Middle East interventionists’ entrenched wrong hyped as “right”

With “friends” like these freedom-democracy humanitarians

Editing by Carolyn Bennett

From Jeremy Salt’s “Straight Talking: The Syrian Cauldron”

Jeremy Salt is author of the 2008 work, The Unmaking of the Middle East: A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands. This is some of what he had to say a June 3 article posted at Palestine Chronicle.

Western media and governments’ “unbalanced narrative,” Salt says, “feeds into war strategies being framed by the ‘Friends of Syria.’”

What/who are these “friends?”

They are what might be fairly called a renegade group operating, as similarly named groups did in Libya and Iraq and other places in the Middle East and Africa, counter and in opposition to United Nations principles and advice; and in the case of U.S. officials, acting also against constitutional declarations of the federal lawmaking body of the United States of America.

Initiated by former French president Nicolas Sarkozy (now under investigation for campaign funding improprieties), the Group of Friends of the Syrian People —variously called ‘Friends of Syria Group’ or ‘Friends of the Syrian People Group’ or ‘Friends of Democratic Syria’ or simply ‘Friends of Syria’—is an international organization of countries and bodies operating outside the UN Security Council, after Russia and China vetoed a resolution on Syria within the UNSC. 

The first meeting of this renegade group took place on February 24 in Tunisia, the second on April 1 in Istanbul, Turkey, and the third this month in Paris. Wikipedia note

Against a sovereign people’s choice of nonviolent solution

Salt continues: These ‘friends’ insist that the armed campaign they are sponsoring is directed against the government and not the people. 

What ‘the people’ – by any measure the majority of Syrians – want is difficult to gauge amidst such chaos but evidence suggests [Syrians] see these ‘friends’ as their enemies. 

 The referendum in February and elections in May were hardly perfect,” he writes, “but they remain the clearest indications yet of general support amongst Syrians for a political solution to the crisis gripping their country. 

 Outside the enclaves dominated by the armed groups, the people are strongly opposed to these groups and their external backers—knowing that but for the obstruction of Russia and China, NATO warplanes would have been bombing their country long ago.

 

Foreigners fasten on Syria with “tenacity of leeches”

The “‘Arab spring’ created the opportunity to reshape the Middle East at its political and geographical center, Salt says, and they (the foreigners) have seized it.

“Although paying lip service to [UN envoy] Kofi Annan’s ceasefire plan, they are prolonging the violence in the hope that the army will eventually disintegrate and the government will implode. While the destruction of the government in Damascus is an end in itself, Syria must also be seen as a way station on the road to Iran”

Bad veiled as good

REGIME CHANGE agents, leeches

(U.S. ally) TURKEY

“For the first time in Turkey’s republican history, a government had committed itself to ‘regime change’ in a neighboring country; for the first time a government had sponsored an armed group operating across its border to kill the citizens of a neighboring country. Even now the moral and legal implications of this policy have scarcely been touched upon in Turkish media.” 

For a country with a long history of other governments meddling in its affairs [Greek rebels in the 1820s, Bulgarian rebels in the 1870s, Macedonian and Armenian rebels in the 1890s), the position taken by Turkey, Salt describes as “almost surreal.

“In a paradoxical play on history,” he says, “Turkey is now intervening in Syria as the imperial powers once intervened in the Ottoman Empire and as they are still intervening in the affairs of other countries.” 

Nineteenth century “intervention in the name of civilization” morphed into twentieth century “intervention in the name of democracy and freedom” and twenty-first century (now) “intervention in the name of humanitarian concern” continues a theme of mendacious “’responsibility to protect.’”

(U.S. ally) SAUDI ARABIA

The princes have long wanted regime change. During the George W. Bush presidency, “Saudi Arabia wanted the United States to attack Iran, to ‘cut the head off the snake,’” Salt writes.

“[Saudi] interests are partly ideological, directed against Shiism in general and Iran in particular, and also rising from a traditional Saudi fear of its large northern neighbor.

In 1979, “the United States put the Syrian government on its list of states that support terrorism.” Since the introduction in 2003 of the Syrian Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Act (SALSA), “the United States has gradually tightened economic sanctions in an effort to bring the [Syrian] government to its knees.”

(U.S. ally) ISRAEL

“Turmoil in the Arab world suits Israel down to the ground, literally,” Salt says, and “what Israel wants, any U.S. administration does its best to deliver.”

Syria has always been Israel’s “visceral Arab enemy.”

  

FOREIGN MISSION of domination

“What is being played out is one of the greatest power games since the end of the First World War,” Salt concludes.

U.S. against these people 
Kuwait

U.S. against these people 
Yemen

World War I (1914-1918) pitted the Central Powers (mainly Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey) against the Allies (mainly France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and, from 1917, the United States).

A war that embroiled most of the nations of Europe along with Russia, the United States, the Middle East, and other regions — and caused unprecedented slaughter, carnage, and destruction—ended with the defeat of the Central Powers

“Behind the cover of the ‘Arab spring,’” any “obstacles to renewed western domination in the region are being knocked down, one by one,” Salt writes.

U.S. against these people
Iran

“The destabilization of Syria brings the region close to a war with potentially catastrophic global repercussions. But the rewards are so great that the western coalition cannot help itself from pressing against all red lines.”

In his earlier work, The Unmaking of the Middle East: a History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands, Jeremy Salt is reviewed as having painted “a damning picture of a sustained campaign by Western powers to dominate the Middle East by whatever means necessary”; and having “emphasized the human costs” of policies implemented “in the name of bringing civilization, democracy, or freedom to the region” or “preserving ‘Western interests.’”

U.S. against these people
Bahrain

Sources and notes

“Straight Talking: The Syrian Cauldron” (By Jeremy Salt – Ankara), July 3, 2012, http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=19392

 Jeremy Salt is an associate professor of Middle Eastern history and politics at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=19392

Jeremy Salt is author of The Unmaking of the Middle East: a History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands (2008)

Note: The author writes for those who want to know more about the Middle East than mainstream media are willing or able to tell, chronicling the long and bloody history of Western intervention in Arab lands as essential background for understanding the Middle East today.

Salt paints a damning picture of a sustained campaign by Western powers to dominate the Middle East by whatever means necessary; and emphasizes the human cost of the policies put in place to preserve ‘Western interests’ or in the name of bringing civilization, democracy, or freedom to the region. The author uses extensive U.S. and British archival research showing what politicians were deciding behind closed doors.

