Current Al-Jazeera (Arabic) Online Poll

The question is:

Do you accept that Arab countries contribute financially to treat the global financial crisis?

With over 6,000 responding so far, 85% said no.

How I survived chop chop square

I was tortured and sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia. As a westerner, I was eventually released, but others are not so lucky

William Sampson
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday October 14 2008

"In theory I should now be dead. Not from disease or an accident but because of the simple fact that my head was set to be severed from my body with a sharp sword in a public square in Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian capital......

Desperate to pin a nascent anti-government insurgency on squabbling "bootlegger" foreigners (anything rather than concede that ultra-safe Saudi Arabia had an internal terrorism problem), we were to be the sacrificial lambs. Remember those bizarre, wooden "confessions", haltingly delivered by scared looking men on national Saudi television? One of those came from me. If I looked petrified it may have been because I'd been dragged to prison, threatened, sleep-deprived and beaten so severely that I almost died from heart attacks......"

America’s Political Cannibalism

By Chris Hedges

"It is no longer our economy but our democracy that is in peril. It was the economic meltdown of Yugoslavia that gave us Slobodan Milosevic. It was the collapse of the Weimar Republic that vomited up Adolf Hitler. And it was the breakdown in czarist Russia that opened the door for Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Financial collapses lead to political extremism. The rage bubbling up from our impoverished and disenfranchised working class, glimpsed at John McCain rallies, presages a looming and dangerous right-wing backlash.

As the public begins to grasp the depth of the betrayal and abuse by our ruling class, as the Democratic and Republican parties are exposed as craven tools of our corporate state, as savings accounts, college funds and retirement plans become worthless, as unemployment skyrockets and as home values go up in smoke we must prepare for the political resurgence of a reinvigorated radical Christian right. The engine of this mass movement—as is true for all radical movements—is personal and economic despair. And despair, in an age of increasing shortages, poverty and hopelessness, will be one of our few surplus commodities........"

Pogrom Against Mosul's Christians

Iraqis Stay in Exile; Too Terrified to Return

By PATRICK COCKBURN
CounterPunch

"Thousands of Christians are fleeing the northern Iraqi city of Mosul to escape a murder campaign by Islamic extremists intent on wiping out one of the oldest Christian communities in the world......

Some 11 Christians have been killed since 28 September leading to the present exodus. Most of the refugees are moving to Christian villages, schools and monasteries in Nineveh province of which Mosul is the capital. “We left everything behind us. We took only out souls,” said Ni’ma Noail, a middle aged Christian civil servant, who has taken refuge with his three children in a room in a church in Bartila, a Christian village east of Mosul. He added, “Relatives in other cities and friends in Mosul, including Muslims, advised me to leave after recent events.”.....

The Christian community in Mosul is one of the oldest in the world and claims to have been founded by St Thomas. Many belong to the Chaldean or Assyrian churches but, even before the present wave of killings, the number of Christians in the city had halved from 20,000 to 10,000 and this remnant is now disappearing. In March the Chaldean archbishop of Mosul, Paul Faraj Ranho, was kidnapped after celebrating mass and his body was later found in a shallow grave.....

The sectarian killings in Mosul are a setback to the Iraqi government’s effort to persuade the 4.2 million Iraqis who have fled their homes since the fall of Saddam Hussein that it is now safe to return. Of these, two million are refugees within Iraq and a further 2.2 million took refuge abroad, mostly in Syria and Jordan. So far only 20,000 families or 120,000 individuals have returned ......"

Israel to allow 700 additional armed PA troops into Hebron

"The Palestinian Authority is expected to deploy a battalion of security forces to the West Bank city of Hebron Friday, Palestinian sources said Sunday. The move will be coordinated with Israel, and the 700 troops will handle security operations among the city's Palestinian population.
Israeli security forces confirmed an agreement is in the works, but said the Palestinian timetable is somewhat optimistic. If the Palestinian sources are correct, the troops will move into their new quarters Friday, which falls during the intermediate days of the Sukkot holiday - when thousands of Israeli Jews are expected to visit the Israeli-controlled territory in Hebron, especially the Cave of the Patriarchs.

