Obama’s Hidden Agenda in Afghanistan Requires 30,000 More Troops

[It is illogical to escalate troops to fight a defeated enemy.  If "al Qaida" is no longer in Afghanistan then there is no need to increase the forces there.  The original "mission" in Afghanistan, as described in the war resolution, has been accomplished.  Neither the military nor government has bothered to tell us what the mission now is.  This war has been fought under false pretenses since the very beginning.]

Obama likely to send only 30,000 more troops

By Kim Sengupta

The US administration is likely to announce the dispatch of at least 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, amid increasing calls in Britain for a withdrawal from the war in the face of a rising death toll. The announcement that the 200th and 201st members of the British forces have been killed in combat in the conflict – the eighth in five days – came on Remembrance Sunday, with public figures in the UK questioning further involvement and yet another opinion poll showing a majority want our troops pulled out.

But Barack Obama, who tours the region this week, is expected to announce his decision based on three options from his advisers, all of which call for more troops. The President is considering the request by General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, for up to 40,000 troops. The US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, is said to favour the sending of 30,000 and President Obama is “strongly veering towards the same option and certainly not a lower figure”, a senior official said. Britain is to send 500 more troops to Afghanistan. But the deployment is being held up until President Obama makes his decision.

The latest British fatalities, a member of the 2nd Battalion, the Rifles, and a member of the 4th Battalion, the Rifles, were killed in separate explosions in Sangin, central Helmand, where another soldier, from the 3rd Battalion of the regiment died on Friday. Five men, from the Grenadier Guards and the Royal Military Police, were shot dead by a renegade Afghan policeman on Wednesday at Nad-e-Ali. The total death toll for UK troops is 232.

In the Babaji area in UK-controlled Helmand, an investigation has been ordered into a Nato rocket strike in which nine people were killed. Western forces at first said they were insurgents laying mines. But Gulab Mangal, the provincial governor, said the victims were civilians and the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) has now agreed to pay compensation to the bereaved families.

The deaths caused widespread anger with demonstrators parading bodies outside the UK base at the Helmand capital, Lashkar Gar. The British commander in Helmand, Brigadier James Cowan, has called in the Special Investigation Branch of the RMP. Isaf said: “The decision to fire was made in the honest belief that it was targeted against a team of insurgents digging in two mines. New evidence has been brought to our attention by Governor Mangal which has caused us to question our belief that the strike was against insurgents and instead that innocent civilians may have been the victims.”

Brigadier Cowan said soldiers under fire are being told to exercise “courageous restraint” so as not to put civilians at risk. “Consider whether it is even worth firing back, consider whether there are civilians in between you and them, consider whether you can move to a position of advantage. Certainly, if you can kill the enemy, do that, but show that courageous restraint.”

In London, the shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague, said the Tories were “very worried” about the prospect of taking over such a difficult situation if they won the general election. “This level of public dissatisfaction that we see in opinion surveys is not a very good basis on which to fight a war,” he said.

Pak Police Seize 120,000 lbs. of explosives

Police recover 60,000 kgs of explosives, 6 held

LAHORE: Law enforcement agencies arrested six militants in Dera Ghazi Khan, seizing 60,000 kilogrammes of explosives from two trucks the men were travelling in, a private TV channel reported on Sunday. According to the channel, police sources said they had been told that the men were trying to transport the explosives to Punjab for attacks. All six men have been shifted to an undisclosed location for questioning. daily times monitor

Erdogan: Israel War Crimes Worse than Sudan’s

Bashir Misses OIC Summit, Erdogan: Israel War Crimes Worse than Sudan’s

09/11/2009 Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday accused Israel of committing greater crimes against Palestinians during its war in the Gaza Strip than those for which Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir had been indicted. Erdogan said he would rather confront Bashir, indicted for orchestrating crimes against humanity in Darfur, than discuss state killings of civilians with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Turkish prime minister also said that he did not believe that Bashir was guilty of the crimes for which he was indicted. “I cannot discuss this with Netanyahu but I can easily discuss such issues with Omar al-Bashir. I can say to his face: What you are doing is wrong,” Erdogan said. Erdogan said Bashir is free to join an Istanbul summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference this week. The 57-nation group holds its main meetings Monday. The president of Sudan has cancelled a visit to Turkey amid an EU push to arrest him for “war crimes charges”. Bashir told Abdullah Gul, his Turkish counterpart, on Sunday that he would not attend the OIC meeting, the state-run Suna news agency said. The cancellation came after the European Union put pressure on host Turkey to either stop al-Bashir from attending the economic summit or arrest him upon arrival. The Turkish prime minister said Ankara respects human rights and would not hesitate to challenge Bashir if it believed he had committed atrocities. But Erdogan said he does not believe that Sudanese paramilitary forces committed acts of genocide against African residents of Darfur. “It is not possible for those who belong to the Muslim faith to carry out genocide,” Erdogan told ruling party members. Turkey does not recognize the International Criminal Court, the Netherlands-based body that in March issued an arrest warrant for al-Bashir. The court accused Sudan’s leaders of orchestrating a campaign of murder, torture, rape and forced expulsions in Darfur. “If there were such a thing in Darfur, we would be chasing this to the end,” Erdogan said. Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar Assad earlier Sunday urged Turkey to maintain good relations with Israel, in order to mediate Damascus-Tel Aviv negotiations. Assad made the comments in an interview with a Turkish newspaper, a day before the Organization of the Islamic Conference was to meet in Istanbul. Netanyahu last month said that he did not want Ankara serving as mediator in any future diplomatic negotiations with Syria, in view of the crisis in relations between Israel and Turkey.

Revolution is the only solution

[Such blatant disregard for international institutions, even for reality itself, by the United States and its allies should set alarm bells ringing all over the earth.  What has the US become, or has this heartless totalitarian monster always lurked in the heart of democratic capitalism?  An honest governing body could not even seriously contemplate such legislation, yet the American Congress goes all the way and passes this affront to decency by an overwhelming majority.  The communistic Democrats under Pelosi and Hoyer have shown their true faces to the world with this resolution and the draconian healthcare dictat. When are the American people going to wake-up to the monsters who preside over us.  Revolution is the only solution.]

Bipartisan Attack on International Humanitarian Law

Stephen Zunes for Salem-News.com

The primary motivation for the resolution appears to have been to block any consideration of its recommendation that those guilty of war crimes be held accountable.

The Israeli attack on a UN compound and school in Gaza.

(SAN FRANCISCO) – In a stunning blow against international law and human rights, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a resolution on Tuesday attacking the report of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict.

The report was authored by the well-respected South African jurist Richard Goldstone and three other noted authorities on international humanitarian law, who had been widely praised for taking leadership in previous investigations of war crimes in Rwanda, Darfur, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere. Since this report documented apparent war crimes by a key U.S. ally, however, Congress has taken the unprecedented action of passing a resolution condemning it. Perhaps most ominously, the resolution also endorses Israel’s right to attack Syria and Iran on the grounds that they are “state sponsors of terrorism.”

The principal co-sponsors of the resolution (HR 867), which passed on a 344-36 vote, included two powerful Democrats: House Foreign Relations Committee chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) and Middle East subcommittee chairman Gary Ackerman (D-NY). Democratic majority leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) successfully pushed Democrats to support the resolution by a more than 6:1 margin, despite the risk of alienating the party’s liberal pro-human rights base less than a year before critical midterm elections.

The resolution opens with a series of clauses criticizing the original mandate of the UN Human Rights Council, which called for an investigation of possible Israeli war crimes only. This argument is completely moot, however, since Goldstone and his colleagues — to their credit — refused to accept the offer to serve on the mission unless its mandate was changed to one that would investigate possible war crimes by both sides in the conflict.

As a result, the mandate of the mission was thereby broadened. The House resolution doesn’t mention this, however, and instead implies that the original mandate remained the basis of the report. In reality, even though the report contained over 70 pages detailing a series of violations of the laws of war by Hamas, including rocket attacks into civilian-populated areas of Israel, torture of Palestinian opponents, and the continued holding of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, there’s no acknowledgment in the 1,600-word resolution that the initial mandate had been superseded or that the report criticizes the conduct of both sides. In fact, despite the report’s extensive documentation of Hamas assaults on Israeli towns — which it determined constituted war crimes and possible “crimes against humanity” — the resolution insists that it “makes no mention of the relentless rocket and mortar attacks.”

The Goldstone mission report — totaling 575 pages — contains detailed accounts of deadly Israeli attacks against schools, mosques, private homes, and businesses nowhere near legitimate military targets, which they accurately described as “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish humiliate and terrorize a civilian population.” In particular, the report cites 11 incidents in which Israeli armed forces engaged in direct attacks against civilians, including cases where people were shot “while they were trying to leave their homes to walk to a safer place, waving white flags.” The House resolution, however, claims that such charges of deliberate Israeli attacks against civilian areas were “sweeping and unsubstantiated.”

Both the report’s conclusions and most of the particular incidents cited were independently documented in detailed empirical investigations released in recent months by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, among others. Congressional attacks against the integrity of the Goldstone report, therefore, constitute attacks against the integrity of these reputable human rights groups as well.

Equating Killing Civilians with Self-Defense

In an apparent effort to further discredit the human rights community, the resolution goes on to claim that the report denies Israel’s right to self defense, even though there was absolutely nothing in the report that questioned Israel’s right to use military force. It simply insists that neither Israelis nor Palestinians have the right to attack civilians.

The resolution resolves that the report is “irredeemably biased” against Israel, an ironic charge given that Justice Goldstone, the report’s principal author and defender, is Jewish, a longtime supporter of Israel, chair of Friends of Hebrew University, president emeritus of the World ORT Jewish school system, and the father of an Israeli citizen.

Goldstone was also a leading opponent of apartheid in his native South Africa and served as Nelson Mandela’s first appointee to the country’s post-apartheid Supreme Court. He was a principal prosecutor in the war crimes tribunals on Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, took a leading role in investigations into corruption in the UN’s “Oil for Food” program in Iraq, and was also part of investigations into Argentina’s complicity in provided sanctuary for Nazi war criminals.

Having 80% of the U.S. House of Representatives go on record attacking the integrity of one of the world’s most respected and principled defenders of human rights is indicative of just how far to the right the U.S. Congress has now become, even under Democratic leadership. In doing so, Congress has served notice to the human rights community that they won’t consider any human rights defenders credible if they dare raise questions about the conduct of a U.S. ally. This may actually be the underlying purpose of the resolution: to jettison any consideration of international humanitarian law from policy debates in Washington. The cost, however, will likely be to further isolate the United States from the rest of the world, just as Obama was beginning to rebuild the trust of other nations.

Indeed, the resolution calls on the Obama administration not only “to oppose unequivocally any endorsement” of the report, but to even oppose unequivocally any “further consideration” of the report in international fora. Instead of debating its merits, therefore, Congress has decided to instead pre-judge its contents and disregard the actual evidence put forward. (It’s doubtful that any of the supporters of the resolution even bothered actually reading the report.) The resolution even goes so far as to claim that Goldstone’s report is part of an effort “to delegitimize the democratic State of Israel and deny it the right to defend its citizens and its existence can be used to delegitimize other democracies and deny them the same right.” This is demagoguery at its most extreme. In insisting that documenting a given country’s war crimes is tantamount to denying that country’s right to exist and its right to self defense, the resolution is clearly aimed at silencing defenders of international humanitarian law. The fact that the majority of Democrats voted in favor of this resolution underscores that both parties now effectively embrace the neoconservative agenda to delegitimize any serious discussion of international humanitarian law, in relation to conduct by the United States and its allies.

License for War?

Having failed in their efforts to convince Washington to launch a war against Syria and Iran, neoconservatives and other hawks in Washington have now successfully mobilized a large bipartisan majority of the House of Representatives to encourage Israel to act as a U.S. surrogate: Following earlier clauses that define Israel’s massive military assault on the civilian infrastructure of the Gaza Strip as a legitimate defense of its citizens and make the exaggerated assertion that Iran and Syria are “sponsors” of Hamas, the final clause in the resolution puts Congress on record supporting “Israel’s right to defend its citizens from violent militant groups and their state sponsors” (emphasis added). This broad bipartisan congressional mandate for a unilateral Israeli attack on Syria and Iran is extremely dangerous, and appears designed to undercut the Obama administration’s efforts to pursue a negotiated path to settling differences with these countries.

Misleading Accusations

There are other clauses in the resolution that take quotes out of context and engage in other misrepresentations to make the case that Goldstone and his colleagues are “irredeemably biased.”

One clause in the resolution attacks the credibility of mission member Christine Chinkin, an internationally respected British scholar of international law, feminist jurisprudence, alternative dispute resolution, and human rights. The resolution questions her objectivity by claiming that “before joining the mission, [she] had already declared Israel guilty of committing atrocities in Operation Cast Lead by signing a public letter on January 11, 2009, published in the Sunday Times, that called Israel’s actions ‘war crimes.’” In reality, the letter didn’t accuse Israel of “atrocities,” but simply noted that Israel’s attacks against the civilian infrastructure of the Gaza Strip were “not commensurate to the deaths caused by Hamas rocket fire.” The letter also noted that “the blockade of humanitarian relief, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and preventing access to basic necessities such as food and fuel, are prima facie war crimes.” In short, it was a preliminary assessment rather than a case of having “already declared Israel guilty,” as the resolution states.

Furthermore, at the time of the letter — written a full two weeks into the fighting — there had already been a series of preliminary reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Committee of the Red Cross documenting probable war crimes by Israeli armed forces, so virtually no one knowledgeable of international humanitarian law could have come to any other conclusion. As a result, Chinkin’s signing of the letter could hardly be considered the kind of ideologically motivated bias that should preclude her participation on an investigative body, particularly since that same letter unequivocally condemned Hamas rocket attacks as well.

The resolution also faults the report for having “repeatedly downplayed or cast doubt upon” claims that Hamas used “human shields” as an attempted deterrence to Israeli attacks. The reason the report challenged those assertions, however, was that there simply wasn’t any solid evidence to support such claims. Detailed investigations by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch regarding such accusations during and subsequent to the fighting also came to same conclusion. As with these previous investigations, the Goldstone report determined that there were occasions when Hamas hadn’t taken all necessary precautions to avoid placing civilians in harm’s way, but they found no evidence whatsoever that Hamas had consciously used civilians as shields at any point during the three-week conflict.

Despite this, the House resolution makes reference to a supposed “great body of evidence” that Hamas used human shields. The resolution fails to provide a single example to support this claim, however, other than a statement by one Hamas official, which the mission investigated and eventually concluded was without merit. I contacted the Washington offices of more than two dozen co-sponsors of the resolution, requesting such evidence, and none of them were able to provide any. It appears, then, that the sponsors of the resolution simply fabricated this charge in order to protect Israel from any moral or legal responsibilities for the more than 700 civilian deaths. (Interestingly, the report did find extensive evidence — as did Amnesty International — that the Israelis used Palestinians as human shields during their offensive. Israeli soldiers testifying at hearings held by a private group of Israeli soldiers and veterans confirmed a number of such episodes as well. This fact was conveniently left out of the resolution.)

In another example of misleading content, the resolution quotes Goldstone as saying, in relation to the mission’s investigation, “If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.” However, no such investigation carried out on behalf of the UNHRC has ever claimed to have obtained evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, the normal criterion for proof in a court of law. This does not, however, buttress the resolution’s insistence that the report was therefore “unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy.” What the fact-finding mission did find was probable cause for criminal investigations into possible war crimes by both Hamas and the Israeli government. Another spurious claim of bias is the resolution’s assertion that “the report usually considered public statements made by Israeli officials not to be credible, while frequently giving uncritical credence to statements taken from what it called the `Gaza authorities’, i.e. the Gaza leadership of Hamas.” In reality, the report shows that the mission did investigate such statements and evaluated them based upon the evidence. The resolution also fails to mention that while Hamas officials were willing to meet with the mission, Israeli officials refused, even denying them entrance into Israel. The mission had to fly Israeli victims of Hamas attacks to Geneva at UN expense to interview them. The mission found these Israelis’ testimony credible, took them quite seriously, and incorporated them into their findings.

The resolution goes on to claim that the report’s observation that the Israeli government has “contributed significantly to a political climate in which dissent with the government and its actions . . . is not tolerated” was erroneous. In reality, it has been well-documented — and has been subjected to extensive debate within Israel — that the right-wing government of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has interrogated and harassed political activists as well as suppressed criticism and sources of potential criticism of actions by the Israeli military, particularly non-government organizations such as the dissident soldiers’ group Breaking the Silence.

No Accountability

The House resolution is particularly vehement in its opposition to the report’s recommendation that, should Hamas and Israeli authorities fail to engage in credible investigations and bring those responsible for war crimes to justice, the matter should be referred to the International Criminal Court for possible prosecution. The resolution insists this is unnecessary since Israel “has already launched numerous investigations.” However, Israeli human rights groups have repeatedly criticized their government’s refusal to launch any independent investigations and have documented how the Israeli government has refused to investigate testimonies by soldiers of war crimes. (At this point, the only indictments for misconduct by Israeli forces during the conflict have been against two soldiers who stole credit cards from a Palestinian home.)

The primary motivation for the resolution appears to have been to block any consideration of its recommendation that those guilty of war crimes be held accountable. Since the ICC has never indicted anyone from a country which had a fair and comprehensive internal investigation of war crimes and prosecuted those believed responsible, the goal of Congress appears to be that of protecting war criminals from prosecution.

As a result, the passage of this resolution isn’t simply about the alleged clout of AIPAC or just another example of longstanding congressional support for Israeli militarism. This resolution constitutes nothing less than a formal bipartisan rejection of international humanitarian law. U.S. support for human rights and international law has always been uneven, but never has Congress gone on record by such an overwhelming margin to discredit these universal principles so categorically. This is George W. Bush’s foreign policy legacy, which — through this resolution — the Democrats, no less than their Republican counterparts, have now eagerly embraced.

Stephen Zunes, a Foreign Policy in Focus senior analyst, is a professor of politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco.

Second Bombing in Two Days Hits Pakistan’s Peshawar

[Expect to see more of this in the days ahead, since the Army just emptied-out the snake -pit in S. Waziristan and chased all the snakes in Peshawar's direction. The Army isn't really fighting against terrorism, it is fighting the Pakistani people with terrorism.]

By Anwar Shakir and Paul Tighe

Nov. 9 (Bloomberg) — A suspected suicide bomber struck a police post in Pakistan’s northwestern Peshawar city, killing at least four people in the second attack there in two days.

Three people were wounded in the bombing, police officer Saheb Zada said in a phone interview from the city, the capital of North-West Frontier Province. The bomber detonated the explosives on the city’s ring road, Agence France-Presse reported. Thirteen people died yesterday in Peshawar as a suicide bomber attacked a crowded cattle market. The Tehreek-e- Taliban claimed responsibility.

Militants in Pakistan have killed more than 300 people in bombings and attacks since the army last month began its biggest offensive aimed at driving pro-Taliban fighters from the South Waziristan tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

Pakistan blames the Tehreek-e-Taliban faction, being targeted by troops, helicopters and fighter jets, for 80 percent of terrorist attacks on its territory.

Late yesterday, police killed a suspected terrorist planning an attack in the capital, Islamabad, the official Associated Press of Pakistan reported, citing Bin Yameen, deputy inspector-general of police in the city. Security forces are hunting for two accomplices who escaped in a car, he said.

The would-be bomber in Islamabad was killed when he jumped from a car and tried to attack the police post, Yameen said, according to APP. “A big terrorist bid was foiled,” he said.

‘Barbaric’ Bombing

Yesterday’s Peshawar bombing killed Abdul Malik, a local official, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the minister of information in the provincial government, said. Malik was a former Taliban supporter who became an anti-militant mayor, AFP said.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani ordered an inquiry into the attack on the cattle market, describing the bombing as “barbaric,” according to APP.

Troops are clearing areas around Sararogha, Raghzai and Sagar Langer Gel after driving militants from the towns, the army said yesterday. Pakistan says it wants to complete its operation in South Waziristan before winter starts in the region next month. A roadside bomb attack killed four Pakistani soldiers late on Sunday in the town of Makin, AFP reported.

Makin was a Taliban stronghold close to where former Tehreek-e-Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud had a house, which the military said Friday had been demolished, the agency said.

Taliban fighters are fleeing into South Waziristan’s mountains, the army said last week. The Taliban says its forces are falling back deliberately to draw soldiers into the region and engage them in a long war.

The capture of Taliban-controlled towns may have limited strategic value unless soldiers pursue militants into their mountain hideouts, ex-army brigadier Javed Hussain, a former Special Forces commander, said last week.

To contact the reporters on this story: Anwar Shakir in Karachi at ashakir1@bloomberg.net; Paul Tighe in Sydney at ptighe@bloomberg.net.

Prayer for Mankind

[Despite the message to Muslims title, this message should apply to all religions.  The message is that brotherhood and sisterhood is universal and that all of us are equal in God's eyes.]

AN OPEN LETTER TO  MUSLIMS ONLY

S.A.Rehman
Dear Muslim Brothers and Sisters,

God forbid if any one of our near one and dear one is
killed then the killer is evil, a beast and what not
and should get penalty but if one among us kills
anybody then he is not evil and we start lying,
denying or even justifying the killing…. double
standards?

Being Muslims, many of our brothers and sisters are
not working for peace. They are misguided, mistaken
and spreading the virus of hatred and revenge through
telling deliberate lies, disinformation and false
accusations, which is resulting in death and miseries
for number of innocent people living around the world
at the hands of merciless KILLER MUSLIMS and also
bringing bad name to Mohammed (PBUH) who never killed
anyone in his life time.

Instead of teaching about Good & Evil, certain Radical
Muslim Clerics are only “Trading in Religion”. They
teach us about accusing, abusing and killing the
non-Muslims. They try to hypnotize us to Hate and Kill
the non-Muslims and brethren of other sects or be
killed and without using any common sense, we readily
believe in whatever is being said by these Hate
Mongers.  Actually, they are “Agents of Satan” who is
paying them heavily and in return they are cutting at
the very roots of the Ummah. Instead of “Mourning”
most of the Muslims are rejoicing on the brutal
killings of the non-combatant innocent civilians and
“The Murderers” have always been “Our Great Heroes”.

Before it is too late and the Curse Of God falls upon
us, we should use common sense, find out the TRUTH and
must change ourselves  to save Muslims from becoming
the most “Hated, Isolated, Discredited and Suspicious”
people in the world. We must start working for
promoting “Sectarian Harmony and Religious Tolerance”
in the society and should prove to the WORLD through
our deeds that Islam is not a religion of Zero
Tolerance and Mohammed (PBUH) teaches “Love & Peace”
and not Gangsterism, Terrorism, Barbarism, Extremism,
Sectarianism, Cruelty, Inhumanity and “Hatred &
Killing” of the innocent civilians.

Islam is a religion of peace. Islam teaches respect
and love for all even the animals. But many
narrow-minded Muslims have so far failed to learn
anything good from the teachings of Mohammed (PBUH)
who preaches love for the peoples of all religions. We
are far away from the basic principle of Islam i.e.
“Enjoining the people to do Good and forbidding them
from Doing Evil” and thus, possess no quality of the
civilized society. Unfortunately, many of us show Zero
Tolerance towards others and have wrongly learnt few
thing to be called as good Muslims and those are
“hate” the non-Muslims and “Accusing, Abusing and
Cursing” the non-Muslims.  …act of madness?

The killing of others in the name of religion is a
Sin. Can a FATHER ever teach his Children to be the
permanent Enemies of each other?

The time has come for us to stop readily believing in
whatever is being said, read and written by the LIARS
/ Hate Mongers. Unfortunately, some misguided-Muslims
believe that the Holy Koran and Holy Prophet (PBUH)
both have instructed Muslims that the opponents be
KILLED and that they are simply following the orders.
We should use our own common sense and only believe
which is logical, convincing and in the best interest
of the humanity.

Why do we hate others so much, may be they are better
humans then what we are. My feeling is that the
Muslims should unite to discredit and deactivate the
fringe mullahs (Preachers of Hate) who promise a quick
trip to paradise to people who have little and
sacrifice themselves with bombs strapped to their
bodies. If the mullahs (THE LIARS) thought that it
really was a way to paradise they would be strapping
bombs to themselves! Their followers are kept too
ignorant to see this for themselves and enlightened
Muslims should educate them. We must promote
understanding and peace. We are all watched by the
same God and need to help one another, not Hate and
Hurt.

Our contention is that the WORLD should resolve the
conflicts facing the Muslim World to stop the
terrorism. Unfortunately, all the disputes facing the
Muslim World are our self created. The root causes of
all the disputes are based on the Muslim Philosophy of
Hate against the non-Muslims. The Muslim literature,
teachings and preaching are spreading and injecting
this hatred in hearts and minds of the Muslims. Our
intolerant behavior is further proved by the root
causes of all the pending conflicts that we (Muslims)
cannot live side by side in peace with the
non-Muslims. All the disputes facing Muslim World can
be resolved easily, only if we (the Muslims) are able
to condemn the “Philosophy of Hate” created in us by
our past and present elders who have divided the
peoples of the world in the name of “Religion, Cast
and Creed”.

Fellow Muslims! if God is one and he loves mankind, we
should value each others life and strive to protect
each other than thinking that if we kill we shall have
reward. God looks at human beings not as belonging to
different religions, that is why the rain falls to
all, the sun shines to all and we all breathe the air
freely. We are all created or given life in the very
same way- whether Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Jew etc.
Let us learn to love each other sincerely.

The change of heart and mind is possible to achieve if
we keep up our relentless efforts for a violence free
and peaceful world. We need to preach love, kindness
and humanity with extremist devotion and mission. The
mullahs (THE LIARS) and the preachers of HATE must be
excommunicated at every level and we should stop
giving them donations as it is our money which is
being used by them to spread HATRED for killing of the
innocents.

We must also stop dividing the World into Muslim and
non-Muslim blocks. Our political leaders and religious
teachers must offer positive ideas. Without the
ability to imagine a better world, we cannot build
anything together. Tolerance of the beliefs of other
peoples in the world, warmth and friendship across
racial cultures MUST be the objective of all peace
loving people worldwide. What is being offered today
through religion is “Death, Destruction and
Sufferings”.

MY PRAYER FOR PEACE:

Merciful God, please give to peoples of the world, the
required wisdom and determination, to Forgive and
Forget the bitterness of the past and learn to live in
peace like brothers and sisters, by condemning the
divisions and hatreds created in us by our past and
present elders.
(Amen)

Please Read And Circulate this Message For Peace.
Thank you.

S.A.Rehman
Peace Activist
PAKISTAN

More Proof of the Pak Army/Militant Dance in S. Waziristan

[If Operation Rah-e-Nijat was really a war to eliminate the Tehreek Taliban in S. Waziristan, alleged to be at least 10,000 fighters, then where are they, if the resistance is about over?  The answer is that the Army and the ever-present American drones just watched them walk away.  As of Friday, 450 terrorists had been killed, and several thousand had relocated to N. Waziristan and to Khyber, where they can escalate their war against the good people of Peshawar on one side, and Parachinar, on the other.  If you want to read about the brave exploits of the Pakistani defenders in killing this dozen "miscreants," then follow the link.]

12 militants killed in SWA as resistance fades

 

 

The Media As Enablers of Government Lies

by James Bovard
by James Bovard
Recently by James Bovard: Eight Years of Big Lies on Afghanistan

Why do politicians so easily get away with telling lies? In large part, because the news media are more interested in bonding with politicians than in exposing them. Americans are encouraged to believe that the media will serve as a check and a balance on the government. Instead, the press too often volunteer as unpaid pimps, helping politicians deceive the public.

In 1936, New York Times White House correspondent Turner Catledge said that President Roosevelt’s “first instinct was always to lie.” But the Washington press corps covered up Roosevelt’s dishonesty almost as thoroughly as they hid his use of a wheelchair in daily life.

