Three small kids bury their mother today in Gaza. They spent the better part of last night locked into a room together, just after they saw the explosion of their front door that killed their mother, and observing soldiers cover her body with a rug. At 11 pm, after six and a half hours of taking care of her younger siblings in a locked room, the 12-year-old daughter Samira was let out and ran next door for help.
Ironically, I read Julia Ward Howe's "Mother's Day Proclamation" immediately after reading about Samira and her mother, Majdi Abd al-Raziq al-Daghma. Mother's Day was meant to be a call for peace, for pacifism and laying down of arms:
The "Mother's Day Proclamation" by Julia Ward Howe was one of the early calls to celebrate Mother's Day in the United States. Written in 1870, Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation was a pacifist reaction to the carnage of the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. The Proclamation was tied to Howe's feminist belief that women had a responsibility to shape their societies at the political level.
Her idea was influenced by Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers' Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.
When Jarvis died in 1907, her daughter, named Anna Jarvis, started the crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother's Day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia, on 10 May 1908, in the church where the elder Ann Jarvis had taught Sunday School. Originally the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, this building is now the International Mother's Day Shrine (a National Historic Landmark). From there, the custom caught on — spreading eventually to 45 states. The holiday was declared officially by some states beginning in 1912. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day, as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.
Nine years after the first official Mother's Day, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become. Mother's Day Proclamation
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice." Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means Whereby the great human family can live in peace, Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, But of God.
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask That a general congress of women without limit of nationality May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient And at the earliest period consistent with its objects, To promote the alliance of the different nationalities, The amicable settlement of international questions, The great and general interests of peace.
Known to the American government as "prisoner #345,"former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Sami Al-Hajj was re-acquainted with his son who he last saw 7 years ago when the boy was 9 months old.
Frail and malnourished from the effects of torture and a 2 year hunger strike, Al-Hajj's weak body (strapped to an ambulance cot) was transported back to his country of origin, Sudan, and taken straight to a Khartoum hospital after he was released from gitmo.
The Al-Jazeera journalist was captured by American forces while covering America's "war on terror" on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. He was detained at gitmo for 7 years without ANY charges brought against him! He described the lurid conditions of his detainment, "rats were treated with more humanity." Explicated in greater detail, is the heartbreaking story of Sami Al-Hajj's unjust detention at Guantanamo Bay as told by Al-Jazeera English:
Interesting Facts about the Sami Al-Hajj case:
He explained that the reason for his detention was "to silence the work of free media."
According to Al-Hajj, detainees were banned from praying.
"Rats were treated with more respect," said Sami Al-Hajj of the conditions at gitmo.
He was interrogated 130 times. Roughly 125 times of those investigations have focused solely on Al Jazeera. According to his lawyer, Americans wanted Sami to say that Al-Jazeera was funded by Al-Qaeda.
Al-Hajj underwent a 2-year hunger strike. In response, American forces in gitmo force fed him with a feeding tube shoved down his throat.
He was the only journalist to be detained in Guantanamo Bay
US authorities invited him to spy on Al-Jazeera activities.
(no really, it's better than the last one.) use whatever you want, just please write or fax something to:
Honorable Judge Gerald Lee U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia 401 Courthouse Square, Alexandria, VA 22314 Fax: (703) 299-3339
RE: The Unjust Imprisonment of Dr. Sami Al-Arian Your Honor,
I am writing to request that you restore some degree of integrity to the justice system of our country by releasing Dr. Sami Al-Arian in this month of April 2008. The plea agreement that was agreed to by both Dr. Al-Arian and the US Government in April of 2006 stipulated his release and expedited deportation on 11 April 2008. As you can see, this date has passed.
Dr. Al-Arian's case has made me lose a great deal of faith in the justice system of our country. It used to be the one branch of government that I was taught to believe was governed by principles. It turns out that this same justice system is willing to keep a man in prison for two and a half years after a jury of his peers failed to convict him of a single charge. It also kept him in prison, most of that time in cruel solitary confinement in a maximum security facility, before he was ever brought to trial. He was the lone pretrial detainee in that facility.