The armed battalion is the second unit of the Palestinian National Security Forces to undergo American training in Jordan, under the supervision of the U.S. security coordinator in the region, Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton. It has 650 to 700 soldiers and officers, and 150 vehicles.

Samih al-Sifi, the commander of the security forces, said the deployment does not mean the Palestinian Authority is taking security responsibility for the Palestinian part of Hebron. He said Israel authorized the PA to restore order and security in the city but that there would be no wide-scale operations, only focused ones. He said the operations would begin only after Sukkot, on October 22.

Some 600 to 700 Palestinian police generally patrol Hebron, and doubling that number - especially since the new troops are well-trained - can be expected to improve the PA's hold on the city.

Four months ago, at American urging, Israel and the PA began to return full security control of the West Bank city of Jenin to the PA. For the past two months, the Palestinians have been asking to expand the Jenin model to Hebron. Israel and the United States held back, primarily because they fear clashes between PA forces and Israeli settlers. It appears that Israel has now decided to accede to the Palestinians' request, albeit to a limited extent and without actually transferring security responsibility to the PA.

Israeli security officials said the PA is interested in bolstering its police presence in Hebron partly because of the influence of wealthy Palestinian residents, who constitute a mainstay of support for Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, and partly because the PA sees Hebron as an area where Hamas is relatively strong, and it wants to erode the rival movement's power in the city. "

الاحتلال يسمح بنشر المئات من عناصر أجهزة عباس في الخليل .. والمهمة ضرب "حماس"

"رام الله – المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام

توقعت مصادر فلسطينية مطلعة أن تنشر سلطة رام الله يوم الجمعة القادم (17/10) حوالي 700 شرطي مسلح آخر في محافظة الخليل وضواحيها ليتولوا مهام أمنية، وذلك في أعقاب إعلان أجهزة الأمن في الخليل اكتشاف مخازن للأسلحة تعود لحركة "حماس"، كما قالت.

وذكرت مصادر عبرية أن السلطات الصهيونية "سمحت للسلطة الفلسطينية بنشر 700 عنصر من قوات الأمن الوطني في مدينة الخليل يوم الجمعة المقبل خلال عيد العرش اليهودي".

وأضافت أن عناصر الأمن الفلسطيني الذين سينقلون إلى الخليل، "تلقوا التدريبات في الأردن طيلة الشهور الماضية. وأنهت كتيبة النخبة، التي شكلت وفقاً لخطة رسمها المنسق الأمني الأمريكي كيت داتون تدريباتها على يد مدربين أردنيين وبإشراف أمريكي".

ونقلت صحيفة "هآرتس" العبرية عن قائد منطقة الخليل العميد سميح الصيفي أن التحرك الفلسطيني هذا لا يعني نقل المسؤولية الأمنية عن الأحياء الفلسطينية في الخليل إلى السلطة "بل سمحت إسرائيل للسلطة بالعمل في المدينة لإعادة النظام والأمن إليها"، حسب زعمه. وأشار الصيفي إلى أن هذه القوات "ستقوم بعمليات محددة في مناطق وأوقات مختلفة".

وذكرت "هآرتس"، أن هذه القوة ستنسق تحركاتها مع قوات الاحتلال في الخليل وجنوب الضفة الغربية، والتي تعتبر معقلاً لحركة المقاومة الإسلامية "حماس" لذلك يبدو أن هدف القوات الحد من وجود وتأثير "حماس" في المنطقة.

وكانت السلطة الفلسطينية قد تسلمت من الأردن الشهر الماضي بموافقة صهيونية ما يقارب ألف بندقية، بالإضافة إلى عشرات الآلاف من الرصاصات. "

Incitement against Arab citizens is the root of the Attacks against Arab Citizens in Akka

By Mossawa Center
Znet

"HAIFA, 10 October 2008 -- During the last 48 hours, confrontations have been taken place in the city of Akka [Acre] between Jews, Arabs and police forces. The tensions began from Wednesday 8th October, the evening of Yom Kippur, when Jewish citizens attacked the car of an Arab family who were driving through a mixed community neighbourhood. The car was surrounded and the family were then attacked at their home. Police forces failed to prevent the on going attack against the family home until 4a.m when the family was surrounded at the home and stones were thrown amongst chants of "Death to Arabs".

