Sections on today's Signs Page:
Signs Editorials
Editorial: Killing Children - Israel's Continued Massacring of Palestinians
Signs of the Times
and
News24.com
Last Friday, an Israeli gunboat sitting off the Gaza coast deliberately fired shells at a family enjoying a picnic on the beach. Below is a link to the video of the aftermath. Please right click and choose "save as" to download and view it. Spread the word as far and wide as possible. Something must be done to stop this wanton inhumanity.
Gaza Beach Carnage Video
There is only one word for the actions of the Israeli government and military towards the Palestinian people - slow and steady Genocide.
Ordinary Jews are not to blame for this. The responsibility lies with the small number of psychopathic Israeli right-wing "Zionist" leaders who, we can only assume, actually enjoy the sight of dismembered Palestinian children.
Gaza picnic ends in carnage
09/06/2006
News24.com
Al-Sudania - Broken camping tables, childrens' sandals and lumps of flesh lay on the sands of Gaza's Sudania beach on Friday, after the Israeli shelling of a picnic party left seven people dead.
Stunned witnesses recounted how the calm of a day out at the seaside turned into a scene of carnage.
The Israeli military said it would investigate the circumstances behind the tragedy, but survivors insisted there was no reason why the army had chosen to target the area.
The shelling wiped out a family.
The five members of the Ghali family, who were enjoying a picnic on the beach, were killed when Israeli shells landed on the beach in the late afternoon.
Husband Ali, wife Raisa, and their three children - aged one, three and ten - died instantly.
Picnic hampers and red plastic sandals lay scattered on the beach, where crimson blood spattered the yellow sand.
Witnesses shocked
Fragments of chairs had been thrown dozens of metres from the scene.
A teenaged girl writhed and wailed in anguish next to the body of a man who had been killed in the strike.
"Father! Father!" she screamed.
Ahmed Abu Amrene, who had been at the beach at the time, was still in a state of shock several hours later.
"I was swimming in the sea when we heard the sound of a shell," said the 20-year-old.
"We rushed over and saw the five members of the family dead on the sand."
Pointing towards the debris, he said: "The family was sitting right here. They were just having a meal."
A fleet of ambulances was dispatched to the scene. In less than an hour, the seven dead and 35 injured had been transferred to hospitals in Gaza City and the nearby Jabaliya refugee camp.
'This is a long way from anywhere'
Ahmed el-Douch, 25, said he could not understand why the Israeli military had fired at people picnicking at the seaside.
"Why did they target a family on the beach? This is a long way from anywhere used by the resistance to fire rockets against Israel. They are not being launched from here," he said.
"The Israelis just fire indiscriminately."
His sense of fury and bewilderment was matched by another bather, Jaber Mughani, who said picnickers had "just come to have a drink and something to eat at the beach" on one of the hottest days of the year so far.
The Israeli military said it had launched an investigation into the incident.
The shellings cap an upsurge of bloodshed in Gaza, where seven other Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air strikes in less than 24 hours.
Of course, the media today are reporting that this particular mass murder was not the result of IDF shelling but rather a "mine on the beach placed by Hamas". The official explanation being that Hamas was hoping to kill Israeli soldiers. The problem with this explanation is that since the IDF pull out last year, there has been NO Israeli military presence in Gaza. So how could Hamas expect to kill Israel soldiers?
Essentially, what we are being asked to believe is that, even though an Israeli gun boat was shelling the beach in that area at that time, this explosion and the deaths were not the result of the shelling. No indeed, the real cause was a "mine", placed by Hamas in the hope of killing IDF soldiers on a beach where IDF soldiers have not been and are not expected to be in the near future, but where Palestinian families regularly go for picnics.
Believe it if you like, and ignore the fact that the IDF has regularly targetted innocent Palestinians in the past.
Also, forget the fact that, today, the Israeli air force fired three rockets at what they claimed was a car carrying three members of Islamic Jihad. Two rockets were fired obliterating the car and killing the three men, then a few moments later, a third rocket was fired that "accidentally" killed a further 8 civilians, including two children.
Israelis kill 11 in Gaza rocket attack
June 14, 2006
ELEVEN people, including two children, were killed in the northern Gaza Strip last night in the deadliest air strike this year by the Israeli military in the Palestinian territory.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the strike as "state terrorism" and urged international intervention.
The casualties occurred when two rockets hit a car carrying three members of the Islamic Jihad militant group travelling on the main thoroughfare dissecting the coastal strip just north of Gaza City.
Two of the militants, Hammudeh al-Wadyeh, 25, and Shawqi al-Saiqali, also in his 20s, were killed. The third man was injured.
Nine civilians, including two children, were killed and 42 injured when a third rocket struck as onlookers gathered on the scene.
The civilians included two brothers, Hisham, 4, and Shaher al-Mugrabi, 8, and their father Ashraf, said Jumaa al-Saqaa, a doctor at the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza treating the wounded. Ambulance driver Mussa Nasrallah was also killed.
The Israeli Army said the military had carried out an operation against a vehicle that was transporting militants who were getting ready to fire rockets into Israel.
 |
| Gaza civilian man falls as he rushes to carry his son, the top of his
head blown open, to an ambulance after an IDF airstrike on innocent civilians. |
A spokeswoman said the car "was loaded with Katyuashas," referring to the Russian-made rocket launcher that has a much longer range than the usual makeshift missiles fired by Palestinian factions.
The army said 38 makeshift rockets had been fired from Gaza into Israel in the previous 24 hours and more than a 100 since last Friday.
(Ed: No mention of the thousands of Israeli rockets fired every few weeks into Gaza)
The air strike came after Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz ended a pause to the shelling to allow an investigation of the deaths of seven members of a Palestinian family in an explosion on a Gaza beach on Friday. "We showed the necessary restraint in light ... of the international uproar that resulted, but it's over," Mr Peretz said.
The army's investigation into last Friday's explosion concluded it was almost certainly caused by a Palestinian mine, not an Israeli shell.
The military wing of Hamas had seized on the deaths to declare an end to its ceasefire with Israel, and a resumption of large-scale hostilities between Palestinian militants and Israel seemed possible.
However, it was unclear whether the Israeli findings on the beach blast would be credible to the Palestinians.
Israel, which expressed regret for the deaths, was initially inclined to accept that an artillery shell was responsible, because Israeli warships fired six shells in the area. The impact of five was observed hundreds of metres from the beach, but the sixth shell was unaccounted for.
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: Corporate Media Lies About the Neocon Panopticon
Tuesday June 13th 2006, 7:42 am
Kurt Nimmo
Another Day in the Empire
Once again, the Boston Globe feeds us a line of hooey:
The administration has acknowledged eavesdropping on Americans' international communications without seeking court approval. President Bush has said the eavesdropping is legal because of a congressional resolution passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that authorized him to use force against terrorism.
In fact, the neocons-it is no longer relevant to talk about Bush, as he is little more than a wind-up doll, albeit a damaged wind-up doll-are snooping domestically and it is disingenuous for the corporate media to go on and on about "international communications," as if the government is only snooping calls going out of the country.
Snooping is so widespread both domestically and internationally, the European Parliament produced a report some time ago recommending that citizens of member states routinely use cryptography in their communications to protect their privacy.
In 1999, well before everything changed-that is before the globalists decided to ramp up their fascist efforts in the wake of the nine eleven false flag operation-Patrick S. Poole wrote: "ECHELON is ... being used for purposes well outside its original mission. The regular discovery of domestic surveillance targeted at American civilians for reasons of 'unpopular' political affiliation or for no probable cause at all in violation of the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution-are consistently impeded by very elaborate and complex legal arguments and privilege claims by the intelligence agencies and the US government. The guardians and caretakers of our liberties, our duly elected political representatives, give scarce attention to these activities, let alone the abuses that occur under their watch."
In U.S. District Court, the American Civil Liberties Union squared off against the Justice Department. "Making its case in court for the first time, the government argued that the president needs as much power as necessary to secure the country, especially as Al Qaeda continues to threaten the United States with terrorist attacks," reports the Detroit Free Press.
Of course, there is absolutely no "al-Qaeda" threat anywhere in the country, regardless of a steady stream of lurid fantasies and campfire stories released by the corporate media, and for anybody with two brain cells to rub together it is obvious nine eleven, the terrorist event sans pareil, is an inside job, although millions of people prefer to be conditioned by the corporate media, maidservant of the fascist state. Like folks who believe in alien abductions and the visage of Jesus appearing on grilled cheese sandwiches, millions of Americans believe a handful of cave-dwelling Arabs were able to suspend the law of physics on September 11, 2001.
In order to scare us into submission, and have us accept massive violations of our constitutional rights, at one time a birthright in this country, Justice Department lawyer-factotum, Tony Coppolino, droned on for 50 minutes about "al-Qaeda" in a Detroit courtroom, declaring the terrorist group, a well-known CIA operation, "attacked and killed thousands" and "threatens to attack us again," although he did not bother to offer a shred of evidence, as the fairy tale is taken as gospel truth now, thanks to a relentless, half decade long drumbeat of propaganda dispensed by the corporate media, making sure to follow their government script closely. "For that reason, the U.S. government must be allowed to eavesdrop on the phone calls and e-mails of Americans in some cases.... He stressed that any surveillance is 'narrowly and specifically focused on Al Qaeda,'" the Freep would have us believe.
Meanwhile, as a reminder America is now a fascist police state, two "software vendors have made their IP wiretapping tools for carriers and law-enforcement agencies work together," reports Network World in a news article that comes off more like a glowing press release. "The transition on carrier networks from circuit-switched phone calls to IP packet data services has turned the world of wiretapping upside down. With new laws requiring carriers to hand over information about subscribers' e-mail and Web surfing, carriers and legal agencies need new tools that work with each other."
In other words, technology made it more difficult for the government to "wiretap" phone calls over the internet, and so in "August 2004, the FCC ruled that interconnected VoIP service providers will have to allow law enforcement wiretapping under Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) by May 14, 2007. A federal court upheld that ruling" last week.
Rest assured, the feds will only monitor calls made to the hundreds of thousands of "al-Qaeda" members abroad.
Not to worry, since the Constitution is simply a "goddamn piece of paper," according to our cardboard cut-out president, a front man for the "universal fascism" neocons, and besides, they are simply trying to protect you from terrorists who "hate our way of life" and "our freedom," for instance the freedom to watch American Idol and consume worthless, ephemeral crap.
Original
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: America's Endless Race Wars and Massacres
BC Publishers Glen Ford and Peter Gamble
The Black Commentator
Massacre is an acquired taste. The United States is arguably the only country on the planet whose national personality and self-image is rooted in centuries of unremitting expansion through race war punctuated by massacre. There have always been "free-fire zones" all along the coveted, ever moving peripheries of white American power, from the "Indian country" surrounding the settler beachheads of Plymouth Rock and Jamestown to the "Sunni Triangle" of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan. Whole peoples - millions - have been erased in the glorious march of American Manifest Destiny.