President Bill Clinton benefited from a press corps that often treated his falsehoods as nonevents – or even petty triumphs. Newsweek White House correspondent Howard Fineman commented that Clinton’s “great strength is his insincerity…. I’ve decided Bill Clinton is at his most genuine when he’s the most phony…. We know he doesn’t mean what he says.”

Flora Lewis, a New York Times columnist, writing three weeks before 9/11, commented in a review of a book on U.S. government lies on the Vietnam War, “There will probably never be a return to the discretion, really collusion, with which the media used to treat presidents, and it is just as well.” But within months of her comment, the media had proven itself as craven as ever. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, who did some of the best exposés of George W. Bush’s falsehoods in his first term, noted that it was not until July 2002 that “the White House press corps showed its teeth” in response to administration deceptions. Even the exposés of FBI and CIA intelligence failures in May 2002 did not end the “phase of alliance” between the White House and the press, as political scientist Martha Kumar observed.

Deference to the government is now the trademark of the American media – at least at times when the truth could have the greatest impact. The media were grossly negligent in failing to question or examine Bush’s claims on the road to war. When journalists dug up the truth, editors sometimes ignored or buried their reports. Washington Post Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks complained that, in the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, “There was an attitude among editors: ‘Look, we’re going to war; why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?’” New York Times White House correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller explained the press’s conduct at a Bush press conference just before he invaded Iraq: “I think we were very deferential because … nobody wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time.”

After the war started, the falsehood of Bush’s claims was often treated as a one-day story, buried in the back of the front section or on the editorial page. Afterward, most papers quickly returned to printing the president’s proclamations as gospel. Eric Alterman, author of When Presidents Lie, observed,

Virtually every major news media outlet devoted more attention to the lies and dissimulations of one New York Times reporter, Jayson Blair, than to those of the president and vice president of the United States regarding Iraq. Given that these two deceptions took place virtually simultaneously, they demonstrate that while some forms of deliberate deception remain intolerable in public life, those of the U.S. commander in chief are not among them.

Docility

The media’s docility to the Bush administration repeated the pattern established during the first Gulf War (and during much of the Vietnam War). Chris Hedges, who covered the 1990–91 Gulf War for the New York Times, later explained, “The notion that the press was used in the war is incorrect. The press wanted to be used. It saw itself as part of the war effort.” Hedges noted that journalists were “eager to be of service to the State,” which “made it easier to do what governments do in wartime, indeed what governments do much of the time, and that is lie.”

Far from being irate about presidential lies, the media often enjoy sharing a laugh with the commander in chief over such technical inaccuracies. On March 24, 2004, President Bush performed a skit for those attending the Radio and Television Correspondents’ annual dinner in which he showed slides of himself crawling around his office peaking behind curtains while he quipped to the crowd, “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere…. Nope, no weapons over there…. Maybe under here?”

Bush’s comic bit got one of the biggest laughs of the night. The Washington Post Style section hailed the evening’s performance with a headline – “George Bush, Entertainer in Chief.” The media dignitaries made no fuss over the comments – until a mini-firestorm erupted a few days later, spurred by criticism by Democrats and soldiers who had fought in Iraq. Greg Mitchell, the editor of Editor and Publisher, labeled the press’s reaction as “one of the most shameful episodes in the recent history of the American media, and presidency.”

The character of the Washington press corps also shone bright in its nonresponse to the Downing Street Memo. On May 1, 2005, the London Times printed a memo from a British cabinet meeting on July 23, 2002, that reported the findings of the visit by Britain’s intelligence chief to Washington to confer with CIA chief George Tenet and other top Bush administration officials. The memo quoted the intelligence chief:

Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

The fact that the top level of the British government was aware that the Bush administration was fixing – i.e., manipulating and contriving – intelligence and facts to justify going to war was a bombshell in the United Kingdom. The decision to “fix” facts was illustrated by the torrent of false accusations and statements that Bush and his top officials made against Iraq in the following months. Throughout 2002, Bush continued to say that he had hoped to avoid going to war with Saddam. In his State of the Union address in late January 2003 and in his subsequent speeches, he talked about the United States as a victim, repeatedly asserting that “if war is forced upon us, we will fight.” Bush had long since decided to attack, regardless of how many UN weapons inspectors Saddam permitted to roam Iraq.

Yet the memo was almost completely ignored by the American mainstream media for the first month after its publication in Britain. As Salon columnist Joe Conason commented, “To judge by their responses, the leading lights of the Washington press corps are more embarrassed than the White House is by the revelations in the Downing Street memo.”

Deceit has become ritualized in U.S. foreign policy. From 2002 onwards, the White House Iraq Group spewed out false information that the New York Times and other prominent media outlets routinely accepted without criticism or verification. After many of the assertions were later discovered to be false, the White House and much of the media treated the falsehoods as irrelevant to the legitimacy of the U.S. invasion. The lack of attention paid to political lies is itself symptomatic of the bias in favor of submitting to rulers regardless of how much people are defrauded.

Katrina

Hurricane Katrina provided an opportunity for the media to ritually renounce their own servility. As the nonresponse and pervasive debacle became undeniable and the death count soared to more than a thousand, many talking heads pointed out the government’s “failures” and proudly showed their indignation. A New York Times headline summed up the broadcast media’s change in tone: “Reporters Turn From Deference to Outrage.” One BBC commentator observed, “Amidst the horror, American broadcast journalism just might have grown its spine back, thanks to Katrina,” which he suggested could provide an antidote to the “timid and self-censoring journalistic culture that is no match for the masterfully aggressive spin-surgeons of the Bush administration.” NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams explained, “By dint of the fact that our country was hit [in 2001] we’ve offered a preponderance of the benefit of the doubt [to the government] over the past couple [sic] of years. Perhaps … this is the story that brings a healthy amount of cynicism back to a news media known for it.” But such periodic affirmations of independence are as credible as an alcoholic who, regaining consciousness after tumbling down the stairs, piously announces the end of his boozing days. There will be other bottles – and other stairs.

The pursuit of respectability in Washington usually entails acquiescing to government lies. Many if not most members of the Washington press corps are government dependents. Few Washington journalists have the will to expose government lies. That would require placing one in an explicitly adversarial position to the government. It is not that the typical journalist is intentionally covering up government lies, but that his radar is not set to detect such occurrences. Lies rarely register in Washington journalists’ minds because they are usually supplicants for government information, not dogged pursuers of the truth. Raising troublesome questions will not help you get any “silver platter” stories.

The vast majority of the media docilely repeated Bush’s claims through most of his presidency. Television networks very likely devoted a hundred times as much air time to peddling government falsehoods as they did to exposing them. The constant barrage of falsehood drowns out the occasional blips of truth. The government only needs the number of people who recognize its lies to be small enough that its latest power play will not be thwarted. The goal is not to prevent well-informed citizens from being nauseated or disgusted by the president’s lies. Instead, it is to neutralize the mass reaction to presidential falsehoods, even those that have catastrophic consequences.

If Americans wish to retain the remnants of their liberty, they cannot trust the media to warn them about government tyranny. In order to recognize government deceit, there is no substitute for more citizens to make more effort to find the truth for themselves.

November 6, 2009

James Bovard [send him mail] is the author of the just-released Attention Deficit Democracy, The Bush Betrayal, and Terrorism & Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil. He serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation. Visit his website.

Copyright © 2009 Future of Freedom Foundation

Congressman Reveals 5-Year Prison Term for Health Insurance Evasion

PELOSI: Buy a $15,000 Policy or Go to Jail

JCT Confirms Failure to Comply with Democrats’ Mandate Can Lead to 5 Years in Jail

Friday, November 06, 2009

Today, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp (R-MI) released a letter from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) confirming that the failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the Pelosi health care bill (H.R. 3962, as amended) could land people in jail.  The JCT letter makes clear that Americans who do not maintain “acceptable health insurance coverage” and who choose not to pay the bill’s new individual mandate tax (generally 2.5% of income), are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years.

In response to the JCT letter, Camp said:  “This is the ultimate example of the Democrats’ command-and-control style of governing – buy what we tell you or go to jail.  It is outrageous and it should be stopped immediately.”

Key excerpts from the JCT letter appear below:

“H.R. 3962 provides that an individual (or a husband and wife in the case of a joint return) who does not, at any time during the taxable year, maintain acceptable health insurance coverage for himself or herself and each of his or her qualifying children is subject to an additional tax.” [page 1]

- – - – - – - – - -

“If the government determines that the taxpayer’s unpaid tax liability results from willful behavior, the following penalties could apply…” [page 2]

- – - – - – - – - -

“Criminal penalties

Prosecution is authorized under the Code for a variety of offenses.  Depending on the level of the noncompliance, the following penalties could apply to an individual:

• Section 7203 – misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.

• Section 7201 – felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years.” [page 3]

When confronted with this same issue during its consideration of a similar individual mandate tax, the Senate Finance Committee worked on a bipartisan basis to include language in its bill that shielded Americans from civil and criminal penalties.  The Pelosi bill, however, contains no similar language protecting American citizens from civil and criminal tax penalties that could include a $250,000 fine and five years in jail.

“The Senate Finance Committee had the good sense to eliminate the extreme penalty of incarceration.  Speaker Pelosi’s decision to leave in the jail time provision is a threat to every family who cannot afford the $15,000 premium her plan creates.  Fortunately, Republicans have an alternative that will lower health insurance costs without raising taxes or cutting Medicare,” said Camp.

According to the Congressional Budget Office the lowest cost family non-group plan under the Speaker’s bill would cost $15,000 in 2016.

Fort Hood Shootings: Don’t Let Racism Hide Truth

RedBedHead

 

November 6, 2009 BY NOW EVERYBODY ON THE PLANET KNOWS about the killing of 12 people and wounding of 31 others at Fort Hood in Texas. There’s no doubt that this is a tragedy for the families and friends of the slain. But from a tragedy like this there will inevitably issue forth a second tragedy – the racist, anti-Muslim hysteria that will follow because the man – Major Nidal Malik Hasan – was from a Palestinian background. And that hysteria – already in evidence in online newspaper comments boxes – will obscure the real issues and the real reasons for this tragedy. Hiding from the truth will only ensure more tragedies like this in the future. So, let’s go through some of the truths. 1) The sheer racism involved in immediately speculating on the religion of the shooter. Back in May, an Army Sgt. stationed in Iraq and suffering from PTSD shot and killed five of his fellow soldiers. That man’s name – John Russell – was Anglo Saxon. Nobody speculated on the role of his religion in the killing. In this instance, as an article in the New York Times makes clear, Hasan, who joined the military out of patriotism, faced harassment for being Muslim and wanted out, even pursuing a failed legal route to early discharge. As a psychiatrist, he had counseled many returning vets who suffered PTSD. The combination of these two things apparently made him “mortified” at the prospect of being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. 2) This racism also provides a cover for the fact that men and women trained to kill and who experience the brutality of enforcing occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, suffer from mental breakdowns, suicides and commit murders at far higher rates than the general population. A 2007 CBS News investigation into military suicides found: “Veterans aged 20 through 24, those who have served during the war on terror… had the highest suicide rate among all veterans, estimated between two and four times higher than civilians the same age. (The suicide rate for non-veterans is 8.3 per 100,000, while the rate for veterans was found to be between 22.9 and 31.9 per 100,000.)” And according to an article in the Washington Post, based in part upon an investigation by the Colorado Springs Newspaper, the rate of homicides amongst veterans from the Fourth Infantry Division’s Fourth Brigade were 114 times higher than the rate amongst the general population in Colorado Springs, where they are stationed stateside. “During their deployment, some soldiers killed civilians at random — in some cases at point-blank range — used banned stun guns on captives, pushed people off bridges, loaded weapons with illegal hollow-point bullets, abused drugs and occasionally mutilated the bodies of Iraqis, according to accounts the Gazette attributed to soldiers who said they witnessed the events.” Another study by the New York Times found that at least 120 people had been killed by returning vets. However, the Times itself assumes that this is a conservative number since it was reached only by looking at newspaper reports and it only includes active-duty soldiers and new veterans. The CBS survey used government statistics. 3) The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocents and the destruction of infrastructure and social networks that will take generations to repair. The media and government are utter, utter hypocrites to condemn these murders while taking no note – or reporting as simply normal operation procedure – the families slaughtered wholesale by US drones that fire missiles at wedding and funeral parties, into Pakistani villages. In Afghanistan alone there have been an estimated 8,400 – 28,000 direct and indirect civilian deaths caused by ISAF and US forces. 4) Mass murder has become as American as apple pie with dozens killed in spree murders this year alone. What is it about American society that brings about such a large number of these types of violent acts? The roots have to be found in the fact that America is the world’s biggest, most violent empire, whose means of domination and largest single budget outlay goes towards the military. This year alone the military will take up to $700 billion directly with more indirectly through military aid to countries such as Israel and Colombia. This is a country jacked on violence. America, as the wealthiest nation on earth, also had the third highest levels of inequality and poverty in a study by the OECD released in 2008. The only two countries above the US were Turkey and Mexico. The combination of poverty and glorified violence, in the shadow of historically unprecedented levels of wealth creation is key to understanding the prevalence of violence in America. There is a danger that in the days following the Fort Hood shootings, the right and the media will whip up terrible racism. Arguing wherever possible the real reasons for this terrible act will be an important part of the ideological struggle to maintain the momentum of opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We mustn’t allow the truth to drown in a sea of racist filth.

:: Article nr. 59782 sent on 06-nov-2009 14:34 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=59782

Link: redioactive.blogspot.com/2009/11/fort-hood-shootings-dont-let-racism.html

Has Zardari or Musharraf given US access to Pakistan’s nukes?

[Has Zardari or Musharraf given US access to Pakistan's nukes?]

 

A Pakistani Abdali missile, capable of carrying nuclear warheads, is displayed in the country’s capital Islamabad

US, Pakistan negotiate nuke security deal: report

(AFP) – 5 hours ago

WASHINGTON — The United States has been negotiating highly sensitive understandings with the Pakistani military about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported in the latest issue of The New Yorker magazine.

The journalist wrote that during meetings with current and former officials in Washington and Pakistan, he was told that the agreements would allow specially trained American units to provide added security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis.

At the same time, the Pakistani military would be given money to equip and train Pakistani soldiers and to improve their housing and facilities, the report says.

The principal fear was that extremists inside the Pakistani military might stage a coup, take control of some nuclear assets, or even divert a warhead, Hersh notes.

The Pakistani nuclear doctrine calls for the warheads and their triggers to be stored separately from each other, and from their delivery devices.

The arrangement serves as a safeguard in case of a quickly escalating confrontation with India but also makes the weapons vulnerable during shipment and reassembly, the report points out.

“We give comfort to each other, and the comfort level is good, because everybody respects everybody’s integrity,” Hersh quoted Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari as telling him in an interview about the security relationship with Washington.

“Our Army officers are not crazy, like the Taliban,” Zardari went on to say. “A mutiny would never happen in Pakistan. It’s a fear being spread by the few who seek to scare the many.”

Meanwhile, former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf acknowledged that his government had given US State Department nonproliferation experts insight into the command and control of the Pakistani arsenal and its on-site safety and security procedures, the report said

McChrystal Wrong For Attempts to Influence Policy

Ruger: Military leaders have a duty to stay out of politics

William Ruger, TEXAS STATE UNIVERSITY

Sunday, November 08, 2009

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, is a very confident man and quite talented, according to many who have followed his career or worked for him over the years.

Unfortunately, confidence and talent frequently combine to produce hubris and an inability to recognize one’s bounds.

McChrystal’s many statements on the lack of easy answers and the difficulties we face even understanding the conflict in Afghanistan suggest that arrogance.The general’s public lobbying for his preferred counter-insurgency strategy and for a significant troop increase reveal that he does not understand the boundaries of civil-military relations. His behavior has been inappropriate at best and a sign of continuing problems in U.S. civil-military relations.

In a liberal democracy, civil-military relations should be characterized by civilian dominance. The president and the Congress should make policy and the military should implement it. Indeed, as Peter Feaver of Duke University (and a member of the Bush administration) argued, civilians even have “a right to be wrong.”

As experts in the “management of violence,” military leaders should have broad discretion in carrying out missions at the operational and tactical levels. Given their greater knowledge of warfare, soldiers should be permitted a voice in the councils of war and provide frank advice to our leaders without fear of punishment.

However, military leaders should not try to publicly influence policy or public opinion. As Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in a thinly veiled rebuke of McChrystal’s campaign, said: “it is imperative that all of us taking part in these deliberations — civilian and military alike — provide our best advice to the president candidly but privately.” Whether that advice is accepted or rejected, troops should then, as Michael Desch of the University of Notre Dame argued, “salute and obey” — or resign.

Though it does not excuse his overt foray into the policy debate, McChrystal’s behavior is not surprising given how frequently military leaders have inappropriately enmeshed themselves in public political debates since Vietnam. For example, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Colin Powell attempted to directly and publicly shape U.S. foreign policy after the end of the Cold War. He publishied two pieces criticizing the kind of policies President Bill Clinton favored while proposing a more restrained vision of U.S. strategy now known as the Powell Doctrine.

By contrast, Gen. Richard Myers, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acted as a cheerleader for President George W. Bush’s Iraq policies while Gen. David Petraeus wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post at the height of the 2004 presidential campaign highlighting progress being made in Iraq. The politicking has filtered down to the troops, exemplified most prominently by a New York Times op-ed by a group of enlisted personnel offering their view of our Iraq policy.

Despite recent problems in civil-military relations, civilian control in the U.S. is not directly threatened. And McChrystal is hardly President Barack Obama’s Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur, who won acclaim during World War II was public in his disdain for President Harry Truman’s management of the Korean War. Truman fired him.

However, we need to be vigilant about too much military influence on policies that are ultimately political in nature and which thus need to be determined by civilian leaders who are not boxed in by their subordinates. Otherwise, we risk indirect military rule.

McChrystal’s bid to publicly influence our Afghanistan policy at such a critical juncture in an important and winnable fight was wrong. However, it would be a mistake to severely punish or even fire him. Instead, the Obama administration’s measured but firm response through Gates was well-calibrated to the offense.

Given the daunting abilities that warranted his selection as commander in the first place, it would be best for all of us for McChrystal to continue his exceptional leadership in Kabul, advise his superiors when called upon, and focus on completing the task that our civilian leaders give him. And active duty military personnel would be well-advised to see this as a teachable moment that reminds them of their duty to stay out of politics for the health of the republic they sacrifice so much to defend.

Ruger, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, is an

assistant professor of political science.

Thousands of Japanese protest U.S. base plan

By Isabel Reynolds

GINOWAN, Japan (Reuters) – Thousands of Japanese gathered in sweltering heat on the southern island of Okinawa on Sunday to demand that a U.S. Marine base be moved out of the region, days ahead of a visit by President Barack Obama.

The row over the re-siting of the Futenma air base threatens to stall a realignment of the 47,000 U.S. military personnel in Japan and sour defense ties between the two countries, seen as key in a region home to a rising China and an unpredictable North Korea.

It could also prove a domestic headache for Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, whose support ratings have slipped since his landslide election victory in August.

“Okinawa’s future is for us, the Okinawan people to decide,” Ginowan mayor Yoichi Iha told a supportive crowd which spilled out of an open-air theater by the beach. “We cannot let America decide for us.”

Organizers put the number of protesters at 21,000.

Under a 2006 U.S.-Japan agreement, the Futenma Marine base in the center of the city of Ginowan is set to be closed and replaced with a facility built partly on reclaimed land at Henoko, a remoter part of the island, by 2014.

The deal, which Washington wants to push through after years of what a military official called “painful” negotiations, is part of a wider plan to re-organize U.S. troops and reduce the burden on Okinawa by moving up to 8,000 Marines to Guam.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has urged Japan to approve the plan ahead of Obama’s visit, which is scheduled to start on November 12.

EMOTIVE ISSUE

Hatoyama, who has vowed to build a more equal relationship with the United States, said in the run-up to his August election victory the base should be moved off the island.

That view was supported by 70 percent of Okinawa residents in a poll published this month by the Mainichi newspaper.

“I think getting rid of Futenma would be a good starting point for the removal of all the U.S. bases from Okinawa,” said a 60-year-old woman at Sunday’s protest, who gave her name only as Shinzato.

Okinawa, controlled by the United States until 1972, makes up only 0.6 percent of Japan’s land mass, but hosts about half the U.S. troops in Japan. Those who live near the bases complain of noise, crime, pollution and accidents.

“It’s such a wonderful place. It makes no sense to build it here,” said Hiroshi Ashitomi, a long-time anti-base campaigner.

Environmentalists are anxious to protect marine life including coral and rare dugongs in nearby waters.

Others have different priorities.

“Nature is important, but the primary responsibility of a politician is to protect people’s lives and property,” said Kosuke Gushi, a regional assemblyman with the opposition Liberal Democratic Party that signed off on the plan while in government.

He and other backers of the existing plan, including Ginowan businessmen, say they are concerned re-opening the issue will mean an indefinite delay to the closure of Futenma, where a 2004 helicopter crash added to fears over safety.

Gushi also sees the row as potentially undermining Japan’s U.S.-dependent security policy, leaving the country vulnerable.

“If we can’t provide the bases as we have pledged to do under the U.S.-Japan security treaty, the Americans could pull out and say they are no longer responsible,” Gushi said.

Hatoyama has said he needs time to review the existing base plan, but his Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa has more or less endorsed the current agreement.

(Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

More troops? Only if U.S. wants more Afghan chaos

Most remember that the initial U.S. objective was to defeat the Taliban and capture Osama bin Laden. But today, eight years after the first U.S. soldiers were dispatched there, few can explain why the number of troops deployed in Afghanistan has tripled in the last 18 months, or what Washington hopes to achieve there now that bin Laden and his Al Qaeda warriors have apparently fled to Pakistan.

For thousands of soldiers and their loved ones, though, the increasingly amorphous U.S. mission in Afghanistan has brought extraordinary financial and familial sacrifice, life-altering injuries and even death. The debate over whether to put still more troops in harm’s way would doubtless be a short one if every American adult were equally at risk of conscription.

Soon, President Barack Obama will decide whether this country’s national security interests justify exposing as many as 40,000 more U.S. troops to mortal peril in a country that has more than earned its reputation as the graveyard of empires.

Our conclusion is that they do not, and that president should undertake to reduce, rather than enlarge, the American military footprint in Afghanistan.

If bin Laden and Al Qaeda have left Afghanistan, why are U.S. troops still there?

Al Qaeda flourished in Afghanistan by allying itself with the Taliban, a radical Islamic organization that seized control of the Afghan government in the civil strife following the end of the Soviet Afghan War. Allied forces who invaded Afghanistan after 9/11 quickly drove Taliban forces from Afghanistan’s major cities and across the frontier into Pakistan, but the organization has since regrouped as an insurgency that contests the Afghan and Pakistani governments for control of significant swaths of territory in both countries.

The current U.S. objective is to keep the Taliban down and support the government of President Hamid Karzai, who broke with the Taliban in 1999 and has been trying to rally Afghans around his tenuous regime since he became the country’s leader in 2001.

Next Page

• 1
• | 2
• | 3
• | 4

House of Non-Representatives Empowers Itself to Take Your Money

[The Democrats have exposed themselves as the communists that they really are, in the passage of this government program of extortion, intended to enslave everyone to the dictates of the pharmaceutical industry.  The communist-Democrats will find it completely impossible to either enforce the mandatory program, or collect penalties from the millions who cannot, or will not comply.  This is the sorry state of our Union.  It is clearly time to abolish this sham of a government and institute new government.]

Historic, Obama-backed health care bill passes House

Speaker Nancy Pelosi smiles at a press conference after the House passed the health care overhaul bill on Saturday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a victory for President Obama, the Democratic-controlled House narrowly passed landmark health care legislation Saturday night to expand coverage to tens of millions who lack it and place tough new restrictions on the insurance industry. Republican opposition was nearly unanimous.

The 220-215 vote cleared the way for the Senate to begin a long-delayed debate on the issue that has come to overshadow all others in Congress.

A triumphant Speaker Nancy Pelosi likened the legislation to the passage of Social Security in 1935 and Medicare 30 years later — and Obama issued a statement saying, “I look forward to signing it into law by the end of the year.”

“It provides coverage for 96% of Americans. It offers everyone, regardless of health or income, the peace of mind that comes from knowing they will have access to affordable health care when they need it,” said Rep. John Dingell, the 83-year-old Michigan lawmaker who has introduced national health insurance in every Congress since succeeding his father in 1955.

In the run-up to a final vote, conservatives from the two political parties joined forces to impose tough new restrictions on abortion coverage in insurance policies to be sold to many individuals and small groups. They prevailed on a roll call of 240-194.

Ironically, that only solidified support for the legislation, clearing the way for conservative Democrats to vote for it.

The legislation would require most Americans to carry insurance and provide federal subsidies to those who otherwise could not afford it. Large companies would have to offer coverage to their employees. Both consumers and companies would be slapped with penalties if they defied the government’s mandates.

If the Ayatollah Khomeini was an enemy of the United States ruling elite, why did he adopt the CIA’s security service?

If the Ayatollah Khomeini was an enemy of the United States ruling elite, why did he adopt the CIA’s security service?

Historical and Investigative Research – 23 Feb 2006
by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/iraniraq/savak.htm
___________________________________________________________

SAVAK was the accronym for the Iranian Shah (King) Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s feared security service, which routinely tortured and assassinated dissidents, and spied on everybody. It had been created by the CIA after the CIA installed the shah in power in a 1953 coup d’état.[1]

In 1979, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini – who as a dissident leader had been denouncing SAVAK — came to power after the revolutionary forces deposed the shah. The next year, the Washington Post wrote an interesting article with the title: “Khomeini Is Reported to Have a SAVAK of His Own.”[1a] And what was Khomeini’s own SAVAK like? It was none other than SAVAK itself. Here is what the Washington Post writes (emphases are mine):

“Though it came to power denouncing the shah’s dreaded SAVAK secret service, the government of Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini has created a new internal security and intelligence operation, apparently with a similar organizational structure and some of the same faces as its predecessor.

The new organization is called SAVAMA. It is run, according to U.S. sources and Iranian exile sources here and in Paris, by Gen. Hossein Fardoust, who was deputy chief of SAVAK under the former shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and a friend from boyhood of the deposed monarch.

…‘SAVAK is alive and kicking’ in the form of SAVAMA, claims Ali Tabatabai, former press counselor at the Iranian Embassy in Washington under the shah… now president of the Iran Freedom Foundation in Bethesda [Maryland, near Washington D.C.]… ‘There are large numbers of former SAVAK people’ in the new organization, he says. ‘In fact, with the exception of the bureau chiefs [who ran the individual sections of SAVAK] the whole organization seems to be intact.’

In Paris, a French lawyer who specializes in representing Iranian exiles told Washington Post correspondent Ronald Koven that ‘SAVAMA is SAVAK without any change in structure. They just replaced some of the chiefs…

…Tabatabai, who claims he has good sources on the situation in Tehran, says that SAVAMA’s organization ‘is almost a carbon copy’ of SAVAK’s, with nine bureaus. These, he said, cover personnel, collection of foreign intelligence, collection of domestic intelligence, surveillance of its own agents and security of its own agents and security of government buildings, communications, finances, analysis of collected intelligence, counterintelligence, and recruitment and training.”

