Sunday, 2 May 2010

IOA demolishes Palestinian home in Taiba


[ 02/05/2010 - 11:06 AM ]

RAMALLAH, (PIC)-- The Israeli occupation authority (IOA) razed a Palestinian home in Taiba, in the Triangle area occupied in 1948, at a late hour on Saturday rendering its residents homeless.

Israeli occupation policemen, backed by a helicopter, clashed with inhabitants of the town, who objected to the demolition, and arrested three young men.

Local sources said that the policemen closed many streets leading to the demolition site.

In another incident, the IOA imposed house arrest on Ahmed Al-Jallad, a Jerusalemite, after one month of questioning in Maskobeh and other detention centers.

The IOA has pursued such a policy as a new quelling method in occupied Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, Israeli occupation forces (IOF) rounded up five Palestinians in Jenin and Al-Khalil districts at dawn Sunday at the pretext they were wanted for interrogation.

IOF troops also combed a number of villages in Jenin and Tobas districts.

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loaded opposition

In Gaza


One can imagine that were US soldiers to open fire with live ammunition on American protesters, this would not be acceptable. Likewise for Canada and most democratic nations.

Yet somehow there is a void, a gaping hole in the media into which fall most potential reports on Israeli soldiers shooting with live ammunition on visibly unarmed demonstraters.

When Palestine is too far away, too “over there” and mired in “age-old conflict” for mild news viewers and readers to understand, perhaps the simple comparison of “would we accept this for ourselves?” is more apt.

Would we accept that a young man in his early twenties is shot dead for prancing on his land, gleefully laughing in the faces of armed (Israeli) soldiers, delighting in accessing land that had been unilaterally cut off from him and its owners… should be shot dead for it?

Sure, it was a shot in the leg…but then it was aimed at the artery, wasn’t it? And don’t most people understand that arteries bleed hard and heavily, that one can die from a wound to the artery. Israeli soldiers certainly know this, which is most likely why the sniper aimed for the artery.

Would we accept that another group, carrying a large and clearly printed banner on more unilaterally-forbidden land, be shot at with live ammunition? That the bullets would pierce the banner, endangering the lives of those holding and behind it? That puffs of dust would arise from bullets striking just metres from our feet?

Would we accept this land annexation in the first place? Give up our right to live on, work, and access our land, because a bullying state said it is for their security? Would we be able to look across the devasted, bulldozed, rendered-lifeless land, across a fortified fence to lush, fragrant land being worked with tractors on the other side…and believe that the destruction of our land was actually for ‘security’?
No, we’d cry racism. We’d scream for our rights. We’d demand the media take notice. We’d demand the support of other “freedom-loving, democratic” nations.

Who the hell is not freedom-loving? Who doesn’t want to access their land? Who doesn’t die inside because they cannot provide for their children?

Would we be as composed, gracious, generous and welcoming as Palestinians if we had endured the decades of suffering, mockery, dispossession, lies, broken promises, massacres, and being the black sheep of the media?

It is never acceptable for Israeli soldiers to use live ammunition against unarmed protesters, not in Gaza, not in the occupied West Bank or East Jerusalem.

But they do, and it’s no diversion from Israeli policy.



Palestinian minister of detainees holds Israel responsible for death of Zedat


[ 02/05/2010 - 11:02 AM ]
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- Palestinian minister of prisoners’ affairs Mohamed Al-Ghoul held the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) fully responsible for the death of cancer patient Fayez Zedat, an ex-detainee in its jails.

In a press release on Saturday, Ghoul said the IOA deliberately did not provide Zedat with appropriate medical treatment at an earlier stage of his cancer which later spread throughout his body until he was released in June last year after he reached the brink of death.

“The occupation intentionally leaves imprisoned patients without treatment until diseases take hold in their bodies and kill them without mercy,” the minister stressed.

He appealed to concerned international organizations to urgently move to follow up the health conditions of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, noting that there are more than 1,600 patients in prison, 16 of them suffer from cancer.

The minister also pointed out that the IOA blackmails patients in its jails through offering them to receive medical treatment abroad in exchange for accepting to be exiled from Palestine.

In a related incident, Hamas-affiliated prisoner Mazen Fuqaha appealed to human rights organizations to intervene to put an end to his health suffering in light of the deliberate medical neglect policy pursued against detainees in Israeli jails.

Prisoner Fuqaha told his family that he suffers from a deviation in his left eye, burning eyes, severe migraine, and ongoing stomachache.

He called for necessarily sending specialist doctors to see his medical condition and pressuring the IOA to stop the slow death sentence issued against him, affirming that the prison authority uses the policy of medical neglect as a delayed death sentence against prisoners.


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Arab MPs in “Israel” condemn the “racist campaign” against them

by Tony Auth
Middle East Monitor, May 1, 2010

Arab members of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, have reiterated the right of Palestinian citizens to communicate with the outside world, especially in the Middle East. The MPs’ statement came in response to moves in the Knesset to strip some Arab MPs of their parliamentary immunity for taking part in a Palestinian delegation to Libya.

