Friday, April 30, 2010

Hidden toll of US wars: 18 veterans commit suicide daily

By Bill Van Auken, wsws.com, April 28, 2010

An average of 18 US military veterans are taking their lives every day as the Obama administration and the Pentagon grow increasingly defensive about the epidemic of suicides driven by Washington’s wars of aggression.

The stunning figure was reported last week by the Army Times, citing officials in the US Veterans Affairs Department.

The department estimates that there are 950 suicide attempts every month by veterans who are receiving treatment from the department. Of these, 7 percent succeed in taking their own lives, while 11 percent try to kill themselves again within nine months.

The greatest growth in suicides has taken place among veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, who accounted for 1,868 suicide attempts in fiscal 2009, which ended on September 30. Of these, nearly 100 succeeded in killing themselves.

The connection between the “surge” in military suicides and the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is undeniable. The suicide rate within the military doubled between 2001 and 2006, even as it remained flat among the comparable (adjusted for age and gender) civilian population. And the numbers continue to rise steadily. In 2009, 160 active-duty military personnel killed themselves, compared to 140 in 2008 and 77 in 2003.

Many have blamed the increasing number of suicides on the repeated combat deployments to which members of the all-volunteer US military are subjected, with the so-called “war on terrorism” approaching its 10th year and nearly 200,000 US troops deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The effect of the repeated deployments is compounded by the shortness of so-called “dwell time”—the interlude at home bases between combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over most of the two wars, this has been limited to just one year because of personnel pressures. While it is now closer to two years, psychological research has indicated that at least three years are necessary to ameliorate the psychological stress inflicted by these deployments.

The military command has tried to obscure the connection. Last month, for example, the Army’s surgeon general, Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, told a Senate committee that the most common factor in military suicides was “fractured relationships of some sort.” Clearly, however, the multiple deployments and the psychological impact that they have upon soldiers is the leading cause of broken marriages and mental health problems that lead to the breaking off of relationships.

Craig Bryan, a former Air Force officer and University of Texas psychologist who advises the Pentagon on suicides, linked the phenomenon to the training given by the military itself.

“We train our warriors to use controlled violence and aggression, to suppress strong emotional reactions in the face of adversity, to tolerate physical and emotional pain and to overcome the fear of injury and death,” he told Time magazine earlier this month. These qualities, designed to prepare soldiers to kill unquestioningly, “are also associated with increased risk for suicide,” he said. He added that these psychological traits cannot be altered “without negatively affecting the fighting capability of our military.” To put it bluntly, suicide, according to Bryan, is an occupational hazard. “Service members are, simply put, more capable of killing themselves by sheer consequence of their professional training,” he said.

The same training, combined with traumatic experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, has created severe difficulties for many veterans of the two wars trying to re-integrate themselves into civilian society. While the suicides are the most glaring and tragic indicator of these problems, there are many others.

Last month, the jobless rate for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan reached 14.7 percent, nearly 50 percent higher than the official nationwide unemployment rate in the US.

According to one recent Veterans Administration estimate, 154,000 US veterans are homeless on any given night, many of them living on the streets. Increasingly, the ranks of this homeless army are being swelled by those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

General Schoomaker, the Army’s surgeon general, was compelled to acknowledge on Monday that the military’s response to soldiers returning from combat with psychological problems has been one of “over-medication.”

“I can tell you that we are concerned about over-medication,” the general said, adding that “we’re very concerned about the panoply of drugs that are being used and the numbers of drugs that are being used.”

According to a report in the Military Times last month, one in six members of the US military is using some form of psychotropic drug, while 15 percent of soldiers admitted to abusing prescription drugs over the previous month.

Schoomaker’s comments came at a press conference called to respond to an article published in the New York Times Sunday exposing a so-called “warrior transition unit” at Fort Carson, Colorado. It referred to this facility and similar units as “’warehouses of despair, where damaged men and women are kept out of sight, fed a diet of prescription pills and treated harshly by noncommissioned officers.”

Soldiers interviewed in the article said that they were given pain pills to which they became addicted as well as sleeping pills and other medication, while alcohol and heroin were readily available in their barracks. Little or no therapy was on offer, however.

At least four soldiers sent to the unit at Fort Carson have committed suicide there since 2007.

On April 16, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff, testified on Capitol Hill on veteran suicides, providing equally telling numbers. He reported that VA suicide hotlines were fielding 10,000 calls a month.

Shinseki told a congressional panel that he was haunted by two images of US military personnel. The first was that of new recruits who “outperform all of our expectations, great youngsters.”

The second is that of veterans who make up a “a disproportionate share of the nation’s homeless, jobless, mental health (problems), depressed patients, substance abusers, suicides.”

“Something happened” along the way, said Shinseki, “and that’s what we’re about is to try to figure this out.”

It is not a great mystery. These “great youngsters” are thrown into wars of aggression and colonial-style occupations where they are exposed to horrific violence and employed in the subjugation of entire populations, with the inevitable killing of civilian men, women and children. Those who acknowledge the mental and emotional trauma created by these conditions are treated as pariahs and weaklings

On the same day that Shinseki was testifying in Washington, 27-year-old Jesse Huff, an Iraq war veteran, killed himself outside a Veterans Administration medical facility in Dayton, Ohio, where he had been treated for post-traumatic stress disorder. Huff, who had been injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq, shot himself twice in the head with an assault rifle at the foot of a statue to the Union soldiers of the Civil War. A cousin told the Associated Press that he “hadn’t been the same” since returning from Iraq, while the father of a young man with whom he lived said that Huff was “really hurting.”