What Tabatabai is describing above is the security apparatus of a totalitarian police state: the nine bureaus of SAVAK/SAVAMA were spying on ordinary Iranians and even on SAVAK/SAVAMA itself. They were also torturing and murdering ordinary Iranians, as they judged it necessary: “SAVAK used torture systematically as a tool of internal repression.” The Ayatollah Khomeini, of course, installed a totalitarian police state, so from this point of view swallowing SAVAK — which had a great deal of experience running the shah’s totalitarian police state — was convenient. But it was still a perfectly absurd thing for Khomeini to do if he was really an enemy of the US ruling elite, because it was this ruling elite’s CIA that had installed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in power and created SAVAK for him, and therefore only an ally of the US ruling elite would welcome the “very close ties that SAVAK, under the shah, [had] maintained with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.”

Of course, US officials were very busy telling everybody that the Ayatollah Khomeini (whom they would soon start arming to the teeth, in secret, for the entire duration of the Iran-Iraq war[1b]) was supposedly their enemy, so they rushed to deny that there was really that much SAVAK in SAVAMA. As reported in the same article:

“In Washington, however, U.S. government analysts offer a more subdued assessment.

‘It may be tempting to look at SAVAMA as SAVAK reborn,’ one source said, ‘but that is too fanciful for the facts.’ …U.S. sources say that some vestiges of the previous system could be useful [to new regime]. So, some former SAVAK functionaries — described as ‘lower level’ — who were able to function for the shah without being tainted now work for Khomeini.”

Uh-huh. But as you can see from one of the quotes above, the one thing that both US and Iranian exile sources were definitely agreeing on was that “SAVAMA…is run…by Gen. Hossein Fardoust, who was deputy chief of SAVAK under the former shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi…”

Not only that:

“Fardoust…[was] a longtime friend, classmate and confidant of the shah. Fardoust, Tabatabai says, was also head of a special SAVAK bureau that summarized all intelligence information. Fardoust delivered it personally to the shah daily.”

This Fardoust was not exactly “lower level,” was he? Nor was he merely “tainted”: Fardoust had been running Iran for the shah. It also turns out that “Fardoust’s deputy at SAVAMA is said to be Gen. Ali Mohammed Kaveh, formerly the head of the SAVAK bureau dealing with analysis of collected intelligence.” This Kaveh was not exactly “lower level” either. Finally, “In three former bureaus dealing with personnel organization and summation of intelligence, Tabatabai claims, every member who worked for Fardoust when he was deputy chief of SAVAK still works for him as chief of SAVAMA.”

The US ruling elite did not support Ali Tabatabai’s Iran Freedom Foundation, which wanted to topple Khomeini,[2] and it was awkward for the US ruling elite that Ali Tabatabai was explaining out loud how the Ayatollah was running Iran with the CIA’s SAVAK, just like the shah had before him. It is possible that Tabatabai’s assassination in his Bethesda, Maryland home, shortly after he made the above statements to the press, was unrelated to the CIA.[3] However, it does seem significant that,

“Only Tabatabai was willing to let his name be attached publicly to the foundation. Only Tabatabai was eager to go before television cameras and radio microphones to discuss the positions of the foundation. In the end, said one of the original 10 [founders] who asked that his name not be used, their fears for the safety of their families and themselves were borne out by what happened to Tabatabai. …‘Our object was primarily to expose the true nature of Khomeini,’ he said.

…Tabatabai was president of the foundation as well as its spokesman. Because of his prominent public profile, the Iran Freedom FOUNDATION (IFF) became in turn the most widely known of nine anti-Khomeini groups in the United States.

…In all cases, it was Tabatabai who took the public stage. … He appeared on talk shows, both radio and television, locally, nationally and in Canada. He helped organize a major anti-Khomeini demonstration in Los Angeles earlier this month, designed to bring together the different anti-Khomeini groups.”[4]

In other words, Tabatai had a big mouth, and he was the only person that needed shutting up — everybody else had already gotten the message. With Tabatabai out of the picture, problem solved. And indeed, I was unable to find mention of the SAVAK/SAVAMA identity in newspaper articles since. On the contrary: the next year, The New York Times ‘informed’ the public in a headline that “[SAVAMA] Isn’t Like Savak Under Sha,” stating in the body of the text that “Savak [was] disbanded after the 1979 revolution.”[5] An article in The Christian Science Monitor, the same year, did say that “Savama [was] the name given [to] the reconstituted Savak secret police organization, so long a weapon of terror and torture in the late Shah’s hands,” but it rushed to assure its readers that the reason “many Savak members gladly serve in Savama” was “to save their own skins.”[6]
_____________________________________________________

Footnotes and Further Reading
_____________________________________________________

[1] “HOW THE UNITED STATES DESTROYED DEMOCRACY IN IRAN IN 1953: Re-print of 16 April 2000 New York Times article”; with an introduction by Francisco Gil-White; Historical and Investigative Research, 5 January 2006;
http://www.hirhome.com/iraniraq/iran-coup.htm

[1a] Khomeini Is Reported to Have a SAVAK of His Own; Khomeini Reported to Have Own SAVAK-Style Agency, The Washington Post, June 7, 1980, Saturday, Final Edition, First Section; A1, 1706 words, By Michael Getler, Washington Post Staff Writer

[1b] “Why Bush Sr.’s 1991 Gulf War? To Protect Iranian Islamism: Like father, like son: this is also the purpose of Bush Jr.’s war”; Historical and Investigative Research; 20 December 2005; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/iraniraq/gulfwar.htm

NOTE: The Iran-Iraq war is covered in the section titled: “The suspicious prelude to the 1991 Gulf War: Khomeini, the Iran-Iraq War, and the Iran-Contra affair.
http://www.hirhome.com/iraniraq/gulfwar.htm#prelude

[2] Exiles plan assault on Iran, Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA), June 19, 1980, Thursday, Midwestern Edition, The News Briefly; Pg. 2, 206 words, WITH ANALYSIS FROM MONITOR CORRESPONDENTS AROUND THE WORLD, EDITED BY DEBRA K. PIOT, Washington

Iranian emigre sources here say exiled Iranian Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar has reached agreement with former generals of the dethroned Shah for a counterrevolution and military moves, based in Iraq, against the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s regime, Monitor correspondent John Cooley reports.

After several visits to Iraq and a meeting with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, Mr. Bakhtiar met Tuesday in Paris, where he lives in exile, with Gen. Gholam Ali Oveissi and Gen. Ahmed Palizban, both of whom have been gathering forces and arms in Iraq for an Iraqi-supported strike against the Ayatollah, the emigres said.

“We know there are military units inside Iran which will support any serious move to restore order. The goal of such a movement would be to establish a military government for two to three years, followed by a popular referendum on the country’s constitutional future,” Ali Akhbar Tabatabai, spokesman for the Iran Freedom Foundation, which supports Mr. Bakhtiar’s cause in the United States, told the Monitor.

The US State Department has shied away from backing Mr. Bakhtiar or the Iran Freedom Foundation…

[3] “Terrorism came to Washington once again yesterday. The chaos and violence of world events crystallized in an instant in a Bethesda home as a gunman pumped bullets into the stomach of Ali Akbar Tabatabai.”

SOURCE: New Case of International Terrorism; Reminder of Vulnerability, The Washington Post, July 23, 1980, Wednesday, Final Edition, First Section; A14, 917 words, By Phil McCombs, Washington Post Staff Writer

[4] Victim Led in Forming Anti-Khomeini Group, The Washington Post, July 23, 1980, Wednesday, Final Edition, First Section; A12, 654 words, By Donnel Nunes, Washington Post Staff Writer

[5] AROUND THE WORLD; Iranian Says Secret Agency Isn’t Like Savak Under Shah, The New York Times, June 1, 1981, Monday, Late City Final Edition, Section A; Page 5, Column 2; Foreign Desk, 183 words, Reuters, TEHERAN, Iran, May 31

FULL TEXT:

“A senior Iranian official said today that Iran has a new intelligence agency but that it is not like the Shah’s hated Savak secret police since it is run along Islamic lines.

Asked at a news conference to confirm the existence of a secret agency called Savama, a Government spokesman, Behzad Nabavi, said, ‘Yes, we have an intelligence organization.’

Revolutionary Iran needs an intelligence agency, Mr. Nabavi said, adding: ‘But of course it does not have the same methods as the C.I.A. or K.G.B. or Savak. It must have Islamic methods and not stray from religious precepts.’

Savak, disbanded after the 1979 revolution, was believed responsible for torturing and killing thousands of suspected political opponents of the Shah. Savak agents ‘were all robbers, drinkers of alcohol, knife-wielders and degenerates,’ Mr. Nabavi said. He did not directly confirm the name Savama, which is believed to stand for the Iranian National Information and Security Organization, or say how long it had existed.”

[6] War between mullahs, leftists staggers Iran, Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA), August 14, 1981, Friday, Midwestern Edition, Pg. 3, 848 words, By Geoffrey Godsell, Staff correspodent of The Christian Science Monitor

Pakistan: The Militant Jihadi Challenge

Asia Report N°164
13 March 2009

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The recent upsurge of jihadi violence in Punjab, the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP), the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Balochistan’s provincial capital, Quetta, demonstrates the threat extremist Sunni-Deobandi groups pose to the Pakistani citizen and state. These radical Sunni groups are simultaneously fighting internal sectarian jihads, regional jihads in Afghanistan and India and a global jihad against the West. While significant domestic and international attention and resources are understandably devoted to containing Islamist militancy in the tribal belt, that the Pakistani Taliban is an outgrowth of radical Sunni networks in the country’s political heartland is too often neglected. A far more concerted effort against Punjab-based Sunni extremist groups is essential to curb the spread of extremism that threatens regional peace and stability. As the international community works with Pakistan to rein in extremist groups, it should also support the democratic transition, in particular by reallocating aid to strengthening civilian law enforcement.

Related content Reforming the Judiciary in Pakistan, Asia Report N°160, 16 October 2008 Pakistan: The Forgotten Conflict in Balochistan, Asia Briefing N°69, 22 October 2007 CrisisWatch database: Pakistan All Crisis Group Pakistan reports

The Pakistani Taliban, which increasingly controls large swathes of FATA and parts of NWFP, comprises a number of militant groups loosely united under the Deobandi Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) that have attacked not just state and Western targets, but Shias as well. Their expanding influence is due to support from long-established Sunni extremist networks, based primarily in Punjab, which have served as the army’s jihadi proxies in Afghanistan and India since the 1980s. Punjab-based radical Deobandi groups like the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) and its offshoot Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ) provide weapons, recruits, finances and other resources to Pakistani Taliban groups, and have been responsible for planning many of the attacks attributed to FATA-based militants. The SSP and LJ are also al-Qaeda’s principal allies in the region.

Other extremist groups ostensibly focused on the jihad in Kashmir, such as the Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, are also signatories to al-Qaeda’s global jihad against the West, and have been active in local, regional and international jihads. Their continued patronage by the military, and their ability to hijack major policy areas, including Pakistan’s relations with India, Afghanistan and the international community, impede the civilian government’s ongoing efforts to consolidate control over governance and pursue peace with its neighbours.

The actions of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP)-led federal government, and the Punjab government, led until recently by Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), against Punjab-based jihadi groups for their role in November’s attack in India’s commercial capital, Mumbai, are a step in the right direction. They must now be followed up by consolidating the evidence and presenting it in court. The two main parties, however, risk reversing the progress they have made by resorting to the confrontational politics of the past. On 25 February 2009, the Supreme Court decided to uphold a ban, based on politically motivated cases dating back to Musharraf’s military rule, on Nawaz Sharif and his brother, Shahbaz, Punjab’s chief minister, from electoral politics. President Asif Ali Zardari’s subsequent imposition of governor’s rule in Punjab has aggravated a political stalemate between the two main parties that, the longer it lasts, will allow non-democratic forces, including the military, the religious right and extremists, to once again fill the political vacuum.

The aftermath of the Mumbai attack presents an opening to reshape Pakistan’s response to terrorism, which should rely not on the application of indiscriminate force, including military action and arbitrary detentions, but on police investigations, arrests, fair trials and convictions. This must be civilian-led to be effective. Despite earlier successes against extremist groups, civilian law enforcement and intelligence agencies, including the Federal Investigation Agency, the provincial Criminal Investigation Departments, and the Intelligence Bureau, lack the resources and the authority to meet their potential. The military and its powerful Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) still dominate – and hamper – counter-terrorism efforts.

The PPP government cannot afford to enforce the law only in response to a terrorist attack or external pressure. Proactive enforcement will be vital to containing religious militancy, which has reached critical levels; this includes checks on the proliferation of weapons and the growth of of private militias, which contravene the constitution; prosecution of hate speech, the spread of extremist literature and exhortations to jihad; greater accountability of and actions against jihadi madrasas and mosques; and ultimately converting information into evidence that holds up in court. It is not too late to reverse the tide of extremism, provided the government immediately adopts and implements a zero tolerance policy towards all forms of religious militancy.

Unfortunately, on 16 February 2009, NWFP’s Awami National Party (ANP)-led government made a peace deal, devised by the military, with the Swat-based Sunni extremist Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), a militant group allied to the Taliban. The government agreed to impose Sharia (Islamic law) in NWFP’s Malakand region, with religious courts deciding all cases after 16 February 2009; dismantle all security checkpoints and require any military movements to be pre-approved by the TNSM; and release captured militants, including those responsible for such acts of violence as public executions and rape. In return, the militants pledged to end their armed campaign.

This accord, an even greater capitulation to the militants than earlier deals by the military regime in FATA, will if implemented entrench Taliban rule and al-Qaeda influence in the area; make peace more elusive; and essentially reverse the gains made by the transition to democracy and the defeat of the military-supported religious right-wing parties in NWFP in the February 2008 elections. With the Swat ceasefire already unravelling, the federal government should refuse presidential assent required for its implementation, and renew its commitment to tackling extremism and realising long-term political reform in the borderlands.

The international response to the Swat deal has so far been mixed, with several key leaders, including U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, viewing it as an acceptable compromise. Acknowledging the failure of unconditionally supporting the Pakistani military, the international community, particularly the U.S., must reverse course and help strengthen civilian control over all areas of governance, including counter-terrorism, and the capacity of the federal government to override the military’s appeasement policies in FATA and NWFP, replacing them with policies that pursue long-term political, economic and social development.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the Government of Pakistan:

1.  Acknowledge that a credible crackdown on jihadi militants will ultimately require convictions in fair trials and take steps to:

a) vest significantly greater authority in civilian law enforcement agencies, including access to mobile phone records and other data, without having to obtain approval from the military and the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI);

b) establish through an act of parliament a clear hierarchy of civilian intelligence agencies, including the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), the provincial Criminal Investigation Departments and the Intelligence Bureau (IB), with the IB as the primary authority in anti-terrorism investigations;

c) strengthen links between law enforcement agencies and prosecutors to build strong cases in court against religious extremists;

d) enhance the capacity of federal and provincial civilian law enforcement agencies, with a particular focus on forensics capabilities and crime scene investigations; establish national and provincial crime labs with modern equipment and internationally trained scientists, under control of the federal interior ministry and provincial home departments;

e) amend the Criminal Procedure Act to establish a witness protection program, and ensure the highest level of security for anyone agreeing to provide valuable testimony against extremists; and

f) enhance the role and guarantee the autonomy of Community Police Liaison Committees to enlist the public in the fight against militancy.

2.  Take robust action against jihadi militant groups and their madrasa networks, including:

a) disbanding private militias, pursuant to Article 256 of the constitution;

b) disrupting communications and supply lines, and closing base camps of jihadi groups in the tribal belt and the political heartland of Punjab; and

c) enhancing oversight over the madrasa sector, including finances and enrolment, and conducting regular inquiries into the sector by provincial authorities, as recently conducted by the Punjab government, with a view to:

i. identifying seminaries with clear links to jihadi groups, closing them and taking action against their clerics and, where appropriate, students;

ii. keeping any seminaries suspected of links with jihadi groups under close surveillance;

iii. taking legal action where seminaries encroach on state or private land; and

iv. ensuring that accommodation and facilities meet proper safety and building standards.

3.  Prosecute anyone encouraging or glorifying violence and jihad, including through hate speech against religious and sectarian minorities, and the spread of jihadi literature.

4.  Acknowledge that political reform is integral to stabilising FATA and NWFP by:

a) invoking Article 8 of the constitution that voids any customs inconsistent with constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights, refusing to sign the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation Order 2009 for the imposition of Sharia (Islamic law) in the Malakand region, and refrain from entering into similar peace deals with religious militants elsewhere;

b) carrying through on its commitment to repeal the Frontier Crimes Regulations (1901), extending the writ of the state, the rule of law, including the courts and police, and ensuring FATA’s representation in the state legislature;

c) integrating FATA into the federal framework by incorporating it into the Northwest Frontier Province, with the seven agencies falling under the executive control of the province and jurisdiction of the regular provincial and national court system and with representation in the provincial assembly;

d) extending the Political Parties Act to FATA, thus removing restrictions on political parties, and introducing party-based elections for the provincial and national legislatures;

e) refraining from arming and supporting any insurgent group or tribal militia, and preventing the army from doing the same; and

f) relying on civilian law enforcement and intelligence as the primary tool to deal with extremism in FATA, limiting the army’s role to its proper task of defending the country’s borders.

5.  Repeal all religious laws that discriminate on the basis of religion, sect and gender.

6.  Resolve the political crisis between the PPP and the PML-N by ending governor’s rule and respecting the PML-N’s elected mandate in Punjab, and agreeing on a political and legal solution to allow for Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif to participate in electoral politics, either through an act of parliament, or an executive order.

7.  Carry through on its commitment to repeal the 17th Amendment to the constitution, and any constitutional provisions, executive orders and laws that contravene the principles of parliamentary democracy.

To the International Community, in particular the U.S. and the European Union:

8.  Provide financial and logistic support to civilian law enforcement agencies to expand their capacity, including in forensics and crime scene investigations, through provision of modern equipment and training of Pakistani scientists.

9.  Condition military assistance on demonstrable steps by the Pakistani armed forces to support civilian efforts in preventing the borderlands from being used by al-Qaeda, Afghan insurgents and Pakistani extremists to launch attacks within Pakistan and from Pakistani territory to its region and beyond; if the Pakistani military does not respond positively, as a last resort, consider targeted and incremental sanctions, including travel and visa bans and the freezing of financial assets of key military leaders and military-controlled intelligence agencies.

10.  Expand assistance to the hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced by the conflict in FATA and Swat.

Islamabad/Brussels, 13 March 2009

Source : http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=6010&l=1

Pakistan: The land of opportunists

[Pakistan is not only home of the "double-game," that of saying one thing and doing another, it is also home to "double-think," as reported in the following article.  There is common knowledge about persons, places and events, but more importantly, there is "official knowledge," that which everyone pretends to be the truth.  It is the same here in America, or in any country that has dealings with America, truth is always insulated from the light of day by many layers of "acceptable lies."]

By Fakir S. Ayazuddin

Hillary Clinton in three short days recognised the people in the presidency as blatant opportunists, a blend of robber barons and Mafiosi combined. Within hours of boarding her flight home, the signal was given, and Zardari was cut loose from US support.
Hillary noted immediately the bunkered mentality of the presidency, with the occupants more concerned with their personal safety, and less for the running of the country. The carpetbaggers were lined up for their last bargains, and sure enough the purchase of 307 acres of prime land worth PKR 2 billion as per newspaper reports, equal to 30 million USD. This deal was finalised on March 9, 2009 well into Zardari’s presidency, violating the constitution by conducting business for profit while president. His son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has also been named as a director in the company.
Hillary was told by some Pakistanis that these deals showed the lack of prudence on behalf of Zardari, for, with the American cover he was confident that it gave him carte blanche to carry on making deals with no questions asked. This prompted Hillary to pull the plug, and negotiations for a safe exit are underway. The call for Zardari’s resignation by the MQM leader from London is a clear indication of the tilt away from the president.
The media is crying hoarse against him, and in his isolated bunker he is incapable of receiving or acting on sensible advice. Meanwhile the argument in focus for the time being is the NRO, to table or not to table. The realisation has not yet struck home, that the NRO is not relevant any more. The bill has been rejected by the people, and to try and ram it through would be ‘suicide’ for any political party. The people, to a man stand against the NRO. Moreover, the people are screaming for accountability – and punishment. In their present mood the people will not allow the present corrupt lot to leave and enjoy their ill gotten gains. They want the crooks to be punished, and this time there will be no amnesty. That time has gone, and to the Godfathers of the NRO, people like Boucher, Negroponte, Marc Lyall, the message is loud and clear. The Pakistani people will not be conned into an amnesty for thieves, for the people are certainly smarter than they are thought to be. On every TV channel they speak with contempt of the politicians, and of their misused votes. While the backroom deals were being negotiated and were then emplaced using foreign powers, a fact that was known to everyone, but quietly converted by a Presidential Ordinance into a law of the land, without public debate, even though there was a Parliament in place. This subterfuge was midwifed by the British and US governments, and has led to the present sorry state. The British and Americans knew fully well about the import of this strategy, but continued nevertheless, in imposing their will.

The Pakistani leadership has already been proven to be opportunist – except for Imran Khan they have all taken any opportunity whatever the cost, to the person or the nation. Honesty of purpose, and financial propriety are very rare commodities in Pakistan, both are compromised at the first available chance. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the founder of the Peoples Party, chose to break from East Pakistan, and take power for himself, of a smaller truncated country. We have heard from many Bangladeshi politicians including the late Mujbur Rahman saying, before he died, that he would have continued as Prime Minister of Pakistan, as the majority leader, if Bhutto had agreed. The future historians would have a better perception of the situation to judge whether Bhutto also acted as an opportunist.
It has been a grab for opportunity at every turn, by the politicians, and the foreign powers have used this bait to lure and exploit the leadership of the country. The coterie of opportunists surrounds every new Pakistani leader and in the present time they saw a heaven-sent vulnerable president, full of insecurities. These were magnified and have resulted in Zardari being cloistered turning the presidency into a no-go area. In fact he has not put a foot on Pakistani soil after taking the oath of office. It is this paranoia that prompted Hillary to pull the plug. The US wants a partner that has an outreach to the people, and not one who is invisible, and only to be viewed on television. Afsandyar is another not so brave Pathan who after a foiled assassination attempt was helicoptered to the presidency and flown to England for almost a year to get over a serious case of jitters. The Pathan, and Baloch blood line is not saying much for their bravery.
The men, women and children of Pakistan are subject to horrific bombings, daily, being killed and maimed. The least they deserve is comfort and solace from their leaders. It is this picture that Hillary takes back with her.
The writer is a political analyst.

Exposing RAW’s Hand In Pakistan Is Exposing America’s Hand

Exposing RAW’s hand

It can no longer be termed as mere suspicion or Pakistanis’ ingrained failing to see the imprint of India in almost every development that tends to strike at the root of its stability. The foreign political and media circles, which counsel Islamabad against perceiving New Delhi as a threat, are either too naïve or have ulterior motives to promote. Their perception could be flawed also because of an inadequate understanding of the historical animosity that has existed between the two countries. Or they might not be following the clever moves that India has all along been making in an attempt to take advantages of Pakistan’s hard times that, unfortunately, have hardly ever been in short supply. The present, when Pakistan is confronted with dire challenges – militancy and its offshoot insecurity, political uncertainty, economic meltdown – is perhaps the most critical juncture for it since the East Pakistan tragic event and it thus creates an ideal opportunity for India to fish in troubled waters.
Investigations into the various acts of terrorism and the army’s inroads into militants’ stronghold of South Waziristan have thrown up incontrovertible evidence that the Research Analysis Wing, India’s spy agency commonly called RAW, has been actively engaged in fomenting trouble for Pakistan, whether in FATA, Balochistan or elsewhere, aiding and even providing training to the elements responsible for creating violence. The use of Indian-made weapons and explosives in terrorist acts has been established. Not only that. The militants taken into custody by Pakistani authorities have revealed their links with Indian intelligence puppeteers. The Indian containers that take weapons and other goods for the ISAF in Afghanistan have on their return been found carrying huge quantities of explosives and weapons when they should be empty. It was quite odd to discover some time back that more than 100 Afghans, some dead and others unconscious, were cooped up in containers that were on their way back from Afghanistan to India.

It is incomprehensible that despite the fact that evidence against India began emerging in 2006, our authorities took it lightly. They raised the issue only feebly, perhaps overawed by the false charge of our role in the Mumbai attacks. Nevertheless, the recent revelations have compelled even the US Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mullen to admit that it was not possible to wish away Pakistan’s concern of Indian doings. He should be doing much more than that to make sure that New Delhi stops its deadly meddling in Pakistan’s affairs.

Will Ft. Hood Assault Be Used to Fuel “Homegrown Terrorism” Bill, or “Islamaphobia”?

Fort Hood attack is 3rd this year by antiwar radicals targeting military on U.S. soil

By Spencer S. Hsu

Washington Post

The Fort Hood attack is the third instance this year in which American military personnel in the United States have been targeted by people reportedly opposed to U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, terrorism experts said.

Investigators are seeking to determine the motivations of the Fort Hood suspect, Army Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, in part to understand whether his alleged actions fit in with what experts see as an emerging pattern of plots developed by U.S. citizens or residents rather than foreign attackers.

Federal prosecutors in September charged two North Carolina men for allegedly conspiring to kill personnel at the U.S. Marine Corps base at Quantico, seeking to attack U.S. forces at home if they could not overseas. In June, Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad, an American Muslim convert, allegedly shot and killed one soldier and wounded another at a military recruiting center at Little Rock, Ark., in what he said was retaliation for U.S. counterterrorism policies worldwide.

Also this year, the last of five men was sentenced in April to 33 years in prison for planning to kill soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J., a plot inspired by foreign terrorist groups.

Overall, U.S. authorities have disclosed at least 10 domestic terrorist cases in the last year — the most since 2001 — in what analysts say is a disturbing spike that suggests the likelihood of incidents is growing. The suspects range from unskilled individuals ensnared in FBI stings after trying to obtain guns and explosives to people allegedly trained in Pakistan by al-Qaeda and preparing homemade bombs like those used in terrorist attacks in London and Madrid.

The Saudi-isation of Pakistan

By Pervez Hoodbhoy
Source: Newsline

The common belief in Pakistan is that Islamic radicalism is a problem only in FATA, and that madrassas are the only institutions serving as jihad factories. This is a serious misconception. Extremism is breeding at a ferocious rate in public and private schools within Pakistan’s towns and cities. Left unchallenged, this education will produce a generation incapable of co-existing with anyone except strictly their own kind. The mindset it creates may eventually lead to Pakistan’s demise as a nation state.

 

For 20 years or more, a few of us have been desperately sending out SOS messages, warning of terrible times to come. In fact, I am surprised at how rapidly these dire predictions have come true.

 

A full-scale war is being fought in FATA, Swat and other “wild” areas of Pakistan, resulting in thousands of deaths. It is only a matter of time before this fighting shifts to Peshawar and Islamabad (which has already been a witness to the Lal Masjid episode) and engulfs Lahore and Karachi as well. The suicide bomber and the masked abductor have crippled Pakistan’s urban life and shattered its national economy.

 

Soldiers, policemen, factory and hospital workers, mourners at funerals and ordinary people praying in mosques have all been reduced to globs of flesh and fragments of bones. But, perhaps paradoxically, in spite of the fact that the dead bodies and shattered lives are almost all Muslim ones, few Pakistanis speak out against these atrocities. Nor do they approve of the army operation against the cruel perpetrators of these acts because they believe that they are Islamic warriors fighting for Islam and against American occupation. Political leaders like Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan have no words of solace for those who have suffered at the hands of Islamic extremists. Their tears are reserved exclusively for the victims of Predator drones, even if they are those who committed grave crimes against their own people. Terrorism, by definition, is an act only the Americans can commit.

 

What explains Pakistan’s collective masochism? To understand this, one needs to study the drastic social and cultural transformations that have rendered this country so completely different from what it was in earlier times.