The president of the “Assembly” parliamentary coalition, Jamal Zahalka MP, is confident that attempts by the Israeli government to put barriers between the outside world and the Palestinians who live in Israel “will not work”. Mr. Zahalka added, “We will break through all barriers and ghettos which are built by the Israeli government, and will not be deterred from communicating with the Arab world by right-wing attacks and the government’s decisions.”

Pointing out that the Israeli parliament is to hold a special meeting to discuss the possibility of stripping parliamentary immunity from those who visited Libya, Mr. Zahalka said that the Arab members of the Knesset will boycott such moves. He described such sessions as “racist parties” and likened them to a military court. “We are not guilty of any crime,” he said. “We have merely exercised our right and duty. This racially motivated campaign is based on the Israeli belief that our visit to Libya poses a threat to the state.”

The President of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, Mohamed Baraka MP, called the parliamentary move “close to Nazi practices”.

“Neither Israel nor the Knesset nor the right-wing MPs can formulate a new identity or history for the Arab minority in Israel,” said Hanin El-Zoghbi MP. The relationship between Israel’s Arab minority and the rest of the Arab world has to be respected by Israel, she added.

Mohamed Zidane, the Chairman of the High Committee for Follow up on the Palestinians’ Rights in the Territories Occupied in 1948, called Israel’s campaign against the Arab MPs’ visit to Libya “a desperate campaign of racism which seeks to destroy the national, cultural and human rights of the Palestinian people.”
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If someone announced that Hezbollah has nuclear weapons, Hezbollah would not deny that."

Sayyed Nasrallah: Hezbollah Has the Right to Possess Any Weapon

Live Arabic Speach

01/05/2010 Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah on Friday announced that "the party is working for consensus in Beirut as to the municipal elections, and up till now, it hasn't taken a final decision as to engaging in Beirut's electoral battle."

Sayyed Nasrallah added that Hezbollah will take the appropriate decision after concluding the exerted efforts to achieve consensus.

During a ceremony to honor the members of the Islamic Resistance Support Organization, his eminence called for "keeping the resistance away from the municipal elections," stressing that "those who don't join the Hezbollah-AMAL consensus electoral lists are not against the resistance and they have the right to run for municipal elections."

Concerning the Israeli threats and US-Israeli claims about Scud missiles, the Hezbollah Secretary General said that "the Israeli and U.S. remarks about transferring Scud missiles to Hezbollah aim at pressuring the resistance forces and the defiance nations and at waging an intimidation campaign, not more," ruling out "the eruption of a war in the region in the current period because there are no political objectives to be achieved (by Israel) through war."

Sayyed Nasrallah stressed that the resistance party “has the right to possess any weapon, but its policy implies that it abstains from denying or confirming any information about the type of weapons it has; and if someone announced that Hezbollah has nuclear weapons, Hezbollah would not deny that."


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Barhoum: American guarantees to Arabs a ploy

Barhoum: American guarantees to Arabs a ploy

[ 02/05/2010 - 09:49 AM ]

GAZA, (PIC)-- The continued Arab cover for the "futile" talks with the "Zionist entity" reflects the state of weakness and desperation of the Arab regimes and the Ramallah authority in the face of American pressures, Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, said on Saturday night.

Barhoum told the PIC that the Arab decision to back indirect talks between the PA in Ramallah and Israel meant bowing to Zio-American dictates.

Commenting on the Arab initiative committee's decision in Cairo, he said that the reported American guarantees were nothing more than a new "ploy", adding that giving a new opportunity for negotiations was a gift for the Israeli occupation government.

The spokesman said that any form of negotiations would only serve as a cover for the Israeli judaization and colonization efforts and aggression other than tampering with the future of the Palestinian people and their main issues.

He warned that such a position would obstruct international legal prosecution of "Zionist enemy leaders" for their crimes and violations against the Palestinian people.

The Arab committee reiterated commitment to its 3/3/2010 statement that gave the American mediation efforts a four-month period to progress talks or else it would head to the UN Security Council for an in-depth discussion of the Palestine cause and the Israeli obstinacy in this regard.

In a separate statement issued in Damascus on Sunday, Hamas expressed dismay at the Arab committee's decision despite the Israeli disrespect of the Arab position and its rejection of its March statement.

Israel continues to judaize occupied Jerusalem and to allow desecration and attacks on the Aqsa Mosque in addition to persisting in settlement projects, siege of Gaza and deportation of Palestinians, the statement pointed out.

It said that the Arab committee's position meant an acceptance of the Israeli de facto conditions in addition to providing a cover for more Israeli crimes.
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South African minister: We support the Palestinians’ struggle for liberation

[ 02/05/2010 - 09:33 AM ]

GAZA, (PIC)-- Deputy foreign minister of South Africa Ibrahim Ibrahim stated Saturday during a visit to the Gaza Strip that his country supports the Palestinian people and their struggle for liberation and the establishment of an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.

