Friday, July 31, 2009

US Adviser: Time to Leave Iraq

Keeping Troops in Iraq Not Worth the Effort, Memo Advises

by Jason Ditz, Antiwar.com, July 30, 2009

Colonel Timothy Reese, a senior US military adviser in Iraq, has issued a memo urging the US to dramatically speed up its pullout from Iraq, saying it should be announced that all troops will be out of the nation by August 2010.

Col. Timothy Reese

In the blunt memo, Col. Reese says keeping 132,000 US troops in Iraq “isn’t yielding benefits commensurate with the effort and is now generating its own opposition,” he also noted that “guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days,” while reminding the reader that US troops have now been in Iraq for over six years. He also mocked the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for “childish chest pounding.”

During the campaign the Obama Administration had originally had a similar pullout strategy, saying they would have all troops out by May 2010. This was quickly revised after taking office, however, to removing all combat troops from the nation. This was further revised to note that the troops remaining would still be conducting combat missions, but wouldn’t be officially called combat troops.

Though his administration has hardly removed any troops at all since taking office, President Obama maintains that the pullout remains “on schedule.” The Reese memo will almost certainly raise further questions of whether that schedule needs dramatic revision, particularly at a time when Maliki is openly talking about keeping the troops in Iraq past 2011.

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Ilan Pappe: Disarm Israel

A Utopia or a Vision for Peace

By Ilan Pappe | ZNet, July 28, 2009

Ilan Pappe’s ZSpace Page

[Contribution to the Reimagining Society Project hosted by ZCommunications]

Whenever the possibility of establishing an independent Palestinian state is mentioned by Israeli politicians, they take for granted that their interlocutors understand that the future state would have to be demilitarized and disarmed, if an Israeli consent for its existence is to be gained. Recently, this precondition was mentioned by the current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in response to President Barrack Obama’s two states vision, presented to the world at large in his Cairo Speech this June. Netanyahu made this precondition first and foremost for domestic consumption: whoever has referred in the past to the creation of an independent state alongside Israel, and whoever does so today in Israel envisages a fully armed Israel next to a totally disarmed Palestine. But there was another reason why Netanyahu stressed the demilitarization of Palestine as a sine qua non: he knew perfectly well that there was no danger that even the most moderate Palestinian leader would accept such a caveat from the strongest military power in the Middle East.

Continued >>

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Three Good Reasons To Liquidate Our Empire

We (the US) are like the British at the end of World War II: desperately trying to shore up an empire that we never needed and can no longer afford, using methods that often resemble those of failed empires of the past — including the Axis powers of World War II and the former Soviet Union, notes Chalmers Johnson.

Chalmers Johnson, The Huffington Post, July 31, 2009

Ten Steps to Take to Do So

However ambitious President Barack Obama’s domestic plans, one unacknowledged issue has the potential to destroy any reform efforts he might launch. Think of it as the 800-pound gorilla in the American living room: our longstanding reliance on imperialism and militarism in our relations with other countries and the vast, potentially ruinous global empire of bases that goes with it. The failure to begin to deal with our bloated military establishment and the profligate use of it in missions for which it is hopelessly inappropriate will, sooner rather than later, condemn the United States to a devastating trio of consequences: imperial overstretch, perpetual war, and insolvency, leading to a likely collapse similar to that of the former Soviet Union.

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Obama’s empire

An Unprecedented Network of Military Bases That is Still Expanding

Catherine Lutz, New Statesman, July 30, 2009

The 44th president of the United States was elected amid hopes that he would roll back his country’s global dominance. Today, he is commander-in-chief of an unprecedented network of military bases that is still expanding.

In December 2008, shortly before being sworn in as the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama pledged his belief that, “to ensure prosperity here at home and peace abroad”, it was vital to maintain “the strongest military on the planet”. Unveiling his national security team, including George Bush’s defence secretary, Robert Gates, he said: “We also agree the strength of our military has to be combined with the wisdom and force of diplomacy, and that we are going to be committed to rebuilding and restrengthening
alliances around the world to advance American interests and American security.”

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UN: Sharp rise in Afghan deaths

Al Jazeera, July 31, 2009

May was the deadliest month in Afghanistan
with 261 civilians killed [AFP]

The civilian death toll in Afghanistan has risen by 24 per cent this year, the United Nations has said.

In a new report released on Friday, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) blamed bombings by the Taliban and air raids by international forces for the majority of the killings.

