Palestinian Pundit

Jody McIntyre writing from Bilin, occupied West Bank, Live from Palestine, 7 December 2009

(Left: Adeeb Abu Rahme during a protest against the wall in Bilin.)

"The end of November marked the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, a time to see family and friends and for people to eat together. But for many Palestinians, the Eid was not so festive. Rajaa Abu Rahmah, aged 19, only has one wish this holiday -- to see her father freed from prison.

On 10 July 2009, Adeeb Abu Rahmah, a leading activist and organizer from the occupied West Bank village of Bilin, was arrested during the weekly demonstration at the wall. A man committed to nonviolent direct action, Adeeb was charged with "incitement to violence," a blanket charge often used to indict leading members of Palestinian communities resisting against the confiscation of their land.....

Jody McIntyre spoke to Rajaa, Adeeb's eldest daughter, to see how the family were coping during Eid al-Adha......"

Law allows Jewish officials to rule local council indefinitely

by Jonathan Cook
Global Research, December 7, 2009

"Some 35,000 Bedouin residents of Israel’s southern Negev have been denied the right to hold their first local council election after the Israeli parliament passed a law at the last minute to cancel this month’s ballot.

The new law gives the government the power to postpone elections to the regional council, known as Abu Basma, until the interior ministry deems the local Bedouin ready to run their own affairs.

Legal and human rights groups say the move is an unprecedented violation of Israel’s constitutional principles. Taleb a-Sana, a Bedouin member of Israel’s parliament, has written to its speaker warning that “it is not possible to have democracy without elections”........"

By Chris Hedges

(Left: A woman in Germany selects a candy box with President Barack Obama’s face on it.)

"Liberals are a useless lot. They talk about peace and do nothing to challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working class, and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American Free Trade Agreement. They insist they believe in welfare, the right to organize, universal health care and a host of other socially progressive causes, and will not risk stepping out of the mainstream to fight for them. The only talent they seem to possess is the ability to write abject, cloying letters to Barack Obama—as if he reads them—asking the president to come back to his “true” self. This sterile moral posturing, which is not only useless but humiliating, has made America’s liberal class an object of public derision......

I learned to dislike liberals when I lived in Roxbury, the inner-city in Boston, as a seminary student at Harvard Divinity School. I commuted into Cambridge to hear professors and students talk about empowering people they never met. It was the time of the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Spending two weeks picking coffee in that country and then coming back and talking about it for the rest of the semester was the best way to “credentialize” yourself as a revolutionary. But few of these “revolutionaries” found the time to spend 20 minutes on the Green Line to see where human beings in their own city were being warehoused little better than animals. They liked the poor, but they did not like the smell of the poor. It was a lesson I never forgot.....

If liberals had even a bit of their fortitude we could have avoided this mess. But they don’t. So here we are again, begging Obama to be Obama. He is Obama. Obama is not the problem. We are. "

In colonial historiography, the victims are almost always silent

By Ramzy Baroud
Al-Ahram Weekly

"Last week Americans observed Thanksgiving commemorating a romanticised era in their nation's record, celebrating the supposed solidarity and brotherhood enjoyed by the first settlers and the indigenous people of what is now called the United States. However, this fantastic tale of friendship contradicts the candid remarks of many notable personalities in US history.

Few can be as blunt regarding the legacy of the United States towards the native people as the 26th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. In his narrative, The Winning of the West, Roosevelt spoke about the "spread of the English-speaking peoples over the world's wasted spaces". He wrote: "The European settlers moved into an uninhabited waste... the land is really owned by no one... The settler ousts no one from the land. The truth is, the Indians never had any real title to the soil."

In an interview with the British Sunday Times on 15 June 1969, former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir made similar claims, stating, "There was no such thing as Palestinians. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country from them. They did not exist."......"

