By Haifa Zangana
(Haifa Zangana is a novelist and former prisoner of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime. She is a weekly columnist for al-Quds newspaper and an occasional commentator for the Guardian, Red Pepper and al-Ahram Weekly. She lectures regularly on Iraqi culture, literature, and women issues)
The Guardian
"Psychologically, it was useful to gain the American people's empathy with their courageous soldiers; "For an American soldier in Iraq, there is no more dangerous neighbourhood than what has come to be known as the Sunni Triangle, the area west of Baghdad, around the town of Falluja."
More important was the success of the brand name to dehumanize Iraqis, to justify the occupation's atrocities, civilian's killings in particular; because; "in the Sunni Triangle, it is not easy to determine who is a combatant and who is not. And this sometimes results in unintended consequences that the military says it can't avoid. Civilians sometimes get caught in the crossfire. They get shot, or worse, they get killed."
For Iraqis, the "Sunni Triangle" has become synonymous with the US-led occupation's brutality - Falluja's destruction, followed by Samara, Tel Afar and parts of Najaf. It is symonymous with daily killings , air-strikes, arbitrary arrests, detentions and torture; with Abu Ghraib, house raids and search and destroy operations; with massacres in Haditha, Al Qaem, and Al Ishaqi. It is also the brand name for all the US-UK military operations that have killed, to date, over 100,000 civilians and driven the country into a sectarian civil war to "establish democracy". The US president recently expressed the aim: "We will fight the terrorists overseas so we don't have to fight them here at home, in the streets of our own cities"."
The increase in attacks on occupation troops in recent months - in Basra, Amara, Diwaniya, Kirkuk, Mosul and Baghdad - clearly defies the " Triangulation" and "Sunnization" of the resistance.
What the occupation and its puppets have chosen not to see is that the Iraqi resistance would not have continued and sustained its attacks, over three years, in 13 provinces unless it was first Iraqi, second national, third and above all supported and protected by Iraqi people through various social networks, communities, tribes, NGOs, and political parties."
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
مصادر رسمية عربية تؤكد نيّة "أبو مازن" إعلان حالة الطوارئ
IMPORTANT BREAKING NEWS
The Puppet Has Received His Marching Orders!
مصادر رسمية عربية تؤكد نيّة "أبو مازن" إعلان حالة الطوارئ في السّلطة حال عودته من نيويورك
كشفت مصادر عربية رسمية عن عزم رئيس السلطة الفلسطينية محمود عباس"أبو مازن" إعلان حالة الطوارئ في الأراضي الفلسطينية حال عودته من لقائه المقرَّر الأربعاء المقبل في نيويورك مع الرئيس الأميركي جورج بوش.
وقالت تلك المصادر؛ التي فضَّلت عدم الكشف عن نفسها: إن عباس أجرى خلال الأسابيع الماضية سلسلة من المشاورات مع بعض الزعماء العرب، ممن أعلنوا رفضهم تكليف الأستاذ إسماعيل هنية بتشكيل حكومة الوحدة الوطنية، حول نيته إعلان حالة الطوارئ في الأراضي الفلسطينية حال عودته من نيويورك، مشيرة إلى أنه نال تأييدهم حيال هذه الخطوة.
وأشارت المصادر للمركز الفلسطيني للإعلام، إلى أن تصاعد موجة العنف الأخيرة التي شهدتها أراضي السلطة، والتي يقف خلفها متنفِّذون في الأجهزة الأمنية، وشخصيات ترفض مبدأ تشكيل حكومة الوحدة الوطنية، أو أيّ تقارب بين حركتي المقاومة الإسلامية "حماس" وفتح، تعدّ مقدّمة لتبرير خطوة عباس إعلان حالة الطوارئ.
وأكدت أن "أبو مازن" تلقَّى وعداً من الاتحاد الأوروبي بالإفراج عن أموال السلطة التي يحتجزها الكيان الصهيوني منذ ستة أشهر، إضافة إلى منحه مساعدات عاجلة، بهدف امتصاص ردَّة الفعل الجماهيرية تجاه هذه الخطوة.
وكان عباس التقى فجر اليوم الثلاثاء (19/9) بوزيرة الخارجية الصهيونية تسيبني ليفني في مقر الأمم المتحدة، وذلك للمرة الأولى منذ خمسة أشهر. ووصف عباس هذا اللقاء بأنه "إيجابي جدا جدا"، مضيفاً أننا "تحدثنا في كل شيء". بينما قالت ليفني: إن الاجتماع كان "جيدا جدا ومهِّماً وبنَّاءً". كما التقى عباس مساء أمس في نيويورك وزيرة الخارجية الأميركية كوندوليزا رايس.
يشار إلى أن الشعب الفلسطيني يتعرض منذ انتخابه لحركة حماس في الانتخابات التشريعية الأخيرة التي جرت في الخامس والعشرين من يناير/كانون الأول 2006، حيث حازت على أكثر من 60% من مقاعد المجلس التشريعي الفلسطيني لحصار محكم، وذلك عقاباً له على خياره الديمقراطي الحر الذي شهد العالم بنزاهته وشفافيته، ويشارك في هذا الحصار بجانب الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية والكيان الصهيوني والاتحاد الأوروبي بعضُ الأنظمة العربية وجهات فلسطينية عملت منذ تشكيل "حماس" للحكومة الفلسطينية، على عرقلة عمل الحكومة المنتخبة، وسحب الصلاحيات من يدها، لشلِّ حركتها وإظهارها بالعاجز أمام شعبها، في مقابل تحميلها مسؤولية كلّ ما يلاقيه من أزمات يقف خلفها منْ يفرض الحصار ويشارك فيه.
***
Official Arabic sources confirmed that Abbas will declare a state of emergency when he returns from New York!
The sources said that Abbas will declare a state of emergency after he returns from meeting Bush on Wednesday. The sources revealed that Abbas has concluded a series of meetings during the past few weeks with some Arab leaders who opposed the idea of naming Haniyeh to head a national unity government. Those same leaders were consulted by Abbas about declaring a state of emergency and they supported this step.
The sources further revealed that the state of unrest and violence seen in the past few weeks, which was instigated by the security services of the PA and by people within Fatah who do not want a government of national unity or any conciliation between Hamas and Fatah, will be used to rationalize and justify the state of emergency.
It was also revealed that the EU has promised Abbas to release the PA funds that Israel is holding as well as urgent additional funds to help Abbas overcome the popular anger resulting from the declaration of emergency.
It was noted that Abbas had meetings with Livni and Rice. He described the meeting with Livni as being very, very positive! He said, "we discussed everything."
Ramadi caught in US street fight
By Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily
Asia Times
"RAMADI, Iraq - US forces are taking to collective punishment of civilians in several cities across al-Anbar province west of Baghdad, residents and officials say.
"Ramadi, the capital of al-Anbar province, is still living with the daily terror of its people getting killed by snipers and its infrastructure being destroyed," said Ahmad, a local doctor who withheld his last name for security purposes. "This city has been facing the worst of the American terror and destruction for more than two years now, and the world is silent."
Destroying infrastructure and cutting water and electricity "for days and even weeks is routine reaction to the resistance", he said. "Guys of the resistance do not need water and electricity, it's the families that are being harmed, and their lives which are at stake."
This month, a classified report written by the chief of intelligence for the US Marine Corps in Iraq concluded that the United States had lost control of Anbar, at least politically.
Inter Press Service (IPS) reported on September 5 that the US military was bulldozing entire blocks of buildings near the governorate to dampen resistance attacks on government offices. Such US action seems most severe in Anbar province, where resistance is strongest, and which has seen the highest US casualties.
While Baghdad is not in Anbar province, occupation forces have used similar tactics there. In January 2005, IPS reported that the military used bulldozers to level palm groves, cut electricity, destroy a fuel station and block access roads in response to attacks from resistance fighters."
Asia Times
"RAMADI, Iraq - US forces are taking to collective punishment of civilians in several cities across al-Anbar province west of Baghdad, residents and officials say.
"Ramadi, the capital of al-Anbar province, is still living with the daily terror of its people getting killed by snipers and its infrastructure being destroyed," said Ahmad, a local doctor who withheld his last name for security purposes. "This city has been facing the worst of the American terror and destruction for more than two years now, and the world is silent."
Destroying infrastructure and cutting water and electricity "for days and even weeks is routine reaction to the resistance", he said. "Guys of the resistance do not need water and electricity, it's the families that are being harmed, and their lives which are at stake."
This month, a classified report written by the chief of intelligence for the US Marine Corps in Iraq concluded that the United States had lost control of Anbar, at least politically.
Inter Press Service (IPS) reported on September 5 that the US military was bulldozing entire blocks of buildings near the governorate to dampen resistance attacks on government offices. Such US action seems most severe in Anbar province, where resistance is strongest, and which has seen the highest US casualties.
While Baghdad is not in Anbar province, occupation forces have used similar tactics there. In January 2005, IPS reported that the military used bulldozers to level palm groves, cut electricity, destroy a fuel station and block access roads in response to attacks from resistance fighters."
UN: Israel cluster bomb use in Lebanon ‘outrageous’
Organization’s humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon says ‘most bomblets were fired by the time the conflict had been largely resolved in the form of Resolution 1701’; adds: it seems to me extraordinary that they were fired off in the last hours of the war into areas where civilian populations were known to be going
Reuters
"A UN official said on Tuesday that Israel dropped at least 350,000 cluster bomblets on south Lebanon in its war with Hizbullah guerrillas, mostly when the conflict was all but over, leaving a deadly legacy for civilians,. “The outrageous fact is that nearly all of these munitions were fired in the last three to four days of the war,” David Shearer, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon, told a news conference in Beirut.
“Outrageous because by that stage the conflict had been largely resolved in the form of (UN Security Council) Resolution 1701,” he said.
Shearer said Israel had not explained why it fired so many cluster bombs across the south as the war drew to a close. Nor had it responded to a UN Request for the map coordinates of the cluster bomb strikes to hasten clearance efforts.
UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland has called Israel “Completely immoral” for using them in residential areas.
The United Nations has so far identified 516 cluster bomb strike locations and says 30 to 40 percent of the bomblets they scattered over the south failed to explode at the time."
Reuters
"A UN official said on Tuesday that Israel dropped at least 350,000 cluster bomblets on south Lebanon in its war with Hizbullah guerrillas, mostly when the conflict was all but over, leaving a deadly legacy for civilians,. “The outrageous fact is that nearly all of these munitions were fired in the last three to four days of the war,” David Shearer, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon, told a news conference in Beirut.
“Outrageous because by that stage the conflict had been largely resolved in the form of (UN Security Council) Resolution 1701,” he said.
Shearer said Israel had not explained why it fired so many cluster bombs across the south as the war drew to a close. Nor had it responded to a UN Request for the map coordinates of the cluster bomb strikes to hasten clearance efforts.
UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland has called Israel “Completely immoral” for using them in residential areas.
The United Nations has so far identified 516 cluster bomb strike locations and says 30 to 40 percent of the bomblets they scattered over the south failed to explode at the time."
Gaza: The children killed in a war the world doesn't want to know about
By Donald Macintyre, The Independent, In Rafah
Published: 19 September 2006
"Jihad Abu Snaima was just the most recent of more than 37 children and teenagers under 18 killed [out of a total death toll, including militants, of 228] in the operations mounted by the Israeli military in Gaza since 25 June, according to figures from the Palestinian Centre of Human Rights (PCHR).
The conflict in Gaza has attracted relatively little international attention, not least because for five weeks it was overshadowed by that in Lebanon. But the death toll has continued to rise.
But Hamdi Shaqqura of PCHR's Gaza office which accuses Israel of using repeated closures and destruction of the power supply to operate a policy of "collective punishment" in breach of international law in Gaza, argues that the excuse of "collateral damage" cannot justify the " very high" death toll in the operations since 15 June. He adds: " Israel's forces have been acting excessively and disproportionately, and this explains the high figures for the number of innocent civilians killed by them.""