The report said that 1,013 civilians were killed on the sidelines of their country’s armed conflict from January to the end of June, compared to 818 in the first half of 2008 and 684 in the same period in 2007.

Commenting on the report, Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said it was critical that steps be taken to shield Afghan communities from fighting.

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Tehran police attack protester memorial

Morning Star Online, Thursday 30 July 2009

Iranian police have fired tear gas and beat anti-government protesters with batons to disperse thousands of people attending a memorial of a woman whose killing made her an icon of the opposition movement.

The memorial service marked the end of the 40-day mourning period under Islam for 10 people killed in protests and clashes on June 20.

The service took place at the grave of one of the victims Neda Agha Soltan, who was shot to death on that day.

The 27-year-old music student’s dying moments were filmed and circulated widely on the internet and her name became a rallying cry for the opposition.

“Neda is alive, Ahmadinejad is dead,” some of those at the ceremony chanted, referring to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who the opposition claims won the June 12 election by fraud.

Plain-clothes forces charged at them with batons and tear gas, some of them chanting: “Death to those who are against the supreme leader.”

Police also barred opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi from joining the crowd around her grave.

When Mr Mousavi arrived at the site, hundreds of police surrounded him.

As several hundred supporters chanted his name, police forced him to leave the vast cemetery on Tehran’s southern outskirts where many of those killed in the nearly seven-week-old crackdown have been buried.

Before the clashes, police arrested two prominent Iranian filmmakers when they tried to lay flowers at Ms Soltan’s grave.

One of them was Jafar Panahi, best known for his film The Circle, which was critical of the treatment of women under the Islamist government and was banned in Iran.

Female documentary maker Mahnaz Mohammadi was arrested with him.

Anger over the abuse of opposition supporters has spread even to conservative government supporters.

Some critics have even compared the government crackdown to the torture and oppression under Iran’s former ruler, the US-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was overthrown in the 1979 revolution that led to the creation of the Islamic Republic.

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The Urumchi Unrest Revisited

The violence in Xinjiang took place almost a month ago, but it continues to generate interesting commentary (see, for example, this thoughtful essay by Pallavi Aiyar). The early July events have also recently had two reverberations in Australia, as Jia Zhangke and two other Chinese filmmakers pulled out of a Melbourne film festival where a documentary expected to present a sympathetic view of one of the people Beijing blames for the unrest was to be shown, and then hackers attacked the festival’s website to protest that film’s inclusion in the line-up. In light of this, we asked James Millward, a leading specialist in the history of Xinjiang who has written about related issues for us before, to share with the readers of China Beat his take on what happened in early July and how it should be understood.

By James Millward | The China Beat, July 29, 2009

The ugly mob violence that roiled the western Chinese city of Urumchi in Xinjiang on July 5th was rather quickly suppressed, and Urumchi is now quiet. Thanks to an unprecedented degree of openness to the international press, moreover, we have a better idea specifically what happened than we have for other such incidents in China.

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Thursday, July 30, 2009

A Case For Interrogating Dick Cheney

Sherwood Ross | MWC News, July 29, 2009

Image

Some in Congress are stung by charges that former Vice President Dick Cheney ran an international assassination op from the White House without telling them about it. They say he told the CIA to withhold the facts from Congress. This raises the question of how much power Cheney actually wielded—and the answer apparently is plenty.

In (Bush lawyer) John Yoo’s version of events, writes Jane Mayer in her book “The Dark Side”(Anchor) “the impetus to break out of Geneva’s strictures…came from the CIA. Many at the Agency, however, saw this differently, suggesting it was Cheney and his lawyer, (David) Addington, who pushed the Agency to take the path toward torture.” A few days after 9/11 Cheney observed the CIA had gone over “to the dark side,” but whether he starred in the role of Darth Vader needs to be established or denied.


The record appears to weight the case against him. Cheney has a long history of yeoman service to the Dark Side. To begin with, he is an unapologetic advocate of force, stating that force “makes your diplomacy more effective going forward, dealing with other problems.” When the first President Bush failed to swing Panama’s voters against General Manuel Noriega with $10 million in cash bribes, he called on Cheney, then his defense secretary, to crush Panama. Cheney did. During Christmas week of 1989, writes Tim Weiner in “Legacy of Ashes”(Anchor), “smart bombs blasted Panama City slums into rubble while Special Forces soldiers fought their way through the capital. Twenty-three Americans and hundreds of innocent Panamanian civilians died in the two weeks it took to arrest Noriega and to bring him in chains to Miami.” That was an example of Cheney’s work.

