William Bowles.info

UPDATE 5 – Iraq’s Elections
Layla Anwar
March 14, 2010 – It’s basically a MESS. A HUGE MESS. Too many contradictory statements from the Western Press and Arabic Press. I’ve been perusing Azzaman, Al-Sharqiya, Al-Jazeera and AP reports and I see no coherence. Let’s start with the ridiculous first. Al-Jazeera in a special report on the HEC, (High Electoral Commission) states “it’s difficult to convey in words quite how remarkable a place the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC ) is at the moment. Its guiding principles – openness, transparency, accessibility – prevail, even under the pressure of this critical moment in Iraqi politics…” You’d think this is a statement from the White House… oh well, it nearly is… Yet the Iraqiya bloc has affirmed again that “that ballots were dumped in the garbage, nearly a quarter of a million soldiers were denied voting rights and electoral commission workers fiddled with vote counts” but that it also filed complaints with the UN security council and UNAMI because innocent residents of Adhamiya (a Sunni area in Baghdad) are being harassed and arrested by the Iraqi army and that Al-Iraqiya candidates are being threatened, 7 days after the voting has been over. Al Iraqiya is asking that the final results be released immediately, and that this delay is causing a state of chaos…

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This Time It’s Pregnant Women: Another US Atrocity in the Bush-Obama War in Afghanistan
DAVE LINDORFF
March 14, 2010 – Another night-time raid on a housing compound in Afghanistan. Another bunch of innocent Afghans killed. Another round of lies by the US-led forces of the so-called International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Only this time, among the dead are two pregnant mothers and a teenage girl. And once again the US media remain mute, accepting the official story, which was of ISAF forces responding to an attack which in reality appears never to have happened…

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Survivors of family killed in Afghanistan raid threaten suicide attacks
Jerome Starkey
March 14, 2010 – A family whose members were killed in a botched night raid in eastern Afghanistan have rejected “blood money” from the Government and vowed to carry out suicide attacks unless the perpetrators are brought to justice. Two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a policeman and his brother were shot dead on February 12 by unidentified gunmen. Eight men were arrested in the raid on the village of Khataba in Paktia province. They have all been released. No one has claimed responsibility for the killings. A US official in Kabul refused to identify the force involved, citing “utmost national and strategic security interests”…”The foreigners are always talking about human rights. But they don’t care about human rights,” said Gulalai’s father, Mohammed Tahir. “They teach us human rights then they kill a load of civilians. They didn’t come here to end terrorism. They are terrorists.”…

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Afghan government says coalition troops killed 12 civilians
BNO NEWS
March 14, 2010 — Coalition troops killed twelve civilians during two recent operations in Afghanistan, according to the office of President Hamid Karzai on Sunday. Karzai’s deputy spokesperson Hamed Elmi said the casualties, which included women and children, occurred during two separate airstrikes in the country’s Kandahar and Kunar provinces. He said the incidents happened earlier this week, but was not able to say on which day or days…

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Jail ordeal of hundreds of Palestinian children arrested for throwing stones
Rory McCarthy
March 14, 2010 – With more than 300 Palestinian children being held in Israeli prisons, human rights groups and Palestinian officials are increasingly concerned about the actions of the Israeli military. The Israeli group B’Tselem said that security forces had “severely violated” the rights of a number of children, aged between 12 and 15, who had been taken into custody in recent months. The family of one 13-year-old boy from Hebron who was arrested on 27 February by a military patrol and detained for eight days have brought a legal case against the authorities…

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Hizma: A microcosm of a disappearing Palestine
Nour Odeh
March 14, 2010 – Palestinian women clash with Israeli soldiers at the Qalandia checkpoint between Ramallah and occupied East Jerusalem. To the south, Israeli soldiers clash with youth in Beit Ummar, near Hebron. These are the latest manifestations of boiling tensions in the area, sparked by Israel’s announcement of large-scale settlement expansion in Occupied East Jerusalem. Israel has kept the West Bank under lockdown since Thursday night, the punitive measure only serving to increase tension and draw international attention to the devastating potential of a lost political horizon in the region…

