Supreme commander’s charge-sheet against Army: JI

LAHORE: Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Syed Munawwar Hasan termed President Zardari’s address at Naudero a charge-sheet against the armed forces by their supreme commander and a declaration of war against other constitutional institutions by a man sitting in the Presidency and talking of reconciliation.

In his response to the president’s speech on Sunday, the JI chief said the president should have openly named those plotting against the government because the people, sitting in the opposition, were friendly and cooperating with the government.

Instead of reacting to themedia criticism and being provoked, the president should have given a report on his government’s announcements and its achievements, he added. He said it is a pity that even on the second death anniversary of Benazir Bhutto, her assassins were not known despite the fact that her husband was head of the state. The nation expected the president to expose her killers because he himself had stated long ago that he knew them.

Referring to the president’s assurance that Pakistan won’t be allowed to turn into Iraq or Afghanistan, he said the present situation in these countries was the US’s creation, as hinted by Zardari himself. The US was worsening the things in Pakistan as well, and the president fully knew that, he said. Therefore, President Zardari should openly come against the US and support the Go America Go Campaign of the JI, Syed Munawwar Hasan said.

JI Secretary General Liaquat Baloch described President Zardari’s address before a limited crowd as ‘the speech of a disappointed leader.’ He said Pakistan was passing through a serious crisis and Zardari’s speech could open floodgates of confrontation among institutions. He said the president had challenged the armed forces, the judiciary and the media and threatened of extra constitutional steps.

Ever Expanding Wars: An Appalling New Year Certainty

By Emily Spence

A message repeatedly making the rounds on the Internet shows a picture of an American airman, John Gebhardt, holding an injured Iraqi child on his lap and the accompanying text explains about his sympathetic provision of comfort to her and others. [1] In addition, the reason that it is all the rage, especially amongst neoconservatives, is that the senders can, in their minds, use the depiction to “prove” that U.S. military personnel undeniably have magnanimous intentions. Subsequently, the message indirectly substantiates their position that U.S. armed forces are overseas fighting wars solely to improve the lives of foreigners and protect American freedoms at home.

Yes, it is touching to see a kindly man reassure a youngster, but the scene and its description in no way verify anything altruistic about American motives in the Middle East. Indeed, both could serve to remind that the wounded child would not have been hurt with which to begin had U.S. warmongers not chosen Iraq as a site for a comprehensive invasion, one that should never have been initiated in the first place. They, also, stand in stark contrast to other renditions of U.S. troop actions, which run the gamut from selflessly heroic to atrociously horrific.

For example, one graphic and disturbing image sums up the violence that is always at the heart of war. Titled “American Soldier showing a severed Iraqi arm hung in a mosque to terrorize the Iraqi resistance”, it portrays a gloating American youth in fatigues flaunting his prize. [2] The spoils of the hunt, his gruesome human arm, was hung against the wall of a house of worship like a rancid slab of meat.

In response to seeing the shot, I could not resist imagining an invading force coming to the U.S.A. to topple our government and gain control of our oil reserves. As such, I pictured that same mangled limb as the remains of an American resistance fighter, one’s neighbor perhaps, strung up at the doorway of a town’s church or synagogue.

Concurrently, I could conjure up the way that Americans would regard the foreign attackers were they forced to prostitute their children to mercenaries, ones like the Blackwater’s warriors paid by the invading forces’ government, in order to provide food for their families. [3] Similarly, I could imagine the way that U.S. citizens would think about citizens of the invading country, so ‘cozy’ in their own lives, while their own homes, jobs sites, electricity plants, water supplies, schools, hospitals, transportation routes and other critical parts of their lives were blown up and contaminated with toxins, such as depleted uranium delivered from assorted types of projectiles.

Of course, government leaders can convincingly state anything that they want as justification for offensive raids into foreign lands. They can mention the need to destroy weapons of mass destruction (that will never be found) through the use of one’s own weapons of mass destruction, the desire to bring democracy to backwards peoples, the obligation to protect far-away populations from dangerous terrorists, the Orwellian wish to bring peace through war or any number of other outlandish excuses.

Simultaneously, they can give glorious pro-war speeches filled with half truths like Barack Obama’s address at West Point aimed at gaining support for war expansion. (In connection, it is useful to remember Adolf Hitler once stating: “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”)

Yet propagandistic talks, regardless of whether they are sincerely stated or even believed, can never undercut the facts as spelled out by Admiral Gene LaRocque: “I hate it when they say, ‘He gave his life for his country.’ Nobody gives their life for anything. We steal the lives of these kids. We take it away from them. They don’t die for the honor and glory of their country. We kill them.” [4] Yes, we kill them in the bid to gain geopolitical control of energy stores and pipeline corridors that deliver the supplies, and we slaughter again and again ever more innocent civilians in the process.

In times to come, finite resources, such as uranium and fossil fuels, will be increasingly used up. Countries that either harbor the remaining supplies or that are en route for their delivery will be posed as hostile and dangerous to Western interests if they do not cave in to Western demands. Accordingly, various bogus reasons will again be fabricated as justifications for invading them and the affiliated costs will again be subsumed by the invading countries’ citizens despite the result as is spelled out by Abraham Flexner: “Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.” [5]

No, indeed, we can’t have both. We simply cannot afford the social, environmental and financial price tag. At the same time, we cannot afford the lost funding for essential programs like universal health-care provision and infrastructure repairs at home. Similarly, we cannot bear the added costs to rebuild whole nations after devastating their landscapes. After war expenditures, there’s just not enough money to spare for much else.

Moreover, we cannot accept the untimely deaths in the hundreds upon hundreds of thousands. They weigh too heavily on the national conscience — that is if one can even exist after so much unbridled wanton carnage.

At the same time, we cannot cope with the nearly permanent poison spreading across the Earth and its waterways from DU tipped weapons. Likewise, we cannot contend with the poisoning of more and more minds of warfare victims who turn into dedicated terrorists as payback.

Besides, why should we be forced to support greedy war profiteers such as are found at Halliburton KBR, Xe, Exxon Mobil and drug cartels, who get kickbacks to leave our troops alone? Why should we be expected to subsume the overall high outlay, such as the recent U.S. $636 billion military spending bill demands, on top of crippling deficits, such as the U.S. public debt that is quickly soaring towards $13 trillion?

Frankly, we can’t afford to destroy region after region while terrorizing their civilians in a bid to put puppet governments in place whose despots will sell off their land’s resources to the highest bidders. Certainly, we cannot, with any scruples involved, use these destroyed places’ petroleum products to fuel further armed invasions in a bid to secure further resources for western corporate, rather than Russian and Chinese, interests.

In short, we absolutely cannot expend lavish amounts on wars — period. We cannot for the sake of the people harmed and killed, we cannot for the sake of the environment, and we cannot when Americans are starving and jobless on homeland soil.

Clearly, employment opportunities could be generated by shifting war funds into creation of work supporting provision of alternative energy as a substitute for fossil fuels. Wouldn’t that be far better than the current expansion of wars in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and other strategic locations? Isn’t it a constructive alternative to building huge bases in countries that abut oil rich Iran and Venezuela?

As long as the response to such questions is always “no”, we can expect ever larger and more greatly drawn out wars. We can anticipate that fossil fuels used in such fights will disappear more rapidly than otherwise would occur. Eventually, we can, also, be assured that the ongoing reckless military rampage will lead to a third world war if Russian or Chinese leaders, finally, reach a limit to the threats that can be endured from western imperial hubris.

In fact, how can anyone anywhere embrace an increasingly extensive war trajectory? If the answer to such an enquiry seems ambiguous at best, it, without a doubt, will become patently clear quite soon enough.

Emily Spence is an author living in Massachusetts. She has spent many years involved in human rights, environmental and social services efforts.

References

[1] snopes.com: John Gebhardt [http://www.snopes.com/photos/military/gebhardt.asp].

[2] Warning: Image is graphic: Imperialism [http://www.worldproutassembly.org/archives/2007/12/imperialism.html].

[3] Blackwater used ‘child prostitutes in Iraq’ [http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=102887&sectionid=3510203].

[4] Admiral Gene LaRocque Quotes/Quotations [http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quotes_by/admiral+gene+larocque].

[5] Quotes [http://www.antiwar.com/quotes.php].

