THE POSTS MOSTLY BY GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

THE POSTS MOSTLY BY GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

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Boston artist Steve Mills - realistic painting

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Thousands attend Syria protesters' funerals


Thousands attend Syria protesters' funerals

AlJazeera.net

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Mourners call for overthrow of President Assad a day after at least 30 demonstrators were killed by security forces.

April 18, 2011

Tens of thousands of Syrians have attended the funerals for protesters killed in the central city of Homs, chanting slogans demanding the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, the country's president.
Rights activists say security forces killed at least 25 pro-democracy protesters in Homs on Sunday night as anti-government demonstrations flared across the country, claiming up to 30 lives.
Witnesses said mourners chanted "From alleyway to alleyway, from house to house, we want to overthrow you, Bashar," and "Either freedom or death, the people want to topple this regime".
The protest was the largest to hit the strategically important city, Syria's third largest, since protests in the country began one month ago.
A protester told Al Jazeera that the first killing took place after evening prayers on Sunday when a group of around 40 demonstrators gathered outside the Bab al-Sibaa mosque chanting "freedom".
The protester, who gave his name as Abu Haider, said seven cars pulled up to the protesters and men in civilian clothes jumped out and opened fire on the crowd without warning.
"First we were calling for reforms, now we're calling for regime change," he said. "No one will accept the death of the martyrs."
More clashes feared
Al Jazeera's correspondent Rula Amin, in Damascus, reported that the situation in Homs was very tense on Monday.
"People are complaining that many of the wounded are not going to the hospital, they fear that the security forces will pick them up from their hospital bed," she said.

"There is also a shortage of blood according to the people we have been talking to.

"People are concerned that clashes might erupt following the [funeral] processions."
She said there was also tension in the nearby town of Talbiseh, where five of the deaths occurred.
"The government says that gunmen had been going near the highway blocking the road.

"When security forces went to control the situation, they were attacked by the gunmen. One policeman was killed and another one injured, and three gunmen were killed."
The government and the opposition were trading blame over the heightened tensions and deadly clashes.
"The [accounts of] the government and the protesters vary. It is very hard to get information from there because there are no journalists there to verify what is happening," our correspondent said.
The latest clashes came two days after Assad said Syria's decades-long emergency laws would be lifted within a week and also promised a number of other reforms.

Despite the apparent concessions, activists had called for protests across nationwide on Sunday, which was Syria's Independence Day, commemorating the departure of the last French soldier 65 years ago.

The Damascus Declaration, an opposition umbrella group, called for peaceful protests in all cities and abroad to "bolster Syria's popular uprising and ensure its continuity".

In a statement posted on its website, the Damascus Declaration said the government was responsible for killing and wounding hundreds of Syrians who have been exercising their legitimate rights in the past month.

"The regime alone stands fully responsible for the blood of martyrs and all that will happen next in the country,'' the statement said.

Iraq snapshot - April 18, 2011




Iraq snapshot - April 18, 2011

The Common Ills

April 18, 2011

Monday, April 18, 2011.  Chaos and violence continue, three cities witness attacks on protesters today, Nouri refuses to allow Camp Ashraf to bury their 34 dead, Iraq still has no vice presidents, Iraq still has not security ministers, and more.

UPI reports approximately 700 Iraqis protested today in Mosul calling for the departure of US troops with Sunni tribal leaders among those participating. Mujbil al-Assafy informs Aswat al-Iraq, "A delegation, comprised of 76 tribal chieftains and leading personalities and religious men, has headed today (Monday) from Falluja to Mosul, to share in the peaceful sit-in demonstration in Mosul." However, they note that at least 40 people from Falluja were not allowed -- by security forces -- to enter Mosul and take part in the demonstrations.   Aswat al-Iraq explains that protesters today joined protesters who had been present for the last ten days staging a sit-in.  This follows a protest in  other news, protesters in Sulaimaniya yesterday which turned violent when activists were fired on by Kurdish forces. Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) reported fifty people were injured (forty-two were protesters, eight were security forces) and, "Health officials told CNN that seven protesters were hit in the legs by gunshots but all are in stable condition. The unrest in the Kurdish city, starting since February 17, has killed at least seven people and injured more than 250 health officials said." Reuters noted that seven of the security forces injured were suffering "exposure to tear gas" according to "Rekawt Hama Rasheed, general directof of the health office in Sulaimaniya." Shamal Aqrawi, Namo Abdulla, Ahmed Rasheed and Elizabeth Fullerton further add two journalists were wounded in the security's assault and quotes Hawalati's editor Rahm Gharib stating, "Journalist Chunour Mohammed was shot while trying to take a photo of a wounded protester. She got a bullet in her hand. We denounce this act by the authorities."  AhlulBayt News Agency reports that, according to the director of Emergency Hospital, the number wounded is 86 -- eleven of which were Kurdish security.  That was Sunday's protest.  Protests continued in Sulaimaniya today.  Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) reports the protests continued with a little less than 1,500 activists demonstrating when Kurdish security forces moved in using tear gas, live bullets, and batons: "Dr. Raykot Hama Rahid, the director of the health department in the city of Sulaimaniya, said that 99 people were wounded: 66 riot police and 33 protesters.  Among the wounded were 16 protesters who were shot in the legs, he said."  Aswat al-Iraq had a correspondent on scene who stated, "A few minutes ago, scores of police, anti-riot squad and Asayesh forces stormed al-Saray square in central Sulaimaniya to disperse protestors, who have been staging a sit-in since February 17. A fire erupted in the stage made by the protestors to deliver speeches."  Reuters notes, "Popular discontent in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region has been directed at a regional government dominated for decades by two political parties whose former guerrilla armies have been converted into security forces."  Aswat al-Iraq notes protesters in Arbil today were attacked and twenty-two people were left injured.  An eye witness is quoted stating, "Gunmen wearing civilian clothes clashed with the students gathered near the High Education Ministry in the city of Arbil." However, the police chief is denying that there was any clash or, for that matter, any protest.
Baghdad was slammed by bombings this morning. Among the bombings were two at the entrance to the Green Zone. BBC News notes of the 2 suicide car bombings, "A BBC correspondent in Baghdad says these are the first suicide bombings in the capital this year." CNN adds, "The casualties included Iraqi security forces and civilians, according to the ministry." AFP explains, "The bombs went off as a queue of cars was waiting to enter the area - also known as the Green Zone -- where many foreign embassies and Iraqi government offices are based." Citing security spokesperson Qassim al-Moussawi, Reuters counts 5 dead and fifteen injured and adds, "In a statement, the media office of the Iraqi parliament said one of the explosions hit the motorcade of Amjad Abdul Hameed, an adviser to parliamentary speaker Osama al-Nujaifi. Hameed was not injured but one of his bodyguards was killed and three others were wounded, the statement said." Hamid Ahmed (AP) offers, "The blasts marked the start of a violent day in the Iraqi capital, where a another bombing and a jewelry heist left two more dead and 13 wounded." Michael S. Schmidt (New York Times) adds, "The explosions began around 8 a.m., when an improvised explosive device was detonated near Baghdad University, injuring two people. Sounds of gunfire erupted throughout the city and a few minutes later a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb at the Green Zone checkpoint. Gunfire rang out again and a few minutes later another suicide bomber detonated a car bomb at the checkpoint." In addition, AFP notes, "A separate attack involving two roadside bombs in the up-scale residential neighbourhood of Jadriyah in east Baghdad left five more people wounded, three of them security force members, the interior ministry official added." Schmidt makes a silly claim regarding violence in Baghdad and you can read Dar Addustour for only way in which Schmidt's wrong. On NPR's hourly news feed, Kelly McEvers noted the Green Zone attack, that most of the wounded are said to be Iraqi security forces, that "the bombers were waiting in line" and "the blasts set many nearby buildings on fire."
Alsumaria TV reports that Osama al-Nujaifi, Speaker of Parliament, declared in a press converence today that if the government cannot resolve the current problems (corruption, imprisonment and other issues which started the protests this year) within the 100 day period . . .. "if the Cabinet fails to provide people with their rights and to deal with the services, unemployed, security and foreign relations files. . . therefore this partnership shall not last for a long time and there will be demands to hold new elections."  The 100 days is supposed to end June 7th.  But then again, Iraq held national elections March 7, 2010 which was supposed to create a new government; however, all these months after the election, they still have no vice presidents and no full Cabinet.   Al Mada reports that attempts to renominate Iraq's current Sunni vice president Tarek al-Hashemi appear to have failed this weekend with Iraqiya failing to find the necessary support in Parliament. In addition, the National Alliance's Sami al-Askari notes the ongoing controversy regarding whether or not al-Hashemi impersonated a vice president by visiting areas as Iraq's v.p. Technically, the v.p.'s ended months ago. However, Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, with Parliament's knowledge, asked the two to stay on as vice president until Iraq could find two or three new vice presidents.  Over the weekend, Alsumaria TV reported that Talabani "refused to appoint a Turkman candidate for the position of Vice President, an Iraqi Turkman MP said on Friday." Iraq still hasn't settled on their vice presidents all this time later. Three appears the number they'll be going for this time round. (They had two from 2006 until the present -- one Shi'ite, one Sunni.)  Along with no vice presidents, Al Mada notes Iraq still has no security ministers. Nouri was named prime minister-designate in November and moved to prime minister in December. To make that move, per the Constitution, the designate has to propose a Cabinet and Parliament has to sign off on each nominee. Nouri was given a pass and waived through despite not having a full Cabinet. All these months later, it's fair to call that decision a political failure.
On things that still aren't resolved, there's been no national census, there's been no referendum on Kirkuk. Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution required the referendum to be held by the end of 2007. Nouri was prime minister than (as he is now) and couldn't live up to his own country's constitution then or since.  Sunday Rawya Rageh filed a report for Al Jazeera:


Rawya Rageh: Jabir Karim is an Arab whose family has called Kirkuk home for generations. But now he says they're being uprooted from a city increasingly coming under Kurdish control.


Jabir Karim: We live in constant fear. The Kurdish Asayish police rounds up people with no charges. I've been detained. My son's been detained since 2006. And I don't know where he is. It's like we're being told leave or your homes will be raided, you will disappear.


Rawya Rageh: In this ethnically mixed city, tension is on the rise again. Many Arabs say Kurds who've been brutalized and replaced under Saddam Hussein for decades are actively trying to change Kirkuk's demographics in their favor. Entire brand new Kurdish neighborhoods are being built while some Arab families claim they're being intimdated into leaving ahead of a census that's supposed to help resolve the city's fate. The squabble repeatedly delaying the country's first full population count in a quarter of a century. Despite the demographic shifts that have been taking place here for years, bridges like this one are a symbolic reminder of how different groups have been trying to co-exist in Kirkuk for generations -- even if Kurds live on one side and Arabs live on the other surrounded by reminders of their common heritage. In the main market, vendors holler in the different languages of the community here. And in neighborhoods across the city, tales of unshaken attachment. Ahmed Ali is a Kurd whose family was expelled from Kirkuk three times in the 1980s under Saddam's Arabization policies. Yet, they kept coming back.


Ahmed Ali: Kirkuk is like a mother. All our life is tied to it. We were born here. Married here. It's like everything to us. How can we forfeit it? It's a part of our soul.


Rawya Rageh: It's not just about inherited birth rights to this land. At stake too is the wealth beneath it. And as long as the census keeps getting delayed so does the Constitutionally stipulated referendum to determine Kirkuk's status.


Jabir Karim: We don't care who ends up ruling us -- Arab, Kurd or Christian. All we want of him is to be just.


Ahmed Ali: If it goes to the Kurds, no problem. Arabs, no problem. Or even the Christians. The most important thing is stability.


Rawya Rageh: Hopes for normalcy for a city that's known too little of it for too long. Rawya Rageh, Al Jazeera, Kirkuk.


In news of other failures, the rationing card system. This is a federal program, not a regional one. It is supposed to come with federal oversight. Waleed Ibrahim (Reuters) reported this weekend that nearly sixty million dollars (US) in cooking oil will be used to feed livestock due to the fact that it has passed the use-by date for humans. It was stored outside for three years. (It actually may not be safe for animals.) How did that happen? Iraq' current prime minister is Nouri al-Maliki and good for him that he wasn't the prime minister in 2008 because this would be on his -- Oh, wait. He's been prime minister since the spring of 2006. This is on his head. Dar Addustour reported a Parliament commission (Commission on the Truth) held a press conference with their chair Ahmed al-Alwani speaking and they declared the failure derived from people assuming that the oil was transferred to stores and distributed to citizens when it wasn't. Al Rafidayn reminded that the country has seen waves of protests in the last months over a number of issues including the deterioration in services with the rationing program specifically mentioned. Ahmed al-Alwani tells the paper that the Ministry of Commerce has been served with a large fine.  In other news of Parliament, Nayla Razzouk (Bloomberg News) reports that Osama al-Nufaifi announced today that the long promised cuts in "pay and benefits of top officials" will finally be discussed in Parliament April 26th with the next being to "pass one law or three separate ones". The proposed cuts are in response to the ongoing protests.
Saturday David Ali (Al Mada) reported that "political sources close to the decision-making report Baghdad and Washington have agreed to extend the US military presence in Iraq until after the end of 2001. The Iraqi parties are now said to be seeking a way to save face when presenting this to the Iraqi people." Today Reuters notes, "Some Iraqi soldiers are worried about the U.S. troops' withdrawal from Iraq at the end of the year and say the country's security forces need more training to use the modern tanks and jets it has brought."  The editorial board of the Albany-Times Union notes today, "The envelopes, please. More than eight years after the United States went to war in Iraq, and heavens knows how many more months -- or, perish the thought, years -- before the last of the troops come home, there are some awards to be given out."  Use link to find out about the 'honors' being handed out.

Back to the violence today, in news from outside Baghdad and Mosul and Sulaimaniya, Reuters notes that a Falluja sticky bombing left four people and, dropping back to yesterday, 2 Ramadi roadside bombings resulted in three people being left injured.                                                 
The Tehran Times reports that Ali Larijani, Speaker of Parliament, delivered a speech to the legislative body including, "The US had better not make a further mockery of its hollow slogan of supporting human rights by pressuring Iraq over its clampdown on the members of the Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO)." 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) reports that the dead included journalist Asieh Rakhshani who has family in California. Reporters Without Borders noted that she and journalist Saba Haftbaradaran were both killed.  The UN News Center reported over the weekend, "The United Nations mission in Iraq today voiced its deep concern at the recent events that led to the deaths of 34 people at a camp housing Iranian exiles, noting that it has repeatedly urged the Government to refrain from the use of force. The Iraqi military operation on 8 April at Camp Ashraf, located north of Baghdad, also left dozens of people injured. UNAMI (the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq) issued the following statement:

