Palestinian Pundit

Al-Masry Al-Youm

"A number of Egyptian activists have posted a Facebook invitation for a rally in front of the Turkish consulate in Alexandria, to welcome Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on 12 September.

Erdogan previously said he would head to the Gaza Strip through Egypt.

The activists said participants in the rally will hoist Egyptian, Turkish and Palestinian flags. Their statement labeled Erdogan as a "brave man" for dismissing the Israeli ambassador to Turkey.

Earlier this week, Ankara expelled the ambassador and severed military and commercial cooperation with Tel Aviv when Israel declined to apologize for a naval attack in May 2010 that killed nine activists aboard a Gaza-bound Turkish aid convoy.

Israel has imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip since Palestinian faction Hamas took control.

Erdogan's move was hailed by Egyptians who slammed their own rulers for failure to take similar action after five Egyptian security and police forces were killed during a border raid last month.

"Egyptians have to credit the man (Erdogan) for his courage and self-esteem. We have to support his visit, which aims to lift the seige on Gaza in a time when Egypt's ruling military is erecting a fence to protect the Israeli Embassy in Cairo," the activists said in their statement.

Meanwhile, Youth for Freedom and Justice, an Alexandria-based group, announced its participation in the welcoming rally.

Group spokesperson Mohamed Abdel Salam said members will participate to express soldiarity with Erdogan and to demand that Egyptian authorities facilitate his trip."

Ali Abunimah
The Electronic Intifada
6 September 2011

"A group of pro-Israel activists, backed by StandWithUs, a national US pro-Israel US organization, is planning to take legal action to force the Olympia Food Co-op to rescind its historic decision to boycott Israeli products.

The Electronic Intifada has obtained a copy of a 31 May 2011 letter sent to the Board of Directors of the Olympia Food Co-op in Olympia, Washington, threatening “expensive” legal action if the pro-Israel activists’ “demands” to end the boycott of Israeli products are not met.

Other documents, supported by interviews, confirm that the Israeli government has taken part in discussions about, and been given advance knowledge of, the planned lawsuit and another planned action against Evergreen State College in Olympia in response to Palestine solidarity activism by students.

Evergreen State is noted for being the school attended by Rachel Corrie, who was killed by an Israeli occupation soldier operating a bulldozer in the Gaza Strip in March 2003.

These developments indicate new, even more aggressive tactics by pro-Israel organizations to suppress, deter and malign any form of Palestine-related dissent, protest or solidarity action....."

In order to keep Israel a "Jewish" state, racist policies amounting to apartheid have been used against Palestinians.

Frank Barat
Al-Jazeera

"....In November this year, a group of legal experts, academics, witnesses, jurists and personalities will meet in Cape Town, South Africa for the 3rd International Session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine .

This group will go further than previous studies on the question as it will address apartheid against the Palestinian people as a whole and will look into possible consequences for the International Community and legal remedies.

Led by luminaries such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Stephane Hessel, the jury panel (composed of South African heroes such as Ronnie Kasrils and Yasmin Sooka as well as British Barrister Michael Mansfield, US activist Cynthia McKinney, US author Alice Walker, Nobel Prize Winner Mairead Maguire, Spanish Judge Martin Pallin, French lawyer Gisele Halimi and Mali former Minister of Culture Aminata Traore) will listen to testimonies from legal experts and on the ground witnesses (including Winnie Mandela, John Dugard, Raji Surani, and Leah Tsemel) coming from all over the world that will focus on examining Israeli policies towards the Palestinians in detail.

After hearing those people, as well as an envoy of the state of Israel (that has been invited), the jury will deliberate and issue a final opinion.

What if the jury finds that Israel's policies towards the Palestinian people amount to the crime of apartheid defined in the 1976 convention and the 2002 Rome Stature of the ICC?

Duty to prosecute under universal jurisdiction exists under the 1976 Apartheid Convention and under general international law. States (third parties) have a duty to cooperate to end apartheid and not to assist the apartheid regime in question. The case, for added weight, could even be taken to the International Court of Justice.

Will states fulfil their duties? Or will political interest come first, as usual?

As it is often the case, it might have to be down to the people of the world - who want to live in a world based on equality, equal rights for all and justice - to take those findings and make it theirs.

Will they be up to the challenge? Our future depends on it."