Reviewers have said about The Unmaking of the Middle East: a History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands, the book is “devastating in its portrayal of the depths to which Western countries (France, Britain, and the United States especially) sank in conquering the Middle East.… Comprehensive, scholarly and highly readable, it focuses on the damaging role of western policy in the Middle East.… Salt makes abundantly clear the West’s “talk[ing] idealistically while act[ing] brutally” in the Middle East.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Unmaking-Middle-East-Disorder/dp/0520255518/ref=la_B001JS7X0M_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341767562&sr=1-1

Wikipedia: Friends of Syria: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends_of_Syria_Group

Redline: (1952): a recommended safety limit: the fastest, farthest, or highest point or degree considered safe; also: the red line which marks this point on a gauge (Merriam-Webster)

World War I note, Britannica

Related (Press TV) Syria, July 8, 2012

“Syrian security forces arrest 11 foreign spies: Syrian security forces say they have arrested 11 foreign spies from different Arab countries in Damascus.

“The alleged operatives were detained in the Reef region of the capital.

“The arrests do not mark the first such case. In February, a Saudi Arabian intelligence agent was detained in Syria's western city of Homs.

“Syria has said certain foreign countries, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are supporting armed groups operating against Damascus and supplying them with weaponry and finances.” http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/07/08/249895/syrian-forces-arrest-foreign-spies/

Related (Press TV) Persian Gulf July 8, 2012

“The U.S. navy has added another warship to its Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, in an attempt to bolster America’s military presence in the Persian Gulf.

“A U.S. Senate report indicates that the United States has now nearly 15,000 troops in three bases across Kuwait - three times the average number of American forces in the Middle Eastern country before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.” July 8, 2012, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/07/08/249882/another-us-warship-enters-persian-gulf/

Related (Press TV) South Central Asia, July 8, 2012

AFGHANISTAN: “Two U.S.-led troops killed in Afghanistan: At least two U.S.-led foreign soldiers have been killed in separate Afghan attacks in the south of the war-ravaged country over the past two days, NATO sources say.”

“41 killed in Afghanistan violence: At least 41 people have been killed in various incidents of violence in different parts of Afghanistan.”

“Afghanistan will only see peace if foreign forces withdraw: Salehi: Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi says peace and stability will only be restored in Afghanistan, if foreign forces withdraw from this country.”

PAKISTAN: “Anti-NATO Pakistanis march in Lahore: Thousands of people have held massive demonstrations in the eastern Pakistan city of Lahore to protest against Islamabad’s decision to reopen NATO supply routes to Afghanistan.”

HEADLINES, http://www.presstv.ir/section/3510204.html

Related (Press TV) Africa, July 7, 2012

“U.S. uses al-Qaeda to foment crisis in Muslim world: In what has become a self-fulfilling prophecy by the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and various neo-conservative think tanks, the Pan-Sahel region of North Africa is rapidly falling under the control of extremist forces, most notably Ansar Dine in Mali, Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, and ‘al Qaeda’ in the Maghreb (AQIM).

“However, it has become apparent that the funding for these groups originates in the Wahhabist-ruled potentates of [U.S.-allied] Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates,” July 7, 2012, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/07/07/249791/extremism-in-the-pansahel-region/

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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Stealth, distance, cover of darkness — U.S. reign of terror

Nighttime raids, drones 50 to 1, double standards

Re-reporting, editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

Occupy Wall Street
Evicted in Late Night Raid
Lawyers Secure Injunction to
Reopen Zuccotti Park
November 15, 2011
 MWC image

Night raids USA

At the New York “occupy wall street” space, Judge Karen Smith said last week on Democracy Now,  she arrived wearing a bright colored hat imprinted with the words ‘National Lawyers Guild Legal Observer.’

She arrived “around 1:30 in the morning,” she said. She “got out and walked to Dey and Broadway streets. The police were in full riot gear… a paramilitary operation …, which sets off … what we call a stealth eviction.…

“All of a sudden, there was like a cordon of police pushing everybody into Dey Street between Broadway and Church and it seemed like they were setting everybody up to get arrested.…

“1:30 in the morning, they were lined up two blocks on either side from the park so that nobody could get near this solid wall of police.…

“…There was a ‘them and us.’ … It is a system that is being set up of ‘us and them.’”

U.S. drone

Night raids AFGHANISTAN PAKISTAN

Thanksgiving Day USA reports from Afghanistan

U.S.-led military forces last night attacked a residential area in southern Afghanistan that left at least seven civilians — mostly children — dead.

The U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force reportedly had launched an air strike in Zhari district of Kandahar Province.

This morning in Afghanistan’s western province of Farah, a security firm came under an attack that left 12 “personnel of the private company” dead. Another nine people suffered injures.

“Afghan civilians,” Press TV contextualized consequences of this U.S. war, “have paid a heavy price since the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2001.”

Insecurity increases and deepens. An estimated 130,000 people were displaced by the conflict in the first seven months of 2011 — an increase of nearly two-thirds over the same period in 2010.

The monthly average of security incidents recorded for the year through the end of August rose nearly 40 percent, according to UN figures. Civilian casualties, already at record levels in the first six months of the year, rose 5 percent between June and August 2011.

Pakistanis protest U.S. drone strikes

PAKISTAN PROTESTS "Playstation" mentality

UN special envoy on extrajudicial killings said in a report in late October 2010 that the U.S. drone attacks “were undermining the rules designed to protect the right of life.”

Philip Alston said he “feared that the drone killings by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency could develop a ‘playstation’ mentality.”

U.S. Thanksgiving week from Pakistan

Wednesday in the northwestern tribal region clashes between Pakistani “militants” and Pakistani “soldiers” left 22 dead and 3 “troops” missing.  

U.S. drone

Late yesterday in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Agency, a bomb explosion destroyed an oil tanker carrying fuel for U.S.-led foreign troops in neighboring Afghanistan. No loss of life was reported.

Night raids Pakistan — 50 to 1

“Casualty figures indicate that the aerial bombings have led to the loss of hundreds of Pakistani civilian lives. According to Pakistani sources, the U.S. drone strikes leave some 50 civilians dead for every militant killed.”

Also in this week’s reports was Pakistan’s announced intention “to complain to UN Human Rights Council about non-UN-sanctioned U.S. drone strikes in its northwestern tribal belt near the border with Afghanistan.”

This country’s parliament intends “to collect data about civilian deaths caused by U.S. assassination drone strikes against Pakistan’s territory” and then [Press TV attributes antiwar dot com] use the data in lodging a complaint about the terror attacks.

