The Truth Reveals Itself : Indonesian court clears Bashir

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

The Truth Reveals Itself :

Indonesian court clears Bashir

Bashir was freed from jail in July
after serving two and half years [EPA]

Indonesia’s supreme court has overturned the conviction on conspiracy charges in the 2002 Bali bombings against cleric Abu Bakar Bashir.

The verdict effectively clears his name and is largely symbolic as he has already served his two-and-a-half year sentence.
Bashir has been accused by the US and other intelligence services of being a founding member of Jemaah Islamiyah, the regional terrorist group blamed for the Bali bombings and linked to al-Qaeda.

He was freed from jail in July despite protests from Australia which said he remained a threat.
Eighty-eight of the 202 people killed in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings came from Australia.

Bashir’s son, Abdurrahmin, said his father had received word of the verdict.

“Thank God the Supreme Court has finally revealed the final truth,” he told the Associated Press via telephone. “He is praying now to say thanks to God that his prayers have been accepted.”

Since his release Bashir has gone on a speaking tour around Indonesia, basing himself at the Islamic school he co-founded on the outskirts of the city of Solo in central Java.

‘Misguided’

Jemaah Islamiyah, or JI, dates from the early 1970s and traces its roots to Darul Islam, a movement advocating the application of Islamic law in Indonesia through force.

The last known attack carried out by JI was on October 1, 2005, when a series of suicide bombings killed at least 19 people and wounded more than 100 in Bali.

Experts disagree on the extent to which JI might have ties to al-Qaeda. Some say JI is al-Qaeda’s Southeast Asian wing while others argue that JI’s regional goals do not match al-Qaeda’s global ambitions.

Abu Bakar Bashir himself has denied any connection with al-Qaeda and has described JI militants as “misguided”.

Western and Asian intelligence officials say that while JI’s recruitment continues, there are some indications that its support base is shrinking.

source:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/95970BC1-C949-4BC0-87DB-4F428540DDDD.htm

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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

A Moral Judgment is Called For – On Israel’s “Right to Exist”

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem

In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

December 21, 2006

 

 

A Moral Judgment is Called For

On Israel’s “Right to Exist”

By JOHN V. WHITBECK

Now that the Palestinian civil war long sought by Israel, the U.S. and the EU appears on the verge of breaking out, it may be timely to examine the justification put forward by Israel, the U.S. and the EU for their collective punishment of the Palestinian people in retaliation for their having made the “wrong” choice in last January’s democratic election — the refusal of Hamas to “recognize Israel” or to “recognize Israel’s existence” or to “recognize Israel’s right to exist”.

These three verbal formulations have been used by media, politicians and even diplomats interchangeably, as though they mean the same thing. They do not.

“Recognizing Israel” or any other state is a formal legal/diplomatic act by a state with respect to another state. It is inappropriate — indeed, nonsensical — to talk about a political party or movement, even one in a sovereign state, extending diplomatic recognition to a state. To talk of Hamas “recognizing Israel” is simply sloppy, confusing and deceptive shorthand for the real demand being made.

“Recognizing Israel’s existence” is not a logical nonsense and appears on first impression to involve a relatively straightforward acknowledgement of a fact of life — like death and taxes. Yet there are serious practical problems with this formulation. What Israel, within what borders, is involved? The 55% of historical Palestine recommended for a Jewish state by the UN General Assembly in 1947? The 78% of historical Palestine occupied by Israel in 1948 and now viewed by most of the world as “Israel” or “Israel proper”?

The 100% of historical Palestine occupied by Israel since June 1967 and shown as “Israel” on maps in Israeli schoolbooks? Israel has never defined its own borders, since doing so would, necessarily, place limits on them. Still, if this were all that were being demanded of Hamas, it might be possible for it to acknowledge, as a fact of life, that a State of Israel exists today within some specified borders.

“Recognizing Israel’s right to exist”, the actual demand, is in an entirely different league. This formulation does not address diplomatic formalities or simple acceptance of present realities. It calls for a moral judgment.

There is an enormous difference between “recognizing Israel’s existence” and “recognizing Israel’s right to exist”. From a Palestinian perspective, the difference is in the same league as the difference between asking a Jew to acknowledge that the Holocaust happened and asking him to acknowledge that it was “right” that the Holocaust happened — that the Holocaust (or, in the Palestinian case, the Nakba) was morally justified.

