Cynthia McKinney: Away From War to Obama+ John Perkins + Afghanistan: No "good war” + Falluja (2) + Galloway, Goldstone, Pappe, Zogby, G.Levy, A.Hass + Crocodile Tears in the UN + Women COs + Scoundrel With Permission + Prisoners (3), Demolitions + I
Feroze Mithiborwala
2) Afghanistan: the case against the “good war” Jonathan Neale
3) THE WALL MIGHT BE GONE IN GERMANY ….. BUT SO IS FREEDOM OF SPEECH
Ilan Pappe silenced in Munich
4)Peres, not Goldstone, is the small man,
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| By Gideon Levy, Haaretz Correspondent |
5) Chavez: US bases in Colombia to be used for spying on Venezuela
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Open Letter From the Peace Movement to President Obama on His Upcoming Decision Regarding the Afghan War
By Cynthia McKinney
Dear Mr. President:
November 15, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- According to press reports, you intend to decide between November 7 and November 11 whether or not to send tens of thousands of American soldiers to Afghanistan. We are writing in advance of that decision to add our voice to those of Sen. Feingold, many House Democrats, and of a clear majority of Americans in urging you not to escalate this war, but rather to announce an immediate cease-fire followed by a withdrawal of all US troops in the fastest way consistent with the safety of our forces. We urge you to end the policy of using Predator drones to assassinate Pakistani civilians on the territory of their own country, in defiance of all concepts of international law. We also call upon you to cease all covert CIA and Pentagon operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran.
No vital American interest is at stake in Afghanistan. Former Marine and State Department official Matthew Hoh is right: the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan have come to be viewed as invaders and occupiers, and the resistance they encounter has nothing to do with international terrorism. This war is futile, and now doomed to failure. There is no military solution to the problems that beset Afghanistan. Afghanistan and the rest of this tragically war-torn region need a Marshall Plan of peaceful economic development, through which some of the 15 million unemployed workers in our own country could find productive jobs. We have no confidence in the advice being given to you by military leaders like Gen. McChrystal, who has been implicated in torture in Iraq.
We supported your candidacy because we viewed you as the best chance for ending the wars of the Bush era. We applauded your rejection of the rhetoric of fear and division that was the stock in trade of Bush and Cheney. We are alarmed by the way that rhetoric has crept into your public pronouncements since your August address in Phoenix. Your decision on Afghanistan will represent the decisive turning point of your presidency. If you turn away from war, you will provide a profile in courage that will solidify your support and open up a new perspective for progressive reforms in our country. You will honor the spirit of John F. Kennedy, who was searching for an exit strategy from the Vietnam war. If you opt for a wider war, the resulting heavy casualties will destroy confidence in your leadership among your own most devoted advocates. Hundreds of billions of dollars will be poured down a rat hole, and will no longer be available for any reform and renovation of American society, which will increasingly fall behind the economic strength of other countries. Your domestic agenda will be halted, in the same way your predecessor Lyndon B. Johnson was crippled by the Vietnam war. Escalation of the Afghan war, in short, would be an act of political suicide for you, and of national suicide for our country.
We are keenly aware of the difficulties and animosities you face, and we have long done everything possible to give your administration the benefit of the doubt, even in the face of repeated disappointments. But we now approach the moment of truth: will you be a great progressive president, or will you prove too weak to turn away from the bankrupt policies institutionalized and entrenched under Bush and Cheney. Therefore, we want you to know our attitude before you decide on the proposed Afghan escalation. If you choose to escalate, we will oppose this policy with all the energy we possess. We will act to mobilize the largest possible anti-war demonstration in Washington DC and other cities before the end of 2009, and continuously thereafter. We will support anti-war candidates of any party in the 2010 elections. If you are still waging the Afghan war in 2011, we will be forced to seriously consider backing an explicitly anti-war primary candidate to challenge you during the Democratic primaries.
We therefore respectfully urge you to act in the spirit of your 2008 campaign – the spirit of hope and change, neither of which can survive the continuation or expansion of the hopeless Afghan war.
Cynthia McKinney, DIGNITY
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23972.htm
Poverty, Global Trade Justice, and the Roots of Terrorism To combat terrorism, we should address the root causes of poverty, says former "economic hit man" By John Perkins The New York Times published that article in April 2009. The very words "pirates," "daring operation," "standoff," and "brigands" were typical of the U.S. media; they made it sound as though white-hated cowboys had ridden to the rescue of a town besieged by Billy the Kid and his gang. Having lived in that part of the world as an economic hit man, I knew there was another side to what had happened. I wondered why no one was asking about the causes of piracy. I recalled my visits with the Bugi people when I was sent to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi in the early 1970s. The Bugi had been infamous pirates since the time of the East India companies in the 1600s and 1700s. Their ferocity inspired returning European sailors to discipline their disobedient children with threats that "the bugiman will get you." In the 1970s, we feared that they would attack our oil tankers as they passed through the vital Strait of Malacca. I sat with one of their elders on the Sulawesi shore one afternoon. We watched his people build a sailing galleon, known as a prahu, much as they had for centuries. Like a gigantic beached whale, it was high and dry, propped upright by rows of gnarled stakes that resembled roots sprouting from its hull. Dozens of men hustled about it, working with adzes, hatchets, and hand drills. I expressed the concerns of my government to him, intimating that we would retaliate if the oil lanes were threatened. The "terrorists" I have found in Andean caves and desert villages are people whose families were forced off their farms by oil companies, hydroelectric dams, or "free trade" agreements, whose children are starving, and who want nothing more than to return to their families with food, seeds, and deeds to lands they can cultivate.The old man glared at me. "We were not pirates in the old days," he said, his bushy white hair bobbing indignantly. "We only fought to defend our lands against Europeans who came to steal our spices. If we attack your ships today, it is because they take the trade away from us; your ‘stink ships' foul our waters with oil, destroying our fish and starving our children." Then he shrugged. "Now, we're at a loss." His smile was disarming. "How can a handful of people in wooden sailing ships fight off America's submarines, airplanes, bombs, and missiles?" A few days after the rescue, the Times ran an editorial entitled "Fighting Piracy in Somalia" that concluded: Yet left to its own devices, Somalia can only become more noxious, spreading violence to its East African neighbors, breeding more extremism and making shipping through the Gulf of Aden ever more dangerous and costly. Various approaches are being discussed, such as working through Somalia's powerful clans to reconstitute first local and then regional and national institutions. These must be urgently explored. Nowhere did the Times-or any of the other media outlets that I read, heard, or saw-attempt to analyze the roots of the problem in Somalia. Debates abounded about whether to arm ships' crews and send more Navy vessels to the region. There was that vague reference to reconstituting regional and national institutions, but what exactly did the author mean by that? Institutions that would truly help, like free hospitals, schools, and soup kitchens? Or local militias, prisons, and Gestapo-style police forces? The pirates were fishermen whose livelihoods had been destroyed. They were fathers whose children were hungry. Ending piracy would require helping them live sustainable, dignified lives. Could journalists not understand this? Had none of them visited the slums of Mogadishu? Finally, NPR's Morning Edition on May 6 aired a report from Gwen Thompkins; she interviewed a pirate who went by the name Abshir Abdullahi Abdi. "We understand what we're doing is wrong," Abdi explained. "But hunger is more important than any other thing." Thompkins commented, "Fishing villages in the area have been devastated by illegal trawlers and waste dumping from industrialized nations. Coral reefs are reportedly dead. Lobster and tuna have vanished. Malnutrition is high." You might think we would have learned from Vietnam, Iraq, the "Black Hawk down" incident in Somalia back in 1993, and other such forays, that military responses seldom discourage insurgencies. In fact, they often do the opposite; foreign intervention is likely to infuriate local populations, motivate them to support the rebels, and result in an escalation of resistance activities. That was the way it happened during the American Revolution, Latin America's wars for independence from Spain, and in colonial Africa, Indochina, Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, and so many other places. Blaming pirates and other desperate people for our problems is a distraction we cannot afford if we truly want to find a solution to the crises confronting us. These incidents are symptoms of our failed economic model. They are to our society the equivalent of a heart attack to an individual. We send in Navy Seals to rescue the hostages, as we would hire doctors to perform a coronary artery bypass. But it is essential to admit that both are reactions to an underlying problem. The patient needs to address the reasons his or her heart failed in the first place, such as smoking, diet, and lack of exercise. The same is true for piracy and all forms of terrorism. Our children's futures are interlocked with the futures of children born in the fishing villages of Somalia, the mountains of Burma (Myanmar), and the jungles of Colombia. When we forget that fact, when we see those children as remote, as somehow disconnected from our lives, as merely the offspring of pirates, guerrillas, or drug runners, we point the gun at our own progeny as well as at the desperate fathers and mothers in lands that seem so far away but in reality are our next door neighbors. Every time I read about the actions we take to protect ourselves from so-called terrorists, I have to wonder at the narrow-mindedness of our strategy. Although I have met such people in Bolivia, Ecuador, Egypt, Guatemala, Indonesia, Iran, and Nicaragua, I have never met one who wanted to take up a gun. I know there are crazed men and women who kill because they cannot stop themselves, serial killers, and mass-murderers. I am certain that members of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other such groups are driven by fanaticism, but such extremists are able to recruit sizable numbers of followers only from populations that feel oppressed or destitute. The "terrorists" I have found in Andean caves and desert villages are people whose families were forced off their farms by oil companies, hydroelectric dams, or "free trade" agreements, whose children are starving, and who want nothing more than to return to their families with food, seeds, and deeds to lands they can cultivate. In Mexico, many of the guerrillas and narcotraffickers once owned farms where they grew corn. They lost their livelihoods when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) gave subsidized U.S. producers an unfair price advantage. Here is how the Organic Consumers Organization, a nonprofit that represents more than 850,000 members, subscribers, and volunteers, describes it: Since NAFTA came into effect on January 1, 1994, U.S. corn exports to Mexico have almost doubled to some 6 million metric tons in 2002. NAFTA eliminated quotas limiting corn imports . . . but allowed U.S. subsidy programs to remain in place-promoting dumping of corn into Mexico by U.S. agribusiness at below the cost of production. . . . The price paid to farmers in Mexico for corn fell by over 70 percent. . . The passage above exposes the dark side of "free trade" policies. U.S. presidents and our Congress have implemented regulations that prohibited other countries from imposing tariffs on U.S. goods or subsidizing locally grown produce that might compete with our agribusinesses while permitting us to maintain our own import barriers and subsidies, thus giving U.S. corporations an unfair advantage. "Free trade" is a euphemism; it prohibits others from enjoying the benefits offered to the multinationals. It does not, however, regulate against the pollution that is melting glaciers, the land grabs, and the sweatshops. Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, a Nicaraguan priest who ministered to Sandinista guerrillas and is now president of the U.N. General Assembly, has a firsthand appreciation for such euphemisms and the power of words used to sway public perceptions. "Terrorism is not really an ‘ism,' " he told me. "There's no connection between the Sandinistas who fought the Contras and Al Qaeda, or between Colombia's FARC and fishermen turned pirates in Africa and Asia. Yet they are all called ‘terrorists.' That's just a convenient way for your government to convince the world that there is another enemy ‘ism' out there, like communism used to be. It diverts attention from the very real problems." Our narrow-minded attitudes and the policies that result from them foment violence, rebellions, and wars. In the long run, almost no one benefits from attacking the people we label as "terrorists." With one glaring exception: the corporatocracy. Those who own and run the companies that build ships, missiles, and armored vehicles; make guns, uniforms, and bulletproof vests; distribute food, soft drinks, and ammunition; provide insurance, medicines, and toilet paper; construct ports, airstrips, and housing; and reconstruct devastated villages, factories, schools, and hospitals-they, and only they, are the big winners. The rest of us are hoodwinked by that one, loaded word: terrorist. The current economic collapse has awakened us to the importance of regulating and reigning in the people who control the businesses that benefit from the misuse of words like terrorism and who perpetrate other scams. We recognize today that white-collared executives are not a special, incorruptible breed. Like the rest of us, they require rules. Yet it is not enough for us to reestablish regulations that separate investment banks from commercial banks and insurance companies, reinstate anti-usury laws, and impose guidelines to ensure that consumers are not burdened by credit they cannot afford. We cannot simply return to solutions that worked before. Only by adopting new strategies that promote global environmental and social responsibility will we safeguard the future. John Perkins adapted this excerpt of Hoodwinked: An Economic Hitman Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded—and What We Need to Do to Remake Them for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. John is also the author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, The World is as You Dream It: Shamanic Teachings from the Amazon and Andes, and Spirit of the Shuar. |
Afghanistan: the case against the “good war”
Jonathan Neale
November 13, 2009
Posted: 2 October 08
Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on earth. More than a million Afghans have died in 30 years of war, and almost everyone has lost someone close to them. Now George Bush, John McCain, Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, and even Barack Obama, call for more troops to be sent, more planes and more death.
In every country in Europe majorities in opinion polls are against participation in the Afghan war. Yet the media still present it as a good war. Iraq, they now admit, was a crime or wrong or maybe just a mistake. But Afghanistan is a war on terrorists, we are told; on fanatics, jihadis, sexists, savages; on people who are not "modern" and therefore deserve to die.
This article will argue differently. My central points are these:
- First, there was almost no resistance when the Americans first invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and for the three years afterwards. The resistance has been produced by the occupation.
- Second, that resistance is led by the right wing Taliban because they are the only organised force who have been root and branch opposed to the occupation. It is also because back in the 1980s Communists and feminists supported another invasion, by the Soviet Union. Soviet troops killed between half a million and a million Afghans, and discredited the left and feminists for at least a generation.
- Third, the resistance is spreading, growing and winning. As a result, the occupying powers are coming under intense pressure to launch a massive air war against villagers and to invade Pakistan.
- Fourth, there are no easy outcomes for Afghans in this situation, but the best one is a victory for the resistance.1
The origins of the 30 years war
I will begin with the Communists.2 One afternoon in the autumn of 1971 I stood on the side of the unpaved main street in Lashkargah, the capital of Helmand province, and watched a protest by high school boys who took turns standing on a wooden box. They didn’t give speeches. The boy on the box would just shout a slogan loudly, and his mates would cheer. Most of the boys who took a turn had only one slogan: "Death to the khans."
These children were brave. Khan is the Pushtu word for the man who is a big landowner and local power. These boys were not calling for the end to an abstract social category. They were calling for the physical killing of the men who held power in their villages, who ruled the lives of their fathers and mothers. Only 30 boys, or a bit fewer, had the courage to stand in that crowd. But around the edges of the street many adult men stood and watched, silently, never looking away, betraying nothing on their faces. There were a couple of policemen watching. More important, the secret police were in every urban crowd, and feared for good reason. There were informers in every village too. If you lived in a village and knew people, a flicker across their faces would tell you when one of the local informers entered the room.
No one said anything. No one smiled. If they did, the khan would know. But the silence spoke approval.
Those boys were part of a national movement of students and educated people led by the Communists. They had good reasons to want to overthrow the established order.3 Until 1974 Afghanistan was ruled by a king, Zahir Shah. There was a parliament and elections, but more dictatorship than democracy. Real power lay in the hands of the big landowners with mud forts in the countryside and their own armed retainers. The central government largely did their bidding and not the other way round.
Please complete the reading of this passionate account in the following links; better print it, as it is lengthy:www.uruknet.info?p=60031
Link: www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=481&issue=120
'My baby was blind. She couldn't eat or speak. I mourn for her' – families' heartache over Falluja birth defects
Doctors and parents tell of huge growth in abnormalities in children of city that saw some of the fiercest fighting – and largest quantities of munitions – of the Iraq war
- Martin Chulov in Falluja
- guardian.co.uk, Friday 13 November 2009 18.55 GMT
- Article history
Zainab Abdul Latif with her six-year-old daughter Mariam. Neither Mariam nor her younger brothers can walk and all three have learning difficulties. Photograph: Muhannad Fala'ah/Getty Images
Zainab Abdul Latif moves wearily between her three children, wiping their foreheads and propping them up in their wheelchairs. "Every day, they need intensive care," the 29-year-old Falluja mother says. Neither her two sons, Amar, 5, and Moustafa, 3, or daughter, Mariam, 6, can walk or use their limbs. They speak two words – "mama, baba" – between them. All are in nappies.
Zainab is one of many faces of Falluja's postwar years, overwhelmed by a workload that she has no means to change. "They cannot eat, or drink by themselves and every day I have to take Mariam to the hospital. She is very sensitive to flu and regularly gets diarrhoea and other ailments. The doctors have told me they are mentally retarded and have nerve paralysis. They say it is congenital. I really can't take care of them like this and I need help."
One of few people she can turn to is Dr Bassem Allah, the senior obstetrician who is chief custodian of Falluja's newborns. During medical school he had to search Iraq for case studies of an infant with a birth defect. "It was almost impossible during the 80s," he says. "Now, every day in my clinic or elsewhere in the hospital, there are large numbers of congenital abnormalities or cases of chronic tumours."
He pauses, his thoughts seemingly interrupted by the gravity of his words, then slowly continues. "Now, believe me, it's like we are treating patients immediately after Hiroshima."
Across Falluja, neonatal wards and centres for disabled people are facing such an influx of infants or children aged under five with chronic deformities that they are fast running out of space and staff to help. After two years of anecdotal reports suggesting a spike in birth defects, more precise data is painting a picture of a deeply disturbing phenomenon.
The Guardian asked Dr Samira Abdul Ghani, a specialist at Falluja general hospital, to compile data from all the newborns she supervised over the three weeks from 11 October. She reported 37 cases of serious deformities, many of them neural tube defects [birth defects of the brain and spinal column including spina bifida and anencephaly], with accompanying heart problems. A sharp rise in the number of infant tumours is also being chronicled by hospital staff but, because tumours usually materialise months or years after birth, doctors are reluctant to quantify their research.
"There is ... a very marked increase in the number of paediatric cases of less than two years with brain tumours," said the hospital director, Dr Ayman Qais. "This is now a focus area of multiple tumours. We are seeing a very significant increase in central nervous system anomalies, especially neural tube defects."
Before 2003, he had been seeing sporadic deformities in babies. Now the frequency had increased dramatically. Most were in the head and spinal cord, but many were in lower limbs.
At Falluja General, doctors who care for newborns are dealing with phenomena none can explain.
The city was the site of the two most savage and prolonged battles in Iraq during the past six years. The potentially toxic residue of precision munitions that rained down on the city for up to two months in 2004 has left many medical professionals questioning the long-term impact of modern weaponry, although few are willing, so far, to directly blame the war.
Doctors point to many factors that could contribute to the birth defects: malnutrition, the psychological status of the parents, drug use, chemicals or radiation. Even preliminary treatment for the most common defect requires life-threatening surgery — a price too high for many parents.
Evidence is on display throughout Falluja's new general hospital and at centres for disabled people across the city. On 2 November, there were four cases of neural tube defects in the neonatal ward. Several more were in intensive care and an out-patient clinic.
"Many more fathers and mothers are refusing ongoing hospital admissions and, until recently, we did not record their children as having been born with defects," said Qais. "I tell parents after each diagnosis that they will need a shunt procedure, which will most likely lead to chronic swelling in the head and the need for surgery in the skull or brain, so the majority of parents are not taking this option."
Falluja's obstetricians said the significant rise in diagnoses of congenital defects was not explained by improving healthcare in the city. "We used to diagnose all such patients before the war," said Qais. "They were registered here and then sent to Baghdad for treatment, but we knew the health base of the newborn."