This is not the justice system that I grew up respecting. This is nothing more than a racially motivated abuse of justice for political ends.
Prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia have abused the grand jury process to keep Dr. Al-Arian detained more than a year beyond his original sentence. They continue to threaten further action with this latest court order seeking his testimony. This must not be permitted.
The plea agreement removed all standard language that would allow the government to pursue cooperation. Florida prosecutors have admitted, on the record, Dr. Al-Arian explicitly requested non-cooperation, and that they agreed to his request.
Dr. Al-Arian has been on a hunger strike since the 3rd of March. For the first 18 days, he abstained from both food and water. Since then, he has only taken water. He has lost 35 pounds and his life is in danger. His release is therefore requested not only on legal grounds, but humanitarian grounds as well.
The case of Dr. Sami Al-Arian has drawn international attention, and has dealt a severe blow to the United States of America’s domestic human rights record. Dr. Al-Arian is the most prominent political prisoner in the United States, and the only one currently on hunger strike. His release may restore some level of respect for our institutions in the world view, as well as at home. Only with the expedited release of Dr. Al-Arian can some measure of integrity be restored to our justice system.
It puzzles me why the soldier-throwing-puppy-off-cliff video has drawn far more outrage across the internet than any single video of US soldiers in Iraq committing indiscriminate murder. Perhaps this video, of American troops essentially behaving like assholes, (or children someone made the very poor choice to hand guns and who are drunk on power, or frat boys who would be much better served by being given scissors to run around with) can put the puppy video into a tiny bit of perspective.
At least in part, the sentiment that causes us by and large to focus on the puppy-over-the-cliff, as opposed to indiscriminate disregard for human dignity, property and life, may be due to the fact that many of us know people who have gone to Iraq. Take the town of Killeen, Texas for instance. Stars line the walls of the high school for the hundreds of parents who are in Iraq, they've had to dig an entire new cemetary, and 200 widows have been created by the war since 2003.
We know these people, they're our neighbors. How can we reconcile these images with our own communities, and as such, our own identities? Is it really possible that the victimizers are in fact also victims?
I've written before that I have little faith in human nature, and that each and every one of us is capable of the worst nightmarishly horrible violations, if only given the power, and the ability to think of others as subhuman.
Everyone believed that US troops should remain in Iraq to protect America from terrorists, to honour the dead, such as Gary, and to complete the job... even one whose definition was becoming less certain.
"You want to know why small-town America is losing so many of its people in Iraq?" he asked, his voice quivering. "It's because small-town America still believes in this country, still believes in fighting for the freedom to worship whichever God you believe in. Our young men and women - like Gary - have been sacrificing their lives for this for 200 years. This is America."
Dr. Al-Arian's hunger strike continues; he has lost 34 pounds. Please contact the Attorney General:
Attorney General Michael Mukasey Department of Justice U.S. Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20530-0001 Fax Number: (202) 307-6777 AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
To the Attorney General:
I am writing to request that you restore some degree of integrity to the justice system of our country by releasing Dr. Sami Al-Arian on 11 April 2008, as agreed to by both Dr. Al-Arian and the US Government in April of 2006.
Dr. Al-Arian's case has made me lose a great deal of faith in the justice system of our country. It used to be the one branch of government that I was taught to believe was governed by principles. It turns out that this same justice system is willing to keep a man in prison for two and a half years after a jury of his peers failed to convict him of a single charge.
This is not the justice system that I grew up respecting.
I demand that:
1. Dr. Al-Arian was promised release and expedited deportation in 2006. This must be honored immediately.
2. The Department of Justice must cease abusing it's power through continual grand jury subpoenas and new criminal charges.
3. Given Dr. Al-Arian's hunger strike, there are serious concerns about his health. He must be released and allowed to return to his family for humanitarian reasons.
4. Dr. Al-Arian's imprisonment, and the US Government's abuses of power, have come to the attention of the entire world. His release may restore some level of respect for our institutions in the world view, as well as at home.
PLEASE ALSO CONTACT
1. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Immigration Field Office Vincent Archibeque Acting Field Office Director 2675 Prosperity Avenue Fairfax, VA. 22031 Phone: 703-285-6200
2. Honorable Judge Gerald Lee U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia 401 Courthouse Square, Alexandria, VA 22314 Fax: (703) 299-3339
UPDATE:
Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice and Peace April 12, 2008
Dr. Al-Arian Placed in Punitive Detention
VIRGINIA-- At 1 a.m. on Saturday, Dr. Sami Al-Arian was moved by hostile prison guards from a regular holding cell at the Howard County Detention Center in Jessup, Maryland, to the "Special Housing Unit." The SHU is an extremely punitive and restrictive section of the prison where inmates are placed in solitary confinement 23 hours a day, usually in freezing temperatures.
Prisoners are normally moved there for violating prison rules. However, in the case of Dr. Al-Arian, he has always been placed there without reason or any explanation. In the SHU, prisoners are subjected to continuous, deafening alarm sounds and have little contact with the outside world. With no medical supervision, this is an extremely dangerous place for Dr. Al-Arian to be during his hunger strike, which is on its 41st day. Dr. Al-Arian was also held in solitary confinement for 37 months before and during his trial. This was a deliberate attempt by the government to break him down physically and psychologically and to prevent him from preparing for his trial.
Amnesty International has written several letters decrying the prison conditions of Dr. Al-Arian, calling his treatment "gratuitously punitive" and "inconsistent with international standards for humane treatment."
The Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice and Peace urges all conscientious individuals and organizations to contact the Howard County Detention Center and call for humane treatment of Dr. Al-Arian. We also call on media outlets to cover these abuses, which so far have received no attention.
TAKE ACTION
Call the Howard County Detention Center and ask that Dr. Al-Arian be removed from the Special Housing Unit, where he does not belong, and that the prison ensures he is given proper medical treatment during his hunger strike. The number is (410) 313-5200.
It has been requested recently that letters urging Dr. Al-Arian's release be sent to Judge Gerald Lee of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, to Attorney General Michael Mukasey and to congressional leaders.
Supporters are also being asked to write letters directly to Dr. Al-Arian.
Please write:
Attorney General U.S. Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20530-0001 (202) 307-6777 Fax askdoj@usdoj.gov
Glenn A. Fine, Inspector General Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Ave. Washington, DC 20530-0001
House Judiciary Chair: The Honorable John Conyers, Jr 2426 Rayburn Building Washington, DC 20515 (202) 225-5126 (202) 225-0072 Fax john.conyers@mail.house.gov
Senate Judiciary Chair: Senator Patrick Leahy 433 Russell Senate Office Building United States Senate Washington, DC 20510 (202) 224-4242 senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov
To contribute to Dr. Al-Arian's legal defense, please send checks to: National Liberty Fund P.O. Box 1211 24525 E. Welches Road Welches, OR 97067
The Associated Press reported that a US Navy-contracted ship fired at a small Egyptian boat. Its crime was going through the Suez Canal. They killed a person.
USS Cole, you're thinking. However, I am thinking that "small boats selling cigarettes and other products often swarm the civilian ships moving through the canal. These waterborne merchants know not to approach military vessels but the 'Global Patriot' looked like a civilian vessel, said the security official, speaking on customary condition of anonymity."
The US military responded, "Our team did take the appropriate steps to take those measured steps to warn the vessels that were getting too close." Plus, what is one more dead Arab father, really?
In related news, Hillary Clinton claimed to land on the 'Global Patriot' in the midst of sniper fire and small explosions. Mission accomplished.