PFLP denounces occupation assassinations of 6 Palestinians, demands end to security cooperation

PFLP – Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

PFLP, December 27, 2009 The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine denounced the bloody crimes of the occupation killing of 6 Palestinians in Nablus and Beit Hanoun in cold blood on December 25, 2009, demanding a complete end to any form of “security cooperation” with the occupation. In a statement, the PFLP said that these killings are systematic assassinations carried out and ordered by the leaders of the occupation and the settlers, saying that they do not only reflect the bloody, brutal and racist nature of the occupation state, but also the reality that Israel is based on state terror and war crimes. It demanded international action to protect Palestinian rights and self-determination against the vicious occupier. The PFLP statement focused on the need to immediately end security cooperation in any way with the Zionist enemy, saying this security cooperation is a threat to our people, a cover for the enemy’s crimes, and legitimizes collaboration with the occupation. It demanded that those responsible be held accountable for this heinous crime, and that the criminals and murderers in charge of the occupation state be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity in international courts. The Front statement said that on the first anniversary of the criminal massacre against Gaza, international forces must hold these criminals accountable, saying that the immunity they have enjoyed only encourages them to assassinate, besiege and kill. The PFLP called for immediate resumption of efforts for national unity and reconciliation as the only way to defeat the occupation, protect our people, and ensure our rights to return, to self-determination, to freedom and independence.

Darkness Renewed: Terror as a Tool of Empire

WRITTEN BY CHRIS FLOYD

WEDNESDAY, 01 APRIL 2009

Here’s a purely hypothetical scenario. Let’s say you were a dedicated imperial militarist who believed that your country’s security, prestige and financial interests could best be served by war and the ever-present threat of war. Let’s say you had some really hot and juicy operations going on, endless deadly conflicts that were pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into your war machine and entrenching national policy even more deeply in the militarist philosophy – the machtpolitik – that you believe in. But there’s a problem. The general public – the cow-like herd out there that doesn’t understand grand strategy the way you and your fellow elites do – is growing weary, and wary, of your Long War. The national treasury is bankrupt, the national infrastructure is rotting, the nation’s communities are dying; millions of people are out of work, losing their homes, losing their dreams, spiraling down into want, privation and despair. Yet you have big plans to escalate the war, expand your war machine, and maintain the global dominance that you believe is the right and natural role for your special nation – and its elites. What to do? How to galvanize the truculent, self-absorbed herd into enthusiastically supporting your vital agenda once more? Well, here’s one purely hypothetical approach you might try. You goad and provoke violent extremist groups into retaliating against your attacks, your civilian-slaughtering invasions and incursions into their territory. Being unable to confront directly your war machine – the largest, most advanced military force in the history of the world, sustained by a tsunami of public money that each year surpasses the military spending of the rest of the world – they naturally respond with “asymmetrical” operations. At first, these are directed at nearby targets: your supply lines, the forces of your local proxies and allies, and other chaos-inducing depredations in the groups’ own regions, designed to foul the lines of your control and drive you out. Just as naturally, you use these attacks to justify an even greater military presence in their regions. The cycle inevitably, inexorably ratchets upwards and outwards, until at last the extremists strike at your homeland – either with your connivance, or your covert acquiescence, or, in any event, with your foreknowledge that such an attack was sure to come. This is the moment you have waited for; this is exactly what you wanted. Now you can whip the herd back into a martial frenzy, keep the Long War going, and push aside the rabble’s petty, small-minded desires for a peaceful, prosperous life at home, minding their own business. One never knows exactly what goes on behind the imperial drapery in the Potomac palaces, of course; ordinary American citizens were long ago turned into Kremlinologists of their own government, trying to discern — through ceremonial signs, backstairs gossip, and slight deviations in ritualized rhetoric — just what their masters are really up to. But some cynics darkly suspect that scenarios something like the one sketched out above have already been enacted; for instance, in the “new Pearl Harbor” that struck America on September 11, 2001 – one year after a group channeling the views of future Bush Administration bigwigs (including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby and many others)had openly pined for a “new Pear Harbor” to “catalyze” the American people into supporting their militarist agenda, which included an invasion of Iraq – whether Saddam Hussein was in power or not. But leaving aside for now the ever-thorny matter of divining the varying proportion of connivance, acquiescence, foreknowledge, exploitation, incompetence and fate involved in 9/11, we can say this as an established fact: It is the policy of the United States government to provoke violent extremist groups into action. Once they are in play, their responses can then be used in whatever way the government that provoked them sees fit. And we also know that these provocations are being used, as a matter of deliberate policy, to rouse violent groups on the “Af-Pak” front to launch terrorist attacks. In other words, just as I first wrote in the Moscow Times more than six years ago (and followed upthree years later), the United States is deliberately fomenting terrorist attacks in order to pursue its political and military agendas. [For more on how these policies and similar uses of terrorism and death squads have been realized in Iraq and elsewhere, see "A Furnace Seal'd: The Wondrous Death Squads of the American Elite," "Ulster on the Euphrates: The Anglo-American Dirty War in Iraq," and "Willing Executioners: America's Bipartisan Atrocity Deepens in Somalia."] Eagle-eyed Jason Ditz at Antiwar.com draws the connection between this policy and the most recent “asymmetrical” strike by a “tickled” terrorist group in Pakistan: the deadly attack on a police center in Lahore by the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The group, led by Baitullah Mehsud, said the attack was in retaliation for the American campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan’s frontier regions – strikes which have killed many civilians along with usually unidentified “militants.” As Ditz notes, one goal of the campaign – which has been intensified by Barack Obama – is precisely the aforementioned fomenting of terrorist activity: The Obama Administration has launched an ever growing number of attacks in the FATA, generally aimed at Mehsud’s training facilities in North and South Waziristan. In September, then-CIA Director Michael Hayden said the attacks were an attempt to “provoke a reaction” from the militant groups led by Mehsud. It appears that now, six months later, they have finally done so. [Hayden described this bloodsoaked strategy as"tickling" terrorists into a response.] What’s more, Mehsud has now vowed to carry the fight back to American soil. As The Times notes (via Antiwar.com): “Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world,” [Mehsud declared.] “The maximum they can do is martyr me. But we will exact our revenge on them from inside America.” Whether or not the rag-tag TTP could actually carry out such a threat is another matter, as Juan Cole notes. But that is not really the point. The point is that once again, a violent group has been knowingly prodded into murderous action. Even better, it has now set itself up as a “deadly terrorist threat” to the sacred Homeland itself: yet another made-to-order supervillain from central casting. And remarkably, this new, open threat to bring terror to the American heartland comes just days afterBarack Obama announced his vaunted surge in the Af-Pak War, citing – what else? – the need to protect the United States from terrorists based in Afghanistan and Pakistan as his chief reason for escalating and expanding the conflict. Yet another astonishing coincidence to justify the militarist agenda, which needs a constant supply of PR-plausible villains and hyped-up, nation-rattling threats like a junkie needs smack. And once again, we are left to puzzle out the varying proportion of connivance, acquiescence, exploitation, luck, etc., involved in this serendipitous pairing of declarations from Obama and Mehsud. II. It is worth looking again at the implications of this policy of terrorist-tickling. As we noted recently, such things are not just counters on the Great Gameboard: they are deadly realities that kill, maim and despoil multitudes of innocent people around the world. So let’s go back to the first glimmers of this strategy in its Terror War context. This is from the Moscow Times article in November 2001: In [a Los Angeles Times] article by military analyst William Arkin… [comes] the revelation of Rumsfeld’s plan to create “a super-Intelligence Support Activity” that will “bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception.” According to a classified document prepared for [Donald] Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization – the “Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)” – will carry out secret missions designed to “stimulate reactions” among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to “counterattack” by U.S. forces. In other words – and let’s say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld’s plan – the United States government is planning to use “cover and deception” and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let’s say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people – your family, your friends, your lovers, you – in order to further their geopolitical ambitions. For P2OG is not designed solely to flush out terrorists and bring them to justice – a laudable goal in itself, although the Rumsfeld way of combating terrorism by causing it is pure moral lunacy… No, it seems the Pee-Twos have bigger fish to fry. Once they have sparked terrorists into action – by killing their family members? luring them with loot? fueling them with drugs? plying them with jihad propaganda? messing with their mamas? or with agents provocateurs, perhaps, who infiltrate groups then plan and direct the attacks themselves? – they can then take measures against the “states/sub-state actors accountable” for “harboring” the Rumsfeld-roused gangs. What kind of measures exactly? Well, the classified Pentagon program puts it this way: “Their sovereignty will be at risk.” The Pee-Twos will thus come in handy whenever the Regime hankers to add a little oil-laden real estate or a new military base to the Empire’s burgeoning portfolio. Just find a nest of violent malcontents, stir ‘em with a stick, and presto: instant “justification” for whatever level of intervention/conquest/rapine you might desire. When the Obama Administration speaks of “continuity” in American foreign policy, this is an integral part of what they are talking about. So look to see much more on TTP and the demon de jure, Baitullah Mehsud, as the bipartisan Long War grinds on and on, with its ever-present need for “catalyzing” – and terrorizing – the American people into support for the militarist project.

