What is the Unites States preparing in Pakistan?
Keith Jones
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari will undoubtedly come under renewed pressure to allow US military forces to wage war within Pakistan when he visits Washington this week for a trilateral summit meeting with President Obama and Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai. For weeks, the US political and military establishment and the American media have been mounting an increasingly shrill campaign to bully Islamabad into fully complying with US diktats in what Washington has redefined as the AfPak (Afghanistan-Pakistan) war theater. At the US’s behest, the Pakistani military has for the past 10 days been mounting a bloody offensive—including strafing by warplanes and heavy artillery—against Pakistani Taliban militia in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). The offensive has caused large numbers of civilian casualties and forced tens of thousands of poor villagers to flee…
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RIGHTS-IRAQ: U.N. Report Paints Grim Picture
By William Fisher
Iraqi prisons are torturing detainees, locking people up for months without charges and, in most cases, allowing the perpetrators of these human rights abuses to escape justice, according to a new United Nations report. “Security may not be sustainable unless significant steps are taken in the area of human rights such as strengthening the rule of law and addressing impunity,” warned the report, issued on Apr. 29… “Allegations of torture should be promptly and thoroughly investigated, and criminal proceedings taken against officials found to have abused detainees in their custody. Every effort should be made to ensure that juvenile detainees are held at the appropriate and separate locations equipped with rehabilitation facilities, and additional resources devoted to address the issue of overcrowding at detention places,” the report said…
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The Lessons of Gaza 2009
Bashir Abu-Manneh
…Sanctions against the occupying Israeli state are thus an urgent and primary task in the West. This also means that the solidarity movement should not get bogged down or distracted with discussions about the one-state or two-state solutions (ultimately a matter for Palestinian democracy). Nor should our movement be required to lend ideological legitimation to Hamas or to other Palestinian nationalists. One supports the Palestinians, not because of the nature of their leadershi p, but because one supports the principle of self-determination for an oppressed people. It’s a basic democratic right and a pre-requisite for a life of dignity, freedom, and justice. It’s also a moral imperative…
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The Jewish State VS Mordechai Vanunu: A Case Of Christian Persecution
By Eileen Fleming
On April 10, 2009, Billy Briggs reported from occupied east Jerusalem that Mordechai Vanunu informed him, “I was walking here this morning and a car drew slowly up alongside me. There were four men in the car wearing sunglasses. One of them shouted at me…the car followed me…the man call out again in Hebrew. ‘You are garbage,’ he said. But I kept on walking and ignoring him.” When Vanunu entered the foyer of his rundown backpacker’s hot el the men “leapt from the vehicle, flashed ID cards and ushered him into the back seat. Residents and traders, many of whom know the famous Israeli, stood and watched his public humiliation. “They took me to the local station and warned me not to go to Bethlehem this year to celebrate Christmas. They said they’d be watching me and that I should also not speak to journalists or foreigners.”…
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Aids convoy in the Mediterranean to Gaza
Sameh A. Habeeb
The climax to the Seventh Palestinians in Europe conference was the launch of the long anticipated ‘Hope for Gaza convoy’ The convoy moved to Gaza and recently is in the Mediterranean carried by a shipping boat. The convoy is destined for the Gaza Strip and carries provisions for the education and medical sectors, specifically for Palestinians with special needs – those who were handicapped by the major Israeli attacks of December and January. Through a chorus of cheers and tears the convoy of a dozen well-equipped ambulances and some 30 trucks loaded with medical and humanitarian supplies set sail on a cargo ship from Genoa along with human rights volunteers, European parliamentarians, and journalists…
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Torture and Mr. Obama
By WILLIAM BLUM
Okay, at least some things are settled. When George W. Bush said “The United States does not torture”, everyone now knows it was crapaganda. And when Barack Obama, a month into his presidency, said “The United States does not torture”, it likewise had all the credibility of a 19th century treaty between the US government and the American Indians. When Obama and his followers say, as they do repeatedly, that he has “banned torture”, this is a statement they have no right to make. The e xecutive orders concerning torture leave loopholes, such as being applicable only “in any armed conflict”. What about in a “counter-terrorism” environment? And the new administration has not categorically banned the outsourcing of torture, such as renditions, the sole purpose of which is to kidnap people and send them to a country to be tortured. Moreover, what do we know of all the CIA secret prisons, the gulag extending from Poland to the island of Diego Garcia?…
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Spain: Garzón investigation reveals abuse suffered by Guantánamo detainees
Paul Mitchell
The criminal investigation launched this month by Spain’s top investigative judge, Baltasar Garzón, into allegations of torture at Guantánamo Bay and other US prison camps is based on the evidence of four detainees who were subsequently sent to Spain for trial. All four were accused of being Al Qaeda members, but Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed and Lahcen Ikassrien were acquitted by Spain’s High Court, and Abdul Latif Al-Banna and Omar Deghay es had their warrants for arrest in the UK cancelled. Garzón’s investigation targets the “possible material authors, enablers and accomplices” of these illegal abuses, possibly including the high-level Bush administration officials, responsible for what amounts to an “authorized and systematic plan for torture and harsh treatment of people deprived of their freedom without any charges and without the most basic elemental rights for detainees, set forth and demanded by international treaties.”…