Names of children under the age of 18 killed during the operations mounted by the Israeli military in Gaza since 25 June, according to the Palestinian Centre of Human Rights
Bara Nasser Habib, 3 (hit by shrapnel to the head and body, Gaza City, 26 July) Shahed Saleh Al-Sheikh Eid, 3 days old (bled to death after airstrike, Al-Shouka, 4 August) Rajaa Salam Abu Shaban, 3 (died of fractured skull in air raid, Gaza City, 9 August) Jihad Selmi Abu Snaima, 14 (killed by a shell, Al-Shoukha, 10 september) Khaled Nidal Wahba, 15 months (died of wounds from an airstrike, 10 July) Rawan Farid Hajjaj, 6 (killed with his mother and sister in an airstrike, Gaza City, 8 July) Anwar Ismail Abdul Ghani Atallah, 12 (shot in the head, Erez, 5 July) Shadi Yousef Omar 16 (shot in the chest by IDF, Beit Lahya, 7 July) Mahfouth Farid Nuseir, 16 (killed by missile while playing football, Beit Hanoun, 11 July) Ahmad Ghalib Abu Amsha, 16, (killed by missile while playing football, Beit Hanoun, 11 July) Ahmad Fathi Shabat, 16 (killed by missile while playing football, Beit Hanoun, 11 July) Walid Mahmoud El-Zeinati, 12 (died of shrapnel wounds, Gaza City, 11 July) Basma Salmeya, 16 (killed in Israeli airstrike, 12 July, Jabalia) Somaya Salmeya, 17 (killed in Israeli airstrike, 12 July, Jabalia) Aya Salmeya, 9 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July) Yehya Salmeya, 10 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July) Nasr Salmeya, 7 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July) Huda Salmeya, 13 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July) Eman Salmeya, 12 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July) Raji Omar Jaber Daifallah, 16 (died of shrapnel wounds from missile, Gaza City, 13 July) Ali Kamel Al-Najjar, 16 (killed by Israeli tank shell, Al-Maghazi refugee camp, 19 July) Ahmed Ali Al-Na'ami, 16 (killed by Israeli tank shell, Al-Maghazi refugee camp, 19 July) Ahmed Rawhi Abu Abdu, 14 (killed by drone missile, Al Nusairat refugee camp, 19 July) Mohammed 'awad Muhra, 14 (killed by Israeli bullet to the chest, Al-Maghazi refugee camp, 20 July) Fadwa Faisal Al-'arrouqi, 13 (died from shrapnel wounds, Gaza City, 20 July) Saleh Ibrahim Nasser, 14 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 24 July) Khitam Mohammed Rebhi Tayeh, 11 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 24 July) Ashraf 'abdullah 'awad Abu Zaher, 14 (shot in the back, Khan Younis, 25 July) Nahid Mohammed Fawzi Al-Shanbari, 16 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 31 July) 'aaref Ahmed Abu Qaida, 14 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 1 August) Anis Salem Abu Awad, 12 (killed by airstike, Al-Shouka, 2 August) Ammar Rajaa Al-Natour, 17 (killed by drone missile, Al Shouka, 5 August) Kifah Rajaa Al-Natour, 15 (killed by drone missile, Al Shouka, 5 August) Ibrahim Suleiman Al-Rumailat, 13 (killed by drone missile, Al Shouka, 5 August) Ahmed Yousef 'abed 'aashour, 13 (killed by missile fire, Beit Hanoun, 14 August) Mohammed 'abdullah Al-Ziq, 14 (killed by drone missile, Gaza City, 29 August) Nidal 'abdul 'aziz Al-Dahdouh, 14 (killed by rifle fire, Gaza City, 30 August) Jihad Selmi Abu Snaima, 14 (killed by artillery fire, Rafah, 10 September)
Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder-A Glimpse Into Israeli Collective Psychosis
DIAGNOSIS AND SHARP WIT BY
Gilad Atzmon
"Indeed, a growing number of people want to see an end to Israel, the ‘Jew Only State’. Yet, no one around expresses any murderous or terminal plans against world Jewry or even against their Jewish State. No one in the political or the media spheres is calling for a homicidal act against the Jews or their Jewish State. Thus the well-established Judeocentric tendency to interpret almost any legitimate political and ideological criticism as a perpetration of an upcoming Judeocide should be comprehended as a severe form of paranoia verging on collective psychosis, which I define as Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Pre-TSD).
Within the condition of the Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the stress is the outcome of a phantasmic event, an imaginary episode set in the future; an event that has never taken place. Unlike the PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) in which stress comes as the direct reaction to an event that (may) have taken place in the past, within the state of Pre-TSD, the stress is the clearly the outcome of an imaginary potential event. Within the Pre-TSD, an illusion pre-empts reality and the condition in which the fantasy of terror is focussed is itself becoming grave reality. If it is taken to extremes, even an agenda of total war against the rest of the world is not an unthinkable reaction.
Let us face it once and for all. Since no one voices a call to throw the Israelis into the sea or to nuke them instead, one is entitled to argue that the Israeli inclination to blame Muslims and Arabs for holding such murderous tendencies themselves must be understood in terms of projection. The people who rained Lebanon with ‘more than a million cluster bombs’ are projecting their murderous zeal onto their victims and even onto their victims to come.
This is indeed very sad but far from being unique. The case of America’s Cold War paranoia is not that different from the case of Israel. Since America was the first and so far, the only country to use the atomic bomb against other people, it was the Americans who were actually caught in a cold war Pre-TSD. They simply projected their collective murderous tendencies onto the Soviets.
Other early Zionists were stimulated by some East European anti-Jewish riots and pogroms. In general, Zionism can be realised as an urge to formulate a general political agenda based on self-inflicting fright. This is probably why Zionism must maintain terror in order to sustain its power. It is evident that Bush and the Neocons use exactly the same tactic. "
Gilad Atzmon
"Indeed, a growing number of people want to see an end to Israel, the ‘Jew Only State’. Yet, no one around expresses any murderous or terminal plans against world Jewry or even against their Jewish State. No one in the political or the media spheres is calling for a homicidal act against the Jews or their Jewish State. Thus the well-established Judeocentric tendency to interpret almost any legitimate political and ideological criticism as a perpetration of an upcoming Judeocide should be comprehended as a severe form of paranoia verging on collective psychosis, which I define as Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Pre-TSD).
Within the condition of the Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the stress is the outcome of a phantasmic event, an imaginary episode set in the future; an event that has never taken place. Unlike the PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) in which stress comes as the direct reaction to an event that (may) have taken place in the past, within the state of Pre-TSD, the stress is the clearly the outcome of an imaginary potential event. Within the Pre-TSD, an illusion pre-empts reality and the condition in which the fantasy of terror is focussed is itself becoming grave reality. If it is taken to extremes, even an agenda of total war against the rest of the world is not an unthinkable reaction.
Let us face it once and for all. Since no one voices a call to throw the Israelis into the sea or to nuke them instead, one is entitled to argue that the Israeli inclination to blame Muslims and Arabs for holding such murderous tendencies themselves must be understood in terms of projection. The people who rained Lebanon with ‘more than a million cluster bombs’ are projecting their murderous zeal onto their victims and even onto their victims to come.
This is indeed very sad but far from being unique. The case of America’s Cold War paranoia is not that different from the case of Israel. Since America was the first and so far, the only country to use the atomic bomb against other people, it was the Americans who were actually caught in a cold war Pre-TSD. They simply projected their collective murderous tendencies onto the Soviets.
Other early Zionists were stimulated by some East European anti-Jewish riots and pogroms. In general, Zionism can be realised as an urge to formulate a general political agenda based on self-inflicting fright. This is probably why Zionism must maintain terror in order to sustain its power. It is evident that Bush and the Neocons use exactly the same tactic. "
Monday, September 18, 2006
Painful Deception In Palestine
AN ARTICLE THAT IS ON THE MARK!
By Rami G. Khouri
(Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, and editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star)
"Rather, the national unity government being contemplated is a show of Palestinian weakness, vulnerability and irresoluteness. It is largely a desperate response to the Israeli-American-European financial embargo that is slowly starving the Palestinians. To avoid death by strangulation and malnutrition, the Palestinians must practice diplomatic submission and subservience to Israel-American positions. In return for a resumption of financial aid and normal diplomatic contacts, the Palestinians must meet the three conditions that were set after the Hamas election victory in January. The Middle East "Quartet"—the U.S., EU, U.N. and Russia—established those conditions as recognition of Israel's right to exist, renunciation of violence, and recognition of previous peace accords with the Israelis.
This waste of time and massive deception deceives nobody. It neither responds to the Quartet’s demands nor offers any hope of a diplomatic breakthrough to a negotiated peace. It is not even sure to resume financial aid to the Palestinians, as the ongoing United States-Israel-Europe debate reveals. As a forced response to inhuman strangulation by the U.S.-Israel, the Palestinian national unity government only perpetuates a low quality American-Israeli-Palestinian tradition of dancing around the tough decisions that need to be made, without grasping them. This always turns into a dance of death on both sides, as we witness today.
Adding forced capitulation and new levels of ambiguity to the already limp legacy of Palestinian national leadership behavior will only generate new forms of political frustration and tension; these will ultimately express themselves in unpredictable manifestations of contestation, resistance and perhaps violence. Israeli-American attempts to punish, strangle, starve, boycott, jail, kill, bankrupt and generally humiliate the Palestinians into submission and surrender will fail, as surely as the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. Bringing the elected Hamas leadership into this cycle of false hopes and slightly delusional expectations will only add Hamas to the list of discredited political amateurs."
By Rami G. Khouri
(Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, and editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star)
"Rather, the national unity government being contemplated is a show of Palestinian weakness, vulnerability and irresoluteness. It is largely a desperate response to the Israeli-American-European financial embargo that is slowly starving the Palestinians. To avoid death by strangulation and malnutrition, the Palestinians must practice diplomatic submission and subservience to Israel-American positions. In return for a resumption of financial aid and normal diplomatic contacts, the Palestinians must meet the three conditions that were set after the Hamas election victory in January. The Middle East "Quartet"—the U.S., EU, U.N. and Russia—established those conditions as recognition of Israel's right to exist, renunciation of violence, and recognition of previous peace accords with the Israelis.
This waste of time and massive deception deceives nobody. It neither responds to the Quartet’s demands nor offers any hope of a diplomatic breakthrough to a negotiated peace. It is not even sure to resume financial aid to the Palestinians, as the ongoing United States-Israel-Europe debate reveals. As a forced response to inhuman strangulation by the U.S.-Israel, the Palestinian national unity government only perpetuates a low quality American-Israeli-Palestinian tradition of dancing around the tough decisions that need to be made, without grasping them. This always turns into a dance of death on both sides, as we witness today.
Adding forced capitulation and new levels of ambiguity to the already limp legacy of Palestinian national leadership behavior will only generate new forms of political frustration and tension; these will ultimately express themselves in unpredictable manifestations of contestation, resistance and perhaps violence. Israeli-American attempts to punish, strangle, starve, boycott, jail, kill, bankrupt and generally humiliate the Palestinians into submission and surrender will fail, as surely as the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. Bringing the elected Hamas leadership into this cycle of false hopes and slightly delusional expectations will only add Hamas to the list of discredited political amateurs."
Poll: Most Palestinians think Hamas should not recognize Israel
"Some 66 percent of Palestinians think Hamas should not recognize Israel, said a poll by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), which questioned more than 1,200 adults in the West Bank and Gaza between Thursday and Saturday.
Hamas' popularity has plummeted from 47 percent since it took office in March to 38 percent currently.
Some 41 percent of those asked said they would vote for Fatah if elections were held today, putting the party slightly ahead of Hamas for the first time in months.
A small majority of Palestinians 54 percent also said they were dissatisfied with the Hamas government's performance, mostly because of its failure to pay salaries and address poverty, said the poll, which had a margin of error of 3 percent."
***
THE ILLOGIC (DESPERATION?) OF THE PALESTINIANS
On the one hand a clear majority (66%) don't want Hamas to recognize Israel (as a Zionist, racist state). On the other hand the support for Hamas is dropping and 54% are dissatisfied with Hamas because of its failure to pay salaries!
I never realized that hunger causes schizophrenia! The refusal of Hamas to recognize Israel (what the majority supports) is one of the key reasons for the total blockade against the Palestinians imposed by Usrael, hence the inability of Hamas to pay the salaries (which is upsetting a majority).
Go figure!
Tony Sayegh
Hamas' popularity has plummeted from 47 percent since it took office in March to 38 percent currently.
Some 41 percent of those asked said they would vote for Fatah if elections were held today, putting the party slightly ahead of Hamas for the first time in months.
A small majority of Palestinians 54 percent also said they were dissatisfied with the Hamas government's performance, mostly because of its failure to pay salaries and address poverty, said the poll, which had a margin of error of 3 percent."