 

For three decades, deep tectonic forces have been silently tearing Pakistan away from the Indian subcontinent and driving it towards the Arabian peninsula. This continental drift is not physical but cultural, driven by a belief that Pakistan must exchange its South Asian identity for an Arab-Muslim one. Grain by grain, the desert sands of Saudi Arabia are replacing the rich soil that had nurtured a magnificent Muslim culture in India for a thousand years. This culture produced Mughul architecture, the Taj Mahal, the poetry of Asadullah Khan Ghalib, and much more. Now a stern, unyielding version of Islam (Wahhabism) is replacing the kinder, gentler Islam of the Sufis and saints who had walked on this land for hundreds of years.

 

This change is by design. Twenty-five years ago, the Pakistani state used Islam as an instrument of state policy. Prayers in government departments were deemed compulsory, floggings were carried out publicly, punishments were meted out to those who did not fast in Ramadan, selection for academic posts in universities required that the candidate demonstrate a knowledge of Islamic teachings and jihad was declared essential for every Muslim. Today, government intervention is no longer needed because of a spontaneous groundswell of Islamic zeal. The notion of an Islamic state – still in an amorphous and diffused form – is more popular now than ever before as people look desperately for miracles to rescue a failing state.

 

Villages have changed drastically; this transformation has been driven, in part, by Pakistani workers returning from Arab countries. Many village mosques are now giant madrassas that propagate hard-line Salafi and Deobandi beliefs through oversized loudspeakers. They are bitterly opposed to Barelvis, Shias and other sects, who they do not regard as Muslims. The Punjabis, who were far more liberal towards women than the Pukhtuns, are now beginning to take a line resembling that of the Taliban. Hanafi law has begun to prevail over tradition and civil law, as is evident from the recent decisions of the Lahore High Court.

 

In Pakistan’s lower-middle and middle classes lurks a grim and humourless Saudi-inspired revivalist movement that frowns on any and every expression of joy and pleasure. Lacking any positive connection to culture and knowledge, it seeks to eliminate “corruption” by regulating cultural life and seizing control of the education system.

 

“Classical music is on its last legs in Pakistan; the sarangi and vichitraveena are completely dead,” laments Mohammad Shehzad, a music aficionado. Indeed, teaching music in public universities is violently opposed by students of the Islami Jamaat-e-Talaba at Punjab University. So the university has been forced to hold its music classes elsewhere. Religious fundamentalists consider music haram or un-Islamic. Kathak dancing, once popular with the Muslim elite of India, has few teachers left. Pakistan produces no feature films of any consequence. Nevertheless, the Pakistani elite, disconnected from the rest of the population, live their lives in comfort through their vicarious proximity to the West. Alcoholism is a chronic problem of the super rich of Lahore - a curious irony for this deeply religious country.

 

Islamisation of the state and the polity was supposed to have been in the interest of the ruling class – a classic strategy for preserving it from the wrath of the working class. But the amazing success of the state is turning out to be its own undoing. Today, it is under attack from religious militants, and rival Islamic groups battle each other with heavy weapons. Ironically, the same army – whose men were recruited under the banner of jihad, and which saw itself as the fighting arm of Islam – today stands accused of betrayal and is almost daily targeted by Islamist suicide bombers.

 

Pakistan’s self-inflicted suffering comes from an education system that, like Saudi Arabia’s system, provides an ideological foundation for violence and future jihadists. It demands that Islam be understood as a complete code of life, and creates in the mind of a school-going child a sense of siege and embattlement by stressing that Islam is under threat everywhere.

 

On the previous page, the reader can view the government-approved curriculum. This is the basic road map for transmitting values and knowledge to the young. By an act of parliament passed in 1976, all government and private schools (except for O-level schools) are required to follow this curriculum. It was prepared by the curriculum wing of the federal ministry of education, government of Pakistan. It sounds like a blueprint for a religious fascist state.

 

Alongside are scanned pictures from an illustrated primer for the Urdu alphabet. The masthead states that it has been prepared by Iqra Publishers, Rawalpindi, along “Islamic lines.” Although not an officially approved textbook, it is being used currently by some regular schools, as well as madrassas associated with the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), an Islamic political party that had allied itself with General Musharraf. These picture scans have been taken from a child’s book, hence the scribbles.

 

The world of the Pakistani schoolchild remained largely unchanged, even after September 11, 2001, the event that led to Pakistan’s timely desertion of the Taliban and the slackening of the Kashmir jihad. Indeed, for all his hypocritical talk of “enlightened moderation,” General Musharraf’s educational curriculum was far from enlightening. It was a slightly toned down version of the curriculum that existed under Nawaz Sharif which, in turn, was identical to that under Benazir Bhutto who had inherited it from General Zia-ul-Haq. Fearful of taking on the powerful religious forces, every incumbent government has refused to take a position on the curriculum and thus quietly allowed young minds to be moulded by fanatics. What may happen a generation later has always been a secondary issue for a government challenged on so many fronts.

 

The promotion of militarism in Pakistan’s so-called “secular” public schools, colleges and universities had a profound effect upon young minds. Militant jihad became part of the culture on college and university campuses. Armed groups flourished, they invited students for jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan, set up offices throughout the country, collected funds at Friday prayers and declared a war which knew no borders. Pre-9/11, my university was ablaze with posters inviting students to participate in the Kashmir jihad. Post-2001, this ceased to be done openly.

 

Still, the primary vehicle for Saudi-ising Pakistan’s education has been the madrassa. In earlier times, these had turned out the occasional Islamic scholar, using a curriculum that essentially dates back to the 11th century, with only minor subsequent revisions. But their principal function had been to produce imams and muezzins for mosques, and those who eked out an existence as ‘maulvi sahibs’ teaching children to read the Quran.

 

The Afghan jihad changed everything. During the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, madrassas provided the US-Saudi-Pakistani alliance the cannon fodder they needed to fight a holy war. The Americans and Saudis, helped by a more-than-willing General Zia, funded new madrassas across the length and breadth ofPakistan. A detailed picture of the current situation is not available. But according to the national education census, which the ministry of education released in 2006, Punjab has 5,459 madrassas followed by the NWFP with 2,843; Sindh has 1,935; the Federally Administrated Northern Areas (FANA), 1,193; Balochistan, 769; Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), 586; the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA), 135; and the Islamabad capital territory, 77. The ministry estimates that 1.5 million students are acquiring religious education in the 13,000 madrassas.

 

These figures appear to be way off the mark. Commonly quoted figures range between 18,000 and 22,000 madrassas. The number of students could be correspondingly larger. The free boarding and lodging plus provision of books to the students, is a key part of their appeal. Additionally, parents across the country desire that their children be “disciplined” and given a thorough Islamic education. The madrassas serve this purpose, too, exceedingly well.

 

Madrassas have deeply impacted the urban environment. Until a few years ago, Islamabad was a quiet, orderly, modern city different from the rest of Pakistan. Also, it had largely been the abode of Pakistan’s elite and foreign diplomats. But the rapid transformation of its demography brought with it hundreds of mosques with multi-barrelled audio-cannons mounted on minarets, as well as scores of madrassas illegally constructed in what used to be public parks and green areas. Now, tens of thousands of their students, sporting little prayer caps, dutifully chant the Quran all day. In the evenings they swarm the city, making women minus the hijab increasingly nervous.

 

Total segregation of the sexes is a central goal of the Islamists, the consequences of which have been catastrophic. For example, on April 9, 2006, 21 women and eight children were crushed to death and scores injured in a stampede inside a three-storey madrassa in Karachi, where a large number of women were attending a weekly congregation. Male rescuers, who arrived in ambulances, were prevented from moving the injured women to hospitals.

 

One cannot dismiss this incident as being just one of a kind. In fact, soon after the October 2005 earthquake, as I walked through the destroyed city of Balakot, a student of the Frontier Medical College described to me how he and his male colleagues were stopped by religious elders from digging out injured girl students from under the rubble of their school building. This action was similar to that of Saudi Arabia’s ubiquitous religious ‘mutaween’ (police) who, in March 2002, had stopped school girls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing their abayas – a long robe worn in Saudi Arabia. In a rare departure from the norm, Saudi newspapers had blamed and criticised the mutaween for letting 15 girls burn to death.

 

The Saudi-isation of a once-vibrant Pakistani culture continues at a relentless pace. The drive to segregate is now also being found among educated women. Vigorous proselytisers carrying this message, such as Mrs Farhat Hashmi, have been catapulted to the heights of fame and fortune. Their success is evident. Two decades back, the fully veiled student was a rarity on Pakistani university and college campuses. The abaya was an unknown word in Urdu. Today, some shops across the country specialise in abayas. At colleges and universities across Pakistan, the female student is seeking the anonymity of the burqa. And in some parts of the country she seems to outnumber her sisters who still “dare” to show their faces.

 

I have observed the veil profoundly affect habits and attitudes. Many of my veiled female students have largely become silent note-takers, are increasingly timid and seem less inclined to ask questions or take part in discussions. They lack the confidence of a young university student.

 

While social conservatism does not necessarily lead to violent extremism, it does shorten the distance. The socially conservative are more easily convinced that Muslims are being demonised by the rest of the world. The real problem, they say, is the plight of the Palestinians, the decadent and discriminatory West, the Jews, the Christians, the Hindus, the Kashmir issue, the Bush doctrine – the list runs on. They vehemently deny that those committing terrorist acts are Muslims, and if presented with incontrovertible evidence, say it is a mere reaction to oppression.

 

The immediate future does not appear hopeful: increasing numbers of mullahs are creating cults around themselves and seizing control of the minds of worshippers. In the tribal areas, a string of new Islamist leaders have suddenly emerged: Baitullah Mehsud, Maulana Fazlullah and Mangal Bagh. Poverty, deprivation, lack of justice and extreme differences of wealth provide the perfect environment for these demagogues to recruit people to their cause. Their gruesome acts of terror are still being perceived by large numbers of Pakistanis merely as a war against imperialist America. This could not be further from the truth.

 

In the long term, we will have to see how the larger political battle works out between those Pakistanis who want an Islamic theocratic state and those who want a modern Islamic republic. It may yet be possible to roll back those Islamist laws and institutions that have corroded Pakistani society for over 30 years and to defeat its hate-driven holy warriors. There is no chance of instant success; perhaps things may have to get worse before they get better. But, in the long term, I am convinced that the forces of irrationality will cancel themselves out because they act at random whereas reason pulls only in one direction. History leads us to believe that reason will triumph over unreason, and the evolution of the humans into a higher and better species will continue. Using ways that we cannot currently anticipate, they will somehow overcome their primal impulses of territoriality, tribalism, religiosity and nationalism. But, for now, this must be just a matter of faith.

 

The author teaches physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad.

America’s new crusader castles

Across the Middle East, the US is building heavily fortified embassies which cut off diplomats and create hostilities

Simon Tisdall

guardian.co.uk,

Thursday 29 October 2009 16.09 GMT

After the US Congress agreed a $7.5bn aid package for Pakistan this autumn, the Obama administration was taken aback by the seemingly ungrateful reaction of its intended recipients. Pakistani opposition politicians fumed about “colonialism” and “imperialism”. Military men spoke angrily of insults to national sovereignty implied in conditions attached to the aid.

But particular hostility was directed at US plans to spend over $800m on building a new, heavily fortified embassy in Islamabad, to be protected by the private security contractor, DynCorp. The activities of contractors in Iraq, notably Blackwater, have become notorious in the Muslim world. In addition, expanded US “bunker consulates” were announced for Lahore and Peshawar.

“Just the other day we had a television debate on America wanting to colonise us,” one Pakistani said. “How easy it was for us to believe this when we hear of Blackwater setting up camp in our cities, buying hundreds of homes, not being accountable to the laws of our country, of hundreds of US marines on our soil, being allowed to enter without visas, of the enormous new US embassy being built which is like a mini-Pentagon.”

Despite such complaints, US plans are going ahead. They include a $405m replacement embassy building in Islamabad, the construction of a $111m office annexe to accommodate 330 workers, and new housing units costing $197m. In Peshawar, scene of a devastating Taliban car bomb attack on Wednesday, the US plans to buy the city’s only five-star hotel and turn it into a sort of diplomatic Martello tower.

The US says the new facilities are needed because old premises are insecure and it must accommodate the “civilian surge” of diplomats and officials into Pakistan and Afghanistan ordered by Barack Obama. But the American expansion in Islamabad mirrors similar developments in other Muslim and foreign capitals that are focal points for the Pentagon’s “long war” against Islamist extremism.

Shocked by the 1998 al-Qaida attacks on its Nairobi and Dar es Salaam embassies, the US has opened 68 new embassies and overseas facilities since 2001 and has 29 under design and construction, the state department’s bureau of overseas buildings operations says. Total worldwide spending on embassy replacement has been put at $17.5bn.

In Kabul, Baghdad, Jakarta, Cairo and beyond, in “allied” cities such as London and Berlin, Washington is building, reinforcing or expanding slab-walled, fortress-like embassies that act as regional overseas HQs, centres of influence and intelligence-gathering, and problematic symbols of superpower.

Historically speaking, these formidable outposts are the 21st century equivalent of crusader castles, rising out of the plain, projecting superior force, and grimly dominating all they behold.

As in Pakistan, the new strongholds attract plenty of criticism, acting almost as magnets for trouble. The massively fortified $700m Baghdad embassy, the biggest US mission in the world with 1,200 employees, was dogged by construction delays and militant attacks before it finally opened in January this year. Now even the state department’s own inspector-general has ruled that the 21-building, 104-acre encampment is too big. “The time has come for a significant right-sizing,” a July report said.

The Kabul embassy, which is negotiating an $87m purchase of 30 to 40 additional acres, encountered a different kind of trouble last month after photographs emerged of embassy guards engaging in sex acts, pouring vodka on each other, and dancing naked round a fire. The guards were employed by another private security firm, ArmorGroup North America. The revelations underscored existing concerns about security contractors. Investigators concluded the embassy’s safety had been seriously compromised.

Away from the frontline of America’s wars, the unveiling last year of the new US embassy in Berlin, close by the Brandenburg Gate, brought strong objections of an aesthetic nature. Architectural experts queued up to lambast the squat, custard-coloured but bomber-proof building, deriding it as a “klotz” (lump) built by barbarians.

One newspaper compared the offending edifice to a maximum security prison, another to a council house, while Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung fumed: “There is hardly a modern building in existence, with the exception of nuclear bunkers and pesticide-testing centres, that is so hysterically closed off from public spaces as this embassy.”

On present trends, Londoners face being similarly shut-out as the US embassy currently centrally located in Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, prepares to move to a brand new concrete citadel in wild, far-off but hopefully al-Qaida-free Wandsworth.

The way the new embassies tend to physically cut off America’s diplomats from the countries they are supposed to connect with is one good reason, among many, why Washington might want to rethink its laager policy. While effective security is obviously important, the worldwide rise of America’s diplomatic fortresses undermines the kind of “soft power” outreach and public diplomacy that the Obama administration earnestly espouses.

In a policy-setting speech in July, secretary of state Hillary Clinton stressed the US need to communicate directly with other countries from the bottom up. “Reaching out directly to people will encourage them to embrace cooperation with us, making our partnerships with their governments and with them stronger and more durable,” she said.

That makes sense. But it’s not the message citizens of Islamabad are hearing. When America speaks to Pakistanis and other Muslim countries, it too often sounds like it’s shouting down from the battlements.

 

The Gaza Chronicles: Part 3 – Shattered Minds And The Children of Gaza

5 November 2009

By: Aditya Ganapathiraju

It’s the most terrifying place I’ve ever been in… it’s a horrifyingly sad place because of the desperation and misery of the way people live. I was unprepared for camps that are much worse than anything I saw in South Africa.– Professor Edward Said 1993 [1]

They may be living but they’re not alive. – Journalist Philip Rizk [2]

Gaza is a place that needs a million psychologists.— Ayed, a psychotherapist from Northern Gaza [3]

More than 95% children in Gaza experienced artillery shelling in their area or sonic booms of low flying jets.

Over 40 years of Israeli military occupation have had a devastating effect on Gaza; airstrikes, artillery shelling, ground invasions, jet flybys and their sonic booms have all led to an epidemic of suffering among Gaza’s most vulnerable inhabitants.[4]

Soon after the recent winter Israeli assault, a group of scholars at the University of Washington discussed different aspects of the situation in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian Territories. Dr. Evan Kanter, UW school of medicine professor and the current president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, delivered a somber talk describing the mental health situation among Gaza’s population.[5]

Dr. Kanter cited studies that revealed 62 % of Gaza’s inhabitants reported having a family member injured or killed, 67% saw injured or dead strangers and 83% had witnessed shootings. In a study of high school aged children from southern refugee camps in Rafah and Kahn Younis, 69% of the children showed symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress (PTS), 40% showed signs of moderate or severe depression, and a whopping 95% exhibited severe anxiety. Seventy percent showed limited or no ability to cope with their trauma. All of this was before the last Israeli invasion.

Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj, head of the Gaza Community Mental Program, and whom Dr. Kanter described as a “medical hero” working under seemingly impossible conditions, has produced “some of the best research in the world on the impact of war on civilian populations.” In a 2002 interview he said that 54% of children in Gaza had symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress, along with 30% of adults.[6] The hardest hit were young ones who had their homes bulldozed or who lost loved ones like their mothers, he said. Again, these figures were obtained well before conditions dramatically deteriorated.

Gaza is a land of youth. About 45% of the population is 14 years old or younger and about 60% are 19 years and younger, political economist Dr. Sara Roy said. [7] With such a young population facing constant violence, the long-term effects are incalculable.

Particularly horrifying about the situation in Gaza is that there is no “post”trauma for most in Gaza.

Recent studies by international researchers and the Gaza Community Mental Health program revealed more worrying figures.[8] Of a representative sample of children in Gaza, more than 95% experienced artillery shelling in their area or sonic booms of low flying jets. Ninety-four percent recalled seeing mutilated corpses on TV while some 93% witnessed the effects of aerial bombardments on the ground. More than 70% of children in Gaza said they lacked water, food and electricity during the most recent attacks, and a similar percentage said they had to flee to safety during the recent attacks.

Additionally, 98.7% of the traumatized children reported that they did not feel safe in their homes. More than 95% of the children felt that they were unable to protect themselves or their family members causing a feeling of utter powerlessness only compounded by a sense of loss over the lives they could have had, safe and boring lives that many take for granted.

A whole generation is being lost to the horrors of large-scale military violence and a brutal occupation. In front of many distraught members in the audience, Kanter described another study that showed that witnessing severe military violence results in more aggression and antisocial behavior among children, along with the “enjoyment of aggression.” There are similar studies among Israeli children who witness terrorist attacks.

Post Traumatic Stress disorder, Dr. Kanter said, is an “engine that perpetuates violent conflict.” It leads to three characteristic symptoms. The first involves reexperiencing the traumatic events in the form of the nightmares, debilitating flashbacks, and terrifying memories that haunt people for years afterwards. Other people may develop avoidance symptoms in which they become isolated and emotionally numb, deadened to the world around them. The third symptom involves hyper arousal, which may lead to excessive anger, insomnia, self-destructive behavior, and a hypervigilant state of mind. Other maladies like poor social functioning, depression, suicidal thoughts, a lack of trust, family violence are all associated with PTS.

More than 70% of children in gaza said they lacked water, food, and electricity during the most recent attacks, and a similar percentage said they had to flee to safety during the recent attacks.

The most recent study however, revealed that in the aftermath of the most recent assault on Gaza an unbelievable 91.4% of children in Gaza displayed symptoms of moderate to very severe PTS. Only about 1% of the children showed no signs of PTS.

Try to imagine an area with this many people—the city you live in for example—where 9 out of 10 children exhibited symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress. What would daily life be like? What would the future hold for your city’s youth?

Particularly horrifying about the situation is that there is no “post” trauma for most in Gaza. Whereas soldiers who endure traumatic experiences in a war zone can return home to relative calm and seek treatment, the people in Gaza continue to held in what one Israeli rights group labeled the “largest prison on Earth”[10]—a methodically “de-developed” island of misery isolated from the rest of the world. The fate of the 1.5 million “unpeople” trapped there is of no concern to the occupying army or its international backers.[11]

This will be the enduring legacy of the Israeli occupation. One of the most distressing prospects for peace are studies of similar war-torn populations like Kosovo and Afghanistan that showed that military violence often leads to widespread feelings of hatred and the simmering urge for revenge. One can easily predict the future consequences of a large number of young people exposed to this level of trauma.

As Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj warned soon after the offensive, Palestinian children in the first intifadah 20 years ago threw stones at Israeli tanks trying to wrest freedom from Israeli military occupation. Some of those children grew up to become suicide bombers in the second intifadah 10 years later. It does not take much to imagine the serious changes that will befall today’s children.[12]

Women in the war zone are have a unique perspective to share, yet their story is an all too familiar narrative: violence that leads to anger, vengeance, and the destruction of the bonds that tie a society together.

Tihani Abed Rabbu, a mother who lost her teenage son, brother, and close friend, spoke of her fears: What worries me is the safety of my family, my sons and my husband. My husband is going through a difficult time, a crazy time. He wants to affiliate with Hamas, he wants to get revenge after what they [Israel, I think] have done to us. How do you expect us to be peaceful after they have killed my son and turned my family into angry people – as they refer to us, “terrorists.” I cannot calm my family down.[13]

Chris Hedges, former New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief, reminds us that, A father or a mother whose child dies because of a lack of vaccines or proper medical care does not forget. A boy whose ill grandmother dies while detained at an Israel checkpoint does not forget. All who endure humiliation, abuse and the murder of family members do not forget. This rage becomes a virus within those who, eventually, stumble out into the daylight.[14]

Despite some positive steps towards regaining some sense of normalcy, mostly from small non-governmental groups and international activists, the crushing siege continues and basic conditions of life continue to deteriorate. For many, hope is fading. Despair is spreading. “The breakdown of an entire society is happening in front of us,” Harvard specialist Sara Roy warned. Many share Roy’s fears that “What looms is no less than the loss of entire generation of Palestinians,” which she fears may have occurred already.[15]

In the face of this onslaught however, lies a stubborn resistance. This resistance takes many forms—the one most often seen in the US is that of the few who see armed conflict as the only path to liberation. “While some Palestinians return Israeli violence with further violence,” journalist Philip Rizk said, “the vast majority does not.” Many bear invisible scars but they nevertheless go on with their daily lives: put their children through school, study and try to do well in exams, seek to serve their home and community, laugh and play, and ultimately try to retain their sense of dignity while living under foreign occupation. As Rizk observed, “the Arabic word for such everyday acts of non-violent protest is sumoud, which means steadfastness, perseverance.” [16]

This essay is a part III of a longer series on Gaza.

1.Edwards Said and David Barsamian ,The Pen and the Sword, Common Courage Press, 1994, page 99

2.“’Gaza wears a face of misery,’ Adam Makary, Al Jazeera” April 4, 2009 http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/…

3.“Young Freud in Gaza” Al Jazeera, June 18, 2009 http://english.aljazeera.net/progra… 4.“Israel’s ‘Crime Against Humanity,’ Chris Hedges, Truthdig, December 15, 2008 http://www.truthdig.com/report/prin…

5.“Gaza: What Next? A Teach-In on the Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza” UW Global Health, February 5, 2009 http://depts.washington.edu/deptgh/…

6.“Clips from Dying to Live, a documentary film by Amineh Ayyad about health and human rights in Palestine. Shot in 2002. http://palestinejournal.blogspot.co…

7.’Sara Roy – Beyond Occupation” Australian Broadcasting Corp. October 14, 2008, Part 17, 1:03:00 http://fora.tv/2008/10/14/Sara_Roy_… 8.Gaza Community Mental Health Program http://www.gcmhp.net/ Additional figures from recent studies reveal the following conclusions (from a June 3 press release): •66.6% of the children appeared to have some symptoms of anxiety and psychological fears. 42.0% of the children expect events similar to those they passed through. •36.4% of the children feel disturbance and tension when experiencing events reminding them of the tragic war. •98.5% of children did not feel secure during the war due to their sense of powerlessness to protect themselves and the inability of others to protect them. •61.5% of the parents indicated the emergence of unusual behaviors among their children (such as continuous crying, and restlessness). •40.6% of parents indicated that their children have problems with their peers. •82.1% of the children expressed their conviction that Gaza is an unsafe place. •73.5% of the children had fears of being targeted and killed. •76.6% of children had fears of occurrence of what happened to them during the war.

9.GCHMP, Thabet, et al., “Trauma, grief, and PTSD in Palestinian children victims of War on Gaza”

10.“ Gaza Prison: Freedom of Movement to and from the Gaza Strip on the Eve of the Disengagement Plan” http://www.btselem.org/English/Publ… “The Gaza Strip-One Big Prison” B’tselem http://www.btselem.org/Download/200…

11’Good News,’ Iraq and Beyond,” Noam Chomsky, ZNet, February 16, 2008 http://www.chomsky.info/articl…

12.“A 14-year-old in Gaza has one question: Why?” Eyad El-Sarraj, January 11, 2009, Boston Globe http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/e… “Cast Lead: As many as 352 children killed” Defense for Children International, Sept 3, 2009 http://www.dci-pal.org/english/disp…

13.“Women in the war zone: Gaza” Helena Cobban July 7, 2009 http://justworldnews.org/archives/0…

“Gaza conflict: Views on Hamas” BBC, July 7, 2009 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_e…

14.“Israel’s ‘Crime Against Humanity,’ Chris Hedges, Truthdig, December 15, 2008 http://www.truthdig.com/report/prin…

15.“Destroying Gaza,” Sara Roy, The Electronic Intifada, 9 July 2009 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/ar…

16.“’Gaza wears a face of misery,’ Adam Makary, Al Jazeera” April 4, 2009 http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/…

Aditya Ganapathiraju is a human rights activist living in Kenmore, Washington in the United States. He is a psychology and philosophy student at the University of Washington.

For Part One and Part Two of the Gaza Chronicles please click on:

http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spi… and http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spi…

The Gaza Chronicles: Part 2 – What a Siege Looks Like

Palestine Monitor

31 October 2009

By: Aditya Ganapathiraju

“Gaza is an example of a society that has been deliberately reduced to a state of abject destitution,” Sara Roy wrote in July. It has led to “mass suffering, created largely by Israel,” and aided by the active participation of the United States, European Union, and Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. [1]

The Israeli policy of isolating Gaza from the West Bank has been a gradual process that started in the early 1990s. It tightened soon after Hamas’ electoral victory in 2006, and turned even more devastating after Hamas’s 2007 takeover, degrading the society to the point where 96 percent of Gaza’s population of 1.5 million is dependent on humanitarian aid for basic survival. [2]

This “perverse” situation is unique in international affairs in that humanitarian groups are sustaining the Israeli occupation by providing care for a civilian population and territory whose humanitarian needs and economy are being deliberately decimated for political reasons, with full backing of the Israeli High Court, Roy explained. [3]

The UN recently reported that 1.1 million people, or 75% of the population there are food insecure. Some 70-80% of Gazans live on less than a dollar a day and the unemployment rate is around 60%. [4]

The UN says about 10,000 Gaza residents have no access to a water network – while about 60% — about 1 million people – don’t have access to water daily and receive water only intermittently.[5] The water consumption of Gazans is less than a third of what Israelis who live a short distance away use.[6] Ultimately, the crippling Israeli siege has degraded the water situation in Gaza to the point that the entire system “could collapse at any minute,” which “could take centuries to reverse,” according to International Committee of the Red Cross and UN officials. [7]

Deterioration of Sanitation and Water Utilities:twenty million gallons of raw and untreated sewage has to be dumped into the Mediterranean every day, according to local officials.

