Those who wanted to marginalize Islam have won

Those who wanted to provoke muslims have won. They just had to bid on the political correctness and the bigotry of the west. Forget Guantanamo, forget Abu Ghraib, forget Iraq and forget Palestine. What is important is the freedom of expression of muslim haters.

The new anti-semitism

Racism against arabs thrives in Europe and the US. They are insulted, tortured, hated, humiliated and dehumanized.

Irak in civil war

In an editorial on his website, Dahr Jamail asks who benefits from the recent sectarian wars in Irak ?

I can tell you something: everybody benefits from Irak sinking into a civil war and this is precisely why Irak is already on the civil war path and will not achieve the bright future planned for it by the neo-cons.
In the first place, not being able to have full control on Irak, the US prefer this state of affair instead of seeing a prosperous Irak in the hands of Shiites (something which will reinforce Iran) and will eventually retreat with the excuse of the civil war. They have retreated before from the lebanese hell and they will retreat from this hell as well. Also, the bombing of the mosque occured during a week of new revelations on the abuse of Iraki prisoners and US prisoners in the war on terror. So the bombings may have been meant to divert the focus of the public and to break media momentum for the abuse story. US satellite states in the region (Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and UAE) are all sunnis, they fear a pacified and a strong shiite Irak.
Second, Israel benefits a lot from a civil war in Irak because it will stay the only ally on which the US can count for maintaining a continuous pressure on arabs and a mighty presence in the region. A pacified Irak and a pacified middle east is not good for Israel, it will loosen its ties with the US and with it the influence, the money and as a collateral, the illegal sale of weapons from which Israel makes huge profits.
Third, Iran has an interest in a civil war in Irak. It reinforces its role as the main supplier of oil in the region and give Iran the possibility of interfering in Irak's internal affairs in the name of the protection of its shiites.

As long as these main players have interest in a civil war in Irak, don't ask who benefits, just ask when the next wave of violence which will push Irak further in a permanent civil war will happen.
I lived the civil war in Lebanon, a war that lasted more than 15 years, left many wounds and shattered society and economy, a war whose impact is still felt in every political move in Lebanon, a war from which Lebanon may never really recover. I can tell you thet all conditions are now met in Irak for a Lebanese like civil war. The only thing that may help stop it is a dictatorship or an Iranian protectorate!

Brace yourself !

Robbing palestinians while putting them on a forced 'Diet'

Amira Hass on what it means ''putting palestinians on a diet'' as advocated by the present Israeli governement and told to the press by Dov Weisglass with general hilarity.

''...These are tax revenues that are due to the people in the territories where the goods are headed, and the Israelis have no right to hold them up.Since 1994, these revenues, transferred each month from the Israeli Ministry of Finance, have made up a critical portion of the Palestinian Authority budget.
When Israel briefly stopped transferring the revenues in 2001, pressure from the EU and other countries — including the U.S. — forced Israel to reverse its decision. Unfortunately, after the Hamas victory, such pressure seems unlikely.
Last year, the $711 million constituted almost two-thirds of the Palestinian Authority's revenues. (Only $383 million was collected in income and sales taxes within the West Bank and Gaza.) Even with all those revenues, there was still an $800-million shortfall in the Authority's $1.9-billion budget. Why are domestic tax receipts so low? Because the economy is in constant recession and "operates well below its potential," according to the World Bank.
What debilitates and cripples the Palestinian economy is Israel's heavy, systematic restrictions on movement within the occupied territories — hundreds of roadblocks and military checkpoints that delay, prolong and sabotage normal economic activity and, hence, potential tax revenues.
The Palestinian Authority cannot compensate for the "lost" — or perhaps it would be more accurate to say "stolen" — tax revenues. Its Ministry of Health, for example, has been unable to pay its contractors for hospital food, equipment or medicine for three months, and is $22 million in debt. Now, with Israel hijacking an additional $50 million or so each month, the ministry will not be able to pay the salaries of its 13,000 employees. The same is true with the approximately 40,000 employees of the Ministry of Education.
In the Palestinian territories, 35% of residents between the ages of 20 and 24 were unemployed during the third quarter of 2005. About 43% live below the World Bank's poverty line, and 15% live in deep poverty — which means, according to the World Bank, that they are unable to meet subsistence needs. By taking their meager — but undoubtedly their own — revenues, Israel does not punish Hamas or persuade it to change its positions. It simply gives the Palestinians another reason to regard Israel as an aggressive and repressive occupying power. ''

A War of Rethorics

''Ahmadinejad warns Israel over blast in Shi'ite mosque in Iraq''

Ahmadi-Nejad is practicing a Bush rethoric style for the region. At every turn Rice and Bush are blaming Iran and Syria for every problem in the region, so why not return them the favor ?

Fanning the flames that he ignited in the first place !

This is not a joke.

Danish PM, Anders Rasmussen, says the Cartoon row should go before the UN. Of course the UN is for resolving conflicts. In this case, it is the free thinking world against obscurantist Islam, or so Rasmussen and his ultra right wing neo-cons friends would like you to believe.

I am sure John Bolton will be more than happy to lend his help !

And what if Danish PM simply apologizes for his country's bad taste in the matter of free expression ? Don't ever think about it; hawks never apologize, better leave it to Kofi.

