Looking at Ourselves

By David Grossman at The NY Review of Books (11.01.2007) :

At the annual memorial ceremony for Yitzhak Rabin, we pause to remember Yitzhak Rabin the man, and the leader. We also look at ourselves, at Israeli society, at its leadership, at the state of the national spirit, at the state of the peace process, and at our place, as individuals, within these great national developments.

This year, it is not easy to look at ourselves.

We had a war. Israel brandished its huge military biceps, but its reach proved all too short, and brittle. We realized that our military might alone cannot, when push comes to shove, defend us. In particular, we discovered that Israel faces a profound crisis, much more profound than we imagined, in almost every part of our collective lives.

Ongoing Vietnam Tragedy Revives Ghosts of a Christmas Past

By Roger Pulvers at The Japan Times (24.12.2006).

Continue reading "Ongoing Vietnam Tragedy Revives Ghosts of a Christmas Past"

Israël n'a-t-il rien appris ?

Par Amos Oz à Libération (20.12.2006).

Continue reading "Israël n'a-t-il rien appris ?"

Turned Blue

Mr. Shaun Mullen writes a good story :

Mrs. Mioshi, my landlady in Tokyo, was one of the first Japanese women to attend Oxford University in England. We became friends, and one evening after a farewell dinner, she said that she wanted to show me something before I flew home.

She explained that she had brought back a lovely Wedgewood china dinner service from England before the war and had buried it in the back yard of their home early in 1945 when the U.S. advance up the Pacific enabled its B-29 bombers to reach Tokyo.

The Mioshis lived out the closing months of the war in the country. They returned after the surrender to find Roppongi, their neighborhood and later mine, decimated from firebombings.

Mrs. Mioshi told a story as she opened the doors to a cupboard and pulled out a dinner plate:

"It was a lovely ivory white," she explained as she handed the plate to me. "But you can see what the intense heat of the firebombings did."

Indeed. The plate had turned an otherwordly cobalt blue, as had the rest of the dinner service.

"I forgive the Americans for what they had to do," Mrs. Mioshi said in her tiny voice. Japanese often look down when they address gaijin, but she looked me right in the eye.

"It is just that we will never be able to confront our past, let alone forgive ourselves for it."

Shaun-san shared her feeling then, I guess.

Stop the Funding of the War!

"Sign the Petition to Support H.R. 4232" at Information Clearing House | YouTube.

Not our (Non-Americans') business, though.

Arna's Children

I was surprised to find Juliano Mer Khamis' documentary movie at Google Video. A must watch.

The Case for Japanese Constitutional Revision Assessed

By Koseki Sho'ichi at Japan Focus (12.12.2006) :

There’s been much discussion of constitutional revision in Japan. In November 2005, celebrating the 50^th anniversary of its formation, the Liberal-Democratic Party published its “Draft of a New Constitution.” In this rapidly changing world, it’s quite risky for a developed country to make a constitution with an eye to the 21^st century. Why? Because this is an age in which the nation-states that shape the modern era are changing dramatically, and because we still can’t see what lies ahead.

The debate over constitutional revision originates in the incompatibility between the Japanese constitution’s renunciation of armaments and the right to make war, on the one hand, and the primacy of the US-Japan security system on the other. No matter how you look at it, it’s risky to dream up a constitution for the 21^st century without addressing—above and beyond US security demands—the changing character of the modern nation-state. In order to see the future, we must first examine the past. The current constitution of Japan has a history of nearly 60 years, and one might think it would be necessary to begin by assessing that history. But the constitutional research committees of the two houses of the Diet that might be expected to take that as their highest duty have failed to do so.

Mr. Kosek's new book, The Scars of War: The Japanese Home Front in World War II, will be published in 2007.

Iraq Study Group: a bipartisan coverup of Washington’s war crimes

By Bill Van Auken at WSWS (09.12.2006) :

A striking feature of the Iraq Study Group report is that its belated admission of the military-political debacle and catastrophic conditions created by the US intervention in Iraq excludes any assessment of how the “grave and deteriorating” situation in that country came to pass, and who bears political responsibility for it.

Instead, the document includes multiple denunciations of the Iraqi government for failing to provide essential services, create a functioning judiciary or foster economic progress. That the country was laid to waste by a US war and remains under military occupation—making Washington fully responsible for all of these failures—is simply passed over in silence.

As one member of the group, Democratic power broker Vernon Jordan, put it, the bipartisan panel made no effort to determine “how the house got on fire.”