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Secret Iraqi government prison was ‘worse than Abu Ghraib’

Inmates at covert jail suffered routine electric shocks and sexual abuse

By Kim Sengupta, Diplomatic Correspondent, The Independent/UK, April 29, 2010

The torture of prisoners in Iraq jails was widespread under Saddam   Hussein's regime. Now human rights  activists claim that similar  abuses  are taking place on government orders
The torture of prisoners in Iraq jails was widespread under Saddam Hussein’s regime. Now human rights activists claim that similar abuses are taking place on government orders

    Gaza Death Zone: Israelis and Egyptians Are Killing Palestinian Youth Who Challenge the Siege of Gaza

    by Ann Wright, CommonDreams.org, April 30, 2010

    The Palestinians in the Death Zone called Gaza are being slaughtered again as Israel and now Egypt kill and wound more innocent civilians who challenge their illegal siege, blockade and quarantine.

    In the past four days, one young Palestinian man has been killed and two young women and a young man have been wounded by Israeli snipers as they protested the Israeli bulldozing of 300 meters of Palestinian land into an Israeli “buffer zone.” Four young Palestinian tunnel workers have been killed by suffocation and 6 injured as Egypt sprayed a crowd disbursal gas into a tunnel.

    Continues >>

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    Hezbollah: Egyptian jailings ‘unjust and politicised’

    BBC News, April 30, 2010
    Hassan Nasrallah, pictured on 13 March 2009
    The convictions were a “badge of honour” Mr Nasrallah said

    The leader of the Lebanese Shia militia Hezbollah has strongly criticised the Egyptian courts for jailing men accused of working for the group.

    Hassan Nasrallah said the judgement by the Security Court in Cairo was “unjust and politicised” in an interview with an Arabic TV station.

    He said he would seek “political and diplomatic means” to get their release.

    The 26 men were sentenced by the court for planning terrorist attacks on ships and tourist sites.

    Continues >>

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    Thursday, April 29, 2010

    War propaganda from Afghanistan

    By Glenn Greenwal, Salon.com, April 27, 2010

    AP
    In this April 26, photo, U.S. Army Lt. David Cummings, of Raleigh, N.C., talks on the radio with his platoon while patrolling areas in Kandahar.

    The New York Times yesterday excitedly declared that the imminent Battle of Kandahar “has become the make-or-break offensive of the eight-and-half-year [Afghanistan] war” and is “the pivotal test of President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy.” As Atrios suggests, there never is any such thing as “make-or-break” because we never leave no matter how completely our war and occupation efforts fail. That’s what led to the countless Friedman Units of the Iraq War: the endless proclamations that The Next Six Months will be Decisive, only to be repeated at the end of the six-month period of failure as though the prior one never happened.

    Just consider what’s being said now about how the Kandahar offensive is the “make-or-break” battle of the war and the “pivotal test” for Obama’s war strategy by comparing it to what was said a mere two months ago about the now clearly failing assault on Marjah:

    Times of London, February 13, 2010:

    Allied troops launched a major offensive into Afghanistan’s most violent province last night, in a key part of President Obama’s push to seize control of the Taleban’s last big stronghold. . . . If it fails, many analysts believe that the war will be lost.

    The Independent declared on February 9, 2010, that General McChrystal wants the Marjah offensive to “be one of the most significant in the country since the fall of the Taliban in 2001″ and, of Obama’s war strategy, said that “Marjah looks like being its first major — and possibly decisive — test.” The BBC quoted a NATO official who proclaimed that Marjah “was ‘probably the definitive operation’ of the counter-insurgency strategy” and “this operation could potentially define the tipping point, the crucial momentum aspect in the counter-insurgency.” Time helpfully informed us that “U.S. officials believe it will mark a turning point in the war.”

    Now that that “make-or-break decisive test” has failed (or, at best, has produced very muddled outcomes), did the Government and media follow through and declare the war effort broken and the strategy a failure? No; they just pretend it never happened and declare the next, latest, glorious Battle the real “make-or-break decisive test” – until that one fails and the next one is portrayed that way, in an endless tidal wave of war propaganda intended to justify our staying for as long as we want, no matter how pointless and counter-productive it is.

    * * * * *

    Speaking of war propaganda, today is a very proud day for the U.S.: the military commission ordered by Eric Holder begins for Omar Khadr, a Canadian-born, Afghanistan-residing detainee encaged at Guantanamo for seven years — since he was 15 years old — on “war crimes” and “terrorism” charges that he was involved in a firefight with American military forces who, revealingly enough, were using a former Soviet military base as their outpost. Khadr was wounded in the battle, imprisoned at Bagram, then at Guantanamo, claims he was severely tortured into falsely confessing, and made worldwide news when a video of him weeping, begging for medical help, and crying for his mother during an interrogation was released. Apparently, if the U.S. Army invades a foreign country, anyone who fights against that invading force — including a 15-year-old boy — is a “war criminal” and a “Terrorist,” even the Worst of The Worst, which is, of course, all that we’re currently holding at Guantanamo. Now that’s some robust propaganda.

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    A Middle East Peace That Could Happen (But Won’t)

    In Washington-Speak, “Palestinian State” Means “Fried Chicken”

    By Noam Chomsky, TomDispatch.com, April 27, 2010

    The fact that the Israel-Palestine conflict grinds on without resolution might appear to be rather strange. For many of the world’s conflicts, it is difficult even to conjure up a feasible settlement. In this case, it is not only possible, but there is near universal agreement on its basic contours: a two-state settlement along the internationally recognized (pre-June 1967) borders — with “minor and mutual modifications,” to adopt official U.S. terminology before Washington departed from the international community in the mid-1970s.

    Continues >>

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    The Legality of Drone Warfare

    By Joanne Mariner, Counterpunch, April 28, 2010

    Congress is holding hearings this week on the legality of the US government’s drone warfare program. Conducted by the National Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the hearings will examine the CIA’s use of unmanned aerial vehicles – commonly known as drones – to fire missiles at suspected militants in Pakistan and elsewhere.