Ibrahim told a news conference that he met with Palestinian premier Ismail Haneyya and senior Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Zahhar, and visited some bombed areas and families of victims within a visit to observe the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

He expressed his deep sorrow to see how Palestinian children were killed during the Israeli aggression on Gaza and the daily suffering of civilians under the Israeli blockade.

The official strongly denounced the continued closure of the Rafah border crossing, affirming that he discussed this issue with Egyptian officials and there would be other meetings with them in this regard.

For his part, Palestinian deputy minister of foreign affairs Ahmed Yousuf expressed his appreciation for this visit, especially since South Africa makes special efforts to break the siege on Gaza, noting that this African country was and still is one of the first states to have been in contact with the Palestinian government since it was formed in 2006.

Yousuf pointed out that Ibrahim would carry a letter from Haneyya to the president of South Africa that highlights a number of important issues.

Earlier on the same day, premier Haneyya hailed during his meeting with Ibrahim and his accompanying delegation the efforts made by South Africa to help the Palestinian people, especially at the political level.

Haneyya also appreciated the role of South Africa as a member of the UN Security Council in tabling the Palestinian cause at international meetings and its diligent attempts to break the blockade imposed on Gaza.

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Hezbollah Slams Roed-Larsen's Interference in Lebanese Affairs

01/05/2010 Hezbollah on Friday slammed "interference in Lebanese affairs" by U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen and warned that its arsenal was off-limits after the diplomat accused what he described as "militias" of creating tension in Lebanon.

"Hezbollah condemns this attempt to create dissent and strife among the Lebanese under the guise of advice and guidance," Hezbollah said in a statement.

"Roed-Larsen's continuous attempts to interfere in Lebanese affairs and incite the Lebanese to fight one another are unacceptable for an international official working for peace in the region," it said.

On Thursday, the U.N. envoy had warned of the need to address the presence in Lebanon of "heavily armed militias," which he said was a violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559, adopted in 2004. The resolution calls for "the disbanding and disarmament of all militias in the country."

Roed-Larsen didn’t mention the ongoing Israeli violations for the Lebanese space and territories.

"As long as these unresolved issues are there, for instance the existence of heavily armed militias in Lebanon... there will always be tension," Roed-Larsen said after briefing the Security Council on a report on the implementation of Resolution 1559.

But Hezbollah warned that its arms were "only to be discussed among the Lebanese as part of a comprehensive national defense strategy, and neither Roed-Larsen nor any other officials, international or not, can interfere."


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Canadian/Israeli Stamp Of Shame





26 April, 2010
Countercurrents.org

Canada had declared the issuance of a “Canada-Israel Diplomatic Relations” commemorative stamp to celebrate 60 years of relations between the two countries.

This stamp will serve as a historical witness and reminder, for many future generations in the whole world, of the inhuman, unethical and immoral Canadian association with and support to the ultimate religiously racist, self-worshipping, rogue, international-law-breaking, murdering, genocidal, ecocidal, and terrorist bastard state of Israel.

Israel is established and based on the ultimate supremacist racist ideology. It is a religious ideology that has surpassed all other racist ideologies Man had ever known throughout history. Whereas German Nazism is a social ideology, and Italian Fascism is a political ideology, that can be opposed, debated and debunked, Israel’s “God’s chosen people in God’s promised land” is a supremacist ideology cloaked within a religious cover. Its opposition is labeled atheism, its debate is called blasphemy, and its debunking is claimed a sin. This ideology is, after all, a divine contract between God and Abraham signed by circumcision in the foreskin of Abraham’s penis. Jewish Israelis consider themselves God’s gift to this world. All other nations, Goyims, non-Jews, are considered animal souls incarnated in human bodies, whose sole purpose of existence is to serve the Jews. One needs only read the Old Testament, the Talmud, Jewish religious books, and Rabbinical texts and pamphlets to learn and to confirm this supremacist ideology.

Israeli Jewish religious supremacy and self-worship beliefs are reflected in their Rabbis’ teachings and statements. This religious arrogance is expressed clearly in Rabbi Ginsburgh’s justification of the Israeli army murdering Palestinian civilians when he declared that: “Jewish blood and a goy’s (gentile’s) blood are not the same … every single cell in a Jewish body entails divinity, and is thus part of God, thus killing isn’t murder if the victim is a Gentile.” Israeli chief Rabbi Yosef Obadia described Palestinians as cockroaches that should be crushed. Such ideology is the basic fundamental teachings Judaic Yeshivot (religious schools) incorporate in their so-called religious curricula.

Unlike all other countries Israel has no a cceptance or tolerance to other religions. Although supremacist Judaism is tolerated and Jews are permitted free worship in every Christian and Moslem country, even in Iran, falsely accused of being fanatic Islamic, Arab Christians and Moslems are harshly rejected, persecuted, and equally ethnically cleansed in “Jewish only Israel”. Jews were persecuted by all western Christian countries for the last two thousand years. They found refuge and acceptance only in the Middle Eastern mainly Islamic Arab countries. Yet instead of expressing any form of simple gratitude they have forcefully occupied Palestine. They are now evicting Christian and Moslem Palestinians out of their own country and especially out of their holiest city; Al-Quds (Jerusalem), and are denying them worship in their holy places during their religious holidays. Israel had destroyed hundreds of mosques and bombed and burnt many churches.

