be just

Abu Aardvark: The insurgency's strategy in September What about the insurgency? For months now, insurgency groups have been trying to formulate some kind of public political front, but seem to be consistently frustrated by internal struggles and the fragmented nature of the insurgency itself (among the latest developments, we've got the 1920 Revolution Brigade denouncing anyone using its name while cooperating with the Americans while accusing Hamas Iraq of being the real collaborators, and the Islamic Army of Iraq indicating that it's striking a truce with al-Qaeda in Iraq). It's in that context that I wanted to draw attention to an essay published today under the title "September and a political project for the mujahideen" on the al-Haq Agency, one of the major internet outlets for the Sunni insurgency, by Abd al-Rahman al-Ruwashdi.

Recently, I picked up a book from public library. The name of the book is My Country Versus Me , in which he described his ordeal in detail. Wen Ho Lee (Chinese: 李文和; Pinyin: Lǐ Wénhé; born December 21, 1939) is a Taiwanese-born American scientist who worked for the University of California at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and was accused of stealing secrets about the U.S.'s nuclear arsenal for the People's Republic of China (PRC) in December 1999. I have also read another memoir written by a Chinese American Muslim chaplain also persecuted by his own government because he is a Muslim and maybe even because he was also a Chinese American. James J. Yee (Chinese: 余百康 or 余优素福, also known by the Arabic name Yusuf Yee) (born c. 1968) is an American, former United States Army chaplain with the rank of captain. He is best known for being subject to an intense investigation by the United States, but all charges were later dropped. Yee, a Chinese American, was born in New Jersey ...

Free Press : Speed Up with Fiber : "So instead of wringing his hands as the United States drops to middle of the pack among developed nations in international broadband rankings, Garrison wants to take action. He’s come to the eyebrow-raising conclusion that Eagan, the state’s eighth largest city, ought to lay high-speed fiber-optic cable to each of its 25,500 homes. The City Council told his broadband committee early this year to figure out how to obtain 1 gigabit-a-second Internet speed by 2015. How fast is that? You could download a movie in less than 8 seconds. By comparison, with a 1.5 megabit DSL connection the same movie would take nearly an hour and a half."

A Legacy of Legitimizing Torture :: from www.uruknet.info :: news from occupied Iraq - it : " The resignation of the torturer in chief was noted by his patron, the president, as an unfortunate day for American democracy. 'It’s sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeded from doing important work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons,' President Bush lamented on Monday. "

Bureaucratic dispossession :: from www.uruknet.info :: news from occupied Iraq - it : "August 29, 2007 On 20 August 2007, a story appeared in the Israeli daily Haaretz about the disputed ownership of a piece of land in East Jerusalem. The 'land in question,' the report said, is 'an olive grove called Kerem Hamufti' and part of the 'Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.' [1] According to Haaretz, the 'Israel Lands Administration (ILA) is working together with the Ateret Cohanim association to wrest from Palestinian landowners control of 30 dunams (7.5 acres) of land in East Jerusalem and to transfer it to the association without a tender.' Petitioning the High Court, the land's owners, the Palestinian Arab Hotels Company, described the purpose of this expropriation as 'extraneous, illegitimate, racist and discriminatory.' "

War and the "New World Order" :: from www.uruknet.info :: news from occupied Iraq - it War is the ultimate means of attempting to change societies and reshape nations. It is through war that national economies and political structures can be forcibly restructured. War is, potentially, the ultimate economic shock therapy. The wars in the Middle East are stepping stones towards establishing a vision of global order that has been in the hearts and minds of the Anglo-American establishment for years. That vision is global ascendancy.

Ethiopia accuses Norway of 'destablising' region - Yahoo! News : "Norway announced Monday it had been informed by Ethiopia on August 15 that Addis Ababa was 'dissatisfied' with Oslo's diplomacy in the region and was demanding the Scandinavian country downscale its embassy staff."

S. Korea to accelerate withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan : International : Home : "South Korea plans to speed up its preparation for the pullout of more than 200 soldiers in Afghanistan after a deal with the Taliban on the release of 19 Korean hostages, officials here said Wednesday. They also indicated that Seoul's future role in Afghanistan _ possibly as a member of the civil-military Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) _ will be limited. The withdrawal of the troops is a key condition of the hard-won agreement that heralded an end to the six-week hostage crisis. "

Taliban militants free 12 hostages - Focus on Afghanistan - MSNBC.com

"French President Nicolas Sarkozy used his first major foreign-policy speech to signal a shift from his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, casting himself as a 'friend of Israel' and taking a tougher line on Russia and China."

