Human Rights organizations around the world marked today (Thursday) the ‘International Day of Identification with victims of torture’, which was created by the UN ten years ago. In Israel, the Israeli Committee against torture held a conference in Tel Aviv, attended by writers, academics and also soldiers who had witnessed the torture of prisoners, in which it presented a new report about torture in Israel.
The report presented at the conference painted a particularly grim picture of the situation in Israel. It reveals that IDF soldiers of varying ranks routinely abuse Palestinians from the moment of their detention until the time of their interrogation by the security forces. The abuse takes the form of beating prisoners, minors too, humiliating and cursing them. Furthermore, the writers of the report determined that the higher ranks of the IDF, the Ministry of Defense and the Law Enforcement system almost entirely disregard this phenomenon.
Among the participants of the conference held this evening by the Israeli committee against torture was Itzhak Ben Mocha, a former fighter with the paratroopers, who participated in arrests made in the Territories and observed abuse and torture of Palestinian prisoners. “I participated in many arrests during the course of my service” told Ben Mocha, “and there were always little abuses in the background: hits on the head, pushes. Abuses are not unusual”, he added. “They are always committed when the prisoners are tied and their eyes covered, although they present no danger to anyone.”
Ben Mocha said that on every trip he always had to sit between the prisoner and the soldiers to protect him with his body. “One time we were sent to perform an arrest in Nablus”, he stated. “After the arrest, before the trip, we got into the vehicle and took a nap. Suddenly we were awoken by a loud noise and when we got out we saw the prisoner lying on the ground and bleeding from the head. It turns out that two of the soldiers tied him up, covered his eyes, took a picture with him and then kicked him hard in the head. That was the noise that woke us up. These things occurred in the paratroopers, an elite troop. If it occurs there, it clearly occurs everywhere”, he concluded.
“They treated me like an animal”
Raami Mofid Jumaa, a Palestinian from the West Bank who was arrested in the past by the IDF and experienced a range of abuses could not participate in the conference, as the army did not allow him to get there. However his filmed testimony was shown.
In his testimony Jumaa says: “I was sleeping peacefully and suddenly my mother woke me to say that the army is here. I got up like a wild man. There were soldiers with two dogs. One of them took me to the bathroom and hit the soles of my feet hard. The soldiers said they would destroy the house. I was afraid. And then the captain arrived, he covered my eyes and tied my hands behind my back. They took me to the truck and threw me on the floor, cursed me and a soldier stepped on my head. Every time I complained they hit and cursed me. The soldiers treated me like I was an animal.”
“The experience of pain does not let go”
In the world they marked the day but the Knesset could not find the time (Reuters). The writer Ronit Matalon said at the conference that these were sickening actions. We must eradicate this phenomenon. There is a wall. The wall is not only the institutions: the IDF, the judiciary, the Ministry of Defense, the Prime Minister. The Wall is that the Israeli public does not want to hear. It could be that in the Israeli society that abandons its weakest, the only form of solidarity that remains is the solidarity between abusing victims.”
Dr. David Senesh, who was a prisoner of the Egyptians for 40 days in the Yom Kippur War, told the participants of the conference “the pain of the abused, humiliated and exploited disrupts the values of social order. The victim carries his pain to the end of his days. It never goes away. I was tortured for 40 days as a prisoner of war but the pain has not gone away for almost 40 years.”
Two months ago, the members of the Israeli Committee Against Torture presented the chairman of the Knesset a request to mark the international day against torture. Two weeks ago, the Secretary of the Knesset responded: “Due to the abundance of events at the Knesset, we will not be able to respond on this day.” This is despite the fact that Israel is a signatory to the international convention against torture.
Waxman: "It may well turn out to be the largest war profiteering in history."
A BBC investigation estimates that around $23bn (£11.75bn) may have been lost, stolen or just not properly accounted for in Iraq.
For the first time, the extent to which some private contractors have profited from the conflict and rebuilding has been researched by the BBC's Panorama using US and Iraqi government sources.
A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations.
The order applies to 70 court cases against some of the top US companies.
War profiteering
While George Bush remains in the White House, it is unlikely the gagging orders will be lifted.
To date, no major US contractor faces trial for fraud or mismanagement in Iraq.
The president's Democrat opponents are keeping up the pressure over war profiteering in Iraq.
Henry Waxman who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said: "The money that's gone into waste, fraud and abuse under these contracts is just so outrageous, its egregious.
"It may well turn out to be the largest war profiteering in history."
In the run-up to the invasion one of the most senior officials in charge of procurement in the Pentagon objected to a contract potentially worth seven billion that was given to Halliburton, a Texan company, which used to be run by Dick Cheney before he became vice-president.
Unusually only Halliburton got to bid - and won.
Missing billions
The search for the missing billions also led the programme to a house in Acton in West London where Hazem Shalaan lived until he was appointed to the new Iraqi government as minister of defence in 2004.
He and his associates siphoned an estimated $1.2 billion out of the ministry.
They bought old military equipment from Poland but claimed for top class weapons.
Meanwhile they diverted money into their own accounts.
Judge Radhi al-Radhi of Iraq's Commission for Public Integrity investigated.
He said: "I believe these people are criminals.
"They failed to rebuild the Ministry of Defence , and as a result the violence and the bloodshed went on and on - the murder of Iraqis and foreigners continues and they bear responsibility."
Mr Shalaan was sentenced to two jail terms but he fled the country.
He said he was innocent and that it was all a plot against him by pro-Iranian MPs in the government.