Dr Sami Al-Arian, who has been imprisoned by the United States Judicial System since 2003, held in prison long before his trial and long after a grand jury failed to find him guilty of even a single charge against him, is now in danger of suffering irreversible kidney failure. Law Professor Peter Erlinder writes:
This is Dr. Al Arian’s third hunger-strike during his 5 years of imprisonment. The first was in 2005 and lasted 140 days on liquids only, before he was permitted the lawyers of his choice. In early 2006 he drank only water for 60 days, when the court refused to require the Bush-administration to honor their “no grand jury cooperation” promise, the first time. Now, he is refusing all food and liquids was transferred to the prison hospital on March 5. But he is not getting necessary medical treatment.
As of Monday, March 10, Dr. Al Arian has not received any intravenous liquids, and he is in danger of irreversible renal failure - yet another kind of torture, that could be ended with proper medical care. If Dr. Al Arian dies, AUSA Kromberg will have accomplished his stated “mission”, so the question is, will anybody else respond, before it is too late?
In 2005, I stood in front of a class made up of students from eight or nine different countries. We all had to present news articles, and my article covered the verdict of the jury in the trial of Dr Sami Al-Arian. He was not found guilty of a single charge brought against him by the government, I said. The government spent millions of dollars trying to make a case against Dr Al-Arian over a six month trial, I said. Dr Al-Arian's lawyers, when it came their turn to argue, stood and said simply that clearly, the government has failed to make a case against this man, whose only crime is saying what he believes. The jury found him not guilty on many of the charges, and hung on the rest, I said.
I fully expected him to be released. After all, a man found not guilty by a jury of his peers can't possibly stay in prison, right?
This was the same class in which a woman from Turkey asked me to speak as a citizen of the US to the human rights abuses of the US government, because this was of great concern to her as other governments worldwide look to the US for leadership. I was unclear as to whether she was talking about abuses within the States or outside.
She was talking about within. I wonder if the people who were in that class have any idea that the topic of my article is, in fact, still in prison, and threatened with kidney failure a few weeks before his scheduled release date.
Despite my living in Israel during the past few weeks of insanity particularly in Gaza, I might as well be observing it from the States.
A mini war, dubbed a holocaust (Shoah) by Israel's Deputy Defense Minister, took place in Gaza and life just went on as usual here in most of Israel. Actually calling it a 'war' implies that two proper, equal armies were fighting each other. It is critical to remember that this is not the case.
In contrast, one Israeli has been killed by the rockets coming from the Gaza Strip since last May. These rockets are imprecise, primitive in comparison, and about as destructive as a metal pipe falling out of the air can be.
Now, the eight students who were killed in Jerusalem were killed by an East Jerusalem resident who picked up a gun. While tragic, the event does not change the unequal nature of this conflict.
Life around me hasn't really changed much in a tangible sense, except for that I read the news. My neighbors watch the Hebrew news that plays and replays Israeli kids in Sderot running for shelter when sirens go off, contributing to a sense of fascination with fear built off of the one Israeli killed by these Qassem rockets since last May. However, next door to the carnage in Gaza, and a school shooting in Jerusalem, I haven't felt in an immediate sense the effects of violence. (In fact, the violence I've felt the most in the past few weeks came not from events in Israel or Palestine, but from UNC where the student body president was recently found murdered.) Considering my life pattern and the life pattern of all those around me, nothing has become particularly extraordinary. I might as well be observing from the States.
And this is precisely the point I want to get across with this post: life in Israel goes on largely as usual while the Israeli army maintains a continual war of varying scale on the entire Palestinian population just on the other side of its borders. This is the status quo.
I've visited the West Bank several times over the past year. Every time I go, someone connected to the people I visit has been killed. Once it was a 16 year old boy at the Qalandia checkpoint. Once, two university student activists were assassinated by Apache helicopters in the middle of the night. Always you might hear the shrill whistles of the kids who spot the army approaching.