UNAMI reiterates that efforts are needed to stop violence and aim at peacefully resolving all issues.
UNAMI calls for restraint and respect for humanitarian and human rights and urges the Iraqi authorities to provide humanitarian assistance in this regard and access to medical services.
UNAMI's mandate includes the promotion of human rights in Iraq, and the Mission's Human Rights Office regularly assesses the situation in and around the camp. The UN continues to advocate that Camp Ashraf residents be protected from forcible deportation, expulsion or repatriation contrary to the non-refoulement principle.
Over the past few years the UNAMI and the High Commissioner on Human Rights have been closely monitoring the situation in Camp Ashraf, exploring possible assistance in reaching a resolution that is consistent with Iraq's sovereignty rights, and international law. UNAMI is committed to continue monitoring the situation in the Camp.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch also issued statements concerning the attack and the continued threats on Camp Ashraf. By contrast, Fars News Agency reports, "A senior Iranian military official voiced Iran's pleasure in Iraq's confrontation against the terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), and urged Baghdad to expel the terrorist group from Iraq's soil as soon as possible." 34 unarmed residents killed and that's something to applaud? And Iran wonders why no one takes it seriously on the international stage. Jane Arraf (Christian Science Monitor) observes, "The United States, which is reluctant to publicly criticize Iraqi authorities, has said it is 'concerned' by the report of the deaths." Meanwhile what is Camp Ashraf supposed to do with their dead? AFP reports, "Iraq-based Iranian rebels who lost 34 members in a clash with the Iraqi army this month were barred from burying the dead at a cemetery inside their base, spokesmen for both sides said on Sunday. The People's Mujahedeen of Iran (PMOI) wanted to bury the bodies at a graveyard within Camp Ashraf, which houses around 3,500 opponents of the clerical regime in Tehran, but were prevented from doing so by Iraqi soldiers responsible for securing the camp."  Today former US Attorney General Michael Mukasey and former FBI director Louis J. Freeh (at Time) call out the response from the White House:
On both occasions, the U.S. has lamented the violence but has failed to take effective action, perhaps in its haste to leave Iraq. Until recently, there was a U.S. military forward operating base called FOB Grizzly adjoining Camp Ashraf. But it has been closed, and this also brought the withdrawal of the U.N.'s observation mission. In the most recent assault, American soldiers were in or near the camp shortly before the attack but happened to withdraw before Iraqi forces proceeded. And sadly, in each case, President Obama and the Secretaries of State and Defense have responded lamely after these violations of humanitarian law by the Iraqi regime. A State Department statement acknowledged that the "crisis and the loss of life was initiated by the government of Iraq and the Iraqi military" but said that the U.S. government has done nothing more than "urge" the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki "to avoid violence and show restraint." Mark Toner, the State Department's acting deputy spokesman, helpfully added on April 12 that "we do need to be mindful that this is a sovereign matter for the government of Iraq" -- a posture of deference that will hardly shake the al-Maliki government to its senses.

Thursday US Senator John Kerry, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued this statement, "United Nations confirmation of the scope of last week's tragedy at Camp Ashraf is deeply disturbing and the Iraqi military action is simply unacceptable.  Corrective action is imperative. First, the Iraqis must stop the bleeding and refrain from any further military action against Camp Ashraf.  Second, the Iraqi government has announced a full investigation into the massacre and it must be thorough and serious.  The investigation must hold accountable the responsible parties and ensure that there will be no sequel to these horrific events.  Third, the current situation at the camp is untenable.  The United States must redouble efforts with all the relevant parties – including the Iraqi government, the United Nations, the European Union, and the Mujahedin-e Khalq itself – to seek a peaceful and durable solution, and to find permanent homes for the residents of Camp Ashraf."
Turning to the United States where Linton Weeks (NPR) is left to wonder what became of the peace movement?  Excerpt:
"It's a far cry from the Bush years, when hundreds of thousands or millions marched against the war," David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute, writes on the Britannica website. He asks the same question: Whatever happened to the anti-war movement?
In the post, he points out that American protests against wars seemed to stop the moment Barack Obama was elected president in 2008. "Maybe anti-war organizers assumed that they had elected the man who would stop the war," he observes.
But the wars have continued. More than two-thirds of Americans have opposed military intervention in Libya, Boaz reports, and nearly two-thirds of Americans -- a number that is up dramatically since early 2010 -- believe the war in Afghanistan hasn't been worth fighting. "Where are their leaders?" Boaz wants to know. "Where are the senators pushing for withdrawal? Where are the organizations?"
He concludes that the anti-war activity in the United States -- and around the world -- a few years ago "was driven as much by antipathy to George W. Bush as by actual opposition to war and intervention."
To buttress his assertions, Boaz cites a recently published study of anti-war protesters. The research was conducted by Michael Heaney of the University of Michigan and Fabio Rojas of Indiana University. It concludes that the anti-war movement in America evaporated because Democrats -- inspired to protest by their anti-Republican feelings -- stopped protesting once the Democratic Party achieved success in Congress in 2006 and then in the White House in 2008.
"As president, Obama has maintained the occupation of Iraq and escalated the war in Afghanistan," Heaney, an assistant professor of organizational studies and political science, said in a news release. "The anti-war movement should have been furious at Obama's 'betrayal' and reinvigorated its protest activity."
Instead, Heaney continued, "attendance at anti-war rallies declined precipitously and financial resources available to the movement have dissipated. The election of Obama appeared to be a demobilizing force on the anti-war movement, even in the face of his pro-war decisions."
               
All of this could have been avoided if Obama had just followed through on a few of his campaign promises. But now it's too late. He may think that he can win-back his former supporters by throwing them a bone in the last year of his term, but it will work. The damage is done. No amount of posturing or grandiloquence will close Guantanamo, stop the killing of women and children in Afghanistan, bring the troops home from Iraq, provide due process for terror suspects, or end the spying on American citizens. I'm not saying Obama is a bad man, but he is thoroughly unprincipled. And because that matters to many of his supporters, his chances for reelection are pretty slim.
Of the many people I know who voted for Obama, every one of them is disappointed, disgusted or angry. My wife -- who was an enthusiastic supporter during the campaign and who cried on the day he was elected -- now rushes to turn off the television whenever he appears on the screen. She won't listen to him on the radio either. Just the sound of his voice drives her crazy. Can you blame her? She says she won't make the same mistake again and I believe her.
In sentencing news, Faleh Hassan Al-Maleki has received a sentence. Lisa Halverstadt (Arizona Republic) reports the 50-year-old Iraqi American was sentenced to 34 and one-half years by Judge Roland Steinie following Al-Maliki's murder of his daughter.
Killed his daughter? Dropping back to the November 3, 2009 snapshot:

In the US, Noor Faleh Almaleki has died. The 20-year-old Iraqi woman was intentionally run over October 20th (see the October 21st snapshot) while she and Amal Edan Khalaf were running errands (the latter is the mother of Noor's boyfriend and she was left injured in the assault). Police suspected Noor's father, Faleh Hassan Almaleki, of the assault and stated the probable motive was that he felt Noor had become "too westernized." As noted in the October 30th snapshot, Faleh Hassan Almaleki was finally arrested after going on the lamb -- first to Mexico, then flying to London where British authorities refused him entry and he was sent back to the US and arrested in Atlanta. Karan Olson and CNN note that the judge has set the man's bail at $5 million. Philippe Naughton (Times of London) adds, "Noor died yesterday, having failed to recover consciousness after the attack. The other woman, Amal Khalaf, was also seriously injured but is expected to survive. "

Lisa Halverstadt reports:

Later, when Steinle spoke, he said the sentencing was one of the most difficult in his six years as a judge.
Noor Al-Maleki's murder was without honor, Steinle said. She was like any other 20-year-old woman whose desire for independence caused tension with her parents. Her father reacted with hatred rather than understanding, Steinle said.
He recounted lessons from Buddhism, Islam and Christianity, which preach forgiveness and compassion.
"For someone to say this crime was committed to restore someone's honor, they really do not understand what religion is all about," Steinle said.

US occupation in Afghanistan hit by string of bombings


US occupation in Afghanistan hit by string of bombings


By Bill Van Auken

WSWS, April 19, 2011

A series of bombings have signaled the beginning of a spring offensive by the Afghan resistance forces, while inflicting the greatest single-day casualties on US-led occupation forces in nearly a year.

Two separate attacks last Saturday claimed the lives of eight NATO soldiers, the deadliest day for the occupation since June of last year.

The bloodiest attack was at a desert base near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. A man wearing the uniform of the Afghan army walked into a room where about 40 US and Afghan troops were meeting and detonated an explosive vest he was wearing. Five US soldiers were killed together with four Afghan troops and an interpreter. A number of others were wounded.