There is an Interpol arrest out for him but he is on the run - using a private jet to move around the globe.
He stills owns commercial properties in the Marble Arch area of London.
If you support Ron Paul, or are at least thinking about giving him your support, you have probably heard the terms "insiders" and "outsiders" used in reference to the people in Washington. The insiders are the people who are members of the exclusive think tanks, policy organizations, lobby groups, and other groups that influence and decide policy. The outsiders are those who aren't.
However, the term "insider" hides the insidious reality. Who are they really?
Ron Paul says he is not one of the insiders:
"I'm not a member of any secret society...I haven't been invited by the Trilateralists of CFR (Council on Foreign Relations). I don't get to go to their meetings."
Laura Knight-Jadczyk SOTT Sat, 19 May 2007 10:14 EDT
I've been sitting back observing the little rumbles of awakening that seem to be emerging here and there across the land. Little by little, one by one, there are voices being raised against the Fascist jack-boots that have been trampling our world into a bloody mess for the past six years. Of course, it is difficult for these voices to be heard widely enough because of the control of the media, nevertheless, some of them are managing lately to get a few words in on Prime Time. Al Gore is among the latest to check in with his book "The Assault on Reason".
It's an interesting show. It's like being at the County Fair and watching somebody trying to shoot little ducks that pop up and down as they move along a little conveyor. The Jimmy Carter duck pops up declaiming that Israel is an apartheid state and all the Zionists start shooting at him. Then, Rosie O'Donnel pops up and delights her listeners by saying that 911 was in inside job so her bosses and their bosses start shooting at her. There have been a number of others, and most of them have been taken out by the media ignoring them more than anything else. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the first order of business for any society suffering oppression that seeks to dig their way out of such a mess is to take back the media. The mass media should belong to the people and should answer only to the people. Does that sound Socialistic? Well, yeah. Fact is, Socialism seems to be a heck of a lot more democratic in many respects than the much vaunted American Capitalism which has led the U.S. into the State Corporatism trap of Soviet style Communism. read more...
HONG KONG (Reuters) - A mysterious disease has killed thousands of pigs in China's southern Guangdong province and authorities have disinfected affected farms, markets and abattoirs, several Hong Kong newspapers reported on Monday.
The outbreak began around early April in Silao town, where the animals stopped eating, developed high fevers and started hemorrhaging under their skin.
The disease has since spread to nearby towns, they reported. Its cause is unknown.
Beijing-backed Ta Kung Pao quoted officials in nearby Yunfu city confirming that more than 300 pigs had died in Silao town.
Some of the carcasses were hurled into rivers and that may have been responsible for the spread of the disease to surrounding areas, other newspapers reported, with some estimating total losses at more than 3,000 animals.
Faced with heavy financial losses, some farmers have hastily sold sick pigs at reduced prices, the Apple Daily reported.
Although the cause of the disease is unknown, experts ruled out the possibility of people contracting the disease.
HONG KONG: The international and Hong Kong authorities said Monday that they had received little information from mainland Chinese officials about a mysterious ailment killing pigs in southeastern China or about Chinese wheat gluten contaminated with plastic scrap, raising questions again about whether Beijing is willing to share data on global health issues.
The Chinese government, and particularly the government of Guangdong Province, next to Hong Kong, suffered heavy criticism in 2003 after concealing the SARS virus for the first four months after it first emerged in Foshan, 150 kilometers, or 95 miles, northwest of Hong Kong. After SARS spread to Hong Kong and around the world, top Chinese officials promised to improve disclosure.
But officials in Hong Kong as well as at the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization said Monday that they had received practically no information about the latest pig deaths and limited details about wheat gluten contamination.
Because pigs can catch many of the same diseases as people, notably bird flu, the WHO and the Food and Agriculture Organization maintain global networks to track and investigate unexplained patterns of pig deaths. State-controlled media in China have carried a few reports on the wheat gluten problem but almost nothing on the pig deaths.
A man answering the phones at the city government of Gaoyao, located 230 kilometers to the northwest of Hong Kong, confirmed late Monday afternoon that pigs were dying there. The man declined to give his name.
Hong Kong media were full of lurid accounts Monday of pigs staggering around with blood pouring from their bodies in Gaoyao and neighboring Yunfu, both in Guangdong Province. Apple, a daily newspaper here, said that up to 80 percent of the pigs had died in the area, that peasants were engaged in panic selling of ailing animals at deep discounts and that pig carcasses were floating down the river.
Dr. Kwok Ka-ki, the medical community's representative in Hong Kong's Legislative Council, said that the Chinese government needed to share information fully about the pig deaths, in particular with the Chinese public as well as with Hong Kong, which Britain returned to China in 1997.
"They definitely need to tell the public but also people in the city as to the extent of the outbreak, how is the disease being controlled and the impact on public health," he said. "It would help a lot to relieve the worry, and it would help the rest of China to fight the disease."
There have been no reports of people becoming ill from the disease. But the SARS experience has left Hong Kong with lasting jitters about mysterious diseases in mainland China, and the media reports fostered considerable concern here.
"It's very scary," said Allen Lee, a longtime senior politician who is now a television talk show host.
Medical experts said that the extent of the reported bleeding from the pigs, including bloody skin lesions, did not sound like common symptoms of bird flu, but added that the pig deaths needed to be investigated. Because pigs can be infected with many avian and human influenza viruses, the most popular scientific model for how avian influenza viruses cause pandemics in humans is that human and avian influenza viruses exchange genetic material when they infect a pig at the same time.