Instant Karma: New US War Target Gets Its Own Terror Icon

Instant Karma: New US War Target Gets Its Own Terror Icon Chris Floyd Wow, that didn’t take long at all. Scant days after the American war machine took the cloaking device off its direct military involvement in Yemen, we have an alleged attempted terrorist attack by an alleged attempted terrorist who, just scant hours after his capture, has allegedly confessed to getting his alleged attempted terrorist material from … wait for it … Yemen! Yemen-trained terrorists on the loose in American airplanes! At Christmas! Great googily moogily! It’s a good thing our boys are on the case over there right now, pounding the holy hell outta some of them Al Qaeder ragheads! And to think, a few pipsqueaky fifth columnists had been starting to wonder why we were killing dozens of innocent civilians on behalf of an authoritarian regime embroiled in a three-way civil war on the other side of the world. Well, now they have their answer, by God! Alleged attempted terrorists allegedly trained in Yemen! What else do you need — a freaking warrant or something? We would obviously be justified in nuking that desert hell-hole and everybody in it! Just think of it — some guy with some kind of something on an airplane, right there in the Heartland! You gonna stand for that? Exterminate the brutes! And yet, because we are good, because we are godly, because our heart is always in the right place, even when — as President Obama himself admitted in his noble Nobel Speech – we sometimes make mistakes, we have not brought down the full force of the iron rod that God himself has placed into our hands for the chastisement and right order of the world. No, there will be no nukes falling on the children of Yemen tonight. But boy howdy, they’d better get ready for some sure-enough heavy ordnance — fired from distant ships, from far-flung bases and from computer consoles in leafy Stateside suburbs, where you can bravely kill some alleged attempted somebody-or-other (and everyone in their immediate vicinity), and still make it home in time to to eat supper with the kids. So here we are. Just one day after the alleged attempted terrorist incident in Detroit, we already have headlines blaring in the New York Times, the “paper of record,” tying the alleged attempt to Yemen. How quick and convenient is that? Already the echo chamber is roaring with the all-justifying cacophony: “Terror, Yemen, al Qaeda, Homeland, Bomb, Terror, Yemen, Yemen, al Qaeda.” And it must be true, right? I mean, just look at how well-sourced the NYT story is. “A law enforcement official” — Police captain? State trooper? G-Man? Traffic cop? — said that the alleged attempted terrorist said he’d got his “explosive chemicals” from Yemen. (Elsewhere in the paper, other unnamed officials told NYT reporters that the alleged material strapped to the alleged attempted terrorist was “incendiary,” not explosive. But who cares? “Bomb, Terror, Yemen!”) Of course, the NYT noted that “authorities have not independently corroborated the Yemen connection claimed by the suspect” (nor, they could have added, have they independently corroborated that the claim was actually made), but still, the completely anonymous “law enforcement official” said that the suspect’s claim “was plausible,” and even added: “I see no reason to discount it.” Well, it doesn’t get more solid than that, does it? They nailed that story down so tight you couldn’t pry it open with God’s own crowbar. An anonymous source confirmed the plausibility of his own claim. Man, that’s ironclad. It’s certainly good enough to light up the media firmament with headlines linking “terror in the Heartland” with the empire’s newest killing field in a volatile foreign land. And it turns out that the suspected attempted terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was already on the radar of our all-encompassing security services — just like the last Muslim terrorist in the heartland, Major Nidal Hasan. (And, for that matter, just like  many of those accused of carrying out the 9/11 attack.) As in almost all of these cases, the question arises: Who is running whom? (For more, see “Darkness Renewed: Terror as a Tool of Empire.”) But this query is precisely the kind of pantywaist handwringing that rightly goes down in the flood of the he-man Homeland Security strutting that always follows these incidents. As we noted here the other day, there’s no time for depth, context, history — or even facts — when the “frame” is screaming “Terror!” In any case, whatever facts about the case — or rather, shards and splinters of filtered information — that are allowed to emerge from the depths of the security apparat, you can be absolutely sure that, as always, the “facts will be fixed around the policy.” And what is that policy? Why, endless war, of course! The American war machine (which now dominates most of “civilian” society as well) is like a shark: it must keep moving, and feeding, or die. “Terror, Bomb, Yemen!”

:: Article nr. 61500 sent on 27-dec-2009 17:12 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=61500

Link: www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1891-instant-karma-n
ew-us-war-target-gets-its-own-terror-icon.html

B-52s Violating Pakistani Air Space

U.S. drone attack kills 13 in NW Pakistan

Xinhua

December 27, 2009 At least 13 people were killed in suspected United States drone attack in northwest Pakistan’s tribal area, local TV channel reported Sunday. According to details, a missile fired by U.S. unmanned aircraft had initially killed four militants in the border village of Saidgai in North Waziristan tribal agency Saturday. The death toll in the strike has mounted to 13 on Sunday morning, the private channel GEO News reported. Following the strike, U.S. B-52 jet plane, along with other spy planes, continued its flights over the tribal areas on Sunday morning, the channel reported. The flights have reportedly remained confined to areas located in South and North Waziristan Agencies and Kurram Agency, sources claimed. According to tribal sources, the flights of B-52 jet plane has kept terrifying the people living on the tribal belt for several weeks. The U.S drones regularly hit hideouts of the militants in the Pakistani tribal region, which Washington considers as the center of Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants. Pakistan opposes the U.S. strikes inside the country’s tribal regions and seeks the drone technology. But the U.S. does not accept Islamabad’s request.

Fatah Warns of 3rd Intifada – This Time Directed against PA

Readers Number : 4

28/12/2009 The killing of the three Fatah operatives in Nablus by the Israeli occupation army over the weekend could trigger a third intifada, Fatah officials warned on Sunday. But the new intifada, they said, would be different from the first two -this time it would be directed against the Palestinian Authority. During the funerals of the three men, all veteran members and leaders of Fatah’s armed wing, the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, thousands of Palestinians chanted slogans accusing the PA of collusion with Israel and calling for an end to security coordination with Israel and the dismantling of the PA. For several hours during the funerals, which took place in Nablus, it seemed as if the PA and not the Israeli occupation army had killed the three men. It was, in the words of a local journalist, “one of the biggest anti-Palestinian Authority demonstrations” in many years. The relationship between the PA and local Fatah activists has always been tense. Nablus and its surrounding refugee camps, especially Balata refugee camp, has long been a stronghold for disgruntled Fatah fighters who occasionally vent their frustration against the PA leadership and security forces. For years during the second intifada, Nablus, the largest Palestinian city in the occupied West Bank, was controlled by dozens of Fatah gunmen. In the context of its efforts to restore law and order to the city, the PA offered four years ago to recruit many of the gunmen to various branches of its security forces if they agreed to lay down their weapons. The PA also managed to persuade Israel to stop pursuing those gunmen who agreed to hand over their weapons and abandon violence. In return, the PA took on itself the mission of holding the “pardoned” gunmen in one of its security installations for a limited time and as a first step toward granting them total freedom of movement. Most of the Fatah gunmen who complied were added to the PA’s payroll, but not all were happy with the arrangement. Some complained that the PA had broken its promise to appoint them to senior positions in its security forces, while others said that their salaries were too low. Others complained that despite their agreement to surrender their weapons and open a new page in their lives, Israeli occupation forces were continuing to target them. Friends and relatives of the Fatah operatives who were martyred in the recent occupation army operation accused the PA of failing to fulfill its “commitments” to give them more money and good jobs. The killing of the three men is now being exploited by leading figures in Fatah to incite against the PA leadership in Ramallah. One of the main instigators is Husam Khader, a charismatic and extremely popular Fatah operative from Balata who has long been attacking the PA and its security forces, accusing them of financial and moral corruption and collaboration with Israel. Khader and another senior Fatah operative, Kadoura Fares of Ramallah, are convinced that continued cooperation with Israel on security matters would eventually turn Palestinians against the PA leadership. The two, along with many of their followers in Fatah, believe that a third intifada is on its way, but that this time it would be directed against the PA and not Israel.

The world’s largest Open Air Prison:Gaza’s Shrinking Borders

Moin Ansari

Forty-two years of military occupation and sixteen years of the Oslo Process have made Gaza a smaller place. Already one of the most densely-populated strips of land in the world, its population has grown during this period from less than 360,000 in 1967 to 1.5 million today. Meanwhile, its borders have not only become more impermeable, but they have been progressively closing in on what some have called “the world’s largest open air prison.”

In the early years following Israel’s seizure of the Gaza Strip during the Six-Day War in June 1967, Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals routinely crossed the border between Israel and Gaza without much difficulty. Palestinian fishermen routinely sailed as far out to sea as necessary to secure a good day’s catch. International freighters continued to arrive at Gaza Port to unload their goods and take on Palestinian fruits, flowers, and other products. Among the first casualties of the Israeli occupation was the loss of trade and tourism with Egypt, but life went on for most Gaza residents. Over the years, many would eventually find employment in Ashdod, Ashkelon, Be’er Sheva, Tel Aviv, and elsewhere inside Israel, mostly in construction and services – 130,000 workers commuting from Gaza to Israel at its peak.

