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I am found of what happens in Middle East. Here I recollect and comment such eventsa.
4 Children Among 18 Killed In US Drone Strikes In Pakistan (DAWN) - 10-sep-2010
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September 9, 2010 - Fourteen suspected militants and four children were killed when US drones carried out three attacks in North Waziristan on Wednesday. Missiles targeted a compound, a car and a house in parts of North Waziristan near the Afghan border, according to reports... Four children died in a house adjacent to the compound due to the impact of the blasts, local people said. The children were relatives of a tribesman, Din Muhammad...
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American to be released by Iran (AlJazeera.net) - 10-sep-2010
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September 9, 2010 - Iran has announced it will free Sarah Shourd, one of the three Americans it has held in prison for more than a year on accusations of spying. An Iranian government official said on Thursday that Shourd will be released as an act of clemency to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Shourd, along with Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, were arrested in July 2009 after straying into Iranian territory from Iraq...
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Respected Think-Tank Calls Afghan War a Disaster, Says Al-Qaeda Threat is Exaggerated (Andy Worthington) - 10-sep-2010
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September 9, 2010 - For years, we have been told by our elected leaders that US and British soldiers have been dying in Afghanistan to prevent al-Qaeda from committing another terrorist attack, or to keep them off the streets of Britain. On December 1, 2009, announcing a "surge" of 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan, President Obama claimed in a speech at West Point, "Our overarching goal remains the same: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future."..
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The Indefensible Drones: A Ground Zero Reflection (Kathy Kelly) - 10-sep-2010
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September 9, 2010 - ...Many citizens are now focused on the anniversary of September 11th and the controversy over whether an Islamic Center should be built near ground zero. Corporate media does little to help ordinary US people understand that the drones which hover over potential targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen create small "ground zeroes" in multiple locales on an everyday basis....
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Aqraba inhabitants facing confiscation of yet more farmland to serve the expansion of an illegal settlement (International Solidarity Movement) - 10-sep-2010
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September 9, 2010 - On Monday 6th September, farmers in Aqraba were forbidden by the Israeli army to work on a 200 dunam area of land near the village. The land is currently in the process of being converted, by a combination of local workers and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, from rocky terrain into usable farmland to increase the productivity of local agriculture. The land in question was bought one year ago by a businessman from the area as a gift for many local farmers, and is located next to the main road between Nablus and the Jordan Valley (southwest of the village, towards Jurish)...
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Deported Iraqi asylum seekers say they were beaten and forced off plane (Owen Bowcott) - 10-sep-2010
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September 9, 2010 - A group of failed Iraqi asylum seekers who were forcibly deported to Baghdad this week have claimed they were beaten by British security staff and Iraqi police. The violence allegedly erupted when the refugees refused to leave a charter flight after it touched down in Baghdad on Tuesday morning. Pictures of one those said to have been injured were released by the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees (IFIR), a London-based organisation. The federation is making a formal protest to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)..
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No Eid for the Occupied and the Oppressed (Reham Alhelsi) - 09-sep-2010
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September 9, 2010 - Every Eid, we greet our family, relatives, friends and neighbours with: next Eid in a liberated Palestine. Every Eid we send postcards, emails and messages which say: next Eid in a liberated Jerusalem. Every Eid we repeat so the whole world hears: Our Eid is the day of our return. For us Palestinians, there is no Eid until all of Palestine is liberated from the river to the sea and all refugees return to their homes, their towns and villages. Our lives were, are and will continue to be centered around three basic aspirations until total liberation. Without a free Palestine there is no Eid, without a liberated Jerusalem there is no Eid and without the return of all Palestinian refugees there is no Eid and there is no reason to celebrate...
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Hamas Re-positioning? (Stuart Littlewood) - 09-sep-2010
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September 9, 2010 - ...It will be hard for western readers, unless they are dyed-in-the-wool Israel stooges, to find much that’s objectionable in the new policy. Given the decades-long suffering and the 90 years of betrayal, many will feel it makes perfect sense from the Palestinian perspective. So it is a powerful weapon – or would be if edited down to a manageable size and presented as a discussion document or released as a promotional leaflet. Mesh’al is at pains to explain that resistance is a means not an end; it is a strategic tool for liberation and the backbone of their working system. He introduces a chilling note, however, in the context of jihad and the struggle when he talks about innovative methods, tactics and tools "such as expanding martyrdom operations and developing them to become a lethal weapon against the enemy, and striking deep at its security". And this is where he nearly derails himself. People who were with him up to that point are likely to leave in droves. Saying such a thing is shocking to western ears and Mesh’al is committing public relations suicide if he doesn’t ruthlessly blue-pencil that bit...