Monday was the last day of the weeklong May Day holiday in China, so most government and business offices were closed. But Hong Kong media reported that pigs had begun dying in Yunfu after Chinese New Year celebrations in February, although it was only recently that the disease had begun spreading.
The Hong Kong Food and Environmental Hygiene Department officials said Monday that the Guangdong authorities had told them only that no live pigs were being shipped from the Yunfu and Gaoyao area to Hong Kong.
A spokesman for the Hong Kong Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department said that there were no signs of suspicious deaths among pigs in Hong Kong, and referred questions about pigs in Guangdong to the food department.
Both departments said last week in written responses to questions that they were not testing wheat gluten imported to Hong Kong for melamine scrap. The presence of melamine in pet food has been linked to the deaths of as many as 4,000 cats and dogs in the United States, and prompted the culling of chickens that ate contaminated feed.
Hong Kong officials expressed surprise Monday when told that the official Xinhua press agency had briefly reported a month ago that the mainland had begun nationwide testing of wheat gluten for melamine. Animal feed dealers in northeastern China said late last month that the two main destinations for feed mixed with melamine had been the Yangtze delta region near Shanghai and the Pearl River delta region near Hong Kong.
Laura Knight-Jadczyk Signs of the Times Mon, 23 Apr 2007 20:04 EDT
Over the past couple of months we here at SOTT have been following the Bee crisis with some interest. It caught my eye when I read the first media article about it that was brought to my attention; I knew this was important. As Albert Einstein observed:
"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."
This really is BIG, people! Do you realize how CLOSE you are to the total collapse of whatever lifestyle you have, including having food on your table (let alone having a table to put it on or a house to keep the table in!) Don't yawn because the habits of bees might be boring and it certainly isn't as entertaining as TV or whatever mindless thing you do and call it entertainment. If you read every word I have written and assembled here, you will know more about global agriculture than you probably ever thought you WANTED to know, but just now, you had BETTER know it because YOUR life depends on it! The fact is, the disappearing bees are giving you a gift, right now, a choice if you will only take the time to read and learn.
The first clue that something was amiss was this odd item back on January 8:
B.K. Signs of the Times Fri, 20 Apr 2007 17:53 EDT
Project Paperclip, MKULTRA and Dr. Greenbaum, three things you've never heard of which may have everything to do with what happened at Virginia Tech.
Virginia Tech
There are a few points on the general timing of events that I think need to be iterated for the sake of clarity before we look at possible explanations.
There were two shooting incidents, the first occurred at 7:15am and then the second series began approximately 2 hours later.
"A lot of our friends live in [West Ambler Johnston Hall] and we heard that a girl got shot and killed in the stairwell, and that it was, like, 7:15 [a.m.]. A lot of people go to class at 7:45 [a.m.], so everyone was just talking about how they couldn't believe that they let students out at 7:45 to go to their 8 a.m. classes, because someone had just gotten shot and killed 30 minutes before. ..." - Hunter Wilson
So evidently we have two separate incidents. The motives and shooter for the first still remain unknown. Thus far there's been no evidence to suggest it was Cho Seung-Hui. What is available are a few references to an Asian or Asiatic man being detained by police, and then released. There is some mention of him being involved in a romantic relationship, but again this info is sketchy. What you've got to remember is that the fact that accounts are so distorted and confusing is actually a fingerprint of intel agencies and their operations.
Cold-water eddy 'monsters' mighty current off Sydney
Oceanographers have identified a huge, dense mass of cold water off Sydney but know very little about what causes it or the influence it has in the Tasman Sea ecosystem.
"What we do know is that this is a very powerful natural feature which tends to push everything else aside - even the mighty East Australian Current," says CSIRO's Dr David Griffin.
Dr Griffin, from the Wealth from Oceans Flagship Research program, said cold-water eddies regularly appear off Sydney.
"Until 20 years ago we would not have known they even existed without accidentally steaming through them on a research vessel," he said.
"However, now that we can routinely identify them from space via satellite, marine scientists can evaluate their role as a source of life in the marine ecosystem."
Reaching to a depth of more than 1000m, the 200km diameter ocean eddy has a rotational period of about seven days. Its centre is about 100km directly offshore from Sydney.
Ocean eddies can have a life of 2-3 weeks although similar eddies identified off South Australia and Western Australia are known to have survived several months.
In a complex cause-and-effect relationship, the East Australian Current is being forced to take a wide detour around the eddy off Sydney instead of flowing along the edge of the continental shelf.
In its centre, cold water from 400m is raised upwards some 200m. The sea surface, conversely, is lowered by 70cm. This dip in the surface of the ocean is invisible to the eye, but it can be accurately measured by the European and US satellites Jason-1, Envisat and GFO orbiting the Earth.
The upward displacement of the water was recorded by a robotic Argo float deployed by CSIRO as part of the international Argo program.
The cold-water eddy phenomena will be one of a wide range of issues to be discussed during a meeting which began in Hobart today of nearly 200 European, US and Australian scientists working with satellite altimetry - instruments that measure the height of the ocean to detect cold and warm water.