    While the Bush administration had an active drone warfare program, US reliance on drones increased greatly after President Obama took office. According to Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann of the New America Foundation, who have carried out a study of the drone program, the Bush administration carried out a total of 45 drone strikes in eight years, whereas the Obama administration carried out 53 strikes in 2009 alone. The pace of such attacks quickened even further in 2010.

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    MidEast, Asia failing to protect domestic workers

    Middle East Online, April 29, 2010



    ‘Reforms have been slow, incremental, and hard-fought’

    HRW: reforms undertaken by governments fall far short of minimum protections needed.

    KUALA LUMPUR – Middle East and Asian nations, which draw millions of foreign domestic workers, have failed to take action to tackle widespread abuse of the vulnerable women despite recent improvements. Human Rights Watch said.

    “The reforms undertaken by Middle Eastern and Asian governments fall far short of the minimum protections needed to tackle abuses against migrant domestic workers,” the US-based group said in a report launched ahead of International Labour Day on May 1.

    Continues >>

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    Fomenting Armageddon: Jerusalem’s Colonization and Western Apathy

    By Dr. Ahmad Yousef, Uruknet.info, April 28, 2010
    7jerusalem_jews_dancing_yousef.jpg

    The Israelis are instigating a Jewish holy war staged in Jerusalem; and they are playing a superb game of propaganda painting the Palestinians as the “real” fundamentalists, despite the fact that the Knesset has more active right-wing political parties than any state in the civilized world. It’s a strategy that has caught the West by surprise as they continue to react with template disappointment.

    Successive governments have supported colonization for decades; yet Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s recent moves have all but dispelled the façade of a secular rationale. Unfettered, expedited settlement construction in Jerusalem, with images of soldiers traipsing through Islam’s third holiest site in army fatigues, mark a new low for the Israelis; yet equally indicate a new level of brazen physical and psychological aggression that will result in a new intifada.

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    Wednesday, April 28, 2010

    Is Iran Really a Threat to America?

    By Ray McGovern, Consortiumnews.com, April 26, 2010

    Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said publicly that Iran “doesn’t directly threaten the United States.” Her momentary lapse came while answering a question at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar, on Feb. 14.

    Fortunately for her, most of her Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) fellow travelers must have been either jet-lagged or sunning themselves poolside when she made her unusual admission.

    And those who were present did Clinton the favor of disappearing her gaffe and ignoring its significance. (All one happy traveling family, you know.)

    But she said it: it’s on the State Department Web site. Those who had been poolside could even have read the text after showering. They might have recognized a real story there — but, granted, it was one so off-message that it would probably not we welcomed by editors back home.

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    Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

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    US military escalates its dirty war in Afghanistan

    By James Cogan, wsws.org, 27 April 2010

    The New York Times reported Sunday that American special forces units are operating in and around the Afghan city of Kandahar, assassinating or capturing alleged leaders and militants of the Taliban resistance ahead of the major US-NATO offensive scheduled for June.

    Suggestive of the sinister and murderous character of such operations, the Times noted that the “opening salvos of the offensive are being carried out in the shadows”. It reported that “elite” units had been “picking up or picking off insurgent leaders” for the past several weeks.

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    Why We Object to Franklin Graham’s Islamophobia

    Truthout, Monday 26 April 2010

    by: Mikey Weinstein | Newsweek

    photo
    Franklin Graham. (Photo: roberthuffstutter)

    Let’s just face it: Franklin Graham is an Islamophobe, an anti-Muslim bigot and an international representative of the scourge of fundamentalist Christian supremacy and exceptionalism. As a result, he fails in the worst way as a role model for Constitutional American citizenship. How can Graham or anyone prejudge/brand all members of a specific culture, religion and/or ethnicity? Such prejudice and racist cretinism is nothing new. It’s as old as our species and has been the direct cause of the brutal end of untold multitudes of our species.

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    British soldiers viewed all Iraqis as ‘scum’, Baha Mousa inquiry hears

    Intelligence officer says officers did not know rules on treatment of prisoners and one tried to mount ‘arse-covering exercise’ after Baha Mousa’s death

    Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian/UK, April 27, 2010

    Baha Mousa inquiryBaha Mousa, a Basra hotel worker, was beaten to death in 2003 while in the custody of 1 Battalion Queen’s Lancashire Regiment. Photograph: Liberty/PA

    An officer of the regiment detaining Baha Mousa, a Basra hotel worker, when he was beaten to death said his soldiers held the view that “all Iraqis were scum”, it was disclosed today.

    One officer tried to mount an “arse covering” exercise after Mousa’s death, while others expressed ignorance of basic rules covering the treatment of prisoners, the public inquiry into the incident heard.

    Continues >>

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    A Nation Born in Deception

    by William A. Cook, Dissident Voice, April 27, 2010

    As Israel attempts today to gloss over the reality of its birth 62 years ago with a sweeping public relations campaign extolling the miraculous “resurrection” of ancient Zion in contemporary times, a new nation seeking only peace with its neighbors, it might be enlightening and valuable to examine the truth.

    On May 14, 1948 President Harry S. Truman received a letter from the Jewish Agency for Palestine announcing the impending proclamation of the independent republic of Israel.1 That date marks not only the beginning of the State of Israel but, sub missa voce, the assumption by the State of Israel of the calculated, systematic and determined ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population of the land of Palestine that had been the business of “The Consultancy” and its agents before May 14, as identified by Dr. Ilan Pappe in his monumental The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.2

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    Tuesday, April 27, 2010

    Egypt a ticking time bomb

    The Arab world’s leading nation has become a political and cultural backwater — and that’s not good

    Eric Margolis, The Toronto Sun, April 25, 2010

    As battered air travellers struggle to recover from Iceland’s volcanic big bang, another explosion is building up.