Later, as Vice President, Cheney led the charge for war on Iraq’s Saddam Hussein by asserting there was “no doubt” he had WMD. “Many of us are convinced he will acquire nuclear weapons very soon,” Cheney told the VFW in Nashville in August, 2002.

Cheney also lowered an Iron Curtain of secrecy around the Bush regime. As John Dean writes in “Worse Than Watergate”(Warner Books), Bush-Cheney secrecy “is extreme—not merely unjustified and excessive but obsessive.” Dean notes, “It has given us a presidency that operates on hidden agendas. To protect their secrets, Bush and Cheney dissemble as a matter of policy.”As U.S. News reported in December, 2003, the Bush-Cheney actions are “a reversal of a decades-long trend of openness in government.”

According to Weiner, six days after 9/11 President Bush issued a secret directive to the CIA ordering it to hunt down and interrogate suspects the world over. “It set no limits on what the agency could do,” Weiner wrote. “It was the foundation for a system of secret prisons where CIA officers and contractors used techniques that include torture.” And just in case the CIA questioned who skippered the ship, Cheney would call its Inspector General into his office, an unprecedented violation of that supposedly independent post.

Upon becoming Vice President, his power led many observers to see Cheney as a “co-president.” Author Dean wrote, “Dick Cheney, effectively a co-president incognito, works behind closed doors and does not answer to Congress or the public.” Noam Chomsky wrote in 2006 in his book “Failed States”(Metropolitan/Owl), “The Cheney-Rumsfeld team for which Bush is the front man has shown repeatedly that it is obsessed with authority and discipline.” That Cheney did run the show is suggested by the fact that, “with the apparent exception of Rice, it was Cheney who did the appointing (of top personnel), not Bush,” James Carroll noted in his “House of War”(Houghton Mifflin).

After 9/11, the Bush regime scrapped due process rights for captured suspects. Cheney said his new legal approach “guarantees that we’ll have the kind of treatment of these individuals that we believe they deserve”—an incredible prejudgment as only a tiny handful of suspects ever saw the inside of a courtroom. Author Carroll asserts Cheney had no less ambitious scheme in mind than “world domination through overwhelming military superiority, with special emphasis on unfettered access to oil…” Carroll says, “Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest have on their hands the blood…of each young American killed, and the blood of many thousands of Iraqis—-all those who have died and will die in that misbegotten war.” Prisoners were just pawns to Cheney, not human beings.

Given this pattern of criminality, a probe into Cheney’s alleged directive to the CIA to withhold information from Congress might appear comparatively trivial. But just as Al Capone was convicted and imprisoned for tax evasion rather than his killings, examining Cheney for deceiving Congress could open the dungeon door to other dark secrets. For example, it was Cheney after 9/11 who backed an alliance with Uzbekistan, even if it tied the U.S. to President Islam Karimov’s infamous torture regime. What took place there?

And if he did give the CIA crooked advice, “he broke the law and violated his oath of office,” The Nation magazine says of Cheney in its August 3rd issue. “News reports outlined how Cheney had ordered the agency to keep the House and Senate intelligence committees in the dark,” the weekly said, adding that Attorney General Eric Holder has “signaled a new openness to investigating the Bush regime’s interrogation practices.”

“Such an inquiry would focus on abuses other than the covert CIA program, but the constant appears to be Cheney, whose office has repeatedly been linked to the previous administration’s torture fetish,” The Nation said, adding, “It is clear that inquiries should proceed on all fronts, not from a desire to ‘get Cheney’ but from recognition that accountability is necessary if we are to restore the system of checks and balances.” And the only way to prevent any repetition “is to hold him fully to account. Anything less would lend dangerous legitimacy to Cheney’s imperial project,” The Nation said. Americans need to know the truth about Cheney—and act on it.

Sherwood Ross a contributing editor to MWC News, is a Miami-based public relations consultant and columnist who formerly worked for major dailies and as a columnist for wire services. Reach him at sherwoodr1[at]yahoo.com.
Articles by Sherwood Ross at MWC News
http://mwcnews.net/SherwoodRoss

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US Blackwater-Xe mercenaries spreads fear in Pakistani town

By Nadeem Sarwar and Aqeel Yousafzai, M&C.com, Jul 27, 2009

Peshawar – Fear is spreading across University Town, an upmarket residential area in Pakistan’s north-western city of Peshawar, due to the overt presence of the controversial US private security contractor Blackwater.

