Obama in mid east
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US – Features
Us group charged with child trafficking in haiti
By Bill Van Auken
(source:World Socialist Website)
Ten members of a Baptist Church-affiliated “rescue” group from Idaho have been detained in Haiti, accused of child trafficking for attempting to spirit 33 Haitian children out of the country without any official permission.
The group claimed to be taking the children to an orphanage in the neighboring Dominican Republic, ultimately to be adopted by evangelical Christian families in the US. The orphanage, however, exists only on paper, and many of the children said that their parents or other close relatives had survived the January 12 earthquake.
The incident is part of what amounts to a second invasion of Haiti, following the country’s occupation by thousands of US soldiers and Marines and the blockading of its coastline by US warships and Coast Guard cutters.
Aipac ordered bush to attack Iran
By Gordon Duff
(source: sabbah.biz)
In a unique interview with an official at the highest policy levels of the Pentagon, White House and, eventually, CIA, we are offered a unique “behind the curtains” look at areas of policy making during the period between 1999 and 2007. Extensive notes have been taken of meetings with President Bush and all his top policy advisors. This is only a teaser.
A highly placed source within the White House and CIA confirmed, in an interview, that the invasion of Iran was sheduled for 2006 but planned in 1999. We have heard some of this before but not with so many pieces and, I am told, more to come. In an interview with a Bush administration policy official:
Q. What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of your work at the White House? You have read my articles, what do you think of my take on things?
A. You are closer than anyone else in understanding how things worked, the only person willing to simply put it out there. You also come at things like the Pentagon people I have worked with, the ones who stood against Bush, Cheney and the AIPAC gang at the NSC (National Security Council.) I can also see that you don’t have background material that you need. Some of it you have wrong, particularly the motives for Iraq. It was always Iran, Iraq was simply a door.
“The Iraq invasion was a ‘done deal’ in 1999, but not as you thought to steal oil and bilk billions, that was all gravy. Iraq, the entire Bush presidency, had one purpose, to remove Iran from the picture.”
Q. You talk about journalists. What has your experience been?
A. I have good friends at the New York Times, Time Magazine, the Washington Post and others. They know all of this. They aren’t fooled. They could write anything but it would never hit print.
Q. Back to the 2000 election. The first impediment was, I am told, removing John McCain from the picture. Was this the case?
A. “He was enemy # 1, stubborn, unpredictable and already tarnished by the Keating 5 scandal, with all his faults, he didn’t have the serous skeletons in his closet that would fit the bill. McCain couldn’t be blackmailed like Bush, thus McCain is a risk. Unless you can be controlled, blackmailed or bought or both, you will go nowhere in Washington.
Response to yasmin alibhai brown
Response To Yasmin Alibhai Brown
In January, 2008 The Star reported on senior British cabinet minister Jack Straw calling for Muslim women in Britain to ‘unveil’ another. Besides a few token scorn ful and dismissive Muslim responses in the UK and elsewhere to the call by Straw, one of those self-appointed western do-gooders who consider themselves the knights in shining armour awaited anxiously by ‘Muslim’ women like myself to “save” them from the perceived drudgery and oppression inflicted on them by their male co-reli gionists, Straw’s straying onto the realms of centuries’ old Islamic traditions and val ues was considered a non-event and was totally ignored. Since there was not a single reported case of a veiled Muslim woman anywhere jumping up and proclaiming her new ‘liberation from ‘veil oppression’ because of Straw’s intervention the message from the other side was clear: Muslim women accept of their free volition and choice the need to don the veil, burkha or scarf as well as their role in Muslim societies as the modest, inwardly mobile home-makers a role many a western woman only now accepts is her lot..
There is now the spectre of another self-appointed duo of saviours of Muslim women in the form of Claire Soares and self-hating Muslim (?) Yasmin Alibhai-Brown with their biassed and sensationalistic stories of alleged abuses of Muslim women ( 5 May ) with their sweeping generalizations against all Muslim societies as women abusers.
Shamelessly Soares, while conceding that Delara Darabi confessed to murdering her father’s wealthy cousin and was convicted of the crime, has the gall to condemn the woman’s execution as some form of targeting of only women for abuse. What the mur murderess’ paintings has to do with her sentence and execution is beyond reason.
It has certainly not dawned on Alibhai-Brown, ranting about four distinct and isola ted cases ( of which the report sale by a man of his daughter in marriage needs the most virulent condemnation and demands that the father be locked up for life ) that “in the UK young girls are covered up in hijab as a matter of choice” and notwithstan ing it being disgraceful, backward, terroristic, savage, degrading and obscurantist ( all provocative appellations used by the author).
Roxana Saberi is a convicted spy who confessed to her crime and, as always happens with convicted – especially Euro-American – felons the confessions are withdrawn on ly when Alibhai-Brown type of journalists, on the lookout for sensationalistic stories about Islam/Muslims/Arabs, pull a case out of a hidden bag and pay the dollars for the stories. Justice must take its course and the convict must pay the price.
Not surprisingly Alibhai-Brown has had the good sense not to attempt to record any Muslim country where the law validates abuse of women. Perhaps there are such countries in the non-Muslim world. Pray enlighten us Yasmin Nightingale.
Of course abuse of women, children and men can never be and is not condoned in any civilized society and this includes the Muslim world. And of course it is offensive for any man ( or woman ) whether in a Muslim or non-Muslim country to stare at a female with lust as happens every day and everywhere ( don’t the women dressing provocatively or semi-nude not invite this solicited attention? ) so why this sorry state of affairs in Muslim societies deservers special mention just does not make sense. Perhaps Alibhai-Brown will ask herself whether she does not secretly desire a second from the roving eyes of the hundreds of sex-starved males the world over.
It is the notorious Muslim apostates like Tasleema Nasreen (of Bangladesh and now India), Salman Rushdie (of India and now New Zealand) and Ayaan Hirsi Ali (of Somalia and now the US after her illegal sojourn in the Netherlands) who base their whole notion of “freedom” for Muslims on one thing and one thing alone – remove and/or outlaw the veil in all its forms and voila their Muslim female charges will be free, free and free just like the freedom (?) brought to Afghanistan and Iraq. And notwithstanding that true western-style democracy means allowing the people to opt for a religious/theocratic state and practices – so why not let them?
I am a 41 year old professional Muslim woman. Like most Muslim females I don the veil and will not dream of leaving home without my whole body fully covered and ha ving at least a scarf over my head. This I do by choice and not under pressure from my husband, son or father. My friends and family members do likewise and do so out of choice. In my travels to Muslim countries I have met dozens of Muslim women with exactly the same views as I have. None of us has asked for or want the Nasreens, Rushdies, Ben Alis, Jack Straws or Yasmin Alibhai-Browns to “fight for our liberation” and liberation from what? Modesty in dress and adherence to age-old values.
No Messrs Straw and company: you do not speak for Muslim women and we do
not want you to speak for us. All we ask is PLEASE LEAVE BE to suffer (?) as you so firmly believe we do by following our God-given shariah. Perhaps you should consider devoting your energies to liberating women in the western world from the self-invited oppression in the form of cheap flaunting of their bodies and beauty and jettisoning of age-old traditional roles and values which see more of our sisters (Muslim and non-Muslim) living out their lives artificially as pseudo-males to prove they are free.
If freedom means freedom of choice then why is my decision to veil my face or cover my head considered self-oppression?
Incidentally to Aluibhai-Brown – who cares whether you drink wine or whisky or shake the hands of strange men. Why the cheap shot at us “backward” Muslims who, unlike you, know the limits to our freedoms and are happy to lead our lives as ordained in the Holy Quran and as shown to us by the Holy Prophet Mohammed S A W.
Yours sincerely
FAEEZA MOHSIN