Haiti an example of dictatorships that rely on Israeli weapons
Originally published in Ha’aretz/Hebrew, penned by Nirit Ben-Ari. This translation is from the February 1 WW4 Report: “Haiti and the Jews: Forgotten History.” Excerpt:
But it seems the Israeli involvement in the nation was not always so positive. On Dec. 27, 1982, the US newspaper Christian Science Monitor reported that since 1968 Israel had sold weapons to two Haitian dictators-Francois Duvalier, who became president in 1957; and his son Jean-Claude Duvalier, who succeeded him in 1971. The two, known as “Papa Doc” and “Baby Doc,” controlled and terrorized the country with a private army. On March 27, 1983, the New York Times reported that Israel was among the few countries that had agreed to sell weapons to Baby Doc, and provided him with the long-term payment arrangement that he requested.
Paul Farmer, who would serve as President Bill Clinton’s deputy UN representative to Haiti, previously reported that Gen. Prosper Avril, the head of the military junta that took power in Haiti in 1988, received temporary asylum in Israel in 1990. Avril was the head of Baby Doc’s notorious “Presidential Guard,” and a US court ruled that he was responsible for “scandalous human rights violations.” He would later serve prison time in Haiti for his crimes.
In 1990, four years after Baby Doc was ousted from power, the popular priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected president of Haiti-in the first democratic elections the nation had seen. But in 1991 he was deposed in a military coup. Britain’s The Independent newspaper reported Oct. 14, 1991 that about 2,000 Uzi and Galil machine-guns from Israel were sent to Haiti in the weeks prior to the coup-with diplomats claiming the weapons went to military units especially loyal to the coup-plotters.
According to an Aug. 1, 2005 report in Jane’s Intelligence Review, weapons of Israeli origin were being smuggled through Florida and ending up with armed gangs in Port-au-Prince in this period-some in collaboration with the junta, and some opposed.
The Israeli Defense Ministry did not issue any reaction by publication time.
Now, as Israeli doctors and nurses work around the clock at the hospital that was established in Haiti, one can only hope that Israel’s contribution to the suffering nation will now focus on saving lives, and not on weapons shipments.
US citizen charged with abusing 18 Haitian boys
Press TV – February 1, 2010
Additional charges have been leveled against an American national once indicted for abusing Haitian boys he was supposed to be helping.
Douglas Perlitz, 39, founded and operated a home and school for needy children in Haiti, known as Project Pierre Toussaint.
But he was arrested in his home in Colorado in September 2009 after a federal grand jury indicted him on 10 counts related to the abuse of nine boys over a period of 10 years.
Prosecutors on Thursday pushed an additional nine counts against Perlitz, bringing the number of his abuse victims to a total of 18.
The American national, who lived in Haiti for years, is accused of enticing the boys into sexual acts with promises of food and shelter, and with gifts, such as cell phones and cash.
According to the new indictment in Federal District Court in Connecticut, Perlitz offered money to one of the boys and assured him that he would not be expelled from school even if he failed his classes.
He allegedly gave another boy and his family money and other benefits, and in another case, offered a television, shoes, clothes and meals to another boy, demanding sexual acts and silence in return.
Those who refused to cooperate with Perlitz were denied benefits, the indictment added.
Douglas Perlitz, scheduled to appear in federal court in New Haven on Tuesday, would face a maximum of 30 years in prison and fine of $2.5 million if convicted.
Murder of Hamas commander in Dubai may enlarge confrontation with Israel
By Emad Drimly, Saud Abu Ramadan
GAZA, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) — Hamas officials as well as observers expected on Saturday that the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior Islamic Hamas movement commander in Dubai on Jan. 20, ” would sooner or later move the battle between Hamas and Israel outside the Palestinian territories.”
They said the ambiguous assassination of al-Mabhouh might be “a new turn” in the military confrontation between Hamas and Israel, that could develop to mutual avenge attacks in some Arab and foreign countries. Hamas has directly accused the Israeli Mosad ( foreign intelligence) for being behind his death.