Photo: Electronic Intifada

In a similarly precarious situation, the sewage system is also being prevented from being repaired by the blockage of spare parts. As a result, twenty million gallons of raw and untreated sewage has to be dumped into the Mediterranean every day, according to local officials.[8] Forty-six percent of all children suffer from acute anemia there, former UN official and international Law Prof. Richard Falk said.[9] He adds that thousands of hearing aids are needed for widespread deafness due to sonic booms from Israeli jets. The restrictions on travel access alone has killed an estimated 260 Palestinians since the blockade escalated in 2007.[10]

The scale and intensity of his type of deprivation is impossible to convey through numbers, but try to imagine if three quarters of the people in your city could not find enough food and water to feed themselves or their children, where the overwhelming majority of them were unemployed, where nearly everyone lived on less than a dollar a day, and this is crucial, that all of this was the planned result of political decisions of a foreign government that has held you under military occupation for over four decades.

School supplies too, are blocked from entering

Photo: Palestine Monitor

Even today, the most basic commodities for life still continue to be barred by the Israeli government. Materials like wood for doors or cement for rebuilding in the aftermath of the destruction left by the last attack remained barred.

No electrical appliances, like refrigerators or washing machines, and no parts for cars are allowed. Also restricted are “fabrics, threads, needles, candles, matches, mattresses, sheets, blankets, cutlery, crockery, cups, glasses, musical instruments, books, tea, coffee, sausages, semolina, chocolate, sesame seeds, nuts, milk products in large packages, most baking products, light bulbs, crayons, clothing and shoes.” [11]

School supplies too, are blocked from entering. More than 100 trucks full of stationary are still awaiting clearance to enter Gaza. All of the 387 government-run and 33 private schools, which serve more than 250,000 students, lack essential supplies. Draconian restrictions on glass, wood, and other building materials, has kept the hundreds of schools damaged during the assault remaining in terrible condition. [12]

When an occupying army blocks, tea, blankets, crayons, and school stationary from entering the “largest prison on Earth,” severely restricts essentials like fuel and medicine, makes travel in and out all but impossible, and exercises complete control over its borders, airspace, and seas, the pretense of “security” seems dubious at best, and suggests that turning Gazans into beggars and Gaza into a “depoliticized humanitarian catastrophe” is precisely the plan.[13]

the most basic commodities for life still continue to be barred by the Israeli government.

Photo: Palestine Monitor

Perhaps former prime minister Ariel Sharon’s advisor Dov Weisglass was describing Israeli policy accurately when he said of the Gaza blockade, “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.” One might ask if he includes the newborn infants, impoverished elderly, and deathly ill among those to be “put on a diet.” [14]

“What possible benefit can be derived from an increasingly impoverished, unhealthy, densely crowded and furious Gaza alongside Israel?,” Sara Roy asked. [15]

Six months have passed since international donors pledged almost $5 billion in aid to the devastated territory, yet “not one penny” has actually reached inside the borders of Gaza, according to the UN, mainly due to the tight blockade. [16]

This “macabre” situation is not the result of an earthquake or flood but rather the predictable consequence of well-planned decisions by Israeli officials, backed by their judicial body, along with complicit Western powers such as the US and EU. Israeli Professor Avi Shlaim observed that the major powers were “imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.” [17]

The January 2008 testimony of Gaza Community Mental Health Program Director Eyad Al Sarraj offered a glimpse into what the stranglehold of Gaza looked like from the ground: [The] Israeli military establishment decided to stop power supply and fuel to Gaza… food and humanitarian aid are not allowed in. My step son is on ventilator for asthma every night. What will happen to him when our generator is not running anymore? What will happen to hospitals, vaccines and blood banks? What will happen to patients on dialysis machines, and to babies in incubators? [18]

This was all before the brutal attacks this winter. The scale of destruction left behind has been covered by numerous writers, human rights groups, and most recently by the comprehensive Goldstone report. What has received little attention though, is the epidemic of mental anguish resulting from decades of oppression.

[The story of mental health in Gaza is covered in Part III]

1.“If Gaza falls . . .” Sara Roy, the London Review of Books, January 1, 2009 http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n01/roy_01…

2.“Destroying Gaza,” Sara Roy, The Electronic Intifada, July 9, 2009 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/ar…

3.”Sara Roy – Beyond Occupation” Australian Broadcasting Corp. October 14, 2008, Chapter 8 Making Palestinians Aid-Dependent http://fora.tv/2008/10/14/Sara_Roy_… “Israeli Supreme Court Fiddles While Gaza Starves” http://www.richardsilverstein.com/t…

4.“Israel’s Gaza blockade crippling reconstruction,” Guardian, September 18, 2009 [-.http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/18/israel-gaza-blockade-reconstruction] Palestinian Center for Human Rights Weekly Report September 10-16 ->http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/W_report/English/2008/17-09-2009.htm]

5.“Analysis: Looming water crisis in Gaza” IRIN News, September 15, 2009 http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx… “Leaked UN report echoes Goldstone and says Israeli blockade is leading to the ‘de-development’ of Gaza” Mondoweiss, September 18, 2009 http://mondoweiss.net/2009/09/leake…

6.“Gaza sewage ’a threat to Israel’” BBC, September 3, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_e…

7.“MIDEAST: Gaza’s Water Supply Near Collapse” IPS, September 16, 2009 http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idn… “Who Needs Clean Water?” Pulse, September 24, 2009 http://pulsemedia.org/2009/09/24/wh…

8.“Narratives Under Siege (17): Swimming in Sewage” Palestinian Center for Human Rights http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/campa…

9.“Israel’s ‘Crime Against Humanity,’ Chris Hedges, Truthdig, December 15, 2008 http://www.truthdig.com/report/prin…

10.“Israel tightens the noose on advocacy organizations” Electronic Intifada, September 23, 2009 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/ar…

11.“Destroying Gaza,” Sara Roy, The Electronic Intifada, July 9, 2009 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/ar…

12.“OPT: Gaza schoolchildren lack basic equipment” IRIN News September 9, 2009 [-.http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86072]

13.“ Gaza Prison: Freedom of Movement to and from the Gaza Strip on the Eve of the Disengagement Plan” http://www.btselem.org/English/Publ… “The Gaza Strip-One Big Prison” B’tselem http://www.btselem.org/Download/200… “How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe” Avi Shlaim, Guardian, January 7, 2009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/200…

14.“What aid cutoff to Hamas would mean” Christian Science Monitor, February 26, 2007 http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0227/…

15.“Destroying Gaza,” Sara Roy, The Electronic Intifada 16.“Not one penny has reached Gaza” The National, August 31, 2009 http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs…

17.“How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe” Avi Shlaim, Guardian

18.“Israel declares Gaza “enemy entity” (19 September 2007)” Electronic Intifada http://electron…

Aditya Ganapathiraju is a human rights activist living in Kenmore, Washington in the United States. He is a psychology and philosophy student at the University of Washington.

For Part One of the Gaza Chronicles please click on: http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spi…

The Gaza Chronicles: Part 1- “The Forgotten Story”

Palestine Monitor

27 October 2009

By: Aditya Ganapathiraju

Why are people on Gaza so unhappy? Well, if you had to live in a prison, wouldn’t you be unhappy? — Former CIA officer Robert Baer[1]

It’s the most terrifying place I’ve ever been in… it’s a horrifyingly sad place because of the desperation and misery of the way people live. I was unprepared for camps that are much worse than anything I saw in South Africa. – Professor Edward Said 1993[2]

They may be living but they’re not alive. – Journalist Philip Rizk[3]

The situation on the ground in Gaza has continued to deteriorate since January. One of the most densely populated areas in the world, this small coastal strip is home to a million and a half Palestinians, many of them refugees for over 60 years. It is now the worst condition it’s been in since 1967 when the Israeli army took military control of the land.[4]

As numerous scholars and observers have concluded, the Israeli plan for Gaza seems to be to turn it into a depoliticized humanitarian catastrophe,[5] turning the Palestinians trapped in there “beggars who have no political identity and therefore can have no political claims.”[6]

The Israeli assault against Gaza last winter brought this enclave to the forefront of the news cycle, only to disappear from the headlines in the weeks and months that followed. The attention of much of the world’s dominant media moved on to other issues soon after a unilateral Israeli pullout—planned precisely timed so as not to cause an unsightly distraction from the inauguration of the new American president.

The lack of prominent coverage was not because there was a lack of newsworthy events in Gaza. No, “breaking news is Gaza’s middle name,” says freelance journalist Philip Rizk. “But because this breaking news always holds the same kind of information, no one cares to report on it.”[7]

“An Eye for an Eyelash”[8]

Violence in the occupied territories has always been bloody but many longtime observers were shocked by the brutality of winter assault,[9] which killed more Palestinians in the first three weeks than during the entire first Intifada, or uprising against the occupation (1987-1993), prompting the UN to label it “one of the most violent episodes in the recent history of the occupied Palestinian territory.”[10]

The January offensive left 1,417 people dead, 1,181 of which were non-combatants (313 children and 116 women). Another 5,303 Palestinians were injured in the attacks, including 1,606 children and 828 women, many left devastated with life-altering conditions.[11]

More than 4000 buildings have been destroyed in Gaza in January 2009 and more than 20.000 severely damaged.

Photo: Palestine Monitor

The attack, carefully-planned six months in advance,[12] destroyed 60 police stations early on, obliterated 20 ambulances and 30 mosques, in addition to leaving several hospitals bombed. Some 280 schools and kindergartens were damaged, 18 of which were destroyed completely (including 8 kindergartens).[13]

Another 6600 dunams of agricultural land, which Palestinian farmers depend on for their livelihood, were razed (1 dunam=1,000 square meters). In all, some 21,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed. An estimated $1.9 billion worth of damage was inflicted, according to an Economist Intelligence Unit report.[14]

“What we’re witnessing today is an assault, a massacre,” and “not a war whatsoever,” said Zahir Janmohamed of Amnesty International on the 15 of January, reminding an audience that this was not a conflict between two equivalent military powers but rather another bloody chapter a long history of “Israel’s colonial operations” in the occupied territories.[15] His views were confirmed by facts on the ground, as one scholar recently observed.[16]

The systemic and widespread destruction of both lives and infrastructure was not an unintended consequence of the offensive but rather a deliberate strategy derived from the destruction inflicted during the 2006 Lebanon conflict.[17]

The attack followed the “Dahiya Strategy,” referring to the Beirut area that was destroyed during the attack on Lebanon in 2006. It concluded civilians must pay for their leader’s actions.[18] Of course if one were to conclude that Israeli civilians should pay for their leader’s actions or American civilians be held responsible for George Bush’s actions, the (muted) international response might be different.

The strategy was formalized two months before the attacks by Tel Aviv University’s Institute of National Security Studies and urged the use of “disproportionate force” ( by definition a war crime) to inflict crushing damage on “economic interests” and “centers of civilian power,” leaving the targeted society devastated and “floundering” in a long reconstruction process.[19] (for more on the political dynamics involved and actions of Hamas and Israel before and during the attacks, see these papers[20]).

“Behind the dry statistics lie shocking individual stories,” a group of Israeli human rights groups wrote. “Whole families were killed; parents saw their children shot before their very eyes; relatives watched their loved ones bleed to death; and entire neighborhoods were obliterated.”[21]

The stories of those who experienced the attacks, who lost loved ones, and who continue to suffer, offer another perspective often absent here in the U.S. Some of these stories, which described the toll of war beyond numerical abstractions, trickled out in the British press, where journalists are less ideologically constrained to follow the party line, even despite the Israeli military ban on foreign journalists.[22]

Anwar Balousha, a 40-year-old man living in Jabalyia refugee camp in northern Gaza told British reporters of his personal loss. It was around midnight when an Israeli bomb struck their refugee camp’s mosque with a blast so powerful it collapsed several neighboring buildings, including the Balousha’s home. Of his seven daughters sleeping in a single room, five were killed—buried under bricks and rubble as they slept.

“We are civilians,” Anwar said. “I don’t belong to any faction, I don’t support Fatah or Hamas, I’m just a Palestinian. They are punishing us all, civilians and militants. What is the guilt of the civilian?”[23]

While human rights groups and other observers painstakingly extracted similar stories, the lesser-known narrative of a siege decimating Gaza’s society remained largely untold, confined to the dissident press and humanitarian groups.[24]

Most stories usually report on the violence and bloodshed between two forces, which are often implied to be equivalent both morally and physically. The day-to-day struggles of 1.4 million Palestinians enduring and resisting a 42-year old occupation do not fit neatly into the standard narrative of events describing the Palestinian-Israeli issue. It becomes easy for many to see ordinary Palestinians as nameless and faceless creatures, characters in a story taking place in a faraway land.

The blockade has caused the economy “irreversible damage”. Unemployment has soared 30% in 2007 to 40% in 2008. 80% of Gazans are living in poverty.

Photo: Palestine Monitor

Israeli violence towards Gaza did not begin on the 27th of December. As Amnety’s Janmohamed observed, the assault included the blockade and other attacks and incursions into Gaza, all of which started well before that Saturday morning in December.[25] The roots of the humanitarian disaster imposed by the Israeli need to be examined, he said, alluding to what one OXFAM official described as “a serious crime against humanity,”[26] a situation where 1.5 million people “are being punished for something they haven’t done.”[27]

[This is the first part of a series on Gaza, Part II describes life under siege]

[This is the first part of a series on Gaza, Part II describes life under siege]

1.“‘U.S. and Iran Share an Equal Monopoly on Violence,’” Inter Press Service, January 23, 2009 http://www.ipsnews.net/print.asp?id…

2.Edwards Said and David Barsamian ,The Pen and the Sword, Common Courage Press, 1994, page 99

3.“’Gaza wears a face of misery,’ Adam Makary, Al Jazeera” April 4, 2009 http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/…

4.“UN: Gaza in worst condition since 1967” Ynet, http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/Ar…

5.“Israel wanted a humanitarian crisis” Ben White, Guardian, January 20, 2009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentis…

6.“If Gaza falls . . .”Sara Roy, the London Review of Books, January 1, 2009 http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n01/roy_01…

7.“’Gaza wears a face of misery,’ Adam Makary, Al Jazeera” April 4, 2009 http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/…

8.“How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe” Avi Shlaim, Guardian, January 7, 2009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/200…

9.Avi Shlaim, Guardian: “On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by “an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders”. I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel’s vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration’s complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.” “Leading Israeli Scholar Avi Shlaim: Israel Committing “State Terror” in Gaza Attack, Preventing Peace,” Democracy Now!, January 14, 2009 http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/…

10.UN OCHA Report “Locked In:The humanitarian impact of two years of blockade on the Gaza Strip” footnote 36 http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.nsf/4…

11.Palestinian Center for Human Rights Press Release March 12, 2009 http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/Press…

12.“Disinformation, secrecy and lies: How the Gaza offensive came about” Haaretz, Barak Ravid http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages… “IAF strike followed months of planning” Barak Ravid http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages…

13.UN OCHA Report “Locked In”

14.Palestinian Center for Human Rights Press Release http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/Press… 15.“The Gaza Offensive and the Laws of War with Zahir Janmohamed,” The Palestine Center January 23, 2009 http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/… 16.“UN Inquiry Finds Israel “Punished and Terrorized” Palestinian Civilians, Committed Acts of War During Gaza Assault, Democracy Now! September 16, 2009 http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/… 17″Israel’s Bombing Campaign Will “Send Gaza Back Decades” Jonathan Cook, January 22, 2009 http://www.alternet.org/module/prin… 18.“The Dahiya strategy: Israel finally realizes that Arabs should be accountable for their leaders’ acts,” Ynet, Ynetnews.com, 6 Oct 2008 http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,… 19. “Disproportionate Force: Israel’s Concept of Response in Light of the Second Lebanon War” Institute of National Security Studies, Insight No. 74, inss.org.il, 2 October 2008 ->http://www.inss.org.il/publications.php?cat=21&page=6] 20.“Behind the Headlines of the Gaza Attacks” Aditya Ganapathiraju ZNet http://www.zcommunications.org/znet… “Foiling Another Palestinian “Peace Offensive”: Behind the bloodbath in Gaza” Norman Finkelstein January 19, 2009 http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/fi…

21.The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories http://www.btselem.org/English/Pres…

22.“Robert Fisk: Why do they hate the West so much, we will ask” Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/opinio… “Robert Fisk: When journalists refuse to tell the truth about Israel” Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/opinio… “Robert Fisk: Keeping out the cameras and reporters simply doesn’t work” Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/opinio… “Foreign reporters dub Israel ’military dictatorship’” Ynet http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3653154,00.html

23.“’I didn’t see any of my girls, just a pile of bricks’” Guardian, December 30, 2008 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/200…

24.“Israel declares Gaza “enemy entity” (19 September 2007)” Electronic Intifada http://electronicintifada.net/bytop…

25.”The Gaza Offensive and the Laws of War with Zahir Janmohamed,” The Palestine Center January 23, 2009 http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/…

26.“Gaza: A humanitarian implosion: A report from eight UK human rights organizations says situation in Gaza worst since 1967” The Real News March 6, 2008 http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?…

27.“New Report Finds Gaza Humanitarian Situation is Worst in 40 years” Voice of America News March 6, 2008 http://www.voanews.com/english/arch…

Aditya Ganapathiraju is a human rights activist living in Kenmore, Washington in the United States. He is a psychology and philosophy student at the University of Washington.

And Now, Pakistan Sovereignty Act 2009

 

Once passed, the President of Pakistan will have to certify in January of every year that his government has not entered into any understandings with foreign governments that violate national interest including, among other things, permitting them to interfere in appointments and promotions inside the Pakistani armed forces.

 

By Tariq Butt
Friday, November 06, 2009
The News International

WWW.AHMEDQURAISHI.COM
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—In an apparent tit for tat to the Kerry-Lugar Act, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate Wasim Sajjad has submitted a bill in the upper house, mandating annual presidential certification to parliament to preserve, protect and assert the sovereignty and honor of Pakistan.

“There are many forces, both inside and outside the country, bent on weakening the defence of Pakistan, thereby endangering its sovereignty and integrity,” Wasim Sajjad said in a statement of objects and reasons of the bill to be called the “Pakistan Sovereignty Act 2009”, a copy of which was exclusively provided to The News.  It said a vulnerable economic situation was being used to force Pakistan into taking steps that were not in the national interest, and it was therefore necessary to enact this law.

The brief bill reads:

 

“Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in any law and treaty, and undertakings or conditionalities agreed with any foreign country, the president of Pakistan shall certify in January each year on behalf of the government of Pakistan to each house of parliament that the sovereignty and honor of Pakistan have not been compromised in any manner whatsoever; that no compromise has been made on security or effectiveness of the nuclear program of Pakistan; that no understanding has been reached with any foreign country for interference in the change of command or promotions in the armed forces or in the structure or role of the security forces of Pakistan; and that no conditionalities have been accepted from any source to weaken the defense of Pakistan against foreign aggressions.”

 

While talking to this correspondent, Wasim Sajjad believed no parliamentary party would oppose or object to the bill because it dealt with an important non-controversial issue, which was of concern to every citizen of Pakistan. He hoped the ruling coalition parties would support this bill because there were no two opinions on protecting the sovereignty of Pakistan.

He said the Kerry-Lugar Act raised many concerns and caused serious worries in almost all civil and military circles. He said to deal with these misgivings and qualms it was necessary to provide a legal statute wherein the president of Pakistan was bound to give to parliament an annual certification.

Wasim Sajjad said this would be something new in Pakistan, but such requirements were in place in many countries, especially the US, where the Congress was informed about all measures and policies decided by the US administration.

It appears the Pakistan Sovereignty Act was drafted keeping in view the harsh provisions of the Kerry-Lugar Act, which were interpreted in Pakistan as something meant to hit the country hard. Almost all the matters on which this proposed law seeks presidential certification were covered directly or indirectly in the Kerry-Lugar Act.

 

This report was published by The News International.  It is reproduced here under the universal fair use understanding for noncommercial purposes.

© 2007-2009. All rights reserved. AhmedQuraishi.com & PakNationalists

Spooks Staging “Freedom Movements” To Increase American Control

[With control of all media and an army of paid agents at their disposal, which includes key military and political leaders, the master-manipulators of the United States can effectively preempt any attempt by any of the captive nations to break free.  The Western press will continue to report such movements as spontaneous expressions of the people's anger and discontent, even when they are clearly staged to advance American interests.]

STAGED BY SPOOKS: FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL, ORANGE REVOLUTION, FALL OF CEAUSESCU AND SUHARTO

The mainstream media lies to us about many of the big events.

What may appear to be the work of ‘people power’ or ‘terrorists’, is so often the work of people within governments.

On 6 November 2009, Tim Mohr explained that the fall of the Berlin Wall ‘wasn’t spontaneous but planned and staged’

Among the points made:

1. The fall of the wall was ’staged’, as Munich’s Suddeutsche Zeitung has now explained.

2. The East German government planned the opening of the wall.

The West German government knew this.

3. Some days before the wall opened, the plan was discussed during a lunch meeting at East Berlin’s Palast hotel between Walter Momper, the mayor of West Berlin, and the official who would open the wall less than two weeks later, Günter Schabowski.

The two men discussed which checkpoints could be opened to best make use of the subway system, as well as the volume of visitors to expect.

In George Washington’s blog ( George Washington’s Blog: Fascism Is Over … If We Want It ) we read:

2 million Americans could all peacefully surround the White House and Capitol Hill, and hold signs saying ‘we’re not leaving until the Constitution and the rule of law are restored’…

