The Corner Report

By Chalmers Johnson

The U.S. Empire of Bases -- at $102 billion a year already the world's costliest military enterprise -- just got a good deal more expensive. As a start, on May 27th, we learned that the State Department will build a new "embassy" in Islamabad, Pakistan, which at $736 million will be the second priciest ever constructed, only $4 million less, if cost overruns don't occur, than the Vatican-City-sized one the Bush administration put up in Baghdad. The State Department was also reportedly planning to buy the five-star Pearl Continental Hotel (complete with pool) in Peshawar, near the border with Afghanistan, to use as a consulate and living quarters for its staff there.

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Some 4,000 marines backed by Nato and Afghan support are attacking Taliban-held Helmand [Reuters]

US forces have launched a major military operation in southern Afghanistan in the first big push to drive the Taliban out of a key stronghold since Barack Obama became US president.

Four thousand marines, backed by Nato aircraft and a 650-strong Afghan force, are moving into towns in Helmand province, where the Taliban has been intensifying its challenge to the Kabul government and allied forces.

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Appointed Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, an American favorite, and former Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose term expired in January but who remains in office and has declined to call new elections

1 July 2009

By Mohamad Shmaysani

Palestinian prime minister designate, Salam Fayyad, who was appointed by former Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, appears to have his own agenda, or rather the same agenda as US General Keith Dayton and Zionist Israel.

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We send ships against Somalian pirates, why not against Israeli ones? We all know the answer. The US talks a good “human rights” game, but never delivers--especially if the human rights abuser is Israel. After all, Israel owns the US Congress and President Obama. Israel even has an Israeli citizen and former member of the Israeli Defense Forces as the Chief-of-Staff in Obama’s White House. Israel owns millions of American “Christian Zionists” and “rapture evangelicans.” When it comes to Israel, the American government is a puppet state. It does what it is told.

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

On June 30, the government of Israel committed an act of piracy when the Israeli Navy in international waters illegally boarded the “Spirit of Humanity,” kidnapped its 21-person crew from 11 countries, including former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and Nobel Laureate Mairead MaGuire, and confiscated the cargo of medical supplies, olive trees, reconstruction materials, and children’s toys that were on the way to the Mediterranean coast of Gaza. The “Spirit of Humanity,” along with the kidnapped 21 persons, is being towed to Israel as I write.

Gaza has been described as the “world’s largest concentration camp.” It is home to 1.5 million Palestinians who were driven by force of American-supplied Israeli arms out of their homes, off their farms, and out of their villages so that Israel could steal their land and make the Palestinian land available to Israeli settlers.

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At least two leaders of the coup launched in Honduras on June 28 were apparently trained at a controversial Department of Defense school based at Fort Benning, Georgia infamous for producing graduates linked to torture, death squads and other human rights abuses.

Leftist President Manuel Zelaya was kidnapped and transported to Costa Rica on Sunday morning after a growing controversy over a vote concerning term limits. Over the last week, Zelaya clashed with and eventually dismissed General Romeo Vasquez -- who is now reportedly in charge of the armed forces that abducted the Honduran president.

According to the watchdog group School of Americas Watch, Gen. Vasquez trained at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at least twice -- in 1976 and 1984 -- when it was still called School of Americas.

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By VIJAY PRASHAD

For Leften Stavrianos, 1913-2004.

No longer can it be said that Iran’s society is authoritarian. The robust display on the streets and within the Parliament, and indeed, within the circle of the éminence grises, particularly the turbaned mullahs of both the Council of Guardians and the deliciously named Expediency Discernment Council of the System, puts paid to the idea that social forces in Iran are suppressed beyond measure. The Iranian State is not fully able to absorb the energetic forces of its society, but it is, in the breech forced to accept them (most recently, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had to call for a judicial inquiry into the street killing of Neha Agha-Soltan). Ludicrous comparisons between contemporary Iran and Nazi Germany should be given their due burial (not two months ago, Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom made just this claim, one often repeated by the now haggard looking neo-conservatives).

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1 July 2009

JENIN, (PIC)-- Israeli Occupation Forces on Tuesday night blocked Palestinian firefighters from reaching cultivated lands of Anin village, Jenin district, to extinguish a fire that started at a late night hour and continued till Wednesday morning.

The village's municipal council made contacts with a number of parties to urge the IOF to allow fire brigades into the lands cultivated with olive and almond trees because the village inhabitants could not reach their lands after the Israeli separation wall had separated them from their lands.

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The unprecedented growth of the international solidarity movement is a grass-roots response to the crimes committed by Israel during its murderous 22-day assault on Gaza, and the tight siege of the territory that it maintains to this day.

By Art Young

The movement to call Israel to account for its crimes against the Palestinian people is growing, it is "invading the mainstream discourse, becoming part of the constant and unrelenting drumbeat against Israel." It could eventually threaten the existence of the Jewish state by undermining the support it receives from its strongest backer, the U. S. government.