***
THE ILLOGIC (DESPERATION?) OF THE PALESTINIANS
On the one hand a clear majority (66%) don't want Hamas to recognize Israel (as a Zionist, racist state). On the other hand the support for Hamas is dropping and 54% are dissatisfied with Hamas because of its failure to pay salaries!
I never realized that hunger causes schizophrenia! The refusal of Hamas to recognize Israel (what the majority supports) is one of the key reasons for the total blockade against the Palestinians imposed by Usrael, hence the inability of Hamas to pay the salaries (which is upsetting a majority).
Go figure!
Tony Sayegh
Bush Demands Lebanese Commit Suicide
By Kurt Nimmo
"Hassan Nasrallah understands what will happen to the people of Lebanon if Hezbollah disarms. In 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon, 20,000 Palestinians and Lebanese were slaughtered and 400,000 were made homeless. “The tonnages dropped on Beirut alone surpassed those of the atomic bomb which devastated Hiroshima. Schools and hospitals were particularly targeted,” writes Ralph Schoenman, who experienced the carnage firsthand. “Virtually all rolling stock and heavy equipment from Lebanese factories were looted and taken to Israel… The citrus and olive production of Lebanon south of Beirut was destroyed. The Lebanese economy, whose exports had competed with Israel’s, became moribund.”
If the residents of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp had weapons in September of 1982, as Hezbollah now has weapons, no doubt over 2,000 Palestinians would not have fallen victim to the brutality of Major Saad Haddad of the Christian (Phalangist, i.e., fascist) South Lebanon Army, a militia armed, supplied, and uniformed by the Israelis. "
What Would War (On Iran) Look Like?
Time Magazine
A flurry of military maneuvers in the Middle East increases speculation that conflict with Iran is no longer quite so unthinkable. Here's how the U.S. would fight such a war--and the huge price it would have to pay to win it
"What's going on? The two orders offered tantalizing clues. There are only a few places in the world where minesweepers top the list of U.S. naval requirements. And every sailor, petroleum engineer and hedge-fund manager knows the name of the most important: the Strait of Hormuz, the 20-mile-wide bottleneck in the Persian Gulf through which roughly 40% of the world's oil needs to pass each day. Coupled with the CNO's request for a blockade review, a deployment of minesweepers to the west coast of Iran would seem to suggest that a much discussed--but until now largely theoretical--prospect has become real: that the U.S. may be preparing for war with Iran.
But superpowers don't always get to choose their enemies or the timing of their confrontations. The fact that all sides would risk losing so much in armed conflict doesn't mean they won't stumble into one anyway. And for all the good arguments against any war now, much less this one, there are just as many indications that a genuine, eyeball-to-eyeball crisis between the U.S. and Iran may be looming, and sooner than many realize. "At the moment," says Ali Ansari, a top Iran authority at London's Chatham House, a foreign-policy think tank, "we are headed for conflict."
Next, Iran might try to foment as much mayhem as possible inside the two nations on its flanks, Afghanistan and Iraq, where more than 160,000 U.S. troops hold a tenuous grip on local populations. Iran has already dabbled in partnership with warlords in western Afghanistan, where U.S. military authority has never been strong; it would be a small step to lend aid to Taliban forces gaining strength in the south. Meanwhile, Tehran has links to the main factions in Iraq, which would welcome a boost in money and weapons, if just to strengthen their hand against rivals. Analysts generally believe that Iran could in a short time orchestrate a dramatic increase in the number and severity of attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq. As Syed Ayad, a secular Shi'ite cleric and Iraqi Member of Parliament says, "America owns the sky of Iraq with their Apaches, but Iran owns the ground.""
A flurry of military maneuvers in the Middle East increases speculation that conflict with Iran is no longer quite so unthinkable. Here's how the U.S. would fight such a war--and the huge price it would have to pay to win it
"What's going on? The two orders offered tantalizing clues. There are only a few places in the world where minesweepers top the list of U.S. naval requirements. And every sailor, petroleum engineer and hedge-fund manager knows the name of the most important: the Strait of Hormuz, the 20-mile-wide bottleneck in the Persian Gulf through which roughly 40% of the world's oil needs to pass each day. Coupled with the CNO's request for a blockade review, a deployment of minesweepers to the west coast of Iran would seem to suggest that a much discussed--but until now largely theoretical--prospect has become real: that the U.S. may be preparing for war with Iran.
But superpowers don't always get to choose their enemies or the timing of their confrontations. The fact that all sides would risk losing so much in armed conflict doesn't mean they won't stumble into one anyway. And for all the good arguments against any war now, much less this one, there are just as many indications that a genuine, eyeball-to-eyeball crisis between the U.S. and Iran may be looming, and sooner than many realize. "At the moment," says Ali Ansari, a top Iran authority at London's Chatham House, a foreign-policy think tank, "we are headed for conflict."
Next, Iran might try to foment as much mayhem as possible inside the two nations on its flanks, Afghanistan and Iraq, where more than 160,000 U.S. troops hold a tenuous grip on local populations. Iran has already dabbled in partnership with warlords in western Afghanistan, where U.S. military authority has never been strong; it would be a small step to lend aid to Taliban forces gaining strength in the south. Meanwhile, Tehran has links to the main factions in Iraq, which would welcome a boost in money and weapons, if just to strengthen their hand against rivals. Analysts generally believe that Iran could in a short time orchestrate a dramatic increase in the number and severity of attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq. As Syed Ayad, a secular Shi'ite cleric and Iraqi Member of Parliament says, "America owns the sky of Iraq with their Apaches, but Iran owns the ground.""
إقليمية وقطرية حقبة العولمة... صهينة!
د. عادل سمارة
"ولكن ماذا قدمنا نحن للعرب؟ ببساطة لا شيىء. وهم لا يريدون منا شيئاً، هم يقولون، إصمدوا في مكانكم ريثما نتمكن من وصولكم. ومع ذلك يبرز هنا وهناك من يهاجم العرب. لا بل قدمنا للعرب، تنظيم عميل لهذا النظام وآخر لذاك، فوضى في لبنان، وعنجهية في الاردن، وأخيراً قدمنا للعرب اتفاقات أوسلو وطابا وواشنطن وواي ريفر وباريس...والقادم اخطر. قدمنا للعرب كتابات من فلسطينيين يقترحون وحدة فدرالية بين لبنان وسوريا والاردن والكيان. ولم تقترح الولايات المتحدة مشروعا ضد العروبة إلا وكان فلسطينيون من مسوقيه ومروجيه. أما أجهزة المخابرت العربية فتنضح عملاء فلسطينيين."
"ولكن ماذا قدمنا نحن للعرب؟ ببساطة لا شيىء. وهم لا يريدون منا شيئاً، هم يقولون، إصمدوا في مكانكم ريثما نتمكن من وصولكم. ومع ذلك يبرز هنا وهناك من يهاجم العرب. لا بل قدمنا للعرب، تنظيم عميل لهذا النظام وآخر لذاك، فوضى في لبنان، وعنجهية في الاردن، وأخيراً قدمنا للعرب اتفاقات أوسلو وطابا وواشنطن وواي ريفر وباريس...والقادم اخطر. قدمنا للعرب كتابات من فلسطينيين يقترحون وحدة فدرالية بين لبنان وسوريا والاردن والكيان. ولم تقترح الولايات المتحدة مشروعا ضد العروبة إلا وكان فلسطينيون من مسوقيه ومروجيه. أما أجهزة المخابرت العربية فتنضح عملاء فلسطينيين."
Murdoch Almighty: When the Public Loses Opinion
by Ramzy Baroud
"German philosopher and political scientist Juergen Habermas is often credited for his immense contribution to sociology and critical theory among other areas of scholarly endeavour. His most memorable achievement, however, is his introduction of the concept of the "public sphere", a phenomenon, he argued, that rose in Europe in the 18th century and was forced into an untimely hibernation by the same forces that led to its inception.
Regardless of where "the public sphere" begins and where it ends -- for at times it failed to fairly represent women, minorities, labourers and other historically marginalised groups -- it at least succeeded in establishing and defining the boundaries between the "life-world" and the "system"; the first representing the mutual solidarity of those involved in making the public sphere and the latter concerned with the state, its apparatus, and its own concern with power and authority.
Habermas's ideas require no compelling reason to be discussed; they are compelling on their own. However, an article in The Guardian on 1 July by Lance Price, former media advisor to the British prime minister, brought the topic back to mind. Price asserted that media tycoon Rupert Murdoch was arguably the most powerful man in the media world today. Murdoch, an Australian-born US citizen, literally owns a significant share in public opinion through his control of the world's largest media conglomerates. "I have never met Mr Murdoch, but at times when I worked at Downing Street he seemed like the 24th member of the cabinet. His voice was rarely heard [but, then, the same could have been said of many of the other 23] but his presence was always felt," Price wrote.
Shocking as they may seem, the revelations of Price, a man once intimately involved in the workings of the British government, appear utterly consistent with the strengthening bond between the mainstream media and governments in Western democracies. Such a bond is equally, but especially visible in the United States.
But the relationship between states and media become even the more dangerous when both team up -- and not by accident -- on the same ideological turf. Murdoch is a right-wing, pro-Israeli (widely known to be a personal friend of Ariel Sharon), pro-war ideologue. In 2003, every editorial page of his raft of 175 newspapers around the world touted the same pro-war mantras. Some might have innocently deduced that the "world's media" were all inadvertently converging on a consensus that sees President Bush as someone who is "acting very morally [and] very correctly", to borrow Murdoch's own language, and that such convergence is a reflection of the overall international public consensus on the matter. Reality, however, was starkly different."
Irish academics call on EU to stop funding Israeli academic institutions
In a letter published in the Irish Times today (text below), 61 Irish academics from a wide variety of disciplines called for a moratorium on EU support of Israeli academic institutions until Israel abides by UN resolutions and ends the occupation of Palestinian territories.
The letter was organized in response to the Palestinian call for an academic and cultural boycott. The ongoing Israeli occupation has meant that educational establishments are closed off for many Palestinians. The checkpoints, closures and curfews Israel has imposed, as well as the ongoing harassment of academics and students, have played havoc with university life. In addition, military attacks on universities and schools and the occupation of many schools by Israeli soldiers have turned education into a life-threatening activity. Continued
The letter was organized in response to the Palestinian call for an academic and cultural boycott. The ongoing Israeli occupation has meant that educational establishments are closed off for many Palestinians. The checkpoints, closures and curfews Israel has imposed, as well as the ongoing harassment of academics and students, have played havoc with university life. In addition, military attacks on universities and schools and the occupation of many schools by Israeli soldiers have turned education into a life-threatening activity. Continued
Deadly harvest: The Lebanese fields sown with cluster bombs
By Patrick Cockburn in Nabatiyeh
The Independent
18 September 2006
The war in Lebanon has not ended. Every day, some of the million bomblets which were fired by Israeli artillery during the last three days of the conflict kill four people in southern Lebanon and wound many more.
The casualty figures will rise sharply in the next month as villagers begin the harvest, picking olives from trees whose leaves and branches hide bombs that explode at the smallest movement. Lebanon's farmers are caught in a deadly dilemma: to risk the harvest, or to leave the produce on which they depend to rot in the fields.
In a coma in a hospital bed in Nabatiyeh lies Hussein Ali Ahmad, a 70-year-old man from the village of Yohmor. He was pruning an orange tree outside his house last week when he dislodged a bomblet; it exploded, sending pieces of shrapnel into his brain, lungs and kidneys. "I know he
can hear me because he squeezes my hand when I talk to him," said his daughter, Suwad, as she sat beside her father's bed in the hospital. Continued.
The Independent
18 September 2006
The war in Lebanon has not ended. Every day, some of the million bomblets which were fired by Israeli artillery during the last three days of the conflict kill four people in southern Lebanon and wound many more.
The casualty figures will rise sharply in the next month as villagers begin the harvest, picking olives from trees whose leaves and branches hide bombs that explode at the smallest movement. Lebanon's farmers are caught in a deadly dilemma: to risk the harvest, or to leave the produce on which they depend to rot in the fields.
In a coma in a hospital bed in Nabatiyeh lies Hussein Ali Ahmad, a 70-year-old man from the village of Yohmor. He was pruning an orange tree outside his house last week when he dislodged a bomblet; it exploded, sending pieces of shrapnel into his brain, lungs and kidneys. "I know he
can hear me because he squeezes my hand when I talk to him," said his daughter, Suwad, as she sat beside her father's bed in the hospital. Continued.
