be just

Abu Aardvark: Some Iraqi Sunni political projects

Dare To Compare - Israel : "I do not compare Israel with Nazi Germany. Israel is a Zionist settlers’ colony founded on land theft and terror against the Palestinian people; Nazi Germany was not. However, I do – like most people – compare Israeli policies in Palestine with those of the Nazis. If you deny what happened in Palestine in 1948 (Nakba) when thousands of Palestinians were murdered, and an estimated 800,000 Palestinians were terrorised and ethnically cleansed from their homeland in a deliberate and systematic policy of mass expulsion by Jewish terrorist organisations, you deny “the holocaust” ever took place.I do not compare Israel with Nazi Germany. Israel is a Zionist settlers’ colony founded on land theft and terror against the Palestinian people; Nazi Germany was not. However, I do – like most people – compare Israeli policies in Palestine with those of the Nazis. If you deny what happened in Palestine in 1948 (Nakba) when thousands of Palestinians were murdered, and a...

Prison Planet.com COPWATCH : "Epidemic Of Police Brutality & Harassment Sweeps America & UK "

'A Coup Has Occurred' Let me simplify this and not just to be rhetorical: A coup has occurred. I woke up the other day realizing, coming out of sleep, that a coup has occurred. It’s not just a question that a coup lies ahead with the next 9/11. That’s the next coup, that completes the first. The last five years have seen a steady assault on every fundamental of our Constitution, … what the rest of the world looked at for the last 200 years as a model and experiment to the rest of the world – in checks and balances, limited government, Bill of Rights, individual rights protected from majority infringement by the Congress, an independent judiciary, the possibility of impeachment. There have been violations of these principles by many presidents before. Most of the specific things that Bush has done in the way of illegal surveillance and other matters were done under my boss Lyndon Johnson in the Vietnam War: the use of CIA, FBI, NSA against Americans.

Bush Threatened Nations That Did Not Back Iraq War Prior to the US-led invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, Washington unsuccessfully lobbied the 15 members of the UN Security Council for a second resolution paving the way for military action against Iraq if Saddam Hussein failed to comply with demands to disarm. But during the meeting with Aznar, Bush made it clear the US would invade Iraq by the end of March 2003 whether or not there was a UN resolution to authorize it, El Pais reported. “We have to get rid of Saddam. There are two weeks left. In two weeks we will be ready militarily. We will be in Baghdad at the end of March,” Bush said in the transcript which was translated into Spanish by the newspaper. Victory would come “without destruction”, he added. The meeting between Aznar and Bush came just days after a massive protest in Madrid by more than a million people against the invasion which Aznar’s conservative government backed.

America’s Police Brutality Pandemic : "The only terrorist most Americans will ever encounter is a policeman with a badge, nightstick, mace and Taser. A Google search for “police brutality videos” turns up 2,210,000 entries. Some entries are foreign and some are probably duplications, but the number is so large that a person could do nothing but watch police brutality videos for the rest of his life. A search on “You Tube” alone turned up 2,280 police brutality videos. PrisonPlanet has a selection of the most outrageous recent cases. [http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september2007/210907_b_brutality.htm]The only terrorist most Americans will ever encounter is a policeman with a badge, nightstick, mace and Taser. A Google search for “police brutality videos” turns up 2,210,000 entries. Some entries are foreign and some are probably duplications, but the number is so large that a person could do nothing but watch police brutality videos for the rest of his life. A search o...

ei: West Bank camp incursion causes destruction, fear : "EIN BEIT ALMA, 26 September (IRIN) - Residents of the Ein Beit Alma refugee camp began to pick up the pieces after an intense Israeli military incursion last week left dozens homeless, and many very frightened, especially children. The fighting with Palestinian militants also caused damage to sewer systems, residents said. Muhammed Msaimi, aged 26, hid for over a day with his wife and three children in the bathroom because of gunfights which took place outside their apartment. However, the bullets found their way into that room as well, and they crawled behind a thick wall, Msaimi, a registered refugee, said."

Free Press : The Jena 6 and the Media : "Eugene Robinson’s Sept. 21 op-ed, “Drive Time for the Jena 6,” rightly concluded that black radio played a critical role in bringing to light what happened in Jena, La. These radio hosts are to be commended. But I worry that as the media grow ever more consolidated, they are doing less and less to serve people of color."

RTE::Righttoenter : "Enaya Samara is a 56-year-old US national of Palestinian origin. For 31 years she lived in Ramallah with her husband, Adel Samara, who is a resident of the OPT, and their two children. For three decades she had to travel abroad every three months to renew her tourist visa. The family’s repeated attempts to obtain family unification and establish Enaya Samara’s right to reside in the OPT were unsuccessful. On 26 May 2006, after more than 120 trips, she was denied entry when she tried to return home to the OPT. She did not see her family until 23 February 2007 when the Israeli Interior Ministry allowed her a three-month visa. She does not know if it will be renewed."