    This time, it’s a political one that could rock the entire Mideast, where rumours of war involving the U.S., Syria, Israel and Iran are intensifying.

    President Hosni Mubarak, the U.S.-supported strongman who has ruled Egypt with an iron hand for almost 30 years, is 81 and in frail health. He has no designated successor.

    Mubarak, a general, was put into power with U.S. help after the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat by nationalist soldiers. Sadat had been a CIA “asset” since 1952.

    Egypt, with 82 million people, is the most populous and important Arab nation and Cairo the cultural centre of the Arab world. It is also an overcrowded madhouse with eight million people whose population has tripled since I lived there as a boy.

    Not counting North Africa, one in three Arabs is Egyptian.

    Egypt was once the heart and soul of the Arab and Muslim world. Under Sadat’s predecessor, the widely adored nationalist Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt led the Arab world. Egyptians despised Sadat as a corrupt western toady and sullenly accepted Mubarak.

    After three decades under Mubarak, Egypt has become a political and cultural backwater. In a telling incident, Mubarak recently flew to Germany for gall bladder and colon surgery. After billions in U.S. aid, Mubarak could not even trust a local hospital in the Arab world’s leading nation.

    The U.S. gives Egypt $1.3 billion annually in military aid to keep the generals content and about $700 million in economic aid, not counting secret CIA stipends, and vast amounts of low-cost wheat.

    Mubarak’s Egypt is the cornerstone of America’s Mideast Raj (dominion). Egypt’s 469,000-man armed forces, 397,000 paramilitary police and ferocious secret police keep the regime in power and crush all dissent.

    Though large, Egypt’s military is starved by Washington of modern weapons, ammo and spare parts so it cannot wage war against Israel. Its sole function is keeping the U.S.-backed regime in power.

    Mubarak has long been a key ally of Israel in battling Islamist and nationalist groups. Egypt and Israel collaborate on penning up Hamas-led Palestinians in Gaza.

    Egypt is now building a new steel wall on the Gaza border with U.S. assistance. Mubarak’s Wall, which will go down 12 metres, is designed to block tunnels through which Gaza Palestinians rely for supplies.

    While Washington fulminates against Iran and China over human rights, it says nothing about client Egypt — where all elections are rigged, regime opponents brutally tortured and political opposition liquidated.

    Washington could quickly impose real democracy to Egypt where it pulls all the strings, if it wanted.

    Ayman Nour, the last man who dared run in an election against the eternal Mubarak — “pharaoh” to Islamist opponents — was arrested and tortured.

    Now, as Mubarak’s health fails, the U.S. and Israel are increasingly alarmed his death could produce a political eruption in long-repressed Egypt.

    Mubarak has been trying to groom his son, Gamal, to succeed him. But Egyptians are deeply opposed. The powerful 72-year old intelligence chief, Gen. Omar Suleiman, an ally of the U.S. and Israel, is another possible strongman. CIA will also be grooming another army or air force general for the job.

    Egypt’s secular political opposition barely exists. The regime’s real opponent remains the relatively moderate, highly popular Islamic Brotherhood. It would win a free election hands down. But its leadership is old and tired. Half of Egyptians are under 20.

    Mohammed El-Baradai, the intelligent, principled, highly respected Egyptian former UN nuclear chief, is calling for real democracy in his homeland. He presents a very attractive candidate to lead post-Mubarak Egypt.

    Washington hopes it can ease another compliant general into power and keep the security forces loyal before 30 years of pent-up fury at Mubarak’s dictatorship, Egypt’s political emasculation, thirst for change and dire poverty produce a volcanic eruption on the Nile.

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    Lies and Wars

    By William Pfaff, Future Fastforward, April 25, 2010

    Tribune Media,

    It is a dismaying reflection that the facilitator of major violence thus far in the twenty-first century have been lies told by democratic governments. The lies are continuing to be told, about the supposed “existential” menace posed by Iran to Israel, America and (if you believe some European leaders) to Western Europe.

    One can say there is nothing new about lies. I would argue that the influence of mendacious official propaganda in the western democracies is probably greater today than in the last century.

    Continues >>

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    Hundreds Killed as US Escalates Pakistan Strikes

    Few Notable Militants Reported Killed

    by Jason Ditz, Antiwar.com, April 25, 2010

    After killing a record 700 civilians last year in at least 44 distinct drone strikes against Pakistan in 2009, the Obama Administration looks to be escalating the rate even further in 2010, to the point that drone strikes have become a decidedly ordinary occurrence.

    Less than four months into the new year, the US has already launched 40 attacks and killed at least 268 people. The most recent strike yesteray in North Waziristan killed at least nine people.

    The identities of the victims are never particularly easy to ascertain, but the number of named militants killed so far this year is trivial, as it was last year, when most of the “suspects” turned out to have no discernible relation to any militant faction.

    Since taking office, President Obama has repeatedly escalated the drone strikes against the tribal areas, to the point where multiple attacks a week are a matter of course. With the normal winter lull seeing such a large number of strikes, a new record for killings seems all but assured again in 2010.

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    Engelhardt: Yes, We Could… Get Out!

    Why We Won’t Leave Afghanistan or Iraq

    By Tom Engelhardt, ZNet, April 26, 2010
    Source: TomDispatch
    Tom Engelhardt’s ZSpace Page

    Yes, we could. No kidding. We really could withdraw our massive armies, now close to 200,000 troops combined, from Afghanistan and Iraq (and that’s not even counting our similarly large stealth army of private contractors, which helps keep the true size of our double occupations in the shadows). We could undoubtedly withdraw them all reasonably quickly and reasonably painlessly.