That was the message of alarm delivered by the Executive Director of the American Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Howard Kohr, to the AIPAC Policy Conference on May 3.[i]

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1 July 2009

We are NOT the “Story”
It’s Not Just Our 21 Kidnapped Passengers

On June 30th 2009 Israeli Occupation Forces forcibly boarded the Free Gaza boat, SPIRIT OF HUMANITY, and kidnapped 21 human rights workers and journalists who were on their way to deliver much needed humanitarian and reconstruction supplies to besieged Gaza. Those abducted by Israel include Nobel peace prize laureate Mairead Maguire and former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.

Since their kidnapping, tens-of-thousands of people around the world have mobilized to demand their immediate and unconditional release. The Free Gaza Movement would like to thank everyone who has made a phone call, sent a fax or email, written a letter, or organized a demonstration on behalf of our 21 imprisoned friends.

With respect, it is not enough. We are not the story. Since its founding in 1948 the State of Israel has regularly kidnapped and tortured Palestinians, throwing them into forgotten prisons where they can languish for years. Today, over 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners without benefit of due process, some never even charged - men, women, and children – endure torture and isolation in Israeli jails, outdoor prison camps, and secret black sites. They come from all walks of life: doctors, journalists, parliamentarians, workers, resistance fighters, homemakers, students and others. They are our sisters and brothers.

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By ESAM AL-AMIN

Only weeks after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post columnist and mouthpiece of the neoconservatives, revealed the target list of the Bush administration as it set out on its post-9/11 war footing. The list included six nations: Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, and the Palestinian Authority. While the priority allotted to Afghanistan and subsequently Iraq was not in dispute, the remaining order was in flux.

Israel was given a free hand in dealing with the Palestinian Authority (PA). President George W. Bush completely shunned and isolated PA President Yasser Arafat, until he died under siege in November 2004. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was allowed to use brutal military tactics to crush the Al-Aqsa intifada, reoccupying much of the West Bank, and setting up hundreds of military checkpoints devastating Palestinian life and what remained of the PA.

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Iraq has about 115bn barrels in crude, among the world's largest deposits [AFP]

Iraq's long-awaited licensing round to develop some of its massive oil reserves has run into trouble as international oil and gas companies rejected all but one deal, demanding more money for their efforts than the government was willing to pay.

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Coup leaders in Honduras have been given three days to restore deposed president Manuel Zelaya to power, or face suspension from the Organisation of American States (OAS).

Jose Miguel Insulza, the OAS secretary-general, said on Wednesday he had delivered the "ultimatum" following a crisis meeting of the group of 35 independent states of the Americas.

Speaking from the OAS' headquarters in Washington DC, he said: "We need to show clearly that military coups will not be accepted.

"We thought we were in an era when military coups were no longer possible in this hemisphere.

'Usurpers' barbarity'

"If within 72 hours the reinstatement doesn't happen, the assembly ... will meet again to suspend Honduras."

In depth
UN General Assembly condemns Honduras coup
Allies fret over coup
Turmoil in Honduras
Honduras' president ousted

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If Obama seriously meant to change the US role in the region and the dynamics of the conflict, this was the time and place to take a stand. A single call to Netanyahu might have caused the Israelis to abort the attack. A single US destroyer or frigate from the 6th Fleet, with orders to enforce international law and protect The Spirit of Humanity in international waters, thereby safeguarding US citizens, absolutely would have done it. . . But it didn't. Obama kept quiet, as he did during the Gaza onslaught – perhaps he is writing a book called Profiles in Silence? – the US 6th Fleet did nothing, and the world has the joy of yet another successful Israeli act of piracy and breach of international law.

Spirit of Humanity (photo www.freegaza.org)

By Alan Sabrosky*

Israel's boarding and capture in international waters of The Spirit of Humanity, an unarmed boat carrying relief supplies to the suffering people of Gaza, shows that state-sponsored piracy is a real peril today. It is just one more breach of international law added to the global "rap sheet" of a rogue state that, as Netanyahu remarked a few weeks ago, is not like other countries. But Israel's capture of this boat was also Netanyahu's test of Obama's resolve – a test Obama failed, to his shame and discredit.

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Post election popular support for Hezbollah appears to have increased.

By Franklin Lamb – Dahiyeh, Lebanon

While on the surface the pro-US team here did preserve its 'majority', the Hezbollah led opposition actually won the election by nearly ten percent of the popular vote. Of approximately 1,495,000 votes cast on June 7, 815,000 voted for the National Lebanese Resistance led by Hezbollah while 680,000 voted for the March 14 government parties.

As Lebanon’s new Prime Minister, Saad Hariri labors to put together a coalition Cabinet, Hezbollah is currently stronger politically in Lebanon than it has ever been. The Party can largely determine the construction of the next Lebanese government and insist on key cabinet posts going to its allies, as it prefers keep a low profile and influence policy through quiet consultation rather than threats and muscle flexing.

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By Dr. Elias Akleh

For the last three weeks the Western media had bombarded us with what they called the Iranian stolen election. They allege that the election was fraudulent and that the masses went into the streets of Tehran protesting the results and demanding new election. The Iranian government is described as fascist and oppressive and is responsible for the chaos in the streets. The opposition is described as reformists and democratic, who are peacefully demonstrating in the streets demanding justice and freedom.