The story in Falluja is playing out away from the clinical calm of hospital wards. In homes across the city, the care needs of children with debilitating injuries are faced by families with no access to social welfare and little support outside their inner-sanctum.
Not far from Zainab's house, Um Omar is mourning the death three months ago of her three-year old daughter, Fatima, who was born with a second mass that protruded from her neck. She was known as the girl with two heads.
Allah, who treated Fatima, said that there was no chance of saving her life in Iraq. "The second 'head' was actually a tumour that contained part of the hydrocephalus and part of the brain. To save her needed highly specialised equipment that we do not have here."
Her mother still grieves for Fatima. "I'm sad about the death of my baby despite all the hardship she faced," she said. "She was blind, she couldn't eat, she had no oesophagus and never walked or spoke. She was my last child. All the rest were born before the war.
All four children were registered by the Falluja Handicapped Organisation, a rudimentary facility with little funding or means to provide other than moral support to the increasing numbers of families flowing through its doors.
The director, Hussain Matroud, said there were 300 children on his books. Many thousands more remained in the community, with their parents and carers refusing help. Some patients being treated for congenital defects at the centre for people with disabilities were clearly born before the start of the war, but the vast majority of children on the register were aged six, or younger.
"Most of the children have brain injuries and nearly all are under eight years," he said. "There were very few before the war. We are in constant contact with NGOs in America, India and Britain, who try to help with treatment. But all we can really do for now is compile their names and the extent of their conditions."
Mohammed and Rana Majid have a daughter, Zahra, who was born four years ago. She has been diagnosed with developmental disabilities stemming back to the pregnancy. The parents complained to the American military and received a compensation form to fill out. They have done so, but received no reply.
Several other families have lodged claims with the US military, but without a scientific case are unlikely to get far. Allah believes science has to start playing a role in explaining what has happened to the city and its young.
"The numbers of abnormalities we are seeing is horrific and no one has yet concluded why," said Allah. "There is not yet any science to tell us why. No one has come here to take soil samples, or make examinations. I think the Iraqi government does not want it proven that the Americans used forbidden weapons here. If there is scientific proof that the war was responsible for so many deformities, there will likely be problems for officials here."
Back story
US troops entered Falluja shortly after invading Iraq in March 2003, but it was the bloody assault some 19 months later that would become synonymous with the city. Operation Vigilant Resolve, in April 2004, was a response to the killing of four US private military contractors employed by Blackwater (now XE). On 8 November 2004 10,000 US troops and 2,000 Iraqi soldiers embarked on Operation Phantom Fury.
The US military called the fighting "some of the heaviest urban combat marines have been involved in since Hue City in Vietnam in 1968".
The US claimed to have killed 2,000 people, mainly insurgents, but produced no figures for civilians. Western media were kept out but accounts emerged of indiscriminate killing.
Iraqi medical officials and NGOs put the civilian toll at up to 6,000. Falluja's compensation commissioner said 36,000 out of 50,000 homes were destroyed, with 60 schools and 65 mosques and shrines. At least 200,000 civilians became refugees.
Additional reporting: Enas Ibrahim
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/13/falluja-children-birth-defects
Iraqi former battle zone sees abnormal clusters of infant tumours and deformities
- Martin Chulov in Falluja
- guardian.co.uk, Friday 13 November 2009 19.24 GMT
- Article history
Silent And Inactive Video - Posted November 15, 2009 Part 2 Part 3 |
Debate On The U.N. Gaza War Crimes Report
By Justice Richard Goldstone and former Israeli ambassador Dore Gold
Video
Packed house hears Justice Richard Goldstone, whose name has become
synonymous with the U.N. Human Rights Council's fact-finding report on
the conflict, engage in a public forum with a senior Israeli political
figure over widespread criticism of the report among supporters of
Israel.
"Let me be absolutely clear," Goldstone said. "International law allows, and indeed requires, Israel to defend its citizens. Hamas and others committed serious war crimes against the citizens of southern Israel…. " However, he said, there is evidence that Israel's policy in the latest fighting was to direct its military might against civilians and civilian infrastructure as a way of deterring future rocket attacks, a policy he said "completely undermines the foundations of international law."
Justice Richard Goldstone
Ambassador Dore Gold responds:
Question & Answer Session
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23964.htm
THE WALL MIGHT BE GONE IN GERMANY ….. BUT SO IS FREEDOM OF SPEECH
Ilan Pappe silenced in Munich
Steve Amsel, Desertpeace
 |
Left-wing groups enraged by Germany municipality’s decision not to allow anti-Zionist Israeli historian to speak at governmental institution. Pappe writes to Munich mayor his policy reminiscent of Nazi Germany Sarah Stricker Anti-Zionist
historian Prof. Ilan Pappe, one of the most important "New Historians",
was scheduled to speak last weekend at the Pedagogical Institute of
Munich. But a letter received from the "Israeli-German association of
Munich", claiming that Pappe’s lecture would turn into "an anti-Israeli
propaganda show," led the Munich Municipality to reconsider the event.
The
municipality eventually did not let Pappe use the room, claiming its
decision was prompted by fears of violent clashes breaking out in the
area. The Munich police insisted that there was no danger of fear for
the security of those attending the lecture.
The
Munich mayor refused to comment on the issue despite appeals from
German media outlets. Pappe’s associates eventually organized a room
not owned by the authorities and the lecture took place as planned.
"We are not seeking to criticize Israel, only to hold an informative-scientists discussion," one of the associates said.
Prof.
Pappe wrote an open letter to the mayor, stating that "in the 1930s my
father, a German Jew, was silenced in a similar manner, and I am
saddened to discover the same censorship in 2009."
Pappe
noted in his letter that he had not experienced oppression or such a
strong desire to silence his opinion in any other European country. He
said that "a handful of people" attempted to frighten the mayor,
"people who view themselves as representatives of the Jewish people and
the disaster they went through in Europe."
'Words don’t kill’Germany’s left-wing party, green party and the ATTAC organization, which is against globalization, came to Pappe’s defense and criticized the mayor for giving in to the Jewish organization. The
green party referred to the mayor’s move as "an act of political
cowardice." The local branch of Die Linke (the left-wing party) said
that although sensitivity must be shown in terms of Jewish interests in
Germany, "the attempt to defend Israel against criticism by preventing
information from reaching people is unthinkable."
Pappe
told Ynet about his bad feelings following the incident. "The lecture
was held in a different place in Germany, not where it was initially
supposed to take place, in a room owned by the municipality. I was
surprised by the fact that the municipality was the one to invite me
and that a letter sent by some people, and I have no idea if they
included Israelis or not, led to a last-minute cancellation," he said.
According
to the professor, "It’s very strange that a lecture should be prevented
due to fear of criticism against Israel. This is the reason, it’s
obvious to everyone, but why cancel? Words don’t kill, but rather open
the mind.
"If
they wanted, why didn’t they bring someone from the embassy to present
the opposite stand and contradict my remarks? This hasn’t happened to
me even in Israel, so it’s even peculiar."
|
:: Article nr. 60022 sent on 13-nov-2009 17:37 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=60022
Link: desertpeace.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/the-wall-might-be-gone-in-germany-but-so-is
-freedom-of-speech/
Debate on Gaza report shows growing resolve to challenge pro-Israeli stance
James Zogby
- Last Updated: November 12. 2009 11:15PM UAE / November 12. 2009 7:15PM GMT
WASHINGTON
// The significance of the congressional debate of the Goldstone report
on the Gaza conflict last week may have been ignored by many given what
appeared to be the lopsided vote in favour of the anti-Goldstone
resolution.
It will be recalled that when the report was first
released, members of Congress were quick to denounce it using, at
times, near hysterical language. Since Goldstone had no vocal
champions, when the foreign affairs committee chairman, Howard Berman,
and the ranking Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen introduced their
anti-Goldstone resolution, one might have thought that the matter would
be quickly resolved with a near unanimous vote.
But that was not to be the case.
For his part, Justice
Goldstone mounted a vigorous defence of his work. In an open letter to
the congressional sponsors, the justice offered a point-by-point
rebuttal of what he detailed as the misleading and factually incorrect
statements in the resolution.
In addition, two members of
Congress, Keith Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota, and Brian Baird,
Democrat of Washington state, who had visited Gaza after the war, wrote
articles and pressed their colleagues urging a more thoughtful
consideration of the Goldstone report. Leading human rights
organisations, Arab-American and American-Jewish groups, a coalition of
Christian churches and other non-governmental organisations mobilised
their memberships and addressed letters to Congress.
As a result, instead of a quick and quiet vote, an extended debate
took place. At least 16 members of Congress rose to speak about their
opposition to the bill.
In their remarks, the members defended
the integrity of Justice Goldstone and the report; spoke of the
importance of defending the rule of law; decried the efforts of some to
cover-up the horrors that occurred in Gaza; and expressed concern with
the lack of any open and transparent process that rushed this
anti-Goldstone measure to a vote.
What follows are excerpts from some of those who spoke:
The Congresswoman Barbara Lee (Democrat of California):
“The
tragic deaths of innocent civilians in Gaza and the devastation brought
upon their homes, schools, and infrastructure has worsened a
humanitarian crisis that cannot be ignored. Residents of Gaza and the
West Bank continue to lack appropriate access to the most fundamental
needs, including food, fuel, water, sanitation, education, health care,
and the basic materials needed to rebuild their communities.”
Congressman William Delahunt (Democrat of Massachusetts):
“This
resolution came to the floor on suspension without a hearing, despite
the willingness of Judge Goldstone to come before the United States
Congress and answer any questions that we might pose to him.”
Congressman Brian Baird (Democrat of Washington State):
“My
friends who have described the Goldstone Report, as a colleague just
did, I’m not sure if they have read it. Unlike most of my colleagues
here, I have been to Gaza and I have read in its entirety the Goldstone
Report. And I will tell you he says many things that, though
unpleasant, are true and must not be obstructed ...