To demand that Palestinians recognize “Israel’s right to exist” is to demand that a people who have for almost 60 years been treated, and continue to be treated, as sub-humans publicly proclaim that they ARE sub-humans — and, at least implicitly, that they deserve what has been done, and continues to be done, to them. Even 19th century U.S. governments did not require the surviving Native Americans to publicly proclaim the “rightness” of their ethnic cleansing by the Pale Faces as a condition precedent to even discussing what reservation might be set aside for them — under economic blockade and threat of starvation until they shed whatever pride they had left and conceded the point.

Some believe that Yasser Arafat did concede the point in order to buy his ticket out of the wilderness of demonization and earn the right to be lectured directly by the Americans. In fact, in his famous statement in Stockholm in late 1988, he accepted “Israel’s right to exist in peace and security”. This formulation, significantly, addresses the /conditions/ of existence of a state which, as a matter of fact, exists. It does not address the existential question of the “rightness” of the dispossession and dispersal of the Palestinian people from their homeland to make way for another people coming from abroad.

The original conception of the formulation “Israel’s right to exist” and of its utility as an excuse for not talking to any Palestinian leadership which still stood up for the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people are attributed to Henry Kissinger, the grand master of diplomatic cynicism. There can be little doubt that those states which still employ this formulation do so in full consciousness of what it entails, morally and psychologically, for the Palestinian people and for the same cynical purpose — as a roadblock against any progress toward peace and justice in Israel/Palestine and as a way of helping to buy more time for Israel to create more “facts on the ground” while blaming the Palestinians for their own suffering.

However, many private citizens of good will and decent values may well be taken in by the surface simplicity of the words “Israel’s right to exist” (and even more easily by the other two shorthand formulations) into believing that they constitute a self-evidently reasonable demand and that refusing such a reasonable demand must represent perversity (or a “terrorist ideology”) rather than a need to cling to their self-respect and dignity as full-fledged human beings which is deeply felt and thoroughly understandable in the hearts and minds of a long-abused people who have been stripped of almost everything else that makes life worth living. That this is so is evidenced by polls showing that the percentage of the Palestinian population which approves of Hamas’ steadfastness in refusing to bow to this humiliating demand by their enemies, notwithstanding the intensity of the economic pain and suffering inflicted on them by the Israeli and Western siege, substantially exceeds the percentage of the population which voted for Hamas in January.

It may not be too late to focus decent minds around the world on the unreasonableness — indeed, the immorality — of this demand and of the verbal formulation on which it is based, whose use and abuse have already caused so much misery and threaten to cause more.

John V. Whitbeck, an international lawyer, is author of “The World According to Whitbeck“. He can be reached at: jvwhitbeck@awalnet.net.sa

source:
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitbeck12212006.html

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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Apartheid in the Holy Land

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Apartheid in the Holy Land

Desmond Tutu

Monday April 29, 2002

Guardian
In our struggle against apartheid, the great supporters were Jewish people. They almost instinctively had to be on the side of the disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones, fighting injustice, oppression and evil. I have continued to feel strongly with the Jews. I am patron of a Holocaust centre in South Africa. I believe Israel has a right to secure borders.

What is not so understandable, not justified, is what it did to another people to guarantee its existence. I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.

On one of my visits to the Holy Land I drove to a church with the Anglican bishop in Jerusalem. I could hear tears in his voice as he pointed to Jewish settlements. I thought of the desire of Israelis for security. But what of the Palestinians who have lost their land and homes?

I have experienced Palestinians pointing to what were their homes, now occupied by Jewish Israelis. I was walking with Canon Naim Ateek (the head of the Sabeel Ecumenical Centre) in Jerusalem. He pointed and said: “Our home was over there. We were driven out of our home; it is now occupied by Israeli Jews.”

My heart aches. I say why are our memories so short. Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon? Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about the downtrodden?

Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice. We condemn the violence of suicide bombers, and we condemn the corruption of young minds taught hatred; but we also condemn the violence of military incursions in the occupied lands, and the inhumanity that won’t let ambulances reach the injured.

The military action of recent days, I predict with certainty, will not provide the security and peace Israelis want; it will only intensify the hatred.

Israel has three options: revert to the previous stalemated situation; exterminate all Palestinians; or – I hope – to strive for peace based on justice, based on withdrawal from all the occupied territories, and the establishment of a viable Palestinian state on those territories side by side with Israel, both with secure borders.

We in South Africa had a relatively peaceful transition. If our madness could end as it did, it must be possible to do the same everywhere else in the world. If peace could come to South Africa, surely it can come to the Holy Land?

My brother Naim Ateek has said what we used to say: “I am not pro- this people or that. I am pro-justice, pro-freedom. I am anti- injustice, anti-oppression.”