The background for these events is continuous incitement against the Arab population that is taking place by political and religious leaders at both local and national levels. Over the last 4 years governmental benefits were allocated to the city in an effort to encourage Jewish citizens to come and live in the city with special support being given to hundreds of young Rabbis to move and establish several Yeshivas in the city. Some of the youth that are living around these Yeshivas are provocatively patrolling them with guns in the neighbourhoods. Meanwhile, the Arab community has been systematically discriminated against in housing, education and public services given by the city council......

In October 2000, 13 Arab citizens were shot and killed during demonstrations, and 8 years after these events, law enforcement institutions continue to fail to finalise investigations and submit charges against officers who were involved in those events. During the last 8 years, 29 additional Arab citizens have been killed during police and civilian clashes. On Sunday October 12th the High Follow-up Committee for Arab Citizens will submit to the Prime Minister a petition which has been signed by a quarter of a million Jewish and Arab civilians that demand an international investigation into the October 2000 killing of Arab citizens......."

Can Congress Bail Out of the Bailout?

And what about the Fed's Even Larger Giveaway?

by Michael Hudson
Global Research, October 13, 2008

(Cartoon by Carlos Latuff)

".....Will voters see the asymmetry in Congress's failure to offer debt relief for homeowners as real estate prices plunge below the mortgages that are owed? Will its members be blamed for not rewriting the nation's bankruptcy laws to free families from debt peonage - and free housing markets from the price declines that result from today's proliferation of foreclosure sales? For that matter, will there be no relief for corporations having to cut back investment in order to service their junk bonds and other debts with which Wall Street's corporate raiders and "shareholder activists" have loaded then down?

Evidently not. Instead of requiring creditors to absorb losses on the excess of debts over what can be paid, the debts are being kept in place, not scaled back to what the economy can pay. The government is to make creditors and computerized derivatives speculators whole - and will act as collecting agent for the overhead of bad debts the economy has run up.

Today we can see the debt-fueled bubble of asset-price inflation that Alan Greenspan trumpeted as real wealth creation for what it really is - credit creation to bid up real estate, stock market and packaged-debt prices. Tangible capital formation has been left out of account, as if postindustrial economies no longer need it."

Hamas Raised Price of Shalit Deal after Kintar Release

Al-Manar

"13/10/2008 Negotiators involved in the talks over captured Israeli occupation soldier Gilad Shalit say Israel will have to change its criteria regarding the Palestinian detainees it is willing to release.

These sources say Hamas is insisting Israel agree to release detainees "with blood on their hands."

They said Hamas has raised its demands, arguing that Israel has already released Samir Kintar, who was convicted of killing four Israelis in a 1979 terror attack in Nahariya, and two detainees of the same ilk as a gesture to the Palestinian Authority, Abu Ali Yatta and Sa'id al-Ataba. Now Hamas wants Israel to agree to this principle in order to renew the talks.

Kintar was freed as part of this past summer's “Operation Al-Redwan” a swap with Hezbollah. In exchange for Kintar and four other Lebanese resistance fighters, Israel received the bodies of two captured Israeli occupation soldiers, who were captured by Hezbollah in 2006.

The negotiators in the Shalit affair said that if Israel relaxes its criteria, indirect talks in Cairo between Hamas and Israel will most likely begin."

Watching Ukraine

Just like John McCain told me to…

By Justin Raimondo

".....Most Americans have no idea where Ukraine is, much less any interest in watching it, but just on the premise that McCain's connections with the War Party give him the inside scoop on where the next phony foreign policy "crisis" is going to erupt, let's take his advice and start watching Ukraine with the help of our Antiwar.com microscope…...