Aerial [drone] attacks begun during the George W. Bush administration have increased under the current U.S. president. Regularly the United States carries out attacks by unmanned aircraft on Pakistan’s tribal regions — strikes that local people report claim the lives mostly of civilians.

Bahrain protest
U.S.-allied regime

“Pro-Taliban militants” in striking back argue that their “assaults are in retaliation for non-UN-mandated U.S. assassination drone airstrikes on Pakistan’s tribal regions.”

  

PROTESTS AND BRUTAL BACKLASH CONTINUED ACROSS U.S.-ALLIED REGIME nations of BAHRAIN, SAUDI ARABIA, YEMEN; AND IN NORTH AFRICA (U.S.-allied military against civilians in EGYPT; Kenyan and Ethiopian military and U.S. drone strikes against devastated SOMALIA)

  

Africa - Red Sea
Middle East

Geopolitics’ Schizophrenia

This week Deutsche Welle reports on the U.S.-led West’s “dangerous balance” dealing with Egypt’s military.

Red Sea

The United States — as well as a number of European states — has continued to supply the oppressive Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) with “the military hardware, tear gas and rubber bullets being used against the crowds in Tahrir Square,” the report said.  “Much the same way as it supplied over $60 billion in unconditional aid to the Egyptian military during [former Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak’s 30-year reign of corruption and oppression.”

U.S. war, occupied
Indian Ocean:
Australia-Asia-Africa

Behind this support for oppression, “some experts believe … are elements in the U.S. political system that see the retention of power by the SCAF as the lesser of multiple evils and are privately supportive out of fear of the alternative.

The West’s continuing support for Egypt’s Supreme Council of Armed Forces [not unlike relations with Libya’s Transitional National Council], North Africa/Middle East expert Kristian Ulrichsen told Deutsche Welle, “‘is sending irreparably damaging signals to the pro-democracy movements in Egypt and across the region.

Asia, Africa
under
U.S. threat, war, occupation

“‘It reinforces perceptions,’” she said, “‘that the West would rather see a narrow change of elites than a thorough revolution based on ideas of equality, dignity, social justice and democracy.’”

Sources and notes

ows

NIGHT RAIDS USA

“Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper on Paramilitary Policing From WTO to Occupy Wall Street [Karen Smith, retired New York Supreme Court judge, acting as a legal observer on the night of the raid on Occupy Wall Street],” Thursday, November 17, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/11/17/paramilitary_policing_of_occupy_wall_street

KAREN S. SMITH

Karen S. Smith is an acting justice for the New York County Supreme Court, Civil Term in the 1st Judicial District of New York, appointed to the position in 2004. She is also Judge, Civil Court of the City of New York, New York County, elected 1996, term ending 2016

Judge Smith’s professional experience and credentials also include New York State Attorney General, Real Estate Finance Bureau-Enforcement (1984- 1995); District Council 37 AFSCME, Associate General Counsel (1976-1983); NYS, Appellate Division, First Department (1977); District of Columbia, Court of Appeals, (1976);  Catholic University Law School (J.D., 1975); Reed College (B.A., 1970), http://www.nycourtsystem.com/applications/judicialdirectory/Bio.php?ID=7026750; http://judgepedia.org/index.php/Karen_Smith

NIGHT RAIDS AFGHANISTAN

“U.S.-led forces kill 7 Afghan civilians,” November 24, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/211898.html

“Militant attack kills 12 in Afghanistan,” November 24, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/211884.html

NIGHT RAIDS PAKISTAN

“22 killed in NW Pakistan clashes,” November 24, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/211759.html

“NATO oil tanker torched in Pakistan,” November 24, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/211827.html

Pakistan to take U.S. drone attacks to UN,” November 24, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/211864.html

Geopolitics’ Schizophrenia— U.S.-led West in Africa and Asia

EGYPT AND WEST

“West strikes dangerous balance in dealings with Egypt’s military” (Deutsche Welle), November 22, 2011, http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15546334,00.html

“The latest street battles between demonstrators demanding the end of military rule and armed members of the security services under the command of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) have reopened barely healed wounds just 10 months since President Hosni Mubarak was forced out of power by similar protests,” Deutsche Welle reports.

 “‘The SCAF represents the old military guard that propped up the Mubarak regime and its leadership is embedded within the networks of crony capitalists that are proving so hard to dislodge,’” says Dr. Kristian Ulrichsen, a North Africa and Middle East expert at the London School of Economics.

MUSLIM COUNTRIES

Muslims predominate in some 30 to 40 countries, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and along a belt that stretches across northern Africa into Central Asia and south to the northern regions of the Indian subcontinent.

Arabs account for less than one-fifth of all Muslims, more than half of whom live east of Karachi, Pakistan. Despite the absence of large-scale Islamic political entities, the Islamic faith continues to expand, by some estimates faster than any other major religion.

Some Muslim countries in Asia and Africa: Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia, Turkey, Nigeria, Iran, Pakistan

Caption Miami Workers Center

Occupy Wall Street Evicted in Late Night Raid; Lawyers Secure Injunction to Reopen Zuccotti Park, November 15, 2011,  http://www.miamiworkerscenter.org/index.php/en/news/7-national-news/108-occupy-wall-street-evicted-in-late-night-raid-lawyers-secure-injunction-to-reopen-zuccotti-park

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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War, conflict cause migration, disease

Migrants in
war-torn Misrata, Libya 

Violence has far-reaching and long-term consequences

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) along with other organizations pitch in to assist with migration crises and aid forced migrants around the world. At the start of the unrest in Libya, IOM began assisting with the evacuation of thousands of stranded migrants within Libya and principally at the border with Egypt, Tunisia and Niger.This is some of their findings. 

IOM data as of October 7, 2011— IOM recorded 721,772 people leaving Libya

TCNs (Third Country Nationals)

*Cross-border movement statistics only refer to migrants leaving Libya.

As of October 7 —

721,772 migrants crossed Libya’s borders. This figure includes 311,770 Third Country Nationals or TCNs (43 percent of total crossings).

Movements continued with another 11,584 migrants (553 TCNs) crossing the borders to Tunisia, Egypt, Chad and Niger between September 30 and October 6.

IOM Cross Border Movements Map as of October 7, 2011

EGYPT

Between September 30 and October 6 — 2,253 migrants (210 were TCNs) crossed the Egyptian border bringing the cumulative total of arrivals to 229,514 migrants.

