http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com :: Blog from Middle East :: E :: en-us 01-aug-2010 04:16 ECT 01-aug-2010 04:16 ECT http://rss.blogfrommiddleeast.com Weblog Editor 2.0 info@blogfrommiddleeast.com info@blogfrommiddleeast.com http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68471 July 31, 2010 - Iraq is seeking to extend the powers of the state over the media, with the announcement earlier this month of the creation of a special court to try journalists. On July 11, the Supreme Judicial Court stated that the new institution would focus solely on charges such as defamation, libel and violations of press freedom. Little further detail has been made available, but a spokesman said the new court was in line with the Judicial Organisation Law which allows for the Supreme Judicial Court to "establish special courts in accordance with the public interest." However, critics have pointed out that its establishment could violate Iraq's own constitution, article 95 of which states that "Special or exceptional courts may not be established." The announcement of the new court has led to protests from journalists.... 01-aug-2010 04:16 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68471 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68470 July 31, 2010 - Father Atallah Hanna, the Greek orthodox patriarchate of occupied Jerusalem, said the Israeli municipal council in the holy city demolished and obliterated Christian ancient monuments dating from the Byzantine era in Ein Kerem area. "We strongly condemn this heinous crime committed against the Christian antiquities in Ein Kerem, which is the birthplace of Saint Youhanna Al-Meamedan (John the Baptist) and his family, and where Virgin Mary lived plenty of time," father Hanna stressed in a statement to Al-Jazeera net... 01-aug-2010 04:11 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68470 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68469 July 31, 2010 - A security researcher involved with the Wikileaks Web site was detained by U.S. agents at the border for three hours and questioned about the controversial whistleblower project as he entered the country on Thursday to attend a hacker conference, sources said on Saturday. He was also approached by two FBI agents at the Defcon conference after his presentation on Saturday afternoon about the Tor Project... 01-aug-2010 04:04 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68469 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68468 July 31, 2010 - As US military fatalities in Afghanistan hit a new high in July, the US Army issued a report exposing record suicides, drug use and other signs of deep demoralization among its ranks after a decade of colonial-style wars. Another six US troops were killed in a series of four separate attacks across southern Afghanistan on Thursday and Friday, bringing the total death toll for the month to at least 66. This follows the previous high set last month of 60. Both were at least double the average number of fatalities for the first five months of this year. But even as the casualties in Afghanistan soar, the number of suicides and other violent non-combat deaths among US Army soldiers is rising even more steeply... 01-aug-2010 03:53 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68468 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68467 July 31, 2010 - ... She said she was curious...she wanted to understand why all this blood, now that the "dictatorship" was over. I tried to keep it simple... I said - Iraqi blood is still being spilled, maybe because dictatorship has only just begun... She was at loss, she did not understand... Only those who have written the script will, and only those who live the postscript do... 01-aug-2010 03:36 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68467 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68466 July 31, 2010 -- Israel is a land built on myths. It is, of course, not unique in this. Indeed in this way Israel is very much like its patron, the United States. In order to build and maintain a mythical status a nation must create a picture of itself from its very inception and pass that picture down generation upon generation. For the U.S. it is the idea that the nation is a beacon of both democracy and capitalism unto the world and what it does in terms of foreign policy, and even when at war, is always done altruistically. For Israel, the myth is that the nation is democratic and the last bastion of safety for the world's Jews. Everything it does, even when that amounts to imperial expansion, is done defensively.... 01-aug-2010 03:23 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68466 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68465 July 31, 2010 - ...The objective of the TTP, and behind the scene that of the Indians and the Israelis, was to make the world believe that Pakistan was under threat of capitulating to terrorist and insurgent elements who were about to take control of Pakistan's nuclear assets. Their goal: to denuclearize Pakistan through foreign intervention. These efforts have not succeeded. Undoubtedly, the army and the ISI played a crucial role in foiling the plots of subversion in Balochistan and the Pashtun region and exposing the foreign hands involved, including those of CIA, RAW, Mossad, RAMA and MI6... 01-aug-2010 02:55 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68465 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68463 July 31, 2010 - Bilal Abu Libdeh was shot outside the Barkan settlement in the West Bank when soldiers wrongly thought they saw a weapon. In the aftermath, the Israeli media readily reproduced the military's excuses, reducing Bilal's final moments to the redundant media stereotypes of the 'suspected terrorist' and 'settlement infiltrator'. But whilst the truth of their son's death becomes another political casualty, Ibrahim and Intihad Libdeh are left to mourn the human being now missing from their lives. The day after he was killed, the family was joined by hundreds of mourners in their home city of Qalqilya, to carry Bilal to his final resting place.... 01-aug-2010 01:51 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68463 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68462 July 31, 2010 - On July 26, Israeli police demolished 45 buildings in the unrecognized Bedouin village of al-Arakib, razing the entire village to the ground to make way for a Jewish National Fund forest. The destruction was part of a larger project to force the Bedouin community of the Negev away from their ancestral lands and into seven Indian reservation-style communities the Israeli government has constructed for them. The land will then be open for Jewish settlers, including young couples in the army and those who may someday be evacuated from the West Bank after a peace treaty is signed. For now, the Israeli government intends to uproot as many villages as possible and erase them from the map by establishing "facts on the ground" in the form of JNF forests... 01-aug-2010 01:27 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68462 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68461 July 31, 2010 - We're talking about Paul Krugman, so we're also talking about those who seek to coerce lots of other people to eat shit, too. There's far too much shit in this column to unpack all of it (ew), so let me mention just three points. First: And Mr. Obama has delivered in important ways. Above all, he managed (with a lot of help from Nancy Pelosi) to enact a health reform that, imperfect as it is, will greatly improve Americans' lives - unless a Republican Congress manages to sabotage its implementation. This is a partisan hack with lots of practice. Notice how he preemptively establishes a foolproof excuse (in his view) for the day when this bill that "will greatly improve Americans' lives" turns to, well, shit. Any and all failures will be the fault of "a Republican Congress" that "manages to sabotage its implementation."... 01-aug-2010 01:08 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68461 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68460 July 31, 2010 - Daily, Israeli oppression continues - demolishing homes, dispossessing occupants, and revoking residency rights, three of its many crimes under international law, Israel spurning it with impunity. On July 22, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) reported mass Jordan Valley Al Farisyie village demolitions, displacing 107 people, including 52 children. Targeted were 26 residential tents, 22 animal shelters, seven taboun clay ovens, eight kitchens, 10 bathrooms, four water tanks, and an agricultural equipment shed - in all, 74 structures illegally bulldozed, family homes and belongings destroyed along with large quantities of food and animal fodder... 01-aug-2010 00:37 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68460 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68459 July 31, 2010 - Three Gaza workers collecting stone aggregates from rubble near the Erez crossing were hit and injured by Israeli fire in two separate incidents shortly after 9a.m. on Saturday, medics told Ma'an. Officials said the shots were fired from watch towers near the border crossing in the northern Strip, with the number injured by Israeli fire for the day rising to 13 following a series of air strikes and artillery fire that reportedly targeted "terrorist infrastructure."... 31-jul-2010 23:00 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68459 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68458 July 31, 2010 - An Afghan civilian was killed as he was trying to approach a NATO military base in southern Afghanistan, the alliance said Saturday. Troops had chased off a group of insurgents after an armed clash when a man ran towards their base, NATO said. "Coalition forces attempted to get the man to stop, however the attempts failed and coalition forces engaged him," it said. "First-aid was rendered immediately, however, unfortunately the individual died of his wounds.".. 31-jul-2010 22:33 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68458 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68457 July 31, 2010 - The corporate media-created popular image of "looting" is one of poor people taking TVs or shoes or other goods from broken-into stores. Many desperate, mostly African American residents of New Orleans abandoned to their fate when Hurricane Katrina flooded that city in 2005 were assailed and arrested as "looters" for appropriating food from shutdown grocery stores. On July 27, the office of the U.S. Special Investigator for Iraq Reconstruction released a report that states the Pentagon cannot account for an astounding 95 percent of at least $9.1 billion in Iraqi funds that it seized when U.S. forces conquered Iraq and dismantled its government in 2003. A total of $8.7 billion has disappeared from the "Development Fund for Iraq.".. 31-jul-2010 22:08 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68457 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68456 July 31, 2010 - July was the deadliest month in Iraq since May 2008 with a total of 535 people killed across the country as a result or violence, according to government figures released on Saturday. A total of 396 civilians, 89 policemen and 50 soldiers died in attacks in July, data compiled by the health, defence and interior ministries showed. The death toll is the highest for a single month since May 2008 when 563 people were killed in violence... 31-jul-2010 21:51 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68456 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68455 July 30, 2010 - The first 100 days of the BP Gulf oil catastrophe have provided an object lesson in the destructiveness and irrationality of capitalism, which subordinates every consideration to the profit drive of the giant corporations and banks. The April 20 blowout aboard the Deepwater Horizon was, in the fullest sense of the phrase, a disaster waiting to happen. There had been no systematic regulatory enforcement on the Deepwater Horizon or any other Gulf of Mexico oil rig under either president Obama or his predecessor, George W. Bush. As for existing legal safety requirements, the order of the day was, and remains, "self-reporting." ... 31-jul-2010 21:06 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68455 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68454 July 30, 2010 - In the wake of strong U.S. government statements condemning WikiLeaks' recent publishing of 77,000 Afghan War documents, the secret-spilling site has posted a mysterious encrypted file labeled "insurance." The huge file, posted on the Afghan War page at the WikiLeaks site, is 1.4 GB and is encrypted with AES256. The file's size dwarfs the size of all the other files on the page combined. The file has also been posted on a torrent download site... 31-jul-2010 18:47 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68454 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68453 July 31, 2010 - An Al-Qassam Brigades fighter was killed and ten other Gaza residents were injured in a series of Israeli airstrikes that hit targets across the Strip on Saturday morning. The Hamas-affiliated military group announced that one of its field leaders, 41-year-old Issa Abdul-Hadi Al-Batran, was killed by one of the strikes near the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. Eight others were injured in a second strike targeting the Ansar Security Compound, formerly the presidential compound in Gaza City, which caused massive damages to the buildings and nearby homes, officials said.... 31-jul-2010 18:43 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68453 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68452 July 30, 2010 - In the first detailed interview with a prisoner released from Guantánamo to Algeria, Abdul Aziz Naji, forcibly repatriated last week, has spoken to the Algerian newspaper El Khabar, describing his experiences during his eight years in US custody. While this is a welcome demonstration of transparency on the part of the Algerian authorities, it is also indicative of what can be achieved through international criticism. After the Obama administration and the US Supreme Court conspired to repatriate a cleared prisoner against his will, for the first time, human rights groups and the United Nations all expressed their disgust with the United States' actions, and their fears that a "diplomatic assurance" with the Algerian government, guaranteeing Naji's humane treatment on his return, was fundamentally untrustworthy, given Algeria's poor human rights record.... 31-jul-2010 18:39 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68452 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68451 July 30, 2010 - It finally happened. The Jerusalem Post has declared archeology itself anti-Semitic. To tell you the truth, I am frankly worried about some of my colleagues who are committed Zionists having difficulty in dealing with reality in the wake of the severe difficulties facing the Zionist project in historical Palestine... 31-jul-2010 17:52 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68451 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68450 July 30, 2010 - 3 days after documents of 8 years of war crimes against the people of Afghanistan were leaked, what does the U.S. government do? Admit or apologize for the crimes? No -- go after the leakers! Pentagon Launches 'Manhunt' for Document Leaker. Cut off the funding for the wars? No, vote another $59 billion! On Friday U.S. Conducts Afghan massacre - On Tuesday Congress Votes to fund more death. The massive release of documents by Wikileaks.org only proves what our movement has been saying for years: the illegitimate occupation is built on regarding all civillians as potential enemies, killing them in strikes from the air, detaining them indefinitely, depriving them of safe havens and carving up the resources under Afghanistan for foreign use. In the name of a war for empire, everyone here and there is less safe.... 31-jul-2010 17:47 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68450 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68448 July 30, 2010 - U.S. officials are worried about what other secret documents the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks may possess and have tried to contact the group without success to avoid their release, the State Department said on Friday. The shadowy group publicly released more than 90,000 U.S. Afghan war records spanning a six-year period on Sunday. The group also is thought to be in possession of tens of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables passed to it by an Army intelligence analyst, media reports have said... 31-jul-2010 17:36 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68448 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68447 July 30, 2010 - The timeframe for when U.S. troops should come home has been debated since American forces were first sent to Afghanistan. After the surge of troops was implemented, President Obama announced that some of those troops would begin coming home in the summer of 2011. American opinion is divided on this timetable. One-quarter of U.S. adults (25%) say all U.S. troops should come home now while 22% believe there should be no timetable for troops to come home. One in five Americans (19%) believe this is a good timetable for U.S. troops to come home, while 17% say some troops should come home before 2011 and 14% are not sure. In January, over one-quarter of Americans (27%) believed there should be no timetable for U.S. troops to come home, while less than one-in five (18%) believed all U.S. troops should come home now.... 31-jul-2010 17:29 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68447 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68445 July 30, 2010 - The American Civil Liberties Union just released a report on the performance of the Obama administration on issues relating to national security, civil liberties, and human rights....But, as the report goes on to state early on, these practical and impressive actions fell short of providing any indication of a long-term commitment to changing eight years of unabashed assaults on American national security, civil liberties and human rights under the Bush administration. Rather, the ACLU argues, the emerging trend of the last 18 months that this administration has been in power is one that is far more dangerous than that presented by the previous administration as the Obama administration seeks 'to normalize that which was radical under George W. Bush.'... 31-jul-2010 17:15 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68445 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68444 July 30, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, Nancy A. Youssef continues to LIE about Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks' Julian Assange tells US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, "We will not be suppressed. We will continue to expose abuses of this administration and others," the Army releases a report on the increased number of suicides, and more... 31-jul-2010 17:13 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68444 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68443 July 30, 2010 - My MP, a Foreign Office minister in the shiny new coalition government, has written to me saying he believes the Foreign Secretary was "extremely fair, tough and statesmanlike" in his reaction to Israel's murderous assault on the vessel Mavi Marmara and the rest of the Free Gaza flotilla. So I re-read William Hague's statement to the House of Commons on 2 June, and it struck me as something the Israeli government spin doctor Mark Regev might have penned... 31-jul-2010 16:13 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68443 http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68441 July 30, 2010 - Twenty years ago, the Middle East was an entirely different entity from the area of today. No U.S. troops were stationed in Arab countries. Iraq and Iran had just finished a bloody eight-year war. Iraq was rebuilding its economy and the nation had a bright future. Then, on August 2, 1990, Iraqi troops crossed the border of Kuwait. The Kuwaitis, in collaboration with the U.S. and their silent partners, Israel, began a propaganda campaign that surpassed those of any in recent history. Iraq had a legitimate gripe with Kuwait and thought the Kuwaitis would sit down at the bargaining table if Iraqi troops crossed the border. Iraq was wrong. Kuwait and the US had begun to plan the destruction of Iraq in 1987 and now was the chance the U.S. was awaiting to control the Arab world with troops on the ground. Shortly after the August 2 intrusion of Iraqi troops, Saudi Arabia became a launching pad for the US military in the Arab world. Soon, it will be the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the end for the country of Iraq. Let's go back to those days and also look at the preposterous events that followed that doomed Iraq's fate... 31-jul-2010 06:46 ECT http://www.blogfrommiddleeast.com?new=68441