In praise of ... hummus

Leader
Friday February 23, 2007
The Guardian


"The disappearance of hummus from the shelves after a hygiene problem at a plant supplying supermarkets has revealed the depth of popular addiction to this appealing paste. Its taste, at once earthy and refreshing, now has a large place in the British palate. Its grainy texture offers what food chemists call "mouthfeel" at its best. It is as moreish as chocolate or ice cream, yet its healthy ingredients induce a feeling of virtue not available with those of other foodstuffs. Who could shake a stick at sesame seeds, chickpeas, olive oil, cumin, garlic and lemon juice? And who expects to wake up to find that the British Medical Journal has identified hummus as the cause of some feared disease?

It is best made at home, but bought versions are not to be despised. In the Middle East it is a dip about which there are many schools of thought. The supersmooth hummus of Beirut is different from that of Damascus, lighter than that of Cairo, and a world away from the rougher product of Cypriot kitchens, while the Israelis tend to skimp on the olive oil. Apart from using good oil, the most important difference is to do with the chickpea skins, which must be rigorously rubbed off, or else grittiness ensues.
The process through which hummus, pesto and salsa have become essential lubricants of British life, displacing the old trinity of salad cream, tomato ketchup and brown sauce, has been a beneficial one. But while pesto divides and salsa inflames, hummus soothes. May it soon return to the aisles."

The US psychological torture system is finally on trial

America has deliberately driven hundreds, perhaps thousands, of prisoners insane. Now it is being held to account in a Miami court

Naomi Klein
Friday February 23, 2007
The Guardian

"Something remarkable is going on in a Miami courtroom. The cruel methods US interrogators have used since September 11 to "break" prisoners are finally being put on trial. This was not supposed to happen. The Bush administration's plan was to put José Padilla on trial for allegedly being part of a network linked to international terrorists. But Padilla's lawyers are arguing that he is not fit to stand trial because he has been driven insane by the government......

It's difficult to overstate the significance of these hearings. The techniques used to break Padilla have been standard operating procedure at Guantánamo Bay since the first prisoners arrived five years ago. They wore blackout goggles and sound-blocking headphones and were placed in extended isolation, interrupted by strobe lights and heavy metal music. These same practices have been documented in dozens of cases of "extraordinary rendition" carried out by the CIA, as well as in prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan.......

These standard mind-breaking techniques have never faced scrutiny in an American court because the prisoners in the jails are foreigners and have been stripped of the right of habeas corpus - a denial that, scandalously, was just upheld by a federal appeals court in Washington DC. There is only one reason Padilla's case is different - he is a US citizen. The administration did not originally intend to bring Padilla to trial, but when his status as an enemy combatant faced a supreme court challenge, the administration abruptly changed course, charging Padilla and transferring him to civilian custody. That makes Padilla's case unique - he is the only victim of the post-9/11 legal netherworld to face an ordinary US trial......

There is no need to go so far back to prove that the US military knew full well that it was driving Padilla mad. The army's field manual, reissued just last year, states: "Sensory deprivation may result in extreme anxiety, hallucinations, bizarre thoughts, depression, and antisocial behaviour" - as well as "significant psychological distress".

If these techniques drove Padilla insane, that means the US government has been deliberately driving hundreds, possibly thousands, of prisoners insane around the world. What is on trial in Florida is not one man's mental state. It is the whole system of US psychological torture."

By Steve Bell, The Guardian

Occupied Palestine like apartheid South Africa, says UN report

Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
Friday February 23, 2007
The Guardian

"A UN human rights investigator has likened Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories to apartheid South Africa and says there should be "serious consideration" over bringing the occupation to the international court of justice.The report by John Dugard, a South African law professor who is the UN's special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, represents some of the most forceful criticism yet of Israel's 40-year occupation.

Prof Dugard said although Israel and apartheid South Africa were different regimes, "Israel's laws and practices in the OPT [occupied Palestinian territories] certainly resemble aspects of apartheid." His comments are in an advance version of a report on the UN Human Rights Council's website ahead of its session next month.

After describing the situation for Palestinians in the West Bank, with closed zones, demolitions and preference given to settlers on roads, with building rights and by the army, he said: "Can it seriously be denied that the purpose of such action is to establish and maintain domination by one racial group (Jews) over another racial group (Palestinians) and systematically oppressing them? Israel denies that this is its intention or purpose. But such an intention or purpose may be inferred from the actions described in this report."

He dismissed Israel's argument that the sole purpose of the vast concrete and steel West Bank barrier is for security. "It has become abundantly clear that the wall and checkpoints are principally aimed at advancing the safety, convenience and comfort of settlers," he said.

