Following my previous post here, I just received this fresh information regarding Hiba Al-Shamaree this fellow Iraqi woman writer/blogger who has been kidnapped/arrested by the Iraqi forces on the 20th of January 2010 in the Sayyediya neighborhood in Baghdad.
Her sister has just updated her blog with the following :
Hiba Al-Shamaree is detained by Baghdad’s security forces on the charges of supporting the Iraqi Resistance (through her writings), she will be presented to the Criminal/Penal Court…
I am now authorized by Hiba to reveal her true identity to you.
Her name : Hanan Ali Ahmad Al Mashadani Age : 33 years old Profession: Doctor in Ophtalmology
The charges pressed against her : Inciting to violence and supporting the Resistance and according to informed sources this is a charge that falls under the clause of Terrorism as per the Iraqi law.
Hiba lived in Amman with us, but she insisted on going to Baghdad on a humanitarian mission/assignment, for a project financed by an Indian NGO called HMOK and which dealt with deaf and mute Iraqi children. Hiba was working as a consultant for this Indian NGO.
They discovered her pen name Hiba Al Shamaree because when they arrested her she had her laptop with her which they confiscated and they saw the articles she has been posting on her blog.
Signed Huda Al Shamaree, sister of the doctor and writer Hiba Al Shamaree.
PLEASE, THIS IS AN URGENT PLEA — THEY WILL DESTROY HER. THEY WILL PUT HER THROUGH THE MOST HORRENDOUS OF TORTURES, including RAPE. I KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT. I KNOW.
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE HELP.
CONTACT ANYONE YOU CAN. HIBA’S ONLY CRIME IS HOLDING A BLOG. THAT’S ALL.
SOMETHING MUST BE DONE. YOU CAN’T LET A 33 YEAR OLD WOMAN DOCTOR BE RAPED, TORTURED AND KILLED THAT WAY. BECAUSE KILLED SHE WILL BE .
YOU CAN LET HER DIE THAT WAY — JUST BECAUSE OF A BLOG. SHE WAS IN BAGHDAD FOR THAT INDIAN NGO, ON A HUMANITARIAN ASSIGNMENT FOR DEAF AND MUTE IRAQI CHILDREN. THIS IS NOT A TERRORIST/CRIMINAL ACT — HELPING DEAF AND MUTE CHILDREN.
HER BLOG IS JUST A BLOG. SHE HOLDS NO GUNS, SHE HAS NO WEAPONS, SHE IS NOT AFFILIATED TO ANY TERRORIST GROUP. SHE JUST HAD HER PEN.
PLEASE HELP HER, PLEASE HELP US.
DISTRIBUTE THIS AS WIDELY AS POSSIBLE.– HRW, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, THE RED CROSS, U.N, ANYONE AND EVERYONE…
YOU OWE IT TO US, YOU BROUGHT “DEMOCRACY” TO IRAQ, YOU OWE IT TO US. YOU OWE IT TO SAVE THIS YOUNG IRAQI WOMAN’S LIFE.
The Petition as translated into English reads. Not a perfect translation but it gives you a very clear provocation for her arrest.
A solidarity campaign for the release of writer-Shammari gift detained because of their views by the government of Nuri al-Maliki
I went colleague (gift Shammari) at her residence in Jordan to Baghdad on a humanitarian mission is the rehabilitation of a group of children deaf and dumb for the benefit of the Iraqi Foundation HMOK Hindi as an international and a doctor’s eyes, but the government of Nuri al-Maliki was Ttrsdha because of her writings that reject the occupation of Iraq was arrested on charges of incitement against the Israeli government has brought against her charge (terrorism) because of her writings.
We, the undersigned in the hold below Nuri al-Maliki and Jalal Talabani, and the Council of Representatives, and all the military serving in Iraq is responsible for maintaining the life of our colleague (gift Shammari), whose real name is Dr. Hanan Ali Ahmed al-Mashhadani (33) years, and demand her release immediately the name of (Democratic) claimed by forces foreign occupation and local communities in Iraq, and for that we have signed the below
This is an absolute crime against freedom of speech.
No one can say Israel doesn’t play a part in the occupation of Iraq.
Seems they play a large part in it if a simple blogger can be put in prison for writing about them, in another country no less.
We cannot tolerate this type of behavior from any country anywhere. We must protect our press, our blogger’s, our freedom of speech around the world.
Please pass this on to everyone you know.
You could be next to put in prison for simply writing a blog.
Helping this woman is helping ourselves.
Putting this woman in prison is a CRIME.
Update February 1 2010
Hiba Al-Shamaree is no criminal.
I have just finished reading her entire blog.
I saw nothing that makes her a criminal in any way.
I will post her first entry however. Of all the things she brings to light this is the most heartbreaking. The translation is not perfect but it tells the story very well. It is not a new story but it does describe how the US treated prisoners. I think it is important to know at least one of the stories Hiba Al-Shamaree wrote about. We all know of the torture that took place in Abu Ghraib prison. This is one more. This is how the women were treated.
You may forget Nadia, the girl who was raped dogs occupied in Abu Ghraib prison, notorious, and to your memories revived this story on the tongue did not Tertm when they emerge from prison into the arms of her family, like a prisoner of any aggrieved injustice Tquih fire and the fire of longing for his family simply.
Nadia had fled as it exits the prison, not because of the shame that Silahakha by the perpetration of a crime and entered prison, but because of what has happened in Iraqi prisoners of abuse and rape and torture at the hands of American mercenaries in the Abu Ghraib prison; where the walls tell the sad stories; however, that ischemia Nadia is the “truth” and not “story”!
Began, “Nadia,” her novel as the “center” saying: “I was visiting a relative of mine Vfujina the U.S. occupying forces raided the house and Tvtcheh to find a quantity of light weapons are based on evacuated to arrest everyone in the house, including me, and vainly tried to persuade the translator who had been with the patrol I have a guest of America, but my attempts failed. I cried and begged and I fainted from the intensity of fear during the road to Abu Ghraib prison. “
Complement Nadia: “They put me in a dirty cell, dark and lonely and I expect you to be a short period I was arrested after the investigation proved that I have not committed a crime.”
She adds, tears spilling down her cheeks a sign of sincerity and an expression of horror they have suffered: “The first day was heavy and I did not used to smell unpleasant as the cell was damp and dark and more from the fear that has been growing on me quickly. The laughter of the soldiers outside the cell that makes me feel more afraid, I was terrified that awaited me, for the first time I felt I was in trouble very difficult and I entered a world unknown parameters will not get out of it as it entered. the midst of this whirlpool of feelings of different ways I heard a female voice accent of an Arab soldier in the American occupation army Immediately she question: “I did not think that arms dealers in Iraq from the women. “
Once I spoke to explain to her the circumstances of the incident so harshly beat me I cried and screamed “God .. and God wronged wronged.” Then the soldier Bimtari stream of expletives that I never expected to be released under any circumstances, and then took me and tells mockery of it was watched by satellite throughout the day, and American technology that can track their enemies even inside their bedrooms!.
When she laughed she said: “I Otabek until you live a sex with your husband!”.
I said to her voice confused: I’m not married. Vdrepettni for more than an hour and forced me to drink a glass of water I learned later that a heavily sedated and had not the horizon only after two or more I find myself Jrdoe of my clothes, I knew immediately that I have lost nothing would be able to all the laws of the land be returned to me, I’ve been raped. Vantaptni a fit of hysteria, and you beat my head against the wall firmly that the income of more than five soldiers, led by soldier and beat him up and on successive rape me laughing amid loud music. As days passed, a repetition of the raped almost daily and they invent new ways each time more brutal than its predecessor. “
It adds to describe the horror of the actions of the American criminals: “After almost a month entered the Negro soldier and threw me by two of clothing and the U.S. military said on Arab broken accent that took me buzzing and after putting a bag in my head to the health facilities where the pipes of cold water and hot and asked me to shower and closed the door and went away. In spite of all that I felt the fatigue and pain, despite the large number of bruises scattered in different parts of my body but I’ve poured some water on my body, and before the end came Asthamami Nigger I felt scared and beaten on his face Baliina response was harsh and He raped me cruelly and spit in my face and came back, accompanied by two others and they have Birjai to the cell, and continued treat me this way to end rape me ten times in a few days, which affected my health! “
Nadia and complement revealed atrocities against American women in Iraq: “After more than four months, I received a female soldier, known by her with the rest of the soldiers that her name was Mary, and she told me that you are now in front of a golden opportunity today Fissezorna If high-ranking officers have dealt with them positively may call released, especially we are sure of your innocence. “
I said to her: “If you’re innocent, why do not you shoot me go?!”.
I shouted nervously: “The only way to ensure that you get out is to be positive with them!”.
And took me to health facilities and oversaw the Asthamami heavy sticks her hand and hit me whenever it refused to comply with its orders and then gave me a box cosmetics and cautioned me from crying so as not to spoil the Zinti, and then took me to a small room empty except for a bed to the ground and returned an hour later, along with four soldiers carrying cameras and the to take off her clothes and took to attacking a man like the laughter of soldiers and the music loud and four soldiers took pictures of all the conditions and focus on my face asking me a smile and only killed me, and took a gun from one of her colleagues and fired four bullets near my head and vowed to settle the fifth bullet in my head after the succession The four soldiers raped me, which made me consciousness and woke up to find myself in the cell and the effects of nails and teeth and stings cigars everywhere in my body! “
Nadia depends on the continuing narrative of tragic novel wiping away tears and then completed: “a day after Mary came to tell me that I was cooperating and that I’m out of prison, but after watching the film image”!
She adds: “I saw the film a pain frequency (Khalguetm have to enjoy you) Here I experienced the anger and attacked them, despite my fear of the reaction, and does not fall the soldiers killed her, and that left me even fell on the soldiers and then beaten out not all of them approached me one more of the month I spent in prayer and supplication to the Almighty to save me Baari than I was.
Then I got Mary with a number of soldiers and gave me the clothes you were buzzing when arrested Ogulwni in the American car and threw me on the highway to the city of Abu Ghraib and me ten thousand dinars. Then returned to the house not home, I was close to where you left me in it, and I know the reaction of my family I chose to visit a relative of mine to know what the situation during my absence and I discovered that my brother set up a funeral to me more than four months, No new dead, I understood that the knife honor waiting for me, I went to Baghdad and has a family of good people Biiwaii and worked with a maid and nanny for their children! “
Wonders Nadia pain and grief and bitterness: “It will heal Gll? It will restore my virginity? And in all my fault what happened? And the guilt of my family and my tribe? In the gut, children do not know son is he?”
Now your right to know where is it, my answer as one of suicide bombers who blew themselves up on a U.S. patrol in the Abu Ghraib where the violation of view the first time God rest her soul rest in peace and curl
The woman who wrote this is now in prison.
She must be wondering if this is going to happen to her as well.
How anyone could see this woman as a threat to anyone is beyond me.
All she did was write a blog. She voiced her opinion.
I encourage you all to do something to help have this woman released.
Write the White house , Write you members of Government. Write Amnesty International. Write to the media and see if they will cover this story.
Write to or call anyone who may be able to help this woman. Write the UN even.
This so called Iraqi law that put her in prison should be amended and the sooner the better. That is not a fair or just law that is pure BS.
This so called law is based on oppression of free speech.
Iraq a democracy what a joke that is. US occupation nothing more. Nothing less.
You may not agree with everything the women wrote, but by God you had better fight for her right to say it. The right to free speech should be the right of every person on the planet.
Also another petition to sign from Reporters Without Borders. Reporters in Iraq who are in prison, also need your help. Go to the site below to read what has been happening in Iraq and sign this petition as well. Just look under the Iraqi Flag to the right of the page.
At least 77 journalists and media assistants have been kidnapped in Iraq since March 2003. Twenty-three of them have been murdered, 40 have been released and 13 are still being held by their abductors.
Thank you all for helping. Than you all for signing the petitions as well.
Please pass this on to all of your friends.
This is what the Harper Government may do to Canadians all for the appeasement of Israel. Do not let this happen anywhere in the world.
January 26 2010
Gaza’s only power station will close by the end of this week following a European Union decision to stop buying fuel for the plant. According to the power station’s director, Rafeeq Maliha, “Since last November the EU has stopped funding the purchase of diesel for us.” This means, he added, that without some external intervention between now and this weekend, the densely populated Gaza Strip will have no central power source to operate many basic services.
Engineer Imad Canaan, the vice president of the Palestinian Power Authority explained that the power authority is unable to continue providing adequate energy resources to the citizens of Gaza. “The Israeli blockade and the suspension of EU support have reduced the output of the station by 50%,” he said.
The Gaza Power Station has been bombarded repeatedly and deliberately by Israel, most notably during the assault and invasion a year ago when the Israelis targeted the civilian infrastructure. The Israeli blockade of Gaza has prevented vital repair materials being imported; these are essential if the power station is to return to full operational capacity. Source
Sewage Collapse threatens the health of Palestinians in Gaza
January 27 2010
Palestinians in Gaza have a lot to contend with, especially since the war launched by the Israeli Occupiers just over a year ago. With the loss of more than 1,400 Palestinian lives, most of whom were women and children, the near total destruction of whatever little infrastructure that remained and the general pillaging of the territory, Palestinians are once again faced with the prospect of rebuilding their lives in the besieged Gaza Strip.
However, because of the ongoing Israeli blockade on essential materials, the Palestinians have not been able to carry out any reconstruction of their houses, hospitals, schools and the local infrastructure, including the power station and sewage treatment plants. Sewage disposal has become a huge problem all over Gaza, with leaks onto farmland and into nearby water sources leading to pollution and less fertile soil, which in turn has led to poor harvests. Sewage and waste material from cities and refugee camps with limited access to sewage treatment plants is ending up in water sources which lead to the beaches of Gaza and the sea. This has resulted in severe water pollution and the contamination of fish, as well as a variety of acute and chronic water-borne diseases.
Israelis impose “financial punishments” on Palestinians
January 26 2010
Israeli prison staff impose financial punishments on Palestinian prisoners.
A human rights organisation has claimed that Israeli prison staff are imposing financial punishments on Palestinian prisoners. In a statement, the Prisoners’ Centre for Studies said that guards and administrators in Israeli prisons force Palestinian detainees to pay for the water and electricity that they consume as a form of additional punishment.
According to the centre, prisoners are also “fined” for trivial reasons, such as reading the Qur’an or praying during the prison’s daily roll call (if officers enter when it is the time for prayer); if the imam, while giving the Friday sermon, utters a word that the guards don’t like; when a prisoner doesn’t manage to get out of the bathroom in the time specified by the guards; and for other similar reasons when the guards abuse their positions and use any excuse to penalise prisoners.
The centre’s director, Raafat Hamdouna, claims that prison administrators withdraw the “fines” from prisoners’ personal bank accounts without informing prisoners. If anyone doesn’t have a bank account, the administration imposes a future fine against his name, provoking the prisoner even further.
Mr. Hamdouna called upon human rights and humanitarian organizations to intervene to stop this unreasonable behaviour. “The Israelis treat prisoners like tenants and force them to pay for water, electricity, food and accommodation,” he added. Source
Fifty-four members of Congress urging the president to pressure Israel to treat Gazans like human beings is a positive development, albeit a VERY small one. Critics may content that the letter protects Israel’s image. I understand that. But I still think it’s encouraging.
Names of the 54 are at the above link. Just so we know who actually cares about the people of Gaza.
Gaza is in desperate need of materials to repair rebuild. Soon they will have no hydro. So just imagine if you had no hydro. This will affect evrything from hospitals to bussiniesses and storage of food and the list goes on an on.
Aid money was promised to help rebuild Gaza and little to none has been received by them. The blockade keeps everything out. This is also in the face of arecent flood in Gaza which has done even more damage. This of course was never in the main stream media. How typical.
Of course much of what we should be told is never in the main stream media.
Shame on them. Shame on the world leaders who do nothing but talk about it.
That is all they do is talk. Of course that makes it into the media and fools the public at large that they are actually doing something, when in fact they are really doing nothing. What has changed for those in Gaza or the West bank in the last year. NOTHING. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAS CHANGED.
Their lives go from bad to worse is all. Every day their lives are more difficult. Thanks to the world leaders who pretend to do something. That is all they do is pretend. They are doing little to help ease the pain and suffering of the Palestinians.
Seems the EU and Western Countries have done little to nothing to help those in Gaza.
Due to the lack of real help people are suffering beyond imagination. Ignored by the Main stream media and World Leaders. Tiger Woods got more air time then people who are suffering and dieing. Well that says it all doesn’t it.
How coincidental the Gaza flood took place during the Haiti Crisis.
Guaranteed it would be ignored by all the main stream media.
Gaza is in crisis and no one seems to notice. The 54 who signed the letter to Obama at least care enough to try. Will Obama listen I hardly thing so he is helping Egypt built the wall of shame and it is a shame. He has done nothing to ease the desperation of those in Gaza and if any time he says he is doing something I know as many other do it is pure BS. His actions and those of the US Government speaks volumes. They want to destroy the people of Gaza.
The blockade is killing Gaza, say NGOs and UN agencies
January 22 2010
One year after Israel’s military offensive on Gaza, United Nations agencies and the Association for International Development Agencies (AIDA), representing over 80 NGOs, are highlighting the impact of the blockade on Gaza on the health of its population and on health services – and are calling for an immediate opening of Gaza’s crossings.
Max Gaylard, the Resident Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said on Wednesday 20 January 2010 that “the continuing closure of the Gaza Strip is undermining the functioning of the health care system and putting at risk the health of 1.4 million people in Gaza.”
He continued: “It is causing on-going deterioration in the social, economic and environmental determinants of health. It is hampering the provision of medical supplies and the training of health staff and it is preventing patients with serious medical conditions getting timely specialised treatment outside Gaza”
The economy of Gaza is in virtual collapse with rising unemployment and poverty which will have long term adverse effects on the physical and mental health of the population. The environment is also in decline, including water quality, sewage and waste disposal and other environmental hazards (including munitions and medical waste) which may lead to long term effects on health.
More than 750,000 children live in Gaza. The humanitarian community is gravely concerned about the future of this generation whose health needs are not being met. The decline in infant mortality, which has fallen steadily over recent decades, has stalled in the last few years.
The lack of building materials as a result of the blockade is affecting essential health facilities: the new surgical wing in Gaza’s main Shifa hospital has remained unfinished since 2006. Hospitals and primary care facilities, damaged during operation ‘Cast Lead’, have not been rebuilt because construction materials are not allowed into Gaza.
Operation ‘Cast Lead’ damaged 15 of Gaza’s 27 hospitals and 43 of its 110 primary health care facilities were either damaged or destroyed.
Supplies of drugs and disposables have generally been allowed into Gaza – though there are often shortages on the ground. However, certain types of medical equipment, such as x-ray equipment and electronic devices are very difficult to bring in. Clinical staff frequently lack the medical equipment they need. Medical devices are often broken, missing spare parts, or out of date.
Health professionals in Gaza have been cut off from the outside world. Since 2000, very few doctors, nurses or technicians have been able to leave the Strip for training necessary to update their clinical skills or to learn about new medical technology. This is severely undermining their ability to provide quality health care.
Many specialised treatments, for example, complex heart surgery and treatment for certain types of cancer, are not available and patients are therefore referred for treatment to hospitals outside Gaza. But many patients have had their applications for exit permits denied or delayed by the Israeli Authorities and have missed their appointments. Some have died while waiting for referral.
Tony Laurance, the Head of Office for the World Health Organisation (WHO) in the West Bank and Gaza, declared: “An effective health care system cannot be sustained in isolation from the international community. Open borders are needed to ensure the health of the 1.4 million people in Gaza”
The humanitarian community believes the health sector would face serious problems in dealing with another emergency on the scale of last year’s Operation Cast Lead, said AIDA yesterday. “The Government of Israel has a legal duty to guarantee the right to health for people in Gaza. The humanitarian community calls for the crossings into Gaza to be reopened.”
More than 61 years since the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) and 42 years after Israel’s belligerent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the issue of forced displacement of Palestinians from their homeland remains an ongoing phenomenon that fails to receive the attention it deserves.
At the end of 2008, at least 7.1 million Palestinians, representing 67 percent of the entire Palestinian population (10.6 million) worldwide were displaced persons. Among them are 6.6 million refugees and 427,000 IDPs. This makes Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) the largest and longest-standing case of displaced persons in the world today.
Caracas, – President Hugo Chavez on Monday said that Petrocaribe, Venezuela’s cut-rate regional energy alliance, will forgive quake-stricken Haiti’s debt, AFP reported.
Haiti’s debt with Venezuela is USD 295 million, about one-third of its global foreign debt of USD 1 billion, according to International Monetary Fund figures.
“Haiti has no debt with Venezuela — on the contrary, it is Venezuela that has a historic debt with Haiti,” Chavez said as he made the announcement.
Chavez was referring to the support that Haiti — which obtained its independence from France in 1804 — gave Venezuelan independence leader Simon Bolivar in 1815 and 1816 in his quest to free his country from Spanish colonial rule.
Chavez made the announcement at the closing ceremony of a meeting of foreign ministers from leftist countries with the ALBA trade alliance, a Cuba and Venezuela-supported regional common market founded in 2004.
Petrocaribe provides preferential oil pricing for its Caribbean members, with Venezuela picking up 40% of the cost if oil is selling over USD 50 a barrel.
When oil prices are above USD 50, member states will have up to 25 years to pay the bulk of the debt at a one percent interest rate, with two years grace.
Haiti, struggling to recover from the January 12 devastating 7.0 earthquake, received in the past days 225,000 barrels of Petrocaribe oil sent through the neighboring Dominican Republic.
Both Haiti and the Dominican Republic are Petrocaribe members.
Other Petrocaribe members include Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Bahamas, Belize, Cuba, Dominica, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, St Kitts-Nevis, Saint Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago, as well as founding member Venezuela.
Separately, ALBA foreign ministers approved an aid package for Haiti that includes sanitary, energy, financial and educational assistance.
The ministers also expressed their concern over the “excessive foreign military presence” in the Caribbean nation, with no clear parameters over its “authority, purpose, role and length of stay.”
Their presence “threatens to further complicate conditions on the ground and… international cooperation” for Haitian reconstruction, the ministers said.
They called on United Nations to take a central role in coordinating emergency efforts, and emphasized that the Haitians must take the lead in their country’s reconstruction. Source
The rest of the rich countries should also do this.
Considering what Haitians have been it wold be the right thing to do.
AMMAN – Long before the election of US President Barack Obama, Jordan has been working towards settling the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on the basis of the two-state solution.
Obama’s election was received with a sense of hope, emanating from the fact that the new US president recognised the necessity of resolving this conflict as the main prerequisite for achieving lasting peace in the region. His Majesty King Abdullah moved fast to ensure that this hope was translated into actual steps that could move peace efforts forward.
Four months after Obama assumed office, King Abdullah travelled to Washington conveying a collective Arab position that the whole Arab world is committed to regional peace on the basis of the Arab Peace Initiative, which offers full normal ties with Israel within the framework of a comprehensive solution in return for Israeli withdrawal from all Arab territories occupied since 1967.
However, hope in President Obama’s declared commitment to the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on the basis of the two-state solution is fading as Israeli intransigence has frustrated progress.
“The window of opportunity is narrowing,” said one analyst. “That is why Jordan is working harder than before to ensure the resumption of serious and effective negotiations that can deliver the two-state solution within a defined time frame.”
In this effort, Jordan has left no stone unturned, coordinating with the Palestinians and all Arab countries and working with major international players to ensure that the current opportunity for peace is not lost, an official source said.
These contacts included discussions with the Israeli government.
In a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year, King Abdullah delivered a clear message: The two-state solution is the only path to ending the conflict. There will be no peace in the region unless the Palestinians’ rights are realised. Israel has to choose between integrating into the region or remaining fortress Israel. It will not enjoy real peace and security unless the Palestinians also enjoy their right to security in their sovereign independent state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital.
The same message was delivered in other Jordanian-Israeli discussions. Jordanian officials met with the Israeli national security adviser, Uzi Arad, late last year to push for a resumption of serious Palestinian-Israeli negotiations that can lead to tangible progress towards the two-state solution. An official source told The Jordan Times that in these two meetings, Jordan reiterated its declared positions that provisional solutions are unacceptable and that negotiations should tackle all final status issues with a view to delivering the two-state solution within a defined time frame. They also warned Israel against the consequences of continuing its unilateral actions in Jerusalem, which, King Abdullah warned in an interview with an Israeli newspaper, threaten to destabilise Jordanian-Israeli relations.
The official rejected as totally baseless Israeli press reports that Arad raised the issue of Jordan playing a security role in the West Bank. “Israel knows our position too well to even raise the subject.”
The only role Jordan will play, and has been playing, is to help the Palestinians realise their right to statehood on their national soil, the official said. Jordan will not even accept discussion of any other role. “That is an unwavering position that has been stated over and again,” he said.
According to the official, Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories is the cause of conflict. This occupation must end if the region is to achieve the peace it has long been denied. He pointed out that King Abdullah has repeatedly said that there will be no peace in the region unless the Palestinians’ right to freedom and statehood is realised. Hence, Jordan’s insistence on the immediate resumption of negotiations to reach the two-state solution on the basis of the previously agreed upon terms of reference.
That is what Jordan has been working for, and that is the message that Israel will continue to receive from Jordan, he said. “Baseless reports about discussions that never took place about Israeli offers for Jordan to play a security role in the West Bank are a vain attempt to divert attention from the fact that its intransigence is the reason why the region is still prisoner to conflict.” Source
Israel’s assassination policy
From January 19, 2010
The comments and story below say a lot about those who worship Israel.
If I said these things about a Jewish group I would be called anti Semitic.
Unhu Wismond Exantus survived on biscuits and coca cola
January 25 2010
By Gareth Dorrian
A HAITIAN earthquake survivor cheated death for 11 days on a diet of biscuits and beer.
Unhu Wismond Exantus, 24, was buried in tons of rubble as he hid under a hotel desk.
Rescuers got the shop worker out of the remains of the Napoli Inn Hotel in Port-au-Prince, hours after the country’s Government had called a halt to rescue plans.
He said: “I ate anything I found. I survived by drinking beer and Coca-Cola and eating cookies.
“Every night I thought about the revelation that I would survive. It was God who was tucking me away in his arms. It gave me strength.”
Officials confirmed the death toll has passed 150,000, which only includes bodies dealt with by the government in and around Port-au-Prince.
Tens of thousands more victims have been buried in outlying areas, are trapped in rubble or their relatives have not registered the death.
Communications minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue said: “Nobody knows how many bodies are buried in the rubble. 200,000? 300,000? Who knows the overall death toll?”
The United Nations came under fire after it was revealed officers are living in relative luxury at the capital’s airport. Food, blankets and medicine have flooded in from around the world, but aid agencies admit it is not getting out fast enough.
Volunteers say efforts to help have been delayed by bureaucracy and red tape.
UN spokesman Alejandro Chicheri said: “Of course we would like to be doing more but the logistics are a nightmare.”
Save The Children has called for a ban on adopting Haitian children as gangs are kidnapping kids caught in the chaos and selling them for £5,000 a time.
X Factor champ Joe McElderry, 18, and Westlife star Mark Feehily, 29, have joined the line-up for Simon Cowell’s Haiti charity single.
