May 2009

UN pushing Israel toward legal proceedings

Gaza under Israeli fire during the 22-day war.

Tue, 05 May 2009 10:40:15 GMT
In pursuit of the case of Israeli war crimes, the United Nations moves to report to the Security Council that UN facilities in Gaza had been targeted willfully.

After the United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNRWA) compound became the target of GPS-guided Israeli mortars on January 15, the UN set up a commission to bring Israeli human rights violations in Gaza out into the open.

The commission — led by the former British secretary-general of human rights group Amnesty International, Ian Martin — assembled a report on Israeli actions in Gaza for submission to the Security Council.

“Israel deliberately fired at UN institutions even though it knew it was forbidden”, read the report.

According to Israeli daily Ynet, the report blames Israel for disproportionate fire and excessive use of force and goes on to confirm that IDF forces shot at Palestinian civilians unnecessarily and excessively.

A member of the American delegation at the UN described the report as “unprecedented in its gravity towards Israel.”

“Israel will have to lick the wounds of the report for many years, if the current wording is accepted as it is,” the source was quoted as saying.

The report which includes serious charges against Israel has ruffled feathers in Israel, raising fears that it would prompt legal proceedings.

As the commission gets set to submit the report to the council on Tuesday, Israel made a move to reject the findings of the controversial report on Tuesday saying that Hamas “are misleading the investigators, the UN and public opinion.”

Israel is suspected of committing war crimes including the use of the deadly white phosphorus shells in densely populated civilian areas, as revealed in an investigation by The Times in January.

While Israel initially denied using the controversial weapon, later mounting evidence forced Israeli officials to admit to having employed the shells.

Earlier in April, the IDF issued a statement claiming that Israeli probes had found that its forces did not violate international law during the recent war in Gaza.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said in its Tuesday statement that Israel has held an independent review of its behavior during Operation Cast Lead and “the conclusions of these probes were released two weeks ago and they proved beyond all doubt that there was no deliberate shooting by the IDF at UN facilities.”

May 7, 2009 0

Salmonella Spills its Secrets on the Space Shuttle

May 6, 2009: Salmonella, what’s gotten into you?
salmonella_med

Researchers have been asking themselves this question ever since Salmonella bacteria grown on board the space shuttle returned to Earth 3 to 7 times more virulent than Salmonella grown on the ground under otherwise identical conditions. Figuring out why could help safeguard astronauts from disease and lead to new treatments for food poisoning and other common ailments on Earth.

see captionNew research by Cheryl Nickerson (Arizona State University) and colleagues explains not only why Salmonella gets “revved up” in space, but also how to calm it down again.

“We think space travel tricks Salmonella into behaving as if it is in the human gut,” Nickerson says. “It’s a mechanical phenomenon having to do with ‘fluid shear.'”

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May 7, 2009 0

Dick Cheney Accused of Running Assassination Ring

Famous journalist Seymour Hersh has alleged that former Vice-President Dick Cheney was in charge of a ‘secret assassination wing’ that would enter a country and execute people on a list – bypassing local government and US CIA operatives.

While of course Cheney has denied any involvement, former aide John Hannah said during an interview that the account is ‘certainly true’. Hannah agreed that troops in the field are given the authority to capture or kill certain individuals.

Q: Is there a list of suspected terrorists out there who can be assassinated?

HANNAH: There’s clearly a group of people that go through a very extremely well-vetted process, interagency process…that have committed acts of war against the United States, who are at war with the United States or are suspected of planning operations of war against the United States, who authority is given to our troops in the field in certain war theaters to capture or kill those individuals. That is certainly true.

Source: thinkprogress.org

In an interview on CNN’s The Situation Room, Hersh said the group — called the Joint Special Operations Command — reported to Vice President Dick Cheney and was delegated authority to assassinate individuals based on their own intelligence.

