A new group warns of blowing up the Rafah terminal if it remains closed

"A new Gaza-based group, calling itself the Brigades for Supporting the Oppressed, threatened on Tuesday to blow up the Rafah crossing terminal "if Egypt continues to close it."

In a statement emailed to media outlets the newly-emerged group threatened also to kidnap Egyptian security personnel in order to swap them with Palestinians imprisoned by Egyptian authorities.

In addition, the statement urged the ruling Hamas party to unilaterally stop dealing with Egypt as a mediator for a potential Israeli-Palestinian prisoner swap deal and to promise not to take part in the Cairo-mediated national dialogue until Egypt allows stranded patients and students to go exit and enter the Strip freely.

Earlier this week, sources close to the ruling Hamas party slammed the Egyptian authorities for what they termed as "Egypt's improper operation of their side of the crossing terminal," as a lot of people have been denied exit.

Since Hamas took over Gaza in June 2007, Egypt has closed the Rafah crossing terminal and Israel imposed a crippling blockade on Gaza. Egypt used to reopen the crossing from time to time to allow patients and travelers in and out of Gaza."

Brokers and Bankers First, by Tab

(Click on cartoon to enlarge)

By Tab, the Calgary Sun

THERE WILL BE HOPE IN GAZA

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Date : 09-22-2008

"(LARNACA, 22 September 2008) - The Free Gaza Movement announced today that an international delegation of doctors, parliamentarians, and human rights workers will sail to Gaza aboard the SS Hope on Wednesday, September 24th. A press conference will be held on Wednesday at Larnaca Port prior to the ship’s departure.

The passengers on board include:
- 5 physicians from 4 countries
- human rights lawyers and monitors
- Jamal Zahalka, a member of the Israeli Knesset
- Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, and member of the Palestinian Legislative Council
- Mairead Maguire, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her work in Belfast

According to Maguire, a world-renowned human rights campaigner, “This mission carries with it the hopes and wishes of many people around the world."

On August 23, two of the Free Gaza Movement’s boats, the SS Free Gaza and the SS Liberty arrived in Gaza Port to the jubilation of tens of thousands of Palestinians gathered there. It was the first time in over forty years that international ships had docked in Gaza Port.

Since Israel tightened its blockade two years ago, malnutrition and unemployment rates in Gaza have soared. In May 2008, several international aid organizations, including CARE International UK, CAFOD, Christian Aid, Oxfam, and Medecins du Monde UK, stated that, “the stranglehold on Gaza’s borders has made ... the work of the UN and other humanitarian agencies ... virtually impossible. Only a trickle of medicine, food, fuel and other goods is being allowed in…making people highly dependent on food aid, and brought the health system and basic services, such as water and sanitation near to collapse.”

Huwaida Arraf, the delegation spokesperson and a law lecturer at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, said, “The world cannot stay silent as the Palestinian people are deliberately starved and humiliated; Palestinians have a right to life with dignity. Last month, on August 23rd, our two, small, wooden boats, the SS Free Gaza and SS Liberty, sailed to Gaza and did what our governments would not do - we defied Israel’s illegal collective punishment of 1.5 million men, women and children living in the Gaza Strip. On September 24th, we’re sailing back to Gaza to challenge it again. Our boats are very humble, but what they represent is hope, and hope is what mobilizes change the world around.”

The SS Hope was named in recognition of St. Augustine, who wrote that “Hope is the greatest of all virtues, even greater than Love. For Love only teaches us what should be, while Hope teaches us what will be.”

For More Information, please contact:
(Cyprus/Gaza) Huwaida Arraf, +972 59 913 0426 / huwaida.arraf@gmail.com
(Cyprus) Greta Berlin, +357 99 081 767 / iristulip@gmail.com "

Protesters say they'll set sail again to Gaza from Cyprus Wed.

"Protesters who defied Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip to bring aid to Palestinians last month say they are making a return voyage.

Free Gaza organizer Greta Berlin says about 20 protesters will sail Wednesday from Cyprus aboard a boat named Hope for the 20-hour trip to the Palestinian territory.

Berlin says Irish Nobel peace prize winner Mairead McGuire and an Italian opera tenor will be among the passengers.

She said Tuesday protesters will deliver a consignment of medicine and ferry Palestinians back to the east Mediterranean island on the return trip......"