The last mile is the hardest: negotiations intensify as Israel and Hamas move towards sealing a prisoner swap deal

By Khaled Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem
Al-Ahram Weekly

"....."They [Israel] want to exhaust and frustrate Hamas to give in and concede on its original demands. But that is not going to happen because all our brothers in Zionist jails are viewed as equal. We don't pay any attention to Israeli classifications of prisoners as some having blood on their hands and others who don't. You know Israeli soldiers and officers have tons upon tons of Palestinian blood on their hands. Israel is in no moral or legal position to lecture us on terror and murder since Israel itself is a crime against humanity."

Asked for his personal opinion on whether a prisoner deal was imminent, Youssef said: "I am sorry to disappoint you. There will be a deal eventually, of course, but not in the next few days or even next few weeks. The Israelis are masters of deceit and prevarication, and we will not be tricked by them. We, too, are tough negotiators.""

America's 'surge' may only expand, intensify and prolong the Afghan conflict

By ERIC MARGOLIS
The Toronto Sun

(Cartoon by Carlos Latuff)

"NEW YORK -- There were no surprises in President Barack Obama's historic speech at West Point last Tuesday.

Obama faced the choice between guns (Afghanistan) or butter (his national health plan). The Nobel Peace Prize winner chose guns......

The longer U.S. forces wage war in Afghanistan, the more the conflict will spread into Pakistan, where 15% of its people and 25% of its military are Pashtuns who sympathize with their beleaguered fellow Taliban Pashtuns in Afghanistan.

A grimmer view is that Obama has become a captive of the military-industrial complex, Wall Street and Washington's rabid neocons who seek permanent war against the Muslim world. Obama's "surge" may only expand, intensify and prolong the Afghan conflict.

In the end, there will be a negotiated peace that includes Taliban. But how many Americans, allies and Afghans must die before it comes?"

Beginning a four-part series of essays to mark 10 years since the dawn of the 21st century, Rupert Cornwell argues that America's response to 9/11 spelt doom for the world's only 'hyper-power'– and paved the way for a turbulent new era

The Independent

"How will the world remember this century's first decade, which is now drawing to an end? For once alliteration works well. The 'decade of disorder' perhaps, reflecting the fragmentation of power into what historians of the present call a multipolar world. Or how about the 'decade of drift', in which huge global problems went untackled?

Or one might describe it as a 'decade of destruction' – not in the sense of annihilation, but as a period of necessary creative destruction, in which many comforting props of the past disappeared in order to permit a new equilibrium. As for the country that not long ago informally ruled the world, another alliteration might apply. For the United States of America, briefly the hub of a unipolar world, this has been a decade of disaster....."

Saudi Arabia has sentenced a Lebanese TV psychic to death for 'witchcraft'. Will his government help him?

Elaheh Khayyat
(Elaheh Khayyat is the pen name of a Lebanon-based journalist and human rights activist.)
guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 December 2009

"Once again, the spotlight is on Saudi Arabia for all the wrong reasons. This time, the kingdom is attracting criticism for condemning a self-styled psychic to death on the vague charge of "witchcraft".

Ali Sibat, who is Lebanese, was arrested by Saudi Arabia's notorious moral police at his hotel room in Medina on May 7 last year, while in town for a pilgrimage. After languishing in jail for a year and a half, he was sentenced to death in November for reportedly practising witchcraft. His lawyer has said Sibat was told that if he confessed to witchcraft, he would be released and allowed to return home.....

Astonishingly, Saudi Arabia also has no written penal code, meaning that those who live in or visit the kingdom have no way of knowing whether or not their actions constitute criminal activity. Accordingly, judges have the power to determine what behaviour is unlawful and to bestow on prisoners any punishment they see fit, including the death penalty.
Since word of Sibat's sentencing emerged, newspapers in the Middle East have been running photographs of his family. One photo is particularly poignant: Sibat's young daughter sits at home in rural Lebanon, smiling innocently next to a framed picture of her father. She probably has no idea what the Saudi "justice" system has in store for him......."

Press TV

"A British lawmaker has called on Muslims and all freedom-seeking people across the world to make efforts to lift blockades on the Gaza Strip and help the oppressed Palestinians.