Many western Christians are deceived and are misguided by the so-called Zionist-Christianity and Judea-Christianity. These are antithetical terms, for Judaism considers Christianity its arch-enemy. Judaism considers Virgin Mary a whore, and calls Jesus Christ a pervert, Satan, and charlatan. Jews had crucified Jesus for his teachings of loving God, who loves all his creations equally without any favoritism to a specific nation.

Israel is a genocidal state. Israeli Jews like to proudly trace their history back to Moses and his commandments. An objective study of Moses’s Five Books reveals that Moses was the most genocidal figure in the history of mankind. He, himself, had broken all his ten commandments. Moses had preached many other commandments that are racist to the core in the form of laws and regulations for the favor of only Jews. He and his racist God had destroyed Egypt seven times. He had ordered his followers to utterly annihilate other nations including babies and pregnant women (Numbers 31:17). Even the homes, the crops, the farm animals of other nations were ordered killed, burnt and destroyed; “you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, but you shall utterly destroy them; the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusites, just as the Lord your God has commanded you” (Deuteronomy 20: 16-17) Moses ordered the Israelites.

He and his God were genocidal even against their own followers; Moses’s God supposedly annihilated the Israelite tribes of Korah, Dathan and Abiram in a fiery earthquake for objecting to Moses’s leadership (Numbers 16), and Moses ordered the sons of Levi to murder their Jewish brothers, companions and neighbors (Exodus 32: 27-28). Moses had even killed his brother Aaron (Numbers 20: 23-29), who was allegedly “gathered to his people” at mount Hor.

Moses’s genocidal crimes are grotesquely documented in his five books in the Old Testament. The Israelites eventually got fed up with his genocidal frenzy that he “mysteriously”, or divinely as they claim, disappeared and no family member of this divine prophet was ever mentioned in the Jewish history since then.
Unfortunately Moses’s genocidal commandments had become so fundamental Judaic teachings that all present-day chief Rabbis of Israel are quoting them to incite and to justify Israeli genocide and holocaust of Palestinians. The Old Testaments tells us how Jewish Rabbis and so-called prophets commanded their people, in the name of their God, to annihilate non-Jews, to destroy their cities, to kill their animals, and to cut down their trees.

Today’s Israeli Jewish Rabbis are no better than their ancestors. They, too, call for the extermination of Palestinians, the destruction of their towns, the killing of their farm animals and the cutting down of their fruit trees. Israel’s former chief Rabbi, Mordechai Elyahu encouraged the Israeli army to mass murder Palestinian civilians; “even murdering a million”. The Hasidic Rabbi Manis Friedman urged the Israeli army to murder Palestinian civilians regardless of their age. He declared: “The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: destroy their holy sites, kill men, women, children, and cattle.”

Israeli Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, the head of a Yishuv in illegal colony of Yitzhar in usurped Palestinian city of Nablus in the Occupied West Bank, had published a religious book distributed to Israeli soldiers before their onslaught against Gaza December 2008. The book called “The King Torah” is based on the halachic (Jewish religious) laws for the killing of non-Jews. Shapiro wrote that “Jews have the right to kill non-Jews in just about every circumstance … If we kill a gentile who has sinned or has violated one of the (Jewish) seven commandments … there is nothing wrong with the murder.” Jewish Rabbis’ disregard to non-Jewish nationals was exposed when Israeli Rabbis and Israeli army officers were caught traffic with human body parts in Palestine and in Haiti.

Before the illegal declaration of Israel, Jewish terrorist groups such as Lehi, Irgun and Haganah had perpetrated many massacres against civilian Palestinians. These terrorist groups merged together to form the terrorist Israeli army. For the last 62 years this terrorist army had committed numerous massacres against all its Arab neighbors; Palestinians, Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Their murdering and assassination arms have reached far other countries such as South Africa, Sudan, Somalia, Algiers, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and lately Dubai. This so-called most moral army finds its morality in spreading terror through the use of the American most sophisticated weapons against unarmed Arab civilians especially women and children. To understand why Israel had waged so many wars throughout its short history one should know that Israel is an army with a government rather than a government with an army. Its survival depends on perpetual conflict; the real reason for Israel’s continuous rejection of all Arab peace initiatives.

Besides crimes against humanity Israel is committing daily crimes against mother earth and against the environment. Israelis keep claiming that they came to a desert and made it bloom. The reverse is true. Part of what is known as the Middle Eastern Fertile Crescent, Palestine is a very fertile land. Its fertility had been for thousands of years the target of all colonial powers. In their genocidal fever the Israelis had uprooted millions of fruit trees, especially olive trees that were cared for by Palestinians for two thousand years.
The 2007 report published by Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem documented that Israel had uprooted 1,000,000 fruit trees in the Occupied West Bank between 1967 and 1999, and an additional 1,405,658 trees from 2000-2006. The building of the Israeli apartheid wall has caused the uprooting of at least another million trees.