The Ukranian people stood up to tyranny and won. The East German people stood up to tyranny and won. The people of the Philippines, Serbia, Czechoslovakia, Indonesia and other countries around the world have won against tyranny whenever ordinary people have poured into the streets in massive numbers and demanded freedom.

~~~

There may be a problem here about historical accuracy.

People Power is usually only successful when it has the backing of the elite.

1. In the 1381 Peasants Revolt in England, the people went on the march. The king promised to meet the peasants’ demands. The peasants headed homewards.

Most of the leaders of the revolt were then executed and the king broke his promises.

2. Now let’s look at the UKRAINE.

The Orange Revolution looks like a CIA operation to replace a set of pro-Russian oligarchs with a set of pro-American oligarchs.

Ian Traynor, in The Guardian 26 November 2004 (US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev Special reports …), described the Ukraine’s Orange Revolution as ‘an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing…

‘The Democratic party’s National Democratic Institute, the Republican party’s International Republican Institute, the US state department and USAid are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros’s open society institute. ‘

After the Orange Revolution, Mr Yushchenko personal popularity rating soon slumped to 20% as people realised they had been conned. ( Yushchenko scorned as Ukraine turns its back on the orange … )

What happened in Serbia was also planned, apparently, by the USA. (US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev Special reports …)

3. Now let us look at revolts in Eastern Europe, including Hungary and Romania.

In 1956 there was revolt in Hungary against the communist regime. There was no serious support for the rebels from the CIA and its friends and the revolt was crushed.

The 1989 revolt in Romania was successful.

An article apparently written by former Securitate officers (‘Was This Your Revolution? This is How It Was!’ Democratia, No. 36, 24-30 Sept. 1990) describes how the CIA and KGB organised the fall of Ceausescu.

Reportedly, key figures in the revolt were working for the CIA and KGB, including Militaru (allegedly a KGB-CIA double agent) and the former Securitate officer and adviser to Ceausescu, Dumitru Mazilu (allegedly a CIA agent), and Silviu Brucan (allegedly both a CIA and KGB agent).

Reportedly, just before the revolt, there were ‘massive arrivals of so-called Hungarian tourists in Timisoara and Soviet tourists in Cluj’.

4. What about the Philippines?

By the mid 1980s, the CIA had decided that Marcos was no longer the person to run the Philippines. The CIA wanted someone more ‘popular’. So a People Power movement was used to replace Marcos with Aquino.

5. Indonesia provides the best example of CIA-organised People Power.

 

At some point in the 1990s Suharto was seen by some Americans as having become too powerful and too independent minded.

Suharto was giving too many business contracts to his family and Chinese-Indonesian cronies, rather than to American companies like Ford.

Some people in the Pentagon considered the possibility of having a general such as Prabowo or Wiranto or Yuhhoyono take over.

In order to topple Suharto there would need to be riots.

In Indonesia, in the years 1997- 1998, there were riots in various parts of Indonesia. Some riots looked spontaneous and some looked as if they had been planned. (http://www.insideindonesia.org/edit50/riots.htm)

Intelligence agencies

In Indonesia, trouble is often organised by the spies. Back in the 1950s the British and American intelligence agencies had organised rebellions in various parts of Indonesia, in order to undermine President Sukarno.(http://www.westpapuanews.com/articles/publish/article_31.shtml)

The generals

In 1998 one of the key generals was Prabowo, son of Dr. Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, a former Finance Minister, said to have once worked with the British and the Americans against Sukarno.

Prabowo had learnt about terrorism at Fort Bragg and Fort Benning in the US. General Prabowo and terror (http://yayasanhak.minihub.org/mot/Prabowo.htm)

In May 1998, Prabowo was commander of Kostrad, the strategic reserve, the regiment Suharto commanded when he took power in 1965.

Prabowo’s friend Muchdi ran Kopassus (special forces) and his friend Sjafrie ran the Jakarta Area Command.

General Wiranto, the overall head of the military, was seen as a rival to Prabowo.

The American Defence Secretary, William Cohen, was in Jakarta in January 1998 and he visited both Prabowo and Wiranto.

The CIA chief had also been a recent visitor to Jakarta. The CIA and the Pentagon were close to both Prabowo and Wiranto. (http://solidarity.igc.org/atc/emily75.html)

Students

At the start of May 1998, students were holding peaceful demonstrations on university campuses across the country. They were protesting against massive price rises for fuel and energy, and they were demanding that President Suharto should step down.

On May 12th, students at Jakarta’s Trisakti University, many of them the children of the elite, planned to march to parliament to present the government with their demands for reform. The police prevented the students from marching.

Some time after 5pm, uniformed men on motorcycles appeared on the flyover which overlooks Trisakti. Shots rang out. Four students were killed.

Riots of May 13-14

On the 13th of May there were reports of rioting in the area around Trisakti. President Suharto was attending a conference in Egypt and the military top brass went off to Malang in East Java to attend a ceremony.

On the 14th of May, serious rioting took place in the Jakarta area. There were no signs of any uniformed soldiers on the streets.

Deaths

Over 1,000 people died during these Jakarta riots, most having been burnt in malls and supermarkets but some having been shot or beaten.

Alleged involvement of the military in planning the riots

Father Sandyawan Sumardi, a 40-year-old Jesuit priest and son of a police chief, led an independent investigation into the events of May 1998.

As a member of the Team of Volunteers for Humanitarian Causes he interviewed people who had witnessed the alleged involvement of the military in organising the riots and rapes.
(The Riot Pattern in Jakarta and Surroundings – Beberapa Pola dalam …) (http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/98/0626/nat_6_indoriots.html)

A security officer alleged that Kopassus (special forces) officers had ordered the burning down of a bank;

a taxi driver reported hearing a man in a military helicopter encouraging people on the ground to carry out looting;

shop-owners at a Plaza claimed that, before the riots, military officers tried to extract protection money;

a teenager claimed he and thousands of others had been trained as protesters;

a street child alleged that Kopassus officers ordered him and and his friends to become rioters;

there was a report of soldiers being dressed up as students and then taking part in rioting;

eyewitnesses spoke of muscular men with short haircuts arriving in military-style trucks and directing attacks on Chinese homes and businesses.

There were reports of children being encouraged to enter malls and then of the malls being set on fire;

there were allegations that muscular men with short haircuts had gang-raped little Chinese girls and then murdered some of them.

Suharto told he had lost the support of the military

Some of Suharto’s former allies deserted him. Wiranto allowed students to occupy Parliament. Reportedly Wiranto reported to Suharto on May 20th that Suharto no longer had the support of the army. Suharto was forced to resign on May 21 and was replaced by Habibie, his Vice President.

The continuing importance of the military

Wiranto remained as chief of the armed forces. Wiranto’s troops began removing the students from the parliament building.

One result of the May riots was that the military appeared to remain the power behind the throne. In 2004, General Yudhoyono became president.

In conclusion: a study of History may help us to understand how change comes about.

The Peasants’ Revolt was defeated. But, the condition of the peasants did eventually improve due to a shortage of labour (caused by the Black death).

Pakistan Cedes Media Control Over Waziristan?

A former Voice of America employee, now part of Pakistani government, hands over airwaves over the tribal belt to the Americans

After coming to power last year, one of the first things the new government did was appoint Mr. Murtaza Solangi, a Voice of America employee, as the head of Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation.  Mr. Solangi worked for Ms. Farahnaz Ispahani, who worked for VOA before getting a seat in the Senate of Pakistan representing the PPP government.  She is also the spouse of Mr. Husain Haqqani, Ambassador to Washington who is also the present government’s undercover media guru [tasked with defending anything to do with Zardari and US].  Reorganizing Pakistani foreign policy and media policy were two things Mr. Haqqani focused at the start of his government’s term.  Solangi, Ispahani and Haqqani do not represent the ‘pro-US lobby’ within the incumbent Pakistani government.  They are just the tip of the iceberg.  In our tribal belt, you can hardly catch the signals of PTV News, the state-run Pakistani channel, but Mr. Solangi deemed it appropriate to give VOA three transmitters to unleash US propaganda inside this small patch of Pakistan.  Mr. Solangi is a professional Pakistani journalist.  The problem with the deal he struck with VOA is that it expands US influence in a country that has too much of it, in an area where Pakistan’s national security interest is already under attack from foreign elements in Afghanistan.

By Ahmed Quraishi

Friday, 6 November 2009.

The Nation.

WWW.AHMEDQURAISHI.COM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—As of October 2009, the Pakistani government has quietly allowed the United States to expand its Afghanistan-based media propaganda network to include Pakistan. This clandestinely signed deal is bound to generate more anger when the Pakistani government is yet to fully recover from accusations of a sellout on the Kerry-Lugar aid bill.

In 2006, the United States set up a transmitter in Afghanistan for the radio broadcast of US political and military propaganda in that occupied country.  Four years later, this propaganda moves to Pakistan. 

The irony is that Pakistan, which disputes unverified US claims that terrorist camps exist deep inside Pakistan in Quetta and Muridke, will now be allowing a US government financed propaganda arm to say as much using transmitters owned by the Government of Pakistan and directed at Pakistani citizens.

The Voice of America, a US government agency, and Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation reached an agreement earlier this month where Pakistan agreed to expand the Afghanistan-based US propaganda network – the Americans call this ‘public diplomacy’ – to Pakistan.  Under the deal, VOA will use PBC equipment and transmitters in Peshawar, Islamabad, and Lahore to distribute VOA material in Pashto and Urdu on medium and FM waves.

A little noticed VOA press release, issued in Washington three weeks ago quotes VOA director Mr. Danforth W. Austin as announcing, "We’re delighted Pakistan’s Cabinet has ratified our agreement with PBC,” adding, “This arrangement will allow millions of people in all parts of Pakistan to listen to the VOA’s popular news and information programmes.”

Interestingly, the Pakistani cabinet did not publicize the agreement.  An internet search of the stories filed for the month of October by the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan does not return any stories on the VOA-PBC agreement, or on Pakistani cabinet’s ratification.  The VOA press release is reproduced online by several American and other news websites and is dated Oct. 13.  However, government sources in Islamabad indicate the agreement was signed sometime in September and referred to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani for approval.

Interestingly, Mr. Murtaza Solangi, Director General PBC and the man who sat opposite Mr. Austin on the proverbial negotiation table was one of Mr. Austin’s subordinates until May 2008, working as a presenter and editor at VOA.  The soft-spoken Mr. Solangi was close to late Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto and interviewed her several times during her visits to Washington while in self-exile.  After Feb. 2008 elections, the PPP government appointed him as DG PBC.  Mr. Solangi came highly recommended by PPP’s closed circle of media handlers, considered close to President Zardari.

Washington will now be taking its information warfare to the Pakistani Pashtun population at a time when Pakistanis are debating if they should share Washington’s policy goals in Afghanistan and especially on the unfair US treatment to the Pashtuns.

Two US  propaganda radio channels, Deewa Radio in Pashto and Urdu-language program Radio Aap Ki Dunyaa will now reach more parts of Pakistan with stronger signals. 

Since there are major differences of opinion between Islamabad and Washington over how to manage America’s floundering Afghanistan occupation, it is yet to be seen how the Pakistani government will tolerate if the two foreign propaganda radio channels aired material that contradicts official Pakistani position.

It should be remembered that Deewa Radio and Radio Aap Ki Dunyaa are part of the US government’s information warfare effort targeting certain regions where US has strategic interest.  The two channels are part of a long list of recent similar channels that include: Radio Sawa [in Arabic, targeting Iraq and the region], Al Hurra TV [targeting Iraqi audience], Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty [targeting Russia and its Eurasian backyward], among others, including a radio beam targeting Iran.

In normal circumstances, agreements such as the VOA-PBC are not unusual.  But in the context of the emerging differences between Washington and Islamabad on how to clean up the American mess in Afghanistan, the deal will raise eyebrows.

Saudi Arabia, for example, declined to allow Washington the use of its territory to relay radio signals aimed at the Arabic-speaking audience in the Middle East.  Smaller and insecure countries such Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, however, agreed to this arrangement. 

The VOA-PBC deal shows that media management remains one of the weakest links within the civilian and military bureaucracies in Pakistan.  Otherwise, a country the size of Pakistan should have been establishing by now its own media projection radio and TV networks in strategic languages instead of accepting to rebroadcast American propaganda. Pakistan’s needs to put its message across to the Iranians in Persian, to the Afghans in Pashto and Dari, to the Chinese and to an international audience.  Pakistan is even unable to convey its message to the people of an ally like China.  And instead of recruiting and reorganizing its official media outlets on nationalist and creative lines, Pakistani governments have a knack in ‘importing’ professionals not only from certain countries for political reasons, but also importing their thinking and biases.  While Mr. Solangi is a professional radio journalist by the testimony of most of those who worked with him, his policy direction betrays itself in the recent deal and might even be seen as running counter to what Pakistan should be pursuing in terms of its own public diplomacy.

During former president Musharraf’s government, a Pakistani-American was imported to head something called Pakistan Image Project that eventually led to a loss of millions of rupees from the public money with nothing to show for them.

Iran Guards say Pakistan released Jundallah leader

Mourners carry the coffins of Revolutionary Guard members, who were killed in Sunday’s suicide bombing in southeastern Iran, during a funeral ceremony in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009. – AP

Three suspects in Iran attack arrested from Turbat

TEHRAN: The deputy head of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards charged on Friday that Pakistan arrested and then released the leader of Jundallah a few days before a suicide bombing claimed by the Sunni rebel group.

‘We have precise information about the movement and places where terrorists are hiding,’ the Fars news agency quoted Brigadier General Hossein Salami as saying.

‘On September 26, Abdolmalek Rigi was arrested in one of the streets of Quetta but after one hour he was released following the intervention of the intelligence service of our neighbouring country,’ Salami said.

Quetta is the capital of Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, which borders Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan province where Jundallah is active. Ethnic Baluchis, the community the rebel group says it is fighting for, straddle the border.

Some 42 people, including 15 Revolutionary Guards members, died in the October 18 bombing in the Sistan-Baluchestan town of Pisheen.

‘How is it possible that this guy can move freely (unless he is) under the protection of the intelligence services?’ the Guards number two said, according to Fars.

Iran has said those responsible for the bombing were based in Pakistan and has demanded that Islamabad hand Rigi over.

Islamabad has strongly denied that Jundallah (Soldiers of God) launched the attack from its territory.

On Thursday, Pakistani police said three Iranians arrested for illegally entering Pakistan may have been linked to the Pisheen bombing.

RAW hand visible in terrorism

By: Mansoor Khan |

KARACHI – Solid proof of involvement of the Indian spy agency, Research Analysis Wing (RAW), in sponsoring and fuelling terrorism has come to surface after Pakistani investigators have found Indian origin explosives used in recent acts of terrorism in Pakistan.
TheNation has learnt through various official sources that Indian made explosives were used for the blasts that occurred in the FIA building in Lahore and Marriott Hotel Islamabad.
Following the revelations, the intelligence agencies have directed all concerned law enforcement agencies to keep up the surveillance of Hindu populated areas in the country.
According to the reports, intelligence agencies have also got tangible evidence of Indian Taliban carrying out terrorism activities across the country.
The sources, on request of anonymity, said that the containers carrying goods, weaponry and other stuff for Allied Forces stationed in Afghanistan are neither checked at the time of leaving the port nor at the time of their return, by Pakistani authorities.
The sources added that these empty containers, on their return, bring arms and explosives to Pakistan. It was revealed that in April last, the containers loaded with eggs imported from India bound for Kandahar and Kabul also carried arms and explosive materials. This happened a week after three of the nine containers along with the truck they were loaded were found parked at Hazar Ganji Truck Stand in Quetta. The alien odour emanating from the containers attracted attention of the people at the truck stand and when the containers were opened 46 dead and 60 unconscious people, all Afghan of various ethnic backgrounds, were recovered.
The revelation helped the intelligence agencies in solving the perplexing puzzle of procurement of such huge quantities of explosives, which were used by militants in carrying out massive explosions at FIA headquarters in Lahore, Marriot Hotel Islamabad and in various other tragic incidents.

“We had evidence even in 2006 that detonators manufactured by Indian companies were used in bomb explosions – both suicide and planted – making us believe that India was sending explosives and weapons to the militants in NWFP and Balochistan,” a security official told from Islamabad on condition of not to be mentioned his name or official position. The same official says that the information that Indian intelligence agencies had leaked to the Indian media about theft of more than 20 thousand kilograms of RDX explosive, 85 thousand detonators and more than 50 thousand meters of detonators fuse in 2006, left no doubt in the minds of the Pakistan security apparatus that the same explosive was smuggled to Pakistan via Afghanistan. SSP Operation Crime Investigation Department(CID), Fayyaz Khan, when contacted said that 150 kilograms explosive found in Karachi was manufactured by an Indian company, revealed the connection of India with militants. He disclosed that the arrested militants have confessed that the explosive was sent to Karachi from Waziristan and Qari Hussain Mehsud a notorious commander of TTP suicidal squad had delivered this huge quantity of explosive to the militants.
Qari Hussain Mehsud, a known commander of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and considered a mastermind of a number of terrorist attacks carried out inside the county and also familiar for his expertise in preparation of suicide jackets, explosive laden vehicles and other sorts of bombs.
SSP Khan explained that we have evidence that proves the involvement of RAW in terrorism in Pakistan, as detonators, explosive being used by Baloch insurgents in Balochistan and Sindh are manufactured by Indian companies.
Apart from the supply of explosives and weaponry to the insurgents groups of Sindh and Balochistan, RAW has also been training insurgents and using them in deadly attacks in Pakistan.
Interior Ministry has directed the concerned law enforcement and intelligence agencies to keep up surveillance of the areas where minorities (Hindus) are residing in majority. It has also directed them to check out the details of residents and collect the details of their relatives.
A source privy to the matter told TheNation that agencies have also got the information about the arrival of RAW agents in Pakistan though various bordering areas under anonymous covers who have spread out in different areas of the country. Source highlighted that mostly agents of RAW use the cover of worshippers and move towards the different sites of their worship places.
On the other side, a senior operative of TTP, introducing himself as Shakeel Mujahid, presently in Karachi, declined the allegations of coward bombings against innocents while saying that international agencies have made inroads inside the country and they usually carry out such kind of terrorist activities to defame Taliban. He pointed out that a number of undercover agents dispatched by RAW have been nabbed in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
He cited an example from Swat where a cleric leading a splinter group of TTP was intercepted by their operatives on some suspicious activities and later handed over to the government by the inhabitants of Swat. Evidence was found from his place which revealed that the cleric of Swat was actually from Afghanistan and was an old cadre of Taliban. He also explained that the said cleric was behind the bombing in schools and hospitals, which is against the policy of TTP.
“We have nothing to do with Pakistan, we are fighting against allied forces, forcibly occupying Afghanistan and having removed the Taliban regime” he said adding that in Pakistan, “we are fighting in our self-defence and against the security forces – those who have been fulfilling the agenda of America and trying to stop Jihad in Afghanistan”.

Is ISI Waging War Against the Generals?

[In the latest incident of motorcycle-riding assassins, yet another Brig. Gen. is targeted.  Is ISI upset at Army for upsetting its role-playing militant games?  Like a recent similar attack, where the sloppy attackers were apprehended with ISI identification cards, this hit and run tactic has been the M.O. of nearly all major hits, beginning with the assassins of Gen. Alavi.]

Third gun attack on brigadier in Islamabad

Gunmen on a motorbike on Friday wounded an army brigadier and soldier in Islamabad before escaping in the third such attack in two weeks, officials said. The officer and a soldier were shot while travelling in a jeep through the I-8 residential neighbourhood, police officer Mohammad Azhar told media. “Two gunmen riding on a motorbike opened fire on the jeep. Two people in the jeep were wounded. They were taken to hospital,” Azhar said, giving no further details. A doctor at the capital’s Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences hospital said the victims were in a stable condition. “Two army officers, including one brigadier were injured when unknown gunmen opened fire on their vehicle,” Doctor Nasir Ahmad told media. “Both have firearms injuries but both are stable,” he added. The attack was the third targeting senior army commanders in the capital in around two weeks. On October 22, a Pakistani brigadier on leave from a UN peacekeeping mission was shot dead in the capital Islamabad. There was a similar gun attack on another military jeep on October 27, but no one was wounded. Friday’s shooting came four days after a suicide bomber killed 35 people outside a bank in Islamabad’s twin city of Rawalpindi, not far from Pakistan’s army headquarters.

Pampering the mullah

Talat Farooq

After the government crackdown on certain madrassas in Islamabad recently, the representatives of the Wafaq-ul-Madaris aired their indignation on TV channels. They criticised the action on the grounds that madrassas have always been weapon/terror-free — including, if you please, the Lal Masjid — and, as such, cannot be held responsible for any anti-state activities The went on to add thatif the government officials wish to visit any of the premises, they must do so with the permission of Wafaq-ul-Madaris. In answer to such defiant outbursts, the interior minister meekly assured the Wafaq that the government never meant to violate the sanctity of these great places of learning and knowledge, and is only looking for some foreign Imams residing in some madressahs illegally. One fails to understand why the government has to be apologetic in carrying out such actions against any institution in Pakistan if it has reports of illegal activity there, especially when we are in a state of war. Madressahs, even if registered, are not sacrosanct or above the law. Unfortunately, it is this obsequiousness of our rulers toward the mullah since the creation of Pakistan that has emboldened the extremists over the last six decades.

The Muslim struggle for Pakistan did not include the Deoband or the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind who opposed the idea of Pakistan tooth and nail. Nonetheless, once Pakistan became a reality the Wahabi-Deobandi groups made gradual inroads as our leaders acquiesced to their demands within a few years of independence. Since then their influence has remained unchecked by the state as it focused on short-term political goals, it is therefore not surprising that they have eventually assumed the mantle of our self-proclaimed saviours and architects of the national identity of Pakistan.

Be it the Objectives Resolution or the timing of the Anti-Ahmadiyya movement in the 50s that facilitated the first martial law; the ban on alcohol and declaration of Friday as a weekly holiday by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Naseerullah Babar’s Taliban idea during Benazir’s government, or Nawaz Sharif’s Shariah Bill of the 90s, staying on the right side of Maulana Fazl ur Rahman by successive governments or the on-going pampering of Wafaq-ul-Madaris by the incumbent administration, the political players of Pakistan have always put their own narrow interests before the interests of the nation.

The military dictatorships on the other hand have used the mullah to further their own specific interests. From Ayub Khan to Musharraf, all military regimes have sought the cooperation of one religious sect or the other. Zia in particular played the mullah card to promote American interests and Arab culture simultaneously, destroying national institutions in the process while Musharraf’s post-9/11 two-faced strategy ensured the continuity of extremism. Jointly, the politicians and the military dictators, with help from America and Saudi Arabia, have managed to create a monster that feeds on violence and bloodshed.

The religious clerics, whether Muslim or non Muslim, derive their political power from exploiting the insecurities of the masses by focusing on differences in religious and socio-cultural beliefs, thus leading to social divisions. In a multi-ethnic Pakistani society with a sizeable non-Muslim population, this has spelled disaster. Over the last three decades, the Deobandi/Wahabi mindset has transmuted ideological divisions into militant sectarianism that has been duly exploited by the Taliban and their domestic sympathisers that include mainstream religious-political parties.

Muslim states like Turkey, in keeping with the Ottoman tradition, have managed to keep their clerics under state control to ensure social order. In Pakistan, they have been given a free hand; what we are witnessing today in the shape of violence is the dark side of religiosity infused by religious extremists into the psyche of both the uneducated masses and the unsuspecting educated elite. This has transpired due to the manipulation of religious sentiments by vested interests and festering socio-economic and governance issues all rolled into one. But above all, this is due to the deliberate omission of critical thinking skills and philosophical knowledge from the national curricula, thus rendering a large majority of Pakistani population incapable of objective assessment. This omission is largely attributable to the direct or indirect influence of the mullah especially during and after the Zia era.

Today the same extremist elements continue to spread their hatred of one another as well as propagate against Pakistan’s national interests by promoting conspiracy theories and blind anti-Americanism from the pulpit. And while doing so, they fail to mention the negative influence of certain policies of the Saudi government toward Pakistan. The anti-American and anti-government slogans after the Islamic University bombing would have sounded more genuine had they been accompanied with anti-Taliban slogans. Pakistan will never become a self-respecting nation unless it disengages itself from not only American shackles but also the ones imported from Saudi Arabia. This requires a mature political leadership that believes in impartial analyses and practical strategies, not to mention courage and wisdom.

The Waziristan operation is in full swing and if the religious parties cannot support it for fear of life, they can at least remain quiet. By stoking the fire of anti-Americanism to garner support for the Taliban through ill-timed rallies and referendums, they are doing no service to Pakistan. The nation is being driven into a frenzy that can only spread more intolerance and spawn fear and anxiety. Furthermore, it serves as a diversion because it deflects people’s attention from the real issue of good governance and allows religious and secular leaders, whether in the government or opposition or outside the parliament, to play their petty games without having to shoulder the required responsibilities to steer the country out of the present quagmire.

Religion is a strong social phenomenon and has been employed by many in human history to serve political ends. Muslim history is no exception. The mullahs of Pakistan have employed the same dispensation since 1947 to gain political power. This has eventually led to the rise of a ferocious militant element never known in Muslim history. Not even the Hashashins of Hassan Sabah killed with such merry abandon. It is high time for the state to check the spread of unbridled hatred. It is time to stop pampering the mullah.

The writer is executive editor of Criterion, Islamabad. Email: talatfarooq11@gmail.com

‘New Georgia war to breakout’

MOSCOW: Russian military intelligence believes Georgia might again attack South Ossetia, the pro-Moscow region over which the two countries fought a war last year, a powerful spy chief said on Thursday.

Alexander Shlyakhturov, who in April took over command of the military’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), said the situation was strained and accused Nato countries of continuing to supply arms to Georgia.

“The situation with Georgia remains tense because the current Georgian authorities do not just refuse to recognise the sovereignty of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but are trying in every way to return these countries…to their jurisdiction,” he said in a rare interview with state news agency ITAR-TASS.

“You have to add to this the unpredictability of attempts by the Georgian leadership, headed by (President Mikheil) Saakashvili, which may give in to temptation to use force to tame these obstinate republics as they did last year,” he said.

“We do not rule out such a development,” said Shlyakhturov, who controls Russia’s biggest spy agency with agents across the globe and thousands of special forces troops inside Russia.

South Ossetia and Abkhazia broke away from Georgian government control in the early 1990s. Russia recognised both as independent states after last year’s five-day war, when its forces repelled a Georgian attack on South Ossetia.

But only two other countries, Nicaragua and Venezuela, have followed Russia’s lead, and the rest of the world regards the two regions as part of Georgia. Saakashvili has said he is committed to a unified Georgia but has no pretensions to retake the breakaway areas by force.

GRU chiefs rarely speak to the media. Thursday’s interview was given to mark 91 years since the spy service was created in 1918 by revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky.

Swine Flu Cases Overestimated? – CBS News

Swine Flu Cases Overestimated?

By Sharyl Attkisson

CBS News Exclusive: Study Of State Results Finds H1N1 Not As Prevalent As Feared

• (iStockphoto)

• Interactive Swine Flu’s ImpactThe latest numbers, photos and information to keep you safe.

• Stories
• CDC: H1N1 Vaccine Behind Schedule
• H1N1 Flu Still a “Young Person’s Disease”

(CBS)

If you’ve been diagnosed “probable” or “presumed” 2009 H1N1 or “swine flu” in recent months, you may be surprised to know this: odds are you didn’t have H1N1 flu.

In fact, you probably didn’t have flu at all. That’s according to state-by-state test results obtained in a three-month-long CBS News investigation.

The ramifications of this finding are important. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Britain’s National Health Service, once you have H1N1 flu, you’re immune from future outbreaks of the same virus. Those who think they’ve had H1N1 flu — but haven’t — might mistakenly presume they’re immune. As a result, they might skip taking a vaccine that could help them, and expose themselves to others with H1N1 flu under the mistaken belief they won’t catch it. Parents might not keep sick children home from school, mistakenly believing they’ve already had H1N1 flu.

Why the uncertainty about who has and who hasn’t had H1N1 flu?

Attkisson Blogs: Freedom of Information Stalled at CDC

CBSNews.com report on H1N1

In late July, the CDC abruptly advised states to stop testing for H1N1 flu, and stopped counting individual cases. The rationale given for the CDC guidance to forego testing and tracking individual cases was: why waste resources testing for H1N1 flu when the government has already confirmed there’s an epidemic?

Some public health officials privately disagreed with the decision to stop testing and counting, telling CBS News that continued tracking of this new and possibly changing virus was important because H1N1 has a different epidemiology, affects younger people more than seasonal flu and has been shown to have a higher case fatality rate than other flu virus strains.

CBS News learned that the decision to stop counting H1N1 flu cases was made so hastily that states weren’t given the opportunity to provide input. Instead, on July 24, the Council for State and Territorial Epidemiologists, CSTE, issued the following notice to state public health officials on behalf of the CDC:

“Attached are the Q&As that will be posted on the CDC website tomorrow explaining why CDC is no longer reporting case counts for novel H1N1. CDC would have liked to have run these by you for input but unfortunately there was not enough time before these needed to be posted (emphasis added).”

When CDC did not provide us with the material, we filed a Freedom of Information request with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). More than two months later, the request has not been fulfilled. We also asked CDC for state-by-state test results prior to halting of testing and tracking, but CDC was again, initially, unresponsive

more about “Swine Flu Cases Overestimated? – CBS …“, posted with vodpod

Video above: A CBS News producer asks the director of the CDC, Dr. Thomas Frieden, for this information at a press conference on Sept. 19.

While we waited for CDC to provide the data, which it eventually did, we asked all 50 states for their statistics on state lab-confirmed H1N1 prior to the halt of individual testing and counting in July. The results reveal a pattern that surprised a number of health care professionals we consulted. The vast majority of cases were negative for H1N1 as well as seasonal flu, despite the fact that many states were specifically testing patients deemed to be most likely to have H1N1 flu, based on symptoms and risk factors, such as travel to Mexico.

(CBS)

It’s unknown what patients who tested negative for flu were actually afflicted with since the illness was not otherwise determined. Health experts say it’s assumed the patients had some sort of cold or upper respiratory infection that is just not influenza.

