ACHIEVEMENTS OF ISLAMIC SCIENTIFIC HERITAGE BELONG TO ALL

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

=== News Update ===

ACHIEVEMENTS OF ISLAMIC SCIENTIFIC HERITAGE BELONG TO ALL

[By Dr. Mohamed Elmasry] – Nov 24, 2007

The science of charting the Earth’s lands and waters was of primary importance to Muslim navigators, for next to faith itself and one’s obedience to it, commerce and travel fed the social economy and thus governed people’s daily lives.

In addition to improving the astrolabe (without which no Western mariner would feel safe on the open seas for centuries to come), Muslims were the first to apply the principle of magnetism to marine and land travel, perhaps as early as the 9th and 10th centuries.

Al-Khwarizmi and other leading Muslim scientists measured and standardized the length of a terrestrial degree, while Al-Biruni accurately determined latitude and longitude: in fact, six centuries before Galileo, he pondered the possibilities of the Earth’s rotation about its own axis.

The leading 12th-century geographer al-Idrisi, a star product of the brilliant Islamic culture that flourished in Sicily, was commissioned by the Norman King Roger II to compile a world atlas. With dozens of maps covering areas never before charted, al-Idrisi’s atlas became the best mapped representation of the known world in Medieval times. Muslim achievements in geography and cartography were still leading the world during the 15th-century. When Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama set out to sail down the coast of Africa, his ship was guided by a Muslim pilot using Muslim maps and sea-charts still unknown to Europeans.

Not surprisingly, Muslim geographical encyclopaedias and dictionaries were a mainstay of European libraries for centuries. Works such as al-Burini’s History of India and Yaqut’s Mu’jam al-Buldan lit the way for future Western explorers, traders, and historians.

Ibn Baas was one of the greatest traveler-authors of the Middle Ages. Covering 75,000 miles between North Africa and China during the 14th century, he recorded in his famous book, Rihla (meaning “journey”) everything from geography and politics to local religious and social customs wherever he visited. A later Muslim geographer produced the first authoritative account of Africa, which remained a basic source of European knowledge for two centuries.

The knowledge gained by Muslim geographers and cartographers was passed to the West largely through translators appointed by Christian kings, who were eager to advance their own nations by enriching them with Islamic scientific and intellectual achievements. Indeed, when the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II founded the University of Naples in 1224, one of his major aims was to enable Western scholars to learn from Islamic culture.

It is hard to imagine what modern life would be like without Arabic numerals. The history of the last seven centuries, particularly in the West, would certainly be different if 13th-century Europe had not adopted the Arabic style of counting and calculating.

Arabic numerals, as they came to be called throughout the world, also made it far easier to cope with simple everyday sums. Try solving even a simple arithmetic problem in Roman numerals — the system in general Western use until the 13th century – and you would find it extremely unwieldy and time- consuming! Thus the Muslims gave to Europe an essential tool on which all of the world’s science and commerce now depends.

The further mathematical development of Algebra – in which alpha-numeric symbols are capable of infinite potential or possibilities — was a crucial innovation by 9th-century Muslims, most notably al-Khwarizmi, one of the greatest scientific minds of his era. Here, at the heart of this pivotal achievement, is a reflection of the Islamic faith in the mathematical
concept of a universe whose creation by God is an unending, or infinitely living process.

Later Muslim scholars also made revolutionary advances in trigonometry and geometry. These new mathematical developments made it possible to reform the calendar to such a level of accuracy that it would be in error by only one day in five thousand years.

Armed with such flexible, yet precise methods of calculation, Muslim astronomers could explore the heavens in greater detail than had ever been possible. Their discoveries were not only important to science, but again both important and practical to their faith; for Muslims everywhere needed to know exactly in which direction to turn for prayers, what course to set for pilgrimages, and exactly when to begin the month-long fast of Ramadan.

In fact, it would take volumes to talk about Muslims contributions to mathematics and astronomy in the detail they deserve.

The 8th century scientists al-Fazari, al-Farghani, and al-Zarqali, as well as later scholars al-Battani, Ibn-Yunus and others, improved instruments such as the astrolabe and compass, built unprecedented large-scale astronomical observatories, and compiled planetary tables and star charts that were used throughout Europe for centuries.

In observing and mapping the movements of the sun, planets, stars and other heavenly bodies so comprehensively, Muslim astronomers expressed the fundamental aims of Islam, which urged a never-ending quest to understand God’s visible signs in the cosmos.

Through observing the material universe, Muslims came to better understand the works of God. Nothing that humans could investigate on earth or in space was considered alien by these scientists.

Thus throughout the Muslim world, it was not at all unusual for an astronomer to be also a mathematician, geographer, physician, or even something of a philosopher and certainly, to some degree, a theologian!

Such multi-disciplined scholars paved the way for the European “Renaissance man” concept – a kind of versatile genius represented by Leonardo da Vinci, among others. He and other gifted scientists throughout the West, such as Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo and Newton, benefited from the fruits of disciplined Muslim mathematician-astronomers who passed on their methods of objective investigation, as well as their preserved transcriptions of early classical pioneers, including Aristotle and Ptolemy.

Without this great combined heritage, the European Renaissance and modern Western civilization could hardly have taken shape as they did.

Without their Muslim scientific forebears, would it indeed have been possible for 20th-century astronauts to set foot on the Moon?

The full story in
www.montrealmuslimnews.net

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Islamophobia acute : Nationalist leader says Danish identity under threat from Muslim immigrants

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

=== News Update ===

Islamophobia acute :

Nationalist leader says Danish identity under threat from Muslim immigrants

2007-11-23 17:32:16 -

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) – Raving xenophobe or fearless defender of Danish values

Nationalist leader Pia Kjaersgaard’s anti-Muslim outbursts have earned her many labels _ and many votes.

Despite predictions of her populist Danish People’s Party’s demise, Kjaersgaard remains a powerful force in domestic politics after winning 14 percent of the vote in last week’s election.

«The most important thing for the Danish People’s Party is to maintain the Danish identity,» Kjaersgaard, 60, told The Associated Press in an interview.

«I am convinced that the Islamists want to sneak Sharia (Islamic law) through the back door, that they want to combat Western society and they want Islam to become the main religion,» she said.

Her party _ Denmark’s third biggest _ has held the role of kingmaker since 2001, giving the center-right government the backing it needs for a majority in Parliament.

In return, Kjaersgaard has been able to press the government to adopt some of Europe’s strictest immigration laws, which she says have been instrumental in stemming the inflow of Muslims with radical views.

There are an estimated 200,000 Muslims among Denmark’s 5.4 million residents.

«The individual Muslim has never been a problem for Danish society. But their number has,» Kjaersgaard told AP in her office, decorated with Danish flags and paintings depicting Danish landscapes.

To emphasize her point, she said she shops at a grocery store owned by a Turkish Kurd who respects Danish laws and culture.

«He has a lot of great stuff _ fruits, vegetables _ and he’s a good friend of mine,» Kjaersgaard said.

The flow of asylum-seekers has dropped by 84 percent since Denmark tightened its immigration laws in 2001. There is now broad agreement across party lines to maintain the system.

But critics say the Danish People’s Party has polarized Danish society by bashing Islam and stereotyping immigrants as welfare cheats.

«She is a scare-mongering populist and opportunist,» said Holger K. Nielsen of the left-wing opposition Socialist People’s Party. He added Kjaersgaard was a skillful politician who has tapped into undercurrents of nationalism and worries over immigration among Danes.