Damas et Bagdad reprennent langue

Par Mariana Belenkaia à Réseau Voltaire (04.12.2006) :

Le rapprochement entre l’Irak et la Syrie, après des décennies de brouille, modifie profondément la donne politique au Proche-Orient. D’autant que l’Iran influence en sous-main une bonne partie du gouvernement irakien. Comme le souligne Marianna Belenkaïa, les États-Unis ne contrôlent plus grand chose dans un pays qu’ils occupent pourtant militairement.

An appeal for an abandoned people

By Donald Macintyre at The Independent (05.12.2006) :

Maybe they are just conveniently forgetting other periods in Gaza's turbulent and blood-stained history, but most Gazans will tell you that 2006 is the worst year they can remember.

In Gaza City's deserted gold souk, people are not even coming to sell their jewellery any more. "We just sit and drink tea," said Yasser Moteer, 35, who runs a jewellery stall. "It's worse than any time in the 20 years I've been here. It's crazy."

The gold-selling started soon after the international and Israeli boycott of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority started to plunge Gaza's economy into collapse last March. But having long ceased to buy here, the poor now have nothing left to sell.

Rumsfeld's Last Stand

By Tom Engelhardt at TomDispatch (05.12.2006). "How Iraq was won" produced by Don Rummy.

Ethics in the globalized war

By Alphonso Lingis at Eurozine (29.11.2006) :

With military technology increasingly reducing the risk of casualties on the side of those using the technology, traditional warrior virtues such as courage have become the preserve of the individual suicide attacker. Paradoxically, writes Alphonso Lingis, it was the photographs of Abu Ghraib that enabled Americans to reassert a sense of their own ethical correctness. In this respect, the photos stand in a line of images that have provided moral reassurance in the face of war.

Slaughter House Iraq

By Patrick Cockburn at Counter Currents (28.11.2006).

"Kill Them! Kill Everyone! All Of Them!"

By Uri Avnery at Counter Currents (28.11.2006).

Howard Zinn on The Uses of History and the War on Terrorism

Democracy Now! (24.11.2006) | RM file (96 mb) | MP4 (torrent).

I too feel like living in an occupied country when I wake up in the morning. Abe, Aso, Nakagawa (alcoholic), Nakagawa (horny), and Koizumi are aliens to me.

UN Mine Group: Israeli Forces Laid Mines in Lebanon During Summer War

By AP at CommonDreams (27.11.2006) :

A U.N. agency said Saturday that Israel laid mines in Lebanon during this summer's war between the Jewish state and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah group — the first time Israel has been accused of planting mines during the latest fighting.

A report by the U.N. Mine Action Coordination Center followed an investigation of a land mine explosion that wounded two European disposal experts and a Lebanese medic on Friday.

Later Saturday, the agency reported that a British demining expert who was trying to clear mines from the same area where Friday's explosion occured also was injured in a separate land mine blast.

The explosions were caused by Israeli anti-personnel mines placed in fields newly laid during the fighting in July and August in south Lebanon, the center said.

The New York Times and the Gemayel assassination

By Chris Marsden at WSWS (24.11.2006) :

The November 23 editorial of the New York Times, “Another Killing in Lebanon”, begins with the assertion:

“It is too early to know who ordered this week’s assassination of the Lebanese cabinet minister Pierre Gemayel, but there are many reasons to suspect Syria.”

Indeed, there are many reasons to suspect all sorts of people for being responsible for Gemayel’s death—and quite a few of them enjoy the editorial support of the New York Times. He was killed amidst an intense internal and international conflict to decide who controls the Lebanon. The assassination took place in the aftermath of a multi-million dollar military offensive by Israel that was fully backed by the United States, and which cost more than 1,500 lives. When such high stakes are involved, there will be many parties for whom the life of a relatively insignificant government minister is small change.

War and Empire Are and Always Have Been the American Way of Life

By Paul L. Atwood at Historians Against the War (DOC file).

From Nuremberg to Bagdhad to Nuremberg again?

By Frank Ejby Poulsen at FM5.at (n.d., 21.11?) :

Yes, yes, capital punishment is a bad thing. And yes, yes, Saddam Hussein's trial is full of flaws, as Human Rights Watch has recently denounced. So no, no, Saddam Hussein should not be hanged. Two reasons are being heard for this, on which I would like to comment and add a third one.

No Peace, No Place For Palestine

By Sheila Samples at Counter Currents (22.11.2006) :

Finally. Someone has noticed what is going on in the Middle East. The UK Telegraph reports that Britain is "furious" with Israel because of the damage it is causing in Gaza. Is it because of the wholesale slaughter of innocent Palestinians -- the bombing of a Gaza beach that turned the entire family of 12-year-old Huda Ghalia into a smoking pile of human flesh and scattered body parts? No? Then, perhaps it is using innocent Palestinians as human shields, gunning down children as they scurry fearfully to school, burying the wounded alive Jenin-style...

