William Bowles.info

Nato ‘covered up’ botched night raid in Afghanistan that killed five (including two pregnant women)
Jerome Starkey, Khataba
March 12, 2010 – A night raid carried out by US and Afghan gunmen led to the deaths of two pregnant women, a teenage girl and two local officials in an atrocity which Nato then tried to cover up, survivors have told The Times. The operation on Friday, February 12, was a botched pre-dawn assault on a policeman’s home a few miles outside Gardez, the capital of Paktia province, eastern Afghanistan. In a statement after the raid titled “Joint force operating in Gardez makes gruesome discovery”, Nato claimed that the force had found the women’s bodies “tied up, gagged and killed” in a room. A Times investigation suggests that Nato’s claims are either wilfully false or, at best, misleading…

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Gaza: relations
Eva Barlett
March 12, 2010 – “My grandmother was Jewish,” a voice drifts out from behind the meagre selection of second-hand clothes. The souk al fres, a massive market in Gaza’s old district, Sahaa, carrying just about all one needs used to thrive with second-hand clothes and goods brought through open borders via Israel. It was a thrift-shop-junkies dream. Today, after 1000 days of siege (complete siege, from June 2007, but in reality the siege goes back to Hamas’ election, back to post-Oslo ‘peace years’ when the closures began, denying Palestinians in Gaza of freedom, of work, of medical treatment outside, of imports and exports, and now of all but less than 40 items) (painstakingly aquired), the used-clothes market is bare-bones. Wa’el is sitting in a room devoid of nearly all but some scarves and many empty hangers. “My grandfather was from Jaffa. He fell in love with a Jewish woman. This was in the 1940s, before the Nakba, (catastrophe) our expulsion,” Wa’el says…

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Censorship in Afghanistan: Death to journalists
by Robert Maier
March 12, 2010 – Since the beginning of the Karzai regime in 2002, twenty Afghan journalists have been murdered, and more than 200 violent physical attacks against journalists have been logged. Scores have fled Afghanistan after receiving threats against them and their families. Journalists have been sentenced to death, and several remain in jail after being arrested for their work. Radio and television stations, print media, and Internet services have been attacked, blocked, damaged, and even burned to the ground by government and other politico-religious agents and gangs. As dozens of governments around the world pour billions of dollars and 100,000+ troops into Afghanistan to defend the Karzai government, it is an appropriate time to explore the human rights and legal issues regarding censorship and freedom of the press there…

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Continuing campaign of arrests against civilians in the West Bank
Silvia Nicolaou-Garcia
March 12, 2010 – The Middle East Monitor (MEMO) has obtained primary evidence of how Israeli forces and Palestinian security services have embarked on a campaign of arrests against Hamas supporters in the occupied West Bank. A list containing details of the political detainees arrested in the months of January and February 2010 is attached. It can be seen how, increasingly, arbitrary political arrests are being conducted in Nablus and Hebron, where there is a high level of Hamas support, as well as other governorates across the West Bank. The detainees include university students, professionals, journalists and political activists…

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The Rogue Nation
by Philip Giraldi
March 12, 2010 – …Three strikes and you’re out, Mr. Obama. Your government stands for preemptive killing and missile strikes on people living in countries with which America is not at war, lets torturers and torture enablers go free, and has asserted the right to assassinate its own citizens anywhere in the world based on secret evidence. Ronald Reagan once described his vision of America as a shining city on a hill. Over the past ten years the shining city has become the ultimate rogue nation, pumped up with power and hubris in spite of the clearly visible signs of decline and moving inexorably towards a catastrophic fall…

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US General: Combat Troops Might Be Needed in Iraq Beyond August
Jason Ditz
March 12, 2010 – The number of potential excuses for having to back off President Obama’s August “deadline” for having all combat troops out of Iraq continues to grow, with Major General Tony Cucolo, the commander of US troops in Northern Iraq, providing the latest possible reason. According to Maj. Gen. Cucolo, the US may need to keep the combat troops in Iraq past August to maintain the “buffer” along the internal border between the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq…

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Weekly Report on Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (04 – 10 March 2010)
PCHR – Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
March 12, 2010 – Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law escalated in the OPT during the reporting period (04 – 10 March 2010): Shooting: During the reporting period, 40 Palestinian civilians, including 4 children and 3 journalists, were wounded when IOF used excessive force against peaceful demonstrations organized in protest to the construction of the Annexation Wall and settlement activities in the West Bank. Incursions: During the reporting period, IOF conducted at least 18 military incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank. IOF arrested 14 Palestinian civilians, including two children. IOF also stormed a school in ‘Azzoun village, east of Qalqilya. Restrictions on Movement: Israel has continued to impose a tightened siege on the OPT and imposed severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem…