Rules of Apartheid: the Israeli version

''R. had a work meeting in Ramallah. She planned to return home, to East Jerusalem, with M., her partner, who works in Ramallah. They reached the Hizma checkpoint, east of the Pisgat Ze'ev settlement, where there is a permanent Israel Defense Forces post that checks all travelers heading to Jerusalem. You are forbidden to take this route, said the soldiers. Only your husband is allowed. Take the Qalandiyah checkpoint route.
R. and M. have been married for about 10 years. He is a Palestinian, born in East Jerusalem, an Israeli resident. She has an ID card from the territories. She has a permit to be in Jerusalem, at home, with her children and spouse.
As soon as they were married they applied to the Israeli Interior Ministry for "family unification." Despite promises, including written promises, she is still waiting for the residency document. They've been through a lot of Kafkaesque travails as a result, but the new prohibition against going home together shocked even them. They thought it might have been a soldier's whim, but a news item in Haaretz last Friday made clear to them that it is a military order, signed by Maj. Gen. Yair Naveh, commander of the IDF in the Judea and Samaria region. The order forbids Palestinians from entering Israel via any route other than 11 special crossings that were allocated only to them - and they can only cross those on foot. Palestinians are not allowed to drive inside Israel. The order also prohibits Israelis from bringing Palestinians into Israel through passages designated for Israelis only.
At the Hizma junction, which is for Israelis only, the "seam administration of the Defense Ministry has not yet hung the signs that it already hung on the road leading from the settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim to Jerusalem. The signs are hung alongside the road and at the military checkpoint, and say, in Hebrew and Arabic, "Passage is for Israelis only. Transporting and/or movement of people who are not Israelis is forbidden through this passage."''

Justice for Palestinians

Two Israelis reporters I really like and the present state of things in Palestine. I have not seen any Saudi, Koweiti, Emirate, any of this oil-rich US friendly submitted reporters speaks so ardently, as these two do, for palestinians.

Israeli Occupation Forces demolish a children playground in the West Bank

You think you have seen and read about all the ugly aspects of occupation ? You are wrong. Have a look at this.

Irak: 'Unintended' consequences - continued

A bomb attack destroyed the golden dome of one of Iraq's holiest Shia shrines today, sparking demonstrations and calls for revenge amongst the protesters.

Torture Files: The Mora Memo

The secret document, published by the New Yorker, part of a larger ensemble of classified files, shows how an internal struggle, led by a four star general at the Pentagon, eventually failed to prevent detainees abuse at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

Irak: Unintended consequences

The US and UK are criticizing Irakis for political sectarianism. The Us is even menacing to stop financial aid to Irak. Irak's PM reacted angrily.

Can anybody tell me why the neo-cons -with all their political knowledge - do not seem to even consider that societies could not be engineered completely in a top-bottom way and that there is a law of unintended conseqences to utopian social and political thinking !

US style democracy: 'Forcing a diet on palestinians' as to hasten the next elections and pave the way for a 'satisfactory' outcome

One slip of the tongue after another, Dov. Weissglass, foreign minister in Sharon's cabinet and in the present Olmert-Kadima Israeli led government, demonstrates the contempt and the humiliating way by which Israeli officials consider the Palestinians as well as the meddling of the US in the Free Democratic elections they so longed and worked for in the Middle east !

When Sharon launched the idea of the unilateral withdrawal, Weissglass explained to Haaretz thet this move should not anger the settlers because it is intended to put the Peace Process in Formaldehyde (a liquid in which dead tissues are kept for conservation and dissection).
After the Hamas victory, he was one of the first to advocate coercing Hamas electors (3/4 of all the palestinians) by forcing a Diet on the PA and on palestinian people as a whole, so next time they will think twice before voting for their representatives against the wishes of Israel ! Forcing a Diet on palestinians, as the NYT revealed, is intended to provoke elections in the near future and to make palestinians reconsider their choice of representatives according to the expectations of the US, EU and Israel !

''The unsuccessful comments by Dov Weissglas - whose position and source of authority in the present government is difficult to understand - regarding the need to put the Palestinian nation on a diet, but not to starve it, symbolizes more than anything the humiliating way in which Israel relates to the Palestinians, which was one of the factors in Hamas' rise to power. It is unnecessary and degrading to recommend a diet to a hungry and unemployed nation, in addition to which Israel is still responsible for preventing hunger in all parts of the West Bank that it controls as an occupying power. At this stage Hamas is acting more responsibly than the Israeli government. Its representatives speak of a new era, of a transition from terror to politics, of continued opposition to occupation via other means, and of aspirations to a long-term hudna (cease-fire). ''