The pair join Alexandra Burke, 21, and James Blunt, 36, recording a cover of REM’s Everybody Hurts in London today. Source
People world wide have united for Haiti. We must also keep watch to make sure, those who need help the most actually get it. We must be sure they are helped as they should be.
If we are to intervene in their lives may it be for the betterment of all the people of Haiti. Not just the rich. We must monitor our Governments and the UN.
Even through this devastation Haitians are being taken advantage of. How sad anyone would want to profit from their despair.
Profiteers are lining up at the door but that is yet another story for another day.
The History of Haitian life is what we must bring to light so it never happens again.
It is up to all of use to assure they have a better future to look forward to. Their past if horrid to say the least. The earthquake is absolute devastation. Aid workers are concerned on all fronts. Aid is still not reaching people. Children are being kidnapped.
In one of my updates US soldiers were told to stop giving Haitians food. Why? Do they want to starve the Haitians or make them angry. That is an act of deliberate cruelty. Beyond cruel in my opinion. the US is now sending 20,000 troops to Haiti for what to see to it they starve.
Letting in Aid workers and supplies has not been a priority. Why?
Seems there is much amiss in all of this.
Finally we have numerous reporters in Haiti, lets hope they will tell us the truth.
From June 20, 2009
A funeral and a boycott: ‘The struggle continues’ in Haiti
HIP – Fanmi Lavalas, Haiti’s largest political party and grassroots movement, laid Catholic liberation theology priest Father Gerard Jean-Juste to rest this past Thursday. A large banner waved overhead declaring “[Father] Jery you left us but the struggle continues” as thousands of mourners streamed out carrying Jean-Juste’s casket, sparking an impromptu pro-Lavalas demonstration. Chants of “The struggle continues, return Aristide” and “No elections without Lavalas” rang through the streets as a reminder that Lavalas is preparing to wage a second round of boycotts against the upcoming Senate elections scheduled for Sunday.
The procession and demonstration were suddenly interrupted by gunfire that could be heard from around the corner. Witnesses report that Brazilian soldiers with the U.N. military mission opened fire after attempting to arrest one of the mourners. The U.N. has since denied the shooting and claims that the victim had been killed by either a rock thrown by the crowd or a blunt instrument. Eyewitnesses on the scene have countered that the U.N. is trying to cover up the affair as it promises to heighten tensions before Sunday’s elections.
The U.N. and the Obama administration continue to endorse and finance a second round of controversial Senate elections in Haiti. The first round was held last April 19 and was marked by a low voter turnout following a successful boycott campaign waged by Fanmi Lavalas.
The Fanmi Lavalas party was excluded from participation in the first round after President Rene Preval’s handpicked Conseil Electoral Provisoire (CEP) demanded original signatures on all of their documents. With former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, their party’s national leader, in exile, Lavalas was unable to comply with what some in their ranks have referred to as “a humiliating last minute request.”
The powerful community organizations that form the base of the Lavalas movement then announced “Operation Closed Door,” urging voters to stay away from the polls. Independent observers put participation at between 3-4 percent, while the CEP announced it had been as high as 11 percent. Lavalas recently announced a boycott of the second round, called “Operation Closed Door 2,” and leaflets were distributed throughout the capital on Thursday urging voters to “stay away from the polls, end the exclusion [of Haiti's largest political party].”
Members of the Lavalas Mobilization Commission, organizers of the boycott, are reportedly in hiding after CEP President Gerard Frantz Verret demanded last Thursday that the Ministry of Justice take “public action in motion against all those who undertake to invite the people to abstain from voting and against those who intend to endanger lives and property.” Public action in motion or “action publique” is a remnant of the Napoleonic Code in Haitian law and, like the term “associating with criminals,” is widely seen as a blanket charge to justify prolonged detention of political opposition in Haiti.
A second successful boycott of Sunday’s elections by Lavalas would serve to further damage the credibility of the Preval administration. The international community is reported to have invested over $12.9 million in an electoral process that many in Haiti say has provided little towards solving the country’s political insolvency and mounting desperation.
Haiti Information Project (HIP), winner of the Project Censored 2008 Real News Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism, is a non-profit alternative news service providing coverage and analysis of breaking developments in Haiti. Email HIP at HIP@teledyol.net. To learn more, visit www.haitiaction.net.
Kevin Pina The Bush administration’s forced removal of democratically electedHaitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, while a power-sharingdeal with his political opposition was being brokered in 2004,resulted in the country’s expulsion from the Caribbean Communityand was condemned by the African Union. The installation ofthe US-backed replacement government of Gerard Latortue hasresulted in the rape, torture and false imprisonment of thousandsof ordinary Haitians. The only Latin American country to condemnthe US’s action in Haiti, however, has been Venezuela. Othercountries and organisations like the Organization of AmericanStates (OAS) have been bought over with a massive programmeof civilian and military funding by the US. Source
I would have to say the rest of the world was kept in the dark about what happens in Haiti.
It was never in the main stream media. More times the not every attempt was made to keep it out of the eyes of the world at large.
Now it the time to expose what has been happening in Haiti.
Of course you still will not hear these stories in the main stream media. What you are hearing now is all the heros going to rescue them.
The earthquake is good PR for the US , Israel, Canada, France etc. and the UN, but the truth be told those in Haiti have been oppressed by all.
Now is the time to share the truth.
From December 25 2005
Heavily armed soldiers of the Brazilian military, which leads the UN
military mission to Haiti known as MINUSTAH, had earlier taken over a
building in Pele belonging to an accused drug dealer with alleged ties
to presidential candidate Guy Philippe. The troops were seen
reinforcing the facility with sand bags and equipment as a military
unit on the ground led a group of black-hooded residents through the
neighborhood on a mission to identify and target suspected “bandits”
for arrest. Twelve residents, ten men and two women, were reportedly
arrested based on the accusations of the hooded informants and were
taken away to an undisclosed UN facility. Several residents reacted
with shock and anger at the site of the black-hooded informants, a new
tactic apparently being used by the UN forces to pacify poor
neighborhoods in the capital. “This is really scary because we don’t
know who these hooded accusers are. We don’t even know if they are
really from our area. I just saw them arrest a man I have known for
years and who is not involved with anything violent. Where are they
taking him?” asked one angry woman who refused to give her name.
Black hoods well doesn’t that just remind one of Iraq or Afghanistan?
Those same black hooded people were there too. Amazing.
From February 20 2008
US Marines, Canadian Special Forces and troops of the French Foreign Legion were authorized by the UN Security Council to ‘stabilize’ Haiti following the ouster of president Jean-Bertrand Aristide on February 29, 2004. In June 2004, the United Nations sent the militaries of Brazil, Argentina and Chile to take control of Haiti with the objective of creating conditions for new elections. The Brazilian armed forces were given overall control of the military component of the UN operation.
On February 19, 2008, Brazilian military forces stormed the neighborhood of Village de Dieu on the outskirts of the capital of Port-au-Prince. Their troops entered with weapons drawn and began a massive sweep with UN police in tow that ended with the arrest of dozens of young men in the area. Residents claim this military incursion was executed without a single warrant being presented from Haiti’s courts or just cause. Residents of poor communities throughout Haiti say that terrifying raids led by Brazilian forces have been common occurrences since they arrived in 2004. For the families of those arrested and left traumatized by these incursions, it raises serious questions about the role Brazilian forces have played in Haiti.
The case against Pakistani citizen Aafia Siddiqui, who is charged with attempted murder of FBI agents and US military personnel, is beginning to unravel as witnesses have offered conflicting accounts in testimony delivered at her trial.
The long-awaited trial of Siddiqui began in a federal courtroom in New York on Tuesday.
On January 21, which was the second day of the trial, Assistant US Attorney Jenna Dabbs showed jurors numerous photographs of the room of the Afghan police station where the shooting allegedly took place, and a photo of the cell where Siddiqui was held when she was first brought to the station on July 17, 2008, the independent online news network Mathaba reported.
But Carlo Rosati, an FBI firearms expert who testified in the federal court on Friday, expressed doubts whether the M-4 rifle, which was allegedly grabbed by Aafia Siddiqui to attack US interrogators in Ghazni, Afghanistan, was ever fired at the crime scene, the Associated Press of Pakistan said.
In addition, on the third of the trial, an FBI agent testified that the FBI did not find Aafia Siddiqui’s fingerprints on the rifle.
No Pakistanis reporters were granted press credentials when opening statements began on Tuesday.
The MIT-educated neuroscientist is currently on trial, facing charges of trying to kill US soldiers and FBI agents in Afghanistan in 2008 and connections with Al-Qaeda operatives.
She insisted on the first day of the trial that she knew nothing about a plan to carry out terrorist attacks on targets in New York, The New York Daily News reported.
“Give me a little credit, this is not a list of targets of New York,” she said. “I was never planning to bomb it. You’re lying.”
Siddiqui told jurors at her trial on Tuesday that she was held in a secret prison in Afghanistan, her children were tortured, and the case against her is a sham.
She was ejected from the federal court on the first day of here trial after her shouting outburst.
Siddiqui vanished in Karachi, Pakistan with her three children on March 30, 2003. The next day it was reported in local newspapers that she had been taken into custody on terrorism charges.
US officials allege Aafia Siddiqui was seized on July 17, 2008 by Afghan security forces in Ghazni province and claim that documents, including formulas for explosives and chemical weapons, were found in her handbag.
They say that while she was being interrogated, she grabbed a US warrant officer’s M-4 rifle and fired two shots at FBI agents and military personnel but missed and that the warrant officer then fired back, hitting her in the torso.
She was then brought to the United States to face charges of attempted murder and assault. Siddiqui faces 20 years in prison if convicted.
However, human rights organizations have cast doubt on the accuracy of the US account of the event.
Many political activists believe she was Prisoner 650 of the US detention facility in Bagram, Afghanistan, where they say she was tortured for five years until one day US authorities announced that they had found her in Afghanistan.
• Greater rates of cancer and birth defects near sites
• Depleted uranium among poisons revealed in report
By Martin Chulov in Baghdad
January 22 20110
More than 40 sites across Iraq are contaminated with high levels or radiation and dioxins, with three decades of war and neglect having left environmental ruin in large parts of the country, an official Iraqi study has found.
Areas in and near Iraq’s largest towns and cities, including Najaf, Basra and Falluja, account for around 25% of the contaminated sites, which appear to coincide with communities that have seen increased rates of cancer and birth defects over the past five years. The joint study by the environment, health and science ministries found that scrap metal yards in and around Baghdad and Basra contain high levels of ionising radiation, which is thought to be a legacy of depleted uranium used in munitions during the first Gulf war and since the 2003 invasion.
The environment minister, Narmin Othman, said high levels of dioxins on agricultural lands in southern Iraq, in particular, were increasingly thought to be a key factor in a general decline in the health of people living in the poorest parts of the country.
“If we look at Basra, there are some heavily polluted areas there and there are many factors contributing to it,” she told the Guardian. “First, it has been a battlefield for two wars, the Gulf war and the Iran-Iraq war, where many kinds of bombs were used. Also, oil pipelines were bombed and most of the contamination settled in and around Basra.
“The soil has ended up in people’s lungs and has been on food that people have eaten. Dioxins have been very high in those areas. All of this has caused systemic problems on a very large scale for both ecology and overall health.”
Government study groups have recently focused on the war-ravaged city of Falluja, west of Baghdad, where the unstable security situation had kept scientists away ever since fierce fighting between militants and US forces in 2004.
“We have only found one area so far in Falluja,” Othman said. “But there are other areas that we will try to explore soon with international help.”
The Guardian reported in November claims by local doctors of a massive rise in birth defects in the city, particularly neural tube defects, which afflict the spinal cords and brains of newborns. “We are aware of the reports, but we must be cautious in reaching conclusions about causes,” Othman said. “The general health of the city is not good. There is no sewerage system there and there is a lot of stagnant household waste, creating sickness that is directly affecting genetics. We do know, however, that a lot of depleted uranium was used there.
“We have been regulating and monitoring this and we have been urgently trying to assemble a database. We have had co-operation from the United Nations environment programme and have given our reports in Geneva. We have studied 500 sites for chemicals and depleted uranium. Until now we have found 42 places that have been declared as [high risk] both from uranium and toxins.”
Ten of those areas have been classified by Iraq’s nuclear decommissioning body as having high levels of radiation. They include the sites of three former nuclear reactors at the Tuwaitha facility – once the pride of Saddam Hussein’s regime on the south-eastern outskirts of Baghdad – as well as former research centres around the capital that were either bombed or dismantled between the two Gulf wars.
The head of the decommissioning body, Adnan Jarjies, said that when inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived to “visit these sites, I tell them that even if we have all the best science in the world to help us, none of them could be considered to be clean before 2020.”
Bushra Ali Ahmed, director of the Radiation Protection Centre in Baghdad, said only 80% of Iraq had so far been surveyed. “We have focused so far on the sites that have been contaminated by the wars,” he said. “We have further plans to swab sites that have been destroyed by war.
“A big problem for us is when say a tank has been destroyed and then moved, we are finding a clear radiation trail. It takes a while to decontaminate these sites.”
Scrap sites remain a prime concern. Wastelands of rusting cars and war damage dot Baghdad and other cities between the capital and Basra, offering unchecked access to both children and scavengers.
Othman said Iraq’s environmental degradation is being intensified by an acute drought and water shortage across the country that has seen a 70% decrease in the volume of water flowing through the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.
“We can no longer in good conscience call ourselves the land between the rivers,” she said. “A lot of the water we are getting has first been used by Turkey and Syria for power generation. When it reaches us it is poor quality. That water which is used for agriculture is often contaminated. We are in the midst of an unmatched environmental disaster.” Source
This type of pollution has long term Health afets on the citizens of Iraq.
This type of pollution is a war crime.
This type of pollution is a crime against humanity.
This type of pollution should never be tolerated.
Those responsible should be held accountable.
Children are affected the most as are unborn an new born babies.
If this happened to you or your children would you be thankful to the US and others who invaded your country.
The invasion of Iraq was and still is illegal.
War crimes have been committed and those responsible must be held accountable. Otherwise there is no true justice in the world today.
Over million died due to the war and many more are dieing due to the pollution left by the invaders.
When war crimes or crimes against humanity are being committed the World must stand up and say No More. Those responsible must be sent to the Hague for trial.
In the case of Iraq there is more then enough evidence to go forward with a trial. The Holocaust in Iraq must be recognized.
We must never turn a blind eye to these crimes.
These crimes are no less then any others that have been committed in our world. If these types of crimes were committed by a leader in Africa they surly would be charged and imprisoned. War criminals should be prosecuted to the greatest extent the law will allow..
Those who pollute are prosecuted are they not?
This was premeditated murder of over a million people..
This was deliberate, toxic, deadly, long term, life threatening, cancer causing, pollution of an entire country.
Why are the ones who planned it and perpetrated the crimes are still walking free? WHY?
Diplomatic immunity does not apply in this case. If that were the Case Saddam would not have been tried and hung. Saddam also did not kill over a million people. Anything said of Saddam is ten fold less then what was done to the innocent victims of Iraq by those who planned the war and the aftermath.
For more information on Iraq and other war pollution the link below has a lot of information. It also has information on Health issues.
New information is added to the War Pollution link as I find it.
Judging someone who is mentally or physically ill by what they do on Facebook is beyond me. On your profile it doesn’t say how many drugs you are on. It doesn’t detail what your Doctors say. Most people would not put Doctors files or how many drugs they are on in their profile.
Looking at a picture of a person does not always tell us how sick they are.
That being said.
If you are smiling insurance companies can say you are not depressed. Well people taking drugs smile. Even if it is a pain medication. Pain medication can and does make people smile but it doesn’t mean if you see a person smiling that they are well. The same goes for anti Depressants. The whole point to taking them is to relieve your problems. Some just so the person doesn’t commit suicide.
A picture on a profile of a person smiling or doing something simple does not mean they are well enough to work however. It is just a picture and pictures do not always tell the whole truth about a persons personal problems.
Most people do not put a picture of themselves looking horrid and decrepit on their profiles.. Well do you?
Everything you do on Facebook it saved in their computers forever, they are “data mining”.
A judge has ordered a woman to provide details of her movements on Facebook, to use in order to determine, if she can go back to work.
Well on Facebook if your on drugs and you make a mistake no problem but in a workplace if you are on drugs, it can in itself cause problems.
In some jobs if you were working and on drugs you could in fact make a mistake and kill someone.
If you work in the medical field, a typo could mean the difference of a patient living or dieing.
Even Statin drugs used to lower blood cholesterol levels can mess you up pretty good, like the pilot could forget how to fly the plane. Statin drugs can mess with your memory, among other things. Just a little fact to always consider.
Drugs affect everyone.
If you were working with machinery you could kill yourself.
Even if you spent an hour or so on line at Facebook does not mean you could work a 40 hour week in and workplace. There are many factors which could cause the person problems in a workplace that being at home you wold not experience. One cannot compare the two.
There are too many factors involved that would have to be taken into consideration.
Anyone at home in bed could use Facebook.
Anyone in a wheel chair could use Facebook.
People who are mentally ill can probably use Facebook.
Even Seniors can use Facebook.
That in no way means they can work a 40 hour week now does it…?
Well the Judge thinks it’s OK to use that as a factor in a court case.
Facebook what you do and say on it can and will be used against you in a court of law.
Turn over Facebook history, judge orders
A New Brunswick judge has ordered a Miramichi woman to reveal how often she uses the social-networking website Facebook to a man she’s suing after a 2004 car crash.
Rosemary Carter is fighting Herbert Connors for damages after the two were involved in a collision in the northern New Brunswick community five years ago.
In her lawsuit, Carter has said she hasn’t been able to return to work full-time as an administrative clerk at the Miramichi Hospital.
During the discovery process, when each side in the dispute asks for evidence, Conners’ lawyer asked Carter to turn over her internet records from Bell Aliant and specifically to disclose her Facebook activity.
She refused, saying turning over that information would violate her privacy.
Connors’ lawyer asked a judge to order her to turn them over, a request that was granted by Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Fred Ferguson on Dec. 2.
He wrote in his decision there’s a low threshold for disclosing evidence and it met the “semblance of relevance” test required when deciding if information will be turned over during discovery.
“It does so, by possibly providing a window into what physical capacity the plaintiff has to keyboard, access the internet and communicate with family friends and associates on Facebook and thus what capacity she may have to work. In that sense: ‘It may lead to the discovery of admissible evidence,’ the threshold required for the evidence to be produced,” the judge’s decision said.
“Incidentally, it must not be forgotten that this legal action was commenced by the plaintiff and in launching it she has implicitly accepted certain intrusions into what otherwise might be private information, the disclosure of which would ordinarily be left to her own personal judgment.”
Ferguson’s decision also cited a British Columbia ruling in which a Facebook account was used to determine if a car accident victim was still able to play sports.
The judge also said he’ll make sure during the trial that Connors doesn’t use the information too intrusively.
Quebec woman lost insurance over Facebook photos
Carter’s case raises similarities to another high-profile Canadian example of how a person’s Facebook account has become the centre of a legal fight.
In November, Nathalie Blanchard, 29, said her disability pay for depression was cancelled because of her Facebook profile.
Blanchard took sick leave from her job at IBM last year, after she was diagnosed with major depression. In that time, she took various approaches to treat her mood disorder, including prescription medication and therapy.
Blanchard also tried to have fun, which was also recommended by her physician.
However, photographs of that fun — a beach holiday last year, a night out on the town with friends — are part of the evidence Manulife used to stop payments this fall.
Blanchard said the insurance company told her that she looked well enough to work based on her Facebook photos.
Manulife stopped paying her sick-leave benefits, and her mortgage company, Desjardins, ended her insurance payments
Now here we have a rather intensive interview with a Facebook employee a must to read. They go into some interesting details including the fact that employees can go into anyone account. They also could change anything in “YOUR” profile if they wanted to. Do go and read the rest it is all very interesting. Facebook is data mining your every move.
Facebook tracks your every move. Of course if a family member was using your account or doing something for you, Facebook would not know that. Just because a profile has new updates, does not mean the persons who’s name is on the account actually did the updating.
Even Facebook employees can update you profile lest we forget.
Compliments of AT &T Seem AT&T was logging their customers onto other peoples Facebook accounts. So strangers were in strangers accounts. They could update add photos whatever one would do in their own account.
Privacy commissioner looking at how Facebook gets data
January 18 2010
TORONTO — Canada’s privacy commissioner is launching a series of public consultations to investigate how personal data is being mined online through social networking sites.
The public has until March 15 to file written submissions to Jennifer Stoddart, who is examining the privacy risks associated with the tracking, profiling and targeting of consumers online.
The consultations are being done in the lead-up to a review by Parliament of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.
Stoddart, who was not available for comment Monday, said in a statement that she hopes to examine “issues that we feel pose a serious challenge to the privacy of consumers, now and in the near future” and to promote debate about “the impact of these technological developments on privacy.”
She cited Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Foursquare as examples of websites that collect mounds of personal information from users, mostly voluntarily.
The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, which complained to Stoddart about some of Facebook’s policies in 2008, applauded the decision to proactively investigate possible privacy concerns linked to some of the web’s newer technologies.
“If people want to use these sites they should be able to do it but you want to be able to make sure they’re aware of (how it works) — it’s about matching up user expectations to what’s actually happening online,” said staff lawyer Tamir Israel.
He said there are advantages to websites having access to detailed information about users.
“It helps, for example, (for websites) to be able to monetize themselves through advertising revenues instead of charging customers — we think that’s good,” he said.
“But we think there really needs to be protections in place because you are basically using the visitors’ personal information and making money off it.”
Emerging social media trends include mobile access and location-based features. Foursquare encourages users to share details about where they go on a daily basis, including which shops and restaurants they frequent.
With many phones now using GPS locators, “it’s going to be very easy to know where everybody is at every moment and I think there’s going to be a lot of problems around that,” Israel said.
“Law enforcement can access this kind of information if it’s on someone’s server, often just by asking or with some type of warrant. So they’ll be able to know where everybody was at any given time.”
Public discussion panels are being organized in Toronto in April and Montreal in May.
A future consultation will also examine the privacy implications of “cloud computing,” which stores users’ data online rather than on personal computers. Examples include Google’s popular Gmail service and its suite of Google Docs applications — including a word processor and spreadsheet maker — which work entirely online.
Facebook decides they want you name so they can make a deal with a company for money of course why else would they do it.
Facebook Snatches User’s Vanity URL And Sells It To Harman International
By Michael Arrington
January 23, 2010
This looks really, really bad. An avid Facebook user named Harman Bajwa says that his Facebook vanity Url – Facebook.com/Harman – was unceremoniously revoked yesterday for violating Facebook’s policies. His new Facebook URL is the much less memorable facebook.com/profile.php?id=538612932.
Facebook then apparently did a sales deal around the vanity URL with Harman International.
The notice from Facebook (also in image at bottom of post):
Please Read This!
Warning
The username you selected was removed for violating Facebook’s policies. A Facebook username should have a clear connection to one’s identity. In addition, impersonating anyone or anything is prohibited. If you see other people with usernames that do not accurately represent their real names, it is only because they have not yet been removed for misuse.
To select a new username, please visit the following link:
www.facebook.com/username
Thanks for your understanding,
The Facebook Team
There’s just one problem. “Harman” as a vanity URL is perfectly appropriate as a username for someone named Harman Bajwa. Facebook’s VP Global Sales Mike Murphy has /mike, for example, much to my personal annoyance.
And while we’re on the topic of Mike Murphy, he may actually be the guy behind all of this. It turns out that the reason Facebook wants to take back that /Harman vanity URL may be more about money and less (much less) about policy violations.
That’s because Harman also received an email yesterday from a representative of Harman International, which is apparently “working with Facebook” to take the /Harman username for a initiative they’re doing around the Grammy Awards. They’re offering “promotional items” to Harman to hand the name over willingly:
From: Tyler Bahl
To: Harman Bajwa
Sent: Fri, January 22, 2010 11:25:21 AM
Subject: Harman
Hi Harman,
Thanks for accepting my friend request on Facebook.
I’m the emerging media strategist at Carat in Boston and I work on the Harman International account. We’re launching our first initiative in partnership with the GRAMMYS on Monday. Harman International is looking to obtain the vanity url facebook.com/harman for their Facebook fan page.
We are currently working with Facebook to reclaim (http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=896#/help.php?page=899) the username, but I wanted to explore opportunities to work with you to acquire the name. In the past, we have offered product in exchange for social domain names. One case in mind was for the new movie Avatar , we were able to give promotional items to the owner of twitter.com/avtr for Coke Zero.
We’ve reached out to Facebook PR for comment, although the evidence, unless fake, sort of speaks for itself. This is actually one of those times that I’m hoping that we’re being duped somehow, because telling users they’ve done something wrong when really all you’re doing is pursuing a sales quota is really, really distasteful. We’ll update with any comment.
Harman, to his credit, isn’t all that angry. “It would be great if I get my User name back,” he said in an email to me, adding that he’s working on a startup that will launch next summer.
Now other things that could happen. When one thinks of all those photos on Facebook one must think of this incident with a Spanish Lawmaker who had his photo snagged off line by the FBI and used it to update Bin Laden’s picture. Well they also updated 17 other people who are most wanted. Question is did they use YOUR photo to do the updates.
Question would something you put on Facebook be used to say you are anti semitic. This new law Harper Gov is considering is totally unnecessary, as Canada already has laws to cover this. Anything anyone says against Israel is considered anti Semitic however no matter how innocent it is. Even the media gets bombarded by stupid e-mails over nothing. They just want to shut people up. They even try to shut up those on blogs, you tube, Human rights organizations etc etc etc. This new law would only take away Canadians Freedom of Speech.
Freedom of speech has been removed in this context in many countries. Do you want to give them even more power, I think not.
News agency’s have been affected in any that have a comment section the comment section is most times not, been put into a story about Israel. Loss of a freedom right there. So if there is something that you find inaccurate about what is said in the News story you cannot comment and say your bit. This in a lot of the media I and others have noticed. Do we want them using things like Facebook to track what you say. The answer would be no. If this law was passed they most certainly would use it against you. Many times people just say things out of anger that doesn’t mean you hate all Jewish people however.
Do you want it forbidden to talk about Israel if it does something that may be a war crime or a crime against humanity. Absolutely NO NO NO.
This child had her photo taken from a news agency I assume and it was used for all the wrong things. Could be they snagged her photo from Facebook even. So if a person posted this story on Facebook could they be charged with being anti Semitic under the new Canadian Law if it ever gets passed. Probably.
In may countries if you deny that Holocaust happened they way they say it did, You go to jail. Getting the drift. So they are forcing us to believe something we may not even believe. “They even invade our freedom of thought”.
DOHA: Qatar Charity has sent aid to flood victims in Mighrafa area in the centre of Gaza Strip. The Charity’s humanitarian gesture is aimed at alleviating the miseries of the families affected by flooding that forced them to evacuate their homes and farms.
Abdullah bin Hussien Al N’amah, Chairman of the Charity, said that Qatar has sent instant relief material to families and has begun distributing it to 40 families.
The relief goods consist of foodstuff and cash doles.
