Apr

30

“I Will Die”: Gaza on the Verge of a Health Crisis

April 30, 2006 | Leave a Comment

In between all the headlines about the “civilized” world stopping its aid to the new Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, and behind the rhetoric and the justifications for such immoral actions, average Palestinians are rotting away in their homes and in hospital beds as they await much needed medical supplies.

From cancer patients to those with a common stomach flu, the answer from the hospital is the same: go home, we can’t help you, we don’t have medicine.

Palestinian health minister Dr. Bassem Naeem made a plea on AlJazeera today to world leaders and Arab and international NGOs to assist the Palestinians in obtaining much needed medical supplies in light of the Israeli closures of major passageways to the Gaza Strip (yes, that piece of land that Israel recently unilaterally ‘disengaged’ from but which remains under a strong chokehold from the IDF) and a halt in international aid. He warned that the Palestinian territories would face an imminent health crisis if no assistance was provided in the coming days.

Gaza’s main hospital did not have what she needed, the Palestinian mother of seven said. Ghaith, 60, had her left foot amputated recently after an illness. She also suffers from chronic blood pressure.

“I will die. Without medicine I will die,” Ghaith said as her son Hani, a police officer whose salary is nearly a month overdue, pushed her along a hospital corridor.

A combination of Israel’s frequent closures of border crossings into Gaza and reduced foreign aid flows in the wake of the election win of the militant group Hamas in January has worsened humanitarian conditions in the impoverished strip. [link]

Even those countries that have heeded the message from the health minister have faced serious roadblocks to providing much needed emergency aid to the sick in the Gaza Strip. A Jordanian shipment of medical supplies to al-Shifaa Hospital stopped short of being delivered to sick patients as it is being blocked by the Israeli forces from entering the Strip, according to statements made the health minister on AlJazeera this evening.

Al Araj [economy minister] asserted that Israel is using the closure of the crossings and Gaza’s humanitarian crisis as leverage against the Palestinian side, adding that international trade agreements have forbidden the use of commercial crossings as negotiations card, but Israel insists on doing so and forcing the passage of certain goods through its Kerem Shalom crossing.

On the other hand, the Minister of Health Basem Naim revealed that his ministry is suffering from a severe shortage of medicines due to the continuous Israeli siege and closure of the Gaza Strip.

Naim asserted that the Ministry of Health needs at least $4 million for its monthly operating costs, adding that the constant closures have disrupted the work of hospitals and primary care centers, as well as hindering the arrival of medical assistance from several countries. [link]

The blockage of emergency medical assistance translates into the deterioration of the health of hundreds of patients in Gaza’s hospitals, some of whom have even lost their lives.

Palestinian health officials said the ministry also had to scale back the number of patients it transferred abroad for treatment because of accumulating debts.

“That means I may lose my son,” said Musa Bahloul, standing next to his 13-year-old boy, who needs a kidney transplant.

Most Gazans rely on government hospitals and clinics for cheap or free services. When more than half the population is living under the poverty line, not many can afford expensive health services. But even those who may have money to buy medicine, pharmacists say many types of medicine are just not available under the current seige. Health practitioners continue to make appeals to the rest of the world.

But Mazen al-Aloul, chief nurse at Shifa, said employees were depressed about not getting their salaries.

“We suffer serious shortages in everything, but most importantly … dealing with difficult illnesses like cancer and kidney failure,” he said.

“We know America stands with Israel but we urge Europe, the mother of democracy, to lift the siege on our people,” he said.

I’m afriad, brother, that the EU has abandoned you, and so has most of the world for that matter. You chose to vote, this is your punishment.

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Apr

28

United States of Israel?

April 28, 2006 | 25 Comments

Robert Fisk does it again, this time meeting up with one of the authors of the recent study on the Israeli Lobby’s influence on American foreign policy. The two professors have tried to stay out of the spotlight and instead respond to attacks against them through academic means. Not surprisingly, they have been attacked as anti-Semites because they dared to state the obvious: American foreign policy is heavily influenced by a pro-Israel lobby that pressures the US into making decisions that do not benefit the short or long term interests of Americans. On the contrary, this influence has had a consistently negative impact on America’s relations with the rest of the world, and in particular, the Arab and Muslim world. More on the report in this earlier post.

The full text of Robert Fisk’s article can be found on this great new blog, or on the Independent’s website if you have access to the Portfolio accounts.

“Anyone who criticizes Israel’s actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle East policy,” the authors have written, “…stands a good chance of being labeled an anti-Semite. Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israeli lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-Semitism … Anti-Semitism is something no-one wants to be accused of.” This is strong stuff in a country where - to quote the late Edward Said - the “last taboo” (now that anyone can talk about blacks, gays and lesbians) is any serious discussion of America’s relationship with Israel.

In the article, also Robert Fisk discusses the biased reaction of the American press to the release of the Walt & Mearsheimer study.

For a while, the mainstream US press and television - as pro-Israeli, biased and gutless as the two academics infer them to be - did not know whether to report on their conclusions… or to remain submissively silent. The New York Times, for example, only got round to covering the affair in depth well over two weeks after the report’s publication, and then buried its article in the education section on page 19. The academic essay, according to the paper’s headline, had created a “debate” about the lobby’s influence.

The infamous Harvard professor and staunch pro-Israel advocate, Alan Dershowitz, naturally felt compelled to attack the study arguing that the professors “recycled” bigoted “accusations”, in other words, he played the anti-Semitic card. The professors are working on a response to his baseless accusations.

Robert Fisk recalls his own experiences in speaking out against Israeli policies and the pressure he faced from US to Australia throughout his career.

I’ll leave you with the last section of the article as I don’t think there’s much to add.

Across the United States, there is growing evidence that the Israeli and neo-conservative lobbies are acquiring ever greater power. The cancellation by a New York theatre company of My Name is Rachel Corrie - a play based on the writings of the young American girl crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza in 2003 - has deeply shocked liberal Jewish Americans, not least because it was Jewish American complaints that got the performance pulled.

“How can the West condemn the Islamic world for not accepting Mohamed cartoons,” Philip Weiss asked in The Nation, “when a Western writer who speaks out on behalf of Palestinians is silenced? And why is it that Europe and Israel itself have a healthier debate over Palestinian human rights than we can have here?” Corrie died trying to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian home. Enemies of the play falsely claim that she was trying to stop the Israelis from collapsing a tunnel used to smuggle weapons. Hateful e-mails were written about Corrie. Weiss quotes one that reads: “Rachel Corrie won’t get 72 virgins but she got what she wanted.”

Saree Makdisi - a close relative of the late Edward Said - has revealed how a right-wing website is offering cash for University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) students who report on the political leanings of their professors, especially their views on the Middle East. Those in need of dirty money at UCLA should be aware that class notes, handouts and illicit recordings of lectures will now receive a bounty of $100. “I earned my own inaccurate and defamatory ‘profile’,” Makdisi says, “…not for what I have said in my classes on English poets such as Wordsworth and Blake - my academic speciality, which the website avoids mentioning - but rather for what I have written in newspapers about Middle Eastern politics.”

Mearsheimer and Walt include a study of such tactics in their report. “In September 2002,” they write, “Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes, two passionately pro-Israel neo-conservatives, established a website (www.campus-watch.org) that posted dossiers on suspect academics and encouraged students to report behaviour that might be considered hostile to Israel… the website still invites students to report ‘anti-Israel’ activity.”

Perhaps the most incendiary paragraph in the essay - albeit one whose contents have been confirmed in the Israeli press - discusses Israel’s pressure on the United States to invade Iraq. “Israeli intelligence officials had given Washington a variety of alarming reports about Iraq’s WMD programmes,” the two academics write, quoting a retired Israeli general as saying: “Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq’s non-conventional capabilities.”

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Apr

28

Darfur: Just When We Thought Things Couldn’t Get Worse…

April 28, 2006 | 5 Comments


The UN is cutting in half its daily rations in Sudan’s Darfur region due to a severe funding shortfall.

“This is one of the hardest decisions I have ever made,” James Morris, head of the UN’s World Food Programme, said.

From May the ration will be half the minimum amount required by each day. The cut comes as the UN said Darfur’s malnutrition rates are rising again.

Nearly 3m in Darfur are totally reliant on food aid after being driven off their land by three years of conflict. [BBC]

Meanwhile, the leaders of the free world are more concerned about Iran enriching a little uranium that COULD possibly cause the deaths of just as many people, oh say, about 50 years from now.

Why not help those people who are dying RIGHT NOW?! Why not mobilize the most powerful countries for a worthy cause like this?! WHY WHY WHY?!

Maybe because making a big fuss about Iran will make gas prices go through the ROOF, giving Exxon Mobil and their buddies (including Bush & Co.) something to rave about…to the tune of $8 Billion to be specific.

[related post]
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Apr

26

Do Not Attack Iran

April 26, 2006 | 9 Comments

Former National Security Advisor and noted international relations scholar Zbigniew Brzezinski makes the case against an attack on Iran in today’s International Herland Tribune. This is a great piece and I do not have much to add to it besides that fact that despite all the purely logical arguments against a war with Iran (as there was with Iraq), we are faced with an administration that knows nothing about logic, nothing about reality, and one completely detached from the American people (Bush’s approval rating have never been lower).

It follows that an attack on Iran would be an act of political folly, setting in motion a progressive upheaval in world affairs. With America increasingly the object of widespread hostility, the era of American preponderance could come to a premature end.

American policy should not be swayed by a contrived atmosphere of urgency ominously reminiscent of what preceded the intervention in Iraq.

While America is clearly preponderant in the world, it does not have the power - nor the domestic inclination - to both impose and then to sustain its will in the face of protracted and costly resistance. That certainly is the lesson taught both by its Vietnamese and Iraqi experiences.

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Apr

25

Bin Laden & Zarqawi Speak Out… And I Shout Back!

April 25, 2006 | 5 Comments

Apparently, they’re in the mood to talk these two thugs. Osama bin Laden released an audio tape on Sunday reiterating his prevoius assertions that the West is at war with Islam. He cited recent events related to the cutting of aid to the Hamas led Palestinian government as proof of this “crusade” against Islam and Muslims. Bin Laden also called on his supporters to prepare for a long war against the “crusaders” in Sudan. These calls fell on deaf ears as both Palestinian and Sudanese sources distanced themselves from bin Laden’s statements.

Today, a website that broadcasts information related to Abu-Musab Al-Zarqawi’s insurgent network released a video showing an unmasked Zarqawi making more threats against the “crusaders” in Iraq. He threatened that “what is coming is even worse.” Zarqawi also admonished the US for not accepting a truce offered by who he referred to as “our prince and leader”, Osama bin Laden.

Two these two cowards, I say:

We don’t need your sympathy. We don’t want to hear your conspiracy theories explaining everything going on in the world. We don’t need to hear verses of the Quran from you because you are hypocrites, choosing to exclude most of the basic principles in Islam. We don’t need you to feel bad for the Palestinian people. We don’t need you to ask the world to help Hamas, because unlike you, Hamas chose a civilized way to enter politics and change the status quo of the Palestinians. We don’t need you to tell us about human rights and crusades in Darfur. We don’t need you to tell us to go fight our Muslim brethren in Darfur who are suffering everyday, and not because of a “crusader” war.

We need you to get the hell back in your stupid cave and stop talking to us. You’ve done enough damage claiming you are acting like a righteous Muslim, blowing up innocent people in planes and hotels and resorts. You know nothing of jihad. You know nothing of what Muslims across the world are going through because of your murderous acts.

You do not know that Muslims in America and Europe are suffering everday because of your sick interpretation of the noble concept of jihad. You do not know that young American Muslim girls are being targeted because of your filthy words. They are being physically attacked, their headscarves torn off by extremists of other religions, just like yourself and because of your actions.

You do not know what our Muslim brothers go through in the West everyday when they are in the airport, in a college classroom, in their offices, on the trains. They are all suspects now, all because of your sick ideas and your personal ambitions, none of which have to do with our beautiful religion.

Everything that we have accomplished and every step that we have made to bring the beauty and essence of Islam to the rest of the world has been hijacked by you and the innocent young boys that you prey on. You brainwash them into thinking they are doing the work of God. There are many of them across the Arab and Muslim world. Poor, hopeless, jobless, willing to do anything to put out the rage inside their hearts. Their ineffective leaders have sucked the life out of them, and you deceive them even more. You lie to them and tell them they will go to heaven, to meet their Lord. Oh my Allah, how He has taught us in the Quran to LIVE for Islam before we die for it. To live for others, to help others, to spread Islam through our peaceful and kind actions.

How dare you even begin to think that you are following in the footsteps of our beloved Prophet Muhammad…how dare you taint his image. How dare you cause cartoonists to make fun of him because of your murderous actions. They are not at fault. You Osama and Abu Musab are at fault. That caricature was of YOU and NOT our beloved Prophet. He is innocent of what you claim he has preached. He preached nothing but peace. He was a patient and soft spoken man, not a sword wielding one. He cared for his neighbors, even the Jewish one who threw trash in front of his home everyday. Yes, you heard me, his Jewish neighbor.

Leave the Muslims alone. We don’t want you to speak on our behalf. We don’t support your terrorist tactics. We don’t need your conspiracy theories. We need you to go back to your cave and ask Allah for forgiveness for all the sins you have committed. I, for one, will never forgive you for what you have done to my brothers and sisters in humanity whom you have killed, and I cannot forgive you for the damage you have inflicted on Muslim communities across the world, especially those in the West. May you live in misery throughout this life and may you burn in Hell in the next one.

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Apr

25

Oh Darfur!

April 25, 2006 | Leave a Comment

5 Truths About Darfur, by Emily Wax, Washington Post

1. Nearly everyone is Muslim.
2. Everyone is black.
3. It’s all about politics.
4. This conflict is international.
5. The “genocide” label made it worse.

Rally To Stop Genocide in Darfur
April 30th
Washington, D.C.

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Apr

23

Truth or Lie, Bush Used it To Support Illegitimate War

April 23, 2006 | 6 Comments

“The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy.”

This is what former top CIA official Tyler Drumheller said today on CBS’ 60 Minutes regarding the Bush administration’s tactics. Ed Bradley spoke to Drumheller as well as former ambassador Joseph Wilson about the Niger uranium issues that surfaced in the months before the lead up to the Iraq invasion.

It all started much earlier than many would expect. Only one month after 9/11, the Bush administration received information from Italian intelligence sources that Saddam Hussein had purchased 500 tons of “yellow-cake uranium” from Niger, of course with the intention of using it to build a nuclear weapon. Drumheller says that most people at the CIA doubted the report, and questioned its authenticity. They didn’t give it much attention.

VP Dick Cheney, however, insisted that this claim be investigated, so former ambassador Joseph Wilson was sent to Niger in February 2002 to do just that.

Wilson spent eight days in Niger looking for signs of a secret deal to send yellowcake to Iraq. He spoke to government officials who would have known about such a transaction. No one did. There had been a meeting between Iraqis and Nigerians in 1999, but Wilson was told uranium had never been discussed. He also found no evidence that Iraq had even been interested in buying uranium.

Wilson adds that he came back confident that the Italian intelligence had been false and that there was no basis to the Niger uranium deal. He relayed this information to the CIA, and then director George Tenet used the results of the investigation to convice Bush’s speech writers to remove any references to the story because “it was overblown” and “the evidence was weak.” Although the Niger story was removed from a speech Bush was scheduled to give in Cincinnati, it would soon reappear in much more high profile address by the president.

At the same time, the CIA had made another breakthrough: Iraq’s foreign minister, Naji Sabri, had agreed to reveal Iraq’s military secrets to the agency, ratting out his long time boss, Saddam Hussein. The administration was excited to hear that such a high level source had decided to speak out. What he told them, however, would be even a bigger shock.

“He told us that they had no active weapons of mass destruction program,” says Drumheller.

“So in the fall of 2002, before going to war, we had it on good authority from a source within Saddam’s inner circle that he didn’t have an active program for weapons of mass destruction?” Bradley asked.

“Yes,” Drumheller replied. He says there was no doubt in his mind at all.

“It directly contradicts, though, what the president and his staff were telling us,” Bradley remarked.

“The policy was set,” Drumheller says. “The war in Iraq was coming. And they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy.”

Once again, the Bush administration clearly heard from a high-level source that there were no WMD in Iraq. They had been planning to take Sabri’s account seriously had he revealed something more in their interest. Now, they claimed that his information “could not be corroborated.”

The Niger story resurfaced when an Italian spy claimed he had documents to prove the purchase of uranium by the Iraqis. He tried to sell them to an Italian reporter, but after close inspection, she doubted their authenticity. Elisabeta Burba says they were “bad forgeries”, and handed them over to the US embassy in Rome in late 2002.

Drumheller says the CIA station chief in Rome, who worked for him, told him he didn’t believe it. “He said, ‘It’s not true. It’s not; this isn’t real,’” Drumheller recalls.

Still, in January 2003, the National Intelligence Council conducted yet another investigation of the Niger story and concluded that it was baseless. This should’ve been the end of the story, until…

“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,” the president said.

In his 2003 State of the Union Address, just weeks after the final investigation, President Bush insisted on using the Niger story to support his bid for an invasion of Iraq. Even after many analysts and experts had agreed the story was baseless and there was no evidence to support it, the president used it in one of the most important statements to his people. He knowingly used false information to support a war he had planned to conduct regardless of the nuclear ambitions of Saddam Hussein. He knowingly lied to the American people.

If this isn’t a good reason to impeach this president, then please turn your tv on and wait for a report about the civil war in Iraq. If that still isn’t enough, I don’t know what is. Maybe we should just send a stripper with some cigars to the White House. That’ll do it.

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