Archive for the 'Middle East' Category

The folks at Fox News, who have been telling us for almost a decade that Iraq is the central front of the War on Terror, can’t even place the country on a map.

Note, though, that Fox isn’t the only news outlet where ignorance reigns when it comes to the Middle East. Just before the 2004 election, while President Bush was busy eking out a narrow victory by riding a wave of fear and loathing of Muslims, Newsweek published a photo of Iranian tanks massing “at the border with Israel“. The photo and caption served as a non-sequitur illustration of a story about Israel spying on the United States.

And people wonder how why Americans gave a second term to the Worst President Ever.

(cross posted at This Old Brit)

We suppose that the law of averages dictates that even governments as full of gobshites as Gordon Brown’s is must eventually get something right … at sometime or other … and do the decent thing.

UK cuts Israel weapons contracts

The UK has revoked five export licences for equipment to the Israeli navy because of actions during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza this year.

The British Foreign office said the exports would now contravene its criteria for arms sales, but denied that it had imposed a partial embargo.

The UK says it does not sell weapons which might be used for internal repression or external aggression.

Israel says …

Read the rest of this report right here.

(Cross posted from across at How This Old Brit Sees It)

Stand With Free Iran ~ Iran election, originally uploaded by harrystaab.

Go to the link above … NOW. And then go on to The Boston Globe ~ and elsewhere.

Thank God for all our fantastic friends at ‘Flickr’.

And thank God for all fearless photographers and photo journalists.

And thank God for all the brave, honest, decent, ordinary Iranian people heroes and heroines.

(Cross posted from across at How This Old Brit Sees It)

The following comes direct from our inbox and was sent to us by the Jewish Voice for Peace.

Dear Richard,

We’ve asked Prof. Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Middle East History at Stanford University, to give us his impression on President Obama’s speech in Cairo today. We’re sharing his response with you.

An articulate and charismatic President of the United States named Barack Hussein Obama giving a speech at Cairo University co-sponsored by al-Azhar, the most eminent institution of Muslim learning - now that’s a new picture. Its enormous symbolic value is President Obama’s biggest asset as he implements policy on the entire range of difficult issues he mentioned. The President stated, “Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.” This is an excellent basis for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The President did not provide details on how the conflict should be resolved beyond general support for “two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security.” But the meaning of this formulation is now contested due to its empty repetition by presidents and prime ministers whose actions and inactions have undermined it. Instead President Obama emphasized U.S. rejection of “the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” saying nothing about the future of those settlements already existing and their nearly 500,000 inhabitants.

By limiting himself to an apparently pragmatic “first step,” President Obama may have made his task harder. If he does not produce concrete results very soon on this limited, albeit it absolutely necessary, measure, then the potential value of his fine words in Cairo will soon diminish.

Joel Beinin

June 4, 2009Stanford, CA

Professor Joe Beinin of Stanford University.

(Cross posted from across at How This Old Brit Sees It)

While we readily admit that today we’re taking a sarcastic sort of swipe at the pretty dumb practice of stating the sodding obvious, we ourselves wish to make it perfectly obvious that we are in no way “having a go” at Ireland’s excellent ex President, Mary Robinson.

Since the sad truth is that there are still millions of westerners convinced that bums like George Bush and Tony Blair, to mention just a pair, always told us all the truth.

Just take a look at this.

GENEVA (Reuters)

Washington’s “war on terror” after the September 11 attacks has eroded human rights worldwide, creating lingering cynicism that the United Nations must now combat, international law experts said on Monday.

Mary Robinson, who was the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights when al Qaeda militants flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001, said the United States caused harm with some of the ways it responded.

“Seven years after 9/11 it is time to take stock and repeal abusive laws and policies,” the former Irish president said, warning that harsh U.S. detentions and interrogations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba gave a dangerous signal to other countries that could easily follow suit.

While new U.S. President Barack Obama has announced he will close Guantanamo to break from the practices of his predecessor George W. Bush, Robinson said sweeping changes needed to take place to ensure Washington abandons its “war paradigm.”