The Charity is also coordinating with local authorities to asses the damage to further provide aid and also to contribute in the reconstruction of damaged houses.
At least 12 people were injured in the flooding which destroyed scores of homes and inundated animal shelters.
The flooding cut off roads and washed away a bridge linking Gaza city to the south of the territory. Flood waters reached 3 meters (9ft) in some places. Source
SAIA demands that Carleton University immediately divest its stock in BAE Systems, L-3 Communications, Motorola, Northrop Grumman, and Tesco, and adopt a Socially Responsible Investment policy.
The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), which is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense (DoD), was involved in organizing these scenarios on behalf of US Southern Command.(SOUTHCOM).
Defined as a “Combat Support Agency”, DISA has a mandate to provide IT and telecommunications, systems, logistics services in support of the US military. (See DISA website: Defense Information Systems Agency).
On the day prior to the earthquake, “on Monday [January 11, 2010], Jean Demay, DISA’s technical manager for the agency’s Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, happened to be at the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami preparing for a test of the system in a scenario that involved providing relief to Haiti in the wake of a hurricane.” (Bob Brewin, op cit, emphasis added)
The Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project (TISC) is a communications-information tool which “links non-government organizations with the United States [government and military] and other nations for tracking, coordinating and organizing relief efforts”.(Government IT Scrambles To Help Haiti, TECHWEB January 15, 2010).
The TISC is an essential component of the militarization of emergency relief. The US military through DISA oversees the information – communications system used by participating aid agencies. Essentially, it is a communications sharing system controlled by the US military, which is made available to approved non-governmental partner organizations. The Defense Information Systems Agency also “provides bandwidth to aid organizations involved in Haiti relief efforts.”
There are no details on the nature of the tests conducted on January 11 at SOUTHCOM headquarters.
DISA’s Jean Demay was in charge of coordinating the tests. There are no reports on the participants involved in the disaster relief scenarios.
One would expect, given DISA’s mandate, that the tests pertained to simulating communications. logistics and information systems in the case of a major emergency relief program in Haiti.
The fundamental concept underlying DISA’s Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project (TISC) is to “Achieve Interoperability With Warfighters, Coalition Partners And NGOs” (Defense Daily, December 19, 2008)
Upon completing the tests and disaster scenarios on January 11, TISC was considered to be, in relation to Haiti, in “an advanced stage of readiness”. On January 13, the day following the earthquake, SOUTHCOM took the decision to implement the TISC system, which had been rehearsed in Miami two days earlier:
“After the earthquake hit on Tuesday [January 12, 2010], Demay said SOUTHCOM decided to go live with the system. On [the following day] Wednesday [January 13, 2010], DISA opened up its All Partners Access Network, supported by the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, to any organization supporting Haiti relief efforts.
The information sharing project, developed with backing from both SOUTHCOM and the Defense Department’s European Command, has been in development for three years. It is designed to facilitate multilateral collaboration between federal and nongovernmental agencies.
Demay said that since DISA set up a Haiti Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Community of Interest on APAN on Wednesday [the day following the earthquake], almost 500 organizations and individuals have joined, including a range of Defense units and various nongovernmental organizations and relief groups. (Bob Brewin, Defense launches online system to coordinate Haiti relief efforts (1/15/10) — GovExec.com emphasis added)
DISA has a Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) Field Office in Miami. Under the Haiti Disaster Emergency Program initiated on January 12, DISA’s mandate is described as part of a carefully planned military operation:
“DISA is providing US Southern Command with information capabilities which will support our nation in quickly responding to the critical situation in Haiti,” said Larry K. Huffman, DISA’s Principal Director of Global Information Grid Operations. “Our experience in providing support to contingency operations around the world postures us to be responsive in meeting USSOUTHCOM’s requirements.”
DISA, a Combat Support Agency, engineers and [sic] provides command and control capabilities and enterprise infrastructure to continuously operate and assure a global net-centricenterprise in direct support to joint warfighters, National level leaders, and other mission and coalition partners across the full spectrum of operations. As DoD’s satellite communications leader, DISA is using the Defense Satellite Communications System to provide frequency and bandwidth support to all organizations in the Haitian relief effort. This includes Super High Frequency missions that are providing bandwidth for US Navy ships and one Marine Expeditionary Unit that will arrive shortly on station to provide medical help, security, and helicopters among other support. This also includes all satellite communications for the US Air Force handling round-the-clock air traffic control and air freight operations at the extremely busy Port-Au-Prince Airport. DISA is also providing military Ultra High Frequency channels and contracting for additional commercial SATCOM missions that greatly increase this capability for relief efforts. (DISA -Press Release, January 2010, undated, emphasis added)
In the immediate wake of the earthquake, DISA played a key supportive role to SOUTHCOM, which was designated by the Obama administration as the de facto “lead agency” in the US Haitian relief program. The underlying system consists in integrating civilian aid agencies into the orbit of an advanced communications information system controlled by the US military.
“DISA is also leveraging a new technology in Haiti that is already linking NGOs, other nations and US forces together to track, coordinate and better organize relief efforts” (Ibid)
ANNEX
Defense launches online system to coordinate Haiti relief efforts
As personnel representing hundreds of government and nongovernmental agencies from around the world rush to the aid of earthquake-devastated Haiti, the Defense Information Systems Agency has launched a Web portal with multiple social networking tools to aid in coordinating their efforts.
On Monday [January 11, 2010, a day before the earthquake], Jean Demay, DISA’s technical manager for the agency’s Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, happened to be at the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami preparing for a test of the system in a scenario that involved providing relief to Haiti in the wake of a hurricane. After the earthquake hit on Tuesday [January 12, 2010], Demay said SOUTHCOM decided to go live with the system. On Wednesday [January 13, 2010], DISA opened up its All Partners Access Network, supported by the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, to any organization supporting Haiti relief efforts.
The information sharing project, developed with backing from both SOUTHCOM and the Defense Department’s European Command, has been in development for three years. It is designed to facilitate multilateral collaboration between federal and nongovernmental agencies.
Demay said that since DISA set up a Haiti Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Community of Interest on APAN on Wednesday, almost 500 organizations and individuals have joined, including a range of Defense units and various nongovernmental organizations and relief groups.
APAN provides a series of collaboration tools, including geographical information systems, wikis, YouTube and MySpace-like pages and multilingual chat rooms.
Meanwhile, other organizations are tackling different technological challenges. Gianluca Bruni, the Dubai-based information technology chief for emergency preparedness and response for the World Food Programme, is setting up networks and systems to support United Nations and nongovernmental organizations in Haiti. WFP already has dispatched two communications kits to Haiti, with satellite systems that operate at 1 megabit per second and can support up to 100 users. It also has sent laptop computers, Wi-Fi access points and long-range point-to-point wireless systems to connect remote users to the satellite terminals. Bruni said eventually WFP plans to set up cyber cafés in Haiti for use all relief workers in the country.
Jon Anderson, a DISA spokesman, said the agency is supplying 10 megabits of satellite capacity to Navy, Marine and Air Force units engaged in the Haiti relief operation.
Many of the relief organizations and agencies in Haiti are bringing their own radio systems to the country. DISA has deployed a three-person team from its Joint Spectrum Management Element to help manage radio frequency spectrum.
The Joint Forces Command’s Joint Communications Support Element deployed two teams equipped with satellite systems and VoIP phones to support SOUTCOM in Port-au-Prince late Wednesday. Those systems were operational “in a matter of hours,” said JCSE Chief of Staff Chris Wilson. The organization will send another team to Haiti in the next few days.
Wilson said JCSE was able to get its gear into Haiti quickly because the systems already were loaded on pallets in Miami in preparation for an exercise that has been canceled.
So many governments and agencies from around the world have responded to the crisis in Haiti that they have overwhelmed the ability of the Port-au-Prince airport to handle incoming relief flights. The Federal Aviation Administration has had a ground-stop on aircraft headed for Haiti for much of the past two days.
FAA warned in an advisory Friday that “due to limited ramp space at Port-au-Prince airport,” with the exception of international cargo flights, “the Haitians are not accepting any aircraft into their airspace.”
The advisory added that domestic U.S. military and civilian flights to Haiti must be first be cleared by its command center. Exemptions will be based solely on the basis of ramp space. The agency also starkly warned “there is no available fuel” at the Port-au-Prince airport.
Well after reading that I got and OH REALLY feeling
Like that same feeling over 9/11 and 7/7 when they were doing a practice scenario both times. Well this little scenario makes me wonder. Finished the plan the day before did they?
Well can an earth quake be man made. Well yes of course it can. So dug through my archives and found a couple of story’s and also have a couple of newer ones as well.
So once upon a time. They did some bomb testing.
Earthquake Tsunamis and Nuclear Testing
Unnatural Disaster?
By LILA RAJIVA
December 30 2004
In the aftermath of a cataclysm like the Asian tsunami, speculation can run wild. Reserving judgment until we really know what happened, here is a list of salient questions and answers that I’ve compiled from news reports, government and other reliable sources.
Q: What set off the gigantic tsunamis that devastated coastal south-east Asia?
A: An undersea earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale with its epicenter about 160 km from the northern portion of the island of Sumatra in Indonesia on Sunday, December 26.
Q: How soon after the quake did the tsunami hit?
A: The earthquake hit Indonesia at 6:58 a.m; the tsunami arrived as much as 2 1/2 hours later, without warning, suggesting that it might not have been caused directly by the quake but by some other change triggered by the quake.
Q: How large was it?
A: It was the largest since the 9.2 quake in Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1964 and the 4th largest in the century. The quake moved the entire island of Sumatra about 100 feet toward the southwest and even disturbed the Earth’s rotation. It was the first tsunami in the Indian Ocean since 1883. Waves of around 30-40 ft in height and even greater were widely reported.
Q: What caused the undersea earthquake?
A: Compression between the Indian and Burmese tectonic plates. Scientists believe that one plate that comprised the landmass from India to Australia has broken up into two. The initial 8.9 eruption happened near the location of the meeting point of the Australian, Indian and Burmese plates
Q: What made the plates shift?
A: It may have been set off by another quake of about 8.1 on the Richter scale on the other side of the plate about 900 km SE of the coast of Tasmania on Thursday, December 24, which caused no serious damage however. The causal relationship is not proved but the time sequence is striking and some seismologists have considered it quite possible.
Q: Were tsunamis expected from that earlier quake?
A: The U.S. government’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said on its Web site that “widely destructive” tsunamis from the quake were possible in the open ocean
Q: Have there been similar earthquakes set off the South East of Tasmania before?
A: Yes, in 1998 a very large earthquake occurred south of Australia and New Zealand, between Macquarie Island and Antarctica on March 25 about 2,300 km south of Hobart in Tasmania, and 500 km north of the Antarctic coast
Q: Did this generate tsunamis?
A: Very large long-period surface waves were recorded in the hour after the earthquake.
Q: What connection if any is there between Tasmania and Antarctica?
A: Its capital Hobart on the South East coast is the base for the administration of Australia’s Antarctic program. The French regularly resupply their Antarctic base at Dumont d’Urville from the port, and American, Chinese, Russian and Italian ice breakers regularly visit.. Through its exploratory, commercial and scientific associations with the sub-antarctic and Antarctic regions, Hobart possibly enjoys a longer continuous Antarctic connection than any other spot on the planet.
Q: What are some other disturbances that can cause tsunamis?
A: Landslides or explosions such as underwater nuclear testing.
Q: Is underwater nuclear testing common?
A: Yes, The United States has conducted 1,054 tests of nuclear devices between July 16, 1945 and September 23, 1992. Before 1962, all the tests were atmospheric (on land or in the Pacific or Atlantic oceans) but overall the majority – 839 – were underground tests. From 1966 to 1990, 167 French nuclear test explosions have been performed on two atolls in French Polynesia, Morurua and Fangataua. Of the 167 tests, 44 were atmospheric. Atmospheric explosions were carried out until 1974, but only underground tests after that. The underground tests have been conducted at the bottom of shafts bored 500-1200 meters into the basalt core of the atoll. Initially these shafts were drilled in the outer rim of the atoll. In 1981, most likely due to the weakening of that rim, the tests with higher yields were shifted to shafts drilled under the lagoon itself.
Q: What are the effects of underwater nuclear testing?
A: To quote from a 1995 case brought against the French government, Case T-219/95 R, by Marie-Thérèse Danielsson, Pierre Largenteau and Edwin Haoa, all residing in Tahiti, French Polynesia: “Short-term effects include geological damage and the venting of gaseous and volatile fission products into the biosphere. Nuclear tests, the applicants say, can cause landslides and did indeed cause a major underwater landslide at Mururoa in 1979, when a nuclear device was exploded after jamming half-way down its shaft. Since the geology of Mururoa is already unstable due to large-scale fracturing caused by previous tests, further major landslides are likely. Such landslides in the past have given rise to tsunamis causing coastal damage in areas as far away as Pitcairn and Tahiti and endangering residences such as that of Ms. Danielsson. They can also release radioactive material into the sea, with catastrophic effects on the food chain in an area such as French Polynesia where fish is an important part of the diet.
Q: What were the effects of the Murarao landslide?
A: It shifted at least one million cubic meters of coral and rock and created a cavity, probably 140 meters in diameter and produced a major tidal wave comparable to a tsunami, which spread through the Tuamotu Archipelago and injured people on the southern part of Moruroa Atoll. French authorities initially denied that any mishap had occurred and declared that the tidal wave was of natural origin, but in a publication in 1985 they did acknowledge “the accident of 25 July 1979″.
Q: Can landslides create tsunamis?
A: Research on underwater landslides is new and it is only in recent years that the potentially catastrophic results of a landslide have become known. Dr Summerhayes, Director of the Institute of Oceanographic Sciences in the United Kingdom, is quoted in the Independent Newspaper on 9 September 1995 as saying that volcanic islands like Mururoa were:
“… inherently unstable and may fail given an appropriate trigger like an earthquake or a very large explosion. Failure is likely to cause a giant submarine landslide which may demolish parts of the island and could create a tidal wave that may itself damage coastal installations on other islands nearby.”
Furthermore he stated that the creation of such a tidal wave was “a general threat to coasts as far away as New Zealand and Australia.”
Q: How predictable would earthquakes be in the region around Indonesia?
A: Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,000 islands, lies along the Pacific Ring of Fire where plate boundaries intersect and volcanoes regularly erupt.
Q: How common are tsunamis in the Indian Ocean?
A: Tsunamis are rare in the Indian Ocean though there have been 7 records of tsunamis set off by earthquakes near Indonesia, Pakistan and at the Bay of Bengal.
This is the first multi-ocean tsunami since Krakatau erupted in the nineteenth century.
Q: Is there a warning system for tsunamis in place?
A: An international system of buoys and monitoring stations ” the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center based in Hawaii ” spans the Pacific, alerting nations there to any oncoming disasters. But no such system guards the Indian Ocean. Neither India or Sri Lanka are part of the system and though Thailand is the south western coast does not have the system,s sensors floated on buoys.
Q: Could the carnage have been avoided?
A: Much of this death and destruction could have been prevented with a simple system of buoys. Officials in Thailand and Indonesia have said that an immediate public warning could have saved lives, but that they did not know about the danger because there was no international system in place to track tsunamis in the Indian Ocean.
Q: How difficult would it have been to set up?
A: The detector buoys have been around for decades and the U.S. has had a monitoring system for more than half a century. More than 50 seismometers dot the Northwest ready to monitor earthquakes that might cause tsunamis. There are 6 buoys in the middle of the Pacific equipped with sensors called “tsunameters” that measure changes in water pressure and programmed to alert the country’s two tsunami-warning centers in Hawaii and Alaska. Dr. Eddie Bernard, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, says just a few buoys could do the job.
Q: What held up putting a system in place?
A: Scientists wanted to place two more tsunami meters in the Indian Ocean, including one near Indonesia, but lacked funding, said Bernard. The tsunameters each cost only $250,000.
Q: How soon did people know about the tsunami?
A: Within 15 minutes of the earthquake, scientists running the existing tsunami warning system for the Pacific sent an alert from their Honolulu hub to 26 participating countries, including Thailand and Indonesia, that destructive waves might be generated by the Sumatra tremors.
Q: Did anyone warn Indonesia or any other country?
A: “We put out a bulletin within 20 minutes, technically as fast as we could do it,” says Jeff LaDouce of the NOOA. LaDouce says e-mails were dispatched to Indonesian officials, but he doesn’t know what happened to the information. Phone calls were hurriedly made to countries in the Indian Ocean danger zone, Dr. Laura S. L. Kong, a Commerce Department seismologist and director of the International Tsunami Information Center said, but not with the speed that comes from pre-established emergency planning. Reportedly, NOOA didn,t know whom to contact.
Q: What responsibility do Asian governments have in the lack of preparedness?
A: At a meeting in June of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, a United Nations body, experts concluded that the “Indian Ocean has a significant threat from both local and distant tsunamis” and should have a warning network but India, Thailand, Malaysia and other countries in the region have “never shown the initiative to do anything,” said Dr. Tad Murty, an expert on the region’s tsunamis who is affiliated with the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. “There’s no reason for a single individual to get killed in a tsunami,” he noted, “The waves are totally predictable. We have travel-time charts covering all of the Indian Ocean. From where this earthquake happened to hit, the travel time for waves to hit the tip of India was four hours. That’s enough time for a warning. In Thailand, officials reportedly played down warnings afraid that if there was a false alarm, tourism might be seriously damages as had happened once before.
Q: Were there any oddities about the quake besides this?
A: The quake was rated a 6.4 on the Richter scale according to an official at the Bureau of Meteorology and Geophysics in Jakarta. But the U.S. Geological Survey measured the earthquake at a magnitude of 8.1. The assessment significantly underestimated the size and impact of the quake.
Q: When were people in the affected regions warned?
A: Officials in Thailand issued the only warnings of the impending disaster, but broadcasts beamed to tourist resorts in the country’s south underestimated the threat and a Web site caution was not posted until three hours after the first waves hit.
Q: Was anyone warned in time at all?
A: Yes. The NOAA immediately warned the U.S. Naval Station at Diego Garcia, which suffered very little damage from the tsunami. NOAA was able to get the warning to the US Navy base in the area, but says it was unable to contact the civil authorities in the region to warn them.
Q: Was there any damage to Diego Garcia, the U.S. base in the Indian Ocean?
A: None, although Diego Garcia, the southernmost island of the Chagos Archipelag, lies about 1,000 miles south of India and about 2,000 miles from the earthquake,s epicenter. Meanwhile, Somalia, nearly 3,000 from the earthquake,s center, reported more than 100 deaths in coastal areas. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Geological Survey, said damage differs greatly because of differences in the undersea topography. The numerous coral reefs may have dissipated some of the waves, impact on the British-owned island, resulting in only a slightly elevated tide, hardly noticeable to residents
Q: Have tidal waves figured in weapons research?
A: Yes. Secret wartime experiments were conducted off the New Zealand coast to create a bomb that would trigger tidal waves, according to government files declassified in Auckland. But the tsunami bomb was never fully tested and the war ended before the project was completed. Its mastermind was Thomas Leech, an Australian professor who was the dean of engineering at Auckland University from 1940 to 1950. He set off a series of underwater explosions that caused mini tidal waves at Whangaparaoa, north of Auckland, in 1944 and 1945. Details of the research, known as Project Seal, are contained in 53- year-old documents released by the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Q: Is it possible for a nuclear explosion to have triggered the Macquarie quake in some way and indirectly caused the changes that led to the Sumatra quake and the Asian tsunami?
A: It is possible that a very large explosion might have triggered the first quake directly in some way or that repeated prior testing could have induced changes that led to the quake indirectly, but research on the fall-out of nuclear testing is so highly classified that little is known of the possible impact. The U.S. has not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, leaving the door open to future U.S. testing despite an extended moratorium. There has already been a strong move toward resumption of testing since 2002. Now earth-penetrating nukes (bunker busters) and mini-nukes might provide the pretext.
Lila Rajiva is a free-lance journalist in the Baltimore area and the author of “The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the American Media,” to be released by Monthly Review Press in 2005 Spring.
The following report has been distributed by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, as a result of renwewed interest in French nuclear testing in the South Pacific. It is an updated version of Chapter 9 from the book “Radioactive Heaven and Earth: the health and environmental effects of nuclear weapons testing, in, on, and above the earth.”(New York, Apex Press, 1991) It is one of the few published sources for information on this subject, and reveals that although only limited environmental impact reports have been conducted in French Polynesia,and despite restrictions imposed by the French, they still highlight the threat to the environment in the Pacific posed by the French nuclear testing programme.
The report contains information under the following headings:
For further information concerning the effects of nuclear testing on the health of French Polynesians, click here
For an update on the latest news concerning nuclear testing and disarmament issues, click here
Locations, Numbers and Types of Tests
The first French nuclear tests were conducted in Algeria between 1960 and 1965. The first test took place on February 13, 1960 at Reggan when Algeria was still a colony in the throes of a war for independence. In all, fourteen nuclear weapons tests were conducted at the two Algerian locations, four atmospheric and 10 underground. The French government made preparations to move the testing to its colony Polynesia after Algeria won its independence.
The French test sites in the Pacific are Moruroa and Fangataufa, two atolls in the southeastern area of the Tuamotu Archipelago, French Polynesia. The Moruroa Atoll (21.83o Southern latitude and 138.88o Western longitude) is one of the largest coral atolls in that area. The atoll, in the form of an incomplete ring encircling a lagoon, measures 26 km. east to west and 10 km north to south. The 65km.-long reefcrown, with a mean height of 2 meters and rarely exceeding 400 meters in width, is open, leaving a 5-km-wide passage into the lagoon on the northwestern side. The lagoon has an average depth of 40 meters and is the crater of an extinct underwater volcano, around which outer coral has grown above sea level to form the visible rim. The distance to the nearest inhabited island (Tureia) is 100 kilometers, the distance to Tahiti is 1,200 kilometers, and New Zealand is 4,200 kilometers away. The atoll was uninhabited before the installation of the test center.(1)
Fangataufa, a much smaller atoll, is located 41 kilometers south- southeast of Moruroa (22.25o Southern latitude and 138.63o Western longitude). It measures 5 by 8 kilometers and was also uninhabited before the tests. In contrast to Moruroa, Fangataufa was a closed atoll. The French military therefore opened a 400 meter gap in the coral ring to enable ships to enter the lagoon.(2)
From 1966 to 1990, 167 nuclear test explosions have been performed on these two atolls. These tests were used for the development of at least eight types of nuclear warheads. Of the 167 tests, 44 were atmospheric, 39 over Moruroa, 5 over Fangataufa. The overall yield of these atmospheric explosions was 12,000 kilotons of TNT. The first atmospheric test was performed on Moruroa on July 2, 1966, the last on September 15, 1974. Most of the early tests were performed on the surface or on a barge anchored in the lagoon. Because of the large amount of radioactive fallout resulting from the low burst altitude, most further tests were performed with warheads hanging under balloons. Very few tests were conducted as air-drops from planes. One test, designed to check the security apparatus of the warhead, resulted in no nuclear detonation, but the fragmented bomb spread huge amounts of plutonium over the coral rim. The first explosion of a two stage fissionfusion device on August 24, 1988 at Fangataufa was also the largest explosion, with a yield of 2.6 megatons.
After June 5, 1975 the tests were conducted underground. Since then between 4 and 11 underground explosions have been conducted each year. Of the total, 3 were in Fangataufa in 1975 and 1988, the other 120 at Moruroa. The yields of these explosions have never been officially released but the total yield is estimated at about 2,500 kilotons TNT. This estimate is based largely upon observations by the New Zealand Department of Scientific & Industrial Research (DSIR) and the Swedish National Defense Research Institute (FOA), which recorded and analyzed the seismic data from these tests.(3)
The underground tests have been conducted at the bottom of shafts bored 500-1200 meters into the basalt core of the atoll. Initially these shafts were drilled in the outer rim of the atoll. In 1981, most likely due to the weakening of that rim, the tests with higher yields were shifted to shafts drilled under the lagoon itself. In 1986 all tests were shifted to this so called ‘zone-central’.(4)
Historical Context of Testing
The independence of Algeria in 1962 threatened further testing at the Algerian sites. The French Defense Department therefore started to look for other suitable test sites. Possible locations included Clipperton Island in the Pacific as well as the Kerguelen Islands in the Southern Indian Ocean, which were eventually ruled out because of their hostile climate and remote location. The final decision was in favor of the uninhabited islands of Moruroa and Fangataufa, and in 1962 the ‘Center d’Experimentation du Pacifique’ (CEP) was established.(5)
The main argument favoring the selection was that only 5,000 inhabitants lived within a 1,000 kilometer radius of the planned ground zero in Moruroa and that it would therefore be suitable for atmospheric testing. Although the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty banned the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, underwater and in space, France was not a signatory to it, and the French government under President de Gaulle announced that it would continue its atmospheric nuclear tests using the Moruroa Atoll. (According to US government sources, President Kennedy offered help in the development of a French nuclear program if France would stop atmospheric testing. This offer was refused by the French government.)(6)
In 1972 the French government bowed to public pressure from Pacific and Latin American countries. The government tried to find a suitable location for underground testing. The island initially considered, Eiao, in the Marquesas Group, was found to be unsuitable because of fragile basalt layers. In 1973 Fangataufa was chosen, and in 1974 President Giscard d’Estaing announced that as of that year only underground tests would be performed. After initial tests in Fangataufa, the testing was moved back to Moruroa, presumably to avoid the costs of running two test-sites.(7) However, after many tests, Moruroa was deemed to fragile for larger underground testing, and in 1988 a high-ranking French officer commented that the larger tests would be relocated to Fangataufa to avoid serious damage to the rock of Moruroa. Although the remark was later denied, on November 13, 1988 a test was performed at Fangataufa.(8)
Sources of reliable information on the tests and their outcome are extremely limited due to the extreme secrecy of the French military. Limited investigations by four groups have been permitted by the French authorities in recent years: a French scientific mission in 1982;(9) a New Zealand, Australian, and Papua New Guinea scientific mission in 1983;(10) the Cousteau scientific mission in 1987;(11) and the mission of the associated French Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (AMFPGN), the IPPNW affiliate, in 1990.(12)
The reports of these committees are the most important available source of information on the consequences of the testing. All these missions were extremely restricted in duration, 3-5 days, and in preparation time. They were, therefore, only exploratory. All four missions were restricted in their access to relevant data, sites or samples, such as coral and sediment from within the lagoon and specific areas of the atoll. Epidemiological data presented by French authorities were insufficient or unreliable. Despite these deficiencies, these studies as well as New Zealand and Swedish seismic data are, to date, the best sources of information on the effects of French testing.
