DEAD URGENT : Iraqi Woman-Hiba Al Shamaree Writer/Blogger Missing.
Layla Anwar
January 28, 2010 – This is an URGENT APPEAL FOR HELP. The fellow Iraqi female writer, blogger Hiba Al-Shamaree, who adores her country and returned to see it, has been reported missing since the 20th of January 2010. One of her family members (a sibling) sent emails out and wrote on her blog (Hiba had given her/him the password just in case) that their sister Hiba had disappeared and was last seen in the Sayyediya neighborhood in Baghdad and eyewitnesses say that they saw Iraqi forces there. Hiba Al Shamaree is a prolific writer, a staunch ant-occupation activist, and a fearless denouncer of the current puppet government. She took amazing risks by returning to Iraq for a visit.Her family as well as many of us Iraqi activists believe that she was kidnapped, arrested by the puppet forces and we all fear, knowing from previous experiences, what will come next…Please, whoever is reading this, I urge you to mobilize for her release. She has a very sick mother and has no one to fend for her. Contact whoever you can and use your influence. Amnesty International, Red Cross, Human Rights Watch…anybody and everyone must be involved. This is a young innocent woman captured by rabid wolves…

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An Illegal War is State-Terrorism
By Yamin Zakaria
January 28, 2010 “ — As the toothless Chilcot Inquiry collates the evidences from the various individuals, not many are asking some basic questions regarding the Iraq War. As a layperson, the following questions come to my mind: * What aggression did Iraq commit against the US and the UK that could have justified the war? How did the people of Iraq ever cause any harm to the people in the UK or the US? * Where are the weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which was the primary pretext for waging aggression on Iraq? * Why was the UN Inspectors not given further time to finish their job, given that they had unimpeded access to inspect any place in Iraq and that they failed to find any evidence contrary to Iraq’s earlier declaration to the UN? * In the absence of such weapons, why is the UN not taking the criminals to task at the international war crimes tribunal and order the belligerent nations to pay war reparations to Iraq?…

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Obama’s Secret Prisons
Night Raids, Hidden Detention Centers, the “Black Jail,” and the Dogs of War in Afghanistan
Tom Engelhardt & Anand Gopal
January 28, 2010 – One quiet, wintry night last year in the eastern Afghan town of Khost, a young government employee named Ismatullah simply vanished. He had last been seen in the town’s bazaar with a group of friends. Family members scoured Khost’s dust-doused streets for days. Village elders contacted Taliban commanders in the area who were wont to kidnap government workers, but they had never heard of the young man. Even the governor got involved, ordering his police to round up nettlesome criminal gangs that sometimes preyed on young bazaar-goers for ransom. But the hunt turned up nothing. Spring and summer came and went with no sign of Ismatullah. Then one day, long after the police and village elders had abandoned their search, a courier delivered a neat, handwritten note on Red Cross stationary to the family. In it, Ismatullah informed them that he was in Bagram, an American prison more than 200 miles away…

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Graveyard shift
Edward Platt
January 28, 2010 – The construction of a museum of tolerance in Jerusalem – on the site of an ancient Arab cemetery – has involved mass exhumations, and caused hurt and outrage among Palestinians. “You can’t build a museum on the bones of our grandfathers and call it the Museum of Tolerance,” Mustafa Abu Zahra told me, as we walked round what remains of the largest Arab cemetery in West Jerusalem. Beyond the trees and the stone tombs that cover the southern half of the cemetery, we could see the white metal fence that enclosed the construction site of a project that has aroused fierce opposition in the six years since its inception. Even its name seems a mockery of the spirit of religious co-operation that the city of Jerusalem – so central to the adherents of three related faiths – is supposed to represent: “It’s not about tolerance or love between nations,’ said Abu Zahra. ‘It’s about the violation of a sacred site.”…

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“Museum of Tolerance” being built on Muslim cemetery
Middle East Monitor
January 28, 2010 -An article was published recently in the New Statesman about Israeli plans to build a “Museum of Tolerance” on the site of the Mamilla (a corruption of Ma’man Allah) Muslim Cemetery in Jerusalem. “Graveyard Shift”, by Edward Platt, highlighted this latest example of Israel’s sustained attack on the property and religious sites of Palestinian Muslims and Christians in the Holy City. The Mamilla Cemetery is located in western Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel in the war of 1948. It is the largest Arab cemetery in West Jerusalem and, according to Platt, contains graves dating back 400 years. However, other sources claim that there are much older graves there and that some companions of Prophet Muhammad are buried in the cemetery amongst some of the city’s most notable sheikhs, imams and political and military leaders. Historically it was always considered a great privilege to be buried in Mamilla but it has not been used since its capture by Israel…

