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Mohsin Naqvi's great majlis on the topic of Jang-e-Safeen

Mohsin Naqvi's great majlis on the topic of Jang-e-Safeen
This war was Held in Rabi-ul-Awwal 37 Hijri, Between Hazrat Ameer-ul-Momineen, Successor and Son in Law of Holy Prophet Imam Ali Ibn-e-Abi Taalib, and Hazrat Ameer Maviya Ibn-e-Abu Suffiyan. The purpose of the war was that Imam Ali was Caliph of Islam and he didn't allow any one to create his individual state with in the state of Islam.Hazrat Ameer Mavia was not ready to give up his Territory i-e Syria.
 

Iraqi Foreign Ministry official calls for more ties with Iran

Iraqi Foreign Ministry official calls for more ties with Iran
File photo shows Iranian trucks parked at the Mehran border terminal, western Iran, and waiting for passage into Iraq.
File photo shows Iranian trucks parked at the Mehran border terminal, western Iran, and waiting for passage into Iraq.
Sun Jun 10, 2012 2:6PM GMT
0
An Iraqi Foreign Ministry official has called for increasing cooperation between Tehran and Baghdad, especially in trade transactions and religious tourism.


Valid Hamid Shaltagh said the relations between Iran and Iraq cannot be harmed by potential problems and minor issues.

Shaltagh, heading a high-ranking delegation to Iran, made the comments in a meeting with senior officials of the western border province of Ilam.

Also in the meeting, Ilam Governor Mojtaba Alaee said some “good agreements” were made with the Iraqi delegation to facilitate economic and trade ties as well as religious tourism between the two countries.

Alaee added that there is a long history to cross-border connections between Iran and Iraq and expressed hope that such ties would lead to a more stable, powerful and developed Iraq.

On May 1, Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said the trade volume between Tehran and Baghdad would reach a figure between 12 and 15 billion dollars in the current Iranian calendar year (started March 20).

Mehmanparast also put the amount the trade balance between Iran and Iraq in the previous Iranian year (ended March 19, 2012) at USD 9.7 billion.

Regional states astonished by Iran's anti-piracy operations: Cmr.

Regional states astonished by Iran's anti-piracy operations: Cmr.
Iran
Iran's Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari says regional countries are amazed by Iran's power in fighting pirates. (File photo)
Sun Jun 10, 2012 2:38PM GMT
0
In that operation, all countries, especially regional ones, were amazed by Iran's power wondering how Iran had been able to carry out rescue operations without harm coming to the ships, hostages, and even the pirates [involved].”
Iran's Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari
Naval Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari says the Iranian Navy's rescue operations for Iran-owned ships attacked by pirates in the Gulf of Aden have amazed regional countries.


“In those operations, all countries, especially regional ones, were amazed by Iran's power, wondering how Iran had been able to carry out rescue operations without harming the ships, hostages, and even the pirates [involved],” the commander said on Sunday.

Addressing a ceremony held to unveil the first computer game developed by the Iranian Army, Sayyari said global economic losses resulting from piracy amount to about USD 12 billion a year.

“Today, the global economy is being threatened by pirates and if we are not careful, our country’s economy will be damaged as well,” Sayyari added.

Turning to Iranian Army’s first computer game, he said computer games represent technological prowess of a country and "this game has tried to inform [Iranian] youths of all the capabilities and the high technological position of the [Iranian] Navy."

“This game shows why pirates are based in the Gulf of Aden and why we are defending our interests in that region,” Sayyari noted.

Iran's Navy has been increasing its naval presence in the international waters in recent years. In addition, in line with the international efforts to combat piracy, the Iranian Navy has been conducting anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden since November 2008 to safeguard the vessels involved in maritime trade, especially the ships and oil tankers owned or leased by Iran.

International Maritime Organization (IMO) Secretary General Efthimios E. Mitropoulos has described the anti-piracy efforts by Iran's Navy as “effective.”

The Islamic Republic has repeatedly asserted that its overseas naval presence is meant to convey a message of peace and friendship to regional countries.

Cyber attack on Iran Oil Ministry traced to US: Official

Cyber attack on Iran Oil Ministry traced to US: Official

Sat Jun 9, 2012 5:46PM GMT
7
The head of Iran's cyber police says the perpetrators behind the recent cyber attack on the Iranian Oil Ministry have been traced to the US.


Kamal Hadianfar told reporters on Saturday that two suspicious American IP addresses were identified in the cyber attack.

He said that the issue has been pursued by the Iranian Foreign Ministry and Interpol, adding that the US needs to disclose the identity of the hackers to Iran.

He said that the cyber attack on the Oil Ministry was successfully neutralized.

On Monday, April 23, the Iranian Oil Ministry spokesman said a cyber attack targeted the ministry and the National Iranian Oil Company, adding, however, that it had failed to damage any key data.

“The cyber attack has not damaged the main data of the Oil Ministry and the National Iranian Oil Company since public servers are separate from the main ones; they have different [network] wirings and are not connected to the Internet,” Ali-Reza Nikzad said.

Iran’s Deputy Oil Minister Hamdollah Mohammadnejad said later that the attack was “in the form of a virus that aimed to steal and damage data", adding that "those who designed the malware “pursued certain objectives.”