Fallujah Finds a False Peace - by Ali al-Fadhily

A Student’s Guide to Hosting Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week - Islamo-Fascism - Terrorism Awareness Project

Miliband: US will not dictate our pullout from Iraq - Times Online

War With Iran- by Justin Raimondo : "For months we at Antiwar.com have been monitoring the situation between Iran and the United States, parsing the words of administration spokesmen for any hints of when and how hostilities between the two countries might begin. We've been running reports from insiders saying that the Cheney faction is pushing for an attack, that Bush is quite amenable but is biding his time, and that an assault on Tehran is imminent. Now the president has come out openly with his warlike intentions. In a speech delivered Tuesday, he reiterated recent charges by Washington that Iran is arming and training Iraqi Shi'ite groups who are launching attacks on American forces in Iraq, and he announced: 'I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's murderous activities.' Translation: The bombing begins shortly."

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush is preparing to ask Congress for as much as $50 billion in additional funding for the war in Iraq, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing a White House official."

"A group of eight Iranians, including two diplomats, were released by U.S. forces today after being detained because unauthorized weapons were found in their cars, the U.S. military said. Four cars carrying the Iranians, as well as seven Iraqis, were stopped at a checkpoint yesterday evening and then allowed to proceed to the nearby Sheraton Ishtar hotel, where they were later taken into custody and questioned, the military said."

Iraq: Karbala Fighting Raises Specter Of Broader Shi'ite Clashes - RADIO FREE EUROPE / RADIO LIBERTY : "Local officials say that about 5,000 assassinations have occurred in Al-Basrah in the past two years."

Perverse Justice -- In These Times : "“I have seen a number of scenarios,” he wrote. “For example, some prisoners lose the capacity to focus their attention rationally on the things which should be priorities; instead, they become obsessively focused on some minor detail, or some perceived injustice—and most commonly, they become obsessively focused on some perceived injustice or offense they are experiencing in confinement (issues which are not relevant to defending themselves in their criminal case).” Jose Padilla spent approximately three and a half years in solitary confinement at the Navy Brig in Charleston, S.C. He spent most of his day in a 9’x7’ cell. The window of his cell was painted over so that he could not see daylight. At times he was deprived of his mattress and pillow. He ate alone in his cell. “I have seen a number of scenarios,” he wrote. “For example, some prisoners lose the capacity to focus their attention rationally on the things which should be priorities; i...

The Promise of Low Power FM -- In These Times : "The movement to develop alternatives to mainstream corporate-owned radio got a boost recently with a bi-partisan congressional bill to expand low-power FM (LPFM), a class of frequencies devoted to non-commercial community groups. Though LPFM stations only broadcast a radius of three-and-a-half miles, they offer the chance to bring seldom-heard voices on the air. The movement to develop alternatives to mainstream corporate-owned radio got a boost recently with a bi-partisan congressional bill to expand low-power FM (LPFM), a class of frequencies devoted to non-commercial community groups. Though LPFM stations only broadcast a radius of three-and-a-half miles, they offer the chance to bring seldom-heard voices on the air. "

The Secret Lives of Plutocrats -- In These Times : "Where is Richistan? According to Wall Street Journal reporter Robert Frank, it’s the domain—effectively a country more foreign to us than the other “stans” on the map—of the world’s households that are worth $1 million or more. But these 9 million-plus households, which have more than doubled in number over the past decade, actually are further divided into distinct provinces of Lower, Middle and Upper Richistan, as well as Billionaireville—population 400 and growing."

How Does Laura Bush Sleep at Night? -- In These Times : "As one of the scant 15 percent of likely voters who has a “very unfavorable” assessment of Mrs. Bush (and who finds her high approval ratings a complete mystery), I would like to suggest that she may be the worst First Lady in recent memory. Here are the reasons: First, she has had no consistent program or agenda that has changed anything for the better. Second, she provides PR cover for her husband so she can pretend they’re doing one thing, like helping school children, while he can do another, like screwing them and their teachers through disasters like “No Child Left Behind.” (Another example of being a beard for Bush, she promotes awareness about women’s heart disease while he proposes slashes in Medicaid, 70 percent of whose recipients are poor women.) Third, she has taken absolutely no stand against her husband’s relentless, Shermanesque march across women’s rights. Last and most damning, she is an utter hypocrite, es...