Columbus, Ohio. September 2, 2008.
"Certainly, terrorists cannot compose the entire populations of the major towns, villages and city of Indian-Occupied Kashmir. And more than one million people cannot be instigated and provoked by a remote control." Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai.
Read More »United nations has not lived upto its responsibilities congressman burton
‘Year of the Drone Strike’ Netted Only Five Actual Militant Leaders
by Jason Ditz
(source: AntiWar.com)
On January 1, 2009, a US drone strike killed two senior al-Qaeda leaders, the first in what then President-elect Barack Obama had said would be a dramatic escalation of the aerial bombardment of Pakistan’s tribal area.
And escalate it did. The US launched 44 distinct drone strikes in Pakistan in 2009, far more than in previous years. The pinnacle of America’s drone achievements was in August, when they killed Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leader Baitullah Mehsud.
Much has been made of the successes, but while the strikes have been regular and they almost always are presented by Pakistan’s intelligence community as having killed “suspects,” the actual successes are few and far between, with only five confirmed kills of real militant leaders, and a handful of unconfirmed claims that usually haven’t panned out.
Read More »Us killed 700 civilians in pakistan drone strikes in 2009
LATEST UPDATE:
1. Summary
The European Commission has recently announced that it has granted more research funding to Israel’s military projects than most of the EU states under the European Security Program. Some of the notorious Israeli firms who are actively participating in the ethnic cleansing and war crimes in the occupied Palestine have been granted billion of Euros as part of joint ‘security research’ projects.
Please write to EU commissioners to express your outrage regarding EU’s involvement in Israeli war crimes by squandering significant amounts of its taxpayer’s money. You can also email Baroness Catherine Ashton Vice-President, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Her email address is provided below.
As pressure mounts on Israel to lift the siege, Hamas gains
(source: The Economist.com)
After three years of campaigning for Israel to lift the siege of Gaza, some of the Islamists ruling the territory are having second thoughts. This week the agriculture minister for Hamas, the Islamist group that runs Gaza, was putting the finishing touches to a ten-year plan to wean it off dependence on Israel and make it self-sufficient in food. Israel’s ban on fertilisers had helped his plan to replace fertiliser with compost made from sewage that otherwise spills into the sea, and turn Gaza into a big organic farm. Then Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, promised to open the crossings. Some Gazans fear that Israeli merchants will sell cheap produce in Gaza, as they used to before the siege.
The minister, Muhammad al-Agha, says he is undeterred. To protect his farmers, he has told Gaza’s importers to buy licences each time they bring in Israeli foodstuffs they import. Garlic, which Gaza lacks, will be let in but no vegetables grown in Gaza. And once he realises his plan to plant a million fruit trees, he will ban fruit imports too.
But keeping Israel’s supplies out will be hard. After three years of reliance on underground smuggling from Egypt, Gaza’s merchants are again buying Israeli. Since Mr Netanyahu’s promise to ease the blockade, an eerie silence has fallen over Gaza’s border with Egypt, which hitherto echoed to the whirl of a thousand winches hauling goods to the surface. Now shopkeepers fear being lumbered with shelves of unwanted tunnel-tattered products, as Israel’s neater goods pour in. In the past, underground traffickers would have organised one of Gaza’s fighting groups to attack an Israeli position in order to provoke a closure and keep trade from Egypt flowing. But as part of its informal non-aggression deal with Israel, Hamas is policing the border and pounces on anyone operating without its consent.