With most cases diagnosed solely on symptoms and risk factors, the H1N1 flu epidemic may seem worse than it is. For example, on Sept. 22, this alarming headline came from Georgetown University in Washington D.C.: “H1N1 Flu Infects Over 250 Georgetown Students.”

H1N1 flu can be deadly and an outbreak of 250 students would be an especially troubling cluster. However, the number of sick students came not from lab-confirmed tests but from “estimates” made by counting “students who went to the Student Health Center with flu symptoms, students who called the H1N1 hotline or the Health Center’s doctor-on-call, and students who went to the hospital’s emergency room.”

Without lab testing, it’s impossible to know how many of the students actually had H1N1 flu. But the statistical trend indicates it was likely much fewer than 250.

CDC continues to monitor flu in general and H1N1 through “sentinels,” which basically act as spot-checks to detect trends around the nation. But at least one state, California, has found value in tracking H1N1 flu in greater detail.

“What we are doing is much more detailed and expensive than what CDC wants,” said Dr. Bela Matyas, California’s Acting Chief of Emergency Preparedness and Response. “We’re gathering data better to answer how severe is the illness. With CDC’s fallback position, there are so many uncertainties with who’s being counted, it’s hard to know how much we’re seeing is due to H1N1 flu rather than a mix of influenza diseases generally. We can tell that apart but they can’t.”

After our conversation with Dr. Matyas, public affairs officials with the California Department of Public Health emphasized to CBS News that they support CDC policy to stop counting individual cases, maintaining that the state has the resources to gather more specific testing data than the CDC.

Because of the uncertainties, the CDC advises even those who were told they had H1N1 to get vaccinated unless they had lab confirmation. “Persons who are uncertain about how they were diagnosed should get the 2009 H1N1 vaccine.”

That’s unwelcome news for a Marietta, Georgia mom whose two children were diagnosed with “probable” H1N1 flu over the summer. She hoped that would mean they wouldn’t need the hastily developed H1N1 flu vaccine. However, since their cases were never confirmed with lab tests, the CDC advises they get the vaccine. “I wish they had tested and that I knew for sure whether they had it. I’m not anxious to give them an experimental vaccine if they don’t need it.”

Speaking to CBS’ “60 Minutes,” CDC Director Dr. Frieden said he has confidence that the vaccine will be safe and effective: “We’re confident it will be effective we have every reason to believe that it will be safe.”

However, the CDC recommendation for those who had “probable” or “presumed” H1N1 flu to go ahead and get vaccinated anyway means the relatively small proportion of those who actually did have H1N1 flu will be getting the vaccine unnecessarily. This exposes them to rare but significant side effects, such as paralysis from Guillain-Barre syndrome.

It also uses up vaccine, which is said to be in short supply. The CDC was hoping to have shipped 40 million doses by the end of October, but only about 30 million doses will be available this month.

The CDC did not response to questions from CBS News for this report.

Diagramming Bush Family Criminal Connections

Disclaimer: the posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.

more about "Diagramming Bush Family Criminal Conn…", posted with vodpod

Japan Uses Controverisal Nuke Fuel

[If the only country in the world to experience the generational curse caused by two radiation exposures cannot stop this development, then the world will have to deal with a whole new level of radioactive contamination and waste disposal problems in the future.  Click here for sample radiation distribution patterns, modeled on Hanford Reactor site.  SEE: Human Health Effects of Radiation

SEE: CHERNOBYL BIRTH DEFECTS]

Critics of Weapons-Grade “MOX” Fuel Say It’s Too Volatile and Generates High Amounts of Radioactive Waste

• Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s nuclear plant is seen in Kashiwazaki, northeastern Japan, July 17, 2007. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara) (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

(AP) Japan used weapons-grade plutonium to fuel a nuclear power plant Thursday for the first time as part of efforts to boost its atomic energy program.

Kyushu Electric Power Co. said workers fired up the No. 3 reactor at its Genkai plant in the southern prefecture of Saga using MOX fuel – a mixture of plutonium oxide and uranium oxide.

The reactor is scheduled to start generating electricity Monday for a monthlong test run, and then begin full-fledged operations after a final government inspection and approval in early December, company official Futoshi Kai said.

The Genkai plant marks the beginning of Japan’s use of MOX fuel for so-called “pluthermal” power generation, approved by the Cabinet more than a decade ago.

MOX fuel is a central element of Japan’s plans to reduce its dependence on energy imports. Supporters say nuclear power is a viable clean energy that will support global efforts against climate change because it is essentially carbon-free.

Critics say MOX is too volatile and produces highly radioactive waste. Dozens of protesters rallied outside the government office in Saga on Thursday, raising safety concerns about the use of plutonium-based fuel.

Saga Gov. Yasushi Furukawa said he reminded Kyushu Electric to give safety top priority, and promised local residents that officials would closely monitor plant operations.

Japan, which now relies on nuclear plants for a third of its electricity needs, aims to raise that to nearly 40 percent in 2010. The government has said it hopes to convert as many as 18 nuclear reactors that now use more common uranium to those that use MOX.

The Japanese public, however, has grown increasingly wary of the nuclear power industry following a spate of safety problems, shutdowns and cover-ups.

Human Health Effects of Radiation

Human Health Effects

Radioactive Contaminants of Concern

---

Radioactive and toxic substances used in the production of plutonium and its resulting waste are dangerous to both Hanford workers and the public. These substances may have been inhaled or ingested through drinking water.

All of the following radioactive contaminants have reached the groundwater at Hanford.

Strontium (Sr-90) is a radioactive isotope with a half-life of 29 years. Sr-90 is a byproduct of the fission of uranium and plutonium in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. It is not harmful unless ingested or inhaled. It can bioaccumulate in the bones and bone marrow and replace calcium in the human body, causing bone tumors and blood cell cancers.

Tritium is the only radioactive isotope of hydrogen. It has a half-life of 12 years. As with all ionizing Radiation, exposure to tritium increases the risk of developing cancer. About 80 percent of tritium in the environment is from former nuclear weapons production and fallout from past testing. At Hanford, tritium in the groundwater was produced by irradiation of reactor cooling water.

Technetium-99 (Tc-99) is a silver-gray, radioactive metal that is manufactured. It has a half-life of 210,000 years. Technetium-99 has no significant industrial use. It is found primarily in radioactive wastes from former nuclear weapons facilities as a byproduct from the operation of nuclear reactors. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, most Tc-99 in the environment comes from detonation of nuclear weapons (especially atmospheric weapons tests), nuclear reactor airborne emissions, nuclear fuel reprocessing plant emissions, and facilities that treat or store radioactive waste. Ingestion is the primary way people are exposed to Tc-99, either by eating contaminated food or drinking contaminated water. Exposure to technetium-99 increases the likelihood of developing cancer.

Iodine-129 is a radioactive isotope in spent nuclear fuel and in the waste from operating nuclear reactors and fuel reprocessing plants. Iodine moves through soil to the groundwater and represents one of the largest contaminated groundwater plumes at Hanford. The half-life of iodine-129 is more than 15 million years. When ingested, it is concentrated in the thyroid gland where it may cause cancer in humans.

Carbon 14 is a naturally occurring radioactive isotope of carbon, best known for its use in radiocarbon dating. It has a half-life of 5,700 years and is present in the low-level radioactive wastes at Hanford. Large amounts of carbon 14 were also released to the atmosphere as a result of nuclear weapons testing. It can enter the body through inhalation, contaminated drinking water, or contaminated food. The health hazard of carbon 14 is associated with cell damage caused by the ionizing radiation that results from radioactive decay, with the potential for subsequent cancers.

Uranium is both radioactive and toxic. It is a naturally occurring element that is very dense and heavy. The greatest health risk from large intakes of uranium is toxic damage to the kidneys. Uranium-238 is used to produce plutonium-239, which was the primary mission at Hanford. It is mildly radioactive and has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. The U.S. Department of Energy (USDOE) only considered the radioactivity of uranium, not its toxicity, in its modeling. Uranium-238 is a primary groundwater contaminant in the 300 Area at Hanford.

Why Does The U.S. Have An Empire In Asia?

By Paul Craig Roberts

The US government is now so totally under the thumbs of organized interest groups that “our” government can no longer respond to the concerns of the American people who elect the president and the members of the House and Senate.

Voters will vent their frustrations over their impotence on the president, which implies a future of one-term presidents. Soon our presidents will be as ineffective as Roman emperors in the final days of that empire.

Obama is already set on the course to a one-term presidency. He promised change, but has delivered none. His health care bill is held hostage by the private insurance companies seeking greater profits. The most likely outcome will be cuts in Medicare and Medicaid in order to help fund wars that enrich the military/security complex and the many companies created by privatizing services that the military once provided for itself at far lower costs. It would be interesting to know the percentage of the $700+ billion “defense” spending that goes to private companies. In American “capitalism,” an amazing amount of taxpayers’ earnings go to private firms via the government. Yet, Republicans scream about “socializing” health care.

Republicans and Democrats saw opportunities to create new sources of campaign contributions by privatizing as many military functions as possible. There are now a large number of private companies that have never made a dollar in the market, feeding instead at the public trough that drains taxpayers of dollars while loading Americans with debt service obligations.

Obama inherited an excellent opportunity to bring US soldiers home from the Bush regime’s illegal wars of aggression. In its final days, the Bush regime realized that it could “win” in Iraq by putting the Sunni insurgents on the US military payroll. Once Bush had 80,000 insurgents collecting US military pay, violence, although still high, dropped in half. All Obama had to do was to declare victory and bring our boys home, thanking Bush for winning the war. It would have shut up the Republicans.

But this sensible course would have impaired the profits and share prices of those firms that comprise the military/security complex. So instead of doing what Obama said he would do and what the voters elected him to do, Obama restarted the war in Afghanistan and launched a new one in Pakistan. Soon Obama was echoing Bush and Cheney’s threats to attack Iran.

In place of health care for Americans, there will be more profits for private insurance companies.

In place of peace there will be more war.

Voters are already recognizing the writing on the wall and are falling away from Obama and the Democrats. Independents who gave Obama his comfortable victory have now swung against him, recently electing Republican governors in New Jersey and Virginia to succeed Democrats. This is a protest vote, not a confidence vote in Republicans.

Obama’s credibility is shot. And so is Congress’s, assuming it ever had any. The US House of Representatives has just voted to show the entire world that the US House of Representatives is nothing but the servile, venal, puppet of the Israel Lobby. The House of Representatives of the American “superpower” did the bidding of its master, AIPAC, and voted 344 to 36 to condemn the Goldstone Report.

In case you don’t know, the Goldstone Report is the Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict. The “Gaza Conflict” is the Israeli military attack on the Gaza ghetto, where 1.5 million dispossessed Palestinians, whose lands, villages, and homes were stolen by Israel, are housed. The attack was on civilians and civilian infrastructure. It was without any doubt a war crime under the Nuremberg standard that the US established in order to execute Nazis.

Goldstone is not only a very distinguished Jewish jurist who has given his life to bringing people to accountability for their crimes against humanity, but also a Zionist. However, the Israelis have demonized him as a “self-hating Jew” because he wrote the truth instead of Israeli propaganda.

US Representative Dennis Kucinich, who is now without a doubt a marked man on AIPAC’s political extermination list, asked the House if the members had any realization of the shame that the vote condemning Goldstone would bring on the House and the US government.   The entire rest of the world accepts the Goldstone report.

The House answered with its lopsided vote that the rest of the world doesn’t count as it doesn’t give campaign contributions to members of Congress.

This shameful, servile act of “the world’s greatest democracy” occurred the very week that a court in Italy convicted 23 US CIA officers for kidnapping a person in Italy. The CIA agents are now considered “fugitives from justice” in Italy, and indeed they are.

The kidnapped person was renditioned to the American puppet state of Egypt, where the victim was held for years and repeatedly tortured. The case against him was so absurd that even an Egyptian judge order his release.

One of the convicted CIA operatives, Sabrina deSousa, an attractive young woman, says that the US broke the law by kidnapping a person and sending him to another country to be tortured in order to manufacture another “terrorist” in order to keep the terrorist hoax going at home. Without the terrorist hoax, America’s wars for special interest reasons would become transparent even to Fox “News” junkies.

Ms. deSousa says that “everything I did was approved back in Washington,” yet the government, which continually berates us to “support the troops,” did nothing to protect her when she carried out the Bush regime’s illegal orders.

Clearly, this means that the crime that Bush, Cheney, the Pentagon, and the CIA ordered is too heinous and beyond the pale to be justified, even by memos from the despicable John Yoo and the Republican Federalist Society.

Ms. deSousa is clearly worried about herself. But where is her concern for the innocent person that she sent into an Egyptian hell to be tortured until death or admission of being a terrorist?

The remorse deSousa expresses is only for herself. She did her evil government’s bidding and her evil government that she so faithfully served turned its back on her. She has no remorse for the evil she committed against an innocent person.

Perhaps deSousa and her 22 colleagues grew up on video games. It was great fun to plot to kidnap a real person and fly him on a CIA plane to Egypt. Was it like a fisherman catching a fish or a deer hunter killing a beautiful 8-point buck? Clearly, they got their jollies at the expense of their renditioned victim.

The finding of the Italian court, and keep in mind that Italy is a bought-and-paid-for US puppet state, indicates that even our bought puppets are finding the US too much to stomach.

Moving from the tip of the iceberg down, we have Ambassador Craig Murray, rector of the University of Dundee and until 2004 the UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, which he describes as a Stalinist totalitarian state courted and supported by the Americans.

As ambassador, Murray saw the MI5 intelligence reports from the CIA that described the most horrible torture procedures. “People were raped with broken bottles, children were tortured in front of their parents until they [the parents] signed a confession, people were boiled alive.”

“Intelligence” from these torture sessions was passed on by the CIA to MI5 and to Washington as proof of the vast al Qaeda conspiracy.

Ambassador Murray reports that the people delivered by CIA flights to Uzbekistan’s torture prisons “were told to confess to membership in Al Qaeda. They were told to confess they’d been in training camps in Afghanistan. They were told to confess they had met Osama bin Laden in person. And the CIA intelligence constantly echoed these themes.”

“I was absolutely stunned,” says the British ambassador, who thought that he served a moral country that, along with its American ally, had moral integrity. The great Anglo-American bastion of democracy and human rights, the homes of the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights, the great moral democracies that defeated Nazism and stood up to Stalin’s gulags, were prepared to commit any crime in order to maximize profits.

Ambassador Murray learned too much and was fired when he vomited it all up. He saw the documents that proved that the motivation for US and UK military aggression in Afghanistan had to do with the natural gas deposits in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The Americans wanted a pipeline that bypassed Russia and Iran and went through Afghanistan. To insure this, an invasion was necessary. The idiot American public could be told that the invasion was necessary because of 9/11 and to save them from “terrorism,” and the utter fools would believe the lie.

“If you look at the deployment of US forces in Afghanistan, as against other NATO country forces in Afghanistan, you’ll see that undoubtedly the US forces are positioned to guard the pipeline route. It’s what it’s about. It’s about money, it’s about energy, it’s not about democracy.”

Guess who the consultant was who arranged with then-Texas governor George W. Bush the agreements that would give to Enron the rights to Uzbekistan’s and Turkmenistan’s natural gas deposits and to Unocal to develop the trans-Afghanistan pipeline.

It was Karzai, the US-imposed “president” of Afghanistan, who has no support in the country except for American bayonets.

Ambassador Murray was dismissed from the UK Foreign Service for his revelations. No doubt on orders from Washington to our British puppet.

Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term.  He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.

Undercover US operations: The Down Low in Pakistan

Undercover US operations

The Down Low in Pakistan

In at least two Pakistani cities, undercover US intelligence operatives have been arrested by Pakistani police.  These American operatives are running an undercover operation in Pakistan that uses the cover of the US Embassy.  On at least three occasions, these operatives, who presented themselves as US ‘diplomats’, were roaming Pakistani streets in cars with fake number plates and wearing Afghan dresses and sporting Taliban-style beards.  Most importantly, these operatives were carrying sophisticated weapons that were not licensed to the US Embassy.  Four such US ‘diplomats’ were arrested a few hours before the arrival of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Pakistan.

When asked about the incident, she said she had no idea who those people were and what exactly they were doing.  She was not lying.  This is a standard procedure for US diplomats when US intelligence operatives get busted.  Pakistani civilian and military officials have enough evidence of the illegal activities of CIA in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the American spy agency is using the help of Karzai’s and India’s spy outfits.  Can Pakistan learn to stand for itself?

Army Doctor Nidal Malik Hasan Allegedly Kills 12 at Fort Hood

Sources Close to the Major’s Family in Ramallah Say He Was Unhappy About an Impending Deployment Overseas

[Prison must be better than going to Iraq.]

By EMILY FRIEDMAN, RICHARD ESPOSITO, ETHAN NELSON, DESIREE ADIB and AMMU KANNAMPILLY
Nov. 6, 2009

Twelve people died and 30 were wounded at a Texas military post in a shooting rampage that officials believe was carried out by an Army psychiatrist who was about to be deployed to Iraq.

The suspected gunman in the shooting at Fort Hood, Tex., was identified by ABC News as Army Major Malik Nadal Hasan, a psychiatrist trained by the military.

(ABC News Photo Illustration)
More Photos

The suspected gunman has been identified as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. Hasan would have been deployed to Iraq later this month, an Army official said.

It would have been his first deployment, two sources told ABC News.

Hasan is believed to be of Palestinian origin: His grandfather moved to the United States in the 1940s. One of Hasan’s two brothers recently moved to Ramallah and works in the West Bank, the sources said. Hasan’s family is said to own a number of apartments in Ramallah.

The family has refused to speak to reporters, but a person close to the family told ABC News that Hasan had told his family he was unhappy about his impending deployment abroad.

UN General Assembly adopts Goldstone Report

UN General Assembly adopts Goldstone Report

The United Nations General Assembly is calling on Israel and the Palestinians to investigate war crime allegations leveled in a UN report on the Gaza war.

The 192-member body adopted the resolution Thursday by a vote of 114-18, with others absent or abstaining.

The resolution calls on the Security Council to act if either side fails to launch credible investigations within three months.

It endorses a report by an expert panel chaired by South African Judge Richard Goldstone which concluded both Israel and Palestinian militants committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.

The harshly worded draft resolution, composed by Arab member states, has not been softened despite U.S. and European efforts.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN Gabriela Shalev told Haaretz that she didn’t plan to take part in the vote. “I won’t lend a hand to a debate whose conclusions are predetermined. It was a predictable Arab game.”

However, Israel and the United States were among those voting against the resolution. A total of 44 countries abstained.

The resolution enjoyed wide support among the Non-Aligned Movement bloc and the Arab bloc. These states comprise an automatic majority of 120 votes.

The draft resolution includes a demand for the Israeli government to carry out an “independent and credible” internal investigation of its own conduct during Israel’s 3-week offensive in Gaza, which left over 1,000 Palestinians dead.

Hamas isn’t mentioned in the draft resolution. Instead, it calls on the “Palestinian side” to carry out an investigation into the Goldstone report findings that relate to Palestinians.

The draft resolution also includes a recommendation to convene the signatories of the fourth Geneva Convention treaty for an emergency session to discuss Israel’s violations of the treaty.

Apart from Israel and the United States, a number of European countries including Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and the Czech Republic voted against the resolution. But the European Union was split, with others including Britain and France abstaining. Most developing countries voted in favor.

There is no veto in UN General Assembly votes, but the assembly’s resolutions are non-binding. However, resolutions adopted by the General Assembly grant legitimacy to Security Council initiatives. But the five permanent members of the Security Council have the power to veto any resolution put up for a vote. Thus, any Arab initiative for an extreme resolution against Israel, such as the submission of the Goldstone report to the International Criminal Court, will likely be torpedoed by the veto-wielding U.S.

If the matter is put up for a Security Council vote, there is also the possibility that the U.S. and its allies – Britain or France, will block an official resolution, and instead issue a presidential statement or a press release.

An Israel delegate denounced the adoption of the resolution as a “mockery of reality” after Israel seized a vessel packed with weapons believed to have been sent by Iran to Hezbollah.

Israel’s Deputy Ambassador Daniel Carmon told the assembly the resolution “endorses and legitimizes a deeply flawed, one-sided and prejudiced report of the discredited Human Rights Council and its politicized work that bends both fact and law.”

U.S. Deputy Ambassador Alejandro Wolff said the resolution was flawed in several respects, including its failure to name the Hamas militant movement that rules Gaza. He also said a demand for international supervision of any Israeli and Palestinian investigations was “unhelpful.”

DoD Inspector General’s report affirms Aafia’s narrative

“Why do they hate us?” This simple, yet loaded five word question has literally outperformed the thousands of answers that have been put forth. This is because comprehensive responses are rarely as powerful as a simple question. Aafia Siddiqui’s case suffers from the very same dynamic; it is complex, it is detailed and it raises disturbing issues that reach far and wide.

Consider the following claims against the U.S. and allied/contracted forces:

1) Abduction of a mother and her three children with the children used for extortion
2) Long term captivity in secret prisons
3) Rape, torture, mental and physical abuse
4) Use of elaborate disorientation and false flag techniques

This laundry list is definitely sensational enough for a kneejerk rejection from the average American patriot. However, what are we to think when these very same allegations are listed in a recently declassified Department of Defense’s Inspector General’s report entitled Review of DoD-Directed Investigations of Detainee Abuse[i]?
There are other serious questions surround this impending trial:

Why is she considered such a high profile suspect when the charges against her are not related to terrorism[ii]?
What caused the interest in Siddiqui in the first place?
How long has she been in custody?
Where have her children been all this time?
Who was responsible for them?
Did we outsource her and her children’s detention and interrogation to other nations?

Despite all these issues, there is one central theme in Siddiqui’s ordeal. It holds true regardless of ones status as a supporter or detractor. As an American, the one inescapable question is: how we, the U.S., treated and continue to treat her.

How Dr. Aafia Siddiqui was and will be treated matters

Why? The reasons are plentiful, but let us examine one of our more important relationships: Pakistan, a strategically vital U.S. ally. Pakistan is a nation that seems to continuously suffer from regime changes, political assassinations and other stability issues; these are conditions conducive to the widespread popular support that Aafia Siddiqui is receiving.

Siddiqui has been transformed from a “U.S. person of interest,” into a galvanizing symbol of the Pakistani people. Her growing status as a focal point of that nation’s pride and desire for true sovereignty is evident. The streets are regularly flooded with pro-Aafia rallies and demonstrations that on occasion number in the tens of thousands.

Popular singers, poets and artists continue to release tributes to Siddiqui as their chosen symbol for all of Pakistan’s missing persons and other popular, pro-Pakistani sentiments. Siddiqui’s story serves as a common rallying point for both Pakistan’s secular and religious as well as for their conservatives and their liberals. Aafia Siddiqui’s case has even overcome bitter rivalries between Pakistan’s competing political movements.

Siddiqui’s status is growing in influence, even transcending Pakistani politics and reaching the broader Muslim world as new and persistent allegations of abuse surface against the U.S. These allegations, especially when women and children are involved, undermine our standing in the world and provoke very serious and avoidable diplomatic problems.

This report legitimizes the hard to accept claims put forth by Aafia Siddiqui’s supporters.

It can no longer be claimed that abusive `interrogation techniques’ and assaults on detainees have not been either approved or perpetrated by our servicemen and contractors. This is the second reason that U.S. treatment of Aafia Siddiqui is the central issue of this case; it is directly related to our values as Americans.
To illustrate the point, let us examine the claims made by Aafia Siddiqui’s supporters with the DoD report’s findings:

CLAIM 1: The abduction of a mother and her three children/ children used for extortion

REPORT: The use of scenarios designed to convince the detainee that death or severely painful consequences are imminent for him and/or his family:… – pg 36

CLAIM 2: Long term captivity in secret prisons

REPORT: CIA detainees in Abu Ghraib, known locally as “Ghost Detainees,” were not accounted for in the detention system. With these detainees unidentified or unaccounted for, detention operations at large were impacted because personnel at the operations level were uncertain how to report or classify detainees. – pg 59

REPORT: …DoD temporarily held detainees for the CIA – including the detainee known as “Triple-X” – without properly registering them and providing notification to the International Committee of the Red Cross. This practice of holding “ghost detainees” for the CIA was guided by oral, ad hoc agreements… – pg 78

CLAIM 3: Rape, torture, mental and physical abuse

REPORT: At the extremes were the death of a detainee in OGA custody, an alleged rape committed by a US translator and observed by a female Soldier, and the alleged sexual assault of a female detainee. – pg 59

CLAIM 4: Use of elaborate disorientation and false flag techniques

REPORT: …military personnel improperly interfered with FBI interrogators in the performance of their FBI duties. – pg 86

REPORT: False Flag: Convincing the detainee that individuals from a country other than the United States are interrogating him. – pg 97

REPORT: …our interviews with DoD personnel assigned to various detention facilities throughout Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrated that they did not have a uniform understanding of what rules governed the involvement of OGAs in the interrogation of DoD detainees. That DoD interrogators improperly impersonated FBI agents and Department of State officers during the interrogation of detainees. – pg 86
How our nation treats its detainees will continue to become more and more significant during the progression of Aafia Siddiqui’s trial. It will be a reoccurring theme in all similar trials as well. Regardless of verdicts, our treatment of detainees if not addressed properly will continue to degrade our nation’s image and standing in the world. This fact cannot be tempered by our stance on the all important and most immediate question of when did the U.S. take custody of Aafia? There are enough claims of mistreatment for either scenario of when Siddiqui came under U.S. authority.

Supporters contend that Aafia was abducted and handed over to U.S. Authorities in April 2003. This claim is supported by an NBC News clip available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xwCHha5ITM .

This claim is corroborated by Siddiqui’s family’s statements expressing their belief that she was dead from 2003 until her capture in Afghanistan.

While convenient, it should be noted that the NBC and other media reports of Aafia’s abduction in 2003 have been denied/contested[iii].
What is certain is that once captured in Afghanistan, Siddiqui has been shuffled between mental and maximum security facilities, both with documented histories of abuse especially toward Muslims[iv] [v] and women[vi] inmates.

Currently, despite the fact that she is held in solitary confinement, under video surveillance, Siddiqui under goes regular, forced, strip searches, when making any outside contact – effectively denying her reasonable access to her attorneys. It is also a matter of record that after Siddiqui was officially in U.S. custody, she was shot by U.S. personal in Ghazni, Afghanistan and that the medical care she needed was at best delayed and inadequate[vii].

For most American’s, there might just be too many allegations against the U.S. for us to sallow. This type of thinking will miss the lessons that are to be learned as information comes to light. Siddiqui’s case, how she was treated and what we will do about it going forward, will define, in part, our capability for leadership in the world. Most importantly, it will serve as a window for who we are or who we have become.

[i] http://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/abuse.pdf
[ii] http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2008/September/08-nsd-765.html
[iii] http://therepublicofrumi.com/archives/aafia01.htm
[iv] http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/05/19/maddy/index.html
[v] http://cryptome.org/bop-abuse.htm
[vi] http://www.aclutx.org/article.php?aid=252
[vii] http://www.reuters.com/article/asiaCrisis/idUSN11499491

Protect Your Sons from Shady Recruiters, Fatten Them Up!

[If we had only thought of this during Vietnam.  We could have dodged the draft by simply overeating.]

more about “Country Joe McDonald – “Feel Like I’m…“, posted with vodpod

75 Percent of Young Americans Are Unfit for Military Duty

WASHINGTON (Nov. 3) — Are America’s youth too fat, dumb or dishonest to defend the nation against its enemies?

The latest Army statistics show a stunning 75 percent of military-age youth are ineligible to join the military because they are overweight, can’t pass entrance exams, have dropped out of high school or had run-ins with the law.

So many young people between the prime recruiting ages of 17 and 24 cannot meet minimum standards that a group of retired military leaders is calling for more investment in early childhood education to combat the insidious effects of junk food and inadequate education.

Mark Mainz, Getty Images

“We’ve never had this problem of young people being obese like we have today,” said Gen. John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

He calls the rising number of youth unfit for duty a matter of national security. “We should be concerned about how this will impact this overstretched Army and its ability to recruit.”

Shalikashvili is among dozens of retired generals, admirals and civilian Pentagon officials who have banded together as Mission Readiness: Military Leaders for Kids. The group, which includes former NATO commander and presidential candidate Wesley Clark, will appear with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan at the National Press Club on Thursday to urge immediate action to reduce dropout rates and improve the physical and moral fitness of the nation’s youth.

They will cite research that shows quality early childhood education raises graduation rates by up to 44 percent and reduces the odds of being arrested for a violent crime by age 18.

Douglas Smith of the U.S. Army Recruiting Command said 2008 data shows about three in 10 youths have an initial barrier to enlistment.

Most aren’t insurmountable. “If you’re overweight, we tell you to come back when you’ve lost the weight. If you don’t score well on the armed forces aptitude test, we suggest you study and take it again,” he said.

Between 2004 and 2008, the Army more than doubled the number of “conduct” waivers it granted to would-be soldiers with criminal or misdemeanor records. The loosened standards proved necessary in a time of war and amid a booming economy that forced military recruiters to work overtime to fill the ranks.

The new warnings about a generation of couch potatoes comes just weeks after the Pentagon announced its best recruiting year since the all-volunteer force began in 1974. The economic meltdown and rising unemployment, combined with bigger military bonuses and benefits, enticed hundreds of thousands to enlist despite the inevitability most would be sent to war.

The plethora of would-be recruits allowed the military services to be choosier after years of taking in more high school dropouts and those needing extra physical training to meet weight requirements.

Recruiting may have gotten easier, but “the good times don’t stay forever,” warned David Segal, a University of Maryland military sociologist. When the economy recovers and young people are able to get jobs or can afford to go to college, the military will be faced with the same out-of-shape, ill-prepared pool of recruits as before.

“Recruiting will get tough again,” he said. “The trend line is clear: The youth population is getting less healthy.”

Hillary’s Love of Zionazism and Netanyahu’s Love for Himself, as They Screw the Palestinians

Hillary Clinton gives Obama’s Middle East game away

Chris Marsden

 