9/11 'independant ' official report: secrets and lies

...''3. How did the President of United States React to the August 6 2001 President's Daily Brief?
Although the August 6 PDB had been mentioned in the foreign press since 2002, it did not come to the attention of official Washington until then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice impaled herself upon the hook of 9/11 Commission member Richard Ben Veniste's artful line of questioning in mid-2004. Blurting out the title of the PDB, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," she let the cat out of the bag--or perhaps not. Having opened Pandora's Box, the commissioners displayed no troublesome curiosity about its contents.What concrete measures did the president take after receiving perhaps the most significant strategic warning that any head of state could have hoped to receive about an impending attack on his country? Did he alert the intelligence agencies, law enforcement, the Border patrol, the Federal Aviation Administration, to comb through their current information and increase their alert rates? Did the threat warning of the PDB (granted that it did not reveal the tail numbers of the aircraft to be hijacked), in combination with the numerous threat warnings from other sources [4] elicit feverish activity to "protect the American people?" Not that we can observe.So what was the actual response of the U.S. government? Here the 9/11 Report exhibits autism. As nearly as we can determine from contemporaneous bulletins, the president massacred whole hecatombs of mesquite bushes and large-mouthed bass, perfected his golf swing, and hosted various captains of industry in the rustic repose of Crawford, Texas. In other words, he presided over the most egregious example of Constitutional nonfeasance since the administration of James Buchanan allowed Southern secessionists to take possession of the arms in several federal arsenals. The 9/11 Commission's silence on this point is an abundant demonstration of its role as an apologist, rather than a dispassionate truth-teller.The testimony of federal officials about what they did up to and during the attacks is telling, in so far as the false and misleading statements of witnesses provide clues. Ms. Rice, her tremulous voice betraying nervousness, averred, against the plain evidence of the public record and common sense, that a PDB stating that Osama bin Laden was determined to strike within the borders of the United States was too ambiguous to take any action.Likewise, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft may have perjured himself when he denied under oath that acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard came to him on July 5, 2001 with information of terrorist plots--information that the Attorney General "did not want to hear about anymore," as NBC News reported on June 22, 2004. It might be considered a matter of Ashcroft's word against Pickering's, except for the fact that Pickering had a corroborating witness.
4. Who wrote the script for the rhetorical response to 9/11?
The smoke was still rising from the rubble of the World Trade Center complex and the Pentagon when the unanimous and universal cry erupted in government circles, and was relentlessly amplified by the media, that this was "war," not a criminal act of terrorism. How very convenient that this war, declared against a diffuse and stateless entity, would trigger long-sought legal authorities and constitutional loopholes which would not apply in the case of a criminal act. [5] Torture, domestic spying, selective suspension of habeas corpus, all the unconstitutional monsters whose implications are only clear four years after the event, all slipped into immediate usage with the rhetorical invocation of war.This was not merely war, it was unlimited war, both in the sense of total war meant by General Ludendorff (civilian rights being trivial), and in the sense of lacking a comprehensible time span. "A war that will not end in our lifetimes," said Vice President Cheney on Meet the Press on the very Sunday following the attacks. How could he be so sure during the fog of uncertainty following the strike?If bin Laden and his followers were merely a limited number of fanatics living in Afghan caves, as we were assured at the time, why did the Bush administration relentlessly advance the meme that a decades-long war was inevitable? Could not a concerted intelligence, law-enforcement, and diplomatic campaign, embracing all sovereign countries, have effectively shut down "al Qaeda" within a reasonable period of time--say, within the period it took to fight World War II between Pearl Harbor and the Japanese surrender?Four years on, Vice President Cheney, doing a plausible imitation of the radio voice of The Shadow, continues to publicly mutter, in menacing tones of the lower octaves, that the war on terrorism [6] is a conflict that will last for decades. [7] This at the same time as the junior partner of the ruling dyarchy, the sitting president, is giving upbeat speeches promising victory in the war on terrorism (i.e., Iraq, the Central Front on the War on Terrorism) against a papier maché backdrop containing the printed slogan "Strategy for Victory."It is curious that no one--not the watchdogs of the supposedly adversary media, nor the nominal opposition party in Washington, nor otherwise intelligent observers--has remarked on this seeming contradiction: victory is just around the corner, yet the war will last for decades. Quite in the manner of the war between Eastasia and Oceania in 1984.In earlier times, this contradiction would have seemed newsworthy, if not scandalous. Suppose President Roosevelt had opined at the Teheran Conference that the Axis would be defeated in two years. Then suppose his vice president had at the same time traveled about the United States telling his audiences that the Axis would not be defeated for decades. An American public not yet conditioned by television would at least have noticed, and demanded some explanation.So question number 4 concludes with a question: why does the U.S. government hive so firmly to the notion of a long, drawn-out, indeterminate war, when Occam's Razor would suggest the desirability of presenting a clear-cut victory within the span of imagination of the average impatient American--a couple of years at most? Or is endless war the point?
5. Why did the mysterious anthrax attacks come and go like a wraith?
For those in immediate proximity to the events, the September 11attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were frightening in the extreme, but they had not the slow accumulation of dread that the anthrax scare of October 2001 presented. Far more than any anomaly concerning 9/11 itself, the anthrax mystery is the undecoded Rosetta Stone of recent years.The anthrax attacks were the most anomalous terrorist attacks in history: clever, successful, unpunished, causing five deaths and a billion dollars' damage. Yet never repeated. This alone makes them remarkable in the annals of criminal activity, but there is more--the intended victims (at least those with an official position) were warned in writing of their peril in sufficient detail that they could take steps to administer an antidote. Is this characteristic of terrorist attacks by "al Qaeda," or by any known Middle Eastern terrorist group?Except for the ambiguous first attack (which killed a National Enquirer photo editor), all the deaths resulting from the anthrax plot were incidental--mail handlers and innocent recipients of mail which had been contaminated by proximity to the threat letters. Evidently the West Jefferson anthrax strain was more powerful and had greater accidental effects than the plotters had intended.But what did the plotters intend, if they did not will the deaths of the addressees of their anthrax letters? It was pure coincidence, perhaps, that the anthrax scare was at its height, producing psychosomatic illness symptoms among members of Congress and staffers, just as the USA PATRIOT Act was wending its way through the legislative process. This measure, which originated among the same Justice Department lawyers who legally opined that torture was wholesome, was rammed through the Congress after enactment of the authorization of the use of force in Afghanistan. Why is this sequence significant?The then-majority leader of the U.S. Senate, Tom Daschle, wrote a curious op-ed in the Washington Post four years after the events just described. [8]. In attempting to refute the administration's allegation that it had been granted plenary wiretap powers in the Afghanistan authorization, he stated that he and his Senatorial confreres explicitly rejected an administration proposal to authorize an effective state of war within the borders of the United States itself''...