TUNISIA

Between September 30 and October 6 — 9,287 migrants (335 were TCNs) crossed the border between bringing the cumulative total of arrivals to 313,414 migrants.

 

War never ends when politicians and war makers announce its ending. 

Flood victims in war-torn Pakistan

Cholera in Haiti

Child migrants in Pakistan

Disease

SCABIES

October 11, 2011, Libya/Egypt — In early September, migrants and refugees who had fled Libya and were temporarily at Salloum transit center awaiting onward transportation complained of skin infections, allergy and rashes.

When they detected the infection, IOM dispatched a team of 11 health volunteers to reinforce their health team.

Egypt Britannica map

Internally Displaced in Somalia

Four hundred people had scabies. In a precautionary measure, IOM gave treatment to all migrants and refugees (1,400). A team of IOM specialists in collaboration with the Egyptian ministry of health and the UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] treated for a scabies infection 1,000 migrants and refugees at the Salloum border crossing between Libya and Egypt.

Scabies is an itchy, highly contagious skin disease caused by an infestation by the itch mite.  It transmits by close personal contact with an infected individual  and spreads rapidly. Scabies causes skin rashes and severe, relentless itching. Small children and babies are particularly prone to scabies infections.

Bangladeshi workers
forced to flee Libya

CHOLERA

Every year there are an estimated 3-5 million cholera cases worldwide and 100,000-120,000 deaths from the disease whose short incubation period of two hours to five days enhances the potentially explosive pattern of outbreaks, according to the World Health Organization.

A 2010 mid-year UNICEF report said, “The good performance of recent rains [had] initiated a process of recovery for drought-affected women and children in Kenya’s pastoral and marginal agricultural areas. However, this recovery [was] uneven and moderated by persistently high food prices and the cumulative impact of previous poor rainy seasons, which have diminished resilience at the household level.

Kenya Britannica map

“Levels of acute malnutrition still remain unacceptably high in the Arid and Semi Arid areas, with more than 43,000 children under five suffering from severe acute malnutrition.

“While availability of water has improved in recent months, cholera outbreaks continue, despite scaled-up prevention efforts. Rains have also caused localized flooding and landslides in many parts of the country affecting up to 130,000 people, heightening their vulnerability to disease and limiting access to basic services. An upsurge in cases of malaria is anticipated due to the wet conditions that have prevailed over the previous months.

“The political environment in Kenya remains fragile, with the potential for inter-communal violence and population displacement to be triggered by political reform processes..

“Flooding and poor sanitation among displaced people leads to cholera outbreaks and acute watery diarrhea in a number of countries in eastern and southern Africa. Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia have reported cumulatively more than 3,200 cholera cases and over 25 deaths between January and April 2010. Highest numbers of cases were recorded in Zambia with 4,421 cases of cholera and 72 deaths (case fatality rate of 1.6 per cent).

“The impact of natural disasters and political crisis in countries in the Southern Africa region were complicated by the high levels of HIV/AIDS prevalence. The situation of armed conflict presented an acute threat to children and women in Southern Somalia. The food security situation in the Greater Horn of Africa sub-region remains unchanged with 12 million people in need of humanitarian assistance.”

Chad Britannica map

In this year’s report, UNICEF raised concern that many outbreaks of cholera begun outside the typical cholera season now affect countries where the disease was not endemic. The children’s fund feared further spread in coastal areas of central Africa where higher than normal rainfall is expected through the end of this year.

UNICEF identified three major cross-border cholera outbreaks: the Lake Chad Basin (Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger), the West Congo Basin (Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic) and Lake Tanganyika (Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi).

Uganda Britannica map

“The virulent diarrheal disease is spreading quickly along waterways between and within countries, causing an ‘unacceptably high’ rate of fatalities.”
Sweeping through west and Central Africa, one of the biggest epidemics in the vast region’s history, cholera has infected more than 85,000 people and killed at least 2,466 so far this year.

Cholera is a bacterial infection of the intestines that is spread by water contaminated with human excrement. In many parts of the world, the lack of safe drinking water and proper waste disposal can be a deadly combination.  

Despite efforts to improve the situation, the number of cholera cases – and deaths – keeps rising. In Uganda, for example, this is particularly true during the rainy season, when waste is often carried into rivers and lakes. Lacking other options, people continue to collect drinking water and often fall ill. It is common to see men, women and children filling water containers in rivers and lakes, despite the very real threat of cholera.

Sources and notes

IOM

IOM works in the four broad areas of migration management: migration and development, facilitating migration, regulating migration, and addressing forced migration. Cross-cutting activities include the promotion of international migration law, policy debate and guidance, protection of migrants’ rights, migration health and the gender dimension of migration. IOM works closely with governmental, intergovernmental and non-governmental partners.

IOM INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS ON MIGRATION

IN RESPONSE TO LIBYAN CRISIS

External Situation Report October 10, 2011

http://www.iom.int/jahia/webdav/shared/shared/mainsite/media/docs/reports/IOM-sitrep-MENA.pdf

Africa and Middle East — “IOM Tackles the Spread of Scabies among Migrants and Refugees at Salloum Border Crossing,” http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/media/press-briefing-notes/pbnAF/cache/offonce/lang/en?entryId=30769

IOM Headquarters: 17 route des Morillons • C.P. 71 • CH-1211 Geneva 19, Switzerland, www.iom.int

ICRC

For those stranded on the border between Libya and Egypt, Salloum is the main crossing point between Libya and Egypt. Operating at Salloum Land Port since March 2011, the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Roses) has helped these displaced people by providing breakfasts, telephone facilities and travel documents, http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/field-newsletter/egypt-libya-newsletter-2011-09-20.htm

Egypt

Egypt (officially Arab Republic of Egypt) is located in the northeastern corner of Africa. Its land frontiers border Libya in the west; the Sudan in the south, and Palestine in the northeast. (Israeli forces occupied the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip in eastern Egypt after the Arab–Israeli War of 1967. In 1982, the Sinai was returned to Egypt.) In the north its Mediterranean coastline is about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers), and in the east its coastline on the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba is about 1,200 miles. The capital is Cairo.

Egypt was the home of one of the principal civilizations of the ancient Middle East and, like Mesopotamia, it was one of the very earliest urban and literate societies.