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Mayor: Israeli settlers uprooted 40 olive trees
Ma’an News
March 12, 2010 – Israeli settlers uprooted dozens of olive trees in Qaryut, south of Nablus, at dawn on Friday, officials said. The settlers uprooted 40 olive trees in the Al-Batashiyah area of Qaryut, the village’s mayor Abdel Nasser Al-Qaryuti told Ma’an. The apparent vandalism was discovered as residents of the village woke up on Friday morning, Al-Qaryuti said…

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Fighting Israeli apartheid
Forget the peace process. Only world public opinion can put an end to Israeli apartheid, just as it did in South Africa
Aijaz Zaka Syed
March 12, 2010 – I am not sure about others, but I really look forward to readers’ reactions after sharing my ramblings with them every week. Each attempt to put across one’s point of view, for what it’s worth, is followed by a breathless wait for the verdict. While many do not understandably agree with my worldview, some of the responses are so interesting and thought provoking that I desperately want to share them with the larger audience. For instance, check out some of these letters I got in response to my piece on the assassination of a Hamas commander in Dubai, which has Mossad fingerprints all over it with the ever-widening ring of suspicion now encircling the whole globe…

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Surging over the brink
M Shahid Alam
March 12, 2010 – The first dismantling of the Taliban was a cakewalk. In 2001, the US quickly and decisively defeated the Taliban, killed, captured or scattered their fighters, and handed over the running of Afghanistan to their rivals, mostly Uzbeks and Tajiks from the Northern Alliance. Unaware of Pashtun history, American commentators were pleased at the smashing victory of their military, convinced that they had consigned the Taliban to history’s graveyard. Instead, the Taliban came back from the dead. Within months of their near-total destruction, they had regained morale, regrouped, organised, trained, and returned to fight the foreign occupation of their country. Slowly and tenaciously they continued to build on their gains, and by 2008 they were dreaming of taking back the country they had lost in 2001. Could this really happen? Only time will tell, but prospects for the Taliban today look better than at any time since November 2001…

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Abbas blames Iran for blocking Palestinian reconciliation
AFP
March 12, 2010 – Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas lashed out at Iran on Friday, blaming Tehran for being behind the latest failure to reconcile his secular Fatah movement with its Isalamist rival Hamas. Iran doesn’t want Hamas to sign the Cairo reconciliation document,” Abbas said during a meeting in the Tunisian capital. Fatah and Hamas struggled for months to reach a unity deal under Egyptian mediation, but the efforts collapsed late last year when Hamas refused to agree to a proposal that was signed by Fatah…

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Expecting a third Intifada
Khaled Amayreh
March 12, 2010 – Observers in occupied Palestine are increasingly of the opinion that a fresh Intifada or uprising is in the offing as the Israeli authorities keep provoking Palestinians, including stepping up efforts to gain Jewish prayer rights at Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest shrine. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has warned that provocative Israeli actions at Haram Al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary) could trigger a religious war between Jews and Muslims. The organisation called on the world community to stop Israeli aggression before it was too late…

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Sending a laptop to Gaza
Ahmed Moor writing from al-Arish, Egypt
March 12, 2010 – I sat outdoors at a cafe on the Mediterranean Sea in al-Arish, a dusty seaside town in Egypt’s northern Sinai. I drank a tea and smoked a water pipe; it gave me something to do while I waited for Ismail — that’s not his real name — an Egyptian Bedouin tunnel smuggler who was going to deliver a package for me into Gaza. It’s been nearly ten years since I’ve been to Palestine. I vividly remember the summer of 2000 when I left Palestine with my family. We passed through the Rafah crossing into Egypt. A long Mercedes taxi — they’re ubiquitous in Egypt and Palestine — carried us from Egyptian Rafah to al-Arish and finally to Cairo…

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PCHR Condemns Recent Israeli Settlement Plans and Calls upon the International Community to Full Its Obligations
PCHR – Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
March 12, 2010 – The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemns the recent Israeli settlement plans in the West Bank in general, and in East Jerusalem in particular. PCHR confirms that settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) constitute a war crime and calls upon the international community, particularly the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, to fulfill their legal and moral obligations, and to ensure Israel’s respect the Fourth Geneva Convention in the OPT in accordance with article 1 of the Convention. PCHR believes that if the international community does not take a serious position toward Israel in acting as a State above the law, Israel will be encouraged to commit more violations of the international human rights law and international humanitarian law…

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