It is true that the globe-ravaging European colonial powers certainly killed more human beings in the course of their imperial careers than their settler sons in North America. However, the national characters of Britain, Spain, France, Holland and Belgium were already formed when the Great European Breakout and Worldwide Pillage commenced. Although their wealth was later built on the blood and bones of faraway "natives" and slaves, European civil societies were already shaped by long histories of conflict among themselves, between classes and nations on their small sub-continent. Britain and France stretched forth their naval and army tentacles to ensure that wealth arrived in Liverpool and Marseilles, but the colonized peoples did not effectively intrude on the evolution of European society.
Nobody had to invent the historical personalities of the Frenchman in France, the Englishman in England. Their civil societies were deeply impacted - and some sectors greatly enriched - by the existence of the colonies, but not (until very recently) by the foreign peoples who died for European prosperity.
The English settler colonies in North America were different - unique. Masses of armed migrants came to steal, and stay, and keep stealing. Theirs was an enterprise of aggrandizement at the native's expense, and unlimited expansion. Less than a century and a half after the massacre and near-erasure of the Pequots - in celebration of which the Governor of Massachusetts proclaimed the first day of Pilgrim Thanksgiving - the white colonists decided that they were a distinct people, no longer Europeans.
They were right. American colonial society was shaped by constant depredations against non-whites, close up and brutal. By 1776, one out of five non-Native American residents of the colonies were Black slaves, the control and dehumanization of which had become a daily collective duty of much of the white population. Across the Alleghenies lay unconquered Native American lands that, once cleansed, could usher into being a white empire that would dwarf Europe. The English King and his treaties with the Native Americans stood in the way; he had to go.
The "American" mission was clear, manifest: to endlessly expand through the elimination of impediments posed by the External Other ("savage" Native Americans), while keeping white society safe and separate from the "debauchery" of the valuable, Internal Other (Black slaves). This is the foundation on which the American iconography and celebration is based. Lacking any other, it is the template of white American identity and purported "civilization."
From Outright Theft to Glorious Empire
By the turn of the 20th Century, with the Native Americans dead or subjugated and African Americans forced into the long nightmare of Jim Crow, soon-to-be president Teddy Roosevelt - who called Blacks "a perfectly stupid race" - summed up the great American adventure with the guilelessness of a pure psychopath. In our March 16, 2004 issue, BC contributing writer Paul Street described Roosevelt's "massive, four-volume 1899 study Winning of the West" as "a white-supremacist paean to Anglo-America's near-eradication of North America's original civilizations."
"During the past three centuries," Roosevelt opined, "the spread of English-speaking people over the world's waste spaces" (meaning spaces not occupied by "progressive" capitalist-developmental Caucasians) was a great and welcome "feat of power," for which the "English-speaking race" could justly feel proud. No such "feat" of "race power" was more laudable, however, than "the vast movement by which this continent [North America] was conquered and peopled" - the "crowning and greatest achievement of a series of mighty movements."
This is still the song that is sung, the imperative to supremacy that cannot but lead to endless war and massacre. Paul Street presents a long but necessarily incomplete chronicle of the mass murder exclamation points in U.S. history that polite white society now shakes its head in regret about, but which remain the operative events and premises on which U.S. behavior in the world is justified - celebrated! - today.
Roosevelt became a "hero" in the Spanish-American War of 1898, a pushover conflict in which a decrepit Spain was ejected from Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. The U.S. was now a full-fledged imperial power with tens of millions of "natives" under its boot - and proud of it. American Manifest Destiny had gone truly global, as white as ever.
But the Filipinos, who had surrounded and almost run out the Spanish before the Americans arrived, insisted on claiming their independence. The U.S. embarked on a scorched earth and bodies strategy - as usual.
The American soldiers were confused, however. What would they call these people who lived in the thousand-island archipelago "free-fire" zone? With the Native American wars (massacres) still fresh in their minds, and the lynching of thousands of American Blacks the favorite pastime for many back home, U.S. soldiers wrote to family and friends of the fun they were having killing the "niggers" and "injuns" of the Philippines.
"Gooks," "chinks," and "hajis" would come later, once the Americans got their feet wet in the blood of the world.
Mark Twain, an anti-war activist, wrote of how 30,000 U.S. troops caused the deaths of a half-million Filipinos. One episode of many in the imperial butchery occurred in 1906 when a whole village sought refuge from the invaders in a dormant volcanic crater on the southern island of Jolo. Sixteen-hundred were massacred by American artillery, rifles and machine guns. U.S. officials reported:
"This action was absolutely necessary to the welfare of the people of Jolo. The position was first shelled by a naval gunboat and then assaulted by the troops and constabulary. The Moro women fought alongside the men and held their children before them, having sworn to die rather than yield. In this way a number of women and children were among the killed - an unfortunate but necessary evil."
The same script we hear today had been written, even then, just as the U.S. was stepping fully onto the global stage. We will not list the atrocities that U.S. soldiers have committed against (almost always) non-white peoples in the 100 years since the Jolo Crater Massacre, the Philippines. They are legion, as were the massacres that occurred in the previous centuries of the evolution of American Manifest Destiny.
The rabid expansionism at the core of the American national personality has never been bound by fixed borders, international law, or any other constraints. Steeped in racism, it places no value whatsoever on non-white lives. That's why the Bush administration gets away with not counting the civilian casualties in Iraq - only the American dead matter. And that's why contemporary Americans feel perfectly normal speaking of "exporting American values" and other nonsense to cloak the atrocities of nation-stealing that are but a "necessary evil" in the fulfillment of some God-given mission - wherever it leads.
Continuity of Crimes
The Haditha, Balad, Ramadi, and Makr al-Deeb massacres of Iraqi civilians by U.S. troops are mere whiffs from the inferno that has consumed up to a quarter million Iraqis since the Americans set upon their mission to accomplish - as in 1906 Jolo, the Philippines - what was "absolutely necessary to the welfare of the people."
In a post-Haditha column that Cindy Sheehan, anti-war mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, called "the most difficult article that I have ever had to write," she decried "the fact that our troops are being turned into war criminals." Sheehan recognizes that the U.S. is in violation of international law - that the Iraq war is a criminal enterprise.
"War turns our mostly normal American youth into wanton murderers who have lost their own humanity and love of others. Haditha in this war and My Lai in another disgusting war were unfortunately not aberrations. War is the abominable aberration."
We commend Sheehan's courage in describing the U.S. government as criminal. In doing so, she is beginning to confront the national mythology - at the core of the national identity - that Americans are always seeking some "greater good" and commit crimes only by mistake or through the "aberrations" that are inevitably unleashed once wars are started.
But even the brave Ms. Sheehan cannot face the truth. The (white) American public still cannot discuss why the U.S. glories in having become the ultimate imperial power of all time, to the acclaim of the overwhelming majority of its citizens whose whole history and culture has prepared them to accept this "burden." Wars may be aberrant experiences in the lives of most human individuals, but some nations are serial aggressors. American society is unique in having been formed almost wholly by processes of aggression against external and internal Others.
Societies willingly go to war when they have been primed to do so by an already existing mass internal dynamic that is easily manipulated by scheming rulers. White America has been constantly at war with Others, internal and external, since long before the founding of the Republic. George Bush just played the right chords, in Iraq. Now the music is sounding way off key, which causes majorities of Americans great concern and confusion. Yet these same citizens react just like their pre-Iraq selves when the Bush regime choreographs a near-identical run-up to war with neighboring Iran - another country they know nothing about except that it's not "white" in the American sense. Are white Americans stupid, or have they been conditioned by a national ethos born of habitual aggression, fundamental expectations of impunity, and an idiotic assumption of innocence.
Cindy Sheehan tries to find the soft spot in America by blaming the crimes in Iraq and Vietnam on something called "war," but sadly winds up in the same place as apologists for slavery and genocide, who claim these systematic crimes were "aberrations" not fundamental to the American national character and worldview.
Slavery was not an aberration; it created the wealth that allowed the United States to emerge as a world power only a century-and-a-quarter after the Declaration of Independence, and to become a magnet for successive waves of European immigrants. Genocide of Native Americans was not an aberration; it was the logical outcome of the original European hemispheric-theft project, and became the national project with the triumph of the settlers over the British. The ever-expanding United States was born. Was it an aberration?
At the very least, we must hope the planet survives the United States. In a world that is becoming inter-dependent at breath-taking speed, there is no room for a superpower nation born in and nurtured by centuries of massacre and endless war, always with the majority support of its white citizenry.
A Change of Values
Most Black Americans understand that the U.S. has never been up to any good in the non-white vastness of the world, because we realize that most American whites have been steeped in either blood or lies about our own Black corner of the society. African Americans react with learned cynicism when white anti-warriors call for a "return" to "American values" - for obvious historical and contemporary reasons. What values? "American" values are the problem.
The American-instigated crisis that threatens to widen the arenas of war is not just an "aberration" that can be corrected by getting the Bush men out of office - although that would be welcome. In truth, most Americans care little about the world, unless they have a privileged position in it, imposing their will on everyone else. They are collectively hostile to their own fellow citizens who are Black, and many are rousing themselves for a fierce confrontation with yet another Other: Latino immigrants. It's the same historical dynamic, that can only lead to more massacres and endless wars - foreign and domestic.
Glen Ford and Peter Gamble are writing a book to be titled, Barack Obama and the Crisis in Black Leadership.
Original
Comment on this Editorial
Post Iraq-awi
Poll: Zarqawi Death Has Little Impact - Most Americans Still Say War's Going Badly; Bush's Ratings Remain Low
CBS News
June 12, 2006
NEW YORK - The death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has done little to improve views of how things are going for the U.S. in Iraq or boost President Bush's approval ratings, a CBS News poll finds.
Mr. Bush has been cautious in his response to Zarqawi's killing by U.S. troops this week, calling it "a major blow to al Qaeda" but warning that it won't end the war "and it's certainly not going to end the violence."
Americans agree. Half think the level of violence in Iraq will be unchanged by Zarqawi's death, while 30 percent say it will actually lead to more attacks against U.S. forces. Just 16 percent think the number of attacks will decrease as a result of his death.
Sixty-one percent also say Zarqawi's death won't have any impact on the terrorist threat against the United States, while 22 percent it will increase that threat. Thirteen percent predict a decreased risk of terrorism.
AS A RESULT OF KILLING ZARQAWI, THE FOLLOWING THREATS WILL:
Attacks on U.S. Troops
Increase
30%
Decrease
16%
Same
50%
Terrorist Threat to U.S.
Increase
22%
Decrease
13%
Same
61%
Fifty-five percent of Americans still say the war in Iraq is going badly for the United States, while an overwhelming majority, 82 percent, describe the situation in Iraq as a civil war between Iraqis.
Still, the poll did find some signs that Americans are becoming more optimistic about Iraq - at least when looking at the long term. Sixty percent now say it's somewhat likely or very likely that the United States will ultimately find success in Iraq, a 5-point jump since last month.
More than half of Americans also say Iraq will eventually become a stable democracy, though it will take more than a year or two.
Zarqawi's killing hasn't helped President Bush with the public, either. His overall job approval rating remains just 33 percent - down slightly from 35 percent last month - while 60 percent disapprove.