“The idea that we have a unit that goes around and without reporting to Congress — Congress knows very little about this group, can’t get hearings, can’t get even classified hearings on it…goes around and has authority from the president to go into a country without telling the CIA station chief or the ambassador and whack someone, I am sorry Wolf, yes I have a problem with that,” Hersh said in the interview with Wolf Blitzer.

May 7, 2009 0

“NATIONAL HOLIDAY FOR NATIVE AMERICANS”

Dear Friends,

I have just read and signed the online petition:

“NATIONAL HOLIDAY FOR NATIVE AMERICANS”

hosted on the web by PetitionOnline.com, the free online petition
service, at:

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/indian/

I personally agree with what this petition says, and I think you might
agree, too. If you can spare a moment, please take a look, and consider
signing yourself.

May 6, 2009 0

The North American Indian Holocaust

by Kahentinetha Horn

The “final solution” of the North American Indian problem was the model for the subsequent Jewish holocaust and South African apartheid

Why is the biggest holocaust in all humanity being hidden from history? Is it because it lasted so long that it has become a habit? It’s been well documented that the killing of Indigenous people in the Western Hemisphere since the beginning of colonization has been estimated at 120 million. Yet nobody wants to speak about it.

Today historians, anthropologists and archaeologists are revealing that information on this holocaust is being deliberately eliminated from the knowledge base and consciousness of North Americans and the world. A completely false picture is being painted of our people as suffering from social ills of our own making.

It could be argued that the loss of 120 million from 1500 to 1800 isn’t the same as the loss of 6 million people during World War II. Can 6 million in 1945 be compared to 1 million in 1500?

School children are still being taught that large areas of North America are uninhabited as if this land belongs to no one and never did. The role of our ancestors as caretakers is constantly and habitually overlooked by colonial society.

Before the arrival of Europeans, cities and towns here were flourishing. Mexico City had a larger population than any city in Europe. The people were healthy and well-fed. The first Europeans were amazed. The agricultural products developed by the Indigenous people transformed human nutrition internationally.

The North American Indian holocaust was studied by South Africa for their apartheid program and by Hitler for his genocide of the Jews during World War II. Hitler commented that he admired the great job Americans had done in taking care of the Indian problem. The policies used to kill us off was so successful that people today generally assume that our population was low. Hitler told a past US President when he remarked about their maltreatment of the Jewish people, he mind your own business. You’re the worst.

Where are the monuments? Where are the memorial ceremonies? Why is it being concealed? The survivors of the WWII holocaust have not yet died and already there is a movement afoot to forget what happened.

Unlike post-war Germany, North Americans refuse to acknowledge this genocide. Almost one and a quarter million Kanien’ke:haka (Mohawk) were killed off leaving us only a few thousand survivors.

North Americans do not want to reveal that there was and still is a systematic plan to destroy most of the native people by outright murder by bounty hunters and land grabbers, disease through distributing small pox infested blankets, relocation, theft of children who were placed in concentration camps called “residential schools” and assimilation.

As with the Jews, they could not have accomplished this without their collaborators who they trained to serve their genocidal system through their “re-education camps”.

The policy changed from outright slaughter to killing the Indian inside. Governments, army, police, church, corporations, doctors, judges and common people were complicit in this killing machine. An elaborate campaign has covered up this genocide which was engineered at the highest levels of power in the United States and Canada. This cover up continues to this day. When they killed off all the Indians, they brought in Blacks to be their labourers.

In the residential schools many eye witnesses have recently come forward to describe the atrocities. They called these places “death camps” where, according to government records, nearly half of all these innocent Indigenous children died or disappeared as if they never existed. In the 1920’s when Dr. Bryce was alarmed by the high death rate of children in residential schools, his report was suppressed.

The term “Final Solution” was not coined by the Nazis. It was Indian Affairs Superintendent, Duncan Campbell Scott, Canada’s Adolph Eichmann, who in April 1910 plotted out the planned murder to take care of the “Indian problem”.