A spokesman for the Taliban said that the attacker was a soldier who had been in contact with the armed resistance for a "long time" and had been assigned to the base where the bombing took place about a month ago.

Three more soldiers were killed Saturday by an improvised explosive device in the south of the country. While NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) did not announce the nationality of the dead, the US has the vast majority of troops in the area.

High-profile attacks continued on Monday, with an assault on the Afghan Defense Ministry, one of Kabul’s most heavily guarded buildings, which sits adjacent to the presidential palace. There another man wearing an Afghan army uniform and an explosive vest—and equipped with a Defense Ministry pass—managed to breach security. He opened fire in the ministry offices, killing two people and injuring seven, including high-level officials. He was shot dead before he could detonate the explosives. Among the wounded were an assistant to the defense minister and the secretary of the Afghan army’s chief of staff.

The Taliban took credit for this attack as well, announcing that its intended targets had been the Afghan defense minister and his visiting French counterpart, Gerard Longuet. After the bombing, Longuet cancelled a scheduled meeting at the ministry.

In a separate incident Monday, a roadside bomb killed seven Afghan police officers in the Ghazni province of central Afghanistan.

The attack on the ministry marked the tenth suicide bombing or bombing attempt in barely a week. In one of these attacks, a man wearing a police uniform managed to sneak into the heavily guarded police compound in Kandahar city and kill the provincial police chief, Khan Mohammad Mujahid.

US and Afghan officials tried to minimize the significance of the attacks, claiming that they were an indication that the armed resistance groups were unable to mount major battles against the US-led forces and therefore were forced to resort to assassinations.

"The insurgents took significant losses in the past year, 2010, and what they will try to do is re-infiltrate those areas," ISAF spokesman Lt. Col. John Dorrian told the media. "One of the ways they will attempt to do this is through assassinations."

The success of these attacks, however, calls into question the central contention of the Pentagon and the Obama administration: that US-trained Afghan security forces will be ready to take over from the 100,000 American and 30,000 other foreign troops the task of suppressing the armed resistance.

Supposedly, this process is set to begin in July, with the Obama administration promising to withdraw an unspecified number of American soldiers and Marines.

Last Friday, in an interview with the Associated Press, President Barack Obama refused to give any indication of how many troops would be withdrawn.

"I’m not going to give a number yet," said Obama. "Gen. [David] Petraeus is providing me with an assessment. Obviously all these things depend on the conditions on the ground." While promising the troop withdrawal would be more than "just a token gesture," he reiterated that he was waiting for "Gen. Petraeus to give me a clear recommendation."

Clearly, the US military brass, which remains convinced that the correct application of sufficient American fire power and the execution of the right set of counterinsurgency tactics can defeat the Afghan resistance, will set the agenda, meaning that there will be no major reduction of the US occupation. The military command wants to maintain present troop levels indefinitely.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared last month that the onset of Afghanistan’s traditional fighting season would be the "acid test" for the Obama administration’s "surge" of troops into the nearly 10-year-old US war.

The warmer weather in Afghanistan allows the Afghan resistance to cross through mountain passes from sanctuaries on the Pakistan border and launch attacks. The Pentagon and US commanders in Afghanistan have claimed that the "surge," which saw the Obama administration pour 30,000 more US troops into the country last year, has fundamentally changed the strategic situation, making it impossible for the so-called insurgents to make headway in their traditional strongholds of Helmand and Kandahar in the south, where the bulk of the American forces were deployed.

"We start this year in a very different place from last year," Gen. Petraeus told the Washington Post. In an article published Saturday, the Post provided some insight into the "success" of the US occupation in the south, which it said was the "result of intense fighting and the use of high-impact weapons systems not normally associated with the protect-the-population counterinsurgency mission."

It described the attack on one village, Tarok Kolache, upon which the US military dropped 25 tons of explosives. The battalion commander who directed the offensive bragged that he had turned it into "a parking lot." According to the Post, "the unit went on to flatten parts of three other nearby villages."

Whatever temporary peace may be bought by such scorched earth tactics in the south—Petraeus described the supposed gains as "fragile and reversible"—US officers acknowledge that the resistance is making gains in the east, resuming control over areas evacuated by the American military.

Meanwhile, the spiraling hostility of the Afghan population toward foreign occupation continues to erupt into bloody clashes.

A protest Monday over the arrest by US-led occupation troops of religious scholars accused of being insurgents turned into a mass demonstration numbering at least 3,000 in the town of Charikar, about 30 miles north of Kabul. The crowd blocked the Kabul—Mazar-i-Sharif for several hours.

Police and troops fired on the demonstration, killing three people and wounding another 25.

In what appears to reflect growing frustration with US policy in both Afghanistan and the region, the government of Pakistan has launched a high-level initiative to broker a peace deal between the Taliban and other armed resistance groups and the government of US-backed President Hamid Karzai.

Last weekend, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, the country’s military intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha and the head of the army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, traveled jointly to Kabul for talks with the Afghan government.

The two governments agreed to set up a joint commission for "reconciliation" in Afghanistan.

"A war in Afghanistan can destabilize Pakistan and vice versa," said the Pakistani Prime Minister Gilani. "We are firmly supporting the strategy of reconciliation and we are with our brother Pakistan," he added.

For his part, Karzai described the talks as "a fundamental departure from our meetings in the past."

Coming at a time that is universally described as the most acrimonious in terms of US-Pakistani relations since September 11, 2001, when US officials threatened to attack Pakistan, the initiative appears to be an attempt to undercut Washington’s policy in the region.

As the New York Times noted: "The Americans have been coaxing the Afghan and Pakistani leaderships to talk to each other, but not at the cost of keeping the United States out of the loop, or of concocting solutions that are against American interests."

These "interests" are understood within Pakistan to include a permanent US military presence in Afghanistan for the purpose of exerting American hegemony over the energy resources of—and pipeline routes from—the Caspian Basin and countering the influence of both China and Pakistan itself.

Speaking on Monday after a meeting with a US congressional delegation led by House Speaker John Boehner, Prime Minister Gilani reiterated Pakistan’s demand for a halt to CIA drone attacks in the tribal areas near the Afghan border.

The Obama administration has more than doubled the number of these attacks over the last year, killing at least 670 people in over 100 separate strikes. This slaughter from the air has provoked rising popular anger throughout Pakistan.

The Pakistani daily Dawn reported Monday that, in a ratcheting up of pressure on Washington, the Pakistani government will halt supplies passing through Pakistan to US-led troops in Afghanistan for two days, on April 23 and 24. The reason given for the blockade is a sit-in demonstration called in Peshawar by a political party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (Pakistan Movement for Justice), to protest the drone attacks.

Citing government sources, Dawn reported that "the federal and provincial government decided to stop NATO oil tankers and food supplies during the protests to avoid any incidents of violence."

CUBA-ΤΟ ΔΡΑΜΑ ΣΥΝΕΧΙΖΕΤΑΙ

CUBA-ΤΟ ΔΡΑΜΑ ΣΥΝΕΧΙΖΕΤΑΙ

***BREAKING NEWS***
Sara Martha Fonseca and family beaten by Castro led mobs

Sara Martha Fonseca
Sources have informed us that Jorge Luis Garcia Perez Antúnez is reporting from Cuba that opposition leader Sara Martha Fonseca, along with her husband and two children, were attacked by Castro State Security led mobs and brutally beaten. The beating came as a consequence of a sign Sara Martha placed on the front of her home that read: "Down with the Communist Party."
Due to the difficulty in obtaining information from Cuba, this report has not yet been confirmed. We will provide more information as it becomes available.