Soumaya Ghannoushi
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 6 September 2011

"....The vacuum created by Gaddafi's departure is now filled by two polarised camps. The first is the National Transitional Council (NTC), made up largely of ex-ministers and prominent senior Gaddafi officials who jumped from his ship as it began to sink. These enjoy the support of Nato and derive their current power and influence from the backing of western capitals. The second is composed of political and military local leaders who have played a decisive role in the liberation of the various Libyan cities from the Gaddafi brigades.

The thousands of fighters and activists these command are now convened within local military councils, such as the Tripoli council, which was founded following the liberation of the capital and which recently elected Abdul Hakim Belhaj as its head. Ironically, this hero of the liberation of Tripoli is the same man who, a few years back had been deported, along with other Libyan dissidents, by MI6 and the CIA to Gaddafi, their close ally at the time.....

Many fighters, such as Sallabi, are insisting that they played the key role in toppling Gaddafi. Some go further, saying that their swift capture of Tripoli had taken the NTC by surprise and that they had defeated what they claim was Nato's real plan for the country: its partition into east and west. Nato's strategy, they maintain, was to freeze the conflict in the west, effectively turning Brega into the dividing line between the liberated east and Gaddafi's west.

Two sources of legitimacy now confront each other in Libya: a legitimacy derived from armed struggle on the one hand, and the de facto legitimacy of a self-appointed leadership with western support on the other. The two are locked in a cold (and potentially hot) conflict over Libya's future, the nature of its political order and its foreign policy.....

Gaddafi has gone, but Libya is now set to be a scene of multiple battles: not only conflicts between Nato's men and the fighters on the ground, but also between the foreign forces that have invested in the war – the French, who are determined to have the upper hand politically and economically; the Italians, who regard Libya as their backyard; the British, who want to safeguard their contracts; the Turks, who are keen to revive their influence in the old Ottoman hemisphere; and of course the losing players in the emerging order, the Chinese and the Russians."

Creators of a new comic hope that they can counter the 'venomous' Israel boycott movement.

Mark LeVine
Al-Jazeera

"...
Saving Brand Israel

It turns out that Captain Israel has come - from where, no one knows (Brooklyn? Miami Beach? Petakh Tikva?) - to save Brand Israel from the evildoers behind the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions movement. In my last column I interviewed Birzeit University sociologist Lisa Taraki, one of the founders of the movement, who explained that the BDS programme sought to raise awareness of how the Israeli government and its allies in the US spend millions of dollars to create a brand image of Israel that occludes the realities of the occupation and its treatment of Palestinians....

Comically revisionist history

Captain Israel could use his super brain power to help educate Israelis - actually, American Jews, since I can't imagine any Israeli wasting her time reading the comic - about the realities of decades of brutal occupation, the same way the great Jewish superheroes of old, the Prophets, took on the People of Israel when their actions contradicted biblical injunctions against oppression and exploitation.

Captain Israel could even show up at the next demonstration in Bil'in or Sheikh Jarrah and defend the Israeli and Palestinian peace activists who are routinely attacked by Israeli forces and settlers. (In fact, in working together non-violently against occupation, they are the true superheroes of today.)

Instead, Captain Israel seems to be reading from a very old (comic) book, one in which Israel can do no wrong and the Land of Israel is empty of Palestinians, who don't exist in his version except as "absentee landowners" 100 years ago and terrorists today.

Perhaps his super vision is such that he doesn't even have to see them. Why should he, when he tells us that nothing important happened for the last 400 years in the country, until Jews came back and took a desolate, barren, empty land and repopulated and restored it?...."

Looking Back on 9/11 a Decade Later

by Noam Chomsky

"....We might also do well to recall Jackson’s eloquent words at Nuremberg on the principle of universality: “If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.”

It is also clear that announced intentions are irrelevant, even if they are truly believed. Internal records reveal that Japanese fascists apparently did believe that, by ravaging China, they were laboring to turn it into an “earthly paradise.” And although it may be difficult to imagine, it is conceivable that Bush and company believed they were protecting the world from destruction by Saddam’s nuclear weapons. All irrelevant, though ardent loyalists on all sides may try to convince themselves otherwise.

We are left with two choices: either Bush and associates are guilty of the “supreme international crime” including all the evils that follow, or else we declare that the Nuremberg proceedings were a farce and the allies were guilty of judicial murder....."