Gaza remained under occupation despite the withdrawal of settlers in 2005. "In effect, following Israel's withdrawal, Gaza became a sealed-off, imprisoned and occupied territory," he said......"

The Fourth Estate Sale

By Mike Luckovich

Apartheid looks like this

Jonathan Cook* joins a watchdog group on duty in the West Bank, documenting abuses and numberless humiliations that characterise the daily life of ordinary Palestinians under occupation.

Al-Ahram Weekly

How War Criminal Cheney Was Received in Sydney

See More Photos Here

What is behind Russia’s delay of Iran’s nuclear reactor?

An Interesting Angle
by Peter Symonds

Global Research, February 22, 2007

"Russian officials suddenly announced on Monday that work on Iran’s nuclear power reactor at the southern port of Bushehr would be slowed due to Tehran’s failure to make scheduled payments on the construction contract. Far from being an ordinary commercial dispute, the delay is another pointer to the extreme tensions produced by the Bush administration’s military threats against Iran.

The Russian announcement came just two days before a UN Security Council deadline for Iran to shut down its uranium enrichment facilities. Tehran, which insists that all its nuclear programs are for peaceful purposes, has refused to comply. The Bushehr reactor, which is being completed by Russian firms, is designed to produce electricity and is not included in the UN resolution......

The BBC reported on Monday that the US Central Command had completed drawing up a list of targets for an air war on Iran, including its nuclear facilities and most of its military infrastructure. Among the list of nuclear targets is the Bushehr reactor, even though its purpose is the provision of electricity and an agreement has been signed to return all spent fuel rods to Russia.

In this context, the Russia’s announced delay in the Bushehr project takes on a more sinister aspect. The most critical component of the timetable is the provision of reactor fuel—enriched uranium—which was due to take place next month. Once the fuel is loaded, any air strike on the reactor has the potential to send a plume of radiated dust and debris into the atmosphere affecting not only Iran but neighbouring countries. Russian technicians employed on the site would also be endangered, threatening to provoke an international incident.

The sudden Russian delay raises the obvious question: just what does the Putin administration know about the Bush administration’s plans for a military attack on Iran?"

All Wind, All The Time

The Final Punch

As the voice of reason, from a traditionalist viewpoint, is being hushed or sidelined, the warmongers’ hold on Washington is still as tight as ever, one of whom is Israel and its dedicated friends on Capitol Hill.


By Ramzy Baroud

"The configuration of the New Middle East — as envisaged by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during the Israeli war against Lebanon in July-August 2006, most certainly has no place for more than one regional power broker, namely Israel.

Under such an arrangement — subservient Arabs and Iran governed by an all powerful Israel and supervised, even from afar by the seemingly philanthropic United States — would ensure Israel’s ‘security’, which has for long served as a casus belli, and supposed American interests in the region; regardless of what one thinks of such logic, in Washington, it is still prevailing......

It is unlikely that Iran will back down; again the North Korea lesson is too fresh, too poignant to ignore. Moreover, the Islamic Republic has a formidable power base in Iraq and Lebanon: Shia militias and the Hezbollah resistance movement respectively; the former is capable of worsening the US army’s plight in Iraq by several fold if decided to join the ongoing Sunni resistance, and the latter has proved an insurmountable foe to Israel in their latest military showdown last summer.

Naturally, the US — which is caught in an unwinnable war in Iraq, confined and blinded by its bizarre alliance with Israel, which is more of a liability to Washington than a strategic advantage and who is watching its own New World Order faltering under its feet, with Latin America going its separate ways, and China moving into what has been the unchallenged domains of the United States for decades — should be expected to avoid a military confrontation at any cost. Savvy US diplomat and former Secretary of State James Baker had many ominous warnings in his Iraq Study Group recommendations. A traditionalist and a pro-business politician, Baker knows well that without a quick exit from Iraq, chaos will befall the waning empire, which is ultimately bad for business. Baker also knows that without solving the Arab-Israeli conflict, the US regional woes will amplify beyond repair......

Evidently, Israel is a prime cheerleader for war, and most likely Israeli agents are working overtime to provide the needed case for war; at least we know, through news reports that Israeli agents are actively involved in Iraq and there is a possibility that they have penetrated the Iranian domain as well, through the northern Kurdish areas. Last November, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appointed a major war advocate, Avigdor Lieberman, as the country’s Minister of Strategic Affairs and also as Deputy Prime Minister. Lieberman’s appointment was principally aimed at ‘countering’ the Iranian threat; championing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, has recently visited Washington to largely discuss the Iranian threat and won standing ovations and endless praise of Democrats and Republicans alike.

Other Israeli politicians have been adamant in their efforts to convince Washington that a war against Iran will yield strategic dividends and will ease the US mission in reigning in occupied Iraq, and will provide Israel with the security it covets. Of course, Israel knows well the disastrous affect that a war on Iran will bring to the waning American empire (even if merely by observing the Iraqi situation) but it matters little in the end, as long as the Iranian threat is eliminated, or so goes the Israeli logic."

Half of Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza malnourished

By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Published: 22 February 2007

"Around 46 per cent of Gaza and West Bank households are "food insecure" or in danger of becoming so, according to a UN report on the impact of conflict and the global boycott of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.

The unpublished draft report, the first of its kind since the boycott was imposed when the Hamas government took office last March, says bluntly that the problem "is primarily a function of restricted economic access to food resulting from ongoing political conditions".

The report, jointly produced by the UN's World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organisation, paints a bleak picture of the impact on food consumption and expenditure throughout the occupied Palestinian territories. It says that the situation is "more grim" in Gaza where four out of five families have reduced their spending - including on food - in the first quarter of last year alone.

The report acknowledges that "traditionally strong ties" among Palestinian families tend to reduce the possibility of "acute household hunger". But it warns that against a background of decreasing food security since the beginning of the Intifada since 2000 and the loss of PA salaries because of the boycott there are now "growing concerns about the sustainability of Palestinians' resilience".

The report is the latest of a series detailing deepening Palestinian poverty as a result of both closures blocking exports from Gaza and the international and Israeli boycott of the PA. Its timing is especially sensitive, coming to light after both Israel and the US indicated that they will maintain the boycott after the planned Fatah Hamas coalition cabinet takes office unless it clearly commits itself to recognition of Israel, renunciation of violence and adherence to previous agreements with Israel.

The UN report says 34 per cent of households - with income below $1.68 per day and/or showing decreasing food expenditures - are "food insecure" . The WFP officially defines "food security" as "the ability of a household to produce and/or access at all times the minimum food needed for a healthy and active life". It goes on to say that 12 per cent of households are "vulnerable" to food insecurity.

The report acknowledges that the findings are broadly similar to those - albeit estimated on a different basis - at the peak of the Israeli Palestinian conflict in 2003 but points out that the number of Palestinians suffering, including children, are much higher because of rapid population growth

While recognising that "significant per capita humanitarian aid" is helping to contain the problem, the report points out that some action taken by families to continue to feed themselves - including the sale of land, jewellery and other assets" - will have an "irreversible impact on livelihoods". It also points out that limitations to PA budget support, the private sector and job programmes because of the boycott are likely to exacerbate Palestinians' dependency on humanitarian assistance and postpone sustainable improvement."......"

The retreat from Basra

By Patrick Cockburn

"It is an admission of defeat. Iraq is turning into one of the world's bloodiest battlefields in which nobody is safe. Blind to this reality, Tony Blair said yesterday that Britain could safely cut its forces in Iraq because the apparatus of the Iraqi government is growing stronger.

In fact the civil war is getting worse by the day. Food is short in parts of the country. A quarter of the population would starve without government rations. Many Iraqis are ill because their only drinking water comes from the highly polluted Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Nowhere in Mr Blair's statement was any admission of regret for reducing Iraq to a wasteland from which 2 million people have fled and 1.5 million are displaced internally......."

This is driven by poll ratings, not by conditions in Iraq

Jonathan Steele
Thursday February 22, 2007
The Guardian

"Tony Blair has always said that there would be no "artificial timetable" for pulling British troops from Iraq. Their departure would depend on conditions. His announcement yesterday of a minor reduction in troop levels this year reveals what those conditions are: the state of his poll ratings and the degree of movement he is allowed by George Bush......."

Broken Wings...no more.

Layla Anwar At Her Best

".....Rape may come in different forms and shapes, as various as the forms and shapes that commit it.
And just as it disguises itself under different forms, it also has several levels - the several levels of rape.
The mental, the emotional, the spiritual, the political, the geographic, the economic, the social...
All the above categories necessitate de facto the physical realm of which the body is an essential part.
The body thus becomes the recipient, the receiver, the receptacle, the reservoir...of this ultimate act of violence.
The body is an integral part of rape as it is the gate, the entry point, the door, the orifice...of any forceful invasion, penetration. The body and its inner realms, mental, emotional and spiritual are hence, all non consenting recipients of the wrath coming for the "Other".

Seen in that light, rape becomes the ultimate weapon not only of coercion and domination, but also the ultimate weapon of breaking the Spirit of Resistance of its victim(s)......

I trust you took the time to reflect on Sabreen's words. What strikes you most?
For me, it is the "objectification" of the woman. She becomes literally an object of gratification.
And once a person is objectified, they are already stripped of all humanness.
They become a non-person. Hence they can be disposed of, thrown away, killed...

That is why the first thing a rape victim will tell you is "I feel cheap."
Adjectives like cheap are usually used for objects. This object becomes cheap, valueless, worthless...it lost its use so it can be easily gotten rid of, thrown away...

And when a woman becomes an object of pleasure, gratification, desire, lust, power, politics...she loses her sense of self, she irretrievably loses herself.
She becomes anything and nothing at the same time. She becomes the public orifice, the public door, the public entry point, the public gate...A non being.

In this light, the whole of Iraq and its people has become an object of rape under its various forms.
From the collective to the personal. From the public to the private. From the general to the particular...geographically, politically, economically, historically, socially, culturally,individually...raped.
In fact, Iraq has become the ultimate object of gratification.

Since 2003, this country and its women and men have been raped...over and over with no respite until "they" have reached its Soul...to break that resisting Self......

For the most part, all the above victims are sunnis and are related one way or another to the Spirit of the Resistance. The rape is nothing but another mean of breaking that spirit.
The highly despicable,corrupt, sectarian "Iraqi" government and its Iran backed militias are accomplices in this collective act of rape. They are faithfully continuing in the footsteps of their masters, the Americans, who have objectified Iraq and her people, rendered them into things to be coveted, used, abused, pillaged, plundered, raped, vilified, tortured and ...killed......

Iraq and Iraqis have become "the object" of the 21st century.
Stripped of her clothes, beaten, relentlessly raped in her body and soul, raped with their collective hands on her mouth so if she does remember her humanness, she must scream quietly or the neighbors will hear her and we don't want the neighbors to be disturbed...we want to break her Spirit in silence...

Out of curiosity, I did check the dictionary even though I did not need a definition of rape and I found an interesting one.
"the residue of grapes, after the juice has been extracted, used as a filter in making vinegar."

Women of Iraq, you owe it to yourselves for you are Iraq herself.
You are the grapes and the juice that has been forcefully extracted and you have become the sour vinegar...So let your revolt be as sour as that vinegar.

Speak out and scream louder and louder...
Let your screams fill the air and its sky, reaching up to the heavens.
Break it, roar it, thump it, spit it out back at them with full force.
Reach it, feel it and reclaim it ."

***

Bravo Layla; a great comment.

Rice Faces Formidable White House Foe

Recommended Reading
Analysis by Jim Lobe

"......Rather, it appears that Rice's own chief Middle East aide when she served as Bush's national security adviser, Elliott Abrams, has become the principal foil in frustrating her efforts to resume a peace process. Until her meeting in Jerusalem last weekend with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the process had been frozen since the last days of Bill Clinton's administration.

Abrams' personal influence over Bush could not possibly match Rice's, but his bureaucratic skills and political connections -- notably to the so-called "Israel Lobby" of pro-Likud Jewish organisations and the Christian Right -- give him considerable clout. According to various sources, Abrams has been working systematically to undermine any prospect for serious negotiations designed to give substance to Rice's hopes -- and increasingly impatient demands by Saudi King Abdullah -- of offering the Palestinians a "political horizon" for a final settlement.

"The Bush administration has done nothing to press Israel to deliver on its commitments, beyond Washington's empty rhetoric about a two-state 'political horizon'," Henry Siegman, the long-time director of the U.S./Middle East Project at the influential Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in the International Herald Tribune just last week.

"Every time there emerged the slightest hint that the United States may finally engage seriously in a political process, Elliott Abrams would meet secretly with Olmert's envoys in Europe or elsewhere to reassure them that there exists no such danger," he complained......

On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Abrams has long been identified with his hard-line patrons, such as Perle and Podhoretz, who have strongly opposed the "land-for-peace" formula that, until the younger Bush, had been official U.S. policy since 1967......

Throughout the 1990s, Abrams denounced the Oslo peace process in the strongest terms -- a Likud government was engaged in it. When Palestinians launched the second intifada in September 2000, he lambasted mainstream U.S. Jewish groups for their continued support for peace talks between Israel and the PA as "self-delusion". "The Palestinian leadership," he wrote, "does not want peace with Israel, and there will be no peace..."

Signs of a serious breach between the two, however, surfaced during the first days of last summer's Israel-Hezbollah conflict.

