Muslim states 'silent' on Uighurs

Rebiya Kadeer, a leading Uighur activist, expresses her dismay at the silence of Muslim countries on the Uighurs' repression by the chinese government. She should not be surprised, Muslim countries have not been able to actively protect and support Palestinians for the last sixty years.

A portrait of Rebiya Kadeer, the 'mother of the Uighurs', in Le Monde.

UN: Israel must tear down West Bank fence

The United Nations demanded Wednesday that Israel implement a five-year-old ruling of its International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague that deemed most of the West Bank separation fence illegal.

The fence severely restricts the movement of tens of thousands of Palestinians, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told a news conference in Jerusalem, marking the fifth anniversary of the ICJ advisory opinion.

Some 85 per cent of it was built inside the West Bank, and not on the Green Line.

The zionist argument is that the wall protects against Palestinian suicide attacks. This argument is shallow. First because the decrease in suicide attacks was balanced by an increase in rocket fire which means that Palestinians will always take some form of action against Israel and Israel will always retaliate. This is an occupation after all. Second because if it is for security, why Israel would not follow the green line of 1967 and why Israel changed the route of the wall several times grabbing more Palestinian land on each of these occasions ?

Burn Before Reading: Zionist Fanatics Practice Serial Vandalism in Paris

Among other things, they burn books. And they get away with their crimes. Anti-semitic crimes are well publicised in France, sometimes they are even invented. In 2004, in what became known as Affaire RER D, a young woman tells the police that she was attacked in the metro by an anti-semitic gang; four Arabs and two black people. The media treatment of this episode was hysterical. There were immediate condemnations from every level of civil society, the police, and the government, on the basis of one accusation which turned out to be false, and an empty judiciary file .
Alex Moise, the head of the zionist federation of France used to send anti-semite messages to himself and complain about being threatened. Eventually he was caught lying and was condemned. This happened in 2004 when Ariel Sharon was accusing France of being soft on anti-semites and inviting French Jews to emigrate to Israel.

Because of its history of collaboration with the Nazi regime, France is a weak target for zionists. While intimidation goes on on a large scale agaisnt the French state and its people, zionist crimes in France are not reported, neither accounted for, nor punished, for fear from accusations of anti-semitism.

Amnesty International: Israel committed war crimes in Gaza

Hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed using high-precision weapons, while others were shot at close range, the group Amnesty International says.

The report says that ''Israeli forces repeatedly breached the laws of war'' (the report you see on the link is not the full report.

UPDATE:

Amnesty International accused Israel and Palestinian militants of war crimes Thursday in the most comprehensive report on the recent Gaza war. Both sides rejected the findings.

Organisations reporting war crimes and human rights abuse have accustomed us now to this false equivalence between Israel and Palestinian organisations without which they cannot condemn Israel unless they condemn the other side, fearing an outcry from Zionist organisations.
First false equivalence: I thought that Hamas being considered anyway a terrorist organisation is not worth the news, while Israel is a 'light unto the nations'.
Second false equivalence: More than 1,400 Palestinians, including more than 900 civilians, were killed during the three-week offensive. Thirteen Israelis were killed.
Third false equivalence: Israel is the occupying entity, Gaza is occupied (the word is even a misstatement since Gaza is not only occupied but under a constant and harsh Israeli siege...
Fourth false equivalence: the Israeli occupation of Palestine has been going on for sixty years now while Palestinian rockets are "the unbearable reality of nine years of incessant and indiscriminate rocket fire on the citizens of Israel" according to an Israeli official, they only killed 11 more Israelis in addition to the thriteen who died during the Gaza December offensive. 544 Israelis died from suicide bombings between 2001 and 2008. So that brings the total of Israeli victims to approximately 568 from both suicide bombings and rockets between 2000 and 2008 while Palestinian victims in Gaza numbered 1400 for the only month of december 2008.