But you know as well as I do that, somehow, the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal [in the US], and to criticise it is to be immediately dubbed anti-semitic, as if the Palestinians were not semitic. I am not even anti-white, despite the madness of that group. And how did it come about that Israel was collaborating with the apartheid government on security measures?

People are scared in this country [the US], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful – very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God’s world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust.

Injustice and oppression will never prevail. Those who are powerful have to remember the litmus test that God gives to the powerful: what is your treatment of the poor, the hungry, the voiceless? And on the basis of that, God passes judgment.

We should put out a clarion call to the government of the people of Israel, to the Palestinian people and say: peace is possible, peace based on justice is possible. We will do all we can to assist you to achieve this peace, because it is God’s dream, and you will be able to live amicably together as sisters and brothers.

Desmond Tutu is the former Archbishop of Cape Town and chairman of South Africa’s truth and reconciliation commission. This address was given at a conference on Ending the Occupation held in Boston, Massachusetts, earlier this month. A longer version appears in the current edition of Church Times.

source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,4403427-103552,00.html

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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Who Will Pay For Haditha?

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

December 21, 2006

 

Who Will Pay For Haditha?

by Mark Weisenmiller

With charges expected to be filed Thursday against five to eight Marines accused of killing 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha, Iraq on Nov. 19, 2005, it now appears that at least one senior officer will also be charged in the case.

The attorney for Capt. Lucas McConnell, who was not present at the alleged massacre but was the commander of the Marines under investigation, said Tuesday that his client had been informed that he will be charged with dereliction of duty.

The others facing imminent charges ranging from negligent homicide to murder were all in the third platoon of Company K, Third Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment. They are currently restricted to the grounds of the Marine base in Camp Pendleton, California..

Eugene Fidell, founder and president of the National Institute of Military Justice, told IPS that “such high-ranking military officers in these types of cases rarely face charges. They tend to get hammered in other ways. They tend to lose a rank or lose their pensions or drop a pay grade.”

According to the group Human Rights First, no civilian official or officer above the rank of major responsible for interrogation and detention practices has ever been charged in connection with the torture or abuse-related death of a detainee in U.S. custody.

The Haditha case is somewhat different as it involves an alleged massacre of families in their own homes, but experts say it shares similar themes of accountability.

“It’s clear that the military has a long track record of not holding responsible military officers who either knew of the types of crimes that may have been committed at Haditha, or actually participated in the crimes themselves, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, since the ‘war on terror’ began,” said John Sifton, a researcher and attorney with Human Rights Watch in New York.

“If you look at the overall record, at the total number of officers who have been found guilty in courts-martial on charges in these types of cases, the number is very minimal,” he told IPS.

“When officers fail to stop their soldiers from committing abuses of civilians, or know that such crimes are going to be committed before they actually occur, they should stop them. That’s called command responsibility.”

Gary Solis of the Georgetown Law Center, who has contacts with the myriad attorneys involved in the Haditha case, told IPS last week that, “The filing of the charges, which could happen any day now, indicate that the NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service) investigation is over.”

A retired Marine who served two tours in Vietnam and wrote the official Marine Corps history of involvement in that war, Solis also taught law at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York for 10 years.

“I personally know three of the attorneys (that are working on the Haditha case) and can vouch that all three are outstanding attorneys,” Solis said.

The tragic chain of events began in the local morning hours of Nov. 19, 2005, when a roadside bomb in Haditha killed Marine Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas, a 20-year-old from El Paso, Texas, along with 19 Iraqi civilians.

What may have followed is something many press reports have dubbed “Iraq’s My Lai,” a reference to the March 1968 massacre of Vietnamese civilians by U.S. soldiers that generated worldwide outrage and led to even greater public disenchantment with the U.S.. involvement in Vietnam.

Following the death of Terrazas, a squad of Company K Marines, led by 26-year-old Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, allegedly went on a rampage, methodically shooting 24 Iraqi civilians who lived not far from the scene of the explosion. Fifteen of those shot were women and children, and another was a wheelchair-bound elderly man.

Since the widely-publicized Army court-martial in 1969 of Lt. William Calley, the officer in charge of the soldiers who murdered the Vietnamese men, women and children, and who was found guilty of premeditated murder for the killings on Mar. 29, 1971, an issue in such cases has been the role of senior military officers.

“I think that the basic idea of accountability for we as Americans is that if you’re part of a conspiracy, then you can be held legally accountable for your actions. That applies to both the civilian courts and the military justice system,” said Mike Marchand, who was an assistant judge advocate for the U.S. Army at the Pentagon for three years.