During last year’s uproar over Danish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, Kjaersgaard and other leading party members took turns blasting Islam as incompatible with Danish traditions including free speech.

Ahead of the Nov. 13 election, one of the party’s campaign posters showed an artist’s hand drawing a picture of Muhammad, with the text «Freedom of speech is Danish, censorship is not.

«Sometimes I wonder what other people think about me _ ‘is she a monster?»’ Kjaersgaard conceded in a moment of introspection. «I need to brush these things off, otherwise I will go down.

Kjaersgaard, who lives with round-the-clock police protection, quickly added she has no regrets about anything she has said.

She rejects accusations of racism and comparisons to far-right parties across Europe such as the National Front in France.

«There is nothing racist about what I have said, I know that. I have a clean conscience,» she said. «My driving force is the love for my home country. … I want Denmark to be a safe and good and cozy nation that has a good relationship to the rest of the world.

When asked if she thought Islam can contribute to Danish society in any way, she replied: «I don’t think so at all.

The full story in
http://www.pr-inside.com/print314928.htm

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Sixty years after ‘Al-Nakba’ in Palestine : Palestinian right of return still a fundamental demand

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

=== News Update ===

Sixty years after ‘Al-Nakba’ in Palestine

Palestinian right of return still a fundamental demand

Richard Becker

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

The struggle in Palestine can be complex and confusing even for the closest of observers.

Like all great struggles, it has had many twists and turns, and will have many more. But the root cause of the conflict­ the forcible expulsion of a people from their homeland­is neither ambiguous nor confusing. Sixty years ago, this is precisely what happened to the Palestinians in “The Catastrophe,” known as “Al-Nakba” in Arabic.

Al-Nakba, one of the key events in modern Middle Eastern history, began on Nov. 29, 1947. That day, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 181 to partition the British Mandate (colony) of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. The United Nations made this decisive step without consulting the Palestinian Arabs, who at the time comprised two-thirds of the population.

Most of the Jewish population was made up of settlers who had arrived in the previous three decades, mainly from Europe. More than 100,000 were survivors of the Nazi genocide.

While the U.S. and British imperialists had done little before or during World War II to aid the Jewish victims of fascism, they used the horrors of Hitler’s death camps to rally support for the establishment of the state of Israel after the war.

The Palestinians­who had had nothing to do with European anti-Semitism or genocide­were not consulted before the U.N. vote. There was no plebiscite or vote of the people. If there had been, the outcome would not have been in doubt: One unitary state would have been the overwhelming choice. The U.N. vote was an illegitimate act and a violation of the Palestinians’ right of self-determination.

The two-thirds majority required to pass Resolution 181 was only achieved through intense U.S. pressure. The vote ended up 33 to 13 with 10 abstentions. The Truman administration leaned heavily on its neocolonies and client states, particularly the Philippines, Liberia, Haiti and Thailand, all of which initially opposed the resolution.

Without those four votes, the resolution would have failed. For narrow and short-term interests, the Soviet Union voted for the resolution. This represented a betrayal of the Arab anti-colonial struggle and one that did great harm to the socialist cause in the region. Later, the Soviet Union would become a major ally of the Arab national liberation movement.

The full story in
http://uruknet.info/?p=m38665&hd=&size=1&l=e

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AMERICA THE TARGET: 9-11 and Israel’s Use of Terrorism to Coerce the West

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

=== News Update ===

AMERICA THE TARGET:

9-11 and Israel’s Use of Terrorism to Coerce the West

My latest research article, entitled “America the Target,” examines the history of Israel’s use of terrorism to coerce the West. This nasty business did not begin in 2001.

The 1946 Zionist terror bombing of the King David Hotel, by members of the Haganah and Irgun gang, and the 1954 bombings of U.S. and British government buildings in the “Lavon Affair” are important precedents which I examine in detail.

Shimon Peres, President of Israel and Senior Terrorist

Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, and the founding director of Israeli intelligence, a man named Isser Harel, are among the high-level Israelis who carried out terror attacks on U.S. targets in the past and who are connected to 9-11 in ways that have not been discussed before.

I chose the title, “America the Target,” for this chapter after reading an editorial by Michael D. Evans with this title in The Jerusalem Post of September 30, 2001.

In this very peculiar editorial, Evans, who “has been received by the highest echelons of Israeli statesmen over a period of many years,” relates how he was told by Isser Harel, the former head of Israeli intelligence — in 1980 — that terrorists would strike the tallest buildings in New York.

Evans is no Christian and Isser Harel was certainly no prophet. Harel, who died in 2003, was a terrorist with a long history of bombing Western targets in order to force the West to support Zionist goals in the Middle East.

Isser Harel, Israeli intelligence chief in 1961

With thousands of Americans and Europeans fighting the “War on Terror,” it looks like the Zionist plan worked.

Michael D. Evans, “a confidante to world leaders in the Middle East,” is a Jew who is dedicated to the militant Zionist agenda of the right-wing Likud party of Benjamin Netanyahu. Evans, who describes himself as “an evangelist,” runs a fake Christian organization called Mike Evans Ministries and the Jerusalem Prayer Team.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Michael D. Evans

The mission of the Jerusalem Prayer Team, according to its Texas-based website, is — “To guard, defend and protect the Jewish people, and the Eretz Yisrael until Israel is secure, and until the redeemer comes to Zion.” (Eretz Yisrael is used here in the Hebrew and means “land of Yisrael.” Ha’aretz means “the land.”)

Among Evans’ supporters are fellow “evangelists” Pat Robertson and Tim LaHaye.

Evans is endorsed by the most radical right-wing Zionists, including Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the terrorist architects of the “War on Terror.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, “War on Terror” Architect

About Evans, Netanyahu said:

Mike Evans is a fighter for freedom in a world of darkening and narrowing horizons. In his devotion to Israel, Mike has consistently demonstrated the moral clarity that is necessary to defend Israel against the lies and distortions of its enemies, and championed the Jewish people’s claim to the Land of Israel…I look forward to strengthening our friendship on his many future visits to Israel.

Ehud Olmert, the current prime minister, said about Evans:

I have known Mike Evans for more than two decades, and I consider him to be a great friend of Jerusalem and the State of Israel. He has always been there for us in our time of need speaking out with courage and compassion. Mike Evans is a true ambassador of Jerusalem, representing millions of Christians in America.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (then Mayor of Jerusalem) with Michael D. Evans
Michael D. Evans certainly does not represent Christians or Christianity. He is a Zionist wolf in disguise. Evans’ only mission is to deceive Christians into supporting the most extreme and militant Zionist agenda.

In a 2004 interview, Evans claims that his “mother’s grandfather was burned to death in his synagogue in Minsk, Russia.” He also says that he was subjected to anti-Semitic abuse by Catholics growing up in Massachusetts.

Evans was asked: Do you think your mission now has to do with the fact that you are Jewish?

“One-hundred percent,” was Evans’ response.

Here are a couple interesting excerpts from the Evans’ interview:

Caldwell: So extrapolating from the scenarios of the Bible, what do you believe is our nation’s future, based on prophecy?

Evans: The story of prophecy that has to do with the Jews goes all the way through to the end of the Book of Revelation. Jesus prophesied in Matthew 24. The disciples said, “What shall be the signs of the coming of the ends of the age?” And he said, “The first sign would be deception.” Now, there’s never been greater deception then what happened on September 11, 2001.

Caldwell: Why do you say that America’s story is contained within biblical prophecies?

Evans: America stepped into the eye of a prophetic storm when it took covenant with both Ishmael and Isaac, the sons of Abraham, the Arab and the Jew…

Most of the Bible talks about this battle between these two brothers, and we’re right in the middle of that.

On Sept. 23, 1979, the founder of Israeli intelligence over dinner told me that America was developing a tolerance for terror. The gentleman’s name was Isser Harel, the founder of Mossad Israeli intelligence — he ran it from 1947 to 1963.

Isser Harel, Senior Israeli spymaster and terrorist,

knew of Israeli plans to bomb the WTC — in 1980.

I said “Where?” He said, “In Islamic theology, the phallic symbol is very important. Your biggest phallic symbol is New York City and your tallest building will be the phallic symbol they will hit.” Isser Harel prophesied that the tallest building in New York would be the first building hit by Islamic fundamentalists 21 years ago.

The following excerpt is from the second chapter of my book, Solving-911 (a work in progress), which describes Harel’s prediction of 9-11 – in 1980 – to Michael Evans, a Zionist propaganda agent who disguises himself as a Christian evangelist:

DECADES OF PLANNING

There are key people involved in the 1954 Israeli terror bombings of the U.S. Information Agency libraries in Alexandria and Cairo who held high-level positions in the Israeli government of 2001. There are other Israelis, with long histories of terrorism and strategic planning, who revealed having very specific prior knowledge of 9-11 long before 2001.

The highest Israeli intelligence official at the time of the Lavon Affair, Isser Harel, was evidently aware of the long-term planning of 9-11 — more than twenty years before it happened.

In 1980, twenty-one years before September 11, 2001, Isser Harel, the former director of Haganah intelligence, the Shin Bet (internal) and the Mossad (foreign) intelligence services, predicted with uncanny accuracy the events of 9-11 to Michael D. Evans, an American supporter of Zionist extremists of the Jabotinsky sort.

“AMERICA THE TARGET”

In an editorial entitled “America the Target,” published in The Jerusalem Post of September 30, 2001, Evans related what Harel had told him:

I sat with former Mossad chief Isser Harel for a conversation about Arab terrorism. As he handed me a cup of hot tea and a plate of cookies, I asked him, “Do you think terrorism will come to America, and if so, where and why?”

Harel looked at his American visitor and replied, “I fear it will come to you in America. America has the power, but not the will, to fight terrorism. The terrorists have the will, but not the power, to fight America – but all that could change with time. Arab oil money buys more than tents.”

As to the where, Harel continued, “New York City is the symbol of freedom and capitalism. It’s likely they will strike the Empire State Building, your tallest building [he mistakenly thought] and a symbol of your power.”

In another article, entitled “Jimmy Carter: Radical Islam’s Ally,” Evans related the same story about Harel:

My last question was would terrorism ever come to America. “You have the power to fight it,” he said, “but not the will. They have the will, but not the power. All of that will change in time. Yes, I fear it will come to New York and your tallest building, which is a symbol of your fertility.”

Think about this for a minute. The founder and cornerstone of Israeli intelligence tells an American supporter in 1980 that Arab terrorism will come to America and that the terrorists will strike the tallest building in New York City. His bizarre prediction, which doesn’t make much sense, comes to pass 13 years later with a hapless and thoroughly fake attack in 1993, evidently arranged by the FBI.

The FBI-coordinated false-flag terror event is followed, 8 years later, by a spectacular, well-planned, and extremely lethal attack which kills thousands. How did Isser Harel know what the Arab terrorists had planned more than two decades before 9-11?

* * *

“Why should they, the Americans, have trusted us? We were a bunch of Russians, socialist Russians.”

– Isser Harel, former head of Mossad, speaking of the unlikely union between America and the state of Israel

Sources: Evans, Michael D., “Is America in Bible Prophecy?” Deborah Caldwell interview with Michael D. Evans, August 2004
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/151/story_15136.html

Evans, Mike, “America the target,” Jerusalem Post, September 30, 2001

The full story in
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=114012

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Is what the US has been doing in Iraq genocide? Absolutly!

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

=== News Update ===

Is what the US has been doing in Iraq genocide? Absolutly!

BULENT KENES

November, 2007

The answer given to this question by Dr. Ian Douglas, who teaches courses on political science at an-Najah International University and is a member of the Brussells Tribunal committee, is an open and clear “Yes.”

The massive tragedy that has been taking place right next to our country since April 2003 is unfortunately not given enough coverage by the Turkish media. The editorial “kitchens” of newspapers and televisions have become so used to the killing of dozens of Iraqis every day by Americans, insurgents or al-Qaeda members that they have ceased to attach any news value to these killings. Although the tragedy that claims lives every day seems to have created a kind of sentimental stupor in the media, this definitely does not mean that the tragedy is no longer there. This bloody tragedy, which we have become so used to, is stripping ourselves of our humanity, and is suffered every single day with all its terror in a country right next to us. Every moment it leaves a woman childless, husbandless, fatherless, brotherless, or leaves a child motherless, brotherless, fatherless, or without a grandfather, uncle or aunt.

Before the very eyes of a numb-hearted world, a country is being pillaged and plundered; a nation is being wiped out step by step. While dozens of people are killed every day, maybe hundreds are forced into leaving their homes, hometowns and homeland.

Dr. Douglas rises against this, articulating that “this is a full-fledged genocide.” He has decided to inform as many people as he can and calls on everyone he reaches to be much more sensitive toward the genocide being perpetrated in Iraq. It is impossible not to see the genuine pain of having witnessed massive destruction in the eyes of this man, who has also visited me to share his views.

Maybe we should stop for a moment to associate Iraq only with the existence of the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the north of the country and the threat it poses to Turkey, or with projects being realized by Turkish contractors and businessmen in Iraq, and once again try to see what is really happening there.

Dr. Douglas states that the United States began its genocide in Iraq 17 years ago and notes, “The 2003 US invasion of Iraq was the culmination and intensification of a consistent US policy of destroying Iraq as a national and state entity.” Having figured out that around 1.5 million people, most them children and women, died because of the 13-year UN-led embargo on Iraq, which was enforced as a result of heavy pressure from the US, Dr. Douglas adds that the number of people killed in the war since 2003 has exceeded 1 million. He benefits also from Lancet and the Iraq Body Count in reaching the quoted figures and holds the United States responsible for the killing of a total 2.5 million people in Iraq — apart from the cultural, social and economic destruction it has inflicted on the country. He bluntly describes this as downright genocide.

“The Iraqi people have the legal right to resist occupation, colonialism and genocide by all available means, including armed struggle,” says Dr. Douglas, adding, “The national popular resistance in Iraq is combating genocide directly where international law as a preventative and protective mechanism has failed.”

The full story in
http://uruknet.info/?p=m38662&hd=&size=1&l=e

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PRESIDENT SIGNS DOCUMENT EFFECTIVELY MAKING IRAQ A COLONY OF THE U.S.

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

=== News Update ===

PRESIDENT SIGNS DOCUMENT EFFECTIVELY MAKING IRAQ A COLONY OF THE U.S.

I’m not sure that I’ve read a more sickening document than the one that was released by the White House yesterday entitled ‘Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship Between the Republic of Iraq and the United States of America’. Encapsulated in this document is the geo-political reality of what the Bush/Cheney administration and their neoconservative and Likudnik supporters had set out to achieve since the day George W. Bush became President of the US.

Far from ‘liberating’ the Iraqi people from the ‘yoke of tyranny’ for them to become a ‘free and democratic’ model to which all other Middle Eastern states could aspire, which was the propaganda and rhetoric used by the neoconservatives that convinced the Coalition of the Willing that Iraq was a ‘noble and righteous cause’, the declaration instead condemns Iraq to an endless occupation designed to enhance the power of the elite puppets of Iraq, and to ensure that Iraq’s resources remain firmly under American control and enriching American controlled oil companies. In short, the document is the instrument by which Iraq has effectively become a colony of the US.

There are several iniquitous points made in the document that betray the real intent of the administration but, in particular, point five of the second principle relating to ‘the economic sphere’ which says: “Facilitating and encouraging the flow of foreign investments to Iraq, especially American investments, to contribute to the reconstruction and rebuilding of Iraq,” and point eight which says: “Supporting the Republic of Iraq to obtain positive and preferential trading conditions for Iraq within the global marketplace including accession to the World Trade Organization and most favored nation status with the United States,” says it all.

Iraq’s puppet leaders have signed over Iraq to the US.

The full story in
http://lataan.blogspot.com/2007/11/president-signs-document-effectively.html

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Alleged Trainer Of 9/11 Hijackers a CIA Informant

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

=== News Update ===

Alleged Trainer Of 9/11 Hijackers a CIA Informant

Sakka attempts to plug holes in 9/11 official story, claims Hanjour did not pilot Flight 77

Paul Joseph Watson

Prison Planet

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

The man who claims to have trained six of the 9/11 hijackers is a paid CIA informant according to Turkish intelligence specialists, who also assert that Al-Qaeda is merely the name of a secret service operation designed to foment a strategy of tension around the world.

In a London Times report, Louai al-Sakka, now incarcerated in a high-security Turkish prison 60 miles east of Istanbul, claims that he trained six of the 9/11 hijackers at a camp in the mountains near Istanbul from 1999-2000.

Sakka was imprisoned in 2005 after being caught making bombs that he planned to use to blow up Israeli vessels.

Sakka asserts that he is a leading Al-Qaeda operative, having directed insurgency attacks in Iraq and also the beheading of Briton Kenneth Bigley in October 2004.

Some of Sakka’s account is corroborated by the US government’s 9/11 Commission. It found evidence that four of the hijackers – whom Sakka says he trained – had initially intended to go to Chechnya from Turkey but the border into Georgia was closed. Sakka had prepared fake visas for the group’s travel to Pakistan and arranged their flights from Istanbul’s Ataturk airport. The group of four went to the al-Farouq camp near Kandahar and the other two to Khaldan, near Kabul, an elite camp for Al-Qaeda fighters.

When Moqed and Suqami returned to Turkey, Sakka employed his skills as a forger to scrub out the Pakistani visa stamps from their passports. This would help the Arab men enter the United States without attracting suspicion that they had been to a training camp.

“But, as with many things in the world of Al-Qaeda, there might be smoke and mirrors,” reports the Times. “Some experts believe that Sakka could be overstating his importance to the group, possibly to lay a false track for western agencies investigating his terrorist colleagues.”

However, when one considers what other experts have said about Sakka, it appears that his intentions towards “western agencies” are anything but deceptive – since Turkish intelligence analysts concluded that Sakka has been a CIA asset all along.

Prominent Turkish newspaper Zaman reported that Sakka was hired as a CIA informant in 2000, after receiving a large sum of money from the agency. This would explain why he was “captured” but then released on two separate occasions by the CIA during the course of 2000.

Sakka was later captured by Turkish intelligence but again ordered to be released after which he moved to Germany to assist the alleged 9/11 hijackers.

Shortly before 9/11, Sakka was allegedly hired by Syrian intelligence – to whom he gave a warning that the attacks were coming on September 10th, 2001.

In his book At the Center of the Storm, former CIA director George Tenet writes, that “a source we were jointly running with a Middle Eastern country went to see his foreign handler and basically told him something big was about to go down.”

“This is very likely a reference to Sakra, since no one else comes close to matching the description of telling a Middle Eastern government about the 9/11 attacks one day in advance, not to mention working as an informant for the CIA at the same time. Tenet’s revelation strongly supports the notion that Sakra in fact accepted the CIA’s offers in 2000 and had been working with the CIA and other intelligence agencies at least through 9/11 ,” writes 9/11 researcher Paul Thompson, who was also interviewed for the London Times article.

Were the alleged “interrogations” of Sakka on behalf of the CIA merely a smokescreen to enable instructions to be passed on? This is certainly the view of Turkish intelligence experts, who go further and conclude that “Al-Qaeda” as a whole is merely a front group for western intelligence agencies used to foment a “strategy of tension” around the world.

Is Sakka still in the employ of western intelligence agencies? His apparent effort to plug the holes in the official 9/11 story is fascinating.

According to Sakka, Nawaf al-Hazmi was a veteran operative who went on to pilot the plane that hit the Pentagon. Although this is at odds with the official account, which says the plane was flown by another hijacker, it is plausible and might answer one of the mysteries of 9/11.

The Pentagon plane performed a complex spiral dive into its target. Yet the pilot attributed with flying the plane (Hani Hanjour) “could not fly at all” according to his flight instructors in America. Hazmi, on the other hand, had mixed reviews from his instructors but they did remark on how “adept” he was on his first flight.

Exactly how “adept” one has to be to pull off maneuvers that would be impossible for veteran crack fighter pilots is not explored in the Times report.

The full story in
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2007/271107_cia_informant.htm

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Abbas Traitor of Palestine : PA-Israeli document liquidating RoR unveiled

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

=== News Update ===

Abbas Traitor of Palestine : PA-Israeli document liquidating RoR unveiled

Palestinian Information Center

November 26, 2007

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)– The Hebrew Haaretz newspaper has unveiled in its late edition on Monday a “serious” PA-Israeli document that aims at liquidating the right of return of millions of Palestinian refugees to their homeland in the 1948-occupied Palestinian lands.

According to the paper, an Israeli group close to Israeli premier Ehud Olmert along with a Palestinian team associated with PA chief Mahmoud Abbas had negotiated the possibility of replacing the RoR with some economic projects that could cost 90 billion dollars.

The document, the paper added, was an initial semi-official attempt to dismantle the barrier of the RoR and to transform it into economic benefits that could help reaching practical solutions to the issue.

The paper also quoted Israeli deputy premier Haim Ramon as saying that the document was a work paper that both Israeli and Palestinian parties should study, and once PA-Israeli talks on the final status started, the document could help the negotiating teams of what is possible to do.

Data on the numbers of the Palestinian refugees were based on the UNRWA records, revealing that there were 4.4 million Palestinian refugees, including 1.3 million living in neighboring Arab countries, and 1.7 million dwelling in refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Furthermore, the paper disclosed that a number of international parties, including the World Bank and the EU among other parties had financed activities of the Israeli group in coordination with the Peres center for peace and the Data Institution in Bethlehem city.

A number of alternatives were suggested by the document to solve the refugees’ issue, including naturalizing them in their host countries and improving their housing, transferring and naturalizing them in different countries, and sending them to the PA-controlled land that could be arranged with the Israelis through the “exchange of lands” process.

