Saturday, June 2, 2007

What Happened to Nasrallah’s Red Line?


A Comment By Tony Sayegh

Last week, Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah in a televised speech concerning the events around Nahr El-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon stated that attacks by the thugs of Fath Al-Islam on the Lebanese Army were a red line. He called for the arrest and trial of those responsible for attacking and killing Lebanese soldiers. Equally important, Nasrallah stated that a military attack on the refugee camp, which is the home of some 40,000 Palestinian refugees, by the Lebanese Army is another red line.

At the time of the speech a pseudo truce was in effect which allowed about 25,000 of the Palestinian refugees to flee Nahr El-Bared to other refugee camps, primarily the nearby Beddawi refugee camp which has doubled in size. Since then, and especially in the past two days, the Lebanese Army, utilizing newly supplied U.S. artillery and a helicopter, has been shelling Nahr El-Bared at the rate of one shell every few seconds around the clock. Fires are raging in parts of the camp and destruction due to the random shelling is expected to be large.

The Lebanese Army is keeping all reporters at least two kilometers away and is not allowing humanitarian workers entry into the camp, which still has up to 15,000 refugees holed-up inside with no water, food, electricity or medical supplies. A catastrophe of huge proportions is in the making, which explains the Army’s rough treatment of all journalists and the complete news blackout on what is unfolding. As Dr. Marcy Newman stated in a live dispatch from near the camp, “…one refugee from Nahr al-Bared camp, who passed through a checkpoint earlier today, was told by a Lebanese soldier, ‘I hope that we can round up all the Palestinians, throw benzene on you, and light a fire.’ This is a truth that Lebanon does not want told.”

With this dramatic escalation taking place, Hizbullah has fallen silent.

When Hizbullah was resisting the Israeli invasion of south Lebanon last summer all Palestinians in Lebanon, in the occupied areas and everywhere, stood by Hizbullah, and Nasrallah was celebrated as a hero. Palestinians in the refugee camps in Lebanon, in spite of their meager means, opened their homes to Lebanese refugees from the south. Sadly, the reverse has not happened to the Palestinian refugees fleeing Nahr El-Bared. I read that not one Lebanese church, mosque or any civil group has opened its doors to the Palestinians.

The Palestinians have become accustomed to respect the word of Nasrallah. He, in the past, said what he meant and meant what he said. Last winter hundreds of thousands of Hizbullah supporters took to the streets of Beirut and thousands of them have been camped out outside the Sarai of Prime Minister Siniora, whose government Hizbullah considers illegitimate. Nothing comparable has happened in support of the Palestinian refugees being slaughtered by the army of that same illegitimate government. The question is, why? Hizbullah’s credibility, especially with the Palestinians, is on the line.

It is quite possible that Hizbullah suspects that the attack on Nahr El-Bared and the flood of U.S. weapons to the Siniora government is a prelude to another round of attacks targeting Hizbullah itself. This time it will be a two-pronged attack: Israel from the south and the newly equipped Lebanese Army from the north. If this happens, Hizbullah would find its natural base of support among the Palestinians in Lebanon. Therefore, it behooves Hizbullah not to try to be politically correct and to respect its own warning that an all-out attack on Nahr El-Bared is a red line. It is time for Hizbullah to act and to back up its words with action.

Whose Truth?


The northern entrance of Nahr al-Bared Refugee Camp, under fire from Lebanese forces. (Dr. Marcy Newman)

When we finally reached Badawi camp to deliver the medicine we were learned that one refugee from Nahr al-Bared camp, who passed through a checkpoint earlier today, was told by a Lebanese soldier, "I hope that we can round up all the Palestinians, throw benzene on you, and light a fire." This is a truth that Lebanon does not want told. These are the stories that must be told and they far outweigh and out number the story of one prominent, wealthy Lebanese leader's international tribunal.

By Dr. Marcy Newman writing from Beirut, Live from Lebanon, 2 June 2007
(Dr. Marcy Newman is a Visiting Professor at the Center for American Studies and Research at the American University of Beirut and a Fellow at the Initiative for Middle East Policy Dialogue)

".......Since early morning U.S. weapons have bombarded the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon, though no one can get a clear idea about what exactly is happening there. On the news we watched bombs going off every few seconds all day long with huge clouds of black smoke smoldering in the sky.......

We saw a crowd of photojournalists who had also been stopped by the army. They were prohibited from shooting film footage of what was going on in the camp and were forced to stay some two to three kilometers from the area where the army was directing its new U.S. donated artillery. Some reported being shot at by the army earlier in the day. All of them (Lebanese and internationals alike) complained of the army inhibiting them from telling the story of what is actually happening in Nahr al-Bared refugee camp. For a country with signs declaring "the truth" everywhere you look it seems rather ironic that journalists are prevented from witnessing the events unfolding before them.

Throughout the day we heard that two Lebanese soldiers were killed and that twelve "terrorists" were also killed. How they know these figures is perplexing, but what is particularly disturbing is that somehow the fact that 15,000 Palestinians still trapped inside this camp are completely absent from the news coverage of the story inside Lebanon (and I gather outside as well). Somehow the fact that there will be Palestinian civilians indiscriminately killed because of this incessant bombing escapes the media's attention......"

Why’s Lebanon Burning?


If you have ever seen Palestinian children reverentially holding aloft those ancient keys to the abandoned homes of their parents and grandparents, you would know what I am talking about.

By Aijaz Zaka Syed
PalestineChronicle.com

"Lebanon is no stranger to conflicts. Especially those involving the Palestinians. But as my hero Robert Fisk, offering another ringside view of another war in the Middle East says, there is something really ‘obscene’ about watching the ever suffering Palestinians get caught in another war that is not of their making.......

Thousands of Palestinians have escaped with only their clothes on the back. Hundreds of families have been torn apart as they ran for their lives once again in their eventful history.

The fact that most of these families are the survivors of the 1982 Invasion by Israel and the subsequent Sabra and Shatila massacres by Ariel Sharon’s goons only underscores the never-ending tragedy that is the Palestinian existence. How long will the Palestinians have to pay for the crimes that they have not committed?

According to the UN, there are still nearly eight thousand Palestinian refugees trapped inside Nahr Al Bared that was originally home to nearly 40,000 of them, without food and war. Many of the Palestinians fled for safety after an informal ceasefire came into being last week. As I write this, the Lebanese troops have resumed their attack......

Many others suggest that Fatah Al Islam are mere mercenaries who, unbeknownst to them, could be part of a bigger plot to destablise Lebanon and ensnare the already bedevilled Middle East into another conflict. The fact that the US has lost no time in jumping into the fray by rushing ‘military aid’ to the Fouad Siniora government gives credence to the second opinion......

The Palestinian refugees do not exactly live in ideal conditions elsewhere in the Middle East. Poverty, unemployment and other problems that go with them are common everywhere, just as they are in the Occupied Territories. They are seen with suspicion and have little freedom of movement or action, wherever they are.

However, Lebanon is easily the worst of them all for the Palestinians. Living in abject poverty and squalid conditions, they are prisoners in their camps for all intents and purposes. This is not my view but the shared opinion of the UN aid agencies and civil society groups working in the region. The Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have no rights, freedom or dignity, to speak of. As some conscientious UN officials and independent journalists have tried to report, the Palestinians have been caught yet again in a dangerous game of big powers. And they are being meted out collective punishment for what they are. The Western media has already condemned them for ‘supporting Al Qaeda elements.’

If Fatah Al Islam snipers are shooting at Palestinian women and children fleeing Nahr Al Bared, the Lebanese tanks are firing deep inside the refugee camp — ostensibly at Fatah Al Islam terrorists. However, they always end up targeting Palestinian civilians......."

Fatah leader laments the intervention of foreign parties in the movement's structure and development


"Ramallah – Ma'an – A prominent Fatah leader and member of the Fatah revolutionary council, Othman Abu Gharbiyya, on Saturday criticized "foreign attempts to interfere in the movement's development."

"Foreign intervention in the movement's organisational structure is practiced by several parties, including the US and Europeans. They intervene at both formal and informal levels, as if the organisational structure is something that can be manipulated according to foreign demands," said Abu Gharbiyya.

He added, "Foreign intervention previously reached the degree of determining the names of candidates to be nominated for legislative elections or those to be excluded, and there was intervention even in the names to be nominated for organisational committees."....."

***

A Comment:

Instead of criticizing "foreign powers" why don't you look inwards and ask how a supposedly "revolutionary" movement degenerated to become an Usraeli tool dependent on Usrael and their Arab puppets (KSA, Egypt and Jordan) for arms, training and financing? How can the Palestinians have any faith in an organization that allows this to happen and in the open? To have any chances of survival, Fatah has to be rebuilt from the ground up. It has to purge itself from all the collaborators and agents such as Dahlan; even the puppet Abbas has to be kicked out.

I am afraid that it is way too late for that to happen or to succeed. The rot and decay are total and the only thing left is to give Fatah a burial.