Sporting the customary dark glasses and carrying assault rifles, the mercenaries zoom around the neighbourhood in their black-coloured armoured Chevy Suburbans, and shout at motorists when occasionally stranded in a traffic jam.

The residents are mainly concerned about Blackwater’s reputation as a ruthless, unbridled private army whose employees face multiple charges of murder, child prostitution and weapons smuggling in Iraq.

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Obama And The Deadline For Closing Guantánamo: It’s Worse Than You Think

Andy Worthington, July 29, 2009

Barack Obama signs the Executive Order relating to the closure of Guantanamo, January 2009

When the Obama administration’s Detention Policy Task Force, established by Executive Order on the President’s second day in office, conceded last week that it would miss its six-month deadline to issue its recommendations about how to close Guantánamo, many observers focused on whether this meant that Obama would fail to meet his deadline of Jan 21, 2010 for the closure of the prison, and missed the bigger story, which was only revealed through close scrutiny of the Task Force’s five-page interim report (PDF).

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10,000 Uighurs disappeared during unrest in China, exiled leader claims

Rebiya Kadeer says undercover snatch squads targeted Uighurs during Urumqi clashes

Rebiya Kadeer in TokyoRebiya Kadeer, head of the World Uighur Congress, gives a press conference in Japan. Photograph: Junji Kurokawa/AP

Rebiya Kadeer, the exiled Uighur leader, today claimed that almost 10,000 Uighurs had “disappeared” during ethnic unrest in China’s north-western region of Xinjiang earlier this month and called on the international community to launch an inquiry.

Speaking during a controversial visit to Japan, Kadeer said Chinese authorities had used undercover “snatch squads” to target Uighurs during clashes between Uighur and Han Chinese in the city of Urumqi on 5 July.

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Re-imagining a democratic, secular and unitary state in Palestine


By sudhan

Self determination, Ethical De-colonization and Equality[1]

By Omar Barghouti | ZNet, July 29, 2009

Omar Barghouti’s ZSpace Page

[Contribution to the Reimagining Society Project hosted by ZCommunications]

INTRODUCTION

With Yassir Arafat’s departure, the doubling of the population of Jewish-Israeli colonial settlers in the occupied Palestinian territory, the latest Israeli slow genocide in Gaza and the fast disintegration of the last vestiges of Israeli “democracy,” the two-state “solution” for the Palestinian-Israeli colonial conflict is finally dead. Good riddance! This was never a moral or practical solution to start with, as its main objective has always been to win official Palestinian legitimization of Israel’s colonial and apartheid existence on top of most of the area of historic Palestine. It is high time to move on to the most just, morally sound and sustainable solution: the secular, democratic unitary state.

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Wednesday, July 29, 2009

President Obama ignores torture

By Helen Thomas | Times Union, July 29, 2009

Secrecy is endemic in all governments. It goes with the turf, especially if their leaders hope to hide illegal or immoral behavior, such as torture of foreign prisoners.

Many Americans heaved a sigh of relief last January when President Barack Obama banned the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

It made the administration look more humane than the Bush-Cheney team. But that is not the whole story.

Obama left unaddressed the possibility of torture in secret foreign prisons under our control as in Abu Ghraib in Iraq or Bagram in Afghanistan, not to mention the ‘black sites” sponsored by our foreign clients in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, Thailand and other countries.

“The United States will not torture,” Obama said in his directive. But he has been silent on the question of whether the U.S. would help others do the torturing.

Members of Congress knew a lot about U.S. torture practices. But Republicans loyal to the Bush administration and Democrats, too, played along and kept silent at the horror of it all.

Why did no bells ring for the U.S. lawmakers — particularly those privy to the brutality — when briefed on the abusive treatment of the captives. Did they owe more allegiance to the CIA than to the honor of our country?

There are hair-raising reports of methods that Americans — including private contractors — have used to coerce information from our prisoners.

They include slamming a prisoner against a wall; denying him sleep and food; waterboarding him under so-called enhanced interrogation; and keeping him in a crate filled with insects.

I remember when President Ronald Reagan, marveling at the courage of American soldiers, used to say: “Where do we get such men?” And I have to ask: “Where did we get such people who would inflict so much pain and ruthlessness on others?”

William Rivers Pitt, a best-selling author who wrote “The Greatest Sedition is Silence,” recently raised the emotional question of whether U.S. adoption of torture has debased the international standards for treatment of prisoners and that our enemies may now feel that they can torture Americans. Pitt specifically expressed concern about Army Pvt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan last month.