Or maybe Britain is at long last enraged by the massacre of 19 Palestine refugees, mostly women and children, in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun on Nov. 8. Maybe Britain was aware of the little-reported six-day seige which had ended just the day before the assault when Israeli ground forces had been withdrawn from Beit Hanoun after slaughtering 50 and injuring many more. In response to the public outcry at the Nov. 8 slaughter, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert explained that it was caused by a mere "technical error." Olmert did admit he was "uncomfortable" with the "event," but said military operations in Gaza would continue, and that further mistakes "may happen."

Civil war in Lebanon

By Robert Fisk at The Independent (22.11.2006) :

Civil war - the words on all our lips yesterday. Pierre Gemayel's murder - in broad daylight, in a Christian suburb of Beirut, his car blocked mafia-style by another vehicle while his killer fired through the driver's window into the head of Lebanon's minister of industry - was a message for all of us who live in this tragic land.

For days, we had been debating whether it was time for another political murder to ratchet up the sectarian tensions now that the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora was about to fall. For days now, the political language of Lebanon had been incendiary, the threats and bullying of the political leaders ever more fearsome. Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Shia Hizbollah leader, had been calling Siniora's cabinet illegitimate. "The government of Feltman," he was calling it - Jeffrey Feltman is the US ambassador to Lebanon - while the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt was claiming Iran was trying to take over.

Kissinger Says Victory in Iraq Is Not Possible

By Brian Knowlton at The NY Times (19.11.2006).

Iraq is a 'disaster' admits Blair

By Tim Shipman at Daily Mail (18.11.2006) :

Tony Blair admitted that British intervention in Iraq has been a disaster last night - sending shockwaves through Westminster.

In his frankest admission about the war to date, Mr Blair admitted that Western forces have been powerless to stop the descent into violence.

The Prime Minister stopped short of accepting the blame for plunging Iraq to the brink of civil war - blaming instead the insurgent uprising that has killed 125 British troops.

But his admission in an interview with the Arab new channel Al Jazeera will be seen as an historic climbdown for Mr Blair, who has always fought to put a positive gloss on often disastrous events.

For the Japanese, Abe is THE disaster.

Depleted Uranium, Another Gift from the Imperialists

By Pauline Paulinson at Counter Currents (16.11.2006).

International Lawyers File Suit against Rumsfeld in Germany

By Sarah Boseley at AFP/CommonDreams (14.11.2006) :

An international grouping of lawyers has filed a lawsuit calling on German prosecutors to investigate outgoing US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for allegedly sanctioning torture.

The 220-page suit is being brought on behalf of 11 former Iraqi detainees of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad and one Saudi currently being held at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The suit was filed to Germany's federal prosecutor Monika Harms at her offices in the western city of Karlsruhe, said Hannes Honecker, the secretary-general of the Germany-based Republican Attorneys' Association Tuesday.

German law allows the pursuit of warcrimes cases regardless of where they originate in the world.

Call It What It Is: A Massacre

By Uri Avnery at Gush Shalom/Counter Currents (14.11.2006).

Japan general's grandson has hopes for Eastwood film

By Linda Sieg at Reuters/AlertNet (12.11.2006). Interviews Yoshitaka Shindo about Letters from Iwojima and his grandfather Lieutenant-General Tadamichi Kuribayashi.

Le désastre militaire en Irak

Par Arthur Lepic à Réseau Voltaire (10.11.2006) :

L’état-major des États-Unis tient Donald Rumsfeld pour responsable du désastre militaire en Irak. Non pas que le secrétaire à la Défense soit responsable de la guerre, mais parce qu’il n’a pas donné aux Forces armées tous les moyens qu’elles réclamaient. La révolte des généraux a alimenté le mécontentement d’une opinion publique militarisée qui a sanctionné l’administration Bush par les urnes. Arthur Lepic dresse le bilan caché de la guerre en Irak.

Massacre of Palestinian Women and Children

Massacre and kidnapping reported at Global Research (10.11.2006) | Video (WMV). Hard to connect. I uploaded this video on my other weblog at VOX, Ça ne va pas mieux (12.11.2006).

From AP/MSNBC (11.11.2006) :

UNITED NATIONS - The United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council draft resolution Saturday that sought to condemn an Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip and demand Israeli troops pull out of the territory.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said the Arab-backed draft resolution was “biased against Israel and politically motivated.”