Regarding the issue of occupied Jerusalem, the paper unveiled that the document presented thee scenarios for settling that issue, the first scenario talks about dividing the holy city politically between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the second suggests that city be an open city for people and goods, and the third scenario was to make it a semi-open city.

However, the three scenarios would confirm the permanent Israeli presence in the city, and would scatter Palestinian hopes of ending the Israeli occupation.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees were forced out of their homes at gunpoint at the hands of Jewish gangs in 1948 and after the 1967 war, however, those refugees along with their children and grandchildren who were born in the diaspora remain holding to their right of return to their homes, and vowing to reject all financial compensations offered to them.

“Palestine isn’t for sale”, the refugees affirmed after being offered to be financially compensated in exchange to drop their RoR.

The full story in
http://uruknet.info/?p=m38600&hd=&size=1&l=e

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______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

The Judaization of East Jerusalem

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

=== News Update ===

The Judaization of East Jerusalem

Posted Nov 26, 2007 08:41 AM PST

Category: ISRAEL

Then there is the little-noticed news that the Israeli Parliament has given preliminary approval to a bill, in violation of international law and United Nations resolutions, which would seize East Jerusalem as a permanent part of Israel. It is thus not surprising that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s belated efforts to corral reluctant world diplomats to an increasingly downgraded meeting in Annapolis are rapidly becoming mission impossible.

# * Resolution 127: ” . . . ‘recommends’ Israel suspends it’s ‘no-man’s zone’ in Jerusalem”.

# * Resolution 162: ” . . . ‘urges’ Israel to comply with UN decisions”.

# * Resolution 250: ” . . . ‘calls’ on Israel to refrain from holding military parade in Jerusalem”.

# * Resolution 251: ” . . . ‘deeply deplores’ Israeli military parade in Jerusalem in defiance of Resolution 250″.

# * Resolution 252: ” . . . ‘declares invalid’ Israel’s acts to unify Jerusalem as Jewish capital”.

# * Resolution 267: ” . . . ‘censures’ Israel for administrative acts to change the status of Jerusalem”.

# * Resolution 271: ” . . . ‘condemns’ Israel’s failure to obey UN resolutions on Jerusalem”.

# * Resolution 298: ” . . . ‘deplores’ Israel’s changing of the status of Jerusalem”.

# * Resolution 446: ” . . . ‘determines’ that Israeli settlements are a ‘serious obstruction’ to peace and calls on Israel to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention”.

# * Resolution 452: ” . . . ‘calls’ on Israel to cease building settlements in occupied territories”.

# * Resolution 465: ” . . . ‘deplores’ Israel’s settlements and asks all member states not to assist Israel’s settlements program”.

# * Resolution 471: ” . . . ‘expresses deep concern’ at Israel’s failure to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention”.

# * Resolution 476: ” . . . ‘reiterates’ that Israel’s claim to Jerusalem are ‘null and void’”.

# * Resolution 478: ” . . . ‘censures (Israel) in the strongest terms’ for its claim to Jerusalem in its ‘Basic Law’”.

# * Resolution 672: ” . . . ‘condemns’ Israel for violence against Palestinians at the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount.

# * Resolution 673: ” . . . ‘deplores’ Israel’s refusal to cooperate with the United Nations.

The full story in
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

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______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Corruption, bribes and trafficking: a cancer that is engulfing Afghanistan, Puppet of the West

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

=== News Update ===

Corruption, bribes and trafficking: a cancer that is engulfing Afghanistan, Puppet of the West

Anthony Loyd in Kabul

November 24, 2007

The general made an elementary mistake. Told by his superiors that his new posting as chief of police in a drug-rich northern province would cost him “one hundred and fifty thousand”, he assumed the bribe to be in Afghan currency.

He paid the money to a go-between at a rendezvous in Kabul’s Najib Zarab carpet market. For two days he was lorded in the office of General Azzam, then Chief of Staff to the Interior Minister, helping himself to chocolate and biscuits. “I must have eaten a pound of the stuff,” he recalled.

But on the third day he received a different welcome. “Get this mother****** out of my office,” Azzam screamed, said the general. Hustled outside, he quickly discovered his error. He should have paid $150,000 (£73,000) rather than a paltry 150,000 Afghanis for the bung.

Now living in disgruntled internal exile in northern Afghanistan, his verdict on his former employers is succinct.

“Everyone in the Ministry of Interior is corrupt,” he told The Times. “They wouldn’t sleep with their wives without wanting a backhander first.”

He never, though, expressed surprise. Governmental corruption in Afghanistan has become endemic and bribes to secure police and administrative positions along provincial drug routes is an established procedure.

“The British public would be up in arms if they knew that the district appointments in the south for which British soldiers are dying are there just to protect drug routes,” said one analyst. Western and Afghan officials are also alarmed at how narco-kleptocracy has extended its grip around President Karzai, a figure regarded by some as increasingly isolated by a cadre of corrupt officials.

“The people around him tell him of a cuckoo land,” said Shukria Barakzai, a Pashtun MP who is both a friend and critic of Karzai. “He circles within a small mafia ring who are supporting the destruction of the system. At the beginning there were only 10 to 15 of them but since then they have spread like a cancer in Afghanistan.”

The Ministry of Interior, key to establishing security in the country, remains the worst offender. Disaffected police officers have named, to The Times, General Azzam, recently appointed Chief of Operations after his stint as Chief of Staff, and his deputy General Reshad as the prime recipients of bribes.

The lawmen say they categorise Afghanistan’s 34 provinces as A, B or C states. ‘A’ denotes those with the highest potential profits for drug-running; ‘C’ states are the least remunerative. The bribes to buy a position in an A-grade province can be vast, up to $300,000. The rewards are even bigger. One border police commander in eastern Afghanistan was estimated by counter-narcotic officials to take home $400,000 a month from heroin smuggling.

This summer a border police vehicle was stopped outside Kabul and found to have 123.5kg of heroin, with a value of nearly $300,000, bagged in the back. The five men inside, an officer, three policemen and a secretary, were under the command of Haji Zahir, formerly Border Police commander of Nangarhar province. Haji Zahir was questioned and removed from his post. He was never charged.

Even the lowlier posts in provinces free of poppy traffic have a price. “To buy a position as a detective in any province you pay $10,000,” explained one police colonel, now on indefinite leave because he refused to pay a bribe. “Then you pay your superior a cut of the money you make through bribes or trafficking.”

One former governor told The Times that every judge in his province had been corrupt. He claimed there were cases of the police handing detainees to the Taleban, or helping to transport Taleban commanders from one province to another.

“The Government has essentially collapsed,” he said. “It has lost its meaning in the provinces, it has lost the security situation and lost its grip on civil servants. Corruption is playing havoc with the country.”

The international community has played its own part in contributing to the crisis. One analyst in Kabul said: “It’s not Afghan culture. It’s a culture of impunity. We created it. We came in in 2001 with cases of cash and made certain people untouchables.”

The dozens of drug-funded villas ­ “narcotechture” in expat parlance ­ that have sprung up around foreign embassies in Kabul’s Sherpur district are a testament to the untouchable status of former warlords.