WSWS, 5 November 2009 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has spent the past days trying to limit the damage from her praise of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for making “unprecedented” concessions to the Palestinians by offering to “limit” settlement construction on the West Bank. Clinton made her remarks after meeting Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas in Abu Dhabi, where he reiterated his refusal to restart talks unless Israel freezes all settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. After travelling to Jerusalem to meet Netanyahu, Clinton demanded that the Palestinians resume negotiations and denied that an end to settlement construction had ever been a precondition for talks. “There has never been a precondition. It’s always been an issue within the negotiations,” she said. Netanyahu was delighted, responding that demands for a full Israeli settlement freeze were “being used as a pretext … as an obstacle that prevents the re-establishment of negotiations.” The Palestinians should “get a grip,” he added. Clinton’s endorsement of Netanyahu’s supposed concessions flies in the face of numerous public declarations by President Barack Obama. In doing so, she has provided an unvarnished insight into Washington’s real intentions and priorities. An end to settlement construction was included in the “Road Map” drawn up by the US, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations in 2002 and has remained the formal US position ever since. The Road Map also states that the issue of East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as their capital, will be determined in the final phase of negotiations. Netanyahu’s offer of a “restraint” on settlement activity excludes East Jerusalem. Obama came to the White House promising to bring about a negotiated settlement creating a Palestinian state, pledging in this way to rebuild the reputation of the US in the aftermath of the Iraq war. In a major policy speech in Cairo in June, he promised to “personally pursue” the realization of a Palestinian state and stressed that “it is time for these settlements to stop.” Netanyahu has treated such public pronouncements with contempt, confident that the US relies on Israel as a regional enforcer and that its professions of even-handedness are for public consumption only. On September 4, he announced a massive program of housing construction involving a total of 3,500 units on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. Obama made ritual statements of opposition, but by the time he met with Netanyahu and Abbas in New York on September 22, this stance was abandoned. He instead praised Netanyahu for having “discussed important steps to restrain settlement activity” [emphasis added] and insisted that both leaders show a “sense of compromise.” US envoy George Mitchell followed Obama’s statement by telling the Jerusalem Post, “We are not identifying any issue as being a precondition or an impediment to negotiation.” A settlement freeze was merely one of several US “requests.” Clinton’s speech only echoed the positions previously expressed by Mitchell and indicated by Obama. But she has nevertheless been forced to make a humiliating public retraction. At a regional forum in Morocco Monday, where she met with various Arab leaders, she said that Netanyahu’s offer to limit settlements “falls far short” of a settlement freeze and that “successive American administrations of both parties have opposed Israel’s settlement policy.” Speaking to Al Jazeera, she added that Obama had been “absolutely clear” on wanting a “halt to all settlement activity,” and “perhaps those of us who work with him and for him could have been clearer in communicating that that is his policy.” In Cairo Wednesday, Clinton stated that Washington does not accept the legitimacy of the West Bank settlements and wants to see construction halted “forever.” Her extraordinary volte face has been necessitated by the anger generated in the Occupied Territories and throughout the Middle East by her fawning before Netanyahu. Tensions in the Palestinian Authority are already explosive, with Israel’s beginning of various settlement projects accompanied by the demolition of numerous Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem. There has been a series of protests, riots and violent confrontations between Palestinian youth and Israeli police in the compound surrounding the al-Aqsa Mosque. Under these conditions, Abbas could have been delivered a fatal political blow by Clinton. He is already despised as a Western stooge, particularly after last month, when he initially agreed to a request from Obama not to support a UN report accusing Israel of war crimes in its 22-day assault on Gaza last December and January. Commenting on Clinton’s remarks, PA Foreign Minister Riad Malki warned, “We should not put the credibility and the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority again under jeopardy. … They started accusing my president and the Palestinian leadership of treason [and] of selling the suffering of the Palestinian people in exchange of one item and another.” Similar concerns were reflected throughout the Middle East. Amre Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, said, “I am telling you that all of us, including Saudi Arabia, including Egypt, are deeply disappointed. … Failure is in the atmosphere.” Clinton’s back-pedaling is a desperate effort to restore the illusion that the US under Obama will act as an honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians. But this pretense, which is critical to the stability, if not survival, of the venal Arab bourgeois regimes in the region, has been shattered and cannot be restored. The claim that Obama’s presidency marks a new era for the Middle East has been utilized from the start for the basest purposes. By posing as a friend of the Palestinians, Obama has attempted to make it easier for the despots in Cairo, Riyadh, Tripoli, et al., to line up behind the US in its ongoing threats against Iran, which are aimed at consolidating US hegemony over the region. Clinton was in Morocco primarily to engage in discussions with the Arab leaders over supporting US threats against Tehran—hence the need for her public recantation. The Wall Street Journal noted that Arab leaders have warned many times that their governments “could be attacked by their publics for conspiring with Israel against another Muslim nation without getting anything in return.” Even as these sordid discussions are taking place, the US is engaged in joint military maneuvers with Israel, Operation Juniper-Cobra, involving 2,000 personnel and testing sophisticated long-range radar and Patriot anti-missile devices. Commander Carl Meuser of the US Navy destroyer Higgins told the press, “We’re here for some very specific reasons, some specific threats that the Israelis are interested in, that we’re interested in.” The clear intention is to prepare a possible Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, while guarding against any possible reprisal. This is the essential content of US policy in the Middle East. Its exposure will hasten the day when the Arab regimes will indeed be attacked by “their publics.”

Nine of Obama’s Victims in Helmand

NATO strike kills nine civilians in Helmand (Photogallery)

AP

 

LASHKARGAH , Nov 5, 2009 : The body of a teenager killed by a rocket attack of the NATO-led soldiers lies in a vehicle after the residents of Babaji brought the body to the provincial capital, Lashkargah, as a protest against the killing of nine civilians. PAJHWOK/Zainullah Astanakzai LASHKARGAH , Nov 5, 2009 : Two civilians killed by foreign troops in southern Helmand province late Wednesday night. Relatives of the victims brought the dead to provincial capital as a protest. PAJHWOK/Zainullah Astanakzai The dead body of a local civilian lies in a civilian vehicle after he was killed in a rocket attack in the southern Helmand province late Wednesday nigh. PAJHWOK/Zainullah Astanakzai An Afghan man accompanies a dead Afghan boy as the vehicle heads to Lashkar Gah, Helmand Province, Afghanistan, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009. Villagers in southern Afghanistan claimed an overnight air strike by international forces killed several civilians, including children. (AP Photo/Abdul Khaleq) Afghan men peer into a car carrying a dead Afghan man in Lashkar Gah, Helmand Province, Afghanistan, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009. (AP Photo/Abdul Khaleq) November 5, 2009 Afghan villagers say NATO strike kills 9 civilians KANDAHAR, AP, Afghanistan – An overnight rocket strike by international forces killed nine civilians, including at least three children, villagers said Thursday. Local Afghan authorities said they had no reports of civilian deaths. NATO said the target of the strike was a group of people believed to be planting a bomb and that the alliance was investigating the allegations. The incident illustrates the confusion and blame that regularly result from night raids and strikes in Afghanistan and threaten U.S.-led efforts to curb the Taliban. In Kabul, the head of the U.N. mission warned that Afghanistan cannot count on international support indefinitely unless the government tackles corruption and bad governance. Residents of Korkhashien village drove the bodies to the governor’s office in the nearby provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, and Associated Press footage and photos showed at least two children among the dead. Helmand provincial spokesman Daoud Ahmadi confirmed a strike in Korkhashien, but said eight Taliban militants were killed while hiding out in a compound. However, President Hamid Karzai’s office condemned “the attack on civilians” in a statement. Ahmadi could not be reached to see if his information had changed. NATO said a rocket fired from the ground hit nine people whom the international coalition believed were planting a bomb. The NATO forces “were not aware of any civilians in the vicinity at the time of the strike,” it said in a statement. It said no other people were targeted. NATO said it was investigating the incident but did not give further details. The NATO force “takes all credible allegations of civilian casualties very seriously and investigates each allegation to determine the facts,” Navy Capt. Jane Campbell said in the statement. “If any civilians were injured through our actions, we deeply regret it.” Villager Abdul Rashin said the people were killed while harvesting corn in their fields. The convoy of vans and station wagons from Korkhashien drove from the governor’s office to a central market, where the villagers shouted blame at both Karzai and his international allies. “Death to Karzai! Death to the foreigners!” they yelled as passers-by looked through the car windows at the blanket-covered corpses. The villagers had propped open the rear doors of the cars to show off the bodies, and a young boy on a bicycle stopped to peer in. Though NATO forces have retooled their mission to focus on protecting the population — and have been issued new rules for airstrikes aimed at reducing civilian casualties — it is often difficult to distinguish militants from civilians in areas where the Taliban live among the people and often grew up in the villages they hide out in. In eastern Khost province, several hundred people demonstrated Thursday against an overnight raid that killed a resident of Baramkhil village. Walishah Hamat, head of the Mandozayi district government, said the dead man was innocent. NATO said the man was a militant who was killed when Afghan and international forces were pursuing an insurgent leader who had been recruiting foreign fighters to the area. More than eight years into the Afghan war, NATO forces are still struggling to fight off the Taliban movement and win the trust of the people they are defending. NATO forces often struggle in the parallel propaganda war, even though Taliban attacks have killed many more civilians. Late Wednesday, a Taliban rocket killed five civilians when it hit a family’s house, said Gov. Jamaldin Bader of Nuristan province. A fraud-marred presidential election this summer has also weakened support for the Karzai government among its international allies. Karzai was declared the winner of the presidential race this week after his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew from a runoff that he said could not be free and fair. Kai Eide, the top U.N. official in Afghanistan, issued a stern warning to Karzai on Thursday, saying it was imperative that his new administration reform and crack down hard on corruption or risk losing the support of countries that have been providing Afghanistan with funds and with foreign troops to establish security. “There is a belief among some that the international commitment to Afghanistan will continue whatever happens because of the strategic importance of Afghanistan,” Eide said during a news conference in Kabul. “I would like to emphasize that that is not correct. It is the public opinion in donor countries and in troop-contributing countries that decides on the strength of that commitment.” Increasing violence in the country is also threatening the U.N. mission there. On Thursday, the world body said it was temporarily relocating more than half of its international staff while it looks for safer accommodation for them, following an attack last week on a guesthouse that killed five staffers. In an initial speech welcoming his re-election, Karzai promised to create an inclusive government and banish the corruption that has undermined his administration. But he did not spell out how he would institute reforms, and he was flanked during his news conference by his two vice presidents — both former warlords widely believed to have looted Afghanistan for years. The Afghan Defense Ministry said 17 militants have been killed in three separate clashes in the last 24 hours. ___ Associated Press writers Elena Becatoros in Kabul and Alfred de Montesquiou in Uzbeen contributed to this report.

A Nation of Golems

By William A. Cook

 

November 5, 2009 ‘Even the most perfect of Golem, risen to life to protect us, can easily change into a destructive force. Therefore let us treat carefully that which is strong, just as we bow kindly and patiently to that which is weak. Everything has its time and place.’ (Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, 1512-1609) The U.S. House of Representatives voted 344-36 in support of H. Res. 867, a vote to reject the Goldstone Report Findings and Recommendations, thus protecting Israel against indictment for crimes against humanity and illegal acts of war as determined by the United Nations Human Rights Council’s special investigation of the Christmas invasion of Gaza this past year. The House of Representatives, acting as a body, embodies the most heinous machinations of the ancient legend of a mythical beast called the Golem. The most famous of the Golem stories comes out of Medieval Prague where Rabbi Loew contended with the paradox of human existence as driven by human desire to control life on the one hand and God’s absolute power over life, “from dust to dust,” on the other. The good Rabbi, it is alleged, turned to the forbidden scriptures to give life to a human form created out of the mud of the Vltava River that flows through Prague; this figure constructed of clay, inanimate matter, a shapeless mass, imperfect, unformed, a body without a soul, responds in perfect obedience to his master. He symbolizes the ultimate protector of the victimized as he assumed in ancient Prague protection of the Jews who were to be expelled or killed from their ghetto. To bring this monster to life, the Rabbi carved in Hebrew the word EMETH on his forehead, the meaning of which is “truth.” This being, living yet not whole, becomes a servant and protector of the people, a tool of his maker, but in time his purpose is slighted, his use abused by those who think only of their desires and self-indulgence. In time this virtual Faustian figure seeks to know himself, rule himself, become his own master and in his soulless state, his ambition and arrogance assume control as he spreads his massive shadow of malevolence across the ghetto. Only the Rabbi can control him by rubbing out the first letter on his forehead, Aleth, leaving Mem and Taw—Death. Once loosed on the world, the Golem becomes a destroyer and hence the Rabbi’s admonishment above. How do our representatives become a Golem? By obedience to their master. That master is Israel through its Zionist government and its multiple lobbies in the U.S., by their use of extortion and threat, and by control of monetary resources. There is no need to recount how these charges are true; books have been written about it, most especially those by former Congressman Paul Findlay and the recent study by Mearsheimer and Walt, Grant Smith’s America’s Defense Line, John Hosteller on the Iraq war, Aaron David Miller on the peace process, and Stephen Sniegoski’s Transparent Cabal. A cursory review of the U.S. Knesset actions taken on behalf of Israel demonstrates conclusively the obedience “our” representatives pay to their owners: 2003, a resolution supporting force against Palestinians, 399-5; 2004, a resolution forbidding a return to the 1967 borders, 407-9; 2006, a resolution defending Israel’s illegal invasion and destruction of Lebanon, 410-8; 2009, a resolution defending Israel’s Christmas invasion of the defenseless people of Gaza, 390-5; and today, a resolution condemning the Goldstone Report issued by the UNHRC, 344-35. Every one of these resolutions support Israel’s illegal actions while the remainder of the world’s nation, excepting a few controlled by the U.S., vote against the crimes of the state of Israel. Their resolution, if adopted and acted upon in the Security Council, would make the state of Israel immune to law. Rabbi Loew’s incantations brought to life the Golem of Prague’s ghetto, a mythical image that reflects a mind conditioned by massive oppression and defenselessness, a need to believe that there could be a way to protect the innocent against the terror that encircled them in their ghetto. But that mindset of necessity rejects the true power over life, the God that gives life, in favor of a dream of self-control over the forces that exist in the world, thus replacing obedience to God with a soulless form that is obedient to the hubris that contaminates a mortal. The myth explores the conflict between the self proclaimed overlord and belief in the God of the Jews. It is the confrontation of the essence of Judaism and the power of the secular forces that forego the true Torah, the polarity battle between oppression and indifference or compassion and love. There is, as Rabbi Loew knew well, a Golem in each of us, the human form that we desire to be but cannot form because we are not alone in this world, because we must exist within a community of others, because we understand that to inflict our will on others gives license to others to inflict theirs on us, because we form societies to protect each other realizing that forging a society to fear its own survival breeds violence against its perceived enemies resulting ineluctably in devastation and death. That is the curse of the Golem, to be brought into existence without knowledge of its master’s intent, yet obedient to that intent; to witness life behind the walls of the ghetto but locked into the mind of the elders that portray life beyond the walls; to feel the pulse of life beneath the carved “truth” that is emblazoned on the forehead, yet know no other truth than that imposed by the masters; to sense, as time passes, the masters’ inner passions, that gave rise to the creation of the Golem, erupt in vengeance against their own phantoms of inadequacy as they command the Golem to destroy all but those who will obey them, and know, that he is the means to avenge; hence the image of the Golem as the corrosive being within us that, once loosed, releases its acid throughout the body and the mind because we have become but a shapeless mass, unformed, imperfect, an artificial creature without natural sympathies, soulless—the obedient slave to another’s will. This is the fate of our congressmen and women, indeed, it is the fate of the Jewish people in Israel who have built a wall around themselves, as the Jews in Prague did in the 16th century, fearing all but themselves, victims of all beyond the wall. Golems all, abandoning their God to placate their masters, the ruling secular Golems that have created a state of fear instead of a state for Jews, a state of oppression and indifference, a state of molded minds lacking human sympathy, a state willing to use its only friend in the community of nations for its own ends turning its representatives into pliant, obedient, mindless, soulless clay forms as heedless of the weak as their masters. “Whence did you come?” asks Nathaniel Hawthorne. “Whence did any of us come? Out of the darkness and mystery; out of nothingness; out of a kingdom of shadows; out of dust, clay, mud…And why are you come? Who can tell? Only one thing I am aware of,–it was not to be happy. To toil and moil and hope and fear; to love in a shadowy, doubtful sort of way, and to hate in bitter earnest, –that is what you came for!” (Works, XIII, 18-19) It is time for the good Rabbi Loew to remove “Aleph” and let our Congress rest in “Mem” and “Taw.” -William A. Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and author of Tracking Deception: Bush’s Mideast Policy.

Abbas: I will not seek second term

Ma’an News

 

November 5, 2009

Ramallah – Ma’an – President Mahmoud Abbas announced in Ramallah on Thursday he would not seek a second term in office.

Confirming rumors of his impending retirement, Abbas said the decision came amid Israel’s intransigence on settlements and the international community’s indifference to it.

“I have informed the PLO Executive Committee and Fatah’s Central Committee that I do not intend to seek a second term in the upcoming [January 2010] election,” he said in a televised address. “This decision is not up for debate or negotiation.”

The president said he decided to step down when it became clear the US would not alter its position in favor of Israel and its settlement enterprise. His announcement came days after Palestinians were left stunned when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised as unprecedented Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s offer to limit construction in West Bank settlements to 3,000 additional housing units.

More disappointing, Abbas said, is that the US and PLO actually agree on most substantive issues, yet somehow the Americans continue to back Israel on the ground. “The stated position of the United States regarding settlements and the Judaisation and annexation of Jerusalem are well-known and appreciated by us. Nevertheless, we’ve been surprised that they still favor Israel’s position.”

“We pledged, us and the Israelis, with the participation and backing of the international community, to reach a two-state solution,” he added. “Yet month after month, year after year, there has been procrastination and an increase of Israeli settlements on our land, which compromise the credibility of peace talks.”

Saying the world looks on in silence when Israel violates its signed agreements, Abbas noted, “I want to remind you that we asked, in tandem with the international community, that Hamas’ government in 2006 adhere to previously signed agreements… A lot less is being asked of the current Israeli government; how is it that the international community accepts that?”

Addresses leaders of Hamas, Israel

But the president also cited Hamas’ refusal to sign an inter-Palestinian unity agreement as a contributing factor in his decision. “More dangerous than anything we’ve yet seen domestically has been the bloody coup that Hamas perpetrated in the Gaza Strip.”

“Egypt began undertaking honest efforts during recent times to broker an agreement between us and Hamas, which Hamas thwarted at every turn under false pretenses,” Abbas said. “In not signing the Egyptian document, which they have seen and agreed to… has benefited only Israel, whose leaders can finally say, ‘There is no Palestinian partner.’”

“The time has come for Hamas’ leadership to reconsider its destructive policies, which are counter to the national project, and stop taking orders from regional interests,” he added. “Think, for once, of the people’s interests, whose problems won’t be solved by taking a little money here, a little there, through smuggling tunnels that have enriched them, and killed dozens of our young children from poor families.”

Addressing “the Israeli government and public, simply and clearly,” Abbas said: “Peace is more important than any political gain to any political party. Peace is more important than [maintaining] a coalition government that pushes the region toward an unknown abyss.”

“It has been my vision for many years that peace is possible, and I have sincerely worked toward it,” he concluded. “The sum of my experience has demonstrated the two-state solution – Palestine and Israel living side by side in peace and security – is still possible, despite the dangers that we face, the severity of which has recently increased.”

Italy Convicts 22 CIA Agents for “Rendition” Abduction and Subsequent Torture

[The world has begun to hold America accountable for the actions of its warriors, just as it has begun action against Israel for the war crimes in Gaza.  The idea that there are two standards of "justice" in the world, one for America and Israel and another for everybody else, is an idea that has finally met the wall or moral resistance.  Creating terror to fight terror is completely immoral.]

CIA agents guilty of Italy kidnap

Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr was snatched from a street in Milan

An Italian judge has convicted 23 Americans – all but one of them CIA agents – and two Italian secret agents for the 2003 kidnap of a Muslim cleric.

The agents were accused of abducting Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, known as Abu Omar, from Milan and sending him to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured.

The trial, which began in June 2007, is the first involving the CIA’s so-called “extraordinary rendition” programme.

The Obama administration has expressed its disappointment at the convictions.

“We are disappointed by the verdicts,” state department spokesman Ian Kelly said in Washington.

He declined to comment further pending a written opinion from the judge, but said an appeal was likely.

Three Americans and five Italians were acquitted by the court in Milan.

Symbolic ruling

The Americans were all tried in their absence as they have not been extradited from the US to Italy.

For us, this first case puts the war on terror on trial Joanne Mariner Human Rights Watch spokeswoman

The CIA’s Milan station chief at the time, Robert Lady, was given an eight-year term, while the other 22 Americans convicted – one of them a US air force colonel – were sentenced to five years in prison.

Lawyers for the 23 Americans said they would appeal against their convictions.

The two Italian agents, who were convicted as accomplices to kidnapping, were given three-year prison terms.

The court also ruled that those convicted must pay 1m euros ($1.5m) in damages to Abu Omar and 500,000 euros to his wife.

CIA spokesman George Little in Washington declined to comment on the convictions, telling the Associated Press news agency: “The CIA has not commented on any of the allegations surrounding Abu Omar.”

Secrecy laws

Italian prosecutors said Abu Omar was taken as part of a series of extraordinary renditions carried out by the CIA – when terror suspects were moved between countries without any public legal process.

Judge Oscar Magi acquitted some of the highest-ranking defendants

They told the court he had been kidnapped in daylight on a Milan street in February 2003 and flown to Germany, and then Cairo, where he was held for years until being released without charge.

Judge Oscar Magi acquitted the CIA chief for Rome, Jeffrey Castelli, saying he was protected by state secrecy rules, as were the former head of Italy’s military intelligence agency, Nicolo Pollari, and his deputy, Marco Mancini.

Mr Pollari, who resigned over the affair, told the court earlier this year that documents showing he had no involvement in the kidnapping were classified under secrecy laws.

Prosecutor Armando Spataro rejected the argument that legal provisions could shield those accused from prosecution, saying any agreement to carry out a kidnapping was “absolutely against Italian law”.

He had sought a 13-year jail term for Mr Castelli and Mr Pollari and 12 years for Robert Lady.

Activist group Human Rights Watch welcomed the verdict, saying it sent “a strong signal of the crimes committed by the CIA in Europe”.

Spokeswoman Joanne Mariner said: “For us, this first case puts the war on terror on trial.”

Afghan Resistance Statement Who are Behind the Chaos in Afghanistan?

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

 

Monday, 02 November 2009 The Americans follow contradicting programs in Afghanistan. These contradictions have greatly contributed to the chaos and corruption now rampant in the country. After invasion in 2001, Americans announced the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reconstruction (DDR) program which was aimed at encouraging former warlords and gunmen to surrender their arms for cash incentives, employment opportunities and vocational training. After a time, they left the program uncompleted, and opted to raise their own militias under the name of Campaign and Security Guards. These so-called security guards escort American and other NATO member countries military and logistical convoys from one province to another, particularly to Urozgan, Helmand, Farah and other provinces in the south. Some militias are used to detain suspected Afghans. Recently, New York Times disclosed that following the American invasion of Afghanistan, Wali Karzai created the Kandahar Task Force which is involved in various human rights violations. According to the Times Weekly, Wali Karzai frequently used the Kandahar Task Force against his opponents and on one occasion, they killed police chief of Kandahar province. Similarly, Americans pay tens of millions of dollars to private militia annually for escorting their convoys. The private militias extort money from common people and levy agricultural tax on farmers named Ushar. They are involved in burglary, kidnapping and other unscrupulous activities. All these are overlooked by the invaders as the militia support them in their fight against so-called terrorism. Applying The Sons of Iraq replica to Afghanistan, the invading Americans have created militia from among the Afghan minorities in the north of the country. Recently, they created such militia in Qazal Qila and appointed a Turkmen as commander. The Turkmen and Uzbek are ethnical minorities and their militias are notoriously known for human rights violations during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. To many observers who closely monitor developments in Afghanistan, these moves by the invading Americans can be part of plan dubbed as Chaostan, which was unveiled by Mc Crystal, American top commander in Afghanistan during his recent speech in London. According to this plan, the Americans want to create chaos in Afghanistan by plunging the country into geographical, racial and religious fighting once again. Mullah Brader Akhund, Deputy-Amir of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in one of his interviews said that Mujahideen had captured several groups of armed men who were involved in destroying schools and bridges. They admitted that they were paid by foreign intelligence agencies to do so. In this year Eid ul Fitre message, the Amir ul Momineen, Mullah Omar Mujahid instructed all Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate to disarm armed groups who are involved in encroachment on people’s life, property and honor on the provocation of the enemy. Similarly, the bomb blasts in congested places, which have killed hundreds of innocent civilians, is of great concern to the Mujahideen and the Afghan people. This year in the holy month of Ramadan, a bomb went off in Kandahar just at the time when people were to break their fast. More than 50 people were killed in the explosion. The Islamic Emirate denied having hand in the explosion and condemned it as a horrendous and despicable event. Later Dawa Khan Mina pal, a Radio Liberty reporter was detained by police of the Kabul puppet regime when he was trying to investigate the blast to find out who were behind this gruesome event. Many observers agree that foreign intelligence agencies are involved in anti-human activities to malign the good name of the armed Mujahideen who are fighting Americans and other forces of the NATO member countries. Recently, the Afghan surrogate president Karzai complained in a press conference that unknown helicopters were airdropping armed men in the north. According to him, these armed men disturb peace and security there. But Mujahideen in the area say, the foreign invaders airdrop the militia there to target Mujahideen hide-outs during the night and they also attack ethnically sensitive areas in order to provoke racial fighting. The Americans think, by doing so, they can justify the presence of their troops and enlist supporters from among Afghan minorities against Taliban. These hidden agendas are driving our country into an unknown direction. Unequivocally, the foreign military presence in Afghanistan is part of the Afghan problem. The more they stay in our country, the more, they will plunge our country into chaos and uncertainly. The only solution is that the invaders leave Afghanistan and let the Afghans to form an Islamic government where people from all ethnicities can participate in the government making on the basis of their talent and services to the people. This will vault out the country from the current vortex of conspiracies and ensure peace and stability in Afghanistan and the whole region.

Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to be ‘raped with broken bottles’

[This is the immoral horror that is OK, when its done by our guys, but terrorism when its done by our adversaries.  Nothing on this earth or beyond justifies sticking broken bottles up men's asses, or boiling them alive.  The so-called "war on terror" has proven to be an excuse for sick individuals in our government to "go medieval" on fellow human beings and unleash their own depraved desires to create hell on earth, in the "service of their country."]

Daniel Tencer

The CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country.

Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK’s ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

“I’m talking of people being raped with broken bottles,” he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network. “I’m talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I’m talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on.”

Human rights groups have long been raising the alarm about the legal system in Uzbekistan. In 2007, Human Rights Watch declared that torture is “endemic” to the country’s justice system.

Murray said he only realized after his stint as ambassador that the CIA was sending people to be tortured in Uzbekistan, country he describes as a “totalitarian” state that has never moved on from its communist era, when it was a part of the Soviet Union.

Suspects in Uzbekistan’s gulags “were being told to confess to membership in Al Qaeda. They were told to confess they’d been in training camps in Afghanistan. They were told to confess they had met Osama bin Laden in person. And the CIA intelligence constantly echoed these themes.”

“I was absolutely stunned — it changed my whole world view in an instant — to be told that London knew [the intelligence] coming from torture, that it was not illegal because our legal advisers had decided that under the United Nations convention against torture, it is not illegal to obtain or use intelligence gained from torture as long as we didn’t do the torture ourselves,” Murray said.

IT’S THE PIPELINE, STUPID

Murray asserts that the primary motivation for US and British military involvement in central Asia has to do with large natural gas deposits in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. As evidence, he points to the plans to build a natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan that would allow Western oil companies to avoid Russia and Iran when transporting natural gas out of the region.

Murray alleged that in the late 1990s the Uzbek ambassador to the US met with then-Texas Governor George W. Bush to discuss a pipeline for the region, and out of that meeting came agreements that would see Texas-based Enron gain the rights to Uzbekistan’s natural gas deposits, while oil company Unocal worked on developing the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline.

“The consultant who was organizing this for Unocal was a certain Mr. Karzai, who is now president of Afghanistan,” Murray noted.

Murray said part of the motive in hyping up the threat of Islamic terrorism in Uzbekistan through forced confessions was to ensure the country remained on-side in the war on terror, so that the pipeline could be built.

“There are designs of this pipeline, and if you look at the deployment of US forces in Afghanistan, as against other NATO country forces in Afghanistan, you’ll see that undoubtedly the US forces are positioned to guard the pipeline route. It’s what it’s about. It’s about money, it’s about oil, it’s not about democracy.”

The Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline is slated to be completed in 2014, with $7.6 billion in funding from the Asian Development Bank.

Murray was dismissed from his position as ambassador in 2004, following his first public allegations that the British government relied on torture in Uzbekistan for intelligence.

The following videos were posted to YouTube by the Real News Network on Oct. 26 and Nov. 4, 2009.

more about “Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people…“, posted with vodpod

more about “UK/USA made use of Uzbek torture Pt2“, posted with vodpod