Iraq: The war was illegal

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'

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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'

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

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.

=============================================

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

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

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
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Child prostitutes rescued in US

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

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

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.

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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

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'

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'

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

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

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

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!