ELEPHANT POACHING ON THE RISE Africa Mulls Loosening Ivory Trade Ban
Some African nations are seeking to relax an international ban on the ivory trade, but wildlife conservations fear that will lead to a renewed massacre of African elephants. Meanwhile, poachers in Africa are killing more elephants than they have in almost 20 years. By Philip Bethge more...
by Michael Carmichael Global Research Tue, 13 Mar 2007 07:27 EDT
Hitler in War Propaganda Poster Nazi Era Germany
The core doctrine of the Bush Era is pre-emptive war. ... In academic discourse, the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive war has been equated with the idea of committing suicide because of the fear of dying.
War propaganda glorifies military indoctrination as the highest form of patriotism while simultaneously demonizing the enemies of the state.
Adolf Hitler realized the power of propaganda to mould and shape public opinion. Hitler wrote a highly informed essay on the powers of propaganda in his political autobiography, Mein Kampf.
MONKEYS GOING TO POT Primate Hunting Reaches Crisis Point in Latin America
Monkey numbers in Latin America have fallen dramatically in recent years as primate hunting reaches unsustainable levels. Most are used for food, but an increasing number of souvenirs are also produced using dead monkeys. more...
Thomas F. Barton Albasrah.net Sat, 10 Mar 2007 10:09 EST
"Given What We Were Doing To Them, Who Could Blame Them For Wanting To Kill Us, And All Americans?"
Joshua Key. Excerpt from The Deserter's Tale, published by House Of Anansi
Joshua Key, 28, was a poor, uneducated Oklahoma country boy who saw the U.S. army and its promised benefits -- from free health care to career training -- as the ticket to a better life. In 2002, not yet 24 but already married and the father of two , Key enlisted. He says his recruiting officer promised he'd never be deployed abroad, but a year later he was in Iraq.
An Israeli human rights group has accused Israel's army of using two young Palestinians as human shields during a recent raid in the West Bank.
The B'Tselem group said it had testimony from a 15-year-old boy, his 24-year-old cousin and also an 11-year-old boy.
They said soldiers had forced them at gunpoint to enter houses ahead of the troops during the raid in Nablus.
The use of human shields is illegal under Israeli and international law.
The Israeli defence force says it is investigating the allegations.
'Knowingly exposed'
The Israeli army occupied the Kasbah, or old town, in Nablus for five days at the end of last month. It said it was hunting for militants and their weapons.
Soldiers conducted house-to-house searches. They imposed a two-day curfew on tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.
Amid Omeira, aged 15, told B'Tselem that a group of soldiers used the barrels of their rifles to force him to enter a number of houses ahead of them.
His 24-year-old cousin Samah told the group and the BBC of a similar experience, as did Jihan Dadush, aged 11.
From their testimonies, B'Tselem says it believes the Israeli soldiers knowingly exposed Samah and the two children to danger as they expected to find armed men in the houses.
B'Tselem has accused Israel's military authorities of not adequately informing soldiers about both Israeli and international laws which prohibit using civilians as human shields.
B'Tselem says the delay in investigating similar alleged incidents in the past suggests a leniency in the army's attitude towards soldiers who use civilians in this way.
A 15-year-old girl from Laos has died from the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu, becoming the country's first official fatality from the disease.
The Laos health ministry said the girl, who lived near the capital Vientiane, died while undergoing treatment at a hospital in neighbouring Thailand.
A 42-year-old woman, who also lived close to Vientiane, died of suspected bird flu a few days ago.
Tests have yet to confirm whether she died of the H5N1 virus.
A World Health Organization spokeswoman said last week that there was no link between the two cases.
Globally, more than 160 people have died of bird flu since late 2003. Most have been in East Asia, with Indonesia registering more human deaths than any other country.
But the virus has also spread to Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Millions of birds across the world have died or been culled because of the disease.
At the moment, the virus is essentially confined to birds and remains hard for people to catch.
But there is a fear that it could mutate to a form which is easily passed from human to human, triggering a pandemic and potentially putting millions of people's lives at risk.
Stephen Lendman sjlendman.blogspot.com Thu, 08 Mar 2007 09:14 EST
The Samson Option is terminology used to explain Israel's intention to use its nuclear arsenal as an ultimate defense strategy if its leaders feel threatened enough to think they have no alternative. It comes from the biblical Samson said to have used his great strength to bring down the pillars of a Philistine temple, downing its roof and killing himself and thousands of Philistine tormentors. It's a strategy saying if you try killing me, we'll all die together, or put another way, we'll all go together when we go. Richard Wagner had his apocalyptic version in the last of his four operas of Der Ring des Nibelungen - Gotterdammerung, or Twilight of the Gods based on Norse mythology referring to a prophesied war of the Gods resulting in the end of the world.
Joe Quinn Signs of the Times Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:34 EST
An innocent blindfolded Palestinian woman sits detained inside an Israeli army jeep in the West Bank city of al-Khalil (Hebron)
Few people in our technologically developed, yet morally bankrupt Western world possess even a basic understanding of just how horrible life in the Israeli occupied Palestinian territories is. Gaza is a small strip of land about 7 miles wide by 30 miles long. It is completely fenced in by the Israeli military, with the vast majority of its 1.5 million Palestinian inhabitants (making it one of the most densely populated areas in the world) denied the right to leave. Ever.
It is not surprising then that the Gaza strip has been compared to a giant open-air prison, because that is exactly what it is. In fact, there is a more exact phrase to describe urban areas like Gaza that have been turned into prisons for the inhabitants, it is a phrase that was made famous during the Second World War - 'Concentration Camp'.