“This resolution does not display an evenhanded characterization of the recent events in Gaza, nor does it advance the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace to which we aspire and for which we are working assiduously,” he told the Security Council.

The veto unleashed a flurry of criticism in the Middle East.

“This decision by the U.S. government gives unlimited cover to commit more massacres of innocent Palestinians,” said Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the Hamas-led Palestinian government. “This is a shame on the American administration, which says it is trying to promote human rights and democracy in the Middle East.”

Israel carries out deliberate massacre in Gaza

By Chris Marsden at WSWS (10.11.2006) :

Israel’s November 8 massacre of 19 civilians at Beit Hanun in Gaza has sparked angry protests throughout the Palestinian territories and within Israel itself.

The government of Ehud Olmert has insisted that the shelling by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) was an accident due to technical error, and Israeli military officials said the artillery was aimed at a target about 500 metres away.

This claim is not credible. The incident follows an offensive by the IDF that has claimed 53 lives in Beit Hanun over the last few days, supposedly aimed at ending Qassam rocket-fire across the Gaza border into southern Israel. This in turn follows on from Israel’s major “Operation Summer Rains” offensive, mounted on the pretext of rescuing Corporal Gilad Shalit.

The Rainy Season's Over; Killing Can Commence

By J. Peter Pham & Michael I. Krauss at TCS Dayly (08.11.2006) :

The rainy season has just ended in northwestern Sudan—now killing can recommence in earnest. Two months ago, we warned that inaction in Darfur was tantamount to a "countdown to genocide" with the impending termination at the end of September of the mandate for the relatively ineffectual peacekeepers of the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS). Fortunately for the more then two surviving million Darfuris who have been displaced in the now three-year-old conflict, a slight reprieve was won when, at the eleventh hour, the African Peace and Security Council agreed to extend authorization for AMIS through the end of the year. Although incidents of violence continue—in early October, for example, government-backed janjaweed militiamen (janjaweed loosely translates to "devils on horseback") attacked a dozen villages in eastern Chad near refugee camps housing Sudanese refugees, while just last week the militias hit a camp for displaced persons at Jebel Moon in western Darfur, killing 63 people, including 27 children—massive killings are likely to be deferred as long as foreign observers are around to bear witness to them.

Millions of children 'damaged by chemicals'

By Nick Fleming at Telegraph (08.11.2006) :

American and Danish researchers describe a "silent pandemic" of disorders including autism, attention deficit syndrome, mental retardation and cerebral palsy caused by chemical pollution.

In a report, they identified 202 industrial chemicals that could damage the brain. They called for tighter controls although other scientists accused the study's authors of scaremongering and a "gross over-statement".

Dr Philippe Grandjean, from the Department of Environmental Medicine at the University of Southern Denmark in Winslowparken said the brain was such a vulnerable organ that even limited damage could have serious consequences.

Bunker buster bombs containing depleted uranium warheads used by Israel against civilian targets in Lebanon

By Dr. Doug Rokke at Global Research (06.11.2006).

Iraq: Amnesty International deplores death sentences in Saddam Hussein trial

Full text of Amnesty International's statement at Global Research (08.11.2006).

Author accuses government of failure of leadership

By Rory McCarthy at The Guardian (06.11.2006). On David Grossman's speech :

Mr Grossman told the crowd: "The deaths of young people are a terrible, screaming waste, but no less terrible is the feeling that, for many years, the state of Israel is wasting not only the lives of her sons, but also the miracle [of the creation of the state], the opportunity to create an enlightened and democratic nation here."

"Any logical person in Israel or Palestine knows today the lines of a possible settlement of the conflict between the two people," he said. "Talk to the Palestinian people, talk to the sorrow and the deep wounds they have. Acknowledge their ongoing suffering. Doing so will in no way diminish your or Israel's position."

Mission impossible en Afghanistan

L'éditorial de Pierre Rousselin au Figaro (02.11.2006).

Continue reading "Mission impossible en Afghanistan"

Internment Without Charges: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment

By Linda Gordon at Japan Focus (02.11.2006) :

Between February and July 1942 Lange worked assiduously to cover the internment throughout California. She made more than 800 photographs. But some military authority found them so evidently critical that the photographs were impounded for the duration of the war. Afterwards they were quietly placed in the U.S. National Archives where, because they are government property, they are in the public domain—free to be used by anyone for any purpose whatsoever.

A few scholars have published a small number of the photographs—fewer than six, to my knowledge—but they have never been published or exhibited as a group. This is surprising, given Lange’s reputation, and the fact that the U.S. government officially apologized for the unjustified and racist internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans. A selection of these photographs, approximately one-eighth of the total, are now published for the first time in Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment (Norton, 2006), edited by Linda Gordon and Gary Y. Okihiro. A selection of Lange’s images, and the captions she wrote to accompany them, are also displayed below.