The Guardian's comment editor at the time of 9/11 on a savage response to those who foresaw the reality of a war on terror

Seumas Milne
guardian.co.uk, Monday 5 September 2011

"By the time the second plane hit the World Trade Centre, the battle to define the 9/11 attacks had already begun, on both sides of the Atlantic. In the US President Bush made the fateful call for a war on terror, as the media rallied to the flag. In Britain Tony Blair and his cheerleaders enthusiastically fell into line. Inevitably, they faced a bit more opposition to the absurd claim that the atrocities had come out of a clear blue sky, and the country must follow wherever the wounded hyperpower led.

But not a lot. Political and media reaction to anyone who linked what had happened in New York and Washington to US and western intervention in the Muslim world, or challenged the drive to war, was savage.

From September 11 2001 onwards, the Guardian (almost uniquely in the British press) nevertheless ensured that those voices would be unmistakably heard in a full-spectrum debate about why the attacks had taken place and how the US and wider western world should respond.
The backlash verged on the deranged. Bizarre as it seems a decade on, the fact that the Guardian allowed writers to connect the attacks with US policy in the rest of the world was treated as treasonous in its supposed "anti-Americanism".....

The most heartening response to the breadth of Guardian commentary after 9/11 came from the US itself, where debate about what had happened, and why, was as good as shut down in the mainstream media in the wake of the attacks. One byproduct of that official public silence was a dramatic increase in US readership of the Guardian's website, as millions of Americans looked for a perspective and range of views they weren't getting at home.

Traffic on the Guardian's website doubled in the months after 9/11, driven from the US. Articles from the Guardian were taped in bookshop windows from Brooklyn to San Francisco. As Emily Bell, then editor of Guardian Unlimited and now digital director at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, puts it, the post-9/11 debate was "totally transformative" for the Guardian, turning it into one of the two fastest growing news sites in the US – and creating the springboard for a US readership now larger by some measures than in Britain.

Which only goes to show how those who accused us of "anti-Americanism" in 2001 so utterly misjudged the society they claimed to champion."

Do you believe that a political solution is still possible for the current Syrian crisis?

With over 1,700 responding, 80% said no.

عرب 48

"كشف الرئيس الفلسطيني، محمود عباس، ظهر اليوم، أنه التقى قبل أسبوعين بوزير الأمن الإسرائيلي، إيهود براك، في العاصمة الأردنية، عمّان. وقال عباس إنه التقى ببراك يوم الرابع والعشرين من الشهر الماضي. وذكر موقع "يديعوت أحرونوت" أن تصريحات عباس صدرت في ختام لقاء جمعه اليوم في رام الله بمجموعة من الصحافيين المثقفين الإسرائيليين.

وكشف عباس أنه التقى بالرئيس الإسرائيلي، شمعون بيرس، في الأردن وروما ولندن، وأكد أنه كان من المقرر الإلتقاء مجدداً في الثامن والعشرين من الشهر الماضي، لكن اللقاء ألغي بناء لطلب بيرس.

وقال عباس إنه بحث وبراك عدة قضايا دون أن يعطي تفاصيل أكثر، وأشار الموقع الإسرائيلي إلى أن عباس رفض الإفصاح عن فحوى اللقاء.

وذكر موقع "يديعوت" أن عباس أكد توجه السلطة الفلسطينية إلى الأمم المتحدة دون تحديد هدف التوجه، وأشار الموقع إلى أن عباس لم يؤكد أن التوجه بهدف "الاعتراف بالدولة". ونقل الموقع عن عباس قوله: نحن ذاهبون لتقديم شكوى في الأمم المتحدة بأننا تحت الاحتلال منذ الحكم العثماني وحتى اليوم، وأننا نريد الاستقلال. نحن نريد أن نكون مع إسرائيل ولا نريد عزلها، نحن نشجع الدول العربية على الاعتراف بدولة إسرائيل كما دفعنا لذلك في مبادرة السلام العربية، ولن نسعى لنزع شرعيتها".

وقال الموقع الإسرائيلي إن عباس لم يشر إلى أن التوجه سيكون إلى مجلس الأمن مباشرة للاعتراف بالدولة الفلسطينية أم أن السلطة ستتوجه إلى الجمعية العمومية للأمم المتحدة للحصول على عضوية فيها.