“It appears that (the accused Marines in Haditha incident) may have acted without direct orders from their higher-ranking officers, at least from everything that I’ve read and heard about the Haditha case,” he said.

“What I see emerging in the (American) military justice system,” noted Jeffrey Addicott, a law professor at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas, “particularly at Abu Ghraib, is that if you know a crime is occurring, or if you know that it’s going to happen, then you are going to face charges, and that may also apply with the Haditha case, depending on the results of the NCIS investigation.”

Addicott was an Army officer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps for 20 years. His reference to Abu Ghraib deals with the 2004 revelations of torture of Iraqi detainees by U.S. civilian and military personnel at the Iraqi prison complex.

Both the My Lai and Abu Ghraib stories came to light through the diligence of reporter Seymour Hersh. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for his work on the My Lai case, and wrote a long piece exposing the atrocities committed at Abu Ghraib for the New Yorker magazine.

In his coverage of My Lai, Hersh detailed how the Army tried to conceal Lt. Calley’s crimes. Hersh wrote two books about the case, My Lai 4 (1970) and Cover-Up (1972).

Addicott told IPS that the U.S. military justice system uses the “Medina Standard,” named after Army Captain Ernest Medina, Lt. Calley’s commanding officer who was also present at the time of the shooting massacre. Both Medina and his commanding officer, Col. Oran Henderson, were ultimately acquitted of all charges.

“‘The Medina Standard’ is the direct proving by prosecutors in court of an officer, or officers, directly ordering soldiers under their command to do something that they know is illegal,” explained Addicott. “I don’t see possible cover-up charges arising for the officers who were in charge of the Marines who may be accused of shooting the Iraqi civilians in Haditha.”

The Pentagon has been conducting its own inquiry into whether there was a cover-up by officers higher up in the chain of command. Until the accusations by witnesses and human rights groups were revealed by Time magazine in March this year, military officials had claimed that 15 civilians were killed by a roadside bomb planted by insurgents.

They later acknowledged that the death toll was higher and that none of the civilians were killed by the roadside bomb. It is not known when the report will be publicly released.

Sifton doubts that what happened at Haditha is an isolated incident.

“You can’t stop abuse on a systematic scale with soldiers,” he said. “Abuse is going to happen in wartime. What you can do is to go after officers who should stop such abuses and know better.”

“We think that the problem is that the American military doesn’t have an independent prosecutor. Commanders, who may very well end up facing charges themselves in some instances, end up making deals with attorneys so as not to face charges. With an independent prosecutor, that wouldn’t happen.”

source:
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/weisenmiller.php?articleid=10203

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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

The Muslim Mary

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

The Muslim Mary

Jennifer Green, The Ottawa Citizen

If you are looking for the religious text with the most references to Mary, the mother of Jesus, look no further than the Koran, Jennifer Green writes.

Published: Thursday, December 21, 2006

Islam and Christianity revere Mary above all other women, a human divinely appointed to bear Jesus in a virgin birth. But the Koran mentions Mary 34 times, and names an entire chapter after her — more than she gets in the Bible, according to Cruden’s Complete Concordance. She is the only woman mentioned by name in the Koran, and some scholars say Muslims actually revere her more than Christians do.

“Without a doubt, she is the most spectacular female figure that appears in the whole of the Koran,” says Bruce Lawrence, Islamic scholar and author of The Qur’an: A Biography. “That’s quite something extra for Christians to have to deal with.”

Robert Moynihan, editor of Inside the Vatican magazine, agrees. In one sense, “I would say Muslims have more veneration of Mary — those who are believing Muslims — than most Christians today. That’s because of the decline of Marion veneration in Christianity.”

Pockets of worshippers around the world still pray extensively to Mary, especially among Catholics, but her influence has waned in the last generation. As women struggled to be heard, in church hierarchies and society at large, exhortations to follow Mary’s example of chastity and acceptance of God’s will started sounding like clerical spin designed to keep the ladies in line.

“She is not out of the picture, but she is not woven into the warp and woof of the faith,” Mr. Moynihan said from his office in Rome. “That shattered with the confrontation with the modern world.”

Muslim women are not as likely to have submitted Mary to this political litmus test, so they are still comfortable turning to her, he says.

Aynur Gunenc is a 37-year-old Ottawa native who commutes to Montreal every week to complete her master’s degree in bioresource engineering at McGill University. She is also a practising Muslim and the mother of two sons.

Like many Muslim women, she looked to Mary while she was pregnant and when went into labour, reading Surah 19, the chapter in the Koran named for the virgin. She also ate dates as Mary did while giving birth to Jesus.