Irak, the economic fiasco

Here is part of an article in french reviewing the present economic situation in Irak and the economic fallouts of the US invasion. Depressing !

L'autre échec en Irak : l'économie

...''Terribles, les faits. Stuart Bowen, l'inspecteur général, était venu les livrer devant le Sénat le 8 février. Nommé fin 2004 par le Congrès pour mettre un peu d'ordre dans les retards, la gabegie, les fraudes et les coulages qui ont caractérisé les premiers mois d'après la victoire militaire américaine, M. Bowen a reconnu que "les modifications intervenues, notamment les conditions de sécurité, ont changé les perspectives". Le décalage entre les objectifs de reconstruction du pays fixés lors du renversement de Saddam Hussein en 2003 et la réalité ne cesse d'augmenter.
Sur les 136 projets planifiés concernant l'eau, seuls 49, soit 36 %, ont été menés à bien. "La plupart des chantiers d'assainissement, d'irrigation et de barrage ont du être abandonnés." Un total de 2 200 mégawatts de capacités électriques supplémentaires ont été construites alors qu'il en eût fallu 3 400 mégawatts.
Conséquences : les infrastructures se sont dégradées par rapport à l'époque de Saddam Hussein et les services vitaux offerts à la population sont inférieurs. Moins d'électricité est produite et le courant n'est disponible que 3,7 heures par jour à Bagdad contre 16 à 24 heures avant-guerre. C'est un peu mieux pour le reste du pays : 10 heures contre 4 à 8 heures. Seulement un tiers de la population a accès à l'eau potable (8,25 millions) contre la moitié sous Saddam (12,9 millions). L'accès aux égouts est limité à 5 millions de personnes contre 6,2 millions.
L'échec le plus lourd concerne le pétrole : la production n'atteint que 2 millions de barils par jour (d'autres estimations donnent 1,7 million), alors qu'elle était de 2,58 millions. Heureusement que le prix du brut est monté à 60 dollars, les recettes ont suivi.
Mais, en parallèle, l'état d'insurrection ruine toute reconstruction. Le coût de la sécurité absorbe désormais de 20 à 50% des crédits des projets à cause des bombes, des attentats et des sabotages, sans compter les " intimidations permanentes" que subissent les personnels. On sait que 2 300 soldats américains sont morts. Il en est de même pour 467 contractants civils. Les forces américaines, 138 000 hommes, ne sont pas capables d'assurer la sécurité des installations pétrolières ! Les soldats irakiens, 227 000, même si "leur qualité" est désormais meilleure, ne feront pas mieux.
...L'échec américain à contrôler le pays se paie par un échec économique patent. Mais ce n'est pas tout. Le coût de la guerre a explosé. L'administration Bush l'avait évalué en 2003 entre 50 et 60 milliards de dollars. Or 251 milliards ont déjà été dépensés, selon une étude des économistes Laura Bilmes et Joseph Stiglitz (le Prix Nobel), cités par Martin Wolf du Financial Times. Si l'administration Bush décide d'un maintien des troupes encore cinq ans (même en plus faible nombre), il en coûtera encore de 200 à 270 milliards. En ajoutant le prix des soins aux blessés, des pensions versées et du remplacement des matériels militaires, la facture monte à 750 ou 1 200 milliards de dollars : dix fois le versement net annuel de l'ensemble des pays riches pour l'aide au développement.
Ajoutons, pour faire bonne mesure, que le manque à produire du pétrole irakien participe de la faiblesse de l'offre et pousse les cours à la hausse. Les auteurs chiffrent à 5 dollars le baril le surcoût. Enfin, ils avouent renoncer à calculer les autres conséquences, comme le prix d'avoir enragé les musulmans du monde entier et celui de la tache sur la réputation des Etats-Unis de Guantanamo.''