People in Gaza are in dire need of food, medicine and fuel, the British Member of Parliament George Galloway told state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) on Sunday.

He strongly criticized Western countries and the British government for providing all-out support for Israel and said in the absence of the West support for the Palestinian people, Muslims are duty-bound to help them......."

"Egyptian security [Whose security, one should ask?] forces uncovered a tunnel and two storehouses filled with goods meant to be smuggled into the besieged and impoverished Gaza Strip.

The tunnel and storehouses were uncovered as Egypt is conducting a security operation targeting tunnels across the border with Gaza......

The Egyptian security forces also raided a storehouse filled with goods meant to be smuggled into Gaza in addition to raiding a warehouse owned by a fish-merchant in Al Arish area, the Maan News Agency reported. The warehouses was filled with vehicles loaded with fabric meant to be smuggled into Gaza......

Several Human Rights Groups in Gaza warned that the ongoing siege is leading to further casualties among innocent civilians, as hundreds of patients died due to the lack of medical equipment and medications.

Gazans are lacking the basic materials needed to carry a decent livelihood such as cooking gas, fuel, food and basic goods......."

30
برلمانيا أوروبيا سيصلون إلى غزة وقافلة "شريان الحياة3" تنطلق اليوم من بريطانيا باتجاه غزة

عرب48/ رأفت الكيلاني

"أعلنت اللجنة الحكومية لكسر الحصار وإستقبال الوفود، أنه من المقرر أن يصل إلى قطاع غزة عبر معبر رفح البري منتصف يناير المقبل 30 برلمانياً أوروبياً ، كما ستنطلق قافلة "شريان الحياة 3" التي يرأسها النائب السابق في مجلس العموم البريطاني جورج جالوي ، اليوم الأحد من بريطانيا باتجاه فرنسا وايطاليا وقبرص ومن ثم تركيا وسوريا والأردن ومصر ، وصولاً إلى غزة.

وقال حمدي شعت، مسئول اللجنة في تصريحات له "إن الوفد البرلماني سينطلق جواً في الخامس عشر من الشهر المقبل إلى جمهورية مصر العربية، ومن المتوقع وصوله إلى غزة في السادس عشر من ذات الشهر", موضحاً أن الهدف الرئيس لهؤلاء البرلمانيين هو التواصل مع نواب المجلس التشريعي الفلسطيني المنتخبين ديمقراطياً بهدف كسر العزلة السياسية المفروضة عليهم وعلى الحكومة الفلسطينية في غزة، ومحاولة منهم لفك الحصار الإسرائيلي المفروض على الشعب الفلسطيني منذ ما يزيد عن ثلاث سنوات".

وأكد أن اللجنة الحكومية على تواصل مستمر مع هؤلاء البرلمانيين بهدف التحضير الجيد لزيارتهم وإعداد جدول يتناسب مع هدف هذه الزيارة، معرباً عن أمله في أن يتمكن الوفد من تحقيق هدفه وأن ينجح في الوصول إلى غزة دون أية معيقات.
....."

"....From an aesthetic point of view, that is a stupid decision. In all anthologies of the most beautiful buildings in the world, Islamic architecture occupies a place of honor. From the Alhambra in Granada to the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, not to mention the Taj Mahal, hundreds of Islamic architectural creations arouse admiration. A minaret or two would do wonders for the urban landscape of Bern.

But this is not a matter of architecture, rather of primitive, brutal racism, the one the Germans are escaping from. The Swiss, too, have much to atone for. Their grandfathers and grandmothers, too, behaved abominably during the Holocaust, when they declared that “The Boat Is Full” and returned the Jews who managed to reach the Swiss border to the Nazi executioners......

By the way, the Swiss referendum should give pause to those who have been tempted to think that the system of referendums is preferable to the Parliamentary system. A referendum opens the gates to the vilest demagogues, the pupils of Joseph Goebbels, who once wrote: “We must appeal again to the most primitive instincts of the masses.”

Jean-Paul Sartre once said that we are all racists. The difference, he declared, is between those who recognize this and struggle against their racism, and those who surrender to it. The majority of the Swiss, I am sorry to say, have just failed this test. What about us?"