Hibakusha: 'Don't turn your eyes away'

From Mainichi Daily News (03.11.2006) :

When Sumiteru Taniguchi hands you his business card, you find yourself staring at a teenage boy's naked back. The boy lies face down. The back is horribly burned, the red skin raw and festering.

Taniguchi, 77, is chairman of the Nagasaki Council of the A-Bomb Sufferers. The boy is himself. The photo was taken by U.S. army personnel six months after the Nagasaki bombing, and under it is printed, "I want you to understand, if only a little, the horror of nuclear weapons."

Hibakusha: 'The abolition of nuclear weapons is within our horizons'

From Mainichi Daily News (01.11.2006) :

"No matter how difficult it may be, I am convinced that the abolition of nuclear weapons is within our horizons."

It's Oct. 21, the opening symposium of the NGO forum "Nagasaki Global Citizens' Assembly for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons." At the podium is symposium executive committee chairman Hideo Tsuchiyama, 81.

"We can act not as a group but as individuals," declares Tsuchiyama, his powerful voice resonating through Nagasaki's Brick Hall. "I want to hear proposals for action, not just criticism."

NATO takes the fight to Pakistan

By Syed Saleem Shahzad at Asia Times (02.11.2006) :

Although Pakistani officials claim that Monday's operation was conducted by the Pakistani military, Asia Times Online contacts in the area are convinced that foreign forces were also involved, including US unmanned Hellfire Predator aircraft. NATO and the US have only acknowledged that they provided intelligence on the possible presence of Taliban and al-Qaeda figures at the madrassa that was attacked, which was known to be pro-Taliban.

After Monday's operation, intelligence sources say that Pakistan will further facilitate NATO in the strategic back yard of Pakistan in an attempt to bolster the struggling NATO forces in Afghanistan in their battle with the Taliban.

Revealed: U.S. Soldier Killed Herself After Objecting to Interrogation Techniques

By Greg Mitchell at E&P (01.11.2006) :

The true stories of how American troops, killed in Iraq, actually died keep spilling out this week. On Tuesday, we explored the case of Kenny Stanton, Jr., murdered last month by our allies, the Iraqi police, though the military didn’t make that known at the time. Now we learn that one of the first female soldiers killed in Iraq died by her own hand after objecting to interrogation techniques used on prisoners.

She was Army specialist Alyssa Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Az., native serving with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. Peterson was an Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal-Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on Sept. 15, 2003, from a “non-hostile weapons discharge.”

Israeli army announces plan to expand its attacks in the Gaza Strip

By Saed Bannoura at IMEMC (01.11.2006) :

Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, will convene with the Israeli political-security cabinet on Wednesday to decide the possibility of expanding the military offensive in the Gaza Strip. Yet, the operations would not be expanded before Olmert returns from his planned visit to the United States in two weeks.

Olmert's visit will be arranged by the American envoys David Walsh and Daniel Abrams, who will arrive in the country on Wednesday.

Olmert intends to discuss the army’s policy in Gaza, which he claims is retaliation for several dozen homemade shells fired into the Israeli desert over the past several months (which have caused no injuries), and arms smuggling into the Gaza Strip. Palestinians counter that these are mere excuses by Israel for an ongoing military operation in Gaza that has resulted in over 250 Palestinians killed since June.

Fiction : A Hero's Journey

By Roger Pulvers at The Japan Times (29.10.2006).

The Arithmetic of Failure

By Paul Krugman at The NY Times/Welcome to Pottersville (27.10.2006).

Iraq is no Vietnam – it's far worse than that

By Andrew Sullivan at The Sunday Times (22.10.2006) :

V, it turns out, is not for vendetta. It’s for Vietnam. In the long, bitter debate before the Iraq war it was always war opponents who brought the V-word up. Many of us who never lived through that nightmare shrugged it off. It was another baby-boomer neurosis, we thought. America had fought and won wars since then, notably the first Gulf war. America had liberated Afghan Muslims and protected Bosnian Muslims, without the “quagmire” so many warned about. It became a point of pride for war supporters to deny outright any Vietnam comparison as preposterous.

Hezbollah et Israël : aux sources du conflit

By Georges Corm at Voltaire Net (20.10.2006) :

Récusant le discours de la presse dominante, le professeur Georges Corm, ancien ministre des Finances du Liban, montre la vacuité de la rhétorique de la guerre au terrorisme. Pour lui, l’offensive israélienne de l’été 2006 n’a rien à voir avec la défense d’un État, mais avec une expansion coloniale. Et l’incapacité de « l’Occident » à juger objectivement cette agression révèle que les États européens n’assument toujours pas leur colonialisme et leur antisémitisme passés.