BUSH'S JOB APPROVAL
Now
Approve
33%
Disapprove
60%
May 2006
Approve
35%
Disapprove
60%
Mr. Bush's approval rating for handling the war in Iraq is unchanged at 33 percent, while approval for his handling of terrorism remains just below 50 percent.
The president also gets mostly poor marks on domestic issues, with just one in three Americans saying they approve of how he's handling both immigration and the economy.
Comment on this Article
"Al-Qaeda in Iraq" names new head
BBC News
13/06/2006
Al-Qaeda in Iraq has named a successor to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, days after he was killed in a US air strike.
Abu Hamza al-Muhajir is "knowledgeable" and has a history of fighting a holy war, said an internet message on a site used by Islamic militants.
But observers say little is known about him - the name could be a pseudonym.
In Washington, President George W Bush said Mujahir would be "on our list to bring to justice", during talks on Iraq with military and diplomatic planners.
Speaking after the first of two days of talks his advisers say may herald a crucial reassessment of the war, Mr Bush also said US troops would stay in Iraq for the immediate future.
The news came as US military officials said Zarqawi had died from injuries consistent with the results of a bomb.
Questions had arisen over how he had died after the Americans revealed he had still been alive following the bombing of a safe house by US planes on Wednesday.
Pseudonym
The statement from al-Qaeda in Iraq said its council had "unanimously agreed" on the choice.
Muhajir is "a good brother, has a history in jihad [holy war] and is knowledgeable", the message said.
"We ask God that he... continue what Sheikh Abu Musab began," it added.
Muhajir was not among the names al-Qaeda analysts had expected as a probable successor, and is believed to be a pseudonym.
Analysts say the name al-Muhajir - which is Arabic for immigrant - suggests he is not Iraqi. [...]
Comment: And there you have. The Pentagon picks another likely suspect, gives him a name and the US and Israel-led war of terror steam ahead uneffected. It we stop and think about the recent Zarqawi show, we realise that there is only ONE party that benefits - the war mongers. The propaganda was very useful, a much needed "success" in the "war on terror" to promote to the masses. Meanwhile, no one else benefits. The killings in Iraq will definitely continue, Blair and Bush insist (how can they be so sure?), the Middle East is no more peaceful, if anything it is more dangerous and the world in general is no safer from "evil Muslim terrorists". Basically there was no net gain from Zarqawi's "demise" other than the propaganda that if offered the Bush government and the war pimps in general.
Comment on this Article
Bush pays surprise visit to Iraqi PM
Last Updated Tue, 13 Jun 2006 10:00:23 EDT
CBC News
U.S. President George W. Bush made a top-secret trip to Baghdad on Tuesday, giving the new Iraqi prime minister only a few minutes notice that he planned to stop by.
"Good to see you," Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said as he met Bush in the U.S. embassy, a palace in the heavily guarded Green Zone.
"Thanks for having me," Bush answered.
The Iraqi leader didn't know Bush was coming until minutes before he arrived, the Associated Press reported.
For security reasons, Bush's trip was kept secret. Only a few aides and reporters had been told in advance.
The president is only supposed to stay in the war-torn Iraqi capital for about five hours.
Al-Malaki's cabinet was sworn in on May 20, months after the Dec. 15 parliamentary election. The installation of the national unity government had been stalled by negotiations between the Shia Muslim politicians who now dominate the Iraqi parliament and Sunnis, who used to wield more power under Saddam Hussein.
The U.S. embassy was once a palace used by the deposed Iraqi leader, who is now on trial accused of war crimes.
Comment on this Article
Bush opens Iraq strategy overhaul
by Olivier Knox
AFP
June 13, 2006
CAMP DAVID, United States - US President George W. Bush was to hold talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on how best to help the new government in Baghdad, paving the way for an eventual US withdrawal.
From the secluded Camp David retreat, Bush and top US officials were to hold a roughly hour-long videoconference with Maliki and his senior aides in the violence-wracked Iraqi capital to map a way forward, the White House said.
The US president was to return to Washington later in the day and take questions from reporters after two days of high-level talks aimed at reassessing US strategy in Iraq.
Bush said after day-long talks with senior advisers on Monday that talk of a US withdrawal from Iraq was premature, even as he placed new leaders in Baghdad squarely in charge of ultimately pacifying their country.
Bush suggested that Maliki's fledgling government tap Iraq's vast oil reserves to create a special fund to help Iraqis, securing support against militants behind a bloody insurgency.
"The best way to win this war against an insurgency is to stand up a unity government which is capable of defending itself but also providing tangible benefits to the people," he said.
Bush also urged Iraq's neighbors and the international community to do more to help Maliki's new government and vowed to target the successor to Al-Qaeda's chief in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed last week.
"The successor to Zarqawi is going to be on our list to bring to justice," said Bush, who called the Jordan-born extremist's death "a major blow" to Osama bin Laden's group but warned it is "not going to end the war."
Amid mounting pressure to bring some or all US troops home, the president said that the commander of US forces in Iraq, General George Casey, would assess how well Maliki's team was doing in defeating the insurgency.
"Whatever we do will be based upon the conditions on the ground. And whatever we do will be toward a strategy of victory," said Bush. "This is a process of understanding the Iraqi capabilities."
A senior White House official said that the new leadership in Iraq -- the first permanent government since
Saddam Hussein's ouster three years ago -- marked a "break point" that left Iraqis "in charge" of their country.
That rhetoric, and recent emphasis on the role the international community must play, suggest a new effort to shift the burden for Iraq from Washington and a few other countries to a broader base.
The US president also suggested that Iraq's vast oil reserves might be one of Maliki's best weapons against those who seek to destabilize his government, proposing the creation of a special fund to help the Iraqi people.
"The new government is going to have to figure out how best to lease the people's lands in a fair way," said Bush.
"My own view is that the government ought to use the oil as a way to unite the country and ought to think about having, you know, a tangible fund for the people so the people have faith in the central government," he said.
Bush also insisted that "Iraq's neighbors ought to do more to help them. And we're constantly working with our friends in the neighborhood to encourage them to support this new democracy."
"We expect our friends who have made commitments -- 13 billion dollars -- to honor those commitments," he said, referring to the amount pledged by donors other than the United States at an Iraq aid conference in October 2003.
Bush summoned senior advisers and outside experts to Camp David for long-distance talks with military and diplomatic officials in Baghdad on how to help Maliki's government secure its footing.
US officials said they were most concerned with finding ways to help Maliki achieve stated goals like boosting electricity generation, securing Baghdad, and curbing sectarian violence.
The pressure on Bush has grown as his Republican party worries increasingly about key November congressional elections that are expected to be dominated by the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq.
Comment on this Article
US artillery round kills Iraqi civilians
Sunday 04 June 2006
A US artillery round landed in a small Iraqi town on Friday and Iraqi police reported later that two civilians were killed in a blast, with one woman later dying from her wounds.
Three other people were also reported wounded and six houses were damaged in the town of Hibhib, north of Baghdad, after a US artillery unit fired a 155mm round during training, a US statement said on Sunday.
"Accident in Diyala (province) kills three, injures three," the statement's headline said.
The incident came at a sensitive time for Iraqi-US relations.
The new Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, said last week he was losing patience with reports of US killings of Iraqi civilians "by mistake".
The US military statement said a self-propelled howitzer fired the round from a base near the bigger regional town of Baquba, 65km north of the capital.
"A short time later Iraqi police reported an explosion at a building in the town (Hibhib) that killed two Iraqi civilians, injured four others and damaged six houses," the statement said.
One of the wounded civilians was evacuated to a military medical facility but later died, it added.
Ties soured
Just two weeks after al-Maliki took office, relations between his government and the US appear to have been soured by accusations of US troops killing Iraqi civilians.
Al-Maliki told Reuters in an interview last week: "We are worried about the increase in 'mistakes' ... I am not saying that they are intentional. But it is worrying for us."
Last Wednesday, a joint Iraqi-US security body said US forces had killed "by mistake" two women who were en route to a maternity hospital north of Baghdad.
The US military is also under pressure over accusations that US marines may have killed 24 civilians in the western Iraqi town of Haditha last November.
The US military separately reported on Sunday that Iraqi soldiers had detained 19 "terrorists" during a search operation in eastern Baghdad on Saturday.
One of the detainees "reported having difficulty breathing" and died of a heart attack, it said.
Comment: Interesting that this "accident" (unlikely) occurred in the town of hibhib, where the Americans have a military base, the same area that Zarqawi was recently killed (again). Strange that Zarqawi would choose to have his safehouse right on the doorstep of US troops. Perhaps it just made it easier to keep an eye on him and contact him for his periodic video and audio shoots.
Comment on this Article
Blasts rock Iraq following Al-Qaeda threats
by Marwan Ibrahim
AFP
June 13, 2006
KIRKUK - At least 18 people have been killed in five car bomb attacks targeting police in the northern oil city of Kirkuk as violence raged country-wide after the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Al Qaeda in Iraq said it had chosen a new leader, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, an Egyptian, and promised to continue the work of slain militant leader, in an Internet statement.
It decided to "prepare, in coordination with the other components of the consultative council of the mujahedeen, great operations that will shake the enemy", the statement said.
US military leaders in Iraq said they had been expecting renewed attacks in the wake of Zarqawi's death while security measures in Baghdad were being beefed up in anticipation of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's long awaited new security plan for the capital.
The attacks came after the first of two days of high-level talks US President George W. Bush held with top diplomatic and military officials to reassess the war effort in Iraq focusing on greater security responsibility for the Iraqi government.
"The best way to win this war against an insurgency is to stand up a unity government which is capable of defending itself but also providing tangible benefits to the people," he said at the Camp David retreat in Maryland.
US troops, however, would not be drawn down until conditions improve on the ground and the Iraqi security forces can clearly secure the situation.
The five car bombs, several of them suicide bombs, in Kirkuk hit an ethnically diverse city that has not been known for large car bombs, but rather mostly individual assassinations between ethnic and sectarian groups.
"The total casualties for the five car bombs are 18 killed and more than 45 wounded," said Brigadier General Burhan Hamid Tayyib, police chief for Kirkuk center.
Another suicide car bomb attempt in central Kirkuk targeting headquarters of the PUK party was foiled when guards shot dead the driver of a booby-trapped car as he drove towards them, without detonating the car.
The first car bomb exploded at around 7:30 am (0330 GMT) in the city's Tisaeen market in an area largely inhabited by Shiite members of the city's Turkmen community, killing 13 people, including two policemen, and wounding 18.
Approximately half an hour later, a suicide car bomb attempted to ram the main police headquarters, prompting police to open fire on it. The car exploded, missing its target, police commander Major General Torhan Yussef, but two policemen died and eight civilians were wounded.
The three other car bombs, one of which was a suicide attack, exploded in different parts of the city, killing three more policemen and wounding over a dozen, including Colonel Taher Salah al-Din, the police chief for the southern Kirkuk Hurriyah neighborhood.
The bombing campaign comes after the arrest of eight suspected insurgents by US and Iraqi forces in two operations on Sunday in Kirkuk.