Remembering Edward Said Five Years On

By Stephen Lendman – Chicago
Palestine Chronicle

".....It was in all his writings and outspokenness - so powerful, passionate, virtuous and a testimony to his uncompromising principles. He described "Sharonian evil." His blind destructiveness. His terrorism in ordering the massacring of children, then congratulating one pilot for his great success. The patently dishonest media. Its one-sided support for Israel. Its suppressing other views. Its turning a blind eye to the grossest crimes against humanity, day after day after day. Of relegating public discourse to repetitive official propaganda. Of subverting truth in support of power and privilege.

Of turning Palestine into an isolated prison. Suffocating an entire people of their existence. Of impoverishing, starving and slaughtering them. Of attacking defenseless civilians with tanks and F-16s. Of blaming victims for their own terror. Of creating a vast wasteland of destruction and human misery. Of sanctioning torture and targeted assassinations as official policy. Of committing every imaginable human indignity and degradation against people whose only crime is their faith, ethnicity, and presence. Whose only defense is their will and redoubtable spirit. Of enlisting world support for the most unspeakable, unrelenting campaign of terror and genocide.

Of pursuing an endless "cycle of violence" and consigning Palestinians to a "slow death" in defense of imperial interests and the national security state. Of pursuing peace as a scheme for "pacification." Of placing the onus for it "squarely on Palestinian shoulders." Of "putting an end to the (Palestinian) problem." Of placing huge demands on Palestinians and making no concessions in return. Of calling resistance "terrorism" while ignoring oppressive occupation as the fundamental problem. Of seeing Palestinians endure and survive in spite of every imaginable assault, affront and indignity. Of piling on even more and seeing an even greater will to survive and prevail......"

Ashes of Empire

".....Reading history books may not be required at the Naval Academy, but Adm. Mullen should consider some historical analogies. Afghanistan has been the graveyard of empires ever since Alexander the Great had trouble crossing the Khyber Pass in 326 B.C. He wisely decided to pretty much leave the tribesmen alone and moved south to India. From the Middle Ages on, waves of invading Mongols, Moghul rulers of India, and Persians have swept through the area, but the Afghan tribes have always proved fractious and hard to rule.

Foreign domination ended in 1747 when the Persians were expelled from the western part of the country and a local dynasty was established that survived into the 20th century......

....If it is being argued that an enhanced U.S. presence in Afghanistan will suddenly turn things around and make the world a better and safer place, it is the right of the American public, which is sending its sons and daughters into the meat grinder, to demand an explanation of why that is so. I do not believe that such a case has been or can be made. It is time to consider leaving Afghanistan. "

Casualties of another war

The Marriott bombing is terrible revenge for the Afghan campaign that has gone so badly wrong

Tariq Ali
The Guardian, Tuesday September 23 2008

".....Hellfire missiles, drones, special operation raids inside Pakistan and the resulting deaths of innocents have fuelled Pashtun nationalism. It is this spillage from the war in Afghanistan that is now destabilising Pakistan......

Why was the Marriot targeted? Two explanations have surfaced in the media. The first is that there was a planned dinner for the president and his cabinet there that night, which was cancelled at the last moment.

The second, reported in the respected Pakistani English-language newspaper, Dawn, is that "a top secret operation of the US Marines [was] going on inside the Marriott when it was attacked". According to the paper: "Well-equipped security officers from the US embassy were seen on the spot soon after the explosions. However, they left the scene shortly afterwards."

The country's largest newspaper, the News, also reported on Sunday that witnesses had seen US embassy steel boxes being carried into the Marriott at night on September 17. According to the paper, the steel boxes were permitted to circumvent security scanners stationed at the hotel entrance.

Mumtaz Alam, a member of parliament, witnessed this. He wanted to leave the hotel but, owing to the heavy security, he was not permitted to leave at the time and is threatening to raise the issue in parliament.

These may be the motivations for this particular attack, but behind it all is the shadow of an expanding war."