وقال عباس إن إسرائيل لم تقدم حتى الآن بديلاً للتوجه إلى الأمم المتحدة وإنه "منفتح لكافة الأفكار"، وأكد ان السلطة تسعى للسلام عبر المفاوضات وإنه مستعد للعودة للمفاوضات لبحث القضايا الجوهرية.
"

الخروج من الكامب
عبد الحليم قنديل

"هل يمكن أن يأتي يوم تلغى فيه معاهدة السلام المصرية 'الإسرائيلية' المعروفة إعلاميا باسم اتفاقية كامب ديفيد؟.
الجواب المباشر عندي: نعم.
والأسباب ظاهرة، وأهمها ما يجري في مصر الآن بعد ثورتها الشعبية العظمى، والتي تتوالى موجاتها، وتنزح من بئر ألم عظيم يستشعره المصريون بعد سنوات الغيبوبة .
صحيح أن الطرق لاتبدو سالكة بسهولة، وأن مصر ـ بعد ثورتها ـ تواجه مصاعب كبرى، وأن المتاعب في كل اتجاه، فقد بدت الثورة في صورة دراما هائلة، ولكن بلا قيادة مطابقة،
...
...
وبقدر ما كانت الثورة الشعبية ردا لاعتبار الشعب المصري، واستعادته لثقته بنفسه، وبمقدرته على صنع المعجزات، وتحدى القوى التي تظن في نفسها القدرة والقوة غير النهائية، بقدر ما كانت الثورة استردادا للثقة بالذات، فإنها استردت لقضية مصر الوطنية اعتبارها، والسبب ـ ببساطة ـ في الطابع الوطني الذاتي لفعل الثورة نفسه، وفي سيطرة مزاج شعبي كاره لتغول الأمريكيين والإسرائيليين، ومناصر لحركات المقاومة المسلحة، وراغب في استعادة كرامة مصر، وهو ما يفسر سلوكا بدا تلقائيا لجمهور الثورة المصرية، وهو يقيم جمعة الغضب من أجل فلسطين في أسابيع الثورة الأولى، ثم توالى دفقات الغضب من أجل حرية مصر، ودخول أولويات التحرر من هيمنة الأمريكيين والإسرائيليين على خط التظاهر الشعبي، وبدء طرح إمكانية إلغاء اتفاقية كامب ديفيد على جدول النقاش العام، وتدفق آلاف الجنود المصريين إلى شرق سيناء في أول اختراق فعلي لمحظورات معاهدة العار، والبقية تأتي، وإن تباطأت الخطى."

S E C R E T JERUSALEM 000286

NOFORN
SIPDIS

NEA FOR FRONT OFFICE, SEMEP, AND IPA
NSC FOR SHAPIRO/KUMAR
JOINT STAFF FOR LT GEN SELVA

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/16/2020
TAGS: PGOV PREL PINS KWBG KPAL IS
SUBJECT: PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY SECURITY OFFICIALS ON COORDINATION WITH ISRAEL

Classified By: CG Daniel Rubinstein, per reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).

Summary
-------

¶1. (S) In recent meetings with Post, Palestinian Authority (PA) security officials reiterated their commitment to continued Israeli-Palestinian security coordination. They expressed frustration with what they termed a one-sided Israeli approach, and highlighted the importance of keeping coordination out of the public eye. PA Civil Police Chief Hazim Atallah highlighted new coordination channels with the Israeli National Police (INP) in areas such as criminal investigations and counternarcotics. End summary.

Continued PA Commitment to Security Coordination --------------------------------------------- ---

¶2. (S) In meetings held in Ramallah on February 7, PA security officials stated their continued commitment to security coordination with Israel. Minister of Interior Said Abu Ali told Post, "We support coordination if it is in the spirit of implementing Oslo," noting that cooperation benefits both sides. However, he said, publicity about Israeli-Palestinian security coordination threatens the sustainability of the PA's security campaign. It is essential to depoliticize these contacts and keep them out of the public eye, he noted.

New Coordination Channels
-------------------------

¶3. (S) In a separate meeting, PA Civil Police Chief Atallah briefed Post on new coordination channels between the Palestinian police and their INP counterparts. With PA President Mahmoud Abbas's approval, the PA Civil Police and INP recently established four working groups to discuss the subject of violence in the H1 (Palestinian-controlled) area of Hebron. These working groups include the Traffic Police, Criminal Investigations Department, Special Police, and Counternarcotics. Atallah acknowledged the need for greater coordination, but noted limits to these efforts, as the INP's responsibilities in the West Bank are circumscribed.