Israel’s use of nuclear (DU), biological, and chemical weapons during its aggression against Lebanon and Gaza had contaminated earth and rivers. The razing of fertile land, the poisoning of water wells, the destruction of farm land, and the aerial chemical spraying of Palestinian crops and trees, which are part of a deliberate plan to destroy Palestinian economy, are grave crimes against Mother Nature and against the environment.

Israel is the most anti-Semitic country. Arabs are Semites, while the majority of Israeli Jews are Khazars and Germanic. Israeli Jews are not one ethnic nation. Walking through any Israeli city one encounters highly differentiated people, who came from different countries with different backgrounds that have nothing to do with Semitic people. Judaism is a religion that is adopted by people from different parts of the world and rather than an ethnic nationality. Not all Jews are Semitic the same way that not all Moslems are Arabs and not all Christians are part of one particular race.


Since the first Zionist Congress in 1897 in Basel, Switzerland up to this very day, every Zionist leader and every Zionist Rabbi had openly called for the ethnic cleansing and forceful eviction of Palestinian Arabs from Palestine. The Zionist Koenig Memorandum encouraged Israeli army to use terror, assassination, intimidation, eviction and land confiscation among other terrorist tactics to terrorize Palestinians out of their country.

It would take large volumes to enumerate Israel’s crimes against humanity and against mother earth. With their at least 200 nuclear bombs and their aggressive posture continuously threatening to bomb their neighbors back to stone age, it is the fanatic self-worshipping Israelis, not the Iranians, who pose the greatest threat to peace in the Middle East and threat to global peace.

With such criminal history I ask descent Canadians whether they really want to associate themselves with such a terrorist state and become a terrorist-sponsoring country. I urge Canadians, specifically, and peace loving people in general, to express their disappointment in Canada’s decision to issue such a shameful postal stamp by writing/emailing to the minister responsible for Canada Post Corporation; Mr. John Baird (baird.j@parl.gc.ca) and to Minister of State Rob Merrifield (Merrifield.R@parl.gc.ca).
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Pentagon Map Shows Wide Taliban Zone in the South


Pentagon Map Shows Wide Taliban Zone in the South

by Gareth Porter, May 01, 2010

The Pentagon was still trying to spin its report on the war in Afghanistan issued this week as holding out hope because the instability had leveled off, even as some news outlets were noting that it documents the continued expansion of Taliban capabilities and operations.

The most significant revelation in the report, however, is that Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and the U.S.-NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) joint command now acknowledge officially that the Taliban insurgents dominate a vast contiguous zone of heavily populated territory across southern Afghanistan that McChrystal regards as the most critical area in the country.

The report admits that the population in key districts across most southern provinces is sympathetic to or supportive of the insurgents.

The contiguous zone of Taliban political power stretches all the way across the 13 provinces from Farah province in the far west of the country through Helmand and Kandahar to Wardak, Logar, Paktia and Khost provinces west and south of Kabul.

The extent of Taliban political power in southern Afghanistan, which had not been acknowledged previously by ISAF, is documented in a map showing an "overall assessment of key districts" as of Mar. 18.

The map shows for the first time the location and political and security status of 121 districts chosen late last year by planners on McChrystal’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Joint Staff as the most important for a strategy of weakening the Taliban gains.

The contiguous Taliban zone includes but is not limited to 58 of the 121 key districts, of which seven have populations assessed as "supporting" the Taliban, 25 with populations "sympathetic" to the Taliban, and 21 with populations that are "neutral".

Only five of the districts within that zone are shown as having populations that are "sympathetic to" the Afghan government and none that are "supporting" the government.

The degree of Taliban political dominance in the south is partly obscured, however, by an obvious effort to portray the attitudes of the population in Helmand and Kandahar provinces more favorably than is reflected in reports from those locations.

Eight of the "neutral" districts shown on the map are in Helmand province, where it has acknowledged in the past that the population was largely sympathetic to the Taliban.

The districts of Nad Ali, in which Marja is located, Naw Zad, Lashkar Gah and Sangin are all shown on the map as having "neutral" populations, even though it has been well documented that the populations of those heavily opium poppy-growing districts had turned decisively against the government and foreign troops over government eradication efforts and the abusive behavior of police associated with local warlords.

The population of Nad Ali had been shown in an assessment in late December as being supportive of the Taliban. Naw Zad and Sangin districts, on the other hand, had been assessed as "neutral" in December.

A report by The Guardian’s Jon Boone last week quoted a recent British visitor to Sangin as remarking on the "intense hatred of people who hate everything you stand for" he had felt from people there.

McChrystal’s staff apparently defined "neutral" so as to include populations in districts where U.S. and NATO forces have carried out operations aimed at clearing the Taliban and are now the object of attempts to change their political views.

