Author: ludek

Assault Leaves Debris in the Mind

Off the radar of the mainstream media, IPS’ David Cronin reports about the material and psychological traumas Palestinians are having to deal with in the aftermath of Israel’s brutal onslaught on Gaza.

GAZA CITY, May 11 (IPS) – Gazans have a colloquial term to describe the buzzing of Israeli warplanes that is an ever-present feature of their lives: zanana.

The gallows humour of likening instruments of death to honey bees might suggest that the people of this crowded sliver of land on the Mediterranean have found a way of coping with the occupation that has lasted more than four decades. Yet the planes also remind Palestinians of what they fear most: that they could come under fresh attack at any time.

The destruction to property caused by the 23-day bombardment which the Gaza Strip endured in December and January remains visible in many parts of its main city.

Continue reading “Assault Leaves Debris in the Mind”

Kabul’s New Elite Live High on West’s Largesse

Patrick Cockburn reports about the self-enriching practices of the Western ‘donor’ community in Afghanistan. As despicable as it may be to siphon off wealth from one of the poorest countries in the world, it really ought to come as no suprise. It is but the continuation of the the multi-billion international development industry’s standard practice. Graham Hancock, a former World Bank employee and one of the first to expose the endemic corruption of the aid policies of the IMF, World Bank and USAID in the late 1980s, aptly calls them the “Lords of Poverty“.

Kabul – Vast sums of money are being lavished by Western aid agencies on their own officials in Afghanistan at a time when extreme poverty is driving young Afghans to fight for the Taliban. The going rate paid by the Taliban for an attack on a police checkpoint in the west of the country is $4, but foreign consultants in Kabul, who are paid out of overseas aids budgets, can command salaries of $250,000 to $500,000 a year.

The high expenditure on paying, protecting and accommodating Western aid officials in palatial style helps to explain why Afghanistan ranks 174th out of 178th on a UN ranking of countries’ wealth. This is despite a vigorous international aid effort with the US alone spending $31bn since 2002 up to the end of last year.

The high degree of wastage of aid money in Afghanistan has long been an open secret. In 2006, Jean Mazurelle, the then country director of the World Bank, calculated that between 35 per cent and 40 per cent of aid was “badly spent”. “The wastage of aid is sky-high,” he said. “There is real looting going on, mainly by private enterprises. It is a scandal.”
Continue reading “Kabul’s New Elite Live High on West’s Largesse”

‘Up to 100 dead’ in Afghan raid

The great British historian Mark Curtis has a name for the victims of Western state terrorism – ‘Unpeople‘. Their fate is barely registered in the annals of Western history, they have no names, no faces, erased from our collective memory. Dozens of them were massacred by US bombs on Monday. Al Jazeera reports:

Up to 100 Afghan civilians may have been killed during an air raid by US forces during a joint operation targeting suspected fighters, a provincial governor has said.

If the claims are verified, the deaths in Farah province on the western border would be the largest loss of civilian life in a single incident since US-led forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001.

Rohul Amin, the governor of Farah province, said on Wednesday that he feared that 100 civilians had been killed in the Bala Baluk district of the province, about 600km from Kabul, the capital.

Continue reading “‘Up to 100 dead’ in Afghan raid”

Major Foreign Tests Likely Over Next 100 Days

Jim Lobe‘s prognosis for the Obama presidency’s upcoming 100 days:

While Barack Obama has clearly improved Washington’s image abroad during his first 100 days in office, the next 100 will almost certainly prove much more challenging for the new president’s foreign policy.

Putting aside the possibility that the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression could become much more severe than the White House currently anticipates, or that the swine flu currently spreading out of Mexico explodes into a modern-day version of the 1918 epidemic over the coming months, Obama will face a series of difficult decisions on how to deal with a plethora of actual and potential geo-strategic crises.

Continue reading “Major Foreign Tests Likely Over Next 100 Days”

End Palestinian demolitions in Jerusalem, UN tells Israel

A new report by the UN OCHA details the demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and calls on Israel to immediately halt the activities. 60 000 Palestinians are at risk of being dispossessed. Rory McCarthy reports for the Guardian, in his typically bland style:

The United Nations has called on Israel to end its programme of demolishing homes in East Jerusalem and tackle a mounting housing crisis for Palestinians in the city.

Dozens of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem are demolished each year because they do not have planning permits. Critics say the demolitions are part of an effort to extend Israeli control as Jewish settlements continue to expand. The 21-page report from the UN office for the co-ordination of humanitarian affairs is the latest round in an intensifying campaign on the issue.

Although Israel’s mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, has defended the planning policy as even-handed, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, in March described demolitions as “unhelpful”. An internal report for EU diplomats, released earlier and obtained by the Guardian, described them as illegal under international law and said they “fuel bitterness and extremism”. Israel occupied East Jerusalem in the 1967 war and later unilaterally annexed it, a move not recognised by the international community.

Continue reading “End Palestinian demolitions in Jerusalem, UN tells Israel”

Printing Police Lies

An excellent article by George Monbiot, setting the abominable policing of the G20 protests into context. Monbiot explains that we are not merely dealing with “a few rogue officers [who] got out of control”, as much of media commentary in the UK would have it, but state-sanctioned violence that is “organised and systematic”.

If a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who has been twatted by the police. As the tabloids turn their fire onto an unfamiliar target – the unprovoked aggression of Her Majesty’s constabulary – the love affair between the cops and the rightwing press has never been more fragile.

The policing of the G20 protests at the beginning of this month was routine. Policemen hiding their identification numbers and beating up peaceful protesters is as much a part of British life as grey skies and red buses. Across 20 years of protests, I have seen policemen swapping their jackets to avoid identification, hurling people against vans and into walls and whomping old ladies over the head with batons. A friend had his head repeatedly bashed against the bonnet of a police van; he was then charged with criminal damage to the van. I have seen an entire line of police turn round to face the other way when private security guards have started beating people up. I have seen them refuse – until Amnesty International got involved – to investigate my own case when I was hospitalised by these licensed thugs (the guards had impaled my foot on a metal spike, smashing the middle bone).

Continue reading “Printing Police Lies”

‘Fallujah never leaves my mind’

This week marks the 5th anniversary of the First Battle of Fallujah. By the end of the second attack on the city in November 2004 hundreds of civilians were slaughtered and 60-70% of the city reduced to rubble. Operation Phantom Fury marked one of the darkest moments in the history of the occupation of Iraq – which explains why it has been so carefully dispatched down Orwell’s Memory Hole with the aid of the complicitous silence of the free press. “Laith Mushtaq was on of only two non-embedded cameramen working throughout the April 2004 ‘battle for Fallujah’ in which 600 civilians died. Five years on, he recounts the events he witnessed and filmed.”

“What you saw on your TV sets at home reflects only ten per cent of the reality. Also, if you watch those pictures at home, you can change the channel.

But we were in the middle. We smell. We feel, see, and touch everything. We could touch the bodies, but we couldn’t change the channel. We were the channel.

When I think of Fallujah, I think of the smell. The smell was driving me crazy. In a dead body, there is a kind of liquid. Yellow liquid. The smell is disgusting, really. It sticks in your nose. You cannot eat anymore.

Continue reading “‘Fallujah never leaves my mind’”

Obama Team Debates Stance on Israeli Attack Threat

And another excellent analysis of the US-Israel-Iran triangle and the machinations within the new Obama administration concerning a possible Israeli ‘pre-emptive’ strike against Iran by Jim Lobe and Gareth Porter

A recent statement by the chief of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), Gen. David Petraeus, that Israel may decide to attack Iranian nuclear sites has been followed by indications of a debate within the Barack Obama administration on whether Israel’s repeated threats to carry out such a strike should be used to gain leverage in future negotiations with Tehran.

In the latest twist, Vice President Joseph Biden, who has been put in charge of the administration’s non-proliferation agenda, appeared to reject the idea. “I don’t believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu would [launch a strike],” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Tuesday. “I think he would be ill-advised to do that.”
Continue reading “Obama Team Debates Stance on Israeli Attack Threat”

PERU: Where the Poor Pay More for Water

On a slightly different note, Ángel Páez of IPS reports about the shocking state of water distribution in Peru. Not only do 8 million people (out of a population of 28 million) lack access to piped water but the inhabitants of the capital’s slums pay almost 8 times more than Lima’s super-rich elite for access to clean water.

In Lomas de Manchay, an area of slum-covered hills outside of the Peruvian capital that is home to 50,000 people, mainly poor indigenous migrants from the highlands, clean
water is worth gold – almost literally.

Local residents of the shantytown pay 3.22 dollars per cubic metre of water, compared to just 45 cents of a dollar that is paid a few blocks away, across the main avenue, in Rinconada del Lago, one of Lima’s most exclusive neighbourhoods.


Continue reading “PERU: Where the Poor Pay More for Water”

Spain Investigates What America Should

The end of impunity? Marjorie Cohn reports about criminal proceedings initiated by a Spanish court against John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, William Haynes and Douglas Feith.

A Spanish court has initiated criminal proceedings against six former officials of the Bush administration. John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, William Haynes and Douglas Feith may face charges in Spain for authorizing torture at Guantánamo Bay.

If arrest warrants are issued, Spain and any of the other 24 countries that are parties to European extradition conventions could arrest these six men when they travel abroad.
Continue reading “Spain Investigates What America Should”