Similar to the concentration camps in WWII, the inmates of the Gaza strip are often summarily shot in cold blood, by the Israeli camp guards, for no reason other than to "maintain order" in a pre-emptive way. Sometimes entire families are massacred and Palestinian houses are regularly demolished by Israeli tanks for the same reason. Gaza fishermen, desperate to make a little money risk coming under fire from bored Israeli gunboat captains by putting out to sea. Curfews are imposed as Israeli tanks rumble along the tattered streets of the Gaza strip, firing indiscriminately at nothing and everything, sometimes they kill something, sometimes not. Soon after every such incursion, news wires dutifully disseminate the Israeli military's version of events, you may have heard them before:
"during an operation to root out members of (insert name of Palestinian resistance group) in the Gaza strip, the Israeli military returned fire when they were shot at by Palestinian terrorists".
Israeli troops arrest a Palestinian boy in March 2006 near Hebron as his mother attempts to stop them
Periodically, and for their own diversion, Israeli government ministers will give the order to prohibit food supplies from reaching the men, women and 750,000 children of Gaza. As Israeli adviser to the prime minister's office Dov Weisglass cynically joked last year on one such occasion, "it's like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won't die." Of course, like the Jews of Nazi Germany, Palestinians do die when you starve them, and they did die last year as a result of their "appointment" with the Israeli "dietitian", particularly the old and the very young.
A Palestinian mother attempts to comfort her 8 year old daughter who was shot (deliberately) in the face with a rubber coated steel bullet by Israeli troops.
The other section of the occupied Palestinian territories, the West Bank, fares little better under illegal Israeli rule. This area of about 100 miles long by 40 miles wide, was occupied by Israel after the 1967 war between Israel and several Arab armies including Egypt, Jordan and Syria. As a result of the capture of this internationally recognised Palestinian territory, the area is today peppered with illegal Israeli settlements, their extensive boundary areas policed by the Israeli military.
Innocent Palestinian men being led to interrogation rooms by Israeli troops
In one West Bank city, Hebron, home to 150,000 Palestinians, around 450 fanatical Israeli settlers, backed by large numbers of Israeli troops and tanks, have moved in and essentially taken control of the city, forcing the Palestinian population to endure curfews, verbal and physical attacks and general dehumanization.
In Jerusalem, the story is much the same. In the aftermath of the 1948 Arab Israeli war, a war fought by Palestinians and neighboring Arab nations AGAINST the occupation of Palestine by Zionist forces, Jerusalem was split down the middle with the Western half given to Israel and the Eastern half given to the Palestinians as their future state capital. In 1981, however, Israel annexed Palestinian East Jerusalem claiming that it did not recognise the Internationally-sanctione d division of the city, essentially claiming all of Jerusalem as Israeli territory. Today there are 185,000 Israeli Jews living illegally as settlers in East Jerusalem, their presence there being assured by the Israeli military. Palestinian residents there are treated as second class citizens.
In the aftermath of the Six Day War, United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 was adopted unanimously by the UN Security Council on November 22, 1967. Resolution 242 is a binding resolution, technically leaving any party that refuses to comply with its dictates open to coercive action to enforce compliance. The text of the resolution states:
The Security Council;
Expressing its continuing concern with the grave situation in the Middle East,
Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security,
Emphasizing further that all Member States in their acceptance of the Charter of the United Nations have undertaken a commitment to act in accordance with Article 2 of the Charter,
1. Affirms that the fulfillment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:
(i) Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;
ii)Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;
Since the adoption of resolution 242, the Zionist state of Israel has consistently violated its dictates. Far from "withdrawing from territories occupied in the recent conflict", Israel grabbed more. Far from withdrawing its "armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict", Israel extended its military invasion and occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Israel also, in 1982, invaded and occupied parts of Lebanon and deliberately ignited a "civil war" in that country that raged for 15 years. While generally referred to as a civil war, the conflict in Lebanon between 1975 and 1990 involved many elements external to Lebanon, most notably Israeli and American forces, both of whom were responsible for exacerbating the conflict.
In contravention of Resolution 242, International Law and the fourth Geneva Convention, the Israeli government has built thousands of new homes on Palestinian land throughout the West Bank. Today, there are 260,000 illegal Israeli settlers spread across dozens of illegal Israeli towns and cities. These illegal towns and cities include:
Many Palestinian homes and entire villages have been and continue to be demolished, their olive groves uprooted, to make way for these illegal settlements.
The entire area outlined here is Palestinian land. Light purple represents closed Israeli military areas. Dark Purple represents illegal Israeli settlements. The black line represents the Israeli apartheid wall. Everything left of the wall has been annexed to Israel. The yellow areas are main Palestinian population centers, although Palestinians live throughout the area of the West Bank.
Graphic showing the illegal annexation of Palestinian land from 1948 to 2000. Since 2000, the green areas of Palestinian land have undergone further annexation to Israel.
According to a 2006 study by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, there are approximately 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank. This figure is corroborated by the CIA factbook and several other sources. Interestingly, a study by the American-Israel Demographic Research Group, also conducted in 2006, claimed that there are just 1.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank. 1.1 million Palestinians 'wiped off the map', figuratively of course...for now.
In attempting to justify its illegal and inhuman treatment of the Palestinian people and their aspirations for the past 60 years, the Zionist state of Israel has relied on the claim that since UN resolution 242 demands the:
"termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force".