"One-Sided" Coordination
------------------------

¶4. (S) Atallah echoed Minister Abu Ali's comments on the importance of continued security coordination with Israel, and underscored his own willingness to continue meeting with Israel Defense Forces (IDF) representatives regardless of the political climate. Atallah said that security coordination is not only required by Oslo-era Agreements, but also is in the Palestinians' interest. He expressed concern about what he described as asymmetrical information sharing, with far more information flowing from the Palestinian side to Israel than is received in return. He also juxtaposed positive GOI statements on PA security efforts (such as Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak's praise at the recent Herzilya conference) with the GOI's unwillingness to change its rules of engagement on the ground. RUBINSTEIN

The confused take on women reflects a desire to be unique that left the Gaddafis scorned by both the Arab world and the west

Nesrine Malik
guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 September 2011

""We will not give up, we are not women," Colonel Muammar Gaddafi declared on Thursday. From a man who had demanded female-only bodyguards for the past few decades, and who fancies himself a bit of a forward-thinking feminist, these are rather odd words.

His Green Book, a short work setting out his philosophy, has pages and pages dedicated to his quirky views on women, underpinned by a belief that we just have to admit to our biological limitations....



Gaddafi holds that western feminism has forced women to overreach their physical capabilities, yet he is obsessed with powerful women. Condoleezza Rice, Madeleine Albright and camouflage-clad women in heels are the objects of his affection – but only if he is in charge....

It appears he applied his philosophies at home as well, spawning a family that resembled soap opera characters. His children seem to have a fascination with the trappings of western culture, but also a fixation on being some new incarnation of secular Arab leadership.....

Gaddafi's most notorious son, Saif al-Islam, has brought the august institution of the London School of Economics into disrepute through his long-standing association and the PhD that he was awarded. A self-styled cultural ambassador, he exhibited his art in a specially erected pavilion in London's Kensington Gardens.....

Fathered by a man who, when his pan-Arab campaign failed, retreated into blaming imperialism for almost everything, they are a motley crew of misfits seemingly desperate to ingratiate themselves with the west, but without internalising enough of its values to forfeit their birthright.

They never found a place or real status as statesmen or power brokers in their own backyard. Ironically, the west embraced the Gaddafi family far more readily than the Arab world ever did. They had money and found a willing audience wherever they went – even in the halls of the London School of Economics, so perhaps the finger-pointing over their gaucheness is a tad hypocritical....."

Intelligence helped Gaddafi regime track and apprehend dissidents, according to files seized from Tripoli offices

Cherry Wilson
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 3 September 2011

Also, on the same subject:

Gaddafi, Britain and US: A secret, special and very cosy relationship

By Kim Sengupta and Portia Walker in Tripoli, Jane Merrick and Brian Brady in London
The Independent.

"British and US intelligence agencies built up close links with Muammar Gaddafi and handed over detailed information to assist his regime, according to secret files found in Libyan government offices.

The documents claim that MI6 supplied its counterparts in Libya with details on exiled opponents living in the UK, and chart how the CIA abducted several suspected militants before handing them over to Tripoli.

They also contain communications between British and Libyan security officials ahead of Tony Blair's visit in 2004, and show that British officials helped write a draft speech for Gaddafi when he was being encouraged to give up his weapons programme.

The discovery was made by reporters and members of Human Rights Watch in the private offices of Moussa Koussa, the former foreign minister and head of Libyan intelligence, who defected to Britain in February. He is now believed to be in Qatar......

The papers, which have not been independently verified, also suggest the CIA abducted several suspected militants from 2002 to 2004 who were subsequently handed over to Tripoli. Human Rights Watch has accused the CIA of condoning torture.

"It wasn't just abducting suspected Islamic militants and handing them over to the Libyan intelligence," said Peter Bouckaert, director of Human Rights Watch's emergencies division. "The CIA also sent the questions they wanted Libyan intelligence to ask and, from the files, it's very clear they were present in some of the interrogations themselves."......."

In Latakia
the Savage beast  : who is your teacher ?
Human : Dr Bashar Al-Assad
Savage beast : slap

Take the resistance and stick it you know where...

Al-Masry Al-Youm

"Dozens of activists staged a protest in front of the Journalists Syndicate to express their rejection of military trials for civilians.

They also called for the release of activists tried in military courts, particularly Mikel Nabil, who was sentenced to three years imprisonment for insulting the Armed Forces.