Observers close to Hamas said that the movement hasn’t yet expressed full commitment to a declared ceasefire with Israel after last winter’s “Cast Lead” Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip, adding that al-Mabhouh’s murder in Dubai “would oblige Hamas to respond to his killing.”
Mustafa al-Sawaf, a Gaza-based political analyst, specialized in Hamas affairs expected that “Hamas response to the killing of al-Mabhouh, who has a high-ranking position in Hamas armed wing, would be equal to an assassination of a senior Israeli leader.”
“Although Hamas response to the killing of al-Mabhouh would be linked to certain political and military considerations in the field, but I still believe that the movement would keep the demand of revenge in order to re-account itself among its supporters,” said al-Sawaf.
He added that the assassination’s circumstances and the place where it occurred “would be a justification to open a new field of confrontation and adopt a new strategy of attacking Israeli targets abroad, which will be contrary to its strategy that focuses on fighting Israel in the Palestinian territories.”
Al-Sawaf explained that this shows Israel is able to infiltrate the security of the Arab countries by targeting Hamas leaders who live abroad. “Israel sends a message to Hamas that it can carry out more assassinations abroad against Hamas prisoners who will be released after the prisoners swap is finalized.”
Hamas has deliberately calmed down the confrontation with Israel by stopping homemade rocket attacks from Gaza at southern Israel after the end of January 2009 Israeli war on Gaza, which has left more than 1,440 people killed and 5,000 wounded.
Hamas officials said that al-Mabhouh, who was killed by an electric shock in Dubai, is one of the founders of Izzedien al- Qassam Brigades, Hamas armed wing in the Gaza Strip in 1988. Since then, al-Mabhouh has been living in Syria.
When he arrived in Dubai, a day before he was killed, he was holding a fake Syrian passport. Leaders in Hamas said that he was in charge of arming Hamas movement abroad over the past several years.
Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal’s calls for immediate revenge hours after al-Mabhouh was killed shows the importance of the man, where Hamas strongman in Gaza Mahmoud al-Zahar had on Saturday warned Israel of conveying the battle outside the Palestinian territories.
“We have maintained that the confrontation between us and the Israeli enemy be in the occupied land,” said Zahar. “Israel wants to change the rules of the game and to open the international field for battles so it will be responsible for this,” Zahar told reporters during a visit to a Jordanian-run hospital in Gaza.
He also said that “Hamas can reach its targets in any place.” However, he emphasized that Hamas “is keeping the game inside the occupied Palestinian land,” where he called on Arab states that have ties with Israel “to assess and rearrange these relations over the crimes that Israel commits.”
Meanwhile, Abu Obeida, spokesman of al-Qassam Brigades said that “when Hamas threatens to revenge, it means what it says,” adding that “the movement will revenge for the blood of the leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. The Zionist enemy will never escape from the punishment.”
The spokesman declined to say when and where the response will be, but said “the gun-battle with the occupation is opened and complicated. The resistance will find the proper time and place for the response,” adding “This response will not contradict with the current political strategy of the movement.”
However, Naji Shurab, the political science teacher at the Gaza- based al-Azhar University ruled out that Hamas would immediately respond to the killing of al-Mabhouh, adding “any Hamas response would be tied to delicate political and regional considerations.”
“The killing of al-Mabhouh was an Israeli message to Hamas to pressure on the movement to drag it to the circle of escalation to justify another large-scale military operation in the Gaza Strip,” said Shurab.
Spanish judge to probe Gitmo torture claims: Report
AFP | 1/31/2010
MADRID: Spain’s top investigating judge Baltasar Garzon is to probe suspected torture and ill-treatment of inmates at the US prison of Guantanamo Bay, the daily El Pais reported yesterday.
The paper gave no sources and the report could not be immediately confirmed officially.