And, since successive Palestinian governments have either refused to accept Israel's 'right to exist' or have maintained a 'belligerent' stance towards the Zionist enterprise, both of which constitute a technical violation of Resolution 242, any Israeli government is not therefore required to abide by Resolution 242. The deception in this stance is in the fact that, in 1967, the statements of Resolution 242 referring to "termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force" was directed largely at Israel because it was Israel that had annexed so much Palestinian and Arab land, not the other way around! And given that since that time Israel has expanded its control and occupation of Palestinian land, there is no possible way that a Palestinian government could EVER not take a belligerent stance towards Israel because Israel is and continues to be the aggressor! If a person comes and occupies part of your home, and then claims that to achieve peace, YOU must recognise his illegal occupation of part of your home and if you do not then YOU are the bad guy who does not want peace, would YOU consent to such an agreement? Would YOU recognise the "legitimate right to exist" of a person if that meant recognising the legitimacy of their theft of your house and oppression of your family? This is exactly the situation in Israel/Palestine today, and that is the true source of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Palestinian Schoolgirls run from tear gas fired at them by Israeli troops.
What quickly becomes obvious is that Israel's ability to continue to exert control over the Palestinian people and their destiny is entirely dependent on the appearance of a continued threat to Israel's existence from groups representing the Palestinian people. If the Palestinians were ever to decide to renounce violence and pursue their goals by entirely political means, it would be a very bad day for Israel. Are we to assume then that this simple understanding has eluded the Palestinians all these years?
Israel's position of primary aggressor in the conflict places it in a precarious position. During the 1990s, several Middle East peace initiatives were tabled. Towards the end of that decade, international awareness of the plight of the Palestinians continued to grow, and it was clear to all those with even a basic understanding of the conflict that the Palestinians had moral right on their side. Something had to be done.
A Palestine boy proves to an Israeli soldier he is not wearing a "bomb belt".
In September 2000, then opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the al-Aqsa Mosque compound at the so-called 'Temple Mount'. The site is in Palestine East Jerusalem and is the third holiest in all of Islam. Understandably, Sharon's visit was seen by Palestinians as a deliberate provocation.
On September 29, 2000, the day after Sharon's visit, following Friday prayers, large riots broke out around Old Jerusalem during which at least five innocent Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli security forces, and 200 others were wounded.
The same day, demonstrations and riots broke out in the West Bank. In the days that followed, demonstrations erupted all over the West Bank and Gaza. The violence quickly escalated and in the first six days of the Intifada, 61 Palestinians were killed and 2,657 were injured by the Israeli army and police. In October, thousands of Jewish Israelis participated in violent acts in Nazareth and Tel Aviv, throwing stones at and attacking Arabs, destroying Arab property and chanting "Death to Arabs". BBC News reported that that year's "Yom Kippur will be infamous for the violent, racist outburst by Jews against Arabs within Israel". Sharon's provocation ultimately gave rise to the second Palestinian 'Intifada' or uprising (literally 'shaking off'), but all of it was clearly part of a carefully laid Zionist plan.
From the point of view of Israel's need for a new and convincing stick with which to beat the Palestinians, it was no surprise that less than a year after Sharon's provocation and the beginning of the second Intifada, the 9/11 attacks occurred. As we explain in our book, 9/11: The Ultimate Truth, the attack in New York and Washington was the quintessential Israeli false flag operation, and the ensuing bogus "war on Islamic terror" played directly into the hands of the Israeli government, giving them carte blanche to increase their persecution of Palestinians under the banner of fighting terrorism.
Like the U.S. war on Islamic terror, the history of the last 6 years of the second Intifada is defined by the inhumanity of the Israeli and American governments towards the Arab populations of the Middle East. Somewhere in the region of 1 million Iraqi civilians and tens of thousand of innocent Afghans have been murdered by U.S. military forces. In Iraq, the Israeli Mossad is hard at work helping covert American and British agents create 'civil war' by way of bombings and mass murders that are blamed on Iraqi insurgents or the mythical 'al-qaeda' as need dictates. Meanwhile last week, the U.S. Airforce began bombing civilian neighborhoods of Baghdad, and the U.S. government knows exactly where Osama is.
In Palestine over 100 'suicide bombings' have been carried out by covert Israeli intelligence groups against innocent Israeli citizens and blamed on Palestinian groups in order to justify Israel's continued occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people. Recent attempts by Hamas and Fatah to unite against the Zionist aggressor have been largely thwarted by teams of Israelis disguised as Palestinians who attack members of both Fatah and Hamas in an attempt to sow discord and set the Palestinian people at each other's throats.
JENIN, West Bank (AFP) - Israeli commandos disguised as Palestinians killed an Islamic Jihad commander and two militants in Jenin on Wednesday during a crackdown in the north of the occupied West Bank.
Israel also relaunched a massive hunt for 'militants' in Nablus, south of Jenin, sending around 100 jeeps and armoured vehicles in, just 24 hours after withdrawing from the West Bank's second-largest city after a two-day siege.
The undercover force in Jenin opened fire on the car carrying the militants, killing Ashraf al-Saadi, 25, a senior Jihad leader in the West Bank, and Alaa Breiki, 26, Palestinian security sources said.
A third militant, Mohammad Abu Naasa, 22, was wounded in the shooting, but a soldier finished him off with a bullet to the head, witnesses said.
"The soldiers came to the car, opened the back door, saw that one of the guys was injured in the back. One of the soldiers took out his pistol and shot him in the head," said one witness, declining to be named.
[...] "The troops opened fire and killed them," the source said, adding that the trio was "involved in planning and carrying out attacks against the army and planning suicide bombings."