Gaza faces major food problems
Palestinians face major difficulties in Gaza, including shortages of food and a crippled fishing industry because of the continued conflict with Israel, the United Nations food agency warned today, as it distributes aid to almost a quarter of a million of those most in need.
"Gaza's food security remains an issue of serious concern, the World Food Programme (WFP) says. Naval restrictions continue to block all boats from fishing off-shore, crippling the fishing industry," UN spokesman Marie Okabe told reporters in New York.
"Furthermore, Gaza's agricultural markets continue to suffer from access restrictions. WFP is distributing food to 220,000 of the most vulnerable people among Gaza's non-refugee population."
Continued.
"Gaza's food security remains an issue of serious concern, the World Food Programme (WFP) says. Naval restrictions continue to block all boats from fishing off-shore, crippling the fishing industry," UN spokesman Marie Okabe told reporters in New York.
"Furthermore, Gaza's agricultural markets continue to suffer from access restrictions. WFP is distributing food to 220,000 of the most vulnerable people among Gaza's non-refugee population."
Continued.
State Dept. adviser: U.S. tying Iran policy to Palestinian issue
"WASHINGTON - The United States is making a connection between efforts to block Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and progress in the diplomatic front between Israel and the Arab world - especially along the Palestinian track.
This was one of the messages in a speech given by Philip Zelikow, a senior adviser to Secretary State Condoleezza Rice, at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on Friday.
In an address that opened the institute's annual conference, Zelikow said that American policy was undergoing changes that have not been sufficiently acknowledged by the international community.
A special adviser to Rice and a consultant on major foreign policy issues, Zelikow gave his address at a time when America is making efforts to convince UN Security Council members of the need to impose sanctions against Iran in order to force it to meet UN demands to freeze its uranium enrichment program.
The senior State Department official explained that the United States must ensure progress in the Israeli-Palestinian track, so that it can preserve a coalition of Arab and European states that are interested in containing Iran and international terrorism.
In the absence of such progress, Zelikow argued, these states will find it difficult to support America in its policies vis-a-vis Iran. Preserving this coalition is also an Israeli interest, he added."
This was one of the messages in a speech given by Philip Zelikow, a senior adviser to Secretary State Condoleezza Rice, at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on Friday.
In an address that opened the institute's annual conference, Zelikow said that American policy was undergoing changes that have not been sufficiently acknowledged by the international community.
A special adviser to Rice and a consultant on major foreign policy issues, Zelikow gave his address at a time when America is making efforts to convince UN Security Council members of the need to impose sanctions against Iran in order to force it to meet UN demands to freeze its uranium enrichment program.
The senior State Department official explained that the United States must ensure progress in the Israeli-Palestinian track, so that it can preserve a coalition of Arab and European states that are interested in containing Iran and international terrorism.
In the absence of such progress, Zelikow argued, these states will find it difficult to support America in its policies vis-a-vis Iran. Preserving this coalition is also an Israeli interest, he added."
Help! Peacemongers!
By Uri Avnery
"Against this danger of the Arab peacemongers, the Olmert government is calling up all its forces. In spite of the fact the entire political and military leadership is now busy fighting for its survival after the Lebanon fiasco, it is uniting in the face of this frightening menace.
Tzipi Livni was sent head over heels to the United States, in order to avert the danger. She went to convince President Bush (who happened to "pass" the room when she was talking with Condoleezza Rice and who calls her "Tsiffi") to use the deadly American veto against any Security Council resolution that might support peace. She is going to meet with some 20 heads of governments and foreign ministers to enlist their support against this menace.
For this, she took down from the Foreign Office attic a diplomatic rag called "the Road Map". It has never even entered the mind of the Israeli government to carry out this agreement, whose sole purpose was, right from the beginning, to create the impression that President Bush has achieved something in the Middle East. From its inception, all the parties knew that this was a document that cannot be implemented.
Israel and the US will, therefore, declare that the Arab peace plan is damaging peace, because it contradicts the Road Map. The Palestinian unity government, when it is set up, must be boycotted, because it does not explicitly state that all its members recognize the State of Israel (as if all the members of the Israeli government were prepared to recognize the State of Palestine and its government, not to mention foreswearing violence and accepting all the existing agreements.) Therefore, the blockade of the Palestinian population must go on, until it sinks to its knees."
"Against this danger of the Arab peacemongers, the Olmert government is calling up all its forces. In spite of the fact the entire political and military leadership is now busy fighting for its survival after the Lebanon fiasco, it is uniting in the face of this frightening menace.
Tzipi Livni was sent head over heels to the United States, in order to avert the danger. She went to convince President Bush (who happened to "pass" the room when she was talking with Condoleezza Rice and who calls her "Tsiffi") to use the deadly American veto against any Security Council resolution that might support peace. She is going to meet with some 20 heads of governments and foreign ministers to enlist their support against this menace.
For this, she took down from the Foreign Office attic a diplomatic rag called "the Road Map". It has never even entered the mind of the Israeli government to carry out this agreement, whose sole purpose was, right from the beginning, to create the impression that President Bush has achieved something in the Middle East. From its inception, all the parties knew that this was a document that cannot be implemented.
Israel and the US will, therefore, declare that the Arab peace plan is damaging peace, because it contradicts the Road Map. The Palestinian unity government, when it is set up, must be boycotted, because it does not explicitly state that all its members recognize the State of Israel (as if all the members of the Israeli government were prepared to recognize the State of Palestine and its government, not to mention foreswearing violence and accepting all the existing agreements.) Therefore, the blockade of the Palestinian population must go on, until it sinks to its knees."
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Israeli Visa Policy Traps Thousands of Palestinians in a Legal Quandary
New York Times
September 18, 2006
By GREG MYRE
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Sept. 16 — Sam Bahour, an American citizen of Palestinian descent, would seem to be the kind of neighbor Israel would welcome.
Mr. Bahour, 41, has a master’s degree in business from Tel Aviv University and runs a successful consulting firm. He developed a gleaming $10 million shopping center in Ramallah, where he has lived for 13 years with his Palestinian wife, Abeer, and their two daughters.
Yet in all that time, Israel has never approved Mr. Bahour’s application for a Palestinian identity document, which would allow him to live permanently in the West Bank with his family. He has had to rely instead on repeated renewals of a three-month tourist visa since he moved from Ohio to Ramallah in 1993. And now Israel says he cannot renew it anymore.
“I’m facing a tough choice,” Mr. Bahour said. “If I leave, I may not be able to come back here, which is where my life is. If I stay, I will be here illegally.”
Mr. Bahour is one of thousands, or perhaps tens of thousands, of people ensnared by an Israeli policy that has effectively frozen immigration to the Palestinian areas of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip since the current Palestinian uprising began in 2000. This spring, after the radical Islamic group Hamas came to power, Israel severed most contacts with the Palestinian Authority and moved to close the last loophole in its immigration policy — the renewable tourist visa.
Over the past six years, more than 70,000 people, a vast majority of them of Palestinian descent, have applied without success to immigrate to the West Bank or Gaza to join relatives, according to B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group that tracks the issue. Many who followed Mr. Bahour’s route and worked around the ban with tourist visas now have no legal way to remain.
“These people are not really tourists — they are living and working without legal permits,” said Shlomo Dror, the spokesman for the Israeli government agency that handles Palestinian affairs.
“I know these people have a difficult life living this way, and I feel sorry for them,” he said. “I think we can solve this when we renew relations with the Palestinian Authority, but right now, we are not talking to them.”
Mr. Bahour acknowledges that he has options that others in the same situation may lack. His daughters, ages 12 and 6, are also American citizens, and his wife has a green card that would allow her to live and work in the United States. He and his wife own a second home in Youngstown, Ohio, where Mr. Bahour was born and raised, and his profession as a business consultant is portable.
But the family is committed to building a future here, he said.
“People ask why I don’t just leave,” Mr. Bahour said. “I tell them it’s because I want to make a contribution here.”
More common are families in which one spouse has only a Palestinian identity document while the other has a foreign passport, making it difficult or impractical for them to live elsewhere.
Many Palestinians say Israel is pursuing a systematic policy of limiting the population in the Palestinian areas, even if it means separating family members.
“Most every Palestinian knows someone with this kind of problem,” said Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for B’Tselem.
In her view, the Israeli policy has several purposes: to apply political pressure on the Palestinians, to create a bargaining chip that could be used in future negotiations and to be a tool in a battle of demographics.
The largest single category of people affected by the Israeli policy is Jordanian women of Palestinian descent who have married Palestinian men and want to move to the West Bank to live with their husbands, Ms. Michaeli said.
Many of those women come to the West Bank on tourist visas and stay on after their visas expire. Complications arise when the women eventually want to travel or visit relatives in Jordan. If they leave the West Bank or Gaza, they face the risk that Israeli authorities will not allow them to return.
Palestinians also say the Israel policy will keep out well-educated, middle-class and politically moderate members of the Palestinian diaspora who could play an important role in developing Palestinian society.
Ali Aggad, a Jordanian citizen of Palestinian origin, has been working in the West Bank since 1999. He is now the general manager at the Unipal General Trading Company, which distributes consumer products for international companies like Procter & Gamble.
For seven years, Israel has routinely granted him a tourist visa that has allowed him to spend weekdays working in the West Bank and weekends in Amman, Jordan, with his wife and two sons. Without warning, Israeli authorities denied him entry to the West Bank twice recently, he said.
Procter & Gamble’s office in Tel Aviv is trying to resolve his case with the Israeli authorities, Mr. Aggad said, adding, “All I can do now is wait and hope it works out.”
In the past few months, about 50 United States citizens have notified American diplomatic offices that Israel has prevented them from entering the West Bank, said Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm, a spokeswoman at the United States Consulate in Jerusalem.
“This is an issue we’ve been monitoring for several months, and it has been raised with the Israeli authorities,” she said.
Many people of Palestinian origin sought to return to the Palestinian areas of the West Bank and Gaza after Israel and the Palestinians signed an interim peace agreement in 1993.
Under a 1995 accord, Israel initially agreed to allow 3,000 immigrants to the Palestinian areas each year, as part of a family reunification process, said Mr. Dror, the Israeli official.
Demand proved to be so great, he said, that Israel later increased the number to as many as 20,000 a year. Even so, there was a backlog of some 50,000 applications when Israel froze the process in 2000. Israel resumed allowing immigration last year, but soon froze it again when Hamas won power.
One of the applications stuck in the pile is Mr. Bahour’s. He said he applied for permanent residency in 1994 and had not received a reply.
Meanwhile, his current tourist visa expires Oct. 1, and Israeli authorities have written “last permit” in his United States passport.
“I still don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said. But he will not leave if he can help it. “If I walked away now,” he said, “I feel I would be letting my community down.”
Faith, Reason and the University
Complete Transcript of Controversial Speech
by Pope Benedict XIV
September 17, 2006
The Vatican
APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
TO MÜNCHEN, ALTÖTTING AND REGENSBURG
(SEPTEMBER 9-14, 2006)
MEETING WITH THE REPRESENTATIVES OF SCIENCE
LECTURE OF THE HOLY FATHER
Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg
Tuesday, 12 September 2006
Faith, Reason and the University
Memories and Reflections
by Pope Benedict XIV
September 17, 2006
The Vatican
APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
TO MÜNCHEN, ALTÖTTING AND REGENSBURG
(SEPTEMBER 9-14, 2006)
MEETING WITH THE REPRESENTATIVES OF SCIENCE
LECTURE OF THE HOLY FATHER
Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg
Tuesday, 12 September 2006
Faith, Reason and the University
Memories and Reflections
Palestinian officials allege torture
MOHAMMED BARGHOUTHI: The Palestinian Authority's minister of labor spent six weeks incarcerated this summer and says he was tied in a painful position for hours at a time.
Three ministers claim Israel used a banned method of interrogation on them known as the shabah.
"RAMALLAH, WEST BANK – A government minister in the Palestinian Authority, who was arrested and held by Israeli authorities for more than six weeks this summer, says that during his interrogation he was tied for hours in a painful position known as the shabah. The technique, which Israeli security officials had argued was an effective way to put pressure on a suspect, was banned by Israel's Supreme Court in 1999.