This brings memories of similar previous Western media campaigns about elections in different countries around the world such as 2004 Georgia’s election, 2002 Venezuela’s election, 1992 Mongolias’s election, 1991 Albania’s election, and 1990 Bulgarian election just to name a few, where elections were described as stolen and the winning parties as oppressive of the, usually pro-American, alleged peaceful demonstrators in the streets demanding freedom and justice.

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More than international 700 doctors have signed a petition arguing that Dr Blachar has disqualified himself from leadership of the World Medical Association, the profession’s governing ethical body, by effectively condoning torture in Israel.

By Jonathan Cook - Nazareth

Israel's watchdog body on medical ethics has failed to investigate evidence that doctors working in detention facilities are turning a blind eye to cases of torture, according to Israeli human rights groups.

The Israeli Medical Association (IMA) has ignored repeated requests to examine such evidence, the rights groups say, even though it has been presented with examples of Israeli doctors who have broken their legal and ethical duty towards Palestinians in their care.

The accusations will add fuel to a campaign backed by hundreds of doctors from around the world to force Yoram Blachar, who heads the IMA, to step down from his recent appointment as president of the World Medical Association (WMA).

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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

Mohammed Al Habbash holds the photo of his daughter Shaza and niece Isra, both killed by an Israeli drone-launched missile on Jan. 4, 2009

Israel Should Release Camera Footage of Deadly Attacks
June 30, 2009

"Drone operators can clearly see their targets on the ground and also divert their missiles after launch. Given these capabilities, Israel needs to explain why these civilian deaths took place." -- Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch and co-author of the report

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM -- Israeli attacks with guided missiles fired from aerial drones killed civilians during the recent Gaza fighting in violation of the laws of war, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The attacks with one of the most precise weapons in Israel's arsenal killed civilians who were not taking part in hostilities and were far from any fighting.

The 39-page report, "Precisely Wrong: Gaza Civilians Killed by Israeli Drone-Launched Missiles," details six incidents resulting in 29 civilian deaths, among them eight children. Human Rights Watch found that Israeli forces failed to take all feasible precautions to verify that these targets were combatants, as required by the laws of war, or that they failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians. Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups have reported a total of 42 drone attacks that killed civilians, 87 in all, during the fighting in December 2008 and January 2009.

"Drone operators can clearly see their targets on the ground and also divert their missiles after launch," said Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch and co-author of the report. "Given these capabilities, Israel needs to explain why these civilian deaths took place."

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* Israel silent on whether drones carry weapons
* Rights group says drone operators didn't exercise caution

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM, June 30 (Reuters) - Missile-firing Israeli drones unlawfully killed at least 29 Palestinian civilians during the Gaza Strip war, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.

Despite having advanced surveillance equipment, drone operators failed to exercise proper caution "as required by the laws of war" in verifying their targets were combatants, the New York-based monitoring group said, issuing a 39-page report citing six alleged strikes by remote-controlled aircraft.

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Thanks to Mazin Qumisyeh for this post and these notes:
The most outrageous news in this week's digest is the Israeli attack on the "Spirit of Humanity" boat in international waters, kidnapping human rights activists and confiscating humanitarian supplies bound for Gaza (just happened). This is simple piracy and shows that Israeli leaders have sunk to new lows on the morality scale. Please take action (see below for press release and action alert from the Free Gaza Movement). Unfortunately where I am now in the US (temporarily), the corporate media is largely silent on this event. But the internet is buzzing and each of us has a responsibility to send this information to all contacts and all media outlets we know. Reality can't be hidden."

ISRAEL ATTACKS JUSTICE BOAT; KIDNAPS HUMAN RIGHTS WORKERS; CONFISCATES MEDICINE, TOYS AND OLIVE TREES
For more information contact:
Greta Berlin (English) tel: +357 99 081 767 / friends@freegaza.org
Caoimhe Butterly (Arabic/English/Spanish): tel: +357 99 077 820 / sahara78@hotmail.co.uk

http://www.FreeGaza.org

[23 miles off the coast of Gaza, 15:30 local time] - Today Israeli Occupation Forces attacked and boarded the Free Gaza Movement boat, the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY, abducting 21 human rights workers from 11 countries, including Noble laureate Mairead Maguire and former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (see below for a complete list of passengers). The passengers and crew are being forcibly dragged toward Israel.

“This is an outrageous violation of international law against us. Our boat was not in Israeli waters, and we were on a human rights mission to the Gaza Strip,” said Cynthia McKinney, a former U.S. Congresswoman and presidential candidate. “President Obama just told Israel to let in humanitarian and reconstruction supplies, and that’s exactly what we tried to do. We're asking the international community to demand our release so we can resume our journey.”