Hizbollah fired cluster rockets on civilians in Israel, says rights group

By Donald Mcintyre at The Independent (20.10.2006) :

Human Rights Watch said the Lebanese guerrilla group had launched 122mm Chinese-made Type 81 rockets on Jewish and Arab communities. These contain dozens of bomblets, known as "sub-munitions".

Israel had earned wide condemnation for its use of cluster weapons during the conflict, which left as many as a million hazardous "duds", ones that failed to explode on impact and which HRW says are still wounding three civilians a day and disrupting economic recovery. Twenty people have died since the August ceasefire.

Hibakusha: Miraculously surviving both atomic attacks

From Mainichi Daily News (18.10.2006) :

The movie "Niju Hibakusha" (Double Hibakusha), in which Yamaguchi appears, was completed this spring. For its American release early in August, Yamaguchi traveled to the U.S., and was there from Aug. 1 to Aug. 5. He had never so much as had a passport before. The film was shown in New York, at U.N. headquarters and Columbia University.

"Let there never be a third atomic bombing," said Yamaguchi. "Please, let us all do everything we can to eliminate nuclear weapons."

On Oct. 14 North Korea's U.N. ambassador angrily walked out of a Security Council meeting that culminated in sanctions against the North in the wake of its announced nuclear bomb test.

"It reminds me of Japan's withdrawal from the League of Nations [in 1933]," says Yamaguchi. "We've got to find a way to stop the nuclear program that will still allow North Korea to save face."

Gaza doctors say patients suffering mystery injuries

From Mail & Guardian Online (18.10.2006) :

"Bodies arrived severely fragmented, melted and disfigured," said Jumaa Saqa'a, a doctor at the Shifa hospital, in Gaza City. "We found internal burning of organs, while externally there were minute pieces of shrapnel. When we opened many of the injured people we found dusting on their internal organs."

It is not clear whether the injuries come from a new weapon. The Israeli military declined to detail the weapons in its arsenal, but denied reports that the injuries came from a Dense Inert Metal Explosive (Dime), an experimental weapon.

In Gaza, Saqa'a said the small pieces of shrapnel found in patients' bodies did not show up under x-ray. "We are used to seeing shrapnel penetrate the body making localised damage. Now we didn't see shrapnel, but we found the destruction," he said.

The More Force You Use, the Less Effective You Are

By Michael Schwartz at TomDispatch (15.10.2006).

Anna Politkovskaya's Last Reportage

From The Independent (13.10.2006) :

Dozens of files cross my desk every day. They are copies of criminal cases against people jailed for "terrorism" or refer to people who are still being investigated. Why have I put the word "terrorism" in quotation marks here?

Because the overwhelming majority of these people have been "fitted up" as terrorists by the authorities. In 2006 the practice of "fitting up" people as terrorists has supplanted any genuine anti-terrorist struggle. And it has allowed people who are revenge-minded to have their revenge - on so-called potential terrorists.

The man who gave second chances

Anna Politkovskaya on the Chechen warlord Buvadi Dakhiev, at Sign and Sight (12.10.2006).

Gaza sliding into civil war

Rory McCarthy's report from Gaza City at The Guardian (11.10.2006) :

When they buried Rafiq Siam, the traffic stopped and hundreds of armed men, some firing into the air, gathered at the Gaza mosque. Eight men wearing red berets and black combat uniforms lifted his body wrapped in a white shroud and Palestinian flag and carried it inside with as much ceremony as the pressing crowd would allow.

Mr Siam, 40, a father of seven, was the victim of a single bullet to the base of his skull. He died on Sunday a week after he was shot, the latest victim in the worst outbreak of factional violence in Gaza for more than 10 years. Years of rivalry between the Islamic Hamas movement, which now dominates the government, and the more secular Fatah, which was ousted from power in January elections, is spilling over into a struggle for power.

World War W

By Michael Carmichael at Global Research (10.10.2006).

Residents protest likely arrival of U.S. Patriot missiles on Okinawa

From IHT (09.10.2006) :

TOKYO About 100 protesters lined up outside a port in Okinawa hoping to prevent advanced Patriot missiles that may have arrived by ship Monday from being deployed at a U.S. military base on the southern Japanese island, a news report said.

A U.S. military cargo ship believed to be carrying Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles arrived at the U.S. military facility at Tengan Harbor on Monday, Kyodo News agency reported.