By Jeremy Scahill
The Nation

(Left: Erik Prince)

"The in-depth Vanity Fair profile of the infamous owner of Blackwater, Erik Prince, is remarkable on many levels--not least among them that Prince appeared to give the story's author, former CIA lawyer Adam Ciralsky, unprecedented access to information about sensitive, classified and lethal operations not only of Prince's forces, but Prince himself. In the article, Prince is revealed not just as owner of a company that covertly provided contractors to the CIA for drone bombings and targeted assassinations, but as an actual CIA asset himself. While the story appears to be simply a profile of Prince, it might actually be the world's most famous mercenary's insurance policy against future criminal prosecution. The term of art for what Prince appears to be doing in the VF interview is graymail: a legal tactic that has been used for years by intelligence operatives or assets who are facing prosecution or fear they soon will be. In short, these operatives or assets threaten to reveal details of sensitive or classified operations in order to ward off indictments or criminal charges, based on the belief that the government would not want these details revealed. "The only reason Prince would do this [interview] is that he feels he is in very serious jeopardy of criminal charges," says Scott Horton, a prominent national security and military law expert. "He absolutely would not do these things otherwise."........."

by Eli Clifton, December 05, 2009

"U.S. President Barack Obama’s plan for a 30,000-troop surge and a troop withdrawal timeline beginning in 18 months has caught criticism from both Democrat and Republican lawmakers.

But a small group of hawkish foreign policy experts – who have lobbied the White House since August to escalate U.S. involvement in Afghanistan – are christening Obama the new "War President."......

For hawks like Kristol, Kagan, and Senor who have been calling for a surge in U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan since August, Obama’s announcement on Tuesday night was a high-point in their campaign of op-eds, columns, and conferences, to push the Obama White House in the direction of an escalation in Afghanistan.

Kristol concluded his blog post on a confident note.

"In a way, Obama is now saying: We’re surging and fighting for the next 18 months; see you in July 2011. That’s about as good as we’re going to get.""

Analysis: Just as in Iraq, more Western troops on the ground will deepen an ongoing civil conflict and drive ordinary Afghans into the arms of the insurgents

By Patrick Cockburn
The Independent

"It will be a long and unnecessary war. President Barack Obama is sending 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan to prove that the US can impose its will on the country and crush by military means what is still a relatively small-scale insurrection.

The real reasons for escalating the conflict are very different from those declared by Mr Obama. He claims that al-Qa'ida might re-establish itself in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban and once again threaten the US and its allies with a repeat of 9/11. But there is no evidence that this is happening.

The remnants of al-Qa'ida are in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. If Osama bin Laden listened to Mr Obama's speech it will have been with mounting pleasure and a sense of achievement. Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qa'ida's chief strategist, explained just after 9/11 that the aim of the attack was to lure the US into a ground war against Muslims which would enable them to wage "a clear-cut jihad against the infidels"......

Mr Obama's plan will deepen and spread the Afghan crisis. It is not going to end the 30-year-old Afghan civil war. It is likely to radicalise the 12 million Pashtun in Afghanistan and the 20 million in Pakistan by conflating them with al-Qa'ida. American and British aims in Afghanistan could be achieved by measured support for the Afghan government. What is now planned will amount to full military occupation and turn the country and the region into a battlefield."

Lebanese pilgrim, arrested and convicted in Saudi Arabia on sorcery charges for his role in a TV show, due to be executed on Thursday

By Robert Fisk

(Left: video still of a beheading on "chop chop square" in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia)

"Some stories from the Middle East make you want to weep. But this one is truly heart-breaking.

The moment came when little Jamal walked back from school and climbed on the sofa beside me in her plaited hair and said – unprompted by any of her family – "Are you going to bring my Daddy home?" Alas, I could not tell a four-year-old of the powerlessness of journalists, nor that her father, a pious, poor Shia Muslim, may be executed in Saudi Arabia on Thursday – for witchcraft.