“It is supposed to help for an easy delivery.” Did it work? “Yes.”

“For us, Mary is a symbol of purity and patience, honesty and believing 100 per cent in God, even when things are difficult. I am full of respect and love for her. I cannot imagine, myself, keeping your faith when you have had a baby without a husband, close to people who disapprove. It would not be bearable.

“If there had been a woman prophet, it would have been Mary. She knew this life is temporary.”

Christianity and Islam differ on the fundamental nature of Jesus. For Christians, he is God the Son; for Muslims, he is a prophet who was fully human.

But their accounts around his birth are startlingly similar. Both tell of an elderly couple beseeching God for a child.

In the Bible, Elizabeth and her husband, the temple priest Zachary, become parents to John the Baptist.

In the Koran, the elderly Zakariya pleads to God for a son, and his prayer is answered with the birth of “Yahya” — John.

Mary’s mother, Anna, offers her child-to-be to God, but she is surprised and dismayed to see that she has given birth to a girl, whom she names Mary, or Maryam. She offers the child to God anyway and brings her to the temple, where she comes under the protection of Zakariya.

Every day she has holy visions, and when Zakariya comes with food, he finds angels have already provided for the young girl — details remarkably similar to the Proto Gospel of James, scripture that is not included in the Bible, but is considered credible by Roman and Eastern Orthodox Catholics.

In the Koran, the angel Gabriel comes to tell Mary she will bear a child, to which she says: “How shall I have a son, seeing that no man has touched me, and I am not unchaste?”

He said: “So (it will be): Thy Lord saith, ‘that is easy for Me: and (We wish) to appoint him as a Sign unto men and a Mercy from Us’: It is a matter (so) decreed.

“So she conceived him, and she retired with him to a remote place.”

In the Koran, there is no Joseph to protect her reputation. Instead, Mary goes off to an unspecified location to bear the child. Once there, she cries out in pain and says she wishes she had died before this.

In response, God provides a stream for water, and dates from a tree above.

When she returns home with the babe in arms, the villagers are horrified. How could she have a child without a husband? Jesus himself speaks to them from her arms, even though he is only a few days old.

Mary is also a bridge between Islam and Christianity, something Pope Benedict XVI touched on in his recent trip to Turkey, where he celebrated Mass at Ephesus, the western town in which Mary is said to have lived her last days.

The Pope pointed to her as an explicit link between Islam and Christianity, stressing that a common devotion to Mary can help bind the two faiths.

Vatican expert and author John Allen also commented on the link: “It is true that Mary is actually referred to more often in the Koran than she is in the New Testament,” he told reporters during the pope’s visit.

“She has always been a figure of strong popular devotion for Muslims as well as Christians. And it would not at all be surprising if Benedict XVI were to want to build on that in some fashion.”

source:
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=a3146ea8-5c72-4be2-b9ce-f688c0cf6b49

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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

US Terrorize The World – 1 Dzulhizah 1427 H (22.12.06)

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem

In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

The Universal Lessons of Hajj

Millions of pilgrims from all over the world will be converging on Mecca in the coming days. They will retrace the footsteps of millions who have made the spiritual journey to the valley of Mecca since the time of Adam.

Hajj literally means, “to continuously strive to reach one’s goal.” It is the last of the five pillars of Islam (the others include a declaration of faith in one God, five daily prayers, offering regular charity, and fasting during the month of Ramadan). Pilgrimage is a once-in-a-lifetime obligation for those who have the physical and financial ability to undertake the journey.
http://www.montrealmuslimnews.net/hajjlessons.htm

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The Muslim Mary

If you are looking for the religious text with the most references to Mary, the mother of Jesus, look no further than the Koran, Jennifer Green writes.

Islam and Christianity revere Mary above all other women, a human divinely appointed to bear Jesus in a virgin birth. But the Koran mentions Mary 34 times, and names an entire chapter after her — more than she gets in the Bible, according to Cruden’s Complete Concordance. She is the only woman mentioned by name in the Koran, and some scholars say Muslims actually revere her more than Christians do.
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=a3146ea8-5c72-4be2-b9ce-f688c0cf6b49

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Allahhu Akbar : Indonesian court clears Bashir

Indonesia’s supreme court has overturned the conviction on conspiracy charges in the 2002 Bali bombings against cleric Abu Bakar Bashir.

The verdict effectively clears his name and is largely symbolic as he has already served his two-and-a-half year sentence.