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U.N. Inquiry Critical of Israeli Attacks in Gaza
By Thalif Deen
A detailed 184-page report critical of Israeli attacks on U.N. personnel and buildings during the Gaza conflict last December-January has been meticulously stripped down to a 27-page document – mostly due to political sensitivities and on security grounds. Responding to charges he had released only a “watered down” version of the report by a four-member U.N. Board of Inquiry (BoI), Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon vehemently denied the accusation…
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In final letters, Saddam Hussein complained of being tortured
Raw Story
Saddam Hussein complained of torture in letters to his interrogators…. Hussein alleged beatings and of being kept where he was forced to endure the screams of others being tortured — thought to be at Baghdad International Airport. Meek notes that Hussein was accused of torturing and killing thousands himself during his 24-year reign. “Not a single part of my body was spared of the severe harm that was inflicted by the detention gang,” Hussein wrote . “Some of the traces are still visible on my body.”…
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Hamas legislator: “P.A Security Forces in the West Bank act in collaboration with Israel”
IMEMC News
Hamas legislator, Dr. Ismail Al Ashqar, stated Tuesday that the Palestinian Security Forces in the West Bank, loyal to Fateh movement, are collaborating with Israel by targeting resistance fighters and shutting down charitable institutions. Al Ashqar added that the Palestinians reject security coordination with Israel and its security forces, and added that the Palestinian Security Forces became part of the “Zionist occupa tion”…
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Fatah lawmaker says foreign interfering blocks unity dialogue
Xinhua
A Fatah lawmaker on Tuesday said external interference were affecting the progress of the inter-Palestinian dialogue. The dialogue, which mainly involves Abbas’ Fatah movement and its Islamic Hamas rival, “faces obstacles and delaying due to external parties that want to impose its own agenda on the debates,” said Faisal Abu Shahla, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). He did not reveal who were those foreign lobbies but Hamas has often accused Fatah of trying to impose the U.S. and the Israeli agenda on the dialogue while Fatah implicitly accused Iran and Syria of influencing Hamas during the talks. The talks aim at reconciling Hamas and Fatah on a unity government that rules the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and West Bank…
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Obama, Israel on collision course over Iran
By MARTIN SIEFF, UPI
U.S. President Barack Obama met with Israeli President Shimon Peres on Tuesday, the day after Peres spoke to the annual policy conference of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The meeting was closed, but the Palestinians and Iran can be expected to be the key agenda items, especially as the Obama administration and new Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu are on a collision course on both of these key Middle East issues…
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UN blames Israel for Gaza attacks
Aljaeera.net
A United Nations inquiry into the war in Gaza has found that Israel was blame for at least seven direct attacks on UN operations – including schools and medical centres. The UN report, commissioned by Ban Ki-Moon, the UN secretary-general, said the Israeli military intentionally fired at UN facilities and civilians hiding in them during the war and used disproportionate force. Missiles, bombs and small arms were all used by Israel against the UN – leading to dozens of deaths. ..
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Israeli police detained 280 Palestinian workers in 24 hours
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC
Israeli Radio reported Monday morning that Israeli policemen detained 280 Palestinian workers in 24 hours after claiming that they were illegally staying and working in Israel. The radio added that most of the detained workers were sent back to the Palestinians territories. ..
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Israel’s war on dissent
Rela Mazali, The Electronic Intifada
About six months after Israel’s attorney general publicly announced an effort to criminalize dissent, state authorities have upped the ante in their “war” — as the Israeli daily Haaretz called it last September — against Israel’s youth; against the broad, grassroots movement slandered by officials as “draft shirkers.” On 26 April, a day before Israel’s Memorial Day, Israeli police produced a hyperbolic piece of political theater. As if facing down a dangerous organized crime “family,” they “raided” — to quote their press release — the homes of six activists in different parts of Israel, who were detained for interrogation. Exploiting the ritual emotions of a day of mourning for military dead, the police action singled out and branded anti-militarist activists as non-members of the legitimate community, implying that they (we) are fair game…
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Love Song for Words.
Layla Anwar, Uncensored Arabwomanblues
Nazik al-Mala’ika (1922-2007) Iraqi poet and critic, one of the most important Arab women writers. Al-Mala’ika was one of the first and a major advocate of the free verse movement in the late 1940s with Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. Her poetry is characterized by its terseness of language, eloquence, original use of imagery, and delicate ear for the music of verse…
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