The story is almost too awful to relate because it should be untrue. But it is a fact that Ali Sbatt set off with members of his family two years ago to join the haj in Mecca. After 15 days, the morality police broke into his hotel room and charged him with sorcery. And the reason turns out to be that Ali, a truck driver, once worked for a now-defunct Lebanese television channel called Sheherezade and predicted happy news or gave encouragement to callers with personal problems.

How the Saudi police should have decided on his arrest when Mr Sbatt was making the haj – his eldest son Hussein was with him and showed me his father's portrait in his white pilgrimage robes, taken just before his imprisonment – is unclear. Shias in largely Sunni Saudi Arabia have been treated with suspicion since the Iranian revolution, and Mr Sbatt had an Iranian visa in his passport. Yet millions of Iranians make the pilgrimage to Mecca without being arrested.....

The family fears that Mr Sbatt was tortured after his arrest – he had no lawyers when he was sentenced – and Saudi courts, which routinely sentence alleged drug-dealers to beheadings, according to Amnesty International, do not meet international standards of fairness...... "

By Gideon Levy
HAARETZ

"Like every production, be it a flop or a hit, the future of this show will also be decided by the audience. In the meantime, as the first act shifts into high gear, the viewers are yawning.

The government and the settlers are proud to introduce "The Freeze," a show in which both sides play - in quite unconvincing fashion - already scripted parts.

During the first act, no real, historic edict has been issued. Rather, these decrees are just props. Thus, nobody will evacuate one balcony in the final scene.

The audience is skeptical. It does not believe the prime minister, who speaks of two states and in the same breath vows that the freeze will soon end, as if it were just a temporary shortage of construction materials that caused it. He pledges that the freeze will not include pergolas and synagogues. Most importantly, he promises that construction will resume in full force immediately after the halt.

The audience is even more skeptical of the shrill, ludicrous performance displayed by the settlers, who are staging a bogus protest over the temporary freeze and sounding the manufactured cry of a bully playing the victim.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the settlers do not mean what they say. They freeze and they wink, for the show must go on. The settlers, as is their wont, scream to the high heavens in order to sow fear and warn of what awaits us in the future.

Every local council chief in the territories who rips up the orders to freeze building in front of television cameras knows full well that these edicts were issued "as if." Meaning, as if there was a freeze, as if there were edicts, and as if there was resistance. The inspectors apologize, the policemen push and shove a bit, but they also know the truth. The show must go on.

This is the reason the viewers - who know that this is another scene in the endless masquerade - are so bored and indifferent. And as long as they stick to their yawning and snoring, nothing will change......"

by William S. Lind, December 05, 2009


(Cartoon by Carlos Latuff; Click on it to enlarge)

"......Now the shoe is on the other foot, and liberals are bidden to hold their tongues as President Obama makes Bush’s wars his own. The usual Washington sellout is in gear.

It should not come as a surprise. America is now a one-party state. The one party is the Establishment party, which is also the war party. Unless you are willing to cheer permanent war for permanent peace, you cannot be a member of the Establishment....

On the operational level, we are adopting a fortress strategy: Festung Kandahar. The Taliban’s operational countermove is obvious: take the rest of the Pashtun areas, isolate us in our fortresses, then work to sever the supply lines running to the fortresses, including Kabul. The Taliban is already attempting to do this; our concentration should make it all the easier.....

If we add all this up, we see that militarily it makes no sense. Of course, that is true of any military option in the Afghan war. We are fighting the Pashtun, and in the end, the Pashtun always win Afghan wars. "This time is different" is, as always, the battle cry of Folly.....

The real choice Obama faced was not how many troops to send. We do not have enough troops to commit a militarily meaningful number. The real choice was to get out now or get out later. His duty as chief executive, the state of America’s treasury (empty), concern for the well-being of our troops and their families, and the hopelessness of the situation all dictated he get out now. By punting the decision, he showed America and the world what he is made of. Dec. 1, 2009, was the date the Obama presidency failed."