Bashir has been accused by the US and other intelligence services of being a founding member of Jemaah Islamiyah, the regional terrorist group blamed for the Bali bombings and linked to al-Qaeda.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/95970BC1-C949-4BC0-87DB-4F428540DDDD.htm

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“I Don’t Think We Westerners Care About Muslims” – Robert Fisk Delivers Keynote Address at MPAC Convention

AMY GOODMAN: With more than 30 years of experience covering almost every major event in the Middle East, Robert Fisk was asked to give the keynote address in the evening. Robert Fisk’s latest book is called The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East. He began his address by recalling one of his first experiences in the Middle East.

ROBERT FISK: Ladies and gentlemen, when I first went to the Middle East — on holiday from Belfast, of all places — 1972, I went to Egypt, and anxious to try and pick up a few first words of Arabic, I had the misfortune of purchasing a very old book produced by the British army in Egypt in the 19th century. I still recall the three principal clauses which you were advised to learn if you were an Englishman: “We shall board the steamship, for there is talk of war,” “Help,” and “Where is the British embassy?” And I can tell you, I never believed I would actually watch people say these things, as I had to in Lebanon this last summer. There were all the refugees, all the foreigners, boarding the steamships because there was a real war, all wanting help and all demanding to know the way to their national embassies. “So it has come to this,” I thought to myself.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/20/1443230

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Dictatorship : Who pays for the liberty you demand?

And prove to me, America, that you care
And prove to me, America, you’re aware
Who’s dying for your freedom in this land
Who pays the cost for the liberties you demand.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15971.htm

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In case you missed it: Militarism and the American Empire

Distinguished social scientist and public intellectual Chalmers Johnson, joins host Harry Kreisler for a conversation on the nature of the American Empire and its costs and consequences for the future of American democracy and power in the world. Video
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6379.htm

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War Crime : Bush “Developing Illegal Bioterror Weapons” for Offensive Use

In violation of the US Code and international law, the Bush administration is spending more money (in inflation-adjusted dollars) to develop illegal, offensive germ warfare than the $2 billion spent in World War II on the Manhattan Project to make the atomic bomb.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122006R.shtml

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War Criminal : The $2 Trillion Dollar War

When America invaded Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration predicted that the war would turn a profit, paying for itself with increased oil revenues. So far, though, Congress has spent more than $350 billion on the conflict, including the $50 billion appropriated for 2007.

But according to one of the world’s leading economists, that is just a fraction of what Iraq will actually wind up costing American taxpayers. Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize for economics, estimates the true cost of the war at$2.267 trillion. That includes the government’s past and future spending for the war itself ($725 billion), health care and disability benefits for veterans ($127 billion), and hidden increases in defense spending ($160 billion). It also includes losses the economy will suffer from injured vets ($355 billion) and higher oil prices ($450 billion).
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12855294/national_affairs_the_2_trillion_dollar_war/print

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War Criminal : Who Will Pay For Haditha?

With charges expected to be filed Thursday against five to eight Marines accused of killing 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha, Iraq on Nov. 19, 2005, it now appears that at least one senior officer will also be charged in the case.

The attorney for Capt. Lucas McConnell, who was not present at the alleged massacre but was the commander of the Marines under investigation, said Tuesday that his client had been informed that he will be charged with dereliction of duty.
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/weisenmiller.php?articleid=10203

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War Crimes Report Advertised In The Military Times Newspapers

12/21/06 “Information Clearing House” — – “U.S. War Crimes in Iraq and Mechanisms for Accountability” is being advertised for the month of December in the classified sections of the weekly newspapers Army, Navy, Marine and Air Force Times, published by Military Times. The newspapers are distributed to all U.S. military bases around the world and are read by an estimated 1 million military people, according to a Military Times advertising representative.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15972.htm

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U.S. Occupation Forces Squad Leader Charged in Killings Of 24 Iraqi Civilians

Squad leader charged in killings of 24 Iraqi civilians; More Marines expected to be charged
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/21/ap/national/mainD8M5DJS00.shtml

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In case you missed it: Iraqi Girl tells of US Attack in Haditha

Ten-year-old Iman Walid witnessed the killing of seven members of her family in an attack by American marines last November. The interview with Iman was filmed exclusively for ITV News by Ali Hamdani,our Iraqi video diarist
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13452.htm

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Iraqi : All Tears Are Not Enough

All tears in the world are not enough to cry our dear Iraq, our dear brothers, relatives, friends and innocent Iraqis who have been killed for no reason just because they loved their country and wanted to stay loyal to its soil till the last breathe they have in this life.