Earlier this year, however, an ISAF official familiar with the assessment on which the command was basing its plans clearly included those same districts among those in which the Taliban were regarded as having gotten popular support. The official told IPS in an interview in late January, "We have a system of 80 districts where Taliban influence is strongest, where people support the Taliban for whatever reason."

That set of 80 districts that are the most pro-Taliban in the country is same set of 80 "Key Terrain districts" defined in the new Pentagon report as "areas the control of (and support from which) provides a marked advantage to either the Government of Afghanistan or the insurgents."

The ISAF official also said that "about one-fourth" of the 80 districts in which the Taliban had the strongest support would be in the "contiguous security zone" that ISAF was planning to establish in Helmand and Kandahar provinces this year. That coincides with the 19 districts in those two provinces that are shown on the Dec. 24 assessment map as "neutral", "sympathetic" to the Taliban or "supportive" of the Taliban.

If the districts labeled on the map as "neutral" are understood to be pro-Taliban as well, the districts in all three categories form an almost unbroken chain of territory with populations leaning toward the Taliban across the full length of the Pashtun south.

The 80 districts described by the ISAF official in January as providing the strongest support to the Taliban apparently included only those pro-Taliban districts that had the largest population and were closest to the major lines of communications. The list does not include a large number of other districts in several Pashtun provinces of the south where the Taliban insurgents predominate but which are farther from the major roads.

The evidence of a coherent Taliban zone of political control in the new Pentagon assessment is consistent with an Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) Provincial/District Threat Assessment as of Apr. 23, 2009, which was reported by BBC last August. An ANSF security map reflecting the ASNF assessment showed almost every district in the Pashtun south except for Nimruz province as being either "high risk" or Taliban-controlled.

Although McChrystal seemed to reject the idea that the Taliban had broad political support in his initial assessment last August, an "integrated campaign plan" jointly agreed by McChrystal and U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry that same month hinted strongly at such support in Pashtun areas.

The campaign plan document concluded, "Key groups have become nostalgic for the security and justice Taliban rule provided."

McChrystal’s announcement earlier this year that ISAF would establish a "contiguous security zone" which would include the bulk of the population of Helmand and Kandahar provinces may have been a response to the recognition that the Taliban had formed its own zone of political dominance in southern Afghanistan.

However, given recent evidence that foreign troops have been unable to clear insurgents from Marja, and that local leaders and elders in Kandahar are opposing U.S. military operations in and around the city, that objective now appears to be well beyond the reach of U.S. and NATO troops.


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France implicated in Hariri murder case

Press TV reports:

A witness who gave false testimony in the case of the murder of the former Lebanese premier says France had provided him with a forged passport to help him get away with perjury.

A report by the Volatairenet website said that France had provided Mohammed Zuhair Siddiq -- the key witness in the case of Rafiq Hariri's murder -- with a forged passport to grant him immunity from prosecution.

The report came amid accusations by the US and Israel against Syria and Hezbollah, claiming that traces of their involvement were found in Hariri's assassination in 2005.

According to the report, a UN probe committee headed by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis had relied on the testimony given by Siddiq, who claimed to be a former senior Syrian intelligence official.

In his testimony, Siddiq had accused the Syrian and Lebanese presidents of masterminding the murder. He also accused seven Syrian and four Lebanese generals of organizing the assassination.

After presenting his testimony, Siddiq took refuge in the Spanish property of Rifaat al-Assad, who is the pro-US uncle of incumbent Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Siddiq was then offered support by the French General Directorate for External Security (DGSE).

While being under the protection of DGSE, the French police department eavesdropped on his telephone calls and found out that Siddiq had lied to the tribunal tasked with probing Hariri's murder case that he was a senior Syrian official.

It was later reported in Lebanese media that Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Lebanon's Druze leader Walid Jumblatt had paid him to commit perjury.

In their defense, Hariri and Jumblatt denied paying for perjury, but admitted to having encouraged Siddiq to testify, believing he was sincere.

Siddiq was then arrested in France under an international arrest warrant issued by the Lebanese judiciary but was later released with Paris refusing to extradite him to Lebanon.

He was living in Paris for a while but later vanished into thin air in March 2008. The French government did not provide any explanation on the issue.

Siddiq was then traced in the UAE, where he was arrested and sentenced to six months in prison for carrying a forged Czech passport.

After being released from prison in the UAE, Siddiq told reporters that he received his passport from the office of French President Nicolas Sarkozy to escape Lebanese justice.

Hariri was Lebanon's most prominent politician since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war. He was killed in a massive truck bombing that set off a spiral of political turmoil in Lebanon.


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Saturday, 1 May 2010

Syrian FM Slams US Missile Claims as 'Slander Campaign'



01/05/2010 Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem on Saturday accused Washington of a "slander campaign" after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Damascus over supplying Hezbollah with Scud missiles.

"The entire world recognizes the constructive role played by Syria in preserving the security and stability of the region, and the public remembers the American slander campaign launched before the war in Iraq," Mouallem said, according to state news agency SANA. "It seems the US administration is now trying to play the same game."

His comments come amid accusations by Washington that Iran and Syria are arming Hezbollah with increasingly sophisticated rockets and missiles.

On Thursday, Clinton warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against the risk of sparking a regional war if he supplies long-range Scud missiles to the Lebanese resistance group. "President Assad is making decisions that could mean war or peace for the region," she told a pro-Israel group.

Her remarks followed claims by Israeli President Shimon Peres in April that Syria was supplying Hezbollah with Scud missiles.

But Mouallem dismissed the accusations and warned Washington against taking Israel's claims seriously. "What destabilizes the region is the United Sates supplying significant quantities of sophisticated weaponry to Israel and the fact that Washington adheres to the unjust allegations made by the Israeli government against Syria."

The Scud allegations come as the United States steps up dialogue with Syria after years of tense relations, and US lawmakers have seized upon the accusations to argue against any rapprochement between Washington and Damascus.

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Israel will not be a Jewish state - Gilad Atzmon

Well Done Frankie Boyle!!! By Gilad Atzmon

Scottish hero comedian Frankie Boyle has accused the BBC Trust of cowardly behaviour.

Boyle published an open letter describing the situation in Palestine as "in essence, apartheid" and lamenting the fact that the BBC was "now cravenly afraid of giving offence and vulnerable to any kind of well-drilled lobbying".

Back in 2008 Boyle made an astute joke on BBC’s Radio 4 programme Political Animal. "I've been studying Israeli army martial arts. I now know 16 ways to kick a Palestinian woman in the back. People think that the Middle East is very complex but I have an analogy that sums it up quite well. If you imagine that Palestine is a big cake, well … that cake is being punched to pieces by a very angry Jew."

In fact, no one can describe the barbarism and collective sadism performed by the Jewish State more accurately.

Following a complaint from a listener who said the comments were "disgusting" and "anti-Semitic", the BBC Trust's editorial standards committee investigated and apologised. The committee said it endorsed the editorial complaints unit's finding into the use of the word "Jew".

So here we are again. Someone out there in the BBC insists on telling us all how to employ the word ‘Jew’. Clearly it is not going to work. Israel defines itself as the Jewish state. It commits colossal crimes in the name of world Jewry. With all due respect to Jews, their pride and their sensitivities, the English language is not yet a possession of the Israeli Government or the Labour Friends Of Israel or the BBC. Every crime committed by the Jewish state is engraved within our lingual symbolic notion of the ‘Jew’. As much as Jews love to regard themselves as the ‘light onto the nations’, their Jewish state presents us with one of the darkest phases in the history of humanism.

Boyle wrote "I think the problem here is that the show's producers [not the BBC line managers] will have thought that Israel, an aggressive, terrorist state with a nuclear arsenal, was an appropriate target for satire". I would add here that the attempt to block any discussion on Israel is just another symptom of Jewish power. However this power falls apart once challenged publicly by people such as Boyle and others.

Well done Frankie Boyle, and do not forget, if they really manage to upset you out there in the BBC, you can always join my jazz band and scat with us all the way till the end of bop.

Palestinians need real freedom, not a deformed state


[ 01/05/2010 - 11:04 AM ]


Day after day, it is becoming amply clear that the Palestinian Authority (PA) regime in Ramallah is implicated in the gradual implementation of conspiratorial designs devised by the U.S. and Israel and aimed at liquidating the Palestinian national cause.

Today, the United States is belatedly discovering that its protracted dark embrace of Israeli apartheid which is morphing itself in many respects into a sort of home-grown Nazism, is costing America dearly in terms of its reputation and vast geopolitical interests in the Muslim world.

This is obviously what has prompted some American officials to remark that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a vital U.S. strategic interest.

In the meantime, it is equally obvious that in order for Washington to maintain Israel as the undisputed military master of the region, the U.S. would have to enlist the support and unhesitating backing of most if not all of the Arab world behind the current American crusade against Iran.

But in order to do the job successfully, the U.S. must at least appear to be carrying out genuine efforts to get the Arab-Israeli "peace process" moving, even if only seemingly.

In short, we are witnessing another affronting replay of the deceptive American tactics that we had witnessed in the early 1990s when then US Secretary of State James Baker convinced certain Arab states to back the war on Iraq in return for pressuring Israel to give up the spoils of the 1967 war.

Eventually, the mostly gullible Arab regimes obliged, and Israel remained quiet for a while, while Zionist efforts to arrogate more and more Arab land in the West Bank continued unabated.

Today, the same stupidity, same gullibility and probably same treachery as well are being played out as the American-funded PA is reacting nearly euphorically to manifestly false American promises about pressuring Israel to end its Nazi-like occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

First of all, it is highly unlikely that a U.S. administration that has been utterly unable to force Israel to stop demolishing even a single Arab home at the Sheikh Jarrah or Silwan neighborhoods will be able to force Israel to end the occupation and give up the spoils of the 1967 war.

Indeed, it is almost a foregone conclusion that for purely domestic American factors, the Obama administration will be neither able nor willing to do what it takes to end the chronic stalemate in occupied Palestine, namely forcing Israel to return to the pre-1967 borderlines.

The American political environment is simply too Zionized and too infested with and prostituted by virulent Zionist influence that a pro-active and genuine American effort to control the Zionist devil is simply unlikely and unexpected, at least in the foreseeable future.

Yes, we might very well hear some un-classical remarks from this or that American official about endangerment to American national interests in the Middle East and beyond as a result of Israeli policies. But these remarks, music to some naïve Arab ears, are utterly unlikely to lead to any substantive change in the basic American embrace of Israeli Nazism.

The US realizes too well that the Palestinian issue is not and won't soon be a first-degree preoccupation for most if not all tyrannical Arab regimes whose ultimate strategic goal is to remain in power for as long as possible. Just look how Mubarak, the emperor of Egypt, is striving to please the Americans, even at the expense of impoverishing, humiliating and even murdering his own people.

And since the US is the ultimate "power broker" in the region, at least as far as these corrupt and decadent despots are concerned, the US is likely to continue pursuing the same whoring policy, namely keep the regimes in power in return for getting them to pay little or no attention to what Israel is doing to Palestine and its people.

Now, it is not only the hypocritical Arabs that are harrowing after the American mirage, the increasingly disconcerted PA is also jumping out of its skin to laude the disingenuous American efforts as if Obama were ushering the Second Advent of Christ.

I think the PA is being deceived and tricked. First of all, the eyes of the U.S. are being focused on Iran, not the Palestinian issue which is only being used to isolate Iran by depriving it of a credible "propaganda asset" or "red herring" that help divert attention from the Iranian nuclear program, as the Americans seem to think.

Yes, Iran , and nothing else, is the driving and main motive behind accelerated U.S. efforts to woo states such as Syria and also to induce false euphoria in occupied Palestine similar to that which was fostered prior and after the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991 when frustrated but utterly gullible Palestinian rabbles were duped to break their own olive trees into shreds in order to hoist olive branches on the hoods of Israeli military jeeps and armored vehicles that didn't hesitate to shoot them.!!

Today, some Palestinians are acting very much like a whore during the Holy Month of Ramadan, as the adage goes. They are so desperate that they want to see a state, even, a deformed or hollow one, established and recognized by the West as if such a brat would finally come up with a magical solution for all Palestinian ills.

The Obama administration reportedly has privately promised PA leader Mahmoud Abbas a state within two years. Well, this joke reminds me of a Quranic verse about Satan and his false promises. "Like Satan when he said to man: Disbelieve, but when man disbelieved, Satan said: I am surely clear of you; surely I fear God, the Lord of the worlds" (suratul Hashr-59-16).

How many times do we have to remind ourselves of the utter worthlessness of American pledges and promises?

They promised to protect our people in Lebanon, following the withdrawal of PLO forces from there in 1982, and the result was a genocidal slaughterhouse for our helpless refugees in Sabra and Shatila, at the hands of the Nazis of our time, the very people who continue to cry "Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen, holocaust, gas chambers, suicide bombing" at any gesture of dissatisfaction directed at Israel while indulging themselves in actions befitting the Gestapo, SS and the Wehrmacht.

George W. Bush, the former Fuhrer of Washington, promised us a state in 2005 and 2006, but his promises eventually landed in the dustbin of history. This is the man who invaded, occupied and destroyed two Muslim countries and killed, or caused the death, of millions of innocent people because "God told me to do it."

And then came the hapless "roadmap" or more correctly "lie-map" which promised us a breakthrough. However, instead of ending the occupation, the roadmap saw a phenomenal expansion of Jewish-only settlements on the very land that is meant to be home for a future Palestinian state.

And now we are being affronted with another scheme, another deception, and another lie while our leaders are mistaking their gullibility and stupidity for statesmanship and brinkmanship.

Well, has it not occurred to them that the thoroughly savaged Palestinians won't accept anything less than real freedom after all these years of brutalization, humiliation and homelessness?

Has it not occurred to them that the state being promised by Hillary Clinton is actually a whore of a state, a brat as deformed as the international order that allows Israel commit every conceivable crime under the sun with impunity thanks to American protection?

Well, let me be clear. The "state" we are being offered is a state that is not worth the name; it is a state without the bulk of Jerusalem, without the repatriation of the refugees, but with most of these satanic settlements and settlers remaining in place, a perpetual thorn in our side.

It is a state that would be made up of territorially discontinuous cantons whereby traveling from one canton to the other would have to be okayed by the ultimate master, Israel.

It is a state that has no real sovereignty or authority and certainly not a modicum of dignity. It is a state that would perpetuate and even consolidate the Israeli occupation and domination of our land and our lives.

For God's sake, we decline to accept such a state. History after all shall not expire upon the end of the Obama administration's term in office. And the Palestinians, who have survived despite history and kept up the struggle for decades, can still go on and on and on.

We shall not commit adultery with our just cause just to please and appease some immoral politicians in Washington.

We never will.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian