Ahmed’s Story – Just a Reminder.
Layla Anwar
February 9, 2010 – A reminder in case you have forgotten, I wrote about Ahmed in a post that I titled “Crucified by Freedom” and you MUST read it again. Yes, you must, because these are the “fruits of your labour”. Ahmed is a victim of horrendous American torture. His story is completely true…and it was not a case of a few bad apples. You are all fucking rotten to the core. I just received news that Ahmed’s health has terribly deteriorated again, because of the effects of Torture. I am told that now, his heads, arms and legs, move involuntarily, they shake, jitter, tremble…which means he can no longer stand up, walk or use his arms. He has a family of 5 in exile, living like dogs…with no income because of you. Ahmed is now on 17 types of medication and the doctors have given up…

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FLASHBACK: Death Squads in Iraq: Evolution…Objectives…Results
Monitoring of Human Rights in Iraq( MHRI )Baghdad – Iraq, December 2006
Monitoring Human Rights in Iraq Net
Mr. Ban Ki Moon,The General Secretary of UN,January 10th, 2007,New York.
Dear Sir,The whole world is watching series of killing tens of people in Iraq on a daily basis until the number of victims can estimated to 130 daily victims; most of them killed for sectarian reasons. The misery of the daily killing in Iraq becomes the most inhumane crimes in the modern era committed against an ancient Iraqi nation who enacted the first civilian laws that humanity recognized all over various times and eras. To assert these genocides and massive killings, we would like to indicate the statistics published by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior on January 1st, 2007 in which they estimated the number of the monthly victims of 1930 civics during December 2006. Dear Sir… One of the most important reasons that caused the expansion of such a deteriorating situation is the existence of the US – British occupation forces who pushed the Security Council, through some resolutions, to legitimize violating Geneva convention and the International Humanitarian Law. This, of course, destroyed the infrastructure, economic, and forced thousands of Iraqis to immigrate…

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Number of cancer patients in Gaza on the rise
Palestinian Information Center
February 9, 2010 – The Palestinian health ministry in the Gaza Strip has announced that the number of cancer patients in the beleaguered Strip had increased to 1899 including 770 women and 220 children. The ministry said in a statement on Monday on occasion of the international day for cancer patients that 850 of those suffer blood cancer…

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No Treatment in Gaza, No Security Risk, but Israel Prevents a Seriously ill Man from Getting Treatment
Gisha
February 9, 2010 – Gisha and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel appealed to the High Court of Justice on behalf of Issam Hamdan against a District Court ruling blocking his exit from Gaza for emergency medical treatment.· The State refuses to allow him out of Gaza based on its claim that he may settle in the West Bank after treatment.· Mr. Hamdan requires immediate surgical intervention; suffers from severe pain and paralysis of his left side.· Israel will bear no cost for the treatment, to be performed in a Palestinian hospital in east Jerusalem, and admits that it makes no security claim against Mr. Hamdan.· Mr. Hamdan’s case is part of a new trend in which Israel blocks treatment for Gaza patients, even in the absence of a security claim…

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Statement on the closure of the legal case for Iraq in Spain
BRussels Tribunal
February 9, 2010 – Public enquiries on the decision to wage war on Iraq that are silent about the crimes committed, the victims involved, and provide for no sanction, whatever their outcome, are not enough. Illegal acts should entail consequences: the dead and the harmed deserve justice. On 6 October 2009, working with and on behalf of Iraqi plaintiffs, we filed a case before Spanish law against four US presidents and four UK prime ministers for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Iraq. The case presented spanned 19 years, including not only the wholesale destruction of Iraq witnessed from 2003, but also the sanctions period during which 1.5 million excess Iraqi deaths were recorded. We brought the case to Spain because its laws of universal jurisdiction are based on principles enshrined in its constitution…
Despite submitting a 110-page long referenced accusation (the Introduction of which is appended to this statement), the Spanish public prosecutor and the judge assigned to our case determined there was no reason to investigate…

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Video: Israel denies NGOs work permits
Aljazeera.English
February 9, 2010 – The Israeli interior ministry has stopped issuing work permits to foreigners working for international non-governmental organisations (NGOs). In the last few weeks, NGO staff have been given tourist visas instead, making it virtually impossible for them to carry out their work. The new Israeli policy affects 120 International NGOs, of which many which provide vital developmental and humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Many NGO members have said that Israel’s actions are illegal because the country is obligated under Geneva and humanitarian law to issue them visas and let them work freely there.

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Aqsa foundation: Aqsa walls cracked
Palestinian Information Center
February 9, 2010 – The Aqsa foundation for endowment and heritage that caters for Muslim holy shrines in Palestine disclosed that big cracks were seen in the northern wall of the Aqsa Mosque. According to a press release issued by the foundation and published by the Quds Press on Tuesday, the cracks were expanding day after day, and described the situation as “serious”. The foundation quoted analysts and experts as asserting that based on the examinations they have conducted, the cracks were the result of the continued Israeli excavations near the wall, particularly under the Omari school, which is located within the zone of the Mosque…

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Christian Arabs remain the best situated to combat the demonization of Islam
By Raid Khoury
February 9, 2010 -… Arabs — both Muslims and Christians — have been the target of a ferocious propaganda campaign in this country. Responding to this onslaught is more than enough to keep them busy without having to contend with a contingent of self-hating Arabs and religious agitators in their midst. As an Arab who happened to be born into a Christian family, I cannot remain silent as individuals on the margins of the Arab American community are enlisted in this demonization campaign as representatives of Christian Arabs. For Christian Arabs their Christianity is an indigenous religion, and Islam is their indigenous civilization. Christian Arabs have lived for centuries in harmony with Muslim Arabs. They form an integral part of the Arab world and Islamic civilization. They share with their Muslim Arab blood-brothers a common Semitic Arab origin, language, culture, and history. Attacks on Islam also constitute an attack on the civilization, culture, and identity of Christian Arabs, whose continued presence in the Arab world is a living testament to the tolerant and peaceful history of Islam, belying the vicious distortions of this great religion and civilization, and making them ideally situated to set the record straight.

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What’s Israel’s new strategy? Arresting Palestinian women
Middle East Monitor
February 9, 2010 – The arrest by the Israeli authorities of Montaha Altaweel has been condemned by Ahrar Centre for Studies on Human Rights and Prisoners. Ms. Altaweel is one of the most active women working in the prisoners’ solidarity movement; her husband is the mayor of Albera, Gamal Altaweel. Fouad Alkhafesh, the Director of the Centre, regards Ms. Altaweel’s arrest as a cowardly act that aims to undermine the Palestinian family. “This seeks to destroy our social fabric by targeting and terrifying women activists,” he said…

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British Government Promises Israeli Official He Won’t Be Arrested During Visit
Saed Bannoura
February 9, 2010 – After receiving a letter from the British Foreign Ministry promising that he wouldn’t be arrested for war crimes while in England, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon arrived in London on Monday. He is the first Israeli official to visit Britain since a British judge issued an edict declaring that Israeli officials would be subject to ‘universal jurisdiction’ laws requiring their arrests and trial for war crimes. The ruling included an arrest warrant for Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni…

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UK’s Afghan casualties pass Falklands toll
CNN
February 9, 2010 — The death of a British soldier on an explosives-clearing operation in Afghanistan has pushed the British death toll there past that of the 1982 Falklands War, the Ministry of Defence announced Tuesday. The soldier’s death brings to 256 the number of British troops killed in Afghanistan since operations there began in 2001, the defense ministry said. The British death toll from the Falklands conflict was 255…

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Gaza: Abu Taima’s land
Eva Barlett
February 9, 2010 – It’s like spring and we’re visiting the Abu Taima region. The different Abu Taima brothers and cousins speak of their land, all in or near the Israeli-imposed “buffer zone” (officially 300m in which Palestinians cannot enter without fear of being shot, killed; but in reality a land-annexation which extends even up to nearly 2 km, driving farmers off their land and rendering land un-used…a waste of space in a Strip that has no space to waste). Mohammed, the 14 year old son of one of the discouraged me, knows the land and its history. He tours us around, points out vacant plots where almond, fruit and olive trees once stood, and refers to Balfour and the days of the British occupation of Palestine. He’s astute, and comes to the point of the buffer zone: “they want to drive us off the land, by any means possible,” he says of the long-held Zionist policies…

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Israel to raze 200 Palestinian homes in Jerusalem
Jonathan Cook
February 9, 2010 – Jerusalem’s mayor threatened last week to demolish 200 homes in Palestinian neighbourhoods of the city in an act even he conceded would probably bring long-simmering tensions over housing in East Jerusalem to a boil. His uncompromising stance is the latest stage in a protracted legal battle over a single building towering above the jumble of modest homes of Silwan, a deprived and overcrowded Palestinian community lying just outside the Old City walls, in the shadow of the silver-topped al Aqsa mosque…

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“When the ‘War on Terror’ Becomes Genocide”
by J.B.Gerald
February 9, 2010 – …Wars against the Muslim countries of Iraq and Afghanistan are proving to be genocide in their effects on the people. Despite increasing suppression of news concerning the effects of depleted uranium the destruction of civilian populations and cultures are terrible enough to show “intention” by the aggressors, and justify prosecution of administration officials pursuing either war. The Convention on Genocide has adequate legal standing within the U.S. for the law to be applied. It is not being applied…

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More Blackwater Contractors Than Cops In Pakistan’s Capital
United Press International
February 9, 2010 — There are more private security contractors from Xe, formerly Blackwater, operating in Islamabad than capital police, a religious leader said. Maulana Fazal-ur-Rahman, the leader of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, a Deobandi political party in Pakistan, said there were as many as 9,000 Xe contractors working in Islamabad, compared with just 7,000 capital police, Pakistan’s News International reports…

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A mother’s grief
Rami Almeghari writing from occupied Gaza Strip
February 9, 2010 – Nejoud al-Ashqar is a 30-year-old mother from the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahiya. Two of her sons, Bilal, 5, and Mohammad, 6, were killed during Israel’s invasion of Gaza last winter. Al-Ashqar also lost her right arm in the assault. Surrounded by her neighbors and her youngest son and daughter she recounted her story. “I recall that as Israeli warplanes dropped leaflets in the area, ordering the residents to stay away, I felt scared for my children. By then we all left our home and headed for a nearby UNRWA (the UN agency for Palestine refugees) school for refuge,” al-Ashqar explained…

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Four weeks after earthquake
Haiti: hunger sparks growing protests
By Bill Van Auken
February 9, 2010 – On Sunday, Haiti saw one of its largest protests since the January 12 earthquake, as four weeks after the disaster, frustration with continuing hunger and homelessness mount. Thousands of demonstrators, most of them women, marched through the streets of Petionville, a Port-au-Prince suburb, denouncing the local mayor, Lydie Parent, for hoarding food for resale and not distributing it to the hungry. A significant amount of food aid has been channeled into Haiti’s informal markets, sold at elevated prices and clearly yielding a profit for some officials who are in charge of its distribution…

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Israeli forces fire upon a demonstration in Gaza
International Solidarity Movement (ISM)
February 9, 2010 – The Israeli army fired four shots and shouted abuse at the group of about 40 Palestinians and internationals who, on Monday 8th February ‘10, walked within 50 meters of the Erez border crossing, waving Palestinian flags and chanting demands for justice and an end to the Occupation. Similar demonstrations have taken place weekly for over a month and this is the closest that the demonstrators got to the border, so far. To mark the occasion two Palestinian flags were placed at the furtherest spots the demonstrators reached…

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Effort To Retroactively Approve Illegal Jerusalem Settlement Backed By Israel’s Interior Minister
Saed Bannoura
February 9, 2010 – A seven-story building constructed by right-wing Israeli settlers on Palestinian land, in East Jerusalem in 2004, is moving toward receiving ‘retroactive approval,’ with the unexpected support of Israel’s Interior Minister, Eli Yishai. This support adds an air of legitimacy to the settler’s illegal maneuver. After US President Barack Obama’s retraction of his call, last year, that Israel freeze settlement expansion, construction of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem has expanded exponentially. Israeli authorities have moved forward with the Jerusalem E1 Plan which was articulated in 2004, in which Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem would expand to ‘encircle’ Palestinian neighborhoods in an attempt to drive the Palestinians out and “Judaize” Jerusalem…

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Afghan unrest kills US, NATO soldiers
AFP
February 9, 2010 — A US and another NATO soldier were killed in attacks in southern and eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, the alliance said. The US service member was killed in an improvised bomb blast in southern Afghanistan while the other soldier, whose nationality was not disclosed, died in a firefight with insurgents in the east, it said. The latest deaths, which follow those of three British and two Swedish soldiers, took to 64 the number of foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan since the start of the year…

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Military Resistance 8B4: The Wave – 9 February 2010
Thomas F. Barton
If you think there isn’t a wave of Down With The Empire politics sweeping through the Army, you are completely out of touch with reality. But let Army Times be your guide. Army Times, to stay in the game, and attract readers, never walks too far against the wind. Once upon a time, it was cheerleading the Iraq invasion, and until recently cheerleading the Empire in general.

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