Libya

Libya (officially Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, formerly  Libyan Arab Republic or  People’s Socialist Libyan Arab Republic) is in North Africa; bounded by the Mediterranean Sea on the north; Egypt on the east; the Sudan on the southeast; Niger and Chad on the south; and Tunisia and Algeria on the west. Libya is largely composed of the Sahara, and the population is concentrated along the coast, where the de facto capital, Tripoli (Ṭarābulus), and Banghāzī (Benghazi), the de jure capital, are located. 

“Cholera epidemic spreads in west, central Africa: UN — The virulent diarrheal disease is spreading quickly along waterways between and within countries, causing an ‘unacceptably high’ rate of fatalities, the U.N. Children's Fund UNICEF said,” October 11, 2011, http://www.worldbulletin.net/?aType=haber&ArticleID=80093

UNICEF, http://www.unicef.org/health/uganda_53862.html

UNICEF Humanitarian Action Mid Year 2010 Review, http://www.unicef.org/files/HAR_Mid-Year_Review_2010.pdf

IOM PHOTOS

http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/media/photo-stories/lang/en

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire

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If a killer kills a no-longer-useful “friend”...

International Justice Day at ICC
The Hague

Who calls the killer to account?

By Carolyn Bennett

War, rights abuse, lawlessness and impunity — the U.S. reign of terror has long-term and far-reaching consequences.

A country actively, lawlessly at war with the world can no longer claim either intervention to save civilians (humanitarianism) or war as last resort. Such statements are lies on their face.

Flag raising at the seat of the Court in 

The Hague © ICC-CPI

Officials (executives and judges, lawmakers and war makers) of such a country send a clear message to the young, who presumably will lead future relations with self, country and the world. The way to get what you want or to have your way is to kill. If you feel you cannot pull it off legitimately, then orchestrate or create conditions on the ground, then squeeze a sort of “yes” from the UN and go in with drones blazing and take down the oligarch, the dictator, the authoritarian (former friend) and everything in his path. Then kick back to corporations. Hire and collude with them to forever suppress a people, all the while pretending to reconstruct what you have destroyed utterly, and continue destabilizing and destroying.

Welcome to the United States’ entrenched foreign policy of violence. If you think Libya’s head of state (or Bahrain’s or Saudi Arabia’s or Yemen’s or Egypt’s) was corrupt and oppressive and had ruled far too long, then you better take a look at entrenched U.S. policy, extending, in contemporary times, no farther back than from the Nixon era and you have another 40-year reign of terror.

Richard Nixon, the 37th U.S. president (1969-1974), didn’t start the war in Southeast Asia but he advanced it. Barack Obama, the 44th U.S. president, didn’t start the wars of Southwest Asia and East Africa but he increased the wars, widened and deepened them, increased cold-blooded preemptive extrajudicial killings and the massive displacement of peoples; and through Washington’s propaganda machine, its inordinate influence over non-super-powered countries, his administration (as its predecessors) has lied about what the United States is doing and why the United States is involved in and actively leading global aggression.

If you believe Qaddafi or any Asian or African head of sect or faction or state is any worse than the long reign of U.S. official violence perpetrated against peoples of the world — and its flagrant impunity (getting away with murder!) — then you have either been living in a cave for a very long time or your brain has been washed by overexposure to U.S. mass propaganda.

Murderer be not proud — If you have refused to see what the United States through its officials have done at least in the past forty years, then you too are complicit in murder and its accompanying destruction of families and children, societies and institutions and potential. 

I am angry and saddened by what the country that I love is doing at home and abroad and I want you to be angry and nonviolently active as well. 

“If ever there was a moment for a revolution in our thinking,” Human Rights lawyer Gareth Peirce says, “this is it.…

“We have waged war, and we are continuing to wage endless war in simplistic terms — domestically against our own Muslim citizens, against others, and against huge swaths of countries, now moving, for instance, to the Horn of Africa. We cannot continue in this permanence of combative aggression in our thinking, let alone our actions.…”

The week’s insight

Human Rights Watch’s Peter Bouckaert said last Friday on Democracy Now, The U.S. CIA and Britain’s MI6 (intelligence agencies) in 2003 and 2004 were dismantling Qaddafi’s weapons of mass destruction program and at the same time reestablishing an intelligence relationship with the Libyan government. In a cache of documents found in Libya by Human Rights Watch, many related “to the [U.S.] rendition and—to the capture and rendition of Islamist suspects abroad.

“The CIA was offering to capture and render Libyan Islamists to the Qaddafi government and then they [the CIA agents] were sending to the Qaddafi government the questions they wanted [Libyan torturers] to ask.”

Bouckaert  said, “We also found many documents [showing] how close their [the intelligence agencies and Qaddafi government] relationship was. … They show a relationship that went way beyond the professional into the intimate, really, with a man known for his brutality and his direct role in repression, a man who probably knows a lot more about the Lockerbie bombing and other dark chapters in Libyan history than anybody else.

“One of the documents found is a fax dated Christmas Day 2003. In it, the head of MI6 clandestine services begins ‘Dear Musa’ and then expresses regret that Musa is not joining him for Christmas lunch. The fax is signed, ‘Your friend’ and then the name of this person.

Commenting on the findings, Gareth Peirce said if the Obama administration has said no to an inquiry into the collusion and torture, then worldwide organizations such as the UN Committee against Torture, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and others must conduct inquiries. They must say, “‘we are going to have an inquiry and we are going to investigate; and those countries that have endorsed the right for us to enter and investigate, we’re going to do so.’”

People in influential western nations have responded to recent Arab uprisings as if they were a reaction to a recent spark, Peirce says, “without any comprehension of the history of those nations as places where the worst kind of oppression has taken place; and where U.S. and British governments have constantly not just backed the wrong horse — it is not that simplistic a choice; but have backed and encouraged leaders of those countries who have been monsters, who have oppressed their people. And we have categorized the resistance and the dissent as the enemy, as Islamic extremism, radicalism, that has to be eliminated.”

What is put forth in the world is a “simplistic view that the ‘enemy’ has to be eliminated, the enemy has to be gotten. If this keeps going in this way, then we will be in perpetual war — in terms of hatred and elimination — not in the quest of perpetual peace.”

The week’s sectors of U.S. war

Southwest Asia

AFGHANISTAN

View from Arabian Sea

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made an unannounced visit to Kabul this week as records show the number of U.S.-led war-related deaths in Afghanistan stood at around 5.6 million. Fatalities, beyond general violence, reportedly have been caused by hunger, deprivation, and adversity generated by the US-led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.