American military leaders had warned President Bush over and over that U.S. torture of prisoners could boomerang against our troops. But he would not listen.

Obama has blocked publication of pictures of the harsh treatment of prisoners from our two ongoing wars — in Iraq and Afghanistan — but the word still gets around.

Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail: helent@hearstdc.com.

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Lies and Israel’s war crimes

Ben White, The Electronic Intifada, 28 July 2009

A Palestinian UN worker inspects debris after an Israeli air strike on a UN school in Gaza where civilians were seeking refuge, 17 January 2009. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)


This month marked six months since the “official” conclusion to Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip, “Operation Cast Lead.” From 27 December to 18 January, the might of the one of the world’s strongest militaries laid waste to a densely-packed territory of 1.4 million Palestinians without an escape route.

The parallel propaganda battle fought by Israel’s official and unofficial apologists continued after the ceasefire, in a desperate struggle to combat the repeated reports by human rights groups of breaches of international law. This article will look at some of the strategies of this campaign of disinformation, confusion, and lies — and the reality of Israel’s war crimes in the Gaza Strip. Very early on in Operation Cast Lead, the scale of Israel’s attack became apparent. In just the first six days the Israeli Air Force carried out more than 500 sorties against targets in the Gaza Strip. That amounted to an attack from the air roughly every 18 minutes — not counting hundreds of helicopter attacks, tank and navy shelling, and infantry raids. All of this on a territory similar in size to the US city of Seattle.

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Netanyahu says Gazans will overthrow Hamas

Middle East Online, First Published 2009-07-29



Calling for a coup against Palestinian democracy?

Hardline Israeli PM predicts overthrow of Palestinian democracy as Gazans suffer under Israeli siege.
TEL AVIV – Hardline Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday predicted the people of the Gaza Strip will one day overthrow the democratically elected Hamas movement.

Israel, which wants to crush any Palestinian liberation movement, responded to Hamas’s win in the elections with sanctions, and almost completely blockaded the impoverished coastal strip after Hamas seized power in 2007, although a ‘lighter’ siege had already existed before.

Human rights groups, both international and Israeli, slammed Israel’s siege of Gaza, branding it “collective punishment.”

There are 1.5 million inhabitants in the Israeli-besieged.

A group of international lawyers and human rights activists had also accused Israel of committing “genocide” through its crippling blockade of the Strip.

“If the Palestinians could, they would overthrow Hamas and believe me one day they will,” Netanyahu said at the National Security Academy’s graduation ceremony.

Netanyahu, himself accused of being a radical Jew, accused Hamas of being part of radical Islam.

“Eventually, radical Islam will be defeated by the global information revolution, the freedom to spread ideas and with the help of technology.”

“This won’t happen immediately, but it will happen. The only thing that could delay or disrupt radical Islam’s demise is the possibility that (radicals) will obtain nuclear arms,” he said, in a reference to Iran.

The hardline Israeli PM, who is accused of seeking to starve 1.5 million people to death, made remarks about Palestinian internal affairs.

“By making the Palestinians of Gaza wear a veil, the Hamas regime is not doing much to make itself popular,” Netanyahu was quoted by YNetnews website as saying.

On Sunday, Palestinian officials said Hamas has ordered women lawyers to wear a headscarf while in court.

Israel’s war on Gaza killed nearly 1,400 Palestinians, mainly civilians, and wounded 5,450 others.

The war also left tens of thousands of houses destroyed, while their residents remained homeless.

Gaza is still considered under Israeli occupation as Israel controls air, sea and land access to the Strip.

The Rafah crossing with Egypt, Gaza’s sole border crossing that bypasses Israel, rarely opens as Egypt is under immense US and Israeli pressure to keep the crossing shut.

Fatah has little administrative say in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and has no power in Arab east Jerusalem, both of which were illegally occupied by Israel in 1967.

Israel also currently occupies the Lebanese Shabaa Farms and the Syrian Golan Heights.

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US Eyes ‘Joint Patrols’ to Keep Presence in Iraq’s Cities

US Patrols Regarded With Suspicion by Iraqi Forces, Civilians

by Jason Ditz, Antiwar.com, July 28, 2009

Since its June 30 pullout from Iraq’s cities, US troops have found it increasingly difficult to conduct patrols in the cities. All such patrols will have to be joint, but Iraqi forces have declined to allow them access to many cities, including Baghdad. Patrols that have gone without accompanying Iraqi forces have been publicly condemned.

