THE POSTS MOSTLY BY GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

THE POSTS MOSTLY BY GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

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Boston artist Steve Mills - realistic painting

Friday, April 29, 2011

Gilad Atzmon-Time is Ripe For a Paradigm Shift


Time is Ripe For a Paradigm Shift

By Gilad Atzmon on April 27, 2011
Gilad Atzmon – gilad.co.uk April 27, 2011

It is slightly embarrassing for me to admit that sometime  Zionists are actually well ahead of our favourite  intellectuals in understanding the depth of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It is not that they are more clever, they are just free to explore the conflict without being subject to the tyranny of ‘political correctness’, also being proud  nationalist Jews- they do not need  the approval of the Jewish left thought police.

I have recently come across a short Haaretz article by Israeli writer A.B. Yehoshua*.

Yehoshua is a proud Zionist, He believes in the right of his people to dwell on Palestinian land.  He is also convinced that the Jewish state is the true meaning of contemporary Jewish life. I guess that Yehoshua loves himself almost as much as I despise everything he stands for and yet, I have to confess, he seems to grasp the depth of the Israeli Palestinian conflict’s parameters  slightly better than most  solidarity activists I can think of.

In his Haaretz article Yehoshua stressed that Zionism was “something original and one of its kind  in human history- A folk arrived  at the homeland of another folk attempting to replace the old identity with a new/old  identity”. Yehoshua  also counters the faulty colonial paradigm and practically repeats my own theses almost  word by word. “There was also no (Zionist) attempt to impose a colonial regime, since the Jews had no (mother) state that could have sent them to perform a colonial conquests like in the case of England or France.”

Yehoshua, is certainly correct here, as much as some amongst us are contend to argue that Zionism is a ‘colonial project’ and Israel is a ‘settler State’, such a position has no ground and cannot be supported factually or historically. The Colonial paradigm is simply a fantasy that is clumsily imposed on our discourse in a desperate attempt to make the Israeli/Palestinian conflict meaningful within a decaying Marxist discourse.

Yehoshua  continues, the Israeli/Palestinian  conflict will not be resolved because it’s a totally unique conflict  in human history. “There is no historical precedence for a nation that decides to return to its ancient homeland and  establish its sovereignty there.” Whether the conflict will be resolved or not is indeed a crucial question. I am not so sure that Yehoshua knows the answer or even can contemplate a reality in which the Jewish State belongs to the past. However, Yehoshua is obviously correct in his reading of the uniqueness of the Zionist history. We are dealing  here with an exceptional and unprecedented national aspiration driving by racist impetus. But Yehoshua takes it further. “Thus,” he says, If we all accept that the modern return of Jews to Zion is a unique event in human history – then the Palestinian people, unlike any other people, had  to face a totally unique phenomenon.” If we accept that Zionism is an abnormal political ideology and practice, then, Palestinian nationalism  (that is defined by  negation to abnormality) must be also a unique to say the least.

I must admit that Yehoshua’s stand is well argued and totally valid. However, it means that all comparative  models  such as the colonial paradigm are doomed to crash. Jewish nationalism doesn’t fit into any available template, it formulates a model of its own.

According to Yehoshua, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is not really about territorial issues. “Territorial issues can be resolved” he says.  “In our conflict, both sides, struggle over national identity of the whole country.” Yehoshua offers here a very interesting insight that cannot be uttered within the boundaries of the Left discourse. For both parties, especially the Palestinians, he says,  “it is unclear what is the size of the people it is up against, is it only the Israelis or is it also the Jewish Diaspora as a whole.” Yehoshua raises here an issue I myself have been stressing for years. It is far from being clear to anyone (including  Israelis and Jews) where Israel ends and the Diaspora starts. It is also far from being clear where the Israeli ends and the Jew starts. I guess that for most contemporary Jews it is even far from being clear anymore where Zionism ends and Judaism starts. In the contemporary Jewish world there are no clear dichotomies. We are dealing with a spineless elastic metamorphic identity that shapes itself to fit every possible circumstances. This may explain how come the Jewish state can dually operate as an oppressor and a victim simultaneously.

The Israelis, according to Yehoshua are also subject to a similar confusion. They also cannot figure out whether it is just the Palestinian people they are up against or is it the whole Arab nation or even the entire Muslim world.  For Yehoshua, the conflict “lacks a clear demographic boundaries. This fact alone creates an initial deep distrust between the two peoples that prevents a possible solution.”

Yeshoua is far from being a brilliant mind, yet, he manages to analyse the conflict correctly just because he is free to think out of the Leftist box. Being a proud Israeli Jew he is free to say what he thinks without the need to appease half a dozen so-called ‘progressive’  Jews.  Yehoshua’s analysis makes a lot of sense to me though we draw the complete opposite conclusions. I believe that ti the Palestinian solidarity discourse  better liberate itself of any form of  dogmatic political thinking. It is about time  and look at the conflict for what it is.  We must engage in a true plural debate and emancipate ourselves of any traces of rigid and anachronistic thinking.

Gilad Atzmon-Drama in London

Drama in London

By Gilad Atzmon on April 28, 2011
Gilad Atzmon – gilad.co.uk April 28, 2011


A panel discussion titled ‘Zionism, Jewishness and Israel’ will take place at The University of Westminster – Cavendish Campus on Tuesday May the 3rd, from 6:30pm – 8:00pm.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=160038250722935

As one may imagine, the Zionist operators in Britain are not happy about the meeting at all: ‘Green Engage’, a Zionist anti-BDS campaign group launched an immediate campaign, soon after the announcement of the panel. Far from being surprising, within hours, they were joined by Tony Greenstein  and  the so called Jewish ‘anti Zionist’ network.

The original panel was supposed to include John Rose, Ghada Karmi, Alan Hart and myself. 

The venue as well as the panelists (except myself funnily enough) came under severe pressure that verged on abuse: one of the panelists admitted to the organisers that he had received twelve phone calls from different Jewish ‘anti-Zionist’ activists, who insisted that — ‘for the sake of Palestine’— no one should share a stage with Gilad Atzmon.

Now, interestingly enough, when I asked the panelist whether any Palestinians had actually called to preach for the ‘sake of Palestine’ — the answer was a resounding negative. I guess  that Jewish ‘anti Zionists’ know better than everyone what is good for Palestine, they are chosen after all.

John Rose and Ghada Karmi pulled out, and that is understandable: not many can endure such a level of abuse — as we learnt recently, Judge Goldstone has also surrendered, and by doing so, has severely damaged his credibility and reputation.

In the early days I myself struggled a lot: on a daily basis I would hear from one  ‘progressive’ Jew or another who I should like and who I should hate.  Being a rebel, I never followed any of these ‘instructions’. It took me years to develop a very thick skin, to believe in myself and to believe in ethical thinking. And, having done so, I am now happier and free, and I continue in the spirit of humanism and resistance.

Resisting Zionist tactics then, the organisers of the event and the venue are undeterred, standing strong, and determined to continue with the original plan:  a list of Palestinian intellectuals and journalists stepped immediately in place of Ghada and John. I advised the organisers not to publish their names for the time being, simply to save them from the unnecessary irritation, annoyance and abuse.  However, I myself made sure that they are fully aware of the possible trouble ahead.

This event is promising to be a turning point — The relentless attempts by Jewish political bodies to gate-keep the discourse needs to be confronted and exposed. 

And I guess that what we see here proves beyond doubt my arguments regarding the duplicity that is tragically manifested all too often by different bodies and individuals within the Jewish ‘anti-Zionist’ network.

Come and support freedom and intellectual exchange
Panel Event: Zionism, Jewishness and Israel
Time:            Tuesday, May 3 · 6:30pm – 8:00pm
Location: University Of Westminster – Cavendish Campus
A panel discussion examining Israeli Criminality in the wake of the Goldstone Retract.
Alan Hart, Gilad Atzmon and others

 (Facebook event Announcement)

“Despite the huge pressures from certain Zionist and “anti-zionist” groups, John Rose and Ghada Karmi have pulled but have been replaced with a number of other high profile and brilliant speakers.

A lot of criticism has been mounted about the fact that the event is putting “Jewishness” into the debate with Zionism and Israel. The fact that Israel calls itself the “Jewish State” warrants that we as rational, critical individuals must at least enquire and question what this may mean.

This is not anti-semitic nor racist, and in fact every religion has been subject to these criticisms and enquiries, and in a truly democratic society, any exclusive belief that posits itself as the truth must be scrutinised and put under the spotlight.”