“There has been severe damage and it needs to be addressed,” she told a news conference in Geneva. “We are not more secure. We are more divided, and people are more cynical about the operation of laws.”

Arthur Chaskalson, former chief justice of South Africa, said that the United States should launch an inquiry into its counter-terrorism practices, including acts of torture by individual security and intelligence agents.

Although counter-terrorism issues have faded from the front pages since the change of government in Washington, Chaskalson said such practices have shifted around the world and could keep restricting liberties if they are not confronted head-on.

“We all have less rights today than we had five or 10 years ago, and if nothing happens, we will have even less,”

So here’s to you, Mrs Robinson, we have to say that we like your style. Like it a lot, in fact. Truth be told, maybe we even love it.

Now read the rest of this Reuters’report.

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

If you belong to that bunch of barmpots who habitually condemn all American lawyers as being nothing but a load of lying, money grabbing mofos, don’t bother reading further. We’d hate to waste both your time and ours.

However, if you’re not so stupid as to all too easily swallow such silly shit, you’ll probably choose to continue.

A Report from Gaza

Strong Indications of Israeli War Crimes

By NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD

Gaza City.

We are a delegation of 8 American lawyers, members of the National Lawyers Guild in the United States, who have come here to the Gaza Strip to assess the effects of the recent attacks on the people, and to determine what, if any, violations of international law occurred and whether U.S. domestic law has been violated as a consequence. We have spent the last five days interviewing communities particularly impacted by the recent Israeli offensive, including medical personnel, humanitarian aid workers and United Nations representatives.

In particular, the delegation examined three issues: 1) targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure; 2) illegal use of weapons and 3) blocking of medical and humanitarian assistance to civilians.

Targeting of Civilians and Civilian Infrastructure

Much of the debate surrounding Israel’s aerial and ground offensive against Gaza has centered on whether or not Israel observed principles of proportionality and distinction. The debate suggests that Israel targeted Hamas i.e., its military installations, its leaders, and its militants, and in the process of its discrete military exercise it inadvertently killed Palestinian civilians. While we have found evidence that Palestinian civilians were victims of excessive force and collateral damage, we have also found troubling instances of Palestinian civilians being targets themselves.

The delegation recorded numerous accounts of Israeli soldiers shooting civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, in the head, chest, and stomach. Another common narrative described Israeli forces rounding civilians into a single location i.e., homes, schools which Israeli tanks or warplanes then shelled. Israeli forces continued to shoot at civilians fleeing the targeted structures.

If that snip has tempted/interested you enough to read the rest of this remarkably revealing report, then please be our guest.

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

That the awesome Aussie and giant among a mire of mediocre, midget, so called journalists, the great John Pilger has been permanently on our blog roll since it’s ‘birth’ - should surprise nobody.

Nor should it surprise anybody to learn that this hero, and we use that word advisedly, once again dares to tell it shout from the rooftops how it really is.

Recently, perhaps we could have spent a little less time reporting in our own amateurish (yet no less sincere and urgent) style, tirelessly trying to warn the wider world of the terrible truth re; Palestine and Israel. Had we done so, we may have caught up with Pilger’s recently published pieces somewhat sooner. But to coin a corny and well worn phrase, better late than never.

How does this sound for starters?

Holocaust denied: the lying silence of those who know

8 Jan 2009

Writing in the New Statesman, John Pilger calls on 40 years of reporting the Middle East to describe the ‘why’ of Israel’s bloody onslaught on the besieged people of Gaza - an attack that has little to do with Hamas or Israel’s right to exist.

(snip)

In fact, Hamas’s real threat is its example as the Arab world’s only democratically elected government, drawing its popularity from its resistance to the Palestinians’ oppressor and tormentor. This was demonstrated when Hamas foiled a CIA coup in 2007, an event ordained in the western media as “Hamas’s seizure of power”. Likewise, Hamas is never described as a government, let alone democratic. Neither is its proposal of a ten-year truce as a historic recognition of the “reality” of Israel and support for a two-state solution with just one condition: that the Israelis obey international law and end their illegal occupation beyond the 1967 borders. As every annual vote in the UN General Assembly demonstrates, 99 per cent of humanity concurs. On 4 January, the president of the General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto, described the Israeli attack on Gaza as a “monstrosity”.