“It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habitating so closely in these schools, and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this alone does not justify a change in the policy of this Department, which is geared towards the final solution of our Indian Problem”. (DIA Archives, RG 10 series).

In the 1930’s he brought German doctors over here to do medical experiments on our children. According to the study the majority of the lives of these children was extinguished. School children are taught his poetry with no mention of his role as the butcher of the Indian people.

Those who carried out this annihilation of our people were protected so they could declare full-scale war on us. North Americans as heirs of the fruits of this murderous system have blood on their hands. If people are sincere about preventing holocausts they must remember it. History must be told as it really happened in all its tragic details.

It’s not good enough to just remember the holocaust that took place during the lifetime of some of the survivors. We have to remember the larger holocaust. Isn’t it time to uncover the truth and make the perpetrators face up to this?

In the west there are a whole series of Eichmanns. General Amherst ordered the distribution of small pox infested blankets to kill of our people. But his name is shamelessly preserved in the names of towns and streets. George Washington is called the “village burner” in Mohawk because of all the villages he ordered burnt. Villages would be surrounded. As the people came running out, they would be shot, stabbed, women, children and elders alike. In one campaign alone “hundreds of thousand died, from New York across Pennsylvania, West Virgina and into Ohio”. His name graces the capital of the United States.

The smell of death in their own backyard does not seem to bother North Americans. This is obscene.

By Kahentinetha Horn, MNN Mohawk Nation News, kahentinetha2@yahoo.com

First published in the Akwesasne Phoenix, Jan. 30, 2005 issue – info@akwesasnephoenix.com

SOURCE

May 5, 2009 3

Journalists under attack on World Press Freedom Day

Monday, May 04, 2009

Editor’s note: The following statement was issued by Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Frank La Rue, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, May 3, 2009.
World Press Freedom Day serves as an occasion to celebrate the fundamental principles of press freedom; to evaluate the benefits of a free and independent press; and to defend the media from attacks on their independence. Sadly, on this day we must also pay tribute to media professionals worldwide who have lost their lives in the daily struggle to disseminate the news. In the last year, over 60 journalists have been killed in the line of duty. Their sacrifice should further strengthen our efforts in promoting press freedom and the protection of journalists everywhere from ongoing harassment and threats.

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May 4, 2009 0

Iraq’s Underworld.

Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
anwar1 May 1, 2009

I was at a friend’s place the other night, and whilst this friend was busy preparing dinner, I was left to zap the TV at my convenience…It is not often that am given this privilege of zapping as I please. I really made up for it, that night and zapped my head away… Engrossed in my nervous hobby, fate or luck had it that I land on Al-Sharqiya – an Iraqi TV channel.

As a rule of thumb, I try avoid watching Iraqi TV altogether. It just depresses the hell out of me. In particular the Iraqi Shiite channels where permanent, chronic, non stop “latmiahs” are aired live. Latmiah is the act of pounding one’s breast with one’s fist or hand…usually followed by scenes of wailing and ultimately by scenes of heavy self flagellation – a 24/7 Ashura. (Ashura is a Shiite religious day characterized by mass hysteria in the “new” Iraq)

The other Iraqi TV channels, I find them as dodgy as the Shiite ones. You have Al-Baghdadia (where Muntather Zaidi – the shoe thrower used to work). One is never sure who Al- Baghdadia works for. Some say it supports the chief Driller of the Mahdi Army – Muqtada Al-Sadr. Others say it is a patriotic channel. Go figure…

Then you have the all Assyrian channels, the all Kurdish channels, a couple of channels from Al-Anbar where they are always reciting poetry of which I understand nothing. And you also have the official Iraqi puppet channels who praise Maliki non stop and of course the Arabic version of Fox news, funded by the Americans.

The only two channels I watch if I have to, are Al-Babylia and Al-Sharqiya both of which are anti-occupation and secular, praise to God.