They also called for the release of Asmaa Mahfouz and Loay Nagaty. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces withdrew reports it had filed against both activists.

Nabil’s brother, Mark Nabil, said the protest calls for Mikel’s immediate release and added that the protests will continue until his release is obtained......"

By Ali Abunimah

".......Although the Mavi Marmara was operated by the independent charity IHH, it seems highly likely that the decision to withdraw from the flotilla in June was taken at the suggestion of the Turkish government. The reasons given publicly for withdrawing the ship were “technical.”

We cannot know what private communications may have taken place, but in early June Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu publicly suggested that the flotilla organizers should “rethink” their plan to break the siege by sea. Whether the decision was at the behest of the Turkish government or not, it suited its needs at the time. Why?

At the time many observers – myself included – feared that Turkey was softening its stance toward Israel and seeking to “mend fences” without Turkey’s demands being met....."

(The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel. Ilan Pappe. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011)

By Khalil Nakhleh
Palestine Chronicle

"....This is an important book about the nearly 1.4 million “forgotten Palestinians” who are the remnants of the indigenous Palestinians who lived in the land of Palestine until it was decimated by the Zionist settler-colonial onslaught in 1947/1948, and who continue to live today within the artificially-created Jewish-Zionist state of Israel.

This is not a traditional book review. It is an interactive reading of Ilan’s book, where I deliberated virtually with him about the overall subject, during my careful reading of the book, which I utilize now as a stepping stone. However critical certain aspects of this reading may appear, it must be kept in mind that it’s coming from a friendly (not hostile) corner. I focus here only on few aspects.....

My conclusion from the above is crystal clear: the lesson that we should learn is to actively resist all attempts by the enemies of the Palestinian people, including the current Palestinian ruling elite structure, to fragment the Palestinian people and existence, and to re-institute and revive our struggle for a FREE, JUST, EQUAL, and DEMOCRATIC Homeland.

All Palestinians must read this book. All Jews—Zionists and anti-Zionists alike, who express concern about justice and human rights for the Palestinians, must read this book."

Family flee home in Syrian city of Homs after eldest son is shot amid government crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators

Foreign staff in Cairo
guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 September 2011

"....The Syrian-British couple and their three children were this week forced to flee their home in the Syrian city of Homs after their eldest son was shot amid a brutal government crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.

Fearing that the bullet wound would mark him out as an opposition activist, the family packed a few bags and left the only country the children have known.

Lifting his T-shirt to show two dressed wounds where the bullet passed through him, Danny, 22, explains how he was wounded.

It was Saturday night and Danny was standing in the street talking to a friend about getting food and medication into Hama – another city that has become a focus of dissent against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

A car drew up alongside the two men, and a passenger – believed to be a pro-government militiaman – opened fire.....

For the family, Danny's shooting was the last straw: wounded protesters have been dragged from their beds and arrested, so after a quick scan and five stitches on each wound, he discharged himself from hospital. Meanwhile, the rest of the family packed up their house. Jannah grabbed her laptop, Sammy took some colognes given to him by friends.

All of the family are adamant they will – one day – return to a democratic Syria. "People are not going to stop," Akram says. "We know that soon the country will be freed.""

Documents found in the offices of former head of Libyan intelligence also reveal MI6 gave Gaddafi regime information on dissidents

David Batty and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 3 September 2011

"The CIA worked closely with Muammar Gaddafi's intelligence services in the rendition of terrorist suspects including Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, the rebel commander in Tripoli, according to documents found in Tripoli.

The documents, found in the offices of the former head of Libyan intelligence Musa Kusa, also show that MI6 gave Gaddafi's regime information on Libyan dissidents living in the UK.

The files, uncovered by Human Rights Watch, provide details of the close relationship between western intelligence services, including MI6 and the CIA, and the ousted dictator's regime...."

by Sharif Abdel Kouddous
The Nation

"Haitham al-Maleh, an 81-year-old Syrian human rights lawyer, has spent most of his life struggling against autocracy in Syria and the last forty years battling the iron-fisted rule of Bashar al-Assad and his father before him, Hafez al-Assad.

“I will live to see the Assad regime fall, just as sure as we are sitting here together,” Maleh said in an interview on a recent visit to Cairo. Tall, with a thick, white goatee, large aquiline nose and an easy confidence, Maleh speaks in a lively manner that belies his years.

His life story is one of relentless resistance to government repression in Syria.

Maleh was first arrested in 1951, at the age of 20, and held for three weeks, after he spoke out as a young lawyer calling for an independent judiciary. Undeterred, he continued to practice law, eventually rising to become a judge. In 1966, he was forced off the bench by the ruling Baath party for his vocal opposition to emergency laws that had had been put in place three years earlier, which effectively suspended most constitutional protections for citizens....

In July, the government lifted the travel ban on Maleh and several other prominent opposition figures. “I don’t know why,” Maleh says. “There is no ‘why’ in Syria. You cannot ask.” He immediately left the country, reuniting with his son for the first time in seven years. They traveled to Istanbul to attend an opposition gathering and embarked on a tour of Western Europe and the Middle East to garner support for the protesters in Syria and call on governments to condemn the Assad regime and sever diplomatic relations.

Official estimates put the death toll in Syria at more than 2,200 over the past five and a half months. Maleh believes the figures are much higher. “More than 3,000 people have been killed or disappeared and more that 25,000 have been arrested,” Maleh says.

Despite the Assad regime’s brutal crackdown and the personal threats to his life, Maleh plans to return to Syria in a few weeks to continue his life’s work. “We will be the winner,” he says with a smile. “This regime is going to hell.”"

WikiLeaks exposé casts doubt on American military's version of events in March 2006

By Donald Macintyre and Jerome Taylor
The Independent
Friday, 2 September 2011

"More than five years after the American military denied claims that its troops had executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians in cold blood, new evidence has emerged in a WikiLeaks diplomatic cable casting serious doubt on the US version of events.

A UN complaint contained in the latest batch of cables published by the whistle-blowing organisation suggests that in 2006 US troops killed at least 10 civilians, including five children and an elderly woman, in the central town of Ishaqi before ordering an air strike which destroyed the house where the alleged killings took place.

The incident is raised in a letter from Philip Alston, the UN rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. Mr Alston's letter to US officials, which went unanswered, challenges the American military version of events. It says that autopsies carried out in the nearby city of Tikrit showed the victims had been handcuffed and shot in the head. They included a woman in her 70s and a five-month-old......"

The Turkish foreign minister says all military agreements are suspended after Israel refused to apologise for its flotilla raid

Associated Press
guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 September 2011

"Turkey says it is expelling the Israeli ambassador and cutting military ties with Israel over the country's refusal to apologise for last year's deadly raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla.

The foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said Turkey was downgrading diplomatic ties to the level of second secretary and the ambassador would leave Turkey by Wednesday.

Davutoglu also said Turkey was suspending all military agreements signed between the former allies, saying "it is time Israel pays a price" [No Kidding!]....."

1 September 2011

"Pro al-Gaddafi forces left 19 detainees to die of suffocation while locked inside metal containers in the sweltering June heat in north-western Libya, Amnesty International has discovered.

Three survivors described how al-Gaddafi loyalists tortured them and then imprisoned them along with 26 others in two cramped cargo containers on 6 June at a construction site in al-Khums, 120 km east of Tripoli.

The detainees endured temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius and drank their own sweat and urine when the limited water supply ran out. Their captors shouted “rats, shut up”, ignoring their cries for help.

This is the first report of the June incident, because al-Khums was off-limits to independent reporting until it fell under the control of the National Transitional Council (NTC) on 21 August.

“This is obviously appalling and inhumane treatment of a group of people who were mostly civilians,” said Diana Eltahawy, North Africa Researcher at Amnesty International, who is currently in Libya.

It is a war crime for any party to a conflict to kill or torture prisoners...."

A prominent European philosopher who argues that the Arab Spring is over simply can't fathom a new, hopeful world.

Hamid Dabashi
Al-Jazeera

"....Zizek: out of touch

But strange that the (evidently Marxist) European philosopher had no concerns about those kinds of “suffocating” the revolution. On a previous occasion I have suggested that the distinguished European philosophers like Zizek who wish to say something about other parts of the world need to diversify among their native informers. But alas, Zizek seems not to have listened to my advice. “The losers,” he warns Europeans, “will be the pro-Western liberals, too weak - in spite of the CIA funding they are getting - to ‘promote democracy’, as well as the true agents of the spring events, the emerging secular left that has been trying to set up a network of civil society organisations, from trade unions to feminists”.

All these key confusions of Zizek - his “secular left” in particular is a giveaway - should warn him to start shopping around (with a proper credit card of course, for shoplifting is nihilistic) for better native informers. The ones he has now are no good. In a “worldless” world, filled with Absolute meanings of militant Islamists stealing revolutions like shoplifters, Zizek’s diagnosis is that “today’s left faces the problem of ‘determinate negation’: what new order should replace the old one after the uprising, when the sublime enthusiasm of the first moment is over?"

In this “worldless” world we have, it seems, a lack of organisation; yes indeed, party politics. Zizek mourns precisely where and what Saidj Mustapha celebrates. Zizek dismisses not just the UK shoplifters, the Muslim terrorists, and the Arab revolutions, but even the Spanish indignados.....

Is the Arab Spring half-full or half-empty?

Whence the difference between these two perspectives: the Arab intellectual morally invested and politically engaged, while his European counterpart morally aloof and politically pessimistic? One has everything to gain, a world to live; the other nothing to lose, having lost his world to worldlessness. The Algerian political scientist thrives on a visionary reading of a world that Zizek dismisses as already worldless. Why is Saidj Mustapha not afraid of a conspiracy between the Islamists and the generals? Why is Joseph Massad far more afraid of American neoliberals and neoconservatives than of Islamists? A world is unfolding right in front of Zizek’s eyes and he sees the world worldless, the Egyptian revolution suffocated, the Arab Spring lost. How and why is it that the Algerian intellectual celebrates precisely what the European philosopher mourns: the absence of party politics, the rise of a politics beyond clichés?

Zizek mourns worldlessness, and designates absolute Meaning as the cause of terrorism. He does not see the world that is unfolding right before him as a hopeful, purposeful, worldly, life-affirming world. This is because, just like Gaddafi, Zizek is stuck in his old ways. He cannot believe his eyes, he cannot believe what is happening to him: that his world has ended, not the world; that he (embodying a European philosophy at the losing end of its dead certainties) lives a worldless world, not the world.

Zizek and Gaddafi are identical souls, sticking to the worlds they know, militantly, the world they are losing - defiant rebels banging at the Bab Aziziyeh compound of their habitat, a world that is either theirs or it will not exits: “Après moi, le déluge.” Barely begun, Zizek dismisses the Arab Spring and then mourns the loss of idealism among the shoplifters.

It is in fact the European philosopher himself that is the gravedigger of history, having nothing to see, nothing to say, nothing to celebrate, because this history is not his history, is not History, for History has always been His, and not anyone else’s....."

By Reese Erlich

"Perhaps you are confused by U.S. policy towards Middle East dictators. The U.S. supports some, denounces others and launches missiles to overthrow another. Having reported from the region for over 25 years, I can explain what might otherwise seem to be an inconsistent U.S. policy.

There are good dictators and bad dictators. We support the good ones and denounce the bad ones, unless of course, we change our minds.

Take Muammar Qaddafi – please...."

A GOOD ARTICLE
By Ramzy Baroud
Palestine Chronicle

"....Listening to upbeat statements by rebel military commanders, and optimistic assessments of NTC members, one gets the impression that the future of Libya is being entirely formulated by the new Libyan leadership. Arab media, lead by Al Jazeera, seemed at times to entirely neglect that there was a third and most powerful party involved in the battle between freedom-seeking Libyans and the obstinate dictator. It is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, whose decisive and financially costly military intervention was not charitable, nor was it a moral act. It was a politically and strategically calculated endeavor, with multifaceted objectives that simply cannot be scrutinized in one article.

However, one needs to follow the intense discussion under way in Western media to realize the nature of NATO's true intentions, their expectations and the bleak possibilities awaiting Libya if the new leadership doesn't quickly remove itself from this dangerous NATO alliance.

While Libyans fought against brutality, guided by a once distant hope of freedom, democracy and liberation from the grip of a clownish and delusional dictator, NATO calculations had nothing but a self-serving agenda in mind.....

Tuning back to Arabic media however, one is confronted with almost an entirely different discourse, one that refers to NATO as "friends," to whom the Libyan people are "grateful" and "indebted." Some pan-Arab TV channels have been more instrumental than others in introducing that faulty line of logic, which could ultimately bode terrible consequences for Syria, and eventually turn the Arab Spring into an infinite winter.

The Libya that inspired the world is capable of overcoming NATO's stratagems, if it becomes aware of NATO's true intentions in Libya and the desperate attempt to thwart or hijack Arab revolts."