Eric Le Boucher, Le Monde
Article paru dans l'édition du 19.02.06

Russia, its recent diplomatic moves and its muslims

Russia is seeking a role on the international diplomatic scene. Two recent initiatives, mediating between Iran on one side and the US and the EU on the other side by enriching uranium for the Iranians and inviting Hamas leaders to Russia despite quasi international reprieve, prove Russia's new move.
However, contrary to its historic international intervention within the USSR, these moves are designed not only to gain international prominence but also to influence opinions in Islamic countries on Russia's long war with its own muslims !

IDF establishes 'Israeli-only' entry points from W. Bank

Don't tell me this isn't APARTHEID !

La Honte

Images of Abu Ghraib abuse.

Wipe Out This Shame !

The UN calls for the closure of Guantanamo and for independant trials for its detainees.

A 'long war' or a world war ?

It is US against them. The US 'long war' have already started and with possible wars against iran, Syria and some african countries, we are bracing for a fifth World War, considering that the third was the cold war and the fourth, the forgotten and ongoing war of civilian society and indigenous people against globalisation (according to sub-commandant Marcos).

The thing is that we are probably experiencing a mix of the last two, the war of the US against terrorrism feeding the war of civilian society against global powers and vice versa.

Lebanon at the crossroads

Tensions are mounting in Lebanon thanks to Jumblatt and the leaders of the 'Cedar' revolution. Now it is up to them to disarm Hezbollah, except that Hezbollah is a military and political force in Lebanon, even bigger than the lebanese army and they will not surrrender without guarantees. People are buying weapons on both sides. It started like this in 1975.
Of course, Jumblatt offers his usual suspect (Syria) and the US will kindly help.

There is a sense of familarity in the air !

No more arabs in the Jordan Valley

Amira Hass reproting on the daily lives of people in Palestine and on the Israeli Apartheid. When Amira reports you have to read !

Greens voice their opposition to the 'fence'

It is rather a euphemism to call Israel's apartheid wall a fence ! It is as Palestinians and Israelis are two groups of animals fenced by a superhuman carer for the benefit of both. Except that One group controls access to the the fence and crosses to kill and exterminate whenever possible.
And people (even Hillary Clinton who posed near the fence) call this ugly thing a necessary measure for the sake pf the security of Israel. Of course, if you consider that Palestinians are dangerous animals !

Cheney shoots a 77 year old in hunt accident

The man is a millionnaire lawyer from texas and was acompanying Cheney on the huntig trip.

Very symbolic of this VP and the administration, of the US and of its relation to weapons and violence in general. Why on Hell hunting is so glamourous among these people ? Can somebody explain ?

The war against Iran: A possible scenario

''A United States attack on Iran could eventually lead to a lengthy confrontation involving many other countries in the region, including Israel, a British think tank said in a report released on Monday."A U.S. military attack on Iranian nuclear infrastructure would be the start of a protracted military confrontation that would probably involve Iraq, Israel and Lebanon as well as the United States and Iran, with the possibility of west Gulf States being involved as well," it said.According to the Oxford Research Group report, thousands of military personnel and hundreds of civilians would be killed if the U.S. launched an air strike on Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear arms.''

Official Air Strikes against Iran to start soon

EVERY DAY NOW, we are more and more closer to this very publicized and very much expected war.
''According to the newspaper report, the most likely strategy would involve aerial bombardment by long-distance B2 bombers armed with precision weapons. ''

A Sword of Damocles hanging over Israel's future

Ultimately what made the south african apartheid fall were not international reprieve and divestments but the fact that the resources and energy of a whole society were concentrated on one matter: racial conservation and racial divisions.

Ultimately what will contribute greatly to the fall of Israel as a jewish and military state is the fact that the energy of the Israeli society is being channelled on one matter: territorial borders and demographics, in other words, the Israeli apartheid.

''A future historian who looks at us will wonder: Why did this nation of wise people decide to destroy most of the years of its renewed sovereignty with obsessive wallowing in a corrosive acid − the issue of the territories? Why did it enlist and militarize the values of democracy, religious beliefs, the state economy, sensitivity to the cries of the poor, human and minority rights, and the character of the Jewish state, for the sake of one issue? The historian will not distinguish between rightists and leftists. The missed opportunity is shared by both.''

BHL as Inspector Gadget

Bernard-Henri Lévy (BHL), the french 'intellectual', continues with his oversimplifications of planetary matters. After having reduced, in his newly released book 'American vertigo: travelling America in the footsteps of Tocqueville', the American people and America to nothing else than already known clichés, he now offers a total explanation to the Cartoon row phenomenon with designated culprits: Syria, Iran and Hamas.
Thank you Mr Levy for having finally resolved the problem. The solution becomes now even simpler than the explanation, designed for Neo-Con international wars.

STRIKE AND OCCUPY SYRIA, IRAN AND WHAT IS LEFT OF PALESTINE AND ALL IN ALL OF THE MUSLIM AND ARAB WORLD NOT YET SUBMITTED TO THE UNITED STATES AND ISRAEL.

After that Muslims all over the world will be quite content and happy and will never be able to protest offending cartoons !

Israel is 'legally' expulsing the arab children of East Jerusalem to the West Bank

''The national ethos still holds sacred the "eternal unity of Jerusalem," but, unfortunately, Jerusalem is full of Arabs. To reduce their number, the government has proposed a law to prevent family unification, a law that threatens to lead to the expulsion of thousands of Palestinian children from Jerusalem, a bureaucratic transfer in the spirit of Avigdor Lieberman.