Rice reportedly favoured a request by Olmert for Washington to discreetly contact Syrian President Bashar Assad about securing the release of two Israeli soldiers captured by the Lebanese group. Abrams not only strongly opposed such a move, but in a meeting with a "very senior Israeli official" in Jerusalem within 48 hours of the outbreak of hostilities, also suggested that Washington would have no objection if Israel extended its military offensive from Lebanon to Syria, a well-informed source who received an account of the meeting from one of its participants told IPS.....

But, as in the Israel-Hezbollah war, Rice is up against a formidable adversary in Abrams and his confederates in the vice president's office who appear once again to have established their own direct line to Olmert, this time through Turgeman and another top adviser, Yoram Turbowicz.

It was that channel that was in play last Friday, on the eve of the Jerusalem talks, when Olmert held a personal telephone conversation with Bush and emerged claiming that the U.S. president had promised to boycott any new Palestinian government of national unity that includes Hamas so long as the Islamist party does not explicitly recognise Israel, renounce violence, and pledge to abide by existing agreements between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO)."The American and Israeli positions are totally identical," Olmert declared,......"

U.S. favorite accepts key Palestinian ministry post

"GAZA (Reuters) - A U.S.-educated economist with close ties to the Bush administration agreed on Wednesday to serve as finance minister in a Palestinian unity government, despite the threat of a boycott by the United States and Israel.

Salam Fayyad met Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas in the Gaza Strip and told reporters afterwards that he had been invited to assume the post of minister of finance. "I have accepted," Fayyad said.

Fayyad, who has previously served in the post, will be taking on a ministry cut off financially since the Islamist Hamas movement came to power in March.

Palestinians hoped Fayyad's return to the ministry would encourage Israel and Western powers to ease an economic boycott after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction signed a power-sharing pact with Hamas earlier this month.....

A former World Bank and International Monetary Fund official, Fayyad served as finance minister from 2002 to 2005 under a Fatah-led administration before creating the Third Way party and running for parliament.

Fayyad has good relations with President Bush. He met Rice before she had talks with Abbas and Olmert in Jerusalem on Monday.

As finance minister, Fayyad initiated reforms of the financial system that won U.S. and international praise......"

All of Iraq Has Been Raped, Not Just Sabrine.
By Naser Jafari

"Theater Iran Near Term" (TIRANNT)

by Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, February 21, 2007

"DUBAI, UAE, 21 February 2007. Code named by US military planners as TIRANNT, "Theater Iran Near Term" has identified several thousand targets inside Iran as part of a "Shock and Awe" Blitzkrieg, which is now in the final planning stages.

According to the Kuwait-based Arab Times, an attack on Iran under TIRANNT could occur any time between late February and the end of April. This assessment, however, does not take into account the disarray of US ground forces in Iraq as well as the untimely withdrawal of several thousand British troops from the Iraq war theater, many of whom were stationed in Southern Iraq on the immediate border with Iran......

The presumption of this military document, is that a Second 911 attack "which is lacking today" would usefully create both a "justification and an opportunity" to wage war on "some known targets [Iran and Syria]".

Civilian Targets

Press reports in the Middle East confirm that the planned air strikes are by no means limited to Iran's nuclear facilities. Central Command Headquarters in Florida (CENTCOM) has already selected a comprehensive list of military and civilian targets. Industrial sites, civilian infrastructure including roads, water systems, bridges, electric power plants telecommunications towers, government buildings are part of the assumptions underlying the Blitzkrieg. "A single raid could result in 10,000 targets being hit with warplanes flying from the Us and Diego Garcia" (Gulf News, 21 Feb 2007)

Meanwhile, the US has been mustering support for its agenda following the holding of a regional Security Conference in the UAE.....

Redeployment of US Troops

Confirmed by military sources, thousands of US troops are being redeployed from US military facilities in Germany and Italy to undisclosed destinations. One assumes that they are being dispatched to the Middle East war theater in the eventuality that the air strikes will lead into a ground war with Iran......"

EI's Ali Abunimah discusses Rice trip on Flashpoints

Interview, Flashpoints Radio, 21 February 2007

EI co-founder Ali Abunimah was interviewed on Flashpoints Radio on Tuesday, 20 February 2007. He discussed the previous day's talks in Jerusalem with Condoleezza Rice as she presses for Bush's vision for a future Palestinian state. He told host Nora Barrows-Friedman, "The United States and Israel expect Abbas to act as their quisling, really, just a collaborator representing them. And Abbas' transgressions in their books are that he has placed the desire among Palestinians for unity and democracy above the demands of the occupier and the United States."

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