I hate to look at these statistics because every human life is unique but we have to do it when we are to look at these false equivalences...I don't think Jews would have got any sympathy to have a state of their own if they were few to die from Nazi's persecutions. For political purposes, numbers matter, and this is what Amnesty and HRW are missing out when they issue their condemnations. For as long as zionists could maintain this equivalence, nobody can imagine how much pain and suffering is inflicted on Palestinians and how much their situation is dramatic...When the rockets fall silent, settlers return to their homes and their villages but every Israeli incursion into Gaza leaves permanent scars, death, trauma, and tragedies behind at the scale of the population and beyond our imagination...In Gaza, between incursions, there is no return to normal life, there is only a stop on the way down the abyss of the occupation...

Gaza: The legacy of war, and audio slideshow by Peter Beaumont, Antonio Olmos and Jim Powell

Israel imprisoned recently human rights activists from the Free Gaza movement trying to ship aid to Gaza including building material. Listen below to a message from Cynthia McKinney in an Israeli prison calling on president Obama to ease the Israeli blockade of Gaza. This is plainly crime against humanity.


Read here from Informed Comment: 'Piracy at the fourth of July'

Iran's present turmoil: Opportunism or Reformism ?

A dissident note in the chorus of western condemnations of Iran is necessary, and what if it is true ? Reading this critique from an Iranian American scholar who is an expert in vote fraud and was on the board of NGOs overseeing votes in many countries worldwide, it appears that the story of vote fraud in Iran is somehow twisted and overblown. Mousavi is more of an opportunist than a reformist. He is betting on western influence and the present uproar to do what he is unable to do hismself: win the elections in Iran or at least destabilise his opponent. This is the Lebanonisation of Iranian politics.

The point of view I have expressed here does not entail that I take sides. I am merely stating that western coverage of post elections Iran is a large scale interference used as a pressure on the regime by those who oppose AhmadiNejad. It is clear that what is going on is an internal struggle inside the regime between hardliners and 'reformists'. But comments from an Iranian blogger (Naj) here confirmed what I suspect is at the bottom of this struggle, the identity of the country: AhmadiNejad and his supporters in the religious hierarchy want a regional and political leadership for Iran focused on current Middle East problems: Palestine and sunni-shia political rivalries and that's a direction that goes against Israel's and the US will for the middle east, while those who oppose AhmadiNejad have set their priority in separating Iran from regional conflicts, namely conflicts in the Arab world. But in my opinion, and although AhmadiNejad and his supporters are labeled as conservatives, and although vote fraud may have taken place, the present turmoil has nothing to do with reforms, at least not from the perspective of Mousavi and some inside the religious hierarchy, but it is certainly for reform that most Iranians are demonstrating in the streets.

I wish Iranian people the best and most of all to be able to resolve the present turmoil in a peaceful manner.

From Le Monde Diplomatique: Betqeen religious and democratic legitimacy: Iran's stolen elections

Good news and bad news: the zionist entity is getting nervous

First: the good news---link found on Angry Arab's website---

The bad news, for us Arabs and for the Palestinians, is that every time the zionist entity is nervous because it is loosing in the PR war or because it is pressured into some action by the US and the international community, like the recent calls to stop illegal settlements, it tries to divert public opinion to another unrest in the middle east and the Islamic world and show that there are more urgent matters for the international community to attend to and more vilains elsewhere. In this case, Iran's unrest, as some Iranian clerics are claiming, may well be more than a coincidence.
Watch for example here French socialite, self appointed 'intellectual' and philosopher', and notorious zionist Bernard Henri Lévy, calling young Iranians to overthrow the regime (this man is a real intellectual crap if you want my opinion).

I think Iranians, after all they went through, some at the hands of their clerics, and some at the hands of US puppet Saddam, deserve to own a revolution, preferably not of the sort of the one that is going on in their streets now.

Message to the Young People of Iran by Bernard-Henri Lévy 
envoyé par BernardHL. - L'info internationale vidéo.