Downwind Communities
The French government has not made public any documents about nuclear tests in Algeria. In the absence of official documentation about armed forces participation, participation of Algerians and dose and contamination levels, there has been considerable speculation and rumor about all of these subjects. The one figure that we have seen on radiation doses was reported by Greenpeace:
“The first underground test, on 1 May 1962, code-named Beryl, was to test the prototype for the AN 11 bomb for the Mirage IVA aircraft. Despite adverse winds, and against the advice of the Commission of Nuclear Safety the explosion went ahead because two VIPs, one from the Ministere des Armees, were present. Twelve soldiers were contaminated when radioactive vapor escaped through a fissure in the rock; nine of them received more than 100 rem of radiation.”(13)
Moruroa was selected for atmospheric testing because only 5,000 inhabitants lived within a 1,000 kilometer radius of the testing site. Yet, the initial dangerzone around the test site, which was to be kept free of planes and ships during a test, contained seven inhabited atolls. When this was pointed out to the French authorities, they reduced the radius of the zone designated as dangerous, but the atoll of Tureia, with around 60 inhabitants, 100 kilometers away from Moruroa, remained in the danger area. This island seems to have received severe radioactive fallout several times. One occasion was the test series of JuneJuly 1967, when two French meteorologists on Tureia were evacuated two days after a test and transferred to the hospital at Hao. A complete evacuation of Tureia took place in 1968.(14) Despite these evacuations, the French authorities described the radiation doses on Tureia and Gambier from these tests as never exceeding 75 millirems per year.(15)
The French Atomic Energy Commission acknowledged many years later that the 1966 Aldebarran tests covered the islands of Mureia, Tamoure, and Gambier with radioactive fallout resulting in radiation doses of 200 to 400 millirems.(16) Because the immediate downwind communities are very small and under the control of the French government and independent radiation data are not available, the impact of the atmospheric tests on nearby communities cannot be judged. French military control over the health system of Polynesia is an obstacle to data collection. Health statistics from the period of atmospheric testing were either not collected, poorly collected, or not published. Missions of longer duration, a lifting of the “military secret” classification on health and environmental aspects of testing, and careful epidemiological surveys would be needed to assess the radiological impact of testing on the health of the population across the region.
The most intense monitoring program of the Pacific region was performed by the National Radiation Laboratory of the New Zealand Department of Health, in co operation with the Meteorological Service, the Australian Radiation Laboratory, and the governments of various Pacific islands. These measurements show that, although fission products from the tests were expected to circle the globe in an eastward direction, reaching the southern Pacific again after three weeks, rapid changes in radioactivity concentration in the days immediately after a test were occasionally observed in various Southern Pacific monitoring stations, indicating that radioactive material had been caught up and swept west to the central South Pacific.
The whole South Pacific should be considered a downwind community. Total beta activity in the air was elevated for all monitoring stations in New Zealand as well as on Pacific islands including Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and Tahiti for the whole period from 1966 to 1975. The same is true for total beta activity in rain. Measurements of gamma emitters in air at Tahiti returned to pre test levels in 1975, after being elevated for the five previous years. Approximate mean effective dose equivalent commitments from nuclear test fallout in New Zealand, Fiji and Tahiti normalized finally between 1975 and 1980.(17) All these data suggest a strong linkage between the concentration of fission products and French atmospheric tests from 1966 until 1974.
In a broader sense, downwind communities also include the South American countries. Most tests were performed with winds blowing to the east to avoid direct contamination of the Pacific islands west of Moruroa. Radiation levels up to 12 millirems were attributed to the French test as far away as Peru and Baja California.(18)
Armed Forces Personnel
The tests at Moruroa are shrouded in extreme secrecy. All exposure information is controlled by the French military and nuclear establishment. Measurements of radiation exposure of armed forces personnel have never been made available the scientists or the public. No known followup of exposed personnel of the sort that was done on British, Australian and New Zealand personnel involved in British tests has taken place. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that comparable exposures have occurred. Measurements were performed by airplanes and helicopters flying into the radioactive clouds. There are also reports of equipment, planes, ships and shelters needing to be decontaminated after certain tests.(19)
To estimate the number of potentially exposed personnel it is relevant to consider the organizational structure of the CEP. The Center is run by the government authority ‘Directions des Centres d’Experimentations Nucleaires’ (DIRCEN), under the control of the French Ministry of Defense. This authority has personnel on the atolls of Moruroa and small peripheral stations on the atolls of Tureia, Tematangi and Reao. Between 3,000 and 3,600 people, military and civilian, are based at these locations. In the early 1960′s the atoll of Hao was used as a rear base for assembling the nuclear weapons to be tested, which came from France by plane. This airbase, 400 kilometers northwest of Moruroa, houses around 400 people, of whom 270 are French military personnel. An additional 1,100 people are based in Tahiti, providing the administrative and back-up services for the testing center.(20)
The first and only report about the problems encountered by personnel at the CEP came from the civilian technicians and engineers employed to conduct the tests on the atoll. A report by their trade union released in 1981 gave detailed information on the careless way in which waste has been managed on the Moruroa Atoll. The report does not contain radiation measurements.(21)
In summary, it seems highly likely that French and Polynesian civilian and military personnel at the CEP were exposed to radiation from the tests. However, the health implications of this exposure cannot be stated with any precision, due to lack of published radiation exposure data, epidemiological studies, or reasonable followup.
Hot Spots
At least two hot spots in the South Pacific have been identified by radiation measurements. Both are linked to rainouts. One occurred in Samoa, 3,610 kilometers from Moruroa, on September 12, 1966. This was a consequence of the test Betelgeuse on the previous day, in which a 120 kiloton bomb hanging under a balloon was exploded at a height of 600 meters, despite worsening wind conditions. (President de Gaulle attended this test, and it has been suggested that this was why the bomb was detonated in spite of unfavorable winds.)(22) As a result of that rain-out, the total beta activity in rain in Apia/Samoa in the year 1966 increased from a normal level of around 200 megabecquerels per square kilometer to 370,000 megabecquerels per square kilometer.
Another incident of similar magnitude occurred at Tahiti on July 19, 1974, following a test on July 17 or 18 of unknown yield and burst height. As a consequence, the average annual concentration of total beta activity in the air, which is normally below 0.3 millibecquerels per cubic meter, increased to 1,460 millibecquerels per cubic meter in Papeete Tahiti. The effective dose equivalent from nuclear test fallout due to external shortlived gamma exposure increased from below 1 millisieverts to 154 millisieverts.(23) It is not known whether there have been additional incidents because detailed information for other locations in French Polynesia is not available.
Environmental Effects of Atmospheric Testing
The total amount of plutonium-239 dispersed as a result of the 45 announced French atmospheric tests, including the four in Algeria, would be about 6750 curies, assuming 150 curies per test. Table 2, in Chapter 3, gives an estimate for the fission yield of the announced French atmospheric tests of about 10.9 megatons. On this basis, the amount of cesium-127 and strontium90 dispersed would have been 1.7 million curies and 1.1 million curies respectively. About onehalf of the cesium and strontium still remains in the atmosphere, on the ground, and in water bodies. French testing in the Pacific was the source of almost all the atmospheric fission product contamination, due to the much larger number of tests and the far greater yields of the French tests there than in Algeria.
Environmental Effects of Underground Testing at Moruroa
The possible environmental effects of underground testing include short-term and longterm effects. At the time of the explosion, fracturing of the atoll surface triggers landslides, tsunamis (tidal waves), and earthquakes. There is also evidence that radionuclides have vented to the environment. Possible long-term effects include leakage of fission products to the biosphere and transfer of dissolved plutonium from the lagoon to the ocean and the food chain.
Physical Damage to the Reef
The upper layer of the atoll is made up of reef carbonates, mainly limestone. This limestone cover is approximately 300 meters in the south of the atoll, increasing to 430 – 550 meters in the north. The upper part of this limestone layer is undolomitized and comprises porous coral debris, approximately 125 meters thick. The lower part is dolomitized and therefore quite compact.
This limestone layer is separated from the underlying volcanic material by a transitional zone of variable thickness, composed mainly of weathered clays. It can vary in thickness from 40 to 45 meters below the atoll to a mere 50 centimeters or even nothing beneath most of the lagoon.
The clay zone is impervious. The underlying volcanics are initially aerial volcanics, which then change to more homogeneous submarine volcanics at greater depths.
Each scientific mission to Moruroa has described severe impairment of the integrity of at least the carbonate part of the atoll. The damage includes fissures in the limestone and surface subsidences of large areas of the atoll. Fissures are propagated by the testing, a result of the cumulative compacting of the limestone. Fissuring serves to increase lateral and vertical water transport in the carbonate body of the atoll,(24) possibly resulting in more rapid leakage of the fission products. The French authorities claim that no new damage is occurring because the tests are no longer conducted under the reef crown but under the lagoon.(25) This claim is contradicted by underwater observations of the Cousteau mission, which discovered recently fallen noncolonized limestone blocks, suggesting that tests were carried out in the months immediately preceding their arrival and that on-going tests are still damaging the reef. (26)
Triggering of Landslides, Tsunamis and Earthquakes
At least one major test-related landslide and consequent Tsunami in Moruroa, on July 25, 1979. Apparently, the 120kiloton weapon, which was supposed to be lowered into a shaft of 800 meters, got stuck at a depth of 400 meters and could not be dislodged. The French authorities decided to explode the device anyway. This explosion resulted in a major underwater landslide of at least one million cubic meters of coral and rock and created a cavity, probably 140 meters in diameter. The underwater landslide produced a major tidal wave comparable to a tsunami, which spread through the Tuamotu Archipelago and injured people on the southern part of Moruroa Atoll. (27)
French authorities initially denied that any mishap had occurred and declared that the tidal wave was of natural origin, but in a publication in 1985 they did acknowledge “the accident of 25 July 1979″.(28)
Venting of Gaseous and Volatile Fission Products
Unusual concentrations of short-lived iodine131 in marine organisms and krypton 85 and tritium in air or water indicate that venting has occurred.
The scientists of the Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea Mission in 1983 were authorized to carry out a single experiment in situ at Moruroa. Their measurements demonstrated a high level of tritium in the interstitial air of the surface terrain. The measured tritium levels were 500 Becquerels per liter while the expected concentration due to atmospheric fallout should have been in the range of 0.2 Becquerels per liter. The report of this mission offers two explanations for these extremely high unexpected tritium levels: either venting of gaseous tritium directly from underground cavities or a faster ground water flow rate than admitted. (29)
The venting explanation appears to be more likely, based on findings of Cousteau mission in 1987. Just days after a test, iodine 131 (half life of 8.05 days) was found in all sediment samples. The same mission measured radioactivity of plankton, which is an even better indicator of venting. In plankton, they found an iodine131 concentration of 22,000 picocuries per kilogram, by far the strongest radioactivity found during their mission. The Cousteau report stated that iodine-131 most likely reached the surface via the test bore. The report overlooked the fact that the spot with the maximum iodine131 concentration in sediment was the farthest away from the test site. Nevertheless, because of the short halflife of this radioisotope, its presence could only be attributed to a recent emission. Although authorities at the testing center claimed that this was due to an accidental leak of exceptional character during post-test drilling for purposes of monitoring, the Cousteau Mission was not able to verify that directly.(30) In any case, even such a posttest valve decoupling accident constitutes a venting phenomenon. The fact that the French did not report this venting accident until forced to do so by having to explain the presence of iodine131 indicates that venting may have been more common than the French nuclear authorities have so far acknowledged.
In summary, two scientific missions, on which major restrictions were imposed, were still able, independently of each other, to find typical indicators of short-term venting.
Medium and Long-term Leakage of Fission Products to the Biosphere
According to a model formulated by Hochstein and O’Sullivan (1985), an underground nuclear explosion in rock saturated with seawater can set up an artificial geothermal system. The heat stored in the explosion chamber is on the order of 10E12 calories per kiloton of yield. In addition, heat generation due to radioactive decay goes on after the explosion of fission bombs, at a rate of about 595 calories per second per kiloton of yield. After the explosion, seawater enters the chamber and is heated by about 25o – 50o C by both stored and newly generated heat. The heated seawater dissolves the glassy materials, liberating the nuclear waste.
At the same time, the heated seawater sets up an artificial geothermal system, which transfers the dissolved nuclear waste slowly upwards through the extended chimney. While the concentration of the radionuclides decreases by diffusion and absorption, the heated cell transferring the radionuclides moves upwards with a speed of about 10 meters per year, according to the computer simulation of Hochstein and O’Sullivan. Under the assumptions of this model, radionuclides from a depth of around 500 meters would reach the cracks of the lagoon in less than 50 years instead of the 500 to 1,000 years assumed by the French authorities.(31)
A first hint that the model of Hochstein and O’Sullivan might be correct was the discovery of cesium-134 by the Cousteau Mission in 1987.(32) In December 1990, too, Greenpeace found cesium-134 in plankton collected outside the 12-mile exclusion zone around Moruroa.(33) While the measured concentrations of cesium-137 are consistent with the consequences of local and global atmospheric tests, the concentrations of cesium134 are less explicable. Global atmospheric fallout does not contain cesium134, which is produced by the addition of one neutron to the nucleus of stable cesium-133.
A recent study reviewing the Cousteau Mission’s water samples comes to the conclusion that the measured concentrations of cesium-134 are attributable to the underground tests and that only leakage can explain the presence of this radionuclide in Moruroan waters. This study also attempted to identify the source of the leakage by matching the coordinates of French underground tests with the coordinates of the places where samples were taken. Leakage is occurring even faster than initially predicted by the model of Hochstein and O’Sullivan (which assumed equal permeability in all directions), probably only six years after a test.(34) Venting, which happens occasionally, may open pathways for more rapid leakage than predicted by the model.
The 120 underground tests conducted at Moruroa have in effect turned it into a longterm waste dump. The total amount of plutonium-239 from these tests and the three at Fangataufa is about 18,450 curies, assuming 150 curies per test. Based on a rough estimate of 2.5 megatons total yield of underground tests, the amount of cesium127 and strontium90 dispersed would have been 400,000 curies and 250,000 curies respectively. About three-fourths of the cesium and strontium still remain underground and some may have found its way into the lagoons and ocean. As a repository for nuclear wastes from underground testing, Moruroa is less than ideal. Natural barriers play the most important role in the confinement of nuclear waste.(35) Consequently, a planned storage site should meet very strict criteria including exclusion of water, lack of natural fractures or fissures, and a high absorption of radionuclides. According to these criteria, Moruroa is a very poor choice: the geological structure of Moruroa is water-saturated; there are natural fractures as well as a veritable network of fissures due to the explosions. These fissures affect the volcanic layer. Moreover, the absorption coefficient for the basalt of Moruroa as estimated by the French authorities is very low.
In conclusion, Moruroa Atoll is a very poor site for storing nuclear waste of any type. If certain confinement criteria are considered necessary for the storage of waste from nuclear power stations, the same would be necessary for the storage of waste as a consequence of nuclear explosions. The discovery of cesium-134 indicates only the beginning of longterm leakage from the underground “storage” sites.
Transfer of dissolved plutonium from the lagoon to the ocean as a consequence of poor waste management.
Radioactive materials deposited on Moruroa have found their way into the lagoon. The land area of Moruroa has been used to store radioactive waste (including metal scrap, wood, plastic bags and clothing) in a huge heap on the north coast of the atoll, which covers 30,000 square meters. In addition, on July 21, 1966 a bomb broke apart on the surface of Moruroa, dispersing plutonium239. This plutonium 239 was confined to the area by fixing it in place with a layer of bitumen. Moruroa was also used as a safety trial area.(36) (A safety trial area is a test to check whether an atomic bomb will explode on impact with a hard surface -as in the event of a plane crash. In the case of a “safe” bomb, or a “successful” safety trial, the impact does not cause a nuclear detonation but breaks apart the bomb, scattering plutonium-239 about the site.) Cyclones hit Moruroa mainly in 1981, washing radioactive waste from the coral rim into the lagoon, including the plutonium-impregnated bitumen.
Due to these waste management practices, the sediment of the lagoon contains an estimated 20 kilograms of plutonium. At the time the Australian, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea Mission visited Moruroa, plutonium239 concentrations in the air were about 4 times greater than in continental France. The Mission estimated that about 20 gigabecquerels of plutonium from the sediment of the lagoon are transported annually to ocean waters.(37)
This is consistent with findings of the Cousteau Mission that concentrations of plutonium in the lagoon entrance are about 10 times greater than in the lagoon itself. They also stated that the observed concentrations in the sediment and in the water are much too high to be attributed to global atmospheric fallout and are therefore of local origin and due to remobilization from sedimentary deposits.
There is evidence that plutonium-239 is accumulating in the food chain. While the concentration of plutonium-239 and plutonium 240 are around .01 picocuries/liter in the water of the lagoon, the respective concentrations for dry sediment are 1,1OO picocuries/kilogram and for dry plankton 9,700 picocuries/kilogram. (Enrichment can be found for cesium 137, also, where the respective concentrations are 0.14 picocuries/liter, 3.5 picocuries/kilogram and 70 picocuries/kilogram.)(38)
Ciguatera Fish Poisoning Due To Changes in Reef Ecology
Ciguatera fish poisoning, discussed in Chapter 5, is a major public health problem in the South pacific, with nutritional, social, and economic implications. The annual average incidence for the South Pacific area is around 200 cases per 100,000 population per year, but incidences as high as 20,700 per 100,000 population per year are reported for the Gambier Islands.
A review of the epidemiology of ciguatera in French Polynesia from 1960 to 1984 clearly demonstrates a general flare-up in ciguatera, with more than 24,000 cases among a population that grew from 84,500 in 1962 to 174,000 by mid1985. The incidence rose dramatically through the 1960s, peaking from 1972 to 1975 at 1,200 per 100,000, a tenfold increase over the 1960 figure.(39) Some of this increase may be due to improved case reporting, but this has never been presented as a major reason for the increase. In the areas most affected, the eastern Tuamotu, Gambier, and Marquesas Archipelagos, the incidence in the 1980s remains at high levels.
The most important cause of ciguatera outbreaks is the disturbance of the sensitive ecology of the coral reef. Natural events, such as storms, earthquakes and tidal waves, can disturb reef ecology, as can human activities. Nuclear test explosions and the construction of supporting infrastructures have been linked with ciguatera outbreaks.(40) For example, the Tuamotu Archipelago was more or less free of ciguatera before the early 1960′s. Epidemiological studies show that in parallel with the installation and running of the test facilities, repeated outbreaks occurred. This is the case for the Hao Atoll (staging base for the testing since 1965, first ciguatera outbreak in 1966), the Gambier Islands (construction of military facilities in 1967, first outbreak in 1968) and Moruroa Atoll (highest density of Gambierdiscus toxicus after the Gambier Islands in 1981 ).(41)
A study by the US Atomic Energy Commission showed no correlation between radioactivity and ciguatoxicity in fish.(42) It is most likely that ancillary military activities linked to the nuclear testing facilities, like runway construction, waste dumping, ship decontamination, are causing ciguatoxicity by disturbance of reef ecology.
The earthquake that struck the Indonesian island of Sumatra occurred in a location geologists know is susceptible to powerful earthquakes. The quake occurred along a “subduction zone,” in which the Indian tectonic plate is being subducted, or pulled beneath, the Burma tectonic platelet. The overlying plate jumped upward more than 4.5 metres, lifting the water above it and setting off the tsunami.
For some, the finger of blame doesn’t point squarely at nature but at top secret military testing in the waters of the Indian Ocean.
The Egyptian weekly magazine Al-Osboa claimed the earthquake that triggered the tsunami “was possibly” caused by an Indian nuclear experiment in which “Israeli and American nuclear experts participated”.
Even Bunker Busters can cause and earthquake. Read up on that a few years ago.
HAARP caused earthquake in China? Could it be they used it?
If you Google ( HAARP Earthquake) you will find a lot of information.
Could it be they used some new technology, they are after all, always coming up with new ways to destroy? Could they been testing a new weapons to see what would happen.
They did test nuclear bombs all around the world. History tells us that.
Chevez may very well be right. It could be man made. It could be natural. It is something we should all think about however. At the site below there is a video and a few other links to information.
Here is a bit more information I found today January 27 2010, as I was roaming around. So I firgured the post is long but now it is longer. Some of the things at this link are on this site but one would have to do do a bit of digging to find it.
This Reporter put a lot of information together and it is 5 pages long but do take the time and you may learn something new.
I also discovered this as I was reading another blog as well.
Earthquakes created on purpose.
The Seismologic Division of the Ministry of National Infrastructure’s Geophysical Institute will attempt to simulate an earthquake in the southern Negev on Thursday. The experiment, financed by the U.S. Defense Department, is a joint project with the University of Hawaii and is part of a scientific project intended to improve seismological and acoustic readings in Israel and its environs, up to a 1,000 km/621 mile radius. For the rest goHERE.
BIG OIL BEHIND HAITI QUAKE?
By Victor Thorn
February 15 2010
Did American petroleum companies murder hundreds of thousands of Haitians while extracting oil from their shores? In an exclusive Jan. 28 interview, social commentator and human rights attorney Ezili Danto believes “hydraulic fracturing” caused by drillers searching for oil may have caused the Jan. 12 earthquake.
Yes, oil is Haiti’s smoking gun. Why do you think 20,000 American troops now occupy and control this impoverished nation? On Jan. 28, 2009, geologist Daniel Mathurin revealed, “Haiti’s oil reserves are larger than those of Venezuela. An Olympic pool compared to a glass of water is the comparison.”
Indeed, Haiti may have 20 times more oil than Venezuela. Daniel and Ginette Mathurin mapped 20 oil sites (five of them major), and, oddly enough, the quake’s epicenter occurred in the exact same area where the Port-au-Prince resources exist. Imagine, one of the largest caches of oil in the Western Hemisphere, and now over a million residents are displaced or deceased.
In a Jan. 26 commentary, Pastor Chuck Baldwin asked, “Why was an
earthquake of this magnitude not felt beyond Port-au-Prince?” He continues, “People living in the adjoining country of Dominican Republic universally say they felt nothing.” He concludes, “It is being called ‘miraculous’ that an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale did not
produce a colossal tsunami.”
Ms. Danto also found the localized destruction very suspicious.
“Port-au-Prince hasn’t had an earthquake since 1771,” she said. “What we’re seeing is similar to Hurricane Katrina. Look at how many people never returned to where they originally lived. Perhaps the oil cartels needed to get rid of certain people near the coastline where they wanted it cleared. If Haiti were a piece of dirt with just black people and no oil or minerals, they would have left us alone. We wouldn’t see all the investment money and troops; nor would the U.S. have built the fifth largest embassy in the world in this tiny little country.”
To whom specifically is she referring? U.S. companies have known since 1908 that Haiti teemed with oil reserves. In the 1950s and 1960s, two different contractors were bought off to not develop these sites. CIA files also show that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) verified contracts in 1962 regarding these possible oil reserve sites.
Ms. Danto explores the economic ramifications of this situation: “Oil companies in the 1960s and 1970s didn’t want to add more supply to the market and allow prices to plummet,” she said. “So, they locked down these deposits and kept them in reserve until the 21st century when Middle Eastern reserves began waning. For the past 50 years, Haiti has been called the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. Oil profits could have vastly changed the lives of these people. Now we’re being fleeced, and our resources are being stolen. Haiti has always been a dumping ground, including the theft of our forests and minerals.”
In mining Haiti’s riches, Ms. Danto recounts, “There were areas in Haiti hidden behind UN guns, fenced off where Haitians knew nothing about what these soldiers were doing,” she said. “There were barricades around Port-au-Prince, and we couldn’t see what the UN soldiers were doing. This activity started after the Bush-led coup d’tat in 2004. The areas blocked off were the same places where experts said oil reserves existed.”
To illustrate the abundance of this natural resource, Dr. Georges Michel wrote on March 27, 2004, “In 1975 we bathed in the waters of Les Cayes and noticed that our feet were covered by a sort of black oil seeping from the seabed.”
An even more interesting point is Ms. Danto’s revelation that a series of minor “earthquakes” registering near 2.0 on the Richter scale have been occurring for the past couple of years. A geologist also informed her that the 7.0 earthquake took place six miles below where oil companies were drilling.
Also curious is a Jan. 15 statement by Bob Brewin, a military-technology writer and editor at the popular web site Next Gov.com. Brewin said that one day prior to the earthquake, Jean Demay of the Defense Information Systems Agency visited the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, where U.S. forces were conducting exercises on how to deal with a major earthquake in Haiti.
Indeed, one day later this catastrophe transpired. As the U.S. military now controls Port-au-Prince, are U.S. government efforts to rebuild their infrastructure simply a ruse to grab Haiti’s oil?
Ms. Danto answers this question very adroitly. “Most of Haiti’s major deep water ports have been privatized since the Bush 2004 regime change in Haiti.” She then noted in 2009, “If there are substantial oil and gas reserves in Haiti, the U.S.-Euro genocide and crimes against the Haitian population has not begun.” Source
GAZA – The United Nations said on Wednesday Israel’s blockade of Gaza undermines the enclave’s healthcare system and puts patients at risk.
Max Gaylard, resident Humanitarian Coordinator for the Palestinian territories, said Israel was to be commended for letting Palestinians from Gaza access specialist medical care but could save more lives by allowing more timely treatment.
“It is causing ongoing deterioration in the social, economic and environmental determinants of health,” he said. “It is hampering the provision of medical supplies and the training of health staff and it is preventing patients with serious medical conditions getting timely specialised treatment.”
“We have had extreme cases of patients dying because they could not get out to get the more advanced medical care in Israel,” Gaylard told Reuters in an interview after presenting a report on the situation at a Gaza news conference.
“It is quite true that hundreds of patients do get out to Israel. That has been happening on a continuing basis. That is good and we welcome it and the Israelis are to be commended for that,” he said. “I think we are concerned about the ones who do not go out and there are too many of them.”
One year later
One year after Israel’s offensive on Hamas-ruled Gaza, UN agencies and the Association for International Development Agencies (AIDA), representing over 80 NGOs, issued a report highlighting the health impact of the blockade.
They again called on Israel to relax its tight control of the Gaza Strip’s borders to allow sufficient supply of essential items and let people seek care not available in the enclave.
Gaza student Fida Hejji, 18, died of cancer waiting for Israeli permission to go to an Israeli hospital for treatment.
She was promised an entry permit three times. Three days after she died last November, her family got a hospital date.
Hejji had hoped to get life-saving treatment in Israel as other Gazans have done. The Egyptian border is also closed.
“In her [Hejji's] last days she used to ask when she could rest, and when all her pain would come to an end,” said her mother Shadia. “I knew she was dying.”
Israel generally permits supplies of drugs into Gaza but not always enough to prevent shortages. Certain medical equipment such as X-ray and electronic devices are difficult to bring in and clinical staff frequently lack equipment they need.
Israel says it approves most requests by Gazan patients to cross its border for treatment, and there has been a 25 per cent increase in approvals since 2008 – data supported by World Health Organisation findings issued by Gaylard’s office.
“Not only are we doing our utmost to allow the people of Gaza every possible medical treatment, but we are doing this in a situation in which their own government is imposing a state of war and trying deliberately to harm Israelis, including those whose mission is to assist the very people of Gaza,” said Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for Israel’s foreign ministry.
Too late for some
The UN report said 1,103 patients sought permits for treatment in Israel in December 2009. Most succeeded but 21 per cent were denied or delayed, as a result of which patients missed their hospital appointments and had to restart.
“Two patients died recently while awaiting referral – one in November and one in December,” it said. In total, “27 patients have died while awaiting referral” in 2009.
Israel captured Gaza from Egypt in a 1967 war. The ensuing occupation saw limited Palestinian scope for developing an autonomous health service. Israel left in 2005 but the result was far from the peaceful coexistence it might have hoped for.