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Economic Recovery? What Recovery? (by Stephen Lendman) - 09-sep-2010
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September 9, 2010 - There is none, and it's getting worse under a president and his predecessor's policies - engineering and sustaining economic decline, not recovery, Obama's latest announced job creation program as bogus as his April 2009 $787 billion stimulus. At the time, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said, besides bailing out Wall Street, it would create millions of jobs and get credit flowing again. Wrong and he knew it. Credit contraction persists. Job creation is moribund. The true unemployment rate, by 1980 calculations, is 22%, not the bogus 9.6%, and recovery focused on Wall Street, not small business and job creation. The Treasury was looted. Trillions of dollars went to banks, shadow banks (like hedge funds) and insurers, not industrial America, a shadow of its former self by design...
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Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (02-07 September 2010) (The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR)) - 09-sep-2010
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September 9, 2010 - Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law in the OPT continued during the reporting period (02 – 07 September 2010): Shooting: During the reporting period, IOF killed two Palestinian civilians and wounded 4 others in the Gaza Strip. They also wounded a 5th civilian in the West Bank. In the Gaza Strip, on 04 September 2010, Israeli warplanes bombarded a tunnel at the Egyptian border to the south of the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah. As a result, two workers were killed and two others were wounded. During the reporting period, two Palestinian workers were wounded when IOF fired at a number of workers who were collecting raw construction materials in the northern Gaza Strip. In the West Bank, a Palestinian civilian was wounded by IOF in Hebron on 02 September 2010...
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American psychopaths (Richard Seymour) - 09-sep-2010
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September 9, 2010 - American soldiers organise "kill teams" - or death squads, as they used to be called - to murder civilians and take fingers as trophies [...] According to investigators and legal documents, discussion of killing Afghan civilians began after the arrival of Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs at forward operating base Ramrod last November. Other soldiers told the army's criminal investigation command that Gibbs boasted of the things he got away with while serving in Iraq and said how easy it would be to "toss a grenade at someone and kill them". Ah yes - you could do anything in Iraq. Gun people down, rape kids with chemical lights, torture people to bloody deaths. Given the availability of so many American soldiers for this kind of sport slaughter, you have to wonder how many actual breathing serial killers will be walking free around the United States when this flesh-mincing occupation finally reaches its bloody end and they return home...
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US 'Kill team' kept Afghan civilian body parts as trophies (Simon Mann) - 09-sep-2010
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September 9, 2010 - Five US soldiers deliberately killed Afghan civilians with grenades, before photographing the corpses and keeping body parts as trophies, according to Pentagon investigators. A 25-year-old sergeant, Calvin Gibbs, was the alleged ringleader, reportedly joking about how easy it would be to "toss a grenade at someone and kill them", according to US Army charge sheets. The five are charged with murdering three Afghan men and forming a "kill team". After blowing up and shooting the Afghans, the soldiers allegedly took photos of the bodies, before souveniring fingers, leg bones and a skull, later discovered among their possessions...
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Provocative Behavior: Pertinent Concerns Over the Burning of Korans (Chris Floyd) - 09-sep-2010
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September 9, 2010 - American policy, at the highest levels of state, is specifically and deliberately designed to kill, despoil, dispossess, insult and outrage Muslims, in operations all over the world. That's what the Terror War is all about. We have spent more than $3 trillion burning Korans -- and their readers -- in the last decade. This policy has been pushed, championed and cheered by virtually the entire bipartisan political and media establishments -- and by much of the religious establishment as well....
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Federal appeals court adopts Obama “state secrets” doctrine to block torture case (By Tom Carter) - 09-sep-2010
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September 9, 2010 - The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit by five victims of the CIA’s "extraordinary rendition" program against Jeppesen Dataplan, a unit of Boeing. The six-five ruling adopts as a rationale the anti-democratic "state secrets" doctrine advocated by the Obama administration. The American Civil Liberties Union brought the suit in May 2007, charging that defense contractor Jeppesen Dataplan knowingly facilitated the renditions, known as "spook flights" or "torture flights," by providing flight planning and logistical support to CIA personnel...