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PFLP on the second anniversary of the loss of Al-Hakim: Revolutionaries never die!
PFLP – Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
January 28, 2010 – On the second anniversary of the loss of Al-Hakim, Dr. George Habash, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Arab Nationalist Movement, the Front pledged to remain on the path and fulfill the goals of Al-Hakim and all of the martyrs of our people and our nation, until return and liberation, on the path of democracy, justice and unity, pledging that revolutionaries never die – and that the example of Al-Hakim as a thinker, organizer, and revolutionary leader will live on immortally in Palestine, the Arab nation and internationally…

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Playing with fire in Iraq
Iraq’s latest political crisis could trigger a return to chaos
Joost Hiltermann
January 28, 2010 – Iraq’s already fragile political order has been thrust into further turmoil in the past three weeks over an attempt to bar 511 candidates, several of them prominent political figures, from legislative elections in March for alleged ties to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. The decision, taken by Iraq’s Accountability and Justice Commission, has the potential to ignite a new civil war.The commission is a re-baptised but hardly reformed version of the De-Baathification Commission established by Paul Bremer, the American proconsul, in 2003. Lack of procedural clarity, transparency, or impartial oversight have turned it into a blunt weapon wielded by a small group of people to settle old scores and advance their own political fortunes in an election year… Maliki has not only failed to condemn the commission’s decision to bar 511 candidates, he has embraced it, piously invoking the law – and surely reckoning that standing up for the Baath party in the name of reconciliation is political suicide, especially in an election year. Yet not many months ago, Maliki was negotiating with the Sunni leader Saleh al Mutlaq, one of the current campaign’s main targets, to form a joint coalition…

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Video: Potkin Azarmehr on Aljazeera After the Execution of Arash Rahmanipour & Mohammad Reza Zamani
Aljazeera.English
January 28, 2010 – Potkin Azarmehr interviewed in Lonodn by Aljazeera English from Doha studios on 28th Jan, 2010 regarding the execution of Arash Rahmanpour and Mohammad Reza Zamani

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Blackwater’s Youngest Victim
Jeremy Scahill
January 28, 2010 – Every detail of September 16, 2007, is burned in Mohammed Kinani’s memory. Shortly after 9 am he was preparing to leave his house for work at his family’s auto parts business in Baghdad when he got a call from his sister, Jenan, who asked him to pick her and her children up across town and bring them back to his home for a visit. The Kinanis are a tightknit Shiite family, and Mohammed often served as a chauffeur through Baghdad’s dangerous streets to make such family gatherings possible. Mohammed had just pulled away from his family’s home in the Khadamiya neighborhood in his SUV. His youngest son, 9-year-old Ali, came tearing down the road after him, asking his father if he could accompany him. Mohammed told him to run along and play with his brothers and sister. But Ali, an energetic and determined kid, insisted… Mohammed gave in, and off the father and son went.

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Researcher: Israel destroyed Palestinian books
Ynet
January 28, 2010 – Israel plundered and destroyed tens of thousands of Palestinian books in the years after the State’s establishment, according to a doctoral thesis to be submitted next month by a Ben-Gurion University researcher. In an interview with the researcher published on al-Jazeera’s website Thursday, he claimed that Israel destroyed the Palestinian books in the framework of its plan to “Judaize the country” and cut off its Arab residents from their nation and culture…

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VIDEO : Humanitarianism: Prolonging the Palestinian Political Plight?
The Palestine Center
January 28, 2010 – Does humanitarianism delay a political solution to the question of Palestine? With the siege on Gaza and the occupation effecting the population in dramatic fashion and eliminating basic human needs for millions, there is a noticeable shift in the discourse on Palestine; that is a shift away from the struggle for freedom and toward a struggle for survival. If Palestinians are consumed with surviving for just another day they cannot focus on liberating their land. How does humanitarianism reinforce this situation and how can Palestinians avert suspended catastrophe?