    Not that you would know it from listening to the debates in Washington or catching the mainstream news. There, withdrawal, when discussed at all, seems like an undertaking beyond the waking imagination. In Iraq alone, all those bases to dismantle and millions of pieces of equipment to send home in a draw-down operation worthy of years of intensive effort, the sort of thing that makes the desperate British evacuation from Dunkirk in World War II look like a Sunday stroll in the park. And that’s only the technical side of the matter.

    Continues >>

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    Monday, April 26, 2010

    Tony Blair, Very Close to being Indicted for War Crimes

    By Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

    Global Research, April 24, 2010

    While on a speaking engagement in Malaysia organized by “Success Resources Company”, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was the object of an articulate protest movement demanding his indictment for war crimes.

    This was no ordinary protest. Tony Blair has been accused of war crimes in a legal initiative led by the country’s former Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad.

    A War Crimes Tribunal as well as a War Crimes Commission were set up integrated by renowned jurists. Documentary evidence of war crimes committed by Blair and Bush has been carefully compiled and collected since 2006. The prosecution is led by several of Malaysia’s most prominent lawyers.

    Dr Mahathir in a public statement “expressed disgust at the companies that had sponsored Blair’s visit here. ‘How can you sponsor and get advice from a liar? Do you also intend to lie in carrying out your business?’ he asked.” (Thousands Of Slippers To ‘Greet’ Tony Blair In Malaysia, April 24, 2010)

    Rather than mingling with delegates to the venue, Blair was hiding in the VIP lounge of the Kuala Lumpur Convention Center, surrounded by British and Malaysian security personnel. Upon entering the main convention hall, Tony Blair was very close to being served with an indictment for war crimes:

    Acting Chairman of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission, Mr. Zainur Zakaria, Chief Prosecutor of the War Crimes Commission, Mr. Matthias Chang [barrister], two members of the Perdana Global Peace Organisation, Mr. Ram Karthigasu and Mr. Christopher Chang, a representative of the Malaysian Kwong Siew Association (one of the largest Chinese clan association) and two representatives of the Iraq Community in Malaysia evaded the security by registering themselves as delegates.

    At 8.30 am, members of NGOs gathered at the entrance of the convention center to protest against the visit of war criminal Blair. Undercover teams were dispatched to the three separate entrances to confront and attempt to serve the war crimes indictment on Blair. But he could not be seen entering the convention centre.

    He had entered surreptitiously and was hiding in a VIP room just above the convention hall where the function was held. His original schedule was 10.00am this morning. But organisers issued statements that no schedule is available.

    British and Malaysian security officers were seen patrolling the corridors and had identified the seven delegates who were waiting for Blair. They kept a close watch on the delegates. Mind games began when rumours were spread that Blair would not be speaking today. Hints were given that Blair would be speaking on Sunday in the hope that the seven delegates would abandon their vigil.

    At 11.25am, the seven delegates discovered that Blair was hiding in the VIP room just above the convention hall. They took their positions, with three members tasked with taking photographs.

    At 11.30am Blair and his team of goons descended from the VIP room and walked towards the VIP entrance of the convention hall.

    Mr. Matthias Chang and Mr. Zainur Zakaria rushed forward to serve the indictment, while the Iraqi representatives loudly denounced Blair ? “mass murderer, war criminal, shame on you,” repeatedly. Blair was obviously unsettled and put on an embarrassed smile.

    Mr. Matthias Chang and Mr. Zainur Zakaria were prevented from handing the indictment to Blair by over 30 British and Malaysian security personnel. Both of them denounced Blair within earshot, “War criminal, shame on you! Mass Murderer!”

    Mr. Zainur Zakaria also shouted at the Malaysian security personnel, “Why are you protecting a war criminal?” The security officers could only respond with a silly expression.

    Having arrogantly told the Chilcot Inquiry in London that he had no regrets for invading Iraq notwithstanding there were no WMDs, Blair displayed cowardice in the face of only seven delegates.

    The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission stated that this is only the beginning of a global campaign to ostracise war criminals like Blair and Bush and urge people the world over to adopt similar campaigns against Bush and Blair. No Where to Hide: Fears of Arrest and Prosecution by Tony Blair on Charges of War Crimes, Global Research, April 24, 2010)


    While these unfolding events have been acknowledged by the Malaysian press, Tony Blair’s visit to Malaysia has passed virtually unnoticed in the United Kingdom. In fact, outside of Malaysia, the issue has not received press coverage.

    Deafening silence and complicity of the British media? One would expect that people in Britain would want to know what happened to Tony Blair in Kuala Lumpur.

    Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics, Director of the Center for Research on Globalization (CRG), Member of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission and Signatory of the 2005 Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalize War.

    Read also: http://www.worldbulletin.net/news_detail.php?id=57590

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    Kucinich: US drone attacks in Pakistan could ‘inspire radicalism’

    By Sahil Kapur, The Raw Story, April 19, 2010

    kucinichobama Kucinich: US drone attacks in Pakistan could inspire   radicalism

    WASHINGTON – Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) forcefully criticized the United States’ drone strikes in Pakistan as inspiring the anti-American sentiments they seek to quell, touching upon a consequence of the policy rarely discussed in the media but well-recognized in the region.

    “I do not support the drone attacks,” Kucinich told Raw Story, arguing that they are pushing the United States “into an area of unaccountability that would lead to blowback, where we actually lose friends, where we help inspire anti-American sentiments and fanaticism and radicalism.”

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    Drone attacks: Killing civilians as legal

    Daya Gamage – US National Correspondent Asian Tribune

    Washington, D.C. 24 April (Asiantribune.com):

    U.S. targeting practices, including lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV or drones), comply with all applicable law, including the laws of war is the authoritative opinion of the Obama administration’s Chief Legal Counsel attached to Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

    The domestic and international outcry in opposition to the Drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) – started during the previous Bush administration in 2002 and increasingly used by the current Obama administration – is for the collateral damage – the vast civilian deaths – that results.