With socialism defeated in the lands of the former Soviet Union but now triumphant on Wall Street and Washington, a new cold war is just what the doctor ordered to get the war economy moving, as everything else comes to a grinding halt, and to divert peoples' attention away from their own increasing misery. From the perspective of our rulers, it's far better to direct all that anger at a foreign enemy – when, of course, the real enemy is right here at home…"

Real News Video with Pepe Escobar: Goldman Sachs socialism

Pepe Escobar: World markets - and top economists - dismiss the Wall Street bailout


"World markets on the verge of panic continue to dismiss the Bush/Paulson Wall Street bailout plan - despite White House rhetoric and supposedly concerted action by the G-7, the group of leading industrialized economies. Top economists criticize the mechanics of the plan, which concentrates too much power on Secretary Paulson and his Goldman Sachs colleagues; warn of an incoming systemic crisis; and point out the taboo topics nobody is talking about: the US budget deficit and the US military budget."

Fisk 'shocked' by US failure to debate conflict in Israel

By Amol Rajan
Monday, 13 October 2008
The Independent

"A feisty debate between Robert Fisk and the author Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman brought The Independent Woodstock Literary Festival to a close on a high note last night.

The absence of a debate on the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in the US presidential elections was "shocking", Fisk told a packed hall at Blenheim Palace, the grand 18th-century home in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, which hosted the festival.

"America must pull its military forces out of Iraq and the Middle East, leaving the peoples of the region to decide their own future," said Fisk, an author and Middle East correspondent for The Independent. He said the US and its allies had "built a new Iron Curtain from the ice cap to the equator", and added that the result of the elections on 4 November "would not make the slightest bit of difference in the Middle East".

"America's uncritical support for Israel is going to continue," he said........"

What is the Traitor Doing in Syria? Asking for Pressure on Hamas? And What is the Rabbit Up to? Why is he Receiving the Traitor?

Hamas-Fatah Talks Tops Agenda in Abbas-Assad Meeting

Al-Manar





Two Capitulating "Leaders" Coordinating Capitulating Some More. Remember Annapolis? Syria Was There Too.



".....Abbas told reporters upon his arrival on Saturday that his visit was aimed at coordinating with Syria on the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians and to brief President Assad on recent meetings between Fatah and Hamas in Egypt.

"The Syrian track is important for us, and the Palestinian track is important for the Syrians," said Abbas. "There must be coordination and consultation," he added.

Syria has recently held four rounds of indirect peace talks with Israel through Turkish mediation. Both sides have said they were satisfied with the talks......."

A Very Interesting Graphical Comparison: How This Bear Market Compares

New York Times

"In the first year of the current bear market, the market has fallen more steeply than it did during the first years of the Great Depression's bear markets. After adjusting for inflation, stocks are more than 40 percent lower than they were at their 2007 high (and more than 50 percent lower than their 2000 high)"

Warning signs of an Israeli strike on Iran

By David Owen
(David Owen was foreign secretary from 1977 to 1979)
The Sunday Times

"Some key decision makers in Israel fear that unless they attack Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities in the next few months, while George W Bush is still president, there will not be another period when they can rely on the United States as being anywhere near as supportive in the aftermath of a unilateral attack.

In the past 40 years there have been few occasions when I have been more concerned about a specific conflict escalating to involve, economically, the whole world. We are watching a disinformation exercise involving a number of intelligence services. Reality is becoming ever harder to disentangle........

The circumstances surrounding Georgia’s decision to attack South Ossetia are worth remembering. The Georgian president was advised by Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, not to attack but there were powerful voices in Washington that, by a nod and a wink, were encouraging action, so the Georgian government felt confident in going ahead.

Following an Israeli attack and Iranian countermeasures, the American military would be bound to follow Bush’s orders. The president-designate or, if before the election, the two candidates, would be wary of criticising him. It is imperative that voices are raised in America and Europe to warn Israel off unilateral action against Iran. The experience of Georgia has given an amber, if not a green, light to Israel and only Bush can switch that to red......"

Great Plan!

(Click on cartoon to enlarge)

The Independent

They shot our son but they can't kill his spirit

Tom Hurndall, 21, was a young, compassionate man when he went to Gaza in 2003. Months later, while he was rescuing Palestinian children from gunfire, he was shot by an Israeli army sniper. On the eve of a Channel 4 film, his parents tell of their anger, loss, intense grief and political awakening as they sought to bring his killer to justice

Kate Kellaway
The Observer, Sunday October 12 2008

"This story begins with an ending. On 11 April 2003, Thomas Hurndall, a 21-year-old photojournalist, was shot in the head in Gaza by a sniper from the Israeli army.

Tom was a brilliant, intrepid young man, driven by an energetic morality, a wish to make a difference in the world. The shooting left him with unsurvivable brain damage, but he clung to life - against the odds - in a coma, for nine months.

While he lay dying in Tel Aviv and later in the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, north London, his parents, Anthony and Jocelyn Hurndall, took on a heroic struggle against the Israeli army. They were determined to seek truth and accountability at all costs. They had no idea how hard this was going to be......."

Without real leadership, we face disaster

A lethal new threat is emerging at the dark heart of the financial system. We must have a unified global response or an already perilous position will become a calamity

Will Hutton
The Observer, Sunday October 12 2008

"In the week of the crash in 1929, Wall Street fell by 23 per cent. Last week, it fell by 18 per cent, London and Frankfurt by 21 per cent and Japan's Nikkei by 24 per cent. Every major financial centre's interbank market is frozen. Trust and confidence have collapsed; the global system is paralysed on a scale that now surpasses 1929. There is a combination of a worldwide bank run, seizure of credit markets and collapse of asset values that could plunge the globe into a depression. This is history's joke: the crisis of capitalism long predicted by communists and socialists who are no longer able to take advantage of it........

For 30 years, greedy, callow, ignorant financiers, supported by no less callow politicians from all the political parties, have proclaimed the wonders of financial innovation and how proud we all should be of the City of London. The price tag for their behaviour is an economic calamity. We should never have bought such snake oil. The consolation in these dark times is that we never will again."

Ousting the quislings is sine qua non for national unity

A Good Comment

By Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank

".....Fatah’s behavior in the West Bank indicates that the mainstream PLO faction is not really serious about national reconciliation.

In recent days and weeks, Palestinian Authority (PA) security officials made a plethora of serious statements suggesting that they value their inherently subservient relationship with Israel much more dearly than they do the cause of Palestinian national unity.

This week, the Chief of the “National Security Forces” in the West Bank, Diab al Ali, also known as Abu al Fath, reportedly described resistance to the Israeli occupation army as “a criminal act that produces criminals and murderers.”

The tone of Abu al Fath’s remarks caricatured a man who has put all his trust in the PA-Israeli “partnership” and who has turned his back to decades of bitter but heroic struggle by the Palestinian masses for freedom from the Nazi-like Israeli occupation.

Earlier, the main Palestinian security chiefs in the West Bank held a truly shameful meeting with their Israeli “counterparts” at the settlement of Beit El near Ramallah.

During that ignominious meeting, which took place in September, the PA chiefs, who are supposed to serve the national interests of their people, assured their Israeli “colleagues” that “we have one common enemy, that is Hamas,” and that “there is no conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.”

According to the Israeli journalist Nahom Barnea, who attended the infamous meeting as an observer, the Palestinian officers went as far as asking the commanders of the Israeli army, the very army that occupies their country and savages their people, to supply them with weapons and training so that the PA could re-conquer Gaza by force.

Unfortunately, the PA leadership completely ignored these brazenly treacherous behaviors, which in itself underscores the extent to which the PA leadership has drifted away from the Palestinian national discourse.

The perfidious collusion between the PA security apparatus and the Israeli occupation army against Palestinian national interests is only one aspect of an overall trend on the part of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian regime to eradicate Abu Ammar’s heritage.......

Hence, the current PA behavior vis-à-vis Israel is nothing short of an a national apostasy of unprecedented proportions.

This is why, it is really difficult to be optimistic about the ongoing Egyptian efforts to end the split between Fatah and Hamas unless Fatah and the PA are willing to reverse their misdeeds......"

Saving Wall Street by Carlos Latuff

(Click on cartoon to enlarge)