The Iron Wall

The classic documentary: The Iron Wall

Past Presidents and Peace

Why is it only when U.S. Presidents become past-Presidents do they say the right thing?

Excerpts:

Jimmy Carter urges Canada to press Israel

Canadian Press

TORONTO — Canada needs to speak out forcefully and press Israel to leave the occupied territories, because only a complete withdrawal will bring lasting peace to the region, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter said on Monday.
...

“Ultimately, Israel is going to have to withdraw from all the occupied territories, except as mutually negotiated.”

In his latest book, Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid, Mr. Carter pulls no punches criticizing Israel for continuing to confiscate and colonize Palestinian lands with the tacit approval of the Bush administration.

“The policy that Israel is pursuing now in the West Bank and Gaza is one of apartness or apartheid,” Mr. Carter said.

“It's a subjugation of the occupied people, their deprivation of human rights, their isolation in a mandatory way from inter-relationships with Israelis.

“There'll be a law going into effect in January that will prohibit any Palestinian even from riding in an automobile that has an Israeli licence plate on it.”

The book also blames Washington for helping incite anti-American violence and terrorism in the Middle East by its failure to denounce Israel where warranted.

Mr. Carter said his book was intended to be provocative, to prompt debate in the United States about Israel's continued refusal to abide by UN resolutions calling for a withdrawal from the occupied territories.

It's also about the refusal of U.S. President George W. Bush to pursue Middle East peace, he said.

Even though the Democrats won control of the House and Senate in this month's mid-term elections, Mr. Carter said it was unlikely American politicians would be willing to criticize Israel given that both Democrats and Republicans are “almost full and unanimous” in supporting whatever the Israeli government does.

He noted the United States has used its veto more than 40 times to block United Nations' resolutions critical of Israel, and Mr. Carter said there has been no push from the Bush administration to promote peace talks in the past six years.

“Some of these vetoes have brought international discredit on the United States and there is little doubt that the lack of a persistent effort to resolve the Palestinian issue is a major source of anti-American sentiment and terrorist activity throughout the Middle East and the Islamic world,” he writes.

“This is the first time in the history of Israel that in the United States you haven't had a presidential effort to bring about an accommodation between Israel and its neighbours.”

The Nobel laureate who helped negotiate an historic peace agreement between Israel and Egypt said steps must be taken for Israelis and Palestinians to share the Holy Land without a constant fear of terrorism or system of apartheid.

“I'm not basing this on racism,” he said.

“It's based on the desire of a small minority of Israelis for land as a preference to peace.” (Source: Globe and Mail, Nov 27, 2006)

Self Knowledge

Three couplets attributed to the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali (A.S.) on the topic of Self Knowledge:

"The cure is with you but you do not see. And the illness is from you, but you are unaware.

You are the clear book whose letters make manifest the hidden.

Do you think you are some small mass while within you there dwells a great world?"

(Source: Insan Kamil, Murtada Mutahhari, pg 203)

End the apartheid against the Palestinians

Watch in horror

Openness and transparency in Iran's Nuclear Program

Does this look like a nation trying to hide something?

Excerpts:

Iran offers UN new nuclear access

Iran will give inspectors access to records and equipment from two of its nuclear sites, the head of the UN's atomic agency, the IAEA, has said. (Source: BBC, Nov 23, 2006)

Grand Ayatollah Mirza Jawad Tabrizi: 1926-2006

Inna Lillahi wa Inna Ilayhi Raje'un - Verily we are from Allah and to Him do we return.

http://tabrizi.org

His Eminence leading a procession bare foot in memory of Fatima Al-Zahra (A.S.)



Rare footage of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and Grand Ayatollah Mirza Javad Tabrizi


Grand Ayatollah Mirza Jawad Tabrizi participating in procession of Fatima-Al-Zahra (A.S.)


News coverage of funeral procession of his Eminence.

Lets see what spin and doubletalk they'll use to explain this

Thanks MM for forwarding this story on.

