Mondoweiss

March 31, 2009 The second day of the One State for Palestine/Israel: A Country for All Its Citizens? conference had a much more ominous tone than Day 1. It focused on the long road to building a one state solution - from the obstacles of the current moment to the challenges of building the movement to get us there. One of the reoccurring themes of the day was the incredible amount of violence that the speakers expect Israel to use to maintain the status quo. The day started with Phyllis Bennis reminding the audience that just because the two-state solution is dead doesn't mean that one state is assured. Rather she expects that a two state "solution" will be imposed on Israel/Palestine that keeps the current inequalities in place. As'ad Ghanem spoke next. Ghanem is a Palestinian citizen of Israel and a preeminent Palestinian academic who has been at the forefront of  calls from the Palestinian community in Israel for equality and national rights.  He began his talk with the joke "here is the session with the bad news." Then he continued: The bad news is that if Israeli is ready to conduct a mass killing in the West Bank and Gaza, and the starvation policies for 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, if the danger comes from Haifa . . . if I'm sitting in the Israeli cabinet with Avigdor Lieberman and Barak and Netanyahu, I mean just imagine they are more than ready to conduct another ethnic cleaning than in '48. Israel is ready to conduct another ethnic cleansing. This idea was repeated throughout the day - the war in Gaza was just the latest chapter in a historical process that began over 60 years ago where Israel has appropriated Palestinian land through force. Although much attention is given to the incredible ethnic cleansing that took place in 1947-49 with the founding of the state, many speakers expect it could happen again and think the incoming government is capable of doing it. In addition, as Ghanem's quote above demonstrates, the speakers did not expect the violence to be isolated to the occupied territories. Ilan Pappe referred to the recent riots in Umm al-Fahm as a practice run at for increased military control of Palestinian communities inside Israel. He also warned that the violence in Gaza was "just a preamble." For all the visionary thinking of an egalitarian future, Nadia Hijab summarized the current focus as simply trying to stay on the land that Palestinians currently have in the face of Israel's ongoing efforts to force them into smaller and smaller areas. All in all, a pretty sobering day. One of the most important points of this discussion to me was the point that this violence is not an arbitrary decision, but the inevitable outcome of maintaining a system of such inequality. Ali Abunimah said this best: Even to maintain the status quo, Israel would have to carry out escalating Gaza-style massacres on a regular basis in an attempt to terrorize and subdue the Palestinian population. In 2009, if you support Israel's claim to be a Jewish state, you must also in practice support its massacres, because those are the price of maintaining it. This is an electrifying statement, and one that I think is true. The violence that both Palestinians and Israelis face are tied to maintaining a system where Jews are given special and exclusive rights over others. While Jewish Israelis do face the threat of violence, Palestinians face the threat of wholesale massacres like we saw in Gaza. And the speakers though it will only get worse. I defer to them in their reading of the situation, the speakers at this conference certainly knew a lot more than I did. It is a terrifying and humbling thought and I think this is part of what gave this conference such energy and urgency. The movement for equality and justice in Israel/Palestine is not just a movement to "do the right thing", but a movement for survival.

www.uruknet.info?p=53034

Eva Bartlett | In Gaza

Shaddi (red crescent)’s father: defying threats of invading Israeli tanks, he stayed in his home during the heavy shelling in his southern Gaza Strip region (Fukhari). March 31, 2009 Less than two months have passed since the end of Israel’s grisly war on Gaza. Not a house has been re-built (there is no cement; Israel continues to ban its entry into Gaza), thousands are displaced or sheltering in an overcrowded relative’s house or renting a scarcely-available apartment. The aid has stockpiled on the other side of crossings into Gaza, many trucks being sent back or expired. And the pain of loss, let alone of seeing family members -children, siblings, parents-burned by white phosphorous, being murdered or left to bleed to death is still unbearably fresh. Yet Palestinians are trying to move on, again, while dealing with a siege which has only tightened post-destruction of Gaza. Last week Palestinian youths held a concert in the burnt-out theatre in one of the al Quds hospital buildings, attacked and seriously damaged by Israel during its war on Gaza [more than 14 hospitals and medical centres were bombed and damaged by Israeli army, 2 clinics were destroyed, 44 other damaged, and 23 emergency workers and medics were killed]. Quds Concert Charred walls as a backdrop, piles of twisted metal, burnt rafters, and the ash of destroyed walls framing the stage, the next generation of Palestinian parents and leaders stood proud last Thursday, saying with their presence, as well as singing, "we will not go down". The Michael Heart song written during Israel’s 3 weeks of attacks on Gaza caught the spirit of what Palestinians have been saying and living for decades, since the Zionists first began -even before Israel was created on the smoking ruins of Palestinian villages -their assassinations and acts of terrorism designed to frighten and drive out the existing Palestinian population. On stage, a youth troupe of Dabke dancers held their own, did justice to the art that is Dabke. What was evident more than the skill of the musicians and dancers was Palestinians’ drive to live, to laugh, to show off and share their love of life. Just as with a concert organized by several youths last November to lift the spirits of Palestinians in Gaza living under a suffocating siege, the crowd clearly reveled in the opportunity for joy …after so much tragedy.               More.........................