Maj. Dani Johnson, a public affairs officer at Kadena Air Base's 18th air wing, confirmed that a ship arrived Monday, but she declined to tell the Associated Press what it was carrying, citing security concerns.

Le Pentagone précipite les Européens dans le chaos afghan

From Voltaire Net (06.10.2006) :

Présentée comme une simple réorganisation technique, l’extension du mandat de l’OTAN en Afghanistan modifie la mission des troupes européennes : elles suspendent leur assistance à la reconstruction pour poursuivre la guerre coloniale des Anglo-États-uniens, tandis que la rebellion s’étend. Sur place, les services secrets britanniques tentent de substituer le Hizb-ut-Tahrir aux Talibans pour encadrer la population, révèle Thierry Meyssan.

The March to War: Naval build-up in the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya at Global Research (01.10.2006).

Supranationalism and Mythologies of American Power

By Joyce Appleby at Japan Focus (02.10.2006) :

Before the invasion of Iraq, it was possible to imagine American power as unbounded. Today the United States evokes images of Gulliver tied down by hundreds of Lilliputian concerns. Whether subduing Iraq and Afghanistan, combating sex trafficking, restricting nuclear weaponry or establishing order in the Middle East, it's obvious that the United States can't go it alone. Despite such an obvious reality, the Bush administration, intent on demonstrating hegemonic power, is unlikely to grapple with supranationalism in its remaining two years in office.

Examples of supranationalism abound. Nigeria accedes to a ruling of the World Court and agrees to vacate oil-rich Bakassi. Turkey wants to enter the European Union and accepts intense surveillance and hectoring questions about its internal practices. Great Britain, Russia, China, Germany, America and France cooperate to persuade Iran to limit its nuclear development through the United Nations, the grandest of all supranational bodies. A contested child custody case in Chile will be decided by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Afghanistan : Why NATO cannot win

By M K Bhadrakumar at Asia Times (30.09.2006).

Interview with Nasrallah

Talal Salman entretient avec Hassan Nasrallah à Voltaire Net (29.09.2006).

Afghanistan. The Other Lost War

By Stephen Lendman at Global Research (30.09.2006).

Most Iraqis Want US Troops Out Within a Year

World Public Opinion (27.09.2006). Via Sabbah's blog.

A Broken, De-Humanized Military in Iraq

By Dahr Jamail at TruthOut (26.09.2006).

Corn Versus Hitchens: On Niger, Plame and WMDs

By David Corn at The Capital Games (26.09.2006).

Human Rights Watch still denying Lebanon The Right To Defend Itself

By Jonathan Cook at Counter Currents (26.09.2006).

Good morning, Baghdad!

By Christian Parenti at The Salon (23.09.2006) :

It was another quiet evening in the suburban Sunbelt -- Dallas to be exact, February 2006 -- and a short, puckish, middle-aged and middle-class father of four named Dave Rabbit was helping his youngest son, a senior in high school, do homework on the Vietnam War. Although Dave had spent most of his adult life managing a family-owned business that designed and manufactured custom T-shirts and caps, he knew about Vietnam, having served three tours there with the Air Force from 1968 to 1971. But that was 35 years ago and now almost a universe away. The decades since the war had been consumed by the simple pleasures and routine trials of being married, raising children, maintaining a summer house on the Gulf Coast and now watching two grandkids grow up.

Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Fuels Terror

By Greg Miller at The LA Times (24.09.2006).

The Darfur Smokescreen

By Carl G. Estabrook at CounterPunch (23.09.2006).

Imperialism 101 : The US Addiction To War, Mayhem And Madness

By Stephen Lendman at Counter Currents : Part 1 & Part 2.

Israeli army attacks Palestinian Banks and money exchange shops, stealing millions

From IMEMC (20.09.2006) :

The Israeli army invaded several cities in the West Bank and broke into money changers' shops and banks, confiscating some 1.5 million USD, on Wednesday morning. The seizure of cash comes after months of seige by the Israeli authorities, who are attempting to 'starve out' the Palestinian people for the results of their democratic election in January.

Army invaded, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem and Ramallah, almost at the same time.

In Jenin, at least 30 military vehicles invaded the city and surrounded a money exchange shop that belongs to Mohammad Nassar.

Deux semaines pour sauver le Darfour

"Lettre ouverte au Président de la République, Jacques Chirac" par Le collectif Urgence Darfour, à Libération (19.09.2006).

Continue reading "Deux semaines pour sauver le Darfour"

West Won't Win Afghan War

By Eric Margolis at Tronoto Sun/ICH (17.09.2006).