However, owing to the heightened tensions of occupation of both Gaza and the West Bank, illegal Israeli settlement activity, successive breakdowns in the peace process, and the Palestinian Intifadas, the situation of Gaza residents continued to deteriorate. Employment inside Israel for Gaza residents was largely cut off by Israel during the Second Intifada beginning in September 2000, and completely eliminated with the economic siege imposed on Hamas in Gaza in January 2006.

As part of the Oslo Process that began in 1993, the Gaza-Jericho Agreement of May 1994 established a fishing limit for Gaza fishermen at 20 nautical miles from the shore. A “Maritime Activity Zone K” 1.5 nautical miles wide was established as a “security” buffer from the Israeli sea boundary inside Gaza’s territorial waters and extending out from shore to the 20-nautical-mile fishing limit. It would be a “closed area” patrolled by the Israeli Navy. A similar “Maritime Activity Zone M” one nautical mile wide was demarcated as a buffer on the sea border with Egypt. Zone M would be patrolled not by the Egyptian Navy, but exclusively by the Israeli Navy. The offshore area in between these security zones was designated “Maritime Activity Zone L” within which Palestinian fishermen were allowed to fish.

In the context of a surge in suicide bombings inside Israel and the comprehensive Israeli military assault on all the occupied Palestinian territories launched at the end of April 2002, Israel demanded tighter limits on Gaza fishermen, as if unarmed fishermen could be any sort of realistic threat to Israel’s security. In August 2002, the Bertini Agreement restricted Gaza’s fishing limit to 12 nautical miles from shore.

When the Israeli government forcibly evicted thousands of Israeli settlers from Gaza and then withdrew its own troops by September 2005, it labelled the move “disengagement.” Many thought that the occupation of Gaza was coming to an end. But on 25 January 2006, the day of Palestinian elections, Israel sealed off Gaza by closing the last open crossing at Erez citing “security concerns” relating to the anticipated strong polling for Hamas. The six functional crossings into Gaza have never been fully opened to anything but a trickle of people and goods since that time.

The final election results gave Hamas an absolute majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council, 74 seats out of 132. After the elections, Israel continued to severely limit the flow of people and goods into and out of Gaza in an attempt to destabilize popular support for Hamas and block Hamas’ participation in the Palestinian government headquartered in Ramallah in the West Bank. It systematically arrested most of the newly-elected Hamas members. By default, Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas took the reigns of government as president and appointed a Fatah colleague, Salam Fayyad, as prime minister, despite Hamas having won the parliamentary right to form a new government.

In April 2006, as part of the ever-tightening noose around Hamas-ruled Gaza, the Israeli Navy began enforcing a 10 nautical mile limit on Gaza fishermen. In October 2006, it changed its mind and reduced the limit to 6 nautical miles.

The drastic lack of employment, and the obstacles placed on the supply of food, drinking water, medicines, fuel, and electricity became a chronic collective punishment on all Gaza residents under occupation in full violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

Gaza is a strip of land approximately 40 kilometres long by 7 kilometres wide. It includes cities, towns, 8 major refugee camps and several minor ones, agricultural land, and uncultivable sand dunes and saline intrusion areas. With nearly 1.5 million people, Gaza has an overall population density twice that of a typical suburban U.S. city. Gaza cannot possibly feed itself. It has no developed natural sources of energy – neither fossil fuel extraction, hydroelectric potential, nor alternative energy sources. It has no natural aquifers to provide renewable fresh water. As a relatively unindustrialized territory, it is completely dependent on the outside for nearly all of its consumption needs. Lacking inputs and cut off from export markets, Gaza’s two industrial export zones at the Erez and Karni crossings are now idled.

Israeli “disengagement” from Gaza changed nothing with respect to the wall and fence that completely encircle Gaza from its northern boundary with Israel to its southern boundary with Egypt. Even the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt (primarily for people) is effectively controlled by Israel through remotely-controlled video cameras, European Union monitors, and Egyptian immigration authorities who have acceded to Israeli demands to exercise veto power over any person or baggage moving through the Rafah crossing. The Kerem Shalom crossing for goods from and to Egypt is controlled directly by Israel because trucks must cross Israeli territory to and from the al-Auja crossing far to the south on the Egyptian-Israeli border. The remaining checkpoints not only are opened by Israel very sparingly, but are each opened by Israel for very specific purposes. The Erez crossing in the north is the primary gateway for people, but not for goods. Nahal Oz crossing is the primary entry point for liquid fuels. Karni crossing is the main gateway for food, medicines, and manufactured goods. Sufa crossing was primarily for bulk aggregates and building materials, but like Kissufim and Ele Sinai crossings are now effectively closed.

Meanwhile, the border itself has been progressively expanding. What started as a border fence became a wall. A second parallel security barrier eventually enclosed a security patrol zone containing in some places two parallel security roads. After disengagement, a 500-metre-wide buffer zone was implemented by the Israeli Defence Forces on the Gaza side of the border, within which any Palestinian is frequently shot at. This deprives Palestinian farmers holding lands within the buffer zone of the ability to cultivate their lands. After the January 2009 Israeli invasion, the buffer zone was expanded to two kilometres.

Gaza had a commercial airport southeast of Rafah, but Israel severely bombed its runway. All Palestinian air traffic has been banned under Israeli occupation and after “disengagement.” That leaves the sea. The Israeli Navy controls all waters around Gaza and does not allow any vessels in or out of Gaza’s fishing limits. There are over 700 registered boats, mostly fishing boats, registered in Gaza. The boats provide a livelihood for 3000 Palestinian fishermen according to a United Nations survey. The wooden boats operate out of four wharfs at Gaza Port, Deir al-Balah, Mawasi Khan Yunis, and Mawasi Rafah. Of these, only the larger fishing boats at Gaza Port can sail far from shore; the smaller boats at the latter three wharfs are only capable of navigating along the coast. But after the Israeli military assault on Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009, even the larger fishing boats cannot venture more than 3 nautical miles from shore owing to the Israeli Navy enforcing a draconian new limit.

Not only has Gaza effectively become the world’s largest open-air prison, but the walls of the prison have been progressively closing in on its inmate population. The only way to avert a humanitarian catastrophe is to lift the siege of Gaza and restore the ability to travel freely and engage in viable economic activity — fundamental human rights presently denied. Gaza’s Shrinking Borders:   16 Years Of The Oslo Process  By Sharat G. Lin, 27 December, 2009
Countercurrents.org

Sharat G. Lin is president of the San José Peace and Justice Center and writes on global political economy, the Middle East, South Asia, and labor migration. He wrote this report from Cairo

Two Hamas Members Killed in Saturday’s Explosion

Hamdan: Two Hamas Members Killed in Saturday’s Explosion

Hamas chief in Lebanon Osama Hamdan on Sunday announced that the movement’s members Bassel Jomaa and Hassan al-Haddad were killed in Saturday night’s explosion that targeted "a Hamas office that also has sleeping quarters for bodyguards."

"Hassan Saeed al-Haddad, 21, and Bassel Ahmed Jomaa, 26, were martyred in Saturday night’s explosion," Hamdan said.

Hamdan identified the pair as "senior bodyguards."

But he refused to speculate on the reasons behind the blast or who was behind it, echoing remarks made earlier by Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha on Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television. Taha also said three people were wounded.

"The circumstances of the explosion are unclear and it is too early to name the party" responsible, Taha said.

Military Judge Rahif Ramadan and the concerned security services examined Haret Hreik’s explosion site, according to state-run National News Agency.

The explosion resulted from a 15 kilograms TNT bomb that was planted in an underground office and led to the death of two and the injury of another two, according to examinations.

The explosion came on the eve of the climax of Ashoura.

Thousands of Lebanese Shiites gathered in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Sunday to mark the end of 10 days of rituals marking the Shiite holy day of Ashoura.

Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah addressed the crowd in a speech broadcast by videolink but did not mention Saturday’s blast.

An AFP photographer said late on Saturday that the blast occurred in an alley in Harek Hreik, meters away from a community center where Hizbullah was organizing a ceremony to commemorate Ashoura.