The Repression in Bahrain


April 19, 2011

Attack on the Shia

The Repression in Bahrain

By PATRICK COCKBURN
Bahraini government forces backed by Saudi Arabian troops are destroying mosques and places of worship of the Shia majority in the island kingdom in a move likely to exacerbate religious hatred across the Muslim world.
"So far they have destroyed seven Shia mosques and about 50 religious meeting houses," said Ali al-Aswad, an MP in the Bahraini parliament.
He said Saudi soldiers, part of the 1,000-strong contingent that entered Bahrain last month, had been seen by witnesses helping demolish Shia mosques and shrines in the Sunni-ruled kingdom.
Mohammed Sadiq, of the Justice for Bahrain organization, said the most famous of the Shia shrines destroyed was that of a revered Bahraini Shia spiritual leader, Sheikh Abdul Amir al-Jamri, who died in 2006. A photograph taken by activists shows the golden dome of the shrine lying on the ground and later being taken away on the back of a lorry. On the walls of Shia mosques that have been desecrated, graffiti has been scrawled praising the Sunni King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa and insulting the Shia.
The attack on Shia places of worship has provoked a furious reaction among the 250 million Shia community, particularly in Iran and Iraq, where Shia are in a majority, and in Lebanon where they are the largest single community.
The Shia were already angry at the ferocious repression by Bahraini security forces of the pro-democracy movement, which had sought to be non-sectarian. After the monarchy had rejected meaningful reform, the wholly Sunni army and security forces started to crush the largely Shia protests on 15 and 16 March.
The harshness of the government repression is provoking allegations of hypocrisy against Washington, London and Paris. Their mild response to human rights abuses and the Saudi Arabian armed intervention in Bahrain is in stark contrast to their vocal concern for civilians in Libya.
The US and Britain have avoided doing anything that would destabilize Saudi Arabia and the Sunni monarchies in the Gulf, to which they are allied. They are worried about Iran taking advantage of the plight of fellow Shia, although there is no evidence that Iran has any role in fomenting protests despite Bahraini government claims to the contrary. The US has a lot to lose because its Fifth Fleet, responsible for the Gulf and the north of the Indian Ocean, is based in Bahrain.
Sunni-Shia hostility in the Muslim world is likely to deepen because of the demolition of Shia holy places in Bahrain. Shia leaders recall that it was the blowing up of the revered Shia shrine of al-Askari in Samarra, Iraq, by al-Qa'ida in 2006 that provoked a sectarian civil war between Sunni and Shia in which tens of thousands died. They see fundamentalist Wahhabi doctrine, upheld by the state in Saudi Arabia, as being behind the latest sectarian assault and attempt to keep the Shia as second-class citizens. Mr Sadiq believes Saudi troops are behind the attacks on mosques and shrines. "What is happening comes from the ideology of Wahhabism which is against shrines," he said. To the Wahhabi, the Shia are as heretical as Christians. Mr Aswad said soldiers in Saudi uniforms had been seen attending the destruction of Shia religious sites.
Yousif al-Khoei, who heads a Shia charitable foundation, said he could "confirm that reports of desecration of Shia graves, shrines and mosques and hussainiyas [religious meeting houses] in Bahrain are genuine and we are concerned that Saudi troops, who believe that shrines are un-Islamic and are trying to enforce that Wahhabi doctrine on the Shia of Bahrain, will undoubtedly result in heightened sectarian tensions."
Some 499 people in Bahrain are known to have been detained during the current unrest and many are believed to have been tortured. Four who died in detention this month showed signs of severe abuse and appeared to have been beaten to death.
In the case of Ali Isa Ibrahim Saqer, who had turned himself in to the security forces after threats to detain his family if he did not do so, photographs showed signs of whipping and beating. The Bahraini human rights activist who photographed the body was later detained and accused of faking the picture, but the same injuries were witnessed by the New York-based Human Rights Watch.
There are continuing arbitrary arrests of people who took part in the pro-democracy protests that began on 14 February. Even waving a Bahraini flag is considered an offence, and a doctor who was shown on television shedding tears over the body of a dead protester was detained.
The aim of government repression is evidently to terrorize the Shia and permanently crush the protest movement. Doctors who treated injured demonstrators have been arrested and on  April 15 the authorities detained a lawyer, Mohammed al-Tajer, who defended protesters in court. Human Rights Watch says the families of many of those detained have no word on what has happened to them. The authorities do not seem concerned about providing plausible accounts of how detainees died. In the case of Mr Saqer, who was detained on 3 April and whose body was released six days later, the government said he had "created chaos" in the detention centre and had died while the disturbance was being quelled.
Human Rights Watch, which saw his body during the ritual before he was buried in his home village of Sehla on 10 April, said "his body showed signs of severe physical abuse. The left side of his face showed a large patch of bluish skin with a reddish-purple area near his left temple and a two-inch cut to the left of his eye. Lash marks crisscrossed his back, some reaching to his front right side. Blue bruises covered much of the back of his calves, thighs, and buttocks, as well as his right elbow and hip. The tops of his feet were blackened, and lacerations marked his ankles and wrists."
The fighting in Libya and unrest elsewhere in the Arab world has drawn attention away from Bahrain, and the authorities have also arrested pro-democracy journalists and prevented several foreign journalists entering the country.