“Do not pass this resolution. Support this fine jurist. Give justice, true justice, a chance to be heard.”
Congressman John Dingell (Democrat of Michigan):
“Neither
Israel nor Hamas, nor any other country or other non-state political
actor is exempt from international human rights laws or free of
consequence for violations of them. If nothing else, the Goldstone
Report should serve as a document that Israel, Hamas and the rest of
the international community can use to ensure that future human rights
violations do not take place in civilian areas …
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (Democrat of Ohio):
“Almost
as serious as committing war crimes is covering up war crimes,
pretending that war crimes were never committed and did not exist.
“Because
if this Congress votes to condemn a report it has not read concerning
events it has totally ignored about violations of law of which it is
unaware, it will have brought shame to this great institution.”
Congresswoman Betty McCollum (Democrat of Minnesota):
“This resolution seeks to hide the ugliness of the Gaza war by
covering up violent excesses committed against innocent civilians by
both Hamas and the Israeli Defence Forces. Why does the US House want
to reject an accounting of Hamas’ terrorism against Israeli civilians,
as if thousands of rockets were not fired at Israel? And why would this
resolution want to deny that hundreds of Palestinian women and children
and elders were needlessly killed?”
Congresswoman Lois Capps (Democrat of California):
“I
think that in this body’s haste, we’ve overlooked some of the depth of
unspeakable tragedies that have occurred during the war on Gaza.
Innocent Israeli and Palestinian lives were lost.”
Congressman George Miler (Democrat of California):
“I
fully support efforts to provide clarity, honesty and accuracy to the
debate about the conflict in Gaza, just as do many of my constituents
who have contacted me this week urging me to oppose this resolution.”
Following this extraordinary debate, with both Democratic and
Republican leadership actively pushing their members to vote for the
resolution, passage was a foregone conclusion. But, the final vote,
though appearing to be lopsided, yielded more votes in opposition than
in any previous similar vote on the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee-supported resolution, with 344 “for”, 36 “against”, 22
“present”, and 30 “not voting”.
What this debate and vote point to is the growing resolve of some
significant members of Congress and some Jewish members to speak out
and challenge pro-Israel orthodoxy.
It should not go unnoticed.
foreig...@thenational.ae
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091113/FOREIGN/711129876/1002
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Peres, not Goldstone, is the small man
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| By Gideon Levy, Haaretz Correspondent | |||||
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President Shimon Peres considers Richard Goldstone a "small man, devoid of any sense of justice, a technocrat with no real understanding of jurisprudence." Same to you, we used to say when we were kids. Indeed, it's amazing to see how aptly these harsh remarks describe Peres himself, a small man, devoid of any sense of justice. A president who tongue-lashes an internationally acclaimed jurist, a senior representative of the United Nations, mainly attests to his own character. The attacks on Goldstone have devolved; they have become personal and unbridled. When they are uttered by the president, in a meeting with his esteemed Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva no less, it shows we have completely lost our way. Peres fulminated in the name of us all. This is not only a matter of personal etiquette, at which Peres normally excels. This is about the image of a country whose number-one citizen speaks so rudely against a global emissary. That is Peres' "PR mission" that everyone here is cheering. Goldstone has already chalked up one impressive achievement: We will now think twice or even three times before sending Israeli soldiers out on another brutal attack like Operation Cast Lead. His report will echo in the ears of politicians and generals before they give the order to move out. Perhaps the brutality is not over; certainly this is not a farewell to arms, but there will be new considerations and restraint. Without our admitting it, Goldstone has become the developer of the Israel Defense Forces' new ethics code.
Israel should be grateful to him for this. Unlike the president, the IDF is taking the Goldstone report a bit more seriously: Last week the military advocate general ordered an investigation into 12 incidents in the report. After all, even based on the IDF's greatly lowballed figures, nearly one-third of those killed in Gaza were innocent civilians. Also, the IDF cannot deny bombing flour mills, chicken runs, water and sewage systems, police stations, a school and a hospital. Goldstone told us about it. The call to establish an investigative panel following the report has come only because of Goldstone. The president's sense of justice, in contrast, has not even led him to call for an investigation into incidents the IDF has admitted to. In the contest over "whose is bigger," Peres will certainly wind up far behind in second place. Peres decried the sense of justice and understanding of jurisprudence of the former justice of South Africa's Constitutional Court, the head of the board of the Human Rights Institute of South Africa, the chief prosecutor of the UN International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, a member of the committee that probed Nazi activity in Argentina and chairman of the International Independent Inquiry on Kosovo. That criticism of Goldstone comes from a man who has never opened his mouth to condemn human-rights violations in his own country brings Israeli temerity to new heights. Another sorry new record: The president has called for Goldstone to be investigated. The sense of justice of Peres, who travels the world as an elder statesman and international man of peace, is certainly far less well-honed than Goldstone's. Goldstone has a proven track record. Peres does not. He keeps silent. He always has. Peres does not know what really happened in Gaza. Goldstone was there and interviewed close to 200 eyewitnesses. He may or may not have exaggerated a bit in his report, but Peres' silence over what happened is much more shameful. Peres is our beautiful and misleading face. Equipped with the ability to delude, one of the founders of the settlement movement has turned into Israel's Mr. Peace. He travels the world, generating admiration for his physical stamina, scattering empty promises and slogans. He calls on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas not to resign, when he knows that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu contributed to this resignation by his rejectionist attitude. He calls on Bashar Assad to come to the negotiating table, knowing that the Syrian president is practically begging for peace. A call by the president for the prime minister to freeze settlements or respond to the Syrian challenge? Of course not. That might make someone angry. He only preaches morality to the whole world. A small man? Peres' words. | |||||
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1128163.html
Palestinian PM: Declaration of statehood just a formality
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Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said Sunday that the declaration of a Palestinian state would be a mere formality once the institutions of a Palestinian state are created. Speaking at a press conference in Ramallah organized by the Saban Forum, Fayyad said it is important to create institutions that are functioning, c
Palestinian officials have they are preparing to ask the United Nations to endorse an independent state without Israel's consent because they are losing hope they can achieve their aspirations through peace talks. The announcement drew a harsh rebuke from Israeli officials. Fayyad did not comment on the independence plan. Fayyad spoke at a news conference with U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman, who praised Fayyad's efforts to develop the economy. "I know some people are concerned that this is unilateral," Fayyad said, referring to his development plan. "But it seems to me that it is unilateral in a healthy sense of self-development." Fayyad said building national institutions is an important step in preparation for the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital. He added thatsaid it was the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority to lay the groundwork for statehood, while it is up to the Palestine Liberation Organization to actually declare a state when the conditions are right. Fayyad said his government is dedicated now more than ever to providing resources to West Bank areas negatively affected by settlements and the separation fence. "Our people are continuing to demonstrate against everything that is illegal under international law, including the separation fence," he said. The press conference was held at the end of a discussion Fayyad held with 80 guests as part of the Saban Forum, organized by Israeli-American media tycoon Haim Saban. Some 40 guests arrived in Ramallah from the United States, including three U.S. senators and five congressmen. Forty Israelis were also in attendance, including Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer. 'We come as investors' U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman said of the visiting members of Congress that to a certain extent they arrived as investors, and are going to carry back to Washington their our own positive reports about how the money of the U.S. Congress has been spent. Lieberman told the assembled reporters that the U.S. representatives were impressed by the progress visible in Ramallah. Howard Berman, a Democratic congressman from California, said the American visitors agree with U.S. President Barack Obama's comments in his Cairo speech, in which he said the U.S.-Israel bond is unbreakable. But he said that feeling in no way precludes the strong commitment to the idea of Palestinian statehood and to the end to the occupation. In response to a question posed by Haaretz over his vision of Mideast peace, Lieberman said his objective is that there be two states, the Jewish state of Israel and a Palestinian state, and that in both those states, every citizen has equal rights, regardless of ethnic or religious background. Erekat: Israel doesn't want two state solution Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said earlier Sunday that frustrated Palestinians had decided to turn to the United Nations Security Council after 18 years of on-again, off-again negotiations with Israel. The Palestinians seek an independent state that includes the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem - areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. "Now is our defining moment. We went into this peace process in order to achieve a two-state solution," he said. "The endgame is to tell the Israelis that now the international community has recognized the two-state solution on the '67 borders." U.S. efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are deadlocked. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has urged the Palestinians to negotiate with him, but they refuse, saying Israel must first stop building settlements on lands they claim. Netanyahu refuses to endorse the 1967 lines as the basis for an agreement. Even if the UN endorses the Palestinian idea, it would be virtually impossible to implement while Israel remains in control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Nearly 500,000 Israelis live in these areas, in addition to thousands of Israeli troops stationed on bases. The Palestinians already declared independence unilaterally on Nov. 15, 1988. The declaration was recognized by dozens of countries, but never implemented on the ground. In the meantime, the Erekat declined to say when the Palestinians would make their appeal to the UN, signaling that the threat may be aimed in large part at putting pressure on Israel. Barak: Agreement needed to stop unilateral declaration Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that Israel risks watching the international community line up behind the Palestinians if negotiations are not restarted. Without an agreement, there is a possibility that support will increase for the Palestinians declaring a state unilaterally, he told the Cabinet on Sunday. Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom, a member of Netanyahu's Likud Party, warned the Palestinians against taking any one-sided action. "I think the Palestinians should know that unilateral actions will not lead to the results they hope for," he said. Nimr Hamad, an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said the Palestinians have no intention of rushing to the Security Council. "We are going to have to prepare for this well and to hold political and diplomatic talks. We want the Security Council to discuss this only after we've been given assurances," he told the Israeli daily Maariv. "There is no point in rushing just so that we collide with an American veto." As one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, the U.S. wields veto power over any resolution. Israeli media predicted that the U.S., Israel's key ally, would veto the move. Hamad said Abbas would travel to Cairo on Wednesday to discuss the plan with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. There was no immediate reaction from Security Council members. But Erekat said Russia, another permanent member of the Security Council, and unspecified European nations are on board with the Palestinian plan. Complicating the matter is the status of the Gaza Strip. The territory is currently ruled by Abbas' rivals, the Islamic militant Hamas group. Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza in 2005. PA seeks to extend Abbas term In the West Bank, meanwhile, the Palestinians announced plans to extend the term of Abbas after a recommendation to postpone presidential elections indefinitely. Last week, Palestinian election officials postponed a planned Jan. 24 presidential election, saying Hamas' opposition made it impossible to hold the vote in Gaza. The decision cleared the way for Abbas, who had threatened to quit politics after the election, to remain in office. Mohammed Dahlan, a top official in Abbas' Fatah Party, said Sunday that the PLO's central committee will meet next month to extend Abbas' term until elections can be held. | |||
http://www.hagada.org.il/eng/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=290
Date: Thursday, November 12, 2009
Topic: ::: Left Forum :::
Shortly after the UN Commission on Human Rights adopted the Goldstone Report, the Israeli Ambassadress to the United Nations launched a whining bout of emotional blackmail against the commission: "Israel is the only state in the world which is being discriminated against by the commission and criticized more than any other state in the world!" she complained.
