Israeli forces arrest Palestinian writer
KUNA – 4/23/2011
RAMALLAH — Palestinian writer Ahmad Qatamish was arrested by Israeli forces after raiding his home in Ramallah early Saturday.
Suha Al-Barguthee, Qatamish’s wife, told KUNA that the Israeli forces raided their empty home at the wee hours of dawn.
“When the Israeli troops found no one home, they called Qatamish’s brother’s house, where we were at that time, and threatened to destroy the house if he did not come to his house for arrest,” Qatamish’s wife added.
She noted that one of her husband’s lawyers was able to visit him in Oufer Jail, where he is currently held, and he was informed by the lawyer that he will be moved soon to administrative detention, a form of detention without charge or trial that is authorized by administrative order rather than a judicial decree and can be indefinitely renewed.
Qatamish was arrested by the Israeli authorities in 1992 then released in 1998, which is considered the longest administrative detention that ever took place.
The latest arrests of Palestinian figures come after Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to eliminate the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFPL) whom he accuses of being responsible for the Itamar incident in which five Jewish settlers were killed. Qatamish’s wife said that her husband has nothing to do with the PFPL.
Freedom of Information Act Reveals Files Suggesting FDR’s Role in Pearl Harbor
Alexis Bonari | Activist Post | April 22, 2011
September 11th is hardly the first “day of infamy” to undergo public scrutiny and accusations of government conspiracy. President Franklin D. Roosevelt coined the phrase on December 7th after the Japanese “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The attack, according to author and WWII Navy veteran, Robert B. Stinnett, however, had been no surprise at all for Roosevelt.
It was only at the author’s insistent calls on the Freedom of Information Act that the U.S. Navy at last released formerly hidden evidence that led Stinnett to conclude: FDR knew and had the power to avert disaster on December 7th.
Interview with Stinnett
The government’s claims that Japan’s codes had yet to be broken in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor have been met with questions and skepticism since 1945’s September issue of Life magazine. Stinnett himself, in an interview featured on The Independent Institute’s website, says that he believed the article to be an anti-Roosevelt tract at the time. After reading At Dawn We Slept by Professor Prange in 1982, however, and learning about the US Navy monitoring station at Pearl Harbor, he changed his mind. This was the beginning of Day of Deceit.
The likes of Gore Vidal and John Toland, Pulitzer Prize-winner and author of Infamy, have praised Stinnett’s heavily researched book, Day of Deceit
. In it, he writes at length about the Roosevelt administration’s plan to provoke Japan in an “overt act of war,” a plan that he adopted in October 7, 1940.
Because the American public still ached from the appalling death toll of the First World War (and because FDR had already promised his people, “Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars”), FDR focused most of his energy on coming up with a reason for the nation to change its mind. In November 1941, all US military commanders received the order: “The United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act.” That would explain why, according to Lynne Olson’s research published in Citizens of London, Churchill and Governor John G. Winant practically danced at the news in December that America would be joining the European campaign, forgetting that over 2,000 Americans were already dead.
Cracking the Code
According to Stinnett’s research, the US Navy had in fact cracked Japanese naval codes and even intercepted eighty-three messages from Admiral Yamamoto to his warships. A message from November 25 read:
…the task force, keeping its movements strictly secret and maintaining close guard against submarines and aircraft, shall advance into Hawaiian waters, and upon the very opening of hostilities shall attack the main force of the United States fleet in Hawaii and deal it a mortal blow.
Even Thomas Dewey, Roosevelt’s competitor in the 1944 presidential elections, had heard whispers of FDR’s role in arranging the massacre. Although Dewey planned speeches to charge FDR with foreknowledge of the attack, General George Marshall (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) convinced Dewey that he would risk American security in doing so, since Japan’s navy had yet to realize their codes had been cracked. Dewey kept his silence, and nearly everyone else has since, too—until Stinnett.
Day of Deceit has received much criticism (predictably) from conventional historians and readers as well as notable acclaim from revisionists. Still others disapprove of Stinnett’s ubiquitous tone that suggests throughout the book that FDR had no choice but to arrange for the deaths of over 2,000 Americans at Pearl Harbor. Stinnet most notably fails to mention FDR’s refusal to meet Prime Minister Konoye for peace talks in late 1941.
Stinnett seems to have broken ground, but it is still only the surface.
Michigan State Police Copying Data from Cell Phones?
Mark Fancher, attorney at the ACLU Michigan, joins us to talk about police extracting personal information from cell phones during traffic stops, the Michigan State Police stonewalling the ACLU’s investigation, and more.
Israeli troops attack 4 separate anti-Wall protests, injuring 16 demonstrators
By IMEMC & PNN | April 23, 2011
On Friday, 16 civilians were injured and four abducted as Israeli troops attacked the weekly anti-wall protests in the villages of Bil’in, Nil’in and al-Nabi Saleh, in central West Bank as well as the village of al-Ma’sara, in the south.
In Bil’in, 15 protesters were injured when troops attacked the weekly march. This week’s protest in Bil’in ended a three day conference on nonviolent resistance in Palestine. The Conference began on Wednesday in Bil’in, and attracted hundreds of supporters from around the world, including Italian parliamentarian Luisa Morgantini and the parents of Rachel Corrie, who was killed by the Israeli military in 2003.
Dubbed the Sixth International Conference on the Palestinian Popular Struggle, the annual conference was dedicated this year to Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni, who was killed last Friday allegedly by a Salafist (right-wing political Islamist) group in Gaza.
The conference was aimed at building and strengthening ties between Palestinian, Israeli and international activists working against the Israeli military occupation in Palestine. The conference was attended by a number of Palestinian officials in addition to members of the European Parliament, and hundreds of international and local peace and human rights activists.
On Friday midday, international and Israeli activists joined the villagers and marched toward the wall built on farmers’ lands by the Israeli army. Israeli soldiers stopped protesters before they reached the wall and fired tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets at them to force them back. 15 protesters were injured including a journalist and three international supporters. The marchers continued forward and reached the gate of the wall, as they have done on every Friday since early 2005.
Soldiers then forced the non-violent demonstrators back into the village, then stormed the village, firing tear gas at houses. Many were treated for the effects of tear gas inhalation.
In 2009 the Israeli High Court of Justice ruled in favor of Bil’in residents and ordered the military to reroute the wall giving back to the village half of the land originally expropriated to build the wall. The military has still not adhered to the court order.
In the nearby village of Nil’in, many were treated for the effects of tear gas inhalation also on Friday during the anti wall protest. Troops attack the villagers using tear gas as soon as they reached the gate of the wall which separates the farmers from their agricultural lands.
Also Friday, two locals and two internationals were abducted when troops attacked the weekly protest against the wall and settlements in the village of an-Nabi Saleh. Palestinians, together with international and Israeli supporters, marched to their lands, where Israel is presently trying to build a new settlement. Troops fired tear gas at them to force them back into the village.
In the southern West Bank, the villagers of al-Ma’ssara, along with their international and Israeli supporters, protested the Israeli wall being built on local farmers’ lands. Israeli soldiers attacked the protesters using tear gas, preventing the march from reaching the construction site of the Wall; many participants in the non-violent demonstration were treated for the effects of tear gas inhalation.