URI AVERY-the annexation of Israel by the West Bank settlers

Doing Whatever They Want

The Settler State

By URI AVNERY
The other day, the almighty General Security Service (Shabak, formerly Shin Bet) needed a new boss. It is a hugely important job, because no minister ever dares to contradict the advice of the Shabak chief in cabinet meetings.
There was an obvious candidate, known only as J.  But at the last moment, the settlers’ lobby was mobilized. As director of the “Jewish department”  J. had put some Jewish terrorists in prison. So his candidature was rejected and Yoram Cohen, a kippah-wearing darling of the settlers was appointed instead.
That happened last month. Just before that, The National Security Council also needed a new chief. Under pressure from the settlers, General Yaakov Amidror, formerly the highest kippah-wearing officer in the army, a man of openly ultra-ultra nationalist views, got the job.
The Deputy Chief of Staff of the army is a kippah-wearing officer dear to the settlers, a former head of Central Command, which includes the West Bank.
Some weeks ago I wrote that the problem may not be the annexation of the West Bank by Israel, but the annexation of Israel by the West Bank settlers.
Some readers reacted with a chuckle. It looked like a humorous aside.
It was not.
The time has come to examine this process seriously: Is Israel falling victim to a hostile takeover by the settlers?
* * *
FIRST OF all, the term “settlers” itself must be examined.
Formally, there is no question. The settlers are Israelis living beyond the 1967 border, the Green Line. (“Green” in this case has no ideological connotation. This just happened to be the color chosen to distinguish the line on the maps.
Numbers are inflated or deflated according to propaganda needs. But it is can be assumed that there are about 300,000 settlers in the West Bank, and an additional 200,000 or so in East Jerusalem. Israelis usually don’t call the Jerusalemites “settlers”, putting them into a different category. But of course, settlers they are.
But when we speak of Settlers in the political context, we speak of a much bigger community.
True, not all settlers are Settlers. Many people in the West Bank settlements went there without any ideological motive, just because they could build their dream villas for practically nothing, with a picturesque view of Arab minarets to boot. It is these the Settler Council chairman, Danny Dayan, meant, when, in a (recently leaked) secret conversation with a US diplomat, he conceded that they could easily be persuaded to return to Israel if the money was right.
However, all these people have an interest in the status quo, and therefore will support the real Settlers in the political fight. As the Jewish proverb goes, if you start fulfilling a commandment for the wrong reasons, you will end up fulfilling it for the right ones.
* * *
BUT THE camp of the “settlers” is much, much bigger.
The entire so-called “national religious” movement is in total support of the settlers, their ideology and their aims. And no wonder – the settlement enterprise sprung from its loins.
This must be explained. The “national religious” were originally a tiny splinter of religious Jewry. The big Orthodox camp saw in Zionism an aberration and heinous sin. Since God had exiled the Jews from His land because of their sins, only He – through His Messiah - had the right to bring them back. The Zionists thus position themselves above God and prevent the coming of the Messiah. For the Orthodox, the Zionist idea of a secular Jewish “nation” still is an abomination.
However, a few religious Jews did join the nascent Zionist movement. They remained a curiosity. The Zionists held the Jewish religion in contempt, like everything else belonging to the Jewish Diaspora (“Galut” – exile, a derogatory term in Zionist parlance). Children who (like myself) were brought up in Zionist schools in Palestine before the Holocaust were taught to look down with pity on people who were “still” religious.
This also colored our attitude towards the religious Zionists. The real work of building our future “Hebrew State” (we never spoke about a “Jewish State”) was done by socialist atheists. The kibbutzim and moshavim, communal and cooperative villages, as well as the “pioneer” youth movements, which were the foundation of the whole enterprise, were mostly Tolstoyan socialist, some of them even Marxist. The few that were religious were considered marginal.
At that time, in the 30s and 40s, few young people wore a kippah in public. I don’t remember a single member of the Irgun, the clandestine military (“terrorist”) organization to which I belonged, wearing a kippah – though there were quite a number of religious members. They preferred a less conspicuous cap or beret.
The national-religious party (originally called Mizrahi – Eastern) played a minor role in Zionist politics. It was decidedly moderate in national affairs. In the historic confrontations between the “activist” David Ben-Gurion and the “moderate” Moshe Sharett in the 50s, they almost always sided with Sharett, driving Ben Gurion up the wall.
Nobody paid much attention, however, to what was happening under the surface – in the national-religious youth movement, Bnei Akiva, and their Yeshivot. There, out of sight of the general public, a dangerous cocktail of ultra-nationalist Zionism and an aggressive tribal “messianic” religion was being brewed.   
* * *
THE ASTOUNDING victory of the Israeli army in the 1967 Six-day War, after three weeks of extreme anxiety, marked a turning point for this movement.
Here was everything they had dreamed of: a God-given miracle, the heartland of historical Eretz Israel (alias the West Bank) occupied, “The Temple Mount Is In Our Hands!” as a one general breathlessly reported. 
As if somebody had drawn a cork, the national-religious youth movement escaped its bottle and became a national force. They created Gush Emunim (“Bloc of the Faithful”), the center of the dynamic settlement enterprise in the newly “liberated territories”.
This must be well understood: for the national-religious camp, 1967 was also a moment of liberation within the Zionist camp. As the Bible (Psalm 117) prophesied: “The stone the builders despised has become the cornerstone”. The despised national-religious youth movement and kibbutzim suddenly jumped to center stage.
While the old socialist kibbutz movement was dying of ideological exhaustion, its members becoming rich by selling agricultural land to real estate sharks, the national religious sprang up in full ideological vigor, imbued with spiritual and national fervor, preaching a pagan Jewish creed of holy places, holy stones and holy tombs, mixed with the conviction that the whole country belongs to the Jews and that “foreigners” (meaning the Palestinians, who have lived here for at least 1300, if not 5000 years) should be kicked out.
* * *
MOST OF today’s Israelis were born or have immigrated after 1967. The occupation-state is the only reality they know. The settlers’ creed looks to them like self-evident truth. Polls show a growing number of young Israelis for whom democracy and human rights are empty phrases. A Jewish State means a state that belongs to the Jews and to the Jews only, nobody else has any business to be here.
This climate has created a political scene dominated by a set of right-wing parties, from Avigdor Lieberman’s racists to the outright fascist followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane – all of them totally subservient to the settlers.
If it is true that the US Congress is controlled by the Israel lobby, then this lobby is controlled by the Israeli government, which is controlled by the settlers. (Like the joke about the dictator who said: The world is afraid of our country, the country is afraid of me, I am afraid of my wife, my wife is afraid of a mouse. So who rules the world?)
So the settlers can do whatever they want: build new settlements and enlarge existing ones, ignore the Supreme Court, give orders to the Knesset and the government, attack their “neighbors” whenever they like, kill Arab children who throw stones, uproot olive groves, burn mosques. And their power is growing by leaps and bounds.
* * *
THE TAKEOVER of a civilized country by hardier border fighters is by no means extraordinary. On the contrary, it is a frequent historical phenomenon. The historian Arnold Toynbee provided a long list.
Germany was for a long time dominated by the Ostmark (“Eastern marches”), which became Austria. The culturally advanced German heartland fell under the sway of the more primitive but hardier Prussians, whose homeland was not a part of Germany at all. The Russian Empire was formed by Moscow, originally a primitive town on the fringes.
The rule seems to be that when the people of a civilized country become spoiled by culture and riches, a hardier, less pampered and more primitive race on the fringes takes over, as Greece was taken over by the  Romans, and Rome by the barbarians.
This can happen to us. But it need not. Israeli secular democracy still has a lot of strength in it. The settlements can still be removed. (In a future article, I shall try to show how.) The religious right can still be repulsed. The occupation, which is the mother of all evil, can still be terminated.
But for that we have to recognize the danger - and do something about it.
Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch's book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.

Iraq, 15 April: The Friday Of The Free


Iraq: "Occupation" is the Highest Form of "Dictatorship" which Washington calls "Democracy"
Iraq, 15 April: The Friday Of The Free
Global Research, April 16, 2011
BRussell Tribunal

The letter below was sent to me by Asma Al Haidari, who follows the news of the Friday demonstrations in Iraq. These peaceful demonstrations have been going on for weeks now. Today was called “ the Friday of the Free ”. Western media reported about Egypt and Tunisia but they will – again – fail to report about this democratic movement. Occupation is the highest form of dictatorship, but the Americans call it “democracy”, “freedom”, “liberty”. And this occupation that is enslaving a nation of 26 million Iraqi citizens, is far from over.
The US Embassy in Baghdad, already the largest in the world, is expected to double its staff from 8.000 to 16.000 “civilians” after American forces pull out of the country later this year. http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/04/02-0 . And a private security force some 5,500 strong will protect the large US diplomatic presence in Iraq . I guess that they will have to issue hand-held GPS's so that the 16,000 "non-military staff" can find their offices in the new and upgraded US Embassy in the " Emerald City "! Just what are all of these people going to do?
For as long as I can recall, the US has always told the UN that it is an inflated organization and that it could easily function with half the current staff members. The UN's website states the following today:
" The UN Secretariat employs some 7,750 staff members under the regular budget and some 8,230 under special funding. Coming from nearly 175 countries, they administer the UN's policies and programmes in New York and at duty stations around the world. The UN system as a whole - the UN and its related programmes and specialized agencies, including the World Bank and the IMF - employs some 63,450 people worldwide. " http://www.un.org/geninfo/ir/index.asp?id=160  
This means that a "diplomatic mission", the US Embassy in ONLY ONE CITY, Baghdad , will employ one-fourth of the number of UN staff worldwide!!! The mind boggles.
If the Americans consider Iraq so important that 16.000 of their staff + 5.500 mercenaries for protection will be deployed there, how come the solidarity work of the peace movement is so weak today when it comes to Iraq ? Can anyone explain? Something is not right here. The Iraqi demonstrations should be wholeheartedly supported by the whole Western civil society, to give the Iraqi courageous protesters a clear signal that they are not alone.