When the monstrosity is done and the people of Gaza are even more stricken, the Dagan Plan foresees what Sharon called a “1948-style solution” – the destruction of all Palestinian leadership and authority followed by mass expulsions into smaller and smaller “cantonments” and perhaps finally into Jordan. This demolition of institutional and educational life in Gaza is designed to produce, wrote Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian exile in Britain, “a Hobbesian vision of an anarchic society: truncated, violent, powerless, destroyed, cowed…

Now, read the rest of these truths that hurt : or remain an ignorant, rabid Pro-Israel, Middle East Master Race enabler. And/or an actual criminal accomplice to ethnic cleansing, mass murder, mayhem, madness, collective punishment and suffering on a massive scale, cold blooded, completely & clearly premeditated, meticulously planned massacres and a virtual barrage of blatant bloody war crimes.

Be said pitiful personal ignorance having been brought about by accident or by design.

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

We sincerely wish to apologise in advance for not publishing this particular piece sooner.

We also offer our apologies to any of our readers who may be offended by the above banner …

… but unfortunately we couldn’t find one using stronger language.

Arwh, whatever.

There are many mere lesser mortals (with much more humanity and honesty than those supposedly above them ), to be found among ordinary, everyday, honest, hard working Beeb employees — including some of the fast becoming increasingly crappy BBC’s real journalists.

Witness this cut & pasted taster:

(snip)

Meanwhile, the BBC is facing a growing revolt from its own journalists, with sources reporting “widespread disgust” within its newsrooms. However, BBC staff have said they have been told they face the sack if they speak out on the issue.

Sources said there was “fury” at the BBC News morning meeting today about the decision, with news editors saying they had not been consulted on the move to not show the appeal.

“Feelings are running extremely high and there is widespread disgust at the BBC’s top management,” one BBC News source said. “There is widespread anger and frustration at the BBC’s refusal to allow people to speak out about it.”

Members of the NUJ at London’s Television Centre are expected to tomorrow pass a resolution condemning the BBC’s decision.

(snip)

Good on you guys & gals, sez we,

Read the rest of the report, which includes the appeal video itself, in it’s entirety.

And …

Good on the United Nations’ boss too, who’s told the BBC big-boys straight - to effin’ forget the planned interview with him.

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

War crimes?

No worries.

Palestinians?

No problem.

Why?

Because the brave IDF boys were just following orders.

And anyway ~ “Israel ubber alles!”

That’s why.

And please pay particular attention to the very last sentence of the BBC report. It’s a blatant, inexcusable outright lie.

Hamas did not “seize control” of anywhere. They were democratically elected by the Palestinian people.

Because said election results made such a monkey of the United States and their choice of puppet/poodle, the lying American & British governments (and almost all of their respective media), were/are once again only too willing and eager to create and to perpetuate, yet one more myth.

What has lately happened to the once so credible/reliable and well respected BBC, is not only sickeningly shameful, it’s downright sodding scary.

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

A long, long time ago before he was ever honoured with a knighthood, we very briefly met and spoke to Gerald Kaufman. (But that’s not really relevant to the rest of this tremendously, refreshingly, revealing report. Probably just a bit of vanity, posing and/or name dropping on our part, eh? Well, none of us are perfect are we? Except maybe mad members of certain self proclaimed, ‘master races’, eh?)

No matter.

This video of Sir Gerald Kaufman delivering an emotional, open, brave, honest and true speech in our old Brit houses of parliament, is a “must NOT miss” sight for sore eyes.

You’d better believe us.

We salute you, Sir Gerald.

[Huge hat-tip to our old fellow blogger friend “Gert” for finding this extra special, recent, unmissable video, btw.]

*(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)