The Israeli PR spin machine, second to none in the world will find some way to denounce their own government maps, records that clearly indicate what the whole world already knows: Occupation, genocide, apartheid is what Israel does best.

Excerpts:

Israeli Map Says West Bank Posts Sit on Arab Land

JERUSALEM, Nov. 20 — An Israeli advocacy group, using maps and figures leaked from inside the government, says that 39 percent of the land held by Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank is privately owned by Palestinians.
...
The data indicate that 40 percent of the land that Israel plans to keep in any future deal with the Palestinians is private.
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The new claims regarding Palestinian property are said to come from the 2004 database of the Civil Administration, which controls the civilian aspects of Israel’s presence in the West Bank. Peace Now, an Israeli group that advocates Palestinian self-determination in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, plans to publish the information on Tuesday. An advance copy was made available to The New York Times.
....
That person, who has frequent contact with the Civil Administration, said he and the official wanted to expose what they consider to be wide-scale violations of private Palestinian property rights by the government and settlers. The government has refused to give the material directly to Peace Now, which requested it under Israel’s freedom of information law. (Source: New York Times, Nov 20, 2006)

How intelligent is it to ignore one's own Intelligence?

Seems the CIA has confirmed what the Iranians have said all along. That their nuclear development is strictly for generating energy for its populace and is fully in support of the NPT.

So much for the whole "axis of evil" thing.

Excerpts:

'No proof' of Iran nuclear arms

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has not found conclusive evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, a US magazine has reported.

Veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, writing in The New Yorker, cites a secret CIA report based on intelligence such as satellite images.

Correspondents say the alleged document appears to challenge Washington's views regarding Iranian nuclear intentions.

The article says the White House was dismissive about the CIA report.
....
"The CIA found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency," Mr Hersh wrote.
...

It says the agency based its conclusions on technical intelligence, such as satellite photography and measurements from sensors planted by US and Israeli agents.

The article says: "A current senior intelligence official confirmed the existence of the CIA analysis, and told me that the White House had been hostile to it." (Source: BBC News, Nov 20, 2006)

An inkling of International condemnation

Has Israel's terrorism reached a point where nations can no longer turn a blind eye?

Excerpts:

France rebukes Israel over jets

Israel's ambassador to France has been summoned to the country's foreign ministry and warned about Israeli flights over UN positions in Lebanon.
...Michele Alliot-Marie told parliament the jets dived towards UN positions in October and were perceived as a threat.
...Mr Douste-Blazy told the radio station that the jets had appeared to be carrying out practice bombing runs.
...France has previously complained about Israel violating Lebanese air space.
...Reports from Germany alleged that Israeli planes buzzed a German warship off the Lebanese coast, and fired shots nearby. (Source: BBC News, November 9, 2006)

A Drop of Blood: "Ek Qatra Khoon"

This wonderful, inspiring play about the Saviour of Islam, Hussain, The Grandson of Prophet Muhammad is coming back to Toronto, Canada.

More details found here.

Some more background on A Drop of Blood

Killing women and children in their sleep.

This one is hard to stomach:

Excerpts:

Israel/Occupied Territories: Amnesty International delegate visits scene of Gaza Strip killings

Press release, 11/08/2006:

Those killed, most of whom were asleep in their beds when their homes were struck by shells fired by Israeli forces, included eight children. An Amnesty International delegate who visited the scene of the killings shortly after the attack was told that 15 of the victims were killed in the first strike and that three others were killed by a second shell as they raced to help the dead and injured.
...
Those killed or injured as a result of Israeli attacks include:

• Ramzi al-Ashrafi, 16, was killed and seven other children were injured on the morning of 6 November when an Israeli shell exploded close by the bus on which they were travelling to school along a busy road between Beit Lahia and Jabalya, north of Gaza City. Najwa Khleif, a 20-year-old teacher who was also in the bus, sustained severe brain injuries. Doctors treating her in the intensive care unit of Gaza City’s main hospital told Amnesty International that she was in critical condition. The bus was hit apparently in a failed strike by Israeli forces on a vehicle believed to belong to a Palestinian armed group. However, the attack was carried out at a busy intersection during the morning rush hour, when it could be expected that the streets would be busy with adults and children making their way to work and school. The shell which killed Ramzi al-Ashrafi and injured others in the school bus, fell near a kindergarten although, fortunately, without causing further deaths or injuries there.

• Ala’ Mansour al-Khdeir, an 11-year-old girl, one of two children who were wounded by Israeli fire on 4 November when they were returning home from a morning at school in Beit Lahia. She was struck by a bullet which entered the left side of her head and travelled to the left side of her neck, where it remains lodged, and remains seriously ill. Her mother told Amnesty International that Ala’was near home in the Sayafa area of north-west Gaza, an area where there has been frequent Israeli army shelling in recent days, when she was wounded. The other child, a boy, was also seriously injured.

• Ibtisam Masoud, 44, was killed and ten other women, including Tahrir Shahin, a 37-year-old mother of seven, were injured by Israeli fire during a women’s demonstration on the morning of 3 November at the entrance of Beit Hanoun. Tahrir Shahin, whose leg had to be amputated, told Amnesty International from her hospital bed in Gaza city that she and other women were unarmed and standing less than 100 meters from the Israeli tanks which fired at them: “Ours was a peaceful demonstration, we were all women, there were no men, no militants, no weapons. We were just women standing in front of tanks. We did not think the Israeli soldiers would shoot us, but they fired indiscriminately”.

• Heba Rajab, 20, a volunteer with the Palestinian Centre for Democracy and Conflict Resolution, and Sou’ad Abu Najem, 43, a mother of eight, both sustained serious gunshot wounds to their legs and hands in the same incident. They said they had seen Israeli soldiers taking aim at the women demonstrators from the tops of their tanks. The women were demonstrating in response to a call by a Hamas party member of the Palestinian parliament to help break the siege by Israeli forces of a mosque in which members of Palestinian armed groups were reported to be sheltering, surrounded by Israeli forces. However, the women were shot before they could approach the mosque.

• Ahmad al-Madhoun, 42, and Mustapha Habib, 26, both volunteer emergency ambulance workers with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), and a third man who was assisting them, were killed in an Israeli air strike on the evening of 3 November as they were evacuating the body of a man killed in an earlier air strike. Iyad Yousef Abu al-Ful, the ambulance driver accompanying them, told Amnesty International: “Ahmad and Mustapha were about 20 meters from the ambulance and were about to load the body of a dead man on the stretcher; I had just got out of the ambulance and was beginning to move towards them when a missile struck at the spot where they were. I got back into the ambulance and called for help. I cannot get out of my mind the sight of my colleagues killed while they were doing their duty”. The medical rescue team was in an open field near Beit Lahia. It was dark but the ambulance should have been clearly visible from the emergency light on its roof. The other victim had directed the ambulance crew to the body of his friend, who had been killed earlier in unclear circumstances.

• Zahir Mustapha Shabat, 32, was shot and seriously injured and his cousin, Mazen Shabat, was killed by Israeli soldiers in the evening of 4 November when they were returning home after they had both been released from three days’ detention by the Israeli army. He told Amnesty International from his hospital bed, shortly after he was moved from the intensive care unit: "After three days in detention the soldiers released us and gave us a paper, which they said we could show if we got stopped by other soldiers on our way home, about 1.5 to 2 km from the place where we were detained. They told us that they had coordinated with the tanks in the area and that we would have safe passage home but when we got about 150 meters from my house soldiers jumped out of the house of one of my relatives and fired on me and my cousin, Mazen, Shabat. Mazen was killed and I was seriously injured in the abdomen and back."

Israel has a thick skin when it comes to condemnation

They have been and could continue to be condemned on stuff like this till the cows come home. It won't stop them. War crimes, genocide, apartheid is embedded into Israel's modus operandi.

Throughout their corrupt elected and military officials are nothing but a record of scandal and corruption against their own people and annihilation and genocide of another people.

Would it be unreasonable to expect a response by Palestinians? However, if their is a response, do you think that it would be seen as just that...a response? No, they would call it a provocation against Israel. Israel would jump on any response as "terrorism" and level out yet more genocidal war-crimes against the Palestinian people.

Excerpts:

THE UN Security Council is to hold an open meeting today on the mounting bloodshed in the Gaza Strip where 18 Palestinians, mostly women and children, were killed by Israeli shelling.
...

UN chief Kofi Annan expressed shock at the Israeli military operations in Gaza.

"The secretary general was shocked to learn about the Israeli military operation ...in Beit Hanoun, which has resulted in the deaths of at least 18 Palestinians, including eight children and seven women,'' UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
...
"The longer the international community takes to react properly to this violation of international law, the longer Israel will continue with its aggression.''
...
The 18 Palestinians were killed when Israeli shells slammed into their Gaza homes in an attack that drew worldwide condemnation and vows of renewed suicide bombings.

No honour among thieves

Bush's Iraq strategy incompetent? Really?

But this criticism is coming from within the Republican Party itself. I guess when the going gets tough (i.e. heat of difficult midterm elections) the truth sometimes makes it way into the open.

Excerpts:

Neocons turn on Bush for incompetence over Iraq war
Julian Borger in Washington
Saturday November 4, 2006
The Guardian

Several prominent neoconservatives have turned on George Bush days before critical midterm elections, lambasting his administration for incompetence in the handling of the Iraq war and questioning the wisdom of the 2003 invasion they were instrumental in promoting.

Richard Perle and Kenneth Adelman, who were both Pentagon advisers before the war, Michael Rubin, a former senior official in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, and David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, were among the neoconservatives who recanted to Vanity Fair magazine in an article that could influence Tuesday's battle for the control of Congress. The Iraq war has been the dominant issue in the election.
....

Mr Adelman said the guiding principle behind neoconservatism, "the idea of using our power for moral good in the world", had been killed off for a generation at least. After Iraq, he told Vanity Fair, "it's not going to sell".

Michael Rubin, who worked on the staff of the Pentagon's office of special plans and the coalition provisional authority in Baghdad, accused Mr Bush of betraying Iraqi reformers.

The president's actions, Mr Rubin said, had been "not much different from what his father did on February 15 1991, when he called the Iraqi people to rise up and then had second thoughts and didn't do anything once they did".

What do you say about a people that target women and children?

Its difficult to make wide-sweeping generalizations, but, what can you say about a people who allow its government and army to target women, children in the name of defending illegally occupied lands?

Is this the justice of Judaism as taught by the Tawrah? Yet the Zionist movement burgeons and rolls full steam ahead.

Excerpts:

Israeli offensive kills Palestinian child and teen in northern Gaza

GAZA, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- A 12-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy were killed on Saturday night by Israeli gunfire during its ground and air military offensive "Autumn Clouds" in northern Gaza Strip, medics said.
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He said that the killing of the two civilians has raised the death toll of the Palestinians that were killed during the Israeli offensive to 44, while about 200 wounded, 25 of them are in critical conditions.
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The ongoing Israeli army offensive was launched after both the political and military establishments' approval.
...
HELSINKI, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- The European Union's current presidency Finland on Saturday expressed its deep concern about increased violence in Gaza and deplored the growing number of civilian casualties the Israeli military operation has caused.

The statement said that the right of all states to defend themselves does not justify disproportionate use of violence or actions which are contrary to international humanitarian law.

We hold this truth to be self-evident

Canadians believe Bush is a threat to peace: Poll (Nov 3)...well duh? Isn't this one of those self-evident truths?

Excerpts:

"WASHINGTON—Canadians believe the world has become a more dangerous place since George W. Bush was elected U.S. president and a majority believe he will launch military strikes in Iran or North Korea before his term ends in 2008, according to a new Toronto Star poll."
...
"The feeling goes well beyond just policy choices," says Charles Pena of the Independent Institute. "There is the perception the Bush administration went into Iraq unilaterally and has made other choices unilaterally. There is a belief we ran roughshod over allies and that their opinions didn't matter and we wouldn't listen anyway."