Here's Asma Al Haidari's comments on today's protests.
“What am I to write to you about today? The Friday of the Free???
For this is what our young revolutionaries have called it.
What am I to start with? Mosul or Tahrir Square …. I will start with the courageous and long suffering men, women, children and youth of Iraq in Tahrir – my tears are streaming down uncontrollably – a man of 50 who cries and says Death to Iran – Death to America – Death to Maliki – 80% of Parliament and the people who rule are Iranians – no loyalty to Iraq – Long Live Iraq – all our sons are in detention centers – my 16 year old son is in prison – Iraq is the crown on our heads – we will all die for Iraq – Iraq will live forever – then a young man who says Down with Sectarianism- Down with the Quota System – Death to Iran – let all Iraqi Young Men rebel and fight for Iraq – If Mohammed is a Sunni then I am a Shi'i – we are all one – we are all brothers – we all have the same blood - women – women cry and men – grown up men cry tears of agony and anguish for Iraq and for our sons and daughters – for our country that has been raped and pillaged
Dirk, where is the free western press???? Ah, Dirk the scenes in Tahrir were phenomenal because Maliki and his henchmen yesterday ordered people to demonstrate in two football grounds – again on a sectarian basis can you imagine???? But he is a stupid man – so are his advisors – the Iraqis are much too intelligent and clever for all of this and demonstrated that they are now at the point of no return in their rebellion and revolt – they assembled in Tahrir and told Maliki and his parliamentarians to go and play football in the stadiums he has assigned!
The young man who said let's all unite and fight – yes, armed resistance is what he is speaking about - continued to say that Maliki and his parliamentarians seem to be equating their demonstrations with a game – well, we will show you that we are not playing. He says that if we do not demonstrate in Tahrir then we will return to Armed Resistance and get martyred for Iraq – he also said that he was sure a massacre was going to be committed by the security forces against the demonstrators, today.
These same security forces that could not stop them from coming to Tahrir.
Men, women, and children, and Christians who are speaking out about the “government's” criminality against them – it was amazing and enthralling! The crushed Iraqi middle class in all its colours and hues is out and will remain out - this is the beginning of civil disobedience - all very peaceful but full of force and commands respect and a bowing of our heads to them.
The women who are in Tahrir are in the hundreds – all women whose sons or husbands have disappeared in Maliki's and the Occupation's secret prisons – Iraqis have broken the chains – the world should watch out – But the world is so silent and apparently deaf and blind as well.
Can't the world see that this revolution is totally different – that we are a people and a country under occupation – and that we have slowly started to take our rights back and to free ourselves.
You can feel the atmosphere of Tahrir – you can see and feel the life that is Tahrir – Tahrir belongs to the People – Of course all the bridges and streets leading to Tahrir were cut off but people came all the same and are still there – They are chanting that Maliki is a liar and a thief – they are chanting that whoever does not say Tahrir – “Liberation” then his life is a loss – They are daring the security forces who are there in great numbers to detain them – I have always known and told you what we are made of – Dirk, how can people not love the Iraqi People – how could the Americans have ever thought that they can colonize us?????
I am amazed at the fact that the United States believed the lies that it was told about us – I am amazed – then you come to Mosul – ah brave and courageous Mosul where for the past 6 days a huge demonstration and gathering has been gradually grown in numbers and today there are 5,000 people in The Square of the Free – the old prison square – all the tribal sheikhs who had not sold themselves to the occupation came from the very south of Iraq, Nassiriya and Basra, led by Shaikh Salim Al Thabbab – The Prince of Rabee'a and Sheyban , tribal sheikhs and leaders from Kut, Diyala, a contingent of Kurdish demonstrators from Azadi Square in Sulaymaniya whose leader put on the “Iqal” – the traditional headgear of Arab men and said that we are all Iraqis – and stood under the old Iraqi flag – they came from Haweeja and Tikreet – a tribal chief from Tilkaif – the Christians in the north as well as tribal leaders from Anbar, Kubaissa and Fallujah – we have come together again, this time publicly – for all the world to see but what is most amusing is that today the American Occupation's helicopters made a great entrance on the stage demonstrating that the American Administration really does believe the democracy it alleges it brought to Iraq is in fact equal to garbage …. No really, Dirk, I really mean it literally!
It was funny and it is all on film – daily, since the vigil and demonstration started in Mosul , American helicopters buzzed the demonstrators and the demonstrators answered back by throwing their shoes and slippers at them in disdain! Today, the helicopters performed what they considered their coup de grace! By flying very low over their heads and throwing down bags of garbage! This is the American sham called “democracy” and this is their attempt to colonize Iraq – they should read history and anthropology a bit more carefully from now on!
When the people in the Square of the Free were asked for comments their answers were that the Americans throw garbage at us every day since the occupation – all the enriched uranium; all the white phosphorous; all the drugs and aids; all the disease, tyranny, oppression, plunder, theft lies and illiteracy they brought with them amongst much more – so we, Iraqis, know everything and we will have justice at the end of the day when a new dawn comes – the feeling is that it is going to be quite soon.
In the Square of the Free, united Friday Prayers were held for the 5,000 - women, poets, lawyers and the important Muslawi Business Merchant community joined - they all signed their names in blood in the Register of the Honoured. A young couple insisted that their wedding should take place in the square today!
Again, I ask, where is the world – where are the free men and women who opposed this war – is there no man no woman, who feels that justice is on his side and that he should speak freely and forcefully about us?????
Reading the NY Times one would believe that their correspondents must be living on another planet – amazing. They are so silent – all the mainstream press, in fact.
Today, there were large demonstrations in Basra , all over Anbar province and and Babil as well – in Diwaniya they were threatened by the security forces that they would all be detained. Of course, Sulaymaniya in the tens of thousands in Azadi Sqaure. I also heard a tribal chief from Tel'laafer say that 10 large vehicles were on their way to Mosul when they were stopped by the notorious general Ghannam and told why do you want to go to Mosul – they are all Sunnis and terrorists and you are Shi'is! and were turned back – the scene is developing and is building up -
I'll keep you in touch but please check the English page of the Great Iraqi Revolution for all the videos etc... which will be posted soon.”
Sallams, Dirk.
Asma Al Haidari
Dirk Adriaensens is a member of the B Russell's Tribunal Executive Committee

Secret Weapons Program Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant?

Secret Weapons Program Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant?
U.S.-Japan security treaty fatally delayed nuclear workers' fight against meltdown