Witnesses said that local Hamas official Ali Baraka has an office in the area where the blast occurred.(Naharnet-AFP)

India Can Have Headley In About 300 Years

Headley not to be extradited to India: FBI

PTI

NEW DELHI: The FBI has politely turned down India’s request for extradition of terror suspect David Headley to this country on the ground he will have to first undergo a sentence which could be imposed on him in the US for the offences committed if convicted.
Indian officials were told there was no realistic possibility of the Pakistani-American being handed over since the sentence could range between 200 and 300 years of imprisonment.
The US stand was conveyed to the Indian investigators by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officials during their regular interaction to discuss the case related to Headley, whose links with the banned Lashker-e-Taiba (LeT) were being probed by the two countries, official sources said here today.
The polite turning down of the Indian request for extradition of 49-year-old Headley, arrested in Chicago on October three last, came in the wake of repeated statements including that by Union Home Secretary G K Pilai that India would press for the extradition of the terror suspect.
Pillai had said earlier that India will seek his extradition after completing investigation by January next year into his links with the Mumbai terror attacks.
However, FBI seems to be in no mood to hand over him to India and very politely conveyed that he could be handed over once the sentence ranging to 300 years is completed. He can also be sentenced to death, the sources said.
Headley has been charged by the FBI for 26/11 attacks in Mumbai also on December seven. He is alleged to have conducted reconnaissance of all targets attacked by Lashker militants on November 26 last year besides drawing the routemap for their landing on the Mumbai coast.

The establishment strikes back

By Yousuf Nazar

Lawyers shout slogans in support of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry outside the Supreme Court in Islamabad on December 16, 2009 after the decision on NRO. — AFP

The Supreme Court’s verdict on the NRO and the way it has been decided to enforce it leaves no doubt in my mind that the establishment is once again out to get the PPP and bring back its favourite civilians to power.

Familiar forces are once again trying to seize the initiative they lost after a decade-long military rule which gave us the ‘war on terror’ and has brought us to a state where Pakistan is bracketed with Afghanistan and is considered one of the hottest spots in the world that can explode anytime.

Never mind the blunders of the masters of ‘strategic lack of depth’ and architects of the policies that have turned Pakistan into a client state of America with few friends; they seem to have decided to strike back again.

Now faced with the question of how to justify this attempt to take back power, they seem to have decided to divert the public’s attention to an easy target and a handy dog to whip; the government of Asif Zardari. It is even speculated that the very reason why the establishment facilitated the entry of Zardari into the corridors of power was because he was considered so vulnerable that getting rid of him would be a piece of cake.

When I wrote about this almost 14 months ago, some PPP stalwarts and senior media pundits dismissed the idea saying the United States was firmly behind him forgetting a basic tenet of Washington’s policy: the US is always with the Pakistan military.

The humiliation of Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar may have come as a shock to some but it was hardly a surprise as it was a demonstration of who really runs the country, a warning to Mr Zardari and an ominous sign of things to come.

If withdrawal of cases on charges of plundering of the national wealth are acts that are void ab initio then so is the deal between Nawaz Sharif and Musharraf that, in effect, washed away all the former’s crimes in exchange for exile, confiscation of property and the Sharif brothers’ promise to stay out of politics for five years according to Nawaz Sharif’s own public admission — and 10 years per the documents released subsequently and according to the Musharraf government’s account of the events.

Let’s see how far the court goes to pursue the loan write-off cases, with the amount totalling billions and allegedly involving the Ittefaq Group, the Chaudhry brothers and many retired generals, regardless of technicalities. Wasn’t that the plunder of national wealth? Or is there one standard for the politicians from Sindh and Balochistan and another for those from the land of the five rivers?

I can already hear screams of ‘provincialism’ and anticipate charges of fanning ethnic discontent but it is just not a coincidence and is an indisputable fact that the judiciary’s every decision has so far favoured Nawaz Sharif and has gone against the PPP.

This is a continuation of the pattern witnessed during Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s trial by the Lahore High Court in 1978, the rejection of his appeal by a split 4-3 verdict of the Supreme Court, Nasim Hasan Shah’s restoration of Nawaz Sharif’s government dismissed by Ghulam Ishaq Khan, and more recently the failure of the Supreme Court to take suo motu notice of the ‘deal’ between Musharraf and Nawaz Sharif that effectively whitened all the latter’s wealth.

I have no love for Mr Zardari and think it is a tragedy that he heads a party that was founded by a political giant like Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, but personal dislike for Mr Zardari should not blind us to the sinister and dangerous game that is being played by the establishment.

For better or worse, we have a parliament and it is parliament that should be sovereign. But it is the judiciary that seems to be sovereign, with no accountability whatsoever.

It is now too obvious that the judges got rid of Musharraf when he became a liability to the establishment. Now they could be part of a hidden agenda because an overt exercise of powers by the establishment does not fit in with the current internal and external environment.

One has to be politically quite naive or a paid journalist (it does not matter by which agency, IB or the ISI) to eulogise all this as the triumph of justice or some rubbish like that. Why doesn’t the Supreme Court order the ministry of information and broadcasting to publish the names of all those media persons who have been the beneficiaries of secret funds during the past 20 years? Why does only the PPP (not that it is innocent) have to face ‘accountability’?

Why is that only Benazir Bhutto had to explain where the funds for Surrey Palace came from and the Sharif brothers can continue to enjoy their escapades to London and stay in their luxury apartments in Park Lane, one of the most exclusive and expensive neighbourhoods in London, and certainly more expensive than Surrey?

It is time to wake up and face the ugly reality. In Pakistan, the judiciary has been used as an instrument of the establishment. Could it be that this time the modus operandi has become rather sophisticated compared to the cruder methods employed in the past?

‘Arrested US men had maps of Pak N-sites’

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ISLAMABAD: Police are trying to determine whether five Americans detained in Sargodha had planned to attack a complex that houses nuclear power facilities, authorities said on Saturday.

The young Muslims were picked up earlier this month in a case that has spurred fears that Westerners are traveling to Pakistan to join the militant groups.

Police and government officials have made a series of escalating and, at times, seemingly contradictory allegations about the men’s intentions, while the US officials have been far more cautious, though they, too, are looking at charging the men.

A Pakistani government official said on Saturday that the men had established contact with the Taliban commanders and planned to attack sites in Pakistan. Earlier, however, the local police accused the men of intending to fight in Afghanistan after meeting militant leaders.

The men had a map of the Chashma Barrage, a complex that, along with nuclear power facilities, houses a water reservoir and other structures, said Javed Islam, a senior police official in Sargodha.

He stressed that the men were not carrying a specific map of any nuclear power plant, but rather the whole of the Chashma Barrage. The detained men also had exchanged e-mails about the area, Islam said. “We are also working to retrieve some of the deleted material in their computers,” he said. Police plan to recommend that courts charge the five men with collecting and attempting to collect material to carry out terrorist activities in Pakistan, police official Nazir Ahmad told The Associated Press. The punishments for those charges range from seven years to life in prison, he said.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah said the men had established contact with the Taliban commanders.

He said they had planned to meet Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud and his deputy Qari Hussain before attacking sites inside Pakistan. The nuclear power plant might have been one of the targets, Sanaullah said.

Police have also alleged that the men met representatives from the al-Qaeda-linked Jaish-e-Mohammed group in Hyderabad and from the Jamaat-ud-Dawa in Lahore, but the groups turned the men away because they did not trust them.

US ready to seize Pak nuke installments: Qazi

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PESHAWAR: Former Jamaat-e-Islami Amir Qazi Hussin Ahmed has alleged that the United States has made the arrangements for the seizure of country’s nuclear installments.

Speaking to media at a reception in Ghazi, Ahmed said the Americans have established their set-up in Kahota and Tarbela.

A large number of Americans are present in the country, he told media.

He expressed serious concerns over presence of Americans in such a large number at Kahota and Tarbela in the name of trainings.

The former JI Amir further said that innocent people were getting killed in tribal areas due to the US drone attacks. He declared both suicide and drone attacks as haram (illegitimate).

The US has tasted defeat in Afghanistan, he said, advising Pakistani people to remain prepared for giving sacrifices like people of Pakistan.