"For five, six, seven hours, they would take me and tie my hands behind my back like this, and with my feet up, in the shabah," says Minister of Labor Mohammed Barghouthi, recalling his interrogation in an interview in his office." It caused a lot of pain in my neck and back, but the psychological pain is much worse."
In 1999, a nine-judge panel of the Supreme Court unanimously outlawed methods of physical force that were routinely used by Shin Bet. Techniques banned in the decision included holding and tying the prisoner in painful positions, violent shaking, sleep deprivation, covering the head with a sack, and playing loud music.
Barghouthi says he was never beaten, but on the day of his arrest he was shackled, blindfolded, and had his cellphone confiscated. He says that the incarceration included 35 days in a windowless, solitary cell in Jerusalem's Russian Compound. "Night and day, I never knew what time it was," he says. "I never saw my face. I never saw the sun. I had no change of clothes." He says interrogators threatened to arrest his wife or his father if he didn't cooperate. By the time of his release, he says he had lost 26 pounds.
One of the arguments Kawasmi used to secure their release was that Israel had not acted until now as if being a member of Hamas's Change and Reform Party was illegal. Israel, he points out, allowed the Palestinian elections to take place in January and for the Hamas-affiliated candidates to run in East Jerusalem, which has officially been annexed to Israel. "You let them participate," Kawasmi says. "You can't come and arrest them now and accuse them of being members of a parliament chosen by an election in which you allowed them to run.""
Hezbollah chief Nasrallah calls for 'victory' rally in Beirut
By Reuters Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah invited Lebanese on Sunday to attend a "victory" rally in the guerrilla group's stronghold in Beirut, battered by Israel Defense Forces in a 34-day war.
"I call on you all to participate in a victory rally, your victory ... next Friday afternoon in the southern suburb, the suburb of honour, glory, faith, steadfastness and victory for the whole country and the whole nation," he said in a message aired on Hizbollah's Al-Manar Television.
"Let us renew our covenant and declare our joy at the divine victory to the whole world," he said.
Meanwhile in Palestine
Israel announces construction of new 'Jews-only' road and land confiscation in Bethlehem area: Israeli authorities announced Sunday a new plan to isolate over 7000 dunums of Palestinian land in the Bethlehem and Hebron areas in preparation for the continuation of the Wall and the construction of a 'Jews-only' road which will carve through the south of West Bank.
Eight Palestinians injured as Occupation raids houses at the Bil'in weekly demonstration: Eight Palestinians were injured yesterday during clashes between demonstrators and Israeli occupation forces yesterday at the weekly demonstration in the West Bank town of Bil'in. After violently dispersing the demonstration with clubs, tear-gas, rubber bullets and experimental weapons, Israeli occupation fighters pursued demonstrators into the village and went from house to house searching for them.
British Trade Unions: “Tear down the Apartheid Wall”: The Trade Union Council, which represents 66 affiliated unions and nearly seven million workers, passed the motion at its annual conference in Brighton, UK, calling for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from all occupied territories, for the British government and EU to restore funding to the Palestinian Authority and for the Israeli government to restore withheld tax revenues due to the PA.
The olive harvest test: Israel's objection to the nascent agreement for a Palestinian unity government, and the frozen plans for a unilateral withdrawal, require, among other things, that Israel continue to bear responsibility for the well-being of the Palestinian population in the West Bank. According to a June High Court ruling, "Protecting the security and possessions of the local residents is among the most basic obligations of the military commander in the field."
Join the Free Palestine Contingent, Manchester, UK 23rd September: The demonstration will meet at 12:30 by the 'Peace Garden' in St Peter's Square, about 200yds away from Albert Square’ in front of Library/by the metro stop. A specially hired train will take supporters to Manchester on the day from London. The train will be covered by national and international TV companies. Al-Jazeera TV will be travelling on the special train, and is doing a major feature on the demonstration.
OPT: Fishermen suffer naval restrictions: As some Palestinian fishermen were heading towards the sea for their daily fishing trips, 25-year-old Shadi Bakr waited anxiously at the pier for a boat owner to hire him for the day. Bakr's own boat was destroyed by the Israeli navy five weeks ago. "My boat was worth US $8,000, and I used to make $300 a week, but now I only make $3 or $4 a day, which is not enough even to buy bread and salt for my family,"
Nonaligned Movement's Final Declaration: Strongly condemns "the relentless Israeli aggression launched against Lebanon." Promotes a revival of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Supports the Palestinian people's "inalienable right to self-determination in their independent and sovereign State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital."
Four Palestinians, including two security officers, taken prisoner from Qalqilia and Hebron: Israeli soldiers, backed by jeeps and armored vehicles, invaded several areas of the northern and southern West Bank on Sunday morning and took four Palestinians prisoner from the West Bank cities of Qalqilia and Hebron.
Israeli soldiers and settlers take over house in Qalqilia, turn it into a military post: The head of the Rural Council of Kufr Qaddom town, east of Qalqilya, told WAFA News Agency that the colonisers attacked Adnan Ali's house in the eastern neighbourhood in the town, positioned themselves on its roof and confined its family members in one room. Witnesses said that there were Israeli soldiers among the attackers, who spread a state of fear and panic among children.
Palestinian collapse hurts all: Donors have been forced to watch impotently as their investments in Palestinian infrastructure and institutions have been destroyed or eroded. Israel has seen a once lucrative and dependent - if not altogether captive - market become increasingly pauperized and separated as walls, border terminals and hi-tech security arrangements dominate Israeli-Palestinian economic relations.
Police expand probe of Israeli Arab MKs' visit to Syria, Lebanon: Police on Sunday summoned former Balad MK Mohammed Miari... He is the fourth member of the Israeli Arab Knesset faction to be summoned by police for his tour of neighboring Arab countries. Current Balad MKs Azmi Bishara, Jamal Zahalka and Wasil Taha, who led the delegation, were warned before their trip that they would be questioned upon their return.
It's all a question of timing: Palestinian sources said yesterday that Corporal Gilad Shalit could very well be moved from the Gaza Strip to Egypt tonight. The sources based their remarks on statements by Palestinian figures, including Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, according to which important developments relating to Shalit's release and the release of Palestinian security prisoners were expected within the next several hours.
Hamas PM denounces ongoing attacks on West Bank churches: The head of the Hamas-led government, Ismail Haniya, denounced a spate of attacks on Christian churches in the Palestinian territories after assailants targeted two West Bank churches following Pope Benedict XVI 's comments on Islam.
Farmers: Too few permits into Gaza Strip issued: Israeli farmers who ship goods into the Gaza Strip have complained that too few produce trucks are being authorized to pass through Karni Crossing. The farmers, who are holding some 3000 tons of produce in refrigeration, have been issued only 105 permits into Gaza, Israel Radio reported.
Genocide in Gaza - By Ilan Pappe: The Israeli leadership is at lost of what to do with the Gaza Strip. It has vague ideas about the West Bank. The current government assumes that the West Bank, unlike the Strip, is an open space, at least on its eastern side. Hence if Israel, under the ingathering program of the government, annexes the parts it covets - half of the West Bank - and cleanses it of its native population, the other half would naturally lean towards Jordan, at least for a while and would not concern Israel.
Abbas now: Ehud Olmert is clutching to a straw - Road Map now. He has no other option. The suppression of pro-Iranian terror groups has failed. The new political order in Lebanon is barely enough. The Americans don't want to hear about the initiation of a diplomatic process with the Syrians. And realignment is out.
Eight Palestinians injured as Occupation raids houses at the Bil'in weekly demonstration: Eight Palestinians were injured yesterday during clashes between demonstrators and Israeli occupation forces yesterday at the weekly demonstration in the West Bank town of Bil'in. After violently dispersing the demonstration with clubs, tear-gas, rubber bullets and experimental weapons, Israeli occupation fighters pursued demonstrators into the village and went from house to house searching for them.
British Trade Unions: “Tear down the Apartheid Wall”: The Trade Union Council, which represents 66 affiliated unions and nearly seven million workers, passed the motion at its annual conference in Brighton, UK, calling for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from all occupied territories, for the British government and EU to restore funding to the Palestinian Authority and for the Israeli government to restore withheld tax revenues due to the PA.
The olive harvest test: Israel's objection to the nascent agreement for a Palestinian unity government, and the frozen plans for a unilateral withdrawal, require, among other things, that Israel continue to bear responsibility for the well-being of the Palestinian population in the West Bank. According to a June High Court ruling, "Protecting the security and possessions of the local residents is among the most basic obligations of the military commander in the field."
Join the Free Palestine Contingent, Manchester, UK 23rd September: The demonstration will meet at 12:30 by the 'Peace Garden' in St Peter's Square, about 200yds away from Albert Square’ in front of Library/by the metro stop. A specially hired train will take supporters to Manchester on the day from London. The train will be covered by national and international TV companies. Al-Jazeera TV will be travelling on the special train, and is doing a major feature on the demonstration.
OPT: Fishermen suffer naval restrictions: As some Palestinian fishermen were heading towards the sea for their daily fishing trips, 25-year-old Shadi Bakr waited anxiously at the pier for a boat owner to hire him for the day. Bakr's own boat was destroyed by the Israeli navy five weeks ago. "My boat was worth US $8,000, and I used to make $300 a week, but now I only make $3 or $4 a day, which is not enough even to buy bread and salt for my family,"
Nonaligned Movement's Final Declaration: Strongly condemns "the relentless Israeli aggression launched against Lebanon." Promotes a revival of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Supports the Palestinian people's "inalienable right to self-determination in their independent and sovereign State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital."
Four Palestinians, including two security officers, taken prisoner from Qalqilia and Hebron: Israeli soldiers, backed by jeeps and armored vehicles, invaded several areas of the northern and southern West Bank on Sunday morning and took four Palestinians prisoner from the West Bank cities of Qalqilia and Hebron.
Israeli soldiers and settlers take over house in Qalqilia, turn it into a military post: The head of the Rural Council of Kufr Qaddom town, east of Qalqilya, told WAFA News Agency that the colonisers attacked Adnan Ali's house in the eastern neighbourhood in the town, positioned themselves on its roof and confined its family members in one room. Witnesses said that there were Israeli soldiers among the attackers, who spread a state of fear and panic among children.
Palestinian collapse hurts all: Donors have been forced to watch impotently as their investments in Palestinian infrastructure and institutions have been destroyed or eroded. Israel has seen a once lucrative and dependent - if not altogether captive - market become increasingly pauperized and separated as walls, border terminals and hi-tech security arrangements dominate Israeli-Palestinian economic relations.
Police expand probe of Israeli Arab MKs' visit to Syria, Lebanon: Police on Sunday summoned former Balad MK Mohammed Miari... He is the fourth member of the Israeli Arab Knesset faction to be summoned by police for his tour of neighboring Arab countries. Current Balad MKs Azmi Bishara, Jamal Zahalka and Wasil Taha, who led the delegation, were warned before their trip that they would be questioned upon their return.
It's all a question of timing: Palestinian sources said yesterday that Corporal Gilad Shalit could very well be moved from the Gaza Strip to Egypt tonight. The sources based their remarks on statements by Palestinian figures, including Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, according to which important developments relating to Shalit's release and the release of Palestinian security prisoners were expected within the next several hours.
Hamas PM denounces ongoing attacks on West Bank churches: The head of the Hamas-led government, Ismail Haniya, denounced a spate of attacks on Christian churches in the Palestinian territories after assailants targeted two West Bank churches following Pope Benedict XVI 's comments on Islam.
Farmers: Too few permits into Gaza Strip issued: Israeli farmers who ship goods into the Gaza Strip have complained that too few produce trucks are being authorized to pass through Karni Crossing. The farmers, who are holding some 3000 tons of produce in refrigeration, have been issued only 105 permits into Gaza, Israel Radio reported.
Genocide in Gaza - By Ilan Pappe: The Israeli leadership is at lost of what to do with the Gaza Strip. It has vague ideas about the West Bank. The current government assumes that the West Bank, unlike the Strip, is an open space, at least on its eastern side. Hence if Israel, under the ingathering program of the government, annexes the parts it covets - half of the West Bank - and cleanses it of its native population, the other half would naturally lean towards Jordan, at least for a while and would not concern Israel.
Abbas now: Ehud Olmert is clutching to a straw - Road Map now. He has no other option. The suppression of pro-Iranian terror groups has failed. The new political order in Lebanon is barely enough. The Americans don't want to hear about the initiation of a diplomatic process with the Syrians. And realignment is out.