Egypt FM: Gaza border crossing to be permanently opened


Egypt FM: Gaza border crossing to be permanently opened

By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz


Egyptian FM tells Al-Jazeera that preparations are already underway to permanently open Rafah border crossing, which would allow goods and people in and out of Gaza with no Israeli supervision.

April 28, 2011

Egypt's foreign minister said in an interview with Al-Jazeera on Thursday that preparations were underway to open the Rafah border crossing with Gaza on a permanent basis.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil al-Arabi told Al-Jazeera that within seven to 10 days, steps will be taken in order to alleviate the "blockade and suffering of the Palestinian nation."

The announcement indicates a significant change in the policy on Gaza, which before Egypt's uprising, was operated in conjunction with Israel. The opening of Rafah will allow the flow of people and goods in and out of Gaza without Israeli permission or supervision, which has not been the case up until now.

Israel's blockade on Gaza has been a policy used in conjunction with Egyptian police to weaken Hamas, which has ruled over the strip since 2007. The policy also aims to reduce Hamas' popularity among Gazans by creating economic hardship in the Strip.

Rafah's opening would be a violation of an agreement reached in 2005 between the United States, Israel, Egypt, and the European Union, which gives EU monitors access to the crossing. The monitors were to reassure Israel that weapons and militants wouldn't get into Gaza after its pullout from the territory in the fall of 2005.

Before Egypt's uprising and ousting of longtime leader Hosni Mubarak, the border between Egypt and Gaza had been sealed. It has occasionally opened the passage for limited periods.

Settlers Torch Palestinian Stores In Hebron


Settlers Torch Palestinian Stores In Hebron

Saed Bannoura

IMEMC, April 27, 2011

A group of armed extremist Israeli settlers hurled, on Wednesday at dawn, Molotov cocktails at several Palestinian stores in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, causing fire in four stores, leading to excessive damage, and massive losses.

The Palestine Information Center reported that the attack was carried out in the Kazazeen Market in the old city of Hebron.

The stores belong to residents Mohammad Al Shalloudi, Atta Al Shweiki, Sha’ban Hashlamon and Abdulhamid Al Natsha.

Palestinian firefighters rushed to the scene but were blocked by Israeli soldiers who claimed that the area is a closed military zone, the Center said.

An owner of one of the torched stores said that the settlers are escalating their attacks against the Palestinian people, their property and land in an attempt to scare them out of their country.

The settlers tried to offer large sums to store owners to sell their stores and leave the city, and threatened to use force against them should they elect to stay.

"This is our land, our soul and heart", the resident said, "Even if they kill us, we will not leave, we will remain steadfast in our homeland".

Iraq snapshot - April 27, 2011


Iraq snapshot - April 27, 2011

The Common Ills

April 27, 2011

Wednesday, April 27, 2011.  Chaos and violence continue, protests continue in Mosul, Nouri preps for a takeover if his 100 days results in failure, Howard Dean calls Nouri a cold-blooded killer, Tim Arango has a snit fit in front of the entire world, and much more.
 
 
O our people everywhere in the pure land of Iraq ...


What was expected happened and the occupation supported, corrupt government bared its teeth when the forces in Nineveh province, raided AlAhrar Square last night, controllled and closed all entrances all under the supervision and orders of war criminal Naser Ghannam, commander of the government second battalion, and then have these forces led by the offender Colonel Ismail al Joubouri randomly opened fire on the crowd which resulted in a large number of martyrs and wounded, including the brothers stationed from the popular movement to save Iraq:

1 - Brother Khalid al-Khafaji, Fri 2 - Brother Rakan Abdullah al-Obeidi 3 - Brother Ghanim Abid 4 - Brother Haitham Jubouri 5 - Brother Mohammad AlKadhy, and we shall relsease a detailed list of names in a later statement.

This cowardly criminal act which flows directly in the interest of the American occupation and survival, is only appropriate to the authority of the war criminal Nuri al-Maliki, who will bear legal and moral responsibility in full for every drop of blood shed being Minister of Interior and Minister of Defense.

While we promise the children our brothers to continue to demonstrate and picket, we declare after depending on God the case of civil disobedience in Medeenat Elremah until the criminals are tried in court in the city of Mosul, on top of this list of war criminals is Nasser Al-Ghannam and Colonel offender Ismail Jubouri, which we call upon the renowned Jabour tribe , to disown him like the people of Heet disowned the rootless Nasser Al-Ghannam, which has become a wanted criminal not only for the people of Mosul, but for all the Iraqi people, and we call on this occasion on our people to exercise restraint and to work closely and avoid giving them the opportunity to lure us into violence and confrontation and the need to maintain a peaceful and civil protest and without prejudice to public and private property.

((And no victory except from Allah, the Mighty Holy))

Popular movement for the salvation of of Iraq

Oday Al Zaidi
NCRI notes Monday's assault on the people of Mosul, "On April 25th, al-Maliki's forces opened fire on protesters in Mosul and killed and injured dozens of people. Al-Baghdadia TV quoted witnesses and announced: The forces of the 2nd Division that had entered Mosul two days ago, started indiscriminate arrest of a large number of demonstrators. The protesters, picketing at Mosul's Ahrar square (Freedom square), are asking the leaders of the southern and central tribes to intervene, join them, and support them."  An e-mail from Iraq Veterans Against the War notes that Mosul has "become the epicenter of the continuing protests" and, "Last week, Iraqi Facebook pages administered directly by protest organizers reported that government security forces encircled their camp, surveiled and taunted them, and called on them to end their sit-in. Protesters also reported that a low-flying American military helicopter swept towards the demonstrators, in what was interpreted as an attempt to intimidate them.  Their response, captured in the video below, was to throw shoes. Demonstrations have been joined by dozens of women, who are calling for the end of the U.S. occupation and the release of their sons and brothers who are held in both Iraqi and US prisons throughout Iraq. This week tribal chieftains from nearby Anbar province joined the Mosul prostests as well."  Today the Great Iraqi Revolution notes, "A member of Ghannam's henchmen has now announced live on air that he and 16 other members of Ghannam's force are resigning because they cannot accept his comands to detain women demonstrators as well as shoot at demonstrators.  He also stated that there are Iranian officers in Ghannam's force in the 2nd Regiment."
 
Let's move over a second to one of Iraq's neighbors, Syria.  Eleanor Hall (The World Today with Eleanor Hall, Australia's ABC -- link has text and audio) summarizes the current events as follows, "Now to Syria where anti-government protesters say that government security forces shot dead at least six more people in Deraa overnight in a new round of clashes.  Human rights groups say that up to 400 people have now died since the protests began in mid-March.  The United Nations Security Council held emergency talks on the issue and the secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, led Western nations in expressing alarm at the deadly Syrian government crackdown."  AFP adds, "UN chief Ban Ki-moon has expressed 'increasingly grave concern' at the bloody crackdown on protesters in Syria, especially at the use of tanks and live ammunition by security forces" and quotes Ban Ki-Moon stating, "Syrian authorities have an obligation to protect."
 
And what about the obligations of Iraqi authorities?  Where's the "increasingly grave concern" for the Iraqi protesters?  When even the governor of Ninevah Province is calling out the Iraqi military's attacks on the people of Mosul, where's the concern from the United Nations?  Human rights groups -- Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Women's Freedom in Iraq -- have decried the targeting of protesters (and the targeting of Iraqi journalists).  Where's the concern for what's happening to Iraqis from the UN -- or, for that matter, from the US government?
 
I'll get a pen and make a list
And give you my analysis
But I can't write this story
With a happy ending.
Was I the bullet or the gun
Or just a target drawn upon
A wall that you decided
Wasn't worth defending?
-- "I Can't Help You Anymore" written by Aimee Mann, first appears on her album The Forgotten Arm
 
On Mosul, War News Radio posts video from Link TV's Moasic which is from Al Jazeera:
 
 
Al Jazeera: In Iraq, security forces opened fire on protesters in Mosul city's Ahrar Square.  In light of the events, the Ninevah Provincial Council suspended its official duties in the province for one day, in protest of the security forces attack on Mosul demonstrators. In this video, people rising up are trying to reach Mosul's Ahrar Square.  Security forces prevented them from doing so in an open fire on them with live bullets.  There is no doubt that this video will be followed by others.  Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was unexpectedly confronted on three different levels.  These days it comes from al Mosul.  These are stressful days for every ruler that finds himself surrounded by angry protesters calling for his downfall unless he meets a list of demands. Their first no is a firm rejection of the Ninevah Provincial Council's nomination of a new police commander in the province who protesters accuse of killing hundreds of Iraqis.  The second no comes as a rejection to Nouri al-Maliki's invitation for delegation of Mosul residents to meet with him.  What is the purpose of such a meeting when their demands are as clear as the sun at 4 o'clock in the afternoon.  The government of Baghdad is politically marginalizing Mosul and imposing its security mechanism on the city -- security forces arrest whomever they want and impose arbitrary rules on the people's movements to impede traffic and daily life. And this rejection is based on the marytyrs.
 