But now, though violence hasn’t really gotten any worse since the pullback, the US is redoubling its effots to secure the joint patrols, particularly in Mosul. The new excuse is monitoring reconstruction projects, monitoring which they claim is vital for the Iraqi economy.

Iraqi forces, however, remain reluctant to allow the patrols into the cities, and even when they get there the residents are not exactly welcoming them with open arms. Though the US determination to get at least some of its 132,000 troops into Iraq’s cities is unlikely to vanish, it seems that going forward they will be clashing with Iraq’s equally strong determination to see them remain out of sight as much as possible.

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International Movements Breaking the Siege on Gaza

by Suzanne Morrison | CommonDreams.org, July 28, 2009

Since June 2007 the Israeli government has imposed almost complete closure over the Gaza Strip. The siege prevents nearly all movement of people or goods to and from the coastal region with only minimal amounts of humanitarian provisions inconsistently allowed in. With the exception of a small amount of carnations allowed out earlier this year, there has been a virtual ban on all exports from Gaza since 2007. [1] A quick socio-economic glimpse of Gaza includes agricultural losses totaling US $30 million and more than 40,000 jobs for the 2007/2008 season, the suspension of 98% of industrial operations, and more than 80% of Gaza’s population is now dependent on humanitarian aid from international aid providing agencies. [2]

Closure of Gaza and the West Bank has intermittently been imposed since 1991. While Israel prevents movement and access in the name of temporary security measures, the regularity and extent of these mechanisms, particularly since the Oslo process, represents an institutionalized policy of closure. Israel’s current siege on Gaza reflects an unprecedented and severe application of the closure policy. In the past year internationals have tried to break the siege on Gaza by bringing critical medical supplies and other humanitarian goods into Gaza.

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IRAN: Victims’ Families Share Stories, Defying Pressure

By Tesa Sabet | Inter Press Service News

TEHRAN, Jul 28 (IPS) – It has become common these days to hear about the killing of young Iranians at the hands of Iran’s security forces and Basij militia. So many families have come forward with heart-wrenching tales about the deaths of their children in prison or during peaceful protests, it is difficult to keep count.

While each story is unique, all speak of serious human rights violations, extreme violence, and an unaccountable court, prison and security system that gives families the runaround. Another common thread is the pressures that families face when trying to claim the bodies of their children or to hold funeral and memorial services.

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Police break up Kyrgyz protest

Al Jazeera, July 29, 2009

Police detained most of the protesters soon
after the demonstration began [AFP]

Police in Kyrgyzstan have dispersed a protest against alleged fraud in the country’s presidential election, reportedly detaining nearly all of the about 200 protesters.

The authorities quickly intercepted demonstrators on Wednesday as they attempted to march through Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital.

There were said to be two or three officers, some dressed in plain clothes, for each demonstrator.

The protesters had been shouting slogans such as “Return the stolen power!” and were about to march on the presidential palace in the centre of Bishkek.

Some protesters scuffled with police.

“They [the protesters] broke public security rules,” Gulya Kozhokulova, a district prosecutor, said. “Police acted in line with the law.”

Disputed poll

The demonstrators were supporters of Almazbek Atambayev, the main opposition candidate in last Thursday’s election, who denounced the vote as “illegitimate” citing widespread fraud.

The election was won by Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the incumbent president, with 76.43 per cent of the vote compared to 8.39 per cent for Atambayev, according to the official results.

Election monitors described the vote as a ”disappointment” and said it had failed to meet international standards.

Bakiyev was first elected in 2005, in a poll seen as free and fair by Western observers.

But since then he has been accused by the opposition of becoming increasingly repressive and a string of mysterious attacks on politicians and journalists in the run-up to the election raised concerns.

The opposition has said it will state more protests across the country ahead of an informal summit of a Russia-dominated security bloc to be held on Friday.

They have threatened to block roads in the resort in east Kyrgyzstan where the meeting is due to take place.

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Tuesday, July 28, 2009

CIA ‘put pressure on Britain to cover up its use of torture’

By David Rose | The Daily Mail/UK, July 25, 2009

Binyam Mohamed
‘Sensitive information’: The treatment of Binyam Mohamed is at the centre of a security row

The CIA has been secretly pressuring the British Government to help it cover up its use of torture, documents filed in the High Court have revealed.

The documents, to be discussed at a hearing this week, suggest that the UK authorities did everything they could to accede to the CIA’s wishes while at the same time trying to conceal the fact they were talking to the agency.