As I was saying before opening the above parenthesis — my friend was in the kitchen chopping away and I could smell some wonderful, mouth watering, scents emanating from there, tipping me into a world that made my palate anxious to taste some good, wholesome stuff for a change…

Meanwhile, Fate decided that I was to watch the program aired by Al-Sharqiya called Al-Aghlabiya Al-Samita — The Silent Majority.
And here I was stuck with the silent majority.

The program was solely devoted to the gross Human rights violations and abuses in “liberated” Iraq with particular reference to the plight of prisoners/detainees in Iraq’s Gulag.

Many called in. Some were ex-prisoners, other relatives of someone who is still in prison or reported dead while in prison.

The stories were harrowing. I felt as if I was watching a horror film. Truly, I still have not fully recovered from what I heard that evening.

People were calling in from ALL of Iraq – Baghdad, Basra, Diwaniya, Suleymania, Erbil…Some were exiled and calling from outside of Iraq and they had escaped a similar ordeal, a similar ordeal as that of the still lingering prisoners. Some were very close relatives of someone still imprisoned in some Iraqi dungeon.

That evening, I had forgotten my writing pad at home, so I just scribbled some of the important information on the blank edges of an old newspaper.

I cannot recall the full exact numbers and locations but I do have the overall stories well stored in my mind as well as few cases that cannot and will never be forgotten. So help me God not to omit or forget anything.

ALL of the stories shared similar characteristics and details – a common thread, if one may call it that.

– What am about to tell you does NOT cover American run prisons/detention camps, nor does it cover official Iraqi prisons. I say official because this program and all the testimonies it bore, made it clear that there are 600 SECRET/SHADOW prisons in Iraq besides the official ones.

– Prisoners, both men and women are arrested on identity/sect basis or because they are relatives of someone who is wanted for “insurgency”. The term insurgency is used very loosely by the Iraqi authorities. I shall explain how later.

– Prisoners are usually caught after a “Mukhber Seree”, a mouchard in French, I am not sure what the term is in English. Basically someone charged of spying on people for anything he considers as “subversive”. So the Mukhber Seree has full authority and 10 times out of 10, he either works for the Police, a Militia or a particular Ministry, or the Mukhabarat – secret service or the official Government.

I say official government because you have to know that today in Iraq there are several mini governments within the government. And that is important to remember, because it transpired from the stories that each prison belongs to a party, a militia, or some government mafia clan member…

Moreover prisoners who make it out alive, and I personally know of two cases who have been released, stay in hiding and keep changing houses, because the Mukhber Al-Seree would not let go of them. So, in fact they are never free.

– All the prisoners have not been formally charged with any “crime” and none has had access to any legal council or trial. An example : someone drew an anti-occupation graffiti on the wall of one neighborhood, all of the men in the age range of 15 to 45of that same neighborhood were arrested the following day and imprisoned.

– All of the stories report widespread use of horrific torture methods. Common torture methods across the country are : electrocution, being hanged by hooks from the ceilings, sleep deprivation, food deprivation, isolation, made to listen to torture from other cells, beatings, crammed space – one example 150 inmates in one cell of 3 by 8 meters, amputating fingers, amputation of limbs following torture, pulling nails and teeth, burning with cigarettes and acid, blinding one eye, drilling extremities…and rape including gang rape of male prisoners was commonly reported. One example given was in the space of one day 45 policemen raped around 100 detainees. Rape includes the forcing of bottles in the anus. This was a common theme that came up in every single story. I will devote a separate paragraph to the secret women’s prison.

– The age range of the prisoners is from as young as 13 to as old as 70. As I said the great majority are not charged with anything and have had no access to any formal trial. Huge ransoms are always asked to release the prisoners. I know that to be the case since we experienced the same thing with my relatives. And this was confirmed again in the testimonies that I heard that night.
Families would pay the extortion money and the prisoner would not be released and more money is requested… It is the police prison guards right up to the highest echelons who do the bidding for the money. Just to show how deep the corruption has seeped in the new “liberated” Iraq.