Her Excellency the Ambassadress should be reminded of what actually makes Israel so globally unique:
- Israel is the only state in the world that was founded on a United Nations resolution.
However, whereas the said resolution ruled the establishment of two states - a Jewish one and a Palestinian one - it was immediately breached by Israel which took over most of the territory designated for the Arab state.
- Israel is the only state in the world established during the 20th century on the ruins of an indigenous people, expelling two thirds of it out of its land, turning them into refugees and denying their return in direct contradiction to a UN resolution on this matter.
- Israel is the only state in the world that defined the remains of the indigenous population whose territory it had settled as "foreigners" and subjected them to its peculiar immigration laws as if they had just landed in the state from far and beyond.
- Israel is the only state in the world that has managed to annul a fully justified UN resolution defining Zionism as racism.
- Israel is the only state in the world that invented a nation which can only be joined through a religious conversion.
- Israel today is the only state in the world sustaining an Apartheid regime which discriminates against its own non-Jewish citizens through a comprehensive, legislative apparatus that includes property, nationality and security laws and regulations.
- Israel is in fact the only apparition in the “developed” world of an army that owns a state, whose commanders blatantly interfere with every attempt to end the conflict that might jeopardize the smooth run of their gravy train.
- Israel is the only state in the world that, instead of adhering to a humane code of conduct during its self-initiated wars, tries to convince the world that it deserves special, different and more convenient rules of war, rules that will not define the killing of non-Jews as a crime.
And so, while the Israeli ambassadress to the United Nations tries to present herself and her masters as the legendary Little Dutch Boy who tries to stop the flood by sticking his little finger into the hole in the dam, indeed the only finger Israel can offer the world as a solution to unsolved issues is a stick of dynamite.
(Eli Aminov is a peace activist living in Jerusalem and is a member
of the Committee for a Secular and Democratic State).
http://www.hagada.org.il/eng
The URL for this story is:
http://www.hagada.org.il/eng/hagada/html/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=290
Young Israeli women follow their consciences into prison
Mya Guarnieri
- Last Updated: November 13. 2009 10:47PM UAE / November 13. 2009 6:47PM GMT
Unlike their uniformed peers, Emelia Markovich, left, and Yaara Shafrir, centre, are refusing to serve in the Israeli military for reasons of conscience. Ilan Mizrahi for The National
TEL
AVIV // When most Israeli girls her age are planning how they will
spend the time after their mandatory two-year stint in the armed
forces, Emelia Markovitch, 19, is considering a spell in jail.
The
19-year-old high school graduate has refused to serve in the Israel
Defense Forces because she does not agree with the country’s continued
occupation of Palestinian lands. But that decision will land her in
prison.
“I am afraid. I don’t know what will happen there,” she said.
Ms Markovitch said she felt being jailed for her moral convictions was an “insult”.
However, she is not alone.
In
October, 88 youngsters – some still enrolled in school, some recent
graduates – sent a letter to Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister,
Ehud Barak, the defence minister, and the IDF’s chief of staff, Gaby
Ashkenazi, stating their refusal to serve in the armed forces.
Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza created an “unbearable
actuality for Palestinians in the occupied territories”. And it will
not achieve peace, their letter said.
“There is no military
solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – only peace will ensure
life and security for Jews and Arabs in this country.”
Ms Markovitch, whose family emmigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union when she was an infant, also signed the letter.
She
said that when she received her first letter from the army while still
in high school about her upcoming service, she realised how little she
knew about the IDF and the occupation. “I started to look for
information,” she said. “I did research. And I decided I didn’t want to
take part in it.”
She went before the Conscientious Objection
Committee, the army body that sometimes grants enlistees a discharge
due to moral objections. “They said no,” Ms Markovitch recalled, but
offered her a position as a secretary within the Israeli army.
“You can’t talk about pacificism to officers.”
Because the IDF does not acknowledge draft-dodgers, Ms Markovitch, technically, has not been released from duty.
When she fails to report for duty in February, she will receive anywhere from one to four weeks in jail for refusing an order.
After
she completes her sentence, she is likely to receive another order,
which she will again disregard – and that means more time in jail.
This can go on for two years, the amount of time young, non-religious women are expected to serve.
Haggai
Matar of New Profile, a local non-governmental agency that advocates
the demilitarisation of Israeli society, estimates that only 50 per
cent of eligible Israeli men complete their mandatory service – 25 per
cent of those do not ever join while another 25 per cent drop out
within a year. Less than half of eligible Israeli women complete their
service according to Mr Matar.
Official numbers, however, are hard to come by as the IDF does not
recognise those who refuse, and conscription rates are confidential.
Academics and pro-peace groups estimate that as many as 700 people have
been sent to jail for refusing to serve over the past 20 years.
But
Israeli pacifists are finding other ways to opt out of military
service, such as claiming psychological or other medical problems.
Religion, too, has provided a way out for conscientious objectors.
Young men who study at religious institutions are automatically
released from service. And Israeli girls need only to claim religious
observance to be set free from the army, which many more have been
doing.
In 1991, 21 per cent of women avoided service on
religious grounds, according to army figures; last year the figure was
36 per cent, even though overall only around 20 per cent of Israelis
classify themselves as religious.
The army, however, appears to be cottoning on, and last year
launched a surveillance operation to try to catch out girls who claim
to be orthodox. Since then, 520 young women have been caught kissing, a
taboo for unmarried religious women, and bar-hopping, or driving on the
Sabbath.
Mr Matar said the slowly thinning ranks, which have
been dropping steadily since the 1990s, are “threatening” to the army.
He points to the recent criminal investigation of New Profile – which
provides information to young Israelis and counselling to draft dodgers
– as evidence of an army that feels insecure about its ability to keep
its numbers up.
Doing time in the IDF is a rite of passage – an entry card to
society. But for many Israelis, the increasingly right-wing policies of
their governemnt has tarnished the cachet of serving with the armed
forces.
Ms Markovich expects serious social repercussions from
her deicison, including difficulties finding work as many employers do
not want to hire those who have not served.
Her neighbours have even threatened her with a lawsuit because she mentioned her hometown in a media interview.
“We are seen as traitors,” Ms Markovich said.
Yaara Shafrir,
17, said her family has been supportive of her decision to refuse to
serve, but some of her friends were confused by her choice to do so on
moral grounds.
“They can’t see why I chose such a difficult
way to get a discharge,” Ms Shafrir said. Most of her friends opted out
of the army by claiming medical exemptions.
Ms Shafrir, who will
go before the Conscientious Objection Committee in February, feels that
publicly refusing army service is a small step in the process of
improving Israel.
“I don’t see myself as standing apart from society, as a viewer – we’re a part of society, so we’re a part of the change.”
There have been many refusal movements in Israel’s history.
The
first came in the early 1970s as “a reaction to the endless skirmishes
in the Sinai and the Israeli government’s rejection of the Egyptian
peace offer,” according to Gadi Algazi, a historian and social activist.
As early as 1979 – 12 years into the occupation – young Israelis,
concerned about participating in the repression of Palestinians, began
refusing to serve in the territories.
Spikes have also occured
in times of war, such as the handful of soldiers who refused to
participate in Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s winter offensive against
Gaza.
And it is not always the students who are refusing to serve.
Some, like Tom Mehager, a former artillery commander, make the decision later in life.
Mr
Mehager is a member of Courage to Refuse, a 500-strong organisation of
reserve soldiers and officers who have publicly spoken out against the
occupation.
Reservists too can find themselves behind bars if
they refuse to report for duty – as approximately 200 members of
Courage to Refuse, including Mr Mehager, have done.
For Mr Mehager, it was while he was on reserve duty in the West Bank
in 2003, and asked to man a roadblock which the army had imposed on a
village after a Palestinian man allegedly murdered an Israeli settler.
The decision was crystal clear,” Mr Mehager, then 26, recalled. “I refused. And I spent four weeks in a military jail.”
* The National
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091114/FOREIGN/711139807/1140
Uri Avnery
14.11.09
Scoundrel With Permission
WHEN
THE TV news starts with a murder, people
are relieved.
This means that
no war has broken out, no suicide bomb
has exploded, no Qassam rocket has been
launched at Sderot. Ahmadinejad has not test-fired
a new missile that can reach Tel Aviv. Just another murder.
Not that Israel is the world’s murder
capital. We shall have to work much harder to reach the heights of New
York or Moscow, not to mention Johannesburg. Statistics even show our
murder rate is declining.
But lately Israel has been shocked
by a series of exceptionally brutal murders.
A husband took revenge on his wife
by killing his little daughter and burying her in a forest. A man who
lived with the wife of his son killed her daughter, his
own granddaughter, put her little body in a suitcase and threw
it into Tel Aviv’s Yarkon river. A
son who quarreled with his wife killed her and her mother, cut
up both bodies and dispersed the parts in garbage bins.
