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Finkelstein Banned in Berlin: A Democracy that isn’t a Democracy

By Anis Hamadeh | February 19, 2010

Dr. Norman Finkelstein wrote several books in the field Israel/Palestine/Holocaust and is one of the most sagacious analysts of our time. Similar to Professor Ilan Pappe, he formulates sharp criticism in respect to past and presence of the State of Israel, and both use very rational argumentations and are reliable researchers. Especially since the mass murders in Jenin and in Gaza, these two men and many other Jews (also in Germany) speak out, because they do not want to be taken in for violent purposes by a state that arrogates to speak and act in the name of all Jews.

As is known now, both the Heinrich Boell Foundation and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation have canceled Finkelstein talks that were already scheduled in Berlin. While the foundation close to the Green party did not even bother to explain its behavior, the board of the foundation close to the Left party explained its drawback in a media info with the empty statement that such a talk would be “explosive” (“brisant”).

What is going on there, one wonders. Does Finkelstein call for violence? Are his views outside legal norms, does he disesteem the human rights? Nothing of all this. On the contrary. The reason for banning him is the veto of groups that seek to avert criticism of Israel, connecting this issue with the reproach of anti-Semitism. This is an old chestnut and not specifically interesting. What is interesting, though, is that the German public buys this nonsense and denies a man, who lost his family in German concentration camps, to talk on German soil, tolerating that he is labeled an anti-Semite for his reflections on violence in Israel. The same thing actually happened only some months ago to the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in Munich, when the city’s Lord Mayor canceled a scheduled talk. Pappe then wrote in an open letter that his father “was silenced in a similar way as a German Jew in the early 1930s”.

The German Self-Conception

So let us revisit the German self-conception and then take a short look at the historical background to understand this apparantly great fear that is going around in Germany. Recently, when the Israeli politician Shimon Peres talked on the occasion of the Holocaust Memorial Day in the German Bundestag, he received standing ovations. The few, who did not stand up for their refusal of Peres’ and Israel’s violent policies, were publically attacked. There is, for example, the quote of a member of the Bundestag: “The Nazi crimes, the Shoa, and the war of annihilation are the original crime of humanity. (…) The Jewish victims of National Socialism are memorized on January 27 in the Bundestag memorial. On this occasion, only they and the reminder of ‘Never again!’ can be the topic. Everything else in this context is a relativization of the Nazi crimes.” It is a quote typical for Germany and reveals the German angst as well as the great danger that goes with it.

The genocide of the Jews in this quote is taken out of any historical context and declared a unique event. Firstly, this reveals a “We (We!) are the greatest” narcissism. Secondly, it reveals a pro-Jewish racism, as if one racism could make up for another one. Not the victims are important, no, the Jewish victims are. The Nazi killing of Sinti and Roma thus is kind of OK. And how much then will the killing of Palestinains be OK if conducted by Jews. Put in a more general way: while calling the genocide of the Jews the “original crime”, the unique and incomparable act, every other crime is relativized and thus not so important. Finkelstein and Pappe do not fit in here, they disturb the celebration by entering the historical framework, which is all the more embarrassing as they are Jews with family ties to Nazi victims. Banning them shows that in the end even Jewish Nazi victims are not what the whole circus is about, despite all the pathetic oaths and solemn declarations. This is what Germany fears, that people realize that public “Remembering the Holocaust” is a fake and that Finkelstein and Pappe are eloquent and powerful enough to unmask this pharce.

Germany has decided to do penance for the Nazi crimes by means of supporting the State of Israel. When it stands in solidarity with the Zionist state, then Germany would fulfil its historical responsibility. This dogma is not questioned, although it is beyond any logic to support Zionism of all things in order to do penance. Beyond logic not in the first place because there had been fruitful cooperations between Nazis and Zionists. (It was in the interest of both ideologies to bring Jews out of Germany.) What is much worse is that violence is not recognized as the problem. Thus Hitler has won in the end, for the violence that made this criminal a criminal in the first place, this violence has not stopped. On the contrary: the compulsive “Never again!” serves as a justification of violence and killing. This works only because the genocide of the Jews was taken out of its historical context and floats around freely.

The Israeli Self-Conception

Both Finkelstein and Pappe write about the missing historical context and this is what people are afraid of, for both use their arguments brilliantly, even compelling, and they are concerned as Jews whose families have Nazi experiences. Like Goldstone, Chomsky, and some others, the two academics are subject to hate and rejection of the ruling Zionism and its strenuous friends. Finkelstein lives in the USA, where Zionism is even stronger than in Israel, and he does not lead an easy life. Pappe needed to go to exile in England, because life in Israel became unbearable for him. He wrote the book “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” in which he clearly shows how the Israeli state was built on heavy violence. Considering that both authors face bans in Germany it is no wonder that there is not much heard of the events around 1948 other than flat stereotypes.

According to the Israeli self-conception the Zionist state emerged out of a “War of Independence”. In this view, the Jewish victims of National Socialism have created a state to protect themselves and were immediately attacked by their evil Arab neighbors. This version of the story is sacrosanct and is defended with great hysteria, be it in Israel or in Germany, because it does not bear with a neutral analysis. For when Israel was founded in May 1948, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine had already been going on for half a year. This was called “Plan Dalet/Plan D” and everybody can read about it. Hundreds of indigenous Palestinians were killed and hundreds of thousands were expelled from their villages by Zionist militias. According to the Israeli self-conception many Palestinians went away voluntarily, as if anybody would voluntarily leave their home and property just like that.

International pressure led to the UN partition plan which deprived the native population of a little more than half of Palestine which was to be given to the Zionists. Yet the Zionists were not content with that. They received weapons and took more of the land by force. When they then built a state on this land, they did not do it in agreement with anybody, but unilaterally and surprisingly. The dogma of the “right of existence” was invented so that people would not talk about these events anymore. Here is the seed of the problems we are confronted with until today. It is possible to begin earlier, with the Sykes Picot Treaty or the first settlers from abroad who for the most part did not integrate, but appeared aggessively. One can talk about the British and about Zionist and Arab terrorism, about Jabotinsky and other pioneers. But it is the founding of the state and Plan D which show most clearly why history is escalating until today.

The massacre of Deir Yassin happened in the framework of this plan, it was covered in the world press. Nobody was ever held responsible for this blood-spree and thus a precedence was created which is working until today. Nobody has been taken to account for the mass murder in Gaza, neither, and all the other massacres that Israel habitually commits. The Plan D land theft is another precedence, for up to this day the Israeli territory gets wider while the Palestinian territory shrinks. All this is inherent in the biased concept of “right of existence”, as are the race laws from 1950 which guarantee all Jews in the world a “right of return” to Israel while the expelled native population had to keep out, an unprecedented act in the long history of the country. Their land and property was confiscated by the new masters who clinged to a blood-and-soil ideology. A lot of this reminds one of the Nazis, which by no means is a wonder, when you consider the victim/perpetrator dynamics. It is known that victims, because of their traumas, are prone to become perpetrators and it is so obvious that it takes a whole lot of energy to suppress the respective discourse. It is suppressed, in militarized Israel just like in Germany, it is taboo. For this reason, a government of right-wing extremists in Israel is not a problem. Right-wing extremism is not right-wing extremism, when it comes to Israel.

The Tip of the Iceberg

The cancelation of Finkelstein’s talks are but the tip of a huge iceberg. While these lines are written, Palestinian houses in Barta’a Ash-Sharqiya are being demolished and in Sheikh Jarrah/Jerusalem new land thefts are scheduled. A big historic Arab graveyard is to be confiscated to build a “Museum of Tolerance” on it while in Bil’in the nonviolent resistance against the wall enters its sixth year. The protesters are injured by the army on a regular basis, and also killed. The world press says almost nothing about the heroes of nonviolent resistance, because it does not fit the image. Russian Jews in Be’er Sheva in the Negev have just killed a bedouin boy and heavily injured another, while a group of fundamentalist settlers have injured a Palestinian child in Hebron. About 11.000 Palestinians are kept in Israeli prisons. The “checkpoints” to Nablus have been closed down recently so that nobody can enter. The Gaza fishermen are being shot at by the Israeli navy and Gaza is still under siege. The head of the Dubai police just confirmed that according to police investigations there is a very high probability that the Mossad is behind the murder of a Hamas politician in the Emirates. Every day you can read on http://www.theheadlines.org what happens in the country and that since 1948 there has been no change of the routine. In Germany, the Palästina Portal is one of the sources one can turn to.

Most of what happens remains unknown to us, our media skips most of it, in fear of an increasing “anti-Semitism”. It is for the same reason that we are not to listen to Finkelstein and Pappe, for they verify the terrible events and the historical development sketched above. Instead, we are fed with “information” on “terrorism”. It is well-known to some of the leading politicians and opinion-leaders that the Israeli policy can only lead to the self-destruction of the State of Israel. Call it a culture of death. Maybe self-hatred is another reason for this behavior, something human rights advocates like Finkelstein and Pappe are labeled by exactly those who display it themselves. But even according to our mainstream dogmas we have a big problem here, for this development is bad for the Jews, too, the Zionists among them and the anti-Zionists.

Norman Finkelstein (http://www.normanfinkelstein.com) will talk about Gaza in Munich on Feb. 24, 7 p.m. Amerikahaus, Karolinenplatz 3, and on Feb. 25, 7 p.m., Kulturhaus Milbertshofen, Curt-Mezger-Platz 1

SOURCE – Also available in German

February 22, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Jerusalem Post analysis: Finkelstein’s Germany tour sparks protest

BY BENJAMIN WEINTHAL – 21/02/2010 – Excerpts

The controversial American Jewish political scientist Norman Finkelstein’s attempt to secure locations last week in Munich and Berlin to deliver anti-Israel lectures

Finkelstein, whose scheduled talk – “One year after the invasion of the Israeli army in Gaza and the responsibility of the German government in the starvation of the Palestinian population” – generated protests and cancellations last week…

Initially, he was scheduled to speak in the Trinitatis evangelical church in Berlin, with organizational and financial support from the political foundations of the Green Party, Left Party, German-Palestinian organizations, and a fringe group of anti-Zionist Jews.

Finkelstein was denied entry to Israel in 2008 because of his pro-Hizbullah solidarity activity in Lebanon. According to a February New York Times review of a documentary on Finkelstein, he waved a banner during a protest against the First Lebanon War in 1982, “urging ‘Israeli Nazis’ to ‘stop the Holocaust in Lebanon.’”

The Heinrich Böll Foundation, affiliated with the Green Party, pulled the plug on its involvement and said in a statement: “We regret our decision… and because of careless, insufficient research we made a fiercely bad decision. Finkelstein’s behavior and his theses take place, in our view, not within the framework of justified criticism.”

There has always been an insatiable market, particularly among the Left, for Finkelstein’s views in Germany, largely because he allows many Germans to air anti-Israel sentiments in a politically and socially correct way. A spokeswoman from the respectable Piper publishing house in Munich, which publishes his books, told The Jerusalem Post that Finkelstein’s anti-Israel Holocaust Industry sold 150,000 copies in 2001, catapulting it to best-seller status.

It’s not hard to explain the popularity of Finkelstein in Germany: If the son of Holocaust survivors can equate Israel with Nazi Germany and charge American Jewish organizations with exploiting the Holocaust to tap into the guilt and financial chords of Germans, then Germans can breathe more easily and alleviate their sense of guilt and connection to the Shoah.

Finkelstein’s background serves as a social-psychological crutch that allows many Germans to invoke his Jewish biography to insulate themselves from accusations of anti-Semitism.

After the cancellation of the support of the Green Party foundation and the Trinitatis church, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, which is affiliated with the Left Party, offered to provide a venue for Finkelstein. A diverse group of pro-Israel organizations – including the BAK Shalom Working Group within the Left Party – protested the foundation’s decision. Henning Heine, a spokesman from the foundation, issued a statement, saying “we underestimated the political explosiveness of Finkelstein’s lecture” and rescinding its offer.

BAK Shalom is a group of young Left Party members who seek to end their party’s adherence to flourishing anti-Zionist positions within the party.

Rising pressure from the pro-Israel community also prompted the Amerika House in Munich to walk away from its support of Finkelstein’s appearance.

The last refuge for Finkelstein is the headquarters of the notoriously pro-Islamic Republic leftist Junge Welt daily, a leftover from the former communist East Germany. Finkelstein will deliver his talk on Friday in the gallery of the paper’s building in Berlin. – Full article

February 22, 2010 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Israel’s new ‘attack on freedom of speech’

By Jonathan Cook | The National | February 21, 2010

NAZARETH // The Israeli government and its right-wing supporters have been waging a “McCarthyite” campaign against human-rights groups by blaming them for the barrage of international criticism that has followed Israel’s attack on Gaza a year ago, critics say.

In a sign of the growing backlash against the human-rights community, the cabinet backed a bill last week that, if passed, will jail senior officials from the country’s peace-related organisations should they fail to meet tough new registration conditions.

The measure is a response to claims by right-wing lobbyists that Israel’s human-rights advocates supplied much of the damaging evidence of war crimes cited by Judge Richard Goldstone in his UN-commissioned report into Israel’s Operation Cast Lead.

Human-rights groups funded by foreign donors, such as the European Union, would be required to register as political bodies and meet other demands for “transparency”.

Popular support for the clampdown was revealed in a poll published last week showing that 57 per cent of Israeli Jews believed “national-security” issues should trump human rights.

In a related move, right-wing groups have launched a campaign of vilification against Naomi Chazan, the Israeli head of an American Jewish donor body called the New Israel Fund (NIF) that channels money to Israeli social justice groups. The NIF is accused of funding the Israeli organisations Mr Goldstone consulted for his report.

Billboard posters around Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and a newspaper advertising campaign, show a caricature of Ms Chazan with a horn growing from her forehead under the title “Naomi-Goldstone-Chazan”.

“We are seeing the evaporation of the last freedoms of speech and organisation in Israel,” said Amal Jamal, head of politics at Tel Aviv University and the director of Ilam, a media-rights organisation that would be targeted by the new legislation. The Israeli political system, he added, was being transformed into a “totalitarian democracy”.

Leading the charge against human-rights groups – most of which are officially described as “non-governmental organisations” – has been a self-styled “watchdog group” known as NGO Monitor. Its activities have won support from the government following the international censure faced by Israel for its attack on Gaza.

The bill, approved by a ministerial committee last week, is the product of a conference staged in the parliament in December by Gerald Steinberg, NGO Monitor’s director, and a settler-backed organisation known as the Institute of Zionist Strategies.

A professor at Bar Ilan University, Prof Steinberg presented a report to MPs and ministers that referred to peace groups as “Trojan horses” and argued for imposing constraints on funding from European governments and the NIF.

In a statement at the time, Prof Steinberg said: “For over a decade European governments have been manipulating Israeli politics and promoting demonisation by funding a narrow group of favored non-governmental organisations.”

He has reserved special criticism for advocacy groups for the country’s Arab minority and for Jewish groups opposing the occupation, accusing both of promoting an image of Israel as an “apartheid” state that carries out “war crimes” and “ethnic cleansing”.

According to his report, 16 Israeli peace NGOs received US$8 million (Dh29m) in European funding in the previous three years.

Pressure has been building in the government for action. This month Yuli Edelstein, the diaspora affairs minister and a member of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, told reporters the cabinet had been “concerned for a time with a number of groups under the guise of NGOs that are funded by foreign agents”.

One of the MPs who participated in December’s conference, Zeev Elkin, also of Likud, initiated the legislation.

Although the bill will need to pass a vote of the parliament, backing from the government has dramatically increased its chances of success.

According to the legislation, human-rights groups will have to satisfy a long list of new conditions. They include: registering as political bodies; submitting ID numbers and addresses for all activists; providing detailed accounts of all donations from overseas and the purposes to which they will be put; and declaring the support of foreign countries every time an activist makes a speech or the organisation stages an event.

Senior officials in NGOs that fail to meet the requirements face up to a year in jail.

Hagai Elad, head of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel, the country’s largest human-rights law centre, said there was “a very hostile political climate” and that freedoms were being attacked “one step at a time”.

“These are classic McCarthy techniques, portraying our organisations as enemies of the state and suggesting that we are aiding Hamas and terror groups.”

He added that NGOs were heavily regulated under Israeli law. “Which leaves me with a troubling question: given that we are already transparent, what is the real motivation behind this legislation?”

Caught in the middle of the campaign against the NGOs has been Ms Chazan, a former dovish MP.

Maariv, a populist newspaper, published a report last month by a right-wing group called Im Tirtzu that blamed Ms Chazan and the NIF for funding human-rights groups responsible for 90 per cent of the criticisms of Israel contained in the Goldstone Report that were from non-official sources.

A counter-report last week suggested that in reality only about four per cent of the citations were from NIF-funded groups, and many were unrelated to the Gaza operation.

But the attack on Ms Chazan has rapidly gained traction, with commentators denouncing her in the media and the derogatory billboard posters springing up across the country.

The campaign against the NIF was backed this month by a petition signed by a long list of former generals, including Giora Eiland, the previous head of the National Security Council, and Doron Almog, a recent chief of the army’s southern command.

Ms Chazan has also been sacked by the right-wing Jerusalem Post newspaper after 14 years serving as one of its few liberal columnists, while an article accusing Ms Chazan of “serving the agenda of Iran and Hamas” was distributed to foreign journalists by the Government Press Office.

Ms Chazan said: “They’re using me to attack, in the most blatant way, the basic principles of democracy.”

NIF has pointed out that Im Tirtzu’s funders include Christians United for Israel, a group led by pastor John Hagee, who made the headlines in the US presidential race in 2008 when in a speech supporting contender John McCain he said “Hitler was fulfilling God’s will”.

foreign.desk@thenational.ae  – Source

February 22, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

The GOP’s “small government” tea party fraud

By Glenn Greenwald | Salon.com | February 21, 2010

There’s a major political fraud underway:  the GOP is once again donning their libertarian, limited-government masks in order to re-invent itself and, more important, to co-opt the energy and passion of the Ron-Paul-faction that spawned and sustains the “tea party” movement.  The Party that spat contempt at Paul during the Bush years and was diametrically opposed to most of his platform now pretends to share his views.  Standard-issue Republicans and Ron Paul libertarians are as incompatible as two factions can be — recall that the most celebrated right-wing moment of the 2008 presidential campaign was when Rudy Giuliani all but accused Paul of being an America-hating Terrorist-lover for daring to suggest that America’s conduct might contribute to Islamic radicalism — yet the Republicans, aided by the media, are pretending that this is one unified, harmonious, “small government” political movement.

    The Right is petrified that this fraud will be exposed and is thus bending over backwards to sustain the myth.  Paul was not only invited to be a featured speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference but also won its presidential straw poll.  Sarah Palin endorsed Ron Paul’s son in the Kentucky Senate race.  National Review is lavishly praising Paul, while Ann Coulter “felt compelled [in her CPAC speech] to give a shout out to Paul-mania, saying she agreed with everything he stands for outside of foreign policy — a statement met with cheers.”  Glenn Beck — who literally cheered for the Wall Street bailout and Bush’s endlessly expanding surveillance state — now parades around as though he shares the libertarians’ contempt for them.  Red State’s Erick Erickson, defending the new so-called conservative “manifesto,” touts the need for Congress to be confined to the express powers of Article I, Section 8, all while lauding a GOP Congress that supported countless intrusive laws — from federalized restrictions on assisted suicide, marriage, gambling, abortion and drugs to intervention in Terri Schiavo’s end-of-life state court proceeding — nowhere to be found in that Constitutional clause.  With the GOP out of power, Fox News suddenly started featuring anti-government libertarians such as John Stossel and Reason Magazine commentators, whereas, when Bush was in power, there was no government power too expanded or limitless for Fox propagandists to praise.

    This is what Republicans always do.  When in power, they massively expand the power of the state in every realm.  Deficit spending and the national debt skyrocket.  The National Security State is bloated beyond description through wars and occupations, while no limits are tolerated on the Surveillance State.  Then, when out of power, they suddenly pretend to re-discover their “small government principles.”  The very same Republicans who spent the 1990s vehemently opposing Bill Clinton’s Terrorism-justified attempts to expand government surveillance and executive authority then, once in power, presided over the largest expansion in history of those very same powers.  The last eight years of Republican rule was characterized by nothing other than endlessly expanded government power, even as they insisted — both before they were empowered and again now — that they are the standard-bearers of government restraint.

    What makes this deceit particularly urgent for them now is that their only hope for re-branding and re-empowerment lies in a movement — the tea partiers — that has been (largely though not exclusively) dominated by libertarians, Paul followers, and other assorted idiosyncratic factions who are hostile to the GOP’s actual approach to governing.  This is a huge wedge waiting to be exposed — to explode — as the modern GOP establishment and the actual “small-government” libertarians that fuel the tea party are fundamentally incompatible.  Right-wing mavens like Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin and National Review are suddenly feigning great respect for Ron Paul and like-minded activists because they’re eager that the sham will be maintained:  the blatant sham that the modern GOP and its movement conservatives are a coherent vehicle for those who believe in small government principles.  The only evidence of a passionate movement urging GOP resurgence is from people whose views are antithetical to that Party.  That’s the dirty secret which right-wing polemicists are desperately trying to keep suppressed. Credit to Mike Huckabee for acknowledging this core incompatibility by saying he would not attend CPAC because of its “increasing libertarianism.”

    These fault lines began to emerge when Sarah Palin earlier this month delivered the keynote speech to the national tea party conference in Nashville, and stood there spitting out one platitude after the next which Paul-led libertarians despise:  from neoconservative war-loving dogma and veneration of Israel to glorification of “War on Terror” domestic powers and the need of the state to enforce Palin’s own religious and cultural values.  Neocons (who still overwhelmingly dominate the GOP) and Paul-led libertarians are arch enemies, and the social conservatives on whom the GOP depends are barely viewed with greater affection.  Sarah Palin and Ron Paul are about as far apart on most issues as one can get; the “tea party movement” can’t possibly be about supporting each of their worldviews.  Moreover, the GOP leadership is currently promising Wall Street even more loyal subservience than Democrats have given in exchange for support, thus bolstering the government/corporate axis which libertarians find so repugnant.  And Coulter’s manipulative claim that she “agrees with everything [Paul] stands for outside of foreign policy” is laughable; aside from the fact that “foreign policy” is a rather large issue in our political debates (Iraq, Israel, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia), they were on exactly the opposite sides of the most intense domestic controversies of the Bush era:  torture, military commissions, habeas corpus, Guantanamo, CIA secrecy, telecom immunity, and warrantless eavesdropping.

    Part of why this fraud has been sustainable thus far is that libertarians — like everyone who doesn’t view all politics through the mandated, distorting, suffocating Democrat v. GOP prism — are typically dismissed as loons and nuts, and are thus eager for any means of achieving mainstream acceptance.  Having the GOP embrace them is one way to achieve that (Karl Rove:  some “see the tea party movement as a recruiting pool for volunteers for Ron Paul’s next presidential bid . . . . The Republican Party and the tea party movement have many common interests”).  Additionally, just as the Paul-faction of libertarians is in basic harmony with many progressives on issues of foreign policy and civil liberties, they do subscribe to the standard GOP rhetoric on domestic spending, social programs and the like.

    But that GOP limited government rhetoric is simply never matched by that Party’s conduct, especially when they wield power.  The very idea that a political party dominated by neocons, warmongers, surveillance fetishists, and privacy-hating social conservatives will be a party of “limited government” is absurd on its face.  There literally is no myth more transparent than the Republican Party’s claim to believe in restrained government power.  For that reason, it’s only a matter of time before the fundamental incompatibility of the “tea party movement” and the political party cynically exploiting it is exposed.

    Source

    February 21, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | Leave a comment

    Peace accord signed for Darfur

    Sudanese pres. officially declares signing of peace agreement with JEM

    Saba / February 20, 2010

    KHARTOUM — Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir officially proclaimed here Saturday that his government signed a peace agreement with the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), the biggest rebel movement in Darfur, led by the chad-based Khalil Ibrahim, according to Kuwait News Agency (KUNA).

    Bashir, who made this announcement in an address delivered before thousands of women at the fairgrounds in Bari district in Khartoum, did not go into the agreement’s details, though he asserted that his government will sign a final peace accord with all Darfurian rebel movements within two days in the Qatari capital of Doha.

    Further, Bashir announced the abolition of all death penalties issued against those belonging to the JEM who took part in the offensive against the Sudanese capital in May 2008 and ordered the immediate release of 30 percent of them.

    Bashir also hailed the role played by the Chadian president Idriss Deby in pushing the negotiations with the JEM as well as the efforts exerted by the Amir of the state of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, Egyptian president Honsi Mubarak, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi and other countries that helped make the peace overtures in Darfur a success.

    JEM had declared earlier today that they signed a framework agreement with the Sudanese government in the Chadian capital N’Djamena that sets modalities for a ceasefire agreement between the two sides.

    This declaration comes a day following the Sudanese president’s assertion that reaching an agreement with the JEM is around the corner.

    This agreement comes following three-day talks between a JEM delegation and a Sudanese government delegation in the Chadian capital N’Djamena brokered by president Dibi in what coincided with consultations held by Darfur rebels with a Sudanese government delegation under the sponsorship of Qatar and with the participation of the United Nations and the African Union.

    Saba

    February 20, 2010 Posted by | Aletho News | Leave a comment

    Why I’m Dropping Google

    By Kirk McElhearn | Macworld.com | February 19, 2010

    For a company whose unofficial slogan is “Don’t Be Evil,” Google has been ignoring its so-called core value with alarming frequency as of late. And because of that, I decided to delete my Gmail account, along with all other Google services that I am able to do without. I have also deleted as much personal information as possible from my Google profile.

    I still need to use some Google services–I have clients who share a couple of documents via Google Docs, I need to access one private blog on Blogger, and I will continue to use Google search (though I plan on exploring alternatives, such as Bing and Yahoo). But for the most part, I’m dropping Google wherever I can.

    It was a combination of recent incidents that drove me to this point. One was the introduction of Google Buzz, which, in some cases, disclosed contact information that users thought was private. When Google launched Buzz, its “social networking tool,” the company didn’t let users opt into the program, but automatically applied it to all of the millions of users of the company’s free Gmail. Google quickly backtracked, but it is not clear whether the “turn off Buzz” link at the bottom of Gmail pages truly purges the links that Google created.

    The second incident was the recent deletion of a number of music blogs from Google’s Blogger and Blogspot platforms without even notifying the owners of the blogs or attempting to determine whether the shutdowns were valid. This is not the first time that Google has pulled the plug on music blogs because of DMCA complaints, but some bloggers claim that their blogs were perfectly legal), because they had permission for every track they posted. While MP3 and music blogs are a popular way of distributing copyrighted content without the owners’ permission, not every such blog is violating the law. A similar shutdown of blogs last year lead to Google’s developing new guidelines, but this current incident shows that someone at Google didn’t read the new rules.

    Google’s actions in these incidents were certainly not accidental, and they are part of a growing trend. Whether it be Google’s censorship of search results for Chinese users–the company helped build the Great Firewall of China before it was against it–or Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s flip comment regarding privacy (“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”), Google has become a corporation that has strayed from its initial values. By choosing an opt-out model for Buzz that basically forced all Gmail users to become a part of this service, Google simply hoped that everyone would ignore this lack of choice and accept it tacitly, so the next time it wanted to impose new features, people would consider it normal. That choice failed, fortunately.

    Google has become so monolithic that it has reached the point of a near-monopoly in certain areas. To be fair, no other search engine comes close to Google in quality, and, while the company should be lauded for that, it’s the way Google uses that search engine, and related services, that makes it the Standard Oil of the 21st century. (I won’t discuss the potential issues involving Google Books; or how the company is milking news organizations via Google News; or the many other issues that one could raise about the company.)

    But not only does Google dominate the search (and, hence, advertising) market, it also knows a lot about you. By adding more and more “free” services–free in exchange for the annoyance of ads, and for users’ giving up their privacy–Google accumulates a wealth of information about your interests, your browsing habits, your contacts, the blogs you visit (using your Google profile), pictures of your home, and much more. (Do you know how much information Google has connected to your Gmail address? Check here: You may be surprised.) Not only does Google have this information on its servers, but if anyone were to be able to hack into your Google account, they’d have a wealth of information about you too (and your business, if you use Google Docs for business documents).

    (Note that, for those who use Firefox, there’s an add-on, Google Sharing, that lets you use most Google tools without sharing any private data.)

    And all that information, and all those “free” services, are amassed and provided for one simple goal: to follow your every movement on the Internet and show you ads related to your searches, e-mails and documents. Many people accept the “free” services in spite of those ads, which, when you look closely, often depend on the content of your personal e-mails. Is the Trojan horse of free e-mail, YouTube videos, and online word processing documents worth giving up one’s privacy, all so a company can make billions from ads? (Your personal information and search habits earned Google more than $6 billion in profits last year.) For me, it’s not.

    Google knows more about you than the NSA, and has recently shown that it doesn’t give a hoot about your privacy. The company has gotten too big, and has turned into just another corporation trying to maximize its assets–and those assets are you. Who’s to say Google won’t progressively loosen its privacy controls and monetize more and more personal information?

    I’m ditching Google as much as I can, and when a competitor develops a search engine as good as Google, I’ll stop searching with Google, too. The trend that Google has been following has been looking darker and darker as the company nibbles away at the limits of privacy. This is no longer a company I trust.

    Source

    February 20, 2010 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | 3 Comments

    Physics professor ‘slowly dying’ in Israeli prison

    Ma’an – 20/02/2010

    Tulkarem – The Ahrar Center for Prisoners Studies and Human Rights called attention to the urgent case of a 52-year-old Physics Professor in an Israeli prison suffering from a bevy of untreated medical problems, including kidney disease and high blood pressure, a report said.

    Director of the center, Fuad Al-Khufesh, described the failure of Israeli prison officials to treat the man as “medical negligence,” and said Israel would be held accountable for his health and well being.

    The prisoner, professor of physics at An-Najah National University in Nablus, Isam Rashed Al-Ashqa, is from the town of Seida in the Tulkarem governorate.

    “Rashed is slowly dying … because of medical negligence and lack of medications,” Al-Khufesh said, noting the professor only receives light painkillers for treatment.

    Rashed obtained his bachelor of sciences in Physics from the Jordanian University in Al-Yarmouk in 1980 and his master of science from the University of Jordan in 1982. He went on to teach at An-Najah between 1982-4, and then traveled to the US for his doctoral studies at Toledo University, Ohio.

    When he returned from Ohio, Rashed founded the department of Physics at An-Najah.

    Rashed has been under administrative detention since 19 March 2009. He has not stood before a judge and has not been charged. This is his third detention.

    Source

    February 20, 2010 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | 1 Comment

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