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War and siege leave Gaza children traumatized

Sarah Jacobs

December 27, 2009 The majority of children in Gaza are suffering from anxiety, depression or behavioral problems as a result of their experiences of conflict and living through a deepening humanitarian crisis, warns Save the Children. One year on from Israel’s three-week military offensive in Gaza, leading psychologists working with the children’s charity report that many Palestinian children in Gaza are suffering sustained psychological damage as their experiences of violence and loss during the conflict are compounded by the hardships of life under the blockade. Osama Damo, aid worker for Save the Children in Gaza, said: “This is a traumatized nation. Many children we work with are not able to sleep at night for fear of soldiers returning. Others cry at the sound of loud noises, mistaking them for military jets and tanks coming to bomb their homes. Young children in Gaza are surviving under extreme levels of stress, which will pose long-term dangers not only for their mental health, but for the future of the region.” Save the Children warns that until Israel’s tight restrictions on the movement of goods and people in and out of Gaza are lifted and the threat of further conflict eased, the mental health of the 780,000 children living in Gaza could continue to deteriorate. Osama Damo continued: “The psychological crisis facing children in Gaza just keeps getting worse. Thousands of children are still living in half-destroyed homes or in overcrowded conditions with host families. Hundreds still live in tents where they risk being attacked by packs of wild dogs and don’t have proper protection against the cold and rain.” Research currently being conducted by the Gaza Community Mental Health Program suggests that the majority of children in Gaza are showing signs of anxiety, depression and behavioral problems, including aggression and bed-wetting. Dr. Ahmed Abu Tawanheena, director of Gaza Community Mental Health Program, has worked with victims of trauma in Gaza for 20 years. He said: “The safety and comfort children rely on their parents for has been destroyed twice in one year: first, during the conflict, when they saw their parents terrified and unable to protect them from the violence. Now, under the blockade, they see their parents are still unable to provide for their basic needs, such as shelter or food. Many children report feeling abandoned by their parents and by the outside world, and parents are left struggling with feelings of guilt. It’s a crisis which is threatening families and communities across the Gaza Strip.” Osama Damo said: “Save the Children’s priority is to try and restore a sense of well-being and normality for children in Gaza. We are helping them take baby steps toward regaining their childhood, but there’s a huge job in front of us. If things are really to change for children here, there has to be an immediate lifting of the blockade to allow children to recover, and Israeli, Palestinian and international governments have to act urgently to make this happen.” As part of its emergency response to the conflict, Save the Children provided psychological support to children in Gaza, creating “safe places” where they could play, draw and express themselves. Save the Children has been working in Gaza since 1973, where they are currently running health, child protection and education projects. — Sarah Jacobs is head of news at Save the Children and can be reached at -S.Jacobs@savethechildren.org.uk

Bin Laden Children Held By Iran

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Big turnout as Uzbekistan votes for new parliament

	An elderly man casting his ballot at a polling station in Tashkent

TASHKENT : The Central Asian state of Uzbekistan voted on Sunday in parliamentary elections marked by a strong early turnout, with all four competing parties supportive of the government of President Islam Karimov.

Over 17 million voters have registered for the ballot to elect the 150-seat lower house of parliament, the Oliy Majlis, with the authorities sending millions of text messages to get people out to vote.

By midday (0700 GMT), just six hours into voting, some 57 per cent of the electorate had already cast their ballots, the central election commission said. Polls were due to close at 8:00 pm (1500 GMT).

Karimov has ruled Uzbekistan for the past two decades, after becoming Communist party boss in 1989 under the Soviet Union and then its first post-independence president in 1991.

The president, who earlier this month described the elections as a test of democracy, said the polls showed Uzbekistan was “moving towards the establishment of a democratic society”.

“From this point of view, everything that has been done in this period, especially since 2000, has given a new impulse,” he told reporters including an AFP correspondent after casting his vote.

“No one should think that I am trying to show off something that does not exist,” he added. “I admit that in our parliament there is very weak control over the executive power. I think we should change this.”

According to the central election commission, over 270 observers from 36 countries and missions of four international organisations are monitoring the polls.

But pan-European security group the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is deploying a smaller election assessment mission instead of a full observer mission, citing democratic shortcomings.

Uzbekistan’s “current political spectrum does not offer the electorate a genuine choice between competing political alternatives,” it said in October.

The elections come as Uzbekistan is being increasingly courted by the United States as an important ally in the Central Asian region due to its strategic transport links with conflict-torn Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, tensions have flared between Tashkent and its former Soviet master Moscow over Russian plans to install a new Russian military base in the Kyrgyz city of Osh, which is close to the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border.

In televised pre-election debates, parties mostly accused each other of usurping government achievements and programmes but also cautiously touched on corruption and unemployment issues.

Uzbekistan formally legitimised factional opposition in the parliament after 2004 elections to answer Western criticism that there is no real political opposition in the tightly controlled ex-Soviet republic.

International rights groups criticised Uzbekistan for stepping up pressure on rights activists ahead of the election. But the authorities reject the accusations.

The number of seats in the lower house of Uzbekistan’s parliament was in 2008 increased from 120 to 150, with 15 seats automatically going to the country’s Ecological Movement.

The Ecological Movement of Uzbekistan was founded in August 2008 and is composed of activists from the pro-government environmentalist groups and health sectors.

Karimov in December 2007 won a new seven-year term in presidential elections with over 88 per cent of the vote.

One of the world’s biggest cotton producers with extensive gas and mineral reserves, Uzbekistan also boasts an ancient history including Samarkand, one of the world’s oldest cities. – AFP/ms

Is Congress planning to destroy every Middle East TV Channel that criticizes Israel?

Part I: Targeting Lebanon’s Al Manar

Franklin Lamb Beirut

“Regarding Al Manar it’s personal for Israel. The reason is that Al Manar did to the Israeli government propaganda machine during and following the July 2006 war what Hezbollah fighters did to Israeli troops. Al Manar kicked butt. That station must be made to disappear. The plan is to stop the 15-20 million daily viewers of Al Manar from receiving its transmission and well as to intimidate all the other Middle East TV channels that are suspected of moving toward the growing “Culture of Resistance’ spreading in the Middle East from Lebanon.” A Washington DC observer of how Israel controls the US Congress 12/9/09

Lebanon is a small country, approximately 0.7% the size of Connecticut with a population a bit more than 1% of America’s. But according to the four public US ‘Terrorist’ and Watch lists and at least seven supposedly secret US ‘T lists’ there are more Lebanese ‘terrorists’ and ‘inciters’ on the loose per square meter of planet Earth than any other nationality. Way more than say Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan or Pakistan could reasonably hope to muster. Increasingly these ‘terrorists and inciters’ work is claimed by some in the US Congress to be done via satellite TV channels. Such is the thesis of Congressman Gus Bilirakis, the ‘author’ of the 122nd US Congressional anti-Arab, anti-Muslim initiative in the past decade now known as the “Terrorist TV” Bill which passed the House on 12/08/09 and is now before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Taking out the ‘TV Terrorists’ Enter Gus Bilirakis: A fresh Lobby Frontman

Veteran Congressional staffers sometimes identify the following four general groupings of supporters of Israel in Congress:

• Jewish members who care a lot about Israel and some of whom may or may not be ardent Zionists but who generally, but not always, put Israel’s concerns first;
• Evangelical Christians, who are eager to advance end-times, believe in Biblical prophecy and that Armageddon is rapidly approaching and strongly supports Israel over Arabs and Muslims in the Holy land conflict.
• Ultra Zionists with elements of racist feelings towards Arabs and Muslims
• Members who normally don’t favor Israelis much over Arabs or Muslims in their normal lives but who are regularly collared by the Israel lobby and who get the message and want to keep their congressional seats and add to their generous $100,000 –plus yearly pensions and are willing to ‘go along to get along’ and generally will do AIPAC’s bidding.

Gus Bilirakis, Reagan Republican from Florida’s 9th District is from this latter category. Filling the seat his late father Michael held since 1983, “Congressman Gus” as he prefers to be known back home, has the reputation of being a nice, affable fellow who does not claim to know much about the Middle East or foreign affairs. Hard to stereotype as being a fanatic supporter of Israel, gross Islamophobe or Arab basher, Bilirakis basically wants to get along by going along. AIPAC likes him because he appears ‘regular American’ and not too ‘neurotically pro Israel.’ as one of his District office interns explained, adding that “our boss is ordinary, folksy, and just wants to help the simple people.” Certainly he appears to fit the recent AIPAC mode shift of lining up more conservative members of Congress to do Israel’s bidding and to pull back a bit from the type casted “Liberal Jewish establishment” stereotype. By selecting Gus to introduce H.R. 2278, AIPAC and friends scored a public relations bonus.

Gus told his District’s Bay 9 News TV station on 12/9/09 that:

“My legislation will provide the United States with critical baseline information to combat media outlets that serve as vehicles for violent anti-American incitement,” said Bilirakis, who is a member of the House Committees on Foreign Affairs and Homeland Security. “Given the danger such incitement and radicalization poses to Americans both at home and aboard, it is crucial that these tools of terror be distinguished from reputable news outlets.”

We already spend too much on foreign aid to countries that take our money with one hand and slap us with the other. This legislation will help us ratchet down foreign aid to countries who take this approach.”

Bilirakis’ reputed suspicion towards ‘foreigners’ may be part of his general conservatism. The American Conservative Union Chairman, David Keene, noted during an award ceremony in May of 2009 that Gus scored “way higher than the 80% necessary to win ACU’s top award during the second session of the 110th Congress. In a short space of time, Congressman Bilirakis has already shown he is someone grass roots conservatives in Florida and elsewhere who love Israel will be turning to for future leadership.”

The Washington DC based “U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation” a pro Middle East Peace advocacy group saw things differently and gave Gus a -4 rating on its just released Congressional Report Card for the 111th Congress, which was barely above the worst rating assigned to any member of Congress, earned by Illeana Ros-Lehtinen (who represents Florida’s 18th District including the Florida everglades opposite Havana , Cuba, about which she likes to joke, “on a clear day I can see Havana and keep an eye on the Castro boys”, reminding some of Sarah Palin learning about foreign affairs by watching Russia from her bob sled), who kept her position from the 110th on the groups ‘Hall of Shame’ with a -5 score. Gus calls Ileana ‘my main Middle East tutor’.