On Wednesday, the US military dropped a pair of 500 pound bombs on Zarqawi's safe house, killing him and yielding a "treasure trove" of intelligence about the organization.
In Baghdad, there were a number of attacks, including a bomb targeting a police patrol in central Baghdad that killed one policemen and wounded four others, as well as injuring a detainee they were transporting.
A professor at the College of Engineering was shot dead as he left his house and 14 bodies, shot and bearing signs of torture, were found in and around the city.
In Karbala, gunmen shot dead a police captain in the criminal investigations department.
A bomb targeting a police patrol in the Samarra market missed its target but killed four civilians and injured seven.
Comment on this Article
Ramadi Becomes Another Fallujah
12.06.2006
IPS
AMMAN - These days, Ramadi is nearly impossible to enter. Against the backdrop of the Haditha massacre, IPS has received reports of civilians killed by snipers, and homes occupied with American snipers on their roof, while families were detained downstairs.
One man, who wishes to be known simply as 'an Iraqi friend,' met with IPS in Amman to describe the situation in Ramadi and detail recent events there as he saw them.
"To enter Ramadi (about 100 km west of Baghdad) you have to pass the bridge on the Euphrates and the electrical station for Ramadi. This is occupied by the U.S. troops. The checkpoint is there, the glass factory nearby is occupied by American snipers. Here they inspect cars and you will need more than four hours just to pass the bridge."
Reports from Ramadi have been few and far between in recent months, and always filed by reporters embedded with U.S. troops working in the area.
Witnesses interviewed by IPS in Amman provided a nuanced picture of the situation, one that is very different from the military focus of embedded journalists.
Their stories describe death happening any moment, without signals or warning.
"On the side of the main street you will find destroyed buildings, and military tents on the buildings for snipers. Be careful, if you hear any sound of fighting, hide in the side roads, park your car there and get in any house and hide, because snipers will kill anyone who moves, even if the fighting is in another area."
Sheikh Majeed al-Ga'oud is from Wahaj al-Iraq village just outside Ramadi, and visits the city regularly. He also described snipers killing without discretion.
"The American snipers don't make any distinction between civilians or fighters, anything that moves, he shoots immediately. This is a very dirty thing, they are killing lots of civilians who are not fighters."
According to the Iraqi friend, many people have been killed in Ramadi because they simply do not know which parts of the city are now no-go zones.
One such area is the main street through Ramadi. After the first traffic light you are not allowed to proceed forward, only to the right or left.
"The way is blocked, not by concrete, but by snipers. Anyone who goes ahead in the street will be killed. There's no sign that it's not allowed, but it's known to the local people. Many people came to visit us from Baghdad. They didn't know this and they went ahead a few metres and were killed."
Sheikh Majeed was in Ramadi just a few days before speaking to IPS in Amman. He described a city where the fighters are very much in control.
"They are controlling the ground and they are very self-confident. They don't cover their faces with masks, and the Americans are running away from them. The Americans cannot win an infantry war with them, so they began using massive airpower to bomb them.."
While in Ramadi, he saw many damaged homes, and said there were no civil services functioning.
"You will see that they bombed the power stations, water treatment facilities, and water pipes. This house is destroyed, that house is destroyed. You will see poverty everywhere. The things that the simplest human in the world must have, you won't have it there."
The Iraqi friend described a similar situation. "I saw four houses until now, but I didn't see all of Ramadi, it's a big town. There are also houses destroyed in the farms, I saw some, but most of them I couldn't see it because they are huge farms."
Ramadi is at present cut off from the rest of Iraq. Within, sometimes the electricity works, and some homes have generators, but the local phone service has been completely destroyed.
"The phone station was attacked by U.S. troops, and now even the building is completely destroyed. And the train station also, one hundred percent destroyed, day after day F16s bomb it."
Life in Ramadi has not always been this difficult. When Baghdad fell, Ramadi had not yet been entered. When Baghdad was wracked by lawlessness and theft, Ramadi remained relatively calm.
"It was a very quiet city, there was order," Sheikh Majeed said. "Though there are many different tribes there, and there is tension between the tribes, there was order. They respected each other, they respected the law."
The Iraqi friend suggested why Ramadi remained calm and, unlike Baghdad, was not entered in the first days of the occupation.
"They made a deal with the tribes to not enter the city. But the political parties spoiled this agreement. They wanted to control Ramadi, so they gave wrong information to Americans. There was a small demonstration but not by Saddam loyalists; it was a peaceful demonstration against the occupation."
After this demonstration of just 30 people, the agreement was broken and the military invaded Ramadi. Iraqis were killed, and following tribal policies of revenge, a cycle of violence began.
Qasem Dulaimi, who lives in Ramadi, told IPS his home was occupied by American and Iraqi troops in May.
"They crushed the main doors and entered the house. I got out of my room and said some words in English, 'we are a peaceful family, ok its ok'." But the family members were locked up in a small room downstairs.
"From time to time we heard shooting from our roof. They used our house as a killing tool, they used the roof as a killing tool."
Eventually his family was released and the American troops moved on.
The Iraqi friend witnessed the killing of a young boy. "He was going to his school at about eight in the morning, carrying his books and crossing the street. Suddenly he fell down. I thought he just had a problem in his leg and fell, but he stayed for a long time like this. I knew or I felt there was a sniper who shot him."
Stories such as this one are common amongst Ramadi's residents.
"Haithem, one of the brothers of this kid, tried to find a way and took two steps to take the boy away. Snipers shot and missed him. So he didn't try again. The boy remained there four hours, bleeding. He had been shot in the head."
Comment on this Article
Bush administration ends already blown Zarqawi deception
June 12, 2006
Online Journal.com
The purported execution of "Al-Qaeda mystery man" Musab al-Zarqawi ends what was exposed two months ago as a Pentagon psychological operation in leaked military documents.
The pursuit of Zarqawi is being sold as the "turning point" of the Iraq war. It is nothing of the sort. This is another lie, heaped upon the multitude of lies that comprise the "war on terrorism" itself.
Zarqawi: Pentagon psy-op and intelligence asset
What is a well-established (and deliberately unaddressed) fact is that the United States government and US-connected intelligence agencies created Islamic "terrorism." The US and its allies have continued to use and guide terrorist cells, as well as fill worldwide media with "terrorism" propaganda.
See, "Who is Osama bin Laden?" and "Al-Qaeda: the database"
As pointed out by Michel Chossodovsky in "The Anglo-American War of Terror: An Overview", the continuing US-led war of conquest rests upon a labyrinth of deceptions, of which "Zarqawi" is one:
"One of the main objectives of war propaganda is to 'fabricate an enemy.' As anti-war sentiment grows and the political legitimacy of the Bush administration falters, doubts regarding the existence of this illusive 'outside enemy' must be dispelled.
"Propaganda purports not only to drown the truth but also to 'kill the evidence' on how this 'outside enemy,' namely Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda was fabricated and transformed into 'Enemy Number One.'"
With the Zarqawi hit, a bit more of this evidence has been killed. Literally.
Zarqawi, "Bush's man in Iraq" is not just a manipulated Anglo-American intelligence asset, but a clumsy Pentagon psychological operation. The legend of the "shadowy terror mastermind" responsible for virtually every act of violence in Iraq and beyond has morphed and changed over the years. In a bizarre recent twist (perhaps paving the way for last week's finale), Zarqawi, the "great terrorist mastermind," was depicted as an incompetent; an object of ridicule lacking the knowledge to properly handle an automatic weapon (leading to questions about the competence of US propaganda apparatus). Zarqawi has been reported dead more than once, and now he is dead again, deader than ever.
The definitive analysis, "Who is Musab al Zarqawi?" (recently updated to include analysis of the purported Zarqawi hit), chronicles the entire Zarqawi operation from its inception. In this piece, Chossudovsky reveals:
" [...] a recent Washington Post article provides details on leaked internal military documents which confirm the existence of a PSYOP 'Zarqawi program' at the Pentagon. (WP. 10 April 2006 ) The latter consists in creating a 'Zarqawi Legend' by feeding disinformation into the news chain:
"The Zarqawi campaign is discussed in several of the internal military documents. "Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response," one U.S. military briefing from 2004 stated. It listed three methods: "Media operations," "Special Ops (626)" (a reference to Task Force 626, an elite U.S. military unit assigned primarily to hunt in Iraq for senior officials in Hussein's government) and "PSYOP," the U.S. military term for propaganda work . . ." (WP . 10 April 2006, further details).
"In this regard, the senior commander entrusted with Pentagon's PSYOP operation is General Kimmitt who now occupies the position of senior planner at US Central Command (USCENTCOM), responsible for directing operations in Iraq and the Middle East confirms that
'There was clearly an information campaign to raise the public awareness of who Zarqawi was, primarily for the Iraqi audience but also with the international audience.'
"A goal of the campaign was to drive a wedge into the insurgency by emphasizing Zarqawi's terrorist acts and foreign origin, said officers familiar with the program. 'Through aggressive Strategic Communications, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi now represents: Terrorism in Iraq/Foreign Fighters in Iraq/Suffering of Iraqi People (Infrastructure Attacks)/Denial of Iraqi Aspirations,' the same briefing asserts . . . (Ibid)'"
Once it was exposed, this psy-op had to be shut down in the most opportune and timely fashion, obliterating the trail behind an explosive final blast of propaganda.
Bush administration's final lies
The Bush administration's mighty Wurlitzer is in overdrive, pushing again to inflate Bush's macho image, distract attention from unfolding scandals (that won't go away) and continuing losses in Iraq and Afghanistan. In an election year, Bush-Rove is seeking to boost lowest-ever poll numbers, and silence political opposition, with help from both corporate media and "alternative" media. News broadcasts continue to show self-congratulatory Bush White House players gloating about its glorious hunt for Islamic "quarry," and posturing over photos of the alleged Zarqawi corpse.
As Chossudovsky notes, the spin is obvious and transparent:
"The Bush administration is already announcing 'a post-Zarqawi era,' suggesting that with the death of its presumed leader, the 'insurgency' is in the process of being defeated. Zarqawi's death was an opportunity for the new government to 'turn the tide,' Bush said. 'The ideology of terror has lost one of its most visible and aggressive leaders.'
"The killing of Zarqawi has occurred at a time when Bush's public support is at an all time low, as confirmed by the opinion polls. In a press conference at the White House, Bush underscored the role of Zarqawi as 'commanders of the terrorist movement in Iraq. He led a campaign of car bombings, assassinations and suicide attacks that has taken the lives of many American forces and thousands of innocent Iraqis. Osama bin Laden called this Jordanian terrorist the prince of Al Qaida in Iraq. He called on the terrorists around the world to listen to him and obey him.'
"'Now Zarqawi has met his end and this violent man will never murder again,' suggesting that the US has from now on the upper hand in Iraq. 'Zarqawi's death is a severe blow to Al Qaida. It's a victory in the global war on terror, and it is an opportunity for Iraq's new government to turn the tide of this struggle.'"