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Mideast churches denounce Quran burning (Ma'an news) - 09-sep-2010
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September 9, 2010 -- A Florida church which says it intends to burn 200 copies of the Quran is not acting "within the teachings of Christianity," the patriarch of the Greek Orthodox church in Jerusalem said Thursday. The Council of Churches in the Middle East condemned the plans, calling them in a statement a "detestable crime against the teachings of Jesus Christ, and all of the values of the Church." Burning the Muslim holy book, they say, contravenes international conventions of human rights.
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The refugees are the crux of the matter (By Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine) - 09-sep-2010
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September 8, 2010 - Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit hinted recently that Palestinian refugees would receive $50 billion dollars as a compensation for giving up the right of return. The Egyptian official didn't elaborate or reveal the source of the information. More to the point, he didn't say where the money would come from or whether the current Palestinian leadership, e.g. the PLO, would accept such a scenario. The right of return is widely viewed as one of the main national constants of the Palestinian national movement and enjoys a wide consensus among all Palestinians, irrespective of their ideological orientation...
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Taliban chief says victory imminent
Mullah Omar says Nato-led forces are losing the war in Afghanistan and his fighters are close to victory. (AlJazeera.net) - 09-sep-2010
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September 8, 2010 - The Afghan Taliban leader has said his fighters were close to victory in driving foreign forces out of the country. In a message on Wednesday marking the end of the Muslim fasting month Ramadan, Mullah Omar called on Afghans to redouble their struggle and push for foreign troops to withdraw, saying the Nato-led coalition was losing the war. He said victory "over the invading infidels is now imminent" attributing the progress to "belief in the help of Allah and unity among ourselves". "Put all your strength and planning behind the task of driving away the invaders and regaining independence of the country," he told Afghan fighters.
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Military Resistance 8I5: UXO (Thomas F Barton) - 09-sep-2010
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September 8, 2010 - The shift in Afghanistan’s public mood since 2007, when I was last in Kabul, is dramatic. Then, the Taliban’s military comeback was still in its infancy and defeating them was the priority. There are several things behind the change: growing disappointment that billions of dollars of Western aid seem to go nowhere except into the bank accounts of foreign consultants or local politicians; despair over the continuing civilian casualties, many caused by US airstrikes; anger and humiliation caused by the high-handedness of foreign troops; and a desire to build a national consensus in which Afghans resolve their problems themselves...
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During war there are no civilians
Sitting in on the Rachel Corrie trial alarmingly reveals an open Israeli policy of indiscrimination towards civilians. (Nora Barrows-Friedman) - 09-sep-2010
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September 8, 2010 - "During war there are no civilians," that’s what "Yossi," an Israeli military (IDF) training unit leader simply stated during a round of questioning on day two of the Rachel Corrie trials, held in Haifa’s District Court earlier this week. "When you write a [protocol] manual, that manual is for war," he added. For the human rights activists and friends and family of Rachel Corrie sitting in the courtroom, this open admission of an Israeli policy of indiscrimination towards civilians -- Palestinian or foreign -- created an audible gasp. Yet, put into context, this policy comes as no surprise. The Israeli military’s track record of insouciance towards the killings of Palestinians, from the 1948 massacre of Deir Yassin in Jerusalem to the 2008-2009 attacks on Gaza that killed upwards of 1400 men, women and children, has illustrated that not only is this an entrenched operational framework but rarely has it been challenged until recently...
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Iraq snapshot - September 8, 2010 (The Common Ills) - 09-sep-2010
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September 8, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, another journalist is killed in Iraq -- one of at least 14 people reported dead today in Iraq with at least 46 reported injured, antiquities are returned to Iraq (and some already returned are now missing), the political stalemate celebrates an anniversary, and more. Today was a banner day for disgraces in puppet government. March 7th, Iraq concluded Parliamentary elections. The Guardian's editorial board notes, "These elections were hailed prematurely by Mr Obama as a success, but everything that has happened since has surely doused that optimism in a cold shower of reality." ...