The Nazi rabbi


By Khalid Amayreh

thepeoplesvoice.org Via uruknet.info

"Shortly before Israeli occupation soldiers in cold blood murdered two Gaza children, who apparently were searching for scrap metal to sell for a few cents in order to help feed their impoverished families, the former Chief rabbi of Israel, Mordechai Elyahu, urged the Israeli army and government to use the "Nazi choice" against Palestinians.

Elyahu reportedly petitioned the Israeli government to carry out a series of carpet bombings of Palestinian population centers in Gaza, arguing that a ground invasion of the world’s most crowded spot would endanger Israeli soldiers.

"If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand," said Shmuel Elyahu, the son of Mordechai Elyahu, quoting his father. "And if they do not stop after 1,000, then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop."

Mordechai, considered one of the most knowledgeable Talmudic sages in Israel, said it was forbidden to risk the lives of Jews for fear of injuring and killing Palestinian civilians......

This totally racist discourse toward non-Jews represents the mainstream and modus operandi at Merkaz Harav where Talmudic sages such as Haim Druckman, Avraham Shapira, Dov Lior, etc, teach that non-Jews are sub-humans, and ought to be enslaved or destroyed.

Western people, constantly brainwashed with unceasing Zionist propaganda and disinformation about Israeli "democracy" and "liberalism" might be prompted to think that such ideas are marginal, eccentric or even anecdotal and that they are espoused by only a small bunch of Talmudic extremists. But this is not the case at all. Today, this Nazi-like ideology is "manual for action" for hundreds of thousands of Jews around the world, especially in Israel, including the estimated half a million settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem who openly claim that non-Jews living under Jewish rule ought to be enslaved, expelled or annihilated......

There is no doubt that the nefarious ideas of Jewish supremacy, as taught by Talmudic circles such as Mirkaz Harav, is poisoning and even nazifying the minds of thousands of Jewish and Israeli youths. Earlier in May, a recent Jewish immigrant from France murdered in cold blood an Arab taxi driver from East Jerusalem after beguiling the unsuspecting victim to take him to Netanya. The murderer, named Julian Sufir, had apparently been subjected to heavy doses of religious indoctrination at a synagogue near his home, which probably preached the message that non-Jews are infra-humans. When this Sufir was interrogated by policy, he so calmly and nonchalantly told them that "I just wanted to kill an Arab, any Arab. There is no difference between killing an Arab and killing an animal. When I killed him, I felt I was slaughtering a sheep.!!".......

This danger is so real and so tangible especially when one considers the fact that tens of thousands of Israeli occupation soldiers happen to be graduates of Talmudic schools, known as Yeshevot. Needless to say, most of these schools teach that killing innocent Arab children is a great mitzvah and makes a Jew closer to God......

I say "when" because the Israeli Jewish society is drifting menacingly to jingoistic religious chauvinism that can be compared with the drifting ideological currents among Germans in the mid and late 1930s. Hence, a takeover of power in Israel by the settler and pro-settler camp is not a matter of "if" but rather "when" it will happen......"

Lebanon, Bush and the Three Stooges


The Three Puppets Promised an American Paradise!

Government for Hire

A Good Piece

By RANNIE AMIRI
CounterPunch

"As the siege of the Nahr al-Barad refugee camp in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli enters its third week, the last piece of this strange puzzle has finally been put in place. For completing the jigsaw of Tripoli, we have no less than the Bush administration itself to thank, along with the three stooges of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt.....

So if the well-armed extremists were invited into Lebanon by Siniora and Hariri Inc., why now turn against them? If they were to do their bidding against Hezbollah (their real nemesis; presciently calling on the government to resign for the past several months) what led to the current conflict?

It was by no coincidence that shortly after hostilities began with the unwelcome guests, the United States and their Arab allies did not hesitate an instant to either send or pledge sophisticated weaponry and arms to the Lebanese government in order to combat "al-Qaeda's" presence there.

We should remember that none of these countries lifted a finger to stop the Israeli onslaught of Lebanon last summer by even appealing to the United States to call for a ceasefire. They too wanted Hezbollah destroyed.

So what Israel could not accomplish last year will now be done from within.

In both Lebanon and Iraq, the solution is to foment division among the people in order to ignite a civil war. It is already well under way in Iraq. And if Israel was unable neutralize Hezbollah prior to a US strike against Iran, it appears an attempt to create a similar climate is taking place in Lebanon......

Fouad Siniora, Saad Hariri and Walid Jumblatt, in this most ugly game, have indeed proven the Lebanese government to be one for hire."

Dying for Nothing


By Charley Reese

".....Of course, these days Memorial Day gets larded with politics and pseudo-patriotism. It's nauseating to watch a bunch of actors, entertainers and politicians who never heard a gun fired in anger put on a maudlin performance as if they really gave a rat's toenail for the dead......

War is mass murder, and no doubt part of the degradation of the human species is the fact that starting with the War Between the States, the human toll of war has increased exponentially. It's ironic that wars take the healthiest and bravest, while the unhealthy and the cowardly manage to evade them.....

The present war is a bad war. It is not being fought to protect freedom, let alone the American people. Poor Cindy Sheehan, who bravely protested the war, finally gave up. She felt betrayed by the Democrats, by the antiwar movement, but the saddest thing of all, she said, was that she finally faced the fact her son died for nothing.

And sad as it is to say, it's true. The politicians and some of the media chicken hawks like to fork the fertilizer talking about sacrifices for freedom (sacrifices most of them studiously avoid ever making), but it's just fertilizer......

Why did we go to war in Iraq? Because the president hated Saddam Hussein; because the Israeli lobby wanted us to; because the crazy neoconservatives had the insane idea that the Middle East could be democratized at the point of a gun; because oil companies and other corporations lusted for profit......."

The Farce Called PA: "Security" Personnel Can't Even Secure Themselves!


Israel is Using Guerrilla Tactics More Successfully Than the Palestinians; Can You Believe This??

Israeli Undercover Agents Enter a Refugee Camp in the Middle of Gaza and Abduct Four, Including Two in the PA "Security" Services!


"Gaza - Ma'an – The media spokesman for the Palestinian national security service in the southern area has announced that undercover Israeli forces arrested four citizens, including two brothers, who are both employees in the national security service, on Saturday at dawn.

The spokesman said that the Israeli unit entered the central Gaza Strip Al Maghazi refugee camp and arrested the men, after entering the camp at 4:00am and invasively searching their home."

British academics did the right thing


By Khalid Amayreh

"......The sheer injustice of this occupation has escalated rapidly of late, with the construction of a gigantic concrete wall in the West Bank, which has effectively reduced Palestinian population centers to de-facto detention camps.

As expected, the shipyard dogs of Zionism, from California to Tel Aviv, including the heads of organized Jewish communities in Britain, have been protesting wildly the UCU decision, describing it as unfair and hasty. Some of the more irate Zionists have shamelessly called the decision 'unethical', 'unconscionable' and 'immoral' as if there is anything moral about the Nazi-like treatment meted out to these helpless Palestinians for wanting to be free from the shackles of Jewish racism......

The truth of the matter is that supporters of apartheid in Israel have no more right to lecture British academics on the morality of boycotting the Jewish state than does a famous courtesan in lecturing critics on the virtues of chastity or an irredeemable thief preaching honesty. I say this because no other state under the sun embodies brutal racism and apartheid and murder and oppression against a constantly hounded and tormented people more than Israel does.

Today, Israel looks very much like Germany prior the Second World War when Jews and non-Jews alike were experiencing the poisoned, macabre atmosphere of virulent racism fostered and promoted by the Third Reich. This week, the Shin Bet, Israel's chief domestic intelligence agency, made it very clear that even legal and fully lawful activities questioning Israel's apartheid policies and institutionalized racism (e.g. that Israel is a Jewish state, not a state of all its citizens) would be strongly suppressed. In other words, non-Jewish citizens in Israel proper (let alone in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem) have no right even to use whatever legal loopholes there are to demand equality as citizens. Needless to say, this is fascism, pure, brash and simple.....

And at the top of all of this, the Israeli army has been arresting thousands of political and community leaders throughout the West Bank, including Palestinian cabinet officials, lawmakers, mayors, doctors, teachers, college professors, business leaders, students, intellectuals, journalists, religious leaders who make up the crème de la crème of the Palestinian society.This Gestapo-like madness is obviously aimed at throwing the Palestinian community off-balance and depriving the Palestinian people of competent leaders who would stand in the face of Israel's efforts to liquidate the enduring Palestinian cause.....

In the preceding years of the Second World War, the world committed a fatal mistake when it gave Nazi Germany the benefit of the doubt on the ground that maybe, just maybe, Hitler and cohorts might revert to their senses. Now, the world can't and shouldn't allow itself to make the same fateful blunder again. If Israel is not stopped now, there is no doubt that it will follow the same, the very same, footsteps of the Nazis. The writing is on the wall, even literally, as in Hebron. "

Israel: Mythologizing a 20th Century Accident


By Gabriel Kolko

".......A state based on religion rather than the will of all of its inhabitants was at the end of the 19th century not only a medieval notion but also a very eccentric idea, one Herzl concocted in the rarified environment of cafes where ideas were produced with scant regard for reality. It was also full of countless contradictions, based not merely on the conflicts between theological dogmas and democracy but also vast cultural differences among Jews, all of which were to appear later. Europe's Jews have precious little in common, and their mores and languages are very distinct. But the gap between Jews from Europe and those from the Arab world was far, far greater.......

....Moreover, from its inception Zionism was symbiotic on Great Powers – principally Great Britain – that saw it as a way of spreading their colonial ambitions to the Middle East. As early as 1902 Herzl met with Joseph Chamberlain, then British Colonial Secretary, to further Zionist claims in the region bordering Egypt, and the following year he hired David Lloyd George – later to become prime minister – to handle the Zionist case......

It was scarcely an accident that in November 1917 Lord Arthur Balfour was to make Britain's historic endorsement of a Jewish homeland in their newly mandated territory of Palestine in a letter to Rothschild......

It is a Zionist myth that there were many Jews who wished to go to a primitive, hot, dusty place and did so. They did not – and all of the available numbers prove this conclusively. After the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 the Pale was abolished and a very large number of the Jews in it moved to Russia's cities; many of them saw the Bolsheviks as liberators and filled the ranks of the revolution at every level. If they emigrated, and here the numbers are very important, it was not – if they had a choice – to Palestine......

In 1893 there were an estimated 10,000 Jews in Palestine, 61,000 in 1920, and 122,000 in 1925. All of these figures are only the best-informed estimates; there were censuses in 1922 and 1931 only, and even the 1922 numbers are contested. But the general trend is beyond doubt and very clear. For every Jew who went to Palestine from 1890 to 1924, at least 27 went to the Western Hemisphere alone. Relatively, the Zionist project was the utopian dream of a tiny minority and it would have failed save for two factors, the Holocaust and the much-overlooked fact that in 1924 the U.S. passed a new immigration law based on quotas using the nationalities distribution in the 1890 census as a basis, effectively cutting off migration from East and South Europe to a mere trickle of what it had been......."

Friday, June 1, 2007


The Lebanese "Army" Must be Getting Ready for Tea Service....
It Has Just Raised the White Flag.....Which it Does Best!

Kissinger, The War Criminal Gives Advice


The lessons of Vietnam
Iraq desperately needs a political solution in the short term to make the war more manageable for the next president.


By Henry A. Kissinger
The Los Angeles Times

"......Vietnam and Iraq are different conflicts in different times, but there is an important similarity: A point was reached during the Vietnam War when the domestic debate became so bitter as to preclude rational discussion of hard choices. Administrations of both political parties perceived the survival of South Vietnam as a significant national interest. They were opposed by a protest movement that coalesced behind the conviction that the war reflected an amorality that had to be purged by confrontational methods. This impasse doomed the U.S. effort in Vietnam; it must not be repeated over Iraq......

American disunity was a major element in dashing these hopes. Watergate fatally weakened the Nixon administration through its own mistakes, and the 1974 midterm congressional elections brought to power the most unforgiving of Nixon's opponents, who cut off aid so the agreement couldn't work as planned. The imperatives of domestic debate took precedence over geopolitical necessities.

Two lessons emerge from this account. A strategic design cannot be achieved on a fixed, arbitrary deadline; it must reflect conditions on the ground. But it also must not test the endurance of the American public to a point where the outcome can no longer be sustained by our political process. In Iraq, rapid, unilateral withdrawal would be disastrous. At the same time, a political solution remains imperative.

A political settlement has to be distilled from the partly conflicting, partly overlapping views of the Iraqi parties, Iraq's neighbors and other affected states, based on a conviction that the caldron of Iraq would otherwise overflow and engulf everybody. The essential prerequisite is staying power in the near term. President Bush owes it to his successor to make as much progress toward this goal as possible; not to hand the problem over but to reduce it to more manageable proportions. What we need most is a rebuilding of bipartisanship in both this presidency and in the next."

***

So, there you have it: The one (war) party system in the name of "bipartisanship." The war criminal is not satisfied with having killed some 3 million Vietnamese; he wants even more Iraqis killed!

The Folly of Maximalist Objectives

Will the US Raze Sadr City?

By WILLIAM S. LIND
CounterPunch

"......Now, it seems, the Bush Administration insists on extending the folly of maximalist objectives from total war into cabinet wars, and moreover into cabinet wars it is losing (or more accurately has lost). In public, it blathers on about democracy for Iraq, a war objective that reaches beyond maximalism into pure fantasy. In private, its real objectives, unchanged since long before the war began, are no less disconnected from reality. It seeks an Iraq that is a willing American satellite, a bottomless source of oil for America's SUVs, a permanent site for vast U.S. military bases from which Washington can dominate the region, and an ally of Israel. The skies will be darkened by winged swine long before any of these objectives are attained.

At this point, for those who want to continue the Iraq war, only one objective makes any sense: restoring a state in Iraq before we leave, or more likely as we leave. A state, any kind of state, under any government; to try to specify anything more is, in the face of our military failure, maximalism and unreality.......

The White House, of course, will accept none of this. Bush's maximalism is part and parcel of his defining break with reality. But our commanders on scene, Admiral Fallon and General Petraeus, may see it. If they do, they have a moral responsibility to act on it, the White House be damned. At this point in a lost game, we must take whatever route might, just might, lead to restoring an Iraqi state. The alternative, a stateless Iraq, will represent such a vast victory for Islamic Fourth Generation forces that any real Iraqi government, however unfriendly to the United States, is infinitely preferable.

If the folly of maximalist objectives instead remains our guide, we will know soon enough. The U.S. will go to war with the Mahdi Army, do a Fallujah on Sadr City (for which the U.S. military has already drawn up plans) and try to capture or kill al-Sadr himself. At that point the war in Iraq will effectively have no strategic objective at all, beyond being a gift beyond price to old Osama."

معلومات عن فتح الإسلام تؤكد ما كتبه صحافيون غربيون


Al-Manar

"01/06/2007 نقلت وكالة أخبار لبنان عن مصدر واسع الاطلاع قوله، ان عدد الموقوفين من عناصر فتح الاسلام بلغ خمساً وعشرين عنصراً ينتمون الى جنسيات مختلفة مع اغلبية لبنانية، وهو ما تبين في ادعاء مفوض الحكومة لدى المحكمة العسكرية القاضي جان فهد على عشرين شخصا من "فتح الإسلام"، أوقفوا في أحداث نهر البارد بينهم ثمانية عشرة لبناني وسوري ومجنس واحد.

ولفت المصدر الذي نقلت عنه وكالة اخبار لبنان الى ان اعترافات هذه العناصر، حملت إدانات لطرف سياسي ثبت رعايته لهذه الجماعة بهدف استخدامها في مواقع مختلفة من الصراع الداخلي، الا ان انقلاباً ما في الموقف جعل من هذه الجماعة تبادل العداء مع الطرف الراعي لها. واضاف المصدر ان الموقوفين اعترفوا بتفجير عين علق والسطو على مصارف واطلاق قذائف على ثكنات قوى الامن الداخلي اضافة الى اعترافات اخرى تحفظ المصدر عن ذكرها.

وأوضح المصدر أن الاعترافات أظهرت أن هذه العناصر تتبع لمجموعات منفصلة ولا تنتظم في اطار تنظيمي ثابت ومحدد وهو الاسلوب الذي يعمل به تنظيم القاعدة حسب المصدر الذي اضاف ان الاعترافات اكدت ان الرعاية لجماعة فتح الاسلام كانت من قبل تيار المستقبل ورئيسه سعد الحريري مباشرة، وان الخلاف مع المستقبل بدأ عندما اوقف الدعم المالي لهذه الجماعة الامر الذي دفع بها الى تبعث برسائل امنية تمثلت باطلاق قذائف الانيرغا على ثكنات قوى الامن الداخلي وتحديداً في بيروت.

وتابعت وكالة أخبار لبنان عن المصدر نفسه قوله ان الاعترافات اكدت ان الاجهزة الامنية وتحديداً شعبة المعلومات كانت تعرف من يقف وراء هذه القذائف الليلية وكانت تعرف انها نتيجة الخلاف بين فتح الاسلام وتيار المستقبل الا انها لم تتجرأ على اتهام مجموعة فتح الاسلام حتى تبادر هذه الجماعة الى كشف حقيقة ارتباطها بتار المستقبل وتحديداً على صعيد التمويل."

Al-Ahram Magazine: Many Fatah leaders are angry with Dahlan


"CAIRO, (PIC)-- An article published by the Cairo based al-Ahram al-Arabi magazine said that many Fatah leaders feel that Muhammad Dahlan has hijacked the movement with the consent of President Mahmoud Abbas.

It was stated in the article that the magazine has surveyed the opinions of a large number of angry Fatah leaders in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip "who felt that Dahaln has hijacked the [Fatah] movement with the consent of President Mahmoud Abbas."

The article also pointed to the fact that many historic leaders of Fatah have taken a back seat since Mahmoud Abbas took over the leadership of the PA after the death of Yassir Arafat allowing Dahlan's trend to gain strength inside the movement and to bypass Fatah's Central Committee and Revolutionary Council through direct support from Abbas.

A member of Fatah's Central Committee told the magazine on condition of anonymity that the committee found itself in a difficult position as did not want to enter into a confrontation with Abbas who overlooks Dahlan's excesses and at the same time they could not criticize him at a time when clashes between Hamas and Dahaln's trend were taking place.

The article also attributes the strength of Dahlan to finance stating that after the death of Arafat, financial support, which used to come from Gulf countries dried up, but Dahlan has been bankrolling the movement since then with funds the sources of which and the agenda behind is not clear.

There are claims that Dahlan has managed by some mysterious power to reopen the tap from Gulf countries and claims that Dahalan is directly supported financially by the USA and even Europe, according to the article.

All these factors, as well as his ability to network with and employ many Fatah cadres, have allowed Dahlan to establish an organization inside Fatah which is answerable to him only and the strength of which parallels that of the mother movement.

A majority inside Fatah's Central Committee voted against the Abbas's proposal to appoint Dahlan to the Committee.

Some members of the Revolutionary Council have been calling for a meeting of the Council, which was supposed to take place on 18 May, to discuss the latest situation in the Palestinian arena blaming Dahlan for the deterioration and for inciting against Hamas which culminated in the armed clashes in Gaza....."

Economy of Scale A.K.A. Cheaper by the Dozen


Some Army posts to end individual memorials

"Soldiers from Fort Lewis, Wash., and Fort Drum, N.Y., who are killed in combat will be honored during monthly group memorials instead of individual services beginning in June.

At Fort Lewis, the decision was announced in a May 22 e-mail from Brig. Gen. William Troy, the acting commanding general of I Corps and Fort Lewis, to the command and staff on post, said Joe Piek, a Fort Lewis spokesman. The first group memorial is expected to take place the third week of June.

“As much as we would like to think otherwise, I am afraid that with the number of soldiers we now have in harm’s way, our losses will preclude us from continuing to do individual memorial ceremonies,” Troy wrote in his e-mail. “I see this as a way of sharing the heavy burdens our spouses and rear detachments bear, while giving our fallen warriors the respect they deserve. It will also give the families of the fallen the opportunity to bond with one another, as they see others who share their grief.”

Group memorial services already are taking place at other Army posts, Piek said.

Nineteen Fort Lewis soldiers were killed in Iraq in May....."

Lebanese Candles of "Joy" for the Formation and Authorization of the "International Court"

Separating the Waters (Part 1)


Clemens Messerschmid, The Electronic Intifada, 1 June 2007

(Clemens Messerschmid has been living and working since 1997 as a hydrogeologist in Ramallah. His assignments include work at the German Water Supply and Sanitation Development Projects Palestine (WSSDPP), by GTZ (1997-2001) and as Research and Co-ordination Advisor in PWA for the project "The Sustainable Management of the West Bank and Gaza Aquifers" (SUSMAQ), funded by DFID and in collaboration with University of Newcastle upon Tyne and the British Geological Survey (2001-2004). He currently works as a freelance water consultant in the Middle East.

The article was originally published in the German quarterly inamo # 34: "Israels Mauer und die Wasserressourcen" (2003).)

"The main water objective of the wall is not to steal a handful of wells, but to prevent any future expansion of Palestinian capacity to mine the Western Aquifer. That is the purpose of the facts on the ground currently being created. Once those facts have been created, they will make it impossible for Palestinian society in the fertile regions along the former Green Line to know any form of development, or even a return to something like their former 'normal' life. Hydrology expert Clemens Messerschmid analyzes the impact the northern section of the wall will have on Palestinians' access to water....."

Click Here for Part 2

Palestinian "Resistance" of the Mics.....
Celebrate, Habila Gets More Mics, so Hamas "Wins"!!!

Welcome to the summer of hate


By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

".......The conservative Iranian paper Jam e Jam - popular among young Iranians - stressed in an editorial that now "it is not possible anymore to oppose our country ... The United States cannot do without Iran, which is the new power in the Middle East."

Over 66-year-old, four-heart-operations Dick Cheney's body, of course. And what about all those expenses - the Stennis and Nimitz floating armadas now "exercising" in the Persian Gulf, the relentless Central Intelligence Agency black ops in Khuzestan and Balochistan to "destabilize" the Iranian government, and reports of the US attempting industrial sabotage of Iran's nuclear program?

Bomb Iran ...
A leading French geostrategist has just returned from a stint in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, visiting the industrial-military establishment and all the top Israeli think-tanks. He stresses three main points.

1. For the Israeli establishment, invading Iraq and deposing the already ineffective Saddam Hussein system was a very bad move (although they didn't think so in 2002).

2. Attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon in the summer of 2006 was a very bad move. "We should have done it, but with at least two divisions, to smash them completely," said a retired general.

3. Now there is an unshakable consensus that the real inevitable move will be to attack Iran's nuclear installations - preferably showering cruise missiles over the Natanz plant. Whatever spinning rolls on, attacking Iran remains the key tenet of the Ziocon (Zionists + neo-conservatives) policy......

Iran at the same time is deeply "reforming" Iraq - whatever the rhetoric coming from the White House. Iranian cultural influence on Iraqi youth is overwhelming - via the financing of at least a cultural center or a library in every village. The foremost foreign language is now Farsi, not English. Girls are exchanging the Arab hijab for the less constraining Iranian chador. Iraq's schoolbooks are now manufactured by Iranian printing presses. Most of Iraq's oil, gas and electricity is now provided by Iran.

But there's no stopping the summer of hate - and not only because of the torrid 50-degree-Celsius temperatures. Iran will keep being linked by the Ziocons to al-Qaeda. Iraq will remain the true heart of darkness. Forty years after the Six-Day War, the State of Israel will continue to smash Palestine to bits, especially Gaza. Saudi funds - channeled via billionaire Saad Hariri - and heavy US military support to the army of the pitiful Fouad Siniora government in Lebanon will be busy spreading divide-and-rule, pitting Salafi-jihadis against, supposedly, Hezbollah, but victimizing helpless Palestinian civilian refugees instead. The Ziocon plan is to provoke a civil war in Lebanon, in which Hezbollah would be inevitably convulsed, and profit from the opening to attack Iran......"

"Islamic Terrorists" supported by Uncle Sam: Bush Administration "Black Ops" directed against Iran, Lebanon and Syria

A Very Good Article

by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, May 31, 2007

"The Bush administration has admitted that covert actions of an aggressive nature were applied against Iran and Syria. The stated objective was to wreck the countries' economies and currency systems. The infamous Iran-Syria Policy and Operations Group (ISOG) created in early 2006, integrated by officials from the White House, the State Department, the CIA and the Treasury Department, had a mandate to destabilize Syria and Iran, and bring about "Regime Change".....

The decision to dismantle ISOG is largely cosmetic. Most of these intelligence operations remain intact. ISOG was one among several covert initiatives to destabilize Iran and Syria. Regime change and outright war are still part of the Administration's agenda. In fact, destabilizing covert intelligence operations directed against Iran and Syria have been stepped up in the course of the last four years. Moreover, these operations are closely coordinated with Israeli and NATO war plans, which constitute an integral part of the US sponsored military operation directed against Iran, Syria and Lebanon......

The US is on a war footing and the various covert operations and Psy-Ops --which routinely feed despicable images of the Iranian head of State into the news chain--, are an integral part of the military-intelligence and propaganda arsenal.

In turn, the covert ops are coordinated with US, Israeli and NATO military deployments in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf including the conduct of major war games, which have been carried out almost continuously since Summer 2006.......

Staged Event in Lebanon? Building a Humanitarian Justification for Military Intervention

Fatah Al Islam is an "intelligence asset" financed by Saudi Arabia. While the Bush administration accuses Damascus of supporting Fatah Al Islam, there are indications that the killings in the Palestinian refugee camps were the result of a carefully staged military intelligence operation..

Since the Summer 2006 following the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, NATO forces are present inside Lebanon as well as off Syrian-Lebanese coastline. The UN Security Council Resolution allowing for the deployment of NATO peace-keeping forces was the first step in this process, which followed the 2005 withdrawal and Syrian forces from Lebanon.

The objective of the military roadmap, is to create sectarian violence inside Lebanon which will provide a pretext "on humanitarian grounds" for a stepped up military intervention by NATO forces under a formal UN mandate. This humanitarian military NATO intervention in liaison with Israel, is envisaged as a sequel to the withdrawal of Syrian troops in 2005 and the Israeli bombings of 2006. If it were to be launched it could lead to a situation of de facto foreign occupation of Lebanon as well as the enforcement of a economic blockade directed against Syria.

The pretext for these stepped up military actions are Syria's alleged support of Fatah Al Islam and Damascus' supposed involvement in the assassination of Rafiq Hariri. The timely "investigation" into Hariri's assassination and the setting up of a kangaroo court are being used by the coalition to foment anti-Syrian sentiment in Lebanon. From a military and strategic standpoint, Lebanon is the gateway into Syria. The destabilization of Lebanon supports the US-NATO-Israeli military agenda directed against Syria and Iran. US intelligence sets loose its Islamic brigades, while also accusing the enemy of sponsoring terrorist groups, which are in fact covertly supported and financed by Uncle Sam. "

Thursday, May 31, 2007


By Imad Hajjaj

Top Israeli rabbis advocate genocide


Ali Abunimah writing from Chicago, USA, Live from Palestine, 31 May 2007

"....... Just when I thought it couldn't get worse, I read a news article on the website of The Jerusalem Post that Israel's former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu -- one of the most senior theocrats in the Jewish State "ruled that there was absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launchings" ("Eliyahu advocates carpet bombing Gaza," The Jerusalem Post, 30 May, 2007).

The Jerusalem Post reported that Mordechai made this ruling in a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert citing biblical authority. The letter was published in a weekly journal distributed in synagogues throughout Israel. The report states that "According to Jewish war ethics, wrote Eliyahu, an entire city holds collective responsibility for the immoral behavior of individuals. In Gaza, the entire populace is responsible because they do nothing to stop the firing of Kassam rockets."

Eliayahu's son, Shmuel Eliayhu, himself chief rabbi of Safad, amplified his father's comments, stating: "If they don't stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand." He added, "And if they do not stop after 1,000 then we must kill 10,000. If they still don't stop we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop."

This kind of genocidal hatred of Palestinians is not unusual in Israel. What used to be unusual was for it to be spoken so brazenly and openly. Of course we know what would happen if a Muslim or Palestinian religious figure made such a statement......

Under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted in the wake of the Nazi holocaust, "Direct and public incitement to commit genocide" is a punishable act. One wonders whether the UN Security Council, which created an international tribunal to investigate the killing of one man in Lebanon, will pay any attention to the indiscriminate state- and theocratically-sanctioned massacres of Palestinians by Israel.

Will Hillary Clinton, who continues to defame Palestinian schoolchildren with the lie that they are taught "hatred" in their schoolbooks, or any of our other pandering candidates, take a moment out from praising Israel to condemn Eliayahu's statement? What about Oprah Winfrey, who at the invitation of Elie Wiesel is to undertake a "solidarity" visit to Israel?

It seems there are no moral restraints left in Israel. It is right and proper that such a regime be isolated with boycott, divestment and sanctions until it desists from its racist -- and potentially genocidal -- practices. It is to be celebrated that an increasing number of individuals and organizations understand this: yesterday the governing body of the UK's University and College Union voted overwhelmingly to support a boycott of Israeli academia. Today UNISON, the UK's largest public service union announced it will vote on similar motions at its next congress. As Israel's house of horror grows, so does the movement to confront it. In that there is great hope."

Time to cut Israel off


By Ramzy Baroud
Al-Ahram Weekly

"South Africa's Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils whispered to me as I sat down following a most enthusiastic speech I gave at a recent conference in Cape Town: "if you want the world to heed to your call for boycotting Israel, the call has to originate from the Palestinian leadership itself."

Kasrils is obviously right. The call for boycotting the racist Apartheid government was an exclusively South African endeavour, made resonantly and repeatedly by the African National Council (ANC) and backed by the various liberation movements in the country and in exile. It took years for the dedicated campaign to be effective. The message communicated to the international community was clear and simply persuasive: put an end to Apartheid. It was but only a facet of various methods of struggle, notwithstanding the armed struggle which spread to Namibia, Angola and other African countries......

A young Indian activist, who spent days on end urging shoppers at Britain's Marks and Spencer, to boycott the store for contributing to the Israeli occupation, recalled her utter frustration with the fact that many of the store's customers were Arabs from the Gulf. While nothing beats a good deal, she failed to understand why a wealthy Arab would find it morally permissible to patronise a company that contributed to the occupation. Needless to say, the same scenario is repeated at many Starbucks branches, despite the corporate management's unabashed support of Israel......

Should we wait for the Palestinian leadership, some of whom are in the process of complete capitulation, while others are struggling for basic survival and limited to an exclusivist political ideology, to cease their infighting, unify their ranks, rehabilitate their political institutions and only then call for boycott? The wait might be too long and arduous......"

Destroying Hamas



Palestinians run for cover as a missile fired by the Israeli military is seen nearly hitting its target during an air strike on Hamas's Executive Force building in the Nusseirat refugee camp, Gaza; Palestinians following the air strike.

Israeli duplicity accompanied by military operations continue unabated in the West Bank
By Khaled Amayreh in East Jerusalem
Al-Ahram Weekly

".....Meanwhile, there have been consistent reports describing a tripartite plan by Israel, the US and unidentified regional Arab governments to destroy or at least weaken Hamas for the purpose of facilitating the dismantling of the current Palestinian Authority.

According to the plan, Israel would arrest the vast bulk of the Hamas leadership in the West Bank in order to leave the Hamas rank and file leaderless and off-balance. And in the Gaza Strip, the US would pour money and weapons unto the Dahlan Camp for the purpose of strengthening it against Hamas.

With a weaker and leaderless Hamas, Abbas, the plan envisages, would dissolve the Palestinian national unity government and call for early general elections. These would be widely manipulated by American-Israeli intervention, including a pledge by them to lift the crippling embargo against the Palestinians and pay the outstanding salaries of civil servants.

Elliot Abrams, the apparent mastermind behind the plan, hopes that a sizeable majority of Palestinians would vote for a "moderate" Fatah leadership, which would eventually accept a "reasonable peace settlement" with Israel whereby the Palestinians would give up the right of return, the bulk of East Jerusalem and allow Israel to maintain most, if not all, of the West Bank settlements including Mael Adumim, Ariel, and Pisgat Zeev.

Moreover, the contemplated final settlement would also include a "Palestinian-Israeli agreement" which would allow the Jewish state to maintain an undisclosed number of military bases and early warning stations on major hilltops in the West Bank as well as in the Jordan valley, for at least 30 years.

The agreement would also allow Israel to "rent" certain settlements, such as Kiryat Arbaa near Hebron, for 99 years. However, the Palestinian Authority, denies that anything like this is being discussed.

However, it is abundantly clear that the Bush administration, ostensibly in connivance with the Israeli government, is acting in a way suggesting that a Palestinian agreement, or at least "understanding" has already been reached with the likes of Mohamed Dahlan. Rumour has it that Dahlan is being groomed as a successor to Abbas, a leader the Americans increasingly regard as weak, indecisive and reluctant to confront Hamas.

There is no doubt that such a deal, or a "sell-out" as numerous Palestinians would view it, would be resisted vehemently by the majority of Palestinians including the so-called Arafatists, Hamas and the leftist organisations.

However, the American-Israeli alliance, possibly in concert with regional Arab governments, might seek to devise ways and means to bolster the "peace camp" among Palestinians by way of arguing that the opposition ought to "give peace a chance", respect the "democratic game" and allow the "democratically-elected government" to negotiate a final peace agreement with Israel.

Nevertheless, it is unlikely that such a conspiracy would succeed, due to massive opposition, even if augmented by American money and Israeli carrots, such as allowing Palestinians to obtain food and work relatively easily and unfreezing Palestinian tax revenues.

In 1978, Israel attempted a similar feat when it tried to destroy the PLO leadership by establishing the so-called "Village League" as a replacement. It failed miserably and Israel was forced to abandon the plan."

Normalization With Israel is Proceeding Full Speed


Livni and Talabani Discussing "the Peace Process" and Strengthening Mossad-Kurdish Ties

FM talks with Pakistani minister, Iraqi First Lady at Vienna conference

"Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni attended a conference of women leaders on Thursday in Vienna, Austria, where she met with women from all parts of the Arab and Muslim world, including first lady of Iraq, Hero Ibrahim Ahmed Talabani.

Talabani and Livni spent several minutes discussing the peace process while they participated in a panel on the topic.....

"There is much better understanding that Middle Eastern politics is not a zero-sum game," Livni told the panel. "Nations in the region face common threats," she added. Livni commended the Arab League's initiative which is aimed at normalizing relations with Israel. "Normalizing relations now will help advance the political process," she said.