The raids into peoples homes are always happening. Some of these are raids into the homes of militant activists, such as this one in Gaza when 'targeted killings' resumed. The wanted member of Islamic Jihad was killed, and so was his granddaughter, an 8-day old infant, who was shot in the head. As Mohammad pointed out, this is normal in Gaza.
As I mentioned in an earlier post about a 12-year-old Egyptian girl who was apparently shot by a sniper from the Israeli border, these specific shootings of children directly in the head by Israeli soldiers are not likely to be accidents, especially if they occur during a home raid at close range. Why is it difficult for some Kabobreaders to believe that these are not accidents? Is it difficult for you to believe that human beings are not above killing children? I wish that I, too, had more faith in humanity. But humanity has proven time and again that we are perfectly capable of the most despicable of crimes. I see no reason to have more faith in the mercy of an Israeli soldier raiding a home in Gaza than in that of the East Jerusalem resident who shot up the Jerusalem school. There is no such thing as a moral army.
A few days ago, I would have said that in all likelihood the latest victims of the carnage in Gaza will be buried, and Israelis will go on living their very normal lives while Gaza starves. Now, with the Jerusalem shooting and the ensuing restrictions on movement in the West Bank and Jerusalem, there looms a frightening cycle of reprisal violence that I sincerely hope does not ensue. There may be more violence that reaches Israelis, or there may not be. However, there is certainty that violence will continue to infiltrate the everyday lives of Palestinians, even if it does not make headlines.
If I may quote Will, settler-colonial projects beget violence. I would add to that statement and point out that settler-colonial projects beget violence of great inequality.
Early this morning a small explosion went off on the front of the Armed Forces Career Center in New York's famous strip of visual diarrhea, Times Square.
Care to read my early morning, breaking news analysis? As an Arab-American, I hold secrets in my mystical palms...
In case we do not understand what a small explosion at such an office could mean, the media are helping us by calling its source an "improvised explosive device," which are also what the US military calls the bombs used by Iraqi insurgents. Are they trying to scream "Iraq"? I know this sounds like splitting hairs, but such subtle suggestive cues are quite powerful. If they weren't, Times Square would not be riddled with advertisements.
Then again, why else would anyone target a military recruitment office? Is it out of solidarity with the insurgents, or anger at US militarism, or by a veteran who saw the measly benefits and care they get (or had to buy his own equipment), or a "home-grown terrorist," or an alienated college student who finds random shooting sprees so passe, or a prank?
I doubt we'll get an answer to this, but if the purpose is for us to rethink this war, I doubt it will work -- the vast majority is already against it. We're too busy soaking up tube, paying our credit card debt, and eating to do anything about it.
Okay, maybe we'll vote for Obama or that recent convert against the war, Clinton, but besides that, do not count on us to do much more.
Mayor Moneybags Bloomberg is going to give a press briefing at any minute. The police are considering whether this could be related to previous small explosions at the British and Mexican consulates in the past years.
While police search for clues, they are missing one obvious suspect. Just so I can beat the right-wing loonies to the punch, I will find the Arab-Muslim link to this.
The New York Timesrevealed that a Muslim, possibly Arab, man "witnessed it":
Mohammed Hossain, 39, whose coffee cart, is at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 44th Street, said he heard the explosion before 4 a.m. “I heard a loud noise and I turned around and saw smoke,” he said. “And then the cops were everywhere, within minutes.” Mr. Hossain, who has operated the cart for 15 years, said police asked him to close up until about 7:15.
15 years? Yeah right. He's just trying to get a little free publicity for his coffee cart, making it seem like a vintage establishment. A little waterboarding in Guantanamo can get the truth out of him.
Rudy Giuliani would have got the truth out of him.
Hopefully we can get one of the two NYC-based KABOBers on the scene, since they probably have nothing else to do.
Yesterday, Dr. Sami Al-Arian was informed he will be called to testify before a third grand jury. Having passed the 5th year anniversary of his imprisonment, the government continues to hold him despite their inability to prosecute him.