It is the latest twist in the saga of Binyam Mohamed, 30, the Ethiopian UK resident released from Guantanamo Bay in February after seven years in US captivity.

In an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday earlier this year, he told how he was captured in Pakistan, interrogated by the CIA, tortured, then sent to Morocco for further ‘medieval’ torture on a CIA ‘extraordinary rendition’ flight.

After 18 months there, he was tortured again in the CIA’s ‘dark prison’ in Afghanistan. He alleged that UK officials from MI5 were ‘complicit’ in his ordeal.

In a judgment in July last year, Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones wrote a seven-paragraph summary of Mr Mohamed’s treatment, based on documents by US intelligence officials. The judges said this amounted to evidence he was tortured.

But the summary has been ‘redacted’ because Foreign Secretary David Miliband insists that if the court were to publish it, US intelligence agencies would cease to share information with Britain, so damaging UK security.

The court will make a final decision about publication after the hearing this week.

The only piece of evidence Mr Miliband’s lawyers have produced is a letter, redacted, unsigned and undated, with its letterhead concealed, which, they say, summarises the views of US President Barack Obama’s administration.

It states: ‘Public disclosure of the information contained in the seven paragraphs could likely result in serious damage to UK and US national security.

‘If it is determined that HMG [Her Majesty's Government] is unable to protect information we provide to it, even if that inability is caused by your judicial system, we will necessarily have to review with the greatest care the sensitivity of information we can provide in future.’

After an order from the judges, Government lawyers were forced to admit the letter had been sent to an unnamed officer in MI6, and had been written by someone at the CIA.

Former Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said it was ‘deeply disappointing that the British Government seems to have been prepared to do the CIA’s bidding’.

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West Bank Settlers Top 300,000 as Growth Continues

11 New Outposts Set Up in Past Two Days

by Jason Ditz, Antiwar.com, July 27, 2009

According to the Israeli military, the population of settlers in the West Bank passed 300,000 for the first time this year, and sits at 304,569 as of the end of June, an increase of 2.3% in the past six months. Usually growth rates are even higher in the second half of the year. The number does not include some 200,000 more settlers living in East Jerusalem.

The announcement comes less than a week after a study by an Israeli think tank showed the heavy subsidies of the settlements by the national government were causing disproportionate increases in the populations of the outposts, at a time when Israel is under increasing pressure to halt their growth.

The Netanyahu government has resisted the calls however, and insists growth will continue. The settlers have considerable sway in Israel’s right-wing government and today held a massive anti-US rally in Jerusalem condemning President Obama’s criticism of the settlements.

The government has tried to salve international criticism with the promise to dismantle the smaller, illegal outposts in the West Bank, but over the past two days it is reported that 11 new outposts were set up by the militant “Youth for Israel” movement, which seemed to consist of little more than a handful of huts set up by teenagers. The Israeli military, however, declined to stop the construction of the new outposts.

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The German offensive in Afghanistan

Ulrich Rippert, wsws.org, 27 July 2009

The German army has dramatically intensified its intervention in Afghanistan in the past few days. In the course of a major offensive in northern Afghanistan, it has deployed heavy weaponry including Marder armed personnel carriers and Mörser mortar artillery.

For the first time since Hitler’s troops laid waste to large parts of Europe, the German army is again conducting major military operations against “rebellious elements.” According to press reports, the 21-cm Mörser 18 was one of the main weapons used by Hitler’s Wehrmacht on all of the fronts of the Second World War. Now, the same weapon in its modern form is being used once again to rain down destruction upon the enemy.

The decision for the latest deployment was not made by the German parliament, but rather by the army high command itself. With unprecedented arrogance and self-assertedness, Brigadier General Wolfgang Schneiderhan announced the military action with the words: “It was simply time to undertake this escalation.”

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Real Peace — Or A Mirage?


The Dreyfuss ReportRobert Dreyfuss, The Nation, July 27, 2009
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One way to keep Bibi Netanyahu from making trouble is to keep him so busy meeting US envoys and diplomats that he doesn’t have time for anything else. That appears to be President Obama’s strategy this week, since Netanyahu will be meeting with a veritable avalanche of Americans, including: George Mitchell, the US special envoy; Jim Jones, Obama’s national security adviser; Robert Gates, the holdover secretary of defense who is showing no signs that he intends to go away; and Dennis Ross, the neocon-linked NSC official whose actual job remains ever vague.