[...] A radical Islamist movement considered close to Iran, the Islamic Jihad has claimed responsibility for most of the suicide attacks in Israel over the past two years, including the January 29 blast in the Red Sea resort of Eilat that killed three Israeli civilians.
[...] The Palestinian Authority has warned that the crackdown in Nablus was threatening U.S.-led efforts to rekindle the long-stalled peace process.
Just for the sake of clarification, any Palestinian who resists Israeli oppression is a "terrorist" as far as the Israeli and American governments are concerned, and fit for nothing but a bullet in the head. And last months "suicide bombing" in Eilat was missing a suicide bomber.
Israeli troops have killed a commander of the militant Islamic Jihad group in the northern West Bank.
Mahmoud Abu Obeid was driving through Jenin when undercover agents sprayed his car with bullets, witnesses said.
The Israeli army had no immediate comment. The death comes a day after police said they foiled a planned suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.
Israeli Radio said the Islamic Jihad leader in Jenin - a militant stronghold - had dispatched the suspected bomber.
Witnesses quoted by Associated Press said an Israeli combat helicopter was seen in the area at the time.
An Islamic Jihad official has confirmed that the group had been planning to carry out the Tel Aviv attack, three weeks after its last attack in the southern Israeli town of Eilat.
Israel periodically sends undercover agents dressed as Palestinians to carry out military operations in the occupied West Bank.
As I have already noted, part of these "military operations" includes the recruitment of Palestinians to act as dupes in the perpetration of "suicide bombings". A scenario that has played out on more than one occasion goes something like this:
A Palestinian is recruited by undercover Israeli agents, or "musta'ribeen" in Arabic, i.e., "those who appear to be Arabs". These recruits may be ordinary, if naive, Palestinians who are lured with the promise of money or a job or they may be selected from any of the more than 10,000 Palestinians languishing in Israeli prisons, many on no charge other than being Palestinian.
Once recruited on false premises, the patsy is instructed to go to a specific area of Tel Aviv or another Israeli town like Eilat to meet with a contact at, say, a restaurant or nightclub. He may also be told to board a specific bus on a specific route at a specific time. Once the Palestinian dupe reaches the specified location, Israeli agents, watching from nearby, detonate a bomb that has been carefully placed previously. The result? Instant "Palestinian suicide bombing".
That this scenario is very likely the reality of the most if not all of the bombings blamed on Palestinians over the past 6 years can be understood by looking at the results of such bombings. On every occasion:
Palestinians were further demonised as "terrorists" by all;
International opinion turned against the Palestinians and their cause;
Israeli Jews' hatred for Palestinians and support of their government's brutal oppression of Palestinians increased;
Arabs in general were demonised as "crazed suicide bombers" thereby lending credence to the lie that Arab suicide hijackers carried out the 9/11 attacks.
How then, in the end, to make sense of all of this?
Israel, funded to the tune of $billions per year by the US government, is pushing for a Middle Eastern war that will radically reshape the entire region. In 1948, the state of Israel was founded on a brutal injustice against the Palestinian people. Since then, rather than atone for this injustice, successive Israeli governments have actively increased the oppression and brutality meted out to the people of Palestine. The leaders of Zion do not want peace, they want only that their insane, inhuman vision of Greater Israel should come to fruition, and if the Palestinians refuse to lie down under the boot of their Israeli overlord, then there is no place for them in the future.
An Israeli soldier pushes his gun into the stomach of a Palestinian girl as he prevents her from reaching school
In 2002, Israel's former Attorney-General Michael Ben-Yair left no doubt when he said:
"We enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft and finding justification for all these activities. Passionately desiring to keep the occupied territories, we developed two judicial systems: one - progressive, liberal - in Israel; and the other - cruel, injurious - in the occupied territories. In effect, we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture. That oppressive regime exists to this day."
Watch the documentary "The Iron Wall" to understand that the Palestinian people currently live under conditions that are the same, if not worse than those experienced by the Jews and others in Nazi Germany.
JERUSALEM (AP) -- A fringe group of extremist rabbis wants to resume the biblical practice of animal sacrifice at an explosive religious site in Jerusalem, members said Wednesday.
The request defied centuries of religious bans and triggered a stiff protest from a Muslim leader.
Now a group, called the "Re-established Sanhedrin" after the Temple-era religious high court, has decided to buy some sheep and try to find one that is ritually perfect for sacrifice, with an eye toward resuming the practice at the Jerusalem site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.
The site is the most hotly disputed in the Middle East, home today to the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, where Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven. [...]
The 71 members of the "Re-established Sanhedrin" say they want to begin sacrificing animals again, despite the absence of the Temple, the ritual altar and all the required implements listed in the Bible. Rabbi Dov Stein of the group admitted that it won't be any time soon.
"We want to do the sacrifice, but we have political problems," Stein said. "We hope there will come a time when the government will agree. We will push for that to happen."
These "extremist" rabbis are not so extremist, at least not when compared with the political leaders of Israel. Both are gripped by a messianic fervor, it's just that the Rabbis have nothing to lose by exposing it too early.
The Jewish feast of 'purim' begins on March 4th. It was during 'Purim' that the illegal US invasion of Iraq began in 2003. Purim is a celebration of the murder of the Persian Prime Minister, Haman 2,500 years ago, for supposedly plotting a conspiracy against the Jews as related in the Old Testament. Haman, it is said, was hung along with all of his ten sons, and 75,000 hapless Persians were slaughtered. Jewish Rabbis, in concert with American Evangelica ministers, claim to have organised 6 million Christian children around the world to pray for Israel and another attack on an Iranian leader.