Shot by both sides

Pakistan's president Asif Ali Zardari cannot easily please his US paymasters and his anti-American electorate

Dilip Hiro
guardian.co.uk, Monday September 22 2008

"The message of the suicide bombers responsible for the devastating assault on the Marriott hotel in the heart of Islamabad on Saturday, which reduced the 290-room hotel to a skeleton and left 53 people dead, was simple and chilling. "We are powerful enough to attack any target we choose, and will do so until the Pakistani government stops its military strikes in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and elsewhere.".......

Anxious to catch or capture Bin Laden, widely believed to be ensconced in Fata, before he leaves the White House in January 2009, Bush will pressurise Zardari to intensify military attacks in Fata while keeping intact his secret authorisation to the Pentagon's Special Operations Forces, stationed in Afghanistan, to enter Fata without even informing Pakistan to kill or capture the "bad guys".

Such acts will undermine the legitimacy of the Zardari government, alienate Pakistan's military high command, and feed anti-American feelings among ordinary Pakistanis. But by then a retired Bush will be busily cutting brush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas."

Hamas Asks the Pharaoh to Act Not Like a Pharaoh! How Pathetic of Hamas!

Hamas asks Mubarak to stop ill practices of Egyptian security forces at Rafah

"GAZA, (PIC)-- The Hamas Movement has requested Monday Egyptian president Mohammed Husni Mubarak to immediately intervene to stop the heinous practices of the Egyptian security forces stationed at the Rafah crossing against the Palestinian people.

"These practices were foreign to the customs of the honorable Egyptian people", asserted Hamas in a statement it issued on Monday and a copy of which was obtained by the PIC.

The Movement also called on the Egyptian leadership to check the complaints of the Palestinian travelers on the Egyptian security forces of insulting Palestinian women, asking for bribes [from travelers], and of dealing with the Palestinian travelers on selective basis in cooperation with the Ramalah-based PA government that deepen the Palestinian rift further.

"Such painful practices that were published by media outlets are polluting the atmosphere of the Egypt-sponsored inter-Palestinian national talks in Cairo", Hamas underlined.

But the Movement hailed the efforts of the PA interior ministery personnel at the crossing point in facilitating and organizing the travelers' movement at the borders, commending the discipline and the honest way that were practiced by the Palestinian personnel in dealing with the Palestinian travelers and in dealing with the Egyptian administration of the crossing point which reveals that the PA interior elements were capable to run the crossing point efficiently.

The Movement also saluted the Egyptian people's eagerness to support and help the besieged Palestinian people in Gaza Strip with all available means [SAY WHAT??; WHO ARE YOU KIDDING??] , and to break the unjust Israeli blockade imposed on them, adding that the honorable Egyptian people are rejecting those ill practices of the Egyptian forces at Rafah crossing point."

Live and let die

William Parry, The Electronic Intifada, 22 September 2008

".....What will McCartney open with, "Pipes of Peace" or "Ebony and Ivory"? Given the reality on the ground, which he refuses to acknowledge, why not open with "Live and Let Die" to a rapturous Israeli audience?

"Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see," the Beatles once sang. This is what Israel is about -- denial. Denial regarding its responsibility for creating 750,000 Palestinian refugees in 1948 through massacres and a campaign of terror. Denial of its legal obligations over six decades toward these refugees, who now exceed 7 million people, comprising the largest refugee population in the world. Denial concerning the ongoing dispossession and ethnic cleansing that is blindingly obvious to anyone who wishes to see it......"

Threat to Democracy in Latin America

by Harold Pinter and John Pilger and Tony Benn

Global Research, September 21, 2008

"On September 10 President Evo Morales of Bolivia declared the US ambassador persona non grata. On September 11 (the 35th anniversary of the military overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile) the president of Venezuela asked the US ambassador there to leave the country. President Hugo Chávez believed he was facing the possibility of an imminent coup d'etat in which he said the US administration were involved. President Morales believed that his government was facing serious destabilisation which was also being fomented by the US. A third country, Paraguay, announced 10 days previously that it had detected a conspiracy involving military officers and opposition politicians.

Latin America now faces its most serious crisis since the reintroduction of democracy at the end of the 20th century. The plot against democracy in Venezuela centred on a conspiracy, revealed in telephone conversations between senior military officers broadcast on national television, to assassinate the democratically elected head of state. In Bolivia, the separatist prefects of the five eastern and southern departments have begun a campaign of violence and economic sabotage designed to destabilise the democratic regime.