Speaker at protest: Brothers in your name and in the name of all honorable people, we reject this offer! We reject this offer!  We say to al-Maliki -- we say to al-Maliki that those who want to talk to us can come to us They can meet with us here in the Square.
 
Al Jazeera: Then came an official rejection -- in addition to that of the masses -- to the curfew and teh ban on demonstrations because as soon as the curfew is imposed, the people take to the streets en mass. Their actions are reciprocated as if the issue is some sort of struggle to break the people's will and see who will last longer. An additional facet was added to the issue when security forces fired live bullets at protesters. The Constitution of the country allows the people of the country to stage sit-ins and protests but then the land seems to be devoid of a Constitution.  Powerism imposed on the people telling them either you stay home or live bullets from above and probably to your heads is what you can expect.  In reality a number of Mosul residents were hit after security forces forcibly dispersed protests; however, this has been tried and proven: As soon as people hear the sounds of bullets, feelings of nationalism and revenge are born inside of them.  'Why are they killing us and depriving us of our rights?'  So the ruler applies in the end, 'How I wish hadn't killed and how I wish I had met their demands on the very first day.'
 
 
 
Still on the protests but moving over to the KRG, Christian Peacemaker Teams have been on the ground in the KRG reporting on the violence.  CPT publishes this piece by Annika Spalde today:
 
 
On Monday 11 April, the four of us from the CPT short-term delegation accompanied the CPT Iraq team to the central square in Suleimaniya to meet the demonstrators and the people organizing the demonstrations.
As soon as we entered the square, we were surrounded by twenty-thirty men of different ages. One of them started asking CPTer Michele Naar Obed, "Have CPT done the report that you were talking about? What are you doing to tell the world about what's happening here?"
I started talking with a young man standing next to me. He had been a student at the university, but was now unemployed. "Our leaders are worse than Saddam," he said, with a tired voice. "They have learnt from Saddam. There are no human rights for us here." In his opinion, many of those who come to the square each day are unemployed. "It is very difficult to get a job if you don't have a connection to one of the parties, PUK or KDP.  And if you don't have a job, you have no money.  You can't even afford to buy a cup of tea."
Michele told one of the men questioning her that Amnesty International would publish a report on the repression against protesters in Iraq and Kurdistan the following day.  He said they would mention this from the stage as an encouragement to the people that the information is getting out.
After a half hour we met with two organizers of the protests in a café.  One was a journalist, the other works for an international non-governmental organization. They told us how, in mid-February, the demonstrations started in a very spontaneous way, with inspiration from the people's nonviolent fight for democracy and human rights in Tunisia and Egypt. After just a few days of demonstrations, representatives from different sectors of society  created a committee to coordinate activities and to think strategically.  One decision they took early on was to always follow the principles of nonviolence. Another was to have an "open mike" at the square, where anyone could share his or her opinions and experiences.
The demonstrations at the square in Suleimaniya have become a daily event for almost two months. Demands to the government that it prosecute persons responsible for the killing of unarmed protesters, have not been met. There is no dialogue between  the demonstrators and the authorities. The ad hoc committee organizing the demonstrations is thinking about its next step. They have written and published a "Roadmap for a peaceful transition of power in Southern Kurdistan," where they would call for the resignation of the president, among other things.
 
We're going to be pulling from the Amnesty report mentioned above.  But first,  Tim Arango (New York Times) reports:

When he returned to his native Kurdistan in February to join the flickering of a protest movement, Dr. Pishtewan Abdellah, a hematologist who lives in Australia but also carries an Iraqi passport, suspected that the demonstrators might face harsh treatment from the Kurdish authorities. At several protests during the last two months security forces have opened fire, and an estimated 10 people have been killed and dozens wounded, according to human rights activists.
What Dr. Abdellah did not anticipate, though, was a barrage of one of this country's more peculiar menaces: death threats by text message.
 
 
Death threats by text message.  Hmm.  I want to text you, I do what?  April 12th,  Amnesty International issued the report [PDF format warning] "DAYS OF RAGE: PROTESTS AND REPRESSION IN IRAQ"  and pulling from the section on the KRG:
 
 
At around 2.30pm as I had just finished a phone conversation with a friend, three men confronted me and asked me to give them the mobile. Other men arrived within seconds, including from behind, and then I received several punches on the head and different parts of the body.  I fell to the ground, they kicked me for several minutes, but I managed to stand up.  They put one handcuff on my right wrist and attached it to someone else's left wrist.  But I managed with force to pull my arm away and the handcuff was broken. I ran away towards the Citadel but within seconds another group of security men in civilian clothes blocked my way and they started punching me and hitting me. There were now many security men surrounding me and kicking me. There was blood streaming from my nose and from left eye. My head was very painful.
They put me in a car . . . One security man told me I was one of the troublemakers. I was taken to the Asayish Gishti in Erbil. I was first asked to go to the bathroom to wash my face wash my face which was covered in blood. I was then interrogated in the evening and the person interrogating me kept asking about why I was in the park and kept accusing me of being a troublemaker. I was asked to sign a written testimony. When I said I needed to see what is on the paper he hit me hard.  Then I signed the paper without reading it.  I stayed there for two nights sharing a room with around 60 people. Then on the third day I was taken to a police station where I stayed for one night before I was released. I was not tortured in the Asayish Prison or in the police station."
 
As noted earlier this month, "There are many more in the KRG who share stories and one of the most disturbing aspects -- something that sets it apart from the arrests/kidnappings of activists elsewhere in Iraq -- is how and when the forces appear.  The report doesn't make this point, I am.  Forces in the KRG show up as people are on the phone or have just finished a call.  It would appear that beyond the physical abuse and intimidation, they're also violating privacy and monitoring phone calls."  Tim Arango's article today makes that even more clear.  How do you call someone to threaten them over the phone or to text them over the phone?  You start by knowing their phone number.  How do you get that information if you don't personally know the person?  How do you end up with their cell phone number?  Privacy is not being respected within the KRG and the big question is are telecoms cooperating with the government to spy on residents and, if so, when did this spying begin?  
 
We're still on the protests -- specifically teh coverage of them.  Dan Hind is a British writer who posts at The Return of the Republic.  He wrote about the protests in Iraq.  He questioned Tim Arango's coverage.  A friend at the New York Times was pleased (proud) of Tim's response and thought I'd like to include it.  Friends know I'm not just going to write what they want and there's nothing to be proud of here.  Dan Hind weighed in on coverage of the protests here.  Excerpt:
 
The reader might reasonably wonder what these other issues were, but the article, at least in its British incarnation, was remarkably unforthcoming. Arango tells us later that 'inspired by uprisings by Arabs elsewhere, Iraqis held their own protests in Tahrir Square' in late February. The authorities attacked the protesters and the protests did not 'blossom nationally'. But apparently the government did decide to 'dial back the crackdown on night-life'.
But why were the protesters taking to the streets in Iraq? The New York Times doesn't give us much of a clue. But the Guardian, the Observer's sister paper in London, published a piece by Sami Ramadani that sheds light on their grievances. Ramadani quoted some of the slogans:
 
Dan Hind was very kind.  There's no point in being kind.  Reporters -- ask any editor -- can't take criticism, they're married to every damn word and convinced that they've done something amazing when most haven't even risen to "adequate."  Tim's one of those who likes to whine in e-mails.  Instead he left a comment.  He opens saying he's responding "with great relish" -- thereby explaining the breath.  He snaps that if Hind had "read the original article" -- there's no reason for him to, Tim.  Your paper chose to syndicate the article.  Dan read it in the Observer.  If your larger points are missing (or, more likely, you think they are) you take it up with people at your paper who syndicated the article, don't blame British readers of the Observer.  Tim could have noted -- but fails to -- that he wrote the piece for the Week In Review sectio nof the paper and therefore it is an opinion piece and not actual reporting.  That's no reflection on Dan Hind's commentary but it would explain the point of view in the piece.  Instead he wants to note that if Dan had "perused The New York Times' coverage of the ongoing protests in Iraq you would have discovered that your points of criticism do not hold up to scrutiny."  First, Tim, familiarize yourself with your paper's style manual.  You should get the point very quickly.  Secondly, it's not on the reader.  No reader of an article has to "familiarize" themselves with past coverage.
 