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Send $300 billion to Detroit, not to Israel
Blaine Coleman
January 28, 2010 – Was there any excuse for a bunch of armed European settlers to occupy Palestine? No. Was there any excuse for those armed gangs—now called the “Israel Defense Forces”– to ally themselves with the most racist regimes on Earth, including Apartheid South Africa? No. Was there any excuse for handing $300 billion to Israel, as it mass-murdered so many Palestinians and Lebanese? No– but Congressman Dingell admits that Israel really did get $300 billion from your pocket, from the U.S. Congress…

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Israel is NOT and Never was a Democracy
Eileen Fleming
Jnauary 28, 2010 – …In the May 28, 1993 edition of Yedioth Ahronoth, Ariel Sharon explained: “The terms ‘democracy’ or ‘democratic’ are totally absent from the Declaration of Independence. This is not an accident. The intention of Zionism was not to bring democracy, needless to say. It was solely motivated by the creation in Eretz-Isrel of a Jewish state belonging to all the Jewish people and to the Jewish people alone. This is why any Jew of the Diaspora has the right to immigrate to Israel and to become a citizen of Israel.”…

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New Iranian Ambassador To Iraq Confirmed As Revolutionary Guards Member
Musings On Iraq
January 28, 2010 – As reported before, on January 14, 2009 Al-Zaman newspaper reported that the new Iranian ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Danafar, was from the Revolutionary Guards’ Qods Force. Danafar is currently the chairman of Iran’s Headquarters for Renovation of Iraq’s Holy Shrines, but other reports say that he was deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s navy. On January 26, the spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry said that Danafar is indeed a member of the Revolutionary Guards. Tehran’s justification is that Iraq is in a state of war…

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B’Tselem calls for investigation into Nablus executions
Ma’an News
January 28, 2010 – The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem requested Major General Avichai Mandelblit investigate the execution-style deaths of three men in Nablus on 26 December, a report from the group said Wednesday. The men, allegedly suspects in the death of a settler rabbi days earlier, were shot dead at close range in their homes, in two cases as their families watched. Detention raids are a regular part of the Israeli occupation, particularly in the north recently…

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Israel’s voice on Britain’s Iraq Inquiry accuses critics of “anti-Semitism”
By Nureddin Sabir
January 28, 2010 – The Iraq Inquiry, led by former civil servant John Chilcot, was set up by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in June 2009 in order to “identify lessons that can be learned from the Iraq conflict”. It began its deliberations in November. On 22 November 2009, as the inquiry, was preparing to convene, a former British ambassador, Oliver Miles, wrote an article in the Independent on Sunday newspaper expressing concern at the fact that two out of the five members of the inquiry’s committee, Martin Gilbert and Lawrence Freedman, were “strong supporters of Tony Blair and/or the Iraq war”. He also pointed out that both Gilbert and Freedman were Jewish, and that “Gilbert at least has a record of active support for Zionism”…

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Murder at Guantánamo Bay?
Nicole Colson
January 28, 2010 – …The report by Scott Horton focuses on the deaths of Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, detainees who the military claimed committed suicide on June 9, 2006…But according to Horton’s report, it now appears that the detainees had been taken from their cells hours before their deaths and transported to a secret site on the island, where they may have been tortured during interrogations. And, Horton reports, the U.S. government—first the Bush administration, and now the Obama administration—may have actively covered up the circumstances of their deaths…

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Israeli soldiers ‘attack’ journalists near Nablus
Ma’an News
January 28, 2010 – A group of Palestinian photojournalists documenting tree-planting near Nablus on Thursday afternoon said they were accosted by Israeli forces, who declared the area a closed military zone. The tree-planting, on the edges of Burin village, was set to see 250 olive saplings dug into the soil under a new “Green Palestine” project in cooperation with the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Agriculture…

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Venezuela: Two students killed in clashes
By Bill Van Auken
January 28, 2010 – Two students, one a supporter of President Hugo Chavez and the other an opponent, were killed Monday as demonstrations and counter-demonstrations took place across Venezuela following a government order to suspend broadcasts by an opposition television channel. The most violent clashes took place in the city of Mérida, where students from the Universidad de los Andes took part in an anti-government demonstration that was broken up by riot police using tear gas, truncheons and shotguns. Supporters of the Chávez government also staged demonstrations…

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Israel to route wall around Ramallah settlement
Ma’an News
January 28, 2010 – Israeli authorities will resume the construction of the separation wall near the Israeli settlement of Modi’in Elite, northwest of Ramallah, Israeli media reported on Tuesday. According to the online news site Kikar Shabbat, the army’s decision was taken last Friday after an alternative route was approved. The High Court of Justice had ordered a halt to the wall’s original route…

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Obama backs Israel
Reuters
January 28, 2010 – United States President Barack Obama said on Thursday that he would never waver from support for Israel’s security, but insisted that Washington must also pay attention to the plight of the Palestinians. “We are working to try to strengthen the ability of both parties to have to sit down across the table,” Obama said at a town hall-style meeting in Tampa. The administration’s efforts to restart long-stalled peace talks have made little progress since Obama took office a year ago…

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