Corruption among police and local authorities is worst in southern Afghanistan, where drug profits are highest. Despite his repeated public denials, President Karzai’s half-brother Wali, head of Kandahar’s provincial council, continues to be accused by senior government sources, as well as foreign analysts and officials, as having a key role in orchestrating the movement of heroin from Kandahar eastward through Helmand and out across the Iranian border.

Britain has been keen for Kabul to begin arresting top drug smugglers in its ranks. Yet diplomats fear the country’s judicial system is so weak that the men would quickly be released or escape. Meanwhile, America has been lacklustre in lobbying for high-level arrests, fearing such detentions would further destabilise matters.

The Afghan Government fears that if corrupt officials in the south were replaced by staunch law enforcers, the huge profits from heroin trafficking would end up with the Taleban.

Kabul has, though, made efforts. A new agency, the directorate of local government (IDLG), was supposed to give the President rather than the Ministry of Interior more say over the appointment of provincial governors, a system notorious for its corrupt procedures. However, many of the IDLG staff were simply transferred from the Interior Ministry, tainting its potential from the start. Afghan anti-corruption agencies similarly lack cohesion and clout. Izzatullah Wasifi, director of Afghanistan’s GIAAC anti-corrution force, said he had been unable to brief President Karzai even once during the past 11 months.

His own force is already under suspicion from rival anti-corruption players in the offices of the Attorney-General and the Ministry of Finance, who in turn face allegations of embezzlement and bribery. Wasifi did time in an American penitentiary 20 years ago for dealing heroin. “You expect my guys to be clean working for $200 a month versus the millions in drug bribes?” he asked. “I don’t see any serious measures being taken to solve the problem.”

The full story in
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2933472.ece

===

-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Iraq : ‘Internationally Sponsored Genocide’

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

=== News Update ===

Iraq : ‘Internationally Sponsored Genocide’

Felicity Arbuthnot

November 27, 2007

Near exactly fourteen years ago – three years and three months in to the embargo – I wrote:

Meridian Hotel, Baghdad, 4th November 1993.

“As you know, when I was here in April/May 1992, I thought things could get no worse. Yet in July this year, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations note in a Report: ‘..with deep regret’, all the: ‘pre-faminine indicators being in place’. Further that an appreciable proportion of the population now had less calorific intake than the most famine stricken parts of Africa. That was July. This is apocalypse. This is internationally sponsored genocide.

“Food has risen in real terms, one thousand percent. Some most basic of staples have risen eleven hundred times. This morning a breakfast for three, of three black cofees, two orange juices and an omlette cost, what would have been, in 1989, the equivalent of one thousand three hundred US dollars. With US dollars, one can buy stacks of black market Iraqi Dinars, an inches high wad for fifty dollars, chillingly redolent of Germany after the first world war. Most Iraqi people have no dollars.

‘”In the foyer of the Rashid Hotel, is one of the most magnificent display of wonderous artifacts one could ever hope to see: jewellery, paintings, superb, rare antique boxes, chandeliers, crystal, exquisite family treaures, handed down over generations, many also collected from around the globe. They are the belongings of the middle class, for sale in the hope they will be sold for hard currency to the rare visitor. Living for a few more weeks. The poor have no antiques.

“A friend, a multi-lingual, much travelled novelist and editor, whose great grandfather’s statue graces an area of Baghdad, boils rose petals for a face cleaner, concocts a mixture of boracic and herbs for deodorant and uses an ancinet clay for hair conditioner.She and her family, as many Iraqis, now clean their teeth with husks from a plant, a method from a bygone age.Tooth paste and tooth brushes are vetoed. Her last novel is trapped in her computer, for want of a minor, embargoed spare part.If she could release it, it would be anyway useless, there is no paper to print it on. Paper is also veoted by the U.N., Sanctions Committee.

“Car tyres cost sixteen month’s average salary.Yet people have to drive the gruelling, utterly isolated, seven hundred kilometre, desert road to Jordan, to attempt to conduct any business, or for medical help, if they are the few lucky enough to have the money to operate in hard currency.They drive one resewn tyres, often stuffed with just about anything to keep them inflated, in the searing heat. They travel in cars that are now death traps. All spare parts also vetoed.

“The deaths on the Jordan road (and the visible testimony of them) are a bare decimal point in the reality of life here.The U.N., of course, fly in, and loudly demand Nescafe for breakfast, unattainable anywhere. The delicious Turkish coffee which is available for those who can afford it, has become a token of ‘ the enemy’ for them, it seems. I have witnessed this over and over again, in this hotel: ‘ No, no, Nescafe, not Turkish coffee …’ Then something along the lines of : ”What is wrong with you people, do you understand nothing’? Last night, they wanted hot ‘ vegetable soup’. The temperature was Hadean and the Chef had worked miracles with pulses and fresh salads, unattainable for most and now pretty difficult for even the government subsidised hotels.U.N., personnel in Iraq are a million miles from the aspirations expressed on behalf of ‘We the people …’ They are bent on ritual humiliation – utterly shameing ‘We the people’.

“The U.N,. personnel were sporting satelite phones and bleepers.Two months ago the U.N., Sanctions Committee (read US and UK., as ever) vetoed a consignment of bleepers and mobile ‘phones for the doctors, medical staff, ambulance drivers and other emergency units, denying all contact between emergency and life saving personnel.

“Just before I left the U.K., in September, the Sanctions Committee revoked the licence for five hundred tons of shroud material. It is currently stuck in Jordan, having taken since April to get even as far as Aquaba port. Sanctions reach even beyond the grave.

“Earlier this year the U.S., U.K., and France vetoed a consignment of school writing pads, erasers, pencil sharpeners, pencils and consignment of ping pong balls. Childhood is dead in Iraq. There are few birthday parties anymore, for most, neither the food nor the presents are affordable.

“The U.S., and U.K., recently also vetoed a consignment of ‘medical gauze’ (ie: bandages) and refused to allow a Spanish company to assist in rebuilding the syringe factory, bombed in 1991. Doctors are forced to re-use syringes again and again. One lowered his eyes and his voice in shame, as he told me that they re-use the paediatric canulars from babies who have died. He did five years post graduate studies in the United States and spoke better english than you or I. He had believed in the ‘land of the free’. Not any more.

“In a tiny grocery store,very early yesterday morning, a child of perhaps five came in, with that air of pride of children everywhere entrusted to run an errand. He was clutching a five Dinar note, fifteen dollars, just four years ago. It bought one egg, which he carefully carried to the door – and then he dropped it.He was beside himself. He fell to the floor and frantically tried to gather it up in his hands, tears streaming down his small, desparate face. As I searched in my pocket, the shopkeeper shook his head, gently touched him on the shoulder and gave him another egg. Protein is unbuyable for the majority. Families chop one egg into miniscule pieces, so all have a couple of tiny morsels – in a country ‘floating on a sea of oil’, the second largest reserves on earth.

“How many more traumatised children, in our name? How many countless ‘broken eggs’ are there here now in just three years? What would be acceptable to the U.S., and British administrations? What do they expect, perhaps an army of premature babies (a quarter of live births are now premature) rising up from their non-functioning-for-want-of-western-spare-parts-incubators, to overthrow Saddam Hussein?

“People here, broadly, do not care about the government.The struggle to survive day by day is the greater challenge. Further, I went back to a large group who were highly critical of the government a year ago. They are now so furious at what the embago is doing to their families, friends, neighbourhood and the ancient country they love – and of which , it seems to the visitor, all feel that they are honoured custodians – this year they all lit a candle on Saddam Hussein’s birthday.

