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THE WORLD WE LIVE IN-HEADLINES FROM THE PRESS
11 months ago
| News/Recent andCurrent events

 

An-Nahar (LEBANON): Obama as President: The World is Changing and We Must Change – With forceful and honest words, U.S. President Barack Obama drew his vision for America and its role in the world, and his ambitions for recovering America, indicating that he will completely change the legacy left behind by the domestic and foreign policies of his predecessor George W. Bush. In his inaugural speech, Obama affirmed that the United States will take back its leading role in the world, not by military force, but through alliances and values. He made it clear he wants to open a new chapter with the rest of the world, and extended his hand to the Muslim world to move forward on the basis of mutual respect.

 

 

Az-Zaman (LONDON/IRAQ): Obama: We Will Leave Iraq for Its People – The 44th U.S. president, Barack Obama, told more than 2 million people who came to the historic inauguration yesterday that Washington will assume a new approach in dealing with the Muslim world. He said the United States will begin, in a responsible manner, to leave Iraq for its people and to work toward peace in Afghanistan.

 

 

Tishreen (SYRIA): Obama Colors White House With Hope – Obama on Tuesday became the first African-American president, breaking the shadow of racism that has covered North America for generations, bringing hope to his country and to the world. As the White House opened its doors to receive its new resident, his predecessor Bush left, in good riddance, as he carried a hundred historic shoes on his head for the death and displacement of millions of Iraqis; his hands bloody with hundreds of thousands in Afghanistan and with the blood of more than 1,300 Palestinians killed and 5,500 wounded for his sponsorship of the Israeli aggression on Gaza.

 

 

Al-Ghad (JORDAN): Doctors: 90 Percent of Palestinian Injuries from White Phosphorous – A Jordanian medical team that just returned from Gaza said 90 percent of the Palestinian injuries from the Zionist aggression on the strip were a result of white phosphorous shells, whose use on civilians is internationally banned. In a news conference in Amman yesterday, the doctors said they brought biopsies of the injuries to confirm the use of this weapon, although it was clear in the open wounds, which they said were releasing white smoke. They said the evidence of the illegal use of white phosphorous is enough to bring international charges of war crimes against Israeli leaders.

 

 

Al-Mesryoon (EGYPT): Arab Differences at Kuwait Summit Dispel Reconciliation – The optimistic mood of Arab reconciliation that prevailed on the first day of the Arab economic summit in Kuwait dissipated after the leaders failed to agree on a practical mechanism for Gaza's reconstruction. Although Saudi King Abdullah seemed ready to abandon the Arab peace initiative, sharp differences surfaced among the Arab states on whether to withdraw the initiative and declare Israel a terrorist state.

10 months ago
Afghan War Should Last Until 2025: Ex-Commander
By Nathan Hodge   

Barno_2 The Iraq war may be winding down. But the battle for Afghanistan could continue until 2025.

That's the view, at least, of Lt. Gen. (Ret.) David Barno, the former head of coalition forces in Afghanistan. In testimony yesterday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Barno outlined a strategy that anticipates keeping U.S. troops there for another 16 years.

Barno's vision of the Afghanistan strategy, in brief:

  • 2009 – Holding Operation: A surge of combat forces to protect the population during the upcoming presidential elections and to stabilize the security situation;
  • 2010 – Counteroffensive: provide security to the population while building state institutions and mentoring the Afghan government;
  • 2010-2015 - Consolidation: Begin selective transition ("Afghanization") of security in the north and west;
  • 2015-2025 – Transition: continue selective transition -- as security allows -- and hand over control to responsible Afghan institutions.

It's unusual to hear someone discuss a long-term presence in Afghanistan with such candor. And while Barno may be out of uniform, his influence continues.

10 months ago

Israel's death squads: A soldier's story

 

 

A former member of an Israeli assassination squad has broken his silence for the first time. He spoke to Donald Macintyre

 

Sunday, 1 March 2009


 

The Israeli military's policy of targeted killings has been described from the inside for the first time. In an interview with The Independent on Sunday, and in his testimony to an ex-soldiers' organisation, Breaking the Silence, a former member of an assassination squad has told of his role in a botched ambush that killed two Palestinian bystanders, as well as the two militants targeted.

 

The operation, which took place a little over eight years ago, at the start of the present intifada, or uprising, left the former sharpshooter with psychological scars. To this day he has not told his parents of his participation in what he called "the first face-to-face assassination of the intifada".

As the uprising unfolded, targeted assassinations became a regularly used weapon in the armoury of the Israel military, especially in Gaza, where arrests would later become less easy than in the West Bank. The highest-profile were those of Hamas leaders Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi in 2005, and of Said Siyam in the most recent offensive. But the targeting of lower-level militants, like the one killed in the operation described by the former soldier, became sufficiently common to attract little comment.

10 months ago

The pasta, paper and hearing aids that could threaten Israeli security

 

 

By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor

 

Members of the highest-ranking American delegation to tour Gaza were shocked to discover that the Israeli blockade against the Hamas-ruled territory included such food staples as lentils, macaroni and tomato paste.

 

Related articles

"When have lentil bombs been going off lately? Is someone going to kill you with a piece of macaroni?" asked Congressman Brian Laird. It was only after Senator John Kerry, the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, raised the issue with Defence Minister Ehud Barak after their trip last month that Israel allowed the pasta in. Macaroni was considered a luxury item, not a humanitarian necessity, they were told. The total number of products blacklisted by Israel remains a mystery for UN officials and the relief agencies which face long delays in bringing in supplies. For security reasons such items as cement and steel rods are banned as they could be used by Hamas to build bunkers or the rockets used to target Israeli civilians. Hearing aids have been banned in case the mercury in their batteries could be used to produce chemical weapons.

Yet since the end of the war in January, according to non-government organisations, five truckloads of school notebooks were turned back at the crossing at Kerem Shalom where goods are subject to a $1,000 (£700) per truck "handling fee".

Paper to print new textbooks for Palestinian schools was stopped, as were freezer appliances, generators and water pumps, cooking gas and chickpeas. And the French government was incensed when an entire water purification system was denied entry. Christopher Gunness, the spokesman for the UN agency UNRWA responsible for Palestinian refugees, said: "One of the big problems is that the 'banned list' is a moving target so we discover things are banned on a 'case by case', 'day by day' basis."

Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said: "Israel's blockade policy can be summed up in one word and it is punishment, not security."

9 months ago

Pentagon honors more than 200 combat medics, other medical troops killed so far in the wars

 

Combat medic Christopher Holland was shot to death in Iraq while tending the wounds of another soldier. Paul Nakamura was killed when his ambulance was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

At least 220 medics, Navy corpsmen and other medical personnel have been killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"They're my heroes," says the Pentagon's top doctor, S. Ward Casscells, who has co-authored a book on them and meets Wednesday with some of their families in hopes of getting support to build a memorial to their sacrifices.

Since the 2001 start of the war in Afghanistan, military medical workers have died in plane crashes, were ambushed on patrols, succumbed in traffic accidents, were killed by friendly fire and died by dozens of other means.

Nakamura, with a rank of specialist in the Army Reserve, was born in Santa Fe Springs, Calif., and died in Iskandariya, south of Baghdad, in 2003. Holland, a 26-year-old soldier also with the rank of specialist, was born in Brunswick, Ga., in 1977 and died in Baghdad the same year as he worked on his platoon leader after an ambush.

Navy Hospital Corpsman Marc A. Retmier died in a Taliban attack in Afghanistan in June while working with a reconstruction team, treating local civilians, the book says.

Mostly a collection of short biographies on the fallen, it's titled, "When It Mattered Most."

"When it mattered the most, they answered the call," Casscells (pronounced kah-sells) said in an interview.

"The call" is the scream of "Corpsman up!" or "Medic!" that comes across the battlefield when a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine is injured.

Soldiers refer to their medic or corpsman as "Doc," but the medical workers call themselves "force multipliers." That is, the very idea that there is someone nearby to render aid — or save lives — emboldens troops to take more risks.

Roughly one soldier dies out of every eight wounded in battle today, compared with a mortality rate of one for every 2.4 in World War II and one for every three in Vietnam, the Army has said. Officials attribute the higher survival rate to better armor and tactics, better and faster medical treatment at the front and other advances.

Medics also can be commanders' eyes and ears for other issues — perhaps more likely to notice when someone in the unit is having emotional problems or not eating well.

But the burden can be great, not just in mortality but in high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, Casscells said.

Doctors, nurses and other medical personnel have borne the strain of what they've seen in the two wars, where burns, amputations and blast wounds from roadside bombs have shattered so many bodies. "But by far, the people bearing the brunt on the medical side have been the medics and corpsmen," because they are on the front line with their units, he said.

They carry defensive weapons and go where their company or platoon goes — searching out insurgents, raiding homes, manning checkpoints and so on.

The history of Iraq and Afghanistan is filled with stories of those who dared to run to the wounded in the middle of a firefight, or kept applying bandages, checking pulses and lifting troops to safety when they themselves were wounded. A number have received the Silver Star and other decorations.

"They're not supposed to be dashing through a hail of bullets," Casscells said, but that unspoken standard set by some weighs on their minds.

They "beat themselves up" when they've made a mistake or simply think they've let a comrade down, but "the chance to do good is also high ... so you can imagine the emotional roller coaster" they are often on, Casscells said.

Patrick Campbell, a combat medic who was attached to an infantry patrol unit in Iraq, said he's an example.

"No matter what I felt about whether or not we should be in Iraq, I felt like I was saving people's lives," said Camp

9 months ago

Sri Lanka's military says a senior Tamil rebel leader has been killed in fighting

KRISHAN FRANCIS

A senior Tamil Tiger rebel leader was killed Wednesday in a government attack on the insurgents' shrinking territory, the Sri Lankan military said.

Sabaratnam Selvathurai is the second major insurgent figure to be killed in 16 months. His death could be a boost for the government as it battles for the last rebel stronghold in the north and appears poised to defeat the group after more than 25 years of civil war.

The killing comes a day after a suicide bomber killed 14 people and critically wounded a government minister in the south. The military has blamed the assault on the rebels.

Military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said that troops on the front lines confirmed killing Selvathurai, whose nom de guerre was Thamilenthi, in battles in the last rebel-held town of Puthukkudiyiruppu.

Selvathurai was in charge of the Tamil Tigers' financial unit. Another major rebel leader, S.P. Tamilselvan, the head of the political wing head, was killed in a 2007 airstrike.

The rebels could not be reached for comment, and it was not possible to verify the report independently because reporters are barred from the war zone.

Media Minister Anura Yapa said earlier Wednesday that the government will put in new security measures across the country after Tuesday's suicide blast in the southern town of Akuressa showed that even regions far from the war zone in the north are vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

Akuressa is 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Colombo.

"No one believed that this kind of attack could take place in a remote area like Akuressa," he said. "Definitely, police will implement new security measures to prevent these kinds of attacks."

He did not elaborate on what the new security measures would entail, saying that senior police officials would decide.

The suicide bomber targeted six Cabinet ministers as they led a religious procession Tuesday morning.

The attack killed 14 people and badly wounded Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Mahinda Wijesekara, who remained in serious condition Wednesday, according to Dr. Hector Weerasinghe, director of Colombo National Hospital.

Meanwhile, pro-rebel TamilNet Web site reported that the guerrillas infiltrated army-controlled territory Tuesday, killing 50 soldiers. The rebels' suicide squad and artillery unit took part in the mission close to Puthukkudiyiruppu, the report said.

Military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara denied the report.

Human rights and aid groups have voiced concern over tens of thousands of ethnic Tamil civilians trapped in the shrinking sliver of land still under rebel control.

The Tamil Tigers have fought since 1983 for an independent state for the Tamil minority, which suffered decades of marginalization at the hands of governments dominated by the Sinhalese majority. More than 70,000 people have been killed.

9 months ago

Brussels - European Union governments Wednesday cautioned Israel against demolishing some 90 buildings in East Jerusalem, warning it would deprive more than 1,000 Palestinians of their homes.

'If implemented, the demolition would deprive more than 1,000 Palestinians of their homes and would be the largest destruction of Palestinian houses in East Jerusalem since 1967,' the Czech presidency of the EU said in a statement issued on behalf of the bloc's 27 member states.

'The EU reminds Israel of its obligations under the Roadmap and international law. Demolition of houses in this sensitive area threatens the viability of a comprehensive, just and lasting settlement, in conformity with international law,' the statement said.

In February, shops, businesses and schools in the West Bank took part in a general strike protesting at Israel's decision to demolish homes in the Jerusalem area village of Silwan to make place for a national park.

Silwan, which is south of the Old City wall of Jerusalem where 45,000 Palestinians live, is the location of the biblical City of King David. Israel has been carrying out excavations in that area, raising concerns among Palestinians that the digs may damage the structures of their homes.

Jerusalem's new mayor, Nir Barkat, has since denied accusations that the demolitions are discriminatory, saying his main concern is to uphold the law and target all illegal constructions found anywhere in Jerusalem.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton described the destruction of homes in Jerusalem during her visit to Ramallah last week as 'unhelpful' and not in keeping with the roadmap obligations.



Read more: "EU cautions Israel against demolition of Palestinian homes" - http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/middleeast/news/article_1464048.php/EU_cautions_Israel_against_demolition_of_Palestinian_homes_#ixzz09WIuk5Vm

PART1
9 months ago

At last we get it - this war is Vietnam for slow learners

Eight years of fighting has made no difference to the balance of power in Afghanistan. Only one word makes sense: exit

One word shines through the spin surrounding this week's Barack Obama policy review on Afghanistan. The word is exit. Before he became president, Obama was much taken by the idea that Afghanistan was a good and winnable war, a usefully macho contrast to his retreatism on Iraq. But in a military briefing at the time, he asked what was the exit strategy from Kabul and was met with silence. He has got the point.

In Britain, Gordon Brown too has no answer. Whether speaking to troops in the field or to the House of Commons, he incants the unconvincing line that the war he is waging, and plainly not winning, against the Taliban is about "terrorism on the streets of Britain". He cannot believe this any more than do his listeners. His platitudinous references to Afghanistan in the counter-terrorism strategy launched yesterday are evidence of this, complete with its absurd insistence on "poppy eradication".

This war remains what it was from the start, aggression against a foreign state intended to punish it for refusing to hand over the perpetrators of 9/11. It was later sanitised (largely by the British) as a liberal intervention to bring democracy and gender awareness to a poor people. The American architect of the war, Donald Rumsfeld, had no such lofty ambition. He just wanted to hit hard and get out. It was Tony Blair and the neocons who saw the country as a testbed for their new philanthropic imperialism.

After nearly eight years of fighting, the original objective - to find Osama bin Laden - has eluded the strongest military coalition on earth, while liberal intervention is ever further from success. A British government has again sent an army to get stuck in a senseless war against Pashtuns. It never learns.

If Britain has forgotten, at least Obama appears to be learning from America's equivalent example, Vietnam. The drift to a repeat of that catastrophe is the last thing his presidency needs just now. He can see that the occupation of Afghanistan has made every mistake in the invader's handbook. It has been Vietnam for slow learners.

There was the insertion of too many troops to make the invasion not an occupation, but too few to suppress the insurgency. There was the concept that aid could install democracy faster than occupation would create antibodies. There was the naivety of planning to wipe out Afghanistan's source of national income (opium), transform its political culture (bribery and corruption), reform its social mores (the role of women), reorder tribal power and ignore the threat from bordering states.

The Pentagon's use of the war to test its latest military kit, notably pilotless bombers, has been a disaster, ensuring that gains by soldiers on the ground are wiped out by aerial massacres that act as recruiting sergeants for the enemy. As for the anti-opium campaign, master-minded since 2001 by the British, it was well described this week by Richard Holbrooke, Obama's "Af-Pak" aide, as "the most wasteful and ineffective programme I have seen in 40 years". It was little more than a western taxpayer subsidy to the Taliban.

The good news from Washington is that Obama seems determined to stop all this. Under cover of a boost of 17,000 troops to Helmand, he hopes to suppress the violence for long enough to reach ramshackle deals with the Taliban, giving cover for withdrawal - first to Kabul and then out altogether, leaving local leaders to make some sort of peace with themselves, their insurgents and their neighbours.

This policy has mountains to climb. Any visitor to Kabul sees the air-conditioned edifices and entrenched interests of the new interventionism. Office blocks are filled with military advisers and NGOs, driving out Afghans and raising rents to the sky. Most foreigners are marooned with little to do, as few dare venture outside their compounds, let alone Kabul - a glaring deterioration of security since a year ago.

The politics swirling round Hamid Karzai, the elected Afghan president, are so fraught that he is reportedly on the brink of being toppled in all but name by a "chief of staff" compliant to American policy. Karzai, a wily survivor in a snakepit of feuding warlords, druglords and Taliban, is unlikely to go quietly. Why Nato should thus want to destabilise this last shred of Afghan democracy under the guise of seeking to root out endemic corruption in Kabul is a mystery.

PART#2
9 months ago

 The parallels with America's last years in Saigon are foreboding.

Nor has the bombing by pilotless Predators ceased. Last week, America's CIA "militants" were leaking proposals for bombing the Taliban-friendly Pakistani city of Quetta in Baluchistan. The inability of Obama or his military chief in the region, David Petraeus, to stop these ventures by subordinates is a most ominous development.

By carrying operations from the border area deep into Baluchistan, America is further undermining the internal politics of Pakistan - and "defeating our objective of countering terrorism", as Yousuf Raza Gilani, Pakistan's prime minister, bluntly described the strategy. It has been so counterproductive as to suggest an al-Qaida mole embedded somewhere in Washington's high command.

Any long occupation by an invader eventually leads to a rough equilibrium of power, each component inevitably feeding the others. UN figures suggest that barely 10% of outside aid reaching Afghanistan - including £1.6bn from Britain - goes to its intended use. Most vanishes into the same power melting pot as the opium harvest and the Taliban's sources of cash in the Middle East. The idea that eager ingenues in NGO Kabul will ever create their new Sweden is fantasy.

The old maxims remain true: getting into a war is easy, getting out is hard. Obama seems to realise that the fate of America's Afghan adventure has come to depend not on what Nato does or does not achieve, but on the good offices of the emergent Taliban and the stability of the currently shambolic regime in Islamabad. In other words the balance of power rests roughly where it was before this wretched business began in 2001.

As with the Russians so with the west: this poor, intensely private country will one day see off another invader who sought to reorganise its history with guns, bombs and money. It has not worked. It was never going to work. Oh so painfully, we are now beginning to understand.

simon.jenkins@guardian.co.uk

Israeli Army Admits 'Isolated mistakes in Gaza
8 months ago

Tel Aviv - Israel's second-ranking military officer admitted Wednesday the army made mistakes that caused civilian deaths during the January Gaza war against Hamas, but he reiterated the Army's assertion that it did not violate international conventions on warfare.

Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Dan Harel said the Army will forward to Israel's military prosecutor and the attorney general the findings of an internal inquiry into accusations of illegal use of white phosphorous munitions, targeting humanitarian and civilian infrastructure.

"We found a very small amount of cases where we had operational or intelligence mistakes during the fighting," General Harel told journalists attending a briefing at the military's national headquarters. Still, Harel insisted, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) "conducted itself in the Cast Lead operation under international rules of law."

The briefing was an attempt to address charges at home and abroad of war crimes. Palestinians and human rights groups allege that the Army used disproportionate force in Gaza's densely packed residential areas that left more than 1,000 Palestinians dead, thousands more injured, and a swath of physical destruction.

The UN is investigating some of the charges, and the International Court of Justice is mulling its own inquiry. Human rights lawyers abroad have said they are planning to introduce lawsuits in European domestic courts willing to exercise principles of universal jurisdiction over accusations of war crimes in third-party countries.

On Wednesday, six Norwegian lawyers said they were planning to bring charges of war crimes against former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other top officials, according to Agence France-Presse.

Army: We hit 1,400 Hamas targets

The Army said the deadliest error occurred Jan. 6 when Israeli soldiers killed 21 civilians who were taking cover in a house. The soldiers mistook the house for a nearby weapons storehouse.

Harel said the mix-up was due to an "intelligence mistake," but insisted that the Army successfully identified some 1,400 Hamas other targets during the war. In a reiteration of the military's defense of the civilian toll at the time of the fighting, Harel said Hamas was to blame for the destruction for booby-trapping residences and hunkering down near hospitals.

The rest of the article :

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0422/p06s10-wome.html

Crimean Parliament Vetoes US Naval Excersice In Black Sea
8 months ago

 

 

Kiev - The parliament of the Ukrainian province of Crimea on Wednesday voted against allowing planned US naval manoeuvres in the Black Sea, the Interfax news agency reported.

The Crimean parliament in voted 61 in favour of a motion declaring the US Navy-led 'Sea Breeze' 2009 manoeuvres 'impermissable' - laying the legal grounds for a possible ban.

Nine members of Crimea's 91-member parliament opposed the motion, whilst the national government in Kiev has signalled it expects the exercise to go ahead as planned.

Ukraine's Black Sea peninsula Crimea is home to a majority of ethnic Russians, and minorities of ethnic Tartars and Ukrainians.

The US-financed 'Sea Breeze' exercises have been held every summer since 1997, with US and Ukrainian naval and marine forces the main participants.

A majority of Crimea's residents oppose the yearly air, land, and sea operations believing they constitute a first step towards making Ukraine a member of NATO.

The Crimean parliament resolution cited the military operations' possible impact on the regionally-important summer tourism industry, as a second reason the exercise should be banned.

Ukraine's national government nonetheless signaled its intent to participate in the training, sending three warships to sea on Wednesday for warm-up manoeuvres prior to the exercises.

Around 20 NATO officials will be on hand to observe the Ukrainian crews as they practise transferring supplies while at sea, towing a damaged vessel, combat manoeuvres, and defences against nuclear, chemical and biological weapons attack, a Ukrainian navy spokesman said.

A Ukrainian frigate, corvette, amphibious assault ship, reconnaissance aircraft and naval helicopter were involved in the warm-up exercises.

The rst of the article:

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1472313.php/Crimean_parliament_vetoes_US_naval_exercise_in_Black_Sea_

 

8 months ago

European Nations May Investigate Bush Officials Over Prisoner Treatment

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
 

 

BERLIN, April 21 -- European prosecutors are likely to investigate CIA and Bush administration officials on suspicion of violating an international ban on torture if they are not held legally accountable at home, according to U.N. officials and human rights lawyers.

Many European officials and civil liberties groups said they were disappointed by President Obama's opposition to trials of CIA interrogators who subjected terrorism suspects to waterboarding and other harsh tactics. They said the release last week of secret U.S. Justice Department memos authorizing the techniques will make it easier for foreign prosecutors to open probes if U.S. officials do not.

Some European countries, under a legal principle known as universal jurisdiction, have adopted laws giving themselves the authority to investigate torture, genocide and other human rights crimes anywhere in the world, even if their citizens are not involved. Although it is rare for prosecutors to win such cases, those targeted can face arrest if they travel abroad.

Martin Scheinin, the U.N. special investigator for human rights and counterterrorism, said the interrogation techniques approved by the Bush administration clearly violated international law. He said the lawyers who wrote the Justice Department memos, as well as senior figures such as former vice president Richard B. Cheney, will probably face legal trouble overseas if they avoid prosecution in the United States.

"Torture is an international crime irrespective of the place where it is committed. Other countries have an obligation to investigate," Scheinin said in a telephone interview from Cairo. "This may be something that will be haunting CIA officials, or Justice Department officials, or the vice president, for the rest of their lives." Read th rest here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/21/AR2009042103742_pf.html

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