Everyone needs to consider carefully the events of the last 7 years, in particular the 9/11 attacks and everything that has resulted. Everyone needs to understand that the U.S. military, largely at the behest of the Zionist leaders, is going to attack Iran. We, the ordinary people of this world, are faced with a serious problem: the most powerful people on this planet are quite clearly 'essential psychopaths'. They are snakes in suits, human beings devoid of any humanity who relish power, domination and control for its own sake.
Where do you think the world is headed with such people at the helm? Do you think there is anything they would not do to further their own insanely selfish agenda? More than anything else, and before it is too late, we need to understand our enemy and the reality of the situation in which we find ourselves. If we do not, then there is nothing left to do but sit back and watch as the darkness spreads across the globe and very soon engulfs us all.
Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands - British scientists have embarked on a mission to study a gigantic hole in the Atlantic seabed - an enigma that defies traditional geophysical theory and will give researchers an unprecedented look into the centre of the Earth.
The 12-person team left the Canary Islands on Monday with a new hi-tech vessel and a robotic device named Toby that will dig up rock samples at the bottom of the crater and film what it sees.
The hole is about 5 000m under the surface of the Atlantic and located half way between Tenerife and Barbados. It has a diameter of 3 000 to 4 000m. Its depth is unknown.
The mysterious hole is in an undersea mountain range, the kind of structure believed to form when Atlantic tectonic plates separate and volcanic lava surges upward to fill the gap. But that did not happen this time. Instead, the hole exposes the mantle, the material that makes up Earth's interior, said British geophysicist Roger Searle of Durham University, one of the researchers.
"We do not know why that is," Searle said before setting sail on the RRS James Cook for the six-week mission. "Because of this gap we can see directly into the Earth's mantle." - Sapa-AP
By Clayton Collins Christian Science Monitor Tue, 06 Mar 2007 09:36 EST
A new study points to disturbing data about Generation Y's supposed lack of empathy, aggressive behavior and inability to form relationships.
A little smug self-absorption might be a time-honored trait of at least some subsets of the under-30 crowd.
But over the past few decades the prevailing disposition among college students -- today labeled Generation Y or Millennials -- has slid into full-blown narcissism, according to a study released this week.
The "all about me" shift means much more than lots of traffic at self-revelatory Web sites such as YouTube and Facebook. It points, says the study's author, to a generation's lack of empathy, its inability to form relationships -- and worse. Read More...
Israeli army forces a Palestinian civilian to strip naked in an attack on the town of Nablus. Shades of Nazi Germany
IMEMC & Agencies Mon, 05 Mar 2007 17:46 EST
The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza issued a report on Monday which stated that 13 Palestinians including one woman, were killed while 188 others were injured by Israeli army fire during the month of February 2007.
HOLLYWOOD has turned them into the cartoon stars of the film Happy Feet, but the real life story of the rockhopper penguin is not such a happy tale, scientists have discovered.
Millions of the birds are disappearing in a "sinister and astonishing" phenomenon that is baffling biologists.
In just six years their numbers have fallen from 600,000 to 420,000 in the Falkland Islands - one of its few remaining strongholds - according to the latest survey by Falklands Conservation.
The decline equates to a drop of about 30 per cent, although the Falklands population is thought to have dipped by about 85 per cent since 1932, when there were more than 1.5 million birds.
It is thought that global warming may be behind its decline, as warmer seas are less productive and the penguins may not be able to find enough food to eat, but researchers admit they have not yet established the reasons.
BAGHDAD, 5 March 2007 (IRIN) - Apart from dodging bombs and bullets in their schools and neighbourhoods, children in Iraq are suffering from worryingly high levels of malnourishment, according to specialists.
Poverty and insecurity are said to be the main causes of the children’s deteriorating diets. Despite efforts by NGOs and the Iraqi government, violence and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people are making it very difficult for monthly food rations to reach those families that need them most.
“We are displaced and have to change our place [because of spreading sectarian violence] every month, making it difficult for us to get our food rations. As a result, our children are constantly ill and are malnourished because we don’t have enough money to afford good food,” said Samira Abdel-Kareem, a mother-of-three who was forced to flee her Yarmouk neighbourhood of Baghdad to the outskirts of the city.
“I lost a child three months ago because of malnutrition. He was only two years old. I don’t want to lose my other three children and hope someone can help us overcome this problem,” she added.
Laura Knight-Jadczyk Signs Of The Times Tue, 27 Feb 2007 08:22 EST
There has been a gathering storm of potentially explosive controversy between Christians and Jews that we have been observing with some interest. It may not be apparent to some that this issue has the potential to ignite global conflict, but if all factors are taken into consideration, including the fact that this very event was predicted years ago by Douglas Reed in his book Controversy of Zion, the arrangement of playing pieces on the board should give us some clue about what is in store.
Obviously, of course, it is only some Jews and some Christians, but the ramifications of the situation - especially considering the background and details - are startling. We hope that you will peruse this mini-series including some comments and understand that this is just another salvo in a long-term project and the when the storm finally breaks, things could get very ugly.
Let's begin our review with the basic claims. Read More...
LIFE IN THE DEPTHS New Sea Life Species Discovered in Antarctica
Fan-finned ice fish, spindley orange sea stars, and roving sea cucumbers -- an unknown underwater world full of new species and exotic sealife has been discovered by an international team of scientists in Antarctica. more...