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Anti-Semitism – Zionist myth vs truth and reality
By Alan Hart
March 14, 2010 – There are two definitions of anti-Semitism in its Jewish context. One was born in real history and represents a truth. The other is part and parcel of Zionist mythology and was invented for the purpose of blackmailing non-Jewish Europeans and North Americans into refraining from criticizing Israel or, to be more precise, staying silent when its leaders resort to state terrorism and demonstrate in many ways their absolute contempt for international law. Anti-Semitism properly and honestly defined is prejudice against and loathing and even hatred of Jews, all Jews everywhere, just because they are Jews. Anti-Semitism as defined by Zionism, the colonial, ethnic cleansing enterprise of some Jews, has come to mean almost all criticism of Israel’s policies and actions, in particular its oppression of the Palestinians, and, also, criticism on the basis of revelations from the documented truth of history which expose Zionism’s propaganda for the nonsense it is…

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Rasmussen In Poland: Expeditionary NATO, Missile Shield And Nuclear Weapons
Rick Rozoff
March 14, 2010 – The civilian chief of the world’s only, and history’s first self-proclaimed global, military bloc is having a busy month. North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen delivered an address in Washington, DC on February 23 on the military alliance’s new 21st century Strategic Concept along with U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her predecessor twice-removed Madeleine Albright and National Security Adviser James Jones, the last-named a former Marine Corps general and NATO Supreme Allied Commander.

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Video: Israel’s continued settlement expansion
Aljazeera.English
March 14, 2010 – Israel has been expanding illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land for decade, and it is now emerging just how far-reaching this policy is. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the Jerusalem housing committee is planning to build another 50,000 Jewish homes in occupied East Jerusalem to join the hundreds of thousands already there or in progress. That includes 3,000 housing units in Gilo, 1,500 apartments in Har Homa and another 1,500 in the settlement of Pisgat Ze’ev…

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Military Resistance 8C9: Political War Splits U.S. Afghan Command – 14 March 2010
Thomas F. Barton
U.S. Command Split At The Top: The Marines Have Opted To Wage The War In Their Own Way. Marines’ Methods Have Riled Many Up The Chain Of Command In Kabul And Washington. Some Refer To Their Area Of Operations In The South As ‘Marineistan’. ‘What The Hell Are We Doing?’ The Senior Official Said. The U.S. ambassador in Kabul, Karl W. Eikenberry, recently noted that the international security force in Afghanistan feels as if it comprises 42 nations instead of 41 because the Marines act so independently from other U.S. forces.

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‘Vote-rigging’ clouds Iraq’s elections
Morning Star
March 14, 2010 – Iraqi opposition candidates have accused Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s supporters of “throwing ballot papers in the trash” in an attempt to deny former leader Ayad Allawi’s party a majority in the country’s new parliament. Mr al-Maliki and Mr Allawi were still neck and neck in the early vote counting following the March 7 election for 325 parliamentary seats, with the prime minister’s State of Law coalition claiming victory in conservative Shia Muslim cities and the opposition Iraqiya party apparently winning a majority in Sunni Muslim provinces…

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Israel detains 5 Palestinians without food for 48 hours
Pal Telegraph
March 14, 2010 – Palestinian sources revealed today that Israeli occupation forces detained five Palestinians from the village of Nabi Saleh in Ramallah for 48 hours. The IOF handcuffed their hands and did not give the Palestinians any food or drink. The sources said that the five detainees kidnapped from their homes in the early morning, including four brothers, were: Uday, Loay, Majed and Mustafa Al-Tamimi and Tammen Al-Tamimi. All of them were taken to Halmish camp near the town, and then to Benjamin camp near Ramallah.—

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PFLP: US position on settlements and negotiations is a cover for the crimes of the occupation
PFLP – Fronte Popolare per la Liberazione della Palestina
March 14, 2010 – The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine condemned negotiations of any shape or form with the occupier, saying that what is needed for the Palestinian people is action, not words with the occupier. On March 13, 2010, the PFLP issued a press statement saying that US positions on settlement construction, labeling it as a “negative step” or “non-constructive” no longer work to convince anyone of the U.S. administration’s willingness to uphold international law and human rights, saying that so-called “negotiations” do nothing to relieve international bodies of their responsibility to uphold fundamental Palestinian rights and that the US is a fundamental strategic partner of the Zionist regime…