U.S. "disappointed" by failure of Iran-IAEA atom talks

U.S. "disappointed" by failure of Iran-IAEA atom talks



VIENNA | Sun Jun 10, 2012 12:31am EDT
(Reuters) - Lack of progress in talks between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency is disappointing and it shows Tehran's continued failure to abide by its commitment to the U.N. nuclear watchdog, a U.S. envoy said on Saturday.
The IAEA and Iran failed at talks on Friday to unblock an investigation into suspected atom bomb research by the Islamic state, a setback dimming any chances for success in higher-level negotiations between Tehran and major powers later this month.
Iran's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh attends a news conference after talks at the U.N. headquarters in Vienna June 8, 2012. The U.N. nuclear watchdog and Iran began a new round of talks on Friday in an attempt to seal a framework deal to resume a long-stalled probe into suspected nuclear weapon research in the Islamic state, a charge Tehran denies. REUTERS-Herwig Prammer
















The IAEA, a Vienna-based U.N. agency, said no progress had been made in the meeting aimed at sealing a framework deal on resuming its long-stalled investigation.
Six world powers were scrutinizing the IAEA-Iran meeting to judge whether the Iranians were ready to make concessions before a resumption of wider-ranging negotiations with them in Moscow on June 18-19 on the decade-old nuclear dispute.
"We're disappointed," Robert Wood, the acting U.S. envoy to the IAEA, told Reuters in an emailed comment.
"Yesterday's outcome highlights Iran's continued failure to abide by its commitment to the IAEA, and further underscores the need for it to work with the IAEA to address international community's real concerns," he said.
The IAEA had been pressing Tehran for an accord that would give its inspectors immediate access to the Parchin military complex, where it believes explosives tests relevant for the development of nuclear arms have taken place, and suspects Iran may now be cleaning the site of any incriminating evidence.
PROGRESS POSSIBLE?
The United States, European powers and Israel want to curb Iranian atomic activities they fear are intended to produce nuclear bombs. The Islamic Republic says its nuclear program is meant purely to produce energy for civilian uses.
Both the IAEA and Iran - which insists it will work with the U.N. agency to prove allegations of a nuclear weapons agenda are "forged and fabricated" - said before Friday's meeting that significant headway had been made on the procedural document.
But differences persisted over how the IAEA should conduct its inquiry, in which U.N. inspectors want access to sites, documents and officials.
"The IAEA and Iran have on some points significantly diverging ideas of how a new agreement would look," said Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
But Hibbs said "negative" signals from Vienna did not necessarily have to mean anything in the talks in Moscow between Iran and the six powers - the United States, Russia, France, Germany, Britain and China.
The talks pursued by world powers are aimed at defusing tension over Iran's nuclear works that has led to increasingly tough Western sanctions on Iran, including an EU oil embargo from July 1, and stoked fears of another Middle East war.
Full transparency and cooperation with the IAEA is one of the elements the world powers are seeking from Iran.
But they also want Iran to stop its higher-grade uranium enrichment, which Tehran says it needs for a research reactor but which also takes it closer to potential bomb material.
For its part, Iran wants sanctions relief and international recognition of what it says is its right to refine uranium.
"If the West makes a serious offer to Iran, we could see real progress. But if Moscow fails to move forward, we'll have big problems," Hibbs said.
(Reporting by Fredrik Dahl; Editing by Alessandra Rizzo)

Iran to Crack Down on Web Censor-Beating Software

Iran to Crack Down on Web Censor-Beating Software

W460
Iran's cyber police force is poised to launch a new crackdown on software that lets many Iranians circumvent the regime's Internet censorship, media reported on Sunday.
The operation will target VPNs, or Virtual Private Networks, which use a secure protocol to encrypt users' data, foiling online blocks put in place by Iran's authorities, according to the head of the specialized police unit, Kamal Hadianfar.
"It has been agreed that a commission (within the cyber police) be formed to block illegal VPNs," he was quoted as saying in a report originally published by the Mehr news agency.
"About 20 to 30 percent of (Iranian internet) users use VPN," or more than seven million people out of the country's 36 million web users, he added.
Legal VPNs would only be used by "the likes of airlines, ministries, (state) organizations and banks," he said -- and even they would be monitored by the commission.
Iran has long tried to stop its population accessing millions of foreign websites authorities see as undermining the Islamic regime, including Facebook, Twitter, the online pages of the BBC and CNN, many torrent sites, blogs, and pornographic hubs.
"Some websites are obscene and others are officially hostile towards the Islamic republic's system. (Thus), in the interest of the people and in order to prevent the collapse of families... there is blocking of the Internet," Hadianfar said.
The Islamic republic's suppressing of the Internet has intensified since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was returned to office in a disputed 2009 election that sparked a wave of anti-government protests, mostly organized online.
Many Iranian Internet users are used to getting around the censorship through the use of either VPNs or IP proxy software.
But they are being increasingly hemmed in by more sophisticated measures being deployed by officials, who are planning a closed "Islamic Internet" that some believe could be designed to supplant the world wide web within Iran.
Iran's telecommunications ministry last month reportedly ordered the country's banks, insurance firms and telephone operators to stop using foreign e-mail accounts such as Gmail to communicate with clients, and instead adopt e-mail domains ending with .ir, which belongs to Iran.
Authorities have also several times recently slowed connections through VPNs to an excruciatingly slow speed to dissuade their use, and have occasionally halted all access to Gmail, Yahoo mail and other foreign communication services.
Such tactics have drawn criticism, even from within the regime, with politicians lamenting the obstacle they present for import/export merchants, students and researchers.
Iran's former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a sidelined pragmatic figure who now heads an advisory council to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was quoted two weeks ago by the ISNA news agency as saying Facebook was a "blessing".
"We see that a Facebook page costing nothing can outstrip several television and radio outlets, and can influence millions of people," he was quoted as saying.
Trying to block the Internet -- and banned although widely-watched foreign satellite television channels -- was futile because users will always find ways around, he said.
"People cannot be stopped in their pursuit of information," he was quoted as saying.
Rafsanjani said some in Iran's regime may dislike that, "but if we think about the happiness of human beings, we see that if social media did not exist, movements against tyranny and oppression would be endangered."
The United States, Iran's arch foe and the genitor of the Internet, is seeking to tear open what President Barack Obama in March termed the Islamic republic's "electronic curtain".
He announced measures to encourage U.S. software makers to market communication programs in Iran. And in April, he ordered new sanctions targeting companies that help Iran and its ally Syria oppress their people with surveillance software and monitoring technology.
The New York Times newspaper reported early this month that Obama had also accelerated cyberattacks on Iran's nuclear program, including the Stuxnet virus that destroyed hundreds of uranium enrichment centrifuges in Iran's Natanz facility.
Iran has said a new computer virus dubbed Flame that hit servers run by its oil sector appeared to be linked to Stuxnet, and it has cast suspicion on the United States as the perpetrator.

More die in Syria though Assad on 'last legs'

The Syrian opposition's new leader said on Sunday that President Bashar al-Assad's regime was on its "last legs," even as Russia warned it would block any move at the UN to use force against its ally.
Britain declined to rule out military intervention, despite the strong opposition of China and Russia, as the death toll from the more than 15-month uprising topped 14,100, according to a human rights watchdog.
"We are entering a sensitive phase. The regime is on its last legs," Kurdish activist Abdel Basset Sayda told AFP shortly after he was named as the new leader of the opposition Syrian National Council.
"The multiplying massacres and shellings show that it is struggling," he added in allusion to a spate of mass killings of civilians, the most recent of which saw 20 people, most of them women and children, killed in the bombardment of a residential area of the southern city of Daraa on Saturday.
Sayda was elected as the SNC's new leader at a conference in Istanbul, replacing the opposition's first leader, Paris-based academic Burhan Ghalioun, who stepped down last month in the face of mounting splits that were undermining the group's credibility.
Activists accused Ghalioun of ignoring the Local Coordination Committees, which spearhead anti-government protests on the ground in Syria, and of giving the Muslim Brotherhood too big a role.
Sayda, who has lived in exile in Sweden for two decades, is seen as a consensus candidate capable of reconciling the rival factions within the SNC and of broadening its appeal among Syria's myriad of ethnic and confessional groups.
The 55-year-old does not belong to any political party and, although his name is not familiar to many Syrians, SNC officials say he is a "conciliatory" figure, "honest" and "independent".
The opposition grouping has been criticised for not representing the full diversity of Arabs, Kurds, Sunni Muslims, Alawites, Christians, Druze and other ethnic and religious groups in Syria.
Asked about his ambitions as SNC leader, Sayda said the opposition bloc "would focus its efforts on the international community to take a decisive move against the regime."
"We want to strengthen links with activists on the ground and the (rebel) Free Syrian Army, who we will support with all our means", he said.
"The Annan plan still exists but it has not been implemented," he added, in reference to a peace blueprint thrashed out by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan that was supposed to begin with a ceasefire from April 12 but which has been violated daily.
"We will work for this plan to be included under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, to force the regime to implement it and to leave all options open," he said.
Chapter VII allows for sanctions and, in extreme cases, military action.
Russia and China, infuriated by the NATO campaign in Libya last year, have vowed to oppose any military intervention but British Foreign Secretary William Hague refused on Sunday to rule out the possibility.
"We don't know how things are going to develop. Syria is on the edge of a collapse or of a sectarian civil war, and so I don't think we can rule anything out," Hague told Sky News television.
He said the situation in Syria resembled that of Bosnia in the 1990s.
"It is not so much like Libya last year, where we had, of course, a successful intervention to save lives," he said.
"It is looking more like Bosnia in the 1990s, of being on the edge of a sectarian conflict in which neighbouring villages are attacking and killing each other."
The violence has intensified in Syria despite the presence of 300 United Nations observers charged with monitoring a truce that was supposed to take effect from April 12.
On Saturday, at least 111 people -- 83 civilians and 28 soldiers -- were killed, according to Observatory figures, representing one of the heaviest single-day death tolls since the nominal start of the ceasefire.
By midday (0900 GMT) on Sunday, clashes and shelling had killed at least 12 people, the watchdog said.
Hundreds of rebel fighters meanwhile remained holed up in Latakia province, a loyalist stronghold on the Mediterranean coast.
The army sent troop reinforcements to the mainly Alawite province where rebels have grouped in a Sunni Muslim enclave around the town of Al-Heffa, the Observatory said.
Nearly 60 soldiers have died since June 5 in battles with opposition fighters in the enclave, which lies some 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the Turkish border. At least 46 civilians and rebels have also been killed.
Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said that the resistance being put up in a province where the majority of the population are members of Assad's Alawite minority showed that the uprising against his regime was truly nationwide.
"The coast is no longer a safe area, and the whole country is now involved in the revolt," he told AFP.

Al Qaeda Offshoot Offers Camels for Obama's Head, Hens for Hillary Clinton's

Al Qaeda Offshoot Offers Camels for Obama's Head, Hens for Hillary Clinton's

The al Qaeda affiliate in Somalia has mocked the new $33 million bounty on its top leaders heads by offering its own bounty for President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – 10 camels for Obama and 20 chickens for Clinton.
"Anyone who helps the Mujahideen find the whereabouts of Obama and Hillary Clinton will be rewarded with 10 Camels to the information leading to Obama and 10 hens and 10 cocks for Hillary," said senior Shabaab commander Fuad Mohamed Khalaf in a statement reported on numerous websites.
Earlier this week, the U.S. offered a total of $33 million through the State Department's Rewards for Justice program for information leading to the capture of seven different Shabaab leaders, including Khalaf.
The U.S. offered $7 million for founder and commander Ahmed Abdi Aw-Mohamed, AKA Godane or Mukhtar Abu Zubeir, five million for Khalaf and three other men, and $3 million apiece for two other leaders.
The announcement of the U.S. bounties came as Somali and other African military forces have begun to squeeze Shabaab into a smaller and smaller section of Somalia. In a statement, the Somali government said the rewards would help crush the al Qaeda affiliate.
"The announcement from the U.S. government . . . will certainly help the Somali government's efforts to end al Qaeda's reign of terror in Somalia," said Somalia's transitional government in a statement Thursday. "This is an important juncture in Somali history, where the possibility of full recovery from years of chaos is within reach."
In his response to the U.S. rewards, Khalaf said that "infidels" offering bounties for Muslims was "nothing new."
"There is nothing new in the fact that infidels pay to have Muslim leaders killed," said Khalaf. "They already did that by offering camels for the head of Prophet Mohammed, and the dollar is the camel of today."
Khalaf was referencing a passage in the Koran in which 100 camels were offered for the Prophet Mohammed as he fled Mecca for Medina.
"I can assure you that these kind of things will never dissuade us from continuing the holy war against them," said Khalaf.
Mohamed Ibrahim, a veteran Somali journalist, is the first recipient of the Galloway Family Foundation Fellowship for International Investigative Reporting at the ABC News Brian Ross Investigative Unit. Prior to coming to the U.S., Ibrahim contributed reporting from Somalia to the New York Times and worked closely with Pulitzer prize-winning Times reporter Jeffrey Gettleman.
Agence France Presse contributed to this report.

Mubarak issued prison uniform, has mugshot taken

Mubarak issued prison uniform, has mugshot taken

Cairo, Mon Jun 04 2012, 09:33 hrs
Hosni Mubarak
Egypt's ex-dictator Hosni Mubarak was issued regulation blue prison uniform today a day after being sentenced to life and taken to a jail that once housed his opponents, official media reported.
The state news agency MENA reported that guards in the Cairo Tora prison took his official jail photograph and supplied him with his prisoner number.
Prison authorities turned down his request to continue receiving treatment from doctors at a military hospital where he was detained while on trial for involvement in the killings of protesters during last year's uprising.
The 84-year-old, who reportedly has a heart condition, is being kept in the prison's medical wing.
Security officials and state television had reported yesterday that Mubarak suffered a "health crisis" on arrival by helicopter at the prison after sentencing, and that he was revived with oxygen.
The former strongman broke down in tears and initially refused to leave the helicopter at the facility that once housed opponents of his regime, many of whom were freed after the uprising that toppled him in February 2011.

Mubarak supporters rally to demand shifting him to hospital

Mubarak supporters rally to demand shifting him to hospital

Cairo, Sun Jun 10 2012, 01:56 hrs

Around 200 supporters of Hosni Mubarak began a protest on Saturday which they said would continue until the deposed Egyptian President was transferred from prison to hospital.
Security officials and media have reported a severe deterioration in the 84-year-old’s health since he was sentenced to life last week for his role in the killing of hundreds of protesters during last year’s uprising that toppled him.
“There are around 200 supporters and lawyers in front of the Prisons Authority and we will not leave until Mubarak is transferred to either a military or private hospital,” said Mohamed Abdel Razek, one of Mubarak’s lawyers.
State news agency MENA said on Saturday that Mubarak — who was wheeled into court to attend his trial on a hospital bed — risked a stroke.

At 94, this Briton is a living textbook on Pakistan

At 94, this Briton is a living textbook on Pakistan

Chitral, Sun Jun 10 2012, 01:58 hrs

DECLAN WALSH
During a grand gathering of tribal elders in this rugged and remote mountain district recently, one guest of honour stood out - an elderly Englishman in a suit and polished shoes, his snowy hair carefully combed, the morning newspaper folded on his lap.
That man, Geoffrey D Langlands, has had a front-row seat on Pakistan’s many dramas since he arrived, at the country’s chaotic birth, 65 years ago. He has taken tea with princesses, dined with dictators, been kidnapped by tribesmen and scraped through several wars. Now, at 94, Langlands, a former British colonial officer who retired with the rank of major, and a lifelong educator, is striking out on a fresh adventure —retirement.
For the past quarter-century, his home and work have been in Chitral, a sweeping district of snow-dusted peaks at the northern tip of Pakistan.
The institution he founded and ran here, the Langlands School and College, has become a watchword for excellence; each year, the best of the school’s 1,000-plus students, one-third of them girls, go on to universities in bigger cities, the United States or the United Kingdom.
That success is all the more startling for its setting in a region awash with violence and intrigue: to the east of Chitral is the Swat Valley, where Pakistan’s army fought Taliban insurgents in 2009; to the west lies the Afghan province of Nuristan, where American troops have seen some of their toughest combat.
But for “the major,” as he is known, this has been a cherished chapter in a life that has mixed adventure and arithmetic in his adopted homeland. He is turning to the next one with a discernible touch of reluctance.

“Time to take life a little easier, I suppose,” he said. Then he sat up. “But there’s still so much to do.”
Doing nothing has never been an option for him.
After the other British left, Langlands stayed on, taking a teaching job at Aitchison College in Lahore, Pakistan’s most prestigious boarding school. Over a quarter-century there, he imparted algebra to the offspring of the Pakistani elite, some of whom went on to lead in politics, sports and the military.
Former charges include Zafarullah Khan Jamali, who was prime minister between 2002 and 2004, and Imran Khan, the cricket hero turned politician.
“He stood out,” Khan said. “He had this mixture of being firm yet compassionate.”

Egypt plans to set up constitution panel again

Egypt plans to set up constitution panel again

Cairo, Sun Jun 10 2012, 02:06 hrs

Egypt will try again on Tuesday to set up an assembly to write a new constitution, the parliament speaker said on Saturday, after the previous such body was dissolved for failing to represent all interests following the fall of Hosni Mubarak's government.
The make-up of the constitutional committee has been in deadlock since April after a court ordered a previous body to be dissolved for being dominated by Islamists and failing to fairly represent Egypt's diverse society.
Islamists control around 70 percent of parliament.
“We have invited the elected parliament members to a joint meeting at 11 am on Tuesday...to elect a 100-member assembly to prepare a new constitution for the state,” Parliamentary speaker Saad al-Katatni said.
“All the political parties and powers have agreed that a full balance and representation of all powers and interests will be taken into consideration while forming the assembly,” he added.
Katatni, who heads the parliamentary committee in-charge of choosing the assembly's members and belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, the biggest parliamentary party, had asked public institutes, courts, syndicates and religious bodies on Friday for their nominations for the new assembly.
The new constitution is expected to define the president's powers and citizen rights. The delay in picking the panel has left Egypt in a constitutional vacuum a week before the final stage of the presidential vote on June 16-17.
The military council that took over after Mubarak was toppled last year has promised to hand over to a newly elected president by July 1, but it is unclear what authority the new head of state will have.
The military council on Tuesday gave political parties a 48-hour deadline to agree on the make-up of the new constitution-drafting assembly.

Suicides outpace war deaths for troops

Suicides outpace war deaths for troops

We specialize in just APO/FPO  Order nowNew York, Sun Jun 10 2012, 02:05 hrs

TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
The suicide rate among the nation’s active-duty military personnel has spiked this year, eclipsing the number of troops dying in battle and on pace to set a record annual high since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan more than a decade ago, the Pentagon said on Friday.
Suicides have increased even as the United States military has withdrawn from Iraq and stepped up efforts to provide mental health, drug and alcohol, and financial counseling services.
The military said on Friday that there had been 154 suicides among active-duty troops through Thursday, a rate of nearly one each day this year. The figures were first reported this week by The Associated Press.
That number represents an 18 percent increase over the 130 active-duty military suicides for the same period in 2011. There were 123 suicides from January to early June in 2010, and 133 during that period in 2009, the Pentagon said.
By contrast, there were 124 American military fatalities in Afghanistan as of June 1 this year, Pentagon said.
Suicide rates of military personnel and combat veterans have risen sharply since 2005, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan intensified.
On Friday, Cynthia Smith, a Defence Department spokeswoman, said the Pentagon had sought to remind commanders that those who seek counseling should not be stigmatized. “This is a troubling issue, and we are committed to getting our service members the help they need,” she said. “I want to emphasize that getting help is not a sign of weakness; it is a sign of strength.”
In a letter to military commanders last month, Defence Secretary Leon E. Panetta said “suicide prevention is a leadership responsibility,” and added, “Commanders and supervisors cannot tolerate any actions that belittle, haze, humiliate or ostracize any individual, especially those who require or are responsibly seeking professional services.”
But veterans’ groups said Friday that the Pentagon had not done enough to moderate the tremendous stress under which combat troops live, including coping with multiple deployments.

ADB, UNEP, GEF to Finance Climate-Friendly Technologies in Asia

ADB, UNEP, GEF to Finance Climate-Friendly Technologies in Asia 
 Saturday, 9 June 2012

A new Climate Technology Network and Finance Center will expand the availability of low-carbon and climate-resilient technologies in Asia and the Pacific with support from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with core funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

"The countries of Asia and the Pacific need to rapidly deploy new technologies capable of decoupling their growth from high emissions of greenhouse gases, and they need to build their resilience to climate change impacts," said S. Chander, Director-General of ADB's Regional and Sustainable Development Department.

The technology finance center will be set up in Manila, Philippines, to be managed by ADB, while the climate technology network secretariat will be based in Bangkok, Thailand, to be managed by UNEP.

The new center will help mobilize financing for clean technology by folding technology considerations into national investment plans and strategies, and by piloting innovative financing mechanisms. The network, meanwhile, will provide complementary technical support and policy advice and be a forum for knowledge sharing.

A pilot technology marketplace to spur transactions in climate-friendly technologies will also be established.

Asia and the Pacific is the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, with emissions from the energy sector alone up 183% since 1990, and has more people at risk who live in the region's coastal cities, and in rural areas where livelihoods are heavily dependent on agriculture and other climate-sensitive sectors.

The new center and secretariat aim to generate investments that will cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than 12 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent over the next 10 years. During the same period, they hope to cut energy use by the equivalent of 1.5 million barrels of oil or 12.3 million megawatt hours of electricity.

GEF is providing a grant of roughly $11 million to support the center. "The project shows GEF's commitment to technology transfer and innovative approaches that encompass both mitigation and adaptation. It is an example of GEF's support for the operationalization and activities of Climate Technology Network and Finance Centers in response to the United Nations Framework Convention Climate Change decision received as guidance from the 2011 Durban Conference of the Parties, in line with GEF procedures," said Monique Barbut, GEF Chief Executive Officer.

Further cofinancing will come from the governments of Denmark, Finland, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and the VITO-Flemish Institute for Technological Research NV.

Clinton Presses Baku on Rights Amid Violence

Clinton Presses Baku on Rights Amid Violence
 Thursday, 7 June 2012

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pressed Azerbaijan yesterday to show greater respect for human rights during her visit to Caspian Sea nation amid an upsurge of violence in the region.

In a roughly five-hour visit, Clinton balanced her concerns about Azerbaijan’s rights record with U.S. interest in its energy resources, making time to meet with activists for a more open government as well as to tour an annual energy trade show. “We ... urge the government to respect their citizens’ right to express (their) views peacefully (and) to release those who have been detained for doing so,” Clinton said after meeting Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. The call came as Azerbaijani forces killed an Armenian soldier in clashes in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, according to Karabakh officials. The incident came after recent killings of five Azerbaijani and three Armenian soldiers in two days. Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement yesterday that they were watching the spread of incidents in to the common border of Azerbaijan and Armenia with deep sadness and concern, Anatolia news agency reported.

Turkey Says Georgia, Azerbaijan Meeting Opportunity for Peace in Region

Turkey Says Georgia, Azerbaijan Meeting Opportunity for Peace in Region
 Saturday, 9 June 2012

Turkey hosts a trilateral meeting with Georgia and Azerbaijan in a bid to deepen ties between the three allies, where Turkey says it believes the cooperation mechanism will become an effective way to restore peace and stability in the region, Today's Zaman reported.

"This three-way mechanism will provide an important opportunity to transform Black Sea, Caucasus and Caspian region to an area of peace, stability and prosperity," Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters after the talks with his Georgian and Azerbaijani counterparts.

Davutoglu met with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov and Georgian Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze within the scope of Turkey-Azerbaijan-Georgia foreign ministers' tripartite meeting in the northeastern province of Trabzon on Friday.

During the meeting, the ministers discussed bilateral and regional issues, increasing cooperation between the countries and regional stability and security. The parties also exchanged views on regional cooperation on the issues of common interest to all three countries.

Davutoglu told reporters that the mechanism between the three countries are not does not have "excluding" nature and the foreign ministers consider the mechanism as a way to widen areas of cooperation.

He added that the three nations have successfully realized very significant peace and stability projects.

The meeting coincided with increasing tension along the Azerbaijani-Armenian border on Friday.

Davutoglu said the foreign ministers discussing during the meeting cooperation opportunities and ongoing projects. He added that the the second session of the meeting will be held in the second half of 2012 in Georgia's Batumi city and the next one will be held in the first half of 2013 in Azerbaijan.

In the final declaration of the Trabzon meeting, foreign minsiters said they underline the importance of stability and prosperity of the South Caucasus region, located at the crossroads of energy, transport and communication corridors between East and West and North and South, for the regional and global stability and security. They said they acknowledge that protracted conflicts emanating from existing occupations are the main obstacle to peace and stability in the South Caucasus and pointing out that resolution of these conflicts will help to build an atmosphere of peace, stability and prosperity.

The countries said they agreed in the final declaration to enhance the existing cooperative partnerships among the countries to promote common development and contribute to peace, security, stability and prosperity of the region.

They said they note the importance of the earliest resolution of the conflict in and around Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, and the conflict over Abkhazia, Georgia and Tskhinvali region/South Ossetia, Georgia on the basis of respect for the sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability of internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan and Georgia respectively and emphasize the right to safe and dignified return of the refugees and internally displaced persons to their places of origin.

Azerbaijanis Kill Armenian Soldier in Karabakh: Reports

Azerbaijanis Kill Armenian Soldier in Karabakh: Reports
 Saturday, 9 June 2012

Azerbaijani forces killed an Armenian soldier in clashes in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region today amid an upsurge of violence between the ex-Soviet enemies, Nagorno-Karabakh officials said.

"An Azerbaijani reconnaissance-sabotage group attempted to penetrate the combat positions of the Nagorno-Karabakh defense army," an official said in a statement.

"Karabakh's vanguard units noticed the enemy's offensive actions in time and took military action, throwing the enemy back," the statement said.

Junior Sergeant Vardan Ohanian was killed and two more Armenian soldiers were wounded during the firefight, it said.

Eight soldiers had already been killed this week in armed clashes on the ex-Soviet states' mutual border -- five Azerbaijanis and three Armenians.

The worst violence for months erupted in the week that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited both countries and called on them to refrain from using force.

US disappointed with IAEA-Iran nuclear talk breakdown

US disappointed with IAEA-Iran nuclear talk breakdown

Published: June 9, 2012
Laura Rockwood, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) legal officer, Herman Nackaerts IAEA Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Safeguards, and Iran's IAEA ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh (centre L-R) brief the media ast they attend a news conference after talks failed at the UN headquarters in Vienna. PHOTO: REUTERS/FILE
VIENNA: Lack of progress in talks between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency is disappointing and it shows Tehran’s continued failure to abide by its commitment to the UN nuclear watchdog, a US envoy said on Saturday.
The IAEA and Iran failed at talks on Friday to unblock an investigation into suspected atom bomb research by the Islamic state, a setback dimming any chances for success in higher-level negotiations between Tehran and major powers later this month.
The IAEA, a Vienna-based UN agency, said no progress had been made in the meeting aimed at sealing a framework deal on resuming its long-stalled investigation.
Six world powers were scrutinising the IAEA-Iran meeting to judge whether the Iranians were ready to make concessions before a resumption of wider-ranging negotiations with them in Moscow on June 18-19 on the decade-old nuclear dispute.
“We’re disappointed,” Robert Wood, the acting US envoy to the IAEA, told Reuters in an emailed comment.
“Yesterday’s outcome highlights Iran’s continued failure to abide by its commitment to the IAEA, and further underscores the need for it to work with the IAEA to address international community’s real concerns,” he said.
The IAEA had been pressing Tehran for an accord that would give its inspectors immediate access to the Parchin military complex, where it believes explosives tests relevant for the development of nuclear arms have taken place, and suspects Iran may now be cleaning the site of any incriminating evidence.
Through the lead shields?
The United States, European powers and Israel want to curb Iranian atomic activities they fear are intended to produce nuclear bombs. Iran maintains its nuclear program is meant purely to produce energy for civilian uses.
Both the IAEA and Iran – which insists it will work with the UN agency to prove allegations of a nuclear weapons agenda are “forged and fabricated” – said before Friday’s meeting that significant headway had been made on the procedural document.
But differences persisted over how the IAEA should conduct its inquiry, in which UN inspectors want access to sites, documents and officials.
“The IAEA and Iran have on some points significantly diverging ideas of how a new agreement would look,” said Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
But Hibbs said “negative” signals from Vienna did not necessarily have to mean anything in the talks in Moscow between Iran and the six powers – the United States, Russia, France, Germany, Britain and China.
The talks pursued by world powers are aimed at defusing tension over Iran’s nuclear works that has led to increasingly tough Western sanctions on Iran, including an EU oil embargo from July 1, and stoked fears of another Middle East war.
Full transparency and cooperation with the IAEA is one of the elements the world powers are seeking from Iran.
But they also want Iran to stop its higher-grade uranium enrichment, which Tehran says it needs for a research reactor but which also takes it closer to potential bomb material.
For its part, Iran wants sanctions relief and international recognition of what it says is its right to refine uranium.
“If the West makes a serious offer to Iran, we could see real progress. But if Moscow fails to move forward, we’ll have big problems,” Hibbs said.

Afghan government warns US over 'one-sided' airstrike that killed 18

Afghan government warns US over 'one-sided' airstrike that killed 18

Raid that killed over a dozen civilians condemned as Afghanistan warns that future raids would be a breach of pact
Afghanistan John Allen
The commander of US and Nato troops in Afghanistan, US Marine Lt General John Allen apologised Friday for the deaths. Photograph: Deb Riechmann/AP
The Afghan government has hit out at the US for failing to consult with local forces ahead of an airstrike that killed 18 civilians, suggesting future such raids would be viewed as a breach of its pact with Washington.
An investigation into Wednesday's night-time raid found that it was the result of "a one-sided decision, and not co-ordinated with Afghan security forces", President Hamid Karzai's spokesman Aimal Faiz said.
He went on to suggest that a repeat of the unilateral strike would be seen as a violation of a pact between the two countries over who takes the lead in "special operations" in the country.
Signed in April, the agreement puts the Afghan government in charge of such manoeuvres – a move designed to resolve some of the longstanding tensions between the two countries.
The fallout from the deadly strike – alongside news Saturday that four French soldiers in Afghanistan were killed by a suicide bomber wearing a burqa – have reaffirmed fears that Nato's exit strategy will be far from orderly.
As part of the transition of power, more agreements are expected to be signed handing responsibility for security matters to Afghan forces.
But investigators looking into the circumstances surrounding the latest loss of civilian life in an airborne attack concluded that the call was made by US authorities alone.
Wednesday's raid took place at a village in the Logar province in which militants were believed to be hiding.
US military officials have said such attacks are key in capturing or killing Taliban fighters. But they have been resisted in Afghanistan, leading to a rift between Karzai and Washington.
Faizi said on Saturday that investigators told the president Afghan forces had surrounded the house prior to the airstrike.
But the US troops decided not to wait for them to try and flush out the militants, opting instead for aerial bombardment.
It was only later that they discovered that women, children and old men were inside the house.
On Friday, the senior American commander in Afghanistan apologised over the incident.
After flying to Logar province, Marine Gen John Allen promised to "do the right things by the families" of the bereaved.
A Nato investigation ruled that coalition forces were responsible for the killings, but made no mention of a violation of the special operations agreement, to the anger of Afghan officials.
"This airstrike was a one-sided decision, and not coordinated with Afghan security forces," Faizi said.
He added that in the future, the Afghan government would consider such actions as a breach of the special operations pact.
The spokesman said: "The continuation of uncoordinated operations and civilian casualties are against the recent decisions made between Afghanistan and the United States."
The Afghan government felt betrayed by the US, he said, adding: "The expectation of the Afghan government and the Afghan people was that a new page would open between Afghanistan and the United States."
A Nato spokesman declined to comment on the Afghan findings.