It said Garzon would be acting on complaints lodged by a number of associations, focussing on one prisoner, Ahmed Abderraman Hamed, who has Spanish nationality. Three other detainees, Moroccan Lahcen Ikasrrien, Palestinian Jamiel Abdulatif al-Banna and Libyan Omar Deghayes would also be concerned as they had links with Spain, El Pais said. In 2005, Spain declared itself competent to investigate any crime committed abroad, but after diplomatic problems the scope of the inquiries was reduced in 2009.
Spanish courts can now deal only with cases that have a clear link with Spain, or cases that are not being investigated in countries where the offences are alleged to have been committed.
El Pais said Washington had not replied to a request made seven months ago from Madrid as to whether it was investigating the allegations now being taken up by Garzon.
The Palestinian Authority’s foreign minister Riyad al Malky said in Madrid last week that Spain had agreed to accept a Palestinian Guantanamo Bay detainee. The unnamed man will be transferred to Spain in early February along with another man whose nationality has not been confirmed.
Argentina reveals secrets of ‘dirty war’
Buenos Aires, Jan 29 (IANS/EFE) Argentina has disclosed the secrets of the ‘dirty war’ waged against the left by the country’s military regime 1976-83.
The secret files of Battalion 601, described as the ‘brain’ that coordinated killings, kidnappings and other abuses, contains the identities of both military and civilian personnel who played a role in the repression.
The declassification of the documents began with an order from Argentine President Cristina Fernandez Jan 1.
The documents presented before the federal Judge Ariel Lijo for review contain data on 3,952 civilians and 345 army personnel who worked for Battalion 601, said Ramon Torres Molina, director of the National Archive of Memory.
The battalion’s civilian operatives included everyone from college professors to people who worked as porters, concierges and maintenance men at apartment buildings.
They were used to collect information and to infiltrate guerrilla groups and human rights organisations, with those assigned to infiltration duties given aliases with initials matching those of their real names.
The civilian agents were classified by grades corresponding to military ranks and the most proficient could aspire to the equivalent of colonel.
Torres, who refused to divulge any names until Judge Lijo finishes reviewing the documents, said the intelligence structure was created in the early 1970s and that it survived until 2000, when Battalion 601 was disbanded and its remaining 500 or so civilian operatives dismissed.
Some former commanders of the unit have died and others have been criminally charged, but many military and civilian veterans of the unit are at large, the archive director said.
The archive continues to thumb through more than 4 million digitised pages and thousands of dossiers in search of information about the crimes of a regime that left more than 30,000 ‘disappeared’.
Village children gassed while taking refuge from military
International Solidarity Movement | 29 January 2010
Over 20 village residents – including 14 children – were targeted by Israeli soldiers in a volley of tear gas and rubber coated bullets as they took refuge in the Tamimi family house in An Nabi Salih. The residents were not part of the weekly demonstration and children from surrounding houses had gathered there for safety. One boy was hit in the stomach with a gas canister. Five people, children and elderly women, were taken away in ambulances and treated for injuries including tear gas asphyxiation.
Earlier, near 12:30PM, Israeli soldiers blocked the non-violent demonstration as they attempted to reach a spring recently taken by settlers from the near-by Jewish-only Hallamish settlement. Demonstrators slowly advanced a few meters and sat down. Israeli and international activists joined in solidarity. This tactic was repeated many times until soldiers began firing tear gas canisters directly at the demonstrators. As soldiers surrounded the village, shooting tear gas from three sides, a water cannon shooting foul smelling waste-water was deployed.
Just after the water cannon emptied its tanks, the Tamimi house was fired on.
As tear gas canisters and rubber-coated bullets flew through windows of the house, Red Crescent and activist volunteers responded to the attack, helping women and children outside to safety. In all, nine women, one man and 14 children were caught inside during the attack.
The same house was targeted one week ago when tear gas and sound grenades broke through the windows. Seven people were gassed but no injuries were serious. As the women and children exited the house, soldiers told them to go back in. They refused due to large amounts of tear gas lingering inside and the soldiers hit them. One woman was arrested.
This brutal repression of a non-violent demonstration and targeting innocent bystanders comes as the Israeli government attempts to squash the popular resistance through illegitimate arrests and disproportionate force.
According to one An Nabi Salih resident, the demonstration’s goal was to reach a spring taken by Israeli settlers, but the over all motivation for ongoing demonstrations is to stop the constant advance of the Hallamish settlement onto Palestinian land. Residents say that since 1977 the settlement has taken half of the village’s farm-land, burning or cutting down trees tended by the village for generations.
Approximately six weeks ago, a group of Halamish settlers took over the spring located in privately owned Palestinian land in between the village and the settlement. Since then, and despite the fact that ownership of the land undisputed, the army began preventing Palestinians from accessing the area.
Researcher: Israel destroyed Palestinian books
Tens of thousands of Palestinian books destroyed after Israel’s establishment, Ben-Gurion University researcher says
Ynet | January 28, 2010
Israel plundered and destroyed tens of thousands of Palestinian books in the years after the State’s establishment, according to a doctoral thesis to be submitted next month by a Ben-Gurion University researcher.
In an interview with the researcher published on al-Jazeera’s website Thursday, he claimed that Israel destroyed the Palestinian books in the framework of its plan to “Judaize the country” and cut off its Arab residents from their nation and culture.
According to the doctoral dissertation, Israeli authorities collected tens of thousands of Arab books in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Haifa, Safed, and other towns that were home to Arabs. Israeli officials proceeded to hand out about half the books, while destroying the second half, characterizing them as a “security threat,” the researcher said.
In his al-Jazeera interview, the researcher claimed that, based on Israeli archives, IDF troops plundered the books from the homes of Palestinians expelled during the “Nakba” and handed them over to authorities. The State proceeded to establish a library in Jaffa and other towns for the books, he said.
‘Cultural massacre’
The researcher told al-Jazeera that according to documents he possesses, Israel destroyed 27,000 books in 1958, claiming that they were useless and threatened the State. Authorities sold the books, most of them textbooks, to a paper plant, he said.
“This was a cultural massacre undertaken in a manner that was worse than European colonialism, which safeguarded the items it stole in libraries and museums,” the researcher charged.
He added that some books were sold at discounted prices to Arab schools, while the others were transferred to the Hebrew University’s library in Jerusalem.
The researcher estimated that about 6,000 Palestinian books are currently available at the National Library at Hebrew University. However, he claimed that many other books in Arabic, English, and French were not recorded, charging that most of them are being held in the library’s warehouses and cannot be accessed.
US Troops Kill Kabul Imam in ‘Unfortunate Incident’
Protests in Afghan Capital as NATO Expresses Regret
By Jason Ditz | January 28, 2010
Mohammad Yonus, the imam of the Paktia Kowt Mosque in the Afghan capital city of Kabul, was killed today by American troops while sitting in his car.
Yonus was reportedly in his car with three of his sons waiting for his other son to arrive. A US convoy saw the parked car and decided it was a “threatening vehicle,” opening fire and killing Yonus. His sons were not injured in the shooting.
Locals said the convoy did not even stop after the shooting, and identified the attackers as American. Yonus was rushed to the hospital but died of his injuries shortly thereafter.
The killing sparked protests in front of a military base in Kabul, and once again brought attention to the growing problem of civilian killings by the international forces in the nation.
NATO spokesmen called the killing an “unfortunate incident” and expressed regret over shooting the imam. They promised that his family would receive an undisclosed amount of money to compensate them for the killing.
Photographs from the Islamic University of Gaza
Photographs from the Islamic University of Gaza:
Before
After
http://pulsemedia.org/2009/01/27/the-islamic-university-of-gaza/
Secret detention may amount to crime against humanity: UN experts
January 28, 2010
GENEVA (AFP) – UN human rights experts warned in a report on Wednesday that “widespread and systematic” secret detention of terror suspects was continuing and could pave the way for charges of crimes against humanity.
The report listed 66 countries that have allegedly been involved in secret detentions — from Ethiopia to Romania, from Kosovo to Pakistan — and called on governments to investigate and prosecute those who ordered such detentions.