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West Bank lockdown extended
Ma’an News
March 14, 2010 – Israeli authorities extended a closure of the West Bank on Saturday evening as restrictions on Palestinian entry into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound remain in place. The closure, expected to end on Saturday night, was extended until Tuesday “In accordance with the directives of the Minister of Defense, Mr. Ehud Barak, and following additional situation assessments adopted by the defense establishment,” an Israeli military statement read…

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Israel Lands in Public Relations Nightmare
Mel Frykberg
March 14, 2010 – Israeli riot police and soldiers have, since Friday, sealed off the Al Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest shrine, restricting entry to women and Palestinian men over 50. Outside the walled Old City, where the Al Aqsa mosque is situated, and in several West Bank villages, clashes were reported between Palestinian protestors, their Israeli and international supporters, and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), leaving at least 20 Palestinians wounded. Following a security assessment Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak ordered security forces to stop tens of thousands of Palestinians from entering Jerusalem…

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Children of Gaza: Scarred, trapped, vengeful
By Rachel Shields
March 14, 2010 – Omsyatte adjusts her green school uniform and climbs gingerly on to a desk at the front of the classroom. The shy 12-year-old holds up a brightly coloured picture and begins to explain to her classmates what she has drawn. It is a scene played out in schools all over the world, but for one striking difference: Omsyatte’s picture does not illustrate a recent family holiday, or jolly school outing, but the day an Israeli military offensive killed her nine-year-old brother and destroyed her home…

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Afghan resistance: Australia and Canada Take a Rational Decision after Holland
Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan
March 14, 2010 – After the dissolution of Dutch government following its parliament’s hot discussion over the American war in Afghanistan, now Canada and Australia have decided to respect views of their people for unconditional withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. The Americans have been using various ploys and wiles in the last nine years to achieve their colonialist objectives, trying to show that the war in Afghanistan is the war of the West. Otherwise, they claim, the West would have to face harm as result or reap its benefits. The Americans have been able to keep a number of countries entangled in the Afghan war through play of wiles and display of ambitious goals…

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AIPAC urges Obama admin to quiet criticism of Israeli government
Laura Rozen
March 14, 2010 – Amid continued tensions between Washington and Jerusalem after an Israeli government announcement last week during the goodwill visit of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden that it would approve the construction of 1,600 new Jewish homes in East Jerusalem, the influential pro-Israel lobby group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) says recent U.S. criticism of the Israeli government is “a matter of serious concern” and has called on the Obama administration to defuse tension with Israel…

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Video: Charges on Gaza boy “human shield”
Aljazeera.English
March 14, 2010 – Two Israeli soldiers will face charges in an Israeli court for allegedly using a young Palestinian boy as a human shield during the country’s three-week bombardment in Gaza in 2008. Majed Al Rubah, 10, says Israeli troops forcefully took him from his family and made him carry out life-threatening tasks during military operations. Many other Palestinians say they have gone through similiar experiences, but this is only the second indictment Tel Aviv has brought against its own soldiers…

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Families denied prison visits as West Bank closure continues
Ma’an News
March 14, 2010 – The Israeli Prison Services cancelled all family visits on Sunday to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody until the West Bank’s lockdown is lifted. The International Red Cross said family visits to the Negev and Ashkelon prions in Israel were annulled, while Monday’s visit to HaSharon, Hadarim, Rimonim, as well as Ashkehlon will also be cancelled as a result of the West Bank’s closure…

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Rights center: Restrictions in Jerusalem continue
Ma’an News
March 14, 2010 – Israeli authorities continued imposing entrance restrictions on Palestinian Jerusalemites on Sunday in the Old City of Jerusalem, the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights reported. An age limited remains in place for the third consecutive day for Palestinians wishing to enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City, with individuals over 50 only being allowed entry…

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