Speaker Of The Truth

Iraq: The war was illegal

2009-11-30T01:23:00.003Z

Taken form the Independent, UK, Sunday, 29 November 2009
By Brian Brady

Tony Blair will be quizzed over a devastating official memo warning him that war on Iraq would be illegal eight months before he sent troops into Baghdad, it was claimed last night.

The Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war will consider a letter from Lord Goldsmith, then Mr Blair's top law officer, advising him that deposing Saddam would be in breach of international law, according to a report in The Mail on Sunday.

But Mr Blair refused to accept Lord Goldsmith's advice and instead issued instructions for his long-term friend to be "gagged" and barred from cabinet meetings, the newspaper claimed. Lord Goldsmith apparently lost three stone, and complained he was "more or less pinned to the wall" in a No 10 showdown with two of Mr Blair's most loyal aides, Lord Falconer and Baroness Morgan. Mr Blair also allegedly failed to inform the Cabinet of the warning, fearing an "anti-war revolt".

Lord Goldsmith allegedly threatened to resign over the issue, but was "bullied" into backing down. He eventually issued carefully drafted qualified backing for the invasion.

But according to The Mail on Sunday, his advice was radically different in July 2002, when ministers were allegedly told the US and UK planned "regime change" in Iraq. Then Lord Goldsmith reportedly wrote a letter to Mr Blair on 29 July, flagging up the legal difficulties of the plan of campaign he had apparently thrashed out with President George Bush. The letter pointed out: (1) Although UN rules permitted "military intervention on the basis of self-defence, they did not apply in this case as Britain was not under threat from Iraq; (2) While the UN allowed "humanitarian intervention" in certain cases, that too was not relevant to Iraq; (3) It would be very hard to rely on earlier UN resolutions in the Nineties approving the use of force against Saddam.

Lord Goldsmith ended by saying "the situation might change" – although, in legal terms, it never did. The advice, and the decision to commit it to an official record, reportedly caused great friction between the two men, as it was feared publication of the details could undermine the case for war and damage Mr Blair's credibility.

The revelations follow testimony from a series of by figures at the Chilcot inquiry who have questioned Mr Blair's judgement and honesty, and the legality of the war. The Independent on Sunday understands, after only four days of testimony, the former prime minister was already furious that his reputation could be "shredded" by senior civil servants taking revenge on him during the inquiry into the Iraq conflict, it emerged last night.

Mr Blair has been appalled by the high-profile evidence given by mandarins who have appeared before the Chilcot inquiry since the first round of public hearings began last Tuesday, close friends have revealed. His image has taken a battering over the past six days, as a series of current and former public servants have given evidence that conflicts with the Government's account of the intelligence assessment of Iraq's weapons capability before the invasion in March 2003.

Among the devastating details presented to the inquiry was the revelation that British spies reported 10 days before the invasion that Iraq had "disassembled" what chemical weapons it had – but Mr Blair went ahead and sent troops into battle. Britain's former ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, claimed Mr Blair and Mr Bush had signed a secret deal "in blood" to remove Saddam almost a year before the invasion. He said the agreement in effect left officials scrabbling to find "a smoking gun" to justify going to war.

Mr Blair's friends claimed last night that he has found some of the evidence given so far "distasteful", and potentially damaging to his reputation. "It is clear that the headlines so far have not been helpful to him," a former minister said. "But more troubling is the sense that some of the people involved are so keen to stick the knife in. It is quite distasteful."

Another Blair ally said the former leader had made clear his concern that "his reputation could be shredded by the Chilcot process". "He is furious that mandarins are seeking revenge and discovering their principles after the event," one friend added.

Sir Christopher Meyer has attracted much criticism from Blairites following a flamboyant appearance during which he claimed Mr Blair's view on "regime change" in Iraq hardened after a private meeting with Mr Bush in 2002. He also compared Mr Blair unflatteringly to Margaret Thatcher. The former diplomat told the inquiry on Thursday: "She would have insisted on a clear, coherent political/diplomatic strategy and I think she would have demanded the greatest clarity about what the heck happened if and when we removed Saddam."

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who worked beside Mr Blair in his attempts to gain UN blessing for the invasion, said the war was of "questionable legitimacy" even though it is unlikely to be proved illegal. The former UK ambassador to the UN said the invasion did not have the backing of most UN members or the British public.

Mr Blair assured MPs in the run-up to the invasion that "extensive, detailed and authoritative" intelligence showed "beyond doubt" that Saddam had continued to produce chemical and biological weapons; tried to develop nuclear weapons; and that he had already produced chemical weapons – and used them on his own people. His government produced two dossiers on Saddam's weapons capability, to back up the case for war.

It has since been shown that much of the intelligence received by the Government in the run-up to the war was confused and inaccurate. Sir William Ehrman, the Foreign Office director general for defence and intelligence at the time, told the inquiry that a report suggested Saddam may not have been able to use chemical weapons. A separate report suggested Iraq might also "lack" warheads capable of spreading chemical agents.

Tim Dowse, the director of counter-proliferation at the Foreign Office between 2001-2003, said most evidence suggested Iraq's chemical and biological programme was largely "destroyed" in 1991. He said intelligence in late 2002 suggested Iraq was rebuilding its capability, although its actual position was unclear after weapons inspectors were expelled in 1998.

And now it appears the inquiry could become more uncomfortable for Mr Blair. It is understood the Chilcot panel has already been given Lord Goldsmith's letter. The two are both likely to be interrogated about it when they give evidence in the new year.

Critical evidence from key figures to Chilcot inquiry
# Sir Peter Ricketts "We quite clearly distanced ourselves from talk of regime change... that was not something we thought there would be any legal base for."
# Sir William Patey "We were aware of those drumbeats from Washington [about regime change]. Our policy was to stay away from that end of the spectrum."
# Sir Michael Wood "[Establishing no-fly zones over Iraq] was very controversial ... The US government was very careful to avoid taking any real position on the law."
# Sir William Ehrman "We did, on 10 March, get a report that chemical weapons might have remained disassembled and Saddam hadn't yet ordered their assembly."
# Sir Christopher Meyer "Suddenly, because of the unforgiving nature of the military timetable, we found ourselves scrabbling for the smoking gun."
# Sir Jeremy Greenstock "I regarded our participation in the military action against Iraq in March 2003 as legal, but of questionable legitimacy."

Gang 'killed victims to extract their fat'

2009-11-22T17:48:00.005Z

Peruvian police arrest suspects who allegedly drained their victims and sold liquid as an anti-wrinkle treatment

Taken form The Guardian, UK
By Rory Carroll, Friday 20 November 2009

A Peruvian gang that allegedly killed people and drained fat from their corpses for use in cosmetics may have been inspired by a grisly Andean legend.

Hilarió Cudeña Simon, the alleged ringleader, linked the crimes to tales of demonic assassins, known as Pishtacos, who purportedly waylaid victims in pre-Columbian times, police said.

Peru reacted with revulsion and horror to reports that scores of peasants may have been butchered by the gang, which was said to have operated in Huánuco, a rural province dotted with Inca temples between the jungle and Andean peaks.

Colonel Jorge Mejia, chief of Peru's anti-kidnapping police, said Cudeña and three other suspects were in custody and that another seven gang members were being hunted.

The jailed men have confessed to killing five people, but police suspect the number of victims is far higher, with 60 people reported missing in Huánuco this year alone. Two of the suspects were arrested at a bus station in the capital, Lima, carrying bottles of liquid fat which they claimed were worth up to £36,000 a gallon.

At a news conference police displayed two bottles of fat, which laboratory tests confirmed were human. "The fat was extracted from the thorax and thighs," said Eusebio Felix Murga, chief of police of Dirincri district. Police also showed a photo of the rotting head of a 27-year-old male victim discovered last month in a coca-growing valley.

Police said they received a tip four months ago about a trade in human fat, which exported the amber liquid to Europe as anti-wrinkle cream. In addition to the alleged ringleader the suspects were named as Segundo Castillejos Agüero, Marcos Veramendi Princípe and Enadina Estela Claudio. They have been charged with homicide, criminal conspiracy, illegal firearms possession and drug trafficking.

The alleged plot has evoked comparisons to Patrick Süskind's novel Perfume in which a killer distills the essence of his victims into a jar. Others compare it to the film Fight Club in which a character played by Brad Pitt steals bags of human fat from a liposuction clinic to make soap.

The gang have been nicknamed the Pishtacos after the ruthless assassins of indigenous Quechua legend who ambushed solitary victims and drained their fat as an offering to gods to make the land fertile. Another version depicts them as cannibal bandits who ate the skin and sold the fat.

The stories date back to before the European conquest.

The suspects allegedly would sever victims' heads, arms and legs, remove organs and suspend torsos from hooks above candles, which warmed the flesh as the fat dripped into tubs below.

Members claimed other gangs were engaged in similar killings.

Medical experts said human fat had cosmetic applications to keep skin supple, but were sceptical about an international black market. "It doesn't make any sense, because in most countries we can get fat so readily and in such amounts from people who are willing to donate," Adam Katz, a professor of plastic surgery at the University of Virginia medical school, told the Associated Press.

Peruvians expressed shock that grisly Andean legends they heard from their grandparents could turn out to have a modern twist. "It's really incredible that killers like this could exist today," said one contributor to the newspaper Peru21.

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I just hope these sickening people get cought and punsied for their actions. All this in the name of beauty!

Anti-Islam lawmaker loses legal challenge to stop hate speech trial in The Netherlands

2009-05-22T09:02:00.001Z

Far-right Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders yesterday lost a legal bid to stop his pending trial for inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims. “The Attorney-General is of the opinion that there are no grounds” for a further appeal, the Dutch Supreme Court said in a statement.

Lawyers for Wilders had sought to overturn a ruling by the Amsterdam appeals court in January that he should be prosecuted for a series of public anti-Muslim statements, particularly for comparing Islam to Nazism.

“It is a political process,” Wilders responded in a statement on the website of his Freedom Party (PVV), which has nine out of 150 seats in parliament.

“I am being prosecuted for saying about Islam what millions of Dutch think. Freedom of expression is at risk of being offered at the altar of Islam.”

The January appeals court judgment had followed numerous complaints from citizens over the prosecution service’s initial refusal to press charges against Wilders.

Wilders, 45, is the maker of a 17-minute film, Fitna, which has been called “offensively anti-Islamic” by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The screening of the film in the Netherlands last year prompted protests in much of the Muslim world including Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iran and Pakistan.

Wilders has called for the banning of the Holy Qur’an in the Netherlands, calling it “fascist.”

In June last year, the prosecutor’s office said Fitna, though offensive to Muslims, did not give rise to a punishable offence. It dismissed dozens of complaints received from around the country, saying Wilders’ utterances were made in the context of public debate.

But the appeals court ruled six months later that politicians, given their special responsibility, ought not to be permitted to make “statements which create hate and grief,” and ordered the prosecution to put Wilders on trial.

Source: AFP/ The Hague

Israeli soldiers ran wild in Gaza

2009-03-20T09:29:00.002Z

Taken from the Toronto Star, Mar 20, 2009
By Oakland Ross

JERUSALEM–Israeli soldiers killed unarmed Palestinian civilians without provocation or warning and vandalized their property during this country's January offensive in Gaza, say some of the soldiers who fought there.

The soldiers blamed the behaviour on poor discipline, lax rules of engagement, and a low estimation of the value of Palestinian life.

The Israel Defense Forces said it had no prior knowledge of the sometimes shocking comportment of its troops, described by the soldiers themselves in a group discussion last month that followed a course they took at an Israeli college.

The IDF said yesterday it would investigate the accounts, which were published yesterday in the Israeli newspapers Haaretz and Maariv.

Haaretz said it would print additional reports in coming days, recounting more acts of serious misconduct by Israeli soldiers during the Gaza operation.

"We have the most moral army in the world," Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israel Radio yesterday.

"I say to you that, from the chief of staff down to the last soldier, the most moral army in the world stands ready to take orders from the government of Israel. I have no doubt that every incident will be individually examined."

In one incident, Israeli soldiers apparently herded a Palestinian family into a single room of their house and left them there, while the troops took positions upstairs and also set up a sniper's post on the roof.

Several days later, soldiers instructed the family to leave the house, directing them to depart the area by heading to the right. They neglected to inform the sharpshooter on the roof what they were doing.

One mother and her two children mistakenly turned to the left and were promptly shot dead by the rooftop sniper.

"He shot them straight away," the squad leader said during the college discussion.

"I don't think he felt too bad about it, because, after all, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given."

The same squad leader reported a general attitude of contempt for Palestinian civilians, a mindset that enabled Israeli soldiers to engage in callous or sometimes lethal behaviour.

"I don't know how to describe it," he said. "The lives of Palestinians, let's say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers.

"So, as far as they are concerned, they can justify it that way."

In another incident, a company commander is said to have ordered his troops to shoot and kill an elderly woman walking past them at a distance of about 100 metres.

"You do not get the impression from the officers that there is any logic to it – to write `Death to the Arabs' on the walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can," said a squad leader who opposed the order.

"I think this is the main thing: to understand just how much the IDF has fallen in the realm of ethics, really. It's what I'll remember the most."

Other soldiers described widespread abuses of property.

"We would throw everything out the windows to make room and order," said one soldier.

"Everything in the house was tossed out the windows – refrigerators, plates, furniture. The order was to throw all of the house's contents outside."

Human rights groups have harshly criticized the Israeli military for its conduct of the war in Gaza – including the use of white phosphorus, a chemical harmful to humans – but the reports published here yesterday were the first documented accounts by Israeli soldiers themselves about widespread abuses.

According to the most recent Palestinian figures, 1,417 Gazans died during the three-week conflict, more than 920 of them civilians.

At least one Israeli organization, the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, puts the civilian death toll much lower.

The college course at which the soldiers related their experiences was taught by Danny Zamir, who said he was "shocked" by what he heard and decided to publish a transcript of the discussion in a newsletter for course graduates.

He told Haaretz he believed the military would conduct a serious examination of the reports.

"They do not intend to avoid responsibility," he said.

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The Israeli's may blame individual soldiers being indiscipline but it is far from the truth. We have seen many times this sort of action in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon and within Israel - this is not the act of individual soldiers - this is an organised crime by the government. It is great that a pro Israeli newspaper like Haaretz is doing the fact find - just wish our own media in the west would publish reports that were fair and accurate rather than Israeli propaganda.

here's more news...

UN envoy sees Israeli war crimes in Gaza
United Nations human rights investigator said that Israel's massive military assault on densely populated Gaza appeared to constitute a grave war crime.

Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said the Geneva Conventions required warring forces to distinguish between military targets and surrounding civilians.

"If it is not possible to do so, then launching the attacks is inherently unlawful and would seem to constitute a war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law," Falk said.

"On the basis of the preliminary evidence available, there is reason to reach this conclusion," he wrote in an annual report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council.

Falk gave the same death toll from Israel's offensive - 1,434 Palestinians, including 960 civilians - as the Palestinian human rights centre.

Israel, which lost 13 people during the war, disputes the figures and has accused Hamas militants in Gaza of using civilians as human shields during the conflict.

Falk called for an independent experts group to be set up to probe possible war crimes committed by both Israeli forces and Hamas.

Violations included Israel's alleged targeting of schools, mosques and ambulances during the December 27-January 18 offensive and its use of weapons including white phosphorus, as well as Hamas firing of rockets at civilian targets in southern Israel.

Falk said that Israel's blockade of the coastal strip of 1.5 million people violated the Geneva Conventions, which he said suggested further war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.

The aggression was not legally justified and may represent a crime against peace - a principle established at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi criminals, according to the American law professor who serves as the Human Rights Council's independent investigator.

He further suggested that the Security Council might set up an ad hoc criminal tribunal to establish accountability for war crimes in Gaza, noting Israel has not signed the Rome statutes establishing the International Criminal Court.

The question is will the UN and the rest of the world do anything baout it?

Mexico condemns US 'corruption'

2009-03-08T19:09:00.003Z

Taken fro Al-Jezeera News Agency, Friday, March 06, 2009

The Mexican president has blamed US "corruption" for hampering his nation's efforts to combat violent drug cartels.

Felipe Calderon also told the AFP news agency that the main cause of Mexico's drug gang problems was "having the world's biggest consumer [of drugs] next to us".

"Drug trafficking in the United States is fuelled by the phenomenon of corruption on the part of the American authorities," he said on Wednesday.

The Mexican president launched a massive assault on drug cartels after entering office in late 2006 but the cartels have responded with campaigns of violence and intimidation that left 6,000 dead in 2008 alone and around 1,000 in 2009 so far.

Calderon acknowledged some Mexican officials had helped the cartels but said the US should ask itself how many of its own officials were implicated.

"It is not an exclusively Mexican problem, it is a common problem between Mexico and the United States," he said.

"I want to know how many American officials have been prosecuted for this [corruption]."

Border concerns

Calderon, who has deployed more than 36,000 troops to the troubled Mexico-US border regions to crack down on violence, also said that the US must halt the flow of weapons into Mexico, where the police and security services are often outgunned.

But he said recent talks with Barack Obama, the US president, had provided "a clearer, more decisive response, one which matches the magnitude of the problem which we face," he said.
Mexican border cities, such as Ciudad Juarez have suffered the brunt of the violence prompting concerns in Washington that the killings and attacks could cross over into the US.

On Wednesday at least 20 people were killed during a prison riot in the city sparked by violence between rival gangs.

Mexican authorities have said they plan to have around 7,500 troops deployed in Ciudad Juarez by the end of this week in a bid to quell the violence, along with 2,000 in the rest of Chihuahua state.

Calderon's comments come as Admiral Mike Mullen, head of the US military, is due to visit Mexico this week as the US is to step up military and other assistance to Mexico in its battle against the cartels.

In February the US department of justice said US and Mexican authorities had arrested 750 people over 21 months in an anti-drug sweep, including 52 members of Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel.

Obama will use spring summit to bring Cuba in from the cold

2009-03-08T19:05:00.002Z

US companies are queuing up as the president moves to ease restrictions on travel and trade, raising hopes of warmer relations and an end to the embargo

Taken from the Observer, UK, Sunday 8 March 2009
By Rory Carroll

President Barack Obama is poised to offer an olive branch to Cuba in an effort to repair the US's tattered reputation in Latin America.

The White House has moved to ease some travel and trade restrictions as a cautious first step towards better ties with Havana, raising hopes of an eventual lifting of the four-decade-old economic embargo. Several Bush-era controls are expected to be relaxed in the run-up to next month's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago to gild the president's regional debut and signal a new era of "Yankee" cooperation.

The administration has moved to ease draconian travel controls and lift limits on cash remittances that Cuban-Americans can send to the island, a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of families.

"The effect on ordinary Cubans will be fairly significant. It will improve things and be very welcome," said a western diplomat in Havana. The changes would reverse hardline Bush policies but not fundamentally alter relations between the superpower and the island, he added. "It just takes us back to the 1990s."

The provisions are contained in a $410bn (£290bn) spending bill due to be voted on this week. The legislation would allow Americans with immediate family in Cuba to visit annually, instead of once every three years, and broaden the definition of immediate family. It would also drop a requirement that Havana pay cash in advance for US food imports.

"There is a strong likelihood that Obama will announce policy changes prior to the summit," said Daniel Erikson, director of Caribbean programmes at the Inter-American Dialogue and author of The Cuba Wars. "Loosening travel restrictions would be the easy thing to do and defuse tensions at the summit."

Latin America, once considered Washington's "backyard", has become newly assertive and ended the Castro government's pariah status. The presidents of Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Guatemala have recently visited Havana to deepen economic and political ties. Brazil's president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is expected to tell Obama on a White House visit this week that the region views the US embargo as anachronistic and vindictive. Easing it would help mend Washington's strained relations with the "pink tide" of leftist governments.

Obama's proposed Cuba measures would only partly thaw a policy frozen since John F Kennedy tried to isolate the communist state across the Florida Straits. "It would signal new pragmatism, but you would still have the embargo, which is the centrepiece of US policy," said Erikson.

Wayne Smith at the Centre for International Policy, Washington DC, said: "I think that the Obama administration will go ahead and lift restrictions on travel of Cuban Americans and remittance to their families. He may also lift restrictions on academic travel.

"There are some things that could be done very easily - for example it's about time we took Cuba off the terrorist list. It's the beginning of the end of the policies we have had towards Cuba for 50 years. It's achieved nothing, it's an embarrassment."

Wayne Smith, a former head of the US Interest Section in Havana, famously said Cuba had the same effect on American administrations as the full moon had on werewolves.

Cuban exiles in Florida, a crucial voting bloc in a swing state, sustained a hardline US policy towards Havana even as the cold war ended and the US traded with other undemocratic nations with much worse human rights records.

To Washington's chagrin, the economic stranglehold did not topple Fidel Castro. When Soviet Union subsidies evaporated, the "maximum leader" implemented savage austerity, opened the island to tourism and found a new sponsor in Venezuela's petrol-rich president, Hugo Chávez.

When Fidel fell ill in 2006, power transferred seamlessly to his brother Raúl. He cemented his authority last week with a cabinet reshuffle that replaced "Fidelistas" with "Raúlistas" from the military.

Recognising Castro continuity, and aghast at European and Asian competitors getting a free hand, US corporate interests are impatient to do business with Cuba. Oil companies want to drill offshore, farmers to export more rice, vegetables and meat, construction firms to build infrastructure projects.

Young Cuban exiles in Florida, less radical than their parents, have advocated ending the policy of isolation. As a senator, Obama opposed the embargo, but as a presidential candidate he supported it - and simultaneously promised engagement with Havana.

A handful of hardline anti-Castro Republican and Democrat members of Congress have threatened to derail the $410bn spending bill unless the Cuba provisions are removed, but most analysts think the legislation will survive.

Compared to intractable challenges in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East, the opportunity for quick progress on Cuba has been called the "low-hanging fruit" of US foreign policy.

That Obama has moved so cautiously has frustrated many reformers. But after decades of freeze, even a slight thaw is welcome, and there is speculation that more will follow.

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Old enemies
President Kennedy imposed an economic and trade embargo on Cuba on 7 February 1962 after Fidel Castro's government expropriated US property on the island. Known by Cubans as el bloqueo, the blockade, elements have been toughened and relaxed under succeeding US presidents. Exceptions have been made for food and medicine exports. George Bush added restrictions on travel and remittances.

The sanctions regime
• No Cuban products or raw materials may enter the US
• US companies and foreign subsidiaries banned from trade with Cuba
• Cuba must pay cash up front when importing US food
• Ships which dock in Cuba may not dock in the US for six months
• US citizens banned from spending money or receiving gifts in Cuba without special permission, in effect a travel ban
• Americans with family on the island limited to one visit every three years.

Former nun tells of sex and suffering inside Indian convent

2009-03-02T23:27:00.004Z

Catholic Church stung by autobiography recounting harassment and abuse

Taken from The Independent, UK, 20 February 2009
By Andrew Buncombe

A former nun's tell-all story which details illicit relationships, sexual harassment and bullying in the convent where she spent three decades is causing ructions in the Catholic Church in the south Indian state of Kerala.

In Amen – an autobiography of a nun, Sister Jesme says when she became a nun she discovered priests were forcing novices to have sex with them. There were also secret homosexual relationships among the nuns and at one point she was forced into such a relationship by another nun who told her she preferred this kind of arrangement as it ruled out the possibility of pregnancy.

"I did not want to make this book controversial. I want to express my feelings and to explain what happened to me... I want people to know how I have suffered," she told The Independent last night, speaking from the town of Kozhikode. "People say that everything is OK, but I was in the convent and I want them to know what goes on. I have concerns for others."

Sister Jesme, who quit last year as the principal of a Catholic college in Thrissur, alleges senior nuns tried to have her committed to a mental institution after she spoke out against them.

In her book, she says that while travelling through Bangalore, she was once directed to stay with a purportedly pious priest who took her to a garden "and showed me several pairs cuddling behind trees. He also gave me a sermon on the necessity of physical love and described the illicit affairs that certain bishops and priests had". The priest took her to his home, stripped off his clothes and ordered her to do the same.

She also alleges that while senior staff turned a blind eye to the actions of more experienced nuns, novices were strongly punished, even for minor transgressions. She was not allowed to go home after she learnt her father had died. "I was able to see [the body of] my father barely 15 minutes before the funeral," she writes. "The [response] of the superiors was that the then senior sisters were not even lucky enough to see the bodies of their parents."

When she resigned as a college principal, she claimed convents had become "houses of torture", saying: "The mental torture was unbearable. When I questioned the church's stand on self-financing colleges and certain other issues, they accused me of having mental problems. They have even sent me to a psychiatrist. There are many nuns undergoing ill-treatment from the order, but they are afraid of challenging it. The church is a formidable fortress."

The allegations are not the only controversy to rock the Catholic Church in Kerala. Last summer, a 23-year-old novice committed suicide and left a note saying she had been harassed by her Mother Superior. Reports suggest there have been a number of similar suicides. And in November, police in Kerala arrested two priests and a nun in connection with the killing of Sister Abhaya in a notorious 1992 murder.

Last night, a spokesman for the Syro-Malabar order of the Catholic Church, Dr Paul Thelakkat, dismissed Sister Jesme's allegations as a "book of trivialities". "It's her experiences, but these are things that might creep into a society of communal living," he said. Asked if the church would be shocked by the allegations, he replied: "Absolutely not. The church knows about these things."

Warning over cough medicines for children

2009-03-01T11:57:00.003Z

Taken from Yahoo News, 01/03/09 (via ITN news)

Over-the-counter cough and cold medicines do not work on children under 12 and can even cause side effects, a review has found.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) found "no robust evidence" that popular remedies such as Lemsip powders, Day Nurse and Sudafed work when given to youngsters.

The MHRA added that the possible side effects - although not dangerous - could include sleep disturbance, allergic reactions and hallucinations.

Many can no longer be sold for use on children under six and pharmacists will be issued with new advice to give to parents about which medicines can be used safely.

Pain relief preparations and remedies used to lower a child's temperature, such as Calpol, are unaffected by the new rules.

For children under six, the MHRA recommends parents stick to simple remedies like keeping their child's temperature down and simple honey and lemon mixtures to ease a cough.

However, the agency identified a list of eight medicines that do work and are safe to use on children under six. They include Beechams Veno's Honey and Lemon, Benylin Tickly Coughs and CalCough TicklyCare Glycerin Lemon & Honey with Glucose.

None should be given to babies under one year old.

Director of Vigilance and Risk Management of Medicines at the MHRA, Dr June Raine, said: "Coughs and colds can be distressing for both you and your child but they will get better by themselves within a few days. Using simple measures to ease symptoms is likely to be most effective.

"Over-the-counter medicines used to treat coughs and colds have been used for many years. However they came into use when clinical trials were not required to demonstrate that they worked in children. This means they were not specially designed for children.

"It is not right to assume safety and efficacy based on children being 'small adults'. Children should have access to medicines that are acceptably safe and designed for their use."

The MHRA said parents should not worry if they have used the medicines in the past and shop shelves will not be cleared of current stocks.

The following is a list of medicines which the MHRA says there is "no robust evidence" on whether they work.

Labels on the remedies in the second group will now be changed to indicate they should not be given to children under six.

The MHRA says it is still safe to give all the medicines listed to children over the age of six, if they feel they will benefit.

* Medicines which can be given to under sixes *
Baby Meltus Cough Linctus
Beechams Veno's Honey and Lemon (not to be given under 12 months)
Benylin Children's Tickly Coughs (not to be given under three months)
Benylin Tickly Coughs (non-drowsy) (not to be given under 12 months)
CalCough Tickly
Care Glycerin Lemon & Honey with Glucose (not to be given under 12 months)
Lemsip Cough Dry
Tixylix Baby Syrup (not to be given under three months)
Pain relief products such as Calpol are not affected by the new advice

* Medicines whose current labelling will be changed under the new guidance *
Beechams Veno's Expectorant
Beechams Veno's Honey & Lemon
Benilyn Childrens Chesty Coughs
Benilyn Childrens Coughs and Colds
Benilyn Childrens Night Coughs
Benylin Children's Dry Cough
Calcold
Calcough Chesty
Calpol Night
Care Glycerin lemon & honey with Ipecac
Cofsed Linctus
Family Meltus Chesty Coughs Honey and Lemon Flavour
Galenphol Linctus
Galenphol Paediatric Linctus
Galpseud linctus
GalsudJunior
Meltus Chesty Coughs with Catarrh
Junior Meltus Dry Coughs with Congestion
Junior Meltus Dry Coughs with Congestion
Lemsip Cough and Cold Chesty Cough Medicine
Lemsip Cough Chesty
Medised for Children
Multi-Action Actifed
Multi-Action Actifed Chesty Coughs
Mutli-Action Actifed Dry Coughs
Non- Drowsy Sudafed Childrens
Non Drowsy Sudafed Expectorant
Non Drowsy Sudafed Linctus
Otrivine Childrens Nasal Drops
Robitussin Chesty Cough Medicine
Robitussin Chesty Cough with Congestion
Tixilix Cough and Cold
Tixylix Chesty Cough
Tixylix Night Cough
Vicks Cough Syrup for Chesty Coughs
Vicks Cough Syrup for Dry Coughs

* Medicines not currently labelled with doses for under sixes and therefore should not be given *
Afrazine Nasal
Allens Pine and Honey Balsam
Beechams Decongestant Plus with Paracetamol
Beechams Flu Plus
Beechams Powders
Benilyn Chesty Coughs (Non-Drowsy)
Benilyn Chesty Coughs (Original)
Benilyn Dry Coughs (Non-Drowsy)
Benilyn Dry Coughs (Original)
Benylin 4 Flu
Benylin 4 Flu
Benylin Cold & Flu Max strength
Benylin Cough and Congestion
Benylin Dual Action Night Cough & Congestion Care
Pholcodine linctus
Covonia Original Bronchial Balsam
Day Nurse
Fenox Nasal
Lemsip Max Cold & Flu
Lemsip Max Day & Night Cold & Flu relief
Lemsip Max Daytime Cold & Flu relief
Lemsip Max Sinus Capsules Non-Drowsy
Sinutab Non-Drowsy
Sudafed Congestion & Headache Capsules Non-Drowsy
Sudafed Congestion Cold and Flu Non-Drowsy
Sudafed Dual Relief
Otrivine Antistin Eye Drops
Otrivine Mucron
Robitussin Dry Cough Medicine
Tixylix Dry Cough
Vicks Cold & Flu Care Daymed Capsules
Vicks Cold & Flu care Medinite Complete Syrup
Vicks Sinex Decongestant Nasal
Vicks Sinex Micromist
Vicks Sinex Soother

Child prostitutes rescued in US

2009-02-23T12:08:00.000Z

Taken from BBC News, 23 February 2009

US authorities have rescued nearly 50 child prostitutes - some as young as 13 - in a nationwide operation against the trafficking of children for sex.

More than 570 suspects were arrested during the action, which took place over three nights.
FBI agents and local police forces were involved in the operations which spanned some 29 cities.

Officials say a 16-year-old girl who recruits children as prostitutes is being sought as a priority.

Special Agent Melissa Morrow, of Washington's FBI, said adult prostitutes who were among those arrested tipped authorities off about the girl.

"She is currently 16 and started when she was 13," Agent Morrow said.

"Now she is out there recruiting other juveniles as well," she said, adding that finding her was "at the top of our list", the Associated Press news agency reported.

Cycle of violence
The ages of teenage prostitutes rescued in Operation Cross Country III ranged from 13 to 17.

The FBI said 571 people were arrested on suspicion of the trafficking children for prostitution and solicitation.

"We continue to pursue those who exploit our nation's children," said FBI Director Robert S Mueller III.

"We may not be able to return their innocence but we can remove them from this cycle of abuse and violence."

Israel takes control of more West Bank land

2009-02-16T14:18:00.002Z

Taken from Yahoo News, 16 February 2009
By Karin Laub, Associated Press

JERUSALEM – Israel has taken control of a large chunk of land near a prominent West Bank settlement, paving the way for the possible construction of 2,500 settlement homes, officials said Monday, in a new challenge to Mideast peacemaking.

Successive Israeli governments have broken promises to the United States to halt settlement expansion, defined by Washington as an obstacle to peace. Ongoing expansion is likely to create friction not only with the Palestinians, but with President Barack Obama, whose Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, has long pushed for a settlement freeze. Obama has said he'd get involved quickly in Mideast peace efforts.

The composition of Israel's next government is not clear yet following inconclusive elections last week. However, right-wing parties are given a better chance to form a ruling coalition, with hardline leader Benjamin Netanyahu at the helm.

Netanyahu supports settlement expansion and has derided peace talks with the Palestinians as a waste of time, saying he would focus instead of trying to improve the Palestinian economy. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has dismissed Netanyahu's approach as a non-starter, and his aides said recently that peace talks can only resume after a settlement freeze.

At the center of the latest expansion plans is Efrat, a settlement of about 1,600 families south of Jerusalem.

The mayor of Efrat, Oded Revivi, said the Israeli military designated 425 acres (172 hectares) near Efrat as so-called state land two weeks ago at the end of a lengthy appeals process. He said nine appeals were filed by Palestinian landowners, adding that eight were rejected and one was upheld.

Revivi said Efrat plans to build 2,500 homes on that land, but that several steps of government approval would still be needed before construction could begin — a process that could take years. Eventually, Efrat is to grow to a city of 30,000 people, he said.

The settlement is situated in one of the three major settlement blocs that Israel expects to hold on to in any final peace deal. Palestinian reaction to the latest development was not immediately available.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel's peace partner, warned that continued settlement expansion would cripple peace talks.

"We oppose settlement activity in principle and if the settlement activity doesn't stop, any meetings (with the Israelis) will be worthless," Abbas said.

Nearly 290,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements today, or 95,000 more than in May 2001 when Mitchell first called for a settlement freeze. At the time, he led a fact-finding mission to Israel and the Palestinian territories to find a way to end months of violence and resume peace talks.

Mitchell called on the Palestinians to halt attacks on Israelis and demanded that Israel halt construction in settlements.

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So much for peace efforts if one country deliberately builds more settlements in areas it shouldn't - denying Palestinians places to build their future homes, continously forcing Palestinians off thier homes and into regufee camps - so as to give more places to so called Jews from New York, Moscow, London who have no connection to Israel. No doubt nothing will be done by the US or the UK on this newspiece.

Blackwater banned from Iraq

2009-02-01T19:18:00.000Z

Taken from Al-Jazeera News Agency, January 30, 2009

Blackwater, a US private security firm, has been barred from providing security for US diplomats in Iraq for its alleged involvement in the deaths of at least 17 civilians in 2007.

The Iraqi interior ministry on Thursday said the measure followed the firm's "improper conduct and excessive use of force".

"It is because of the shooting incident in 2007 ... [Blackwater] came to us and applied and we refused them. They tried by all means to stay here and we said 'no'," General Abdel Karim Khalaf, an interior ministry spokesman, told AFP.

Five former Blackwater guards are awaiting trial in the US for the incident that took place in September 2007.

One Blackwater guard has pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and attempt to commit manslaughter over that incident.

A US embassy official in Baghdad and Khalaf gave no exact exit date for Blackwater employees.

They also did not clarify whether the Blackwater guards would be allowed to continue guarding US diplomats until a date is decided.

"We don't have specifics about dates. We are working with the government of Iraq and our contractors to address the implications of this decision," the US embassy official said.

Immunity stripped
Blackwater employees who have not been implicated in the 2007 shooting incident will be allowed to work with a different employer in Iraq.

The security contracting company deny any misconduct over the shooting. They say guards opened fire after coming under attack when a car in a US state department convoy broke down in Baghdad's Nisoor Square.

Erik Prince, Blackwater's founder, acknowledged that the loss of the contract would hurt the company, but said that the company's exit from Iraq would also endanger the diplomats it has protected.

"Our abrupt departure would far more hurt the reconstruction team and the diplomats trying to rebuild the country than it would hurt us as a business," he said.

The decision not to renew the Blackwater contract comes in the wake of a US-Iraqi security agreement approved in November which gives Iraq the right to decide which Western security companies can work in Iraq.

Gary Jackson, Blackwater's president, said it will remove its nearly two dozen aircraft and 1,000 security contractors from Iraq within 72 hours of receiving an order to leave.

Up until the beginning of this year, Western security contractors enjoyed blanket immunity from Iraqi law.

This has since been reversed to allow security contractors to be prosecuted in Iraq.

----------------------------------------------------------

The case has also been complicated because, at the time of the attack, private contractors like Blackwater operated without any clear legal oversight and it could be argued they did not have to answer either to Iraqi or US laws.

Under the deal Blackwater had with the US government, it was allowed to repair the vehicles involved in the attack before investigators saw them, taking away key forensic evidence. - source: Al-Jazeera 08 December, 2008

When you have contractors with immunity from being prosecuted then there is something wrong somewhere.

Payout for family of Gaza film-maker

2009-02-01T12:14:00.000Z

Taken from Yahoo News (via ITN News) 01.02.2009

The family of a film-maker shot dead by the Israeli army have accepted a settlement.

James Miller, 34, from Braunton, north Devon, died in May 2003 while working on a documentary for the American HBO network about the impact of terrorist action on Palestinian children in a refugee camp in Rafah, Gaza.

Mr Miller's family said in a statement: "The family of British film-maker James Miller confirmed today that it accepted a settlement from the Israeli government, saying that after five and a half years since his death this is the nearest they are likely to get to an admission of guilt by the Israeli government."

The award-winning cameraman and documentary maker was shot at night by an Israeli soldier despite carrying a white flag.

Mr Miller was trying to ask troops if it was safe to leave the area when he was hit in the neck.

The serviceman who opened fire was cleared of misusing firearms in 2005, but the following year an inquest in the UK found Mr Miller was unlawfully killed.

No details of the settlement were given but the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported a sum of around £1.5 million was paid to the family.

Mr Miller's death came before the killing of peace activist Tom Hurndall, who was left in a coma after being shot in the head by an Israeli soldier.

The 22-year-old from Tufnell Park, north London, was shepherding children to safety in Rafah when he was hit. He died nine months later.

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The Israel War and PR machine will not stop at anything to cover their dirty tracks. Lucky this story was exposed and although they trie dtheir best - they could not hide all the evidence on the death of an innocent man. I hope the family of Tom Hurndall find peace after this emotional saga.

Obama tells Muslim world: 'America is not Islam's enemy'

2009-01-27T18:04:00.003Z

Extracted from Daily Mail, UK, 27.01.09

In the his first major interview with an Arabic television station, President Obama also told Dubai-based satellite TV station Al Arabiya that it was his job to tell the Muslim world: 'Americans are not your enemy'.

He spoke as his new Middle East envoy arrived in Cairo today on a tour to kick off the new administration's efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking and shore up a shaky Gaza truce.

George Mitchell, a former U.S. senator, was due to meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak tomorrow at the start of a week-long trip that will also take him to Israel, the West Bank, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, France and Britain.

'Sending George Mitchell to the Middle East is fulfilling my campaign promise that we're not going to wait until the end of my administration to deal with Palestinian and Israeli peace. We're going to start now,' Mr Obama told Al Arabiya.

'He's going to be speaking to all the major parties involved. And he will then report back to me. From there we will formulate a specific response.'

He added that he had told Mitchell to 'start by listening'.

'Now, my job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect. I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.

'What I want to communicate is the fact that in all my travels throughout the Muslim world, what I've come to understand is that regardless of your faith - and America is a country of Muslims, Jews, Christians, non-believers - regardless of your faith, people all have certain common hopes and common dreams.

'And my job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives.
'My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy.'

He praised Saudi King Adbullah for putting forward an Arab plan for peace in the Middle East.

He said: 'It is impossible for us to think only in terms of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and not think in terms of what's happening with Syria or Iran or Lebanon or Afghanistan and Pakistan.

These things are interrelated.'

Mr Obama said his administration had begun to fulfill his campaign promises by naming former U.S. Senator George Mitchell as a Middle East peace envoy and sending him to the region within days of becoming president. Mr Mitchell was travelling to the region on Monday evening.

He added: 'Ultimately we cannot tell either the Israelis or the Palestinians what is best for them.
'But I do believe that the moment is ripe for both sides to realise that the path that they are on is one that is not going to result in prosperity and security for their people.

'And that instead, it's time to return to the negotiating table.'

The President urged people in the Muslim world to judge him by his actions, pointing to the decision to close the U.S. prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, where detainees in the U.S. war on terror are being held. He said he also would begin to follow through on his pledge to draw down U.S. troops in Iraq.

Israel 'completes Gaza troop withdrawal'

2009-01-22T22:18:00.001Z

Taken from the Independent, UK, 21 January 2009
By Jeffrey Heller, Reuters

Israel said it completed a troop pullout from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip today, starting its relationship with US President Barack Obama by quitting Palestinian land devastated by its 22-day offensive.

"As of this morning, the last of the Israel Defence Forces soldiers have left the Gaza Strip and the forces have deployed outside of Gaza and are prepared for any occurrences," an army spokesman said, about 13 hours after Obama's inauguration.

Israel had withdrawn most of its forces before Obama was sworn in on Tuesday, in a move analysts saw as an attempt to avoid any early tensions with his administration that could cloud the start of a new era in a key alliance.

Obama's predecessor, George Bush, endorsed Israel's right to defend itself against rocket fire by the Gaza Strip's ruling Hamas Islamists. Obama, before taking office, declined to comment in detail on the Gaza crisis.

Israel's attacks in an offensive it launched on Dec. 27 killed some 1,300 Palestinians and made thousands homeless. Gaza medical officials said the Palestinian dead included at least 700 civilians. Israel says hundreds of militants died.

Ten Israeli soldiers and three civilians, hit by cross-border rocket fire, were killed in the conflict.

The United Nations, whose secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, toured Gaza's rubble-strewn streets on Tuesday and described the destruction he witnessed as heartbreaking, has estimated some $330 million is needed for urgent aid in the coastal enclave.

Reconstruction, if it can be launched in light of the frost between Hamas and the West, may cost close to $2 billion, according to Palestinian and international estimates.

Although aid agencies said they planned a massive inflow of supplies through Israeli crossings, help will be complicated by the Western boycott of Hamas as a "terrorist" organisation and an Israeli blockade on many items, including building materials, that can be used to make weapons.

Hamas, announcing a ceasefire on Sunday - hours after an Israeli-declared truce went into effect - had demanded Israeli troops quit the territory within a week.

The group held what it termed victory rallies in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, but many Palestinians have returned to their homes only to find they had been reduced to piles of rubble.

"We've won the war. But we've lost everything," said Nabil Sultan, commenting on Hamas's V for Victory signs as he surveyed the wreckage of his home on the outskirts of the city of Gaza. "This was my house," he shrugged, by a pile of smashed concrete.

In his inaugural speech, Obama promised to reach out to Muslims worldwide and "seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect".

Sources familiar with the matter said in Washington that Obama would move quickly to name a Middle East envoy, possibly former Sen. George Mitchell, who had tried on behalf of the Clinton and Bush administrations to bring about an end to Israeli-Palestinian violence.

In a 2001 report, Mitchell called for a freeze in the construction of Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land and for the Palestinians, who were waging an uprising, to stop attacks on Israelis.

Hailing Obama's election as "a change of historic significance", Israeli President Shimon Peres said: "What can be expected of the new president is a winning team to really rout violence from the Middle East and move the peace process forward."

Bush's efforts, late in his second term, to reach at least a framework peace deal in renewed talks between Israel and President Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority, fell short of any agreement.

Immediate diplomatic steps were likely to focus on turning the Gaza truce into a long-term ceasefire, and more comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace moves would have to await the outcome of Israel's Feb. 19 parliamentary election.

Hamas has said it was continuing talks in Cairo over Egypt's proposal for a deal that would guarantee the reopening of Gaza border crossings, including a terminal on the Egyptian frontier that had served as the territory's main exit to the outside world.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has declared his government's mission accomplished - noting a flurry of diplomatic efforts by the United States, Egypt and European countries to prevent Hamas rearming.

That would mean as yet unspecified measures to stop Hamas smuggling weapons across the Egypt-Gaza frontier, a sensitive matter given Cairo's past efforts to play down its scope.
Iran, accused by Israel of supplying arms to Hamas militants, said on Wednesday that resistance groups around the world like those in the Gaza Strip had the right to have access to weapons to fight against "colonialists".

"A government or a people who would like to defend themselves, it is very natural they will do their utmost to get weapons from whatever place possible," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in a speech on the conflict in Gaza.

British Jews attacked for pro-Gaza solidarity

2009-01-20T22:07:00.001Z

Taken from the Independent, UK, 18 January 2009
By Emily Dugan

British Jews have been attacked for expressing support for Palestinians suffering under Israeli military strikes in Gaza. Police confirmed yesterday that they have provided protection to a number of people believed to be victims of UK-based Zionist extremists angered by expressions of solidarity with Palestinians.

Israel's assault on Gaza has prompted a rise in anti-Semitic attacks in Britain, with more than 150 incidents reported by the Community Security Trust (CST), an organisation for the protection of Jews. But the past two weeks have also seen aggression within the Jewish community towards those sympathetic to the plight of Gaza.

Rabbi Elchenon Beck, 39, was among six rabbis expressing support for Gaza's Palestinians who were set upon by a gang of what they allege were Zionists while walking back from opposing rallies outside the Israeli Embassy on 6 January. "They were shouting and pushed someone to the floor, so we called the police," Rabbi Beck said. "All the time they are trying to intimidate us, but we get used to it."

Rabbi Aharon Cohen, a Palestinian sympathiser and member of the anti-Zionist group Neturei Karta, had his letter box destroyed by a powerful firework after attending the peace march in Manchester this month.

Mark Gardner, of the CST, said it had not kept records of attacks within the Jewish community, but condemned those using the situation in Israel to justify violence in Britain.

"There's passionate political debate," he said, "but what's vitally important is that it does not spill over so that we become participants in a war by proxy."

We must adjust our distorted image of Hamas

2009-01-01T21:57:00.000Z

Taken from The Times, UK, December 31, 2008
By William Sieghart

Last week I was in Gaza. While I was there I met a group of 20 or so police officers who were undergoing a course in conflict management. They were eager to know whether foreigners felt safer since Hamas had taken over the Government? Indeed we did, we told them. Without doubt the past 18 months had seen a comparative calm on the streets of Gaza; no gunmen on the streets, no more kidnappings. They smiled with great pride and waved us goodbye.

Less than a week later all of these men were dead, killed by an Israeli rocket at a graduation ceremony. Were they “dangerous Hamas militant gunmen”? No, they were unarmed police officers, public servants killed not in a “militant training camp” but in the same police station in the middle of Gaza City that had been used by the British, the Israelis and Fatah during their periods of rule there.

This distinction is crucial because while the horrific scenes in Gaza and Israel play themselves out on our television screens, a war of words is being fought that is clouding our understanding of the realities on the ground.

Who or what is Hamas, the movement that Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defence Minister, would like to wipe out as though it were a virus? Why did it win the Palestinian elections and why does it allow rockets to be fired into Israel? The story of Hamas over the past three years reveals how the Israeli, US and UK governments' misunderstanding of this Islamist movement has led us to the brutal and desperate situation that we are in now.

The story begins nearly three years ago when Change and Reform - Hamas's political party - unexpectedly won the first free and fair elections in the Arab world, on a platform of ending endemic corruption and improving the almost non-existent public services in Gaza and the West Bank. Against a divided opposition this ostensibly religious party impressed the predominantly secular community to win with 42 per cent of the vote.

Palestinians did not vote for Hamas because it was dedicated to the destruction of the state of Israel or because it had been responsible for waves of suicide bombings that had killed Israeli citizens. They voted for Hamas because they thought that Fatah, the party of the rejected Government, had failed them. Despite renouncing violence and recognising the state of Israel Fatah had not achieved a Palestinian state. It is crucial to know this to understand the supposed rejectionist position of Hamas. It won't recognise Israel or renounce the right to resist until it is sure of the world's commitment to a just solution to the Palestinian issue.

In the five years that I have been visiting Gaza and the West Bank, I have met hundreds of Hamas politicians and supporters. None of them has professed the goal of Islamising Palestinian society, Taleban-style. Hamas relies on secular voters too much to do that. People still listen to pop music, watch television and women still choose whether to wear the veil or not.

The political leadership of Hamas is probably the most highly qualified in the world. Boasting more than 500 PhDs in its ranks, the majority are middle-class professionals - doctors, dentists, scientists and engineers. Most of its leadership have been educated in our universities and harbour no ideological hatred towards the West. It is a grievance-based movement, dedicated to addressing the injustice done to its people. It has consistently offered a ten-year ceasefire to give breathing space to resolve a conflict that has continued for more than 60 years.

The Bush-Blair response to the Hamas victory in 2006 is the key to today's horror. Instead of accepting the democratically elected Government, they funded an attempt to remove it by force; training and arming groups of Fatah fighters to unseat Hamas militarily and impose a new, unelected government on the Palestinians. Further, 45 Hamas MPs are still being held in Israeli jails.

Six months ago the Israeli Government agreed to an Egyptian- brokered ceasefire with Hamas. In return for a ceasefire, Israel agreed to open the crossing points and allow a free flow of essential supplies in and out of Gaza. The rocket barrages ended but the crossings never fully opened, and the people of Gaza began to starve. This crippling embargo was no reward for peace.

When Westerners ask what is in the mind of Hamas leaders when they order or allow rockets to be fired at Israel they fail to understand the Palestinian position. Two months ago the Israeli Defence Forces broke the ceasefire by entering Gaza and beginning the cycle of killing again. In the Palestinian narrative each round of rocket attacks is a response to Israeli attacks. In the Israeli narrative it is the other way round.

But what does it mean when Mr Barak talks of destroying Hamas? Does it mean killing the 42 per cent of Palestinians who voted for it? Does it mean reoccupying the Gaza strip that Israel withdrew from so painfully three years ago? Or does it mean permanently separating the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank, politically and geographically? And for those whose mantra is Israeli security, what sort of threat do the three quarters of a million young people growing up in Gaza with an implacable hatred of those who starve and bomb them pose?

It is said that this conflict is impossible to solve. In fact, it is very simple. The top 1,000 people who run Israel - the politicians, generals and security staff - and the top Palestinian Islamists have never met. Genuine peace will require that these two groups sit down together without preconditions. But the events of the past few days seem to have made this more unlikely than ever. That is the challenge for the new administration in Washington and for its European allies.

William Sieghart is chairman of Forward Thinking, an independent conflict resolution agency

Robert Fisk: Why bombing Ashkelon is the most tragic irony

2009-01-01T19:49:00.002Z

Taken from The Independent, UK, Tuesday, 30 December 2008

How easy it is to snap off the history of the Palestinians, to delete the narrative of their tragedy, to avoid a grotesque irony about Gaza which – in any other conflict – journalists would be writing about in their first reports: that the original, legal owners of the Israeli land on which Hamas rockets are detonating live in Gaza.

That is why Gaza exists: because the Palestinians who lived in Ashkelon and the fields around it – Askalaan in Arabic – were dispossessed from their lands in 1948 when Israel was created and ended up on the beaches of Gaza. They – or their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren – are among the one and a half million Palestinian refugees crammed into the cesspool of Gaza, 80 per cent of whose families once lived in what is now Israel. This, historically, is the real story: most of the people of Gaza don't come from Gaza.

But watching the news shows, you'd think that history began yesterday, that a bunch of bearded anti-Semitic Islamist lunatics suddenly popped up in the slums of Gaza – a rubbish dump of destitute people of no origin – and began firing missiles into peace-loving, democratic Israel, only to meet with the righteous vengeance of the Israeli air force. The fact that the five sisters killed in Jabalya camp had grandparents who came from the very land whose more recent owners have now bombed them to death simply does not appear in the story.

Both Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres said back in the 1990s that they wished Gaza would just go away, drop into the sea, and you can see why. The existence of Gaza is a permanent reminder of those hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who lost their homes to Israel, who fled or were driven out through fear or Israeli ethnic cleansing 60 years ago, when tidal waves of refugees had washed over Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War and when a bunch of Arabs kicked out of their property didn't worry the world.

Well, the world should worry now. Crammed into the most overpopulated few square miles in the whole world are a dispossessed people who have been living in refuse and sewage and, for the past six months, in hunger and darkness, and who have been sanctioned by us, the West.

Gaza was always an insurrectionary place. It took two years for Ariel Sharon's bloody "pacification", starting in 1971, to be completed, and Gaza is not going to be tamed now.

Alas for the Palestinians, their most powerful political voice – I'm talking about the late Edward Said, not the corrupt Yassir Arafat (and how the Israelis must miss him now) – is silent and their predicament largely unexplained by their deplorable, foolish spokesmen. "It's the most terrifying place I've ever been in," Said once said of Gaza. "It's a horrifyingly sad place because of the desperation and misery of the way people live. I was unprepared for camps that are much worse than anything I saw in South Africa."

Of course, it was left to Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to admit that "sometimes also civilians pay the price," an argument she would not make, of course, if the fatality statistics were reversed. Indeed, it was instructive yesterday to hear a member of the American Enterprise Institute – faithfully parroting Israel's arguments – defending the outrageous Palestinian death toll by saying that it was "pointless to play the numbers game". Yet if more than 300 Israelis had been killed – against two dead Palestinians – be sure that the "numbers game" and the disproportionate violence would be all too relevant. The simple fact is that Palestinian deaths matter far less than Israeli deaths. True, we know that 180 of the dead were Hamas members. But what of the rest? If the UN's conservative figure of 57 civilian fatalities is correct, the death toll is still a disgrace.

To find both the US and Britain failing to condemn the Israeli onslaught while blaming Hamas is not surprising. US Middle East policy and Israeli policy are now indistinguishable and Gordon Brown is following the same dog-like devotion to the Bush administration as his predecessor.

As usual, the Arab satraps – largely paid and armed by the West – are silent, preposterously calling for an Arab summit on the crisis which will (if it even takes place), appoint an "action committee" to draw up a report which will never be written. For that is the way with the Arab world and its corrupt rulers. As for Hamas, they will, of course, enjoy the discomfiture of the Arab potentates while cynically waiting for Israel to talk to them. Which they will. Indeed, within a few months, we'll be hearing that Israel and Hamas have been having "secret talks" – just as we once did about Israel and the even more corrupt PLO. But by then, the dead will be long buried and we will be facing the next crisis since the last crisis.

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Another brilliant article by Robert Fisk - I wish there were more journalist like him - telling the truth with accurate reporting.

this is an interesting article extracted from Haaretz, 31/12/2008

Disinformation, secrecy and lies: How the Gaza offensive came about
By Barak Ravid

Long-term preparation, careful gathering of information, secret discussions, operational deception and the misleading of the public - all these stood behind the Israel Defense Forces "Cast Lead" operation against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, which began Saturday morning.

The disinformation effort, according to defense officials, took Hamas by surprise and served to significantly increase the number of its casualties in the strike. Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. According to the sources, Barak maintained that although the lull would allow Hamas to prepare for a showdown with Israel, the Israeli army needed time to prepare, as well.

Barak gave orders to carry out a comprehensive intelligence-gathering drive which sought to map out Hamas' security infrastructure, along with that of other militant organizations operating in the Strip. This intelligence-gathering effort brought back information about permanent bases, weapon silos, training camps, the homes of senior officials and coordinates for other facilities. The plan of action that was implemented in Operation Cast Lead remained only a blueprint until a month ago, when tensions soared after the IDF carried out an incursion into Gaza during the ceasefire to take out a tunnel which the army said was intended to facilitate an attack by Palestinian militants on IDF troops.

So it was all pre-planned including killing civilians - women and children included!

Johann Hari: The true story behind this war is not the one Israel is telling

2008-12-30T20:14:00.000Z

Taken from The Independent, Monday, 29 December 2008

The world isn't just watching the Israeli government commit a crime in Gaza; we are watching it self-harm. This morning, and tomorrow morning, and every morning until this punishment beating ends, the young people of the Gaza Strip are going to be more filled with hate, and more determined to fight back, with stones or suicide vests or rockets. Israeli leaders have convinced themselves that the harder you beat the Palestinians, the softer they will become. But when this is over, the rage against Israelis will have hardened, and the same old compromises will still be waiting by the roadside of history, untended and unmade.

To understand how frightening it is to be a Gazan this morning, you need to have stood in that small slab of concrete by the Mediterranean and smelled the claustrophobia. The Gaza Strip is smaller than the Isle of Wight but it is crammed with 1.5 million people who can never leave.

They live out their lives on top of each other, jobless and hungry, in vast, sagging tower blocks. From the top floor, you can often see the borders of their world: the Mediterranean, and Israeli barbed wire. When bombs begin to fall – as they are doing now with more deadly force than at any time since 1967 – there is nowhere to hide.

There will now be a war over the story of this war. The Israeli government says, "We withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and in return we got Hamas and Qassam rockets being rained on our cities. Sixteen civilians have been murdered. How many more are we supposed to sacrifice?" It is a plausible narrative, and there are shards of truth in it, but it is also filled with holes. If we want to understand the reality and really stop the rockets, we need to rewind a few years and view the run-up to this war dispassionately.

The Israeli government did indeed withdraw from the Gaza Strip in 2005 – in order to be able to intensify control of the West Bank. Ariel Sharon's senior adviser, Dov Weisglass, was unequivocal about this, explaining: "The disengagement [from Gaza] is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians... this whole package that is called the Palestinian state has been removed from our agenda indefinitely."

Ordinary Palestinians were horrified by this, and by the fetid corruption of their own Fatah leaders, so they voted for Hamas. It certainly wouldn't have been my choice – an Islamist party is antithetical to all my convictions - but we have to be honest. It was a free and democratic election, and it was not a rejection of a two-state solution. The most detailed polling of Palestinians, by the University of Maryland, found that 72 per cent want a two-state solution on the 1967 borders, while fewer than 20 per cent want to reclaim the whole of historic Palestine.

So, partly in response to this pressure, Hamas offered Israel a long, long ceasefire and a de facto acceptance of two states, if only Israel would return to its legal borders.

Rather than seize this opportunity and test Hamas's sincerity, the Israeli government reacted by punishing the entire civilian population. It announced that it was blockading the Gaza Strip in order to "pressure" its people to reverse the democratic process. The Israelis surrounded the Strip and refused to let anyone or anything out. They let in a small trickle of food, fuel and medicine – but not enough for survival. Weisglass quipped that the Gazans were being "put on a diet". According to Oxfam, only 137 trucks of food were allowed into Gaza last month to feed 1.5 million people. The United Nations says poverty has reached an "unprecedented level." When I was last in besieged Gaza, I saw hospitals turning away the sick because their machinery and medicine was running out. I met hungry children stumbling around the streets, scavenging for food.

It was in this context – under a collective punishment designed to topple a democracy – that some forces within Gaza did something immoral: they fired Qassam rockets indiscriminately at Israeli cities. These rockets have killed 16 Israeli citizens. This is abhorrent: targeting civilians is always murder. But it is hypocritical for the Israeli government to claim now to speak out for the safety of civilians when it has been terrorising civilians as a matter of state policy.

The American and European governments are responding with a lop-sidedness that ignores these realities. They say that Israel cannot be expected to negotiate while under rocket fire, but they demand that the Palestinians do so under siege in Gaza and violent military occupation in the West Bank.

Before it falls down the memory hole, we should remember that last week, Hamas offered a ceasefire in return for basic and achievable compromises. Don't take my word for it. According to the Israeli press, Yuval Diskin, the current head of the Israeli security service Shin Bet, "told the Israeli cabinet [on 23 December] that Hamas is interested in continuing the truce, but wants to improve its terms." Diskin explained that Hamas was requesting two things: an end to the blockade, and an Israeli ceasefire on the West Bank. The cabinet – high with election fever and eager to appear tough – rejected these terms.

The core of the situation has been starkly laid out by Ephraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad. He says that while Hamas militants – like much of the Israeli right-wing – dream of driving their opponents away, "they have recognised this ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future." Instead, "they are ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state in the temporary borders of 1967." They are aware that this means they "will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original goals" – and towards a long-term peace based on compromise.

The rejectionists on both sides – from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to Bibi Netanyahu of Israel – would then be marginalised. It is the only path that could yet end in peace but it is the Israeli government that refuses to choose it. Halevy explains: "Israel, for reasons of its own, did not want to turn the ceasefire into the start of a diplomatic process with Hamas."

Why would Israel act this way? The Israeli government wants peace, but only one imposed on its own terms, based on the acceptance of defeat by the Palestinians. It means the Israelis can keep the slabs of the West Bank on "their" side of the wall. It means they keep the largest settlements and control the water supply. And it means a divided Palestine, with responsibility for Gaza hived off to Egypt, and the broken-up West Bank standing alone. Negotiations threaten this vision: they would require Israel to give up more than it wants to. But an imposed peace will be no peace at all: it will not stop the rockets or the rage. For real safety, Israel will have to talk to the people it is blockading and bombing today, and compromise with them.

The sound of Gaza burning should be drowned out by the words of the Israeli writer Larry Derfner. He says: "Israel's war with Gaza has to be the most one-sided on earth... If the point is to end it, or at least begin to end it, the ball is not in Hamas's court – it is in ours."

Rice tops US 'official gift list'

2008-12-26T19:32:00.001Z

Taken from BBC News, Wednesday, 24 December 2008

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has topped the list of US officials for the number of gifts received in 2007, a state department report shows.

Ms Rice received $312,000 (£211,000) worth of jewels from the king of Saudi Arabia - worth three times more than his gifts to President George W Bush.

Among the presents listed for First Lady Laura Bush were "nuts and dried fruit" from the Dalai Lama - worth $6.

However, all gifts remain public property in keeping with US law.

In January 2007, Saudi King Abdullah presented Ms Rice with a diamond and emerald set - including a necklace, bracelet, earrings and a ring - worth $147,000 (£100,000), according to the list.

In July 2007, he gave Ms Rice a set of diamond and ruby jewellery valued at $165,000.

The inventory also includes a $170,000 flower petal necklace he gave Ms Rice in 2005, which the department says was not previously disclosed.

Earlier, the state department reported erroneously that the jewellery valued at $147,000 had been given to Ms Rice by King Abdullah II of Jordan, not the Saudi monarch.

Fitness machines
Mr Bush's wife, Laura, also received a diamond and sapphire set from the Saudi monarch, but hers was worth just half that given to Ms Rice at $85,000.

From the same Arab leaders, President Bush received just over $100,000 in gifts in 2007, the list shows.

Among the more offbeat gifts, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrick Reinfeldt honoured the US leader with a $570 made-in-Sweden power saw equipped "with comfort grip handles", presumably for use at his Texas ranch.

And the prime minister of Singapore gave Mr Bush $450 worth of fitness equipment, including a uSurf Wave Action Exerciser and an iGallop Core and Abs Exerciser.

The wife of Japan's former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gave Mrs Bush two hand-embroidered pillows with the names and images of first dogs Barney and Miss Beazley worth $100.

Unfortunately for the recipients, the gifts must be turned over to the General Services Administration in accordance with US law, which bars politicians and officials from accepting personal presents in almost all circumstances.

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If these were the official gift from states - I wonder what the unofficial gifts might be - i.e hidden in Swss bank accounts etc. It's no surprise that the Saudi & other Arab Monarchs waste money offering jewels when they know fully well that it will eventually go to the state rather than to the individual. It must be even hurtful for Muslims around the world to see money wasted when it could have been used to feed the poor etc.

Ahmadinejad gives Christmas Speech

2008-12-26T14:42:00.002Z

Channel 4 of the U.K. broadcasted an alternative to the Queens Speech - this one by Dr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran giving a short message of hope and prosperity for Christmas.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, delivered Channel 4's alternative Christmas address yesterday, sending a message of "happiness, prosperity, peace and brotherhood for humanity" which immediately ignited a furious row.

The speech by Mr Ahmadinejad, whose nuclear ambitions and views on Israel and homosexuality have strained relations between Iran and the West, was moderate, with none of the harsh rhetoric for which he has gained notoriety. God, he said, had created "every human being with the ability to reach the heights of perfection". He also urged Muslims and Christians to work together towards a world of "love, brotherhood and justice".

Speaking in Farsi with English subtitles, Mr Ahmadinejad sent his congratulations to "the followers of Abrahamic faiths, especially the followers of Jesus Christ, and the people of Britain".

He said the world's ills had come about through nations failing to follow the teachings of the Prophets, including Jesus. He also made a thinly-veiled attack on the US, claiming Christ would have been against "bullying, ill-tempered and expansionist powers" and would have opposed "warmongers, occupiers, terrorists and bullies the world over".

Israel called the message a "sick and twisted irony". Ron Prosor, the Israeli ambassador to Britain, said: "In Iran, converts to Christianity face the death penalty."

The full text of a Christmas message - Click Here!
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The fact of the matter is that this was the best Christmas Message i have ever heard - It was a religious message - much better than the usual message from the Queen which is probably written by 10 Downing street and is more political. I would be happy to hear more messages like this in future. As for the Israeli ambassador - he seems to stay silent on the plight of Palestinian Christians that have been forced out of Bethlehem, West Bank and those that continue to live there face oppression by the Israeli government. No mention of the wall dividing the Jews against Muslims & Christians, that is causing economic hardship, business to go bust, high unemployment rates between Muslim and Christian Arabs, checkpoints all over Palestine causing further hardships – no mention of the dwindling numbers of Christians in place where many believe Christianity began.

Madoff made off with the mother of all hedge funds scams

2008-12-19T20:21:00.002Z

Ex-chairman of Nasdaq is charged over £33bn 'Ponzi' scam

Taken from Daily Mail, UK, 12th December 2008
By Bill Condie

Former Nasdaq chairman Bernard Madoff has been charged with running a $50billion (£33.7billion) fraudulent investment scam.

Madoff, a long-time powerful Wall Street figure, told staff at his investment firm that a hedge fund he ran was 'all just one big lie' and that it was 'basically, a giant Ponzi scheme' with estimated investor losses of about $50billion, according to a criminal complaint against him.

A Ponzi scheme is a pyramid-type scam in which very high returns are promised to early investors, who are paid off with money put up by later ones.

The $50billion allegedly lost by investors would make Madoff's fund one of the biggest frauds in history.

When Enron filed for bankruptcy in 2001, one of the largest at the time, it had $63.4billion in assets.

Prosecutors charged Madoff, 70, with a single count of securities fraud, for which he faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $5million if convicted.

Lev Dassin, acting Attorney General for the Southern District of New York, said: "Madoff stated that the business was insolvent, and that it had been for years."

His lawyer, Dan Horwitz, said outside the manhattan court where Madoff was charged: "He is a longstanding leader in the financial services industry. We will fight to get through this unfortunate set of events."

Madoff stared at the ground as reporters asked questions. He was released after posting a $10million bond secured by his Manhattan flat.

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Well you couldn't make this up. So much for the American regulators of financial markets.

Below is list of the banks and financial institutions affected so far (taken from Telegraph, UK, 19.12.08), all information had been sourced from company statements and agency reports:

Access International Advisors said some of its funds were invested with Bernard Madoff. The New York-based investment firm said it was working with counsel to assess the situation, describing it as "a shocking development".

Insurer Axa said that it faced losses because of the Madoff scandal, but said that its exposure amounted to less than €100m (£90m).

Spain's Banco Santander, which owns Abbey and Alliance and Leicester, said its hedge fund unit invested €2.33bn (£2bn) of client funds with Bernard Madoff.

The Geneva-based Banque Benedict Hentsch Fairfield Partners SA said its exposure is 56m Swiss francs (£32m) of client assets.

Spain's second-largest bank, BBVA, said it could potentially lose €300m (£270m) in the alleged scam run by New York trader Bernard Madoff.

Boston philanthropist Carl Shapiro’s charitable foundation - $145m (source Boston Globe).

Bramdean Alternatives Ltd - 9.5pc of its assets, according to a company statement.

BNP Paribas, France's biggest listed bank, said it could face a potential €350m (£313) loss from an exposure to Bernard Madoff's investment activities.

EIM Group - $230m (£153m) (source Reuters, citing Le Temps Newspaper).

EFG International, the Swiss private bank whose largest shareholder is the Latsis family, said some of its clients have investments worth $130 million in funds managed by Bernard Madoff’s investment-advisory business.

Elise Wiesal Foundation for Humanity - undetermined ( source Wall Street Journal).

Fairfield Greenwich Group - $7.5bn, according to a company statement.

Fix Asset Management - $400m (£266m), according to a company statement.

GMAC chairman Jacob Ezra Merkin's Ascot Partners - Most of its $1.8bn (£1.2bn) of assets (Wall Street Journal).

Harel Insurance Investments and Financial Services - $14.2m (£9.5m), according to a company statement.

HSBC said it has a potential exposure of about $1bn (£688m) in loans provided to a small number of institutional clients who invested in funds with Madoff.

Julian J. Levitt Foundation - $6m (£4m) (source Washington Post).

Kingate Management Ltd - $3.5bn (£2.3bn) (source Bloomberg).

Korea Life Insurance - $50m (£33m) (source Yonhap news).

Korea Teachers' Pension - $9.1m (£6m), according to a company statement.

Man Group said that its institutional fund of funds business RMF has approximately $360m (£239m) invested in two funds that are directly or indirectly sub-advised by Madoff Securities and for which Madoff Securities acts as broker/dealer executing the investment strategy.

Madoff Family Foundation - $19m (£13m) - (source Washington Post).

Maxam Capital Management - $280m (£186m) - (source Wall Street Journal).

Neue Privat Bank, a Zurich-based bank, said its clients may lose as much as $5m (£3m) invested in the fund linked to Bernard Madoff. The money was invested through Nomura Bank International, Neue Privat Bank said in a release.

New York Met's owner Fred Wilpon's Sterling Equities - undertermined, according to a company statement.

Nomura Holdings, Japan's largest brokerage, said it has 27.5 billion yen ($302 million) at risk linked to Bernard Madoff's investment funds

Norman Braman, former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles Football Team - undertermined (source Wall Street Journal).

North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System - $5m (£3.3m), according to a company statement.

Notz, Stucki & Cie - undertermined (source Reuters, citing Le Temps newspaper)

Pioneer Alternative Investments - almost all of its $280m (£187m) of assets (source Bloomberg).

Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation - $8m (£5.3m) (source Washington Post).

Royal Bank of Scotland said it had exposure through trading and collateralised lending to funds of hedge funds invested with Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities.If as a result of the alleged fraud the value of the assets of these hedge funds is nil, RBS's potential loss could amount to approximately £400m.

The Dutch pension fund of Royal Dutch Shell said it has a $45m exposure to the alleged $50bn fraud by prominent Wall Street trader Bernard Madoff.

Reichmuth and Co’s Reichmuth Matterhorn fund - $330m (£221m) (source letter to clients).

Societe Generale - less than €10m, according to a company statement.

Tremont Capital Management - undertermined (source Wall Street Journal).

Yeshiva University - undetermined (source Washington Post)

Abbas: Israel must free all 11,000 Palestinian prisoners

2008-12-16T20:19:00.000Z

Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 15/12/2008
By Tomer Zarchin

Israel on Monday released 227 Palestinian prisoners as a gesture to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to mark the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice), which marks the end of the hajj pilgrimage.

Of the prisoners, 209 were transferred from Ofer Prison, near Jerusalem, to the Beituniya checkpoint in the West Bank. The remaining 18 prisoners were to be transferred from Shikma Prison in the Negev, to the Erez checkpoint on the Israel-Gaza border. At his office in Ramallah, Abbas greeted each of the 209 prisoners released to the West Bank individually with kisses on the cheeks, but said Israel should release all Palestinians it was holding.

"Our happiness will not be complete until all of the 11,000 prisoners are freed," he said. "We promise you we will work to free all prisoners from all factions."

Hundreds of relatives and supporters waited on the Palestinian side of the Beitunia checkpoint, waving Palestinian and yellow flags of Abbas' secular Fatah movement and carrying posters of late Fatah leader Yasser Arafat. The two Palestinian territories have divided leadership.

Gaza is ruled by the militant Hamas organization, which refuses to recognize Israel; the West Bank territories are largely under the control of Abbas and his Fatah organization, which is engaged in a sporadic peace process with Israel.

"We hope these releases will be seen as an important confidence-building measure designed to strengthen the trust and the confidence in the [peace] negotiations," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

The Supreme Court gave a green light Monday morning for the release, hours after Justice Elyakim Rubinstein ordered that the state must first reply to a petition against it. The petitioners had argued that freeing jailed Palestinians placed the region at risk of renewed conflagration.

According to prosecutors, an examination of the prisoners listed for release showed that none had been charged with causing injury to Israelis, Army Radio reported. As a matter of general precedent, the courts rarely intervene with the government's decisions on matters of policy vis-a-vis the Palestinians. The prisoners being freed are a fraction of the 11,000 Palestinians held by Israel. Their release was originally due to take place last week, during Eid.

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So 11,000 prisoners held by illegal occupation. Innocent people help captive in Israeli cells, without trial, some abducted by the Israeli army not hust in Palestine but also from Lebanon - yet no one bats an eye lid on why they have been held captive and if they are so dangerous why have they been released as a gesture of goodwill. There rae not terrorist they are innocent people - the real terrorist are the illegal occupiers running the State of Israel.

WMD found in IRAQ!

2008-12-16T11:40:00.006Z

Shoey to go W!

If Youtube video doesn't work then click here!

Don't shoe forget about me!

In the middle of the news conference with Mr Maliki, Iraqi television journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi stood up and shouted "this is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog," before hurling a shoe at Mr Bush which narrowly missed him.

Showing the soles of shoes to someone is a sign of contempt in Arab culture.

With his second shoe, which the president also managed to dodge, Mr Zaidi said: "This is for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq."

Mr Zaidi, a correspondent for Cairo-based al-Baghdadiya TV, was then wrestled to the ground by security personnel and hauled away.

The World would like to thank Muntadar al-Zaidi - you sir have definitely left a rememberable event in the legacy of George W Bush's reign.

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A few updates...

(1) 15/12/08 - according to BBC news - Thousands of Iraqis have demanded the release of a local TV reporter who threw his shoes at US President George W Bush at a Baghdad news conference. Crowds gathered in Baghdad's Sadr City district, calling for "hero" Muntadar al-Zaidi to be freed from custody.

(2) 15/12/08 - according to Daily Mail - The Iraqi journalist was given a bravery award by a Libyan charity. The Waatassimou group gave Muntazer al-Zaidi the courage award because it said 'what he did represents a victory for human rights across the world'.

(3) 16/12/08 - According to the Guardian Newspaper - It was claimed by the brother of Muntadar al-Zaidi that he has been beaten in custody. Dargham, told the BBC today that al-Zaidi had suffered a broken hand, ribs, suffered internal bleeding and sustained an eye injury.
According to the BBC, after the incident, al-Zaidi was detained by Iraqi authorities under the command of national security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, who also said the 28-year-old will be prosecuted under Iraqi law.

(4) 17/12/08 - According to Reuters - An Egyptian man said he was offering his 20-year-old daughter in marriage to Iraqi journalist Muntazer. The daughter, Amal Saad Gumaa, said she agreed with the idea. "This is something that would honor me. I would like to live in Iraq, especially if I were attached to this hero," she told Reuters by telephone. Her father, Saad Gumaa, said he had called Dergham, Zaidi's brother, to tell him of the offer. "I find nothing more valuable than my daughter to offer to him, and I am prepared to provide her with everything needed for marriage," he added. Amal is a student in the media faculty at Minya University in central Egypt. Zaidi's response to the proposal was not immediately clear.

(5) 22/12/08 - according to BBC news- Muntadar al-Zaidi is due to face trial on 31 December accused of "aggression against a foreign head of state", which carries a jail sentence of up to 15 years.

(6) 22/12/08 - according to BBC news - Istanbul-based Baydan Shoes claims it made the shoes that the journalist threw at President Bush. They say that they have tens of thousands of orders from around the world - including from the US and Iraq. The shoe was called Model 271 but has been renamed Bush shoe, the firm said. However, the brother of shoe-throwing journalist Muntader al-Zaidi says he believes the shoes were Iraqi-made. Durgham al-Zaidi criticised people he said were trying to exploit his brother's actions for commercial gain. "The Syrians claim the shoes were made in Syria and the Turks say they made them. Some say he bought them in Egypt. But as far as I know, he bought them in Baghdad and they were made in Iraq," he told the AFP news agency.

Official History Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders

2008-12-14T20:29:00.002Z

Taken from The New York Times, December 13, 2008
By JAMES GLANZ and T. CHRISTIAN MILLER

BAGHDAD — An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.

(for original PDF Document - Click here!)

The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag — particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army — the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.

WATER Students used water from a faucet at the Khulafa al-Rashideen school in Baghdad in October. Access to potable water plummeted after the 2003 invasion.

In one passage, for example, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! ‘We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.’ ”

Mr. Powell’s assertion that the Pentagon inflated the number of competent Iraqi security forces is backed up by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former commander of ground troops in Iraq, and L. Paul Bremer III, the top civilian administrator until an Iraqi government took over in June 2004.

Among the overarching conclusions of the history is that five years after embarking on its largest foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II, the United States government has in place neither the policies and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed to undertake such a program on anything approaching this scale.
The bitterest message of all for the reconstruction program may be the way the history ends. The hard figures on basic services and industrial production compiled for the report reveal that for all the money spent and promises made, the rebuilding effort never did much more than restore what was destroyed during the invasion and the convulsive looting that followed.

COMMUNICATION Landline phone service plunged after the invasion, forcing Iraqis to rely on cellphone companies, above.

By mid-2008, the history says, $117 billion had been spent on the reconstruction of Iraq, including some $50 billion in United States taxpayer money.

The history contains a catalog of revelations that show the chaotic and often poisonous atmosphere prevailing in the reconstruction effort.

When the Office of Management and Budget balked at the American occupation authority’s abrupt request for about $20 billion in new reconstruction money in August 2003, a veteran Republican lobbyist working for the authority made a bluntly partisan appeal to Joshua B. Bolten, then the O.M.B. director and now the White House chief of staff. “To delay getting our funds would be a political disaster for the President,” wrote the lobbyist, Tom C. Korologos. “His election will hang for a large part on show of progress in Iraq and without the funding this year, progress will grind to a halt.” With administration backing, Congress allocated the money later that year.

In an illustration of the hasty and haphazard planning, a civilian official at the United States Agency for International Development was at one point given four hours to determine how many miles of Iraqi roads would need to be reopened and repaired. The official searched through the agency’s reference library, and his estimate went directly into a master plan. Whatever the quality of the agency’s plan, it eventually began running what amounted to a parallel reconstruction effort in the provinces that had little relation with the rest of the American effort.

Money for many of the local construction projects still under way is divided up by a spoils system controlled by neighborhood politicians and tribal chiefs. “Our district council chairman has become the Tony Soprano of Rasheed, in terms of controlling resources,” said an American Embassy official working in a dangerous Baghdad neighborhood. “ ‘You will use my contractor or the work will not get done.’ ”

A Cautionary Tale
The United States could soon have reason to consult this cautionary tale of deception, waste and poor planning, as troop levels and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan are likely to be stepped up under the new administration.

The incoming Obama administration’s rebuilding experts are expected to focus on smaller-scale projects and emphasize political and economic reform. Still, such programs do not address one of the history’s main contentions: that the reconstruction effort has failed because no single agency in the United States government has responsibility for the job.

Five years after the invasion of Iraq, the history concludes, “the government as a whole has never developed a legislatively sanctioned doctrine or framework for planning, preparing and executing contingency operations in which diplomacy, development and military action all figure.”

ELECTRICITY A new generator in Baghdad in 2007. Electricity output is now only slightly higher than it was before the war.

Titled “Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience,” the new history was compiled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, led by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., a Republican lawyer who regularly travels to Iraq and has a staff of engineers and auditors based here. Copies of several drafts of the history were provided to reporters at The New York Times and ProPublica by two people outside the inspector general’s office who have read the draft, but are not authorized to comment publicly.

OIL The production of oil at Iraqi fields, like the one above, 370 miles southeast of Baghdad, has been below prewar levels.

Mr. Bowen’s deputy, Ginger Cruz, declined to comment for publication on the substance of the history. But she said it would be presented on Feb. 2 at the first hearing of the Commission on Wartime Contracting, which was created this year as a result of legislation sponsored by Senators Jim Webb of Virginia and Claire McCaskill of Missouri, both Democrats.

The manuscript is based on approximately 500 new interviews, as well as more than 600 audits, inspections and investigations on which Mr. Bowen’s office has reported over the years. Laid out for the first time in a connected history, the material forms the basis for broad judgments on the rebuilding program.

In the preface, Mr. Bowen gives a searing critique of what he calls the “blinkered and disjointed prewar planning for Iraq’s reconstruction” and the botched expansion of the program from a modest initiative to improve Iraqi services to a multibillion-dollar enterprise.

Mr. Bowen also swipes at the endless revisions and reversals of the program, which at various times gyrated from a focus on giant construction projects led by large Western contractors to modest community-based initiatives carried out by local Iraqis. While Mr. Bowen concedes that deteriorating security had a hand in spoiling the program’s hopes, he suggests, as he has in the past, that the program did not need much outside help to do itself in.

Despite years of studying the program, Mr. Bowen writes that he still has not found a good answer to the question of why the program was even pursued as soaring violence made it untenable. “Others will have to provide that answer,” Mr. Bowen writes.

“But beyond the security issue stands another compelling and unavoidable answer: the U.S. government was not adequately prepared to carry out the reconstruction mission it took on in mid-2003,” he concludes.

The history cites some projects as successes. The review praises community outreach efforts by the Agency for International Development, the Treasury Department’s plan to stabilize the Iraqi dinar after the invasion and a joint effort by the Departments of State and Defense to create local rebuilding teams.

But the portrait that emerges over all is one of a program’s officials operating by the seat of their pants in the middle of a critical enterprise abroad, where the reconstruction was supposed to convince the Iraqi citizenry of American good will and support the new democracy with lights that turned on and taps that flowed with clean water. Mostly, it is a portrait of a program that seemed to grow exponentially as even those involved from the inception of the effort watched in surprise.

Early Miscalculations
On the eve of the invasion, as it began to dawn on a few officials that the price for rebuilding Iraq would be vastly greater than they had been told, the degree of miscalculation was illustrated in an encounter between Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, and Jay Garner, a retired lieutenant general who had hastily been named the chief of what would be a short-lived civilian authority called the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.

The history records how Mr. Garner presented Mr. Rumsfeld with several rebuilding plans, including one that would include projects across Iraq.

“What do you think that’ll cost?” Mr. Rumsfeld asked of the more expansive plan.

“I think it’s going to cost billions of dollars,” Mr. Garner said.

“My friend,” Mr. Rumsfeld replied, “if you think we’re going to spend a billion dollars of our money over there, you are sadly mistaken.”

In a way he never anticipated, Mr. Rumsfeld turned out to be correct: before that year was out, the United States had appropriated more than $20 billion for the reconstruction, which would indeed involve projects across the entire country.

Mr. Rumsfeld declined to comment on the history, but a spokesman, Keith Urbahn, said that quotes attributed to Mr. Rumsfeld in the document “appear to be accurate.” Mr. Powell also declined to comment.

The secondary effects of the invasion and its aftermath were among the most important factors that radically changed the outlook. Tables in the history show that measures of things like the national production of electricity and oil, public access to potable water, mobile and landline telephone service and the presence of Iraqi security forces all plummeted by at least 70 percent, and in some cases all the way to zero, in the weeks after the invasion.

Subsequent tables in the history give a fast-forward view of what happened as the avalanche of money tumbled into Iraq over the next five years.

Dashed Expectations
By the time a sovereign Iraqi government took over from the Americans in June 2004, none of those services — with a single exception, mobile phones — had returned to prewar levels.

And by the time of the security improvements in 2007 and 2008, electricity output had, at best, a precarious 10 percent lead on its levels under Saddam Hussein; oil production was still below prewar levels; and access to potable water had increased by about 30 percent, although with Iraq’s ruined piping system it was unclear how much reached people’s homes uncontaminated.

Whether the rebuilding effort could have succeeded in a less violent setting will never be known. In April 2004, thousands of the Iraqi security forces that had been oversold by the Pentagon were overrun, abruptly mutinied or simply abandoned their posts as the insurgency broke out, sending Iraq down a violent path from which it has never completely recovered.

At the end of his narrative, Mr. Bowen chooses a line from “Great Expectations” by Dickens as the epitaph of the American-led attempt to rebuild Iraq: “We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us.”

Blackwater court battle looms

2008-12-08T13:37:00.006Z

Taken from Al-Jazeere News Agency, 08 Dec 2008

Five security guards accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad are expected to hand themselves over to federal authorities in the United States.

Exact details of the charges against the employees of the Blackwater private security firm are expected to be made public on Monday after they have surrendered.

Click here for Video!

However, it is known that the five military veterans were indicted for manslaughter offences in Washington DC on Thursday.

On Sunday they were given 24 hours to surrender themselves to the FBI.

The Associated Press news agency reported that the men would hand themselves over in the US state of Utah on Monday, possibly sparking a legal battle over where the trial should be heard.

Any dispute over where the trial should be held would delay proceedings and further frustrate the relatives of the Iraqis killed in Baghdad's al-Nisoor Square in September 2007.

'Fair judgment'

Mohammed Al-Kinani, whose son was killed in the shooting, said: "We hope to see a fair judgment that will impose the maxium penalty for them, not only the guards but the director who gave them the authority, weapons, vehicles and immunity."

But Dr Haythem Al-Rubaie, who lost his wife and son in the al-Nisoor Square shootings, said there was "no credibility" in the US judiciary.

"But let me be optimistic and I hope that the judge will be a fair one since there are many innocent people who were killed in the attack and there should be a fair judge who will not respond to pressures.

"We hope that his word is a fair word, the result will show us credibility," he said.

The five men's identities and the nature of the charges against them had been kept secret for more than a year, but were also released on Sunday.

They were named as Evan Liberty and Donald Ball, both 26-year-old former marines, Dustin Heard, a 27-year-old ex-marine, Nick Slatten, 25, an ex-army sergeant, and Paul Slough, a 29-year-old army veteran.

The men are all decorated war veterans who were contracted to protect US diplomats in Iraq.

A sixth guard, who has not been named, has reached a plea bargain deal with prosecutors to avoid a mandatory 30-year prison sentence.

'Unjustified deaths'

Blackwater said that the guards were returning fire after their convoy was shot at in Baghdad's al-Nisoor Square.

The head of Blackwater appeared before the US Congress shortly after the incident, saying that the men acted responsibly.

However, FBI investigators found in late 2007 that most of the 17 deaths had been unjustified.

Steven McCool, a lawyer for Ball, confirmed that his client would surrender in his home state of Utah.

"Donald Ball committed no crime,'' McCool said. "We are confident that any jury will see this for what it is: a politically motivated prosecution to appease the Iraqi government."

The incident created a furore about the perceived ability of private guards to act with impunity in Iraq.

An Iraqi government spokesman has said that they believed that the attack were tantamount to deliberate murder.

Ali Al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the Iraqi government, told Al Jazeera that Baghdad would maintain the victims' right to a fair trial and would not accept anything less than "normal standards available in such cases".

The case has also been complicated because, at the time of the attack, private contractors like Blackwater operated without any clear legal oversight and it could be argued they did not have to answer either to Iraqi or US laws.

Under the deal Blackwater had with the US government, it was allowed to repair the vehicles involved in the attack before investigators saw them, taking away key forensic evidence.

UN accuses Israel of punishing aid workers

2008-12-03T11:39:00.003Z

Taken from The Independent, UK, 1 December 2008
By Anne Penketh

The UN official responsible for the welfare of 4.6 million Palestinian refugees has accused Israel of extending its punishment of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip to include international humanitarian staff.

Karen AbuZayd, who is based in Gaza City, said that Israeli authorities have within the past month stopped UN staff based in Gaza from using the diplomatic pouch. They gave no reason for the move, which is a clear breach of international law.

“We can’t send the mail out or get any mail in. I don’t think they could give a reason because there is no way they could justify it,” said Mrs AbuZayd, an American who is commissioner-general of the UN Relief and Works Agency. UNRWA is the main provider of basic services – such as education and health – to registered Palestine refugees, including 1.1 million in Gaza.

Two weeks ago the Israelis issued for the first time a written list of goods that cannot be sent into Gaza for UN humanitarian needs, she said. The list, which has baffled UN officials, includes spices, kitchenware, glassware, yarn and paper.

“They are punishing the international community that’s inside,” said Mrs AbuZayd. “For our own office, we are having trouble in keeping it going, because we’re not allowed to bring in spare parts,” she added. UN cars are lying idle for lack of tyres and oil, office photocopiers cannot be mended and computers are not allowed into Gaza. “And we’re supposed to have privileges and immunities,” she added.

As the restrictions have been extended, the international press has been barred from entering Gaza for the past month, and is challenging the Israeli decision in the Supreme Court.

The UNRWA chief officer is to meet the new Israeli co-ordinator, General Amos Gilad, next week to discuss the latest developments. It will be their first meeting since his appointment in September. Until now, the United Nations has privately protested against the decisions but Mrs AbuZayd’s decision to speak out publicly about the crisis is a sign of the level of frustration within the UN.

The Israeli blockade has caused an ever-worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza since it was imposed after the election of Hamas in January 2006. But Israel has refused to ease the measures on the ground that Palestinian militants have continued to fire rockets on Israel from the territory.

The spokesman for London’s Israeli embassy, Lior Ben-Dor, today said that the restrictions were due to safety concerns. “We can’t operate the checkpoints because we are not willing to risk the lives of Israelis,” he said.best wishes,

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If Israel left the occupied Palestine then there would not be any security issues to ponder about. Palestinians have been suffering for decades, generation after generation by the aggressive Israeli state (who pretends to be the aggrieved). On the same day this story was written, Israel blocked a Libyan ship carrying 3,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid for Palestinians from docking in Gaza. The voyage of the Marwa, which carried food, blankets and powdered milk, was intended to challenge Israel's economic blockade on the Gaza Strip, which has tightened in recent weeks. But as the ship approached Gazan waters at dawn an Israeli naval ship ordered it to turn back.

Bush: My biggest regret is false intelligence on Iraq WMDs

2008-12-02T11:23:00.002Z

Taken from Haaretz, Israel
By Reuters, 01/12/2008

U.S. President George W. Bush said the biggest regret of his presidency was flawed intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Bush told ABC "World News" in an interview scheduled to air on Monday that he was unprepared for war when he took office.

Bush leaves the White House on Jan. 20 with public approval ratings near record lows partly due to the unpopular Iraq war that toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein after the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. More than 4,200 U.S. troops have died in Iraq.

"It was a tough call, particularly, since a lot of people were advising for me to get out of Iraq, or pull back in Iraq," he said.

There are 146,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and 32,000 in Afghanistan.

In his final months at the White House, Bush said he was required to take bold action on the financial crisis to ward off another Great Depression.

He was asked whether it scared him that government actions to address the financial crisis amounted to about $9.5 trillion, equivalent to about half the U.S. economy.

"What scared me is not doing anything, which would have caused there to be a huge financial meltdown and the conceivable scenario that we'd have been in a depression greater than the Great Depression," Bush said.

He told ABC: "I will leave the presidency with my head held high."

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On the centenary, he will leave office o be known as one of the worst and most hated Presidents of the United States. This war monger has blood on his hands – people will be glad that he is going very soon.

Obama evokes brighter days ahead in Thanksgiving address

2008-11-28T11:19:00.003Z

Taken from Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
November 28, 2008

President-elect Barack Obama on Thursday promised "a new beginning" when he takes over the White House in January and urged Americans to work together to overcome a deepening economic crisis.

President-elect Barack Obama, second from right, his wife Michelle Obama, left, and daughters Sasha, 7, second from the left, and Malia, 10, second from the right, greet people at a food bank in Chicago.

"This weekend - with one heart, and one voice, the American people can give thanks that a new and brighter day is yet to come," Obama said in the weekly Democratic radio address, usually delivered Saturday but released early for the Thanksgiving holiday.

His political hero, president Abraham Lincoln, established the holiday "in one of the darkest years of our nation's history," 1863, during the US Civil War, Obama said.

"This Thanksgiving also takes place at a time of great trial for our people," Obama said.
"We face an economic crisis of historic proportions."

"That's why I am committed to forging a new beginning from the moment I take office as president of the United States," the president-elect said.

Earlier this week Obama unveiled his economic team, including Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary and Larry Summers as chairman of the White House National Economic Council, and touted his plan to create 2.5 million jobs through a vast infrastructure spending program.

"But this Thanksgiving we are reminded that the renewal of our economy won't come from policies and plans alone - it will take the hard work, innovation, service and strength of the American people," Obama said.

"Times are tough. There are difficult months ahead. But we can renew our nation the same way that we have in the many years since Lincoln's first Thanksgiving: by coming together to overcome adversity; by reaching for - and working for - new horizons of opportunity for all Americans."

American families gather on the fourth Thursday in November for a festive dinner of turkey, potatoes and pie, seen as commemorating the first harvest feast of English pilgrims in the new world in 1621.

Mumbai gunman goes on TV to justify terror attacks

2008-11-27T10:54:00.002Z

Taken from Sydney morning Herald, Australia
November 27, 2008

One of the gunmen involved in terrorist blasts in Mumbai told a television channel he belonged to an Indian Islamist group seeking an end to the persecution of Indian Muslims.

Identifying himself as a member of a group calling itself Deccan Mujahedeen, the gunman, who was holed up in the Oberoi Trident Hotel, called for the release of all fellow Islamic militants detained in India.

"Muslims in India should not be persecuted. We love this as our country but when our mothers and sisters were being killed, where was everybody?" he told the India TV channel by phone from inside the hotel, which is surrounded by army commandos.

Up to 100 people were killed and about 100 more wounded in the attacks, Indian media reported.

The luxury Taj Mahal and Oberoi Trident hotels and eight other locations across Mumbai, including the train station, a hospital and an up-market restaurant were hit in precisely-timed assaults by small groups of gunmen who lobbed grenades into crowds and opened fire with AK-47s on people as they fled.

Maharashtra Director General of Police A N Roy was quoted by the Press Trust of India as saying that about 100 people were dead.

The NDTV news channel put the death toll at 100, with 110 injured in the ongoing violence. The IBN Live channel said at least 87 people were dead. The Times of India was reporting up to 900 injured.

Two Australians - Katie Anstee, 24, and her boyfriend David Coker, 23 - were among the injured as they dineed at Cafe Leopold, and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told parliament today the number of Australian casualties could rise.

Australia's Islamic leaders have condemned the attacks.

President of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils Ikebal Adam Patel said he learned of the atrocity with shock and dismay and condemned the Mumbai attacks as abhorrent, despicable and outrageous.

He said attacks against innocent people were abhorrent to all peaceful people and to all faiths. He stressed that Islam does not preach acts of terrorism and rightly condemns those who do, even if they are Muslims.

Witnesses said the gunmen had specifically chosen US and British citizens to take hostage, and some foreign tourists are reported to be among the dead, including one Japanese man. A Briton who was dining at the Oberoi hotel also said the gunmen there singled out Britons and Americans.

"They were talking about British and Americans specifically,'' Alex Chamberlain told Sky News. One of 12 members of a 20-strong NSW trade delegation is unaccounted for and other members of the delegation are trapped in hotel rooms with gunmen taking hostages outside.

Officials were checking with local authorities and hotel owners to determine exactly how many Australians had been caught up in the incidents, he said.

One terrified Australian is former Neighbours actress Brooke Satchwell, who is trapped with her boyfriend.

Rabbi taken hostage
A Jewish rabbi and his family have been taken hostage, India's Jewish Federation said. "The name of the place is Chabad house in South Mumbai. I hear commandos are storming the apartment block, which is a four-storey building. A rabbi is in there with his family," Indian Jewish Federation chairman Jonathan Solomon said.

"I don't know the number of gunmen in there. I don't know how many family members are in there," he added.

Meanwhile, as mainstream media outlets struggled to contend with the enormity of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, citizen journalists were already on the scene filing a constant stream of reports and images from the ground.

Every moment of the attacks has been documented in harrowing detail on Twitter, with new messages published from mobile phones every second as people described the scenes around them.

A little-known Islamic group, the Islamic Security Force-Indian Mujahedeen, claimed responsibility for serial blasts last month in India's northeast state of Assam that claimed nearly 80 lives.

Six weeks earlier, the capital New Delhi had been hit by a series of bombs in crowded markets that left more than 20 dead. Those blasts were claimed by a group calling itself the Indian Mujahedeen.

US charity guilty in Hamas case

2008-11-26T12:01:00.000Z

Taken from Al-Jazeera News Agency, November 25, 2008

A US court has convicted a Muslim charity and five of its former leaders on 108 charges in the largest "terrorism" financing trial in US history.

The Texas jury reached its verdict on Monday after eight days of deliberations over whether the former Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, once the largest US Muslim charity, had given money to the Palestinian group Hamas.

The charity, which was shut down seven years ago, was accused of giving more than $12m to support Hamas, which was designated a "terrorist organisation" in 1995 by the US government.

The hour-long verdict, following a seven-week trial, came after a first trial ended in October 2007 with one man acquitted on 31 charges but jurors unable to agree on verdicts for others.

Several relatives of those convicted on Monday wept as the verdict was read out in the Dallas courtroom, with one woman shouting "my father is not a criminal".

Ghassan Elashi, Holy Land's former chairman, and Shukri Abu-Baker, thecharity's ex-chief executive, were convicted of a combined 69 charges, includingsupporting a specially-designated "terrorist" organisation, money-laundering and tax fraud, The Associated Press reported.

Mufid Abdulqader and Abdulrahman Odeh were convicted on three counts ofconspiracy, and Mohammed El-Mezain was convicted on one count of conspiracyto support a "terrorist organisation".

The Holy Land foundation itself was convicted on all 32 counts.

'Political' case
While prosecutors said the foundation raised money for Hamas they did not accuse the charity of directly financing or being involved in "terrorist" activity.

Prosecutors said the charity was spreading Hamas's ideology by funding schools, hospitals and social welfare programmes controlled by the group in the Palestinian territories, and permitting it to divert funds to the activities of fighters.

However, the charity's supporters said the government was politicising the case as part of its so-called war on terror and ignoring the foundation's charitable mission in providing aid to the poverty-stricken Palestinian territories.

Government officials had raided Holy Land's headquarters in December 2001, and George Bush, the US president, later announced the seizure of the charity's assets as "another step in the war on terrorism".

But defence lawyers said their clients had been put on trial partly because of their family ties to members of Hamas - Khaled Meshaal, Hamas's political leader exiled in Syria, is the brother of defendant Mufid Abdulqader.

Unidentified Israeli witness
Al Jazeera's Tom Ackerman, reporting from Dallas, Texas, where the court case took place, said a former US state department official testified that he was never told that Hamas directed the US charity during intelligence briefings.

But an unidentified Israeli witness told the court that the aid was funnelled through Hamas channels.

Lydia Gonzalez of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said the defendants did not get a fair trial.

"When you're supposed to be able to face your accusers fully and against secret evidence and secret witness, I think that leads to reasonable doubt."

Muslim groups say the prosecution has made American Muslims more hesitant to fulfil their religious obligation of helping the needy and the foundation's defenders accuse the government of selectively prosecuting the charity.

"The same charities that these guys gave to the American Red Cross is still giving to, the USAID is still giving to," Mustafaa Carroll of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said.

Ex-IDF Chief Ya'alon: "We must consider killing Ahmadinejad"

2008-11-23T21:27:00.008Z

Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 23/11/2008

Former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Moshe "Boogie" Ya'alon was quoted as saying by an Australian newspaper this week that the West must consider all options necessary to stop Tehran's nuclear program, including assassinating Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"We have to confront the Iranian revolution immediately," Ya'alon said in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, published Monday morning in Australia. "There is no way to stabilize the Middle East today without defeating the Iranian regime. The Iranian nuclear program must be stopped."

When asked whether "all options" included a military deposition of Ahmadinejad and the rest of Iran's current leadership, Ya'alon told The Herald: "We have to consider killing him. All options must be considered." The Jerusalem Post, meanwhile, quoted an aide to Ya'alon as saying the former chief of staff never suggested assassination, just defeating the Iranian regime.

Ya'alon, who served as IDF chief from 2002 through the final year of the Palestinian Intifada in 2005, also told The Herald that a military strike on Iran would be welcomed by regional elements as quelling the most divisive conflict in the Middle East today.

"Any military strike in Iran will be quietly applauded by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf states," he was quoted by The Herald as saying.

"It is a misconception to think that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the most important in the Middle-East. The Shiite-Sunni schism is much bigger, the Persian-Arab divide is bigger, the struggle between national regimes and jihadism is much bigger," he was quoted as saying. "And I can't imagine the U.S. will want to share power in the Middle East with a nuclear-armed Iran."

The former army chief told the paper he has long seen Iran as the source of regional terrorism and was surprised the United States chosen to invade Iraq in its stead.

"I was chief of staff during Operation Iraqi Freedom and I was surprised the U.S. decided to go into Iraq instead of Iran," The Herald quoted him as saying. "Unfortunately, the American public didn't have the political stomach to go into Iran."

Ya'alon made headlines last week when he announced that he would be running for the Knesset on hardliner Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud list, after weeks of being courted by the opposition leader.

Interesting reading:
(1) Israeli hawks ready to fly on Iran - Brisbane Times - Click here!
(2) NZ Government overrules war-crimes arrest order against Moshe Ya'alon - New Zealand Herald Click Here!

India shocked by discovery of first Hindu terror cell

2008-11-23T20:54:00.002Z

At least 10 people, including monk and army officer, held over bombings initially blamed on Islamists

Taken from The Independent, UK,
By Andrew Buncombe in DelhiSunday, 23 November 2008

India is in something of a state of shock after learning from official sources that its first Hindu terror cell may have carried out a series of deadly bombings that were initially blamed on militant Muslims. The revelation is forcing the country to consider some difficult questions.

At least 10 people have been arrested in connection with several bomb blasts in the Muslim-dominated town of Malegaon in the western state of Maharashtra in September, which left six people dead. But reports suggest that police believe the cell may also have carried out a number of previous attacks, including last year's notorious bombing of a cross-border train en route to Pakistan, which killed 68 people. Among the alleged members of the cell are a serving army officer and a Hindu monk.

Bomb attacks are not uncommon in India – there has been a flurry in recent months – but police usually blame them on Muslim extremists, often said to have links to militant groups based in either Pakistan or Bangladesh. As a result, the recent cracking of the alleged Hindu cell has forced India to face some difficult issues. A country that prides itself on purported religious and cultural toleration – an ambition that in reality often falls short – has been made to ask itself how this cell could operate for so long. India's military, which prides itself on its professionalism, has been forced to order an embarrassing inquiry.

The near-daily drip of revelations from police has also caused red faces for India's main political opposition, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), ahead of state polls and a general election scheduled for early next year. The BJP and its prime ministerial candidate, Lal Krishna Advani, have long accused the Congress Party-led government of being soft on terrorism that involved Muslims. However, the BJP has refused to call for a clampdown on Hindu groups, and last week Mr Advani even criticised the police over the way they questioned one of the alleged cell members, a woman called Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur.

The Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, phoned his rival to ask him not to politicise the issue or the investigation. "There is a strong case so let the police do their job," he told Mr Advani. While some commentators have expressed surprise about the discovery of the alleged cell, others have pointed out that there has been growing concern about the possible threat from Hindu extremists. In the summer, two members of a right-wing Hindu group were killed while putting together a bomb, and two other suspected members of the same group died in similar circumstances in 2006.

Meanwhile, senior right-wing leaders have made no secret of their wish that Hindus should form suicide squads to protect themselves against Muslim extremists. Bal Thackeray, leader of a group called the Shiv Sena, which has been responsible for communal and regional violence in Mumbai, wrote recently in the party's magazine: "The threat of Islamic terror in India is rising.

It is time to counter the same with Hindu terror. Hindu suicide squads should be readied to ensure the existence of Hindu society and to protect the nation."

Observers say the fact that the police have arrested the alleged cell members amid considerable political pressure suggests the growing professionalism of its security forces. "It's the first Hindu cell and it's the first time Hindus have been shackled and taken to jail," said Professor Dipankar Gupta, a sociologist at Delhi's Jawarlahal Nehru University. "I'm quite pleased with the way the police have done their jobs."

U.S. study urges Obama to press Israel over nuclear program

2008-11-22T22:58:00.003Z

Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 18/11/2008
By Yossi Melman

The Middle East is in danger of accumulating large stocks of nuclear material over the next decade that could be used to produce over 1,700 nuclear bombs, a U.S. research center has projected in a newly released report.

The Institute for Science and International Security, headed by David Albright, one the world's top experts on nuclear weapons and the prevention of nuclear proliferation, recently released its report urging president-elect Barack Obama to take a number of measures to avoid such an outcome, including convincing Israel to halt production of its nuclear weapons.

"The Obama administration should make a key priority of persuading Israel to join the negotiations for a universal, verified treaty that bans the production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear explosives, commonly called the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT)," the institute argued. "As an interim step, the United States should press Israel to suspend any production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. Toward this goal, the United States should change its relatively new policy of seeking a cutoff treaty that does not include verification. The Bush administration's rejection of the long-standing U.S. policy of requiring verification was a mistake that the incoming administration needs to rectify."

Though Israel has never publicly admitted it has nuclear arms, it is largely believed to possess about 200 nuclear warheads. Iran has defied the international community for years by running a nuclear program which many observers fear may allow it to obtain nuclear arms in the future.

More recently, several Middle Eastern countries including the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt and Turkey announced their intention of building nuclear power plants.

Though most countries said they want to build reactors in order to reduce their dependency on fossil fuels as their sole source of energy, the institute's researchers believe they also wish to create a nuclear infrastructure in their own countries in light of the possibility that Iran will obtain nuclear arms.

In the year 2020 a number of nuclear reactors in the Middle East are expected to be completed, producing over 13 tons of plutonium. According to the institute, a nuclear device requires only eight kilograms to be assembled.

The institute believes the White House should strive to have Egypt, Iran and Israel ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). It also has stated that the U.S. should discourage the reprocessing of irradiated power reactor fuel both domestically and internationally.

Jewish settlers desecrate Hebron mosque and graves

2008-11-21T22:20:00.002Z

Well we usually hear about Jewish graves through Europe being desecrated by facsist now it seems that Jewish Settlers (majority who had left the same parts of Europe) are doing what facsists had done to their communities!

Taken from Google News, By AFP

HEBRON, West Bank — Jewish settlers angry at an Israeli court order for their eviction from a house in Hebron desecrated a mosque and tombs in the flashpoint West Bank City before dawn on Thursday, witnesses said.

The settlers scrawled "Mohammed is a pig" and "Death to the Arabs" on the front of a mosque and drew the Israeli emblem, the Star of David, on several gravestones in a Muslim cemetery, the witnesses said.

The mosque and cemetery both lie near the Hebron house where dozens of hardline Jewish settlers are defying the order by the Israeli High Court setting last Wednesday a deadline for them to leave or face eviction.

Israeli soldiers are on round-the-clock patrol in the tense neighbourhood.

The ruling, which was slammed by settler leaders, follows a series of violent clashes between Israeli security forces and hardline Jews seeking to erect unauthorised outposts in the West Bank, which Israel occupied in 1967.

The court rejected an appeal by two right-wing organisations against a government order to evacuate the Hebron house, which the settlers claim they had purchased from a Palestinian, who denies selling the house.

The four-storey house at the centre of the dispute was occupied in March 2007 by dozens of hardline Jewish settlers who have dubbed it "the house of peace".

The court ruling said the settlers "should turn to the appropriate legal bodies to prove their ownership over the house and refrain from taking the law into their own hands by occupying the property against the will of its owner."

The settler representatives claimed the house had been bought for 700,000 dollars, but Palestinian Faez Rajabi said he had documents proving he was the legal owner and that the deal had never been completed.

While the court ruling said there were "contradictions and queries" in Rajabi's claims, it also said that documents presented by the settlers in a bid to show ownership "were found by police investigators to be forged."

Leaked list reveals BNP strongholds

2008-11-20T00:10:00.007Z

Taken from the Independent, 19 November 2008

Lancashire was today revealed as a stronghold of BNP supporters with 861 people in the county on a leaked membership list.

West Yorkshire has the second highest rate of membership with 858 people from the county on the list.

And throughout Yorkshire as a whole the party counts more than 1,600 members.

The list, posted on an internet blog, contains 12,000 names including addresses, contact details and some members' jobs.

Some of the towns in Lancashire with the most BNP members include Oldham (78) and Burnley (73) which were the scene of violent race riots in 2001.

In Yorkshire, more than 240 members live in Leeds and 109 are in Bradford - where the 2001 rioting spread after igniting in Lancashire.

Essex has just over 670 members and the West Midlands more than 580. In Kent 417 people are signed up and in Leicestershire there are 409.

But there are hotspots of BNP membership across the country.

In Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, where there are nine BNP councillors on the city council, there are more than 100 members.

London has close to 500 members on the list and more than 230 members are listed as living in Manchester.

Burnley Council Labour Leader Julie Cooper said: "It doesn't surprise me that there are so many members in Lancashire and in Burnley. The BNP in Burnley have worked very hard to prey on vulnerable communities and appeal to the selfish side in all of us.

"Most of their support comes from traditional Labour areas where there is a lot of deprivation.

"But I think the tide is turning. We have four BNP members on the council now but we used to have seven and I believe that we can bring that down to three at the next election.

"It is such a shame because Burnley has got so much going for it and so many people here are doing a lot of good work."

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The publication of the list was inappropriate and put the lives of people “we disagree with” in danger. Although the original source of the list on Blogger has been taken down there are many websites still hosting the bnpmemberslist.

Whatever people say – groups like The BNP, National front, Combat 18 etc are all racist groups. The BNP may appear to be more mainstream and have a clean cut image but deep down it is another matter.

It has been alleged that hate groups like the above have set up websites that publish names and address of left wing politicians and ordinary people that stand up against fascism. Websites such as redwatch.org / redwatch.net (note: domain name keeps changing) is one prime example. here is a video report youtube.com

The majority of the members of hate groups have grown up in areas where there is a lot of deprivation but most of them have a disillusioned life. One of the highest profile BNP members was uncovered in 2006 – ballerina Simone Clarke. She joined the party to stand up against mass immigration (something unfamiliar to her that every party stands against).

The astonishing thing about Simone Clarke was that at that time she was in a relationship with fellow English National Ballet star Yat-Sen Chang, a Cuban immigrant of Chinese descent. They even have a five year old daughter, Olivia. The relationship didn’t last as Yat-Sen Chang, refused to back her politics. Simone Clarke is currently engaged to local BNP politician Richard Barnbrook who allegedly made the comment of Simone and Yat’s relationship "I'm not opposed to mixed marriages but their children are washing out the identity of this country's indigenous people." - Need I Say more!

Here are some points why many people consider the BNP to be a fascist party Click Here!

Stand up against fascism - for more info Click Here!

World recalls end of World War I

2008-11-11T09:37:00.005Z

World recalls end of World War I
Taken from BBC News, Tuesday, 11 November 2008

Ceremonies are being held across the globe to mark the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I.

Four years of trench warfare between Germany and the Allies killed some 20m people and redrew the map of Europe.

A major commemoration will take place in Verdun, north-east France, where French and German troops fought for eight months.

The battle was the war's longest, and Verdun has since become a symbol of Franco-German reconciliation.

Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, and the Duchess of Cornwall will be the guests of honour of French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the event.

Pacific century
Remembrance ceremonies have already been held in Australia, which lost 60,000 men in the conflict.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd used a speech at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra to issue a call for peace.

"We have all endured a most bloody century," he said.

"Let us resolve afresh at the dawn of this new century... that this might be a truly pacific peaceful century."

A lone bugler then played the Last Post, which is used to to commemorate the war dead in Commonwealth countries.

In the UK, three of the four surviving British World War I veterans - Henry Allingham, 112, Harry Patch, 110, and Bill Stone, 108 - will represent the RAF, Army and Royal Navy respectively during a ceremony at London's Cenotaph.

Mr Patch, Britain's oldest survivor of the trenches, will read an act of remembrance.

A two-minute silence will be observed from 1100 GMT, marking the exact time - at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month - when the Armistice Treaty came into effect to end the war.

World War I led to the creation of the Soviet Union and the destruction of the Ottoman Empire.

Useful reading:

(1) Echoes of conflict 90 years on (BBC)

(2) The last soldiers to die in WWI (BBC)

(3) Map of WWI battlegrounds (BBC)

(4) Audio slideshow: Scenes from the Great War's trenches (BBC)

Monks brawl at Jerusalem shrine

2008-11-09T21:54:00.008Z

Monks brawl at Jerusalem shrine
Taken from BBC News, 09.11.08

Israeli police have had to restore order at one of Christianity's holiest sites after a mass brawl broke out between monks in Jerusalem's Old City.

Fighting erupted between Greek Orthodox and Armenian monks at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site of Christ's crucifixion.

Two monks from each side were detained as dozens of worshippers traded kicks and punches at the shrine, said police.

Trouble flared as Armenians prepared to mark the annual Feast of the Cross.

Tapestries toppled
Shocked pilgrims looked on as decorations and tapestries were toppled during Sunday's clash.

Dressed in the vestments of the Greek Orthodox and Armenian denominations, rival monks threw punches and anything they could lay their hands on.

The Greeks blamed the Armenians for not recognising their rights inside the holy site, while the Armenians said the Greeks had violated one of their traditional ceremonies.

An Armenian clergyman said the Greek clergy had tried to place one of their monks inside the Edicule, an ancient structure which is said to encase the tomb of Jesus.

"What is happening here is a violation of status quo. The Greeks have tried so many times to put their monk inside the tomb but they don't have the right to when the Armenians are celebrating the feast," he said.

The Armenians had been preparing to commemorate the 4th Century discovery of the cross believed to have been used to crucify Jesus.

A Greek clergyman said: "We protested peacefully, we stood here in the middle and we claimed that we shall not leave the procession finished unless they leave our guardian be inside. This didn't happen and in that moment the police interfered."

Six Christian sects share control of the ancient church and the BBC's Wyre Davies in Jerusalem says confrontations between them are not uncommon, but rarely descend into violence.

Barack Obama has been elected president of the United States of America!

2008-11-05T17:26:00.001Z

Democratic Senator Barack Obama has been elected the first black president of the United States. The world is already a better place and Americans are loved all around the world once more!

"It's been a long time coming, but tonight... change has come to America," the president-elect told a jubilant crowd at a victory rally in Chicago. His rival John McCain accepted defeat, saying

"I deeply admire and commend" Mr Obama. He called on his supporters to lend the next president their goodwill.

World Reacts to Obama Win!

Israel Builds Museum on Muslim Graves

2008-10-30T22:33:00.000Z

Taken from Islamonline, Thu. Oct. 30, 2008

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — An Israeli court ruling allowing the construction of a Jewish museum over graves of some companions of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) in Al-Quds is sparking a controversy.

"Israeli is declaring a global war on Muslims and Arabs," Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel, told a press conference on Thursday, October 30.

"A general of the [prophet's] Companions is buried in this cemetery."

Sheikh Salah noted that thousands of other Muslims have been buried in the cemetery, putting the number at 70,000 thousands until 1948.

Israel's High Court on Wednesday, October 29, rejected an appeal by two Muslim groups to halt the building of a Jewish museum on the site of a Muslim cemetery in central Al-Quds.

The court argued that the cemetery has been in public use since the municipality authorities put a parking lot over a small section of the graveyard in the 1960s.

It claimed that a proposal put forward by the museum planners to rebury the bones or cover the graves was "satisfactory" to resolve the issue.

The court said the construction of the museum, halted in 2006 after human remains were discovered during the digging, can resume immediately.

The Mufti of Al-Quds, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein, said the verdict was a "grave decision which harms the Muslim holy sites."

He described the construction of the $250-million museum by a Los Angeles-based Jewish group as "act of aggression."

Help Plea

Sheikh Salah appealed to the Muslim world to intervene to halt the construction on the Muslim cemetery.

"We have sent messages to the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference to stop this crime."

The Muslim leader said the court verdict was part of the Israeli policies to judaize the holy city.
"But we will not give up our rights."

Israel captured Al-Quds in the 1967 war and later annexed the holy city, in a move not recognized by the international community.

The city is home to Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest shrine and the first Qiblah [direction Muslims take during prayers].

Al-Quds is also home to some of the holiest Christian worship places, including the Jerusalem Church and the Greek Orthodox Church.

Archmandrite Atallah Hanna also criticized the Israeli court ruling.

"This is the true face of the occupation," he told the same press conference.

The Christian clergy reaffirmed the unity of Palestinian Muslims and Christians in the face of Israeli aggressions.

"We stand shoulder to shoulder in the same trench."

Israeli scam exposed

2008-10-18T19:56:00.001Z

Hostage-taking in Caribbean result of illegal funds charged by Israeli employers

Taken from YNet news, Israel, 18.10.08
By Hanna Zohar

Three hundred Chinese workers decided to break the law and take the Israeli representatives of a construction company hostage until they get their money back. These workers paid a total of $4.5 million ($15,000 each) even before they started working – the money was divided among the various Chinese and Israeli intermediaries. We can assume that the construction company also got its share – as we know, there are no suckers around here.

The right to work is a basic universal right. Therefore, international conventions and laws in most countries forbid employers from demanding fees from employees in exchange for giving them work. Yet when it comes to those 300 Chinese workers, as well as the millions of workers who travel from eastern countries to the West, the conventions and laws do not offer much help.

It’s a fact. They pay thousands of dollars only because they hope for a high salary that will cover the debts they accumulated and enable them to save up some money and raise their standard of living upon their return to their homeland.

A Chinese construction worker employed by Israeli construction companies pays more than $20,000 even before coming here. Construction corporations are in fact manpower companies that got a license to bring laborers to Israel and arrange construction jobs for them. Before they were set up, in 2006, the workers paid sums ranging from $6,000 to $10,000.

By law, these corporations are not allowed to charge workers more than $1,000 for hiring them. The corporations pay the State tens of thousands of shekels for their license, and in addition are asked to provide significant financial guarantees in case the workers do not get paid. These high sums of money paid by the corporations have been passed on to the workers, which is why they need to pay much more today.

No such corporation has been sued to this day for charging illegal sums from workers. Moreover, no corporation was asked to pay the guarantees for worker salaries, even though hundreds of workers have complained that they have not been paid. What we have here is not only a case of the government turning a blind eye – knowingly and deliberately in my view – to the charging of illegal funds, but also criminal cooperation with the corporations in avoiding to use the guarantees to pay workers.

Israeli workers also charged illegally
In June 2007, a plan for bringing laborers from Thailand through a UN-affiliated group was supposed to get underway, with the purpose of preventing the high payments handed over by workers to intermediaries (Thai workers pay between $9,000 to $12,000.) The government decision to launch the plan was taken after a petition to the High Court of Justice filed by Attorney Yuval Livnat from the Kav LaOved (Workers’ Hotline) organization.

However, agricultural groups cried out, as many of them share in the illegal funds, and when the farmers’ lobby raises its voice, no convention or law can stand in its way. The government decision was frozen on the basis of various pretexts.

Meanwhile, Israeli workers are also being charged for the right to work, despite the universal ban. This is done in a hidden and sophisticated manner, under the auspices and with the cooperation of the Israeli government.

The 200 Chinese workers in the Caribbean exposed the ongoing scam of greedy companies and a corrupt government. Had it not been for the current financial crisis, the workers would reconcile themselves to the fees they have already paid and continue to work.

In Chinese, crisis also means opportunity. Perhaps this is our opportunity to understand something and change it.

Hanna Zohar directs the Kav LaOved (Workers’ Hotline) non-profit organization

Holy war strikes India

2008-10-11T20:19:00.000Z

35 Christians killed and 50,000 forced from their homes by Hindu mobs enraged at Swami's murder

Taken from The Independent, UK
By Andrew Buncombe in Phulbani, Orissa, Thursday, 9 October 2008

As she recalled her awful story, Puspanjali Panda made no attempt to halt the tears flooding down her face.

Holding her daughter close, she told how a baying Hindu mob dragged her husband – a Christian pastor – from his bed, beat him to death with stones and iron rods and then threw him into a river. She found his corpse two days later, washed up on the bank. When she went to the police, they told her to go away.

Mrs Panda and thousands of others like her are victims of the worst communal violence between Hindus and Christians that India has seen for decades. For a country that boasts of its mutual religious tolerance, the long-simmering tension that has erupted in the Kandhamal district of the state of Orissa – a nun being raped, churches being burned, at least 35 people killed and thousands forced from their villages – is both a belated wake-up call and a mounting embarrassment. The Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, called it a "national disgrace".

But for Mrs Panda, sheltering in a wretched relief camp in the state capital, Bhubaneswar, it is much worse than that. The 38-year-old said she had no idea what would now happen to her and her bewildered-looking child, Mona Lisa. "I do not want to go back. They have destroyed my home," she wailed.

The journey to the heart of the violence follows a bone-shaking road east from Bhubaneswar to the district capital, Phulbani. It was here in late August that thousands of Hindus armed with swords, sticks and primitive guns began taking matters into their own hands after the murder of an elderly religious leader, Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati.

The swami, a senior member of a right-wing Hindu organisation known as the Vishswa Hindu Parishad (VHP), had reportedly been working to prevent low-caste Hindus converting to Christianity. His followers claimed he had been murdered by local Christians, though police said there was no evidence of that. Either way, in the days that followed, groups of Hindus wrought a terrible revenge on Christian families whom they had lived alongside for decades. In addition to the deaths, 140 churches and prayer halls were attacked and up to 50,000 people forced to flee.

In instances the violence appears staggering in its cruelty. Rabindranath Pradhan, now a refugee, had to watch helplessly while a 300-strong mob doused his disabled brother with petrol and set him alight. "He was shouting 'Help me, Help me.' I could not help – there were so many of them," he said.

Local people are now forced to fly saffron-coloured flags outside their homes to identity themselves as Hindus and prevent attack. In the village of Pabinga a Catholic church lies in ruins, the cross pushed from the roof and the interior of the building badly damaged. Christian leaders say that families forced to flee have been told they can only return if they re-convert to Hinduism.

Raphael Cheenath, the Archbishop of Cuttack and Bhubaneswar, traced the violence to the anger of upper-caste Hindus at the number of Dalits or so-called untouchables converting to Christianity. Previously, he said, the lower castes had lived the lives of slaves and now – liberated and better-educated – they represented a challenge. "It incites the upper castes," he said.

While conversion has been an issue, the conflict here is more complex than a religious disagreement. Many activists believe the fight is an economic dispute between two of India's poorest groups, complicated by the issue of caste and ethnicity. For decades there has been conflict over land and resources between the two groups at the bottom of India's complex social system – the indigenous people of the region officially listed as scheduled tribes (ST) and non-indigenous poor known as scheduled castes (SC).

While the ST are Hindu, increasing numbers of SC have converted to Christianity to escape the misery of the caste system, for perceived economic benefit and because of the efforts of missionaries. Many politicians have accused right-wing Hindu groups of agitating tension for political reasons.

Somewhat surprisingly given the number of churches that have been destroyed, the ST of Kandhamal also say their conflict with the SC communities is not a religious dispute. They too say the battle is over land and resources.

Lambahdhar Kanhari, a tribal leader, says he has received death-threats from Christians. At his house near Phulbani a guard with a pump-action shotgun stands outside. Mr Kanhari did not deny that tribal people were responsible for the flurry of attacks but said that while the recent violence had been triggered by the killing of Swami Saraswati, its roots went back decades.

"These SC came from outside the area. They are criminal by nature. They have taken our land, our crops, everything," he said. "When the Swami was killed by the Christians some of his followers went after the killers and some of our people have been involved in the fighting."

The authorities say 11 relief camps have been set up to help more than 23,000 people. The Indian government has belatedly dispatched hundreds of police and paramilitaries to Kandhamal to calm the situation. In Phulbani, there is now a 6pm-8am curfew.

On a recent evening, the curfew had just been called as Asis Mishra was chaining shut the gate in front of his home. One of a tiny number of Christians in Phulbani still daring to live in their homes, Mr Mishra had good reason to take special safety precautions.

During the worst of the violence his family had fled their home and lived in a guesthouse, provided with food and money by Hindu families. Mr Mishra explained that he was not a recent convert, his family having been Christians for five generations. He said he hoped the fact he was well known within the community would protect him. He tapped on his chest and said: "We have been here a long time, but there is still some fear... It is always here."

Religious intolerance: The flashpoint state
* Orissa, on the Bay of Bengal, is India's ninth-largest state. It is less densely populated than its coastal neighbours but it is still home to 36 million people.
* Hindus make up 94 per cent of the population; 2 per cent are Christians. Tensions mounted in 1999, when an Australian missionary and his sons were burnt alive by a Hindu mob.
* The state has one-fifth of India's coal reserves and a third of its bauxite, but many people live in chronic poverty.

Secrets of Iraq's death chamber

2008-10-10T20:36:00.002Z

Prisoners are being summarily executed in the government's high-security detention centre in Baghdad.

Taken from The Independent, UK, Tuesday, 7 October 2008

By Robert Fisk

Like all wars, the dark, untold stories of the Iraqi conflict drain from its shattered landscape like the filthy waters of the Tigris. And still the revelations come.

The Independent has learnt that secret executions are being carried out in the prisons run by Nouri al-Maliki's "democratic" government.

The hangings are carried out regularly – from a wooden gallows in a small, cramped cell – in Saddam Hussein's old intelligence headquarters at Kazimiyah. There is no public record of these killings in what is now called Baghdad's "high-security detention facility" but most of the victims – there have been hundreds since America introduced "democracy" to Iraq – are said to be insurgents, given the same summary justice they mete out to their own captives.

The secrets of Iraq's death chambers lie mostly hidden from foreign eyes but a few brave Western souls have come forward to tell of this prison horror. The accounts provide only a glimpse into the Iraqi story, at times tantalisingly cut short, at others gloomily predictable.

Those who tell it are as depressed as they are filled with hopelessness.

"Most of the executions are of supposed insurgents of one kind or another," a Westerner who has seen the execution chamber at Kazimiyah told me. "But hanging isn't easy." As always, the devil is in the detail.

"There's a cell with a bar below the ceiling with a rope over it and a bench on which the victim stands with his hands tied," a former British official, told me last week. "I've been in the cell, though it was always empty. But not long before I visited, they'd taken this guy there to hang him. They made him stand on the bench, put the rope round his neck and pushed him off. But he jumped on to the floor. He could stand up. So they shortened the length of the rope and got him back on the bench and pushed him off again. It didn't work."

There's nothing new in savage executions in the Middle East – in the Lebanese city of Sidon 10 years ago, a policeman had to hang on to the legs of a condemned man to throttle him after he failed to die on the noose – but in Baghdad, cruel death seems a speciality.

"They started digging into the floor beneath the bench so that the guy would drop far enough to snap his neck," the official said. "They dug up the tiles and the cement underneath. But that didn't work. He could still stand up when they pushed him off the bench. So they just took him to a corner of the cell and shot him in the head."

The condemned prisoners in Kazimiyah, a Shia district of Baghdad, are said to include rapists and murderers as well as insurgents. One prisoner, a Chechen, managed to escape from the jail with another man after a gun was smuggled to them. They shot two guards dead. The authorities had to call in the Americans to help them recapture the two. The Americans killed one and shot the Chechen in the leg. He refused medical assistance so his wound went gangrenous. In the end, the Iraqis had to operate and took all the bones out of his leg. By the time he met one Western visitor to the prison, "he was walking around on crutches with his boneless right leg slung over his shoulder".

In many cases, it seems, the Iraqis neither keep nor release any record of the true names of their captives or of the hanged prisoners. For years the Americans – in charge of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad – did not know the identity of their prisoners. Here, for example, is new testimony given to The Independent by a former Western official to the Anglo-US Iraq Survey Group, which searched for the infamous but mythical weapons of mass destruction: "We would go to the interrogation rooms at Abu Ghraib and ask for a particular prisoner. After about 40 minutes, the Americans brought in this hooded guy, shuffling along, shackled hands and feet.

"They sat him on a chair in front of us and took off his hood. He had a big beard. We asked where he received his education. He repeatedly said 'Mosul'. Then he said he'd left school at 14 – remember, this guy is supposed to be a missile scientist. We said: 'We know you've got a PhD and went to the Sorbonne – we'd like you to help us with information about Saddam's missile project'. But I said to myself : 'This guy doesn't know anything 'bout fucking missiles.' Then it turned out he had a different name from the man we'd asked for, he'd been picked up on the road by the Americans four months earlier, he didn't know why. So we said to the Americans: 'Wrong gentleman!' So they put the shackles on him and took him back to his cell and after 20 or 30 minutes, they'd bring someone else. We'd ask him where he went to school and he told us he had never been to school.

"Wrong person again. It was a complete farce. The incompetence of the US military was astounding, criminal. Eventually, of course, they found the right guy and brought him in and took his hood off. He was breathing heavily, overweight, pudgy, disoriented, a little bit scared."

On this occasion, the Americans had found the right man. The British and American investigators asked the guards to remove the man's shackles, which they did – but then they tied one of the man's legs to the floor. Yes, he had a PhD.

Again, the official's testimony: "We went through his history, what he'd worked on – he was obviously just a minor functionary in one of Saddam's missile programmes. Iraqi scientists didn't have the knowledge how to make nuclear missiles nor did they have the financial support necessary. It just remained in the dreams of Saddam."

The scientist-prisoner in Abu Ghraib miserably told his captors that he'd been arrested by the Americans after they'd knocked on his front door in Baghdad and found two Kalashnikov rifles a woman's hijab, verses from the Koran and, obviously of interest to his captors, "physics and missile textbooks on his bookshelves." But this supposedly valuable prisoner was never charged or previously interviewed even though he admitted he was a rocket scientist.

"I don't know what happened to him," the former official told me. "I tried to tell the UK and the US military that we've arrested this man but that he's got a wife, children, a family. I said that by locking up this one innocent person, you've got 50 men radicalised overnight. No, I don't know what happened to him."

For many of the investigators working for the Anglo-American authorities in Baghdad, the trial for the crime for which the Iraqi dictator was himself subsequently hanged was a fearful experience that ultimately ended in disgust. Through captured documents, they could see the dark, inner workings of Saddam's secret police. The idea of the Saddam trial was less to bring members of the former regime to justice than to show Iraqis how justice and the rule of law should operate.

"It was exhilarating to see Saddam being cross-examined," one of the court investigators said. "The low point was when he was executed. What drove me on was seeing how Saddam dealt with his victims – I was looking at a microcosm of all the deaths that had taken place in Iraq. But when he was executed, it was done in such a savage way."

Saddam Hussein was hanged in the same "secure" unit at Kazimiyah where Mr al-Maliki's people, in an echo of Saddamite Baathist terror, now hang their victims.

Iraq The death penalty
* The death penalty in Iraq was suspended after Saddam Hussein was deposed in 2003. It was reinstated by the interim government in August 2004.
* The United Nations, the European Union and international human rights organisations all spoke out against the reintroduction.
* At the time, the government claimed the death penalty was a necessary measure until the country had stabilised. Amnesty International claims that "the extent of violence in Iraq has increased rather than diminished, clearly indicating that the death penalty has not proved to be an effective deterrent."
* Saddam, left, his half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and Iraq's former chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bandar were hanged at the end of 2006 for their part in the killings of 148 people in the mainly Shia town of Dujail in 1982. Illicit videos of all three executions later became public. Saddam's body could be seen on a hospital trolley, his head twisted at 90 degrees. Barzan – Iraq's former intelligence chief –was decapitated by the noose. Officials said it was an accident.
* According to Amnesty, there were at least 33 executions reported in Iraq last year. About 200 people were estimated to have been sentenced to death.

Guantanamo release angers Bush

2008-10-09T20:04:00.000Z

Taken from Al-Jazeera News Agency, Wednesday, October 08, 2008

A US judge has ordered the release of 17 Chinese Muslim detainees from the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in what has been seen as a rebuke to the Bush administration.

US district judge Ricardo Urbina said there was no evidence the men were a security risk and that the US constitution prohibits indefinite detention without cause.

Local Uighur residents and human rights activists cheered as he told a Washington courtroom the men, who have been in custody for almost seven years, should be freed.

The ruling is the first court-ordered release of Guantanamo detainees since the facility opened in 2002.

The Bush administration reacted with anger to the ruling, with a spokesman for the department of justice saying it presented "serious national security and separation of powers concerns and raises unprecedented legal issues".

The department said it would file an emergency request on Tuesday evening for a stay with the US court of appeals in Washington to halt the ruling.

If it loses, it has the option of appealing to the US Supreme Court, the highest in the country.

Lawyers 'thrilled'
Lawyers representing the men said they were "thrilled" with the decision.

"Justice has too long been delayed but today we saw a great judge give a principled and just decision," Sabin Willett, a lawyer for some of the men, told Reuters news agency.

The Uighurs, from the Xinjiang province in western China, had been living in a camp in Afghanistan during the US-led bombing campaign in the country that began in October 2001 after the September 11 attacks in the US.

They fled into the mountains and were detained by Pakistani authorities, who handed them over to the US.

The men have been cleared for release from Guantanamo since 2004 as they are no longer considered "enemy combatants", the official designation for those held in Guantanamo Bay, and would have been sent home.

However, the US has not been able to find a country willing to accept them.

Many Muslim Uighurs seek greater autonomy for the region and some want independence, however China has waged a relentless campaign against what it calls their violent separatist activities.

About 265 detainees are still held at Guantanamo, which was opened in 2002 to hold suspects captured during the US's so-called "war on terror" launched after the September 11 attacks.

Most have been held for years without being charged and some allege they have been abused or tortured.

'Your company is bankrupt, you keep $480m. Is that fair?'

2008-10-08T21:44:00.003Z

Taken from the Guardian, UK, Tuesday October 7 2008

By Andrew Clark in New York and Elana Schor in Washington

It was a showdown to cherish for critics of Wall Street's culture of enrichment. The grim-faced boss of the bankrupt bank Lehman Brothers was left squirming yesterday as a veteran Democrat roasted him over his multimillion-dollar pay.

With the startled look of a man unaccustomed to sharp examination, Lehman chief executive Richard Fuld clashed bluntly with the chairman of the House oversight committee, Henry Waxman, on Capitol Hill.

Called on to explain why Lehman collapsed last month, Fuld began with a note of humility, saying he felt "horrible" over the demise of the 158-year-old institution. "I want to be very clear," Fuld said. "I take full responsibility for the decisions I made and for the actions I took."

In a brief speech which was heard in silence, Fuld told legislators that if he could turn back the clock he would do many things differently. As soon as he finished speaking, sparks began to fly.

The chairman of the committee held up a chart suggesting that Fuld's personal remuneration totalled $480m (£276m) over eight years, including payouts of $91m in 2001 and $89m in 2005.
"Your company is now bankrupt and our country is in a state of crisis," said Waxman, a liberal from California. "You get to keep $480m. I have a very basic question: Is that fair?"

After a long pause, Fuld said the figure was exaggerated: "The majority of my compensation, sir, came in stock. The vast majority of the stock I got I still owned at the point of our [bankruptcy] filing."

Waxman cut him off, saying that even if the figure was slightly lower, it was "unimaginable" to much of the public. "Is that fair, for a CEO of a company that's now bankrupt, to make that kind of money? It's just unimaginable to so many people."

"I would say to you the $500m number is not accurate," said Fuld. "I'd say to you, although it's still a large number, for the years you're talking about here, my cash compensation was close to $60m, which you've indicated here, and I took out closer to $250m [in shares]."

Interrupting again, Waxman listed Fuld's collection of property, including a $14m ocean-front villa in Florida and a home in an exclusive ski resort.

"You and your wife have an art collection filled with million dollar paintings," Waxman said.

"Your former president, Joe Gregory, used to travel to work in a helicopter."

A pugnacious congressman with a bald head and military moustache, Waxman warmed to his theme: "You made all this money taking risks with other people's money."

Refusing to give ground, Fuld said his pay had been set by an independent compensation committee which spent "a tremendous amount of time" making sure executives' interests were aligned with those of shareholders.

"When the company did well, we did well," Fuld said. "When the company did not do well, we didn't do well."

Waxman disagreed: "Mr Fuld, there seems to be a breakdown, because you did very well when the company was doing well and you did well when the company was not doing well. And now your shareholders who owned your company have nothing. They've been wiped out."

Fuld's evidence was his first public appearance since Lehman failed, sparking a chain of events which has sent shockwaves through the global financial system and prompted the US government to begin a $700bn bail-out of the banking sector.

A lifelong Lehman employee who joined the firm as an intern in 1966, Fuld has been blamed for the debacle by many of the bank's 28,000 staff - including those in London who have accused senior management of filleting Lehman's British operation of money in the bank's final days.

Deadpan and emotionless, Fuld repeatedly frustrated congressmen by answering questions with lengthy, technical financial explanations.

Frustrated by his demeanour, a Republican congressman, John Mica, tried humour: "If you haven't discovered your role, you're the villain today. You've got to act like a villain."

Fuld stared back wordlessly, without a shadow of a smile.

Nun dies after Hindu hardliners torch Christian churches and an orphanage

2008-08-27T19:32:00.000Z

Taken from Daily Mail, UK, 25th August 2008

A nun has been killed and a priest seriously injured after Hindu hardliners set fire to an orphanage run by Christian missionaries.

The attack occurred in the village of Khuntapali, in India’s Orissa state, during protests against the murder of a Hindu religious leader on Saturday.

Police say tensions between the two groups have been growing in recent weeks, with some Hindu groups accusing the missionaries of bribing villagers to convert to Christianity.

Yesterday the religious fanatics converged on the orphanage and asked nearly 20 residents to leave the complex.

They then set the orphanage on fire with the nun and the priest locked inside.

The priest suffered extensive burns and was last night in a serious condition in hospital.

Although India’s constitution is secular, 84 per cent of its 1.2billion population is Hindu.

Around 2.5 per cent of Indians are Christians.

In the past Hindu extremists in Orissa state have attacked other Christian missionaries.

In 1999 an Australian missionary, Graham Staines, and his two sons were killed by a Hindu mob that set their car on fire.

Churches have denied that residents have been pressured or bribed to change their religious beliefs.

Indian law accepts missionaries but bars forced conversions. Nevertheless, any missionary activity generally provokes controversy.

Afghan president 'pardoned rapists'

2008-08-24T21:39:00.002Z

Taken from the Independent, UK,
By Kate Clark in Kabulm, 24 August 2008

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has pardoned three men who had been found guilty of gang raping a woman in the northern province of Samangan.

The woman, Sara, and her family found out about the pardon only when they saw the rapists back in their village.

“Everyone was shocked,” said Sara’s husband, Dilawar, who like many Afghans uses only one name. “These were men who had been sentenced and found guilty by the Supreme Court, walking around freely.”

Sara’s case highlights concerns about the close relationship between the Afghan president and men accused of war crimes and human rights abuses.

The men were freed discreetly but the rape itself was public and brutal. It took place in September 2005, in the run up to Afghanistan’s first democratic parliamentary elections.

The most powerful local commander, Mawlawi Islam, was running for office despite being accused of scores of murders committed while he had been a mujahedeen commander in the 1980s and a Taliban governor in the 1990s, and since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Sara said one of his sub-commanders and body guards had been looking for young men to help in the election campaign.

“It was evening, around the time for the last prayer, when armed men came and took my son, Islamuddin, by force. I have eye-witness statements from nine people that he was there. From that night until now, my son has never been seen.”

Dilawar said his wife publicly harangued the commander twice about their missing son. After the second time, he said, they came for her. “The commander and three of his fighters came and took my wife out of our home and took her to their house about 200 metres away and, in front of these witnesses, raped her.”

Dilawar has a sheaf of legal papers, including a doctors’ report, which said she had a 17mm wound in her private parts cut with a bayonet. Sara was left to stumble home, bleeding and without her trousers.

When I met the couple in May 2006, they were in hiding and struggling to pursue the four men through the courts, petitioning the parliament, the president, human rights organisations and the United Nations. Sara and Dilawar say that one of the men involved in the attack used money and connections to repeatedly evade justice, particularly after his boss, Mawlawi Islam, became an MP and, they allege, was fully able to protect him.

In January 2007, Mawlawi Islam was assassinated. However, the other three men accused of the gang rape were put on trial, found guilty and sentenced to 11 years in prison. Abdul Basir died in jail. The other two rapists, Nur Mohammad and Kheir Mohammad, were released last May. The commander was found not guilty.

A copy of the pardon was numbered, dated in May and appeared to bear the personal signature of Hamid Karzai. It recommended the men’s release because, it said, “they had been forced to confess to their crimes.”

When showed copies of the presidential pardon and court papers, President Karzai’s spokesman, Hamayun Hamidzada, was visibly shocked and said that if the documents proved genuine, Mr Karzai would be “upset and appalled.”

He said it was impossible that President Karzai could knowingly have signed a pardon for rapists, but refused to speculate on how the pardon could have come about. He promised an investigation into all aspects of the case, including the - as yet unsolved - mystery of Sara’s missing son.

He denied that there was one law for the rich and well-connected in Afghanistan and another for people like Sara. “There are difficulties - we’re rebuilding institutions, including our justice institutions and there are shortcomings, but the president and the government are committed to the rule of law on all equally.”

A UN human rights official said that, although she could not remember a similar case of the president giving a pardon in such a serious case, corruption in the police and courts was endemic.
The MP, Mir Ahmad Joyenda, said cases similar to Sara’s were actually becoming more common. The police and the courts, he said, were usually under the sway of local commanders.

“The commanders, the war criminals, still have armed groups,” he said. “They’re in the government. Karzai, the Americans, the British sit down with them. They have impunity.

They’ve become very courageous and can do whatever crimes they like.”

Sara and Dilawar are again in hiding, having felt too vulnerable to stay in their village. Dilawar was prepared to discuss the case. In Afghanistan, speaking about rape means risking further dishonour, but when asked whether he minded Sara’s story being publicised, Dilawar said, “We’ve already lost our son, our honour, we’ve sold our land to pay for legal costs and we’ve lost our home – what else can we lose?”

'Librarian' of global paedophile ring jailed

2008-08-18T20:57:00.000Z

Taken from Daily Mirror, 18.08.2008

By Hannah Wood

This is the face of one of the bosses behind a worldwide internet paedophile ring smashed apart by UK cops in a massive undercover operation.

Twenty-seven year old Philip Thompson, who acted as the ‘librarian’ of the network that spanned 33 countries, was jailed today for three years nine months – but warned he could remain behind bars for much longer.

The self-taught British computer expert used his skills to moderate an invitation-only website forum that featured ‘borderline illegal’ images of children playing in their underwear.

Police said the gateway site was used to prove users had a perverted interest in children and once users were accepted as members they would then be linked up to other more secretive online environments.

It was here that thousands of more disturbing images and videos, as well as information about vulnerable children, were exchanged.

The capture of Thompson, of Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, has saved 15 children from the evil clutches of the vile paedophile ring and led to dozens more arrests, it has emerged.

Police have so far pinpointed 360 suspects involved in this global trade of child pornography, the court was told.

Thompson, who lived with his mother, pleaded guilty to 27 charges, including 16 counts of making indecent photographs of children, seven counts of distributing indecent photographs of children and one count of causing or inciting a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity.

Prosecutor Harry Hadfield told Teesside Crown Court that when cops raided the unemployed driver’s home in February this year they recovered two desktop computers and a laptop, as well as a selection of other computer paraphernalia.

Forensic analysis by computer experts established that the defendant had 241,000 indecent photographs of children, being one of the largest seizures of indecent photographs in the UK,’ he told the court.

Mr Hadfield said: “The defendant’s role was to police the website, which gave him the opportunity to transfer these images to his computer.

“The evidence recovered from his computer showed he had amassed a vast collection of indecent photographs of children.

“It appeared the defendant kept some of the most serious images to use as trading chips.”

Detective Chief Superintendent Mark Braithwaite, of Cleveland Police, said: “Thompson was a critical piece of this network. He was, essentially, the librarian for a myriad of images that were distributed to like-minded individuals both in this country and elsewhere.

“I hope this result acts as a deterrent and sends out a clear warning that activity such as this will not be tolerated.”

Of the near 250,000 images on Thompson’s computers, more than 3,000 were of levels four and five - the worst kind of child abuse images.

“The Crown would say that this collection of indecent photographs and the subsequent police investigation revealed that this defendant has been involved in the distribution of these photographs for the last four or five years,” Mr Hadfield said.

He added that 51 arrests had been made as a result of the investigation into Thompson and inquiries were continuing.

The international child abuse network was infiltrated by police in the largest deployment yet of undercover officers in the UK used in a child protection inquiry.

Detective Sergeant Becky Driscoll, of Cleveland Police, said Thompson thought he was operating ‘below the radar’.

“He was integral. He played a key role. He was trusted by others members of this site, so much so that he stored horrific images of child abuse on their behalf,” she said.

“He described the 250,000 child abuse images as his collection. He was prepared to share that with acquaintances he found on his forum.”

Jim Gamble, chief executive of the Ceop, added: “This website, whilst appearing to operate on the margins of legality, was clearly a front for the sinister, sexual abuse of children and an image trading ground for paedophiles.

“There is a simple message for those individuals like Thompson, who think they can go to this website - or indeed any space on the internet - and discuss their sexual interest in children and share images.

“You leave a digital footprint. We will track you down and hold you to account.”

Mary Dejevsky: Russia the bad guys? Who are the West trying to kid?

2008-08-18T09:20:00.003Z

Taken from the Independent, UK
Friday, 15 August 2008

As Russian forces started to hand over control of the Georgian town of Gori yesterday, you could detect a note of surprise, even disappointment, in many media reports. So the all-out Russian invasion of plucky little democratic Georgia might not be going to happen after all. Could it be that the bear was drawing in his claws?

Well, Russia did not have long to worry about losing its reputation as backyard bully. Within hours, the United States envoy to Georgia was spinning a whole new myth to the BBC about how it was only decisive US intervention – by which he presumably meant the warplanes laden with humanitarian aid by then ostentatiously parked at Tbilisi airport – that the mighty erstwhile Red Army had been turned back.

The many Georgians who had counted on more timely and robust assistance from their US protector surely laughed a bitter laugh. But there were signs, with the arrival of the US Secretary of State in Georgia, that this version was gaining hold. The story of this war, it seems, will be that the US faced down a snarling, expansionist Russia, and forced it to limp back to its lair.

This is a travesty. But it is only the latest and most glaring in a series of Western misrepresentations and misreadings of Russian intentions throughout this sorry episode. They began with the repeated references to Russian "aggression" and "invasion", continued through charges of intended "regime change", and culminated in alarmist reports about Russian efforts to bomb the east-west energy pipeline. None of this, not one bit of it, is true.

Take "aggression" and "invasion". Georgia declared itself to be in a state of war with Russia.

War, regrettably, is war, and a basic objective is to reduce, or destroy, the enemy's military capability. This is what Russia was doing until it accepted the ceasefire. The positions it took up inside Georgia proper can be seen as defensive, not offensive. Gori houses the Georgian garrison on South Ossetia's border.

And anyway, how did hostilities begin? Georgia sent troops into South Ossetia. The status of that region – which declared unilateral independence – is anomalous. It is inside Georgia's borders, but outside its control. But one reason why the dispute has not been solved is that the "fudge" over independence brought with it a degree of stability. Georgia's action upset that stability. But did anyone describe it as "aggression"? Trying to explain Russian "aggression", many reports went further, observing a "new" mood of Russian aggressive nationalism. Today's Russia, they reasoned, was uniquely liable to lash out, because energy wealth had fuelled new national ambitions. Where, though, is the evidence that Russian national pride is automatically malign?

If you exclude Chechnya, which Russians have always regarded as part of Russia, then neither Putin, nor Medvedev, had sent troops outside Russian borders before this point. As for the idea that Putin wants to restore the Soviet Union – derived from his remark about the Soviet collapse being "among the greatest catastrophes" of the 20th century – nothing could be further from what he did. Far from hankering after a lost empire, Putin used his years as president systematically to fix Russia's post-Soviet borders, signing treaties with every neighbouring country that would agree – including, last month, China. Of course, Russia does not like the idea of another Nato member on its borders. But this is not the same as wanting to restore "ex-Soviet space". It reflects Russia's view of its legitimate security interests.

Perhaps the most pernicious assumption over the past week, however, is that Russia wanted to effect "regime-change". Russian officials categorically denied this, insisting that they had no business overthrowing an elected leader. You might scoff, but Russia has done nothing that would contradict this. The Kremlin would probably be delighted if Georgians eventually punished their President for his misguided enterprise, but Russia seems to accept that Georgians decide what happens in Georgia.

Why was it so difficult for outsiders to believe that Moscow wanted precisely what its leaders said they wanted: a return to the situation that had pertained before Georgia's incursion into South Ossetia – and does it matter that its intentions were so appallingly misread? Yes it does. If outsiders impute to Moscow motives and objectives it does not have, they alienate Russia even further, and make a long-term solution of many international problems that more difficult. It is high time we treated Russia's post-Soviet leaders as responsible adults representing a legitimate national interest, rather than assuming the stereotypical worst.

UNIFIL commander: Israel violating 1701

2008-08-15T21:27:00.003Z

Taken from The Jerusalem Post, Aug 15, 2008

Commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) Maj.-Gen. Claudio Graziano on Thursday accused Israel of violating UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that brought an end to the Second Lebanon War.

During a press conference at the United Nations headquarters in New York, Graziano cited the IAF forays over Lebanon and the village of Ghajar, which he called "a permanent violation of 1701" and "a permanent area under occupation."

A further violation, according to Graziano, was Israel's failure to provide maps of all the locations where it dropped cluster bombs during the 2006 war.

In contrast, he said that the UN enjoyed excellent cooperation with Hizbullah and with the local Lebanese people.

"At this moment Hizbullah is one of [the] parties that agrees with 1701," he stressed.

Graziano asserted that apart from UN troops, Lebanese soldiers and hunters, no one was armed south of the Litani River.

"We have seen hunters, we saw somebody moving with one weapon and he was arrested, but we never met anybody [else] moving with weapons," he said.

He conceded that his soldiers were not trying to prevent weapons smuggling from Syria as demanded by the UNSC because the Lebanese government had not requested such action.

The UNIFIL commander emphasized that Israel's numerous allegations regarding violations of the UN resolution were being investigated.

Iraq contractors 'cost US $85bn'

2008-08-14T13:59:00.001Z

Taken from Al-Jazeera News Agency, 13 Aug 2008

The US government has spent at least $85 billion on private contractors during the 2003 Iraq war and its aftermath, a government review has said.

About 20 per cent of money spent for operations in Iraq has gone to contractors, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said.

At present there are at least 190,000 contractors in Iraq and in neighbouring countries, a ratio of about one per US service member, the report said.

The report sparked heavy criticism by US Democrats, with Senator Kent Conrad, chairman of the US senate budget committee, saying the reliance on contractors "restricts accountability and oversight; opens the door to corruption and abuse and ... may significantly increase the cost to American taxpayers".

The study did not include figures for 2008 and therefore the total paid tocontractors for work in Iraq since the invasion could be even higher, possibly topping $100 billion by the end of this year, the report said.

The US military has relied increasingly on contractors in its wars as it reduced the size of its own forces.

Increased scrutiny
The CBO estimated on Tuesday that between $6 billion to $10 billion has gone to pay for security work in Iraq, which was comparable to the costs of having a US military unit performing the same tasks.

The work of contractors in Iraq - of whom between 25,000 to 30,000 are in security work - has faced increased scrutiny following a series of fatal incidents involving Iraqi civilians.

Last September, 17 Iraqis were killed in a shooting involving contractors from Blackwater security company, an incident that provoked furious protests from the Iraqi government and strained relations with the US.

The US Justice Department is expected to decide soon whether to bring charges over the incident, although Blackwater itself is not expected to be prosecuted.

The firm recently announced that they planned to scale back their securitycontracting business and focus on other areas, due in part to negative publicity from the shooting.

In addition, contracting companies such as Halliburton, previously run by Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, and KBR, formerly known as Kellogg, Brown and Root, have also been accused of overcharging and corruption.

Charles Tiefer, a professor of government contracting at the University of Baltimore Law School, told the New York Times newspaper that the scale of contractor usage in Iraq was

"unprecedented".
"It was considered an all-out imperative by the administration to keep troop levels low, particularly in the beginning of the war, and one way that was done was to shift money and manpower to contractors," he told the paper.

"But that has exposed the military to greater risks from contractor waste and abuse."

Israeli troops kill West Bank boy

2008-08-03T13:15:00.003Z

Taken from Al-Jezeera News Agency, Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Israeli troops have shot dead a Palestinian boy during a protest near the separation wall in the occupied West Bank, according to Palestinian medics and witnesses.

Hammad Hossam Mussa was hit by a bullet fired by Israeli soldiers in the village of Ni'lin on Tuesday, Salah Al Khawaja, a member of Ni'lin's Committee Against the Wall, said.

He died of his wounds while being transported to hospital in an ambulance, medical sources said.
Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland in Jerusalem said that the Israeli military had not yet given a definitive account of the incident.

"They have merely told us that they are carrying out 'a careful and thorough investigation' into how this child died, and only once they have done that investigation will we get their comment on how this boy happened to die," she said.

Live rounds

According to Khawaja, soldiers fired live rounds towards a group of protesters who had run into the village after the army dispersed protesters outside using rubber-coated bullets.

"Protesters arrived at the wall's construction site outside the village and the soldiers started to open fire with rubber bullets and tear gas. This pushed the protesters back into the village where the boy was hit by a live bullet in his chest," he told AFP.

However, other witnesses said that the boy was hit in the head as strone-throwers confronted Israeli troops.

Fifteen people were also lightly injured by rubber-coated bullets during the demonstration in Ni'lin, which has in recent months become the site of regular demonstrations against the barrier.

"This barrier, made of coiled razor wire, deep trenches and a fence equipped with electronic sensors, is cutting through the land of the village," Rowland reported.

Earlier this month, demonstrators in Ni'lin and other locations marked four years since the International Court of Justice issued a non-binding resolution calling for parts of the barrier inside the West Bank to be torn down and for a halt to construction there.

Israel has largely ignored the ruling.

Hunt for Karadzic ends as fugitive is found

2008-07-22T12:50:00.004Z

Taken from the Independent, UK, 22/07/2008

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade

After a 13-year hunt Radovan Karadzic, the man accused of masterminding the Srebrenica massacre, has finally been arrested in Serbia.

It was a momentous arrest that brought to mind the capture of Saddam Hussein. "Ladies and Gentlemen, we got him." They were the words of Paul Bremer, the American pro-consul in Iraq, on the capture of the former Iraqi leader. But they could equally apply to last night's triumphant announcement that the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic had finally been run to ground by Serbian security forces.

Karadzic, wanted by the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal for genocide, has eluded the world's best-equipped armies since the end of the Bosnian war in 1995 and topped the list of the UN war crimes court for former Yugoslavia. His co-indictee, the Bosnian Serb military commander General Ratko Mladic, remains at large, however.

The pair are accused of masterminding the massacre of more than 7,500 Muslim men and boys in the "safe haven" of Srebrenica in July 1995. It was the worst atrocity in Europe since the end of the Second World War. They are also indicted for the siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, that lasted for three-and-half years and left 10,000 people dead.

Karadzic, 64, has been handed over to the war crimes section of Belgrade County Court, pending his extradition to The Hague, in The Netherlands. No details were released last night on the circumstances of the arrest which was announced by the Serbian president's office.

The arrest, a milestone for Serbia, which had been accused of shielding the pair for more than a decade, sets the Balkans country firmly on the road to European Union membership under the new pro-European government there. The arrest of Karadzic and other indicted war criminals is a key condition posed by the EU for membership.

The news was greeted with euphoria across Europe, and welcomed by the UN War Crimes Prosecutor for the Former Yugoslavia and by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which had launched a number of unsuccessful raids on Karadzic's presumed hideouts in recent years.

The EU said the arrest "illustrates the commitment of the new Belgrade government to contributing to peace and stability in the Balkans region".

A statement from the EU presidency, currently held by France, said the arrest was "an important step on the path to the rapprochement of Serbia with the European Union". The issue of Serbian membership is expected to be discussed by EU foreign ministers in Brussels today.

Richard Holbrooke, a former US assistant secretary of state for Europe who negotiated the 1995 Dayton accords that ended the Bosnian war, welcomed his capture, describing him as the Osama bin Laden of Europe, "a real, true architect of mass murder".

In Britain, the shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague, also welcomed the arrest but pointed out that the fractured country of Bosnia would only obtain closure once Mladic, too, had been sent to The Hague. The leader accused of being the architect of the Balkan wars, Slobodan Milosevic, died in The Hague in 2006 while fighting war crimes charges.

Many in Serbia, however, will be more circumspect about Mr Karadzic's arrest, which took place only weeks after the new government took power under President Boris Tadic, suspecting a deal had been brokered. For many Serbs, Karadzic is still a hero of the Bosnian conflict, which left more than 100,000 dead, mostly non-Serbs. More than 1.8 million people were forced to leave their homes and many remain displaced.

Karadzic, a psychiatrist by training, went into hiding only a year after the war in Bosnia had ended with the Dayton accords.

It is widely believed that he used the sanctuaries of Orthodox monasteries in the border region of eastern Bosnia and Montenegro for years. He is also said to have resorted to elaborate disguises, such as posing as a priest by shaving off his trademark silver mane and donning a brown cassock, to elude authorities.

Karadzic in disguise that eluded everyobe for many years

While in hiding, he published five books – poetry and novels – widely publicised by his supporters. The former UN prosecutor for the former Yugoslavia, Carla del Ponte, openly accused successive Serbian governments of shielding Karadzic. She also said that Mladic could be arrested if the "political will" were present. Attempts to reach Karadzic through his family, through regular searches at their homes in Pale, once the stronghold of Bosnian Serbs, were in vain. He did not react to an appeal by his wife, Ljiljana, in 2005, who begged him to surrender saying the family could no longer "live under pressure." Karadzic has a daughter, Sonja, and son, Sasa with Ljiljana,

Additional reporting by Anne Penketh

13-year search
*Radovan Karadzic has been one of the world's most wanted men since 1995. Before last night's arrest, sightings of Karadzic were rare, but in 2004 he published a book, Miraculous Chronicles Of The Night. Pressure to capture him mounted in 2005 after several of his ex-generals gave themselves up, and a video showing Bosnian-Serb soldiers shooting captives from Srebrenica was shown at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic. In 2007, the homes of Karadzic's two children were raided by Nato troops, who suspected they were supporting him.

Ratko Mladic Bosnian Serb military commander whispers to Karadzic. Both are accused of masterminding the massacre of more than 7,500 Muslim men and boys in the 'Safe Haven' of Srebrenica in July 1995

Muslim refugees ride a United Nations truck as they flee the Serb-besieged Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica for Tuzla in March 1993

Forensic experts examine remains of the bodies after removing layers of soil from a massgrave near eastern Bosnian town of Zvornik, 28 July 2003. The massgrave is thought to contain several hundred bodies of Bosnian Muslims, killed in 1995 Srebrenica massacre and others killed in Zvornik at the beginning of war

Stacks of unidentified corpses line the walls of an underground shelter at a Bosnian morgue in Tuzla. The bags contain victims found in mass graves after the 1995 Srebrenica massacre

A Bosnian woman weeps next to the coffins of Muslim men and boys before their burial in Potocari, near Srebrenica, 11 July 2004. The identified remains of 338 Muslim men, aged from 15 to 70, were buried in a common funeral, marking the ninth anniversary of the massacre of Srebrenica

Report: Israeli jets flying over Iraqi territory in preparation for strike on Iran

2008-07-11T22:55:00.004Z

Taken from YnetNews, Israel, 11.07.2008

Sources in Iraq's Defense Ministry say for past month Israel using American bases to conduct overflights as part of rehearsal for possible bombing or Iranian nuclear facilities

Israeli fighter jets have been flying over Iraqi territory for over a month in preparation for potential strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, sources in the Iraqi Defense Ministry told a local news network Friday, adding that the aircraft have been landing in American bases following the overflights.

Word of Israel's alleged Air Force maneuvers in Iraq has reached Iran. The sources said the US has boosted security in and around the bases used by Israel during the exercises.

According to the Defense Ministry officials, retired Iraqi army officers in the Al Anbar district reported that fighter jets have been regularly entering Iraqi airspace from Jordan and landing at the airport near Haditha.

The sources estimated that should the Israeli jets take off from the American bases it would take them no more than five minutes to reach Iran's nuclear reactor in Bushehr.American officials said recently that more than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighters took part in maneuvers over the eastern Mediterranean and Greece in the first week of June, apparently a rehearsal for a potential bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities.

Oil giants return to Iraq

2008-07-01T14:31:00.000Z

Shell, BP, Exxon Mobil and Total set to sign deal with Baghdad

Taken from The Independent, UK, Friday 20 June 2008
By Patrick Cockburn

Nearly four decades after the four biggest Western oil companies were expelled from Iraq by Saddam Hussein, they are negotiating their return. By the end of the month, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Exxon Mobil and Total will sign agreements with the Baghdad government, Iraq's first with big Western oil firms since the US-led invasion in 2003.

The deals are for repair and technical support in some of the country's largest oilfields, the Oil Ministry in Baghdad said yesterday. The return of "Big Oil" will add to the suspicions of those in the Middle East who claimed that the overthrow of Saddam was secretly driven by the West's desire to gain control of Iraq's oil. It will also be greeted with dismay by many Iraqis who fear losing control of their vast oil reserves.

Iraq's reserves are believed to be second only to Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, but their exploitation has long been hampered by UN sanctions, imposed on Iraq after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990.

The major oil companies have been eager to go back to Iraq, but are concerned about their own security and the long-term stability of the country. The two-year no-bid agreements are service agreements that should add another 500,000 barrels of crude a day of output to Iraq's present production of 2.5 million barrels a day (b/d).

The companies have the option of being paid in cash or crude oil for the deals, each of which will reportedly be worth $500m (£250m). For Iraq, the agreements are a way of accessing foreign expertise immediately, before the Iraqi parliament passes a controversial new hydrocarbons law.

But they mean that the four oil companies, which originally formed the Iraq Petroleum Company to exploit Iraqi oil from the 1920s until the industry's nationalisation in 1972, will be well-placed to bid for contracts for the long-term development of these fields. The oilfields affected are some of the largest in Iraq, from Kirkuk in the north to Rumaila, on the border with Kuwait. Although there is oil in northern Iraq, most of the reserves are close to Basra, in the far south.

Since the US invasion, Iraqis have been wary of foreign involvement in their oil industry. Many are convinced that the hidden purpose of the US invasion was to take over Iraqi oil, but the Iraqi Oil Minister, Hussein Shahristani, has said that Iraq will hold on to its natural resources. "If Iraq needs help from international oil companies, they will be invited to co-operate with the Iraqi National Oil Company [Inoc], on terms and conditions acceptable to Iraq, to generate the highest revenue for Iraq".

Inoc's technical expertise has deteriorated sharply during the long years of sanctions. Iraq is currently exporting 2.1 million b/d and is expecting to have oil revenues of $70bn this year, but its government administration is too dysfunctional and corrupt to rebuild the electricity or water supply systems. The government has $50bn in the Federal Bank of New York.

Mr Shahristani has been highly critical of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) for auctioning off oil concessions in Iraqi Kurdistan without reference to the oil ministry in Baghdad.

In an interview with The Independent last year, he said Inoc would never do business with any oil company that signed up with the KRG, and he also doubted if the oil could be exported without pipelines. "Are they going to carry it out in buckets?" he asked.

Several of the small oil companies who have signed contracts in Kurdistan are hoping that in the long term there will be an agreement between the Kurds and the central government and they will then sell out to the majors at a large profit.

The technical support agreements, as the service agreements are known, may open the door to Iraq for the majors. Mr Shahristani has said that Iraq will open up the same fields for bidding for long-term development projects soon. "We're going to announce the first licensing round by the end of this month or early next month," he said.

The high price of oil means that Iraq is not under immediate pressure to maximise its oil revenues. The Iraqi parliament has suspected anything which looks like giving foreign companies ownership of Iraq's oil through a production sharing agreement.

The nationalisation of Iraq's oil is one the few acts of Saddam Hussein's long years in power which is still highly popular, and Iraqi members of parliament are fearful of anything that looks like back-door privatisation in the interests of foreigners.

Big four have history of control
For the four oil giants, the new agreements will bring them back to a country where they have a long history. BP, Exxon Mobil, Total and Shell were co-owners of a British, American and French consortium that kept Iraq's oil reserves in foreign control for more than 40 years.

The Iraq Petroleum Company (once the Turkish Petroleum Company) was formed in 1912 by oil companies eager to grab the resources in parts of the Ottoman Empire.

The company was formalised in 1928 and each of the four shareholders had a 23.75 per cent share of all the oil produced. The final 5 per cent went to Calouste Gulbenkian, an Armenian businessman.

In 1931, an agreement was signed with Iraq, giving the company complete control over the oi fields of Mosul in return for annual royalties. After Saddam's coup in 1958, nationalisation came in 1972.

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It's sad to see a country that was only a decade ago was one of the most advanced economies in the Arab world with women entitled freedoms like being able to work, go to school, being destroyed for the sake of oil and oil supply. Most people knew from the begining that the war in Iraq was about Oil and gaining control of the Middle East - in September 2007, Alan Greenspan a Republican whose 18-year tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve was widely admired, said in his view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” a few months earlier the Australian Defence Minister admitted his country's troops are in Iraq to secure oil interests. Brendan Nelson is believed to be the first government minister from any country with forces in Iraq to publicly admit oil was a key factor in their presence. 'Obviously the Middle itself, not only Iraq but the entire reason, is an important supplier of energy, oil in particulary, to the rest of the world,' he told a radio programme. He said Australian forces were there for 'resource security'. Yes, we depend on the oil from the Middle East, yet we spend billions of developing weapons or sending people to the moon when this money could be used to investigate alternative fuels. You have to ask why this has not happened.

'Shopped' son faces jail over gun

2008-06-20T08:10:00.004Z

Taken from ITN, UK
20/06/2008

A teenager whose father called the police after finding a gun and bullets in his bedroom faces jail when he is sentenced later.

Paul Metcalfe, 19, from Nelson, Lancashire, pleaded guilty to possession of 11 cartridges and a blank firing handgun, converted to fire real bullets.

Despite being shopped by his 45-year-old father Neil, Metcalfe has forgiven him, believing it was the right thing to do.

He said: "Although I'm scared of going to prison, I feel dad saved me. I was angry with him at the time. Now I know why he did it and respect him for it."

Mr Metcalfe said: "How would you feel if you hadn't done that and then you came back home and found your son with a bullet hole in his head?

"You just have to realise that these are weapons - they are dangerous."

Metcalfe was "minding" the bullets and gun for another, unidentified individual, who has not been named, Burnley Crown Court was told.

He showed the ammunition to his sister's boyfriend and a neighbour - who told his father, who was living at another house after splitting from Metcalfe's mother.

When Mr Metcalfe went round to investigate, he found the bullets wrapped in a plastic bag on top of an airing cupboard.

"Sick with worry", Mr Metcalfe called police who then also found the gun hidden in a sofa bed and Metcalfe was arrested.

He told officers he was "looking after it" - after being put under pressure to do so, the court heard.

Metcalfe has not told police who it belongs to.

Possession of a handgun carries a mandatory five year jail term - but Metcalfe's lawyer, Hugh Barton, pleaded with Judge Christopher Cornwall to make an exception.

He said the five-year minimum term was "purely deterrent" but in this case it would not be a deterrent because Metcalfe has learnt his lesson.

Metcalfe has no previous convictions and was put under pressure and intimidated into minding the weapon, Mr Barton said.

In such a case five years would be "arbitrary and disproportionate", he added.

And he said a five-year term for Metcalfe could actually deter other people from informing police on their loved ones if they found a firearm belonging to their son or father.

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This is brilliant news that parents are taking the correct steps to not only protect their children but society. Only a few days earlier twin girls shopped their drunk mum after she nearly drove into their house. A breath test revealed she was about two and a half times the drinkdrive limit - 35 micrograms of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath. Cox at first denied drink driving but changed her plea when she realised her girls would testify against her at Barnsley magistrates' court in South Yorks. So all round great news,we need more people to speak out and stop the disese that is ruining our society.

‘Vultures’ expose corruption

2008-06-15T14:10:00.004Z

Hedge funds lift the lid on African deception

Taken from The Sunday Times, June 15, 2008
By Tony Allen-Mills

ON a spring morning in Paris three years ago, a young African oil executive went on a shopping spree. He spent £1,600 at Escada on the Avenue Montaigne, and £3,700 a few doors down at Christian Lacroix. A couple of weeks later he spent £4,000 at Ermenegildo Zegna and £3,200 at Louis Vuitton.

By the end of 2005, Denis Christel Sassou-Nguesso had charged more than £112,000 to his personal Hong Kong-issued credit card, up from £64,000 the previous year.

Last August Mr Justice Stanley Burnton dismissed an attempt by Sassou-Nguesso in the High Court to suppress publication of his credit card bills. Last month he lost a related action in Hong Kong.

So why is Sassou-Nguesso such an embarrassment for several prominent British and French companies – not to mention the celebrities and politicians, among them Gordon Brown, who have argued so vociferously for poor African countries to be forgiven their international debts?

The answer has all the elements of a detective novel, complete with straw men, false noses, hidden bank accounts, and American bankers who have been derided as “vultures”, but who have managed to find out more about corruption in Africa than Scotland Yard and the FBI.

It is a story that leads from the oil-rich coast of western Africa to the gas-guzzling consumers of America and Europe, via a trail of government fraud and corporate deceit that successive UK judges have publicly condemned.

It starts with Sassou-Nguesso, the son of Denis Sassou-Nguesso, president of the Republic of the
Congo, one of the world’s poorest countries. Two-thirds of Congolese people subsist on less than 50p a day.

The Sassou-Nguessos are no strangers to allegations of profligate spending. Their country, also known as Congo-Brazzaville to distinguish it from the bigger adjacent Democratic Republic of Congo, controls Africa’s fourth-largest proven oil reserves. It pumps crude at about 235,000 barrels a day, worth £5.8 billion a year at today’s record prices.

When Sassou-Nguesso senior visited New York for a recent United Nations summit, bottles of Kristal champagne popped as his entourage ran up a hotel bill of £169,000 – of which £100,000 was paid in cash. Yet he repeatedly claims his country is too poor to pay off its debts.

In May last year, when he was still chancellor, Gordon Brown said he was shocked that poor African countries were being pursued by international hedge-fund creditors seeking to turn a profit on old debt they had bought at a discount.

Brown demanded international action to protect Africans from so-called “vulture funds” whose pursuit of highly indebted countries was, he said, “nothing short of scandalous”.

It was a theme close to the heart of Bono, Bob Geldof and other anti-poverty campaigners who have turned African debt relief into a popular cause.

When Danny Glover, the Hollywood actor and activist, testified before Congress last year, he urged the American government to “follow the example of Gordon Brown . . . to stop vulture funds from devouring African economic progress”.

Yet the case of Congo-Brazzaville and its free-spending rulers offers a radically different perspective on debt relief, and who, exactly, is responsible for obstructing economic progress.

Earlier this year, in a little-noticed, out-of-court settlement, the Brazzaville government paid off its “vulture” creditors, thereby ending almost a decade of legal wrangling that stretched from Bermuda and the Virgin Islands via Paris, New York and Hong Kong to London’s High Court.

It was a startling surrender for a country that has spent much of the past 10 years dodging its creditors, ignoring court orders and pleading to join the debt-relief programme run by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Why give in to the vultures just as world opinion had clearly turned against the hedge funds?

My search for an answer started on the 35th floor of a Fifth Avenue skyscraper in mid-town Manhattan. This is the headquarters of Elliott Associates, a $10 billion (£5 billion) hedge fund that specialises in so-called “distressed” debt – the packages of national and corporate loans turned bad that are routinely sold by banks trying to tidy up their balance sheets.

“Our approach has always been to look for countries with a good prospect of re-negotiating debt,” Jay Newman, a senior Elliott portfolio manager, told me in the company boardroom overlooking Central Park. “We do not acquire the debt of countries that have no means to pay.”

In the late 1990s, an Elliott subsidiary named Kensington International purchased several packages of overdue Congo debt with a collective value of about $100m. It was a perfectly legal transaction and Kensington swiftly won a series of judgments in British and other courts ordering Brazzaville to pay up. The hedge fund’s attempts to initiate negotiations were ignored.

Thus began a game of cat-and-mouse across the world as Elliott’s team of private detectives and forensic accountants attempted to identify shipments of Congolese oil that might be seized and sold to repay the outstanding debts.

Armed with court-approved powers to subpoena witnesses and with search warrants, the Elliott team began a journey into the murky depths of the international oil trade. It would subsequently emerge in court that the Brazzaville government had established a network of sham companies (known in French as faux nez, or “false noses”) and bogus executives (“straw men”) in the hope of concealing their oil transactions.

The breakthrough came in 2005, when Elliott detectives discovered two consignments of Congo oil had been loaded on a vessel called the Nordic Hawk for sale to Glencore, a British company set up by Marc Rich, the Swiss-based trader. Glencore intended to sell the oil on to BP in what should have appeared as a standard and un-noteworthy industry transaction.

Kensington promptly applied to the High Court in London for injunctions to seize the proceeds of the Nordic Hawk consignments on the grounds they were fraudulently concealed sales by the Brazzaville government.

The transcript of Mr Justice Cook’s ruling, among hundreds of court documents reviewed by The Sunday Times, found that Denis Gokana, the head of the national Congo oil company SNPC, had set up a series of front companies and was in effect selling Congo’s oil to himself to disguise its true origins.

Somewhere along the way millions of dollars went missing, and the judge noted that an examination of the bank statements of one of Gokana’s companies “reveals that there was virtually no connection between the cash passing through its bank accounts and the sums it should have received for the oil it sold”.

Where the money went remains a mystery.

Critics of vulture funds say the pursuit of African debtors forces them to resort to unconventional measures to protect sovereign assets. Oxfam is among the charities to denounce vulture funds for “profiting from poverty”.

Undeterred by the “vulture” slurs, Elliott identified a new target. It decided to go after the middlemen. In 2005, Kensington filed a civil suit against BNP Paribas, the French bank, accusing it of conspiring with the SNPC “to divert oil revenues from the Republic of Congo into the pockets of powerful Congolese public officials, while at the same time protecting both the oil and oil revenues from seizure by legitimate creditors”.

BNP denied that its banking arrangements with the Congo were anything other than routine, but a New York judge rejected the company’s motion to have charges dismissed. The case was ultimately dropped as part of the settlement between Elliott and Brazzaville.

Kensington also went back to court in London, where it was attempting to obtain information and documents concerning a related pair of British companies, Vitol Services and Vitol Broking, and their dealings with Congo.

Elliott’s investigators had established that the Vitol companies had made substantial payments to Hong Kong accounts controlled by prominent Congo oil executives. Among them was Denis Christel, the president’s son, who was also head of Cotrade, SNPC’s trading arm.

Kensington argued before Mr Justice Gross of the UK commercial court in January 2007 that “the only credible explanations for these payments are that either they were made to assist Congo in hiding its assets, or they were made as corrupt kickbacks in return for valuable business”.

Vitol promptly startled the oil world by pleading the British equivalent of the Fifth Amendment – it did not want to testify for fear of incriminating itself.

The judge ultimately rejected the Vitol claim, and the case went to appeal. Despite extensive allegations of bribery and corruption detailed in court, no British police investigation has been launched. The Vitol case has also been dropped as a result of the Elliott settlement.

At first, Sassou-Nguesso shrugged off Elliott’s attempts to seize Congo’s assets. “If this is not robbery, what is?” the president once complained to Fortune magazine.

“Who is stealing from the poor?” He dismissed the hedge funds as “snakes in the ocean” and “thug gangsters” who hid in Caribbean tax havens.

Then Elliott’s trail led to Hong Kong, and to Denis Christel’s credit-card receipts.

These first surfaced publicly on the website of Global Witness, a London-based anti-corruption pressure group that has long been monitoring Congo. The group claimed in a 2005 report that the country’s main economic asset “has for too long been managed for the private profit of the elite rather than for the benefit of its entire population”.

The documents produced by Global Witness purported to show that at least part of Denis Christel’s personal expenditure had been paid for by an offshore company he controlled, Long Beach. The same company had received payments from sham oil companies set up by Gokana.

When Sassou-Nguesso went to court in London in August to make Global Witness remove the documents from its site, Mr Justice Burnton noted “it is an obvious possible inference that his expenditure has been financed by secret personal profits made out of dealings in oil sold by Cotrade. The profits of Cotrade’s oil sales should go to the people of the Congo, not to those who rule it or their families”.

The judge declined to suppress the documents. He concluded: “Once there is a good reason to doubt the propriety of the financial affairs of a public official, there is a public interest in those affairs being open to public scrutiny.”

Attempts to obtain a comment from the Brazzaville government were unsuccessful last week, but the president must have realised the spotlight on his family’s private affairs wasn’t going away.

The publication of the Hong Kong credit-card bills “made them get serious” about negotiating a settlement, a source familiar with the case said.

The terms of the settlement prevent Newman from providing details, but the question arises: Did the hedge fund really make a profit after all those years of expensive sleuthing around the globe?

In a newspaper article describing the Nordic Hawk affair, Newman likened the pursuit of Congo’s oil revenues to “a magical mystery tour”.

He said: “Far from being under control, as Bono and [others] would have us believe, corruption in Africa is out of control.

“Seasoned Third World bosses like President Sassou-Nguesso know all too well how to manipulate soft-hearted campus sensibilities and dysfunctional international financial institutions like the IMF.”

Last week Newman declined to address the profit issue, but had no regrets about his company’s approach. “It’s about the rule of law,” he said.

In the course of its near-decade-long pursuit of Congo, Elliott has probably done more than any other national or corporate entity to expose corruption in Africa. It has identified the middlemen who facilitate corrupt payments; it has traced the money trail from British oil traders to luxury boutiques in Paris.

And where was Scotland Yard while all this mischief was being exposed? Brown’s response, a month before he became prime minister last year, was to “deplore the activities of so-called vulture funds”.

Compare that to the remarks of Brice Mackosso, a Congolese citizen who campaigns for transparency in the handling of the country’s oil wealth. “If it were not for these vulture funds we would not know any facts about the way our country’s wealth is being taken away,” he said.

In June last year, a consortium of three French anti-corruption groups filed a civil complaint in Paris alleging the ruling families of Angola, Burkina Faso, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville had acquired millions of euros worth of French assets that they could not have afforded on their official salaries.

The case was dismissed in November but not before a resulting police investigation accumulated hundreds of documents, including property titles, cheques, bank orders and invoices. Among them was evidence that earlier this year, the wife and son of Sassou-Nguesso bought separate flats on the same street near the Boulevard Saint-Germain for a total of £3.6m.

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I'd just like to say well done to the Hedge Fund teams and all those organisation that exposed these evil people - they had done a great job in exposing corruption of some of the richest people from one of the poorest countries in the world. When things like this happen you do wonder why international governments don't use powers to flush out these people. Maybe oil is the key word?

As for the UK government and international celebrates promoting Africa to be debt free so that it could have a fresh start - this is a good idea but we really do need to control those that exploit the countries from within.

Ethiopia committing war crimes - says HRW

2008-06-12T10:15:00.002Z

Taken from Yahoo News, 12 June 2008
By ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY, Associated Press

NAIROBI, Kenya - Ethiopia's government is committing war crimes in its military campaign against rebels in the Ogaden region, a rights group charged Thursday in a report that complained the U.S. and other Western governments have remained silent about abuses.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said Ethiopian troops are beating and strangling civilians, staging public executions and burning villages in Ogaden. It said the allegations were based on more than 100 eyewitness accounts.

An Ethiopian official denied the charges.

A State Department spokesman, Gonzalo Gallegos, said officials had not seen the report. He declined to comment generally about the insurgency in the Ogaden.

Washington looks to Ethiopia for help in the fight against Islamic extremists in East Africa, where al-Qaida has claimed responsibility for several attacks, including the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 225 people. Ethiopia is helping the U.N.-backed government in neighboring Somalia against Muslim insurgents.

"The silence of the U.S. government is not a silence based on ignorance," said Peter Bouckaert, the emergencies director at Human Rights Watch. "They are ignoring the information available to them."

Ethnic Somalis have been fighting for more than a decade seeking greater autonomy in the desolate Ogaden, which is being explored for oil and gas. Ethiopian forces stepped up operations after rebels attacked a Chinese-run oil exploration field in April 2007, killing 74 people.

"The Ethiopian army's answer to the rebels has been to viciously attack civilians in the Ogaden," said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director for Human Rights Watch.

The group also said the rebel Ogaden National Liberation Front has violated humanitarian law by conducting the oil attack and by setting land mines along roads. Ethiopia accuses the rebels of being financed by its archenemy, Eritrea.

Bereket Simon, special adviser to Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, denied all allegations in the report.

"It's not true," he said. "It's the same old fabrication."

Asked whether an internal investigation was planned, he said: "How can we investigate lies and innuendoes? How can we try to disprove lies by investigating?"

Gagnon chided Ethiopia's leading donors, including the United States, Britain and the European Union, accusing them of ignoring what is happening in Ogaden.

"These widespread and systematic atrocities amount to crimes against humanity," she said. "Yet Ethiopia's major donors, Washington, London and Brussels, seem to be maintaining a conspiracy of silence around the crimes."

Gagnon said Western governments and institutions give at least $2 billion in aid to Ethiopia every year.

"Influential states use many excuses, such as lack of information and strategic priorities, to downplay the grave human rights concerns in Somali Region," she said. "But crimes against humanity can't be swept under the carpet."

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It is sad that the Ethopian regime does not get regular mention of their war crimes in the news (let alone from our politicians) - it seems that certain news pieces have a higher agenda than others. Another case where Oil is more important than people? or maybe a case like Israel where human rights crimes are ignored as Ethopia (like Israel) is a friend of the west. Looks like more double standards by the United States, Britain and the European Union.

US issues threat to Iraq's $50bn foreign reserves in military deal

2008-06-07T10:33:00.001Z

Taken from Independent, UK
By Patrick Cockburn, 06 June 2008

The US is holding hostage some $50bn (£25bn) of Iraq's money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an agreement seen by many Iraqis as prolonging the US occupation indefinitely, according to information leaked to The Independent.

US negotiators are using the existence of $20bn in outstanding court judgments against Iraq in the US, to pressure their Iraqi counterparts into accepting the terms of the military deal, details of which were reported for the first time in this newspaper yesterday.

Iraq's foreign reserves are currently protected by a presidential order giving them immunity from judicial attachment but the US side in the talks has suggested that if the UN mandate, under which the money is held, lapses and is not replaced by the new agreement, then Iraq's funds would lose this immunity. The cost to Iraq of this happening would be the immediate loss of $20bn. The US is able to threaten Iraq with the loss of 40 per cent of its foreign exchange reserves because Iraq's independence is still limited by the legacy of UN sanctions and restrictions imposed on Iraq since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in the 1990s. This means that Iraq is still considered a threat to international security and stability under Chapter Seven of the UN charter. The US negotiators say the price of Iraq escaping Chapter Seven is to sign up to a new "strategic alliance" with the United States.

The threat by the American side underlines the personal commitment of President George Bush to pushing the new pact through by 31 July. Although it is in reality a treaty between Iraq and the US, Mr Bush is describing it as an alliance so he does not have to submit it for approval to the US Senate.

Iraqi critics of the agreement say that it means Iraq will be a client state in which the US will keep more than 50 military bases. American forces will be able to carry out arrests of Iraqi citizens and conduct military campaigns without consultation with the Iraqi government.

American soldiers and contractors will enjoy legal immunity.

The US had previously denied it wanted permanent bases in Iraq, but American negotiators argue that so long as there is an Iraqi perimeter fence, even if it is manned by only one Iraqi soldier, around a US installation, then Iraq and not the US is in charge.

The US has security agreements with many countries, but none are occupied by 151,000 US soldiers as is Iraq. The US is not even willing to tell the government in Baghdad what American forces are entering or leaving Iraq, apparently because it fears the government will inform the Iranians, said an Iraqi source.

The fact that Iraq's financial reserves, increasing rapidly because of the high price of oil, continue to be held in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is another legacy of international sanctions against Saddam Hussein. Under the UN mandate, oil revenues must be placed in the Development Fund for Iraq which is in the bank.

The funds are under the control of the Iraqi government, though the US Treasury has strong influence on the form in which the reserves are held.

Iraqi officials say that, last year, they wanted to diversify their holdings out of the dollar, as it depreciated, into other assets, such as the euro, more likely to hold their value. This was vetoed by the US Treasury because American officials feared it would show lack of confidence in the dollar.

Iraqi officials say the consequence of the American action was to lose Iraq the equivalent of $5bn. Given intense American pressure on a weak Iraqi government very dependent on US support, it is still probable that the agreement will go through with only cosmetic changes. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the immensely influential Shia cleric, could prevent the pact by issuing a fatwa against it but has so far failed to do so.

The Grand Ayatollah met Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), which is the main supporter of the Iraqi government, earlier this week and did not condemn the agreement or call for a referendum. He said, according to Mr Hakim, that it must guarantee Iraqi national sovereignty, be transparent, command a national consensus and be approved by the Iraqi parliament. Critics of the deal fear that the government will sign the agreement, and parliament approve it, in return for marginal concessions.

Revealed: Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control

2008-06-07T08:49:00.000Z

Bush wants 50 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors

Taken from The Independent, UK
By Patrick Cockburn, 05 June 2008

A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.

The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.

But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.

The timing of the agreement would also boost the Republican candidate, John McCain, who has claimed the United States is on the verge of victory in Iraq – a victory that he says Mr Obama would throw away by a premature military withdrawal.

America currently has 151,000 troops in Iraq and, even after projected withdrawals next month, troop levels will stand at more than 142,000 – 10 000 more than when the military "surge" began in January 2007. Under the terms of the new treaty, the Americans would retain the long-term use of more than 50 bases in Iraq. American negotiators are also demanding immunity from Iraqi law for US troops and contractors, and a free hand to carry out arrests and conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting the Baghdad government.

The precise nature of the American demands has been kept secret until now. The leaks are certain to generate an angry backlash in Iraq. "It is a terrible breach of our sovereignty," said one Iraqi politician, adding that if the security deal was signed it would delegitimise the government in Baghdad which will be seen as an American pawn.

The US has repeatedly denied it wants permanent bases in Iraq but one Iraqi source said: "This is just a tactical subterfuge." Washington also wants control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000ft and the right to pursue its "war on terror" in Iraq, giving it the authority to arrest anybody it wants and to launch military campaigns without consultation.

Mr Bush is determined to force the Iraqi government to sign the so-called "strategic alliance" without modifications, by the end of next month. But it is already being condemned by the Iranians and many Arabs as a continuing American attempt to dominate the region. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful and usually moderate Iranian leader, said yesterday that such a deal would create "a permanent occupation". He added: "The essence of this agreement is to turn the Iraqis into slaves of the Americans."

Iraq's Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is believed to be personally opposed to the terms of the new pact but feels his coalition government cannot stay in power without US backing.

The deal also risks exacerbating the proxy war being fought between Iran and the United States over who should be more influential in Iraq.

Although Iraqi ministers have said they will reject any agreement limiting Iraqi sovereignty, political observers in Baghdad suspect they will sign in the end and simply want to establish their credentials as defenders of Iraqi independence by a show of defiance now. The one Iraqi with the authority to stop deal is the majority Shia spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. In 2003, he forced the US to agree to a referendum on the new Iraqi constitution and the election of a parliament. But he is said to believe that loss of US support would drastically weaken the Iraqi Shia, who won a majority in parliament in elections in 2005.

The US is adamantly against the new security agreement being put to a referendum in Iraq, suspecting that it would be voted down. The influential Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has called on his followers to demonstrate every Friday against the impending agreement on the grounds that it compromises Iraqi independence.

The Iraqi government wants to delay the actual signing of the agreement but the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney has been trying to force it through. The US ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, has spent weeks trying to secure the accord.

The signature of a security agreement, and a parallel deal providing a legal basis for keeping US troops in Iraq, is unlikely to be accepted by most Iraqis. But the Kurds, who make up a fifth of the population, will probably favour a continuing American presence, as will Sunni Arab political leaders who want US forces to dilute the power of the Shia. The Sunni Arab community, which has broadly supported a guerrilla war against US occupation, is likely to be split.

US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships

2008-06-03T21:48:00.003Z

Taken from The Guardian, Monday June 2 2008
Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor

The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.

An amphibious assault vehicle leaves the USS Peleliu, which was used to detain prisoners, according to the human rights group Reprieve. Photograph: Zack Baddor/AP

Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.

Information about the operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners.

The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped.

It is the use of ships to detain prisoners, however, that is raising fresh concern and demands for inquiries in Britain and the US.

According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as "floating prisons" since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.

Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans.

Reprieve will raise particular concerns over the activities of the USS Ashland and the time it spent off Somalia in early 2007 conducting maritime security operations in an effort to capture al-Qaida terrorists.

At this time many people were abducted by Somali, Kenyan and Ethiopian forces in a systematic operation involving regular interrogations by individuals believed to be members of the FBI and CIA. Ultimately more than 100 individuals were "disappeared" to prisons in locations including Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Guantánamo Bay.

Reprieve believes prisoners may have also been held for interrogation on the USS Ashland and other ships in the Gulf of Aden during this time.

The Reprieve study includes the account of a prisoner released from Guantánamo Bay, who described a fellow inmate's story of detention on an amphibious assault ship. "One of my fellow prisoners in Guantánamo was at sea on an American ship with about 50 others before coming to Guantánamo ... he was in the cage next to me. He told me that there were about 50 other people on the ship. They were all closed off in the bottom of the ship. The prisoner commented to me that it was like something you see on TV. The people held on the ship were beaten even more severely than in Guantánamo."

Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve's legal director, said: "They choose ships to try to keep their misconduct as far as possible from the prying eyes of the media and lawyers. We will eventually reunite these ghost prisoners with their legal rights.

"By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been 'through the system' since 2001. The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are, and what has been done to them."

Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, called for the US and UK governments to come clean over the holding of detainees.

"Little by little, the truth is coming out on extraordinary rendition. The rest will come, in time.

Better for governments to be candid now, rather than later. Greater transparency will provide increased confidence that President Bush's departure from justice and the rule of law in the aftermath of September 11 is being reversed, and can help to win back the confidence of moderate Muslim communities, whose support is crucial in tackling dangerous extremism."

The Liberal Democrat's foreign affairs spokesman, Edward Davey, said: "If the Bush administration is using British territories to aid and abet illegal state abduction, it would amount to a huge breach of trust with the British government. Ministers must make absolutely clear that they would not support such illegal activity, either directly or indirectly."

A US navy spokesman, Commander Jeffrey Gordon, told the Guardian: "There are no detention facilities on US navy ships." However, he added that it was a matter of public record that some individuals had been put on ships "for a few days" during what he called the initial days of detention. He declined to comment on reports that US naval vessels stationed in or near Diego Garcia had been used as "prison ships".

The Foreign Office referred to David Miliband's statement last February admitting to MPs that, despite previous assurances to the contrary, US rendition flights had twice landed on Diego Garcia. He said he had asked his officials to compile a list of all flights on which rendition had been alleged.

CIA "black sites" are also believed to have operated in Thailand, Afghanistan, Poland and Romania.

In addition, numerous prisoners have been "extraordinarily rendered" to US allies and are alleged to have been tortured in secret prisons in countries such as Syria, Jordan, Morocco and Egypt.

Cyclone Nargis: one month on, US accuses Burma of criminal neglect

2008-06-02T21:10:00.001Z

Extracted from Guardian, UK, Monday June 2 2008
By Matthew Weaver and agencies

The US has accused the Burmese military government of "criminal neglect" in its response to Cyclone Nargis, after it was claimed that aid had still failed to reach 200,000 people, a month after the disaster struck.

The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, said he would make a decision within "a matter of days" whether or not to withdraw US navy ships from the Burmese coast. They had been mobilised to coordinate aid deliveries.

"It's becoming pretty clear the regime is not going to let us help," Gates told reporters in Singapore.

Asked if the military junta was guilty of genocide in its response to the disaster, Gates said: "This is more akin, in my view, to criminal neglect."

The Burmese junta responded by insisting its response to the disaster had been "prompt".

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Mr Gates and many politicians around the world have been very critical about the response to aid by the Burmese regime. The Burmese government have not been perfect but understandably been taking their time and only trusting countries that they know will not occupy them. Having American warships hovering close to their country wouldn't make any country feel secure. This brings me to my main point about Gates's comments.

Wasn't there a regime in North America (a couple of years ago) who refused any help from Cuba (who wanted to give them 1000 doctors to treat victims of the hurricane) - instead they let the people starve and rot. Help did not arrive for a long time, the President hid in his luxury home whilst people started looting and killing people for food and resources - yes, welcome to the richest country in the world. Maybe George Bush doesn't like black people? Hurricane Katrina was a very bad experience but shows that even the wealthiest countries in the world can be on their knees against mother nature. I pray that we don't have any more of these natural disasters.

Burma United States

Mother turns in sons to police for blinding man in drunken assault

2008-06-01T15:06:00.000Z

This is a beautiful story that I came across from the UK...

Taken from Telegraph, UK, 30/05/2008
By Laura Clout

A mother turned in her own sons to police after they boasted of carrying out an unprovoked assault which left a father blind in one eye.

Carol Saldinack said she felt compelled to make the "agonising" decision after learning of the role her sons Luke Newman, 27, and Oliver Clark, 24, played in the violent attack on 36-year-old Marc Parkinson after a night out drinking.

The 51-year-old, who lives in Norfolk, said she has no regrets despite being ostracised from her family and subjected to threats, and she urged others to follow her example.

The pair, along with 25-year-old Benjamin Hammond, were jailed for two years at Chichester Crown Court last week for grievous bodily harm.

The group had been drinking in Chichester, West Sussex, in June last year when they launched the unprovoked attack on Mr Parkinson outside a takeaway restaurant.

The company director, who has two children, was left with a detached retina, extensive cuts and bruising, a perforated eardrum and bruised ribs. He is now blind in one eye, his business has folded and he has been forced to sell his home to pay off debts.

Mrs Saldinack, who has six children, told the Daily Mirror she was trembling with nerves as she picked up the telephone to call police, after hearing that her sons had bragged about the attack.

She said: “Luke was apparently walking around with a newspaper report of the attack as if it was a trophy. I felt angry, appalled, shocked and sickened.

“All I could think was 'this man might die, my sons could be killers’. In minutes I rang police and said: 'About the fight in Chichester, I know who's responsible’.”

The pair’s homes were raided by police the following day and the they two were later identified by witnesses in line-ups.

Despite now living in fear from threats, Mrs Saldinack insisted she has no regrets and said others in her situation should do the same.

“I’d urge anyone who finds themselves in this situation to search their own heart and do the right thing”, she said.

“Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends - someone always knows who’s responsible for things like this. They need to come forward.

“Think of the victim’s family and their hell. If you feel you can cope with the consequences, speak up and tell the truth.”

Mr Parkinson thanked Mrs Saldinack, telling the newspaper it was a “brave thing” to do.

Detective Inspector Jim McKnight of Sussex Police said: “The call we received in this case obviously helped in the investigation. However, there was strong evidence, including forensics, which led to the convictions.

“We would always seek to support and protect individuals who provide us with information in difficult circumstances.”

Aid workers 'abuse kids as young as six'

2008-05-27T21:25:00.008Z

Taken from Yahoo News, May 27, 2008
By By David Clarke, Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - Sexual abuse of children by aid workers and peacekeepers is rife and efforts to protect young people are inadequate, said a report published on Tuesday.

The study by Save the Children UK said there were significant levels of abuse in emergencies, much of it unreported and unless the silence ended, attempts to stamp out exploitation would "remain fundamentally flawed".

Accusations of sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeepers and aid workers around the world have increased in recent years and the United Nations is investigating claims against its soldiers in hot spots such as Haiti, Liberia, Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The report said while the U.N. and some non-governmental organizations were stepping up efforts to address the problem, a global watchdog should be established this year to monitor attempts to tackle abuse and champion effective responses.

Save the Children based its findings on visits last year to Haiti, Southern Sudan and Ivory Coast.

It held 38 focus group discussions with 250 children and 90 adults, followed up by in-depth interviews with some and desk-based research.

The study found a huge range of exploitation and abuse: children trading sex for food, forced sex, verbal sexual abuse, child prostitution, child pornography, sexual slavery, sexual assault and child trafficking.

The focus groups identified children as young as 6 as having been abused, although most were aged 14 to 15.

U.N. peacekeepers were identified as the most likely perpetrators by 20 of the 38 groups, although a total of 23 humanitarian, peacekeeping and security organizations were associated with sexual abuse in the three countries.

"All humanitarian and peacekeeping agencies working in emergency situations, including Save the Children UK, must own up to the fact that they are vulnerable to this problem and tackle it head on," said Jasmine Whitbread, chief executive of Save the Children UK.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is "deeply concerned by the Save the Children UK report", U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas told reporters in New York later on Tuesday.

"The abuse of children by those sent to help is a significant and painful issue and one that U.N. peacekeeping has and will continue to address candidly, comprehensively and robustly," Ban said in the statement read by Montas. "Even one incident is too many."

YOUNG GIRLS
More than half of the participants in the study identified incidents of sexual touching and forced sex. Of these, 18 and 23 percent respectively recalled 10 or more such incidents.

"They especially ask us for girls of our age. Often it will be between eight and 10 men who will share two or three girls. When I suggest an older girl, they say that they want a young girl," a 14-year-old boy who works at a peacekeeping camp in Ivory Coast told the Save the Children research team.

And the report said official U.N. statistics appeared to underestimate the scale of abuse, probably because so much of the exploitation was not reported by victims.

"Clearly there is a significant disparity between the low levels of abuse cited in these statistics and the high levels suggested in field investigations and other evidence," it said.

Save the Children said there were many reasons why abuse was not reported: fear of losing material assistance, threat of retribution, stigmatization, negative economic impact, lack of legal services, resignation to abuse, lack of information about how to report abuse and, crucially, lack of faith in a response.

Anecdotal evidence from all 38 focus groups suggested there was an endemic failure to respond to reports of abuse.

"Many U.N. agencies and NGOs working here feel they cannot be touched by anyone," said an aid worker in Ivory Coast.

(Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau and Megan Davies at the United Nations; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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It is very depressing to read that those in charge of looking after some of the most vulnerable people in the world have been abusing their position. These children are going through enough as it is...poverty, hunger, illness, loss of loved ones...and now this - the people who committed these crimes should be sent to prison for life.

Maybe it’s time that aid workers and peacekeepers are vetted properly before they are allowed to work with people, particularly children. Soldiers who act as peacekeepers need to be trained and vetted. This sort of abuse has been happening all over the world, not just in Africa – countries like Bosnia, Iraq, where the UN and allied forces have been patrolling, soldiers, aid workers, NGO’s and mercenaries have been reported caught with raping civilians, some soldiers have been infected with Sexual transmitted diseases. These abusers seem to think they are immune from prosecution but hopefully they will all be captured and punished.

For sale: 13-year-old virgin

2008-05-25T18:18:00.003Z

Whilst America is waiting on the outcome of the "R Kelly videotape" trial - where the R&B artist is charged with 14 counts of videotaping, producing and soliciting child pornography - there is a disturbing story from India where girls as young as 13 are being sold into prostitution.

Taken from The Telegraph, UK, 18/04/2008

By Sue Ryan

Thirty miles west of the Taj Mahal, on the road to the pink city of Jaipur, tourists on buses pass a sight that the guide books rarely mention.

A mile beyond the town of Bharatpur in Rajasthan, where the highway is being widened to four lanes, traffic slows down for roadworks. But the workmen who lounge by their bulldozers have their eyes on something else - a cluster of makeshift shelters where girls, several under 18 and at least two younger than 15, can be seen strolling or sitting, in view of the dusty carriageway.

Tonight, one girl in particular is attracting attention as she sits on a stool by a fire so that she can be seen by passing vehicles. Her heavily made-up, striking face and beautiful pink sari make her look as if she were on her way to a party. But the truth is different. Suli, 14, is a virgin and a bidding war is being held for the right to be the first to sleep with her.

The collection of shelters where she lives houses 59 families, all members of the Bedia tribe, which has a long tradition of caste-based prostitution. Girls born here become prostitutes in a rite of passage into "adulthood" as routine as marriage is to the rest of Indian society.

The "first time" is a valued commodity for which the middle-class businessmen who pass this way are prepared to pay a premium.

The normal rate is 100 rupees (£1.30) but a virgin is sold to the highest bidder for anything over 20,000 rupees. If she is very pretty, the community would hope to get up to 40,000 rupees. For this, the man can have access to the girl for as long as he likes - several hours, days, or even weeks. When he tires of her, there is a celebration. Because it is considered unlucky for a girl to keep the money from her first time, it is spent instead on an extravagant party. Jewellery is bought for her and for her relatives, goats are slaughtered and alcohol runs freely. There is dancing, and offerings are made to the gods.

Once a girl has lost her virginity she cannot marry. The choice has been made and the community celebrates it - this is her non-wedding night.

Suli said she was happy to enter the trade. "I chose it," she said, though she admitted being "a little" frightened. "I do not know how it is going to be. I know other girls who are in the trade but I have not asked them how it is."

She claimed it did not matter what the man looked like. "I will go with whoever pays the highest price," she said, before running off as her mother called her for supper.

Nita, a virgin in the hut next door, has four sisters, all prostitutes. She wears jeans and a skimpy top, and giggles a lot. One sister boasts that as Nita is particularly pretty, they hope to get 40,000 rupees (£600). "We have been offered 25,000, but it is not enough."

Nita is only 13 but has opted to follow her sisters into the trade. It is her own "choice", because, she giggled, "I won't have to do any housework."

But in avoiding making chapatis, Nita has signed up to a life in which she will deal with 20 to 30 clients per day, until she reaches her forties. After that, when she is no longer considered desirable, she will depend on any children she may have for support.

Two of her sisters, Ritu, 35, and Manju, 25, have built one of the few stone houses in their village, for which they paid the equivalent of £14,600, and are proud of their success. "There was a lot of poverty, we had nothing to eat," said Manju. "What you see now has come with hard work." They support 50 family members - 35 children and 15 adults.

Elsewhere in India, the birth of a boy is celebrated with dowries paid by the bride's family, one of the reasons given for the high abortion rate for female foetuses. But in the villages around Bharatpur there is a shortage of girls to marry, and the custom is for the boy's family to pay the girl's family a large lump sum before the wedding can take place.

Possibly because the money comes from prostitution, and because any granddaughters will be destined for the trade, the sums are high.

Ritu and Manju paid for four of their five brothers to marry, and now support their sisters-in-law, nieces and nephews.

They earn between 1,000 and 1,500 rupees a day. It was more before the government knocked down their shelters to make room for the highway.

"We need a shelter by the road," they said. "Tell the government to build us somewhere we can work. We used to have 25 or 30 clients a day, now the average is 10 or 15." They said they were able to keep their rates up because they could provide a nice room and running water for their clients, who are mostly married businessmen from Agra.

The prevalence of caste-based prostitution in certain tribes in the region - the Bawaria, Nuts, Bedias, Kanjars and Sansis - came to light after a raid on a brothel in Delhi. Now an attempt is being made to break the cycle by which the girls of each generation enter the trade.

Dr KK Mukerjee, a social work professor at the University of Delhi, who was commissioned by the government to research the scope of prostitution, has founded a group, known as GNK. Supported by Plan International, a child-centred community development agency, the organisation has set up a hostel to look after prostitutes' children.

Many of the women said they did not wish their daughters to follow them into the trade. Ritu and Manju each have a daughter, whose fathers were clients. "My daughter will get educated, and not enter this profession," said Ritu. "I have seen what it is like. I don't want it for her."

A young boy at the hostel told proudly how he had persuaded his grandmother not to push his aunt into prostitution. "My grandmother said that she would kill herself if my aunt did not go into the trade and earn money," he said. "But I persuaded her, and my aunt got married."

Orthodox Jewish youths burn New Testaments in Or Yehuda

2008-05-20T18:06:00.003Z

Taken from Haaretz, Israel
By The Associated Press, 20/05/2008

Orthodox Jews set fire to hundreds of copies of the New Testament in the latest act of violence against Christian missionaries in the Holy Land. Or Yehuda Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon said missionaries recently entered a neighborhood in the predominantly religious town of 34,000 in central Israel, distributing hundreds of New Testaments and missionary material.

After receiving complaints, Aharon said, he got into a loudspeaker car last Thursday and drove through the neighborhood, urging people to turn over the material to Jewish religious students who went door to door to collect it. "The books were dumped into a pile and set afire in a lot near a synagogue," he said.

The newspaper Maariv reported Tuesday that hundreds of yeshiva students took part in the book-burning. But Aharon told The Associated Press that only a few students were present, and that he was not there when the books were torched.

"Not all of the New Testaments that were collected were burned, but hundreds were," he said.

He said he regretted the burning of the books, but called it a commandment to burn materials that urge Jews to convert.

"I certainly don't denounce the burning of the booklets, he said. I denounce those who distributed the booklets."

Jews worship from the Old Testament, including the Five Books of Moses and the writings of the ancient prophets. Christians revere the Old Testament as well as the New Testament, which contains the ministry of Jesus.

Calev Myers, an attorney who represents Messianic Jews, or Jews who accept Jesus as their savior, demanded in an interview with Army Radio that all those involved be put on trial. He estimated there were 10,000 Messianic Jews, who are also known as Jews for Jesus, in Israel.

Police had no immediate comment.

Israeli authorities and Orthodox Jews frown on missionary activity aimed at Jews, though in most cases it is not illegal. Still, the concept of a Jew burning books is abhorrent to many in Israel because of the association with Nazis torching piles of Jewish books during the Holocaust of World War II.

Earlier this year, the teenage son of a prominent Christian missionary was seriously wounded when a package bomb delivered to the family's West Bank home went off in his hands.

Last year, arsonists burst into a Jerusalem church used by Messianic Jews and set the building on fire, raising suspicions that Jewish extremists were behind the attack. No one claimed responsibility, but the same church was burned down 25 years ago by ultra-Orthodox Jewish extremists.

Some examples of Jewish Hate against Christians & Muslims Caught on tape

Ethiopian child brides give themselves to tradition

2008-05-18T12:08:00.003Z

Taken from the Times, UK, May 17, 2008
By Ross Appleyard

Wube-Enat cowers under a brightly embroidered blanket, peering out at the festivities going on around her. Bemused and bewildered, she has little understanding of why she is suddenly the focus of so much attention.

It is her wedding day; Wube-Enat is 10 years old. Her husband, Abebe, is 14.

For the first time in her life she has discarded her grubby smock and is dressed in traditional robes. “I like my new husband,” she says shyly. “But I don't really know him. In fact, I've never met him.”

The ceremony, in the remote Amhara region of Ethiopia, is conducted by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Child weddings are common in this region, although it is illegal to marry below the age of 18. The priest justified conducting the wedding by saying: “We marry the girls so young to ensure they are virgins. If she was older we wouldn't marry her - someone might have raped her.”

Tradition is paramount in this part of Ethiopia but practices such as child marriage can have terrible repercussions for the girls. In Amhara half of all girls are married before they are 15.

Most get pregnant as soon as it is physically possible. Simegne, 12, is eight months pregnant. “I am looking forward to giving my mother a grandchild,” she said. “But I would rather be back at school.”

Almost all the girls give birth at home without proper healthcare and with no way of reaching a hospital if anything goes wrong - which is often.

Achawache was 15 when she got pregnant. She spent 12 days in labour before eventually giving birth to a stillborn baby. She was left incontinent. The condition is caused during a prolonged labour leading to a hole forming between the bladder and the vagina. It was six years before she heard of a hospital that would treat her. Because she was incontinent, bus drivers refused to let her on board to get to the medical treatment she needed. In many cases the condition leads to the girl being ostracised and deserted by her husband. The Government is determined to stamp out child marriages and has increased the penalties for anyone arranging such a ceremony. Getting the message to areas such as Amhara is difficult.

“Part of the problem is that it happens in areas that are so remote communication is difficult,” Tedros Ghebreyesus, the Health Minister, said. “We are also battling against deep-rooted traditions.”