Now I don't like Ahmadi-Nejad, I don't like Mousavi either, and there is a real discontent among the Iranian people to feed some unrest, but looking at how events are unfolding in Iran and how western powers and their media are fanning the flames, and how the zionists are cheering, I am still sure of one thing: as long as there is no justice for Palestinians and no real peace in the middle east, we will always have this kind of unrest across the Arab and Muslim world which Israel considers as its first threat not because of their leaders, most of them carefully nursed by USrael, but because of their public opinions strongly opposed to the occupation of Palestine.

As for the elections in Lebanon, I am pleased: I would have liked Hezbollah and Aoun to win big but Lebanon's reality is this: across its tormented history, and except on one or two short occasions, it was never able to reach an equilibrium between political parties representing western allegiance like March 14th and parties that are against this allegiance like Hezbollah and Aoun, and this has been made even a more hard goal to reach in the context of today's mideast tensions - actually Aoun's and Hezbollah's political platform may help Lebanon reach this equilibrium by insisting on a secular governance and dissociation from foreign allegiance, but this is another story. And so I am pleased by the last Lebanese elections' results, the country and western and Saudi interference being what they are, a big win by Hezbollah may have brought more misery upon the country and its citizens. However, a win for Hezbollah and its Christian allies that position them as a strong opposition is a good enough win despite the fact that it represents a status quo for the country . But this political status quo is an imposed one because as I mentioned earlier, there is no real peace and prosperity in the middle east as long as Israel continues the ever expanding illegal occupation of Palestine.
Not only Palestinians, but the entire middle east is waiting for peace. It is frustrating but it has been going on for sixty years now and it will be going on as long as the US and the international community are unable to coerce the zionist entity into making peace with Palestine and Arab and Muslim countries.

1. And as the clamour of Iran's unrest is becoming regular coverage in western news outlets, nobody is noticing that Israel is defying the US with a new settlement plan.

2. Here is additional reporting from Reuters putting the unrest in Iran into a larger mideast context.

3. More from inside Iran on how western coverage is perceived:

If the government cheers, the media cheer, if the government condemns, the media condemns...

4. An informed comment from Juan Cole on the US and Obama's attitude toward the ongoing protests in Iran.

P.S: I was on vacation in a place where internet is a rare commodity. Sorry for this long absence.

Spiegel's article on Hezbollah's involvment in Hariri's murder or the reinvention of Detlev Mehlis: a story in two acts by Netanyahu and Lieberman

Under the title 'New Evidence Points to Hezbollah in Hariri Murder', the German daily Spiegel joins the ranks of those who are trying to inlfluence the outcome of the coming legislative elections in Lebanon where Hezbollah and its christian coalition are expected to win.

Basically, nothing is new in the article because it recycles the first hypothesis for Hariri's murder: Hariri was killed by Syria and its allies in Lebanon. Strange enough, this hypothesis was advanced by the German Detlev Mehlis who was appointed to lead the special tribunal investigating Hariri's murder. Mehlis's work was described as lousy: he interviewed only people close to the Hariri clan, he did not conduct extended investigations, many of his witnesses were discredited, and finally Mehlis was disgraced, a disgrace that threatened to taint the way the UN does international justice. The UN appointed then the Belgian Serge Brammertz to conduct the investigation. Brammertz's method was different: he relied more on facts and solid evidence than on hearsay. Moreover, Brammertz's investigation seemed to lead to a new hypothesis: the business dealings of the late murdered Hariri.

Nevertheless,the Spiegel article, ignoring a considerable amount of evidence pertaining to the credibility of both prosecutors, affirms nonchatlantly:

In late 2005, an investigation team approved by the United Nations and headed by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis found, after seven months of research, that Syrian security forces and high-ranking Lebanese officials were in fact responsible for the Hariri murder. Four suspects were arrested. But the smoking gun, the final piece of evidence, was not found. The pace of the investigation stalled under Mehlis's Belgian successor, Serge Brammertz.