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    Garzon who pursued Spain’s fascist assassins finds himself on trial

    Powerful enemies are attempting to unseat the ‘superjudge’ who tried to bring the death squads of Franco’s dictatorship to book

    Giles Tremlett in Madrid, The Observer/UK, April 25, 2010

    Spanish judge Baltazar Garzon participat

    The Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, who dared to investigate the atrocities of the Franco dictatorship. Photograph: Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images

    The crowd gathered outside Madrid’s national court was loud and angry. “The world has been turned upside down,” they cried. “The fascists are judging the judge!” Some carried photographs of long-dead relatives, killed by rightwing death squads in Spain‘s brutal civil war in the 1930s. Others bore placards bearing the name of the hero they wanted to save, the controversial “superjudge” Baltasar Garzón.

    Pedro Romero de Castilla carried a picture of his grandfather, Wenceslao – a former stationmaster taken away from his home in the western city of Mérida and shot by a death squad at the service of Generalísimo Francisco Franco‘s rightwing military rebels 74 years ago. The family have never found his body.

    Continues >>

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    Sanctioning Iran Is an Act of War

    by Rep. Ron Paul, Antiwar.com, April 23, 2010

    Before the US House of Representatives, April 22, 2010, Statement on Motion to Instruct Conferees on HR 2194, Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act.

    I rise in opposition to this motion to instruct House conferees on HR 2194, the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act, and I rise in strong opposition again to the underlying bill and to its Senate version as well. I object to this entire push for war with Iran, however it is disguised. Listening to the debate on the Floor on this motion and the underlying bill it feels as if we are back in 2002 all over again: the same falsehoods and distortions used to push the United States into a disastrous and unnecessary one-trillion-dollar war on Iraq are being trotted out again to lead us to what will likely be an even more disastrous and costly war on Iran. The parallels are astonishing.

    Continues >>

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    Friday, April 23, 2010

    Pope Benedict’s version of God and Islam

    Nasir Khan, October 10, 2006

    Pope Benedict XVI is the ruler of the Vatican City State and the spiritual head of more than one billion Christians across the world. What he says has an impact on political and religious thinking as well as on interfaith relations in the world. On 12 September, he delivered a well-prepared theological lecture before his home crowd of Bavarian academics and students in which he made a thinly veiled attack on the Prophet Muhammad and the notion of Holy War (Jihad). But instead of making a frontal attack on Islam, he used the derogatory remarks against Islam by a 14th century Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, to convey his own message and thus to absolve himself of any responsibility for such remarks. Manuel II Paleologus had said:

    ‘Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by sword the faith he preached.’

    Now, before I say anything whether such a remark has any basis in historical fact or is a mere crude misrepresentation of Islam, we should turn our attention to the method the Pope has used. It is common knowledge that whenever we use a quotation from other sources in our written or spoken words, we seek support for the particular point we may be making or we reject the view advanced by such a quotation by challenging it. To use a quotation in the former case does not need our comment; our using it evinces our – either direct or tacit — approval.

    It seems the Pope has used the emperor’s words in support of his own criticism of Islam and of his theological standpoint. It may be a clever device, but it was in reality an unhealthy and unfortunate thing for a number of reasons.

    First, Manuel’s formulation and accusation belongs to a particular era and historical setting in which the emperor was a direct participant in military and political struggle against the expanding Ottomans; however, his views on the Prophet and Islam have no relation to historical facts.

    Secondly, the Pope is an influential leader in world affairs and he has a moral and political responsibility to help reach out to other faiths, especially Islam, to promote better interfaith relations in a world where conflicts and violence seem to be increasing; gross violations of human rights are taking place, and we are living through a time when international law and the norms of civilised behaviour are being eroded and ignored by the powerful and mighty states.

    Thirdly, behind the seemingly scholarly rhetoric lies the Pope’s theology according to which Christianity is compatible with rationality, thus negating a similar compatibility in the case of Islam.

    I do not intend to go into the details of such a theology, but such exclusivist views about the divine are excessively capricious and uncalled for in this century. His provocative and historically untenable remarks about Islamic teachings have led only to negative results; his ill-chosen words have inflamed the passions of Muslims throughout the world. In no way do I condone such violent responses, but at the same time we should be aware of the religious sensitivities of believers and not provoke them without good cause. We need to keep in mind that most believers, ‘the flock’, believe in a Divine Being and hold their holy books in high esteem. Indeed, they take their faiths seriously; they should not be assumed to be a gathering of philosophers, historians or doctors of theology capable of entering into dispassionate academic discussions. There are far too many people who are certain of their traditional beliefs and the authorities they rely upon. The British philosopher Bertrand Russell rightly says that the whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves but wiser people so full of doubts.

    The political objectives?

    The Pope’s speech comes amidst the growing anarchy and destruction in Iraq. The American war of aggression against Iraq has not gone according to the wishes of the Bush Administration. As a result of the militaristic policies of America in Iraq and its so-called ‘war against terror’, there is growing anger and frustration throughout the Muslim world against the American wars and terrorist policies in the Middle East. Some observers see the Pope adding his voice to throw his support in favour of President Bush and his allies in what they call ‘Islamic terror’ and portray Islam as a violent religion.

    Evidently much of the Islamic world is going through an extremely difficult phase at this stage. Two Muslim countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, have been invaded and occupied by the armies of the New Crusaders – Bush and Blair – and two puppet regimes have been installed in these countries to serve the imperial interests. Also among the Western allies is Pakistan, whose ruler General Musharraf has admitted that America had threatened to bomb Pakistan back into the Stone Age if he did not join the American ‘war against terror’. This he did. I addition to launching major military operations in the Frontier Province and Balochistan, Pakistan has rounded up any of its nationals who showed hostility towards American policies in the region. This has been carried out by the intelligence services of Pakistan in return for millions of American dollars and more than seven hundred such victims handed over to the CIA. Where and how are these prisoners being held or what has happened to them? The American government gives no information. Thus the crimes against humanity continue to mount and the only explanation is the flat statement that there is a ‘war against terror’.

    We all know that the Christian Right, especially evangelical and born-again Christians, are open supporters of the American invasion of Iraq, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and the systematic killings of Palestinians on a regular basis, not to mention the recent Israeli war against Lebanon.

    The Pope is a learned theologian. He certainly knows what is happening in the Muslim world at the hands of the Christian Powers. But instead of siding with the victims, he attacks them by distorting Islam and its Prophet as well as the true message of Jesus. This is quite a sharp reversal of the path pursued by his predecessor, John Paul II, who had stood for interfaith dialogue and called for respect for other religions. It is well known that as a cardinal in the Holy See, Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict) was opposed to John Paul II’s pursuit of dialogue. But the Vatican Council II (1962-65) had already taken some important decisions in the Catholic approach towards Islam and other religious traditions. To undermine these decisions of the Second Vatican Council by anyone, by whatever means, will constitute a leap in the wrong direction.

    Benedict has held Christianity to be the foundation of Europe and just a few months before he was elected, he had spoken out against the Muslim country, Turkey, joining the EU. He has argued that Christian Europe should be defended. Turkey should seek partners in Muslim countries, not in Christian Europe.

    Now, a brief comment on the charge against Muhammad and his so-called use of the sword to spread his faith. The Christian polemic against Islam is almost thirteen centuries old and Christian apologists have said and written much about it. To situate the whole discussion in a historical context, I did research for more than seven years on the topic. It has resulted in the publication of my book Perceptions of Islam in the Christendoms: A Historical Survey (Oslo: Solum Forlag, 2006). (The Norwegian Research Council had paid the cost of production to the publisher, and thus I have no financial interest in the sale of the book!) I have tried to show the problematic nature of such distorted views in detail, whereas Professor Oddbjørn Leirvik in his new book Islam og kristendom, Konflikt eller dialog? has given a brilliant account of the interaction between the two faiths and explored the possibilities of dialogue and cooperation, instead of confrontation, crude misrepresentations and mutual recriminations. I believe all those who are interested in historical facts will find these two books useful for study and reflection.

    The present attempt by the Pope to claim that ‘violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul’; in other words, that such a view of God cannot be extended to Islamic teachings because here ‘God is absolutely transcendent’. He is ‘not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality’. I find such a formulation and explication simply baffling. This reminds us of the Holosphyros Controversy during the reign of Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenus (r. 1143-80), where the official Melkite theologians had held that ‘the God of Muhammad was said to be holosphyros [made of solid metal beaten to a spherical shape] who neither begat nor was begotten’. If the Pope needed a good source for inspiration then he did chose the right epoch and the right mentors!

    Finally, I would add only a short comment on the old Christian cliché that Muhammad stood for war and violence while Jesus stood for love and peace. There are many Christian believers who still believe this. There is no historical or scriptural evidence that Muhammad at any time in his life advocated war or encouraged his followers to spread Islam by means of the sword. But what did Jesus say?

    ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the world. No, I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. I came to set sons against their fathers, daughters against their mothers, daughters-in-law against their mothers-in-law; a man’s worst enemies will be the members of his own family’ (Matthew 34-36).

    I wonder if the Christian apologists by some strange mental confusion exchanged the roles of Muhammad and Jesus. But why do they still continue to ignore what the Bible says on the matter so clearly?

    At the same time I want to emphasis that self-serving myths and dreams are not an alternative to historical facts. The question of forcible conversions in Islam is another big distortion because all the historical evidence points to the contrary. During the early period of Islamic Caliphate the Umayyad caliphs practically discouraged conversions to Islam. Far too many people had converted to Islam and that created administrative and financial problems for the State! In the Ottoman Empire, if any Muslim forced any Christian or Jew to convert to Islam, he was beheaded.

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    Tony Blair stands accused of crimes against humanity

    Malaysia must not allow this mass murderer to be immune from justice.

    By Prof Shad Saleem Farudi, Information Clearing House, April 22, 2010
    Source: The Star

    It is distressing to note that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been invited to Malaysia as an honoured guest of an NGO when he stands accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity by many learned and independent scholars of international law.

    The case against him looks rock solid, especially after his confession to the BBC and the Chilcot Inquiry that he would have gone to war to topple Saddam Hussein regardless of the issue of Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.

    Indictments around the world:

    The international criminal court to which Britain is a signatory has received a record number of petitions against Blair.

    The World Tribunal on Iraq held in Istanbul in 2005 heard evidence from 54 witnesses and published rigorous indictments against Blair, former US president George W Bush and others.

    The Brussels War Crimes Tribunal, the Blair War Crimes Foundation and the American international law jurist Richard Falk have amassed impressive evidence of Blair’s complicity in international war crimes.

    Spain’s celebrated judge Baltasar Garzon (who indicted former Chilean dictator and president Augusto Pinochet) has called for Bush, Blair and former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar to be prosecuted for the illegal invasion of Iraq, which Garzon has condemned as “one of the most sordid and unjustifiable episodes in recent human history”.

    Many UK jurists have described the invasion as a devastating attack on the rule of law that left the United Nations in tatters.

    Here at home, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission, after two years of meticulous investigation, received first-hand evidence from Iraqi victims of war that there have been grave violations of the international law of war in Iraq.

    Last year, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, consisting of several international jurists – including Richard Falk from the US, Alfred Webre from Canada, and Niloufer Bhagat from India – unanimously adjudicated that Bush and Blair do not enjoy any immunity in international humanitarian law.

    The main charges against Blair relate to his collusion with Bush in an illegal war of aggression against Iraq in 2003.

    Crimes against peace:

    Blair repeatedly and deliberately deceived the UN, his allies and his own people that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that could be rained on anyone within 45 minutes. In deceit and conspiracy, he incited passions for an illegal war.

    The resulting amassing of an American, British and Australian invasion force outside Iraq and the invasion of March 20, 2003, were flagrant acts of lawlessness and an international crime.

    The Charter of the UN contains a general prohibition against force as a means of resolving disputes. The unleashing of the horrors of war on innocent populations is permitted in only two circumstances by the Charter. First, legitimate self defence, under Article 51 in the event of an actual armed attack. Iraq had not attacked the US, the UK, Spain or Australia, and the argument about self-defence had no credibility.

    Second, specific Security Council authorisation of force as a last resort to maintain peace and security under Articles 39 to 42 of the Charter. There never was such a resolution. The US and UK had tried to bulldoze one through but the Security Council was divided and the attempt failed, rendering the subsequent invasion a crime against peace.

    Genocide and crimes against humanity: The Anglo-American alliance is also guilty of the heinous crimes of war, genocide and crimes against humanity.

    The misadventure in Iraq has up to now caused 1.4 million deaths, four million refugees and countless maimings and traumas. Two to three million Iraqis are mentally and physically disabled. Iraq today is a land of five million orphans and one to two million widows.

    There is near-total devastation of basic infrastructure, health, cultural and educational systems. Water systems have been contaminated. Iraq’s assets have been looted by the Allies.

    In the prosecution of the illegal and racist war, indiscriminate rocket attacks were, and still are, being rained on civilian centres, killing thousands of innocent women and children.

    In 2004, the entire population of Fallujah was expelled, save for young men of military age. Banned radioactive ammunition like depleted uranium, white phosphorous and cluster bombs have been used. Torturing of prisoners of war has been practised on a large scale.

    These crimes of complicity by Blair are punishable under the United Nations Charter, the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the Nuremberg Principles, Article 146 of the 1949 Geneva Convention and Article 3 of the 1907 Hague Convention.

    What is also notable is that Blair has expressed no remorse whatsoever. Instead, he struts around the world as an apologist for the US in the Middle East and Israel. He recently received an Israeli “peace prize” worth US$1mil (RM3.2mil).

    Malaysia must stand up and be counted among the community of civilised nations. It must not allow this perpetrator of epic crimes, who fakes faith in democracy and in “God’s work and God’s will”, to touch our soil ever again.

    (Blair, who gave a talk at a local university in 2008, has been invited to head a line-up of speakers at the 2010 National Achiever Congress in Subang Jaya this weekend.)

    If he does enter this country again we should arrest him. Regrettably, Malaysia has not yet ratified the Rome Charter, but we do have a Penal Code. Murder is a crime.

    The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission has countless reports from Iraqi survivors against Blair for complicity in mass slaughters, tortures, looting and other war crimes. The police must act on these reports and arrest this mass murderer.

    In addition, citizens’ groups must file complaints against Blair with the United Nations General Assembly and with the Attorney-Generals of countries like Spain, Germany, Belgium, France and the UK which have “universal jurisdiction” statutes to pursue and prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity.

    A tribunal like the one that tried Nazis at Nuremberg and several Yugoslav and African warlords since then needs to be constituted.

    The world needs to be reassured that international humanitarian law is not applied and enforced in a racist and selective way against Asian and African tyrants only. Imperial politicians from the West who destroy millions of lives should not, any more, be immune from justice.

    Shad Saleem Faruqi is Emeritus Professor of Law at UiTM and Visiting Professor at USM.

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    Pakistani air strike kills more than 70 civilians

    By W.A. Sunil,wsws.org, April 22, 2010

    In a bid to quell public anger, Pakistan’s army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, was forced to issue a public apology last Saturday over the killing of more than 70 civilians in a recent air strike on a village near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The air strike was part of the proxy war being fought by Pakistan on behalf of Washington to suppress Islamist militants fighting against the US-led occupation inside neighbouring Afghanistan.

    Continues >>

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    Demonizing Iran: US Media Continue Beating War Drums

    by Dave Lindorff, CommonDreams.org, April 22, 2010

    Just yesterday, the New York Times had a lead story about Israeli planning to possibly “go it alone” in an attack on Iran if the US were not to “succeed” in its diplomatic efforts to get Iran to “stop” it’s alleged attempts to develop a nuclear weapon capability.

    Aside from the fact that there is no hard evidence that Iran is trying to make a nuclear bomb or even to refine uranium to obtain nuclear-grade material, the paper ignored one crucial point: Israel cannot “go it alone” in any strike on Iran, since its key weapons–F15 and F-16 fighter-bombers–are supplied to it, and kept flying, thanks to the equipment and spare parts provided by the United States. Indeed the entire Israeli military machine is largely financed and armed by the US.

    Contsinues >>

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    Pakistani Military Holding Thousands of Detainees

    Claims Civilian Courts Can’t Be Trusted

    by Jason Ditz, Antiwar.com, April 21, 2010

    Pakistani officials and human rights advocates are expressing concern today about the large number of “suspects” being held in extralegal detention by Pakistan’s military in the tribal areas.

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    2010: Palestinian Prisoners Day

    Palestine Monitor, April 22, 2010
    prisoners_day__10_.jpg

    There are currently more than 7.000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Hundreds are being held in administrative detention. 17th of April was the Palestinian Prisoners Day. Hundreds of Palestinians took part to the rallies organised across the West Bank and Gaza. Palestine Monitor’s photographer, FLV, takes a look to the commemoration held in Ramallah.

    Since its occupation of the Palestinian Territory in 1967, the Israeli authorities systematically violate the most basic rights granted by international and human rights conventions through inhumane treatment, restrictions on movements, killings, deportation, and detention.

    Continues >>

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