How HR 2286 can save America from ‘terrorists and inciters’

The ‘TV Terrorist” bill passed on a House roll call vote, while, as is the norm, an eager AIPAC staffer in the front row of the House Visitor’s Gallery with clip board and pen in hand, peered down on the Floor keeping tabs on how the Members voted. As is the Congressional practice with ‘Israel Bills’ or Psych-War Resolutions Israel wants passed, the vote on H.R. 2278 was held under a suspension of the rules to cut debate short and pass it quickly with the needed two-thirds majority. This fast track is normally used for relatively minor items like honoring “butterfly watchers day”, “national be kind to fat stray cats day” etc. The totals were 395 Ayes, 3 Nays, 36 Present/Not Voting- a slightly above average tally when AIPAC sends a legislative request ‘up the Hill.’

H.R. 2278 is what some employees in Congress call “a sleeper bill”. Legislation that is quickly and quietly passed, without much public notice, but which is very powerful in its effect. The language of the Bill, while far overbroad and many first Semester law students would no doubt hammer it on Constitutional Law grounds, and some lawyers think a case brought under this law would be nearly impossible to prosecute, this legislation, if it passes the Senate, will de jure establish that “ It shall be the policy of the United States of America to designate as a Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT) any satellite provider in the Middle East (including Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen) that knowingly and willingly contracts with entities designated as Specially Designated Global Terrorists under Executive Order No. 13224, to broadcast their channels, or to consider implementing other punitive measures against satellite providers that transmit anti-American declarations (read criticize US support for Israeli crimes) or incite violence against Americans.

Bilirakis’ bill also requires that state-sponsorship of anti-American incitement to violence be taken into account when determining the level of assistance to, and frequency and nature of relations with, all states (Ed: such as Lebanon whose hoped for millions in US aid could be stopped) and urges “ all governments and private investors who own shares in satellite companies or otherwise influence decisions about satellite transmissions to oppose transmissions of telecasts by… al-Manar … or any other Specially Designated Global Terrorist owned and operated stations that openly incite their audiences to commit acts of terrorism or violence against the United States and its citizens.”

The Bill also provides that beginning 6 months after the date of the enactment of the new law and annually thereafter, the President must prepare a report on anti-American incitement to violence in the Middle East including a description of all media outlets in the Middle East for program and news broadcast scrutiny.

Congressional sources report that the political goal is to stop the 10-15 million daily viewers of Al Manar from receiving its transmission as well as to intimidate other Middle East TV channels that are suspected of moving toward the growing “Culture of Resistance’ in the Middle East.

More than 600 Middle East TV channels risk being closed down among the 19 target Countries listed in H.R. 2278. Some of the most strident criticism of America comes from Israeli colonists and extremist Rabbi’s in occupied Palestine.

‘MEMRI as Congressional staff

Part of the job description of all Congressional staff employees who works on legislation includes doing research in support of proposed legislation or to demonstrate to the Member who employees them the need for a new law. This system by and large works in the US Congress except for the Middle East. This area of inquiry is hands off for all but ardent supporters of Israel.

One Congressional staffer who recently retired after 28 years working on the hill, noted on 12/13/09:

“It used to be that Congressional staffers actually did research and wrote recommendations for their bosses around here. Those days are long gone when it comes to Middle East issues. The Israel lobby handles all that now. If staffers want to be heard on Middle East issues from Iran to Palestine, they are discouraged. If they persist they run the risk of being targeted for unemployment by AIPAC and their bosses may cut them loose rather than confront the Lobby. In essence Israel is saying to Congressional staffers, “Listen up! We know best and will handle Congressional Middle East legislation. Just get out of the kitchen, leave this to us and busy yourselves elsewhere.”

Those who demonstrated to Congress the urgent need for a “TV Terrorism” law included the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)

This was confirmed by the office of Congressman Gus Bilirakis and indeed the Congressman himself noted that ‘research’ provided by MEMRI helped to establish the need for the new legislation.

MEMRI supplied the video excepted from Al Manar and cited by the sponsors as ‘evidence’ of incitement against Americans by the station and its satellite provider because it broadcasts the speeches of Hezbollah leaders on special occasions, as does virtually every other TV news channel in the Middle East that transmit at least portions of the speeches which are popular across the region. In fact all the video shows in spliced together excerpts from two speeches Hassan Nasrallah gave and two by his deputy Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Naim Qassim. They contain no incitement against Americans but rather criticism of Israel and of US support for Israel that can be heard any day of the week in all 50 States in the US.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) describes itself as a “free media monitoring service.” Based in Washington DC with half a dozen offices set up in countries including China, Tokyo, Germany, England, Italy and Israel, MEMRI was founded in 1998 by Yigal Carmon, a former colonel in Israeli military intelligence and its first three employees were also veterans of Israeli intelligence. Following 9/11 and George W. Bush’s executive order 13222 and the unleashing of the War on Terrorism, MEMRI shed much of its earlier pretense of being objective and became stridently anti-Arab and anti-Muslim.

Increasingly, MEMRI’s work has been criticized on three grounds: that their work is biased; that they choose articles to translate selectively so as to give an unrepresentative view of the media they are reporting on; and that their translations are frequently inaccurate.

The Middle East editor for the UK Guardian newspaper, Brian Whitaker has been one of the most outspoken critics of MEMRI, writing: “My problem with MEMRI is that it poses as a research institute when it’s basically a propaganda operation, “to further the political agenda of Israel.”

Several critics have accused MEMRI of selectivity. They state that MEMRI consistently picks for translation and dissemination the most extreme views, which portray the Arab and Muslim world in a negative light, while ignoring moderate views that are often found in the same media outlets.

Juan Cole, Professor of Modern Middle East History at the University of Michigan reported that MEMRI “cleverly cherry-pick the vast Arabic press, which serves 300 million people, for the most extreme and objectionable articles and editorials.” Laila Lalami, writing in The Nation stated that MEMRI “consistently picks the most violent, hateful rubbish it can find, translates it and distributes it in e-mail newsletters to media and members of Congress in Washington”.

Professor Norman Finkelstein,in a June 2007 interview with In Focus newspaper explained that MEMRI “uses the same sort of propaganda techniques as the Nazis… it’s a reliable assumption that anything MEMRI translates from the Middle East is going to be unreliable.”

In 2007, CNN correspondent Atika Shubert and Arabic translators accused MEMRI of mistranslating portions of a Palestinian children’s television program. MEMRI translates one caller as saying ‘We will annihilate the Jews,”‘ said Shubert. “But, according to several Arabic speakers used by CNN, the caller actually says ‘The Jews are killing us.” According to one CNN source, “Put bluntly, MEMRI is a hate group”.

Working with MEMRI, as its Al Manar specialist, Avi Jorisch senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies published ‘research’ in 2004 entitled “Beacon of Hatred-Inside Al Manar” , funded by the Israel advocacy ‘think tank’, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), with the assistance of Dennis Ross. Jorisch proudly admits he had the political goal of getting the Bush administration declare Al-Manar a “ Terrorist organization.” One of Jorisch consistent worries is “ that al-Manar broadcasts may contain coded communications — a way for Hezbollah’s terrorist “generals” to command terrorist “troops” in the field, for example sleeper cells in the United States and elsewhere.”

During its 2008 annual Conference, Jorisch was honored in a private reception arranged by MEMRI and AIPAC, and given a champagne toast while being introduced “as the man who put Al Manar on the Terrorism list.” As recently as 11/4/09, writing in the Wall Street Journal, Jorisch accused Iran of using the UN to skirt sanctions and various other ‘terrorist’ acts relating to importing “foodstuffs, textiles and medicine” which could help it create a nuclear weapon.

Jorisch’s campaign against Al Manar is designed to show that it is anti-Semite, but he repeatedly misunderstood the context of some of his ‘proof’ including the phrase, “Jerusalem we are coming” , which he claimed to have heard on Al Manar.

Jorisch and MEMRI claim this language shows a threat against the Jewish state and therefore is anti-Semitic. In fact, the phrase “Jerusalem, we are coming” comes from the classic song of the Lebanese Christian singer Fairouz, whose, “Jerusalem, we are coming”, extols religious unity, worshiping in Jerusalem by all religions, and Jerusalem as a city of peace. Viewers in Lebanon and the Middle East and fans of Fairouz everywhere know this song which is in no way anti-Semitic and its been played on hundreds of TV and radios stations including many in Israel.

