Picture: (AFP/Pool/File/Janet Hamlin)- Artist’s sketch, reviewed by the U.S. military, shows defendant Salim Hamdan at his trial inside Camp Justice,… Read More »Hamdans lawyers dismiss US terror trial as unfair
Fatah fears Gaza conflict has put Hamas in the ascendancy
By Patrick Cockburn
The Islamic movement Hamas is taking over from Fatah, the party created by Yasser Arafat, as the main Palestinian national organisation as a result of the war in Gaza, says a leading Fatah militant. "We have moved into the era of Hamas which is now much stronger than it was," said Husam Kadr, a veteran Fatah leader in the West Bank city of Nablus, recently released after five-and-a-half years in Israeli prisons.
"Its era started when Israel attacked Gaza on 27 December."
Read More »Fatah fears Gaza conflict has put hamas in the ascendancy
Obama is part of the problem
Fatima Bhutto
War rages in the North-West Frontier and the poor are embracing the Taliban because they at least fix roads and discipline criminals. But if catastrophe is to be averted in Pakistan it is the corrupt elite who must be confronted
Carlos Marighella, the Brazilian writer, Marxist and guerilla revolutionary, could have been talking about Pakistan’s present-day civil war in the North-West Frontier Province when he said: “It is necessary to turn political crises into armed crisis by performing violent actions that will force those in power to transform the military situation into a political situation. That will alienate the masses, who, from then on, will revolt against the army and the police and blame them for this state of things.”
Pakistan’s government, in the small league when it comes to the brain department, does not understand that it has just entered into a guerrilla war in the Swat Valley and surrounding areas, such as Buner, Mingora and Bajaur. The prime minister, Yousef Raza Gilani, who exists solely for photo opportunities as opposed to policy decisions, has declared a military offensive to halt the growth of the Taliban along Pakistan’s northern frontier.
Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire and Cynthia McKinney speak from an Israeli Jail Cell
By Free Gaza Team
"This is Cynthia McKinney and I am calling from an Israeli prison"
Posted July 03, 2009
LISTEN TO AUDIO HERE: http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22970.htm
JUAN GONZALEZ: We begin today with the latest news of the ship that was seized by the Israeli military Tuesday as it tried to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. Israeli forces boarded the ship and towed it to the Israeli port of Ashdod. The twenty-one activists on board include former Congress member and presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney and the Irish peace activist and Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire. Huwaida Arraf and Lubna Masarwa were released, while the other nineteen remain in detention.
AMY GOODMAN: Huwaida Arraf is the founder of the Free Gaza movement. She joins us now on the phone from Israel.
Huwaida, welcome to Democracy Now! Explain why you took this boat trying to get to Gaza and then what happened to you on board.
HUWAIDA ARRAF: [inaudible] Hello to you all.
The purpose of our mission was to highlight to the international community that what Israel is doing to Gaza is blatantly illegal, and our government isn’t doing anything about it. Israel constantly claims that their policies are based on security, but what they’re doing—imposing collective punishment on an entire civilian population.
We were carrying on our very, very small boat some medical aid, some rebuilding supplies, because after the January—December-January assault on Gaza, thousands of homes have been destroyed, tens of hospitals and schools all demolished. And, you know, the donor community supposedly pledged [inaudible] Gaza, but no one is saying anything. Not one country is saying anything about the fact [inaudible] the entire Gaza Strip, and not one bag of cement [inaudible]—
AMY GOODMAN: Huwaida, we’re going to interrupt for a minute, because, Juan, it sounds like we have someone else from a jail cell in Israel.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes, it sounds like we have Mairead Maguire, the Nobel Prize winner, on the phone from her jail cell.
Welcome to Democracy Now!
MAIREAD MAGUIRE: Thank you very much, indeed. Thank you.