Four of Mirfat Abu Jawila's seven children would be due for expulsion; the Supreme Court will hold a hearing on the law next week.The main purpose of the law, which has been in the works for the past three years, is to limit seriously the ability of Palestinian citizens to obtain Israeli citizenship by means of marriage with Israeli citizens. Much has already been said and written about this law. Now it appears that also hidden somewhere in its sections and subsections is the possibility of preventing thousands of children who are residents of Jerusalem from staying in Israel after they turn 18; obviously, they will have to move to Palestinian Authority territory. Some were born in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is where their lives are centered. It's where their parents live.''

Freedom of speech or freedom to provoke ?

Posted on the Danish newspaper website who published the anti-islamic cartoons:

"Jyllands-Posten in no circumstances will publish Holocaust cartoons from an Iranian newspaper"

Previously, they turned down cartoons even less offending for christians.

Do you call this freedom of speech ?

Art of Provocation

My colleague, Earl, at:
http://politicsinternational.web-log.nl/log/4904221
http://politicsinternational.web-log.nl/log/4893977

has an interesting story and links about the danish cartoon row and its relation to the run-up to the Iran war.

'Impure Islam' according to Irshad Manji

I wonder if Manji wasn't Muslim, or if she would'nt profess that she is a Muslim, what would be her credo ? Her writings are full of simplifications and manipulation but she has a preset audience and she knows how to speak to this audience. Some people make money by importing and exporting food, weapons, oil, whatever... Manji makes money and fame by exporting her own hate of Islam which echoes the actual Islamic hate wave.

Meanwhile in Democracy Land

While the attention of the entire world is focused on the cartoon row and the 'violence' of Islam, Israel is perseverating in land grabbing, children killing and other democratic tolerant non violent matters. Defenders of democracy, free speech and other modern political weapons against the disadvantaged and the poor are being busied and entertained !

The Bantustans of the middle east: Israel unveils plan to encircle palestinian state

"He talked about Israel having to maintain a Jewish majority in the state of Israel, meaning that we have to create a new border, what is called final borders. He knows that we can't negotiate with Hamas. So the only conclusion that can be derived from this is that, in order to reach final borders, Israel will have to carry out additional [unilateral] withdrawals," said Mishal.
''Mr Olmert said he intends to annex the three main settlement blocks of Ariel, Gush Etzion and Maale Adumim as well as the Jordan Valley, the TV station said. The pressure group Peace Now estimates 185,000 of the 244,000 Israelis in the West Bank outside Jerusalem are resident in the settlements Mr Olmert wants to keep within Israel's border. ''

Freedom of speech and Freedom of expression

From the comments ent to Al-Jazeera on the cartoon row, a meaningful one from Nigeria explains very well what is going on in the muslim world.

''I think EU should be made to know that if the Danish newspaper printed the repulsive pictures in the name of "freedom of speech", which is accepted by the member states, then governments of the Muslim countries cannot stop their citizens from also enjoying a "freedom of expression".Ammabua Ameer, Nigeria

Notice that the protests were the most violent where there are sectarian tensions, like in Lebanon, a police state, like in Jordan and Syria or anger and great misery like in Palestine. So governments are letting people vent their frustrations. One good thing that may emerge from this is that people know now the power of freedom of expression and they might use it to protest other things, like the west,s opression of arab countries through Israel, the United states and corrupted arab leaders.

Brothers in arms: Israel's secret pact with the apartheid regime

During the second world war the future South African prime minister John Vorster was interned as a Nazi sympathiser. Three decades later he was being feted in Jerusalem. In the second part of his remarkable special report, Chris McGreal investigates the clandestine alliance between Israel and the apartheid regime, cemented with the ultimate gift of friendship - A-bomb technology.

''"Israel and South Africa have one thing above all else in common: they are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples."''

''"There are things we South Africans recognise in the Palestinian struggle for national self-determination and human rights," says Kasrils. "The repressed are demonised as terrorists to justify ever-greater violations of their rights. We have the absurdity that the victims are blamed for the violence meted out against them. Both apartheid and Israel are prime examples of terrorist states blaming the victims.""

''White South Africa and Israel painted themselves as enclaves of democratic civilisation on the front line in defending western values, yet both governments often demanded to be judged by the standards of the neighbours they claimed to be protecting the free world from.
"The whites [in South Africa] always saw their fate in a way related to the fate of the Israelis because the Israelis were a white minority surrounded by 200 million fanatic Muslims assisted by communism," says Liel. "Also, there was this analysis that said Israel is a civilised western island in the midst of these 200 million barbaric Arabs and it's the same as the Afrikaners; five million Afrikaners surrounded by hundreds of millions of blacks who are also assisted by communism."''

''In 2004, Ronnie Kasrils visited the Palestinian territories to assess the effect of Israel's assault on the West Bank two years earlier in response to a wave of suicide bombings that killed hundreds of people. "This is much worse than apartheid," he said. "The Israeli measures, the brutality, make apartheid look like a picnic. We never had jets attacking our townships. We never had sieges that lasted month after month. We never had tanks destroying houses. We had armoured vehicles and police using small arms to shoot people but not on this scale."''

