It smells of sulphur here
September 21, 2006
Chávez attacks ‘devil’ Bush in UN speech
· Venezuelan accuses US of double standards on terror
· Bolivian president condemns war on drugs
Ed Pilkington in New York
Thursday September 21, 2006
The Guardian
Hugo Chávez holds a copy of Chomsky’s Hegemony or Survival at the UN. Photograph: Julie Jacobson/AP
Brandishing a copy of Noam Chomsky’s Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, cemented his reputation as Washington’s chief irritant yesterday with a fiery performance at the United Nations.
In a 15-minute address to the annual gathering of international leaders in New York, President Chávez said he could still “smell sulphur” left behind by the “devil”, George Bush, who had addressed the chamber 24 hours before.
His speech, which veered between a rousing appeal for a better world and a florid denunciation of the US, included the claim that President Bush thought he was in a western where people shot from the hip: “This is imperialist, fascist, assassin, genocidal, the empire.”
Mr Chávez complained that his personal doctor and head of security had been prevented from disembarking at New York airport by the American authorities. And then he coined the phrase that will now forever be etched into UN history as one of the more colourful criticisms levelled at the US president from his own turf: “This is another abuse and another abuse of power on the part of the devil. It smells of sulphur here, but God is with us and I embrace you all.”
He went on to accuse the US of double standards on terrorism. “The US has already planned, financed and set in motion a coup in Venezuela, and it continues to support coup attempts in Venezuela and elsewhere … I accuse the American government of protecting terrorists and of having a completely cynical discourse.”
Coming just 12 hours after Washington’s other nemesis, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, had stood at the same spot and accused the US of hegemony and hypocrisy, Mr Chávez’s colourful speech left US administration officials exasperated. John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN, said afterwards that it was a “comic strip approach to international affairs” and “insulting”.
Mr Chávez could openly say what he wanted in Central Park, he added: “Too bad President Chávez doesn’t extend the same freedom of speech and the press to the people of Venezuela. That’s my comment on his speech.”
Delegates and leaders from around the world streamed back into the chamber to hear Mr Chávez, and when he stepped down the vigorous applause lasted so long that it had to be curtailed by the chair.
A fellow South American leader, Evo Morales of Bolivia, also livened up proceedings at the assembly. President Morales held up a coca leaf from the platform to make a point about his opposition to the US-driven war on drugs in his country.
The small, pale green leaf – illegal in the US – joins a growing list of artefacts displayed from the general assembly lectern that includes Nikita Khrushchev’s shoe and Yasser Arafat’s trademark gun and an olive branch.
Mr Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia, said: “We don’t need blackmail and threats” and “There’s another historical injustice – criminalising coca, the coca leaf.”
The Bush administration has accused the Bolivian government of failing to curb the country’s growing cocaine industry.
Special Forces – They Only Target Children
September 21, 2006
Gaza: The children killed in a war the world doesn’t want to know about
09.19.2006 | The Independent
By Donald Macintyre In Rafah
Nayef Abu Snaima says his 14-year-old cousin Jihad had been sitting on the edge of an olive grove talking animatedly to him about what he would do when he grew up when he was killed instantly by an Israeli shell.
He says he clearly saw a bright flash next to the control tower of the disused Gaza international airport, occupied by Israeli forces after Cpl Gilad Shalit was seized by militants on 25 June. “I went two or three steps and the missile landed,” said Nayef, 24. “I thought I was dying. I shouted ‘La Ilaha Ila Allah’ [There is no God but Allah].”
When Jihad’s older brother Kassem, 20, arrived at the scene: “My brother was already dead. There was shrapnel in his head. Nayef was shouting ‘Allah, Allah’. The missile landed about four metres from where Jihad had been standing. There was shrapnel in his body as well, his legs, everything. He had been bleeding a lot everywhere.”
Jihad Abu Snaima was just the most recent of more than 37 children and teenagers under 18 killed [out of a total death toll, including militants, of 228] in the operations mounted by the Israeli military in Gaza since 25 June, according to figures from the Palestinian Centre of Human Rights (PCHR).
Of these, the PCHR classifies 151 as “civilian”, although beside non-combatants and bystanders, that total also includes militants or faction members not involved in operations against Israel at the time for example those deliberately targeted in Israeli air strikes because of their involvement in previous attacks. The Israel Defence Forces have always maintained that being under 18 does not automatically exclude a person from taking part in action against them.
The conflict in Gaza has attracted relatively little international attention, not least because for five weeks it was overshadowed by that in Lebanon. But the death toll has continued to rise.
Nayef, who was speaking from his hospital bed, has multiple shrapnel-inflicted cuts on his plaster-covered arms and legs. But he was lucky compared with Jihad. A school caretaker with a five-year-old daughter, Nayef insists the evening of Jihad’s death was just a family get-together. It is normal, he said, in this Bedouin community in the Al Shouka hamlet outside the southernmost Gaza town of Rafah to socialise at each other’s homes on a summer evening, and that he and Jihad were especially close.
“I was always with him. He was an innocent person, kind. He was talking to me about how he was going to inherit part of his father’s land and farm it and how he was going to get married and stay here.” Nayef added tearfully: “He was a boy who had hopes. He wanted to live his life.” He added: “What is my daughter going to think? She is going to grow up hating the Israelis.”
The family say there was no shelling in the area at the time either before or after the incident; and that they therefore presume Jihad and Nayef were targeted by a tank crew. They insist there was no activity by militants against Israeli positions on the day of the attack. “This is an open area,” said Nayef. “The resistance would not go there because they would be seen.”
By contrast, the Israel Defence Forces said, without specifying Al Shouka, that on 10 September it had identified and hit “two men” moving near its forces in southern Gaza crouching on the ground, and ” apparently planting explosives”. Nayef is adamant that on the night in question he and Jihad were merely pausing on an evening stroll to his own house.
The PCHR, which seeks to monitor every violent Palestinian death, does not only focus on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It has, for example, repeatedly condemned the killing and injuring of growing numbers of civilians, also including children, during mounting inter-Palestinian disputes in Gaza; shootings by Palestinian security forces themselves; attacks on Christian churches by Muslims protesting against the Pope; the injury of civilians, including children, by Palestinian-fired Qassam rockets which fall short of targets in Israel; and the kidnapping last month of two Fox TV employees which has deterred journalists from visiting Gaza.
But Hamdi Shaqqura of PCHR’s Gaza office which accuses Israel of using repeated closures and destruction of the power supply to operate a policy of “collective punishment” in breach of international law in Gaza, argues that the excuse of “collateral damage” cannot justify the ” very high” death toll in the operations since 15 June. He adds: ” Israel’s forces have been acting excessively and disproportionately, and this explains the high figures for the number of innocent civilians killed by them.”
At the other, northern end of Gaza, close to the al-Nada apartment blocks between Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, Aref Abu Qaida, 16, was killed by an artillery shell on 1 August. Sharif Harafin, 15, said: “We had been playing football and we had just finished. I was carrying the ball. I was going to my home, and [Aref] was going to his home. I heard a loud boom and then I saw him cut to pieces.”
As his family displayed Aref’s shredded red baseball cap, Sharif said he saw his friend’s severed head on the ground, adding: “His chest was torn out by the rocket. People were collecting parts of his body. I was crying a lot.”
The IDF says that on 1 August it had fired and hit “a number of Palestinians” in “the area of Beit Lahiya” who had ” approached a number of rocket launchers placed in the area”. Both PCHR and local residents, including Mohammed Abu Qaida, 39, the dead boy’s uncle, say that, while three other civilians were wounded, the only other death in this incident was that of Mervat Sharekh, 24, a woman who was visiting relatives from Rafah and who died in hospital an hour later.
Although the area had been shelled before, and some residents had fled in response to Israeli warnings the previous week, Mr Abu Qaida said the area had been quiet on the day except that Qassam rockets had been fired about four hours earlier from northern settlements more than a kilometre away from the flats.
The IDF said last night that, of those killed in Gaza, it had the ” positive identities of over 220 gunmen killed in fighting, and can confirm their affiliation with terror organisations”. The 220 figure said to be “unbelievable” by Mr Shaqqura coupled with another 20 dead which the military acknowledges as genuine civilians, is all the more strikingly at variance with PCHR figures since it produces a total exceeding the centre’s own records.
Mr Shaqqura said that, at the absolute minimum, the IDF figures do not take into account the casualties under 18 which PCHR estimates at 44 and from which he said every effort is made to exclude the “rare” teenagers with militant connections or eight women killed since 25 June. ” We do not believe their figures. We do not believe their investigations.”
The IDF said: “Since the abduction of Cpl Gilad Shalit by the Hamas and PRC terror organisations, the IDF has been operating in the Gaza Strip against terrorist infrastructure and in order to secure the release of Cpl Shalit. In the course of the operations, the IDF engaged in intense fighting with Palestinian gunmen, who chose heavily populated areas as their battlegrounds. The IDF takes every measure to prevent harm to civilians, often at a risk to its soldiers.”
The forgotten war in the Middle East
* 25 June: Palestinian gunmen from the Hamas-linked Izzedine al-Qassam brigades cross from Gaza into Israel and launch a raid on an Israeli military patrol. Two Israeli soldiers are killed, four wounded and one, Cpl Gilad Shalit, is captured and taken back into Gaza.
* 28 June: Israel masses troops before launching a reoccupation of the Gaza Strip under the codename Operation Summer Rains. Civilian casualties mount as Israeli forces search the Khan Younis refugee camp for Cpl Shalit.
* 12 July: Mimicking the tactics of Palestinian militants, Hizbollah launches mortars and rockets into northern Israel from southern Lebanon to divert attention from a cross-border raid that ambushes an Israeli military patrol, killing three soldiers and capturing two others. The raid threatens to draw the whole Middle East into conflict.
* 13 July: International attention is diverted from Gaza as Israel launches a full military invasion of southern Lebanon in response to Hizbollah’s attack. The mounting civilian death toll across Gaza pales in comparison to Lebanon as Israeli jets pummel infrastructure.
* 24 July: As world powers frantically search for a UN-backed ceasefire in Lebanon, Israel increases its bombardment of the Gaza Strip in an attempt to force Palestinian militants to release Cpl Shalit. Under the codename Operation Samson’s Pillars, Israeli jets pound Gaza’s roads and buildings, including the power station.
* 14 August: UN approves a ceasefire for Lebanon after four weeks of fighting which has left approximately 1,500 Lebanese and 150 Israelis dead. International community continues to ignore the conflict in Gaza over fears that Lebanon could slip back into warfare unless a UN peacekeeping force arrives in the region.
* Mid-August-present: Israel continues to carry out air strikes and raids in Gaza. At least 33 civilians have been killed since the beginning of August, 10 of whom were under the age of 18.
Names of children under the age of 18 killed during the operations mounted by the Israeli military in Gaza since 25 June, according to the Palestinian Centre of Human Rights
Bara Nasser Habib, 3 (hit by shrapnel to the head and body, Gaza City, 26 July)
Shahed Saleh Al-Sheikh Eid, 3 days old (bled to death after airstrike, Al-Shouka, 4 August)
Rajaa Salam Abu Shaban, 3 (died of fractured skull in air raid, Gaza City, 9 August)
Jihad Selmi Abu Snaima, 14 (killed by a shell, Al-Shoukha, 10 september)
Khaled Nidal Wahba, 15 months (died of wounds from an airstrike, 10 July)
Rawan Farid Hajjaj, 6 (killed with his mother and sister in an airstrike, Gaza City, 8 July)
Anwar Ismail Abdul Ghani Atallah, 12 (shot in the head, Erez, 5 July)
Shadi Yousef Omar 16 (shot in the chest by IDF, Beit Lahya, 7 July)
Mahfouth Farid Nuseir, 16 (killed by missile while playing football, Beit Hanoun, 11 July)
Ahmad Ghalib Abu Amsha, 16, (killed by missile while playing football, Beit Hanoun, 11 July)
Ahmad Fathi Shabat, 16 (killed by missile while playing football, Beit Hanoun, 11 July)
Walid Mahmoud El-Zeinati, 12 (died of shrapnel wounds, Gaza City, 11 July)
Basma Salmeya, 16 (killed in Israeli airstrike, 12 July, Jabalia)
Somaya Salmeya, 17 (killed in Israeli airstrike, 12 July, Jabalia)
Aya Salmeya, 9 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)
Yehya Salmeya, 10 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)
Nasr Salmeya, 7 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)
Huda Salmeya, 13 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)
Eman Salmeya, 12 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)
Raji Omar Jaber Daifallah, 16 (died of shrapnel wounds from missile, Gaza City, 13 July)
Ali Kamel Al-Najjar, 16 (killed by Israeli tank shell, Al-Maghazi refugee camp, 19 July)
Ahmed Ali Al-Na’ami, 16 (killed by Israeli tank shell, Al-Maghazi refugee camp, 19 July)
Ahmed Rawhi Abu Abdu, 14 (killed by drone missile, Al Nusairat refugee camp, 19 July)
Mohammed ‘awad Muhra, 14 (killed by Israeli bullet to the chest, Al-Maghazi refugee camp, 20 July)
Fadwa Faisal Al-’arrouqi, 13 (died from shrapnel wounds, Gaza City, 20 July)
Saleh Ibrahim Nasser, 14 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 24 July)
Khitam Mohammed Rebhi Tayeh, 11 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 24 July)
Ashraf ‘abdullah ‘awad Abu Zaher, 14 (shot in the back, Khan Younis, 25 July)
Nahid Mohammed Fawzi Al-Shanbari, 16 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 31 July)
‘aaref Ahmed Abu Qaida, 14 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 1 August)
Anis Salem Abu Awad, 12 (killed by airstike, Al-Shouka, 2 August)
Ammar Rajaa Al-Natour, 17 (killed by drone missile, Al Shouka, 5 August)
Kifah Rajaa Al-Natour, 15 (killed by drone missile, Al Shouka, 5 August)
Ibrahim Suleiman Al-Rumailat, 13 (killed by drone missile, Al Shouka, 5 August)
Ahmed Yousef ‘abed ‘aashour, 13 (killed by missile fire, Beit Hanoun, 14 August)
Mohammed ‘abdullah Al-Ziq, 14 (killed by drone missile, Gaza City, 29 August)
Nidal ‘abdul ‘aziz Al-Dahdouh, 14 (killed by rifle fire, Gaza City, 30 August)
Jihad Selmi Abu Snaima, 14 (killed by artillery fire, Rafah, 10 September)
Iraqis Enjoy the Fruits of Their Liberation
September 21, 2006
Torture in Iraq ‘worse than under Saddam’
A few weeks back, the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq’s Vichy government was being interviewed on CNN where he thanked the US for “liberating” the Iraqi people. Perhaps he meant the liberty to partake in the torture and abuse that in the past was for the occupiers benefit only. The collaborationist Interior Ministry’s death squads have long been terrorizing Iraqis and they fear that the exit of the occupiers might cost them this privilege. The Guardian reports:
Torture in Iraq is worse now than it was under the regime of Saddam Hussein and “is totally out of hand”, according to a United Nations investigator.”The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein,” said Manfred Nowak, a UN special investigator on torture, at a press conference in Geneva.
He said government forces, private militia and terrorist groups were all involved.
“You have terrorist groups, you have the military, you have police, you have these militias. There are so many people who are actually abducted, seriously tortured and finally killed,” said Mr Nowak, an Austrian law professor.
“It’s not just torture by the government. There are much more brutal methods of torture you’ll find by private militias.”
Mr Nowak also said that bodies were being discovered with very heavy and very serious torture marks.
He said a mission to Iraq to investigate torture was too dangerous, but he had gathered information from interviews with people in Amman, Jordan, and other sources.
Mr Nowak is in Geneva to brief the UN Human Rights council – a body that addresses human rights violations – on the situation of the United States detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.
He is one of five UN human rights investigators who in February called for the closure of the camp on the grounds it was a “torture camp”. The calls were rejected by the US.
Mr Nowak’s comments come a day after the human rights office of the UN assistance mission for Iraq (Unami) raised concerns about the violence gripping the country. It said that 6,599 civilians had died in July and August.
Unami cited increasing evidence of violent torture, a growth in the numbers of death squads, and a rise in the honour killings of women and girls.
“Corpses appear regularly in and around Baghdad and other areas. Most bear signs of torture and appear to be victims of extrajudicial executions,” said the report.
Iraqis Enjoy the Fruits of Their Liberation
September 21, 2006
UAE Royals Face Slavery Lawsuit
September 15, 2006
It has been long in coming but finally someone has decided to hold the UAE royals to account. Aljazeera reports:
A lawsuit accusing rulers of the United Arab Emirates of enslaving and forcing tens of thousands of young boys to work under brutal conditions as camel jockeys over the past three decades has been filed in the US.
The civil lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, was filed last week by unnamed parents of boys as young as two years who were allegedly abducted, enslaved and sold to serve as camel jockeys.
The lawsuit claims that the boys were taken largely from Bangladesh, Pakistan and elsewhere, held at desert camps and forced to work in the UAE and other Gulf nations.
“The defendants robbed parents of their children and boys of their childhoods, their futures and sometimes their lives, for the craven purposes of entertainment and financial gain,” the lawsuit alleged.
It claims some boys were sexually abused, given limited food and sleep, and injected with hormones to prevent their growth.
Royals targeted
The lawsuit said Sheikh Muhammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, and Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the deputy ruler, were the most active perpetrators of the crimes.
“Sheikh Muhammad and Sheikh Hamdan treated their camels better than they treated their slave boys for the simple reason that the camels were far more valuable,” the lawsuit said.
It was filed in Miami because the members of the royal family maintain hundreds of horses at farms in Ocala in Florida, and because there is no venue outside the US in which the plaintiffs can possibly get redress for being trafficked internationally and enslaved.
John Andres Thornton, the Miami Beach-based co-counsel for the children, said the ruler of Dubai had been served with the lawsuit on Monday while buying horses in Kentucky.
Camel racing is a popular Arab sport, and using children as camel jockeys was banned by the UAE in 1993, but young boys could still be seen riding in televised races for years afterwards and up to 30,000 children are believed to have been enslaved for such purposes.
The problem was highlighted in the US state department’s June 2005 Trafficking in Persons Report.
Calls to the UAE embassy in Washington were not answered,
with no possibility to leave a message after hours.
Patti Smith: Breaking the Silence
September 14, 2006
Due to the massive Zionist influence over the entertainment industry, otherwise politically correct celebrities have raised nary a bleat over the years to protest Israels brutal treatment of the Palestinians or its recent murderous invasion of Lebanon. (There have been notable exceptions such as Vanessa Redgrave, Daniel Day-Lewis and the rock band Ministry) Patti Smith has broken this silence with what The Independent has described as “an emotional indictment of American and Israeli foreign policy” in two new protest songs.
The American singer takes the Israeli bombing of Lebanese civilians and the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay and as her subjects in the songs “Qana” and “Without Chains”.
She condemned an Israeli air strike on the Lebanese village of Qana in July as “an atrocity” for which America was partly to blame. At least 56 people were killed, including 32 children.
Smith said she was further ashamed of America for its detention of young men in Guantanamo Bay. “I wrote both these songs directly in response to events that I felt outraged about,” she said. “These are injustices against children and the young men and women who are being incarcerated. I’m an American, I pay taxes in my name and they are giving millions and millions of dollars to a country such as Israel and cluster bombs and defence technology and those bombs were dropped on common citizens in Qana. It’s terrible. It’s a human rights violation.”
BBC Still Waging Israel’s Propaganda War IV
September 14, 2006
For the duration of Israel´s recent invasion of Lebanon on the BBC’s website we were treated daily to images of Israeli soldiers in action and headline’s reporting the most inconsequential developments on the Israeli side. However, BBC seems to have finally realized that such blatant propaganda for Israel may lose it its handful of admirer’s among US liberals (who of course can’t help finding it less execrable so long as their yardstick remains Fox News). Today, finally the Lebanese are on BBC’s headline… except, to make the dramatic announcement: “Hizbullah accused of war crimes”. Further down, however, you’ll notice a text link which acknowledges that Israel has already been accused of war crimes, except that BBC choses to put the words between quotation marks, lest its Israeli patrons take offence.
French Poodle Vying for Blair’s Kennel
September 14, 2006
If you thought Blair was a disgrace, wait till you meet his new competitor for American affection. Nikolas Sarkozy, the French Interior Minister and future Premiereship hopeful is on a visit on the United States, and according to this NYT report he also seems to have a keen sense of where the power lies:
He told Jewish leaders of his love of Israel, American business leaders of his love of free enterprise, and Francophiles of his love of America. He confessed that he loves to read Hemingway and watch movies like “Miami Vice.”…
In a closed-door meeting with more than a dozen Jewish leaders on Monday, he said France should not have waited as long as it did to commit troops to Lebanon and went further than Mr. Chirac in criticizing Hezbollah, calling it a “terrorist” organization, according to one participant, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose what took place at the meeting.
Speaking on Turkey’s bid to join the EU, he added:
In the meeting with Jewish leaders, for example, he said Europe had a problem with its own Muslim population and asked, “So why is America advocating Turkish membership in the European Union?” according to one participant. He added, “We don’t have a model of handling Muslims in Europe, so why should we bring in the Turks?”
He said the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, had told him that one day Europe would be Muslim, and added that it would be “terrible” if such a thing happened with American help, the participant said.
Labour Friends of Israel and the Politics of Anti-Semitism
September 13, 2006
More than a year back I had written on how the Labour Friends of Israel tries to delegitimize criticism of Israel using the spectre of “anti-Semitism”. Predictably enough, as criticism of Israel has mounted in the aftermath of its brutal assault on Lebanon, members of LFI have issued a Report under the guise of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry Into Antisemitism which concludes that anti-Semitism is on the rise in Britain. Norman Finkelstein, who in his book Beyond Chutzpah had argued that every time Israel faces a PR disaster, its apologists in the west resort to cries of a rising “New Antisemitism” to deflect attention off its actions, deconstructs this latest farce. What he doesn´t mention however is that the conductors of the inquiry as well as witnesses mostly come from the Labour Friends of Israel.
BBC’s Nadir
September 13, 2006
While BBC has nothing much left in the way of credibility, this time it may very well have hit bottom. As the prime organ of British state propaganda, it has thrown all caution to the wind in order to appease its American overlords. According to The Guardian.
The BBC broadcast a controversial docu-drama, The Path to 9/11, this week without realising that it had been made by a member of the US religious right.