During the conference, Livni also met with Pakistani Minister for Women's Development, Sumaira Malik. The two spoke informally and warmly in the lounge. They discussed the need to broaden the range of nations who supported and aided the political process to include Islamic nations such as Pakistan and Indonesia rather than exclusively Arab nations.

"The whole world's involvement in the peace process should be strengthened," the Pakistani minister said......"

Hezbollah:Resolution 1757 is transgression of Lebanon


Al-Manar

"31/05/2007 Hezbollah issued a statement to comment on UN Security Council resolution 1757 over the formation of the tribunal to try suspects in the assassination of former Prime Minister martyr Rafik Hariri.
The statement said:
1- There is national consensus on the persistent effort to uncover the perpetrators involved in the assassination of former Prime Minister martyr Rafik Hariri and try them for their ugly crime. This effort would have required the formation of a judicial-criminal court emanating from an internal agreement that preserves the role of institutions and respects Lebanese constitutional principles. The steps taken at the UN Security Council have put Lebanon in the direction of international interests and opened the doors for international interference in such a manner that Lebanon became under international tutelage with its decision making and sovereignty annulled, in an unprecedented manner in the history of sovereign states.

2- As much as the resolution constitutes a transgression of the state of Lebanon and an aggression against its internal affairs which is the responsibility of Lebanese institutions exclusively, it also violates legal principles and UN charters, objectives and principles. Consequently, this is a blatant violation that gives this resolution an illegal and unconstitutional attribute on both national and international levels. Perhaps the best way to express this, are the clear and frank remarks made by the representatives of abstaining states.

3- The pressure that had been exerted by the US administration on the UN Security Council to endorse the resolution, does not differ from similar pressures made by this same administration to pass resolutions which only serve the interests of the US political project, regardless of other considerations whether establishing justice, spreading illusive democracy or destroying weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Consequently, the ruling authority has done the US administration a great favor, by giving it a political card to use for political pressuring. After fulfilling its missions, this ruling authority has become ineffective and unimportant in this domain, because all matters have now become subject to international political bargaining and the interests of major states, rendering Lebanon a card in their hands, and not just their arena.

4- The internal crisis in Lebanon, which the ruling bloc had sought to hide behind the issue of the tribunal of international character, had refused to pass it through constitutional principles and internal agreement that preserves Lebanon's sovereignty and had insisted on trespassing all of this to fulfill its goal to take the issue to the Security Council and endorse it under chapter 7 of the UN Charter, requires that this bloc realizes that the real crisis in Lebanon is still a crisis of political partnership among all the Lebanese to decide and rule; not to monopolize power and deal with the country as if it were private property allotted for investment to whomever secures the continuity of power and hegemony and protects private interests. "

No, These Two Lebanese "Soldiers" with Their Brand-new U.S. Weapons are not Getting Ready to Serve Tea to the Palestinian Refugees Stranded and Dying in Nahr El-Bared Refugee Camp.....
No Sir, Tea Service is Reserved for the IOF, after Raising the White Flag!

You Call this "Government?" It Can't Even Protect the Reservations!


Hamas movement will not leave government prematurely

"Bethlehem – Ma'an – The Hamas movement on Thursday assured that it would remain in the unity government, excluding the idea of a potential withdrawal from power and a return to opposition.

The spokesperson of Hamas, Fawzi Barhoum, stated "Hamas entered the political process with a political vision, based on enhancing rights and preserving the unchangeable principles."

He told Ma'an via telephone: "Hamas supports the unity government because it represents the majority of the Palestinian people. We are now fighting a battle for the unchangeable principles, and for that very reason, the government is besieged. Hamas entered the government to stay, rather than to leave, and it will remain steadfast until the embargo is lifted, and until the Palestinian government is accepted by the international community."

With respect to the Cairo talks, Barhoum revealed, "Hamas has its own vision for political partnership, having control over domestic affairs, ending the state of chaos and rearranging the security services, which are, in the most part, affiliated to outside organizations."

The Hamas spokesperson criticized the declarations of the Deputy Prime Minister, about "having no intention to rearrange the security services". Barhoum said, "Many of Al-Ahmad's declarations are confused.""

***

The stupid "government" doesn't even speak with one voice! The "deputy PM" contradicts and fights the "PM"! Dissolve this disgrace and stop this vaudeville show, it is not even funny.

Israel the third most dangerous place to live on the planet


"Bethlehem – Ma'an – A report by the Economist Intelligence Unit has labeled Israel as the third most violent and dangerous place in the world to live. Only Sudan and Iraq were described as worse in the annual survey, which listed 121 countries according to how peaceful each country is, based on levels of violence and organised crime within the country, as well as levels of military expenditure.

Israel ranked at number 119 amongst the most peaceful and tranquil countries out of 121 included in the report, as a result of the ongoing crisis in the Middle East and the high expenses on military. Scandinavian countries fared well as the most peaceful places in the world, with both Norway (1) and Denmark (3) in the top three.

The report highlights that the US invasion of Iraq, and the high level of criminal acts conducted with firearms caused Iraq to be the rated as the most dangerous place. Jordan came 63rd in terms of tranquility, Egypt 73rd, Syria 77th and Lebanon 114th of the 121 countries surveyed.

The United States of America was rated 96th, sandwiched between Yemen and Iran, due to huge domestic gun crime, homicide rates, prison population as percentage of citizenry and military spending which is greater than most of the rest of the world combined. The United Kingdom was ranked 49th, primarily due to its involvement in the war on Iraq.

The Economist Intelligence Unit explained that they used 24 points for the evaluation and measurement in their classification, which included street violence, violence in prisons, organized crime, military expenditure and number of law enforcement officers. The level of tranquility also took into account average income and the level of education, "in addition to the ability to assimilate in the area"."

***

How about Gazastan? How did it rank??

By Mr. Fish

Repudiation, Not Impeachment


By Scott Ritter
(A long article)

"......But this will not happen of its own volition. The impeachment of President Bush would not in and of itself terminate executive unilateralism. It would only limit its implementation on the most visible periphery, driving its destructive designs back into the shadows of government, away from the public eye, and as such, public accountability. Impeach President Bush, yes, if in fact he can be charged with the commission of acts which meet the constitutional standard for impeachment (and I believe he could, if Congress only had the will to do its job). But to truly heal America, we must repudiate everything President Bush stands for, in terms of not only public and foreign policy, but also in terms of his style of governance, since the former is derived from the latter.

Repudiation is a strong term, defined as “rejecting as having no authority or binding force,” to “cast off or disown,” or to “reject with disapproval or condemnation.” In my opinion, the complete repudiation of the presidency of George W. Bush is the only recourse we have collectively as a people to not only seek redress for the wrongs committed by the Bush administration, but also to purge society of this cancer that threatens to consume and destroy us as a whole, and which would continue to manifest itself in our system of governance even after any impeachment proceedings.

Like any cancerous growth, the Bush administration has attached its malignancy to the American nation in a cruel fashion, its poisonous tentacles stretching deep into our national fabric in a manner that makes difficult the task of culling out the healthy from the diseased. But we cannot truly repudiate something without its complete and utter elimination from our midst. As such, there must be a litmus test to help us differentiate the good from the bad, that which must be restored from that which must be eliminated. For me, there is only one true test: that of constitutionality. There will be those who argue, and have argued, that the time is well past for an oppressed people (and one would be a fool not to comprehend that under the Bush administration, the American people have in fact been oppressed) to rely on the niceties of legal argument, especially when the system of law we seek to use in our defense has been so thoroughly corrupted by those who seek to impose tyranny......"

Drawing conclusions

By Brian Whitaker
The Guardian

".......These praiseworthy efforts are devalued, though, by the political motives of Washington. Of all the crimes in the Middle East that deserve similar treatment, this one has been singled out because Syria - regarded by the US as a strong candidate for membership in the Axis of Evil - is widely thought to be behind it.

Almost a year after the Israel-Hizbullah war, there has been no comparable attempt to investigate crimes committed in Lebanon by Israel, despite the prima facie evidence of them - nor, indeed, crimes committed against Israeli civilians by Hizbullah.

Syria is not the only country meddling in Lebanon. The Americans, the Saudis and the Israelis are meddling, too. Israel's continuing breaches of UN resolutions regarding Lebanon were documented in the most recent UN report, though largely overlooked by the media.

Meanwhile Dan Halutz, the disgraced ex-head of the Israeli military - the man responsible for the largest number of bombings in Lebanon - recently travelled to the US without fear of arrest, to take a management course at Harvard Business School."

Militias act with impunity, despite US troop surge


It is absurd to speak of men dressed as police as if they were gunmen in disguise

By Patrick Cockburn
The Independent

"The raid on the Finance Ministry in Baghdad by 40 policemen in 19 vehicles who calmly cordoned off the street in front of the building before abducting five Britons shows how little has changed in the Iraqi capital despite US reinforcements and a new security plan.