According to an International Committee of the Red Cross report released yesterday, the Palestinians living in Gaza are “trapped in despair.” Thousands of Gazans whose homes were destroyed earlier during Israel’s December/January massacre are still without shelter despite pledges of almost $4.5 billion in aid, because Israel refuses to allow cement and other building material into the Gaza Strip. The report also notes that hospitals are struggling to meet the needs of their patients due to Israel’s disruption of medical supplies.

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GAZA - On 29 and 30 June 2009, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) is hosting Ms. Naomi Klein, a Canadian journalist and author renowned for her criticism of corporate globalization and who has more recently called for a boycott of Israel to bring about the “end of the occupation”. Ms. Klein is visiting the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

On 29 June PCHR organized a field visit for Ms. Klein to the northern Gaza Strip, Gaza City, Rafah and Khan Yunis to witness the extensive destruction caused by Israeli forces and to meet with Palestinian victims and eyewitnesses.

Ms. Klein's visit also includes meetings with Palestinian public figures, businesspeople, representatives of civil society, human rights and women's organizations. She will also meet with mothers of Palestinian prisoners currently detained in Israeli jails. Ms. Klein will also hold meetings with PCHR's board and lawyers and attend public hearings of testimonies of victims of the latest Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip. The hearings are taking place as part of the United Nations Human Rights Council fact-finding mission which is currently in Gaza.

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Australians in Melbourne protest Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip that killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, January 2009. (Takver)

By Peter Manning, The Electronic Intifada

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard have made no secret of their love for Israel.

Rudd, who leads the Labor Party, formally congratulated Israel in the Parliament on reaching 60 years of statehood in 2008. He forgot to mention the fact that Palestinians lost 78 percent of their land in 1948, millions have been refugees for the 60 years since and the rest live under Israel's military occupation.

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Obama's remark that "Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon" would be "profoundly destabilizing" and "could set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East" is profoundly dishonest. In reality, the race started in the early 1950s when Israel launched its nuclear weapons program

(Nidal El Khairy)

By David Morrison, The Electronic Intifada, 29 June 2009

At a White House press conference on 18 May 2009, US President Barack Obama expressed "deepening concern" about "the potential pursuit of a nuclear weapon by Iran." He continued:

"Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon would not only be a threat to Israel and a threat to the United States, but would be profoundly destabilizing in the international community as a whole and could set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East."

By his side was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In the room with them, there was an elephant, a large and formidably destructive elephant, which they and the assembled press pretended not to see.

I am, of course, referring to Israel's actual nuclear weapons systems, with which Netanyahu is capable of doing to numerous cities in the Middle East, including Tehran, what the US did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Iran, by contrast, has no nuclear weapons. The US President said so himself in Prague on 5 April 2009 in his major speech on nuclear disarmament. "Iran has yet to build a nuclear weapon," he admitted.

Obama's remark that "Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon" would be "profoundly destabilizing" and "could set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East" is profoundly dishonest. In reality, the race started in the early 1950s when Israel launched its nuclear weapons program.

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Uribe, left, was told by Obama to improve
Colombia's human rights record [AFP]

The US president has said that he expects Washington to eventually reach a free trade deal with Colombia.

After holding talks with Alvaro Uribe, his Colombian counterpart, Barack Obama said he had instructed Ron Kirk, the US trade representative, to work closely with Bogota on how to proceed with the free trade agreement.

"There are obvious difficulties involved in the process and there remains work to do, but I am confident that ultimately we [will] strike a deal that is good for the people of Colombia and good for the people of the United States," Obama said on Monday.

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By Claire Messud | June 29, 2009

I RECENTLY returned from a literary festival that was to have opened and closed in Jerusalem; but which, to our surprise, opened in France and closed in the United Kingdom.

Some 20-odd writers from the world over - including the popular British travel writer and comedian Michael Palin; Sweden’s preeminent thriller writer Henning Mankell; and Canada’s Giller Prize-winning M.G. Vassanji - found our events at Jerusalem’s Palestine National Theater shut down by machine-gun toting Israeli soldiers in flak jackets. On the first evening, with a Gallic flourish, Jean-Paul Ghoneim of the French Consulate opened the French Cultural Center impromptu, and hosted our event on nominally French soil: we paraded through the streets in our party clothes, bearing trays of canapés and looking, I’m sure, very threatening indeed.

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By Joharah Baker – Jerusalem

Israeli political tactics are based on a fundamental premise. Disregard the core and delve into the minutest of details. This way, the basis of any given argument is easily lost in details, a pinch here, a dash there. By the end of the hypothetical argument, you are nowhere near your original goal and now, ironically, have ten items more to negotiate than when you first started.

This is nothing new. In order to stall a final agreement and permanent solution, Israel creates facts on the ground, which then must be negotiated. While this has probably been Israel's tactic from as early on as the occupation of 1967 (or even earlier), it has become the most apparent since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. By then, of course, the bulk of Israeli settlements had been built on confiscated Palestinian land, thus solidifying the occupation in more ways than one.

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The ship carries three tons of medical aid, children's toys, and reconstruction kits..

By Free Gaza Team – Larnaca

The Free Gaza boat the 'Spirit of Humanity' departed Cyprus at 7:30am on Monday, 29 July.

Twenty-one human rights and solidarity workers representing eleven different countries were aboard. The passengers include Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire and former U.S. congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. The ship also carries three tons of medical aid, children's toys, and rehabilitation and reconstruction kits for twenty family homes.

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Israel's offensive damaged 47,000 houses, leaving many Gazans homeless [AFP]

Friday, June 26, 2009

By Sherrine Tadros, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Gaza

Exactly six months ago - minutes before Israel launched its war - I was sitting in a coffee shop in Gaza City's main square.

Six months later, here I am again. At the same table, ordering the same drink from the same waiter who is talking about the same thing – no fuel, no electricity, no goods.

The untouched rubble of Israel's onslaught is becoming part of Gaza's landscape. Nothing here has changed, except the weather.

In 23 days, Israel's military managed to damage 47,000 homes in Gaza. Tens of thousands of people are still living in tents, just as I left them months ago, because Israel continues to block the entrance of building material.

The winter has come and gone, and now the blistering heat is their new challenge.

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A Palestinian man rests near the remains of his destroyed houses in the northern Gaza Strip. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

By Katie Nguyen

"There's no future in Gaza." Aid workers say that's the view being voiced throughout the coastal enclave which is struggling to recover after an Israeli offensive early this year flattened thousands of houses and damaged dozens of schools and hospitals.

Six months after the campaign, many families are still living in tents or homes with broken windows and smashed walls. Donkey carts are being used to clear away rubble. Thousands of people have no running water and there are frequent power cuts.

Aid groups say the suffering is made worse by Israel's two-year blockade of Gaza, which continues to frustrate reconstruction efforts and strangle the economy, forcing four out of five Gazans to rely on foreign aid.

"Gaza will remain in a state of abject destitution unless the blockade is lifted," said Christopher Gunness, spokesman for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

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Jewish Telegraph Agency

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM -- American voters' support for Israel has dropped 20 percent in the past nine months, a new survey found.

Some 49 percent of American voters call themselves supporters of Israel, down from 69 percent last September, according to the poll conducted for The Israel Project.

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By Mohammed Omer Released: 26 Jun 2009

June 26, 2008 is a day I will never forget. For the events of that day irrevocably changed my life. That day I was detained, interrogated, strip searched, and tortured while attempting to return home from a European speaking tour, which culminated in independent American journalist Dahr Jamil and I sharing the Martha Gellhorn Journalism Prize in London -- an award given to journalists who expose propaganda which often masks egregious human rights abuses.

I want to address the denials from Israel and the inaccurate reporting by a few journalists in addition to requesting state of Israel to acknowledge what it did to me, prosecute the members of the Shin Bet responsible for it and put in place procedures that protect other journalists from such treatment.

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Protesters outside the presidential palace voiced
their anger at the military-led 'coup' [AFP

Zelaya was elected for a non-renewable
four-year term in 2006 [File: AFP]

Manuel Zelaya, the president of Honduras, has called for "peaceful resistance" after the country's military forced him to leave the country.

After arriving in Costa Rica on Sunday, Zelaya said that he had been the "victim of kidnapping" when Honduran soldiers raided his home earlier in the day.

The military made its move after Zelaya vowed to go ahead with a referendum on constitutional changes, which the Central American nation's supreme court and attorney-general had declared illegal.

"They came to my house in the early hours of the morning and firing guns they broke the doors with bayonets and threatened to shout me," Zelaya told Venezuela's Telesur television station.

Factbox: Honduras
Second largest country in Central America
Population of 7.2 million
Second poorest country in the region
Economy forecast to grow less than two per cent this year
Relies on money from Hondurans in the US for more than 25 per cent of its gross domestic product
Former Spanish colony gained independence in 1821

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By Franklin Lamb – Dahiyeh, Lebanon

Some Legmen for the US Israeli lobby, and even some here in Lebanon appear barely able to contain themselves, such is their felt glee over the Lebanese and Iranian election results. Some supporters of Israel see these results as two recent victories while others calculate that Israel is scratching for some good news given that polling data from Israeli surveys show that more than 50% of its population favors bombing Iran to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Another survey, late last month, found that nearly one third of Israelis polled said they would leave Israel if Iran gets a nuclear weapon which it likely will have-if it decides to-within the next 18 months according to estimates by the Israeli Defense Ministry. Meanwhile US visa applications have broken records, according to the US Embassy in Tel Aviv for three out of the past five months.

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There are many middle class people in Iran who would like a change of government.

By John Chuckman

A recent article called "Ahmadinejad Won, Get Over It" by Flynt and Hillary Leverett is not the only source with serious credentials offering reasonable, non-sensational explanations for events around Iran's presidential election.

Kaveh Afrasiabi, a scholar who once taught at Tehran University and is the author of several books, says many of the same things.

Close analysis of the election results gives absolutely no objective basis for making charges of a rigged election. Mousavi’s expected win – expected, that is, by the Western press and by Mousavi himself - never had any basis in fact.

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Has anything changed since the massacre in My Lai?

By Stuart Littlewood – London

Reports of prisoner abuse at the US prison at Bagram air force base in Afghanistan come as no surprise. They are just the latest example of the world’s biggest bully behaving badly as usual.

As if that weren't enough, I'm reading how some 83 people, mostly civilians, were killed and over 50 injured in three drone attacks within 12 hours in Lataka, South Waziristan.

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Hamas astuteness means it's no longer clear who's chasing who, argues Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah

Hamas has been signalling its willingness to help, or at least refrain from obstructing, American-led efforts aimed at resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and creating a Palestinian state on territories occupied by Israel in 1967.

Last week, the Gaza-based Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh held a "cordial meeting" with visiting former US president Jimmy Carter. Carter toured the coastal territory, inspecting the havoc wreaked by Israel during its blitz against the blockaded enclave.

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Israel's obsession with nuclear weapons reveals just how ephemeral the Zionist project is, discovers Saleh Al-Naami

Head of Israel's Mossad Meir Dagan leant on a small staff in the company of his top aides as they waited in the room that opens into the Defence Ministry office of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for permission to enter.

This scene used to repeat itself every Thursday at noon, but recently the meetings between Netanyahu and Dagan have intensified, with them now meeting as often as three times a week, the Israeli media reports. One reason for their hectic schedule is that Dagan is in charge of coordinating Israeli policy on the Iranian nuclear issue, and is required to present evaluations of Israeli responses to the Iranian nuclear programme. Yet the increase in the number of meetings also reflects how seriously Israel is taking Iran's nuclear endeavours, a fact that was expressed in Netanyahu's recent speech at Bar-Ilan University, where he said that the Iranian nuclear threat was currently the top threat facing Israel.

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Aziz Dweik

Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council Aziz Duweik, just released from an Israeli detention centre, has called for "immediate reconciliation" between Fatah and Hamas, saying the rift between the two factions was inflicting incalculable damage on the Palestinian national cause. Khaled Amayreh talked to Duweik in Ramallah

The 60-year-old professor called on both Fatah and Hamas to "immediately and unconditionally release all political prisoners. The message I am carrying is a message of unity and reconciliation," said Duweik, repeating the phrase three times.

He revealed that Hamas political leaders in Israeli jails were formulating a vision for overcoming the rift between Fatah and Hamas and restoring the "geographical unity" between the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Duweik also urged the Palestinian masses to make every possible effort to get Israel to improve the virulent prison conditions facing elected Palestinian lawmakers in solitary confinement. He described conditions in Israeli jails as "uglier than ugliness", adding that some prisoners, like Nael Barghouthi, have spent 32 years in detention, without any hope for freedom anytime soon.

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By GLEN JOHNSON

The village is small and run-down. A couple of hundred residents. Green Hamas flags hang above the dirt street and wave in the breeze.

It is brutally hot. The buildings are plastered with images. One is a photo of a small Palestinian boy from the village. His face is smiling, superimposed over a picture of the West Bank Wall and a sniper tower.

At the age of 10 he was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers.

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The international Quartet on Middle East peace has called on Israel to halt Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories and open border crossings as a first step to advance peace.

The Quartet, comprised of the European Union, Russia, the United States and the United Nations, made the appeal on Friday in the northeastern Italian city of Trieste.

The group is holding the meeting in an attempt to restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

=> Read more!

Hamas leaders like Ismail Haniyeh, seen here with former US President Jimmy Carter in Gaza, have adopted the two-state solution against the resistance party constituents' interests. (Muhammad Al-Ostaz/MaanImages)

By Haidar Eid, The Electronic Intifada, 25 June 2009

When Hamas, unexpectedly, won the 2006 parliamentary elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the message from the one-third of the Palestinian people living in those territories was clear: no more of the "peace process" facade -- with its untiring "two-state solution" slogan that never materialized, and no more of the bread crumbs offered to the new inauthentic NGOized, Osloized leadership classes. (In the years since the 1993 Oslo accords, funding NGOs -- nongovernmental organizations -- has been a major means for foreign governments to influence, co-opt and neutralize Palestinian politics. This process of "Osloization" made some Palestinian organizations more loyal to their funders than to their principles.)

Many of those who voted Hamas into power were not, in fact, supporters of the organization, but rather disgruntled Palestinians looking for change and reform after 13 years of futile, meaningless negotiations that did huge damage to the Palestinian cause and transformed it from a liberation struggle supported by millions all over the world into a dispute between "two equal parties," two countries fighting for border arrangements.

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Yasser al-Wadiya, Chairman of al-Wadiya Group in burnt out store room
Mr Wadiya says two storerooms were completely burned out

By Heather Sharp
BBC News, Gaza City

One of the building's corners stands on a precariously buckled concrete pillar.

But the small assembly line swishes on in the middle of the vast room, spitting out blue-wrapped ice lollies.

Al-Wadiya group, Gaza's largest food manufacturer, suffered extensive damage during Israel's 22-day military operation in January.

But six months later, recycled scrap metal covers a gaping hole, and the factory is making ice-cream again. Just.

Before the conflict, Chairman Yaser al-Wadiya employed 276 people to make 127 food products. Now 45 employees produce only four items.

Al-Wadiya ice-cream factory struggles to get back to business

"They damaged everything," he says, flicking through an album of pictures of charred vehicles and pointing out a heap of rubble that was once a biscuit factory.

Recovery has been "very difficult," he says, because of the Israeli blockade, which includes a virtual ban on all exports, and on imports of raw and construction materials.

Israel imposed the restrictions in an attempt to end rocket attacks on Israel and weaken Hamas, which seized control of the Strip in 2007.

Al-Wadiya group is Gaza's biggest food processing company, a family businesss established in 1954.

Israeli authorities say building materials can be used to make rockets, and to build the tunnels through which weapons and other goods are smuggled into Gaza from Egypt.

GAZA UNDER BLOCKADE: June 2009
40% unemployed
750,000 receive Unrwa food aid
No petrol or diesel since Nov 2008 (except UN)
Half required cooking gas allowed
Recently blocked items: light bulbs, candles, matches, books, musical instruments, crayons, clothing, shoes, mattresses, sheets, blankets, tea, coffee, chocolate, nuts
Virtually no building materials allowed in
Source: Unrwa and World Bank

Mr Wadiya has bought some materials and machinery sold off from other damaged businesses, and imported much of the rest at inflated prices through the tunnels.

He paid $65 each for bags of cement that cost $5 before the blockade, he says.

"We will fix whatever we can," says Mr Wadiya, the third generation in the family business. "We are not going anywhere, this is our land."

The premises were damaged in the January Israeli operation. This building is still standing, but one corner was left barely standing - as shown in this photo, taken in the immediate aftermath.

Even before the conflict, the blockade had devastated Gaza's industrial sector.

By June 2008, all but 90 of Gaza's 3,900 industrial enterprises had ground to a halt, laying off 97% of their 35,000 staff, according to the Palestinian Trade Center, although things improved slightly in the six-month Israel-Hamas truce that followed.

In an air-conditioned office in Gaza City, Amr Hamad has just returned from giving his latest international visitor, Norway's foreign minister, a tour of Gaza's ruined industrial zone.

Mr Wadiya says the company's losses amount to $22.3m. He has picture after picture of destroyed vehicles - he says the company lost 27 in total.

The Palestinian Federation of Industries, which he heads, says many of the 324 businesses damaged in the Israeli operation were those that were still functioning.

He says the Israeli troops' destruction of economic infrastructure was "very much deliberate".

Mr Wadiya, for example, has photographs of caterpillar tracks amid the ruins of the biscuit factory, which he believes the Israelis finished off with bulldozers after hitting it from the air.

The company has laid off about 400 employees since the Israeli blockade began in June 2007. "Really they are struggling," says Mr Wadiya, "they can't believe they lost their jobs".

The UN's top humanitarian official, John Holmes, has accused Israel of the "systematic levelling" of Gaza's industrial area, where the al-Wadiya factory is located.

The site is close to the border with Israel, so a desirable rocket launching zone for Palestinian militants, but Mr Wadiya says his factory was surrounded by a 3m security fence.

The factories are in Gaza's industrial area, close to the border with Israel. Israel says it only targeted industrial buildings if they were used by Hamas, or if there was a "specific military need to do so".

The Israeli military says it "did not specifically target industrial premises".

They were damaged, it says, either because they were being used by Hamas, or because "there was a specific military need to do so".

The damage was "proportional", the military says, and due to Palestinian militants' use of civilian buildings for cover.

Both Israel and Hamas deny allegations that they violated international humanitarian law during the conflict.

Mr Hamad cites the case of al-Badr flour mill, Gaza's largest, the only one that was operating at the time and the only place in the Strip that can store large volumes of grain.

Mahmoud Hamada, manager of al-Badr flour mill, amid destroyed machinery
Mr Hamada says new machinery would cost $1.5m

Pigeons now fly in and out of a mess of charred machinery, open to the sky where a huge section is missing from the top two floors.

Manager Mahmoud Hamada says it was hit from both sides by F16s and helicopters on 16 January, following telephone warnings that the building would be targeted, but he insists there were no Hamas fighters in the area.

At the time of publication, the Israel military had not responded to questions about why either the flour mill or the al-Wadiya factories were attacked.

There were no casualties from the strikes, but his 35-year-old nephew, a doctor and father of five, plunged four floors to his death while trying to clear debris after the attack.

Mr Hamada says he needs 60 tonnes of iron, 200 of cement and some $1.5m worth of machinery to rebuild. But none of it is available.

He says, politically, he is neutral and simply cares about "how to bring bread for the people of Gaza".

A large section of the top two floors of the al-Badr mill was completely destroyed

This is typical, says Amr Hamad, of much of Gaza's business community - who he says tend to be either politically unaffiliated, or supporters of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority rather than the more militant Hamas.

"These people are very keen on good relations with Israel, because for them, peace means money," he says.

He says the business community is losing influence in Gaza, as it is replaced by black marketeers who run the tunnels, on which Hamas is widely thought to levy taxes.

An Israeli government official recently admitted to the BBC that the blockade, which is currently under review, may inadvertently benefit Hamas - but pointed out that easing it might be taken as a victory for the Islamic movement.

Mr Hamad is concerned that if things do not change soon, Gaza's industrial sector will be beyond recovery, leaving isolation, aid-dependency and unemployment that he believes would be "dangerous":

"I have grown up to know other people - Jewish, Muslim and Christians. The coming generations don't mix with Western people. They will not be able to accept others unless they mix with them."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8119457.stm"

The World Bank and IMF assume that corruption
can be removed by reforms [EPA]

By Professor Mushtaq H. Khan

In common usage, corruption is often used to refer to all types of immoral or harmful behaviour by public officials.

But in the social sciences and policy discussions, corruption refers specifically to the illegal use of power by politicians or bureaucrats for their own benefit.

The important point is that this definition does not presume that corruption is damaging, though it may be.

How damaging it is has to be established by theory and evidence, and here there is considerable debate.

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By Terry Lacey – Jakarta

The Iranian authorities, shocked by the massive popular protests against alleged election malpractices have blocked web sites such as Facebook and Twitter, blocked SMS messages, restricting use of cell phones, restricting the foreign media, and clamping down hard on protesters. (AP. Jakarta Post 23.06.09). The government side will cry foreign intervention. How much will they be right?

In a global electronic world Iranian resistance and NGO networks are active, financed and involved. How much are states involved in backing them? What sort of economic or even criminal interests got involved, and why? These are reasonable questions and not a criticism of those struggling for more freedom.

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The leader of the Palestinian group Hamas's political bureau has refused to recognize Israel as Jewish state.

At the same time, Khaled Meshaal has endorsed the idea of a two-state solution, accepting the creation of a Palestinian state within 1976 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

The comments came in an address to supporters in the Syrian capital Damascus on Thursday.

"We reiterate our rejection of the so-called Jewish state of Israel and we warn of any lenience toward this principle," he said.

"The call by the Israeli leader for a Jewish state is nothing but a racist call, no different from Nazis and other calls denounced by the international community."

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Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has rejected a call by the French president to halt settlement activity in the occupied West Bank.

Nicolas Sarkozy had on Wednesday made the plea to impose a "total freeze" on Israeli settlements after holding talks with Netanyahu in Paris, but the Israeli leader signaled that the settlements would remain.

"We will not build new settlements and we will not expropriate additional lands for settlements. We know that our people are living there and, pending a final, political settlement, they have to live a normal life," Netanyahu said.

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Abraham Hirchson, Israel's former finance minister, has been jailed for five-and-a-half years on theft and fraud charges.

Hirchson was also fined $115,000 on Wednesday by the Tel Aviv District Court for stealing about $600,000 from the National Federation of Workers and its subsidiary organisation, Nili.

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The allegations against Bank Leumi surfaced more than a decade ago.

By Jonathan Cook - Nazareth

Israel's second largest bank will be forced to defend itself in court in the coming weeks over claims it is withholding tens of millions of dollars in 'lost' accounts belonging to Jews who died in the Nazi death camps.

Bank Leumi has denied it holds any such funds despite a parliamentary committee revealing in 2004 that the bank owes at least $75 million to the families of several thousand Holocaust victims.

Analysts said the bank’s role is only the tip of an iceberg in which Israeli companies and state bodies could be found to have withheld billions of dollars invested by Holocaust victims in the country -- dwarfing the high-profile reparations payouts from such European countries as Switzerland.

“All I want is justice,” said David Hillinger, 73, whose grandfather, Aaron, died in Auschwitz, a Nazi camp in Poland. Lawyers are demanding reparations of $100,000 for Bank Leumi accounts held by his father and grandfather.

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Al Ahram
The Fatah leadership continues in disarray, its bets with Israel having failed and with no credentials for restoring Palestinian unity, writes Khaled Amayreh in the West Bank

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Nobel Peace Award winner Mairead Corrigan (L) in Gaza.

By Emily Spence

Recently, an American Civil Liberties Union report pointed out, "Anti-terrorism training materials currently being used by the Department of Defense (DoD) teach its personnel that free expression in the form of public protests should be regarded as 'low level terrorism'." [1]

Despite that DoD officials removed the offensive section from their educational resources at the urging of ACLU members, the DoD stance is still troubling since a longstanding practice to designate peaceful, law abiding activists as dangerous and treasonable still exists in many government departments and agencies. Indeed the participants of the first antiwar protest against the Vietnam incursion, put together in the mid-1960's by peaceable Quakers and FOR members after having discussed Gandhi's Salt March as a model for a nonviolent demonstration, faced government operatives filming them face by face from rooftops as they moved en masse down Broadway to the UN Plaza. (My mother, a pacifist married to a World War II Conscientious Objector, and I, a child at the time of the march, both were in attendance.

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