By Iain Marlow – Staff Reporter

(source: The Star.com)

Jameel Jaffer dug up torture memos

One of the key figures behind the cascade of documents detailing torture and abuse within America’s global "war on terror" happens to be a Canadian-born graduate of Toronto’s Upper Canada College.

Jameel Jaffer, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer born in London, Ont., was instrumental in filing and fighting an unlikely Freedom of Information Act request that eventually unearthed thousands of pages of secret documents which illustrated damning evidence of U.S. government complicity in violations of international humanitarian law.
"A lot of the documents describe abuses that are really horrific," he said in an interview. "It was hard to believe that these incidents had occurred in facilities run by the United States."

Jaffer told the Star last night that this type of lengthy and expensive legal muck-raking is unlikely to occur in Canada because grants and funding are so scarce. "There are people doing this kind of work in Canada and they have a tough job," he said."
The request was filed by Jaffer and fellow ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh – daughter of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh – in October 2003, before the disturbingly iconic Abu Ghraib prison photographs emerged. When those photos came out in April of 2004, they spurred Jaffer and Singh to press their request in court, which is sometimes the only way to successfully pursue an FOI request.

Six years later, more than 130,000 pages of previously classified evidence has trickled out; much of it has been seized upon by critics of America’s seemingly unending global war on terrorism.

Read More »How canadian lawyer unearthedUStorture documents

By Dr. Salman Abu Sitta

(source: Palestine Chronicle)

While the news headlines were occupied with the freeze or suspension of Jewish settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories or with the competition for positions in the sixth Fateh conference in Bethlehem, Israel is putting into effect the most devastating operation since the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in al Nakba of 1948.  This new operation aims to eliminate irrevocably Palestinian rights and historical roots in Palestine.

Ironically, Arab and Palestinian leaderships remain oblivious to these cataclysmic developments. In particular, the Palestinian leadership, whose main duty is to defend Palestinian rights, is bogged down with the assignment of internal political posts and fighting what it sees as its primary enemy, Hamas.

The Zionist leadership in Israel felt bold enough to transform  the ideological slogan of ‘Jewish Israel’ into a reality on the ground.  The Knesset, the Israel Parliament, passed a law on August 3rd, 2009, after its second and third readings, which allowed the sale of “Absentees” Palestinian refugees’ land to Jewish individuals and Jewish institutions exclusively anywhere in the world. Thus, the legal right of the original Palestinian owner to his land would be severed through creating a barrier between the owner and his property.  The passing of the new law represents an audacious initiative by the current Israeli government that no previous Israeli government dared contemplate or venture into.

Read More »Dividing war spoils Isaraels robbery of Palestinian property

(source: HAARETZ)

by Staff Writers

The $25 million deal is said to have been clinched through Amit Sadeh, a middle-man implicated in the "controversial sale of air and sea drones by the Yavneh-based Aeronautics Ventures to the Nigerian defense ministry," the AllAfrica Web site reported.

Read More »Israel eyeing Africa arms exports

By Khaled Amayreh

(source: Palestine Information Centre)

When addressing Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, Fatah indulges in all sorts of bombastic rhetoric about the liberation of Palestine.

However, in negotiations with Israel and meetings with visiting Western officials, the leaders of the movement would dutifully  assure their interlocutors that the rhetoric was only meant  for public consumption and that Fatah would eventually accept  a “peace” deal  with the Zionist state even if  such a deal didn’t meet Palestinian expectations.

I recently asked a prominent Palestinian intellectual who maintains close  ties with the Palestinian Authority (PA)  leadership if he  thought that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who is Fatah’s undisputed leader,  had any alternative plan in case the Obama peace efforts collapsed.My interlocutor didn’t mince his words. He said that the only alternative Abbas had to failed negotiations with Israel was more failed negotiations.

Unfortunately, this seems to be completely true.

Abbas views lightly, even contemptuously Fatah’s occasional allusion about resuming “armed struggle” in case Israel refuses to end the occupation. Well, Israel not only refuses to end the occupation, but is also consolidating and perpetuating it by making the prospect of creating a Palestinian state on the West Bank unrealistic and illusive.

But why would Abbas look  down on these late-time pseudo revolutionaries within his party, who threaten to rise up anew against Israel while enjoying the fruits of political and security coordination with the enemy they are threatening to fight?

Well, the answer is clear. Abbas thinks, probably correctly, that these Fatah leaders are either hypocrites or liars, or both. After all, most of them have reached the positions they are now having thanks to the close cooperation and collaboration with Israel, mainly against other Palestinians, especially Hamas. Read More »Fatahs schizophrenia