A young man who had a quarrel with his mother killed her, and then went
off to kill his brother, too. A man
in his 70s killed his wife in her sleep
with a hammer.
In recent weeks, there were two cases
that trumped even these atrocities.
Damian Karlik, an immigrant from Russia
who worked as head waiter in a Russian restaurant, was
dismissed for theft and decided to
take revenge on the owners, Russian immigrants like him. He went to
their apartment and stabbed to death
six people, one after another – the owner and his wife,
their son and his wife and their two small grandchildren.
An immigrant from the US called Jack
Teitel, an inhabitant of one of the most extreme West Bank settlements,
has now confessed to the killing some years ago
of two random Palestinians. He returned briefly
to America, and, after coming back, put bombs into police cars. Why?
Because the police were protecting gays and lesbians. He is
also suspected of killing two traffic policemen for the same reason.
He also claimed responsibility for the mass killing of gays in a Tel
Aviv club (though that may be empty bragging). He
planted a bomb in the home of some
Messianic Jews (Jews who regard Jesus as the Messiah) and grievously
injured a 15-year-old. He tried to kill the leftist professor
Ze’ev Sternhell with another bomb which wounded him.
WHAT IS so special
about these two cases is that they
involved new immigrants who were allowed into
Israel in spite of already being under investigation
for crimes in their homelands.
The Law of Return accords
every Jew the right to immigrate (“make Aliyah”) to Israel, where
he or she automatically receives Israeli citizenship on arrival. But
even according to this law, the Minister of the Interior can
reject people suspected of serious crimes.
This makes
the case of Karlik especially interesting. He was suspected in Russia
of armed robbery, but the organization in charge of issuing
Israeli immigration permits in Russia asserts that they did not know
about it.
This organization,
Nativ (“path”), was active in the Soviet Union as one of the
Israeli secret services, like the Mossad and Shin Bet. Its particular
job was to infiltrate Jewish communities and induce Jews to come to
Israel.
Apart from this,
Nativ was also engaged, of course, in espionage. It is no secret that
for decades immigrants arriving from the
Soviet Union were interrogated exhaustively
by the Shin Bet about military, economic and other installations in
their former homeland. The precious information thus gathered
ensured Israel a high standing in the Western intelligence community.
After the collapse of the Communist
regime, Nativ was to be disbanded, but like
every threatened organization it fought for its
life. It was decided to leave it intact and put it in charge of immigration
to Israel from all the former Soviet republics. They
now have to make sure that immigrants are kosher Jews according to religious
law.
The religious credentials of the immigrants
interest Nativ much more than any criminal record they may have. It
seems Nativ has no contacts with the Russian police, who
probably suspect it of other activities.
Thus it happens that a person like
Karlik, a man under investigation for
robbery with violence, was found suitable for immigration. His
ethnic pedigree was impeccable. After his arrival in Israel, the Russian
authorities officially applied for
his extradition for robbery, but the request was denied. The escaped
robber was issued a license for a gun and allowed to
work as a guard.
Teitel’s case
is similar. True, in the US there is no Nativ, but the logic of those
in charge of emigration to Israel is the same:
to bring immigrants without asking unnecessary questions. According
to religious law, a Jew remains a Jew even if he sins.
THESE AFFAIRS
shine a spotlight on one of the guiding
principles of the Zionist establishment: to bring Jews to Israel,
whatever the price. Statistics must show that this year
– or any other year – a record number of Jews have
“made Aliyah”. In many communities, the
bottom of the barrel is scraped in order to bring more Jews. Emissaries
find “lost tribes” of Jews in Peru and Ethiopia, India and China.
In this situation, there is an understandable
temptation to overlook the criminal past of would-be immigrants. So
what if somebody, a kosher Jew, has robbed a bank or mistreated children?
In Israel he will perhaps mend his ways. Or if somebody was put on trial
abroad for illegal arms deals, money laundering and/or selling
blood-stained diamonds – he is welcome,
and if he brings his millions with him, the leaders of the state will
be happy to be photographed in his company.
That is true, of course, only for
an immigrant who is a Jew according to the Halakha (religious law).
If he is a Goy, the story is quite different. That is the province of
the leader of the Shas party, Eli Yishai.
IN THE present Israeli government
there are several candidates for the title of Racist in Chief. An objective
jury would be hard put to choose between them.
The favorite is the Foreign Minister,
Avigdor Lieberman, a certified racist whose
entire career in Israel is built on hatred towards Arabs and foreigners.
It was he who appointed as Minister of Justice the kippa-wearing
lawyer Ya’akov Ne’eman, who is now busily engaged in securing the
all-important position of Legal Advisor
to the Government (practically the Attorney General)
for a judge educated in a Yeshiva (Orthodox school), who
lives in one of the more extreme settlements and who has become notorious
for several rightist judgments. Binyamin Netanyahu himself, of course,
is also an excellent candidate.
But the King of Racists is the Minister
of the Interior. He is more dangerous than his colleagues because he
has absolute power over the civil status of every person in Israel,
immigration and emigration, the Register of Residents and the expulsion
of foreigners. In this position he
is now doing to foreigners what others
have done to Jews in many countries.
He is untiring in his efforts to guard the real Israel
– not the “Jewish and democratic state” as it is
officially defined, but rather the
“Jewish and demographic state”. For this purpose he has recently
created a special para-police force for the
detection and deportation of illegal
foreigners.
It is difficult to decide whether
Yishai is an extreme fanatic or a complete cynic, or
some strange combination. As matter of fact, when Shas was still a moderate
party, in those distant days when its guru, Rabbi Ovadia
Yosef, ruled that it is permissible
to give back the occupied territories, and its former leader, Aryeh
Deri, was the darling of the left, Yishai, too, declared
“Yes to Oslo, Yes to the evacuation of Jews from Hebron, Yes to Arafat!”
But since then much dirty water has flowed
down our polluted rivers, Shas has
turned into a radical right-wing party and Yishai is
now the most extreme rightist in the government.
His unshakable devotion to the purity
of the race arouses admiration. Hardly a day passes without some shocking
news about his activites. He fights like a tiger for the expulsion of
1500 children of foreign workers who were born in Israel,
who speak Hebrew and attend Israeli schools, who have no other homeland.
Yishai is ready to lay down his life for their deportation.
The Interior Ministry prevents the
entry of American and European citizens who bear Arab names. Officials
of the UN and the EU in charge of projects for the Palestinians are
normally unable to enter from Jordan (or anywhere else outside Israel),
and if they somehow do obtain permission
– they are then forbidden to cross the Green Line
into Israel. Foreign women married to
Israelis are expelled without mercy. There is no end to the
examples.
In the eyes of Yishai, every son of
a Thai is an enemy of the Jewish state, every daughter of a Colombian
worker is a threat to the purity of the Jewish people. He has declared
that the foreign workers are an “infection”,
and warned that Tel Aviv is “becoming Africa”. He has disclosed
that the foreigners carry frightening
diseases, such as AIDS, tuberculosis and such. (And in this respect
they resemble gays and lesbians, who, according to Yishai,
are “sick people”.
Such a person would not remain a minister
in the cabinet of the US or most European countries. In the homeland
of the Nuremberg laws he would not
even come close to a government position.
Recently, during
the operation “Cast Lead”, Yishai demanded
that we “bomb thousands of houses, to
destroy Gaza” – which does not hinder him from denouncing Judge
Richard Goldstone as an abominable anti-Semite. He himself, by the way,
never risked his skin as a combat soldier
– this national hero served as an NCO for religious services in a
transport unit.
800 years ago, Rabbi Moshe Ben-Nahman,
called Nahmanides, coined the phrase
“Scoundrel with the permission of the Torah” - meaning a person
who does despicable things which are not expressly forbidden in the
Bible. I am not sure if even this appellation
would fit Yishai, since the Bible forbids more than once
the mistreatment of strangers – “Ye oppress not the stranger, the
fatherless and the widow” (Jer. 7:6),
“He…loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment” (Deut.
10:18) and many other commandments to this effect.
BUT More important than Yishai himself
is the phenomenon that he represents: the
invocation of the demographic demon, which terrifies the country.
62 years after its foundation, the
State of Israel is still living in fear of the
“demographic danger”. It is afraid of its Arab citizens, and therefore
discriminates against them in every sphere. It is afraid of
the 400 thousand Russians who have
come to this country with their Jewish relatives
in accordance with the Law of Return, but whose mothers were not Jewish.
Here is a built-in contradiction: while the Nativ operators are interested
in maximizing the number of immigrants, Yishai and his people deny these
very same immigrants the right to marry Jews or to be buried in Jewish
graveyards. They serve in the army, but if they
fall in action they cannot be buried next to their comrades.
Practically all Hebrew Israelis want
a state with a Hebrew majority, where the Hebrew language, culture and
tradition are cultivated. But many of us do not want a man-hunting,
woman-hunting and child-hunting state, closed to asylum-seekers, where
foreign workers who outstay their welcome
must live in permanent fear, like our ancestors
in the ghettoes.
In order to exorcise the demographic demon, my friends and I have applied to the courts and requested that the registration “Nation: Jewish” in the Ministry’s Register of Residents be replaced with “Nation: Israeli”. Our application was rejected by Judge Noam Solberg – the very same person the Minister of Justice is moving mountains to get appointed as Attorney General.