After a lengthy trial in which he was not found guilty, the government is keeping him as a "material witness," which Dr. Al-Arian's lawyers argue is in direct contravention to an agreement they struck last April. Holding material witnesses can be an arbitrary exercise in prosecutorial power (giving them the ability to detain those they have no evidence again). He thus refuses to testify, and has engaged in hunger strikes that cost his health severely. With this announcement, he decided to go on another strike.
Dr. Al-Arian is clearly a political prisoner being punished for nothing more than the substance of his ideas and activism. His imprisonment is a sham, again showing that the American "justice" system is flawed by ethnic bias. The court's ideological orientation values Islamophobic alarmism and anti-Palestinianism over the US Constitution (i.e. while giving money to the Israel army can be a tax write-off, giving money to Palestinian militant groups, as he was charged with, is illegal). This explains this case's contradictions of the law's premises of due process and fair treatment.
The United States today used precision missiles to strike a "known terrorist target" in southern Somalia, a U.S. military official said. The strike destroyed two houses killing three women and three children, a local official told CNN
This picture for me articulates the utter despair of Gaza. The little girl is in the hospital in the first place because of how clearly malnourished she is. She is malnourished because Gaza's borders are continuously closed. The ventilator is reportedly running on the emergency generator, for which there is severely limited fuel due to border closures. Remember that this is the backdrop for all of the killing taking place right now. At the human chain from last week, this boy is holding an empty bottle upon which is written "We want milk."
A 12-year-old Bedouin Egyptian girl was shot in the head while standing in front of her house this week. The house is 300 yards from the Israeli border. There was no gunfighting in that area the day she was shot directly in the head.
I would suspect there is maybe a 2% chance that the bullet was a stray.
A US military invasion of Mosul is coming. US and Iraqi officials are saying Al-Qaeda re-grouped there after being driven from Baghdad.
This statement from individuals from around the world is calling attention to the likely outcome of such an attack -- more bloodshed and suffering. This war has been characterized by trade-offs in savagery. As an outsider, I have seen no compelling humanity or vision from either American military forces, their Iraqi allies, or any Iraqi or Arab insurgents.
Attacks like this are unlikely to help Iraq in the long run. They only seem to sow the seeds of future conflict. That is why foreign interventions like this do not work. They engender resentment.
Instead of fueling Iraq's economy and building is infrastructure, the US military focuses on what it is better at: killing and occupying. "For five years Mosul has been occupied by the US and the Iraqi military and still we have no electricity, no water. We have nothing," a journalist in Mosul said.
As the people of Mosul prepare for siege and continue to live in fear, I wonder if any will be appreciative.
An Emergency Statement of Intellectuals and Activists
No Attack on Mosul! Tue Feb 5, 2008
Bush´s failure in Iraq requires a new "success". While the blood-soaked US occupation in Iraq declares one victory after another sincenearly five years, it stages massacre after massacre of the people ofIraq.
Now the occupation declares a new "decisive" success is imminent, this time against the population of Mosul, the third largest city in Iraq. Its pretext is always the same: to eradicate "Al-Qaeda", while Al-Qaeda from its mouth means Sunnis, Baathists, Arabs and all patriotic Iraqis.
Although the occupation has on many occasions declared its victory, the fact that it needs to attack yet again an entire city and its population proves that it couldn´t and cannot eradicate the legal resistance of the Iraqi people. The only thing decisive is that the occupation by its tactics announces its defeat.
The occupation has escalated its air bombing campaigns by 400 per cent [1] in the past year and openly promises more indiscriminate attacks on populated urban areas. It uses disproportionate force indiscriminately against civilian populations in a pattern of actions that constitutes genocide under international law.
The imminent attack on Mosul - another urbicide following the ones of holy Najaf, martyred Fallujah, Al-Qaim, Tel Afar, Haditha, and whole neighbourhoods of Baghdad, among others - will only result, as with its precedents, in horrific killings, destruction and mass population displacement, thereby changing the historical, sociological and demographic makeup of the city.