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SHOULD SAUDI KING ABDULLAH INVITE NETANYAHU TO RIYADH? (ALAN HART) - 09-sep-2010
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September 8, 2010 - The suggestion that he should was made by Thomas L. Friedman in his column for the New York Times on 7 September. My first response was to say to myself, "That proves Friedman doesn’t understand the complexities of the conflict and is at least a little bit bonkers." But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that King Abdullah should do what Friedman suggested. In a moment I’ll get to what I think the Arabs and the Palestinians especially would have to gain without losing anything, but first here’s the essence what Friedman wrote. He noted that eight years have passed since the Arab peace initiative pushed by Abdullah when he was Crown Prince was presented to, and approved by, an Arab League summit in Beirut...
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The American Occupation of Afghanistan and the Birth of a National Liberation Movement (by Prof. Marc W. Herold) - 09-sep-2010
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September 8, 2010 - ...I realize that my use of the phrase "national liberation movement" may not sit well with some people.[21] How can a national liberation movement exist in a largely pre-modern, rural society? Isn’t a national liberation movement or front part of the anti-colonial struggle? The West had no qualms labeling Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation as a "war of national liberation." For example, the legal scholar W. Michael Reisman cited the 1949 Geneva Conventions which argued that peoples engaged in resisting the suppression of their right of self-determination are fighting what has come to be known as a "war of national liberation." The phrase illustrates the contest over assigned meaning. America’s duplicity is mind-boggling: when common Afghans fight the evil Soviet Union, it is a war of national liberation; when a dozen years later common Afghans fight the American invader, they are terrorists....
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America's Grand Strategy: Militarizing Space (by Stephen Lendman) - 09-sep-2010
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September 8, 2010 On January 3, 2001, the UN General Assembly's Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space Resolution A/55/32 said: "The exploration and use of outer space....shall be for peaceful purposes and be carried out for the benefit and in the interest of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development. (The) prevention of an arms race in outer space would avert a grave danger for international peace and security." Over 140 nations agreed. Only two declined support, both abstaining - America and Israel...
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Anna Baltzer: An Up-close Look At The Israeli Occupation Of Palestine (Christian Avard) - 09-sep-2010
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September 8, 2010 - ...There are too many myths to name, but many fall into a few categories: Myth 1:"This is an age-old conflict based on religion and mutual hatred." This is a conflict about land and human rights, not about religion. Prior to the Zionist movement, Jews were better treated in the Arab world than they were in much of the Christian West. There is nothing inherently incompatible about Jewish, Muslims, and Christians, but with the introduction of the Zionist movement seeking to--and eventually succeeding to--annex Palestine for one segment of the population while excluding and discriminating against the other segments of the population, you saw the emergence of violence. Israel was created and is maintained at the expense of Muslims and Christians in the area, who are denied their land and their human rights simply because they are not Jewish. This ongoing discriminatory system perpetuates the conflict today and until it is addressed we can expect no just or enduring peace.
Myth 2: "The occupation may be ugly, but it's for security" (note the switch from the previous narrative that "there is no occupation").
The majority of the institutions of Israel's occupation simply cannot be justified by security. Israel pays its citizens to move from Israel to the West Bank to live amidst the so-called "enemy"--does that make them safe? Israel has never declared its own borders, rather it expands them onto more and more of someone else's land--does that make Israel safer?...
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Israeli soldier jailed for killing British activist Tom Hurndall released early (Rachel Shabi) - 09-sep-2010
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September 8, 2010 - The Israeli soldier convicted of killing British activist Tom Hurndall was released from prison today, two years before completing his sentence. Tasyir Hayb was found guilty of manslaughter in 2005, when a military court found he had violated orders. He was also convicted him of obstruction of justice and false testimony. He has served six years of his eight-year sentence. Hurndall, then 22, was shot in the head in April 2003 while he was helping Palestinian children cross a street in Rafah, in the Gaza strip...
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Iraqi official foresees a U.S. military presence until 2016 (By Liz Sly) - 09-sep-2010
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September 8, 2010 - Some form of U.S. military presence will be needed in Iraq at least until 2016 to provide training, support and maintenance for the vast quantity of military equipment and weaponry that Iraq is buying from America, Iraqi Defense Minister Abdul Qader Obeidi said. In addition, Iraq will continue to need help with intelligence gathering after 2011, and the fledgling Iraqi air force will require U.S. assistance at least until 2020, the date by which Iraq aims to achieve the capability to defend its airspace, Obeidi said...
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continua / continued
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