Al Jazeera English - News - Myanmar Monks' Three Demands : "The first step is to reduce all commodity prices, fuel prices, rice and cooking oil prices immediately. 'The second step – release all political prisoners, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and all detainees arrested during ongoing demonstrations over the fuel price hike. 'The third step – enter a dialogue with pro-democracy forces for national reconciliation immediately, to resolve the crisis and difficulties facing and suffered by the people."

Blackwater ‘may be worse than Abu Ghraib’ - The Carpetbagger Report : "“This is a nightmare,” said a senior U.S. military official. “We had guys who saw the aftermath, and it was very bad. This is going to hurt us badly. It may be worse than Abu Ghraib, and it comes at a time when we’re trying to have an impact for the long term.”"

The Greater Depression : "Another general definition of a depression is this: a period of time when most people's standard of living goes down significantly. Now, for the long run, there's no question in my mind the standard of living of everybody on earth is going to go up immensely over the next hundred years. Immensely. But that doesn't mean that we're not going to have setbacks, and I think we're looking at one: A severe standard of living drop. So the economic picture is not going to be good… So what should you be doing about all this? I suggest you really internationalize yourself. I think what you ought to have is your citizenship in one country, your bank account in another country, your investments in a third, and live in a fourth. You've got to internationalize yourself. Most people out there are like medieval serfs, psychologically and physically: they're born some place, they don't go very far from it and that's where they die, and ...

Why Did Israel Attack Syria? The reasoning was simple: before an attack on Iran could be countenanced, Hizbullah in Lebanon had to be destroyed and Syria at the very least cowed. The plan was to isolate Tehran on these two other hostile fronts before going in for the kill. But faced with constant rocket fire from Hizbullah last summer, Israel's public and military nerves frayed at the first hurdle. Instead Israel and the US were forced to settle for a Security Council resolution rather than a decisive military victory. The immediate fallout of the failed attack was an apparent waning of neocon influence. The group's program of "creative destruction" in the Middle East -- the encouragement of regional civil war and the partition of large states that threaten Israel -- was at risk of being shunted aside.

Chaos and unity in a fragmented Iraq - The Boston Globe : "WHAT GENERAL PETREAUS and his master, President Bush, would like us to believe is that recent American policy in Iraq can be seen as a military success but a political failure judged in terms of the inability of the country's sectarian leaders to unite. What they cannot see is that the two are much more closely related than they are willing to admit." One factor is that by arming and financing the Sunni tribes in Anbar Province as local militias, the American military is both recognizing the lack of central government control and helping to undermine it still further. But there is much more to it than that.

US Senate votes to divide Iraq | The Australian

Soldier tells of shooting unarmed Iraqi - Yahoo! News : "BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier cried Thursday as he told a court-martial that his staff sergeant ordered him to shoot an unarmed Iraqi. He said the sergeant then laughed and told the trooper to finish the job as the dying man convulsed on the ground." Vela said Staff Sgt. Michael Hensley of Candler, N.C., told him to shoot the man, who had stumbled upon their snipers' hideout, although he was not armed and had his hands in the air when he approached the soldiers. "He (Hensley) asked me if I was ready. I had the pistol out. I heard the word shoot. I don't remember pulling the trigger. It took me a second to realize that the shot came from the pistol in my hand," he said, crying. Vela said that as the Iraqi man was convulsing on the ground, "Hensley kind of laughed about it and hit the guy on the throat and said shoot again." "After he (the Iraqi man) was shot, Hensley pulled an AK-47 out of his...

Israel kills 12 Palestinians in Gaza in 24 hours - Yahoo! News : "GAZA CITY (AFP) - The Israeli military killed three Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, bringing to 12 the death toll in one of the bloodiest 24 hours in the Hamas-run territory in recent months."

10 die in Somalia

McClatchy Washington Bureau | 09/27/2007 | Blackwater guards killed 16 as U.S. touted progress As Hussein walked out of the customs building, an embassy convoy of sport-utility vehicles drove through the intersection. Blackwater security guards, charged with protecting the diplomats, yelled at construction workers at an unfinished building to move back. Instead, the workers threw rocks. The guards, witnesses said, responded with gunfire, spraying the intersection with bullets. Hussein, who was on the opposite side of the street from the construction site, fell to the ground, shot in the leg. As she struggled to her feet and took a step, eyewitnesses said, a Blackwater security guard trained his weapon on her and shot her multiple times. She died on the spot, and the customs documents she'd held in her arms fluttered down the street.

globeandmail.com: Afghans block highway shouting 'Death to Canada' KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — The death of two Afghan clerics in an overnight raid has ignited an unusual protest against foreign troops and sharply increased the volatility of a district that is critical to Canadian success in southern Afghanistan. Shouts of "Death to Canada!" were heard among the clamour yesterday on the main highway west of Kandahar city, as an estimated 300 to 400 protesters voiced their anger against the violent searches of local homes.