Anti-U.S. sentiment has risen as the killing of civilians by foreign forces has dramatically intensified in Afghanistan.

Today, in a village in the northeastern Kunar Province, a U.S. rocket struck a residential area and left at least 10 Afghan civilians dead.

A United Nations report on Afghanistan issued on September 28 said that the monthly average number of security incidents recorded for 2011 until the end of August had risen by nearly 40 percent.

The report also said civilian casualties, already at record levels in the first six months of the year, rose five percent between June and August 2011 compared to the same period in 2010.

Around 130,000 people were displaced by the conflict in the first seven months of the year, up nearly two-thirds from the same period one year earlier.

A U.S.-led airstrike targeting suspected Taliban militants today [updated] hit a house in Afghanistan’s northeastern province of Kunar and left 13 Afghan civilians dead.

Yesterday October 19

At least one Afghan civilian died and six others were kidnapped after U.S. military forces attacked a residential area in the eastern province of Nangarhar, Press TV reported.

October 16 (last Sunday)

Pakistani anti-U.S. demonstration

U.S.-led soldiers killed an Afghan teacher and his two daughters during a night raid in eastern Afghanistan. Local officials said the troops stormed the Wardak Province house and shot and killed the teacher and his daughters, aged18 and 20.

PAKISTAN

The U.S. Secretary of State also trooped off to this nation under U.S. drone attack where U.S. relations have plummeted because of the killing of civilians by the non-UN-sanctioned U.S. drone attacks. Begun by the previous U.S. administration, the Obama government has escalated these aerial attacks. 

Tensions between Islamabad and Washington have also increased because of the secret U.S. raid into Pakistan that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May.

  

At the time of the U.S. Secretary’s Thursday visit, there were also reports of “U.S. troops massing in Afghanistan along the Pakistani border, raising concerns in Pakistan about a potential U.S. plan to wage a military offensive on its North Waziristan region.

Welcoming the U.S. official were hundreds of Pakistanis in the streets in city of Multan protesting her visit, chanting anti-U.S. slogans, and slamming Washington for accusing Pakistan of harboring Afghan militants.

This week from official Pakistan came a warning to the United States against a unilateral ground operation in the restive North Waziristan tribal region. Pakistani Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani reportedly told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing on Tuesday, “Any such attack by U.S. forces from across the Afghan border would prove 10 times harder than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Also today in clashes between Pakistani security forces and the Taliban group in Khyber tribal region in northwest of Pakistan, 3 soldiers and more than 34 “militants” died in violence.

Middle East

BAHRAIN [U.S. ally]

Bahrain protests

Last month, Bahrain’s court sentenced 20 medical professionals to between 5 and 15-year terms in jail for their having treated anti-regime protesters. Physicians for Human Rights said doctors and nurses have been detained, tortured or disappeared because they have ‘evidence of atrocities committed by the authorities, security forces and riot police’ in crackdowns on anti-government protesters.

Today, as the regime in Bahrain sends more demonstrators to jail and a military court in Manama has sentenced 20 more people to six-month jail terms for protesting against the ruling family, the government has delayed release of a report about the [U.S.-allied] Saudi-backed brutal crackdown on the pro-democracy protests.

IRAQ

Backed by air strikes, Turkish forces reportedly have entered northern Iraq to attack Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) ‘terrorists’ in retaliation for their killing of more than two dozen Turkish soldiers in the southeastern province of Hakkari.

The offensive is said to have followed a Tuesday attack on Turkish security forces by PKK militants entering Turkey from the mountains of northern Iraq.  

PALESTINE

Violence and vandalism by Israeli settlers, night time raids and detentions by Israeli occupation forces, house demolitions, threatened expulsions, and a host of other practices have deprived Palestinian children of safety and a sense of security, said UN special Rapporteur Richard Falk. He was reporting Thursday on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Middle East - Palestine

Falk said, “Prolonged occupation deforms the development of children through pervasive deprivations affecting health, education, and overall security.”

Reporting to the General Assembly’s human rights committee, he raised concerns about the violence against Palestinian children arrested by Israeli military and urged Tel Aviv to adopt guidelines in line with humanitarian law for the detained children.

“‘Arrest procedures documented by UN agencies and reliable human rights organizations include arrests in the middle of the night, removal of children from parents for questioning, abusive treatment at detention, and conviction procedures that appear to preclude findings of not guilty.’”

Gulf to Africa’s Horn

Mostly SOMALIA

More than 13 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Djibouti, according to the United Nations, are in need of assistance in what has been the worst drought in 60 years in the region of Eastern Africa and the Horn.

Added to the suffering is U.S. bombing. Somalia is the sixth country against which the U.S. military has conducted drone strikes. U.S. bombing and intelligence drones have hit Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq and Yemen.

Yesterday, a U.S. drone strike killed 22 in Kudhaa Island in southern Somalia near the border with Kenya.

Today, close to Ras Kamboni town in the Badhaadhe district of Lower Juba region near the border with Kenya another attack by a U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) killed at least 44 civilians and injured 63 others in southern Somalia.

EARLIER NEWS

U.S. drone attacks kill 26 in Somalia

Kenyan jets strike ‘militants’ in Somalia

U.S. drone attack kills 46 in Somalia

U.S. drone attack kills 18 in Somalia

US drone crashes in Somalia killing five

This suffering is needless, given the resources and know-how of developed countries: In Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, a combination of poor sanitation conditions, scarcity of safe and clean drinking water, and overcrowding has led to the spread of waterborne diseases.

Today’s report from Somalia says, in Mogadishu 65 more children have died from cholera where cases of waterborne diseases have increased due to unhygienic living conditions.

A physician told Press TV the victims died Thursday morning in the capital’s Hodan neighborhood and added that more than 160 other children, suffering from cholera and waterborne diseases, were also taken to Banadir and Digfeer hospitals in southern Mogadishu to get some medication.

EARLIER REPORTS

80 more Somali children die of cholera

Cholera claims 195 more lives in Somalia

Cholera kills 116 children in Somalia

Cholera and hunger kill 83 more Somali kids

French in Africa

A Frenchwoman, cancer-stricken quadriplegic was abducted and died after being kidnapped from a Kenyan resort island. The abductors are demanding a ransom for return of the woman’s body.

French officials said on Wednesday that Marie Dedieu, 66, had died in the hands of her captors, most probably because they had refused to provide her medication. A group of ten heavily armed gunmen reportedly had kidnapped the French woman on October 1 from her home on Manda Island in the Lamu archipelago and had taken her to neighboring Somalia.