Can any body explain to me what kind of a world we are living in now, a world that is watching and hearing every day that no less than 100 body found in Baghdad thrown in the trash and does not take a single step to stop that, in the contrary it has become a common piece of news and merely number written in the newspapers and thrown away, no one can feel the impact of that, only the Iraqi families who lose every day,a father, brother, son and relative.
http://iraqiscreen.blogspot.com/2006/12/all-tears-are-not-enough.html

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Pentagon wants $99.7 billion more for Iraq, Afghanistan

The military’s request, if embraced by President George W. Bush and approved by Congress, would boost this year’s budget for those wars to about $170 billion.
http://www.dailynews.com/ci_4876938

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Iraqi pilgrims die at Saudi border

Saudi Arabia has agreed to admit more than a thousand Iraqi pilgrims stranded at the border, where four have died, after the Iraqi government appealed to the Saudi king, an Iraqi official said.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E3F268F5-1079-4765-9893-CB434EFB7ECF.htm

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Navy vet says he was tortured by U.S. forces: Suit filed against Rumsfeld

A Navy veteran from Chicago says he was detained and tortured by U.S. forces in Baghdad without being charged. Twenty-nine-year-old Donald Vance was a private security employee in Baghdad at the time of his arrest.
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=local&id=4862858

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Flouting the laws of war

DAVID Hicks has been accused of some ill-defined war crimes. But is he the victim of a policy promoted by the Australian Government that is itself a war crime?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15869.htm

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Iraq: At least 39 killed as U.S. occupation grinds on

A suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest killed 15 people and wounded 15 more when he blew himself up at a police recruitment centre in eastern Baghdad
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/PAR130339.htm

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Occupied Iraq: More than 111 killed on Wednesday

Iraqi police found 76 bodies around Baghdad, all with gunshot wounds and most with signs of torture, the Interior Ministry said.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L20480397.htm

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Wednesday, 20 December 2006.

• US snipers shoot dead four Iraqi civilians, wound nine more after taking control of downtown ar-Ramadi Wednesday afternoon.
• Resistance blasts puppet police station in Hit Tuesday.
• Americans arrest residents in al-Karmah Tuesday night while their allies in the puppet “Iraqi National Guard” rob their houses.
• Resistance fighters hurl hand grenades at Iraqi puppet police in al-Fallujah Tuesday.
• Resistance blasts Iraqi puppet army headquarters in al-Fallujah at dawn Wednesday.
• Resistance bombards largest US base in al-Fallujah two times within 24 hours.
• Four US troops reported killed in Iraqi Resistance car bombing in Baghdad Wednesday; US admits six Americans killed in three bombings in the Iraqi capital.
• Resistance bomb destroys US intelligence vehicle on Airport Road in western Baghdad.
• Resistance ambush leaves two puppet “Shock Troops” dead on Baghdad’s al-Munazzamah Street midday Wednesday.
• Resistance sharpshooter kills puppet “Shock Troop” soldier at roadblock Wednesday morning.
• Car bomb kills four civilians in predominantly Sunni al-A’zamiyah district of Baghdad.
• Resistance bomb destroys US Humvee in al-Latifiyah Tuesday afternoon.
• US soldier reported killed by Resistance sharpshooter in al-Hawijah Wednesday morning.
• Heavy mortars pound US headquarters in al-Hawijah.
• Resistance bomb explodes under US column in at-Tarimiyah Wednesday.
• Resistance blasts pro-Iranian Jaysh al-Mahdi militia headquarters in Balad with mortars Wednesday noon.
• Resistance sharpshooter kills puppet “Iraqi National Guardsman” in Tikrit Wednesday morning.
• Resistance blasts puppet “Shock Troop” headquarters in al-Mada’in Tuesday night.
• Resistance bomb targets Iraqi puppet army column south of Kirkuk Wednesday.
• Resistance bomb blasts puppet police in Kirkuk Tuesday.

http://www.albasrah.net/pages/mod.php?mod=art&lapage=../en_articles_2006/1206/iraqiresistancereport_201206.htm

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Apartheid in the Holy Land

12/21/06 “Guardian” — – In our struggle against apartheid, the great supporters were Jewish people. They almost instinctively had to be on the side of the disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones, fighting injustice, oppression and evil. I have continued to feel strongly with the Jews. I am patron of a Holocaust centre in South Africa. I believe Israel has a right to secure borders.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,4403427-103552,00.html

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A Moral Judgment is Called For On Israel’s “Right to Exist”

Now that the Palestinian civil war long sought by Israel, the U.S. and the EU appears on the verge of breaking out, it may be timely to examine the justification put forward by Israel, the U.S. and the EU for their collective punishment of the Palestinian people in retaliation for their having made the “wrong” choice in last January’s democratic election — the refusal of Hamas to “recognize Israel” or to “recognize Israel’s existence” or to “recognize Israel’s right to exist”.