It has always been absurd to speak of men "dressed in police uniforms travelling in police vehicles" as if they were gunmen in disguise. "Of course they have the uniforms and the vehicles, because they are real policemen," said an Iraqi minister after a similar operation in which 150 people were abducted from the Ministry of Higher Education in the capital last year......

The abductions at the Finance Ministry underline another truth about Iraq. In Arab Iraq, the US and Britain have no allies. For four years the Sunni community has been in rebellion. But the Iraqi Shia only supported the US-led occupation as a means to an end, by which they would legally take power through elections. The Shia do not, at the end of the day, intend to share power with foreign occupiers.

One reason why so many foreign security contractors are employed in Iraq, at vast expense, is that the US, Britain and the Iraqi governments recognise they dare not rely on Iraqis to protect them."

Refugees from Nahr el-Bared refugee camp find refuge at....
Beddawi refugee camp
By Naser Jafari
Shame on the cowardly Lebanese "army"

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

من يعبث بالشعب ومقدراته؟

بقلم : د. إبراهيم حمّامي

"......
فهل يعقل أن تكون الرئاسة وتوابعها هي من يعبث بمقدرات الشعب الفلسطيني؟ أم أن هناك أيادي خفية فوق "الرئاسة"؟ سؤال ربما نجد له إجابة بعد أن نستعرض بعضاً من هذه العبثية - ولا أقصد هنا العبثية بالمعنى العباسي- من خلال ثلاث "حالات" في الأشهر الأخيرة تمس الوطن والمواطن بشكل خطير ومباشر.

1ـ كلنا يعلم تفاصيل اتفاقية المعابر المخزية والتي وقعها محمد دحلان واعتبرها انجازاً بطوليا، والتي كرست وجسدت السيطرة الفعلية للاحتلال على المعابر، وحولت غزة إلى سجن كبير يغلق بأوامر احتلالية، وكنت قد تناولت بالتفصيل الممل مخازي دحلان في هذه الاتفاقية تحت عنوان " إنجاز دحلان المزعوم ودوره المرسوم" بتاريخ 19/11/2005، هذه الاتفاقية الدحلانية انتهى العمل بها منتصف شهر نوفمبر/تشرين الثاني الماضي، ورغم معارضة كافة الفصائل والقوى الفلسطينية دون استثناء تجديدها بشكلها الذي أراده دحلان، والمطالب الواضحة برفض السيطرة الاحتلالية على المعابر، لكن وفجأة ودون سابق إنذار جُددت هذه الاتفاقية وبموافقة فلسطينية دون علم الحكومة في حينها ودون عرضها على التشريعي، ودون حتى معرفة الطرف الذي فاوض ووافق ووقع.

فمن يا ترى قام بذلك وبأي صفة وصلاحية؟ ومن الذي خوله للتوقيع نيابة عن المؤسسات الشرعية ودون علمها؟

2ـ أشبع الباحثون والأخصائيون مشروع القناة الرابطة بين البحر الميت والبحر الحمر – قناة البحرين - بحثاً وتمحيصاً، ونُشرت التقارير التي تتحدث عن مضار ومخاطر هذا المشروع على البيئة، وخطورته السياسية التي تطرح التطبيع واقعاً مفروضا، ورغم أن المجلس التشريعي السابق، والمفترض أنه أعلى سلطة على الإطلاق، قرر في جلسته المنعقدة في مدينتي رام الله وغزة بتاريخ 05/07/2005، وبعد تقرير اللجنة السياسية المقدم من رئيسها غسان كنفاني، قرر عرض أي اتفاقية يجري التوصل إليها بخصوص مشروع قناة البحرين عليه قبل توقيعها باعتبارها سيادية وتمس مفاوضات الوضع النهائي(..)، رغم كل ذلك وفجأة أيضاً وفي شهر نوفمبر/تشرين الثاني 2006 وقعت اتفاقية بين “إسرائيل” والأردن والسلطة الفلسطينية وبنك النقد الدولي لرعاية بحث تمهيدي يفحص الآثار الاقتصادية والبيئية للمشروع، وجرت مراسم التوقيع داخل قاعة مغلقة في فندق فخم على الشاطئ الأردني للبحر الميتوسط تكتم وسرية شديدين من جانب الأطراف الثلاثة، وبدون دعوة وسائل الإعلام!

بغض النظر عن موقفنا من المشروع نقول من قرر ووافق ووقع هذا الاتفاق؟ ولماذا لم يناقش في التشريعي، ولماذا السرية في التوقيع؟ وهل قضية تمس مستقبل الأراضي الفلسطينية برمتها هي شأن شخصي خاص لا نعرف من يقوده ويديره؟

3ـ "الصفقة" الكارثية الأخيرة كانت صفقة غاز غزة، والتي أيضاً دبرت ووقعت بليل، وبشروط ما أنزل الله بها من سلطان، وبشكل كارثي حقيقي، حيث ذكرتوكالة معاً الإخبارية يوم 23/5/2007أن صحيفة التايمز نشرت الأربعاء ماقالت انه صفقة تاريخية تتعلق ببيع الغاز الفلسطيني المكتشف في شواطئ غزة إلى"اسرائيل"، وقد جاء في الخبر ان الصحيفة علمت ان مجموعة "بي جي" (المالك السابق لشركة الغاز البريطانية) قد توافق على شروطالصفقة التي وصفتها بالتاريخية والتي تقدر قيمتها بأربعة بلايين دولار امريكي، إلى هنا والخبر يحمل بشائر الخير، لكن لنراجع بعض الحقائق الخاصة بالصفقة:

· في خبر نشرته الهيئة العامة للاستعلامات ــ المركز الصحفي - بتاريخ 3/7/2005م، أكد الوزير عزمي الشوا أن السلطة الفلسطينية قامت في عام 1999م بمنح شركة بريتش غاز البريطانية الامتياز لمدة 20 عاماً ، منوهاً أن عوائد مقدارها 60% ستكون من نصيب شركة بريتش غاز B.G ) )، و30% لشركة CCC ، و 10% لصندوق الاستثمار الفلسطيني ، مؤكداً أن هذا الغاز يعتبر من أحسن أنواع الغاز، خصوصاً وأن نسبة الميثان فيه 99.4 % و هو خالٍ من ملوثات الكبريت

· مصادر "إسرائيلية" و فلسطينية متطابقة سبق وأن أوضحت أن هناك مفاوضات مع الجانب "الإسرائيلي" لكي يشتري الغاز من الجانب الفلسطيني بمعدل 100 مليون دولار شهرياً تحصل السلطة منها على 10 مليون دولار على شكل مساعدات غير نقدية أما الباقي فيذهب حسب التوزيعة التالية:( 30 مليونا إلى شركة ( CCC ) و 60 مليون مليونا إلى شركة ( B.G ) و سيتم مد أنابيب الغاز تحت سطح البحر إلى مدينة المجدل لصالح الطرف "الإسرائيلي" و يبدأ تنفيذ الصفقة عام 2011م.

· شركة ( CCC ) وبحسب ذات المصادرهي اختصار للشركة المعروفة (شركة إتحاد المقاولين العالمية) والتي تأسست في لبنان ثم انتقلت إلى أثينا بسبب الحرب اللبنانية الأهلية 1977م و يرأس الشركة سعيد خوري وهو فلسطيني مسيحي من صفد من عائلة رمزي خوري المدير السابق لمكتب الرئيس ياسر عرفات و الرئيس الحالي للصندوق القومي الفلسطيني ، وحسيب الصايغ هو ابن المرحوم رشيد الصايغ الذي كان يرأس الصندوق القومي الفلسطيني سابقاً قبل أن يتولى أمره رئيس الوزراء السابق أبو علاء قريع، أما نائب مدير الشركة فهو وليد سلمان ( وليد سعد صايل) و هو نجل القائد الفلسطيني الشهيد/سعد صايل، وليد سلمان هو المدير التنفيذي للشركة في أراضي السلطة الفلسطينية والذي تمتلك شركته 40% من شركة توليد الكهرباء في غزة أيضاً.

لا يوجد اتفاق تنقيب عن الغاز أو النفط في العالم تحصل منه أي شركة استثمارية على أكثر من 50% من الأرباح فكيف حصلت شركة بريتش غاز على 60% ؟ مع العلم أن مصر قد وقعت مع نفس الشركة ( B.G ) على عقد استخراج الغاز بنسبة 50% للطرفين في المنطقة القريبة من قطاع غزة، وكيف حصلت شركة ( CCC ) على 30% وتحت أي ذريعة؟ ومن الذي قرر هذه الصفقة وبأي صفة وصلاحية؟

أمثلة على التلاعب بمقدرات الشعب، وحقائق تشير أن هناك من يتاجر بالشعب وأملاكه ومقدراته وثرواته ومستقبله، وأصابع خفية تعبث في الخفاء وبسرية تامة، في ظل عجز وتجاهل من قبل كل القوى الفلسطينية، وبوتيرة تصاعدية متصاعدة لا تبشر بخير.