By Jeremy Salt - Ankara

The 'Dahiye strategy' has just been applied in Gaza. March 31, 2009 The spate of reports coming out of the Middle East in the past two weeks are signs of a coming danger greater than the region has known in its modern history. The Israeli onslaught on Gaza; the massacre of civilians; the strafing of hospitals, ambulances and medical staff; the vandalisation of Palestinian homes; the violent, racist graffiti scrawled on walls; the soldiers’ t-shirts patterned with graphics showing a pregnant Palestinian woman in the cross hairs of a rifle; the support by 85 per cent of the Israeli population for an attack on civilians which killed hundreds of children; the evidence of Israeli soldiers themselves of how civilians were murdered in cold blood; the march on Umm al Fahm by the followers of Meir Kahane, at the same time as Palestinian cultural festivals in Jerusalem were being prohibited; the choice of a settler racist as Israel’s Foreign Minister; the two-tier colonial society established on the West Bank, reminiscent of Algeria in the 19th century; the wall, the checkpoints, the closures, the daily humiliation, the seizure of land and demolition of homes; the continuing demographic war against the Palestinians in Jerusalem; the recent attack on Sudan by unknown planes said to have been Israeli; the wars of the past and now the preparations for an attack on Iran - what more evidence could anyone need of how utterly dangerous the state of Israel is to regional and global stability? The misdeeds of soldiers are not an aberration. All of these actions are part of the same deeply disturbing mosaic. One part cannot be separated from the other. Senior political and military figures keep repeating the same old mantras. This is the most moral army in the world. Against the proven evidence of the same crimes committed over the past 60 years, who on earth could believe it? But apparently the Israelis do. Every criticism of Israel is converted into the refuges of anti-Semitism, Israel-bashing and unfair treatment. Anti-Semitism is said to be on the rise around the world, but it was not the anti-Semites who appropriated the symbol of a religion and put it on the pennants of tanks shelling market and apartment blocks in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, and on the sides of planes and helicopters strafing and assassinating Palestinians in their cities, towns and refugee camps. It was not anti-Semites but the state of Israel which nurtured the arrogant and fanatical Jewish settlers who run wild on the West Bank, beating, killing, vandalizing and intimidating, with kippas on their head, sidelocks flying and guns on their shoulders, in the name of the inalienable rights of the Jewish people. What kind of ammunition has Israel itself, and Jews who do not speak out against the violence committed in their name by 'the state of the Jewish people’, handed to anti-Semites?                                                More.............................

AWPSA

March 27, 2009 Torture Expose by Iraq member of Parliament. Mohammed Al-Daini reveals torture in Iraqi prisons. He is currently missing.

www.uruknet.info?p=52971

by Nicole Colson / March 27th, 2009

Defending government eavesdropping without a warrant. Arguing that prisoners of the U.S. held overseas don’t have the right to challenge their detention in U.S. courts. Claiming that victims of CIA kidnapping shouldn’t have their cases heard because of “national security” interests.

These were supposed to be relics of the Bush administration and its attacks on basic constitutional and human rights. Instead, they are among the many troubling actions taken by the new administration of President Barack Obama.

Rather than repudiating Bush’s shredding of the Constitution, the new White House is embracing some of the worst abuses carried out by the Bush administration in the name of national security and the “war on terror.”