“As you know, rightly or wrongly, I have no view on politics here, it is none of our business and to collectively punish – U.N., or not, is illegal and beyond shame – twenty five million souls hostage to our Adminstrations’ views of their government.The highest category of victims are the new born, the unborn and the under fives.This is being done, we are told, that Saddam Hussein will be forced to comply with the latest moving goal post and curb the excesses of his regime. Yet in the name of our regimes the ‘mass graves’ are spreading across the country – with our nations’ names on them.

” I do not know when or where this shocking epsisode in history will end. But I know for certain that we will never be forgiven, not alone in Iraq, but across the region and beyond. Putting out the hand of friendship and being big enough to forget about ‘losing face’, might just avert some major tragedy, the spirit of generosity is what embodies this region. Otherwise the silent crimes of the U.S.,-U.K., driven ‘U.N.’ embargo may return to haunt us too.’”

The embargo of course, ground on for a further ten years, then came the criminality of ‘Shock and Awe’ and an invasion where Iraqis can be killed, tortured, stolen from, raped, run over, bombed, blown up, imprisoned without trial, with impunity. If anyone treated a domestic or farm animal in the West, as the Iraqis have been treated for over seventeen years: denied a proper diet, medication, clean water, a safe environment, that person would end up in Court and likely in prison.

The above letter is a minute snap shot from just one visit now long ago – and it went downhill from there. Every visit saw a new crisis. Forget ‘Al Qaeda’, ‘insurgents’, ‘dead enders’, ‘terrorist elements’, ‘bad guys’. The majority of the resistance are the child that dropped the egg within the man and his generation of childhoodless, traumatised children, who survived the internationally sponsored genocide. ‘No child left behind’? In Iraq every child has been left behind, discarded year after year, by the ‘international community’.

The full story in
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m38641&hd=&size=1&l=e

===

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______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Gujarat Masacre : Do You Remember The Thousands Muslim Slaughtered by Hindu Extremes?

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

=== News Update ===

Gujarat Masacre :

Do You Remember The Thousands Muslim Slaughtered by Hindu Extremes?

Hindus confess to Gujarat carnage

Source: IslamOnline

28/10/2007 08:00:00 PM GMT

A Hindu politician confessed that Narendra Modi had given the green light for the extremists to go ahead with their rampage.

An Indian magazine released videotaped confessions of Hindu activists detailing blatant state collusion over the 2002 Gujarat massacre.

CAIRO — An Indian weekly magazine has released a series of videotaped confessions of Hindu activists of hacking hundreds of Muslims to death in the southern state of Gujarat and detailing blatant state collusion over the 2002 massacre, reported the Washington Post.

“It is a very disturbing story,” said Tarun Tejpal, the editor of the weekly Tehelka, which released the confessions.

“It is a story that makes me worry about the kind of India we are living in.”

The videos showed Hindu activists and politicians bragging about hacking Muslims to death and burning their bodies.

Some activists confessed that they doused petrified Muslims in kerosene and burned them alive.

Another activist said that he slit open the stomach of a pregnant Muslim woman.

“There is a complete absence of remorse in these confessions,” said Tejpal.

“The perpetrators of the violence have themselves confessed to the crime.”

The videos are the result of a six-month investigation by a by a Tehelka investigative reporter, who posed as a research scholar and spoke to the activists.

Up to 2,500 people, mostly Muslims, were hacked and burnt to death by Hindu extremists in Gujarat in 2002.

The carnage took place after 59 Hindu pilgrims were died on train in a fire some blamed on Muslims.

India’s Supreme Court has accused the Hindu nationalist government in Gujarat of being complicit in the killings.

Gujarat carnage was the worst religious violence India had seen in years.

India is home to the world’s largest Muslim population after Indonesia and Pakistan.

Hindus account for more than 80 percent of the country’s 1.1 billion population while Muslims make up about 13 percent.

State Collusion

The video also showed an Indian Hindu politician confessing that Gujarat’s chief minister Narendra Modi had given the green light for the Hindu extremists to go ahead with their rampage.

“He (Modi) had given us three days to do whatever we could,” admitted Haresh Bhatt, a leader of Bajrang Dal, a hardline Hindu group affiliated to the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

“He said he would not give us time after that, he said this openly,” he was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Modi, who is seeking a reelection in December state elections, earlier claimed that the massacre was a spontaneous reaction to the train fire.

Arvind Pandya, a Gujarat government counsel at a riot inquiry panel, said Modi’s “blood was boiling” when he first heard of the train fire.

“His reaction was like this, ‘if he were not a minister he would have burst bombs … detonated a few bombs in Juhapura’,” Pandya said, referring to a Muslim suburb in Gujarat’s main city Ahmedabad.

Indian Muslims said the videos were no surprise.

“None of these confessions are new to us. We have experienced all this firsthand,” said Shakeel Ahmed, a legal activist in Gujarat and a member of the Association for the Protection of Civil Rights.

He, however, said that the videotaped confessions mount pressures on the state government to act against the perpetrators.

“The perpetrators themselves are admitting to the heinous crimes,” he said.

“Whether it will bring justice depends on political will. Many of the accused are our rulers today. Who will investigate them?”

Right groups complain that little has been done to catch the culprits.

They insist that there was no trace of accountability on government officials who reportedly engineered the massacre.

Only about a dozen people have been convicted from 3,200 cases filed.

The full story in
http://www.islamonline.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=50987

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

One Million Dead in Iraq, Our Own (US) Holocaust Denial

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

=== News Update ===

One Million Dead in Iraq

Our Own (US) Holocaust Denial

By Mark Weisbrot

11/22/07 “ICH‘ — – Institutionally unwilling to consider America’s responsibility for the bloodbath, the traditional media have refused to acknowledge the massive number of Iraqis killed since the invasion.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s flirtation with those who deny the reality of the Nazi genocide has rightly been met with disgust. But another holocaust denial is taking place with little notice: the holocaust in Iraq. The average American believes that 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the US invasion in March 2003. The most commonly cited figure in the media is 70,000. But the actual number of people who have been killed is most likely more than one million.

This is five times more than the estimates of killings in Darfur and even more than the genocide in Rwanda 13 years ago.

The estimate of more than one million violent deaths in Iraq was confirmed again two months ago in a poll by the British polling firm Opinion Research Business, which estimated 1,220,580 violent deaths since the US invasion. This is consistent with the study conducted by doctors and scientists from the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health more than a year ago. Their study was published in the Lancet, Britain’s leading medical journal. It estimated 601,000 people killed due to violence as of July 2006; but if updated on the basis of deaths since the study, this estimate would also be more than a million. These estimates do not include those who have died because of public health problems created by the war, including breakdowns in sewerage systems and electricity, shortages of medicines, etc.

Amazingly, some journalists and editors – and of course some politicians – dismiss such measurements because they are based on random sampling of the population rather than a complete count of the dead. While it would be wrong to blame anyone for their lack of education, this disregard for scientific methods and results is inexcusable. As one observer succinctly put it: if you don’t believe in random sampling, the next time your doctor orders a blood test, tell him that he needs to take all of it.

The methods used in the estimates of Iraqi deaths are the same as those used to estimate the deaths in Darfur, which are widely accepted in the media. They are also consistent with the large numbers of refugees from the violence (estimated at more than four million). There is no reason to disbelieve them, or to accept tallies such as that the Iraq Body Count (73,305 – 84,222), which include only a small proportion of those killed, as an estimate of the overall death toll.