These events show unequivocally who defends democracy and who threatens it today. We are appalled by the failure of much of the international media to provide accurate and proportionate coverage of these events. All democrats throughout should rally to defend democracy in Latin America......"

The gloves are off in Pakistan

By Syed Saleem Shahzad
Asia Times

"Hundreds of American "training officials", with 20 large containers of "equipment", have taken over a large chunk of land at a base for Pakistani special forces. Their unstated targets are al-Qaeda leaders and Taliban militants. The militants have already responded to this new phase of the "war on terror" with the weekend suicide truck bombing at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad...."

Fleecing What’s Left of the Treasury

By Chris Hedges

"The lobbyists and corporate lawyers, the heads of financial firms and the crooks who control Wall Street, all those who spent the last three decades assuring us that government was part of the problem and should get out of the way, are now busy looting the U.S. treasury. They are also working feverishly inside the Democratic and Republican parties to blunt any effective regulatory reform as they pass on their distressed assets to us....."

Abbas's officers and their Israeli counterparts classify Hamas as common foe

"OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- An Israeli journalist revealed Sunday that a meeting took place between Fatah-affiliated PA security officers and their Israeli counterparts during which the two sides agreed on waging a fierce war on the Hamas Movement as the common enemy.

Journalist Nahum Barnea, a senior commentator in the Yediot Ahronot, said that he was the only journalist who was allowed to attend the meeting held last week at the IOF headquarters in the Beit Eil settlement near Ramallah.

Barnea underlined that the talk was briefly about a violent confrontation between Hamas and Fatah that is expected to take place in January to control the West Bank.

"On the ninth of January, Mahmoud Abbas's term of office will expire; he is determined to stay in office until January 2010. The possibility of declaring Gaza a rebel region must not be ruled out," a PA officer was quoted as saying.

According to the journalist, commander of PA general security apparatus, Abu Al-Fateh told Israeli officers that there is no conflict between Fatah and Israel because both have a common enemy. "There is a major conflict going on here in preparation for the month of January. Abbas is peace-oriented, and you have to promote his position", Abu Al-Fateh said.

The PA officers also agreed on sending Fatah-affiliated military group from Jericho to Al-Khalil, suggesting that the group should move to Al-Khalil at night Friday in order to avoid any confrontation with Israeli settlers.

For his part, PA intelligence chief Majed Faraj blatantly said: "Hamas is the enemy. We decided to wage a war against it and I am telling you, there will be no dialog with Hamas." "Now, We are dealing with every Hamas institution you send its name to us. You gave us lately names of 64 institutions and we have dealt with 50 of them. Some of these institutions were closed and in others, the administrations were replaced," Faraj added, bragging that the PA security apparatuses also seized Hamas funds.

For his part, another PA official called Hussein Al-Sheikh pointed out during the meeting that Hamas does not have military force in the West Bank, but it has the ability to bring the Palestinian masses to the street....... "

There We Go, Again: Iran 'galloping toward a nuclear bomb,' military intelligence chief says

"Iran is trying to enrich uranium, a critical step in developing nuclear capability, the head of Military Intelligence's research department told the cabinet on Sunday.

"Iran is developing a command of uranium-enrichment technology and is galloping toward a nuclear bomb," said Brig. Gen. Yossi Baidatz.

He said there is an increasing gap between between Iran's progress in developing the bomb and the global pressure to halt that process, and added that Israel's assessment that the Islamic Republic is focusing on improving uranium enrichment is consistent with the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report on the matter....."

Palestinian Politics on the Road to Nowhere

Analysis by Mel Frykberg

"RAMALLAH, West Bank, Sep 22 (IPS) - Israeli-Palestinian peace talks appear to have hit a dead-end, while efforts to bridge the yawning chasm which divides Hamas and Fatah politically and ideologically appear to be going nowhere.....

It is widely believed that Israel, together with the U.S., was responsible for arming and training Fatah cadres in the Gaza strip to overthrow Hamas, before Hamas short-circuited the move with its own military coup that brought it into power in Gaza last year (after winning the election in 2006).

Many believe that Hamas was provoked into taking over. Extensive media reports both regionally and internationally had spoken of shipment of arms from Egypt through the Rafah crossing to beleaguered Fatah men in Gaza. As Israel monitors the Rafah crossing, these would not have reached Gaza without its complicity and tacit coordination with Cairo.