(Comment: Lebanon’s Prima Diva Fairouz, Israeli troops, and ‘Beirut Jane’. According to an AP report of July 7, 1982, Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden visited Israeli troops in East Beirut and watched the shelling of West Beirut from Israeli positions next to St. Anthony’s School. Israeli soldiers crowded around Miss Fonda to be photographed with her.” Not mentioned in the report was that singer Fairouz was to meet with actress Jane and then hub Tom.

AP: “Mr. Swersky, the Israeli command spokesman, gave Miss Fonda and her husband a private briefing on the military situation. Mr. Hayden, who was a leader of the opposition to the Vietnam War, told the assembled troops that ‘the Israeli invasion is justified because the PLO refused to recognize Israel’. Hayden said he spoke with Lebanese Christians in Sidon, Tyre and east Beirut, but did not meet any Palestinians during the trip, which began Friday. In November, he faces Republican businessman Bill Hawkins in California’s heavily Jewish 44th Assembly District.”

AP: “Miss Fonda stated that the visit to Israel and Lebanon was “a very good and important opportunity for me personally to try to understand the situation better. I learned a lot. It helped me to be there and to see this interesting – and maybe unique to Israel – situation where you have a tremendous Israeli defense force, and unanimity when it comes to the necessity to defend, to not pull back right now and to do everything that’s possible,” she said. “I think that’s why they were happy that we came here.”

One employee of the Beirut weekly, Monday Morning, who was present, still remembers: “Jane applauding with Israeli troops while cluster bombs ripped through apartments and hospitals, and Israeli helicopter gunships strafed those trying to escape. Some still refer to her as ‘Beirut Jane’ and last time I checked, her films were still banned in Lebanon.”

Fairouz was reportedly enraged by the spectacle and declined to have any part of it and walked out. Elements of the Israeli lobby began a campaign against the distribution of her songs, but nearly 28 years later Fairouz has out lasted most of the Israeli soldiers on Lebanese soil, still sings beautifully, and earlier this month sold some of her song rights, including, “Jerusalem we are coming’, for $ 2million to a Syrian company. In fairness to ‘Beirut Jane’, twenty years later, on 12/10/02, (Universal Declaration of Human Rights day), she did finally meet some Palestinians during a visit to Deheshih Palestinian Refugee Camp near Bethlehem in the West Bank)

With the 22 State member Arab League and the 57 member International Organization of the Islamic Conference condemning the House bill, and the Lebanese Foreign Ministry planning to summon US Ambassador Michele Sisson to discuss the matter, late word is that John Kerrey, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman may actually hold hearings on the Bill. If so it will be a major setback for Aipac and friends. Will Al Manar actually be invited to present testimony? Debate Aipac?

Part II: Inside Al Manar TV and its record as ‘inciter against Americans’.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and is a member of the Lebanese Steering Committee seeking to pass the 2010 Civil Rights Law for Palestinian Refugees in the current ‘Unity’ Parliament. He can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com

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Franklin P. Lamb, PhD
Director, Americans Concerned for
Middle East Peace, Wash.DC-Beirut
Acting Chair, the Sabra-Shatila Memorial Scholarship Program Laptop Initiative
Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp
fplamb@gmail.com

FOR YOUR INFORMATION PLEASE:
The Price We Pay: A Quarter Century of Israel’s use of American Weapons against Lebanon (1978-2006) is available at Amazon.com.uk or Lebanese Bookstores The Revised and Arabic Edition was released on 8/12/08. The Farsi and French Editions are expected this Fall.
And in the USA, the title is available at www.LebaneseBooks.com, and currently enjoys Free Standard Shipping.

‘ISI, CIA ran over 60 join operations against Qaeda commanders hiding in FATA’

2009-12-27 12:40:00

A senior Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s main spy agency, official has revealed that the Central Investigation Agency (CIA) and the ISI together have run over 60 operations against Al-Qaeda and other key extremists commanders hiding in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Balochistan. The official said the missions included “snatch and grabs”, the abduction of important militants, as well as efforts to kill extremist leaders, The New York Times reports. The operations were carried out on the basis of intelligence inputs provided by both the US and the Pakistani agencies, the official said, on conditions of anonymity. The Obama administration has been pressing Pakistan to take action against the Haqqani group, which is controlled by one of Al-Qaeda’s top commanders, Sirajuddin Haqqani. The US believes that the Haqqani network is using Pakistan’s lawless border areas to carry out attacks in Kabul and important locations in Afghanistan. US troops, stationed in Afghanistan, have intensified their commando operations against the Haqqani network in Afghanistan and have gained substantial success. Although President Obama and his top aides have never discussed these highly classified missions in public, such counterterrorism operations are expected to increase, along with the deployment of 30,000 more US forces in the next year, as part of the revamped strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. US Central Command Chairman General David Petraeus has also made it clear that following the surge there would be more focus on the counterterrorism operations. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, earlier this month, General Petraeus had said that more such commando offensive against hard-core Al-Qaeda and Taliban extremists could be seen in the near future. “We actually will be increasing our counterterrorist component of the overall strategy,” General Petraeus had told the Senators. “There’s no question you’ve got to kill or capture those bad guys that are not reconcilable. And we are intending to do that, and we will have additional national mission force elements to do that when the spring rolls around,” he added. (ANI)

Protests against Egypt’s Steel Wall and Deadly Salt-Water Pipe System

[It's not enough that they build a thirty-meter high steel trap below ground to stop the brave diggers, the Zionist killers have to install a massive piping system to drown all the trapped Palestinian rats who dare to try and feed and care for their families.  God will have a particularly nasty punishment prepared for such men.  It's no wonder they all are devil worshippers.]

26/12/2009 International activists planning to enter Gaza from Egypt for a march appealed to President Hosni Mubarak on Saturday to allow them to enter the blockaded enclave through the Rafah crossing. Organizers of the Gaza Freedom March had earlier said they would try to defy the ban after Egypt turned down their request to pass through Rafah, the Gaza Strip’s only crossing that bypasses the occupied territories. “We plead to you to let the Gaza Freedom March continue so that we can join the Palestinians of Gaza to march together on December 31,” the activists said in a statement addressed to Mubarak. Egypt said it would prevent their passage because of the “sensitive situation” in Gaza and warned Monday of legal repercussions for anyone defying the ban. Around 1,300 international delegates from 42 countries have signed up to join the Gaza Freedom March which was due to enter Gaza via Egypt during the last week of December. From Gaza, a committee to break the siege set up by the Gaza Strip administration called on the Egyptian government to facilitate the arrival of the international aid convoy headed by George Galloway and endorsed by many prominent figures such as the US scholar Noam Chomsky and others. The committee expressed concern at the Egyptian moves to put obstacles in the way of the convoy bringing food, medicine and other primary goods to the Gaza Strip residents, who have been under Israeli siege for the past four years. The committee called on the Egyptian government to lift the siege instead of participating in it by building the “wall of death.” The reference was to the huge steel wall currently under construction by Egyptian workers and supervised by US and French officials to enforce a more efficient isolation of the Gaza Strip population. The Palestinian Information Centre reported on details obtained from sources in Cairo saying that the death wall is conceived to function as a water-leaking system, by which existing tunnels will be flooded and anyone trying to build new tunnels would be drowned. According to the report, on the Palestinian side of the steel wall holes will be dug, into which 20 to 30 meters long pipes would be inserted vertically and at a distance of 30 to 40 meters one from another; these pipes would be connected through a 10 km-long horizontal main pipeline, from which sea water would be poured into them. The pipes, equipped with holes, would then release the sea water into the soil causing existing tunnels to collapse and preventing new ones to be dug. The comb-shaped pipe system would also destroy the soil on the Palestinian side of the steel wall, which would contemporaneously prevent the salty water from soaking Egyptian territory. In the Gaza Strip mass demonstrations were held against Egypt’s plan to build the steel wall which claimed its first victim on Friday. According to Palestinian security sources, a Palestinian man was killed after a tunnel collapsed over him due to the Egyptian excavation. During the demonstration, Hamas spokesperson Hammad Al-Ruqab urged Cairo to open the Rafah border crossing and facilitate the entry of food and construction materials needed to rebuild Gaza which is in ruins due to Israel’s war which left thousands of homes destroyed last year. “We in the Hamas movement announce our deep shock at the construction of the wall which bypasses every diplomatic rule. Egypt is building the wall between Gaza and Egypt in a sensitive period of time,” Ma’an news agency quoted Al-Ruqab as saying. Reports revealed earlier in December that Egypt was building an underground wall with a depth of 30 meters and 10 kilometers long along the Rafah border. Turkish parliamentarians and politicians raised their voices describing the Egyptian steel wall as a new instrument meant to kill Palestinians. Talking to Al-Alam TV, Muhammad Patuk, vice-chairman of Turkey’s Saadet Party said on Christmas Eve, it is difficult to look on as Palestinians face additional oppression from the Egyptian side, which is seen helping the Israeli occupation forces turning the Gaza Strip into an open-air prison.