In their first in-depth global study on secret detentions, the UN experts said that virtually no judicial steps had been attempted against the practice despite the “widespread” manner in which suspects were held in a legal limbo.
“Secret detention continues to be used in the name of countering terrorism around the world” in spite of international human rights norms, said the study, which is due to be submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in March.
“If resorted to in a widespread and systematic manner, secret detention might reach the threshold of a crime against humanity,” the authors cautioned.
The “global war on terror,” which was launched by President George W. Bush’s administration after the September 11 attacks, had “reinvigorated” the use of secret detentions in an organised manner, they said.
The campaign saw the creation of “a comprehensive and coordinated system of secret detention of persons suspected of terrorism, involving not only US authorities, but also other states in almost all regions of the world.”
The study was compiled by two independent UN experts on counter-terrorism and torture, as well as UN panels overseeing arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances.
Campaign group Amnesty International said in a statement that governments must be held to account.
“States must act swiftly to implement the recommendations in this important study, to confront and end secret detention and the human rights violations it entails and enables,” said Widney Brown, Amnesty’s director of international law, citing torture and unlawful executions.
The UN study welcomed commitments by US President Barack Obama to dismantle and investigate secret detentions.
But the experts also called for clarification of outstanding issues such as short term CIA holding facilities and those operated by the military Joint Special Operation Command.
Human rights campaigners say other countries took advantage of secret detentions to crack down on their own political opponents or restive ethnic groups.
Extraordinary rendition involved abducting suspects without legal proceedings, and flying them to foreign countries or secret CIA prisons.
Drawing on its own interviews with former detainees, witnesses, officials and its own analysis of flight records, as well as published material, the UN study named dozens of secret detainees — including some alleged to have died in custody.
Thailand denied that it had hosted a secret detention facility for the United States in a response to the experts, but the study maintained that it was “credible that a CIA black site” existed there.
The study also welcomed a Lithuanian parliamentary inquiry into similar allegations, which had concluded that there was no evidence to back them up.
However, it stressed that the findings “in no way constitute the final word on Lithuania’s role in the programme.”
The UN study also cited evidence of secret US-run facilities in Romania, Poland, and Kosovo as well as several in Afghanistan and Iraq, including “Dark Prison” and “Salt Pit.”
Accounts by detainees added weight to claims that Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Djibouti were proxy centres where “detainees have been held on the CIA’s behalf,” the report added.
No sight of drones after ‘crash’
Pakistan Daily News | January 28, 2010
PESHAWAR: Following the crash of two US drones in North Waziristan in just one week, the tribesmen were surprised on Wednesday when they could not see any spy aircraft during the past two days.
“We have not seen any US drone during the past two days, which is a surprising news for us,” remarked Haji Syed Halim, a tribesman of Danday Darpakhel village, five kms west of Miramshah, the main town of militancy-stricken North Waziristan.
He said even the children were asking their elders about lack of thundering sound of the drone, which is called “bangana” locally. The tribesman said it was for the first time in the past several months that no US drone was seen flying over the tribal region.
He said continuous flights of drones over villages in the tribal region had left immense negative psychological impacts on the local population, particularly women and children. In Mirali subdivision — the second biggest town of North Waziristan which had been targetted quite frequently by the CIA operated spy planes in the past few months — villagers said the drones were no more seen in the skies.
How to Get Out of Being Held Indefinitely Without Charge
By Spencer Ackerman – 1/22/10
So the Obama administration’s Guantanamo task force has decided that about 50 people ought to be held indefinitely without charge. What’s the remedy for that? Basically, there’s habeas corpus, the procedure by which a detainee requests that a court determine the validity of the government’s claim to hold him (in this case) because of his status as a belligerent in the conflict with al-Qaeda. Notice that’s not the same thing as asking a court to decide whether the government in the first place has the power to detain someone indefinitely without charge. According to lawyers for Guantanamo detainees and prominent civil liberties advocates, any lawyer who asks a court to decide that broader question will immediately be told, “Your client has the right to a habeas hearing. File a habeas petition and then come talk.” So here’s what the procedure is for the 50 or so detainees in this indefinite-detention-without-charge category.
First a detainee has to win a habeas case. (Check their track record here.) Easy, right? If the government decides not to contest the decision, then the detainee — who, recall, the Obama administration is saying is too dangerous to responsibly release — walks. (More on that in a second.) We haven’t been faced with this situation yet. But if the administration appeals, then the detainee has to win. And on up to the Supreme Court, if the government really wants to contest the issue. Joseph Margulies, a professor of law at Northwestern University who’s focused extensively on Guantanamo, estimates that this process could take at least 18 months to exhaust itself at the earliest. Possibly years. (And even then, it wouldn’t be certain that the Supreme Court would use a habeas appeal as an opportunity to decide the first-order question: whether the Obama administration has the constitutional power to hold a member of al-Qaeda or the Taliban in indefinite detention without charge.)
The real inflection point will come “when the government loses” a habeas case, said Margulies. “Are they going to let [a detainee] go?” If the administration concedes the loss, then there’s no crisis. But if it decides it can’t let someone go, and runs out of appeals, then the administration’s most likely option is to get a preventive detention bill from Congress, a civil liberties Rubicon. The Obama administration briefly considered that option this summer and balked. But if the administration loses a habeas case; seeks to detain someone indefinitely even so; and doesn’t have explicit preventive detention powers from Congress, then it most likely is just simply breaking the law.
“I heard about this listening to an NPR story this morning,” said Sabin Willett, a lawyer for the Uighurs at Guantanamo Bay, describing his big-picture reaction to the Guantanamo task force’s conclusions. “The intro to that story described them as ‘the terror suspects at Guantanamo.’” Willett pointed out that his clients have been cleared by Defense Department tribunals and exonerated by the courts. They are not terrorists, and no one believes they’re terrorists. “This proves the power of the press — those two words ‘terror suspects.’ How do I fight that?”
From there, Willett continued, it’s natural to start wondering if those “terror suspects” really are too dangerous to release. “I keep saying, give me a name. Who’s too dangerous? Give me a reason. Then start asking what other regimes had people they considered ‘too dangerous to release.’ You’re going to find yourself on a list of countries you’re not too proud to be on.”
Featured Video
False Flags and the Dawn of Bioterrorism
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
How 1960’s French Nuclear Tests Are Still Claiming Lives in Algeria
Sputnik – 15.02.2018
On February 13, 1960, France carried out its first nuclear test in Algeria’s southern Reggane region. According to official statistics, 17 nuclear tests were carried out in total over the next 6 years. The area remains affected, and local scientists say that radioactive contamination has caused genetic mutations and irreversibly changed the region.
There are no official statistics on the number of victims. The only figures can be found in the records kept by the French representative of the local church, which lists 42,000 victims of nuclear tests. Three years ago, the French Ministry of Defense issued a statement, putting the number at 27,000 people. The victims include French soldiers as well as local Algerians who lived in the surrounding areas. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Using nuclear weapons, the US-Israeli alliance still can’t beat Iran
- Sunset on the Quality of Western Propaganda: Arrival of the Dr Strangelove Moment
- Ukrainian general accused of protecting crime bosses
- US-‘Israel’ alliance faces growing rupture after midterms
- GOP’s Crushing Midterm Loss Could Reshape US Political Landscape – Analyst
- Midterm loss gives Congress power to rein in US war on Iran
- Midterms Were ‘Vote of No Confidence’ in GOP, But Iran Has No Illusions About Democrats – Marandi
- Israeli Soldiers Inadvertently Prove Their Own Genocidal Guilt
- Ukraine arrests woman who exposed Azov battalion’s ‘torture chamber’
- Did Israel lose the midterms?
- If Americans Knew
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: The Net Fossil Fuel Contribution To Rising Atmospheric CO2 Has Been Zero For 500 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