These three verbal formulations have been used by media, politicians and even diplomats interchangeably, as though they mean the same thing. They do not.
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitbeck12212006.html

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A Parrot Talking : Harper calls Hamas ‘genocidal’

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Canada will not talk with the “genocidal” Islamic groups Hamas and Hezbollah even though he acknowledged that dialogue is the way to peace in the Middle East.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061221.wxharper21/BNStory/National/home

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Nuclear Power a Threat to the World – Dirty Bombs Depleted Uranium and WMD

No other country in the Mid East has more weapons of mass destruction than the Israelis. And no other country in the world has escaped scrutiny of its nuclear arsenal as has Israel.Israeli nuclear power is a threat to the Mid East region and to the entire world – So is every other countries use of nuclear power – a threat to its neighbors – and to the entire world -The dangerous connection between nuclear research, nuclear power and nuclear weapons must be understood.

I have vigorously continued to fight the use of nuclear power since I was a high school student – Because the use of nuclear power is an unacceptable risk to the environment and to the human kind.In my perception the only solution is to stop the expansion of all nuclear power – and a shutdown of existing nuclear plants.
http://palestinefreevoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/nuclear-power-threat-to-world-dirty.html

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Speaking frankly about Israel and Palestine

Jimmy Carter says his recent book is drawing knee-jerk accusations of anti-Israel bias. His newest book is “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” published last month.

The book describes the abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid system of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine’s citizens and Jewish settlers in the West Bank. An enormous imprisonment wall is now under construction, snaking through what is left of Palestine to encompass more and more land for Israeli settlers. In many ways, this is more oppressive than what blacks lived under in South Africa during apartheid. I have made it clear that the motivation is not racism but the desire of a minority of Israelis to confiscate and colonize choice sites in Palestine, and then to forcefully suppress any objections from the displaced citizens. Obviously, I condemn any acts of terrorism or violence against innocent civilians, and I present information about the terrible casualties on both sides.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-carter8dec08,0,7544738.story

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The West is starving the Palestinians

The West is starving the Palestinians in order to overthrow the democratically elected government of Hamas.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15974.htm

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Israel ‘poisoning the Palestinians’

“Analyses carried out in laboratories outside Palestine have shown that Israel has had recourse to banned chemical weapons and depleted uranium” in the territories, said environment minister Yussef Abu Sofia in Algiers
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=165178&Sn=WORL&IssueID=29276

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Secret Trial Detainee Mahmoud Jaballah’s Indefinite Detention Continues as Bail Hearing Suspended

Secret Trial Detainee Mahmoud Jaballah’s Indefinite Detention to Continue; Bail Process Suspended by Federal Court Decision That Upholds Law While Dismissing Justice; Jaballah No Longer Eligible for Bail For at Least Another Two Months as Hunger Strike Continues at Guantanamo Bay North Facility in Kingston, Ontario
http://www.montrealmuslimnews.net/jaballahdec20.htm

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U.S., British warships to head for gulf

The United States and Britain will begin moving additional warships and strike aircraft into the Persian Gulf region in a display of military resolve toward Iran that would come as the United Nations debates possible sanctions against the country
http://www.registerguard.com/news/2006/12/21/a12.int.iran.1221.p1.php?section=nation_world

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Ahmadinejad derides Bush for baseless accusations against Iran

“It is 27 years that the US and Britain have stood against our nation to stop national progress but they failed.” Saddam’s defeat during eight years of imposed war (1980-1988) is a good example to the US hostility to Iranian nation, he pointed out.
http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-22/0612210520194232.htm

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Iran rejects Blair’s “hateful” criticism

Iran lambasted a call by Prime Minister Tony Blair for Middle Eastern countries to form an alliance against Tehran.
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-12-20T203046Z_01_L20437336_RTRUKOC_0_UK-BRITAIN-BLAIR-IRAN.xml

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The problem is that he just doesn’t understand race

Tony Blair needs to stop lecturing and start listening when it comes to ethnic minorities. Here’s what he could say

The following is a draft of Tony Blair’s follow-up speech on multiculturalism – or what he might have said if he’d considered the matter more carefully.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1975743,00.html

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Bar investigating lawyer with possible link to CIA

The Oregon State Bar plans to investigate a Portland attorney over his work for a shadowy company linked to allegations of CIA-sponsored torture.
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/business/1166671531126760.xml&coll=7

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-muslim voice-
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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW