The secret
of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake
that, you got it made. - Groucho Marx
..INTERNATIONAL
SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT
Nablus:
Terror and Resistance Today is the fourth day of the Israeli
Army's campaign of terror against the Old City of Nablus,
during which ISM activists based in the city worked with
Palestinian UPMRC (first aid) volunteers in the delivery
of food and medicine to stranded households, rescuing the
injured, evacuating families from occupied houses and
monitoring the activities of Israeli troops.
In their rescue
operations they were frequently hindered by Israeli
soldiers who denied them access to areas where wounded
people were stranded.
On two occasions
yesterday they were able to rescue families who called
out to them from the top floors of their
occupied houses. With the ISM activists
looking on, the families were able to escape from the
houses without interference from the soldiers occupying
the house.
..However, today they were unable to rescue a woman, her
ten year old son and new baby from a house under
occupation by Israeli special forces. The woman's
husband has been taken into detention by the Israelis and
the soldiers denied that the woman wanted to leave her
home. When the activists insisted on talking to her
the soldiers took her to window while keeping her
children in another room. With the soldiers
standing behind her the visibly terrified woman, whose
arm had been injured, told the activists that she
didn't want to leave. Later the soldiers vacated
the house for the house across the road. They had
been there only an hour when the activists arrived with a
doctor who had come to give a tranquilising injection to
a hysterical teenage girl who was traumatised by
the soldiers' behaviour but already that house had been
thoroughly vandalised. The family of eight were
all being kept in a small room.
Last night the activists were fired upon
by Arab mercenaries who were holding prisoner an
ambulance driver, and four UPMRC volunteers in the
Hammam Shifeh bathhouse. This time the mercenaries
shot to kill rather than shooting over their heads or at
the ground as it their usual practice and the activists
heard the bullets whistling past their heads.
The ISM then contacted Miri Weingarten of the human
rights organisation, Physicians for Human Rights, who
contacted the Israeli Army at 8.15 pm, informing them
that medical workers were being held as prisoners in
violation of international law. The Army
spokesperson calmly informed her that they were aware of
this and they would be released in 10 to 15
minutes. At 10 pm the activists were told by the
troops that they could retrieve the female UPMRC
volunteer from the bathhouse. When they did so the rest of the medical
workers were led away to the interrogation centre at
Jamal Abd Nasser School. They were finally released
from there at 2 am last night.
It seems that it is the Israeli Army's strategy to
round up for interrogation as many men as possible
in the hope of recruiting them as
informers. This morning the Army expanded the focus of
their operations from the east to the west of the
Old City but their tactics remained the same: human
shields were made to walk before the soldiers as they
conducted their house to house searches and made
their captives stand in front of the buildings as they
ransacked homes, took away the men, occupied houses and
confined their occupants in single rooms.
A new
feature of the operation was that tanks based in the
suburb of Ras El-Ain fired their shells into the Old
City. Their targets were not apparent to those who
witnessed the assault since there were no resistance
fighters in the area. This afternoon Tommy, a Danish
journalist working with the ISM, and 15 UPMRC volunteers
were bringing food to families living near the Jamal Abd
Nasser School in the Ras el-Ain suburb. The entire
school has been turned into a military base by the
occupying army who are being billeted in occupied houses
surrounding the school.
The families of these houses have not been allowed out to
buy food since the invasion commenced. They found
the streets around the school full of tanks, armoured
personnel carriers (APCs) and soldiers. At
4.40 pm they saw that four other UPMRC volunteers were
being held next to an APC so they approached to
investigate. When they arrived at the APC its
commander immediately demanded to see Tommy's
passport. When Tommy handed it over, the APC's
commander, Ariel Ze'ev emerged from the vehicle. "Do you
remember me fat-arse?" he asked. "You're
in big trouble now."
Ariel
Ze'ev headbutted Tommy at Azmut checkpoint two weeks ago
and. He and his men are renown in Nablus as among
the most sadistic soldiers in the area. He has
boasted to ISM activists that he is not human and enjoys
making people suffer, has been seen by the
activists beating women at Azmut checkpoint and has
been known to roam the streets around his occupied house
in search of Palestinian children to take back and beat
up.
The soldiers then took one of the UPMRC volunteers into
the APC as a prisoner and then began to taunt Tommy. "Am I getting
my passport back?" the journalist asked. "No no
no!" Ariel replied. "When I get
asked about this I will say it was all a
misunderstanding. Anyhow I've been missing
you. I need something ugly to look at." "I haven't
seen you for a long time either," replied
Tommy. "I was beginning to think that Israeli
soldiers weren't that bad." "You never
know when I'll be back," replied Ariel.
"By the way, where's Maria? I've been missing
Maria." (Maria is another member of the ISM.)
Gradually,
all of the prisoners were released except Tommy and Jaber
Jowbreh, the UPMRC worker held in the APC. When darkness fell
Ariel told Tommy he could leave but that he would keep
his passport. Unwilling to spend the night in such
unwholesome company, Tommy left and is working with the
Danish consulate to recover his passport. After Tommy left
Jaber Jowbreh remained unaccounted for several hours but,
after a coordinated campaign by the ISM and the Israeli
human rights group, Hamoked, to discover his location, he
was released from prison at around midnight.
Two Palestinians
were killed yesterday (a man and his grandson who were
crossing the road together) and two more killed
today. One was killed trying to cross the street
with his wife (who was injured in the same attack and is
now in hospital). The other was shot dead by
soldiers when they saw him trying to close the door of
his store, which had been damaged when the soldiers
forced their way into the store on a previous
occasion.
The ISM are unable to determine the number
people wounded over the past two days as they have
been too busy to visit the hospital. The Army claims
that its operation in Nablus is intended to destroy the
infrastructure of terrorist (Palestinian resistance)
groups operating in Nablus but, "because the Old
City was not sealed off before it was invaded, the
resistance fighters were easily able to escape to other
parts of the city ." A more likely explanation
for the operation is that it was intended to terrorise
the city's population into submission.
If this is the case
then it seems to have been totally unsuccessful.
Yesterday, 1,500 people gathered at a rally outside of
the Old City organised by the Political Coalition (an
alliance of Nablus community associations). This
evening the Political Coalition coordinated a protest
involving the entire population of Nablus. At 8.30
the people of the city all came out onto their rooftops
and to their windows and began to cry Allah Akhbar (God
is Great), whistle and bang their pots and pans
together.
The
more daring then began to gather in the streets, in spite
of the pouring rain, to shake hands light fires and march
to the city centre as they were cheered from the windows
and rooftops of Nablus. Tommy, accompanied the
crowd which and reported that he felt carried along by
the tremendous civic pride of the people of Nablus. Though physically
exhausted from their labours of the past four days and
shocked by the savagery of the violence that they have
witnessed against defenseless civilians, the spirits of
the ISM activists have been raised by this display of
resistance by a city that is occupied but nevertheless
unconquered.
The
picture was taken today of a soldier in Nablus
guarding two of his human shields.
..20 22 February
2003 22:52
Canadian
Weapons Inspection Team!!!
http://www.rootingoutevil.org
MISSION USA: UPDATE: February 17, 2003
With only five days left before our trip to the
U.S.A., final arrangements are now being made for our
first weapons inspection.
Today we sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld serving notice that we will be sending
an international team of weapons inspectors to
Edgewood Chemical Biological Center in Maryland on
Sunday, February 23, 2003 to investigate U.S.
involvement in the development and storage of chemical
and biological weapons. Read the letter here.
The delegation that will be performing the inspection
at Edgewood includes: Libby Davies, Member of
Parliament (Canada - NDP); Alan Simpson, Member of
Parliament (United Kingdom - Labour) and head of
Labour Against the War; Christy Ferguson, Organizer
and Spokesperson, Rooting Out Evil; Deborah Bourque,
National President, Canadian Union of Postal Workers;
Steven Staples, Defense Analyst, Polaris Institute;
Mel Watkins, Professor Emeritus - Economics and
Political Science, University of Toronto; Samaa
Elibyari, Representative, Canadian Islamic Congress;
Ed Hammond, Director, Sunshine Project; Peter Shorett,
Director of Programmes, Council for Responsible
Genetics; Francesco Martone, Senator (Italy - Green
Party; Graziella Mascia, Member of Parliament (Italy -
Rifondazione Communista); and Pernille Rosenkrantz,
Member of Parliament (Denmark - Red-Green Alliance).
Supporters and the general public are invited to join
the team at a public forum in Washington D.C. at
7:30pm, Saturday, February 22nd at the First
Congregational Church, 945 G Street NW (corner at 10th
and G, next to the library).
We would like to extend our sincerest appreciation to
all of our honorary inspectors for the financial and
moral support that has made this project possible.
We have selected the US as our first priority based on
criteria provided by the Bush administration.
According to those criteria, the most dangerous states
are those run by leaders who:
1) have massive stockpiles of chemical, biological,
and nuclear weapons;
2) ignore due process at the United Nations;
3) refuse to sign and honour international treaties;
and
4) have come to power through illegitimate means.
The current US administration fulfills all these
criteria. And so, again following Bush's guidelines,
Rooting Out Evil is demanding that his administration
allow immediate and unfettered access to international
weapons inspectors to search out their caches of
chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.
On the weekend of February 22/23,
the team will
attempt to cross into the United States on a mission
of peace, and will be greeted on the US side by
Americans who favour true global cooperation, an end
to weapons of mass destruction, and a regime change in
the US at the next election. The team will then
attempt to inspect a US site suspected of housing
weapons of mass destruction.
JOURNALISTS
SACKED BY BBC
Matt
Wells(The Guardian)
Friday February 21, 2003
The two journalists sacked by the BBC World Service after
an alleged "breakdown of trust" today said they
had been victims of character assassination.
Adli Hawwari and Dr Abdul-Hadi Jiad, producers in the
BBC's Arabic Service at Bush House in London, held a
press conference at the headquarters of the National
Union of Journalists, saying they had been victims of
malicious briefing by the BBC press office.
The pair were marched out of Bush House on Wednesday,
after their dismissal - without right of appeal - was
approved by the director general, Greg Dyke.
The BBC accused them of making "malicious and
vexatious" complaints. The two men were involved in
17 employment tribunals and 20 appeals over five years.
Today, Dr Jiad maintained he had been dismissed partly
because of his Iraqi descent: "It is certainly
linked to my origin, and they want to clear the place of
Iraqis before war."
The BBC has said there are six other Iraqis working for
the World Service. But Dr Jiad countered that none work
in the current affairs department of the Arabic service,
but for the online section.
He maintained that his professional record was clean.
"There has never been any disciplinary action
against me throughout my life at all. On the day of my
dismissal, I was the day editor, in charge of all current
affairs programmes."
Mr Hawwari, who is a member of the NUJ national
executive, said a year had passed since his last tribunal
against the BBC. He had offered to be moved to another
department to defuse tensions, but claims all offers of
reconciliation were rejected.
"When people get sacked it's usually a quiet affair,
but this was unprecedented. We were producers. In the
hierarchy of the BBC, we were very very low.
"But our dismissal was very well publicised, a press
release was issued and there was briefing against us. It
was malicious.
"For an organisation that is meant to be
broadcasting accurate news, this was a disgraceful
action.
"This is to scare people at the World Service, to
give the message: 'Don't open your mouth, if you open
your mouth, you are going to get it'."
He attacked the BBC for the manner in which it publicised
the sackings.
"To leak it to the media, there is an element of
character assassination involved," he said.
The NUJ pointed out that the BBC's Arabic Service had a
long history of problems with employee relations.
NUJ spokesman Tim Gopsill said: "We have professors
and poets here who are put to work as translators of
material prepared by English people in the World Service
newsroom who don't understand what is going on in their
country."
Mr Hawwari pointed out that the department's head, Gamon
McLellan, cannot speak Arabic to a level at which he
could understand the programmes being put out.
"The fact that the Arabic Service is headed by
someone who doesn't speak the language speaks for
itself," he said.
The television branch of the NUJ's London section passed
a motion in support of the pair last night, saying:
"This branch is appalled that the BBC tries to ride
roughshod over British industrial law in such a reckless
matter. It urges the BBC to reconsider."
The BBC maintained it had acted properly.
A spokesman said: "We felt these were quite
exceptional circumstances.
"For the past five years, these ex-employees, under
the cloak of legal privilege, have made the most malicous
and untrue allegations against the BBC and its staff, and
continued to make these on the day they were dismissed.
"It was important that the BBC's side was put."
tony Blair
refuses,Feb.6th 2003, to rule out war on
Iraq "without a new UN mandate", if
there is an "unreasonable veto" in the
Security Council.
(This means that no veto re. Israel from America against
observers or a peace keeping force, for which Palestine
has pleaded for years,was ever unreasonable ??
England, therefore, is prepared to and is
party to, and has always condoned the murder of
Palestinian civilians, school-children and the aged,
pregnant women and the new-born and thousands of
men - England is really also at war for Jewish and
Bankers financial interests in the Middle East ??)
Dossier on
Iraq.
THE UK DOSSIER LIFTED EVIDENCE - 10 OF
19 PAGES PLUS DOCUMENT DETAILS ON OTHER PAGES BY
WHITEHALL OFFICIALS, NOT "INTELLIGENCE SERVICE"
MATERIAL:
The latest English Gov. dossier on Iraq - allegedly drawn
on "intelligence material" is plagiarised right
down to original grammatic errors from internet material
from the Middle East Review, Sept.2002, by Ibrahim
al-Marashi, and draws heavily from Jane's Intelligence
Review 1997 and Nov.2002.
Colin Powell,U.S.Secretary of State
calls this a "fine paper" of "exquisite
detail".
Four Whitehall officials working on
the rest of the document are named - which indicates that
the English do not have any independent sources of
information, drawing on publicly available data.
Electronic cut and paste that fails to acknowledge its
sources - but was recognised for what it is by a lecturer
in politics at Cambridge University. Guardian,7.1.2003,
Illustration Steve Bell.
Popular
referendums are no guarantee of direct democracy, just as
little as parliamentary elections prove that democracy is
alive and well. That is why the quality and effectiveness
of popular rights depends on the precise procedures put
in place. The forthcoming EU-accession referenda present
a great opportunity of overcoming some of these
procedural failings, writes BRUNO KAUFMANN
Link to article http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?aid=9227
.POLITICAL ANALYST NORMAN
SOLOMON WRITES:
There's no doubt about it: Colin Powell is a great
performer, as he showed yet again at the U.N. Security
Council the other day. On television, he exudes
confidence and authoritative judgment. But Powell owes
much of his touted credibility to the fact that he's
functioning inside a media bubble that protects him from
direct challenge.
Powell doesn't face basic
questions like these:
* You cite Iraq's
violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions to
justify the U.S. launching an all-out war. But you're
well aware that American allies like Turkey, Israel and
Morocco continue to violate dozens of Security Council
resolutions. Why couldn't other nations claim the right
to militarily "enforce" the Security Council's
resolutions against countries that they'd prefer to bomb?
* You insist that Iraq is
a grave threat to the other nations of the Middle East.
But, with the exception of Israel, no country in the
region has made such a claim or expressed any enthusiasm
for a war on Iraq. If Iraq is a serious threat to the
region, why doesn't the region feel threatened?
Tacit erasure of inconvenient history -- including his
own -- is integral to the warm relationship between
Powell and U.S. news media.
The
Gulf War catapulted Powell to the apex of American
political stardom in early 1991. When he was asked about
the Iraqi death toll from that war, Powell said that such
numbers didn't interest him.
At this point it seems that only a miracle could prevent
the Bush administration from going ahead with its plans
for a horrific attack on Iraq, sure to kill many
thousands of civilians. The U.S. leaders will demonstrate
their evident belief that -- in Colin Powell's apt words
-- "with the destruction of buildings, with the
murder of people, they can somehow achieve a political
purpose."
For an in-depth analysis of Colin Powell's role in
setting the media agenda for a war on Iraq in 2003, go to
www.accuracy.org/unilateral.pdf -- an excerpt from
"Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell
You," a new book by Norman Solomon and Reese Erlich,
just published as a paperback original by Context Books.
For the prologue to the book and information on how to
order, go to: http://www.contextbooks.com/newF.html
Due
to the pressure of events this Diary will be updated
during the month.THE MOST RECENT MAILS BEING AT THE TOP
OF THE COLUMN
BACKGROUND : A KRAUZE, CARTOON:
STEVE BELL
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