This imminent attack is a pre-announced genocide. It is blood, death and destruction for oil. As the spreading of the resistance to Southern and Northern provinces proves, this new attack is in vain. The Iraqi people rejects - and will always reject - the criminal US occupation.
This imminent attack should raise condemnation, disgust and protest from peace loving people and human rights defenders worldwide. Five years of destruction and death should have taught the Bush administration that its litany of killing serves no purpose and leads only to moral suicide for the United States.
Humanity is in distress in Iraq. Our role and duty is to save it.
Act to stop the massacre in Mosul!
5 February 2008
Abdul Ilah Albayaty, member of the BRussells Tribunal Executive Committee - Iraq / France. Hana Al Bayaty, coordinator, Iraqi International Initiative on refugees - Iraq / Egypt. Margarita Papandreou, Former First Lady of Greece, Peace activist and honorary president of Center for Research and Action on Peace - Greece. Dr. Saadallah Al-Fathi, former head of the Energy Studies Department at OPEC - Iraq. Prof. Em. François Houtart, Director of the Tricontinental Center - Cetri, co-founder of the World Social Forum. Sara Flounders, Co-Director, International Action Center. Dr. James E. Jennings, PhD, President Conscience International - USA. David Swanson, Co-Founder AfterDowningStreet coalition - USA. Dr. Gerri Haynes, past president, Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, Kirkland, Washington. Dr. Hassan Aydinli, President, Committee for the Defence of the Iraqi Turkmens´ Rights. Niloufer Bhagwat, Vice President of Indian Lawyers Association - Mumbai / India. Dr. Curtis F.J. Doebbler, International Human Rights Lawyer - USA. Karen Parker, Attorney, Association of Humanitarian Lawyers - USA. Prof. Kazashi Nobuo, Faculty of Letters, Kobe University, NO DU Hiroshima Project - Japan. Carlos Varea, Coordinator of CEOSI - Spanish Campaign against Occupation and for the Sovereignty of Iraq - Spain. Marion Küpker, International Coordinator against nuclear-and uranium weapons for GAAA and DFG-VK, Germany. Dr. Ian Douglas, editor and correspondent for the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Weekly and visiting professor in the Department of Political Science at An-Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine. Dr. Imad Khadduri, former nuclear scientist - Iraq. Dirk Adriaensens, member of the BRussells Tribunal Executive Committee, Coordinator SOS Iraq. John Catalinotto, International Action Center - USA. Dr. Dahlia Wasfi, M.D., Anti-war activist, speaker, Global Exchange - Iraq / USA. Merry Fitzgerald, Committee for the Defence of the Iraqi Turkmens´ Rights. Michael Parenti, Author and scholar - USA. Prof. Em. Edward S. Herman, writer, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Dr. Imad Khadduri, former nuclear scientist - Iraq. Prof. Stephen Soldz, Director, Center for Research, Evaluation, and Program Development Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice - USA. Prof. Em. Gideon Polya, retired senior biochemist, author: biochemical scientific publications and global avoidable mortality - Australia. Prof. David Miller, Professor of Sociology at Strathclyde University, co-founder of Spinwatch - UK. Prof. Paola Manduca, Geneticist, University of Genoa, Newweapons working group - Italy. Prof. Glen D. Lawrence, Long Island University, USA. Prof. Dr. Jean Bricmont, scientist, specialist in theoretical physics, U.C. Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium. Prof. Stephen Eric Bronner, Professor of political science, Rutgers University - USA. Dr. Thomas M. Fasy, MD PhD, Clinical Associate Professor, Mount Sinai School of Medicine - USA. Dr. Pol De Vos, Tropical Institute Antwerp, chair, Stop USA - Peace movement, Belgium. Anne Burns, U.S. Academics For Peace / Conscience International - USA.