People and the Land: The Documentary Israel Tried to Block
“People and the Land” (PDF file) by Tom Hayes; a 24 page article about how hard this film was to make, how Israel sought to make it illegal doing all they could to prevent the film. It was made in 1997, but the occupation is always the same. The story alone if you take time to read it is amazing. You’ll really like the scenes where the Israelis say how to take care of the “problem”. One American holds up a sign saying “transfer all the Arabs to Oklahoma..."
Palestinians suspect Israeli agents behind fire-bombing of Churches
17 September, 2006
from Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank
Palestinian nationalist and Islamic leaders on Sunday strongly condemned fire-bombing attacks against a few churches in the West Bank, calling the incidents “suspicious” and “incompatible with Palestinian and Islamic culture.”
Three churches in Nablus, Tulkarm and Tubas in the northern West Bank have been attacked with fire-bombs by unknown perpetrators resulting in minor damage.
The mayor of Tubas, where a small Greek Orthodox Church was attacked, accused “suspicious elements,” a reference to Israeli Shin Bet (Israel’s chief domestic intelligence agency) agents of “having embarked on this ugly act and criminal act.”
“It is either Israeli collaborators or some overzealous fools upset by the remarks of the Pope,” said Iqab Darghmeh (Abu Ahmed), in a telephone interview.
Darghmeh and Muslim notables, including representatives of Fatah, Hamas and civic leaders visited the church Sunday morning to show solidarity with the small Christian community in the town.
“Christians here are not a separate sect. They are our flesh and blood. They are our brothers. An attack on their churches is an attack on Islam and the Palestinian people.”
The fire-bombings have been widely condemned by religious and political leaders throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Sheikh Muhammed Hussein, the highest-ranking Muslim clergyman in East Jerusalem described the bombing as “immoral, unethical and injurious to Palestinian unity.”
“Those who perpetrated these acts don’t represent the Palestinian people. They are a gang of ignoramuses and fanatics, or suspicious elements.” In the Palestinian political lexicon, “suspicious elements” is an allusion to Israeli collaborators and informers.
Earlier, the Mufti of Ramallah, Jamal Bawatneh, called on all Palestinians to inform on any person seen attacking or vandalizing Christian churches and property.
“I urge our people to inform on any person carrying out a crime against people and property. Failing to do so amounts to treason and complicity, “ read a statement issued by the Palestinian Interior Ministry in Gaza.
Hamas condemns vandalism
Meanwhile, the Islamic Resistance group, Hamas, strongly condemned attacks on churches in parts of the West Bank, calling such attacks “criminal and harmful to the Palestinian cause.”
“I am sure that Israel is enjoying this. Israel always wants to create problems and divisions between Muslims and Christians. And those who committed these acts are only serving Zionist propaganda and goals,” said Yousuf Ibrahim, a Hamas spokesperson in the Bethlehem region.
“I am nearly certain that at least some of the perpetrators are Israeli agents.”
On Sunday, the Palestinian Authority (PA) Interior Minister, Sa’eed Siyam, ordered the security apparatus to step up security measures around churches in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Pope’s remarks condemned
Muslim and most Christian religious and secular leaders did condemn anti-Islam remarks made by Pope Benedict XVI in Germany on 14 September.
The Pope, quoting a medieval Byzantine emperor as saying that “Show me just what Muhammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”
The remarks drew angry but mostly non-violent reactions from across the Muslim world, with Muslim leaders calling on the Pope to apologize for offending Muslim sensibilities.
Some Muslim scholars interpreted the remarks as “a declaration of war on Islam.”
“When you say that Islam is evil, you are not only de-legitimizing it, but encouraging open war on its followers,” said the Supreme Sharia Judge in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Sheikh Taysir Tamimi.
The pope more or less apologized during a Sunday mass.
“I wish also to add that I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims.
“These in fact were a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought.”
from Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank
Palestinian nationalist and Islamic leaders on Sunday strongly condemned fire-bombing attacks against a few churches in the West Bank, calling the incidents “suspicious” and “incompatible with Palestinian and Islamic culture.”
Three churches in Nablus, Tulkarm and Tubas in the northern West Bank have been attacked with fire-bombs by unknown perpetrators resulting in minor damage.
The mayor of Tubas, where a small Greek Orthodox Church was attacked, accused “suspicious elements,” a reference to Israeli Shin Bet (Israel’s chief domestic intelligence agency) agents of “having embarked on this ugly act and criminal act.”
“It is either Israeli collaborators or some overzealous fools upset by the remarks of the Pope,” said Iqab Darghmeh (Abu Ahmed), in a telephone interview.
Darghmeh and Muslim notables, including representatives of Fatah, Hamas and civic leaders visited the church Sunday morning to show solidarity with the small Christian community in the town.
“Christians here are not a separate sect. They are our flesh and blood. They are our brothers. An attack on their churches is an attack on Islam and the Palestinian people.”
The fire-bombings have been widely condemned by religious and political leaders throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Sheikh Muhammed Hussein, the highest-ranking Muslim clergyman in East Jerusalem described the bombing as “immoral, unethical and injurious to Palestinian unity.”
“Those who perpetrated these acts don’t represent the Palestinian people. They are a gang of ignoramuses and fanatics, or suspicious elements.” In the Palestinian political lexicon, “suspicious elements” is an allusion to Israeli collaborators and informers.
Earlier, the Mufti of Ramallah, Jamal Bawatneh, called on all Palestinians to inform on any person seen attacking or vandalizing Christian churches and property.
“I urge our people to inform on any person carrying out a crime against people and property. Failing to do so amounts to treason and complicity, “ read a statement issued by the Palestinian Interior Ministry in Gaza.
Hamas condemns vandalism
Meanwhile, the Islamic Resistance group, Hamas, strongly condemned attacks on churches in parts of the West Bank, calling such attacks “criminal and harmful to the Palestinian cause.”
“I am sure that Israel is enjoying this. Israel always wants to create problems and divisions between Muslims and Christians. And those who committed these acts are only serving Zionist propaganda and goals,” said Yousuf Ibrahim, a Hamas spokesperson in the Bethlehem region.
“I am nearly certain that at least some of the perpetrators are Israeli agents.”
On Sunday, the Palestinian Authority (PA) Interior Minister, Sa’eed Siyam, ordered the security apparatus to step up security measures around churches in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Pope’s remarks condemned
Muslim and most Christian religious and secular leaders did condemn anti-Islam remarks made by Pope Benedict XVI in Germany on 14 September.
The Pope, quoting a medieval Byzantine emperor as saying that “Show me just what Muhammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”
The remarks drew angry but mostly non-violent reactions from across the Muslim world, with Muslim leaders calling on the Pope to apologize for offending Muslim sensibilities.
Some Muslim scholars interpreted the remarks as “a declaration of war on Islam.”
“When you say that Islam is evil, you are not only de-legitimizing it, but encouraging open war on its followers,” said the Supreme Sharia Judge in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Sheikh Taysir Tamimi.
The pope more or less apologized during a Sunday mass.
“I wish also to add that I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims.
“These in fact were a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought.”
The best (PR) war ever
By Bill Berkowitz
OAKLAND, California - In a recent speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared, "The enemy is so much better at communicating. I wish we were better at countering that, because the constant drumbeat of things they say - all of which are not true - is harmful."
Later, during a question-and-answer session at Fallon Naval Air Station in Nevada, Rumsfeld complained about terrorist groups that have "media committees" that "manipulate the media".
"What bothers me the most is how clever the enemy is," he said. "They are actively manipulating the media in this country ... They can lie with impunity."
During the three-plus years since the United States invaded Iraq, the administration of President George W Bush has repeatedly criticized the media for reporting only the "bad" news from Iraq. Bush himself has frequently maintained that the consequences of the media's preoccupation with negative stories demoralizes the troops on the ground, and undercuts support for the war at home.
There were few complaints from the administration at the beginning of the war when embedded and compliant media filed mostly positive reports.
In their new book titled The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006), which was to go on sale on Thursday, co-authors John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton assert that television reporters "actually underplayed rather than overplayed the negative" in their reporting from Iraq, while "newspaper coverage during the subsequent occupation has also been sanitized".
Stauber and Rampton cite a study by researchers at George Washington University that analyzed 1,820 stories on the five main US television networks, as well as the Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera, and found that "all of the American media largely shied away from showing visuals of coalition, Iraqi military, or civilian casualties. Despite advanced technologies offering reporters the chance to transmit the reality of war in real time, reporters chose instead to present a largely bloodless conflict to viewers even when they did broadcast during firefights."
Print journalists didn't perform much better. A May 2005 review by Los Angeles Times writer James Rainey of the coverage of a six-month period - when 559 US and other Western allies died in Iraq - by six major US newspapers and two popular newsmagazines found that "readers of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, St Louis Post-Dispatch, and Washington Post did not see a single picture of a dead serviceman".
"Rumsfeld's complaints are an interesting twist of the truth, since the reality is that the US has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on media campaigns that have been spectacularly ineffective," Rampton said in a telephone interview. "That the enemy has been more effective in communicating its message to the world is not so much a reflection of their media savvy as it is on the ineffective message of the United States.
"You can't expect a better messaging strategy to compensate for the fact that the underlining policy is based on falsehoods and deliberate deception," Rampton said.
As the occupation of Iraq proved unmanageable and the total number of dead and wounded US military personnel mounted, stories about the revamping of schoolhouses and the building of soccer fields were given a back seat by the media.
With things continuing to spiral out of control in Iraq, the Bush administration has once again decided that it's a public relations problem; a question of propaganda, not policy. Around the same time that Rumsfeld was on the road railing about anti-war appeasers and confused critics who were enabling terrorism and how much better the terrorists were at handling the media, the Washington Post reported that "US military leaders in Baghdad have put out for bid a two-year, [US]$20 million public relations contract that calls for extensive monitoring of US and Middle Eastern media in an effort to promote more positive coverage of news from Iraq".
According to the Post's Walter Pincus, the "contract calls for assembling a database of selected news stories and assessing their tone as part of a program to provide 'public relations products' that would improve coverage of the military command's performance, according to a statement-of-work attached to the proposal".
Pincus pointed out that the proposal "calls in part for extensive monitoring and analysis of Iraqi, Middle Eastern and American media, [and] is designed to help the coalition forces understand ]the communications environment'. Its goal is to 'develop communication strategies and tactics, identify opportunities, and execute events ... to effectively communicate Iraqi government and coalition's goals, and build support among our strategic audiences in achieving these goals'," according to a statement publicly available through the FBO Daily's website.
"From what I've seen, the thing about this proposal that most concerns me is the component calling for the monitoring of the media, especially when journalists will be rated as to how favorable they are toward US policy objectives," Rampton pointed out.
"Monitoring journalists and maintaining a database of their stories raises a number of serious questions: Who knows where that database will wind up in two years or five years from now? What kind of retribution might be exacted against those reporters whose work is seen as unfavorable to US policy?"
The Bush administration's new maneuver appears to be deja vu. As early as September 2003, less than six months after the invasion of Iraq, it determined that the best way to sell its policy was to make its highest-ranking officials - including the president - available for safe media opportunities.
Bush gave the Fox News Channel a 30-minute interview and a 20-minute on-camera tour of the White House while then-national security adviser and current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appeared on the American Broadcasting Co's Nightline and gave interviews to Fox Television's Brit Hume, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.
A later campaign was aimed at sidestepping the national media entirely by dispatching administration spokespeople to talk only to local news outlets. Another campaign had the administration hiring the Lincoln Group, a high-powered public relations firm, to plant positive stories in the Iraqi news media and to pay friendly Iraqi journalists monthly stipends.
"In the first chapter of The Best War Ever, we discuss the failures of recent attempts by the US to plant stories in the Iraq media," Rampton noted. "You can't throw money at a messaging problem and expect to be effective when the people you are trying to persuade are deeply outraged at what you are doing."
Over the course of the war and the occupation of Iraq, even the parameters of what constitutes "good" news has changed dramatically. Early on, the "good" news consisted of reports on the rebuilding of schools and hospitals, the delivery of new fire trucks to a small town, or the opening of soccer field for Iraqi children.
These days, the "good" news has more to do with whether Iraqi troops have the stuff necessary to militarily confront sectarian militias, whether attacks by insurgents have dropped from 50 a day to 25, whether daily Iraqi civilian deaths are in the dozens instead of the hundreds, and whether the situation has descended into a full-blown civil war or whether a civil war is still in the offing.