هل تبقّى لبائعي فلسطين بقية للبيع؟ وهل يستيقظ الشعب وقواه قبل فوات الأوان؟ أم أن قدرنا أن تتحكم حثالة معدومة الأخلاق والضمير بكل ما يخصنا حتى الماء والهواء؟ "

After 90 years of struggle and this is the best the Palestinians were able to produce??
It is enough to make you despair....

The Case for Bombing Iran


I hope and pray that President Bush will do it.

BY NORMAN PODHORETZ
Wednesday, May 30, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

"......Like the Cold War, as the military historian Eliot Cohen was the first to recognize, the one we are now in has ideological roots, pitting us against Islamofascism, yet another mutation of the totalitarian disease we defeated first in the shape of Nazism and fascism and then in the shape of communism; it is global in scope; it is being fought with a variety of weapons, not all of them military; and it is likely to go on for decades.

What follows from this way of looking at the last five years is that the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq cannot be understood if they are regarded as self-contained wars in their own right. Instead we have to see them as fronts or theaters that have been opened up in the early stages of a protracted global struggle. The same thing is true of Iran......

Not surprisingly, the old American foreign-policy establishment and many others say that these dreams are nothing more than the fantasies of a madman. They also dismiss those who think otherwise as neoconservative alarmists trying to drag this country into another senseless war that is in the interest not of the United States but only of Israel.....

Not so George W. Bush, a man who knows evil when he sees it and who has demonstrated an unfailingly courageous willingness to endure vilification and contumely in setting his face against it. It now remains to be seen whether this president, battered more mercilessly and with less justification than any other in living memory, and weakened politically by the enemies of his policy in the Middle East in general and Iraq in particular, will find it possible to take the only action that can stop Iran from following through on its evil intentions both toward us and toward Israel. As an American and as a Jew, I pray with all my heart that he will."




Finger Puppets of the Empire

Here, Another Helicopter "Goes Down"


5 GIs among 7 killed in Afghan crash

"KABUL, Afghanistan - Five U.S. soldiers were killed when their Chinook helicopter was apparently shot down in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, a U.S. military official said. The Taliban claimed responsibility.

Initial reports suggested the helicopter was hit with a rocket-propelled grenade, said the U.S. military official, who requested anonymity because details of the crash had not yet been released. It wasn't clear if there were any survivors, the official said.

A purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, claimed in a phone call to The Associated Press that militants had shot the helicopter down in the volatile province of Helmand......"

Israel's house of horrors


Debris litters the streets of Ramallah after an undercover Israeli death squad shot a 22-year-old man 24 times at close range, an event which was not reported by the mainstream press. (Elias Khayyo)

Ali Abunimah writing from Chicago, USA, Live from Palestine, 30 May 2007

"Reading an account of an Israeli cabinet meeting in Ha'aretz is like a trip through a House of Horrors. Here are some choice excerpts:

"Ministers Meir Sheetrit and Rafi Eitan proposed Wednesday that Israel produce its own version of the Qassam rocket to be fired at targets inside the Gaza Strip in response to Palestinian rocket fire on its southern communities."

"Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor Eli Yishai of Shas proposed that Israel use air strikes to destroy Palestinian towns and villages in response to the rocket fire, after giving local residents advance notice allowing them to evacuate their homes."

"Shas MK Yitzhak Cohen proposed cutting off the supply of electricity, water and fuel to the Strip, and justify the move by saying that Qassam rockets had destroyed Israel's infrastructure and that it will take a long time to repair the facilities with which to supply the Palestinians with basic resources. Shin Bet security service director Yuval Diskin suggested that Cohen's idea is worth examining."

This is the state that is supposed to be the conscience of the world following the Nazi holocaust? Which other government could openly hold such discussions to such overwhelming silence from the so-called "international community"?

For weeks, Israel has bombed the Gaza Strip killing dozens. In one such attack, on May 20, Israel bombed the house of a democratically-elected legislator Khalil al-Haya, killing eight people, including seven members of his family -- among them three teenagers. B'Tselem called for a criminal investigation, but the issue has been long forgotten by the rest of the world.....

Yesterday, an Israeli death squad carried out a cold blooded execution of a 22-year-old man in the center of occupied Ramallah. After shooting him in the leg, he was finished off with a bullet to the back of the head. He was then riddled with a total of 24 bullets. This brutal murder did not even make the news in the US......

Ronnie Kasrils, South Africa's minister of intelligence, and an ANC veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle wrote on May 21 "Travelling into Palestine's West Bank and Gaza Strip, which I visited recently, is like a surreal trip back into an apartheid state of emergency." Except, adds Kasrils, it's a situation "infinitely worse than apartheid" (Mail & Guardian)......"

Another assassination in Ramallah's city center


Sam Bahour writing from Ramallah, occupied Palestine, Live from Palestine, 29 May 2007

"It was a good day today, well, that is until about 5:40pm when Israeli undercover and military forces assassinated a Palestinian outside the window where I was standing.

The target was Omar Abu Daher, a 22-year-old who it seems happens to be a member of a security force loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. He was only one of several that were murdered in cold blood today; two more were killed in Gaza, one in Tulkarem, two others in Jenin. These are the ones reported so far, but the night is still young.....

On my way home, I passed the Presidential Compound on Radio Street. This is Mahmoud Abbas's headquarters. Only a few hours before it was reported in the news that he announced that he will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Olmert on June 7 to discuss the 'peace process.' Alone, I just shook my head and wondered for how long can this Palestinian President, this Palestinian Authority Government, and this Palestinian Legislative Council continue to go through the empty motions of governance under military occupation, while Israel, with full internationally-sanctioned impunity, assassinates Palestinian citizens -- those very same security personnel that are supposed to hold the peace -- in broad daylight, arrests dozens from their beds every night -- including ministers, mayors and legislators -- and prohibit millions of Palestinians whom they have displaced from returning to their homes.

I guess the more accurate question I should be asking myself is until when will the Palestinian people continue to accept such inept leadership?....."

Lecturers back boycott of Israel

"University lecturers this afternoon backed calls for an academic boycott of Israel at their inaugural national conference. Delegates at the University and College Union conference voted 158 to 99 to circulate its branches with the boycott call from Palestinian trade unions for "information and discussion".

The general secretary of the UCU, Sally Hunt, said she believes "every member should have the opportunity to have their say".

Opponents of the boycott have already called for a national ballot of all the union's members.

The decision followed a plea earlier today from Ms Hunt that the Israeli issue should not be a major priority for the union and that a boycott would be unlikely to win majority support from members.

Just hours before the debate at the union's first national conference in Bournemouth, Ms Hunt told delegates that most UCU members would prefer to "retain dialogue" with trade unionists on all sides "not just those we agree with".

The motion calling for an Israeli academic boycott came jointly from the University of Brighton and the University of East London.

They asked members to rally to the call from Palestinian trade unions "for a comprehensive and consistent international boycott of all Israeli institutions".

Their motion also called on university lecturers to condemn the "complicity of Israeli academia in the [Palestinian] occupation
".

It went on: "Passivity or neutrality is unacceptable and criticism of Israel cannot be construed as anti-semitic". Lecturers were told to consider the "moral implications" of existing and proposed academic links with Israeli institutions.

The Israel and Palestinian issue has a history of controversy at past annual conferences of both Nafthe and the Association of University Teachers (AUT), which merged last year to form the UCU......"

'Rockets of futility'?


Hasan Abu Nimah, The Electronic Intifada, 30 May 2007

"......The Palestinian rockets may indeed be futile when compared to the superior Israeli military capabilities, but they still cause harm and panic, as stones did before. They are also likely to become more advanced and lethal, otherwise why should the Israeli retaliation be that intense and violent. The life of even one victim of 200 rocket attacks, on the other hand, should be valuable too, although continuing violence and wholesale murder in as many war theatres in the region has got us accustomed to undermining the meaning and the value of human life.

But this also misses the point essentially: if the Palestinians should stop firing because their rockets lack precision and effectiveness, would they be justified using them if, or when, they managed to overcome the shortcomings? And is it, therefore, the flawless efficiency of Israeli weapons that justifies the continuation of their use against Palestinian civilians? Is that a new standard of legality and justice?.....

Any society which would be subjected to a fraction of what the Palestinians have since the catastrophe befell them 60 years ago would react much more violently, and would still be respected, supported and justified. One need not go far to find proof. When Israel destroyed much of the poor Gaza infrastructure, in June 2006, including power supply, water and bridges, in addition to tightening the siege and terrifying the people, it was acting "in self defence", and therefore not blamed by the hypocritical world which regularly condemns Palestinian violence. Israel at the time was retaliating for the capture of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who has not been harmed. Few paid any attention to the Palestinian claim that they, by capturing the soldier, were also retaliating for the detention of close to 12,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, of whom more than 1,500 were children and women. Israel, it seems, owns the exclusive right to retaliate......."