Many missing in Egypt boat accident

Al-Jazeera

"Dozens of people have been reported as missing after two passenger ferries collided in the north of Egypt's Nile river.

At least 40 passengers were believed to be on board, but there were contradictory reports over how many of them might have gone missing.

Security sources put the number of missing people at between 14 and 38.....

Rescuers were still searching for those thought to be missing after one of the ferries broke in half and the other overturned.......

Egypt has frequent transportation accidents, mainly because of poor infrastructure.

In February 2006, a ferry in the Red Sea caught fire and sank en route to Egypt from Saudi Arabia, killing 1,034 of the 1,400 people on board. An Egyptian appeals court in March this year found the owner of the ferry guilty of manslaughter and sentenced him to seven years in jail.

Transport Minister Mohamed Mansour resigned in October over a train crash south of Cairo which killed 18 people."

Watching him make the most important speech of his term was profoundly depressing

By Rupert Cornwell
The Independent

"Be careful what you wish for. Barack Obama wanted the American presidency, and with a brilliant campaign he won it. As late as early this summer, disbelief could still be suspended. Cartoonists were still depicting him as Superman, leaping over every problem mere mortals might put in his way. But he too has now been exposed as a mere mortal. He's not soaring over problems. Rather, he may be crushed by them......

More than 40 years ago, an earlier Democratic president named Lyndon B Johnson, with a no less ambitious domestic agenda than Obama, was confronted by the same choice. We all know how Vietnam ended. No two conflicts are exactly alike. But with every passing month, the similarities between Vietnam and Afghanistan grow.

George Orwell once observed that the quickest way to end a war is to lose it – but losing a war is also the quickest way to lose a presidency, too. That reasoning prevailed with LBJ, though Vietnam forced him out of the White House regardless. For Obama, the stakes are as high now......

The great promise of this presidency was that it would usher in a new way of doing politics. It would, as they say, break the mould. But the Afghan speech, so full of politics as usual, gave the lie to that. We all should be careful what we wish for."

I am old enough to remember Ruhollah Khomeini banning Mozart and Haydn

A Nice Piece
By Robert Fisk

(Left: Marcel Khalifa)

".....Yes, real live troubadours in the real live Islamic Republic, two of them, hacking at a violin and beating on a "zarb" drum, the work of the classical Persian musicians, a combination – for a westerner – of gypsy and nursery melodies, a sudden revelation of 14th- and 15th-century music in a regime which aspires to the purity of the 8th......

But I am old enough to remember Ruhollah Khomeini banning Mozart and Haydn. So how do the Revolutionary Guards, praetorians of the Ayatollah's spirituality in President Ahmedinejad's oh-so-chaste republic, react to these ghosts of culture past? "I play music to earn money," Zandegani replies, a little shiftily I think. "We earn maybe $40 or $50 a day." In theory, all music must pass Iran's censorship authorities; a female singer, for example, is not allowed to sing solo lest her lone voice be too arousing for male listeners.

But music and Islam have a dodgy relationship. In Saudi Universities – and here I thank Jonas Otterbeck, Independent reader extraordinaire of Malmo University in Sweden – the most sanctimonious of students have assaulted music enthusiasts; when a professor at King Saud University, Hamzah Muzeini, condemned this brutality in the daily Al-Watan newspaper, he was convicted by a Sharia court – a ruling later overturned by King Abdullah. Yet according to journalist Rabah al-Quwai'i, some sheikhs encourage youths to burn instruments and books in public. In Saudi, I should add, Christmas carols – like all Christian religious services – are banned, except for the all-purpose "Jingle Bells". Father Christmas, I suppose, wasn't really a Christian.