More importantly: "Zarqawi's death has also served as a convenient cover-up of the extensive war crimes committed by coalition forces in Iraq. The news coverage suggests that Zarqawi, rather than coalition forces, are responsible for countless atrocities and civilian deaths. In the words of Don Rumsfeld, the man who led the criminal invasion and occupation of Iraq: 'I think arguably, over the last several years no single person on this planet has had the blood of more innocent man, women and children on his hands than Zarqawi.'"
(In fact, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and the other murderers of the Bush administration have more blood on their hands than any US presidency in history. They know it. They like it.)
The Bush administration has momentarily succeeded in one respect: hapless congressional Democrats and Left intellectuals (who have enthusiastically supported the "war on terrorism") have been maneuvered and cowed into congratulating Bush's "success," and echoing the administration's lies verbatim. They, along with a large portion of the American sheeple, still jump through the time-honored 9/11 propaganda hoops in Pavlovian fashion, each time Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and the New York Times and Fox News, say "jump." But even this trick has lost its power. Even mainstream reports have noted that any momentary popularity bump for Bush and his war have been "fleeting" at best.
No psychological operation can hide the fact that the Bush administration and its neocon "plan" has failed in catastrophic fashion: failed to do the job it was installed into power to do; failed to conquer Central Asia and the Middle East; failed to secure and control cheap oil; failed to gain geopolitical advantage over superpower rivals. In fact, Bush-Cheney has obliterated what little international respect the New World Order once believed it commanded.
The Zarqawi "crescendo" signals what is likely the beginning of a final chapter in the Bush administration's "war on terror" fiction, as the administration itself faces its own fall. In an attempt to save face, the mentally ill Bush and his criminals know they must act now to create the illusion of victory, even as their violent, criminal acts have left the New World Order, and the entire world, in flames.
Could a spectacular pursuit and execution of "Osama bin Laden" be far behind?
Comment on this Article
Another US Cover-Up Surfaces in Iraq
13.06.2006
Dahr Jamail
With Arkan Hamed
BAGHDAD - In the wake of the Haditha massacre, reports of another atrocity have surfaced in which U.S. troops killed two women in Samarra, and then attempted to hide evidence of their responsibility.
Among the innumerable such cases people speak of, this one too has now come to light.
According to an earlier account, Nabiha Nisaif Jassim, a 35-year-old mother of two, was killed in firing along with her 57-year-old cousin Saliha Mohammed Hassan on May 30 when they were being transported to Samarra General Hospital for Nabiha to give birth.
What was not reported, according to an Iraqi human rights investigator who spoke with IPS on condition of anonymity, was that both women were shot in the back of the head by U.S. snipers.
"I investigated this incident myself, and both of these women were shot from behind," said the investigator. "Nabiha's brains were splattered on her brother who was driving the car, since she was in the back seat."
The U.S. military said soldiers fired on the car after it entered a "clearly marked prohibited area near an observation post" after failing to stop despite "repeated visual and auditory warnings." The U.S. military said in a statement that "shots were fired to disable the vehicle."
The brother of the pregnant woman, Redam Nisaif Jassim, who was driving the car, told IPS that he neither saw nor heard any warnings by the U.S. military. Two men who witnessed the incident from a nearby home also said they saw no signs of any warning.
"These kinds of killings by the Americans happen daily in Iraq," said Jassim, "They gave no warning to us before killing my cousin and sister. Of course we know they have no respect for the lives of Iraqis."
The U.S. military claims the incident is being investigated.
The Haditha slaughter in which 24 Iraqis were killed is under investigation for the incident itself, and further for the cover-up, since the initial report given by the Marine Corps stated only that 15 civilian deaths were caused by a roadside bomb and fighting with insurgents.
In this case too, all signs point to a cover-up. "The area where they were killed by the Americans was completely unmarked," the human rights investigator told IPS. A warning sign at the place was put up after the two women were killed, he said.
Like the Haditha massacre, this incident too should be investigated both for the killing and the cover-up, he said.
According to the investigator, the U.S. troops who killed the two women made no attempt to assist them after the shooting.
The next day Redam Jassim was summoned to a local police station. "The Americans offered me $5,000, and told me it wasn't compensation but because of tradition," Jassim told IPS. The U.S. military pays usually $2,500 compensation for killing an Iraqi. Jassim says he refused the payment.
The U.S. military recently announced in a Defense Department report provided to Congress that it paid out $19 million in compensation to Iraqis last year - half of which paid out by Marines in al-Anbar province west of Baghdad.
The military claimed the amount was paid in 600 separate incidents, but it is common knowledge in Iraq that the usual payout for a non-combat civilian death is $2,500.
A payment of $19 million compensation at $2,500 a person would suggest such killings in thousands.
Jassim told IPS and the human rights investigator that he was asked by the Americans' translator to sign a paper written in English. The family and their relatives live in a village called al-Muta'assim, a 40-minute drive from the main hospital in Samarra.. Most people there, like the Jassims, neither speak nor read English.
After he signed the paper, Jassim was offered $2,500 by U.S. soldiers, which he again refused.
"It is clear the Americans tried to cheat him as well as cover up their tracks at the same time," the investigator told IPS. "Like in Haditha, this incident, along with so many others we cannot keep track of, requires a truly independent investigation, rather than one by the U.S. military."
Phone calls and e-mails to the U.S. military spokesperson in Baghdad have not been returned.
Comment on this Article
Nine killed in US raid near Baquba
Monday 12 June 2006
Witnesses said the raid left a total of nine dead
Seven people with links to senior al-Qaeda leaders were killed in an air strike in Iraq on Monday, the US military said.
The raid also left two children dead, the military stated, although an Iraqi witness gave a different account, saying the nine killed were all members of one family.
The US military said three people were wounded and two others were detained in the attack near the city of Baquba, where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed last week.
"Coalition forces killed seven terrorists, wounded three, and detained an additional two terrorists during a raid in the vicinity of Baquba June 12," the military said in a statement.
"The targeted terrorists have been linked to previous coalition operations and had ties to senior al-Qaeda leaders across Iraq. Intelligence also indicates this particular terrorist cell is involved in the facilitation of foreign fighters in the area."
The military said coalition forces received machine gun fire from a rooftop upon arriving.
"Two other individuals with AK-47s had been seen fleeing that area just prior to the assault. Coalition aircraft supporting the ground force immediately suppressed the enemy fire, killing seven."
It said there were women and children at the scene.
"Following the assault, coalition troops discovered two children had been killed. One child was wounded and evacuated for treatment," the military said.
It added that troops secured one rocket propelled grenade launcher, five rockets, nine AK-47 assault rifles and 20 loaded ammunition magazines.
On Wednesday, al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed near Baquba in an air strike.
Guard error
Witnesses said the raid on Monday left a total of nine killed.
Muhammad Abbas, a relative of those killed, said the raid was started after an error on part of the local guard in the village of al-Hashmiya, west of Baquba, where the air strike was carried out.
"We were sleeping on the rooftop at midnight when one of the local guards fired in the air as he saw individuals who he thought were insurgents ... unfortunately they turned out to be US troops on foot patrol," he said.
"The US forces responded fiercely and struck several houses first and later concentrated on one house. We later discovered that nine members of the house, including seven children and youngsters were killed while four members are missing."
'Fierce attack'
Another witness, Shahin Abdullah at the local hospital where the bodies were brought, described the US attack as "fierce."
"We were sleeping on the rooftop at midnight when one of the local guards fired in the air as he saw individuals who he thought were insurgents ... unfortunately they turned out to be US troops on foot patrol"
Muhammad Abbas, a relative of the dead
"We heard sound of explosions and airplanes in the sky. The result was that nine were killed and four are missing," Abdullah said, and added that the local guard mistook the US troops for armed groups as "we are not used to the troops doing foot patrol. They usually come in tanks and vehicles."
In other developments, an early morning blast on Monday killed six people when it struck a minivan carrying oil refinery workers in Baghdad.
Also, a roadside bomb was detonated next to a police patrol east of Kirkuk, but missed and struck a civilian car.
One person was killed and two were injured in the explosion.
Comment: Given that the US military has a long history of blatantly lying about the fact that it had killed innocent civilians, much like the IDF in Palestine, the above official version of events is very likely entirely made up.
Comment on this Article
Eugene Soldier refuses to deploy to Iraq
AP
Tue Jun 13, 2006
EUGENE, Ore. - A 21-year-old woman who refused to deploy with her Army unit to Iraq for a second tour has been arrested and will be returned to Fort Lewis, Wash., Eugene police said Monday.
Eugene Police spokesman Sgt. Rich Stronach said Spec. Suzanne Swift, 21, told officers she did not want to go back to Iraq. She was picked up Sunday night at the request of the Army.
Stronach said Swift at first did not say who she was but was identified by tattoos described in the warrant and was arrested at her family's home without incident.
She was listed as AWOL late last year and her unit left for Iraq without her. She served her first tour in Iraq with a military police unit in 2004, her mother, Sarah Rich, told Oregon Public Broadcasting.
Rich said her daughter broke down and said she could not return because of the war and the way she was treated. She said her daughter was belittled, called names, and frequently propositioned.
Swift is expected to be returned to Fort Lewis on Tuesday.
Comment on this Article
Cancer
Nine killed in Gaza strike, Abbas slams 'state terrorism'
by Adel Zaanoun
AFP
June 13, 2006
GAZA CITY (AFP) - Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has accused Israel of engaging in state terrorism after seven civilians were among a group of nine people killed in an air strike on the Gaza Strip.
The raid, the deadliest since the Islamists of Hamas won elections in January, turned the focus back on the conflict with Israel after a bout of factional violence which saw the parliament and cabinet offices set ablaze.
Although two of the victims were confirmed as members of the hardline Islamic Jihad movement, the other seven were believed to be civilians and included two children.
Around 20 other people were wounded in the raid Tuesday on the main north-south road in the narrow coastal territory, which came shortly before another explosion went off in the Beit Lahiya region of northern Gaza.
Palestinians said the second blast, which wounded one, was the result of an Israeli raid although the army denied involvement.
A military spokesman however confirmed the involvement of its aircraft in the first explosion, saying it had hit a car carrying militants who were preparing to fire Katyuashas, rockets which have a much longer range than the usual makeshift missiles fired by the Palestinian factions.
A local leader of Jihad, Khaled al-Batsh, told AFP that three of the movement's followers had been in the vehicle which was targeted in the raid.
Two of the three were killed when two missiles slammed into the vehicle and the other injuries were caused by a third missile which was fired a short time afterwards while a group of civilians had gathered at the scene.
Israel has intensified its air strikes in recent days against all factions, including the governing Hamas which recently resumed rocket attacks following the death of eight Palestinian civilians on a beachfront in the Gaza Strip.
Still fuming over the deaths in Gaza, which the Palestinians say was caused bvy Israeli shelling despite denials from the military, Abbas denounced the latest civilian deaths.
"What Israel is doing is called state terrorism," Abbas told reporters at his office in Gaza. "This state terrorism will not shake us."
Israel appeared unrepentant however, with Defence Minister Amir Peretz renewing veiled threats against the Hamas leadership unless there was a halt to the Hamas rocket attacks.