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The west widens the Fatah-Hamas split

Palestinian unity is essential for any peace deal – but the US, Britain and the EU are playing a central role in preventing it

It should be obvious that no settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict is going to stick unless it commands broad support or acceptance on both sides. That is especially true of the Palestinians, who have shown time and again that they will never accept the denial of their national and human rights. The necessity of dealing with all representative Palestinian leaders was recognised by Britain’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee yesterday, which called on the government to end its ban on contacts with Hamas.

But despite the parade of top American officials visiting Israel and the Palestinian territories this week to drum up business for a new peace conference, the US, Britain and European Union continue to play a central role in preventing the Palestinian national unity that is essential if any deal is going to have a chance of succeeding. Far from helping to overcome the split between Fatah and Hamas, the US, Israel and their allies in practice do everything they can to promote and widen it.

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High Court rejects Gaza war crimes case

Morning Star Online/UK, Monday 27 July 2009

A Palestinian boy holds up a Hamas flag on a destroyed house in Jebaliya, northern Gaza

A Palestinian boy holds up a Hamas flag on a destroyed house in Jebaliya, northern Gaza

The High Court has thrown out a legal bid by a Palestinian human rights group to hold the British government to account for its “complicity” in Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

Ramallah-based Al-Haq accused the government of failing in its international legal obligations to stop “aid and trade” with Israel, including supplying arms, following Israeli incursions into Gaza in December and January which led to the deaths of 1,400 Palestinians.

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Monday, July 27, 2009

Malalai Joya: The big lie of Afghanistan

Inquiries into the 954 deaths in police custody since 1990 have all proved fruitless – and then this historic case comes along

In 2005, I was the youngest person elected to the new Afghan parliament. Women like me, running for office, were held up as an example of how the war in Afghanistan had liberated women. But this democracy was a facade, and the so-called liberation a big lie.

On behalf of the long-suffering people of my country, I offer my heartfelt condolences to all in the UK who have lost their loved ones on the soil of Afghanistan. We share the grief of the mothers, fathers, wives, sons and daughters of the fallen. It is my view that these British casualties, like the many thousands of Afghan civilian dead, are victims of the unjust policies that the Nato countries have pursued under the leadership of the US government.

Almost eight years after the Taliban regime was toppled, our hopes for a truly democratic and independent Afghanistan have been betrayed by the continued domination of fundamentalists and by a brutal occupation that ultimately serves only American strategic interests in the region.

You must understand that the government headed by Hamid Karzai is full of warlords and extremists who are brothers in creed of the Taliban. Many of these men committed terrible crimes against the Afghan people during the civil war of the 1990s.

For expressing my views I have been expelled from my seat in parliament, and I have survived numerous assassination attempts. The fact that I was kicked out of office while brutal warlords enjoyed immunity from prosecution for their crimes should tell you all you need to know about the “democracy” backed by Nato troops.

In the constitution it forbids those guilty of war crimes from running for high office. Yet Karzai has named two notorious warlords, Fahim and Khalili, as his running mates for the upcoming presidential election. Under the shadow of warlordism, corruption and occupation, this vote will have no legitimacy, and once again it seems the real choice will be made behind closed doors in the White House. As we say in Afghanistan, “the same donkey with a new saddle”.

So far, Obama has pursued the same policy as Bush in Afghanistan. Sending more troops and expanding the war into Pakistan will only add fuel to the fire. Like many other Afghans, I risked my life during the dark years of Taliban rule to teach at underground schools for girls. Today the situation of women is as bad as ever. Victims of abuse and rape find no justice because the judiciary is dominated by fundamentalists. A growing number of women, seeing no way out of the suffering in their lives, have taken to suicide by self-immolation.

This week, US vice-president Joe Biden asserted that “more loss of life [is] inevitable” in Afghanistan, and that the ongoing occupation is in the “national interests” of both the US and the UK.

I have a different message to the people of Britain. I don’t believe it is in your interests to see more young people sent off to war, and to have more of your taxpayers’ money going to fund an occupation that keeps a gang of corrupt warlords and drug lords in power in Kabul.

What’s more, I don’t believe it is inevitable that this bloodshed continues forever. Some say that if foreign troops leave Afghanistan will descend into civil war. But what about the civil war and catastrophe of today? The longer this occupation continues, the worse the civil war will be.

The Afghan people want peace, and history teaches that we always reject occupation and foreign domination. We want a helping hand through international solidarity, but we know that values like human rights must be fought for and won by Afghans themselves.

I know there are millions of British people who want to see an end to this conflict as soon as possible. Together we can raise our voice for peace and justice.

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