David Peterson, writer and researcher, Chicago, USA. Comaguer, Anti-war Committee Marseille - France. Sarah Meyer, Independent researcher living in Sussex - UK. Cynthia Banas, Iraq Peace Team member, 2002-2003. Ludo De Brabander, chair, Vrede - Peace Movement, Belgium. Hans Lammerant, chair, Vredesactie - Peace movement, Belgium. Frank Vercruyssen, Actor, TG Stan - Belgium. Karen Hoover, USA. Frans Dumortier / Charles Ducal, Poet - Belgium. Suror Merza
However, with the latter, you cannot associate with groups that fight against occupying military forces allied with the United States. This shows that domestic civil liberties are often sacrificed for foreign policy. Yes, it is absurd.
The case below really exposes the illogic and inherent biases of such policies. While the professor is prosecuted for supporting Hamas, there are numerous groups supporting Israel's military, though it is a much bigger violator of international law, and has perpetrated far more death and destruction than Hamas has. It began its occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem two decades before Hamas was founded. Perhaps most ridiculously, donations to US groups supporting the Israeli military are tax-deductible -- a further subsidy.
CHICAGO — A former business professor accused of taking part in a Palestinian terrorist network was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury.
The defendant, Abdelhaleem Ashqar, 49, a former associate professor of business at Howard University in Washington, was taken into custody by federal marshals immediately after the sentencing.
In a passionate, arm-waving statement before sentencing, Dr. Ashqar painted a grim picture of the suffering of Palestinians in the occupied territories and said that some of his own relatives had been killed or jailed.
He said he would rather go to prison than betray his people as they strived to free themselves from Israeli domination. "The only option was to become a traitor or a collaborator," Dr. Ashqar said, "and this is something that I can't do and will never do as long as I live."
The case, based on a long-running federal investigation of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, was closely watched as a major Justice Department initiative in the war on terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Dr. Ashqar and a co-defendant, Muhammad Salah, were acquitted this year on a racketeering conspiracy charge that accused them of bankrolling Hamas. But prosecutors presented telephone records showing that Dr. Ashqar had been in contact with Hamas leaders.
Dr. Ashqar was convicted of obstruction of justice and criminal contempt for refusing to testify before the grand jury on June 25, 2003, even after he had been granted immunity from prosecution. Mr. Salah was convicted of lying on a document and sentenced to 22 months in prison.
Defense lawyers said Judge Amy J. St. Eve of Federal District Court imposed an unusually stiff sentence on Dr. Ashqar given the complex political background. In addition to 11 years and 3 months in prison, he was fined $5,000.
The hospital director, Dr Hassan Khalaf, describes the situation at al-Shifa as "Potentially disastrous." He explains that, "Out of an essential drug list of 480 items recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO), we are already ninety items short. Out of the 390 items we do have in stock, we have less than three months supply of 130 items."
Some of the essential drugs no longer available include strong painkillers. Moin al-Wadiya's family are buying his painkillers from a local pharmacy because he says the drugs at al-Shifa are not effective.
The Christian Science Monitor ran a good article on Fouad al-Farhan, the Saudi blogger detained and charged by Saudi Arabia for non-security-related charges (okay?). They are seeking "an apology" from the blogger for his criticism of Saudi's arrest of Jeddah-based civil rights activists, who were charged with supporting terror. Al-Farhan, a visible blogger who blogged under his real name, is not clear on what he is supposed to apologize for. Man, it's like third grade all over again, but on a national level.
This has stunned Saudi's blogging community, though they cannot be too surprised. Saudi Arabia, which has not freedoms of expression or press, is supposed to be liberalizing since King Abdallah took over. This is a major test of just how far that is coming along.
Saudi Arabia must free Fouad now! See the website to support him.
The article points out that currently Egypt and Tunisia are holding bloggers, as well. These, and the many attacks on journalists, are egregious excesses by despotic regimes at war with their own citizenry. KABOBfest stands in solidarity with Fouad, Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer, and all bloggers being punished for their words.