I am trying not to forget anything here and my little pieces of newspaper are scattered in front of me and my head is spinning with bits of stories…

– Many relatives of ex-prisoners, ex-prisoners because these prisoners died under torture, said that they were called by anonymous people telling them that the body of so and so, was found in some street. One prisoner after a brutal torture session managed to give the phone number of his family to his cell mate, this latter engraved it on the sole of his rubber slippers. He called the family two days later to inform them that their son died from torture.

– Usually those who die from torture and if they are not dumped in some street, are given fake death certificates by an official hospital. It seems that there is an agreement between those who run those prisons and some of the hospitals in Iraq to fabricate death certificates stating – cause of death : natural. And the usual reason given is heart attack. But when the families do manage to recuperate the body, they see that it has been deformed beyond recognition because of torture.

– Now for the women’s secret prison. This is how it happens and this what takes place. The police, militia or some other party is looking for an “insurgent” – as I said the word “insurgent” is used loosely by the current Iraqi mafia to denote just about anyone they don’t like and mainly for sectarian or political reasons or because he was affiliated to the previous regime in particular the army. So if they can’t find this person, they usually go for the female member of his family. Usually his wife or sister.
These female relatives are then placed in a secret prison — a women only prison.
Nidal Shibib, an Iraqi woman human rights activist reported during the course of this program the following — and I want you to read this carefully.

Torture and gang rape are common daily occurrences in this secret female prison. Not only that, but when “Firaq Tafteesh Amerkiya” – meaning American teams for Prison supervision – go to visit these secret prisons, one of which is the women’s, the police in charge of this particular prison invite this American team “to do as they please with the female prisoners.” And I quote – “they unbolt the doors of the cells wide open and tell them – take them all for your pleasure.” These female prisoners find themselves raped again but this time by the Americans who supervise the Iraqi prisons- supervise them for “good conduct”.
Some of the women who are eventually released are killed in “honor” by their families to wash away the shame of rape. Nidal Shibib rightly asked – “the male prisoners who are raped are not killed in honor, why do they kill the women? ” (This is another parenthesis, I will not go into right now.)

– The IRANIAN connection : Many of the prisoner’s relatives confirm that their relative was/is held in Iranian run prisons IN IRAQ and their torture was done by Iranians or that it was done under Iranian order and command. Some of these detainees happen to be ex-army officers. Many of them have died under torture.

Those who are not detained in Iraq, were arrested in 2003 by Iranian special forces and transferred to KARON prison in IRAN where their fate is still unknown.
Again, another Iraqi human rights activist by the name of Mohamed Al-Sheikhly has a whole dossier of the names of those Iraqis who disappeared in Iranian prisons in IRAN, and he has been active in finding their whereabouts/release, in vain…

On the same subject, I was told recently that President Ahmadinejad, in the 80’s, then member of the Iranian revolutionary guards, was in charge of supervising the torture of Iraq soldiers during and in the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq war. (yet another parenthesis. So many sub-chapters in the Iraqi tragedy.)

– Yalla Layla, the food is ready…
– Yes, am coming, just one second
– Ya Layla, the food is getting cold…you have been complaining that am slow cook and that you are so hungry…yalla…
– Yes am coming, hold on one more second please…
– What are you doing for God’s sake?
– Here I am.
– See, I cooked your favorite stew with Bamia (Okra) and rice… what’s the matter aren’t you hungry anymore ? Layla are you okay ?
– Yes I will be fine, give me a few minutes…
– What happened to you all of a sudden ?
– Give me a few minutes, I need to re-emerge from the Underworld…

I re-emerged, but a part of me is still there…in the secret prisons of Iraq.

P.S: Please circulate this post widely. As far and as wide as you can. The truth about Iraq new found “freedom and democracy” must be shown to the whole world.For more complete information you may contact the Silent Majority.
Alternatively, you may write to: aghlabiya@alsharqiya.com

May 3, 2009 0