The unjust fate of an American ‘terrorist’

Charlotte Silver writes: Before Hamas was designated a “terrorist organisation” in the United States, it wasn’t.

And before Sami al-Arian, The Holy Land Five, and the countless other Palestinian Americans whose lives have been wrung through harrowing immigration and counter-terrorist proceedings for their connections – however slight – to Gaza, there was Muhammad Salah.

It’s useful to view the shift in the US relationship to Hamas alongside the story of Muhammad Salah, a Palestinian-born citizen of the United States, who was seized in 1993 by Israel when he was on his way into the Gaza Strip to distribute humanitarian aid. The aid had been raised in the wake of Israel’s mass deportation of 415 men from Gaza to South Lebanon in the dead of winter in 1992.

In 1993, Salah was a grocer in the suburbs of Chicago; a husband and father of four children. He was described as soft-spoken and keen on community volunteer work.

Today, Salah is the sole person residing in the US who is labelled a “terrorist”. The status, assigned to him in 1995, has rendered his every movement, purchase, transaction and life decision – from the mundane to the substantive – subject to review by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

“He is, essentially, internally banished. He cannot engage with anyone, and no one can engage with him,” said David Cole, an attorney with the Centre for Constitutional Rights, who is representing him in his recently filed suit against the federal government.

“Internal banishment” is a form of punishment in which the government determines with whom the sentenced is permitted to speak. It gained notoriety by its wide use under South Africa’s apartheid regime.

Matt Piers, who has represented Salah since 1998, believes the conditions of Salah’s sentence are even more severe than those imposed in South Africa [Continue reading…]

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Gaza’s future looks even bleaker than its past

NPR reports: Gaza’s statistics make grim reading. A recent report by the United Nations says the Gaza Strip will be unlivable by 2020 if nothing is done to alleviate the situation in the tiny coastal territory.

According to the report, despite a recent pickup in the economy, by almost every indicator, Palestinians in Gaza are worse off than they were in the 1990s.

Even as the infrastructure is crumbling, the population is booming. That, coupled with dwindling resources and restrictions on trade and travel by neighbors Egypt and Israel, has meant the situation for the 1.8 million Palestinians who live in Gaza is increasingly desperate.

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Libyan authorities give Islamist militia two days to leave their bases

The Guardian reports: The Libyan authorities have given armed groups two days to vacate military bases and compounds as they seek to capitalise on the wave of people power that drove an Islamist militia from Benghazi at the weekend.

Jihadist militias in Derna, Libya’s Islamist stronghold, threw in the towel on Sunday, withdrawing from their stronghold and announcing they were disbanding to avoid a repeat of the scenes in Benghazi in which angry crowds sent armed gunmen fleeing. One of the routed militias was blamed for an attack on the US consulate two weeks ago that left four Americans dead including the ambassador, Chris Stevens.

The de facto head of state, Muhammad Magariaf, president of Libya’s parliament, met Benghazi politicians and security officials, anxious to fill a security vacuum that has emerged from the weekend violence, in which at least 11 people died.

“The army chief Yussef al-Mangoush and Muhammad Magariaf have ordered all illegitimate militias should be removed from compounds and hand over their weapons to the national army,” said Adel Othman al-Barasi, a spokesman for the defence ministry, according to Reuters. “A committee made up by the military police has been formed to take over the compounds and the weapons and hand these over to the army.”

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New Arab realities

Rami G. Khouri identifies five genuinely historic, new and meaningful developments in many of the Arab states in transformation, after 21 months of the Arab uprisings:

1. New legitimacies are coming into play, including legitimate governance structures, leaders and political actors, replacing their former counterparts that enjoyed incumbency but had long ago lost legitimacy. The transition from mass public humiliation to newfound legitimacy in national governance and the exercise of power is the single most important foundational change that is taking place in these Arab uprisings and national reconfigurations. These new legitimacies provide the foundation on which all other new developments occur, especially new national systems of governance and citizen rights.

2. New actors now participate in the process of contested politics that will shape national governments systems and policies at home and abroad; these include most notably revolutionary and other youth, individual citizens with the power to choose and change governments and presidents, Muslim Brothers and more hard-line Salafist Islamists (some of whom lead or participate in coalition governments), tribes (some with militias), secular-nationalist political parties, the armed forces that now engage in open rather than secret politics, the judiciary, civil society groups, and private sector interests.

We should note three important aspects of these new players. They all emanate from these Arab societies and did not parachute in from abroad, and they now operate in public and with populist democratic legitimacy, rather than working in the shadows as many of them did before, including the military, tribal forces, the private sector, and some Islamists. They reflect the important development that very few people are now excluded or marginalized, as was the case previously when the vast majority of citizens were shut out from the decision-making process. And, they evolve and change, as they share or seek power via the consent of the governed; they soften or harden positions and clarify their policies in response to citizen demands, and so they act in a political manner, reflecting their need to remain legitimate and credible in the eyes of their supporters and the public at large. [Continue reading…]

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Israeli occupation strong as ever on Capitol Hill

Benjamin Netanyahu flanked by Congressional courtiers Reid and McConnell.

Ali Gharib writes: After midnight yesterday, the Senate voted 90 to 1 to express the “sense of the Congress” as weighing in on the debate about what red lines the U.S. should declare against Iran. You’ll remember this issue as the one roiling the relationship between Benjamin Netanyahu and President Obama at the moment. On the Hill, almost everyone — including most of the Democrats — just sided with Netanyahu.

The resolution, initially introduced by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in the Spring, laid out a non-binding position that “strongly supports United States policy to prevent the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability” and “rejects any United States policy that would rely on efforts to contain a nuclear weapons-capable Iran.” Obama has set his red line at Iran producing nuclear weapons rather than the “capability” to do so, a phrase loaded with a special yet ill-defined meaning in proliferation matters.

The “capability” debate was initially framed as one over “containment” in February, and hawks like Graham found little bipartisan support until their position became a centerpiece of the AIPAC policy conference in March. But the initial resolution from Graham in May stalled. Then things rose into the national consciousness.

This month, an unprecedented campaign by Benjamin Netanyahu to get Obama to shift his Iran red line drew jeers from liberals and even Members of Congress. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) upbraided Netanyahu for interjecting himself in American politics. AIPAC took notice, e-mailing its members last week with articles on Obama’s refusal to lower his threshold for war and Netanyahu’s denials of interference. The debate seemed, for now, over, with Obama victorious. Then this week, Majority Leader Reid surprised everyone by re-introducing the Graham resolution.

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Neanderthals more advanced than contemporary humans?

Scientific America reports: Experts agree that Neanderthals hunted large game, controlled fire, wore animal furs and made stone tools. But whether they also engaged in activities deemed to be more advanced has been a matter of heated debate. Some researchers have argued that Neanderthals lacked the know-how to effectively exploit small prey, such as birds, and that they did not routinely express themselves through language and other symbolic behaviors. Such shortcomings put the Neanderthals at a distinct disadvantage when anatomically modern humans availed of these skills invaded Europe—which was a Neanderthal stronghold for hundreds of thousands of years—and presumably began competing with them, so the story goes.

Over the past couple decades hints that Neanderthals were savvier than previously thought have surfaced, however. Pigment stains on shells from Spain suggest they painted, pierced animal teeth from France are by all appearances Neanderthal pendants. The list goes on. Yet in all of these cases skeptics have cautioned that the evidence is scant and does not establish that such sophistication was an integral part of the Neanderthal gestalt.

The cutmarked bones from Gibraltar as well as bird remains from other sites could force them to rethink that view. In a paper published September 17 in PLOS ONE, paleontologist Clive Finlayson of the Gibraltar Museum, Rosell, a zooarchaeologist at Rovira I Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain, and their colleagues report on their analyses of animal remains from 1699 fossil sites in Eurasia and north Africa spanning the Pleistocene epoch. Their results show that Neanderthals across western Eurasia were strongly associated with corvids (ravens and the like) and raptors (vultures and their relatives) — more so than were the anatomically modern humans who succeeded them.

The Neanderthals seem unlikely to have hunted these birds for food. People today do not eat corvids or raptors. Moreover, if the Neanderthals did hunt the birds for food, one would expect to see signs of butchery on those bones linked to fleshy parts of the bird, such as the breastbone. Yet the team’s study of the bird bones from the Gibraltar sites found the cutmarks on wing bones, which have little meat — a sign that the Neanderthals targeted the birds for their feathers rather than their meat.

Exactly what the Neanderthals were doing with the feathers is unknown, but because they specifically sought out birds with dark plumage, the researchers suspect that our kissing cousins were festooning themselves with the resplendent flight feathers. Not only are feathers beautiful, they are also lightweight, which makes them ideal for decoration, Finlayson points out. “We don’t think it’s a coincidence that so many modern human cultures across the world have used them.”

Everyone loves these stories that reveal similarities between contemporary humans and our distant ancestors (or even non-human species). But it strikes me that as much as these narratives resonate with a desire for the experience of ancient kinship, they are also colored with condescension. Beings we took to be of very limited intelligence turn out to have a few of the markers that we associate with our own supposedly abundant intelligence.

So, it appears that Neanderthals had a greater interest in their personal appearance than we would have expected among those whose outfits were limited to a choice of animals skins. They adorned themselves with feathers. Still, they weren’t advanced enough to be able to accessorize with Gucci.

In cultures obsessed with stuff, cultural comparisons invariably get limited to comparisons between objects — feathers vs. designer clothes. But even if anthropologists hesitate to speculate at length about why Neanderthals used feathers, I have little doubt that the Neanderthals knew why and their explanations would not have been so banal as simply the idea that feathers look cool. They were adorning themselves with forms endowed with meaning.

What Neanderthals surely possessed were the talents handed down in cultures of every age prior to the age of consumerism. Which is to say, the abilities to create things and to possess them were deeply intertwined. Skills in craft and artistry were a dimension of the social skills that wove societies together. Dexterity, agility and the keen perceptions of those who were attuned to their environment were all necessary for survival.

Even if we live in cultures endowed with the most sophisticated artifacts ever created, the application and cultivation of ingenuity now confined within the hands of a few has rendered the hands of many with no greater skill than the ability to hand over a credit card as culture has been turned into a commodity.

(The Omo People.)

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Syrian opposition figures meet in Damascus

The Associated Press reports: Syrian opposition figures called Sunday for the overthrow of President Bashar Assad at a rare meeting of anti-regime groups held in the government-controlled capital Damascus, a possible attempt by the gathering to position itself as an alternative to the armed rebellion.

Rebels fighting Assad typically dismiss the so-called “internal opposition” as too lenient on the Syrian dictator, so the strong statements from the 16 parties in the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change in Syria may be aimed at gaining credibility among Syrians who despise the regime but are weary of an uprising that has since devolved into a grinding and bloody civil war. Assad’s government tightly restricts criticism in areas it controls.

But the group would have its work cut out for itself to have its peace initiative, centered on a cease-fire, gain traction. Many rebels look askance at any political plan short of Assad’s immediate ouster, seeing it as a play for time.

Ambassadors from Iran and Russia attended Sunday’s conference. Both countries support Assad, suggesting the regime authorized the gathering to bolster its own rhetoric that there should be a peaceful settlement to the Syrian crisis through dialogue.

A statement distributed to journalists said the participants at the conference have agreed on a number of principles, mainly “overthrowing the regime with all its symbols” while emphasizing the need for “peaceful struggle to achieve the goals of the revolution.”

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Libyan crackdown on unauthorized militias spreads to Tripoli

AFP reports: A Libyan crackdown on lawless militias spread to the capital on Sunday after armed groups that have not been integrated into state institutions were ordered to disband and evacuate their bases.

Commander in chief Yussef al-Mangush said on his Facebook page that the armed forces had dislodged a militia from a military complex on the highway to Tripoli International Airport, arresting militiamen and confiscating their weapons.

The sound of gunfire was heard in the area at 9 am (0700 GMT) and lasted less than a minute, an AFP journalist said, but Mangush made no mention of casualties.

“We will carry out these kind of operations for the next two or three weeks until we dislodge all armed groups not under the authority of the State,” an army officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.

On Saturday, the army issued an ultimatum ordering militias and armed groups to evacuate military compounds, state property and the properties of members of the former regime in and near Tripoli, the official LANA news agency reported.

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Palestinians need a one-state solution

Ghada Karmi writes: It is one year this week since the Palestinians applied for UN membership. President Mahmoud Abbas’s impassioned plea to the UN’s General Assembly for support of the We Palestinian case on 23 September 2011 won him much praise, even from his detractors. But it came to nothing, and no further Palestinian application for UN membership was made. Now, however, the statehood issue is back on the Palestinian agenda.

Abbas has recently threatened to relaunch the UN application if Israeli settlement expansion continues. This time he would seek UN non-member observer state status, but has yet to decide to consult with Arab and other states, and it may come to nothing again. Only a bankruptcy of ideas could be driving him towards this move, given the present situation of US acquiescence to regional Israeli hegemony, and Israel’s stunning success in diverting world attention from the conflict on its doorstep to Iran’s nonexistent nuclear weapons.

The president also faces serious trouble at home. The Palestinian economy, dependent on aid, is staggering under a chronic budget deficit and external debt of a billion dollars, nearly a fifth of GDP. Donor funding has declined from $1 billion to $750 million, and the Palestinian Authority has delayed paying 153,000 employees, prompting protests. Mass strikes and demonstrations have rocked the West Bank for days.

The protesters want an amendment of the 1994 Paris protocol, a key part of the Oslo accords that govern economic relations between Israel and the PA. Its main effect has been to keep the Palestinian economy dependent on Israel. It pegs Palestinian tax rates to Israel’s much higher ones, lays open Palestinians markets to Israel, though the reverse is not true, and through various restrictions, forces the Palestinian to trade only with Israel. The resulting poverty and 40% youth unemployment have pushed people on to the streets, and they now demand the resignation of the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, and of the PA itself. Now Abbas has proposed cancelling the whole Oslo accords, including the economic and security agreements. However, no decision was reached, and whether it’s another empty threat remains to be seen. [Continue reading…]

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Saudi millions and special forces expertise turn Syria’s rebels into a fighting force

The Daily Telegraph reports: Hidden under olive groves in the rolling countryside of Syria’s northern Idlib province, of which a vast swathe is now in opposition hands, more than a dozen training camps have been set up in which young men prepare for the fight against President Bashar al-Assad’s military.

In one camp seen by The Daily Telegraph this week, recruits were put through their paces on an arduous obstacle course. Timed to the shouts of Commander Abdel Kadr, a military officer who has defected, the men vaulted walls, scrambled under razor wire mesh and swung along ropes in the tree tops.

Two men looked on from the tented sleeping quarters nearby. Tall with shaven heads, fair skin, bulging pectoral muscles, and biceps covered in tattoos, they were incongruous among the scrawny young fighters. They could not speak Arabic and were extremely unhappy in the presence of The Daily Telegraph.

The men, who use the code names Radwan and Mohammed, come from Scandinavia, but have requested that the country not be disclosed.

Though they refused to speak, saying only that they were “here to help”, recruits in the Free Syrian Army told this newspaper that the men were ex-special forces working as military advisers.

“The Free Syrian Army at first didn’t exist, it was just an idea. Now we are trying to turn this into a reality,” said Louay al-Mokdad, a coordinator for the FSA in charge of channelling much of the foreign funding into Syria. Unlike most of Syria’s rebel “brigades”, who, with informal behaviour and mismatched uniforms bear little relation to a conventional army, the men in this training camp wore identical uniforms and conducted themselves with military discipline.

As Commander Kadr arrived, the men sprung to attention with a salute. Answers were given in the shouted delivery of soldiers responding to a command.

“We have 20 men training, 12 on vacation and some on missions,” said one recruit. To some questions he replied that the information was “classified” and the “strength of an army is in its secrets”.

For three weeks the men are subjected to extensive physical training, gun practice on a firing range, lessons in military discipline, and instruction in military tactics, such as how to attack a sniper or move under fire. Trainees cannot leave the camp without permission.

Failure to follow the rules leads to “hard physical punishment” or expulsion. Many of the men undergoing the extensive training are civilians.

“I was studying in Damascus and I went to the first protests,” said a 21-year-old, who would not give his name. “And then the massacres started. You see it on TV and you hate it, and then you feel it and you hate it more. Then either you die with your hate or you go to fight.”

There are 18 such training camps spread across Idlib province, as well as some in the suburbs of Damascus, FSA commanders said. Rebels denied that other camps also had foreign advisers, but one source said it was something that was under consideration.

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Egypt’s president spells out terms for U.S.-Arab ties

The New York Times reports: On the eve of his first trip to the United States as Egypt’s new Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi said the United States needed to fundamentally change its approach to the Arab world, showing greater respect for its values and helping build a Palestinian state, if it hoped to overcome decades of pent-up anger.

A former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mr. Morsi sought in a 90-minute interview with The New York Times to introduce himself to the American public and to revise the terms of relations between his country and the United States after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, an autocratic but reliable ally.

He said it was up to Washington to repair relations with the Arab world and to revitalize the alliance with Egypt, long a cornerstone of regional stability.

If Washington is asking Egypt to honor its treaty with Israel, he said, Washington should also live up to its own Camp David commitment to Palestinian self-rule. He said the United States must respect the Arab world’s history and culture, even when that conflicts with Western values.

And he dismissed criticism from the White House that he did not move fast enough to condemn protesters who recently climbed over the United States Embassy wall and burned the American flag in anger over a video that mocked the Prophet Muhammad.

“We took our time” in responding to avoid an explosive backlash, he said, but then dealt “decisively” with the small, violent element among the demonstrators.

“We can never condone this kind of violence, but we need to deal with the situation wisely,” he said, noting that the embassy employees were never in danger. [Continue reading…]

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