10-year-old Palestinian boy jailed for 11 hours
Hussam
Faisal Muhana throws stones during demonstration in his village near
Tulkarem, detained in Israeli prison for 11 hours, returns home shocked
and in pain. IDF spokesman: Event being investigated
Ali Waked
Published: 11.15.09, 13:20 / Israel News
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Hussam Faisal Muhana, 10, heeded the calls made on Saturday over the loudspeakers throughout his village of Deir al-Ghusun near Tulkarem encouraging residents to participate in a demonstration against the separation fence. Together with other children and youth from the village, he went to the demonstration. The children threw stones at the security forces that clashed with the demonstrators. Despite his young age, Muhana was arrested. "There were two soldiers there who beat me in the legs with a club. After that, they took me to Ariel," the boy told Ynet the day after his arrest. Still in shock, he didn't know whether he was taken to a police station or to a military base. "In Ariel, they started to ask me, 'Why do you throw stones?' I told them, 'Just because.'" After his family and human rights groups learned that he had been arrested, they phoned the military and the police. "They took him to the Jabara Checkpoint. From there they told a taxi driver to take him home," recounted the father, Abu Tarek. According to him, the driver was not from the village "and Hussam directed him how to get to our home." The father said that his son was in complete shock even the day after. "He arrived home after 10 pm, nearly 11 hours after he had been arrested. This is his first experience with the police and military. We didn't even know that he went to the procession," he said. "He returned in shock and went immediately to sleep. This morning he also woke up very late, not like he usually does. Fortunately, there is a day off from school today because of the anniversary of the declaration of independence, so he can recover at home."
Dozens of Palestinians, Israelis, and activists from around the world took part in the demonstration at which Hussam was arrested. According to the demonstrators, 18 people were arrested. The IDF, on the other hand, claims that only six people were arrested for lightly damaging the external gate of the separation fence. The IDF reported that it is investigating the issue of Hussam Muhana's arrest.
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In a statement, the PFLP said Greek MEP Nikos Hountis of the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) asked on Thursday that the European Commission look into Sa'adat's case, as well as others in Israeli jails.
"Sa'adat has been imprisoned since 2006," Hountis told the assembly. "He is being held in a special unit of solitary confinement in the Ramon prison, where he is deprived from fundamental human rights."
Hountis said Sa'adat was banned from visits by members of his family or by his lawyer and communication with fellow prisoners is prohibited. His private belongings have been confiscated, and he is obliged to go to the yard handcuffed, he added.
The party leader was sentenced in December 2008 to 30 years in prison for belonging to the political party, which Israel considers an "illegal terrorist organization." His solitary confinement was renewed for another six months on 10 October.
In 2008, the European Parliament passed a resolution expressing concern for the estimated 11,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, among them hundreds of women and children, as well as calling for the release of all of imprisoned Palestinian parliamentarians.
Referring to that resolution, Hountis called for action on Sa'adat's case. "The commission is being asked, what are the actions that it has taken in order to implement this resolution and secure the freedom of the Palestinian MP Ahmad Sa'adat?"
In a statement, the Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat applauded Hountis for urging the European body to "take action to pressure the occupation regime to release Ahmad Sa'adat, all of the imprisoned members of the PLC and all Palestinian political prisoners."
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=239611
Thirty-two-year-old Mehraj Ibrahim from the Tulkarem Refugee Camp is serving his ninth year of a 15-year sentence in Israeli prison. He has been transfered from the Gelboa, Bafha, Negev, Maggido, Ashkelon and Beersheba prisons during his time in incarceration. His mother was permitted to see the man last week, and reported he was in serious condition.
Ibrahim's hands and legs were cuffed when his mother saw him, and he reported that he had been held in an isolation cell with no contact from other inmates for at lest four months. She said her son looked ill, was limping on his right leg, shook violently and had a racking cough. She appealed to local and international authorities to intervene in his case and see that he is treated fairly.
Ibrahim was detained on 29 April 2001 and is serving a 15-year term.
Meanwhile, the Center for Detainees Studies said on Friday that surgeons discovered the cause of 24-year-old detainee Salem Jamal Kassab's chronic pain, pus, and infections - a metal pin left behind during a prior operation. In a statement, the center said that after a review of the seemingly endless infections doctors finally found the pin. Kassab also suffers from an optical illness, the center said, calling on human rights groups to intervene in his case.
http://ow.ly/BY2m
New Demolition Threats in Umm al-Kheir
At the middle of last week – Wednesday 12\11 the soldiers from the Occupation's Civil Administration appeared again in the two Umm al-Kheir clusters, next to the settlement of Carmel in south Mt. Hebron. In their old tradition of civil service, they distributed 11 orders of halting constructing work – the legal act which precedes the act of house demolition. As the people of those two clusters of Umm al-Kheir don’t have much of any construction work left – most of their constructed houses were demolished in the many rounds of house demolition that were inflicted on them by the civil administration – most of the halting construction orders were addressed to tents (donation of the Red Cross form the last round of demolitions), tin shacks, toilet and a toilet hole, along with three built houses that are located in the farthest spot form the settlement. This indiscriminate work mode reveals the real purpose of the civil administration acts – making the life of the local residents (who haev lived there since 30 years before the establishment of the Israeli settlement) so unbearable, that they would leave their dwellings of their own “free will”.
For information on the last round of houses demolitions in Umm al-Kheir, check: http://villagesgroup.wordpress.com/2008/11/02/umm-al-kheir-homes-demolitions-29102008/
Ehud Krinis
Villages Group
Clueless Idiots
Reza Fiyouzat, Revolutionary Flowerpot Society
Friday, November 13, 2009
This is a declaration!
The wretched cluelessness of some in the American left is beyond description.
.........
So, now, you tell me, dear reader, what kind of answers would you give to this person who claims is calling you on behalf of some 'polling agency' in 'Washington, DC', or whatever? Knowing that the government is particularly interested in international calls. And, again, fully aware of the price of an out-of-line answer.
But of course even this picture, painted as it is, cannot possibly drive home the point to the fools who talk about 'opinion polls' conducted with regular people in Iran as if they were talking about a poll taken of Vermonters' attitudes regarding their lovely green state.
What is one to tell such people? When reading their utterly ugly garbage or having to discourse with such people, I feel like I am talking to some insane teenager going through intense identity and anger issues. There is no logic to engage with. There are only unrelated series of non-sequiturs arranged in sentences and paragraph arrangements. But no sense at all comes of any of it. This fascistic theocracy is made out to be 'just another normal state', which can only lead us to conclude that the 'normal', for these people, is pretty bleak.
One idiot says 81% of people support the coup regime. Another one chimes in, 'The left in Iran should be addressing the 81% that support Ahmadinejad!', proving that not only do they not understand the Iranian society or the state in the slightest bit, they don't even know the meaning of the word 'dictatorship'. If you ask them, though, they KNOW (oh, boy, do they!) that THEY live under the dictatorship of Capital, and they can recite entire treaties by Marx and Lenin on the subject. Yet ... yet, they like to pretend to be completely blind to a most vicious dictatorship of religious men and their bazaari mercantilist allies (not even 'progressive' industrialists), that is based purely on violence, oppression, fear, terror and regional bullying. These 'leftists' are, for all cognitive, psychological and social purposes, insane. They are simply insane and therefore incapable of distinguishing between actual reality and their own hallucinations-cum-belief (narrations, etc.). The other side of the description of insanity -- endlessly doing the same and expecting different outcomes -- applies to them as well.
The whole lot of them should go to hell right along with the fascistic thugs they support. They can all hold hands in their respective circles in hell, lick the gunk off each other's faces, and watch the butt-ugly faces they loved to give succor to while alive in this hell on earth. They can all go and make love to themselves for all eternity. Politeness is bunk! Go love yourselves, you miserable wretches!
My loveable Iranian comrades tell me not to waste heartbeats. I should listen to them. I will. But the rage for these traitorous self-lovers dirties my blood too much, and some spilling of guts becomes necessary once in a while. How long are we supposed to take insults and just turn our faces? How long should we stand by while getting kicked in the head not just by fascistic regimes and their paid goons but by 'leftists'? What the ...! What an unloved-up, f'ed around, screwed-up world these idiots live in and impose on others!
And that is the true mark of a clueless idiot. All they can do is make life even more miserable for anybody they can stick it to. Just like the right wingers they love to hate.
Don't miss the above outburst in full here:
:: Article nr. 60033 sent on 13-nov-2009 21:01 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=60033
or here:
revolutionaryflowerpot.blogspot.com/2009/11/clueless-idiots.html
TEHRAN (AFP) – Iranian armed forces chief of staff General Hassan Firouzabadi said on Friday he backed proposals for Tehran to ship out most of its stocks of low-enriched uranium in return for fuel for a reactor designed to produce medical isotopes.
"We won't suffer from an exchange of fuel," the Mehr news agency quoted the general as saying.
"On the contrary, in obtaining fuel enriched to 20 percent purity for the Tehran reactor, a million of our citizens will benefit from the medical treatment it can enable and we will prove at the same time the bona fides of our peaceful nuclear activities."
The general said he had no particular issue with the amount of low-enriched uranium that Iran shipped out -- 1,200 kilos (more than 2,640 pounds) under the current proposals drawn up by the UN nuclear watchdog and approved by the major powers.
"The quantity of uranium enriched to 3.5 percent that will be shipped out in order to obtain the fuel is not so large as to cause damage," he said.
Under the plan put forward by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on October 21, Iran would ship out the low-enriched uranium, equivalent to more than 70 percent of its estimated stocks, and Russia would further enrich it before France turned it into fuel for the Tehran reactor.
The proposals are designed to assuage fears that Iran could otherwise divert some of the stocks and enrich them further to the much higher levels of purity required to make an atomic bomb, an ambition Iranian officials strongly deny.
Other Iranian officials have criticised the IAEA proposals, expressing concern that Tehran would be handing over most of its stocks before getting anything in return and that its arch-foe Washington might welch on the deal.
Iranian media say counter-proposals are being circulated under which Tehran would ship out only 800 kilogrammes of low-enriched uranium and do so not in one go but in two instalments.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091113/wl_mideast_afp/irannuclearpoliticsmilitary_20091113101952
Berlin Against Anti-Terror Bank Data Deal
Hands off our banking data: Privacy rights and data protection must be discussed before a deal allowing US access to European bank transactions can go through, say the Germans.