To paraphrase bluesman Albert King's song "Born Under a Bad Sign", "If it wasn't for bad news, there would be no news at all."
Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His WorkingForChange column "Conservative Watch" documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the US right wing.
(Inter Press Service)
OAKLAND, California - In a recent speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared, "The enemy is so much better at communicating. I wish we were better at countering that, because the constant drumbeat of things they say - all of which are not true - is harmful."
Later, during a question-and-answer session at Fallon Naval Air Station in Nevada, Rumsfeld complained about terrorist groups that have "media committees" that "manipulate the media".
"What bothers me the most is how clever the enemy is," he said. "They are actively manipulating the media in this country ... They can lie with impunity."
During the three-plus years since the United States invaded Iraq, the administration of President George W Bush has repeatedly criticized the media for reporting only the "bad" news from Iraq. Bush himself has frequently maintained that the consequences of the media's preoccupation with negative stories demoralizes the troops on the ground, and undercuts support for the war at home.
There were few complaints from the administration at the beginning of the war when embedded and compliant media filed mostly positive reports.
In their new book titled The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006), which was to go on sale on Thursday, co-authors John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton assert that television reporters "actually underplayed rather than overplayed the negative" in their reporting from Iraq, while "newspaper coverage during the subsequent occupation has also been sanitized".
Stauber and Rampton cite a study by researchers at George Washington University that analyzed 1,820 stories on the five main US television networks, as well as the Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera, and found that "all of the American media largely shied away from showing visuals of coalition, Iraqi military, or civilian casualties. Despite advanced technologies offering reporters the chance to transmit the reality of war in real time, reporters chose instead to present a largely bloodless conflict to viewers even when they did broadcast during firefights."
Print journalists didn't perform much better. A May 2005 review by Los Angeles Times writer James Rainey of the coverage of a six-month period - when 559 US and other Western allies died in Iraq - by six major US newspapers and two popular newsmagazines found that "readers of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, St Louis Post-Dispatch, and Washington Post did not see a single picture of a dead serviceman".
"Rumsfeld's complaints are an interesting twist of the truth, since the reality is that the US has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on media campaigns that have been spectacularly ineffective," Rampton said in a telephone interview. "That the enemy has been more effective in communicating its message to the world is not so much a reflection of their media savvy as it is on the ineffective message of the United States.
"You can't expect a better messaging strategy to compensate for the fact that the underlining policy is based on falsehoods and deliberate deception," Rampton said.
As the occupation of Iraq proved unmanageable and the total number of dead and wounded US military personnel mounted, stories about the revamping of schoolhouses and the building of soccer fields were given a back seat by the media.
With things continuing to spiral out of control in Iraq, the Bush administration has once again decided that it's a public relations problem; a question of propaganda, not policy. Around the same time that Rumsfeld was on the road railing about anti-war appeasers and confused critics who were enabling terrorism and how much better the terrorists were at handling the media, the Washington Post reported that "US military leaders in Baghdad have put out for bid a two-year, [US]$20 million public relations contract that calls for extensive monitoring of US and Middle Eastern media in an effort to promote more positive coverage of news from Iraq".
According to the Post's Walter Pincus, the "contract calls for assembling a database of selected news stories and assessing their tone as part of a program to provide 'public relations products' that would improve coverage of the military command's performance, according to a statement-of-work attached to the proposal".
Pincus pointed out that the proposal "calls in part for extensive monitoring and analysis of Iraqi, Middle Eastern and American media, [and] is designed to help the coalition forces understand ]the communications environment'. Its goal is to 'develop communication strategies and tactics, identify opportunities, and execute events ... to effectively communicate Iraqi government and coalition's goals, and build support among our strategic audiences in achieving these goals'," according to a statement publicly available through the FBO Daily's website.
"From what I've seen, the thing about this proposal that most concerns me is the component calling for the monitoring of the media, especially when journalists will be rated as to how favorable they are toward US policy objectives," Rampton pointed out.
"Monitoring journalists and maintaining a database of their stories raises a number of serious questions: Who knows where that database will wind up in two years or five years from now? What kind of retribution might be exacted against those reporters whose work is seen as unfavorable to US policy?"
The Bush administration's new maneuver appears to be deja vu. As early as September 2003, less than six months after the invasion of Iraq, it determined that the best way to sell its policy was to make its highest-ranking officials - including the president - available for safe media opportunities.
Bush gave the Fox News Channel a 30-minute interview and a 20-minute on-camera tour of the White House while then-national security adviser and current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appeared on the American Broadcasting Co's Nightline and gave interviews to Fox Television's Brit Hume, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.
A later campaign was aimed at sidestepping the national media entirely by dispatching administration spokespeople to talk only to local news outlets. Another campaign had the administration hiring the Lincoln Group, a high-powered public relations firm, to plant positive stories in the Iraqi news media and to pay friendly Iraqi journalists monthly stipends.
"In the first chapter of The Best War Ever, we discuss the failures of recent attempts by the US to plant stories in the Iraq media," Rampton noted. "You can't throw money at a messaging problem and expect to be effective when the people you are trying to persuade are deeply outraged at what you are doing."
Over the course of the war and the occupation of Iraq, even the parameters of what constitutes "good" news has changed dramatically. Early on, the "good" news consisted of reports on the rebuilding of schools and hospitals, the delivery of new fire trucks to a small town, or the opening of soccer field for Iraqi children.
These days, the "good" news has more to do with whether Iraqi troops have the stuff necessary to militarily confront sectarian militias, whether attacks by insurgents have dropped from 50 a day to 25, whether daily Iraqi civilian deaths are in the dozens instead of the hundreds, and whether the situation has descended into a full-blown civil war or whether a civil war is still in the offing.
To paraphrase bluesman Albert King's song "Born Under a Bad Sign", "If it wasn't for bad news, there would be no news at all."
Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His WorkingForChange column "Conservative Watch" documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the US right wing.
(Inter Press Service)
West Won’t Win Afghan War
by Eric Margolis
(Toronto Sun, Canada)
"As Canadian, American and British soldiers continue to die in Afghanistan, it is time the truth be told about this ugly little war. Much of what we’ve so far been told by our governments and media has been untrue, wishful thinking, or crass jingoism.
Claims that withdrawing Western garrisons from Afghanistan or Iraq will leave a void certain to be filled by extremists are nonsense. Half of Afghanistan and a third of Iraq are already largely controlled by anti-Western resistance forces.
“Good Morning, Afghanistan!” Doesn’t anyone remember the Vietnam War’s fruitless search-and-destroy missions and inflated body counts? Don’t NATO commanders know their every move is telegraphed in advance to Taliban forces? Did Canadian officers making such fanciful claims really believe the Taliban’s veteran guerillas would be stupid enough to sit still and be destroyed by U.S. air power?
What the West calls “Taliban” is actually a growing coalition of veteran Taliban fighters led by Mullah Dadullah, other clans of Pashtun tribal warriors, and nationalist resistance forces under Jalalladin Hakkani and former prime minister Gulbadin Hekmatyar. Many are former mujahadeen once hailed as “freedom fighters” by the West, and branded “terrorists” by the Soviets.
The U.S. and its allies are not going to win the Afghan war. They will be lucky, the way things are going, not to lose it in the same humiliating manner the Soviets did in 1989. Ottawa’s deepening involvement in a conflict in which it lacks any national interests — save pleasing Washington and selling lumber — jeopardizes Canada’s security. Western troops are not fighting “terrorism” in Afghanistan, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper claims. They are fighting the Afghan people. Every new civilian killed, and every village bombed, breeds new enemies for the West."
(Toronto Sun, Canada)
"As Canadian, American and British soldiers continue to die in Afghanistan, it is time the truth be told about this ugly little war. Much of what we’ve so far been told by our governments and media has been untrue, wishful thinking, or crass jingoism.
Claims that withdrawing Western garrisons from Afghanistan or Iraq will leave a void certain to be filled by extremists are nonsense. Half of Afghanistan and a third of Iraq are already largely controlled by anti-Western resistance forces.
“Good Morning, Afghanistan!” Doesn’t anyone remember the Vietnam War’s fruitless search-and-destroy missions and inflated body counts? Don’t NATO commanders know their every move is telegraphed in advance to Taliban forces? Did Canadian officers making such fanciful claims really believe the Taliban’s veteran guerillas would be stupid enough to sit still and be destroyed by U.S. air power?
What the West calls “Taliban” is actually a growing coalition of veteran Taliban fighters led by Mullah Dadullah, other clans of Pashtun tribal warriors, and nationalist resistance forces under Jalalladin Hakkani and former prime minister Gulbadin Hekmatyar. Many are former mujahadeen once hailed as “freedom fighters” by the West, and branded “terrorists” by the Soviets.
The U.S. and its allies are not going to win the Afghan war. They will be lucky, the way things are going, not to lose it in the same humiliating manner the Soviets did in 1989. Ottawa’s deepening involvement in a conflict in which it lacks any national interests — save pleasing Washington and selling lumber — jeopardizes Canada’s security. Western troops are not fighting “terrorism” in Afghanistan, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper claims. They are fighting the Afghan people. Every new civilian killed, and every village bombed, breeds new enemies for the West."
Palestinian president halts talks with Hamas, demands more concessions
The Little Dictator Will Probably Form an Usraeli-Dictated "Emergency Government."
"U.S. demands that a new Palestinian government recognize Israel have forced moderate President Mahmoud Abbas and the militant group Hamas to delay talks on forming a coalition, Palestinian officials said Sunday.
"What's the point of forming a government if this government is saying that it won't recognize agreements signed with Israel," Palestinian lawmaker Saeb Erekat, an Abbas confidant, told The Associated Press. "The whole point is to break the deadlock in the peace process and bring an end to the siege." "We expect any government to accept the Quartet principles," said Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm, a spokeswoman at the consulate in Jerusalem.
U.S. Consul-General Jacob Walles told Abbas Saturday that the new government would be unacceptable unless these conditions are met, officials said. "America was not very happy, Europe was not so happy. Nobody was happy, but Abbas was doing his best to convince them," said Yasser Abed Rabbo, an Abbas aide. "Hamas has undermined his efforts." Abbas will try to convince Bush that the alternative to a Fatah-Hamas government is civil war and ask him to soften the demands to allow Hamas to sign on to a coalition, officials said.
Although Hamas-Fatah talks will continue, Erekat and Abed Rabbo both questioned whether it would be possible in the end for the sides to bridge their differences and establish a joint government.
"I don't know if the deal is aborted. We will see in the near future," Abed Rabbo said."
***
MY PREDICTION:
The government of "national unity" is dead in the water. Abbas' cheerleaders Abed Rabbo and Erekat are already writing its obituary. The story on which I commented on Thursday has proved to be true; namely the Hamas government was dissolved without forming a new government to replace it. The fact that no one has noticed the effects of the resulting government "vacuum" says loads about the irrelevance and impotence of the PA and any "government" based on the Oslo agreements.
My prediction is that during the coming week, the stooge-in-chief Abbas will receive his marching orders from Usrael, delivered to him by the Princess of Darkness herself who received her orders from Livni. The orders will instruct him to form an "emergency government" and to use his recently expanded and armed "presidential guard" to militarily crack down and to confront Hamas. The irony is that Abbas who "will try to convince Bush that the alternative to a Fatah-Hamas government is civil war" will be instructed to start precisely such a civil war. And why not? Isn’t Usrael behind the raging civil war in Iraq? Hasn't Usrael been laying the foundation of and accelerating the process for a civil war in Lebanon? Why not in Palestine? Welcome to "creative destruction" from the Nile to the Euphrates.
Tony Sayegh
الطائفة الأرثوذكسية في غزة: من يجهل التاريخ عليه أن يعرف أن المسيحيين في الشرق العربي تعامل معهم الإسلام بكل محبة وصدق
غزة ـ المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام
أعربت الطائفة الأرثوذكسية في مدينة غزة، عن استنكارها لـ " تطاول بابا الفاتيكان بينديكت السادس عشر في تصريحاته الأخيرة والمسيئة للديانة الإسلامية"، مطالبة البابا بالتراجع عن تصريحاته وسحبها، مؤكدة أن المسيحيين في الشرق العربي تعامل معهم الإسلام بكل محبة وصدق.