The tribunal is now headed by judge Daniel Bellemare. If you listen to the careful and media shy Bellemare in a press briefing answering journalists' questions you wonder how Spiegel was able to access such 'explosive' revelations. Israel's new foreign minister was the first to react calling for

And if this latest piece of disinformation from Spiegel is meant to influence Lebanese who are going to vote on June 4th, it surely missed its target. Lebanese media, from all sides, are skeptical and unmoved. But the main target for such an irresponsible piece of journalism (or can we still call it journalism ?) is maybe the international opinion who is opening up to Hezbollah as a political force in Lebanon. Is Lebanon going to be the new Gaza ? Are we going to try to stall the democratic process there, and stall the Israeli-Arab peace process knowing that: 1) Lebanon and Hezbollah are at the center of the Israeli-Arab tensions, not Hamas and the lousy Abbas who were defeated and are unable to speak for their people ? 2) That Israel's new right wing government does not want to hear of any peace process and is reluctantly preparing for a new war on Lebanon after experiencing a humiliating defeat at the hands of few hundred Hezbollah militants in 2006. 3) That Hezbollah is a very popular movement inside Lebanon, and who are, contrary to Hamas and the representatives of the Palestinians, widely supported and respected in the Arab world ?

Having failed in the war against Hezbollah, Israel is now trying to manipulate international justice against its most serious ennemy in the Arab world who are at the brink of winning a historic election in a country Israel occupied twice, and desperately wanted to neutralise its resistance. The next act ? If Hezbollah wins the elections, Israel might contemplate another war on Lebanon. However, Israel never learned the lesson: Lebanon is not and will not be a second Gaza.
Angry Arab reminds us that on this day in 2000 Israel humiliatingly fled Lebanon, thanks to Hezbollah. This was before the 2006 defeat.

Read here why Spiegel's article is probably a 'plant'.

And once again, French blogger Loubnan Ya Loubnan gives us a socratic tour of the western media reporting on the latest developments in the Hariri investigation and the Spiegel's article.

Civil libertarians on Obama's speech adressing Guantanamo: All bells and whistles

Barely four months into the job, read what constitutional lawyer Michael Ratner had to say to the Huffington Post on Obama, Guantanamo, Torture, and military tribunals:

"He wraps himself in the Constitution, talks about American values and then proceeds to violate them."
..."Though we'd do it differently then Bush. We will set up rules. Well no matter how you repackage Guantanamo, with all kinds of rules on top of it -- that is what he is doing, he is re-wrapping a preventive detention scheme and giving it some more due process. In the end, it still comes down to holding people -- much like Minority Report or pre-crime stuff -- for being dangerous, and that is not something that I think is constitutional or this country should be engaged in."
..."I always believe that democracy dies behind closed doors, and the fact that these photos are being hidden right now -- if anything, it makes people think that there is a lot being hidden right now and that there is much more to this."
..."What is unfortunately effective about Obama is that he is able to use a setting like the National Archives, talk about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and all that, get people to sincerely believe he is [committed to these principles] and then go ahead and in my view undercut the core aspects of those documents,"

Rumsfeld's biblical memos

Rumsfeld and co definitely outsmarted Bin Laden with these memos. But Bin Laden had one permanent impact on the US (beside the WTC), he dragged the most powerful country in the world in the abyss of religious idiocy.

The paradox of Israel's pursuit of might

By the Guardian's Max Hastings.

Palestinian Christians

This article highlights the ignorance of pro-Israeli westerners of the demographics of Palestinians and hopes that the Pope's visit bring a certain awareness in the West that there are indeed Palestinians who are christians and that their land and their homes have been occupied by Israel and its settlement expansion policy. The article does not mention however that one of the most successful Palestinian liberation movements, the FPLP, was mostly run by Christians.
And the article does not mention that the misfortunes of Christians in the Arab world are due mainly to US and Israel's policies of war and alliance with corrupt regimes, except of course Egypt where there is a historic and systematic intimidation of Coptes by the state and the muslim brotherhood.