Gaza: The children killed in a war the world doesn't want to know about

By Donald Macintyre in Rafah at The Independent (19.09.2006) :

Nayef Abu Snaima says his 14-year-old cousin Jihad had been sitting on the edge of an olive grove talking animatedly to him about what he would do when he grew up when he was killed instantly by an Israeli shell.

He says he clearly saw a bright flash next to the control tower of the disused Gaza international airport, occupied by Israeli forces after Cpl Gilad Shalit was seized by militants on 25 June. "I went two or three steps and the missile landed," said Nayef, 24. "I thought I was dying. I shouted 'La Ilaha Ila Allah' [There is no God but Allah]."

When Jihad's older brother Kassem, 20, arrived at the scene: "My brother was already dead. There was shrapnel in his head. Nayef was shouting 'Allah, Allah'. The missile landed about four metres from where Jihad had been standing. There was shrapnel in his body as well, his legs, everything. He had been bleeding a lot everywhere."

Deadly harvest: The Lebanese fields sown with cluster bombs

By Patrick Cockburn at The Independent (18.09.2006) :

In a coma in a hospital bed in Nabatiyeh lies Hussein Ali Ahmad, a 70-year-old man from the village of Yohmor. He was pruning an orange tree outside his house last week when he dislodged a bomblet; it exploded, sending pieces of shrapnel into his brain, lungs and kidneys. "I know he can hear me because he squeezes my hand when I talk to him," said his daughter, Suwad, as she sat beside her father's bed in the hospital.

At least 83 people have been killed by cluster munitions since the ceasefire, according to independent monitors.

The Longer the War, the Larger the Lies

By Frank Rich at The NY Times/TruthOut (17.09.2006).

Condemned to desolation

By Eric Silverman at Al-Ahram (14-20.09.2006) :

Hundreds of desperate parents swarmed lists of coupon numbers tacked to the walls of the UNRWA relief centre in the Beach Refugee Camp of Gaza City Sunday, nervously trying to locate their assigned lot to collect emergency food packages only being offered to families with at least 11 members.

"There is not enough food in Gaza; even we at UNRWA are struggling to get the food in," warned John Ging, director of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza, as he toured the relief centre. UN workers urgently tossed bags of flour from supply trucks and stacked bottles of oil in efforts to alleviate what Ging described as a "desperate and unprecedented" crisis.

Murtha Lays the Dead at Rumsfeld's Door

By Jason Leopold at TruthOut (15.09.2006). John Murtha :

"Many Army combat and support units scheduled to deploy to Iraq in 2007 will have less than the required one year period for rest and re-training," the report says. "This is one of the key indicators that lead many Army officials to conclude that current deployment rates cannot be sustained without breaking the force."

"In effect, the Army has become a 'hand-to-mouth' organization," Murtha said, reading from the report. "Its inability to get ahead of the deployment and training curves is rooted in the Secretary's miscalculations and blind optimism about troop and industrial surge requirements for the US occupation of Iraq."

"For the good of the country, the United States of America must restore credibility both at home and abroad and the first step toward restoring that credibility must be to demonstrate accountability for the mistakes that have been made in prosecuting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by immediately effecting the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and replacing him with someone capable of leading the nation's military in a strategy to resolve our deployment in Iraq," Murtha's resolution says.

"The situation facing the Army Guard and Reserve is comparatively worse," Murtha added. "Of all the Guard units not currently mobilized, about four-fifths received the lowest readiness rating. Personnel shortages are the major reason behind the decline in Guard and Reserve readiness-shortages created for the most part by mobilizations having lapsed or personnel having been pulled from units to augment others. Perhaps most troubling to many of the Army's senior uniformed leaders is the lack of national attention to the Army's plight."

CIA Learned in '02 That Bin Laden Had No Iraq Ties, Report Says

By Walter Pincus at Washington Post (15.09.2006).

Contre le «business model» d'al-Qaida, la guerre classique est impuissante

Par Ted Goranson au Figaro (13.09.2006).

Continue reading "Contre le «business model» d'al-Qaida, la guerre classique est impuissante"

The Forgotten People: The Despair of Gaza One Year After the ‘Disengagement’

By Palestinian National Initiative at AMIN (12.09.2006).

Britain’s Role in the Israeli-Hezbollah War

By David Wearing at ICH (12.09.2006) :

Whilst Israel’s close relationship with the US is well known, and has long been the focus of debate, no comprehensive discussion of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war should allow the role of the British government to pass without comment. London was accused of “standing back and doing nothing” during the conflict. But on the contrary, it played an active role in supporting Israel’s actions, supplying substantial military, diplomatic and political support.