More than 90 per cent of the 77 million people in Ethiopia live in rural areas. The Orthodox Church has a massive influence over the communities. While the Christian hierarchy claims to want an end to child marriages, its priests - there are half a million in the country - still carry them out. “Most of these priests are also carpenters and farmers,” the Church's head, His Holiness Abune Paulos said. “It will take time for the message to filter down that they must not be a part of this tradition.”

The British-based charity Safe Hands for Mothers has been working with the UN Population Fund to increase awareness. “It is not for us to interfere with cultural traditions that go back hundreds of years but we must alert people to the dangers of early marriage,” Nancy Durrell McKenna, its executive director, said. “We are working alongside our partners to make films that show the physical and psychological effects of child marriage on these vulnerable young girls. Some of the stories we have come across are heartbreaking.”

For more information visit safehands.org

Saudis reject Bush's appeal to ease oil prices

2008-05-17T22:26:00.004Z

Taken from The Guardian, UK, May 16 2008

By Haroon Siddique and agencies

Saudi Arabia today rebuffed George Bush's appeal to increase production and help cut record oil prices, the White House said.

It was the second time this year that the pleas of the US president, who is visiting King Abdullah, have fallen on deaf ears.

Bush's latest request came as the price of crude oil hit a new high of more than $127 (£65) a barrel.

"What they're saying to us is ... Saudi Arabia does not have customers that are making requests for oil that they are not able to satisfy," the US national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, told reporters.

However, the oil minister, Ali Naimi, said later that Saudi Arabia had raised production by 300,000 barrels per day on May 10 in response to requests from its customers. He said the increase would push the kingdom's output to 9.45m barrels a day by June.

High petrol prices are a potential issue in November's US presidential election. When Bush made his first appeal in January the Saudi oil minister said that oil production was at normal levels and the kingdom would raise production only when the market justified it.

Bush has conceded that raising output is difficult because the demand for oil — particularly from China and India — is stretching supplies.

The price of crude oil has consistently traded at new highs this year since hitting $100 a barrel at the beginning of January.

UBS yesterday became the latest bank to predict the price of crude oil could hit $200, with its analysts saying that the figure could be reached by 2015.

The US Congress yesterday voted to halt daily shipments of 70,000 barrels of oil to the US's emergency reserve in a bid to push down prices.

Bush had argued that halting the shipments would have little or no impact on petrol or crude oil prices.

The US Energy Department said later it had cancelled shipments into the reserve, beginning in July. But the White House has indicated that he will sign the reserve measure.

Senate Democrats have introduced a resolution that would block $1.4bn in arms sales to Saudi Arabia — the world's biggest oil supplier — unless it agrees to increase its production by 1m barrels a day.

The Democrats said they proposed the measure to coincide with Bush's visit to send a message to Saudi Arabia that it should produce more oil to reduce the cost of petrol for Americans.

While demand has surged because of booming economies in developing countries, political tensions in Nigeria, Venezuela and Iran have threatened supplies.

Before Bush arrived in Saudi Arabia, the US said it had agreed to cooperate to protect Saudi Arabia's oil and to help it develop peaceful nuclear energy. Saudi Arabia accounts for more than a tenth of global oil output and severe damage to its infrastructure would have far-reaching effects.

Al-Qaida has threatened more strikes on Saudi oil facilities after a failed attack on the world's largest oil processing plant at Abqaiq in February 2006.

"The United States and Saudi Arabia have agreed to cooperate in safeguarding the kingdom's energy resources by protecting key infrastructure, enhancing Saudi border security, and meeting Saudi Arabia's expanding energy needs in an environmentally responsible manner," a White House statement said.

The two countries will also sign a memorandum of understanding to cooperate on a peaceful nuclear programme

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In short the demand from India and China have meant that there is greater demand for oil but the supply of oil should not be attributed to Saudi Arabia. What is the oil production of illegally occupied Iraq, or friends of the United States Iran and Venezuela? How come Bush is not requesting more output from these countries? Saudi Arabia have stated numerous times that they do not fix price or output for political gain, if the roles were reversed and Capitalist America had all the oil no doubt they would cream off as much money as possible from any would be customers - why is there so much hatred of the Saudis in the media?

One thing is for certain if the price is too high, the United States will drop it's capitalist philosophy and show it's facist face and invade Saudi Arabia like it planned in the early 1970's -(when Israel instigated and won the the 1973 Arab-Israeli war). So would the United States really invade? Thanks to the release of British records - we find that a British intelligence committee report from December 1973 said America was so angry over Arab nations' earlier decision to cut oil production and impose an embargo on the United States that seizing oil-producing areas in the region (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi ) was "the possibility uppermost in American thinking." Click here for more info: usatoday.com - 01-01-2004 and SundayTimes 09-02-1975.

Washington's Battle Over Israel's Birth

2008-05-08T13:02:00.003Z

Taken from Washington Post, Wednesday, May 7, 2008; Page A21
By Richard Holbrooke

In the celebrations next week surrounding Israel's 60th anniversary, it should not be forgotten that there was an epic struggle in Washington over how to respond to Israel's declaration of independence on May 14, 1948. It led to the most serious disagreement President Harry Truman ever had with his revered secretary of state, George C. Marshall -- and with most of the foreign policy establishment. Twenty years ago, when I was helping Clark Clifford write his memoirs, I reviewed the historical record and interviewed all the living participants in that drama. The battle lines drawn then resonate still.

The British planned to leave Palestine at midnight on May 14. At that moment, the Jewish Agency, led by David Ben-Gurion, would proclaim the new (and still unnamed) Jewish state. The neighboring Arab states warned that fighting, which had already begun, would erupt into full-scale war at that moment.

The Jewish Agency proposed partitioning Palestine into two parts -- one Jewish, one Arab. But the State and Defense departments backed the British plan to turn Palestine over to the United Nations. In March, Truman privately promised Chaim Weizmann, the future president of Israel, that he would support partition -- only to learn the next day that the American ambassador to the United Nations had voted for U.N. trusteeship. Enraged, Truman wrote a private note on his calendar: "The State Dept. pulled the rug from under me today. The first I know about it is what I read in the newspapers! Isn't that hell? I'm now in the position of a liar and double-crosser. I've never felt so low in my life. . . ."

Truman blamed "third and fourth level" State Department officials -- especially the director of U.N. affairs, Dean Rusk, and the agency's counselor, Charles Bohlen. But opposition really came from an even more formidable group: the "wise men" who were simultaneously creating the great Truman foreign policy of the late 1940s -- among them Marshall, James V. Forrestal, George F. Kennan, Robert Lovett, John J. McCloy, Paul Nitze and Dean Acheson. To overrule State would mean Truman taking on Marshall, whom he regarded as "the greatest living American," a daunting task for a very unpopular president.

Beneath the surface lay unspoken but real anti-Semitism on the part of some (but not all) policymakers. The position of those opposing recognition was simple -- oil, numbers and history.

"There are thirty million Arabs on one side and about 600,000 Jews on the other," Defense Secretary Forrestal told Clifford. "Why don't you face up to the realities?"

On May 12, Truman held a meeting in the Oval Office to decide the issue. Marshall and his universally respected deputy, Robert Lovett, made the case for delaying recognition -- and "delay" really meant "deny." Truman asked his young aide, Clark Clifford, to present the case for immediate recognition. When Clifford finished, Marshall, uncharacteristically, exploded. "I don't even know why Clifford is here. He is a domestic adviser, and this is a foreign policy matter. The only reason Clifford is here is that he is pressing a political consideration."

Marshall then uttered what Clifford would later call "the most remarkable threat I ever heard anyone make directly to a President." In an unusual top-secret memorandum Marshall wrote for the historical files after the meeting, the great general recorded his own words: "I said bluntly that if the President were to follow Mr. Clifford's advice and if in the elections I were to vote, I would vote against the President."

After this stunning moment, the meeting adjourned in disarray. In the next two days, Clifford looked for ways to get Marshall to accept recognition. Lovett, although still opposed to recognition, finally talked a reluctant Marshall into remaining silent if Truman acted. With only a few hours left until midnight in Tel Aviv, Clifford told the Jewish Agency to request immediate recognition of the new state, which still lacked a name. Truman announced recognition at 6:11 p.m. on May 14 -- 11 minutes after Ben-Gurion's declaration of independence in Tel Aviv. So rapidly was this done that in the official announcement, the typed words "Jewish State" are crossed out, replaced in Clifford's handwriting with "State of Israel." Thus the United States became the first nation to recognize Israel, as Truman and Clifford wanted. The secret of the Oval Office confrontation held for years, and a crisis in both domestic politics and foreign policy was narrowly averted.

Clifford insisted to me and others in countless discussions over the next 40 years that politics was not at the root of his position -- moral conviction was. Noting sharp divisions within the American Jewish community -- the substantial anti-Zionist faction among leading Jews included the publishers of both The Post and the New York Times -- Clifford had told Truman in his famous 1947 blueprint for Truman's presidential campaign that "a continued commitment to liberal political and economic policies" was the key to Jewish support.

But to this day, many think that Marshall and Lovett were right on the merits and that domestic politics was the real reason for Truman's decision. Israel, they argue, has been nothing but trouble for the United States.

I think this misses the point. Israel was going to come into existence whether or not Washington recognized it. But without American support from the very beginning, Israel's survival would have been at even greater risk. Even if European Jewry had not just emerged from the horrors of World War II, it would have been an unthinkable act of abandonment by the United States. Truman's decision, although opposed by almost the entire foreign policy establishment, was the right one -- and despite complicated consequences that continue to this day, it is a decision all Americans should recognize and admire.

Richard Holbrooke writes a monthly column for The Post. He co-authored Clark Clifford's "Counsel to the President: A Memoir."

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What a big mistake the recognition of the State of Israel turned up to be. Not just because of the creation of the State of Israel which was forced on the Arab population by anti Semitic Europeans but the United States had a chance to stop all the hatred from the very beginning from happening. If the US felt so compelled to the Jewish cause then it would have been better to move all prosecuted Jews (from Europe) to the United States. Truman was a Zionist and didn’t care of the consequences of his actions otherwise as President of the most powerful nation on earth he had the power to stop the evils from happening.

Furthe reading:

(1) Harry Truman’s Corruption By Zionists - http://www.realjewnews.com/?p=217

(2) Zionists pressured Truman to support the creation of Israel
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/3962

(3) Current state of Affairs in Israel (as supporte dby the united States)

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/index.html

Wanted: The last Nazis

2008-05-01T21:46:00.003Z

They are accused of some of the worst war crimes of the 20th century. Now a final bid has been launched to bring them to justice before they die

Taken from The Independent, UK
By Claire Soares, 1 May 2008

At first glance, the mugshots appear to be a gallery of roguish grandfathers, but the octo- and nonagenarians are the 10 most-wanted fugitives of one of the most heinous regimes the world has ever seen. They are the last remaining Nazis, and the codename of the hunt to find them – Operation Last Chance – says it all

More than 60 years after the Nuremberg trials put the first of Hitler's henchmen in the dock, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre yesterday released its most wanted list of the remaining Nazi war criminals. The battle to bring them to justice is complicated by a mix of political apathy, legal wrangling, legendary powers of evasion and what Nazi-hunters term "misplaced sympathy" for the craggy-faced men in their twilight years.

"They are old, and the natural tendency is to be sympathetic toward people when they reach a certain age, but the passage of time in no way diminishes the guilt of the perpetrators," said Efraim Zuroff, the Jerusalem-based director of the Wiesenthal Centre. "If we were to put a chronological limit on prosecution, we would basically be saying you can get away with genocide."
The top target is Aribert Heim, now 93. Jewish prisoners at Mauthausen concentration camp probably knew better him as "Doctor Death". The Austrian medic would inject petrol and an array of different poisons straight into the hearts of his so-called patients to see which killed them fastest. He once removed the tattooed flesh of a prisoner and turned it into soft furnishings for his commandant's flat.

An 18-year-old Jewish footballer and swimmer who was sent to Heim with an inflammation of the foot was knocked out, castrated and then decapitated. His head was boiled to remove the flesh and his skull was put on display. "[Heim] needed the head because of its perfect teeth," testified one hospital worker at the camp, according to an arrest warrant uncovered by the Associated Press news agency.

Although the hunt for the fugitives continues, the race is on to bring them to justice before they die. Conscious of the ticking clock, Mr Zuroff will launch a media blitz in South America this summer, airing adverts there for the first time which publicise the $485,000 (£245,000) reward offered for Heim's arrest.

Heim has been on the run since 1962 when, happily married and working as a gynaecologist in the West German town of Baden-Baden, he was tipped off that his arrest was imminent. Proof that he is still alive after all these years may be the €1m (£785,000) sitting in a Berlin bank account, which would probably have been claimed by his family if he were dead. The best guess now is that the doctor is in either in Chile, where his daughter lives, or Argentina – a favoured destination for fleeing Nazis, including the architect of the Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann, and another lover of ghoulish medical experiments, Josef Mengele.

It is only Heim whose whereabouts are unknown. For the other nine suspects, Mr Zuroff rattles off a string of house numbers and street names in cities around the world – from Klagenfurt in Austria to Perth, Australia. In these cases, the biggest problem is a lack of political will. John Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian emigré, was extradited from the US to Israel in 1986 and sentenced to death for allegedly being the Treblinka camp guard "Ivan the Terrible". But Israel's Supreme Court overturned the ruling and released him. He is now fighting deportation from America.
"Some countries don't have the guts or the courage to prosecute and punish," sighs Mr Zuroff. "Nazi war criminals are not serial killers. They are not likely to murder again and the governments basically know that in a few years they will pass away."

Take Sandor Kepiro, who is No 3 on the list. Now aged 93, he was among Hungarian officers alleged to have carried out a three-day massacre of more than 1,000 mostly Jewish people on the banks of the Danube in Serbia. He was convicted in 1944 but was pardoned and moved to Austria. In 1946, he was convicted again – in absentia – and decided to flee further afield, this time to Argentina.

Half a century later, he slipped secretly back into his homeland after being assured he would not face punishment. But when he was discovered living in Budapest in 2006, there was a public outcry. No decision has been made on whether he will stand trial.

Hungary is one of nine countries to be given a "failing" grade in the Wiesenthal Centre's annual scorecard. Sweden is another; lambasted for its blanket refusal to investigate Nazi-era crimes, because of a statute of limitations which kicks in at 25 years for all acts of murder, including genocide.

Another is Australia; accused of being too slow in processing the extradition of most-wanted Nazi No 7, Charles Zentai.

"For three years, they let this guy play games in court," says Mr Zuroff. "When you are talking about three years for someone who is in his 80s, that is a long time and could, effectively, help him elude justice."

Mr Zentai, now 86 and living in a Perth suburb, is accused of beating an 18-year-old called Peter Balazs to death when he caught him riding a Budapest tram without wearing a yellow star to identify himself as a Jew. Mr Zentai denies the charges and has been fighting extradition since 2005. Last week, he lost a constitutional challenge against state magistrates ruling on his case. His family claims the incriminating witness testimony came from confessions beaten out of soldiers. They say that he stands little chance of a fair trial in Hungary, should extradition go ahead.

Mr Zentai's son, Ernie Steiner, said yesterday: "I know my father was never a Nazi, so why is a Nazi-hunter hunting my father? He was never involved in the Holocaust or the mistreatment of Jews. So this is a complete fabrication."

He dismissed the Most Wanted List as the theatrics of a bounty hunter, saying: "Of course there's a principle of justice but, when you've got the wrong bloke, you are persecuting an innocent man."

One who didn't get away
The case of the "Executioner of Bolzano" has been a triumph for Nazi hunters. Michael Seifert tortured his victims in the north Italian concentration camp using fire, broken bottles, clubs and ice-cold water.

After the war he moved to Canada, working in a Vancouver mill and raising his family. In 2000, he was convicted in absentia and sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering at least 18 people but it was two years before he was arrested by the Canadian police at Italy's request. He began a long fight against extradition, which ended in failure this February when, at the age of 83, he was finally deported to Rome to serve his sentence.

Father held daughter in cellar for 24 years

2008-04-28T15:58:00.001Z

Taken from the Independent, UK
Sunday, 27 April 2008

A woman has told police that she was held prisoner in a cellar for almost 24 years by her father, who repeatedly raped her and fathered her seven children.

Lower Austria police said in a statement that the 42-year-old woman had been missing since August 29, 1984 and was found by police in the town of Amstetten last night following a tip-off.

Franz Polzer, head of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs, said the 73-year-old father had been taken into custody.

In a chronology of events outlined in a statement, police said the woman had apparently sent a letter a month after her disappearance asking her parents not to search for her.

During police questioning, she told police her father began sexually abusing her when she was 11 and locked her in a room in the cellar on August 28, 1984.

During the 24 years that followed, she said she was continually abused by her father and gave birth to six children, the statement said. In 1996, she gave birth to twins but one died several days later because it was not appropriately cared for. Her father had then apparently removed the corpse from the cellar and burned it, the statement said.

Police said the woman appeared "greatly disturbed" psychologically during questioning. She agreed to talk only after authorities assured her that she would no longer have to have contact with her father and that her children would be taken care of.

One of her children, a 19-year-old girl, is now in hospital the Lower Austrian town of Amstetten in very serious condition. Police said the father has been arrested but had not confessed.

Gerhard Sedlacek, spokesman for the public prosecutor's office in St Poelten, said the surviving children - three boys and three girls - are aged between five and 20.

DNA tests are expected to determine whether paternity of the children.

Woman, 38, charged with having sex with her young sons

2008-04-14T11:48:00.002Z

Another incest incident. This sickening act seems to be happening in most part of the world these days...

Taken from Harretz, Israel, 13 April 2008
By Haaretz Service

The Be'er Sheva District Court on Sunday indicted a 38-year-old woman from the southern town of Netivot who allegedly had sexual relations with her two sons, 9 and 11.

The defendant is a religious woman and a divorcee. Her children were taken from her home last year by court order and put into boarding schools and foster care, upon recommendation of a social worker involved in their case.

One of the children, 11, was transferred to a boarding school in B'nei Barak, where he exhibited sexual behavior inappropriate for his age. When confronted, the boy told school counselors that his mother had forced him to have sex with her on one of the occasions he had come to visit her last year.

When arrested by police, the woman said she had committed the act as revenge against her former husband.

The charges state that the woman lay on her bed naked, with only her head covered and forced her children to undress and have sex with her. She then did the same thing with her other son, according to the indictment.

The woman is also suspected of watching pornographic films with her children. The Southern District Prosecution has requested that the woman remain in policy custody until the end of proceedings on the grounds that she could be a danger to her children.

Children removed from sect in Texas tell of girls forced into sex with older men

2008-04-10T15:49:00.002Z

Taken from the Guardian, UK
Ed Pilkington, April 10 2008

Interviews with hundreds of children removed from a polygamist sect in Texas have revealed that several underage girls were forced into "spiritual marriage" with much older men as soon as they reached puberty and were then made pregnant, according to investigators.

A total of 416 children, mainly girls, have now been taken into state custody after five days of raids on the Yearn for Zion ranch in Eldorado, west Texas. Court documents reveal the children were removed for fear they were at risk of "emotional, physical and/or sexual abuse".

A further 139 women left the ranch voluntarily to accompany the girls, and are being held with them. A local court has granted state custody of all the children until a hearing later this month.

The 1,700-acre ranch is the retreat of a group from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a 10,000-strong splinter sect that broke with the main Mormon church when it denounced polygamy in the 1890s. The compound was built in 2004 in a remote location in the prairies by Warren Jeffs, the then "prophet" of the sect who is currently in jail in Arizona awaiting trial over charges relating to the arranged marriages of three teenage girls. He has already been sentenced to 10 years to life imprisonment in the state of Utah.

The raids were sparked by a telephone call from a 16-year-old girl inside the Yearn for Zion compound to a local family violence shelter on March 29. She said she had been forced to become the seventh "spiritual wife" of a man aged 50, who made her pregnant with a child, now aged eight months, and then made her pregnant for a second time. The girl said other girls, some as young as 13, had been forced to have sex with older men for procreation. She said she had been beaten by her "husband" so badly that on one occasion several of her ribs were broken. The beatings included hitting her on the chest and choking her, the affidavit says, while another woman held her baby.

The police are searching for the man, Dale Barlow. They are also continuing to search for the girl, whose identity has not been released and who has yet to be found among the 416 children taken into care.

The court papers give new details about the isolated life of the sect.

The compound is self-sufficient, in order to avoid contact with the "outsiders' world". In addition to a temple, the ranch includes a cement factory, a school, a cheese factory and medical centre.

Women wear home-sewn dresses and are not allowed to wear red, which Jeffs decreed was reserved for Jesus, or cut their hair. They live on a diet of dairy produce, vegetables, berries, nuts and honey.

Sect members were only allowed out of the compound for emergencies. The 16-year-old who sounded the alarm told the shelter that she had been warned that if she left the ranch, "outsiders will hurt her, force her to cut her hair, to wear makeup and to have sex with lots of men", the documents say.

Several of the teenage girls were found to have children or are pregnant. Many could not spell their last names or state their birth date.

The sect believes that polygamy for men is an essential religious practice. Underage girls were married to older men of the church's choosing, the affidavit says.

The leader of the ranch, Merrill Jessop, has called for a public outcry over the raids, saying the "hauling off of women and children matches anything in Russia or Germany".

Lawyers for the church have filed a court petition to quash the searches on the grounds they are unconstitutional as the authorities lack sufficient evidence to justify the intrusion.

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Latest Update - 25th May 08: Members of a polygamist sect in Texas were overjoyed after an appeal court ordered the state authorities to return 440 children taken from a church compound during a raid. The Third Court of Appeals in Austin said on Thursday that the state had failed to show that the children were in any immediate danger – the only justification under Texas law for taking children from their parents without a court order. Child-protection officials argued that five of the girls had become pregnant under the age of 16 and that the sect was essentially a paedophile ring. Warren Jeffs, the “prophet” of the church, is serving a ten-year sentence in Utah for rape. The decision to return the children was seen as an embarrassment for the child welfare authority and as vindication for members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), who claim that they are being subjected to religious persecution.

Storm in a shot glass as advert redraws map of Americas

2008-04-08T22:16:00.007Z

Taken from The Independent, UK
By David Usborne, 8 April 2008

A whimsical ad by the makers of Absolut vodka aimed solely at consumers in Mexico has drawn the ire of some sovereignty-sensitive Americans, forcing the company to issue an unusual apology.

The storm in a shot glass was provoked by advertisements that depict an antique map of North America dating back to before the 1848 Mexican-American War, when large swaths of what is now the United States, including all of California and other south-western states, belonged to Mexico. One of a series of ads that run under the tag-line "In an Absolut World", the spot was a cheeky attempt to tap into simmering nationalistic sentiments in Mexico, which chafes at its status as the "poor neighbour" of a country that it once partly owned.

If in Mexico they smiled at the notional re-conquering of their lost lands, the reaction in El Norte has been more mixed than a dirty martini. The company has been assailed by American vodka fans, mostly writing in blogs on the internet, accusing it of inflaming passions about an already touchy political subject: illegal immigration and plans to erect a fence along the existing border.

The Swedish beverage giant, which was bought last week by the French group Pernod Ricard, has even been charged with encouraging Mexicans to enter the US without proper papers.

"We are sorry if we offended anyone," the company said in its own blog on the Absolut website. "This was not our intention. In no way was this meant to offend or disparage, nor does it advocate an altering of borders, nor does it lend support to any anti-American sentiment, nor does it reflect immigration issues. Instead, it hearkens to a time which the population of Mexico may feel was more ideal." Also on the defensive was the company's spokesman in New York, Jeffrey Moran. "This ad certainly has nothing to do with immigration issues or anti-Mexican sentiments," he insisted. "It's based on a historical perspective on what Mexico was once. That's all."

The blogospheric bashing of Absolut was set off by the conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, who posted the Mexican ad on michellemalkin.com, her blog site. From there it quickly migrated to other US sites, including the influential drudgereport.com, further kindling criticism.

"I find this ad deeply offensive and needlessly divisive," one blogger simply named "New Yorker" said on MexicoReporter.com: "I will now make a point of drinking other brands."

Another Outraged of the US added: "Absolut is pandering to ignorance, historical illiteracy and Mexican national chauvinism. I'll never drink Absolut again."

That Absolut may have touched a sweet and a sour nerve simultaneously on each side of the border may now seem obvious. While history classes in America teach that the territories were legally purchased from Mexico after the conclusion of the war, many Mexicans still feel they were stolen.

"This advertising basically taps into a very painful episode of Mexico's history, so the cultural code for understanding that is, 'We were robbed,'" commented Eduardo Caccia, an executive at Mindcode, a Mexico City advertising consultancy. "For the US it's different. The understanding for that episode is 'We bought some land. We made a deal.' The same event, but with different meanings."

The loss of what was once Alta California and the other states to the US, including Texas (although it had broken away in 1836 after its own war of independence with Mexico), Arizona and New Mexico, was sealed with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the end of the war.

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The land grab by the United States will eventually be offset by the demographic change that is taking place in America - where it's estimated that within 10 years, hispanics will become the majority in these parts of the United States - Hola!

Father and daughter have child

2008-04-08T15:55:00.002Z

Taken from Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
APP - April 7, 2008

A South Australian woman has given birth to her father's daughter after the couple had sex.

John and Jenny Deaves reunited 30 years after Mr Deaves separated from Jenny's mother.

Jenny was 31 and, just two weeks after meeting, father and daughter had sex.

"John and I are in this relationship as consenting adults," Mrs Deaves told the Nine Network last night.

"We are just asking for a little bit of respect and understanding."

Their 11-month-old daughter Celeste, shown on TV, appears fit and healthy.

Ms Deaves said soon after reuniting with her father she began to see him as a man first and her father second.

"I was looking at him, sort of going, 'Oh, he's not too bad.'

"Like you might look at a man across the bar at a nightclub."

Ms Deaves brought two children, Samantha and Alex, into the relationship after splitting from her former partner.

Mr Deaves admitted that he "initially" thought having sex with his daughter was wrong.

"Emotions take over. As people no doubt realise, there are times during your life where emotions do rule the heart, it rules the head," he said.

"I knew it was illegal. Of course I knew it was illegal but you know, so what."

Ms Deaves said the physical relationship with her father was like "a sexual relationship with any other man".

For Mr Deaves the sexual relationship was "absolutely fantastic".

A South Australian police media spokesman said: "The couple is being monitored."

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LATEST UPDATE 08.04.08: latest court transcripts have revealed that the father and daughter had another baby seven years ago, who died from a congenital heart defect.

I just hope that the new baby does not have the same defects. This is why it is very wrong to marry family members - firstly it is morally wrong but also there is a big chance that the genes of the two parenst will be too close and the ofspring will have defects/ suffer from mutations.

UK children rescued from worldwide sex abuse ring

2008-03-06T20:48:00.001Z

Taken from The Guardian, UK, 6 March 2008

Detectives in three continents believe they have broken one of the most sophisticated paedophile rings ever. Eight British children between six and 14 years old have been rescued and arrests made in the UK, Australia and the US.

The ring used advanced techniques to avoid detection and one member boasted of belonging to the "greatest group of paedos ever to gather in one place".

Police traced the victims to addresses in the UK, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (Ceop) Centre said. Some had been abused by their parents. The arrests followed a two-year inquiry which began in Australia, spread to Europe and was coordinated by the FBI in the US.

The US was chosen as the base for police operations as most of the sex ring's members were American residents, police said.

A total of 22 people were arrested last week, including two men in the UK, in the final strike against the ring. Six further British men have already been jailed for their roles in trading and receiving pictures and videos on the network.

The newsgroup members gained access to the ring by providing pictures of child sexual abuse.

According to US court documents, one member in Florida labelled one folder of images "mild" and another "wild". James Freeman, who used the nickname "Mystikal", bragged: "All I can say is they are worth the download." According to the US indictment against Freeman, seen by the Guardian, he wrote: "My thanks to you and all the others that together make this the greatest group of paedos ever to gather in one place."

Paul Griffiths, who heads the victim identification team at Ceop, based in the UK, said the children were subjected to horrendous abuse. "In every image there is a child. These images are crime scene photos where children are being subjected to sexual abuse. This is not 'child pornography'.

"It's important to remember too, though, that these children were not missing. They were located in the place where they were supposed to be safe - their own home - where their abuse was recorded and made available over the internet to satisfy sickening sexual desires of a deviant group of individuals."

Australian police said the international covert operation had uncovered 2,500 "customers" in 19 countries. As a result of the two-year operation, 400,000 images of child abuse were seized.

Police also closed four commercial child sex web sites and arrested more than 100 people for allegedly purchasing child sex material. Officers in the UK used facial recognition software and a database called Childbase as they raced to identify victims from clues in each image.

The FBI's executive assistant director, Stephen Tidwell, said the online gang was run like a business, with indecent images used as a substitute for cash. He said: "This is beyond a quantum exponential leap for us to see folks that have gone to this much trouble to produce this kind of volume of horrific exploitation of children. But with 400,000 [images] we're going to be at this for years, trying to find the victims."

Peter Crawford from Queensland police's state sexual crimes squad, said: "It has been the most significant infiltration of an international child exploitation network by a law enforcement agency anywhere in the world. The major challenge for this investigation was to unravel the intricate web that networked offenders had weaved to protect themselves, incorporating strict guidelines, rules and encryption."

Members of the ring all used aliases, such as Box of Rocks, Crazy Horse, Lizzard, Methusaleh and Pickleman. In one example cited in the indictment, Raymond Roy, known as Nimo, posted videos of Thai children "to give everyone something to do for an afternoon".

"This one may offend here, so a word of caution, these girls are heavily drugged," Roy wrote on July 10 2007, according to the court documents. "Not much action to speak of, the girls are [sic] to [expletive deleted] up to move or resist. Three girls, the first one being the youngest, around eight or nine yo [years old]."

Noting the sophisticated process the porn ring used to outwit police, Tidwell compared the growing number of child pornography crimes to those of cocaine dealers, terrorists and the mafia. "If they had good operational security, that's a bad thing for us," he said. "When you've got that, you've got a real challenge for law enforcement."