It's not difficult to understand the objections to modern music and pop. Hamdi Hassan, a member of the Egyptian Assembly for the Muslim Brotherhood, complained about Ruby's first video and "the gyration of other pop stars". Incredibly, of all issues raised by the Brotherhood in the Assembly between 2000 and 2005, 80 per cent involved cultural and media issues – so much for the injustices of Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan! In my own country of choice, Lebanon, the Ministry of Defence monitors music, according to musician Mohamed Hamza. In November, 1999, Marcel Khalife was charged with blasphemy before the Beirut courts, an outrageous infringement of cultural liberty supported by the Sunni Grand Mufti, Mohamed Kabbani. Khalife had set a verse by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish to music in his album Arabic Coffeepot, but Darwish's poem contained lines from the Koran (part of verse four of Sura 12, for the uninitiated) and protesters argued that Khalife had defiled the Koran by singing it as part of a commercial song. Shiite clerics – to their great credit – defended the song-writer. He was acquitted, the Beirut judge adding that Khalife had "chanted the poem in gravity and composure that reveal a deep perception of the humanism expressed in the poem ornamented with the holy phrase." Phew.

But when Amar Hassan wanted to sing about love as well as politics in the Palestinian city of Ramallah in 2005, he was threatened before a Nablus court and his concert broken up by gunfire and the explosion of stun guns. The conflict, as Otterbeck realised in his thesis, has deep roots: between secular nationalistic music and Islamist music. In Algeria, the Islamic Armed Group made their point in lethal fashion, assassinating Berber singer Matoub Lounès.

On Al-Jazeera television, Sheikh Yusef al-Qaradawi claims there's nothing forbidden about music unless it is slanderous, sexually exciting or – and here's the rub – if it's listened to with over-enthusiasm (Islam supposedly being against all things in excess). Sufis have suggested that uneducated listeners may be stirred to sexual desire while experienced practitioners are moved by music to do God's will. The old, I suppose, know how to control themselves when they hear Mozart's "Jupiter" symphony. In Iraq, the musical scene has been bleak indeed. Shia Islamists attacked music-playing male and female students in a Basra park in 2005, killing two and wounding five others. Between 2003 and 2006, the UN found that as many as 75 Iraqi singers had been murdered; 80 per cent of the country's professional singers had left the country by the end of 2006.

I guess it's really all to do with that most jealously guarded commodity, the human soul, over which music exerts such passion. While the passion of humans should be directed towards God, music, it seems, is a diversion, even worse a perversion, the path to alcohol, adultery, murder. An Islamist internet site quotes the classical scholar Abu Hanifa who insisted that "musical instruments are the wine of the soul, and what it does to the soul is worse than what intoxicating drinks do.".... "

Press TV

"A senior Iranian official has admonished the Saudi government for entering the Yemen conflict by launching an offensive in northern parts of the country.

Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani called into question the Saudi motive behind its offensive into northern Yemen, which he said had exacerbated the already worsening situation in Yemen.

“An unfair conflict has arisen in Yemen but I wonder how [our] Saudi brothers who are Muslim do such a thing. They are in fact … killing Muslims," Larijani said, citing negotiation as the only means to defuse the crisis in Yemen.

He advised the Riyadh government against “inciting division” among Muslims." If Saudis have rockets, why don't they use them against Israel but instead drop them on poor innocent people …The Saudi government is Islamic and should not excite division among Muslims."

Larijani reiterated that the Saudi involvement in Yemen fighting was a “seditious act instigated by the enemies of Islam."

He said Saudi Arabia had financially supported Saddam Hussein's attack against Iran in the 1980s for the simple reason that Iraqis were Arabs but now refuses to intervene in issues related to other Arab nations.

“We told them (Saudis) not to collaborate with Saddam's dictatorial regime but they retorted that Iraqis were Arabs. Why is it now that you don't intervene to help in Lebanon and Palestine considering that they are mostly Sunni [Arabs]? Why don't you confront the Zionist regime?" he retorted......."

Afghanistan and Elkhart, Indiana

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
CounterPunch

"Goldman Sachs senior executives are arming themselves with New York gun permits, according to Alice Schroeder on Bloomberg.com. The banksters “are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.”