Critics accuse Israel of applying collective punishment to Gaza’s 1.5 million people, who are ruled by an elected Islamist government of the Hamas movement. Hamas refuses to recognise Israel and preaches armed struggle until its destruction.
Hamas remains in control despite the hammering Gaza took in the offensive Israel launched a year ago to stop the firing of rockets and mortars aimed at southern Israeli towns.
The UN said Gaza’s economy and environment were in a poor state, with inevitable consequences for health, and it noted that half the population are children.
“The humanitarian community is gravely concerned about the future of this generation whose health needs are not being met.
“The decline in infant mortality, which has occurred steadily over recent decades, has stalled in the last few years.”
Israel refuses to let Gaza have materials that can be put to military use. It says the Palestinians are too ready to blame all ills on Israel, and should not be ungrateful for the medical aid Israeli doctors and hospitals provide.
Israel’s offensive damaged 15 of Gaza’s 27 hospitals and 43 of its 110 primary healthcare facilities, the report said.
Some 1,400 Palestinians died in the bombing and shelling, and Israel lost 13 citizens in the December 27 – January 18 offensive of 2008-2009. Rocket and mortar fire into Israel from Gaza dropped off dramatically in 2009, but has never entirely ceased.
The damage cannot be fixed until Israel allows construction materials into Gaza, the report said. Meanwhile, doctors and nurses are cut off from learning the latest techniques abroad.
“The new surgical wing in Gaza’s main Shifa Hospital has remained unfinished since 2006,” the report noted.
Nafeth Enaeem, head of Shifa’s kidney department, said dialysis treatments had to be carefully rationed last year, which he said was the worst in terms of health conditions.
“Sometimes a cable for a machine took three months of coordination with the Israeli side to get into Gaza,” he said.
Israel has stopped issuing work permits to foreign aid workers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem
James Hider in Jerusalem
January 21 2010
Israel has stopped issuing work permits to foreign aid workers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, sparking fears about the future of relief operations in the Palestinian territories.
The Israeli Interior Ministry has issued only tourist visas to aid groups such as Oxfam, Médecins sans Frontières and Save the Children since before Christmas. They say that their legal situation is now precarious and that some staff have been denied entry by Israeli border officials who also control all entry to the West Bank.
The move came amid pressure from right-wing Israeli groups to crack down on non-governmental organisations, which are often seen as having a political, anti-Israeli bias. Early last year an Israeli group, NGO monitor, forced the New York-based Human Rights Watch to suspend a weapons specialist who had written a scathing report on Israel’s use of white phosphorus during its Gaza offensive. The group tracked down anonymous comments that the researcher had made on online discussions for collectors of Nazi memorabilia.
Some left-wing Israeli groups have accused Israel of “declaring war” on foreign groups such as Human Rights Watch and Oxfam, which have been critical of Israel’s blockade of Gaza.
Aid groups are now worried that the decision by the Interior Ministry could inhibit their work to provide medical support, welfare and basic supplies to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
“We are now in a very precarious legal position,” said Jean-Luc Lambert, head of Médecins sans Frontières in Jerusalem: “We can’t get B1 [working] visas, only [tourist] visas, and with this it is not permitted for us to work.”
Mr Lambert said that aid groups had been given verbal reassurances from the Israeli authorities that they would be able to continue their operations in the 60 per cent of the West Bank under Israeli control, in Arab East Jerusalem and in Gaza — whose only open crossings are on its frontier with Israel, controlled by Israeli forces.
During the Israeli offensive against Gaza, however, the authorities prevented many aid groups from entering the area, raising concerns about the value of any verbal agreement. “This leaves NGOs vulnerable to border guards’ interpretation of the rules,” said Mr Lambert, making the development a serious source of concern for 150 international organisations.
He said that technically, under the new rules, he could not work in his East Jerusalem headquarters, nor hold a meeting in the predominantly Arab half of the city that Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War and which both sides claim as their capital.
“Officially, East Jerusalem belongs to the West Bank, but for Israelis it belongs to Israel.”
Another Western aid worker said there was a fear in the aid community that the move was a first step towards expelling them from East Jerusalem, where Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, has said that Jewish settlement building will continue despite protests from the United States and the European Union. “There’s a feeling that we are going to be pushed out of East Jerusalem,” he said.
The Interior Ministry denied that visas had been stopped and said that if aid organisation workers spent most of their time in the West Bank they would need to apply to the Palestinian Authority or the Israeli Army for permits.
Aid workers said that they usually worked in both Israel and the West Bank, with their logistical hubs in the former, with its access to international sea, land and air routes, while bringing relief to Palestinians in the isolated West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The Interior Ministry said that it was holding discussions with the army about how to deal with such cases.
NGOs operating in Gaza also worry that a lack of work permits could mean that they would not be able to enter the sealed-off coastal enclave through Israel, and may have to take in supplies through Egypt.
Catherine Weibel, of Oxfam, said that the issue of Israeli work permits was generating much anguish among foreign aid workers, many of whom worry that they could be denied permission to re-enter.
NGO Monitor goes after all Human Rights organizations. NGO Monitor is is a group set up to harrass Human Rights organisations.
Not a very impressive group. They go after groups like Amnesty International or the Red cross even. So anything they have to say should be totally ignored by everyone.
It rates right up there with Honest Reporting or Camera.
They rather remind me of Fox TV. Anything but honest or fair.
Just more or less lobby groups. All Pro Israel and send thousands of letters to whoever they wish to annoy.
Anything to stop the truth about Israel from being told.
The US has never wanted Haitian self-rule, and its focus on ‘security concerns’ has hampered the earthquake aid response
By Mark Weisbrot
January 20 2010
On Monday, six days after the earthquake in Haiti, the US Southern Command finally began to drop bottled water and food from an air force C-17. US defence secretary Robert Gates had previously rejected such a method because of “security concerns”.
If people do not get clean water, there could be epidemics of water-borne diseases that could greatly increase the death toll. But the US is now sending 10,000 troops and seems to be prioritising “security” over much more urgent, life-and-death needs. This in addition to the increase of 3,500 UN troops scheduled to arrive.
On Sunday morning the world-renowned humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders complained that a plane carrying its portable hospital unit was re-routed by the US military through the Dominican Republic. This would cost a crucial 48 hours and an unknown number of lives.
On Sunday, Jarry Emmanuel, air logistics officer for the UN’s World Food Programme, said: “There are 200 flights going in and out every day, which is an incredible amount for a country like Haiti … But most flights are for the US military.”
We’ve been circulating throughout the city until 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning every night, evacuating patients, moving materials. There’s no UN guards. There’s no US military presence. There’s no Haitian police presence. And there’s also no violence. There is no insecurity.
To understand the US government’s obsession with “security concerns,” we must look at the recent history of Washington’s involvement there.
Long before the earthquake, Haiti’s plight has been comparable to that of many homeless people on city streets in the US: too poor and too black to have the same effective constitutional and legal rights as other citizens. In 2002, when a US-backed military coup temporarily toppled the elected government of Venezuela, most governments in the hemisphere responded quickly and helped force the return of democratic rule. But two years later, when Haiti’s democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was kidnapped by the US and flown to exile in Africa, the response was muted.
Unlike the two centuries of looting and pillage of Haiti since its founding by a slave revolt in 1804, the brutal occupation by US marines from 1915 to 1934, the countless atrocities under dictatorships aided and abetted by Washington, the 2004 coup cannot be dismissed as “ancient history.” It was just six years ago, and it is directly relevant to what is happening there now.
The US, together with Canada and France, conspired openly for four years to topple Haiti’s elected government, cutting off almost all international aid in order to destroy the economy and make the country ungovernable. They succeeded. For those who wonder why there are no Haitian government institutions to help with the earthquake relief efforts, this is a big reason. Or why there are 3 million people crowded into the area where the earthquake hit. US policy over the years also helped destroy Haitian agriculture, for example, by forcing the import of subsidised US rice and wiping out thousands of Haitian rice farmers.
Aristide, the country’s first democratically elected president, was overthrown after just seven months in 1991, by military officers and death squads later discovered to be in the pay of the CIA. Now Aristide wants to return to his country, something that the majority of Haitians have demanded since his overthrow. But the US does not want him there. And the René Préval government, which is completely beholden to Washington, has decided that Aristide’s party – the largest in Haiti – will not be allowed to compete in the next elections (originally scheduled for next month).
Washington’s fear of democracy in Haiti may explain why the US is now sending 15,000 troops and prioritizing “security” over other needs.
This military occupation by US troops will raise other concerns in the hemisphere, depending on how long they stay – just as the recent expansion of the US military presence in Colombia has been met with considerable discontent and distrust in the region. And non-governmental organisations have raised other issues about the proposed reconstruction: understandably they want Haiti’s remaining debt cancelled, and grants rather than loans (the IMF has proposed a $100m dollar loan). Reconstruction needs will be in the billions of dollars: will Washington encourage the establishment of a functioning government? Or will it prevent that, channelling aid through NGOs and taking over various functions itself, because it of its long-standing opposition to Haitian self-rule?
But most urgently, there is a need for rapid delivery of water. The US air force has the capability to deliver enough water for everyone who needs it in Haiti, until ground supply chains can be established. The more water is available, the less likely there is to be fighting or rioting over this scarce resource. Food and medical supplies could also be supplied through air drops. These operations should be ramped up, immediately. There is no time to lose.
Aid workers frustrated with relief effort. The people are frustrated.
Aid is still not getting to the people 9 days and many are still not getting help.
They need food, they need water, they need shelter, they need medical help.
The aid workers need transportation, they need equipment to work with.
They don’t need 15,000 military personnel.
Again MFS Doctors without Borders who are professionals in disasters have had six Planes Carrying Vital Medical Supplies Are Re-routed
January 20 2010
Six Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) cargo planes loaded with vital medical material like antibiotics have been redirected to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. This will delay MSF staff’s ability to treat patients who urgently need it.
Medical aid should be a priority
International aid may at be last trickling, painfully slowly, into the rubble-strewn centre of Port-au-Prince. But in this filthy shanty town half an hour’s drive away, where families sleep five or six to small shacks, next to none has arrived. And the poorest of the poor complain that their plight is being forgotten.
“We don’t have doctors, we don’t have food, we don’t have water,” said Louis Jean Jaris, a 29-year-old resident. “The aid comes to Haiti, but it goes elsewhere. In Cité Soleil we are all victims, just like everyone else, but compared to the rest of the country, we are a low priority. To the people in power, we are not considered to be victims.”
If they are wondering why people are getting angry it’s no wonder. It has been 9 DAYS.
The US needs to get it’s bloody priorities straight. This is not a military invasion this is a rescue mission. Isn’t it? Or is it a military invasion just using the earthquake as an excuse.
US says will increase troops in Haiti to to above 15,000
January 21 2010
The amphibious assault ship USS Nassau (LHA 4) will be stationed in Haiti.
Why, Why, Why?
Amid growing concerns of Latin American leaders over the presence of the US military in Haiti, Washington plans to send 4,000 troops to the quake-hit country.
A statement from the US Second Fleet Wednesday stated that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, has made the decision to dispatch the troops.
The 2,000 sailors and 2,000 marines are from the Nassau Amphibious Ready Group and the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, according to the statement. Their deployment will increase the number of US troops in Haiti to above 15,000.
Three amphibious ships, the USS Nassau, the USS Mesa Verde and the USS Ashland, will support the latest mission, bringing the total number of US Navy and Military Sealift Command vessels to 20.
A 7.0-magnitude quake struck Haiti last week, killing at least 75,000 people and perhaps as many as 200,000. Almost 250,000 people were injured and around 1.5 million people are without shelter.
Meanwhile, the presence of the US military, which has taken command of distribution of humanitarian aid, has raised the ire of some South American leaders, with the presidents of Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela condemning the US role.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said Haiti seeks “humanitarian aid, not troops.”
Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez accused the US of seeking to occupy the quake-stricken nation. “The United States government is using a humanitarian tragedy to militarily occupy Haiti. I read somewhere that they even occupied the [presidential] palace.”
Bolivian leader Evo Morales said that he would seek UN condemnation of the “US military occupation.”
In Europe, France spoke out against the US role, demanding the United Nations to investigate and clarify the US military presence in Haiti.
Three days after the quake, US paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division took control of the main airport in the capital Port-au-Prince.
The US says its primary mission is to speed distribution of aid, in part by providing security at distribution points and escorting aid convoys.
In the past, Washington has been accused of interfering in Haitian internal affairs on many occasions. The US military played a role in the departure of the former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide before his second term was over in early 2004. Source
Seems this is preparing for war not aid. This should be questioned by everyone the world over.
People are wondering all over the world. What is really going on?
Aid workers are having a difficult time, getting to where they are needed.
If the US is going to take control of everything they had better get it together and soon.
This is Hurricane Katrina all over again. Now I know for sure.
The time factor is a real indication. When people get angry they accuse them of being violent blah blah blah and so the story of BS goes.
They nor the UN or NATO have been good to Haitians in the past.
Military personnel wold make them feel fearful if anything.
How stupid do the US, UN and NATO think we all are?
Soldiers in Haiti told to stop handing out food
By Jim Michaels
January 20, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Food handouts were shut off Tuesday to thousands of people at a tent city here when the main U.S. aid agency said the Army should not be distributing the packages.
It was not known whether the action reflected a high-level policy decision at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) or confusion in a city where dozens of entities are involved in aid efforts.
“We are not supposed to get rations unless approved by AID,” Maj. Larry Jordan said.
Jordan said that approval was revoked; water was not included in the USAID decision, so the troops continued to hand out bottles of water. The State Department and USAID did not respond to requests for comment.
Jordan has been at the airport supervising distribution of individual food packages and bottled water since his arrival last week. Each package provides enough calories to sustain a person for a day.
The food is flown by helicopter to points throughout the capital and distributed by paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division. At the tent city, set up at a golf course, more than 10,000 people displaced by the Haitian earthquake lay under makeshift tents. Each day, hundreds of people, many young children, line up for a meal.
Tuesday morning, the helicopters came only with water. Soldiers carried boxes of water in the hot sun and supervised Haitian volunteers who handed the supplies out. Source
This is a rescue mission, a humanitarian mission, not a military invasion which it seems it has become.
I read a story earlier that was fluffing up Israel, but back at home this is what they are doing. Aid workers are ‘being pushed out’ of Palestinian areas. Well isn’t that just fluffy. Considering they justfloodedGaza on January 18. They for the most part were not really helpful when it came to Haiti either. They for the most part were just as involved in past problems, as they assisted the US.
All of the above mentioned owe Haiti. I am sure some of the past deeds equal war crimes and crimes against humanity. They had better not fluff to much it makes them look like hypocrites.
Considering everything they have done, to those in Haiti in the past that is. It’s a long dreadful history.
Considering the size of Haiti, there must be something extremely important about it or the US and company would have allowed the people to be free. What is it that makes Haiti so special?
Could it be oil? Could it be it’s proximity to Cuba?
Help Haiti rebuild then leave them to be free. Stop stealing their resources. When they elect a new leader, don’t kidnap him.
Some how it reminds me all to often of Gaza and the West Bank.
Haiti: Small Victory for Shock Resistance
In response to the wave ofcriticism, the IMF has just issued a statement saying that they will try to turn the $100-million loan to Haiti into a grant.
__
Today, the IMF put out an announcement clarifying the terms of its new loan to Haiti–it’s “an interest-free loan of $100 million in emergency funds.” A spokesman for the IMF told me that “the US$100 million loan does not carry any conditionality. It is an emergency loan aimed at getting the Haitian economy back to function again…” The IMF’s managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in a statement that the IMF would immediately work to cancel the entirety of Haiti’s debt ($265 million) to the fund: Source
February 22 2008
So what if anything has changed. Seems the earthquake is giving the US a reason to move in even more troops. How convenient. Haiti has something they want obviously if not oil, what?
Aafia Siddiqui, shown in custody in Afghanistan in 2008, faces life in prison on charges of attempted murder. AP
The U.S. says Aafia Siddiqui is a terrorist. Her countrymen say she is a victim of American injustice
By Saeed Shah
January 20 2010
In the United States, she’s been dubbed “the most dangerous woman in the world.” In Pakistan, she is seen as a victim of American injustice in the fight against al-Qaeda. And at the opening of her trial in New York, the judge found her too disruptive and had her removed from the courtroom.
“I was never planning a bombing! You’re lying!” Aafia Siddiqui shouted as she was taken out of court less than two hours into the proceedings yesterday.
The outburst came as U.S. Army Captain Robert Snyder testified that documents found in Dr. Siddiqui’s possession included targets for a mass casualty attack, including the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street and the Brooklyn Bridge.
There was shouting in Pakistan, too, at demonstrations in cities across the country in support of Dr. Siddiqui, who is a national cause célèbre as a symbol of Muslims mistreated during U.S. antiterrorism efforts, just like the prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, or Bagram, the Afghan prison where her supporters say she was secretly held for years.
Dr. Siddiqui’s frail appearance and tormented outbursts in pretrial hearings have added to allegations that she has had to endure years of torture since going missing from her hometown of Karachi in 2003. But according to her detractors, including her former husband Amjad Khan, she was a jihadist who spent those years on the run. Some have even suggested that she became a double agent, working at some point against al-Qaeda.
U.S. officials have accused Dr. Siddiqui, a 37-year-old neuroscientist educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, of working for al-Qaeda, in particular as a facilitator for the 9/11 hijackers. The only charges she faces in the New York court, however, are related to the extraordinary circumstances of her supposed capture in Afghanistan in 2008.
“They couldn’t find a more innocent person,” says Fauzia Siddiqui, Aafia’s sister in Karachi. “I don’t believe that there’s any justice possible in the post-9/11 U.S. system.”
Fauzia Siddiqui cares for 13-year-old Ahmed, one of her sister’s three children, who were all with her when she disappeared. The whereabouts of the other two, Suleman, who would now be 7, and Maryam, 10, remain a mystery.
Dr. Siddiqui’s family says she was abducted by Pakistani intelligence and then handed over to American agents.
Shortly after the stories of Dr. Siddiqui’s alleged detention at Bagram hit the international headlines in 2008, she turned up in American custody. U.S. authorities said she was arrested after acting suspiciously in Ghazni, Afghanistan, a town 80 kilometres south of Kabul, and found with documentation on U.S. landmarks and jars containing chemicals.
According to the U.S. account, when in custody at a police station in Ghazni, the petite Dr .Siddiqui jumped out from behind a curtain, grabbed an M-4 rifle that was lying at the foot of a U.S. soldier, and shot at him twice, missing. A second soldier fired back, hitting her in the stomach. She was then flown to the United States.
In New York, she faces life in prison on charges of attempted murder, armed assault on U.S. officers and employees and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence – all stemming from the Ghazni incident.
Defence lawyer Charles Swift – whom Dr. Siddiqui has disowned – told jurors there was no conclusive evidence she ever picked up the rifle. “There are many different versions of how this happened,” he said.
In Pakistani cities such as Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi, there were small but emotional demonstrations.
“They [the Americans] are just trying to lock up people to show they have some bad guys, to try to prove they are winning the war,” 18-year-old student Mohammad bin Ismail said in Islamabad. “They are using people like trophies.”
The fact that Dr. Siddiqui is a woman seems to have generated much anger in conservative Pakistan, where her support is noticeably from the religious right. “It’s a case of rendition,” said Amina Janjua, a local campaigner for missing people. “We feel that as a Pakistani nation, our respect, honour and dignity is at stake.”
Pakistani neuroscientist and an alleged al-Qaida sympathiser Aafia Siddiqui accused of shooting at US military officers in Afghanistan, today promised to behave in court and refrain from any outbursts.
Siddiqui has been accused of shooting at US military officers and FBI agents, was taken out of the court, following an outburst on the first day of trial.
Siddiqui exploded into an disjointed protest shortly after the first witness, Captain Jack Snyder began testifying about a paper on which the defendant allegedly had written words like “radiation material”, “dirty bomber”, and names of New York City landmarks including Brooklyn Bridge and Empire State Building.
“I was never planning to bomb,” “When you’ve been in a secret prison,” “When your children have been tortured” are some of the things, she said, before being taken out from the courtroom.
Siddiqui told Judge Richard Berman she would be quiet on even though she might disagree with testimony. The prosecutors requested that Siddiqui not be allowed back in for the rest of the trial that is expected to last about ten days.
The defendant, herself, has refused to participate in the court proceedings, several times, and does not recognise here defence team retained by the Pakistani government including, Charles Swift, who is well know for being the lawyer for Osama bin Laden’s driver, Salim Hamadan.
Siddiqui was picked up by Afghan forces after she was found wandering around the governor’s house in the city of Ghazni with a small boy, the alleged handwritten paper and a thumb drive with more notes in various languages including Urdu.
After opening statements from both sides, the prosecutor presented three witnesses who proceeded to describe how the defendant had picked up a M4 rifle that had been left unsecured by one a military official during her interrogation in the police headquarters in Ghazni.
Snyder recalled that the gun was pointed straight at his head and being able to see in the barrel of the gun. “I used the arms of my chair to spring out of my seat and get out of the line of the fire,” he said.
The defence team intends to show that the suspicious material that the defendant allegedly had on her person is not credible as it changed hands several times between Afghan and American officials, and also that the petite 90 pound, Siddiqui, could not have lifted a M4 much less fired it.
The defendant, 37, who studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has also been described as an Al Qaeda sympathiser but this case is only about whether she shot the army personnel and she is not facing any terrorism-related charges.
Siddiqui left the United States for Pakistan in 2002. The following year she disappeared from Pakistan and suddenly resurfaced in 2008 in front of the governor’s house. It is believed she was held by the US authorities during this time.
NEW YORK: A 16-member jury was chosen on Thursday for Dr Aafia Siddiqui’s trial next week, as the Pakistani neuroscientist repeatedly interrupted questioning of potential jurors about the Sept 11 terrorist attacks.
Of the 16 jurors, 12 will be part of the jury team and four will be alternate team in case someone falls sick.
“I have nothing to do with 9/11,” Ms Siddiqui declared when a potential juror who cited her personal experience on Sept 11 was dismissed. Dr Aafia suggested Israel was behind the attacks.
Ms Siddiqui’s trial for allegedly shooting at her US interrogators in Afghanistan last July begins in the US District Court in Manhattan on January 19. She’s not facing terrorism charges.
When Judge Richard Berman quizzed the jury panel whether their 9/11 experiences would influence their deliberations, Ms Siddiqui stood up from the defence table.
“The next question will be on anti-Semitism, Israel was behind 9/11. That’s not anti-Semitic,” she said before being escorted out.
Judge Berman later said that anyone who disrupts proceedings will be removed, but that Ms Siddiqui has a right to be present for her trial and would be allowed to return.
On Wednesday, Ms Siddiqui demanded that Jews should be excluded from the jury at her trial.
Ms Siddiqui has repeatedly said she is boycotting her own trial and has attempted to make her case directly to prospective jurors and the judge.
In the end on Thursday, a jury of seven women and five men was chosen, with four alternate jurors, two men and two women.
Ms Siddiqui is accused of attempted murder of US Army officer by grabbing rifle during an interrogation in Afghanistan in July 2008.
A Regina couple says their plan to adopt two Haitian teenagers is shrouded in doubt after last week’s devastating earthquake, which damaged the youngsters’ orphanage and cut off the couple’s ability to communicate with the lawyer who was working on their case.
They have become the most vulnerable victims of Haiti’s devastating earthquake. Before the catastrophic events almost half of the population was under 18-years-old.
Many now have been left bewildered, bruised and lonely.
In these ruins of a school the children had come to learn. It was here too they were fed their main meal of the day. Now they are hungry and abandoned.
A woman explains: “I have nothing for them my pocket, not even plain rice to help these children to live, there is nothing, nothing.” “I have nothing I am going to boil up mint tea with some salt.”
In the fog of figures emerging from Haiti it is reckoned that before the quake there were 380,000 children living in orphanages. Such scenes suggest there will be a dramatic rise in those numbers. A woman holding a child says: “Her parents are dead. I will look after her.”
Protection is critical. The UN is setting up a mission on the ground to do just that, protection against trafficking, kidnapping and sex abuse.
Julie Bergeron, UNICEF: “It would be very easy for certain people to be involved, trafficking these children, especially as they do not have birth certificates. There are many children who will go from here as their parents will always believe they are dead.”
In a field hospital in Port-au-Prince the medical team have saved the life of a five-month-old baby. He has no name, just a number. No one knows who the boys family is or if they are alive. What will happen to him when he has been treated. Such are the now daily dilemmas for the children of this quake. Source
// Haiti earthquake
One in a million: the girl in a tartan dress who symbolises the orphan crisis facing Haiti
Wyclef and Evry, two-year-old orphans at the Foyer de Sion home in Pétionville Photo Independent
9-year-old Wideline Fils Amie lost both her parents in the Haiti earthquake Photo Independent
By Guy Adams in Port-au-Prince
January 20 2010
Her name is Wideline Fils Amie. She is nine years old. Both her parents are dead, and her only possession is the red tartan dress on her back. For the past week, she’s been living and sleeping in the indescribably filthy back-yard of the Foyer de Sion orphanage in Pétionville. When you ask how she is feeling, Wideline whispers two words, through her broken teeth: “hungry” and “scared”.
Eighteen boys and girls, aged two to 15, are holed-up behind the tattered two-storey building in the hills just outside Port-au-Prince. Their food reserves consist of three bags of rice, three bags of beans, a few yams, and half a bottle of orange cordial. As of yesterday morning, they hadn’t a single drop of drinking water left. And a week after the earthquake that flattened their city, the orphanage has not received a single batch of aid.
“I don’t know why,” says Pascale Mardy, the orphanage’s manager. “We have almost nothing left. When the earthquake happened, I had $100 in my pocket to buy food. Now I have spent the last dollar, so we are down to one meal a day. We are in trouble.”
It’s the same story across Port-au-Prince, where a dysfunctional aid effort is still only slowly creaking into action. Huge reserves of supplies sit on the runway of the city’s airport. For the entire story go HERE
Israel’s compassion in Haiti can’t hide our ugly face in Gaza
By Akiva Eldar
January 18 2010
Who said we are shut up inside our Tel Aviv bubble? How many small nations surrounded by enemies set up field hospitals on the other side of the world? Give us an earthquake in Haiti, a tsunami in Thailand or a terror attack in Kenya, and the IDF Spokesman’s Office will triumph. A cargo plane can always be found to fly in military journalists to report on our fine young men from the Home Front Command.
Everyone is truly doing a wonderful job: the rescuers, searching for survivors; the physicians, saving lives; and the reporters, too, who are rightfully patting them all on the back. After Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon became the face we show the world, the entire international community can now see Israel’s good side.
But the remarkable identification with the victims of the terrible tragedy in distant Haiti only underscores the indifference to the ongoing suffering of the people of Gaza. Only a little more than an hour’s drive from the offices of Israel’s major newspapers, 1.5 million people have been besieged on a desert island for two and a half years. Who cares that 80 percent of the men, women and children living in such proximity to us have fallen under the poverty line? How many Israelis know that half of all Gazans are dependent on charity, that Operation Cast Lead created hundreds of amputees, that raw sewage flows from the streets into the sea?
