9/11: Who Benefits?

The leader of the Zionist party “Likud” and former “Israeli” Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has described the 9/11 attacks as “very good for Israel.”

“We have benefited from the attacks on the twin towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, as well as from the American war in Iraq.  Those events tilted American public opinion in our favour, “- said the leader of the Zionist right.

“We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq. These events swung American public opinion in our favor,” said the leader of the Zionist right.

His words quoted by Jewish newspaper “Ma’ariv”, the Palestinian Information Center reports.  Netanyahu made the comments recently during a conference at Bar-Ilan University on the future of Occupied Jerusalem.

In a televised interview soon after the landmark 9/11 attack, Netanyahu remarked that “this is good for Israel,’ but prevaricated when asked by the interviewer how he could describe a horrible act as being good.

The Palestinian Information Center points out in this connection that in 2001, former head of Zionist regime Ariel Sharon was said that “the Jewish people control America and the Americans knew it.”

Kavkaz Center

 

Australian Government Apologises for Genocide

The apology was directed especially at Aborigines forcibly taken from their families as children in assimilation policies that lasted from the mid-1800s until 1970, during which time up to a third of Aboriginal children were ’stolen’.

An official commission which reported to Parliament in 1997 said that the assimilation policy amounted, under international law, to genocide and demanded a national apology. Mr Howard resisted such a move for a decade and even declined an invitation to attend today’s ceremony.

The 360-word motion of apology used the word sorry three times, each greeted by cheers as crowds watched Mr Rudd introduce the motion on large television screens put up around the country.

“For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry,” the motion said. “To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry. And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.

“We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation. For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.”

Some MPs were still opposed to the national apology, seeing it as a piece of liberal gesture politicking. The outspoken conservative MP Wilson Tuckey, known as “Ironbar” for his uncompromising views, walked out of Parliament before the apology, saying it would do little for Aborigines.

“Tomorrow there’ll be no petrol sniffing, tomorrow little girls can sleep in their beds without any concern - it’s all fixed, the Rudd spin will fix it all,” Mr Tuckey quipped.

But others described how hearing the Prime Minister say “sorry” after successive leaders refused to do so was like a weight off their shoulders.

“Sorry heals the heart and it goes deep,” said Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor, an Aborigine watching the ceremony on a large screen in the largely indigenous Sydney suburb of Redfern.

“This really means a big thing to us - a weight that can be lifted so that we can start our healing.”

Australia says sorry for ’stolen generations’ of Aborigines

 

Russia Punishes Converts’ Husbands

Russians Jail Muslim Men for Marrying Russian Islam Converts

Maryam, a Russian convert to Islam, came to Nalchik, the capital of the Russian-occupied Caucasian Muslim state of Kabardino-Balkaria, last month to wed in a festive ceremony that spilled out into the streets with well-wishers shouting “Allahu Akbar” - God is Great, the AP reported.

Now she spends her days mournfully standing in a knot of people outside the regional prosecutor’s office in Nalchik, petitioning for her husband to be released from jail. She says he was abducted by men in camouflage uniforms and masks a week after the wedding; after days of searching, she found he was being held in a prison hospital with a broken arm and three cracked ribs, and was accused of illegal weapons possession.

“I am sure that my husband’s arrest is revenge for our wedding. They even told me in the police station, ‘You deliberately mocked us with your God is Great,’” said the slight 23-year-old from the central Russian city of Ivanovo, her wide eyes and pale face the only things visible from underneath her tightly tied Muslim headdress and robe.

Young men such as Maryam’s husband continue to be jailed in spite of relatives’ protestations of innocence. Rights advocates have accused police of using repressive measures against observant Muslims all over the North Caucasus.

Maryam, an ethnic Russian who adopted a Muslim name when she converted two years ago, said she had been warned against moving to Nalchik but she had brushed off the warnings as exaggerations.

“After what happened to my husband, I understood they were right. It’s dangerous to live here,” she said, asking that her last name not be revealed so her parents would not find out about her troubles.

“But now I definitely won’t go. I will fight for my husband to be freed.”

 

US Torture’s Gestapo Roots

“BUSH lies” doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to ourselves.

Ten days ago The Times unearthed yet another round of secret Department of Justice memos countenancing torture. President Bush gave his standard response: “This government does not torture people.” Of course, it all depends on what the meaning of “torture” is. The whole point of these memos is to repeatedly recalibrate the definition so Mr. Bush can keep pleading innocent.

By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader, observed last weekend in The Sunday Times of London, America’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques have a grotesque provenance: “Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the ‘third degree.’ It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.”

From New York Times: The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us

 

America’s Hellish Epidemic

New York - They are the casualties of wars you don’t often hear about - soldiers who die of self-inflicted wounds. Little is known about the true scope of suicides among those who have served in the military.

But a five-month CBS News investigation discovered data that shows a startling rate of suicide, what some call a hidden epidemic, Chief Investigative Reporter Armen Keteyian reports exclusively.

“I just felt like this silent scream inside of me,” said Jessica Harrell, the sister of a soldier who took his own life.

“I opened up the door and there he was,” recalled Mike Bowman, the father of an Army reservist.

“I saw the hose double looped around his neck,” said Kevin Lucey, another military father.

“He was gone,” said Mia Sagahon, whose soldier boyfriend committed suicide.

Keteyian spoke with the families of five former soldiers who each served in Iraq - only to die battling an enemy they could not conquer. Their loved ones are now speaking out in their names.

They survived the hell that’s Iraq and then they come home only to lose their life.

Twenty-three-year-old Marine Reservist Jeff Lucey hanged himself with a garden hose in the cellar of this parents’ home - where his father, Kevin, found him.

“There’s a crisis going on and people are just turning the other way,” Kevin Lucey said.

Kim and Mike Bowman’s son Tim was an Army reservist who patrolled one of the most dangerous places in Baghdad, known as Airport Road.

“His eyes when he came back were just dead. The light wasn’t there anymore,” Kim Bowman said.

 

True Jews Reject Zionism

From the site Jews against Zionism

“…From ancient times, the relations between the Jewish and Islamic peoples have always been those of peace and brotherhood, and friendship always reigned between them. The proof of this is the fact that for centuries, in all the Arab lands, hundreds of thousands of Jews lived in honor and amidst mutual esteem.

“Jews throughout all generations yearned to grace the sacred soil of the Holy Land and to live there. However, their sole purpose was to fulfill the commandments dependent upon the land and to absorb Its holiness. Never, G-d forbid, did they have any nationalist or sovereign intent whatsoever which, as mentioned above, is forbidden to us. Indeed, also here in the Holy Land, our fathers lived in neighborly harmony with the Palestinian residents of the land, helping one another, to mutual benefit…”

 

Tunisian Authorities Confiscate Dolls Wearing Hijab

This is Fulla, the Hijab-clad Arab Muslim adaptation of the decadent West’s Barbie doll.

Our Barbie wears the Hijab (head scarf) and Islamic attire - a long dress with long sleeves. While she is a blessing to many parents in the Muslim world who are happy to see their children playing with a doll which conforms to social traditions and religious obligations, Egyptian blogger Ahmed Shokeir registers his disgust against Tunisian authorities who aren’t happy with the doll and are conducting a witch hunt and confiscating it from stores.

“Fulla is an Arab doll, developed a few years ago as an adaptation from the famous Barbie doll. It is only natural that she appears Arab or more specifically Gulf Arab, wearing the attire people in this part of the world are used to. Its manufacturers made sure that she wears the head scarf and its accompanying cloak without a veil, which covers the face. But Tunisia and you don’t know what Tunisia is, is conducting a clampdown and confiscating the doll and all other items which have Fulla’s image (such are stationery and school bags) on the grounds that the clothes she is wearing spread sectarianism. One of the journalists wrote that school bags carry Fulla’s pictures and he was worried that young children will be arrested and questioned for carrying the bags,” he wrote.

Source: Arabic Hijab Clad Doll under Fire in Tunisia

 

Headscarf Banned in Kyrgyzstan’s Schools

‘As the new school year gets under way, several Muslim girls in southern Kyrgyzstan have been excluded for wearing headscarves, and more are considering dropping out if the ban continues to be enforced.

‘The extent to which the headscarf ban is official remains unclear, but schools are citing new guidelines instructing them to interpret and enforce the school dress code more strictly.

‘In the past, schools have tolerated girls wearing Muslim-style headscarves, but now many are insisting that the costume does not count as part of the prescribed uniform and anyone who flouts the rules will be excluded.

‘The parents of devout Muslim schoolgirls have protested at the new rules, saying they should be allowed to adopt “hijab” or Islamic dress under the constitutional right to religious freedom.

 

Beauty and Brutality

This post from Umkahlil’s blog archive touched me deeply. A story of lofty nobility and base criminality, no less…

umkahlil: Kamil Nasir: Fighting on the Side of Beauty

It was not only childhood memories that pressed. Others, more recent ones, came. I recalled an incident, early after the 1967 War, when my husband and I accompanied our cousin Kamal Nasir, Palestinian nationalist and poet, on a visit to West Jerusalem. He needed to go there to settle a traffic violation fine. After years of separation we were excited and apprehensive to find ourselves, once again, in West Jerusalem, inaccessible to us since 1948. Jerusalem was and still is at the core of every Palestinian’s life, as a reality and as a symbol of our belonging to the land, and like children happy to be back at the scene of our youth we set out on a moving journey of memories .

Hanna and Kamal were exchanging stories and anecdotes of growing up in Jerusalem, their old haunts, Cinema Rex, the coffee shops, the YMCA where they played tennis, where Hanna learned how to type, where they attended concerts given by the Palestine Symphony and where the Palestinian musician Salvador Anita gave his memorable organ recitals. They remembered how once a year Jewish musicians from the Symphony, under the direction of Arnita, would come from Jerusalem to Birzeit College (now Birzeit University) to perform at commencement exercises with the school choir in which Kamal, with his warm tenor voice, was an enthusiastic singer.

I remember, as if it were yesterday, how during that same visit to
Jerusalem with Kamal we saw a little Israeli girl crossing the street, happily carrying her violin, confident and at peace with herself and the world. Noticing her Kamal, the committed humanist, known for his love of children and of music, looked at us, looked back at her and in the grand manner of the orator that he was, his face radiating compassion, said: “Look at her, a mere child, carrying her violin, her music. How can I, as a Palestinian leader, label this Israeli child an enemy. How can I disregard her people’s humanity even if they have dispossessed me of my country?” His words carried with them the ardent need for peace, and a hidden yearning for a Jerusalem he had once known.

 

Ingush Islamic Council Approves Murder of “Wahhabis”

From the Ingushetiya.Ru site: 

An Officer of the Mobile unit of the Russian Federation Ministry of Internal Affairs: the Lists of Addresses for “Working through” and Liquidation of “Wahhabis” Living at these Addresses Are Issued to Us by the Local Ministry of Internal Affairs. The Lists Are Approved by the Republic’s Islamic Council

Our correspondent has managed to talk with the commander of one of the subunits of the Directorate of Internal Affairs for Kurgan Region. The group of policemen headed by him is attached to the mobile unit of the Russian Federation Ministry of Internal Affairs based in Karabulak. In the words of the officer of the Directorate of Internal Affairs for Kurgan Region, the list of persons suspected of terrorist activity and “Wahhabism” is given to them by the local Ministry of Internal Affairs. In particular, the address of the Galayevs in Sagopshi village was on the list due for “working through” and “liquidation” sent to the mobile unit and signed by the Ingush Republic Minister of Internal Affairs Musa Medov. The operation in Sagopshi was approved by Medov and the latter assured them that the Galayevs were Wahhabis and combatants, that it was desirable to eliminate them on the spot, and not to attempt to take them captive. “At a joint operational meeting with the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Ingushetiya, Medov announced to us that the list was approved by the Islamic Council for Ingushetiya, that it included “Wahhabis” who leave the mosque on Fridays after midday prayers before the others etc.,” the officer of the mobile unit said.

In this manner, many young Muslims have found themselves placed on the “list for execution” compiled by the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Ingushetiya jointly with the Islamic Council for the Republic of Ingushetiya. Their entire guilt lies in the fact that they pray in the wrong way and leave the mosque early, after the ruzban prayer without performing the midday prayer. Whether they are indeed combatants, whether they belong to illegal armed formations is not a question bothering anyone.