As a candidate for president, Obama promised a new direction. While pledging to maintain national security, Obama said that “we also want to make sure that we’re protecting the Constitution, and that we’re not excessively providing the president with a sort of a ‘blank check’ when it comes to dealing with national security,” he told ABC’s This Week.

And, in fact, it was refreshing to hear Obama’s new Attorney General Eric Holder declaring bluntly during his confirmation hearings that “waterboarding is torture.” It was a forceful repudiation of one aspect of the Bush administration, at least–Vice President Dick Cheney had, after all, openly defended “waterboarding” in October 2006.                                                           More..............................................

As the mother of a Marine who served two tours in Iraq who came home 80% disabled , he would call me and say, Mom, I don't deserve to live anymore, I have a gun in mouth, I have to pull the trigger, I can't live with all the innocent women and children I've killed.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has said the security forces have arrested a group of alleged Islamist militants linked to Israeli intelligence.

Mr Saleh did not say what evidence had been found to show the group's links with Israel, a regional enemy of Yemen.

The arrests were connected with an attack on the US embassy in Sanaa last month which killed at least 18 people, official sources were quoted saying.

Israel's foreign ministry has rejected the accusation as "totally ridiculous".

"A terrorist cell was arrested and will be referred to the judicial authorities for its links with the Israeli intelligence services," Mr Saleh told a gathering at al-Mukalla University in Hadramawt province.

"Details of the trial will be announced later. You will hear about what goes on in the proceedings," he added.

The 17 September attack was the second to target the US embassy since April. Militants detonated car bombs before firing rockets at the heavily fortified building.

Mr Saleh did not identify the suspects, but official sources were quoted saying it was same cell - led by a militant called Abu al-Ghaith al-Yamani - whose arrest was announced a week after the attack.

An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said the Yemeni president's statement was without foundation.

"To believe that Israel would create Islamist cells in Yemen is really far-fetched. This is yet another victory for the proponents of conspiracy theories," Igal Palmor said in remarks reported by AFP.

"محمد على الأتاسي"، واحد من كتاب قلائل أحرص على قراءة مقالاته أنّى وجدتُها في صحيفة النهار أو في المواقع الإلكترونية، رغم اختلاف وجهات النظر بيننا، وهي اختلافات لا تنبع من ترف الاختلاف، بل في أمور جوهرية، وأرجو أن لا تفسد للود قضية.

فعندما اطلعت على المقال الذي نشرته له "النهار" في 24 آذار 2009م، تحت عنوان "المحكمة الجنائية الدولية والبشير في: نقد ردود الفعل العربية"، وجدت أن هناك ما ينبغي الرد عليه في هذا المقال. ومع أنه بذل مجهودا في متابعته بعض القوانين الناظمة للموضوع، لكنه للأسف استحضر البعض منها وغض الطرف عن بعض آخر. وحتى التي استحضرها فقد أخذ بمآلات بعضها وأعرض عن مآلات البعض الآخر.

ليسمح لي الأستاذ "الأتاسي" أن أقتبس مما أورده في مقاله، مبتدئا بالأسباب التي تمنع المحكمة الجنائية من أن يكون لها ولاية على جمهورية السودان، ثم أذكّر بالثغرات التي حاول "لويس مورينو أوكامبو" أن يعبر من خلالها للادعاء على الرئيس السوداني "عمر البشير".

أول ما يمنع من ملاحقة البشير ـ بحسب الأتاسي ـ أن المحكمة الجنائية لا ولاية لها على الدول التي لم توقع على اتفاقية "روما"، الناظمة للأساس القانوني لهذه المحكمة. والعجيب أن الأتاسي عندما فوجئ بهذا العائق الذي يمنع من ملاحقة "البشير"، كون السودان ـ هي ومعظم دول المنطقة باستثناء الأردن وجيبوتي ـ لم يوقع على اتفاقية روما، حاول أن يهرب بقوله (لندع الجواب على هذا التساؤل جانبا). فلماذا هذا الهروب؟ سنحاول ـ فيما بعد ـ أن نعرف لماذا؟

لكن "الأتاسي" لم يستسلم. فعاد ليذكرنا بالحالات التي يستطيع المدعي العام فيها الملاحقة، قال: (وعليه، فإن اختصاص المحكمة وولايتها القانونية التي تبدأ من تاريخ إنشائها في العام 2002 محددة بنقطتين رئيستين: أن يكون المتهم 1ـ مواطنا في دولة عضو، 2 ـ أو أن تكون الجريمة واقعة على أراضي دولة عضو).