The Israeli newspaper reader knows about the baby pulled from the wreckage in Port-au-Prince. Few have heard about the infants who sleep in the ruins of their families’ homes in Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces prohibition of reporters entering the Gaza Strip is an excellent excuse for burying our heads in the sand of Tel Aviv’s beaches; on a good day, the sobering reports compiled by human rights organizations such as B’Tselem, Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel on the situation in Gaza are pushed to the newspapers’ back pages. To get an idea of what life is like in the world’s largest prison, one must forgo “Big Brother” and switch to one of the foreign networks.
The disaster in Haiti is a natural one; the one in Gaza is the unproud handiwork of man. Our handiwork. The IDF does not send cargo planes stuffed with medicines and medical equipment to Gaza. The missiles that Israel Air Force combat aircraft fired there a year ago hit nearly 60,000 homes and factories, turning 3,500 of them into rubble. Since then, 10,000 people have been living without running water, 40,000 without electricity. Ninety-seven percent of Gaza’s factories are idle due to Israeli government restrictions on the import of raw materials for industry. Soon it will be one year since the international community pledged, at the emergency conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, to donate $4.5 billion for Gaza’s reconstruction. Israel’s ban on bringing in building materials is causing that money to lose its value.
A few days before Israeli physicians rushed to save the lives of injured Haitians, the authorities at the Erez checkpoint prevented 17 people from passing through in order to get to a Ramallah hospital for urgent corneal transplant surgery. Perhaps they voted for Hamas. At the same time that Israeli psychologists are treating Haiti’s orphans with devotion, Israeli inspectors are making sure no one is attempting to plant a doll, a notebook or a bar of chocolate in a container bringing essential goods into Gaza. So what if the Goldstone Commission demanded that Israel lift the blockade on the Strip and end the collective punishment of its inhabitants? Only those who hate Israel could use frontier justice against the first country to set up a field hospital in Haiti.
True, Haiti’s militias are not firing rockets at Israel. But the siege on Gaza has not stopped the Qassams from coming. The prohibition of cilantro, vinegar and ginger being brought into the Strip since June 2007 was intended to expedite the release of Gilad Shalit and facilitate the fall of the Hamas regime. As everyone knows, even though neither mission has been particularly successful, and despite international criticism, Israel continues to keep the gates of Gaza locked. Even the images of our excellent doctors in Haiti cannot blur our ugly face in the Strip. Source
Israel has opened the floodgates of one of its dams in the eastern part of the Gaza Strip, flooding Palestinian houses and causing severe damage.
The Israeli authorities opened the dam’s floodgates without any prior warning or coordination with local authorities in Gaza, stunning the residents of the area, the Press TV correspondent in Gaza reported late on Monday.
There has been heavy rain in the region over the past 24 hours. It seems the Israeli authorities could not handle the huge amount of rainwater and decided to open the floodgates without prior warning.
Because Gaza is located in a low-lying area and the elevation decreases on the way to the Mediterranean Sea, water gushed into the area, flooding two Palestinian villages and displacing a hundred Gazan families.
The locals say Israel intentionally caused the floods, the Press TV correspondent said.
The waters from the dam, called the Valley of Gaza, flooded houses in Johr al-Deek village, which is southeast of Gaza City, and Nusirat in the eastern part of the territory, where the Al-Nusirat refugee camp is also located.
The Valley of Gaza is about 8 kilometers long. It starts on the eastern Gaza border with Israel and ends in the Mediterranean.
The houses of many Palestinians have been flooded and a number of people are trapped inside or on their roofs, while many have also gone missing, the Press TV correspondent said.
Rescue teams are using small boats to evacuate the trapped people.
Hamas has condemned the act as a war crime and has called on all concerned parties to intervene and offer assistance to the locals.
The flooding has made life more difficult for the Gazans, especially for those still living in tents because their homes were destroyed in the December 2008-January 2009 Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.
In the war, more than 1,400 people were killed, mostly women and children, and over 10,000 houses were destroyed or damaged, forcing at least 500 families to live in tents.
Very little progress is seen in reconstruction of the devastated areas in the Gaza Strip, mostly due to the Israeli blockade, which has prevented the delivery of building materials to the coastal enclave.
Valley areas south of Gaza evacuated from rising floods
January 18 2010
Gaza – Civil defense forces in Gaza evacuated tens of families from their homes in the valley town of Juhor Ad-Dik south of Gaza city Monday, as floodwaters inundated the low-lying area and filled the streets.Dr Muawia Hassanen, head of emergency and medical services in Gaza, told Ma’an emergency crews were on standby to respond to calls from rapped residents in areas adjacent to the southern Gaza city valley. So far, he noted, no injuries were reported.
Colonel Yousef Az-Zahhar, the director of the civil defense in the de facto government, said waters were collecting in the valley and sweeping down from several nearby hills, he said vehicular traffic had been prohibited on the streets leading into the flooded areas.
The flood area has cut off Gaza city from the southern West Bank, Az-Zahhar said.
Jared Malsin, the editor of the English edition of Maan News Agency, has been detained by Israeli authorities.
Malsin, a Jewish-American who lives and works in the West Bank, was picked up on Tuesday at Ben Gurion International Airport, as he and his partner returned from vacation in the Czech Republic. After being subjected to eight hours of interrogation, Malsin was deemed a security threat and was slated to be deported to Prague Thursday morning. Why?
I am guessing that is Why Ma’an news the second story above failed to mention Israel flooded Gaza on purpose.
Rescue personnel in the West Bank have also declared a state of emergency. Floods have hit various areas, and flooding is expected to get worse. The civil defense called on Palestinians to avoid using coal or wood for heating, and to use heaters instead, to lessen the risk of fire. Residents were also warned to be alert to fires that could break out due to incorrect use of heating appliances.
Gaza floods: ‘We heard the mosque speaker warning and fled’
Gaza flood Photo Ma’an news January 19 2010
Nabil Al-Qeshawi’s home was destroyed Monday night in torrents of floodwater that inundated the valleys south of Gaza city, rendering the 19 members of his extended family homeless.
Al-Qeshawi, 61, described the incident as terrifying, “everything was normal, there were winds and rains in the area, but we dealt with them as usual. Suddenly we heard a warning message being broadcast from the mosque, but we could hardly hear it through the rain.”
When the father of five went outside to check the house, he “found floodwaters rising in the valley were only 200 meters away from my house. We started to evacuate the children and lead them to a safe place. When we went back to save some of our clothes and belongings, we found out that the house was under two meters of water, everything was ruined.”
Farmer survives drowning in valley flood
Adnan Al-Khamaysa spoke to Ma’an as he checked himself out of the Gaza City Hospital Tuesday, after being choked and battered by torrents of waters at the bottom of the valley south west of the city.
The farmer was in his home when the rains hit, and evacuated his family from the area, then walked out into the valley to check on his flock of sheep. Al-Khamaysa became trapped in the water and dragged through the current until other families down the hill managed to pull him out.
“The night was terrifying, I have seen death a thousand times, I did not expect the flood to be so strong” he said.
Officials confirm heavy losses
Yousif Abu Hweshel, mayor of the town Al-Mughraqa, hardest hit next to Juhor Ad-Dik, said at least 70 homes and hundreds of dunums of agricultural land were totally underwater.
He added that Civil Defense forces were working to find displaced families safe places to stay as the floods continue, but worried about the difficulties residents would face in the future in rebuilding their homes given the Israeli siege. Source
Gaza gov’t to provide shelter for families affected by floods
Gaza Flood Photo Ma’an News January 19 2010
The de facto council of ministers announced on Tuesday that it will provide families affected by the recent flooding with shelter and immediate assistance, secretary general of the council Mahmoud Awad said in a statement.
Israeli Minister claims Israel provides Palestinians “more than enough water”
January 19, 2010
By Saed Bannoura
On Monday Israel’s National Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau told a meeting of German Ministers that Israel gives the Palestinians more than they are required to by treaties.
Uzi Landau (photo wikimedia)
But the Palestinian Authority’s Water Board says that this statement is an outright lie.
Palestinians control only 14% of their water and last year received only 90MCM from the 118 MCM allotted by Oslo Article 40.
Even the 118 MCM are nowhere near what is needed for the population.
According to the most recent World Bank report, Palestinians get 34 liters of water per capita per day while Israelis get 280 liters per capita per day. Israelis, including settlers living on stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank, are permitted to dig wells 70 meters deeper than their Palestinian counterparts.
Some Palestinians wondered if Landau was referring to Israel’s flooding, on the same day he made the statement, of Palestinian villages in the Gaza Valley. Hundreds of Palestinians were displaced from their homes, which suffered severe damage when Israel opened a dam directly toward the Palestinian area.
German supporters of the Palestinian cause are holding a demonstration against a joint German-Israeli cabinet meeting in Berlin.
A crowd of demonstrators gathered on Monday to expressed anger at Israel’s ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip and the ongoing expulsion of Palestinians from East Jerusalem Al-Quds.
They have also vowed to expose Israel’s indiscriminate and targeted killings of the Palestinians, which was highlighted in Israel’s relentless three-week blitz on the tiny enclave in December 2008-January 2009.
More than 1,400 Palestinians, including women and children, were killed in the onslaught during which Israeli soldiers committed war crimes by using human shields, targeting schools and UN buildings that were hosting civilians.
Meanwhile other activists held a protest to decry Germany’s potential sale of military equipment, stressing that the country’s constitution did not allow the sale of arms to any sides of an ongoing conflict.
The protests come amid Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Germany for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The meeting is aimed at boosting security cooperation and bilateral relations, but German media have also speculated it may entail a fresh Israeli requests for more free or half-priced German arms.
Ahead of the joint cabinet meeting, media reports said Israel intends to station one of its German-made Dolphin submarines in the Persian Gulf.
Since 1998, Germany has spent EUR 900 million in providing Israel with five Dolphin class submarines. Source
After surviving more than 5 days in the rubble, two victims were pulled alive from the wreckage of a collapsed Haiti supermarket late on Sunday to applause from amazed onlookers. (Jan. 18)
Had help arrived sooner many more would have been saved. Unfortunately it took far to long for help to arrive.
One would thing after Hurricane Katrina and the Tsunami they would be better organized for such catastrophes.
Haiti text donations won’t get there until your billing cycle ends
Millions were raised in 48 hours for organizations like the Red Cross and Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti foundation. (You can watch Wyclef’s response to financial criticisms of his charity here.) As of Friday, people texting “Haiti” to 90999 had donated $8m to the Red Cross specifically for Haitian earthquake relief. The damage is immense, suffering in Haiti is off the charts bad, and Haitians desperately need the financial relief that these charities can provide. The bad news? Any donations made via text message to these charities won’t be forwarded to their intended recipients until after your billing cycle ends:
It could take up to 90 days. For the rest of the information go HERE
Fractured Narrative: Haitian Calm, American Cynicism
One can almost feel the disappointment amongst Western media mavens that earthquake-stricken Haitians have not, in fact, degenerated into packs of feral animals tearing each other to pieces. Day after day, every single possible isolated incident of panic, anger, “looting” (as the removal of provisions from ruined stores by starving people is called) and vigilantism has been highlighted — and often headlined — by the most “respectable” news sources.
If you need food and water etc, Yes you would breaking into a store and take it. That is not looting it is survival. I would do the same thing wouldn’t you.
During Hurricane Katrina some of the press said the same horrid things when in fact much of it was not true.
Some were even arrested for doing nothing wrong whatsoever. I remember.
Witness to a nightmare
Interview with Jesse Hagopian who was in Port-au-Prince with his 1-year-old son to visit his wife when the earthquake hit. His wife, an aid worker, works until the evening on most days, but by sheer luck, she came to the hotel where they were staying early on Tuesday–just minutes before the quake struck at 4:53 p.m. This spared Jesse and his family agonizing hours or days trying to find one another amid the chaos.
Port-au-Prince/Paris /New York, 17 January 2009—Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) urges that its cargo planes carrying essential medical and surgical material be allowed to land in Port-au-Prince in order to treat thousands of wounded waiting for vital surgical operations. Priority must be given immediately to planes carrying lifesaving equipment and medical personnel.
One has to wonder how many other Aid agency’s are having the same problem? This should be a priority. The US military is running the airport in Haiti.
Reporters were there almost immediately and then the military.
Specially trained international teams continue to search for and rescue trapped victims throughout Haiti, but many of those saved are in dire need of medical care. More relief organizations and troops are arriving, but with communication limitations and travel restrictions, the desperately needed food, water and supplies are not reaching people fast enough. The frustration over the delay has left many wondering if the U.S. has done enough to help, and who will take charge in the coming days to protect the injured and homeless?
Palestinians in Gaza set off for the Red Cross headquarters on Monday to offer donations and financial support for the victims of Haiti’s devastating earthquake on Tuesday.
WOW is all I can say to that one. It breaks my heart to know what they are going through, but this is very heart warming at the same time.
France is demanding the United Nations investigateand clarify the dominant US role in Haiti, after Washington deployed over 10,000 troops to the quake-hit country.
The demand came after US forces turned back a French aid plane carrying a field hospital from the main airport in the Haitian capital.
The Pentagon says it has deployed soldiers in Haiti to help victims of Tuesday’s earthquake. This comes as US paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division took control of the main airport in the capital Port-au-Prince on Friday.
The move has raised ire among aid agencies with extensive experience of operating in disaster zones.
“This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti,” France’s Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet said in an emergency EU meeting concerning Haiti on Monday.
He added that he expects a UN decision on how governments should work together in Haiti, while demanding a clarification of the United States’ role in the Caribbean nation.
Joyandet’s remarks echo those made by Venezuela and Nicaragua that expressed “deep concern” over the US deployment of troops in Haiti.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton whose country is also blamed for not being quick enough to send aid to the quake-hit nation has denied the occupation charges, stressing on Saturday that the White House had no intention of taking power from Haitian officials.
The US has been accused of interfering in Haitian internal affairs in the past.
The US military played a role in the departure of the former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide before his second term was over in early 2004. Aristide has described his departure as a kidnapping.
Last week’s 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti is estimated to have left some 200,000 people dead and more than 1.5 million homeless, with at least 70,000 bodies collected from the rubble so far. Source
Well the US has interfered many times. This is one I have a few more somewhere just have to find them. But this is a start. Haitian’s also have a fear of US soldiers and for good reason…. Seems no one has bothered to mention that of course.
Coincidentally this was just the day before the London Bombings 7/7 and was pretty much totally ignored by the media. I guess they thought no one would notice.
AP – This digitally enhanced image taken from the U.S. Department of State’s web site rewardsforjustice.net, …
By HAROLD HECKLE
January 16 2010
MADRID – A Spanish lawmaker was horrified to find out the FBI used his photograph as part of a digitally enhanced image showing what Osama bin Laden might look like today, he said Saturday, calling into question the crime-fighting agency’s credibility in battling terrorism.
Gaspar Llamazares of the United Left party said he would no longer feel safe traveling to the United States after his hair and facial wrinkles were taken from the Internet and appeared on a wanted poster updating the U.S. government’s 1998 photo of the al-Qaida leader.
“I was surprised and angered because it’s the most shameless use of a real person to make up the image of a terrorist,” Llamazares said at a news conference Saturday. “It’s almost like out of a comedy if it didn’t deal with matters as serious as bin Laden and citizens’ security.”
The FBI said in a statement Saturday that it was aware of the similarities between their age-progressed image “and that of an existing photograph of a Spanish public official.”
“The forensic artist was unable to find suitable features among the reference photographs and obtained those features, in part, from a photograph he found on the Internet,” the statement sent to The Associated Press said.
The photo appeared on a U.S. State Department Web site rewardsforjustice.net, where a reward of up to $25 million is offered for bin Laden, wanted in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. The FBI said the photo of bin Laden will be removed from the Web site.
Llamazares said he planned to ask the U.S. government for an explanation and reserved the right to take legal action.
The State Department told a reporter to call back Tuesday after the U.S. federal Martin Luther King Day holiday on Monday.
Llamazares said he couldn’t believe it when he was first told about the similarity, but he quickly realized the seriousness of the situation.
The 52-year-old politician said he would not feel safe traveling in the U.S. now, because many airports use biometrics technology that compares the physical characteristics of travelers to passport or other photographs.
“I have no similarity, physically or ideologically, to the terrorist bin Laden,” he said.
They do share on characteristic — both are 52.
Jose Morales, spokesman for Llamazares’ party, told the Associated Press that no one in Spain had any idea that important security computer images such as the retouched bin Laden photo were built up from photographs of real people. Llamazares, the former leader of his party, was elected to Spain’s parliament in 2000.
“A technician has cut and paste in Photoshop a photograph he found out there on the Internet, and you don’t have to be in Quantico — the agency’s Virginia training facility — to do that,” Morales told the AP.
Llamazares said it was worrying to see elite security services like the FBI resorting to such sloppy techniques, especially in the light of recent security alerts like the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Detroit-bound airplane.
“It might provoke mirth, but it demonstrates that what we’re seeing from security services isn’t exactly recommendable,” he said.
Bin Laden is believed to be hiding in the lawless Pakistan frontier bordering Afghanistan. His exact whereabouts have been unknown since late 2001, when he and some bodyguards slipped out of the Tora Bora mountains, evading air strikes, U.S. special forces and Afghan militias.
The U.S. State Department Web site shows the photos and bounty on bin Laden and 41 others wanted for terrorism.
Morales said Llamazares had received calls from Spain’s Prime, Foreign and Interior ministers, all expressing their concern and assuring him the government would ask the U.S. for explanations.
In a first “aged progressed” mugshot, he is portrayed in western clothes with wavy grey and black hair and a trimmed beard; a second shows the terrorist leader in his traditional outfit, with a white turban and a flowing, but greyer, beard.
Forensic artists used digital enhancement to modify Bin Laden’s features in an attempt to show what he might now look like.
The FBI also published “aged progressed” mug shots of another 17 terrorists wanted by the US, which can be seen on the state department website.
So all 17 are bogus. Nice. Can you figure out which ones are bogus. Just click on the photo to bring up the entire profile. Then Try click and save pictures. What do you see? One of them might be you? I would check if I were you.
Well they weren’t the only ones using images for immoral purposes. As noted in the link below. Shameful in use of someones photo in both cases.
This never made it to the main stream media she wasn’t important enough and the news agency the photo was found on, never even said a word, like she was not important. Had she been a lawmakers child then I suppose something would have been said. Shameful absolutely shameful.
Stephen Simburg holds the mobile phone that he used when he found himself logged into a stranger’s Facebook account recently, as he stands outside a coffee shop in Vancouver, Wash., Friday, Jan 15, 2010. (AP Photo/Greg Wahl-Stephens)
January 16 2010
SAN FRANCISCO — A Georgia mother and her two daughters logged onto Facebook from mobile phones last weekend and wound up in a startling place: strangers’ accounts with full access to troves of private information.
The glitch — the result of a routing problem at the family’s wireless carrier, AT&T — revealed a little known security flaw with far reaching implications for everyone on the Internet, not just Facebook users.
In each case, the Internet lost track of who was who, putting the women into the wrong accounts. It doesn’t appear the users could have done anything to stop it. The problem adds a dimension to researchers’ warnings that there are many ways online information — from mundane data to dark secrets — can go awry.
Several security experts said they had not heard of a case like this, in which the wrong person was shown a web page whose user name and password had been entered by someone else. It’s not clear whether such episodes are rare or simply not reported. But experts said such flaws could occur on email services, for instance, and that something similar could happen on a PC, not just a phone.
“The fact that it did happen is proof that it could potentially happen again and with something a lot more important than Facebook,” said Nathan Hamiel, founder of the Hexagon Security Group, a research organization.
Candace Sawyer, 26, says she immediately suspected something was wrong when she tried to visit her Facebook page Saturday morning.
After typing Facebook.com into her Nokia smart phone, she was taken into the site without being asked for her user name or password. She was in an account that didn’t look like hers. She had fewer friend requests than she remembered. Then she found a picture of the page’s owner.
“He’s white — I’m not,” she said with a laugh.
Sawyer logged off and asked her sister, Mari, 31, her partner in a dessert catering company, and their mother, Fran, 57, to see whether they had the same problem on their phones.
Mari landed inside another woman’s page.
Fran’s phone — which had never been used to access Facebook before — took her inside yet another stranger’s page, one belonging to a young woman from Indiana. They sent an email to one of their own accounts to prove it.
They were dumbfounded.
“I thought it was the phone — ‘Maybe this phone is just weird and does magical, horrible things and I have to get rid of it,”‘ said Candace Sawyer.
The women, who live together in East Point, Ga., outside Atlanta, had recently upgraded to the same model of phone and all used the same carrier, AT&T.
Sawyer contacted The Associated Press after reporting the problem to Facebook and AT&T.
The problem wasn’t in the phones. It was a flaw in the infrastructure connecting the phones to the Internet.
That illuminates a grave problem.
Error on network led back to Facebook
Generally websites and computers are compromised from within. A hacker can get web pages or computers to run programming code that they shouldn’t. But in this case, it was a security gap between the phone and the website that exposed strangers’ Facebook pages to the Sawyers. Misconfigured equipment, poorly written network software or other technical errors could have caused AT&T to fumble the information flowing from the Sawyers’ phones to Facebook and back.
Fortunately, Hamiel said, the vulnerability would be of limited use to a hacker interested in pulling off widespread mayhem, because this hole would let him access only one account at a time. To do more damage the criminal would have to pull off the unlikely feat of gaining full control of the piece of equipment that routes Internet traffic to individual users.
AT&T spokesman Michael Coe said its wireless customers have landed in the wrong Facebook pages in “a limited number of instances” and that a network problem behind those episodes is being fixed.
The Sawyers experienced a different glitch. Coe said an investigation points to a “misdirected cookie.” A cookie is a file some websites place on computers to store identifying information — including the user name that Facebook members would enter to access their pages. Coe said technicians couldn’t figure out how the cookie had been routed to the wrong phone, leading it into the wrong Facebook account.
He also said AT&T could confirm only that the problem occurred on one of the Sawyers’ phones, possibly because they had logged off Facebook on the other two before reporting the incident.
Facebook declined to comment and referred questions to AT&T.
Some websites would be immune from this kind of mix-up, particularly those that use encryption. A Web browser would have trouble deciphering the encryption on a page that a computer user didn’t actually seek, said Chris Wysopal, co-founder of Veracode Inc., a security company.
Sensitive sites and those used for banking and e-commerce generally use encryption. But most other sites, including some web-based email services, don’t use it. One way of checking: The web addresses of encrypted sites begin with “https” rather than “http.” Facebook uses encryption when user names and passwords are entered, to cloak the sign-on from snoops, but after the credentials are entered the encryption is dropped.
It’s unclear how many people were affected by the problem the Sawyers discovered, and whether it was limited to Facebook.
Glitch led to strangers swapping accounts
The reason all three women experienced the glitch is a function of the way cellular networks are designed. In some cases, all the mobile Internet traffic for a particular area is routed through the same piece of networking equipment. If that piece of equipment is misbehaving or set up incorrectly, strange things happen when computers down the line receive the data.
Usually that means a web site simply won’t load, said Alberto Solino, director of security consulting services for Core Security Technologies. In the Sawyers’ case, “somehow they got the wrong user but they could keep using that account for a long period of time. That’s what’s strange,” he said.
The AP tried to contact two of the people whose Facebook pages were exposed to the Sawyers, but the calls and emails were not returned. It’s unclear whether they are also AT&T customers, though security experts said that’s likely the case.
Indeed, it was the case in a similar incident in November.
Stephen Simburg, 25, who works in marketing, was home for Thanksgiving in Vancouver, Wash., when he logged onto Facebook from his cellphone. He didn’t recognize the people who had written him messages.
“I thought I had gotten really popular all of a sudden, or something was wrong,” he said. Then he saw the picture of the account owner: A young woman.
He got her email address from the site, logged off and wrote the woman a message. He asked whether he had met her at some point and she had borrowed his phone to check her Facebook account.
“No,” she wrote back, “but I was just telling my family that I ended up in your profile!”
Simburg and the woman figured out they were both using AT&T to access Facebook on their phones. (AT&T had no comment because the incident wasn’t reported to the company.)
“I felt like I had been let down by the phone company and by Facebook,” he said.
He says he has put the incident behind him. But one piece of it remains: He and the young woman are now Facebook friends.
January 16 2010
Imagine 5 days and no help. Brings back memories of Katrina.
They were angry as well. They were hungry and desperate.
5 days is a long time to go without.
Much of the reporting after the earthquake in Haiti has been from the capital, Port-au-Prince.
But the devastation and the need for help is just as severe in the south of the country,
In the city of Carrefour, near the epicentre of the quake, no rescue teams are on site and angry residents have blocked the roads to protest against the absence of aid.
Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo reports from southern Haiti.
The United Nations says Haiti’s earthquake is the worst disaster it has ever had to deal with.
Aid is now pouring in, with a steady flow of relief getting through the nation’s only airport.
The World Food Programme says it expects to feed a million people. But survivors say help is not happening fast enough as dead bodies lie scattered on the capital’s streets.
Haiti mass graves receive unclaimed, unidentified bodies
January 15 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE
Every five minutes, a vehicle pulled up to the gates of Port-au-Prince’s cemetery, delivering another corpse to a mass grave dug by authorities trying to clear the broken city’s streets of the dead.
“We have lost any dignity in death,” said Mezen Dieu Justi, an old man barely able to contain his nausea and tears before the grim spectacle.
The massive earthquake that struck Haiti on Tuesday has produced a steady stream of bodies, with estimates of the death toll well into the tens of thousands.
Many families confronted with their final glimpse of a loved one simply lost control.
“It’s my father, my dear father,” screamed one young woman, who fainted at the sight of the mass grave filled with human bodies.
One woman, as though possessed, lowered herself into the grave saying she felt more comfortable among the dead. Bystanders eventually forced her back out again.
“We have lost our senses. Death has driven us insane,” said one Haitian, whose relative’s body had been transported to the grave for burial.
“For three days my sister was dead in her house. Finally we brought her here. We have lost hope of giving her a dignified burial, a coffin, the blessing of a priest,” sobbed Florence, 40, a teacher.
Across Port-au-Prince, the dead litter the streets, stripped of human dignity, decomposing and covered in flies.
The efforts of recently-arrived foreign aid workers seem almost inconsequential by comparison with the scale of the devastation wrought by the quake.
Their work is both a race against time to save people who may still be alive under the rubble strewn across the city and also an effort to transport overwhelming numbers of corpses to the nearest mass grave.
Morgue officials said they no longer have the means to move the bodies, forcing aid workers to transport scores of unidentified and dust-covered cadavers.
Families waited patiently as rescue teams dug through the rubble, waiting to see if they could recognize a loved one.
“The truth is that we don’t know what will be done with the dead,” said Joseph Tihaly, a Haitian volunteer coordinating the delivery and identification of corpses abandoned at the general hospital’s morgue.
The young student said numerous families had come seeking their relatives, but the majority of the bodies remained unclaimed and unidentified.
In one corner of the morgue, a Haitian man finished building a makeshift wooden coffin to hold his brother’s body.
“I will try to take him to our village, to bury him there,” he said.