وعبرت رئاسة الطائفة ومجلس وكلائها وجميع مؤسساتها، في بيان لها، عن استهجانها لتصريحات بابا الفاتيكان، معتبرة ما يمس المسلمين يمس المسيحيين الذين عاشوا سوية على مدى العصور وباحترام وتقدير متبادل.
وقالت الطائفة في بيانها: "هل هناك أحد يجرؤ على الإساءة لأبناء شعبنا من إخواننا المسلمين والمساس بمعتقداتهم، وليعلم القاصي والداني أننا جميعاً مسلمون ومسيحيون نعيش في خندق واحد، ونطالب البابا بسحب تصريحاته المسيئة لنا ولإخواننا المسلمين".
وأضافت: "إذا كان إخواننا المسلمون يؤمنون بما جاء في القرآن الكريم من تكريس واحترام لرجال الدين المسيحيين، فهل كان بابا الفاتيكان يجهل هذه الحقيقة؟". وأكدت أن المسيحيين والمسلمين في غزة وفي كل فلسطين أخوة وأحباء وشركاء في السراء والضراء.
وقالت الطائفة الأرثوذكسية: "إن من يجهل التاريخ عليه أن يعرف أن المسيحيين في الشرق العربي قد تعامل معهم الإسلام بكل محبة وصدق، كما ورد في العهدة المحمدية والعمرية التي يعرفها كل أبناء شعبنا العربي".
وأشارت إلى أن تلك العهدة وما أقرته من حماية المسيحيين وممتلكاتهم وعلى اختلاف طوائفهم، كانت وصية من الخليفة عمر بن الخطاب –رضي الله عنه- اختتمها باعتبار من يخالفها "لعهد الله ناكثاً ولرسوله الحبيب باغضاً".
غزة ـ المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام
أعربت الطائفة الأرثوذكسية في مدينة غزة، عن استنكارها لـ " تطاول بابا الفاتيكان بينديكت السادس عشر في تصريحاته الأخيرة والمسيئة للديانة الإسلامية"، مطالبة البابا بالتراجع عن تصريحاته وسحبها، مؤكدة أن المسيحيين في الشرق العربي تعامل معهم الإسلام بكل محبة وصدق.
وعبرت رئاسة الطائفة ومجلس وكلائها وجميع مؤسساتها، في بيان لها، عن استهجانها لتصريحات بابا الفاتيكان، معتبرة ما يمس المسلمين يمس المسيحيين الذين عاشوا سوية على مدى العصور وباحترام وتقدير متبادل.
وقالت الطائفة في بيانها: "هل هناك أحد يجرؤ على الإساءة لأبناء شعبنا من إخواننا المسلمين والمساس بمعتقداتهم، وليعلم القاصي والداني أننا جميعاً مسلمون ومسيحيون نعيش في خندق واحد، ونطالب البابا بسحب تصريحاته المسيئة لنا ولإخواننا المسلمين".
وأضافت: "إذا كان إخواننا المسلمون يؤمنون بما جاء في القرآن الكريم من تكريس واحترام لرجال الدين المسيحيين، فهل كان بابا الفاتيكان يجهل هذه الحقيقة؟". وأكدت أن المسيحيين والمسلمين في غزة وفي كل فلسطين أخوة وأحباء وشركاء في السراء والضراء.
وقالت الطائفة الأرثوذكسية: "إن من يجهل التاريخ عليه أن يعرف أن المسيحيين في الشرق العربي قد تعامل معهم الإسلام بكل محبة وصدق، كما ورد في العهدة المحمدية والعمرية التي يعرفها كل أبناء شعبنا العربي".
وأشارت إلى أن تلك العهدة وما أقرته من حماية المسيحيين وممتلكاتهم وعلى اختلاف طوائفهم، كانت وصية من الخليفة عمر بن الخطاب –رضي الله عنه- اختتمها باعتبار من يخالفها "لعهد الله ناكثاً ولرسوله الحبيب باغضاً".
Papal ignorance
AN EXCELLENT COMMENT
By Khalid Amayreh
Palestine-info
"Yes, we both have our misunderstandings and misgivings and peculiar beliefs and convictions, both as individuals and as religious and cultural communities. However, it would be unforgivable if we allowed these differences to marginalize let alone neutralize the fundamental common grounds between our religions, commonly called the Abrahamic religions.
There is always a huge reservoir of quotes, positive and negative, about religions and religious symbols. A Muslim or non-Muslim could easily amass a preponderance of quotes and texts from the Old Testament, for example, to prove that the Bible advocates murder.
In truth, the Prophet of Islam, Muahmmed (Peace be on him), never ever really called for spreading religion with the sword. The Quran states in Surat (chapter) al-Nahl, v. 134, “Invite to the path of thy Lord with wisdom and good advice, and argue with them kindly, for Thy Lord is well aware of those who go astray and He is aware of those who follow true guidance.”
Indeed, the very next verse states that “if thou should punish (aggressors) punish only in proportion to the aggression inflicted upon you, but if ye be patient, it will be better for the patient.”
Let us take Indonesia , the largest Muslim country in terms of population size, as an example. Historically, it is well known that no Muslim armies had ever set foot on the huge archipelago. Yet all these millions chose to embrace the religion endeared to them by Arabian merchants and sailors who had exemplified to the natives the Islamic ideals of honesty, purity and faithfulness.
A few days ago, a Jewish lady, who had lost 8 relatives in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, appeared on Aljazeera TV, explaining why she decided to revert to Islam only a few months after the landmark tragedy. She simply said that “I found truth in Islam.” The same can be said about the estimated 20,000 Americans who have embraced Islam after 9/11.
Besides, what modicum of objectivity and honesty can there be in the words of an emperor who had lost his throne and empire because of Islam.? What else would we expect from the mouth of that loser?
Furthermore, the Pope should have realized that he lives in a glass house. I want to remind him of the history of the Catholic Church upon the helm of which he now sits. It was the Church that burned scientists alive, it was the Church that invented the Indulgences and Simony systems, it was the Catholic world that invented the Inquisitions, the pogroms, and all other abominations associated with its dark practices against critics and opponents, including Christians who didn’t extend fealty to Rome .
And the Crusades? And the Holocaust? Must we re-open these dark chapters again? Do we have to remind his holiness that in the past century alone, over a hundred million Christians were killed by other Christians in numerous wars, including two world wars? May we remind his holiness that he himself sixty years ago was a member of the Hitler Youth? And then how about the spread of Catholicism in South America ? Was it done through the example of platonic love and self-abnegation?"
By Khalid Amayreh
Palestine-info
"Yes, we both have our misunderstandings and misgivings and peculiar beliefs and convictions, both as individuals and as religious and cultural communities. However, it would be unforgivable if we allowed these differences to marginalize let alone neutralize the fundamental common grounds between our religions, commonly called the Abrahamic religions.
There is always a huge reservoir of quotes, positive and negative, about religions and religious symbols. A Muslim or non-Muslim could easily amass a preponderance of quotes and texts from the Old Testament, for example, to prove that the Bible advocates murder.
In truth, the Prophet of Islam, Muahmmed (Peace be on him), never ever really called for spreading religion with the sword. The Quran states in Surat (chapter) al-Nahl, v. 134, “Invite to the path of thy Lord with wisdom and good advice, and argue with them kindly, for Thy Lord is well aware of those who go astray and He is aware of those who follow true guidance.”
Indeed, the very next verse states that “if thou should punish (aggressors) punish only in proportion to the aggression inflicted upon you, but if ye be patient, it will be better for the patient.”
Let us take Indonesia , the largest Muslim country in terms of population size, as an example. Historically, it is well known that no Muslim armies had ever set foot on the huge archipelago. Yet all these millions chose to embrace the religion endeared to them by Arabian merchants and sailors who had exemplified to the natives the Islamic ideals of honesty, purity and faithfulness.
A few days ago, a Jewish lady, who had lost 8 relatives in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, appeared on Aljazeera TV, explaining why she decided to revert to Islam only a few months after the landmark tragedy. She simply said that “I found truth in Islam.” The same can be said about the estimated 20,000 Americans who have embraced Islam after 9/11.
Besides, what modicum of objectivity and honesty can there be in the words of an emperor who had lost his throne and empire because of Islam.? What else would we expect from the mouth of that loser?
Furthermore, the Pope should have realized that he lives in a glass house. I want to remind him of the history of the Catholic Church upon the helm of which he now sits. It was the Church that burned scientists alive, it was the Church that invented the Indulgences and Simony systems, it was the Catholic world that invented the Inquisitions, the pogroms, and all other abominations associated with its dark practices against critics and opponents, including Christians who didn’t extend fealty to Rome .
And the Crusades? And the Holocaust? Must we re-open these dark chapters again? Do we have to remind his holiness that in the past century alone, over a hundred million Christians were killed by other Christians in numerous wars, including two world wars? May we remind his holiness that he himself sixty years ago was a member of the Hitler Youth? And then how about the spread of Catholicism in South America ? Was it done through the example of platonic love and self-abnegation?"
Papal Insults
A Bavarian Provocation
A GREAT PIECE
By TARIQ ALI
"I think he knew what he was saying and why. Choosing a quote from Manuel II Paleologos, not the most intelligent of the Byzantine rulers, was somewhat disingenuous, especially on the eve of a visit to Turkey.
The Muslim world with two of its countries---Iraq and Afghanistan-- directly occupied by Western troops does not need to be reminded of the language of the Crusades.
It was the Catholic Church that declared War on Islam in the Iberian Peninsula and Sicily. Mass expulsions, killings, forced conversions and a vicious Inquisition to police the cleansed Europe and the reformist Protestant enemy. Jews and Protestants alike were granted refuge by the Ottoman Empire, a refuge they would have been denied had Istanbul remained Constantinople.
'Slaves, obey your human masters.For Christ is the real master you serve' said Paul (Colossians 3: 22-24) in establishing a collaborationist tradition which fell on its knees before wealth and power and which reached its apogee during the Second World War where the leadership of the Church collaborated with fascism and did not speak up against the judeocide or the butchery on the Eastern Front. Islam does not need pacifist lessons from this Church.
Not all Christians joined in the crusades old and new. When Pope Urban launched the crusades the Norman king of Sicily refused to send troops in which Sicilian Muslims would be compelled to fight against Muslims in the East. His son, Roger II, refused to back the Second Crusade. In doing so they showed more courage than the leaders of contemporary Italy, who are only too willing to join the imperial crusades against the Muslim world.
'To make sure of being right in all things', said the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola, 'we ought always to hold to the principle that the white I see I should believe to be black if the hierarchical church were so to rule.'
Today most Catholic prelates in the West (including the Bavarian in the Vatican) and politicians of Centre-Left/Right worship the real Pope who lives in the White House and tells them when black is white.
Amen."
A GREAT PIECE
By TARIQ ALI
"I think he knew what he was saying and why. Choosing a quote from Manuel II Paleologos, not the most intelligent of the Byzantine rulers, was somewhat disingenuous, especially on the eve of a visit to Turkey.
The Muslim world with two of its countries---Iraq and Afghanistan-- directly occupied by Western troops does not need to be reminded of the language of the Crusades.
It was the Catholic Church that declared War on Islam in the Iberian Peninsula and Sicily. Mass expulsions, killings, forced conversions and a vicious Inquisition to police the cleansed Europe and the reformist Protestant enemy. Jews and Protestants alike were granted refuge by the Ottoman Empire, a refuge they would have been denied had Istanbul remained Constantinople.
'Slaves, obey your human masters.For Christ is the real master you serve' said Paul (Colossians 3: 22-24) in establishing a collaborationist tradition which fell on its knees before wealth and power and which reached its apogee during the Second World War where the leadership of the Church collaborated with fascism and did not speak up against the judeocide or the butchery on the Eastern Front. Islam does not need pacifist lessons from this Church.
Not all Christians joined in the crusades old and new. When Pope Urban launched the crusades the Norman king of Sicily refused to send troops in which Sicilian Muslims would be compelled to fight against Muslims in the East. His son, Roger II, refused to back the Second Crusade. In doing so they showed more courage than the leaders of contemporary Italy, who are only too willing to join the imperial crusades against the Muslim world.
'To make sure of being right in all things', said the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola, 'we ought always to hold to the principle that the white I see I should believe to be black if the hierarchical church were so to rule.'
Today most Catholic prelates in the West (including the Bavarian in the Vatican) and politicians of Centre-Left/Right worship the real Pope who lives in the White House and tells them when black is white.
Amen."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)