SOMALIS seek refuge in troubled land

The United Nations Press Service reports today, “Some of the nearly 200,000 Somalis who have sought refuge in Yemen from violence and famine in their own country are now considering going back home due to worsening security in the Arabian Peninsula nation.”

The UNHCR (High Commissioner for Refugees) said today “Most new arrivals tell UNHCR that they were unaware of the situation in Yemen and the conditions they would be facing.”

Yemeni protests

Supporters and opponents of [U.S.-allied] Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh have been fighting for most of this year — while Somalia’s two decades of factional warfare [together with foreign aggression] have been exacerbated by one of the worst famines in memory. The dead in Somalia total in the tens of thousands of people with 750,000 more at risk of death in the coming months, and four million affected.

Many Somalis left their country with the hope that they would be able reach to Yemen and other Gulf countries and find work but the deteriorating security situation in Yemen has curtailed their movement and work opportunities for refugees are rapidly shrinking. Refugees have little choice but to return to their troubled country.

LIBYA

Murderer be not proud

Today the United Nations human rights office called for a probe into Muammar Qaddafi’s death to determine whether he was killed during fighting or after his capture.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) noted that the circumstances surrounding the ex-Libyan leader’s death yesterday in his hometown of Sirte are unclear, with four or five different versions of how he died.

Rupert Colville of the OHCHR said, “There are at least two cell-phone videos, one showing [the former president] alive and one showing him dead. Taken together, these videos are very disturbing.… We believe there is a need for an investigation and more details are needed to ascertain whether he was killed in the fighting or after his capture.”

Since the start of bombing in Libya began, an estimated 24,000 refugees have successfully made the voyage from North Africa to Italy’s Lampedusa.

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Friday that rescue efforts must be strengthened as growing numbers of refugees pour out of northern Africa and lose their lives on the perilous journey across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. An estimated 1,500 African migrants have been reported missing since NATO launched its UN-sanctioned bombing campaign in Libya in March, according to UNHCR’s Laura Boldrini.

During an incident in August UNHCR called for assistance from NATO after the Italian coast guard came to the aid of a refugee boat packed with 300 people bound for the island of Lampedusa, located halfway between Sicily and the African coast. Italy reportedly asked a NATO ship in the area to come the aid of the 20-meter (66-foot) long boat, but the NATO vessel did not respond.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) today announced the end of resettlement for refugees from Libya. Egypt’s Saloum border, which had been one of the main sites over recent months for people fleeing the crisis in Libya, will, beginning tomorrow, no longer process arriving third-country nationals from Libya.

Since the start of the conflict in February, UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) have evacuated 37,866 third-country nationals from Saloum. Yesterday there were 1,816 people still at Saloum, approximately half of whom have been submitted for resettlement and most others awaiting the completion of refugee status determination.

AMERICAS

Protesters in Canada take the view that former U.S. President George W. Bush is responsible for ‘mass murders’ and ‘torture’ and was ‘commander of the utterly illegal war on Iraq that has caused the deaths of over 1.2 million Iraqi people.’

Yesterday, during the former president’s visit to attend an economic summit in Canada, hundreds of Canadians protested against the visit and chanted, “‘arrest George Bush.’”

Amnesty International had expressed the belief that George W. Bush is a war criminal and called on the Canadian government to arrest him the moment he entered the country.

More needless suffering

Haiti

The United Nations World Health Organization reported that on record today in Haiti are “470,000 cases of cholera.” In this figure are “6,595 deaths, which have been reported since an epidemic of the disease erupted in the Caribbean country a year ago.”

Over the past year, an estimated 250,000 the cholera patients had been hospitalized. If the current trend continues, a WHO representative told reporters in Geneva, the disease could infect another 75,000 Haitians by the end of the year. If this happens, the cumulative total number of cases would rise to half a million.

U.S. rocket on Afghanistan
Press TV image

What wars and conflict cause and create — mass migration, displacement, destabilization, suffering and anger

 This year has been a year of displacement crises like no other, said António Guterres of the office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). People fled not so much to far-off industrialized countries as to their neighboring countries.

Through its latest survey, UNHCR found that between January 1 and June 30, 2011, there were 198,300 asylum applications. Last year the survey reported 169,300.

Of the 44 countries surveyed, the main countries of origin for asylum seekers this year remained largely unchanged from previous surveys: Afghanistan (15,300 claims); China (11,700); Serbia [and Kosovo] (10,300); Iraq (10,100); and Iran (7,600).

By continent or region, 

Roma asylum seekers

Europe registered the highest number of claims, with 73 percent of all asylum applications in industrialized countries. By country, the United States received more applications (36,400) than any other industrialized country followed by France (26,100), Germany (20,100), Sweden (12,600), and the United Kingdom (12,200). The Nordic region was the only European region to see a decline in asylum applications. In Northeast Asia, applications more than doubled – 1,300 claims were lodged in Japan and South Korea compared to 600 in the first half of 2010.

Somalis displaced in camps

Applications for asylum in developed countries rose by 17 percent in the first six months of this year, with most of those seeking admission coming from countries with a history of population displacement.

SISTERS AGAINST VIOLENT EXTREMISM (Women without Borders) have voiced another vision, a SAVE Declaration

“As a woman I will — 

• Use the local and global networks of women to stop the killing
• Inspire a new response to prevent terror, violence and discrimination
• Create awareness for not stigmatizing the families of the extremists/terrorists
• Support the young generation with non-violent alternatives in their search for a better life
• Engage all forms of media for spreading the message of non-violence
• Insist on peaceful resolutions to prevent escalation of conflict and violence
• Promote a global dialogue for a future without fear
• Raise my voice against all hostile states and politics that cause suffering
• Recognize the urgency to create “SAVE” spaces for a peaceful coexistence
• Always remember those affected by violent extremism.”

Sources and notes

“Gareth Peirce: Why I still fight for human rights ‘Justice dies when the law is co-opted for political purposes.’ Gareth Peirce, one of our key human rights lawyers, talks to Stuart Jeffries,” October 11, 2010,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2010/oct/12/gareth-peirce-fight-human-rights

“Discovered Files Show U.S., Britain Had Extensive Ties with Qaddafi Regime on Rendition, Torture—Human Rights Watch has uncovered hundreds of letters in the Libyan foreign ministry proving the Qaddafi government directly aided the extraordinary rendition program carried out by the CIA and the MI6 in Britain after the 9/11 attacks. The documents expose how the CIA rendered suspects to Libyan authorities knowing they would be tortured,” September 7, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/9/7/discovered_files_show_us_britain_had

Peter Bouckaert is emergencies director at Human Rights Watch and helped find the documents in Tripoli.