"Nobody has an insurance policy. There will be no immunity for anyone who is connected with the planning or carrying out attacks against Israeli citizens," he said on a tour of the northern border with Lebanon.
The army issued a statement saying that 38 rockets had been fired from northern Gaza into Israel in the past 24 hours and more than 100 since Friday.
Abbas has consistently called on the factions to hold off from firing the crudely built rockets which have caused a number of Palestinian deaths.
Hamas had largely held off on rocket attacks for 18 months under a deal with Abbas but the resumption of firing over the weekend was reflective of the breakdown in relations between the Islamists and the president who continues to have control the security services stuffed with members of his Fatah faction.
The tensions between the two sides erupted on Monday in unprecedented factional violence which saw the parliament and cabinet offices torched, an MP kidnapped as well as deadly clashes in southern Gaza.
Gunmen from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, supported at times by members of the security services, even initially prevented the fire brigade from reaching the cabinet offices although the blaze was eventually brought under control.
To cap the sense of chaos, one of the few independent members of the Palestinian cabinet, tourism minister Judeh Mourqos, resigned in protest at the worsening security situation.
The Fatah loyalists' anger had been sparked by earlier violence in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah where Hamas militiamen tried to storm a compound housing the local headquarters of the preventive security service.
Two people were killed and more than a dozen wounded in Monday's factional violence in Rafah, which at one stage saw Hamas fire rocket-propelled grenades into the preventive security HQ.
Comment on this Article
Israel plans new homes in West Bank settlement (Palestinian Land)
DailyTimes.com
13/06/2006
JERUSALEM: Israel plans to build 54 new homes in the occupied West Bank despite an obligation under a US-backed peace "road map" to halt such construction on land Palestinians seek for a state. The Israel Lands Administration, a government agency, issued a tender inviting bids on 54 plots for single-family homes in the Jewish settlement of Elkana, near Ariel, a major settlement bloc.
The tender was published by Israeli media on Monday. The Palestinians have failed to meet their own obligation under the road map to dismantle militant groups. The Elkana tender was the first to be issued since the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert took office on May 4. "We fear this is only the first of further tenders to build up settlements," a spokesman with Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now said. reuters
Comment on this Article
Book links Begin to 1952 plot to kill then-German Chancellor Adenauer
By Amiram Barkat, Haaretz Correspondent4:49 13/06/2006
Former prime minister Menachem Begin played a central role in a failed attempt to assassinate then-West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, with the objective of sabotaging the reparations agreement in the works with Israel, according to the journal of Eliezer Sudit, one of the men who carried out the attempted hit.
Sudit's journal, which was published in a limited number of copies only, came into the possession of the Israel correspondent for the German daily, the Frankfurter Allgemeine.
Excerpts from the diary passed on to Haaretz reveal that Begin knew of the plans to assassinate Adenauer, and even initiated meetings to promote the operation. Among other things, Sudit writes that he heard Begin had offered to sell his gold watch to pay for the hit after the operation ran into financial difficulties.
Begin's personal secretary, Yehiel Kadishai, and Herzl Makov, the director of the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, told Haaretz on Monday night that they knew nothing of Begin's involvement in the affair.
On March 27, 1952, a German sapper was killed by an explosive device that had been hidden in an item of mail addressed to Adenauer. At the same time, two letter bombs were sent to the meeting place of the Israeli and German delegations by a group calling themselves the Jewish Partisans Organization.
A few weeks later, five Israelis were arrested in France on suspicion of involvement in the assassination attempt. One of the men arrested was Sudit, a former member of the Irgun, a prestate underground led by Begin. Sudit allegedly prepared the explosive device and hid it in the package sent to Adenauer.
Sudit decided to publicize the affair some 40 years later, in his journal, Be'shlihut Ha'matzpun (On a Mission of Conscience). According to Sudit, he met secretly with Begin and suggested "an operation that would shake the world and prove that not all Israelis are prepared to accept money as atonement for blood."
Sudit writes that Begin was very unhappy with the reparations agreement in the works, noting that the former prime minister "was ready for any reaction that would come as long as the reparations agreement was avoided."
Sudit says that Begin subsequently introduced him to then-Herut MKs Yohanan Bader and Haim Landau, and also Abba Shertzer, who headed the Irgun's intelligence service. It was Shertzer who told Sudit of Begin's readiness to sell his gold watch to finance the trip to France.
According to the journal, Begin and Sudit met once more before the latter left to carry out his mission.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine announced Monday that it would be publishing extracts from the journal in the near future. The newspaper's Israel correspondent, Joerg Bremer, told Haaretz that he had tried to interview Sudit a number of times, but had been turned down with the excuse that the man was not willing to speak to Germans.
Comment on this Article
Report: Israeli spy network in Lebanon uncovered
By Jack Khoury, Haaretz CorrespondentLast update - 18:23 12/06/2006
Lebanese intelligence services say they have uncovered a spy network working for Israel, the Lebanese A-Safir daily newspaper reported Monday.
According to the report, the network has been active since 1990 and was exposed in a complex operation dubbed Surprise at Dawn. The operation was launched following the assassination of the Islamic Jihad secretary general in Lebanon Mahmoud al-Majdoub and his brother Nidal with a car bomb last month.
A senior Lebanese intelligence source predicted that the interrogation of suspects could lead to the exposure of Lebanese and Palestinian agents working for Israel on Lebanese soil.
The source said it was possible these agents were involved in a long series of explosions and assassinations in Lebanon.
According to the report, Lebanese intelligence identified the car used in the al-Majdoub assassination as owned by Mahmoud Qassem Rafa, 59, a retired policeman. Security forces began following the man after his financial situation radically improved several months ago.
Surveillance has been tightened in the past week and intelligence services wire-tapped into his phone. Rafa was arrested several days ago in the early hours of the morning coming home.
In his interrogation Rafa confessed to his involvement in the al-Majdoub assassination, as well as in the killing of senior Hezbollah member Ali Salah and in several other incidents.
Lebanese intelligence services said that the investigation now focuses on the source of the explosives in the al-Majdoub assassination and on Rafa's network associates, some of whom already managed to flee the country.
Comment: Explosions and assassinations, eh? Can anyone say "Hariri"?
Comment on this Article
Abbas supporters attack Palestinian parliament
Last Updated Tue, 13 Jun 2006 05:15:48 EDT
CBC News
Tensions between the two main Palestinian factions exploded into violence on Monday when forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas opened fire on the parliament building in Ramallah.
Tensions between President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction and Hamas, which controls the parliament, are reaching a crisis. (Muhammed Muheisen/Associated Press)
The security forces of Abbas' Fatah movement were enraged by an earlier attack in Gaza where gunmen from the governing Hamas faction attacked a Fatah security installation.
The two groups have been involved in a bitter power struggle made worse by Abbas' decision to call for a referendum on Palestinian statehood.
Hamas fears a 'yes' vote would amount to de facto recognition of Israel, something the militant group vehemently opposes.
The power struggle between the Palestinian militias is reaching the crisis point.
The attack on the parliament in Ramallah has taken the violence, already endemic in Gaza, directly to the West Bank.
The Ramallah attack began when hundreds of officers from the security forces loyal to Fatah stormed the parliament building. They let loose with automatic weapons, shooting out the windows. Once inside, they smashed furniture and destroyed rooms.
Attackers set cabinet offices ablaze
The gunmen set fire to the cabinet offices, the symbol of Prime Minister Ismail Haniye, leader of the new ruling party Hamas.
The fire spread quickly and some gunmen prevented fire engines from approaching the building to douse the blaze.
The rampage followed an attack by Hamas gunmen on a building of the preventive security forces in Gaza.
The day-long clashes that followed left two people dead and 14 wounded, with each side blaming the other for having started the fighting.
Abbas, the Fatah leader, has been locked in a power struggle with Hamas since its landslide victory in Palestinian elections earlier this year. That power struggle has revolved around control of the security forces.
Haniye established a new Gaza security force loyal to Hamas last month, sparking the present crisis.
Tensions have escalated since Abbas called a referendum Saturday on negotiating a political settlement with Israel.
Comment on this Article
Israeli investigation shows that deadly Gaza blast not caused by Israel
03:02:32 EDT Jun 13, 2006
LAURIE COPANS
ERUSALEM (AP) - An Israeli investigation into what caused an explosion on a Gaza beach that killed eight Palestinians will conclude that the blast was most likely caused by a mine planted by Palestinian militants and not an Israeli shell, military officials said Tuesday.
The Palestinians had blamed an Israeli shell for the killing of the civilians in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday, and had recognized as a hero a Palestinian girl whose image was broadcast around the world crying over her father's body at the scene.
While Israel had originally left open the possibility that it was responsible and expressed sorrow for the deaths, senior officials had suggested that Palestinian militants could have planted explosives on the beach and the army opened an investigation.
The military committee looking into the blast is expected to issue its findings later Tuesday.
The committee will announce that Israel was almost certainly not involved in the explosion and it was caused by explosives planted by the Hamas militant group, military officials said on condition of anonymity since the results were not official yet.
The blast occurred on the outskirts of the town of Beit Lahia, not far from where Palestinian militants frequently fire rockets toward Israel. Israel often shoots artillery in the area to prevent the rocket launchings.
According to the findings, shrapnel taken from two wounded Palestinians who were evacuated to Israeli hospitals showed that the explosives were not made in Israel, the officials said. In addition, the last Israeli shell fired toward Palestinian rocket launchers who operate in the area was seven minutes before the blast and landed 250 metres away from the scene, the officials said.
Also, after the blast, Israeli military viewed Hamas militants collecting the shrapnel from the area, in an apparent effort to prevent authorities from revealing that the explosion was caused by explosives it had laid, the officials said.
The results of the investigation are also based on threats by Hamas to stop Israeli naval commandos from landing on the beach after group militants were killed in the area in an ambush by Israeli navy divers last month, the officials said.
The army has accounted for five of six of the shells that it fired in the area Friday evening before the blast, the officials said. The one shell that is not accounted for was fired before the five others - more than ten minutes before the blast that killed the Palestinians - and apparently landed further away than the shells that were fired later, the officials said.
Comment on this Article
Blair, Olmert meet on Israel-Palestinian border negotiations
www.chinaview.cn 2006-06-13 03:04:58
LONDON, June 12 (Xinhua) -- The leaders of Britain and Israel agreed on Monday that negotiations on the Palestinian and Israeli borders could only be held if there was a renunciation of violence and an adherence to the peace "road map".
In his first meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Downing Street since his election win in March, the visiting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged to make every effort to seek a deal with the Palestinians before drawing borders unilaterally.
At a joint press conference after talks, Blair said the United kingdom, like other countries, wanted Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians on border changes.
The international community was agreed on how to solve the problem, he said.
A two-state solution recognizing a viable Palestinian state and Israel, a renunciation of violence and an adherence to the road-map for peace were all principles agreed by the outside world, he added.
Olmert said "the first policy of Israel is negotiations," and it was the chance for Palestinians to "realize their dreams" of an independent state.
But he warned Palestinian leaders that he is prepared to act unilaterally if they do not join him at the negotiating table. Israel would give the Palestinians until the end of the year to negotiate a peace deal, he said.