ولأن أياً من هذين الشرطين لم يكن متحققا في حالة السودان كي يسعفاه بالوصول إلى ملاحقة الرئيس "البشير" التي يظهر أن الأتاسي يريدها بأي ثمن ولو كان على حساب الحقيقة، لأسباب سنعرفها فيما بعد، فإنه لجأ إلى الاستثناء، وهو بحسب "الأتاسي": (والاستثناء الوحيد في هذا المجال هو أن يحيل مجلس الأمن إلى المحكمة جريمة واقعة خارج نطاق الدول الأعضاء في المحكمة، وهذا بالضبط هو حال السودان الغير موقع على اتفاقية روما).

وإذ سلّم "الأتاسي" أن السودان غير خاضع لولاية المحكمة الجنائية لفقدان الشرطين اللازمين: (أن يكون المتهم مواطنا في دولة عضو أوأن تكون الجريمة واقعة على أراضي دولة عضو) ، حاول أن يتكئ على الاستثناء أعلاه. ولأنه يعرف أن هناك أكثر من عشرين دولة متورطة في جرائم إبادة وجرائم ضد الإنسانية على رأسها أمريكا وإسرائيل (وإن تكونا غير موقعتين على اتفاقية المحكمة الجنائية)، فإن الأتاسي قبل عذر "أوكامبو" عن عدم ملاحقته الإسرائيليين، بأنه قال لقناة العربية في 4 آذار 2009م: (السلطة الفلسطينية قدمت طلباً للتحقيق في جرائم الحرب على غزة ونحن ننتظر الأدلة التي يمكن أن توفرها مع الجامعة العربية، للمضي قدماً في التحقيقات وتقييم الوضع، لأن جرائم الحرب في غزة كانت فظيعة)، فقد نسي "الأتاسي" أو تناسى أن مندوبين "نرويجيين" لتقصي الحقائق، رفضت مصر السماح لهم أن يعبروا معبر رفح إلى غزة.

In total, Binyam Mohamed spent just under seven years in custody - four of those were at the US's Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba.

US authorities considered him a would-be bomber who fought alongside the Taleban in Afghanistan, following his arrest in Pakistan in 2002.

But Mr Mohamed has insisted the only evidence against him was obtained using torture. Last year the US dropped all charges against him.

Mr Mohamed was said to be very ill as a result of a hunger strike in the weeks before his release, while US authorities were reviewing his case.

Conversion to Islam

Binyam Mohamed al Habashi was born in Ethiopia on 24 July 1978.

In 1994 he arrived in the UK and sought asylum on the basis of his family's opposition to the Ethiopian government.

His application was rejected, but in 2000 he was given exceptional leave to remain in the UK for four years.

Living in North Kensington, west London, Mr Mohamed worked as a cleaner and studied electrical and electronics engineering.

In 2001 - the year he converted to Islam - Mr Mohamed travelled to Pakistan, and then Afghanistan. What he was doing there was the crux of his legal battle.

US President Barack Obama has ordered the closure of Guantanamo

According to Mr Mohamed, he wanted to kick a drug habit and get away from familiar haunts in London.

He says that he also wanted to see whether Taleban-run Afghanistan was a good Islamic country - a path followed by other young Muslim men who were fascinated by events in that war-torn region.

US authorities, however, said that while in Afghanistan Mr Mohamed fought on the front line against anti-Taleban Northern Alliance forces.

They claim he was cherry-picked by al-Qaeda because of his UK residency, and received firearms and explosives training alongside British shoe bomber Richard Reid.

Prosecutors claimed he planned to travel to the US, rent several flats in an apartment block and then blow it up with a timing device.                                               More.................................

'You are fighting a religious war against gentiles': What rabbis told Israeli soldiers in Gaza war

Rabbis in the Israeli army told battlefield troops in January's Gaza offensive that they were fighting a 'religious war' against gentiles, it has been revealed.

An army commander wrote of the shocking command in an Israeli newspaper today - one day after it emerged that Israeli soldiers were told they could kill innocent civilians during the war.

'Their message was very clear: we are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the gentiles who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land,' the commander said.

Fierce: An Israeli mobile artillery unit fires a shell towards Gaza in January

The account by Ram, a pseudonym to shield the soldier's identity, was published by the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper in the second day of revelations that have rocked the Israeli military.

They were leaked from a February 13 meeting of armed forces members to share their Gaza experiences.

Some veterans, alumni of an Israel Defence Force (IDF) military academy, told of the killing of civilians and their impression that deep contempt for Palestinians pervaded the ranks of the Israeli forces.

The institution's director, Danny Zamir, confirmed that Thursday's published accounts were authentic.

In longer excerpts in its Friday 'Week's End' edition, the daily quoted 'Ram' as saying his impression of the 22-day operation was 'the feeling of an almost religious mission'.

It began when a devout sergeant in his unit 'assembled the whole platoon and led the prayer for those going into battle', he said.

'Also when we were inside they sent in those booklets full of Psalms, a ton of Psalms. I think the house I was in for a week, we could have filled a room with the Psalms they sent.'

Injured: A Palestinian boy who was hurt in a missile strike cries as he's treated

The officer felt there was a 'huge gap between what the Education Corps sent out and what the IDF rabbinate sent out.'

The corps distributed pamphlets about the history of Israel's fighting in Gaza from 1948 to the present, he said.

But the rabbinate's message imparted to many soldiers the sense that "this operation was a religious war".

A squad commander from Ram's Givat Brigade, named as Aviv, recounted his misgivings about orders to break down doors with armoured vehicles and shoot anyone inside, floor by floor. 

In the event, the order was amended to include 'operating megaphones' so advancing troops could tell people they had five minutes to get out or be killed.

Aviv said 'there was a very annoying moment' when he briefed his men and one challenged that order, saying: 'Yeah? Anyone who is in there is a terrorist, that's a known fact...

Zeal: Israel's Defence Minister Ehud Barak speaks to reservists during the war

'And then his buddies join in: "We need to murder any person who's in there, yeah, any person who's in Gaza is a terrorist' and all the other things that they stuff our heads with, in the media,' Aviv said.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) has put the Palestinian death toll during the war at 1,417 - 926 civilians, 236 fighters and 255 police officers. Israeli officials have disputed those figures. Thirteen Israelis were killed.

Yesterday, an Israeli think-tank, the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, challenged the conclusion that close to 1,000 Gaza civilians were killed. It said a statistical analysis of PCHR's list of civilian casualties showed a disproportionate number of young men of fighting age.

Defence Minister Ehud Barak responded to the IDF revelations yesterday by repeating Israel's description of its armed forces as the most moral in the world. The IDF said its judge advocate-general had ordered an investigation.

According to a soldier named as Moshe, investigations into battlefield conduct are not taken seriously.

He said the attitude could be summed up as: 'It isn't pleasant to say so, but no one cares at all. We aren't investigating this. This is what happens during fighting...'

AlJazeera.net

March 23, 2009 A group of former Israeli soldiers say they have new evidence of potential war crimes committed by the Israeli army during the war on Gaza. These are not the first allegations of war crimes levelled at the Israeli military and the claims have sparked a bitter debate within Israel's defence forces and wider society over the "morality" of the IDF and its behaviour in Gaza.... Inside Story - Israeli war crimes in Gaza - 22 Mar - Part 1   Inside Story - Israeli war crimes in Gaza - 22 Mar - Part 2

www.uruknet.info?p=52842

BRADLEY S. KLAPPER, AP

March 23, 2009

GENEVA (AP) — Israeli soldiers used an 11-year-old Palestinian boy as a human shield during the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, U.N. human rights experts said Monday.

The Israeli Defense force ordered the boy to walk in front of soldiers being fired on in the Gaza neighborhood of Tel al-Hawa and enter buildings before them, said the U.N. secretary-general's envoy for protecting children in armed conflict.

The boy also was told to open the bags of Palestinians — presumably to protect the soldiers from possible explosives — before being released at the entrance to a hospital, Radhika Coomaraswamy said.

She said the Jan. 15 incident, after Israeli tanks had rolled into the neighborhood and during "intense operations," was a violation of Israeli and international law.

It was included in a 43-page report published Monday, and was just one of many verified human rights atrocities during the three-week war between Israel and Hamas that ended Jan. 18, she said.

Coomaraswamy accused Israeli soldiers of shooting Palestinian children, bulldozing a home with a woman and child still inside, and shelling a building they had ordered civilians into a day earlier.

"Violations were reported on a daily basis, too numerous to list," said Coomaraswamy, who visited Gaza and Israel for five days in February.

Coomaraswamy said there also have been allegations that Hamas used human shields or fired from heavily populated areas, and that U.N. officials are investigating.

Israel criticized the report as "unable or perhaps unwilling" to address Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza or the threat of terrorism, citing Saturday's failed attempt to explode a car bomb in a Haifa mall parking lot as the most recent manifestation.

"The report claims to examine Israel's actions while it willfully ignores and downplays the terrorist and other threats we face," Ambassador Aharon Leshno Yaar told the 47-nation Human Rights Council.

Leshno Yaar said terrorists use women and children as human shields when they launch attacks from schools, homes, hospitals and mosques. He did not address the report's specific allegation about the boy, but an army spokesman rejected the claim.

"We are an army to which morals and high ethical standards are paramount," said Capt. Elie Isaacson.

Coomaraswamy said her list of Israeli violations constituted "just a few examples of the hundreds of incidents that have been documented and verified" by U.N. officials who were in the territory.

She was the only one of the nine U.N. experts who compiled the report that was allowed into Gaza following the war. The experts covered issues ranging from health and hunger to women's rights and arbitrary executions.

The experts also noted reports that Hamas had committed other abuses. They said Hamas had been unwilling to investigate the allegations.

The report called for Israel to investigate human rights abuses that occurred during the conflict.

Last week Israel's military ordered a criminal inquiry into published reports from soldiers that some troops had knowingly killed Palestinian civilians, including children.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Winter Patriot

March 23, 2009

Famed investigative reporter Seymour Hersh ruffled a few feathers last week with comments in Minnesota regarding an alleged "executive assassination ring" -- a squad of elite killers who have allegedly been infiltrating foreign countries and murdering ... well, officially, nobody knows who their victims have been, really, but if this story were officially acknowledged (whatever that means these days), we would no doubt be told that the alleged victims of the alleged murders were "the worst of the worst", without whom America will now be safer, huzzah huzzah.

Here's Hersh, as quoted by Eric Black of the Minnesota Post:

"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...

"Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders [sic], a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.

"Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.

The article in the New York Times to which Hersh refers [or here] was written by Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt, and the admiral in question is Rear Admiral William H. McRaven, Commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), former Commander of Special Operations Command Europe (SOCEUR) and the first Director of NATO Special Operations Forces Coordination Centre (NSCC).

He's a special operations specialist, and a proud Navy Seal!

"Special Operations", of course, is intelligence jargon for "high-deniablilty" "clandestine" raids: sabotage, murder and other acts of what we would normally call terrorism.

In order for an act of international terrorism to have "plausible deniablilty", the perpetrators cannot share their plans with the ambassador or the CIA station chief. So that part of Hersh's statement is not surprising.

Neither is this: the NYT piece makes it very clear that the "stop" Admiral McRaven ordered was temporary, limited, and local -- and that it's history. In other words, the executive killing spree has resumed.

McRaven's order applied only to Afghanistan, and apparently was largely a matter of spin-control. The piece by Mazzetti and Schmitt is, as usual, full of spin itself, but nonetheless it's worth a look. It starts like this:

The commander of a secretive branch of America’s Special Operations forces last month ordered a halt to most commando missions in Afghanistan, reflecting a growing concern that civilian deaths caused by American firepower are jeopardizing broader goals there.

The spun part here, of course, is the alleged context. The "broader goals" mentioned by Mazzetti and Schmitt are only hinted at, but never specified in any detail -- not in the New York Times, at any rate.                                       More....................

Clancy Chassay, Guardian

March 23, 2009

www.uruknet.info?p=52861

Link: www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/23/gaza-war-crimes-medics

by M. Shahid Alam / March 23rd, 2009

It has never been easy offering a critique of capitalism or markets to my undergraduate students. Most have never heard an unkind word about these bedrock institutions, which they know to be the foundations of American power and prosperity.

These are hallowed institutions. The power of private capital to produce jobs, wealth and freedom is one of the central dogmas that many Americans absorb with their mother’s milk. To hear this dogma challenged – in any context – is unsettling. I sometimes suspect that this bitter pill is harder to swallow because it emanates from someone who, so transparently, is not a native-born American.

As the weeks pass, however, my students appear to settle down. In the past, they have been reassured to learn that markets have done a good job at delivering prosperity to a few centers of global capitalism. They do work for us, even if they have not worked for most Asians, Africans and Latin Americans.

Nevertheless, the thesis that ‘free’ markets have rarely worked for economies lagging far behind the economic leaders, does not quite take root. The fault could not lie with markets. For too long, the West has believed that Asians, Africans and Latin Americans failed because they were lazy, spendthrift, venal and unimaginative.                                                                        More...............................................

by Gilad Atzmon / March 24th, 2009

The issue I am going to discuss today is probably the most important thing I’ve ever had to say about Israeli brutality and contemporary Jewish identity. I assume that I could have shaped my thought into a wide-ranging book or an analytical academic text but instead, I will do the very opposite, I will make it as short and as simple as possible.

In the weeks that have just passed we had been witness to an Israeli genocidal campaign against the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza. We had been witnessing one of the strongest armies in the world squashing women, elderly people and children. We saw blizzards of unconventional weapons bursting over schools, hospitals and refugee camps. We had seen and heard about war crimes committed before, but this time, the Israeli transgression was categorically different. It was supported by the total absolute majority of the Israeli Jewish population. The IDF military campaign in Gaza enjoyed the support of 94% of the Israeli population. 94% of the Israelis apparently approved of the air raids against civilians. The Israeli people saw the carnage on their TV screens, they heard the voices, they saw hospitals and refugee camps in flames and yet, they weren’t really moved by it all. They didn’t do much to stop their “democratically elected” ruthless leaders. Instead, some of them grabbed a seat and settled on the hills overlooking the Gaza Strip to watch their army turning Gaza into modern Hebraic coliseum of blood. Even now when the campaign seems to be over and the scale of the carnage in Gaza has been revealed, the Israelis fail to show any signs of remorse. As if this is not enough, all throughout the war, Jews around the world rallied in support of their “Jews-only state”. Such a popular support of outright war crimes is unheard of. Terrorist states do kill, yet they are slightly shy about it all. Stalin’s USSR did it in some remote Gulags, Nazi Germany executed its victims in deep forests and behind barbed wire. In the Jewish state, the Israelis slaughter defenceless women, children and the old in broad daylight, using unconventional weapons targeting schools, hospitals and refugee camps.                                                         More............................

Barring British MP Galloway Puts Canada in Shameful Light

by Eric Walberg / March 25th, 2009

Who ever thought that Canadian politics could be so interesting? First there was the attempted coup last December, when the fractious opposition Liberals, socialists and separatists stunned the nation and joined together, almost ousting the ruling Conservatives. Now the intrepid British MP George Galloway, fresh from bringing the walls of Gaza tumbling down, is launching a land invasion of Canada from the US in a replay of the war of 1812.

The world was shocked — or rather embarrassed — this week when Canadian Immigration and Citizenship Minister Jason Kenney announced he was banning Galloway from entering Canada, as a “security risk.” Well, sort of. Kenney’s Director of Communications Alykhan Velshi explained that it was really the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). Kenney merely chose not to overturn their decision, taken, no doubt, after long and costly sleuthing by Canada’s ace security forces. No official reason was given.

Is Galloway planning to enter Canada as part of some top-secret global terrorist operation? The more likely explanation is because of his outspoken and eloquent opposition to the war in Afghanistan and his success in breaking the siege of Gaza with the historic Viva Palestina convoy last week. He is being accused of supporting Hamas, which Canada officially considers a terrorist organization. However, his only weapon is his fiery oratory, a fine example of — to paraphrase the old saw — words are mightier than white phosphorus bombs.

The Conservative government is on shaky ground these days. It is only because the opposition is split almost equally three ways that the united right can pretend to govern. Conservative strategists obviously feel that Galloway is not an issue that the opposition will rally around. After all, the new Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff supported the war in Iraq and the Liberal government under Prime Minister Jean Cretien provided troops for Afghanistan as early as 2002. The socialists and separatists are not happy with the war but are afraid to say so too openly, considering who controls the media and hence politicians’ fate in any elections.                                                                                                 More................................