One can understand why the banksters are worried. The company, now known as Gold Sacks, has a large responsibility for the financial crisis and the fraudulent “securities” that wrecked the world economy and Americans’ pensions. A former Gold Sachs CEO had control of the US Treasury during the Bush regime from which he diverted $750 billion to bail out the banks, thus supplying them with free capital. Gold Sachs made $27,000 million during the first three quarters of 2009 and is paying out massive bonuses, leaving the busted taxpayers with the debt and interest charges.

Little wonder the US can’t afford health care for the uninsured and unemployed. It is far more important to finance multi-million dollar bonuses for investment bankers. I mean, what would we do without capitalism?....."

Press release, The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, 3 December 2009

"The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) released today [2 December 2009] a new report which exposes the shifts in Israel's combat doctrine as evidenced in the prosecution of operation "Cast Lead" and from numerous public oral and written statements made by high ranking military officers and senior Israeli government officials.

The report, "No Second Thoughts: Changes in the IDF's Combat Doctrine In Light Of Operation 'Cast Lead'," demonstrates Israel's application of a new combat doctrine during the hostilities in Gaza, which is based on two principles:

"Zero Casualties": The complete prioritization of avoiding IDF [Israeli army] casualties while disregarding the increased risk to Palestinian civilians. The implementation of this policy is evident in the massive use of fire power, the use of white phosphorous weapons in densely populated areas, and in firing at Palestinians in the streets, with no discrimination between combatants and civilians, this even after the IDF would order the evacuation of residents from civilian homes.

"Dahiyah Doctrine": named after the residential Dahiyah district in Beirut, where Hizballah enjoyed support and also had its headquarters. The district was massively bombed by the IDF during the Second Lebanon War. The doctrine promotes targeting civilian infrastructure in order to cause widespread destruction and suffering among the civilian population so as to foment popular opposition to Israel's opponents (namely Hamas and Hizballah)......"

President Barack Obama’s escalation of the Afghan War has upset many rank-and-file Democrats who had hoped for a more peaceful strategy, but Obama’s order to dispatch 30,000 more U.S. troops is being welcomed by neoconservatives, a group that has long favored U.S. military interventions in Muslim lands.

By Robert Parry
December 3, 2009

"After Obama’s West Point speech on Tuesday, the neocons gloated over their success in turning the Obama administration’s deliberations on Afghanistan toward an Iraq-like “surge” and away from negotiations aimed at winding down the eight-year-old war.

The Washington Post’s editorial pages, which have become the flagship for neocon opinion, sounded almost giddy.....

But there remains a glaring impracticality in the neocons and their hegemonic rhetoric. Krauthammer combines his call for the American people to accept their inner “hegemon” with a tirade against those who say it’s time for the United States to reduce its military budget and begin addressing its economic and social problems.

To the neocons, all that is important is the American ability to project military power around the world – and especially in the Middle East. The reality of the disappearing U.S. industrial base and America’s decaying infrastructure do not fit into the soaring rhetoric about U.S. global power......"

First Time in 40 Years Americans Want to 'Mind Their Own Business'

By Jason Ditz
Antiwar.com

(Cartoon by Carlos Latuff)

"Polling data released today by the Pew Research Center showed the start of what may well be an historic shift in the American public’s foreign policy priorities away from a multi-decade bias toward globalist interventionism and toward what the center called “isolationist sentiment.”

But far from isolationist, the policy supported appeared to be a less bellicose, decidedly non-interventionist foreign policy, but one which still recognized the value of foreign trade (more supportive of free trade now than in previous polls, in fact).

The real eye-popping statistic, however, was that for the first time in the poll’s 40 year history, most Americans supported a policy of “minding its own business internationally.”

Fascinatingly enough the study asked the same questions of members of the Council on Foreign Relations, and showed that the group of influential policy-makers still sees the world with largely the same mindset it had been in the past, seeing America needing to take a “leadership” role in the world and putting top priority on more interventionist policies.

The transition is far from complete. Most Americans, for instance, still support military action against Iran in principle and many still have a troubling attachment to the value of torture. But if the trend continues, the more interesting question will be if the CFR members start to catch up with popular sentiment on foreign policy or if the split between popular opinion and government policy will continue to grow."