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.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Israel takes control of more West Bank land
Sunday, February 01, 2009
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.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
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.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
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.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
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."
Thursday, January 01, 2009
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!
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Johann Hari: The true story behind this war is not the one Israel is telling
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."
Friday, December 26, 2008
Rice tops US 'official gift list'
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
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.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Madoff made off with the mother of all hedge funds scams
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)
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Abbas: Israel must free all 11,000 Palestinian prisoners
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!
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.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Official History Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
ELECTRICITY A new generator in Baghdad in 2007. Electricity output is now only slightly higher than it was before the war.
OIL The production of oil at Iraqi fields, like the one above, 370 miles southeast of Baghdad, has been below prewar levels.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Monday, December 08, 2008
Blackwater court battle looms
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.
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.
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
UN accuses Israel of punishing aid workers
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.
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Bush: My biggest regret is false intelligence on Iraq WMDs
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.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Obama evokes brighter days ahead in Thanksgiving address
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.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Mumbai gunman goes on TV to justify terror attacks
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.