The two leaders also discussed Iran's nuclear program. Olmert said "Israel will not tolerate nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran. We will not be able to accept such a reality."
Comment on this Article
Abbas: Israel trying to wipe Palestinians out
Ynet News
13/06/2006
[...] Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of trying to "wipe out the Palestinian people." [...]
"Every day there are dead and injured, all innocent, all passersbys. The Israelis want to destroy the Palestinian people, but we will stick to our land. We want to establish a state and live in peace," he said.
A cabinet minister from Hamas, Yousef Rizka, condemned what he called "the continuous series of Israeli massacres of our Palestinian people."
"I call on the international community to immediately intervene to protect the Palestinian people from the increasing aggression of the Israeli occupation army, which will definitely provoke a response that will engage the entire region," Rizka said.
Comment on this Article
Israelis Fear Spread Of War Crimes Cases
Jewish Week
12/06/2006
Laws passed in wake of Nuremberg trials now being pressed in Europe against Israeli generals.
On Sept. 10, 2005, Doron Almog, the former commander of the Israel Defense Forces' Southern Command, was on board an El Al flight to London to raise money for brain-damaged children. But as the plane landed at Heathrow and other passengers began to disembark, a flight attendant approached Almog with a cryptic message.
"The pilot asked that I disembark last," Almog later told Israeli Radio, repeating the flight attendant's message. "After some time, the chief steward said that the Israeli military attache was on his way and wanted to speak to me. I phoned him, and he told me not to get off the plane."
The reason, he soon learned, was an arrest warrant, issued that day by a senior London magistrate charging Almog, as the army's top commander in the Gaza Strip, with overseeing the bulldozing of 59 Palestinian homes in the Rafah refugee camp in January of 2002 - acts that violate the Geneva Conventions.
Under British law, ordinary citizens are free to file criminal complaints against individuals suspected of war crimes, even if the accused are not British citizens and the alleged crimes were not committed on British soil. The threshold such complaints must meet to justify an arrest warrant are substantial. But in this case, Senior District Judge Timothy Workman ruled that the plaintiff - a resident of one the bulldozed homes - had met the bar.
Almog never got off the plane. He returned to Israel the same day. And with Almog's departure from his jurisdiction, Workman withdrew his arrest warrant, as per the requirements of British law.
The problem, however, was far from solved: A few months later, Israel's military advocate general advised the current Gaza commander, Brig. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, to decline an official British invitation to spend the summer at the Royal College of Defense Studies, fearing that he, too, would be greeted at the airport by police officers.
Neither is the problem confined to Britain. Other European nations, such as France, Spain, Sweden and Denmark, have similar laws, all guided by the principle known as universal justice. These statutes allow lawsuits against alleged perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity to be prosecuted even if neither the complainant nor the defendant are citizens of the country in which they are filed, and even if the alleged crime took place somewhere else.
With cases similar to Almog's already brought against Israeli officials in Belgium, Israeli diplomats and legal experts fear that the procedures in England might herald an onslaught of lawsuits against Israeli officers in courts the world over. Ironically, the laws in question were first put into place in the wake of the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals to ensure such crimes could not be perpetrated without prosecution.
Chandra Sriram, professor of human rights at the University of East London and one of the leading experts in the field, cautioned that universal justice cases face tough tests.
"The threshold is relatively high," she said. As a practical matter, courts "are not willing to assert jurisdiction unless they think there is a reasonable case and a reasonable chance of managing it."
Usually, there must be strong evidence that the individual or individuals in question were personally responsible for specific gross violations of international law, such as genocide or torture, explained Sriram. And the evidence must support clear intent to commit the violations, she said, not just that they occurred as byproducts of other actions.
Still, on a strictly legal level in Great Britain, a judge technically need only find that the facts alleged, if proven, would constitute a violation of international law under the principle of universal justice, said Sriram.
It is hard to know Workman's exact legal reasoning for issuing Almog's arrest warrant. Alongside the warrant, Workman issued a still-sealed document explaining his decision.
Kate Maynard, the solicitor who brought the charges against Almog, said the magistrate stated there was sufficient evidence to open up a case against Almog, as his responsibility for the house demolitions was in breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, a violation criminalized in the UK.
Sriram noted that another common yardstick in such cases was whether the country whose citizens were being charged had a functioning judicial system capable of pursuing its own challenges. "You can," she added, "characterize the Israeli legal system as such."
Yet, Israel's judicial system has been reluctant to address most accusations concerning the behavior of army officers in the West Bank and Gaza. According to a 2005 Human Rights Watch report, more than 1,600 Palestinians - including at least 500 children - were killed by Israeli security forces between Sept. 29, 2000 and Nov. 30, 2004. Thousands more were seriously injured.
The Israel Defense Forces informed Human Rights Watch that as of May 10, 2004, it had launched criminal investigations of just 74 alleged cases of unlawful use of lethal force - less than 5 percent of the civilian deaths in nearly four years of the second intifada.
Maynard, the British solicitor who filed the suit against Almog, stressed it was the evidence, not the Israeli judicial system's failure to deal with that case, that most influenced the magistrate's decision to issue an arrest warrant. Documenting such a failure was not, in any event, a formal requirement of the British statute in question, she said.
But Maynard added, "In all cases we've put together, we've always sought to show a chain of impunity in Israel. In all of the cases we've been able to show that local lawyers have petitioned the courts to try and obtain justice in Israel, and couldn't."
For all the efforts by some to use the principle of universal justice against Israeli actions in the occupied territories, Sriram stressed that the concept remained problematic in legal terms.
"It's murky," she said. "If anyone can assert it anywhere in the world, how could you resolve competing claims? And how do you establish who has a legitimate claim?"
As a result of such issues, she said, courts the world over think carefully before translating principle into action. Courts, she stressed, "are only going to entertain a case where a case has been made of a clear international crime. They exercise a pretty significant degree of caution."
Israel Fights Back
Tzipi Livni, Israel's minister of foreign affairs, has denounced the cases filed against Israel as politically motivated.
"England is turning into an address for lawsuits that do not deal with its own citizens," she said in a recent statement. "This may undermine its war on terrorism."
Working behind the scenes, Israeli diplomats are trying to convince other European countries to amend their legislation. Its negotiators conduct their talks, for the most part, without publicity.
Belgium is a case in point: In 1993, the country passed an unprecedented law that allowed citizens to press criminal charges against anyone suspected of crimes against humanity, with few restrictions. Unlike Britain, for example, Belgium allowed for arrest warrants to be issued against accused individuals even if they were outside the country and had never entered into its jurisdiction.
Using this law, 23 survivors of the 1982 massacre in the Lebanese Sabra and Shatila refugee camps filed a complaint in 2001 accusing Israel's then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and other Israeli officials, of war crimes and crimes against humanity. A tense debate ensued, with Israeli and American diplomats arguing the law's flaws. In 2003, the law was changed, stating that Belgian courts will only have jurisdiction over international crimes if the accused or the victim is Belgian or a Belgian resident, or if Belgium is required by treaty to exercise jurisdiction over the case.
More recently, Livni met last month with British Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells to discuss the problems British law posed for IDF officers. Howells acknowledged that the problem burdened both countries, and pledged to try and resolve the situation rapidly.
But not all countries are revising their laws. Spain's Supreme Court, for example, last year overturned a 2003 decision that blocked the country from prosecuting the perpetrators of human rights violations in Guatemala, affirming the need to bring international criminals to justice, regardless of their citizenship or where they committed their crimes.
Israeli legal experts agree that the lawsuits are harmful in the long term. But, in an apparent indication of the issue's sensitivity, no official could be found in the Foreign Ministry or the army who was willing to comment on the record.
"While no immediate threat is evident," said an Israeli official who would speak only on condition of anonymity, "the damage, in the long run, accumulates. Such lawsuits deeply embarrass us, and they create a false impression that Israel is a singularly unlawful state."
The irony of this wave of legal challenges, said Israeli officials, is that they rely on aspects of international law originally devised, in part, as a response to the Holocaust. During the Nuremberg trials, a concept of International Jurisdiction began to take shape, according to which states may claim criminal jurisdiction over persons suspected of crimes against humanity regardless of the perpetrator's nationality or the location of the crime itself. One of the most famous international cases invoking this principle was Israel's prosecution, in 1961, of Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann.
The United States does not allow citizens to file such criminal complaints. But U.S. law does allow for civil suits. A class-action suit was brought last December in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by a group of Lebanese nationals charging Moshe Ya'alon, the Israeli army's former chief of staff, and Avi Dichter, the former head of the Shin Bet, with war crimes for their roles in the 1996 bombing of the Lebanese village Kafar Qana, an incident that caused the death of more than 100 civilians. Ya'alon is currently serving as a research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
The plaintiffs sued under the Alien Torts Claims Act of 1789, which grants jurisdiction to U.S. federal courts over "any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States."
The act has been invoked many times, albeit with scant success, in cases involving everything from a Holocaust survivor suing the National French Railroad Company for the deportation of Jews to Nazi death camps to a suit filed against Texaco for disposing of waste in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
The complaint against Ya'alon, filed on November 4, 2005, accuses the former head of army intelligence of having "command responsibility" in the 1996 attack.
The case, said Judith Chomsky of the Center for Constitutional Rights, an organization that helped bring the lawsuit against Ya'alon, stands a good chance.
"A recent Supreme Court decision has recognized that the statute provides that an alien can bring a claim if the claim is based on violations of the law of nations, or customary law, which is universal, obligatory and specific," she said. "For example, you can't torture people, and no nation has the right to say, 'I'm staying out of this rule; I'm going to torture people anyway.'" The complaint, she said, with its meticulous description of the attack's damage to lives and property, falls within that realm.
Israeli officials declined to comment on the Ya'alon case.
Comment: "Israelis Fear Spread Of War Crimes Cases".
As they should. There are many guilty of war crimes, both in the Israeli army and the Israeli government. The real source of such inhuman acts however are at the level of the decision makers. Remove these people and the headlong dash to all-out war on the innocents can be averted.
Comment on this Article
The System Works
Karl Rove won't face charges in CIA leak probe
Last Updated Tue, 13 Jun 2006 07:57:04 EDT
CBC News
Top White House aide Karl Rove will not be charged in an investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity, his lawyer said Tuesday.
"On June 12, 2006, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald formally advised us that he does not anticipate seeking charges against Karl Rove," said Robert Luskin in a statement.
Luskin said Fitzgerald's decision should "put an end to the baseless speculation about Mr. Rove's conduct."
For 22 months, Fitzgerald and a grand jury have been trying to determine who told journalists that Valerie Plame was a covert operative for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Federal law in the U.S. makes it illegal to identify such CIA employees.
Plame's name was leaked to reporters in 2003 after her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, publicly criticized the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq.
Fitzgerald's probe had zeroed in on Rove, President George W. Bush's top political strategist, and Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.
Rove has acknowledged speaking with conservative columnist Robert Novak just days before Novak wrote a piece speculating that Wilson received a government consulting contract because his wife worked for the CIA.