In May of last year, shortly before Hamas overthrew the PNA, U.S. Security Coordinator to Israel and the Palestinians, Lieutenant-General Keith Dayton, in testimony before the House Subcommittee on the Middle East, admitted that the U.S. was helping and training Fatah in its fight against Hamas. Earlier the U.S. State Department had denied this.

A factor further complicating the multi-dimensional dynamics of political developments is Hamas's recent differences with Egypt....."

'The American Left (Dailykos) Also Is Claimed by the Israel Lobby'

By Philip Weiss

"One of the most important political posts I've seen in a while was done by Richard Silverstein out of Washington State yesterday.......

.....This is a hugely important interchange. It shows that, as Mary-Kay Wilmers of the London Review of Books said to me so sagaciously 2 years ago, The American left is also claimed by the Israel lobby. It means that the burden of waging Israel's p.r. war falls so heavily even on liberal Democrats that you cannot broach the subject in good lefty circles without fear of ending the dinner party. It means that Jews are a tremendously important part of the Democratic base, left (Dailykos) or lib (Huffpo) it makes no difference. It explains why Peace Now never left AIPAC's constituent body and why brave J Street must be careful about how it attacks McCain on Jerusalem. It explains Mel Levine and Steve Grossman and the other Lieberman hawks who remain good bedfellows in the Democratic base and are Atilla the Hun when it comes to Israel, and explains why Dershowitz can call himself a "liberal Democrat" without demurral, and Jimmy Carter is PNG......."

Where's Canada's oversight to protect human rights?

By Maher Arar
The Globe and Mail

".....Two years later, Canadians still have no credible recourse for reporting human-rights abuses perpetrated by these agencies. While the existing review bodies for the RCMP and CSIS - the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP and the Security Intelligence Review Committee - serve a valuable function, they have failed to prevent these agencies from engaging in activities that violate basic human rights of Canadian citizens - activities such as leaking selective and sometimes false information to the media, interrogating a minor "softened up" by weeks of sleep deprivation, and working against the return of a Canadian citizen to Canada......"

Two US marines killed in Islamabad explosion

"Monday, September 22, 2008
ISLAMABAD: The US Department of Defence at Pentagon has confirmed the death of its two marines in Hotel Marriott blast in Islamabad. According to GEO News, the Pentagon said on Sunday its two marines succumbed to injuries in the blast. The soldiers were deployed in the US embassy in Islamabad, it said....."

The American Empire: Too Big to Fail?

Who gets bailed out – and who doesn't

By Justin Raimondo

".....The policy of bank credit expansion, which enriches the already wealthy at the expense of the rest of us, has a fatal allure. It induces an initial euphoria, the false promise of permanent prosperity. This Panglossian view is the perfect economic system for an emerging empire, especially one with such inflated pretensions as ours. It is the economics of hubris – the same grandiosity that let us imagine we could implant "democracy" in the arid soil of Iraq and make the desert bloom.....

This outrageous rip-off is mirrored in the foreign policy realm, where the very same crowd that dragged us waist-deep into the Middle Eastern quicksand are lecturing us from every podium. The neocons who brought us the Iraq war are directing John McCain's campaign, hanging on to power for dear life, shamelessly touting their alleged "success" even as the $3 trillion bill comes in and the people ask "For what?' These are the real dead-enders, the ones who believe that George W. Bush never implemented his self-proclaimed "global democratic revolution," but they will.

The same foreign lobbyists who pushed for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by U.S. force of arms have now turned their sights on Iran. The same newspaper columnists and professional know-it-alls who imagined that we would have a quick victory in Iraq – that it would be a "cakewalk," as one of the more arrogant neocons once put it – are still dominating the official discourse with their calls to action on this front and that. Bill Kristol, the little Lenin of the neocons, who made the Iraq war his vocation, was awarded a coveted pulpit on the op-ed page of the New York Times. Other people are demoted for advocating failed policies, but members in good standing of the War Party are promoted. They, too, are too big to fail.

When the bill comes due, American taxpayers – and grieving parents and loved ones of the fallen – will have to pay, while the authors of our suicidal foreign policy get off scot-free......"