Global Research, April 12, 2011



Confused and often conflicting reports out of Fukushima 1 nuclear plant cannot be solely the result of tsunami-caused breakdowns, bungling or miscommunication. Inexplicable delays and half-baked explanations from Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) seem to be driven by some unspoken factor.
The smoke and mirrors at Fukushima 1 seem to obscure a steady purpose, an iron will and a grim task unknown to outsiders. The most logical explanation: The nuclear industry and government agencies are scrambling to prevent the discovery of atomic-bomb research facilities hidden inside Japan's civilian nuclear power plants.
A secret nuclear weapons program is a ghost in the machine, detectable only when the system of information control momentarily lapses or breaks down. A close look must be taken at the gap between the official account and unexpected events.
Conflicting Reports
TEPCO, Japan’s nuclear power operator, initially reported three reactors were operating at the time of the March 11 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Then a hydrogen explosion ripped Unit 3, run on plutonium-uranium mixed oxide (or MOX). Unit 6 immediately disappeared from the list of operational reactors, as highly lethal particles of plutonium billowed out of Unit 3. Plutonium is the stuff of smaller, more easily delivered warheads.
A fire ignited inside the damaged housing of the Unit 4 reactor, reportedly due to overheating of spent uranium fuel rods in a dry cooling pool. But the size of the fire indicates that this reactor was running hot for some purpose other than electricity generation. Its omission from the list of electricity-generating operations raises the question of whether Unit 4 was being used to enrich uranium, the first step of the process leading to extraction of weapons-grade fissionable material.
The bloom of irradiated seawater across the Pacific comprises another piece of the puzzle, because its underground source is untraceable (or, perhaps, unmentionable). The flooded labyrinth of pipes, where the bodies of two missing nuclear workers—never before disclosed to the press— were found, could well contain the answer to the mystery: a lab that none dare name.
Political Warfare
In reaction to Prime Minister Naoto Kan's demand for prompt reporting of problems, the pro-nuclear lobby has closed ranks, fencing off and freezing out the prime minister's office from vital information. A grand alliance of nuclear proponents now includes TEPCO, plant designer General Electric, METI, the former ruling Liberal Democratic Party and, by all signs, the White House.
Cabinet ministers in charge of communication and national emergencies recently lambasted METI head Banri Kaeda for acting as both nuclear promoter and regulator in charge of the now-muzzled Nuclear and Industrial Safety Commission. TEPCO struck back quickly, blaming the prime minister's helicopter fly-over for delaying venting of volatile gases and thereby causing a blast at Reactor 2. For "health reasons,” TEPCO 's president retreated to a hospital ward, cutting Kan's line of communication with the company and undermining his site visit to Fukushima 1.
Kan is furthered hampered by his feud with Democratic Party rival Ichiro Ozawa, the only potential ally with the clout to challenge the formidable pro-nuclear coalition
The head of the Liberal Democrats, which sponsored nuclear power under its nearly 54-year tenure, has just held confidential talks with U.S. Ambassador John Roos, while President Barack Obama was making statements in support of new nuclear plants across the U.S.
Cut Off From Communications
The substance of undisclosed talks between Tokyo and Washington can be surmised from disruptions to my recent phone calls to a Japanese journalist colleague. While inside the radioactive hot zone, his roaming number was disconnected, along with the mobiles of nuclear workers at Fukushima 1 who are denied phone access to the outside world. The service suspension is not due to design flaws. When helping to prepare the Tohoku crisis response plan in 1996, my effort was directed at ensuring that mobile base stations have back-up power with fast recharge.
A subsequent phone call when my colleague returned to Tokyo went dead when I mentioned "GE.” That incident occurred on the day that GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt landed in Tokyo with a pledge to rebuild the Fukushima 1 nuclear plant. Such apparent eavesdropping is only possible if national phone carrier NTT is cooperating with the signals-intercepts program of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
The Manchurian Deal
The chain of events behind this vast fabrication goes back many decades.
During the Japanese militarist occupation of northeast China in the 1930s, the puppet state of Manchukuo was carved out as a fully modern economic powerhouse to support overpopulated Japan and its military machine. A high-ranking economic planner named Nobusuke Kishi worked closely with then commander of the occupying Kanto division, known to the Chinese as the Kwantung Army, General Hideki Tojo.
Close ties between the military and colonial economists led to stunning technological achievements, including the prototype of a bullet train (or Shinkansen) and inception of Japan's atomic bomb project in northern Korea. When Tojo became Japan's wartime prime minister, Kishi served as his minister of commerce and economy, planning for total war on a global scale.
After Japan's defeat in 1945, both Tojo and Kishi were found guilty as Class-A war criminals, but Kishi evaded the gallows for reasons unknown—probably his usefulness to a war-ravaged nation. The scrawny economist’s conception of a centrally managed economy provided the blueprint for MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry), the predecessor of METI, which created the economic miracle that transformed postwar Japan into an economic superpower.
After clawing his way into the good graces of Cold Warrior John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower's secretary of state, Kishi was elected prime minister in 1957. His protégé Yasuhiro Nakasone, the former naval officer and future prime minister, spearheaded Japan's campaign to become a nuclear power under the cover of the Atomic Energy Basic Law.
American Complicity
Kishi secretly negotiated a deal with the White House to permit the U.S. military to store atomic bombs in Okinawa and Atsugi naval air station outside Tokyo. (Marine corporal Lee Harvey Oswald served as a guard inside Atsugi's underground warhead armory.) In exchange, the U.S. gave the nod for Japan to pursue a "civilian" nuclear program.
Secret diplomacy was required due to the overwhelming sentiment of the Japanese public against nuclear power in the wake of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings. Two years ago, a text of the secret agreement was unearthed by Katsuya Okada, foreign minister in the cabinet of the first Democratic Party prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama (who served for nine months from 2009-10).
Many key details were missing from this document, which had been locked inside the Foreign Ministry archives. Retired veteran diplomat Kazuhiko Togo disclosed that the more sensitive matters were contained in brief side letters, some of which were kept in a mansion frequented by Kishi's half-brother, the late Prime Minister Eisaku Sato (who served from 1964-72). Those most important diplomatic notes, Togo added, were removed and subsequently disappeared.
These revelations were considered a major issue in Japan, yet were largely ignored by the Western media. With the Fukushima nuclear plant going up in smoke, the world is now paying the price of that journalistic neglect.
On his 1959 visit to Britain, Kishi was flown by military helicopter to the Bradwell nuclear plant in Essex. The following year, the first draft of the U.S.-Japan security was signed, despite massive peace protests in Tokyo. Within a couple of years, the British firm GEC built Japan's first nuclear reactor at Tokaimura, Ibaragi Prefecture. At the same time, just after the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the newly unveiled Shinkansen train gliding past Mount Fuji provided the perfect rationale for nuclear-sourced electricity.
Kishi uttered the famous statement that "nuclear weapons are not expressly prohibited" under the postwar Constitution's Article 9 prohibiting war-making powers. His words were repeated two years ago by his grandson, then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The ongoing North Korea "crisis" served as a pretext for this third-generation progeny of the political elite to float the idea of a nuclear-armed Japan. Many Japanese journalists and intelligence experts assume the secret program has sufficiently advanced for rapid assembly of a warhead arsenal and that underground tests at sub-critical levels have been conducted with small plutonium pellets.
Sabotaging Alternative Energy
The cynical attitude of the nuclear lobby extends far into the future, strangling at birth the Japanese archipelago's only viable source of alternative energy—offshore wind power. Despite decades of research, Japan has only 5 percent of the wind energy production of China, an economy (for the moment, anyway) of comparable size. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, a nuclear-power partner of Westinghouse, manufactures wind turbines but only for the export market.
The Siberian high-pressure zone ensures a strong and steady wind flow over northern Japan, but the region's utility companies have not taken advantage of this natural energy resource. The reason is that TEPCO, based in Tokyo and controlling the largest energy market, acts much as a shogun over the nine regional power companies and the national grid. Its deep pockets influence high bureaucrats, publishers and politicians like Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, while nuclear ambitions keep the defense contractors and generals on its side. Yet TEPCO is not quite the top dog. Its senior partner in this mega-enterprise is Kishi's brainchild, METI.
The national test site for offshore wind is unfortunately not located in windswept Hokkaido or Niigata, but farther to the southeast, in Chiba Prefecture. Findings from these tests to decide the fate of wind energy won't be released until 2015. The sponsor of that slow-moving trial project is TEPCO.
Death of Deterrence
Meanwhile in 2009, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued a muted warning on Japan's heightened drive for a nuclear bomb— and promptly did nothing. The White House has to turn a blind eye to the radiation streaming through American skies or risk exposure of a blatant double standard on nuclear proliferation by an ally. Besides, Washington's quiet approval for a Japanese bomb doesn't quite sit well with the memory of either Pearl Harbor or Hiroshima.
In and of itself, a nuclear deterrence capability would be neither objectionable nor illegal— in the unlikely event that the majority of Japanese voted in favor of a constitutional amendment to Article 9. Legalized possession would require safety inspections, strict controls and transparency of the sort that could have hastened the Fukushima emergency response. Covert weapons development, in contrast, is rife with problems. In the event of an emergency, like the one happening at this moment, secrecy must be enforced at all cost— even if it means countless more hibakusha, or nuclear victims.
Instead of enabling a regional deterrence system and a return to great-power status, the Manchurian deal planted the time bombs now spewing radiation around the world. The nihilism at the heart of this nuclear threat to humanity lies not inside Fukushima 1, but within the national security mindset. The specter of self-destruction can be ended only with the abrogation of the U.S.-Japan security treaty, the root cause of the secrecy that fatally delayed the nuclear workers' fight against meltdown.
Yoichi Shimatsu who is Editor-at-large with the 4th Media is a Hong Kong–based environmental writer. He is the former editor of the Japan Times Weekly. This article is first appeared in the New American Media.