If I don't convey something in the snapshot -- and frequently I don't, these are dictated and dictated quickly, any edits are done in my head with 'take out paragraph three and move the section on Camp Ashraf up above the Parliament section' -- that's on me.  If you don't, that's on you. You wrote a piece for your paper's opinion section on Sunday -- biggest day of the week for the paper in terms of circulation so you had the potential to reach a large section of readers you've never reached before.  Your article, as Dan Hind pointed out, did not offer clarity on the protest motivations.  It should have.  Instead of carping and trying to bicker, you should file that away for when you next write for The Week In Review.
 
Tim Arango then writes, "You then continue with a more general critique of The Times' coverage of the protests in Iraq, a gripe that you surely wouldn't be able to make had you taken the time to read our numerous articles over the last several months about the grievances of Iraqis. It is astonishing that you would take the liberty to make the following statement, without seemingly reviewing our coverage: '… for The New York Times to be so vague about the grievances of the Iraqi people in a country that is, after all, still occupied by 50,000 American troops seems to me to be extraordinary'."  Take the liberty?  Again, no one's required to read every article the paper's published to weigh in on one of your pieces.  If you'd practiced clarity in your Week In Review piece, no one would have been confused.
 
Of course, they wouldn't have been informed either.  Because the Times has done a lousy job of covering the protests. That includes the fact that the Washington Post has owned the government's reaction to the protests because the Times has ignored journalists being pulled out of cafes, beaten in Baghdad by security forces.
 
You pretend to know, Tim Arango, how the protests started in Iraq -- well they re-started.  They were enough last year to force the Minister of the Electricy out.  But you weren't covering Iraq then and are apparently unfamiliar with that aspect of the protests.  To prove the paper's been on the ball and show that the paper covered the issues, you provide a list of links.  But, thing is, Tim, those links don't go back far enough this year alone.
 
What started the protests?  The paper's never been huge on crediting others but Iraqi protests this year kicked off in February and kicked off outside of Baghdad.  As January wound down, Ned Parker. reported on the secret prisons for the Los Angeles Times and Human Rights Watch issued their report on it.  Parker's January report on the secret prisons and how they were run by Nouri's security forces, the Baghdad Brigade followed up on his earlier report on how the Brigade was behind the prison that he and the paper exposed in April 2010.   All the while Nouri insisted that there were no secret prisons in Iraq -- such as February 6th when Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) reported, "The Iraqi government on Sunday denied a human rights organization's allegation that it has a secret detention center in Baghdad, run by Prime Minister Nur al-Maliki's security forces." The report then quoted Nouri's spokesperson Ali al-Moussawi stating, "We don't know how such a respectable organization like Human Rights Watch is able to report such lies."  Camp Honor is a prison that's under Nouri's control, staffed by people working for him.  Amnesty International would also call out the use of secret prisons while Nouri continued to deny them.
 
But while many in the press would play dumb, the Iraqi people knew better.  They knew their loved ones were gone, disappeared into Iraq's legal system.  That is what began the protests in Iraq: the prisons.  It's what fueled them throughout.  From the Feb. 10th snapshot:
 
Alsumaria TV reports protests took place in Babel Province today with one protest calling for the release of prisoners and another calling out the continued lack of public services. Dar Addustour reports the the Council of the Bar Association issued a call for a Baghdad demonstration calling for corruption to be prosecuted, for the Constitution to be followed and sufficient electricity in all the schools. Nafia Abdul-Jabbar (AFP) reports that approximately 500 people (mainly attorneys "but also including some tribal sheikhs") marched and that they also decried the secret prisons.  They carried banners which read "Lawyers call for the government to abide by the law and provide jobs for the people" and "The government must provide jobs and fight the corrupt." Bushra Juhi (AP) counts 3,000 demonstrating and calls it "one of the biggest anti-government demonstrations in Iraq" this year.  Juhi also notes that attorneys staged smaller protests in Mosul and Basra today.  Al Rafidayn reports that five provinces saw protests yesterday as the people demanded reliable public services and an end to government corruption. Noting the Babylon Province protest, the paper quotes Amer Jabk (Federation of Industrialists in Babylon president) stating that the provincial government has not provided any of the services the province needs, that basic services have deteriorated and that heavy rains have not only seen streets closed but entire neighborhoods sinking.  Hayder Najm (niqash) observes protests have taken place across Iraq, "The protesters' grievances have been many and varied: the quality and level of basic services, government restrictions on civil liberties and freedom of expression, violations against civil servants, and the rampant financial and administrative corruption within state institutions. [. . .] Eight years after the US invasion of Iraq, the electricity supply in most areas of the country still does not exceed two hours a day, and the country still suffers from poor infrastructure, a weak transport network, and an acute crisis of drinking water and sanitation."

The February 10th snapshot.  But Tim Arango can only go back to Feb. 15th because that's when the paper finally, kind of sort of (Jack Healy's article is an embarrassment of non-knowledge) acknowledges the protests.
 
Again, I didn't seek out the above topic.  A friend with the paper thought Tim Arango had done an amazing job responding to a critique.  I said I'd review it and then note it in some way but warned I might disagree.  And I do.  Tim Arango wrote an article (an opinion piece) that his paper chose to syndicate around the world.  A reader in England, reading the syndicated version, was left confused.  Instead of owning that and addressing it, Arango wants to stomp his feet and insist it is the reader's job to go back and read eight other articles.  No, that's not how it works.  And Arango's stomping of the feet? Off putting here in the US.  But overseas, probably a little worse than that?  If I made the call at the Observer, Tim Arango would not be featured again since he's unable to take criticism from Observer readers and wants to insist that it is their job not just to read what the Observer prints but all these articles from another paper.  It's a point I'll be making to two friends at the Observer on the phone tomorrow morning. 
 
            
 
Ben Birnbaum (Washington Times) reports former head of the Democratic National Committee Howard Dean is speaking out on behalf of the MEK and said yesterday of Nouri al-Maliki, "The truth is the prime minister of Iraq is a mass murderer."  What's Howard Dean referring to?  Camp Ashraf.  Following the US invasion, the US made these MEK residents of Camp Ashraf -- Iranian refuees who had been in Iraq for decades -- surrender weapons and also put them under US protection. They also extracted a 'promise' from Nouri that he would not move against them. July 28, 2009 the world saw what Nouri's word was actually worth. Since that Nouri-ordered assault in which at least 11 residents died, he's continued to bully the residents. April 4th, Iran's Fars News Agency reported that the Iraqi military denied allegations that it entered the camp and assaulted residents. Specifically, Camp Ashraf residents state, "The forces of Iraq's Fifth Division invaded Camp Ashraf with columns of armored vehicles, occupying areas inside the camp, since midnight on Saturday." Friday April 8th saw another attack which the Iraqi government again denied. Thursday April 14th, the United Nations confirmed that 34 people were killed in the April 8th assault on Camp Ashraf. Barbara Grady (San Jose Mercury News) reported that the dead included journalist Asieh Rakhshani who has family in California.  Dean explains to Birnbaum how he learned of the MEK, "I got asked by my agent to go over to Paris to speak to a group I knew nothing about.  I spent a lot of time on the Internet learning about them.  Brinbaum notes, "Mr. Dean cited a long list of former U.S. officials who had become vocal supporters of the Mojahedin, maing Jim Jones, a former director of the National Security Council and Louise Freeh, a former FBI director."
 

The US government failed to live up to its legal obligations. It's an issue in England -- even letters to the editor decry the US, like Martyn Storey's letter to the Guardian which includes, "Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt has issued a strongly worded statement deploring the loss of life and emphasising the need to make medical assistance available. There is no sign, however, of the US administration rushing to fulfil its obligations. We are waiting for President Obama's strong condemnation of the atrocities committed by Iraqi troops at Ashraf. " For all the attention it receives in England, it's largely ignored in the US. The Tehran Times notes, "The Iranian ambassador to Baghdad has predicted that the members of the terrorist Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) would leave Iraq by the end of the current Iranian calendar year, which started on March 21. The Iraqi government has issued a declaration and the Iraqi cabinet has approved a ratification, both of which require that the MKO members leave Iraq, Ambassador Hassan Danaiifar told the Mehr News Agency in an interview published on its website on Tuesday." This week at the Huffington Post, former resident of Camp Ashraf Hajar Mojtahedzadeh contributed a column:

On Thursday, April 8th, I received a phone call a little before midnight D.C. time. The voice on the other end franticly told me to turn on the Iranian satellite channel, Iran NTV, adding that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's forces had stormed Camp Ashraf just hours before. As my friend on the phone continued speaking, all I could think about was my brother Hanif and our mutual friend Elham. Hanif and Elham Zanjani, both 29, are residents of Camp Ashraf located in the Diyala province, north of Baghdad in Iraq. The camp is home to 3,400 unarmed Iranian refugees, members of the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), the primary opposition group to the tyrannical mullahs in Iran. Surely acting at the behest of Tehran, the Iraqi Prime Minister ordered the deadly assault.
As I watched the scenes of carnage unfold that day, I recognized the familiar face of my dear Elham. Her body, badly injured by a hand grenade thrown by Iraqi forces, was lying on a medic stretcher. Overwhelmed with a sense of anger and disbelief, I realized that my loved ones were paying the price of their legal protector's broken promises, with their blood.

In England, Natalie O'Neill (Times) reports, "A MOTHER has protested almost every day for 25 years in aid of Iranian refugees in Camp Ashraf, where her daughter lives. Despite finding it difficult to walk, 75-year-old Fatemeh Mohammad has rallied alongside hundreds of fellow Anglo-Iranians outside the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and US Embassy in Westminster calling for the protection of exiles in Camp Ashraf, Iraq."  A British MP, Alex Carlile of the House of Lords, weighs in on the assault on Camp Ashraf at the Independent of London:
 
 
Such international condemnation as there has been of the deadly attack this month carried out by Iraqi forces against a camp housing members of the Iranian opposition leaves two pertinent questions unanswered. First, is the attack a crime against humanity under the principles of international law; and, secondly, have the US authorities turned a deliberate blind eye to a massacre on their watch in Iraq as part of a deal with the Iraqi authorities, or as part of a policy of appeasement?
Undoubtedly, the answer to the first question is yes. Video footage of the incident shows Iraqi forces running over unarmed residents with armoured vehicles and Humvees. Further as stated by the Bar Human Rights Committee: "the Camp residents, all of whom are recognised as Protected Persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention, were shot at indiscriminately". The United Nations confirmed that at least 26 men and 8 women were killed, while 178 suffered gunshots out of some 300 injured.
The actions of the Iraqi authorities and specifically Nouri Al-Maliki is an international criminal justice offence which demands that the UN, US and EU condemn the attack and define it appropriately as a crime against humanity. Firing at the unarmed residents with live machine gun rounds in these circumstances was clearly a government sanctioned act of war perpetrated against a civilian population and specifically a civilian population which has repeatedly been recognised as protected under the Convention.

Alsumaria TV reports, "Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki threatened on Tuesday to ask for the dissolution of the government in case it fails to accomplish the country's projects beyond the 100 day deadline. The deadline involves Iraq's Parliament also, Maliki said." If that happens, Nouri says, he may call for early elections. Yeah, that's what Iraq needs, another round of elections. Those 2010 elections were resolved so quickly. Not noted in the report, it's already been floated by Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nufaifi that if the 100 days passes without marked improvement, it may be necessary to register a vote of no confidence. That would topple Nouri's government. It is fear of that which has prompted Nouri to begin speaking of the need for a "majority government." Al Rafidayn reports Nouri was again speaking of that yesterday saying it would allow 99% consensus -- that would be 99% consensus on plans that currently his own hand-picked Cabinet can't or won't agree to. The puppet wants some puppets of his own to play with.

Al Mada reports on Nouri's press conference in Baghdad yesterday where he declared that Iraq could not defend its external borders or the country from an invasion if one should take place. Moqtada al-Sadr's spokesperson Salah al-Obeidi is quoted insisting that if US forces remain on the ground in Iraq past December 31, 2011, the Mehdi milita/mob will be in the streets of Iraq again. Al Rafidayn also reports on the press conference noting something others are skipping, Nouri says that afer he returns from his trip to Korea, he will invite members of Parliament to share their own views. The wording could be seen as Norui refusing to see the Palriament as a body that makes the decision -- that's a position in keeping with his previous stance. Meanwhile Dar Addustour notes that MP Haidar al-Mula and 75 others are calling for Nouri to appear before the Parliament and take questions in his role as commander-in-chief of the military.


Al Sabaah reports
that the Cabinet has put an end to employees of "the three presidencies" (Iraq's president and two vice presidents) grabbing up residential land plots. Dar Addustour calls it a "private ownership scheme" It sounds very good but before you buy it hook-line-and-sinker, note that the source is Nouri's spokesperson Ali al-Dabbagh.
 
We've noted Firas Ali several times in the snapshots, most recently Monday:
 
 In the text version of the report, Muir notes that Firas Ali campaigned for Ala Nabil's release while he was imprisoned for eight days and that the response was for "armed security operatives" to seize Firas Ali from an NGO office and that Ala Nabil is attempting to get Firas released.  
 
In Defense of Marxism notes, "After almost two weeks of detention, Firas Ali was released from Muthanna Airport prison on the evening of Monday, 25 April.  We would like to express special thanks to all those who in the campaign to free Firas Ali the youth leader of Rahrir Square in Baghdad Iraq."
 
Turning to violence, Reuters notes a Baghdad shooting that left the a Ministry of Defence official injured, a Hamman al-Alil roadside bombing which claimed 1 life, a Baghdad market bombing which injured five people, a Baghdad bombing which injured two people, a Baghdad bombing which injured four people and a Baghdad sticky bombing targeting Shafqi Mahdi ("general director of Iraq's theatre and cinema department").
 
On violence in Iraq, Kelly McEvers (NPR's All Things Considered -- link is audio and text) filed a report yesterday that's rather confusing.  John Drake of AKE Group is on speaking.  He does not say in the report what Michele Norris apparently wanted so Norris puts in his mouth?  Maybe she just misunderstood him or McEvers' report?  I have no idea but McEvers interviewed him, recorded the conversation and the pitch of the report Norris did on air is not him actually being quoted.  That's a problem right there.  It's a bigger problem for those of us who receive AKE Group's reports because it's hard to believe that the John Drake who writes those reports would have said the words NPR puts into his mouth.  Kelly McEvers has an interesting report.  But violence has been on the rise since February 2010.  Steady rise.  And the latest report from AKE opens with, "Levels of voilence rose in Iraq over the past week."  Those of us who are paying for AKE's reports like to believe we're not wasting money. 

Deadly blast devastates Marrakesh cafe


Deadly blast devastates Marrakesh cafe

AlJazeera.net

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Authorities suspect blast which killed at least 15 in Moroccan city's main square was the work of a suicide bomber.

April 28, 2011

An explosion in a busy cafe in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh has killed at least 15 people and wounded several others, according to local officials.

Moroccan officials said on Thursday that they suspect the attack at Argana cafe in the city's main Jamaa el-Fna square was the work of a suicide bomber.

"According to the information I have, it could have been perpetrated by a suicide bomber," an official in the regional governor's office told the AFP news agency.

"We found nails in one of the bodies," added the official, who was in a hospital where some of the bodies were taken.

Moroccan television, quoting interior ministry officials, said 20 people were also injured and said foreigners were among the victims. The state-run 2M channel reported that the dead comprised six French nationals, five Moroccans and four foreigners whose nationality it did not give, .

Rescuers were dispatched to the scene and an investigation was opened to provide details on the blast.

An official from the ministry said the blast appeared to be a terror attack, though the ministry had said earlier in the day, in a statement carried by the official MAP news agency, that "early evidence collected at the site (of the explosion) indicates that it was a criminal act".

France condemned the blast as being "cruel and cowardly" and confirmed there were French casualties.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, learnt "with consternation of the terrorist attack," his office said in a statement.

"He condemns with the greatest firmness this odious, cruel and cowardly act that has caused many casualties, including French citizens," it said.

Alain Juppe, the French foreign minister, slammed "this barbaric terrorist attack that nothing can justify", calling in a statement for "all light to be shed on this revolting crime, for those responsible to be found, tried and punished".

Asked whether there was any current threat against French citizens in its former North African protectorate, Henri Guaino, Sarkozy's advisor, said France "had nothing in particular to fear in Morocco at the moment".

"Terrorism is something that we always fear... that reminds us to be extremely vigilant against this terrifying phenomenon," Guaino told RTL radio.

The Argana cafe is a popular spot with tourists and ranks 21 on the Lonely Planet’s online list of 'things to do in Marrakesh'.

"One of the few cafes where you'll compete with locals for elbow room and a spectacular view of the [Jamaa el-Fna] at sunset, when the restaurant stalls set up shop and the belly dancers begin to wriggle," the travel guide writes.

If confirmed as a terror attack, Thursday's blast in Morocco would be the fourth such attack since 2003 when suicide bombers set off at least five explosions in Casablanca, killing 45 people, including 13 bombers.

In 2007, a series of suicide attacks took place in Casablanca between March and April, including an attack on the US diplomatic offices on April 14.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Commemorating Palestinian Political Prisoners


Commemorating Palestinian Political Prisoners

by Stephen Lendman

24prisoners-day.jpg
April 24, 2011

Since 1979, April 17 annually is Palestinian Prisoners Day, commemorating Mahmoud Hijazi's 1974 release - the first ever prisoner swap with Israel.

Acknowledging the day, the Addameer Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association highlighted the thousands of persecuted prisoners, launching a new campaign on their behalf "to raise awareness of specific cases....whose detention (pose) serious risks."

Ayed Dudeen is one of many affected, incarcerated without charge or trial since October 2007, the longest interned administrative detainee. A father of six, he's, in fact, been held for most of the past 19 years unjustly like so many others for shorter or longer periods.

Addressing Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, Military Judge Advocate General Avihai Mandelblit, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israel's Permanent UN Mission in Geneva, Addameer expressed "strong concerns" on his behalf.

Serving as deputy director of the Hebron Palestinian Red Crescent Society ambulance and emergency services, his detention was renewed 30 times, most recently on April 11, 2011. Yet no evidence proves criminality, political or otherwise. Nonetheless, he's been denied minimal due process, preventing his right to a just defense.

Addameer expressed outrage about "the manifest breaches of human rights and international humanitarian law" violations against him, like so many others. As a result, the organization strongly urged:

-- his immediate and unconditional release, as well as others unjustly held;

-- an immediate end to arbitrary arrests and administrative detentions without charge for indefinite periods; and

-- respect for international human rights and humanitarian law provisions regarding arrests, detentions and treatment.

Addameer currently estimates about 6,000 political prisoners in Israeli prisons. The Prisoners at Risk Campaign highlights cases getting little public attention yet deserve urgent action. They include:

-- prisoners seriously ill at risk of further deterioration because of willful medical neglect;

-- those held indefinitely without charge of trial;

-- human rights activists;

-- those longest held; and

-- those severely tortured because they refuse to be silent about their ill-treatment.

Addameer's director, Sahar Francis, says:

"This campaign, and its focus on the mobilization of international civil society, is absolutely essential because the failure of peace talks, including Oslo (and subsequent sham efforts), to resolve the prisoner issue has amply demonstrated that without intense external pressure, Israel will never abide by international human rights and humanitarian law."

On April 17, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) headlined its press release, "Palestine Prisoners Day - Narratives Behind Locked Doors," saying:

Commemorated annually, the day "support(s) and recognize(s) Palestinians currently in custody in Israel" unjustly. According to the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, the number ranges from the current low up to 12,000 or more, mostly for political and related reasons, including women and children.

From 1967 - 2008, Addameer reported over 650,000 detained, or about 20% of the total Occupied Territory (OPT) population and 40% of all males. Moreover, since the beginning of the September 2000 second Intifada, 70,000 were interned. According to PCHR, 760,000 have been held since 1967. Currently, it states, about 6,500 are detained, including over 250 children and 37 women.

Most are held in Palestine, but many others in Israeli civil and military prisons, in violation of numerous Fourth Geneva provisions, including Article 49 stating:

"....forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons (including prisoners) from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive."

"PCHR notes with particular concern the many violations of human rights and humanitarian law that prisoners are subjected to while in Israeli detention. In particular violations of Articles 7, 9 and 10 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which Israel is a State Party."

Moreover, children are treated like adults in brazen violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), defining a minor is anyone below age 18. Israel is a CRC signatory yet violates this law like all other international ones flagrantly.

On June 7, 1967, Military proclamation No. 1 justified detentions "in the interests of security and public order," subjecting all Palestinians to police state persecution. Hundreds of other orders followed, gravely harming their rights and well-being.

As a result, they may be held indefinitely as well as subjected to months of abusive, inhumane and degrading interrogations and treatment, then detained without charge or tried in military courts, denying due process and judicial fairness.

In confinement, Israel willfully and systematically violates international humanitarian law, including Geneva's Common Article 3, requiring:

"humane treatment for all persons in enemy hands, specifically prohibit(ing) murder, mutilation, torture, cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment (and) unfair trial(s)."

Fourth Geneva's Article 4 calls "protected persons" those held by parties to a conflict or occupation "of which they are not nationals." They must "be treated with humanity and, in case of trial, shall not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed by the present Convention." They're entitled to full Fourth Geneva rights. Prisoners of war under Third Geneva have the same rights and those under Common Article 3.

Israel willfully denies them. Under the 1971 Israeli Prison Ordinance, no provision defines prisoner rights. It only provides binding rules for the Interior Minister who can interpret them freely by administrative decree. For example, it's legal to intern 20 inmates in a cell as small as five meters long, four meters wide and three meters high, including an open lavatory, and they can be confined up to 23 hours daily. As a result, they're subjected to horrific conditions, including:

-- severe overcrowding;

-- poor ventilation and sanitation;

-- no change of clothes or adequate clothing;

-- sleeping on wooden planks with thin mattresses, some infested with vermin; blankets are often torn, filthy and inadequate; hot water is rare and soap is rationed;

-- at the Negev Ketziot military detention camp, threadbare tents are used, exposing detainees to extreme weather conditions; in summer, vermin, insects, scorpions, parasites, rats, and other reptiles are a major problem;

-- Megiddo and Ofer also use tents; in addition, Ofer uses oil-soiled hangers;

-- for some, isolation in tiny, poorly ventilated solitary confinement with no visitation rights or contact with counsel or other prisoners;

-- no access to personal cleanliness and hygiene; toilet facilities are restricted, forcing prisoners to urinate in bottles in their cells;

-- inadequate food in terms of quality, quantity, and dietary requirements;

-- poor medical care, including lack of specialized personnel, mental health treatment, and denial of needed medicines and equipment; as a result, many suffer ill health; doctors are also pressured to deny proper treatment, some later admitting it;

-- extreme psychological pressure to break detainees' will;

-- widespread use of torture, abuse, cruel and degrading treatment;

-- women and children are treated like men;

-- NGOs like Physicians for Human Rights - Israel and the ICRC are deterred from aiding detainees;

-- denied or hindered access to family members and counsel; and

-- enforced conditions subordinating visits to national security priorities, requiring prisoners not be security risks, that persons applying for visits not have a security record, and whatever other stipulations Israel imposes.

PCHR noted special concern for about 700 detained Gazans, denied visits, phone calls, mail or other communications with family members for nearly four years with rare (usually one-time only) exceptions allowed. This outrageous prohibition, "exacerbates the already difficult conditions of confinement and constitutes a violation of international human rights law."
PCHR commemorated Palestinian Prisoners Day by releasing nine poignant narratives, including "The Mother of a Minor in Prison - Amal Abdul-Allah."

For many years, she endured enormous hardships. Her father was incarcerated for 17 years. Her husband was arrested and released in 1983. Her brother and nephew were also imprisoned, and in February 2009, Israeli her third-oldest son, Oudai.

"He was arrested on his way to Ramallah, at Beit Iba checkpoint near Nablus. We realized that he must have been arrested when he did not come home to sleep that night. He had been arrested in the morning and forced to spend the entire day and night at the checkpoint. He had to lie on the ground the entire time, until they took him to Megiddo prison the next day."

Family members weren't told of his whereabouts. The ICRC got spotty information. For several months, he was repeatedly transfered to new prisons. With one exception, Amal and other family members were totally denied visitation rights for "security reasons."

Family members occasionally get information from released prisoners, Amal learning that Oudai was healthy but emotionally exhausted, depressed, always crying, and wanted to go home.

Amal told PCHR:

"I am emotionally in pain because I haven't seen him in so long. The whole situation is very hard. I can't bear it. Also, when I saw him for the first time in court, it was very hard for me, especially since I hadn't seen him for (months). I could not stop crying, but I was afraid for him and I tried to hold myself together as much as possible. For now, what hurts me most is that I am not allowed to visit him."

Moreover, Oudai, like most other child or adult prisoners, is held on spurious charges, assuring months or many years of injustice and harsh treatment. Unlike detained Jews given due process in civil courts, Palestinians get none under occupation. Nor do Israeli Arabs for their faith and ethnicity in a Jewish state.

Final Comment

On April 17, the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) said about 1,000 Hebron protesters marked the day by rallying for release of Palestinian prisoners. "At the same time, thousands of prisoners joined a one-day hunger strike," protesting their treatment and legal rights.

Protesters included family members, local authorities, and international activists. According to former political prisoner Abdul Nasser Farwana's new report, virtually every Palestinian household has had members jailed. It explains that most of those detained are unrelated to alleged security issues; that torture is freely used to extract confessions; that no consideration is given women, children and those ill; and that overall treatment violates fundamental international law.

On April 17 and throughout the year, remember how abusively Israel treats Arabs for their faith and ethnicity, and that conduct this reprehensible no longer can be tolerated.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

130 intrusions to Palestinian prisoners' cell-rooms and tents


130 intrusions to Palestinian prisoners' cell-rooms and tents

by Friends of Humanity International

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April 24, 2011


Friends of Humanity International releases detailed report about the conditions of Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli jails in the last year 2010. The organization has also confirmed that this year was unusual to the Palestinian prisoners. More than 130 brutal and humiliating intrusions executed by the Israeli Prison service and forces against the Palestinians rooms and tents in many jails. Meanwhile its following up to intrusive operations, the rightful band documentized big amount of hostilities and brutal inspections assaulted by the Israeli prison service units and special forces on the prisoners rooms and tents which can be accounted as follows:

- Launching tear-gas to suffocate prisoners.

- Beating prisoners using electronic sticks.

- Confiscating prisoners possessives and belongings.

- Isolating some prisoners in individual isolating cells.

- Executing random transferring to prisoners from a prison to others as happened to Hadareem jail prisoners in which Israeli prison service units intruded and oppressed prisoners then transfer them from section 3 to section 5.

- Moreover, Israeli prisons security units destroyed walls on rooms and shifted all prisoners to a lifeless section with even no basics of living. Israeli prison authorities alleged that they were looking for forbidden-smuggled mobiles.

The same brutal intrusion and suppression has been repeatedly executed against prisoners in Nafha jail, in which hundreds of long-terms and life imprisonments-sentences prisoners detained in. Thus, dozens of prison security units aggressively intruded the jail many times. They attacked and humiliate prisoners to the extent that the jail officer calls one prisoner's wife which waged a furious uprising among prisoners inside the jail.

Later, the prison administration has presented apology on this immoral behavior and promised to open an investigation to this accident.

Reemon Jail is another grief story. The chief of this prison is constantly humiliating and degrading prisoners throughout frequent mid-night inspections and suppression to prisoner rooms by which pushed prisoners to warn higher Jail authorities that a special escalation and procedures will be protested against this brutal chief if he continues his provocative and humiliating intrusions and hostilities against prisoners in Reemon jail.

Correspondingly, the organization confirmed registering many constant intrusions by the Israeli special forces to the Palestinian female prisoners' rooms for the sake of provocative frequent inspections and humiliations. This disgustingly occurs in front of a queue of Israeli soldiers in the time of inspection. Lately, the Israeli Prison service has escalated humiliating and provocating all Palestinians prisoners in all jails through adapting abrupt assault and intrusion to prisoners' rooms and confiscating their possessives and belongings by which made life of prisoners instable and incontinent.

Hence, regarding the usual techniques of inspections and suppression, the organization has published a precise description of jails intrusions and inspection that executed by special security forces called Mitsada or Nakhshoon. These special forces frequently intrudes and attack prisoners rooms and tents in path of inspecting or looking for forbidden materials or escape dug-tunnels. They aggressively and inhumanly intrude rooms and tie prisoners blocking them in a place then hold a very accurate inspection to everything in the rooms. They inspect electric-light bottoms, beds, clothes, WC even TV. They open it and make sure prisoners haven't hid anything inside it.

Accordingly, the organization has clarified that number of Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli jails reached 6600 prisoner in the last year as follows:

· 35 Palestinian female prisoners.

· 9 Palestinian legislative council members.

· 270 kids and children under 18 age in which international laws forbidden arresting them.

· % 79 of prisoners is already sentenced.

· 820 prisoners have been sentenced to life imprisonment or even duple or triple life imprisonments.

· 5 Palestinian female prisoners were sentenced to life imprisonment.

· 307 prisoners arrested by the Israeli occupying forces before Oslo Agreement for Peace that was signed by Palestinian and Israeli parts in 1993. These prisoners are commonly called, old prisoners.

· 120 prisoners have eventually spent more than 20 years in the Israeli jails.

· 3 prisoners have spent more than 30 years in the Israeli jails, they are: Nael Al Barghouthy, Fakhri Al Barghouthy and Akram Mansour.

· More than 1000 prisoners are prevented to obtain the right of family visit in jails.

Vienna, April 23, 2011

No Place to Hide: Internet Tracking Probe Unveiled as New Smartphone Spy Scandal Unwinds


No Place to Hide: Internet Tracking Probe Unveiled as New Smartphone Spy Scandal Unwinds


By Tom Burghardt

April 24, 2010

As the United States morphs into a failed state, one unwilling and soon perhaps, unable, to provide for the common good even as it hands over trillions of dollars to a gang of financial brigands engorged like parasitic ticks on the wealth of others, keeping the lid on is more than just an imperial obsession: it's big business.

Earlier this month,
New Scientist reported that "a new way of working out where you are by looking at your internet connection could pin down your current location to within a few hundred metres."

Although similar techniques are already in use, they are not very accurate in terms of closing the surveillance trap. "Every computer connected to the web has an internet protocol (IP) address, but there is no simple way to map this to a physical location," reporter Jacob Aron informs us. "The current best system can be out by as much as 35 kilometres."

However, Yong Wang, "a computer scientist at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu, and colleagues at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, have used businesses and universities as landmarks to achieve much higher accuracy."

According to
New Scientist, "Wang's team used Google Maps to find both the web and physical addresses of such organisations, providing them with around 76,000 landmarks. By comparison, most other geolocation methods only use a few hundred landmarks specifically set up for the purpose."

With geolocation tracking devices embedded in smartphones (and, as we'll see below, this data is stored without their users' consent), all of which is happily turned over to authorities by telecoms (for the right price, of course!), as privacy researcher Christopher Soghoian revealed in 2009, it becomes abundantly clear that sooner than most people think they'll be no escaping Big Brother's electronic dragnet.

"The new method," Aron writes, "zooms in through three stages to locate a target computer." First, the team of public-private financed research snoops measured "the time it takes to send a data packet to the target and converts it into a distance--a common geolocation technique that narrows the target's possible location to a radius of around 200 kilometres."

Wang and his cohorts then "send data packets to the known Google Maps landmark servers in this large area to find which routers they pass through."
New Scientist reports that when "a landmark machine and the target computer have shared a router, the researchers can compare how long a packet takes to reach each machine from the router; converted into an estimate of distance, this time difference narrows the search down further."

"We shrink the size of the area where the target potentially is," Wang cheerfully explained.

"Finally," Aron writes, "they repeat the landmark search at this more fine-grained level: comparing delay times once more, they establish which landmark server is closest to the target."

"On average," we're told, "their method gets to within 690 metres of the target and can be as close as 100 metres--good enough to identify the target computer's location to within a few streets."

While
New Scientist focused their attention on how an IP address tracking tool might be a boon to advert pimps, who else might find the method "useful in certain situations"?

Tightening the Surveillance Noose

Back in December,
The Wall Street Journal reported that "few devices know more personal details about people than the smartphones in their pockets: phone numbers, current location, often the owner's real name--even a unique ID number that can never be changed or turned off."

As part of the
Journal's excellent "What They Know" series, reporters Scott Thurm and Yukari Iwatani Kane revealed that an examination of more than 100 smartphone apps for Apple's iPhone and Google's Android platforms "showed that 56 transmitted the phone's unique device ID to other companies without users' awareness or consent," 47 apps "transmitted the phone's location in some way," and "five sent age, gender and other personal details to outsiders."

Like the
New Scientist report above, the Journal focused their investigative lens on "intrusive effort[s] by online-tracking companies to gather personal data about people in order to flesh out detailed dossiers on them."

Without a doubt, such data is already being collected by various police intelligence agencies at the local, state and federal levels.

In all likelihood, smartphone geolocation data has now been added to the dossier creation mix, another component of the secret state's massive national security index called "Main Core" by investigative journalists Christopher Ketchum and Tim Shorrock.

As Ketchum reported in his 2008 piece, three unnamed former intelligence officials told him that "8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect" and, in the event of a national emergency, "could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and even detention."

We've now learned that Apple's iPhone and iPad and Google's Android smartphone platforms "constantly track users' physical location and store the data in unencrypted files that can be read by anyone with physical access to the device,"
The Register disclosed.

And with technological advances far-outstripping legal remedies to protect Americans' privacy as Soghoian wrote last week, and with Congress and the Obama administration further lowering the boom, the notion that our personal communications are off-limits to advertisers and government officials is as quaint as the concept that financial institutions should be transparent when it comes to investing our hard-earned dollars.

According to researchers Pete Warden and Alasdair Allen, who first reported their findings on the iPhone Tracker blog, the geolocation file is stored on both the iOS device and "any computers that store backups of its data," and "can be used to reconstruct a detailed snapshot of the user's comings and goings, down to the second."

The researchers aver that despite Apple's refusal to even acknowledged the existence of these files, or frankly what the firm does with the data once its been downloaded to their servers, users of iPhones and iPads are put at risk that their movements are available to any and all comers with the requisite skills to access their information.

"The most immediate problem is that this data is stored in an easily-readable form on your machine," Warden and Allen wrote.

"Any other program you run or user with access to your machine can look through it. By passively logging your location without your permission, Apple have made it possible for anyone from a jealous spouse to a private investigator to get a detailed picture of your movements."

Needless to say, such information would be a boon to police agencies seeking to "terminate with extreme prejudice" the ability of protest organizers to communicate with demonstrators, as happened during the G20 protests in Pittsburgh, as
Antifascist Calling reported in 2009.

Elliot Madison was arrested after he relayed a police order to disperse message via Twitter to demonstrators during the protests. A week later, his New York City home was raided by the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force (!) which carted off his computers and cell phone as "evidence." Madison and co-defendant Michael Wallschlaeger were criminally charged with using computers, cell phones and a police scanner to track the movements of "Pittsburgh's finest." Federal prosecutors charged the activists with "hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility, and possession of instruments of crime."

While such repressive acts may have raised eyebrows two years ago, they have now become part of the seamless panopticon spreading across the "shining city on a hill" like an invisible swarm of privacy-killing locusts.

Last week, in the wake of the smartphone tracking scandal, CNET News reported that "law enforcement agencies have known since at least last year that an iPhone or iPad surreptitiously records its owner's approximate location, and have used that geolocation data to aid criminal investigations."

Security journalist Declan McCullagh revealed that although "Apple has never publicized the undocumented feature buried deep within the software that operates iPhones and iPads," the secretive Mountain View firm acknowledged to Congress last year that "cell tower and Wi-Fi access point information" is "intermittently" collected and "transmitted to Apple" every 12 hours.

CNET reported that "phones running Google's Android OS also store location information," according to Swedish programer Magnus Eriksson. Another researcher told McCullagh that "'virtually all Android devices' send some of those coordinates back to Google."

"Among computer forensics specialists," CNET avers, "those location logs--which record nearby cell tower coordinates and time stamps and cannot easily be disabled by someone who wants to use location services--are not merely an open secret. They've become a valuable sales pitch when targeting customers in police, military, and intelligence agencies."

In other words, enterprising grifters from niche security firms servicing the secret state--or anyone willing to pay for their unique services, say a dodgy employer, a jealous spouse or a sociopathic freak for that matter--can take advantage of a smartphone's embedded location files.

CNET reported that the "U.K-based company Forensic Telecommunications Services advertises its iXAM product as able to 'extract GPS location fixes' from an iPhone 3GS including 'latitude, longitude, altitude and time'."

"Its literature boasts," McCullagh writes, that "'these are confirmed fixes--they prove that the device was definitely in that location at that time'."

"Another mobile forensics company, Cellebrite," CNET avers, even "brags that its products can pluck out geographical locations derived from both 'Wi-Fi and cell tower' signals, and a third lists Android devices as able to yield 'historical location data' too."

Just last week,
The Tech Herald disclosed that the Michigan State Police have been using a handheld device and "secretly extracting information from cell phones during traffic stops," and have refused to release information on this program to the ACLU.

The Tech Herald reports that for "nearly three years, the ACLU has attempted to get the Michigan State Police (MSP) to answer questions over their use of Cellebrite's UFED Physical Pro scanner."

"The handheld device allows police to extract data from phones and SIM memory," journalist Steve Ragan writes, and that "in addition to the normal information, such as contact lists, email, and text messages, the UFED is also able to recover hidden and deleted data."

Manufactured by security outfit Cellebrite, the company boasts that their "mobile forensics products enable extraction and analysis of invaluable evidentiary data including deleted and hidden data for military, law enforcement, governments, and intelligence agencies across the world," according to a blurb on their web site.

The ACLU charges that the device is routinely used during traffic stops and that state troopers were able to access the mobile devices without their users being aware their data was being grabbed.

In their letter to the MSP, the ACLU cautioned that "The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable searches. With certain exceptions that do not apply here," the civil liberties watchdogs averred, "a search cannot occur without a warrant in which a judicial officer determines that there is probable cause to believe that the search will yield evidence of criminal activity."

"A device that allows immediate, surreptitious intrusion into private data creates enormous risks that troopers will ignore these requirements to the detriment of the constitutional rights of persons whose cell phones are searched."

Sounds reasonable, right? The MSP responded by demanding the ACLU fork over $544,680 before they'd even consider releasing these
public documents!

But as Cryptohippie reported in their excellent study,
The Electronic Police State, "two crucial facts about the information gathered under an electronic police state are these: 1. It is criminal evidence, ready for use in a trial. 2. It is gathered universally ('preventively') and only later organized for use in prosecutions."

"In an Electronic Police State," researchers averred, "every surveillance camera recording, every email sent, every Internet site surfed, every post made, every check written, every credit card swipe, every cell phone ping... are all
criminal evidence, and all are held in searchable databases. The individual can be prosecuted whenever the government wishes."

Called a "Universal Forensic Extraction Device," Cellebrite claims their "UFED family of products is able to extract and analyze data from more than 3000 phones, including smartphones and GPS devices."

According to the firm, such tools will prove invaluable to secret state snoops. "Diving deeper into a mobile phone's memory than ever before provides them with the ability to gather data and establish connections between networks and people that is quicker and easier to arrive at."

The secret-spilling web site Cryptome has generously provided us with with Cellebrite's Smartphone PDA Spy Guide. Amongst other things, we're told that the firm's "UFED Forensics system empowers law enforcement, anti-terror and security organizations to capture critical forensic evidence from mobile phones, Smartphones and PDAs."

"UFED," we're informed, "extracts vital data such as phonebook, camera pictures, videos, audio, text messages (SMS), call logs, ESN IMEI, ICCID and IMSI information from over 1,600 handset models, including Symbian, Microsoft Mobile, Blackberry and Palm OS devices."

Think you've erased those messy call logs or text messages to your girl- or boyfriend? Better think again! With Cellebrite on the job, "the UFED can extract data from a phone, or directly from the SIM card. When extracting from phone, the UFED connects to the phone via cable, Bluetooth or infrared, and the data is read logically from the phone. It also performs a physical extraction from SIM cards, allowing extraction of additional data such as deleted SMS, ICCID, IMSI, location information and more."

We're told that the company's UFED "helps intelligence agencies widen their view and form a complete picture with access to content that can be repurposed, analyzed, and linked to information existing in databases," Main Core, or a similar national security index, perhaps?

"For us, people look like little particles..."

While digital technologies advance by leaps and bounds, the Empire's political-economic requirements are determining how new devices will be used, who has access to the data points and, once our personal details are extracted--by corporations or shadowy intel outfits (public and private) who do their bidding--what happens to it once it's been stored in giant data farms.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers are conducting a study that "has tracked 60 families living in campus quarters via sensors and software on their smartphones--recording their movements, relationships, moods, health, calling habits and spending."

"In this wealth of intimate detail," reporter Robert Lee Hotz writes, MIT researcher Alex Pentland "is finding patterns of human behavior that could reveal how millions of people interact at home, work and play."

According to preliminary findings, "the data can predict with uncanny accuracy where people are likely to be at any given time in the future," and the data "can reveal subtle symptoms of mental illness, foretell movements in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and chart the spread of political ideas as they move through a community much like a contagious virus, research shows."

"Advances in statistics, psychology and the science of social networks are giving researchers the tools to find patterns of human dynamics too subtle to detect by other means," the
Journal reports.

At Northeastern University in Boston for example, "network physicists discovered just how predictable people could be by studying the travel routines of 100,000 European mobile-phone users."

"After analyzing more than 16 million records of call date, time and position," Hotz reports, "the researchers determined that, taken together, people's movements appeared to follow a mathematical pattern," and that given enough information about past movements, scientists averred "they could forecast someone's future whereabouts with 93.6% accuracy."

Chillingly, Northeastern physicist Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, who conducted the study, told the
Journal: "For us, people look like little particles that move in space and that occasionally communicate with each other. We have turned society into a laboratory where behavior can be objectively followed."

Ruthless "objectivity" such as this have real world consequences, not that it matters to those whose butter their bread by bludgeoning our privacy and cratering our political rights.

"As a reward when the [MIT] experiment was done," the
Journal laconically observed, "the students were allowed to keep the smartphones used to monitor them."