The new German justice minister says Berlin is not comfortable with an EU measure that would grant US authorities access to European banking data. Now it seems likely that the Germans may scupper the deal, which is supposed to be pushed through at an EU meeting in Brussels at the end of November.
The agreement was supposed to be laced up before others got involved in the tricky debate about data protection and individual rights. Now, though, it looks like European Union plans to push through an anti-terror agreement with Washington may not go ahead, thanks in part to the new German government.
Germany is not the only country to have doubts. France, Austria and Finland have also expressed reservations, particularly regarding to the speed with which the new measure was being pushed through. Dec. 1 is the date when the new Lisbon Treaty goes into effect. The reform agreement grants the European Parliament new powers of control over decisions such as the one under consideration -- and that means lengthy debate.
Effective Protection of Rights
That, though, is exactly what a number of countries would like to see when it comes to the bank-data proposal. In a wide-ranging interview with the German daily Berliner Zeitung, German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said that she thinks the quick deal is a bad idea for both ideological and legislative reasons. Speaking about a planned meeting of interior and justice ministers in Brussels at the end of the month, at which the deal will be discussed, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said the German government would "argue for clear rules and effective protection of citizens' rights."
She added: "I consider the attempt to push this (deal) through the European Union just one day before the Lisbon Treaty comes into effect to be very unfortunate. It is a snub directed at the European Parliament, a parliament which has been critical of this deal and which, after the Lisbon Treaty comes into effect, will have a right to help make this decision." Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a member of the FDP, told the newspaper that "the German government is very opposed to this agreement."
Meanwhile in an interview with the Frankfurter Rundschau, Thilo Weichert of the Independent State Center for Data Privacy in the state of Schleswig Holstein also warned against the deal. Weichert said handing over data when there are well-established grounds for suspicion is one thing. But allowing the US wholesale access is quite another.
Moving the Server
The US "maintain that this is only about the fight against terrorism," Weichert said. "But we know that the US understanding of the war on terror doesn't fit with the understanding of basic human rights in Europe."
Weichert also noted that American investigators have actually been able to look at EU banking data on international transactions for some time now -- there was a bank server in the US that they were able to access. The EU only discovered the leak in 2006. Information on foreign transactions is now to be moved to a more secure computer network based in Switzerland by the end of 2009 -- which is why, he adds, the US needs the deal.
In lieu of a deal with the European Union, the US will have to ask for banking information from individual EU member-state governments in the course of terrorism investigations.
cis -- with wire reports
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,661117,00.html
"FREE WORLD" AND MARKET ECONOMY HORRORS HAVE RARELY BEEN EXPOSED, SO THAT WESTERN MORAL SUPERIORITY MIGHT SHINE UNRIVALED. BUT THE VICTIMS' PAIN CANNOT BE UNRECORDED IN THE LING TERM.
UK child migrants apology planned
Historian Dr Stephen Constantine reflects on a policy considered beneficial at the time
Gordon Brown is to apologise for the UK's role in sending thousands of its children to former colonies in the 20th century, the BBC has learned.
Under the Child Migrants Programme - which ended just 40 years ago - poor children were sent to a "better life" in Australia, Canada and elsewhere.
But many were abused and ended up in institutions or as labourers on farms.
Officials are consulting with survivors of the programme so that a statement can be made in the new year.
On Monday, Australia's prime minister will apologise to the 7,000 UK migrants living there for the mistreatment.
Sandra Anker was sent out to Australia when she was six years old
He will deliver a national apology to the "Forgotten Australians" and recognise the mistreatment and ongoing suffering of some 500,000 people held in orphanages or children's homes between 1930 and 1970.
As they were compulsorily shipped out of Britain, many of the children were told - wrongly - their parents were dead, and that a more abundant life awaited them.
Many parents did not know their children, aged as young as three, had been sent to Australia.
Care agencies worked with the government to send disadvantaged children to a rosy future and supply what was deemed "good white stock" to a former colony.
|
HISTORY OF UK CHILD MIGRANTS
UK the only country with a sustained history of child migration - over four centuries
In 1618, 100 sent from London to Richmond, Virginia
In total 130,000 sent from the UK to Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) and Australia
Post-war, 7,000 shipped to Australia and 1,300 to New Zealand, Rhodesia and Canada
Source: Child Migrants Trust
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In many cases they were educated only for farm work, and suffered cruelty and hardship including physical, psychological and sexual abuse.
In a letter to the chairman of the health select committee this weekend, Mr Brown said "the time is now right" for the UK to apologise for the actions of previous governments.
"It is important that we take the time to listen to the voices of the survivors and victims of these misguided policies," he wrote.
Kevin Barron, chairman of the select committee which looked into what happened, said he was "very pleased" to have received a written commitment from Mr Brown.
"After consultation with organisations directly involved with child migrants we are going to make an apology early in the new year," he said.
Baroness Amos, Britain's high commissioner in Canberra, said an apology was an important part of addressing the damage.
Baroness Amos: "This was a shocking period in our history"
She told the BBC: "We've always said that this was an absolutely shocking period in our history and it's important that there is an apology.
"The next stage will be consultation with the Child Migrants Trust and others on the actual form and wording of that apology."
Trust founder Margaret Humphreys has travelled from the UK to Canberra for Mr Rudd's apology.
She said: "The trust has campaigned for over 20 years for this kind and degree of recognition. For child migrants, of course, it has been all their lives and for their families.
"This is a moment - a significant moment - in the history of child migration. The recognition is vital if people are to recover."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8361025.stmUgly Truth: Most U.S. Kids Sentenced to Die In Prison Are Black
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted November 11, 2009.
The U.S. stands alone in the world in condemning thousands of juveniles to life without parole. And race is a huge factor. Will the Supreme Court even consider it?
This is the second in a two-part series on juvenile life without parole. Read Part One here.
On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court heard two cases that could have major implications for the way juvenile offenders are treated in our criminal justice system. Sullivan v. Florida and Graham v. Florida both involve men who are serving life without the possibility of parole for crimes they were convicted of as teenagers -- crimes in which no one was killed.
Joe Sullivan was only 13 years old when he was accused of sexually assaulting a 72-year-old woman in her Pensacola, Fla., home, hours after he and a group of older teenagers robbed her house. Sullivan, who reportedly suffers from mental disabilities, insisted that, while he participated in the robbery, he did not commit the rape. But his co-defendants, 15-year-old Michael Gulley and 17-year-old Nathan McCants, 17 pinned the crime on him. Both were tried as juveniles; Sullivan was tried as an adult.
Sullivan is African American, a fact that was stressed repeatedly at trial. The victim, Lena Bruner, testified that her assailant was "a colored boy" with "kinky hair" -- "he was quite black, and he was small," she said. Bruner admitted that she "did not see him full in the face," but she remembered him saying, "If you can't identify me, I may not have to kill you."
According to the New York Times, "at his trial, Mr. Sullivan was made to say those words several times." ("'It's been six months,' the woman said on the witness stand. 'It's hard, but it does sound similar.' ")
Sullivan had shabby representation -- his lawyer didn't bother making an opening statement and later lost his license to practice in Florida -- and his one-day trial should have cast serious doubts about his guilt. "The only physical evidence was a fingerprint lifted from a plaque in the bedroom, which could have been made during the burglary," wrote Amy Bach in Slate last week. "The clothing and other evidence have been destroyed and couldn't be tested for DNA." Nevertheless, he was found guilty, and at 14, Sullivan became the youngest person in the country to be sentenced to life without parole.
"I'm going to send him away for as long as I can," the judge said.
Today, Sullivan is one of some 109 prisoners in the country whose non-homicide crimes have condemned them to leave prison only in a coffin. No fewer than 76 of those prisoners are behind bars in Florida. (Until last month there were 77, but 29-year-old Travis Underhill, sentenced to life in 1999 for armed robbery, "collapsed while playing basketball at a Palm Beach County prison on Oct. 8 and died," according to the Miami Herald.) The vast majority -- 84 percent, in Florida -- are African American. On a national level, according to Human Rights Watch, African American youths are serving life without parole at a rate of about 10 times that of white youths.
Monday's oral arguments covered a lot of ground, including whether life-without-parole is comparable to the death penalty (which has been banned for juveniles); whether the purpose, ultimately, is about deterrence or retribution -- "What is the State's interest in keeping ... the defendant in custody for the rest of his life if he has been rehabilitated and is no longer a real danger?" -- whether, for sentencing purposes, there's any practical difference between a 13-year-old or a 10-year-old -- or, for that matter, an 18-year-old and a 17-and-11-month-old ("the line has to be drawn somewhere.") At points, it got downright philosophical ("Why does a juvenile have a constitutional right to hope, but an adult does not?" asked Justice Kennedy.) But at the center of the argument was the question of whether children -- and their potential for rehabilitation -- should be judged by the same standards as that of grown-ups. "To not recognize the difference between a child and an adult is cruel and unusual," defense attorney Bryan Stevenson told Justice Antonin Scalia.
Conspicuously absent from the oral arguments, however, was any discussion of race. The one time Stevenson attempted to mention it, as one of the "arbitrary features" of the distribution of life-without-parole sentences -- these prisoners are "disproportionately kids of color," Stevenson said -- he was interrupted by Justice Alito, who questioned the reliability of his statistics. ("What is your response to the State's argument that these statistics are not peer-reviewed?" he asked.)
It can be tricky to pin down exact numbers when it comes to specific
prison populations from state to state, particularly given the
differences between sentencing statutes across the country. And states
have not traditionally kept track of how many juveniles are in their
adult prisons. But when it comes to juvenile lifers, there are some
figures that have been widely accepted (and not contested by the state
of Florida.)
http://www.alternet.org/story/143776/ugly_truth:_most_u.s._kids_sentenced_to_die_in_prison_are_black
--
“They have succeeded in dominating us more
through ignorance, than through force”.
Simon Bolivar
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." Voltaire
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