Of course, acknowledging the holocaust in Iraq might change the debate over the war. While Iraqi lives do not count for much in US politics, recognizing that a mass slaughter of this magnitude is taking place could lead to more questions about how this horrible situation came to be. Right now a convenient myth dominates the discussion: the fall of Saddam Hussein simply unleashed a civil war that was waiting to happen, and the violence is all due to Iraqis’ inherent hatred of each other.

In fact, there is considerable evidence that the occupation itself – including the strategy of the occupying forces – has played a large role in escalating the violence to holocaust proportions. It is in the nature of such an occupation, where the vast majority of the people are opposed to the occupation and according to polls believe it is right to try and kill the occupiers, to pit one ethnic group against another. This was clear when Shiite troops were sent into Sunni Fallujah in 2004; it is obvious in the nature of the death-squad government, where officials from the highest levels of the Interior Ministry to the lowest ranking police officers – all trained and supported by the US military – have carried out a violent, sectarian mission of “ethnic cleansing.” (The largest proportion of the killings in Iraq are from gunfire and executions, not from car bombs). It has become even more obvious in recent months as the United States is now arming both sides of the civil war, including Sunni militias in Anbar province as well as the Shiite government militias.

Is Washington responsible for a holocaust in Iraq? That is the question that almost everyone here wants to avoid. So the holocaust is denied

The full story in
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18765.htm

===

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______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

The Israeli Holocaust Against Arab Children

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

=== News Update ===

THE WORLD MUST KNOW!

Researched and curated by Michael Hoffman

Independent History & Research Box 849, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho 83816

Last revision: April 5, 2002

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Israeli Child Killers: Documentary Proof

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Murdering Children for Sport“Ali Murad Abu Shaweesh was 12 when Israeli soldiers shot him in the back. Ali was killed on the same day in June, 2001 that Sharon refused to let the Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, meet with Yasir Arafat, yet his death also went unnoticed by American television news. But not entirely unnoticed, since the Israeli soldiers, who taunted the Palestinian boys over loudspeakers outside the Khan Yunis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, goading them to come out and throw rocks, did so under the gaze of Chris Hedges, a reporter for the New York Times.”Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered–death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights…in Sarajevo–but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport,” Hedges wrote. His account, coolly factual yet full of passionate intensity, was written not for his own paper but for Harper’s Magazine, which sent Hedges to Gaza on his vacation.” The Nation, March 11, 2002

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Israelis Kill 13 Year Old Boy

Little Ahmed Ghanem bids a final farewell to the remains of his big brother, Mahmoud, 13, in the village of Sara in the West Bank. Mahmoud was shot in the head March 10, 2002 by Israeli troops, west of Nablus.

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Israelis Murder Palestinian Family: Mother and three children

The body of Mohammad Abu Kweik, 8, is lifted from the carnage after the Mitsubishi pick-up truck he was travelling in was bombed by Israeli forces in the West Bank Palestinian ghetto of Ramallah, March 4, 2002. Six Palestinian civilians, including the boy’s mother, Bushra Kweik, 38, and two sisters, Bara, 14, and Aziza, 16, were killed when Israeli troops bombed their truck after their mother had picked them up from school. The car behind them was also hit. The man the Israelis were attempting to assassinate was not in either vehicle. Two Palestinian children, ages 4 and 16, were killed in the second vehicle.

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Israelis Murder 8 Year Old Palestinian Girl

Israeli soldiers shot this eight-year-old Palestinian girl, Sabreen Abu Sneineh, in the head, in Hebron, Aug. 12, 2001

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Israelis Murder Two Palestinian Brothers

Two Palestinian brothers, Bilal Abu Khader, 8, and Ashraf Abu Khader, 5, were killed in the West Bank town of Nablus, July 31, 2001 by Israeli helicopter gunships, which rocketed the center of a Palestinian population center in the middle of the day. Six other Palestinians were killed during the Jewish-sponsored assassinations.

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The full story in
http://www.revisionisthistory.org/palestine46.html

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______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Why We Shouldn’t Celebrate Thanksgiving – Remember The Genocide of Native Americans, Indians

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

=== News Update ===

Why We Shouldn’t Celebrate Thanksgiving – Remember The Genocide of Native Americans, Indians

By Robert Jensen, AlterNet. Posted November 22, 2007.

Thanksgiving Day should be turned into a National Day of Atonement to acknowledge the genocide of America’s indigenous peoples.
After years of being constantly annoyed and often angry about the historical denial built into Thanksgiving Day, I published an essay in November 2005 suggesting we replace the feasting with fasting and create a National Day of Atonement to acknowledge the genocide of indigenous people that is central to the creation of the United States.

I expected criticism from right-wing and centrist people, given their common commitment to this country’s distorted self-image that supports the triumphalist/supremacist notions about the United States so common in conventional politics, and I got plenty of such critique. But I was surprised by the resistance from liberals, including a considerable number of my friends.

The most common argument went something like this: OK, it’s true that the Thanksgiving Day mythology is rooted in a fraudulent story — about the European invaders coming in peace to the “New World,” eager to cooperate with indigenous people — which conveniently ignores the reality of European barbarism in the conquest of the continent. But we can reject the culture’s self-congratulatory attempts to rewrite history, I have been told, and come together on Thanksgiving to celebrate the love and connections among family and friends.

The argument that we can ignore the collective cultural definition of Thanksgiving and create our own meaning in private has always struck me as odd. This commitment to Thanksgiving puts these left/radical critics in the position of internalizing one of the central messages promoted by the ideologues of capitalism — that individual behavior in private is more important than collective action in public. The claim that through private action we can create our own reality is one of the key tenets of a predatory corporate capitalism that naturalizes unjust hierarchy, a part of the overall project of discouraging political struggle and encouraging us to retreat into a private realm where life is defined by consumption.

So this November, rather than mount another attack on the national mythology around Thanksgiving — a mythology that amounts to a kind of holocaust denial, and which has been critiqued for many years by many people — I want to explore why so many who understand and accept this critique still celebrate Thanksgiving, and why rejecting such celebrations sparks such controversy.

Once we know, what do we do?

At this point in history, anyone who wants to know this reality of U.S. history — that the extermination of indigenous peoples was, both in a technical, legal sense and in common usage, genocide — can easily find the resources to know. If this idea is new, I would recommend two books, David E. Stannard’s American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World and Ward Churchill’s A Little Matter of Genocide. While the concept of genocide, which is defined as the deliberate attempt “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” came into existence after World War II, it accurately describes the program that Europeans and their descendants pursued to acquire the territory that would become the United States of America.

Once we know that, what do we do? The moral response — that is, the response that would be consistent with the moral values around justice and equality that most of us claim to hold — would be a truth-and-reconciliation process that would not only correct the historical record but also redistribute land and wealth. In the white-supremacist and patriarchal society in which we live, operating within the parameters set by a greed-based capitalist system, such a process is hard to imagine in the short term. So, the question for left/radical people is: What political activity can we engage in to keep alive this kind of critique until a time when social conditions might make a truly progressive politics possible?

In short: Once we know, what do we do in a world that is not yet ready to know, or knows but will not deal with the consequences of that knowledge?

The full story in
http://www.alternet.org/story/68170/

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-muslim voice-
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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW