By Silvia Cattori via Information Clearing House Standing straight and tall, an impressive and deeply introspective man, Sami El Haj walks with a limp and the help of a walking stick. Neither laughter nor smiles light up the refined face of this man, old before his time. A deep sadness pervades him. He was 32 years old when, in December 2001, his life, like that of tens of thousands of
(thanks to Alex P. for this story) A Think Progress Exclusive Speaking at the Campus Progress journalism conference earlier this month, Seymour Hersh — a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker — revealed that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran. In Hersh’s most recent article, he reports that this meeting occurred in the wake
Byzantine Blog reports: Hague tribunal’s decision to assign no other but the biggest Serb hater, Dutch judge Alphons Orie, to preside over the trial against former Republic of Srpska President Radovan Karadzic is the latest evidence of the kangaroo court’s pathological Serbophobia. Judge Orie has gained notoriety as a man who had released Kosovo Albanian butcher Ramush Haradinaj, while issuing maximal convictions to all Serb indictees who had a misfortune
Press TV reports: Mohammad Sacirbey, former Bosnian foreign minster says that US diplomat, Richard Holbrooke made an unambiguous political deal with Serb leader Radavan Karadzic. Sacirbey pointing out that he has been telling this story for more than a decade now, said the Holbrooke-Karadzic pact called for Karadzic to give up leadership of his political party and to drop out of public life in return for his already existing war
By M K Bhadrakumar for Asia Times (via Informationclearinghouse) From the details coming out of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan and Moscow over the weekend, it is apparent that the great game over Caspian energy has taken a dramatic turn. In the geopolitics of energy security, nothing like this has happened before. The United States has suffered a huge defeat in the race for Caspian gas. The question now is how much
By Scott Ritter for Truth Dig The war between the United States and Iran is on. American taxpayer dollars are being used, with the permission of Congress, to fund activities which result in Iranians being killed and wounded, and Iranian property destroyed. This wanton violation of a nation’s sovereignty would not be tolerated if the tables were turned and Americans were being subjected to Iranian-funded covert actions which took the
by Philip Giraldi for the American Conservative The Benny Morris op-ed in the NYT last Friday should provide convincing evidence that Israel really really really wants an attack against Iran sooner rather than later. Morris is close to the Israeli government and his case that Iran must be bombed soon and with maximum conventional weaponry to avoid using nukes later was clearly intended to push the United States to do
By Mike Whitney for Information Clearing HouseThere were no surprises on Barak Obama’s trip to Israel. Everything went by without a hitch. Obama met with all the heads of state and party bosses and raced from one event to another without incident. He skillfully tip-toed through a political minefield that could have ended his presidential bid in a blinding-flash. But he never stumbled. There were no gaffes, no miscues, and
by Srdja Trifkovic for Chronicles Magazine The spirit of the media frenzy surrounding the arrest of the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic on July 21 is based entirely on the doctrine of non-equivalence inaugurated in 1992: Serbs willed the war, Muslims wanted peace; Serb crimes are bad and justly exaggerated, Muslim crimes are understandable. This doctrine was spectacularly reiterated a month before Karadzic’s capture, when the Muslim wartime commander
by Gilad Atzmon for Palestine Think Tank Monitoring the current Israeli collective pornographic lament in the Hebrew press, I found, to my amazement, a critical editorial written by Dr Mordechai Keidar, an Israeli rightwing academic. “Our enemies,” says Keidar, “see in front of them a frenetic, emotional, weeping, corrupted, hedonistic, possessive and liberal nation. People who grab and eat, people who lack historical roots, people who are short of ideology,
by Khalid Amayreh for Palestine Think Tank The latest prisoner swap deal between Israel and Hezbollah is a healthy indicator that at least some Arabs are beginning to understand the depraved Zionist mentality, and act accordingly. Such mentality is based on arrogance, insolence, and religious and ethnic superiority. Israel, a country whose collective mindset views non-Jews as virtual animals or at least lesser human beings, had to face a new
Peace be upon all of you, It’s just as we promised in 2000, the age of defeats has gone and that of victories has come; these people, this land and this country which demonstrated an obvious image- Today, it’s well known to the entire world (including friends as well as enemies) that it’s impossible to have this country defeated! I liked to pass by you personally for greeting and salutation,
(Thanks to Mari for these two articles) Israel accused of threatening Lebanese by phone Lebanon protests to United Nations against Israeli ‘threatening phone calls’ to Lebanese. BEIRUT – Lebanon’s new telecommunications minister on Thursday accused Israel of bombarding Lebanese people with threatening phone calls, a day after a prisoner swap between Israel and Hezbollah. “Hundreds of people throughout Lebanon received threatening phone calls on their landlines from Israel,” Gibran Bassil
This is how the website of Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV presented Samir Kintar (himself a member of the Palestine Liberation Front and *not* of Hezbollah): In a world full of conflicts and atrocities, heroes are rare to find, but wherever they are found, they just seem to impose themselves and their values. One of those heroes is Samir Kintar who returns to Lebanon after spending thirty years in Israeli prisons, thus
by Gilad Atzmon for Palestine Think Tank Back in 2003 I wrote, “If ‘world peace’ is our main concern, we must achieve a balance of power, we must let the oppressed people of this world have access to the most advanced weaponry…. Balance of power is the only key to peace.” Nowadays, when Israel and its supportive lobbies are doing everything within their powers to drag us all into a
By Mike Whitney for InformationClearingHouse It was a perfectly executed rescue mission and they pulled it off without a hitch. A small group of Columbian military-intelligence agents, posing as aid workers on a humanitarian mission, touched-down in the heart of rebel territory, gathered up Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages, and whisked them away to safety while a small army of rifle-toting Marxist guerrillas looked on dumbfounded. The tale of
by Scott Ritter for Truthdig There can no longer be any doubt about the consequences of any U.S. and/or Israeli military action against Iran. Armchair warriors, pundits and blustering politicians alike have been advocating a pre-emptive military strike against Iran for the purpose of neutralizing its nuclear-related infrastructure, as well as retarding Iran’s ability to train and equip “terrorist” forces on Iranian soil before dispatching them to Iraq or parts
Check out there interview here: http://antiwar.com/radio/2008/07/12/scott-ritter-5/ (download sound file here: http://dissentradio.com/radio/08_07_11_ritter.mp3 ) An absolute must listen!
Press TV reports that Iran says its Armed Forces would target the heart of Israel and 32 US bases before the dust settles from an attack on the country. “If the enemy was confident that it would emerge victorious from an attack on Iran, they would not put it off for even another day,” an aide to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Mojtaba Zolnoor said on Saturday. Today, through