Arnon Soffer has spent years advising the government on the "demographic threat" posed by the Arabs. The Haifa university geographer paints a bleak vision of how he sees the Gaza strip a generation after Israel's withdrawal.
"When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it's going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful. It's going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day," he told the Jerusalem Post.
"If we don't kill, we will cease to exist. The only thing that concerns me is how to ensure that the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings."''

The Danish cartoons were deliberate provocation

The Guardian reveals today that the danish newspaper refused to run cartoons thought to be offensive to their christian readers, three years ago.

Worlds Apart: The Israeli Apartheid

''Israelis have always been horrified at the idea of parallels between their country, a democracy risen from the ashes of genocide, and the racist system that ruled the old South Africa. Yet even within Israel itself, accusations persist that the web of controls affecting every aspect of Palestinian life bears a disturbing resemblance to apartheid."

''Said Rhateb was born in 1972, five years after Israeli soldiers fought their way through East Jerusalem and claimed his family's dry, rock-strewn plot as part of what the Jewish state proclaimed its "eternal and indivisible capital". The bureaucrats followed in the army's footsteps, registering and measuring Israel's largest annexation of territory since its victory over the Arab armies in the 1948 war of independence. They cast an eye over the Rhateb family's village of Beit Hanina and its lands, a short drive from the biblical city on the hill, and decided the outer limits of this new Jerusalem. The Israelis drew a line on a map - a new city boundary - between Beit Hanina's lands and most of its homes. The olive groves and orchards were to be part of Jerusalem; the village was to remain in the West Bank.
The population was not so neatly divided. Arabs in the area were registered as living in the village - even those, like Rhateb's parents, whose homes were inside what was now defined as Jerusalem. In time, the Israelis gave the Rhatebs identity cards that classified them as residents of the West Bank, under military occupation. When Said Rhateb was born, he too was listed as living outside the city's boundaries. His parents thought little of it as they moved freely across the invisible line drawn by the Israelis, shopping and praying inside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City.
Four decades later, the increasingly complex world of Israel's system of classification deems Said Rhateb to be a resident of the West Bank - somewhere he has never lived - and an illegal alien for living in the home in which he was born, inside the Jerusalem boundary. Jerusalem's council forces Rhateb to pay substantial property taxes on his house but that does not give him the right to live in it, and he is periodically arrested for doing so. Rhateb's children have been thrown out of their Jerusalem school, he cannot register a car in his name - or rather he can, but only one with Palestinian number plates, which means he cannot drive it to his home because only Israeli-registered cars are allowed within Jerusalem - and he needs a pass to visit the centre of the city. The army grants him about four a year.''

"Apartheid was an extension of the colonial project to dispossess people of their land," said the Jewish South African cabinet minister and former ANC guerrilla, Ronnie Kasrils, on a visit to Jerusalem. "That is exactly what has happened in Israel and the occupied territories; the use of force and the law to take the land. That is what apartheid and Israel have in common."

Bush and Blair were wrong: Chirac is right

Jonathan Steel on the State of the World:

''The crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions is equally significant. The post-cold-war era, when there was only a single superpower, is over now. The United States is being forced to enlist Russia and, to a lesser extent, China as partners in finding a compromise. With this, the economic rise of India and the resurgence of anti-yanqui nationalism in several states in Latin America, we have clearly entered a multi-polar world.
No one in Downing Street or Washington will admit it publicly, but Jacques Chirac has turned out to be right. His global Gaullism, the notion that the world has several power centers, and it is no longer just "the west versus the rest", offers a more accurate picture than the image of the lone cowboy acting in the name of us all. The analysis is not Chirac's alone, of course. The French president is in most ways a discredited figure, little loved even at home. But he is the most prominent European to dare to embrace multi-polarity as the new reality of international politics. ''

Killing history in Palestine

One constant aspect of the Israeli occupation of Palestine is the disregard for historic and cultural artifacts related to the history of palestinians and their land. The erection of the wall, besides annexing illegally palestinian land beyond the 1967 borders, is harming the environment, isolating people from their orchards and their agricultural land and killing history.

The Damning Street Memo

What was previously called by the press 'The Downing Street Memo' pointing to an agreement between Bush and Blair on the Iraq war even before taking the matter to the UN resurfaces under the form of 'The White house Memo' this time with more details which are damning for Blair and Bush. These details are from a top british academic and human rights lawyer, Philippe Sands, consigned in his book 'Lawless World'. here is the profile of Mr. Sands.

''The meeting between Mr Bush and Mr Blair, attended by six close aides, came at a time of growing concern about the failure of any hard intelligence to back up claims that Saddam was producing weapons of mass destruction in breach of UN disarmament obligations. It took place a few days before the then US secretary Colin Powell made claims - since discredited - in a dramatic presentation at the UN about Iraq's weapons programme.''

Bush and Blair are so silly to speak of this in the presence of their aides but this is symptomatic, in my opinion, of the fact that these leaders are so contemptuous and self-conceited to the point where their aides become like ghosts, ornamental non-existent persons, deprived of skill and judgement, and more precisely of a judgment which is superior to their own. This tells a lot about the quality of the leaders and their morality.

Both 'leaders' decided to invade whether there was a second UN resolution or not and whether Iraq had WMDs or not. Bush expressed, I can't believe it, some anguish about the fact that Iraq might not have WMDs. I cannot believe that this guy is still running the United States and listened to by world leaders !

Blair mostly agreed to whatever Bush expressed or imagined.

And what Bush imagined to embarrass Saddam and justify war was really even more silly than all the lies that we were told, it looks like it is coming from the mind of a primate in terms of deception. With the media America have, it could make every American swallow whatever lies and fabrications told and shown on TV's and newspapers.

Here is a short list of Bush wishful planning for the Iraq war:

Paint US spy planes with UN colours and fly them over Iraq so Saddam will attack and then he will be in breach of UN resolutions. Did Kofi know that ?

Assassinate Saddam...

Find a defector who will do a public presentation about Iraq's WMDs.

Blair is said to have presented a second UN resolution as an insurance against political unrest in the Arab world and in Iraq in particular but Bush told him that he had no worry on this side and that interethnic tensions are unlikely to take place after the invasion...This guy is a genius !

What will happen, in my opinion, is that Blair will succumb to British citizen's anger first while Bush's agony and impeachment will be slower. He will try to escape justice and succeed with the help of his many friends and his family's friends in the judiciary only to face justice when he will become old and ill like Pinochet and when he will be of no use to anybody...

Read the original article here

Read here another source with more details found by my colleague Earl.

Read here the timeline of the war preparations.

The Prophet's cartoons: Hysteria and double standards

Even if I am against the hysteria going on in the arab world concerning the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet with a bomb in his turban, I should admit that if this was an incident involving jewish people and the jewish community, accusations of anti-semitism and legal procedures would have been launched and publicized against the culprits.
So may be the anger of muslims is related to what they feel as a double standard treatment of the freedom of expression...

"AU SECOURS VOLTAIRE, ILS SONT FOUS"

Across the Arab world, people are protesting the publication by the Danish and the French press of what they consider as 'offensive' caricatures of the prophet. France Soir who published the cartoons in protest said that there was no racist remarks or any other offense in the caricature other than the fact that the prophet is represented which is forbidden by Islam. However, non Muslims are not bound by this interdiction. Yesterday, the director of France Soir was fired by the Franco-Egyptian owner of the paper who issued an apology.

I think the Arab world should be ashamed by these reactions. There is much more to be offended with than the silly cartoons. There are many tasks awaiting the Arab world, development, end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, end of wars, end of the misery of the people, end of the hegemony of the US on every aspect of political life in the Arab world...There are more urgent issues touching the building of Arab nations and the welfare of their citizens. All this is demagogic agitation provoked by inept rulers to divert the attention of Arab citizens from real problems going on in the Arab world.

This movement is banking on an evident and wide anger in the Arab world against westerners.
However, the anger should be directed elsewhere than on silly religious issues and silly cartoons.

The forgotten 'enemy combatant': Does anybody still remember Guantanamo ?

American citizens march in protest and in solidarity with the prisoners from Santiago, Cuba, to Guantanamo.

Hamas's only sensible option: state building

Jonathan Freedland draws on the history of zionism to shpw that Hamas can still serve palestinian interests despite international reprieve and isolation.

War between palestinian factions ?

Could it be the next outcome to the palestinian elections ? In that case zionists will just have to sit and watch the show as one Haaretz reader from Lisbon, Pedro Vieira, commented recently:

''It is as fatal as destiny;Hamas,Fatah,al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades,Hezbollah and other prominent Peace Nobel laureates will end up killing each other.Just relax and enjoy the show.''

Fatah members have shown that they are corrupted and stupids and they can be dragged into a war with Hamas at the incitement of Israel and the US. But it takes two to make a war and I don't think that the Hamas people are that stupid !

Anyway, Israeli newspapers just love to report those things.

State of the Union / State of the World

''Bush urges end to US 'oil addiction' ''. Meanwhile he has more than 130000 soldiers enduring daily hostilities in one of the richest oil country in the world (Irak) and preparing to topple the regime or invade another (Iran):
"America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world ", Oh yeh ? But he seems to ignore who made this part of the world unstable !

''He proposed training 70,000 high school teachers to lead advanced courses in mathematics and science. In addition, he urged bringing 30,0000 math and science professionals into the classrooms to teach. Bush said the US needed to strengthen its competitiveness in the global economy.'' Meanwhile, his extreme-right christian donors and those who put him at the white houseare assassinating what is left of science in schools by attacking the theory of evolution and science in general. Moreover, the impovering brought on the american middle class by Bush and the cuts in health care and education might lead to fewer students in america's classrooms, not to speak of the people who were already struggling before Bush came to power.

"The American economy is pre-eminent; but we cannot afford to be complacent," he said. "In a dynamic world economy, we are seeing new competitors like China and India."
Bush knows that the United States might not recover from the strains he put on the economy by making huge tax cuts, cuts in health care and education and, most importantly, expansive wars. If only he listened to Osama who made it clear, in one of his discourses adressed to the world, that Al-Qaida war's against the United States was meant to put the country in an economic crisis brought on by expansive wars and from which it will not easily recover.