At least two mass graves have been dug in the city to try to deal with the catastrophe. Haiti Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said he believed some 15,000 people had already been interred across the stricken capital.
But the sheer number of dead has simply overwhelmed all efforts, said Tihaly.
“Realistically, we don’t know when these bodies will be taken, and we don’t know by whom. It’s chaos and a breeding ground for infection,” he said.
The world is suffering from a “freedom recession” according to a new report from the American think tank Freedom House (“Freedom in the World 2010,” 12 January 2010).
Established in 1941, Freedom House markets itself as “an independent watchdog organization that supports democratic change, monitors the status of freedom around the world, and advocates for democracy and human rights.” Its board of directors, chaired by a former US deputy secretary of defense, is a who’s who of Democratic and Republican former US government officials, prominent neoconservatives and Israel lobby stalwarts such as Tom Dine, former executive director of AIPAC. In 2007, more than two-thirds of its $16 million budget came directly from the United States government.
Not surprisingly then, Freedom House’s report reveals more about the groupthink of the US establishment — especially with respect to its continued efforts to dominate the Middle East and ensure Israel’s supremacy — than it does about the countries surveyed.
Focusing on two categories of “freedom” — “civil liberties” and “political rights” — the report divides the world’s 194 countries into three groups: “free” (89), “partly free” (58), and “not free” (47).
Interestingly, Freedom House records “declines in freedom” in “countries that had registered positive trends in previous years, including Bahrain, Jordan, Kenya and Kyrgyzstan.” Jordan was one of only six countries to move from the “partly free” category to “not free.” What does it say about US “democracy promotion” that Jordan, Bahrain and Kyrgyzstan — major political and military operating bases for the “war on terror” and US-led occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan — have become less free as their dependence on the US has increased?
Sadly, while the report frets that “the most powerful authoritarian regimes [such as Russia and China] have become more repressive, more influential in the international arena, and more uncompromising,” it has nothing at all to say about the US role in restricting freedom and spreading mayhem around the world. Sometimes this is truly absurd as the report points to “continued terrorist and insurgent violence in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Yemen,” but fails to note that two of these countries are under direct US military occupation (Afghanistan and Iraq) while the US is intervening militarily in the other three. (The report presents a mixed picture for the US-occupied countries; both are “Not Free” but Iraq allegedly became more free during 2009 and Afghanistan less free.)
Rather than offer any introspection on the inverse relationship between US efforts at global domination on the one hand, and the spread of freedom on the other, the report’s overview essay concludes with a call for more vigorous intervention: “The United States and other democracies should take the initiative to meet the authoritarian challenge …”
Freedom House’s approach to Israel provides the starkest example of the abyss into which liberal thinking has fallen on the relationship between colonialism and freedom. Israel, we are told, “remains the only country in the [Middle East] region to hold a Freedom in the World designation of Free.” We are informed euphemistically that “The beginning of the year [2009] was marred by fierce fighting between the Israeli military and the Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip.”
There is no mention of the deliberate targeting by Israel of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure and the resulting massive destruction, and death and injury to thousands of Palestinian civilians. Nothing is said of the denial of fundamental political, civil and human rights, or freedom of movement, association and education to four million Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation and siege in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. There is no mention of the systematic discrimination, and social and political exclusion faced by 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, nor of the denial of the right of return of millions of Palestinian refugees.
There is an acknowledgment that “Hundreds of people were arrested during demonstrations against the Gaza conflict, and the parliamentary elections committee passed a measure banning two political parties from national elections, though the ban was quickly overturned by the Supreme Court.”
Despite this, on the tables accompanying the report, “Israel” receives the highest score of “1″ for political rights, and a very respectable “2″ for civil liberties — on a par with Italy and Japan. The overall impression is of minor glitches that could occur in any exemplary “Western” democracy.
Then on a separate table of “Disputed Territories” we find “Israeli-occupied territories” and “Palestinian Authority-administered territories” both listed. Both are given the designation “Not Free” and nearly the lowest scores for political rights and civil liberties. There is no narrative to explain who is responsible for this dire state of affairs. This convenient separation allows for all the ugly realities of what “free” Israel does in the occupied territories to be pushed out of sight and ignored.
But in what scheme can Israel be awarded freest of the free status when for two-thirds of its existence, since 1967, it has ruled directly over millions of disenfranchised Palestinians through violence and repression? The idea that the political regime in Israel’s pre-1967 boundaries can be looked at as a “democracy” even while the situation in the occupied territories can be criticized as undemocratic is very widespread among Israelis and American liberals.
Former US President Jimmy Carter has been excoriated (and recently forced to apologize) by the Israel lobby for calling the situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip “apartheid.” Yet even he had simultaneously claimed that within its pre-1967 boundaries, “Israel is a wonderful democracy with equal treatment of all citizens whether Arab or Jew.” True, Palestinian citizens of Israel can vote and are accorded civil rights far wider than their Palestinian counterparts in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But even Israeli Jews commonly concede that Palestinian citizens suffer systematic and severe disadvantage and total exclusion from key political decisions about the country.
Israeli Jewish leftists (a rapidly dwindling group) and Western liberal sympathizers tend to view Israel within its 1967 boundaries as a flawed democracy — perfectible with a reallocation of resources and less discrimination against non-Jews, even as they remain fully invested in maintaining Israel as a “Jewish state” with a Jewish demographic majority.
They view the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as the original sin that corrupted a purer Zionist vision, and thus remain fixated on the chimera of “ending the occupation” through a “two-state solution.” Once this nirvana is reached, so they believe, Israel can resume its destiny as a liberal democratic state among others.
But it is not just the discrimination and limited rights of Palestinian citizens and other non-Jews that undermine the claim that Israel — considered separately from the West Bank and Gaza Strip — is a democracy. Nor is it even that Israeli settler-citizens in the West Bank have full voting rights for the Israeli parliament while Palestinians in the same territory have none. It is that “Israel” and the “occupied territories” are two sides of the same coin.
Israel’s 1948 and subsequent ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and ongoing repressive rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are not exceptional or temporary conditions. They are constitutive of the situation that allows Israeli Jews to currently claim they live in a (flawed) liberal democracy.
To be clear, the argument is not that conditions in Israel and the occupied territories are indistinguishable; rather it is that they form a single interdependent system. Israeli Jews can “freely” elect a Jewish government in Israel only because most Palestinians have already been ethnically cleansed. Thus the maintenance of this “liberal democratic” Jewish space depends directly on the permanent denial of fundamental rights to Palestinians.
Palestinian citizens of Israel — who form 20 percent of the population within Israel’s pre-1967 boundaries — are, as noted, accorded limited liberal rights. This helps boost Israel’s external image as a “wonderful democracy,” but if the exercise of these rights ever threatens Jewish domination, they are curtailed. Examples include the constant legal harassment of Palestinian members of the Knesset, and various legislative projects for loyalty oaths or to ban commemoration of the Nakba, the 1948 ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians. Overwhelming Israeli Jewish opposition to calls by Palestinians in Israel for the country to be a “state of all its citizens” is an indication that Israeli Jews value their own supremacy over democracy.
Israel has sometimes been described as an “ethnocracy” — a state where one ethnic group dominates and enjoys a wide range of liberal rights which are denied to others. But these liberal rights depend directly on the successful repression of the non-privileged ethnic group(s). As rebellions by the disenfranchised require ever greater levels of repression and violence to control, the repression must also be turned inwards.
In recent days, Israel extended for six months a ban on Sheikh Raed Salah, an Israeli citizen, and leader of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, from traveling to Jerusalem, Israel’s ostensible capital, where he had been exercising his civil rights to campaign against Israeli efforts to “Judaize” the city. (Separately Salah was also sentenced to nine months in prison for allegedly assaulting a police officer during a 2007 demonstration; a conviction condemned as political persecution by other Palestinian leaders inside Israel.)
Such repression does not only affect non-Jews. The United Nations-commissioned Goldstone report noted “that actions of the Israeli government” within Israel, during and after Israel’s invasion of Gaza last winter, “including interrogation of political activists, repression of criticism and sources of potential criticism of Israeli military actions, in particular nongovernmental organizations, have contributed significantly to a political climate in which dissent with the government and its actions in the Occupied Territories is not tolerated.”
These means of “internal” repression resemble the movement bans, censorship and other forms of harassment that the South African apartheid regime began to deploy in its late stages against dissenting whites, eroding the “liberal democratic” space they had for so long enjoyed at the expense of the country’s black majority.
Maintaining a Jewish-controlled “liberal democratic” regime in Palestine/Israel is incompatible with the exercise of the inalienable rights of Palestinians. It emphatically depends on their permanent violation, especially the right of return. But the exercise of the inalienable rights of Palestinians — an end to discrimination against Palestinian citizens, dismantling the 1967 occupation regime, and the right of return for refugees — is fully compatible with Israeli Jews exercising the human, civil, political and cultural rights to which they are unquestionably entitled.
As a first step toward imagining and creating such a framework, we have to ditch the absurd idea reproduced by Freedom House, that Israeli Jews can epitomize perfect freedom while imposing perfect tyranny and dispossession on a greater number of human beings who belong to the same country.
Ali Abunimah is the co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of ‘One Country, A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.’ I’ll be using this page to post images, sounds and writing about my trip to Gaza with the Gaza Freedom March
Bethlehem – Ma’an – The editor in chief of Ma’an English, Jared Malsin, was temporarily spared deportation after an Israeli judge in Tel Aviv reversed an overruled injunction filed by lawyers representing the Bethlehem-based news agency late Wednesday night.
Malsin was detained at Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport on Tuesday afternoon while returning from the Czech Republic on holiday. After eight hours of interrogation, the Israeli Interior Ministry ordered him held and scheduled deportation for 6am on Thursday.
Ma’an attorney Castro Daoud intervened amid pressure from US diplomats seeking an injunction against the deportation. The request was rejected by the Israeli attorney general, whose own ruling was then overturned by a Tel Aviv District Court, granting Malsin a hearing. Judge Miriam Sokolov will hear Malsin’s case at 10am at the Tel Aviv District Court. A verdict is expected by noon.
Hebrew-language interrogation transcripts obtained by Ma’an reveal that Malsin was deemed a security risk on the apparent basis of his political beliefs. Interrogators gathered online research into the journalist’s writing history, which the transcripts indicate included news stories “criticizing the State of Israel,” among other allegations that he “authored articles inside the territories.”
The security agents questioned why Malsin would have entered the West Bank if he were truly interested in becoming an Israeli citizen, say he “claimed to be Jewish,” and allege that “he exploited his Jewishness to gain entry into the State of Israel.” Among the specific grounds for detaining him were “lying to border officials,” “here illegally,” and “entered Israel by means of lies.”
Shortly after it became clear why Malsin was actually detained, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a media rights organization, issued a scathing statement denouncing the the detention and calling on Israel to reverse its decision.
“Israel cannot hide behind the pretext of security to sideline journalists who have done nothing more than maintain an editorial line that the authorities dislike,” said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, the CPJ’s program coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa. “Israel should release Jared Malsin without delay and allow him to resume his work,” the statement concluded.
Meanwhile, Israeli officials have refused to publicly acknowledge Malsin’s presence at the airport or anywhere else.
By Amanda Kloer
What has been a slow crisis of poverty and enslavement for almost 250,000 child slaves in Haiti, known as restaveks, turned into an immediate crisis this week with the brutal 7.0 earthquake that hit the country. Mere hours after the news of the devastation in Haiti broke, America and countries around the world saw an outpouring of aid from international organizations and individuals. Groups have organized drives for everything from donations to shoes to volunteers.
But as we all get that warm and fuzzy feeling from helping our neighbors in their time of great need, it’s important to remember that millions of Haitians needed aid before this earthquake, and they’ll continue to need it long after the media fervor has died. And those with the greatest need will be the enslaved restaveks.
Restaveks are a huge part of Haitian society and the economy. They are usually children from extremely poor families who are sent away to work as domestic servants in wealthier homes. The children aren’t paid for their work, but provided shelter and a sometimes meager meal supply. In the best case scenarios, families will send their restavek children to school. But restaveks often work long days performing a variety of household tasks for nothing more that a meal or two a day. Two-thirds of restaveks are girls, and they are extremely vulnerable to rape and sexual abuse from the families who house and control them. The life of a restavek child in Haiti often varies between bleak and hopeless, and many children never successfully leave their slave conditions.
Update on the Charity and also added a link to yet another Charity which isn’t so Charitable either.
You may want to take the time to read both.
January 13 2010
This is the little girl in question
A Palestinian girl cries during the funeral of a relative that was killed in an Israeli air strike in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, Sunday, Jan. 4, 2009. Israeli ground troops and tanks cut swaths through the Gaza Strip early Sunday, cutting the coastal territory into two and surrounding its biggest city as the new phase of a devastating offensive against Hamas gained momentum.”photo by Fady Adwan/propaimages”
A Palestinian girl cries during the funeral of her brother who was killed after an Israeli air strike in the northern Gaza Strip January 4, 2009. Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants battled on Gaza City’s outskirts on Sunday after Israeli troops and tanks invaded the coastal enclave in the worst fighting in the conflict in decades. REUTERS/Ismail Zaydah (GAZA)
This is a story about the day her picture was taken with the above REUTERS photo
Life gets worse for Palestinians in Gaza
For the first eight days of Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip, codenamed Operation Cast Lead, many Palestinians trapped inside the territory believed that living conditions could not get any worse. They were wrong.
By Tim Butcher on the Israel-Gaza border
Published: 6:29PM GMT 04 Jan 2009
This was discovered January 12 2010 and screen shots was taken so it could be proved, this child was the one being used as advertising for the Charity. One has to wonder how long they were using her photo?
Both pictures used by the Charity were cropped, but if you look closely both have the Design on the clothing of the woman, who standing on her right, in her time of such tremendous, sorrow, considering she lost her brother an being surrounded by war.
Just check the top right hand corner of the picture. Look for the green part of the design.
Definitely the cropped version of the larger “photo by Fady Adwan/propaimages” above was used at the Charity site and HAARTZ.com
The same by “photo by Fady Adwan/propaimages”of the little girl is alsoHEREas well third row down, third picture in.
These photos are also on this site as well HERE along with many other photo’s of the War on Gaza
The two screen shots can be enlarged by clicking on them.
This Screen shot of the Charity site itself was also taken as well.
Again the design is also in the top right hand corner. Also a of version of the larger “photo by Fady Adwan/propaimages”
Second Screen shot of Charity site. Click on it to enlarge
Today the Charity Meir Panium removed the little Palestinians girls photo from its flyer. This of course I imagine after there were complaints about it’s immoral use. There were thousands of people who saw this reprehensible use of this little girl to raise money for Starving children in Israel.
Their new poster girl. Now is she really Israeli I wonder? If you see this little girls picture and she is from anywhere but Israel do let inquiring minds know.
This ad
is still on the HAARETZ site however. Seems the Charity has yet to contact them. So check to see if it is still there, it may or may not but if it is, you will see to the right of the picture of State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss. Then again in the past two days she has been most of their news stories.
Update Seems the little Girl is still on the HAARETZ site
January 15 2010 Just click on the screen shot to enlarge.
The little Palestinian girl has finally been removed from HAARETZ.com site as noted in the screen shot below.
I do believe we all will need to monitor the Charity sites to be sure nothing like this happens again.
To some it may seem like a small thing.
Just imagine if your son were killed by someone, then that someone used your daughters picture to make money for themselves.
All the while that someone is still committing crimes against you, your family and your friends.
Imagine how the rest of your family and friends would feel.
Then you may find it is no small thing.
If this were my daughter I would be outraged.
I cannot even fathom, the words to express how angry I would be.
So if nothing else, try to imagine this is your tiny little girl.
Think about how you would feel.
If the roles were reversed and this was Hamas using an Israeli child in the same context, it probably would have been on news casts world wide and Hamas would have been demoized as evil hateful horrid people. I can see the Tiger Woods craze go wild..
There to the embarrassment of many was no coverage of this in the US Canada or Britain even.
The we also have to wonder why Israel has Charities for Israel in many countries around the world as well. Israel is not a third world country by any means.
Questions to think about.
Do the Canada, US, Britain, France or Germany etc have Charities in other countries to get money for food for their hungry children? If not why not?
Those countries all have hungry, starving, people. They do have charities set up to help the poor, but they also remain within their borders. Canadians help take care of Canadians and Americans help take care of American etc. I have never seen any ad in all my travels that had offices in other countries however.
I can fully understand why others would want to help those in Gaza considering they have been blown back to the stone age. I can see helping those in Afghanistan or Iraq they to have been devastated.
I can see helping those in Africa, Haiti and other third world countries.
Israel however is questionable. They have all sorts of Charities set up to get moeny for all sorts of things.
Not so long ago one was in the news. It was suppose to be raising money for schools in Israel, turns out some of the money was actually going to settlements. Which of course is illegal. The money can only go to the place the advetising says. If it says food it can only go for food etc.
I do believe some of these charities should be checked to see if others have done the same thing.
I as a person who donates money to different causes want to be assured the money I donate, goes to the people and the cause the advertising says it will.
If I donate $100 for school books for children in Afghanistan, it had better to go to school books for children in Afghanistan.
If I donate money to go to Haiti for food, it had better go to Haiti for food.
If it is for medical needs such as Doctors Without Boarders it had better go to medical help and supplies for those in need.
If I discovered it was going to Israel for settlements, instead I would be fuming.
Other wise it it is fraud and theft. Those crimes would be directly against anyone who donated. That means the charity stolen from you the person, who was kind enough to give to the cause advertised..
We will be watching.
Found this Report today as I was wandering about.
This is not the first report of this type but should be read by all.
The children in Gaza are far worse off, then any child in Israel. If Israel has hungry men, women and children maybe they should spend less on weapons, checkpoints or imprisoning those from Gaza and the West Bank.
The Building of the illegal wall could and should be stopped. The entire wall should be torn down.
Those in Gaza do not have enough medical supplies, hydro, food, water heating fuel, cooking fuel and next to no building supplies and the list goes on an on. Many still live in tents. The things most people take for granted, they do not have.
They are in desperate need of real help. That little Palestinian girl if she is still alive really does need help. She is an innocent little girl.
Using her picture for profit to help those in Israel is beyond reprehensible. She and everyone in Gaza are desperately in need.
Thank You to all who take the time to read this and those who took the time to do screen shots pictures and get copies of all the information pertaining to this horrid incident.
Thank You to all the blogger’s or those from forums and there are many for sharing this information.
You will never see this on the main stream media.
If not for others who took the time no one would know the crime against this innocent child. This is a crime. Even Charities have laws they must live by.
Thank you all for caring. I know she is just one small little girl but we must be her voice, as her voice is so small.
The children in Gaza don’t get almost 3 billion dollars from the US every year.
They don’t get the millions Israel gets from Charities set up for them around the world.
Just in a recent report the US has built buildings in Israel and I guess they need them for the $800 million in munitions Israel will also have access to as well.
The US just gave it to them.
Seems to me if Israel has so many hungry should be given food not weapons. The US should stop giving weapons aid to Israel. If they are so desperately, hungry as they say they are, which I doubt, they do not in need more bullets, bombs, tanks, planes, etc.
The same can be said of the US they have many hungry people as well and over 45 million without health insurance because it is unaffordable.
Yet they spend about or over 500 billion dollars on war. That doesn’t include what they give in aid to other countries for weapons.
Then there are all their military bases they have to run. Over 800 or more by now. In most countries the people who live there do not want them there to boot. This of course all at the expense of the American citizens.
Seems to me they need to get their priorities straight. Feed your people and stop warmongering is my motto.
The UN and many others have demanded the blockade be lifted.
The world is watching.
Contact your Governments and tell them to have the Blockade in Gaza lifted.
When people try to get aid into Gaza, they meet with a numerous problems.
Added March 8 2010
Now for that other so called Charity which helps in removing land from Palistinians. Very interesting read this is. The Jewish National Fund. They have many offices all over the world as well. They have been taking peoples hard earned money and using for the worst of reasons. This a recent report and well worth reading.
Seems to me Israels Charities should all be scrutinized. Who do they really benefit and is the money actually being used for good or bad. This one is used to take land and hide what really happened.
George Bush once said something about watching the Charities. Well dare I say, maybe he was right. Maybe they were watching the wrong Charities however. Seems old George may have hit the nail, but on the wrong head.
Turkish PM lashes out at Israel for threatening peace in the region
By Selcan Hacaoglu
January 12 2010
ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey’s prime minister accused Israel on Monday of threatening peace in the region and using disproportionate force against Palestinians.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Israel to stop violating Lebanon’s airspace and territorial waters. He also called on the U.N. Security Council to put the same pressure on Israel regarding nuclear arms as it does on Iran.
“We can never remain silent in the face of Israel’s attitude. … It has disproportionate power and it is using that at will while refusing to abide by U.N. resolutions. We can never accept this picture,” Erdogan said. “These steps threaten global peace.”
He spoke a joint news conference with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri. Hariri described Israel as an enemy that threatens Lebanon’s security.
“Today, Israel continues its violation of our airspace and waters,” Hariri said.
Erdogan promised to support Lebanon’s case against Israel at the United Nations. Turkey is a temporary member of the Security Council.
Discussing the possibility of war to make Iran drop its nuclear program, Erdogan said, “The region cannot accept a new Iraq syndrome.” Turkey has long defended Iran’s right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful use.
“Those who are warning Iran over nuclear weapons are not making the same warnings to Israel,” Erdogan said. “Five permanent members of the Security Council must be just. Israel has not denied the existence of its nuclear arsenal; on the contrary it has admitted it.”
Erdogan also criticized Israel for an airstrike in Gaza on Sunday.
“What is your excuse this time?” he asked.
On Sunday, three members of the militant group Islamic Jihad were killed in an Israeli strike.
Cross-border exchanges have escalated in recent days. The Israeli military said there have been 15 rocket attacks from Gaza this month, compared to eight in December. No Israeli casualties have been reported.
Erdogan accused Israel of using of white phosphorus shells in its offensive in Gaza last year. “No one can claim that phosphorus shells are not weapons of mass destruction,” he said.
Turkey’s ties with Israel have been strained by Erdogan’s frequent criticism of the Jewish state’s use of force against Palestinians, as well as during the 2006 war against Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.
On Monday, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, summoned the Turkish ambassador for clarification over a new Turkish TV show where actors pretending to be Israeli intelligence agents kidnap children and shoot old men. A diplomatic spat occurred a few months ago between Israel and Turkey after a different Turkish show depicted Israeli troops killing Palestinian children.
Associated Press Writer Suzan Fraser in Ankara and Ian Deitch in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
ANKARA — The prime ministers of Turkey and Lebanon on Monday lashed out at Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace and air strikes in Gaza, warning they were undermining prospects for peace in the region.
“Attacks on Lebanon is terrorism itself… We have to stand shoulder by shoulder against the enemy’s plans… We have to stop Israel,” visiting Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri told a press conference.
Lebanese anti-aircraft guns opened fire on four Israeli warplanes which were violating its airspace at low altitude on Monday, the military said.
Israel argues that the overflights are necessary to monitor what it says is massive arms smuggling by Hezbollah.
Hariri’s counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country’s once-flourishing ties with Israel took a sharp downturn last year, said that Turkey “will never stay silent” on Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace.
He slammed the Israeli overflights as “unacceptable action that threatens global peace.”
Erdogan also questioned a deadly Israeli air raid on the Gaza Strip Sunday, which, the Israeli army said, targeted militants who were preparing attacks.
“Is the Israeli government in favour of peace or not?… Gaza was bombed again yesterday. Why?… There were no rocket attacks,” Erdogan said.
“They (the Israelis) have disproportional capabilities and power and they use them… They do not abide by UN resolutions… They say they will do what they like. We can in no way approve of such an attitude,” he said.
Israel’s ties with Turkey, a key regional ally, were poisoned by its massive offensive on Gaza last year, which prompted an unprecedented barrage of criticism from Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted government.
In October, Turkey excluded Israel from joint military drills and said ties would continue to suffer unless Israel ends “the humanitarian tragedy” in Gaza and revives peace talks with the Palestinians.
Erdogan also renewed criticism of Western powers on Monday for pressuring Iran on its nuclear activities while tolerating Israel, considered the region’s sole if undeclared nuclear power.
“We are against the development of nuclear weapons by any country in the region,” he said.
“Israel has nuclear weapons… Those who are cautioning Iran must also caution Israel,” he said, referring to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
“If we fail to display a fair attitude in this region, the problems will hit not only the region, but will spread elsewhere as well. The unrest of the Middle East is the unrest of the world,” he said.
Hariri hailed Turkey’s improving ties with Arab countries and increased activism in peace efforts in the Middle East.
“We hope and expect Turkey to continue playing a positive role in trying to bring peace,” he said.
The two premiers witnessed the signing of an accord on visa-free travel between their countries and other deals envisaging cooperation in the military, agriculture and transport realms.
Erdogan said Turkey would supply natural gas and electricity to help meet Lebanon’s energy needs and that the two countries planned a ferry service between their Mediterranean coasts.
Hariri was to wrap up his three-day visit Tuesday after attending a meeting of business people from the two countries in Istanbul.
Israeli security forces arrested a foreign activist in a raid in the West Bank town of Ramallah overnight, her lawyer said on Monday.
“Her visa had expired, but that’s not a reason for them to arrest her,” he said, adding that the Israeli interior ministry has no authority to operate in the Palestinian territories.
“The ministry of the interior was acting outside of the sovereign territory of Israel… They wouldn’t invade Poland to arrest someone.” Source
Israel has gone into other countries and kidnapped people.
Israel also violates Egypt’s air space as well.
Israel the walking violation.
Sanctions are needed against Israel. There needs to be an Arms embargo as well.
There will be no peace if Israel continues on this path of violating International Laws, Human rights and UN Resolutions. They violate those on a daily basis.
But critics of the government believe that it is contriving the threat. They note that the government itself issues visas each year to 120,000 non-Jewish migrant workers who arrive at Israel’s borders legally and that hundreds of thousands among the wave of immigrants from the former Soviet Union to reach the country during the 1990s were not Jewish.
Egyptian move to ‘barricade’ Palestinians slammed
January 12, 2010
By Asim Hussain
LAHORE
NOTED Pakistani Islamic scholars have joined their counterparts elsewhere in the Muslim world to condemn Cairo for constructing a huge metal and concrete wall along its border with Gaza which will literally starve Palestinians to death.
Religious clerics from a wide spectrum of Muslim schools of thought have criticised Cairo which, they said, had been acting as a stooge in the hands of Washington and Tel Aviv. They called upon Muslim Ummah to rise to the occasion, calling for their urgent help in the name of Muslim brotherhood and Islamic principles of helping out the oppressed.
They also criticized Al Azhar University, Egypt’s largest Islamic institution, for issuing an edict justifying the construction of wall in the name of national security. Pakistani scholars praised those few Muslim scholars of the world who dared to raise voice against Cairo and Al-Azhar such as Qatar’s cleric Allama Yusuf Qardhawi, Yemen’s Sheikh Abdul Majid Zandani, Cairo University’s Dr Abdul Saboor Shaheen, Kuwait’s Sheikh Hamid bin Abdullah Al-Ali and Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan’s Syed Munawwar Hasan. They have condemned rest of the Muslim world, particularly the states who are keeping a criminal silence over the issue.