“Alleged Inhumane Conditions for Post-9/11 Suspects Sparks Global Scrutiny of U.S. Detention Policies,” October 14, 2011,

“Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, detention policies in the United States are facing increasing scrutiny both here and abroad. American citizen Tarek Mehanna is set to stand trial this month on charges of ‘conspiring to support terrorism’ and ‘providing material support to terrorists.’

“Mehanna is accused of trying to serve in al-Qaeda’s ‘media wing.’ When arrested in October 2009, he was 27 years old. Since his arrest, he has been held in solitary confinement.

“Mehanna was originally courted by the FBI to become an informant.

“Meanwhile, the European Court of Human Rights is hearing a case on the legality of extradition of terror suspects to the United States on the grounds that inmates are subjected to inhumane conditions of confinement and routine violations of due process. This could become a landmark case in human rights law, potentially damaging the international reputation of the U.S. legal system.”

In this program discussion of detention policies since 9/11 in the United States were Tarek Mehanna’s brother, Tamer, and Gareth Peirce, one of Britain’s best-known human rights lawyers. She has represented WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and many prisoners held at the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay. October 14, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/10/14/alleged_inhumane_conditions_for_post_9

 “‘U.S. uses UN as a tool to wage wars’” (Press TV interview with Sara Flounders, co-director of International Action Center from New York, asking why the U.S. has made the claim against Iran and whether legally the U.S. should be held responsible for making false accusations or not), October 18, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/205273.html

AFGHANISTAN

“U.S. blast kills 10 Afghan civilians,” October 21, 2011,

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/205834.html

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/205489.html

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/204883.html

PAKISTAN

“Pakistanis protest Clinton's visit,” October 21, 2011,

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/205857.html

“U.S. warned against Pakistan incursion,” October 19, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/205451.html

MIDDLE EAST

Caption for Yemen protest

Tens of thousands of Yemenis have taken to the streets in the capital to call on Ali Abdullah Saleh to learn from the fate of slain Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and step down.

Caption Bahrain protest

Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters converge from two directions to demonstrate outside the walls of King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa's Safriya Palace in the Bahraini capital of Manama (file photo).

“Bahrain delays report on crackdown,” October 21, 2011,

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/205739.html

“‘Torture of Bahraini detainees persist’— Concerns grow over the health condition of detained Bahraini opposition leaders amid continuing reports of ongoing torture in the country’s prisons, Press TV reports, October 20, 2011

“Turkish forces enter Iraq to fight PKK,” October 21, 2011,

In Jordan thousands have rallied in the capital, Amman, to urge prime minister-designate Awn Khasawneh to implement political reform, October 21, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/205738.html

“UN calls on Israel to stop harassing kids— The UN has criticized Israeli violence against Palestinian children, urging the international community to scale up its protective measures for minors living under Israeli occupation,” October 21, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/205736.html

AFRICA

“U.S. drone strike kills 44 in Somalia,” October 21, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/205775.html

“Cholera kills 65 more Somali children,” October 20, 2011,

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/205690.html

Caption Somalia displaced hospital scene

A paramedic attends to internally displaced children suffering from cholera inside a ward at Banadir hospital in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, on August 18, 2011. (file photo)

“Abductors ask cash for Dedieu’s body,” October 20, 2011,

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/205642.html

Britannica note

Lamu is a town, port, an island administered as part of Kenya in the Indian Ocean off the East African coast, 150 miles (241 km) north-northeast of Mombasa.

Manda is near Lamu on the Kenyan coast, apparently established in the 9th century, distinguished for its seawalls of coral blocks. Trade, which seems to have been by barter, was considerable, with the main export probably of ivory. Manda had close trading connections with the Persian Gulf. It imported large quantities of Islamic pottery and, in the 9th and 10th centuries, Chinese porcelain. There is evidence of a considerable iron-smelting industry at Manda.

“Somalis fleeing insecurity at home find more insecurity in Yemeni ‘haven’ – UN,” October 21, 2011, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=40146&Cr=somalia&Cr1=

  

Refugees

 “North African refugee deaths prompts UN agency to call for assistance — Thousands are fleeing north Africa for Europe by boat; the Italian coast guard saved another boat full of north African immigrants bound for Europe after NATO reportedly failed to intervene. The UN refugee agency has now called for rescue efforts to be redoubled,” August 5, 2011,

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15297933,00.html

LIBYA

“Libya: UN human rights office calls for probe into Qaddafi’s death,” October 21, 2011, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=40144&Cr=libya&Cr1=

AMERICAS

“100s of Canadians protest Bush’s visit,” October 21, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/205798.html

http://www.presstv.ir/section/3510207.html

Haiti

“Nearly 470,000 cholera cases reported in Haiti over the past year – UN,” October 21, 2011,

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=40149&Cr=Haiti&Cr1=

Refugees

“Asylum requests in developed countries rose in first half of year – UN,” October 18, 2011,

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=40091&Cr=asylum&Cr1=

Caption Roma asylum-seekers being housed in Schaerbeek, Belgium

http://womenwithoutborders-save.blogspot.com/p/save-declaration.html

Women without Borders — Sisters Against Violent Extremism

Women without Borders supports women all over the world as they strive towards the inclusion and participation of women in all levels of the decision-making process, and helps them to bring their talents and energies into the public arena.

Women without Borders stands for non-violent conflict resolution in countries in transition or undergoing reconstruction; advocates a future without fear, suppression or violence; and works toward positive politics that cultivate the participation of women.

Women without Borders is an advocacy and PR organization for women around the globe. As an international initiative for women in politics and civil society, Women without Borders offers a forum through which women’s voices can be heard and their concerns made public.

“SAVE (Sisters Against Violent Extremism) is the world’s first female counter-terrorism platform. Headquartered at the Women without Borders offices in Vienna, Austria, SAVE brings together a broad spectrum of women determined to create a united front against violent extremism. SAVE provides women with the tools for critical debate to challenge extremist thinking and to develop alternative strategies for combating the growth of global terrorism.”

The participants of the first Global SAVE Conference developed and signed the SAVE Declaration in 2008.

http://www.women-without-borders.org/save/

http://www.women-without-borders.org/aboutus/

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire

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