Libby resigned in October 2005 after being indicted in the case.
He was charged with perjury, false statements and obstruction of justice in relation to conversations with federal investigators and his testimony before the grand jury.
Comment: So much for the illusions of those who thought that the system "works" and that justice would be served. The system does work, as it should, only justice has nothing to do with it.
That Rove will not be indicted is also bad news for William Rivers Pitt, Jason Leopold and their "Truth Out" website. In May, Leopold published an article affirming that, based on their inside sources, Rove would definitely be charged with perjury. What this says about Pitt and his Truth Out website is open to debate. If it was simply an error of judgement, perhaps he will think twice before publishing anything further from dodgy "unnamed sources" and consider the negative effect on the credibility of the alternative media. Of course, there is always the possiblity that damaging the credibility of the alternative media is Pitt and Leopold's conscious goal.
Kudos to CLG for catching this one.
Comment on this Article
Clinton Links GOP Policies to More Storms
By BRENDAN FARRINGTON
Associated Press
June 12, 2006
ORLANDO, Fla. - As Tropical Storm Alberto threatened to strengthen into the ninth hurricane in 22 months to affect Florida, former President Clinton predicted Monday that Republican environmental policies will lead to more severe storms.
"It is now generally recognized that while Al Gore and I were ridiculed, we were right about global warming," Clinton said at a fundraiser for the Florida Democratic Party. "It's a serious problem. It's going to lead to more hurricanes."
Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," chronicles the former vice president's efforts to educate the public about global warming. It's in limited release around the country.
In his critique of the GOP, Clinton also touched on the war in Iraq, the rising federal deficit and high health care costs. The crowd of about 500 greeted him with loud applause and shouts of "We love you, Bill!" and "Four more years!"
Jeff Sadosky, spokesman for the state Republican Party, decried Clinton's rhetoric. "Bill Clinton's class warfare and race-baiting message gets us no closer to solutions for the issues he brings up," he said.
Sadosky referred in part to Clinton's comments earlier this month in Arizona. At that event, Clinton characterized Republican Party leaders as right-wing, white Southerners.
Comment: We seem to recall big business getting away with polluting heavily even when Slick Willy was in office...
Comment on this Article
Violent crime on rise in big U.S. cities
By PATRICK WALTERS
Associated Press
Tue Jun 13, 2006
PHILADELPHIA - FBI statistics Monday confirmed what big cities like Philadelphia, Houston, Cleveland and Las Vegas have seen on the streets: Violent crime in the U.S. is on the rise, posting its biggest one-year increase since 1991.
In Philadelphia, homicides jumped from 330 in 2004 to 377 in 2005, a 14 percent increase, according to the FBI. Murders climbed from 272 to 334 in Houston, a 23 percent rise, and from 131 to 144 in Las Vegas, a 10 percent increase.
Jeffrey Sedgwick, director of the U.S. Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics, cautioned that it is not yet clear whether the FBI numbers reflect a real increase, or the ordinary year-to-year variations that statisticians call "static noise."
Sedgwick said it is possible that crime rates in the U.S. are approaching a floor below which it may be difficult or even impossible to go. "I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect you can always drive the crime rate down," he said.
Some criminal justice experts said the statistics reflect the nation's complacency in fighting crime. Crime dropped dramatically during 1990s, and some cities have since abandoned effective programs that emphasized prevention, the putting of more cops on the street, and controls on the spread of guns.
"We see that budgets for policing are being slashed and the federal government has gotten out of that business," said James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University in Boston. Still, Fox said, "We're still far better off than we were during the double-digit crime inflation we saw in the 1970s."
In Philadelphia, which has had more than 160 murders this year, the police department has responded by creating a special unit charged with roaming the streets in the dangerous hours between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. The program, which is expected to start soon, will shift 46 officers from other assignments.
Philadelphia police Capt. Benjamin Naish said more people appear to be settling disputes with guns.
"I think that everybody continues to be frustrated within the government, within the department," he said. Philadelphia police have stressed that the number of killings is still below the averages in the mid-1990s and far below the 525 homicides in 1990.
The overall national increase in violent crime was modest, 2.5 percent, which equates to more than 1.4 million crimes. Nevertheless, that was the largest percentage increase since 1991.
Nationally, murders rose 4.8 percent, meaning there were more than 16,900 victims in 2005. That would be the most since 1998 and the largest percentage increase in 15 years.
Some big cities felt the brunt.
Murders rose from 59 to 104 in Birmingham, Ala., up 76 percent; from 59 to 85 in Charlotte-Mecklenburg County, N.C., a 44 percent spike; from 89 to 126 in Kansas City, Mo., a 42 percent rise; from 87 to 122 in Milwaukee, a 40 percent jump; and from 79 to 109 in Cleveland, up 38 percent.
"The killings are going in spurts," said Judy Martin, a victims' advocate in Cleveland whose son was shot to death in a 1994 carjacking. "A number of the murders this year seem to come from a number of young men jumping on someone and killing them. We are going downhill."
Detroit, Los Angeles and New York were among several big cities that saw murder numbers drop.
Theories about New York's decline vary. Some experts point to favorable shifts in demographics and the economy, as well as the crash of a once-thriving crack market that fueled violence in the 1980s.
Officials in the 36,000-officer department, the nation's largest, credit their crime-fighting approach. They cite a tactic refined over the past decade in which commanders use computers to track crime patterns - particularly those involving guns and drugs - and deploy patrols where and when criminals are most active.
Police in Houston attributed some of their spike in violent crime to New Orleans gang members who evacuated there along with thousands of other victims of Hurricane Katrina last fall.
The FBI figures were released on the same day authorities announced the arrest in Louisiana of a Katrina evacuee considered one of the Houston area's most-wanted killers. Authorities said he robbed two other evacuees of their FEMA money and shot them, killing one.
Comment on this Article
Stooping to New Lows to Sabotage the Antiwar Movement: MoveOn Rigs Its Own Vote, Betrays Its Membership
By JOHN WALSH
Counterpunch.org
June 3/4, 2006
The first email.
On May 17, I received an email from MoveOn.org signed by Ben Bradzel, Matt and Eli (Pariser) inviting me to a "trial" house party to begin creation of a "positive agenda" for 2006. The house party was the very next day, May 18. According to the email, the "positive agenda" to be created had to come "from the grass roots." While the email suggested that we could decide on anything that we liked ("The sky's the limit."), it named three possible elements in the "positive agenda": "universal health care" (not specified as single-payer), "clean energy," "publicly financed elections." (Remember these three.) Later in the email it was made clear that there should be 3 points to the new agenda."
It was striking to me that there was no mention of the war on Iraq or Iran in this email--striking but not surprising in light of MoveOn's long-standing failure to call for immediate withdrawal from Iraq.
Moreover, at the end of the missive the reasons for developing the "positive agenda" was made clear. Not only were MoveOn members asking for it, but the MoveOn bosses considered it crucial to "getting people to the polls" and "winning in November" which meant that "Democrats" would "gain seats in November. There was no question about whether the Democrats deserved to win seats in November. This was a goal slipped into the "p.s." of the email to be taken as a given. We were also told in passing that the "conversation" at the house party would be "guided," which meant directed by a script which as we shall see also failed to mention the war.
The second email.
I was curious but unable to attend that "trial" house party, but the following week the real thing emerged. The next week on May 22 another email appeared, announcing a series of nationwide house parties on May 24. I decided to go. But I was disappointed that once again there was no mention of the war in the email. So I decided to call a staff contact that we were given. She was young, enthusiastic and dedicated but inexperienced. I asked her why there was no mention of the war. I pointed out that a clear and ever growing majority of voters were for that. And I informed her that Karl Rove essentially conceded that the war was Bush's Achilles heel. So if MoveOn wanted to defeat the Bushies, why not raise the war? Silence came over her. She then said, as if recalling something, that opposition to the war was "negative" and we had to have a "positive" agenda. I asked whether "Bring all the troops home now. Peace now." would amount to a "positive agenda." Silence. She did call the national office for me, but they had nothing to say in response.
At the house party itself, there were but a handful of people, less than ten, smaller than previous MoveOn events and this in Cambridge, Mass. We were given a list of "positive goals" to decide upon, but the war was not mentioned. I piped up at once, asking why not. Most people had not seemed to consider that the war was missing from the list of possible agenda items, so taken were they with thoughts of national health care and a clean environment. We agreed to add the war to our agenda, and when we took the final vote on our positive agenda, the results were as follows. "Bring the troops home from Iraq in 2006" was number one by a wide margin. "Develop alternative energy sources for everyone" and "Decent medical care for everyone" were number two and three, respectively.
The third email.
On May 30 came another email, giving the top 10 choices from the house parties from which 3 were to be chosen by an online ballot. Again there was no mention of Iraq. The choices were "the top 10 most popular ideas from last week's house parties." Apparently other house parties did not think to bring up Iraq, because it was not offered as an alternative, or else the MoveOn bosses did feel inclined to include it. Of course MoveOn is far from transparent, so we cannot know. What we do know is that the number one issue on the minds of Americans did not emerge in the top 10! Quite amazing! (The 10 "most popular" choices were: "A living wage for all; Global leadership through diplomacy: Verifiable, accurate elections; High quality education for all; Balanced federal budget; Health care for all, Publicly funded elections; Preserve our natural resources; Energy independence: clean, renewable sources; Restored constitutional rights". The second of these is noteworthy, "verifiable, accurate elections"; MoveOn would do well to take careful note of this.)
The final email.
Finally, the results of all this emerged in the last email on June 1 in which "the whole MoveOn.org Political Action team" triumphantly announced the top 3! And the winners were: "Health care for all. Energy independence through clean, renewable sources. Democracy restored." Damned close to the three suggested at the outset in the very first email - before any voting at all - as you remember from the first paragraph above: "universal health care" "clean energy," "publicly financed elections." The MoveOn bosses turned out to be remarkable seers.
In this final email MoveOn said that this agenda was chosen by "more than 100,000 people in local house parties and then online." But in a previous email the MoveOn bosses claimed only 10,000 in attendance for the house parties so most of the voting was done on line when the final 10 choices "on the ballot" excluded Iraq and the online voters were in no position to add it in. The ballot choices were fixed. More than that, its base is catching on to MoveOn. It is pretty pathetic for an organization of 3 million members (as claimed in the email of June 1) to get only 100,000 votes online. That is less than 4% of the members voting! And 100,000 hits on a well-financed and established web site is no big deal.
How did the MoveOn bosses engineer this? It is unclear. Did they simply exclude results like those of our house party? Did they actually falsify the voting? Or did they simply exclude choices with their "guided conversations," restricted choices and demands for the members to be "positive." We cannot know, for MoveOn is as opaque as the higher reaches of its parent organization, the Democratic Party. But we do know that the MoveOn bosses are not to be trusted. They are one element in a wider strategy of the Dem establishment and its accessories to sabotage and cripple the antiwar movement.
John Walsh keeps up with MoveOn in an attempt to bring the war to the forefront of its agenda and in an increasingly deseperate hope that something will change there. He can be reached at John.Endwar @gmail.com