Many Pakistani clerics and religious groups will be holding protest meetings in coming days to condemn Cairo’s move, while some of the big institutions such as Jamia Ashrafia – the largest university affiliated with Deobandy school of thought in Lahore – has already held meetings, condemning Cairo for such a blatant violation of Islam and demanding immediate reversal of the decision.
Cairo has already completed initial phase of 10-kilometre long wall which will also go down 50 to 60 feet into the ground to cut off the tunnels which Tel Aviv accuses Palestinians of using to smuggle arms along with food supplies into Gaza. Cairo has also practically shut its border crossings with Gaza under Tel Aviv’s demands. This porous border was the only available link of Gaza with the outside world since Israel constructed a similar wall on Gaza boundary with the occupied lands, turning the area into a literal prison camp.
Renowned scholar and chairman Central Royat Hilal Committee, Mufti Munibur Rehman said Cairo’s move could provide Israel a fresh license for a renewed spate of Palestinians’ genocide which, God forbid, could result into complete wiping out of Palestinian Muslims from the face of the world besides turning entire Palestine into Israel.
Talking to The News, the head of Pakistan’s official moon sighting committee, said the Egyptian wall could prove more disastrous than those of Israel and Germany since it could change the geography of the world on a large scale. Terming the wall against Islamic principles of Muslim brotherhood and helping the oppressed, he said: “Why has Cairo cited a flimsy argument like national security for clamping prison like restrictions on 1.5 million Palestinian Muslims languishing under extreme Israeli-Egyptian blockade for the last many years that caused deaths to thousands of patients, infants and other Palestinians”.
Mufti Munib, who is also the head of the board governing seminaries belonging to Barelvi school of thought, noted that Cairo had always been acting as US-protÈgÈ since the signing of Camp David accord, carrying out Washington’s agenda in the region. He said besieged Gaza people never threatened Egyptian security though they managed to smuggle small amounts of food, milk and medicines etc. through Egyptian borders in their attempts to ward off serious scarcity of vital supplies.
“Cairo’s move to construct Israel-like wall against Palestinians is heart rending for entire Muslim Ummah, and we in Pakistan are so deeply grieved that we don’t have words to condemn Mobarak administration,” said Hafiz Fazl-e-Rahim, head of Jamia Ashrafia, Lahore, while talking to The News. He said Cairo not only turned against fellow Muslims but also betrayed Allah Almighty for giving away the first Qibla (House of worship) of Muslims to the enemies literally in a platter, instead of waging jihad for its recovery.
Maulana Abdul Maalik, noted scholar and president Jamiat Ittehad-ul-Ulema, termed Cairo’s wall as anti-Islamic, anti-humanity, and in serious violation of rights given by Islam, besides the ‘much talked-about’ fundamental human rights. He said such a move that allowed enemies of Islam to commit mass murders of Muslims was highly condemnable and entire Ummah should raise voice against it.
Maulana Abdul Maalik equated Cairo’s move with Islamabad’s U-turn on Afghan policy providing vital support to US forces to overthrow Taliban’s Islamic regime in Afghanistan in the wake of 9-11. “Hosni Mobarak’s action is similar to the strategic and logistic support given by General Pervez Musharraf to the US forces invading Afghanistan resulting into massacre of over a million fellow Muslims,” he said.
Maulana Abdul Maalik also slammed the religious edict issued to Cairo by Egypt’s largest Islamic university justifying the construction of wall on the plea of national security. He said any edict allowing committing blatant violations of Quran, Sunnah and Islamic principles of brotherhood, besides the ‘world known’ human rights, had no value in the eyes of Muslim scholars, since anything like that is believed to have been issued under government pressure.
Noted Shia scholar, Allama Abdul Jalil Naqvi, said Cairo’s vital help in likely massacre of millions of Palestinian Muslims was a matter of great shame for the entire nation. Talking to The News, the leader of the largest religious party of Shia sect in Pakistan, said Egypt had always been a partner in Israeli and US genocide of Palestinians despite serious protests by Muslim ummah. Cairo’s latest move to construct an iron wall on the remaining boundaries of Gaza is nothing but pure enmity of Islam, he said.
Naqvi wondered under what Shariah Al-Azhar justified and aided Israeli plans of wiping out entire Palestinian population of Gaza. He said Al-Azhar appeared to be working under the slavery of Cairo rulers instead of Allah Almighty.
Cairo: A former Egyptian ambassador, Ibrahim Yousry, in addition to 250 Egyptian and foreign political activists, jurists and parliamentarians filed a lawsuit before an administrative court on Monday against both President Mubarak, Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, and Ministers of the Interior and Foreign Affairs, Ahmed Aboul Gheit and Habib Al- Adli. The suit urged them, first, to suspend the decision to build a steel separating wall along Egypt’s border with the Gaza Strip and, second, to stop the Egyptian government’s decision to close the Rafah crossing.
Political forces said in their lawsuit that the Egyptian Government is violating tenets of international law and human rights charters, particularly the 1907 Hague Rules, the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and customary rules of international law which are supported and reinforced by the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
The lawsuit was signed by representatives of both conservative and liberal political forces, led by Ambassador Ibrahim Yousry, who initiated a lawsuit to stop exporting Egyptian gas to Israel, as well as a number of other activists, including Dr. Abdel Halim Kandil, Dr. Abdel Jalil Mostafa, Dr. Karima El-Hefnawy, MP Mohamed Al Omda. The group also includes journalists, a activists from the 6th of April Movement, along with a number of French, American and European activists.
For his part, Ibrahim Yousry told local newspapers that all political movements have confirmed their opposition to the wall and the closure of the Rafah crossing and the participation of the Egyptian Government in support of the Israeli siege of a million Palestinians.
The activists, after finishing the proceedings before the administrative court of the State Council in Giza, went to the Egyptian Attorney General and organized a protest in front of his office, chanting slogans like “stop the wall… break the siege”, ” tunnels are legal as long as the convoys are banned” and “wall of shame… humiliation of the siege”.
Transport minister defends invasive search of senior
By Christian Bergmeister,
January 10, 2010
OTTAWA — Transportation Minister John Baird was unapologetic Sunday about the invasive search of an 85-year-old woman conducted by security personnel at the Ottawa Airport.
Baird was asked by media Sunday about the treatment of the four-foot-10, 90-pound woman who was travelling from Ottawa to Toronto on Dec. 28. The woman was asked to remove her boots and then unzip her pants. A female inspection officer then poked at her abdomen.
The woman’s niece, Cynthia Sutcliffe, said that the former federal public servant is now “terrified” of airport security and that the search was “extreme.”
But Baird argued that even people who seem non-threatening cannot be disregarded by security.
“The reality is, as we’ve seen in Iraq, the al-Qaida network has put explosive devices on developmentally disabled adults and then sent them into marketplaces where their bombs were detonated,” Baird said on the Sunday TV show Question Period. “Obviously we have to deal with every concern. I think we should use common sense.”
But Sutcliffe said her aunt’s search doesn’t pass that “common sense” test.
“I still stand by my disappointment in how they treated my aunt, but I understand Baird’s position at the same time,” said Sutcliffe.
Sutcliffe’s aunt was taken from an Air Canada security line during a random search.
“She has osteoporosis and her stomach protrudes a little bit,” Sutcliffe said. “But that is no reason for this kind of search.”
Sutcliffe said her aunt is frightened she will be searched again.
Next time her aunt flies, Sutcliffe said she will get a pass that will allow her to take her aunt to the boarding area, an option she was previously unaware of.
As part of new airport security measures, Baird explained that 44 full-body scanners, at a cost of $11 million, will soon be arriving in major airports across Canada. Twelve scanners are arriving this week while the rest will come in five to 10 weeks.
At Canadian airports, adults will have the option of either going through a full-body scanner or being subject to a pat-down. Youth under 18 will not have to go through a scanner and will be patted down instead, said Baird.
Sutcliffe is skeptical of full-body scans because some elderly people who go through the scanners will be wearing incontinence briefs.
“I want them to catch the bad guys, don’t kid yourself. But if it’s your grandmother or grandfather who is going to be wearing those undergarments for personal incontinence and things, and then they start saying, ‘Well the guy that blew up the plane had the stuff in his underwear,’ where do we stop?”
The airplane never blew up By the way. Not even a chance of it happening.
Seems there is misinformation being fed to the public already.
The kid didn’t have a passport.
There needed to be a detonator to set off the explosives and there wasn’t one found.
He was helped onto the plane by some one in authority.
He didn’t talk to anyone. Someone else did all the talking for him.
Security was run by the same company that let the shoe bomber threw in 2001 and at the airports on 9/11.
So who helped put the kid on the plane?
Witnesses wonder and so should we.
Was it Mossad, was it CIA or was it the Israeli Security at the Airport or all, who helped the kid onto the plane? Witness told us he had help.
Where is the video surveillance tapes? Of course by the time we see them they could be altered. Or have they miraculously vanished?
So what is the connection between the Security company at the airport and those who make the scanners? Inquiring minds wish to know.
Who was video taping the entire thing? Someone was. Witnesses already told us that.
I think these questions should be asked to a whole lot of politicians world wide.
Seems to me this is just a scam to sell scanners.
As for the scanners????
How safe are they really? How much radiation will one be exposed to when going through them? What are the long term side affects for those who go through them often? Will they cause cancer or other illnesses?
A few more questions that should be asked of politicians world wide.
Scanners see you naked ,viewers will just love their job now.
Nothing like seeing naked bodies all day. A perverts dream job.
Considering the Detroit incident was probably staged.
Well seems sales for those scanners will be doing just fine because of it.
Anything for profit.
Who are they getting the scanners from? I wonder.
Canadians and those in other countries should be asking.
Saleh Al-Naami finds that everyday commodities are what form the contraband passing through secret tunnels between Egypt and Gaza
Cairo AL-AHRAM News
Maged Ibrahim hurried to his sister’s house metres away from his own to fetch empty plastic containers. This university professor was out of time. As soon as his nephew, Adham, gave him three containers, Ibrahim sped away in his car to the nearest fuelling station to fill up on gasoline, in order to ensure a minimal supply for his car in case of emergencies. He also uses gasoline for the electricity generator at his home when there are power outages, which can sometimes last up to five hours, since Israel refuses to allow the regular refuelling of the sole power station in the area.
Ibrahim, like many others in Gaza, is desperate to stock up on food and fuel supplies that are smuggled through tunnels after hearing rumours that Egypt intends to build an iron wall on top of these tunnels to collapse them. The tunnels have become a vital source of livelihood and provisions for the people here. The university professor was lucky and filled up on fuel, but the majority return empty handed as gasoline stations run dry.
Salem Al-Othman, a resident of Al-Nosayrat Refugee Camp in the centre of Gaza, owns a grocery shop and is preoccupied with stockpiling merchandise in anticipation of an end to smuggling. Al-Othman went to one of the wholesale merchants in neighbouring Deir Al-Balah to reserve his goods but was surprised that the wholesaler claimed to be out of stock on everything Al-Othman wanted.
At the same time, and unlike most Thursdays, the traditional markets in Gaza, Rafah and other large Palestinian cities that trade in Egyptian goods were very active. Shoppers bought everything in sight, and the uncertainty of what will happen next caused prices to skyrocket, despite warnings against overpricing by Ismail Haniyeh’s government. Meanwhile, Egypt’s iron wall was the talk of the town.
Aisha Maghli, 81, who lives in Al-Satr Al-Sharqi district in Khan Younis, south of Gaza, has been in low spirits of late. Maghli is an asthmatic that in recent years has had fewer episodes because of medication that is smuggled from Egypt through the tunnels. “Shutting down the tunnels and the siege spell doom for my grandmother,” her grandson Hassan told Al-Ahram Weekly. “None of us care about the tunnels, except that they allow us to breathe under siege.” He despondently pleaded, “Please don’t let my grandmother die just because there is no medicine.”
The rumoured wall has been a topic of much debate among young Palestinians also. At many of their gatherings in Gaza, they deliberate on how to render the wall ineffective. News of the wall comes at a time when Palestinians realise the importance of the tunnels in freeing them from the debilitating effects of Israeli-led siege. For example, the tunnels are a major factor in controlling prices since the siege began, and are a source of employment for thousands of people in what is known as the tunnel trade business.
For Salman, 38, tunnel smuggling was a turning point in his life. He began as the owner of a small electrical goods shop and has evolved into a trader of many commodities. Today, he deals in electrical equipment, construction material, livestock, and other goods that are in short supply under siege. Near his house in central Gaza, Salman erected a large paddock for hundreds of cattle that are smuggled through the tunnels. He sells them to smaller merchants and employs between 10 and 20 men to tend to them. “Sometimes the staff work around the clock to meet the demands of the customers,” Salman told the Weekly.
Salman partners with Egyptian merchants who bring goods to the Egyptian side of the tunnels. From there, Salman and his men bring the merchandise through the tunnels after paying a fee to the owners of the tunnel. Tunnel traders prefer not to disclose the value or volume of goods that they bring in from Egypt in order for them to make a reasonable profit.
Although the majority believe these traders make a steep profit, in reality this is not true. Tunnel traders pay their Egyptian counterparts for the goods and then the tunnel owners, as well as the wages of a large number of workers, which necessitates that they considerably raise the price of commodities in order to make a profit. Like other merchants, Salman hopes the siege will end and the tunnels shut down because his is a risky business.
Khamis Al-Daqqa, who sells vegetables, explained how the tunnels have helped keep prices low. Al-Daqqa cited that if large amounts of onions were not pouring through the tunnels, the price of one kilogramme would be around five shekels, or LE6, instead of the current price of two shekels. “The large volume of fruit and vegetables has revived trade and improved the public’s purchasing power,” he told the Weekly.
Before rumours about the iron wall began to circulate, merchants had begun a new practice to drive prices even lower: digging their own tunnels to cut the fee they pay to tunnel owners. One such trader, who previously paid 40 per cent of the value cost to tunnel owners, dug his own tunnel that specialises in the passage of electrical goods and garments. Israel is propagating an untrue and deceitful notion that these tunnels are being used to smuggle weapons and combat supplies. In reality, the tunnels that Israel and its allies are so concerned about are being used to meet everyday basic needs.
One tunnel owner, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Weekly that all the tunnels he is familiar with are used to smuggle basic civilian goods and merchandise. His tunnel is dedicated to medication and some foodstuffs that are secured by his partners on the other side of the border. He receives the goods at his end of the tunnel and distributes them based on orders placed by medicine dispensaries. He and his partners receive a set fee from the dispensaries for each delivery.
Deputy parliament speaker Ahmed Bahr is certain that the Egyptian leadership will not allow the people of Gaza to starve. “President [Hosni] Mubarak promised not to allow Palestinians to go hungry,” Bahr told the Weekly. “I am positive he will keep his word and will stand by our people.” He added that Egypt’s national security is “just as important to us as Palestinian national security. Hence, Gaza has not been — and will never be — a source of threat to Egypt’s security.”
Forget about oil, occupation, terrorism or even Al Qaeda. The real hazard for Iraqis these days is cancer.
Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment.
Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment.
Here are a few examples. In Falluja, which was heavily bombarded by the US in 2004, as many as 25% of new- born infants have serious abnormalities, including congenital anomalies, brain tumors, and neural tube defects in the spinal cord.
The cancer rate in the province of Babil, south of Baghdad has risen from 500 diagnosed cases in 2004 to 9,082 in 2009 according to Al Jazeera English.
In Basra there were 1885 diagnosed cases of cancer in 2005. According to Dr. Jawad al Ali, director of the Oncology Center, the number increased to 2,302 in 2006 and 3,071 in 2007. Dr. Ali told Al Jazeera English that about 1,250-1,500 patients visit the Oncology Center every month now.
Not everyone is ready to draw a direct correlation between allied bombing of these areas and tumors, and the Pentagon has been skeptical of any attempts to link the two. But Iraqi doctors and some Western scholars say the massive quantities of depleted uranium used in U.S. and British bombs, and the sharp increase in cancer rates are not unconnected.
Dr. Ahmad Hardan, who served as a special scientific adviser to the World Health Organization, the United Nations and the Iraqi Ministry of Health, says that there is scientific evidence linking depleted uranium to cancer and birth defects. He told Al Jazeera English, “Children with congenital anomalies are subjected to karyotyping and chromosomal studies with complete genetic back-grounding and clinical assessment. Family and obstetrical histories are taken too. These international studies have produced ample evidence to show that depleted uranium has disastrous consequences.”
Iraqi doctors say cancer cases increased after both the 1991 war and the 2003 invasion.
Abdulhaq Al-Ani, author of “Uranium in Iraq” told Al Jazeera English that the incubation period for depleted uranium is five to six years, which is consistent with the spike in cancer rates in 1996-1997 and 2008-2009.
There are also similar patterns of birth defects among Iraqi and Afghan infants who were also born in areas that were subjected to depleted uranium bombardment.
Dr. Daud Miraki, director of the Afghan Depleted Uranium and Recovery Fund, told Al Jazeera English he found evidence of the effect of depleted uranium in infants in eastern and southeastern Afghanistan. “Many children are born with no eyes, no limbs, or tumors protruding from their mouths and eyes,” said Dr. Miraki.
It’s not just Iraqis and Afghans. Babies born to American soldiers deployed in Iraq during the 1991 war are also showing similar defects. In 2000, Iraqi biologist Huda saleh Mahadi pointed out that the hands of deformed American infants were directly linked to their shoulders, a deformity seen in Iraqi infants.
Many U.S. soldiers are now referring to Gulf War Syndrome #2 and alleging they have developed cancer because of exposure to depleted uranium in Iraq.
But soldiers can end their exposure to depleted uranium when their service in Iraq ends. Iraqi civilians have nowhere else to go. The water, soil and air in large areas of Iraq, including Baghdad, are contaminated with depleted uranium that has a radioactive half-life of 4.5 billion years.
Dr. Doug Rokke, former director of the U.S. Army’s Depleted Uranium Project during the first Gulf War, was in charge of a project of decontaminating American tanks. He told Al Jazeera English that “it took the U.S. Department of Defense in a multi-million dollar facility with trained physicists and engineers, three years to decontaminate the 24 tanks that I sent back to the U.S.”
And he added, “What can the average Iraqi do with thousands and thousands of trash and destroyed vehicles spread across the desert and other areas?”
According to Al Jazeera, the Pentagon used more than 300 tons of depleted uranium in 1991. In 2003, the United States used more than 1,000 tons.
What you don’t know about your government could kill you… Department of Defense documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act expose the horrific underworld of the disposable army mentality and the government funded experimentation upon US citizens conducted without their knowledge or consent.
These people were taking much needed aid to those in Gaza.
They have been beaten tear gassed and the Egyptian Police now have the nerve to arrest 7 of them yet again and deport George.
They have been treated horridly by Egypt from the time they got there.
Of course the rest of the world sits complacently by letting the people in Gaza starve because of the blockade. Just recently the UN called on Israel to open the borders to allow food and building materials into Gaza. Israel has done nothing to date. They absolutely defy all Internationals Laws. Gaza is a human rights disaster.
Even the Gaza Freedom Marchers were treated horridly in Egypt as well.
The incident began after George Galloway and his colleague Ron McKay arrived at the Rafah crossing from Gaza to Egypt.
As soon as they emerged onto Egyptian soil both Men were forcibly pushed into a van, refused exit and told that they were leaving the country. They were then driven off in a police convoy.
Egyptian Authorities also banned George from ever entering Egypt again.
He is considered a National Security Risk.
So when did it become a National Security Risk to take desperstly needed Medical Aid to people?
Maybe the risk is not the Medical Aid entering the country maybe Egypt is in fear of loosing the 2 billion dollars in weapons aid from the US.
Maybe Egypt fears retaliation from Israel. After all the US and Israel are tied at the hip.
What ever the real reason taking Medical Aid to Gaza ia not a Security Risk. What a foolish statement on part of
Egyptian Authorities.
How sad they would do everything they did, to prevent the Aid from getting to Gazans.
If anything Egypt is at fault as is the US and Israel. It is absolutely shameful this horror is allowed to continue.
The people of Gaza are prisoners in their own country.
Extremely badly abused prisoners.
2 Interviews with George Galloway at Heathrow Airport in London
Convoy leaving GazaFri 8 Jan 2010 @1200GMT
The Egyptian authorities have said they will arrest 7 members of the convoy when they leave Gaza. Rafah crossing There have also been more Air Strikes on Gaza as well. Why do I have this sick feeling Israel is going to do a repeat bombardment like last Decembers attacks on Gaza.
More on Galloway’s Deportation 8 Jan 2010 @1100GMT
Bombing defenseless people is a crime. Palestinians have no way to defend themselves.
One of the people killed was a 14-year-old-boy (Photo by AP)
This what those in Gaza must endure.
I do not believe the rocket story fed to the public by Israel. They have used that same story for years even during the Lebanon Bombings. They just keep repeating the same old worn out lines.
Israel is the elephant in the room stepping on the little mouse.
Nothing like Bombing a concentration camp, where people are trapped.
That is what Gaza is a Concentration Camp.It is a prison nothing less..
“It was to protect him from the Egyptian people’s anger,” the officer said on condition of anonymity because he was allowed to speak to the media. “He was told that he is a troublemaker and his behavior is undermining Egyptian security.”
Well I hardly thing the Egyptian people would be out to get Galloway. Seems they were not to impressed with Israel either when they Attacked Gaza. I imagine they also think the blockade on Gaza is horrific. They of course would also meet Riot police if they protest as well. They too are beaten and arrested by Security Forces.
Since the beginning of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip on December 27, and Egyptian street has been boiling with angry calls to open up the Gaza border and demanding the government to put more pressure to reach an immediate ceasefire.
Seems to me the people who are the threat to all are the Egyptian Security Forces and Riot police.
“Protect George from the people what a crock of malarkey”.
The people of Egypt might Elect him as their new leader that’s why he was deported? It’s not so far fetched there people from a lot of countries that said if he was running for election in their country they would vote for George as opposed to the leaders they have now.
I heard that so many times to day I lost count.
Well if he ran in my country I would most certainly vote for him as well.
He cares about people. That’s what a Great Leader does.
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Following the extensive Israeli attacks across Gaza Strip, Israeli air force launched a number of air raids against the food tunnels with Egypt. Medical sources reported that 4 civilians killed and a number injured in the heavy bombardment.
Israeli F16 were used in the attack and easily heard directly within the targeted the area. Due to the raids number of 10 Palestinian civilians is missing at the moment, while 4 have been confirmed as dead.
There are more than 1500 tunnels between Gaza and Egypt that are mainly used for smuggling food as Israelis impose a harsh siege. The tunnels considered to be the key lifeline as the main crossings blocked via Israeli occupation.
Less than 2 hours ago a massive explosion took place few moments ago western Gaza City, in Tal Al Hawa neighborhood. Eyewitness reported that Israeli F16s launched an Arial attack midnight. The attack was followed by a series of air raids.
Palestine Telegraph reported that a number of air raids took place northern Gaza Strip while no new reported about the attacks yet. The attacks also targeted the middle areas of Gaza Strip.
Medical sources reported no casualties till this moment while ambulances hurried to the targeted area.
A number of F16 can be heard at the moment and a case of panic and fear spread amongst the civilians who were in a sleep.
The attacks came amid a very densely populated area where around 150 thousands Palestinians live.
Israeli army launched a number of attacks last week killing a number of Palestinians.
The leaflets bore telephone numbers and email addressed, urging people to inform the Israeli army of any activities by the Palestinians in the border area.
They also warned residents to stay at least 300 meters away from the border with Israel.
If Gaza was not under the blockade there would be no need for the tunnels. The tunnels are needed to get food to those in Gaza.
It is Israel who is at fault. They are the cause of all the violence.
Remove the blockades, remove checkpoints, open the boarders and treat Palestinians with human compassion, then and only then will there be any progress.
Israel creates the problems. They have always created the problems only they are too blind to see it.
If this were done to those in Israel they would dig tunnels too, just like the Jews did in Warsaw. There is really little difference.
The Jews in Warsaw were considered brave and heroes. Those in
Gaza doing exactly the same thing for the same reasons are considered terrorists. Israel needs to be sanctioned. There needs to be an arms embargo agains Israel as well.
All Aid to Israel should be cut off until they stop torturing, imprisoning and starving Palestinians.
Do to them exactly, what they are doing to Palestinians.
It’s time for the International Community to wake up.
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Reading “The Collection of UN Resolutions on the Question of Palestine 1948-1982″ can get you arrested by Israel
This is Gaza. From July 13, 2009. Nothing has changed since then. What you see here cannot be rebuilt as construction material is not getting into Gaza. Israel will not let it across the borders.
This is what Israel doesn’t want the outside world to see. This is why they keep out reporters and thsoe from the Gaza Freedom March. That is why those in the Viva Palestina Convoy can only stay for 48 hours.
Heaven forbid they see the destruction and devastation caused by Israel.
Believe me when I say Egypt is enabeling Israel. Just as the US is.
Just as much as the West and the EU. Anyone who remains silent on this is enabling Israel. Shame on them all who remain silent. There are no excuses. No reasons.
Israeli occupation forces prevented young Christians from the Gaza Strip from traveling to the West Bank to celebrate Christmas and the New Year. These restrictions were imposed in the context of Israel’s illegal closure of the Gaza Strip, which has now been in place for 928 consecutive days. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns this form of collective punishment, and calls upon the international community to exert pressure on Israeli occupation authorities to cancel their decision and immediately allow all Christians to move freely, to grant access to the Church of the Nativity and Church of the Resurrection, and to respect the right to freedom of religion.
According to Palestinian sources, Israeli occupation authorities prevented Christians from the Gaza Strip aged 16-35 from traveling from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank to participate in the celebration of Christmas and the New Year in Bethlehem and Jerusalem. They refused to consider any application for permits for those aged between 16 and 35 from both sexes for no apparent reason. This policy contradicts Israeli claims that it allowed all Gazan Christians to participate in the celebrations of Christmas in the West Bank.
According to investigations conducted by PCHR, at least 550 Christians applied for permits to travel to the West Bank, and Israeli occupation authorities refused to accept applications from 450 others aged 16-35. Israeli occupation forces allowed only 450 applicants, 70% of whom were children, to travel to the West Bank. PCHR note that most rejected applications were of parents, which in effect deprived children who obtained permits of traveling as their parents were not able to accompany them.
Such measures have been in place for the last number of years. Last year, the Palestinian Civil Affairs Commission submitted at least 1,000 applications to obtain permits for Christians to travel from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank, but Israeli occupation authorities approved only 271, mostly of children and the eldery. Those who were allowed to travel were subjected to humiliating prolonged checking at Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing before being allowed to pass through the crossing.
PCHR is deeply concerned over the policy of collective punishment adopted by Israeli occupation authorities, which constitutes a serious violation of international human rights and humanitarian law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. PCHR calls upon the international community to immediately act to allow Palestinian civilians to enjoy their rights to freedom of movement and worship. PCHR stresses that everyone has the right to freedom of faith and religion, including the right to conduct religious rituals, and the right to freedom of movement and/or having access to sacred religious sites, which are fundamental rights that must be respected, protected and upheld.