Not 2013, 2012: France brings forward Afghanistan troop pullout date

Not 2013, 2012: France brings forward Afghanistan troop pullout date

Published: June 10, 2012
France's President Francois Hollande delivers a speech after the death of four French soldiers in Afghanistan, in Tulle, central France June 9, 2012. PHOTO: REUTERS
TULLE, FRANCE: President Francois Hollande said Saturday France will begin its Afghanistan pullout next month and complete it by year-end, after four French troops were killed in a Taliban attack.
Hollande said France would pay a “national homage” to the men killed in a suicide bombing and that five wounded soldiers would be repatriated rapidly.
Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian will head to Afghanistan on Sunday.
Hollande said the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan, one of his presidential campaign pledges, “will begin in the month of July, will be carried out and be completed at the end of 2012.”
“In the meantime, everything must be done for our troops to meet their obligations but with the highest level of security and with the greatest vigilance for the lives of the soldiers.
“I am making this engagement here and I will be the guarantor for this operation,” Hollande said in the central town of Tulle, where he was to attend a commemoration of the massacre of civilians by the Nazis on June 9, 1944.
He added that the attack “does not change anything, it neither accelerates nor delays” withdrawal plans.
While some have called for the pullout to be sped up, “it is not possible to go faster,” he said.
Burqa clad suicide bombing
Four troops killed in a suicide bombing on Saturday were the first French soldiers to be lost in Afghanistan since January 20, when an Afghan soldier shot dead four unarmed soldiers and wounded 15 others.
According to the French defence ministry, the soldiers taking part in a “control operation” in the eastern province of Kapisa bordering Pakistan where insurgents are very active.
Afghan interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi told AFP the attacker was disguised as a woman wearing a burqa.
Three of the five wounded were in critical condition.
Some 3,500 French soldiers are deployed in Afghanistan, mainly in Kabul and in Kapisa, the fifth largest contingent in NATO’s 130,000-strong US-led force.
Since January’s attack, France has begun accelerating the withdrawal of its troops, and French soldiers have been given instructions to minimise their exposure.
Allies have downplayed the impact of their early departure, saying Afghan troops are ready to take over.
While former right-wing French president Nicolas Sarkozy had set a deadline of end-2013 to bring home combat troops, Hollande, who defeated Sarkozy in a May election, has decided to bring the timetable forward.
France returns to the polls on Sunday in the first round of legislative elections in which Hollande’s Socialists and their allies are hoping to win control of the National Assembly from the conservatives.
Pullout poses bigger headaches
Although Hollande’s decision met with little resistance from NATO partners during a summit in Chicago, the actual pullout remains a complex process.
It would involve bringing 2,000 combat troops home within six months, with the remaining personnel to stay behind to take charge of repatriating military equipment including 900 armoured vehicles and over 1,000 containers.
Francois Heisbourg from the International Institute for Strategic Studies noted that the withdrawal of Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1990s took place with little losses but warned that insurgents’ actions are unpredictable.
“Normally, it is not in the interest of the insurgents to delay the withdrawal, but they are divided among themselves and some could try to outdo the others,” he said.
The relatively quiet Kabul district of Surobi, where French troops are also based, was handed over to local control in April.
Kapisa has been included in the third of a five-phase transfer, which Afghan officials say could take as little as six months, but which NATO’s International Security Assistance Force has timetabled at 12-18 months.
The entire process is made all the more difficult since the main supply and exit route for materials is through Pakistan, a road which has been closed since November 2011 when a Nato air strike killed 24 people. Pakistan has demanded a high level apology from the US, besides renewed negotiations deadlocked over rates for transit of Nato containers through its territory.
Pakistan and US are still engaged in the negotiation process with the jury out on when routes could actually reopen. The Nato earlier this month also signed a pact with three countries for ferrying non-lethal cargo out of Afghanistan.

Study: 78% of Palestinians in Jerusalem live below poverty line

Study: 78% of Palestinians in Jerusalem live below poverty line

9 June 2012
SHUAFAT REFUGEE CAMP, occupied East Jerusalem (IPS) - A group of Palestinian Jerusalemites steps down from a crowded bus to let two Israeli soldiers climb aboard and check identity cards, below the aluminum roof of this newly operational checkpoint terminal.
Outside, Israel’s concrete wall snakes around the Shuafat refugee camp, an overcrowded and depressed Palestinian neighborhood that, while within the geographical boundaries of Jerusalem, is almost entirely cut off from the rest of the city.
It’s a five-star checkpoint,” Fadi Abbasi said. Abbasi is in charge of projects and fundraising at the Shuafat refugee camp’s only women’s center, which offers psychosocial, educational and empowerment services to women and children.
More than 20,000 Palestinians live in the Shuafat refugee camp. About half are Jerusalem residents and carry blue ID cards; they must now cross the checkpoint on their way to work and school, and to get services in the rest of Jerusalem.
The Israelis are looking to make us visitors in Jerusalem, not residents,” Abbasi said. “Without work, without income, without any services from the municipality, they don’t give us a chance to build or do anything.”
More than 30,000 right-wing Israelis marched through Palestinian neighborhoods on 20 May to mark Jerusalem Day, the 45th anniversary of Israel’s takeover of East Jerusalem in 1967 and the so-called “reunification” of the city. While Israel declared Jerusalem its “eternal and indivisible” capital in 1980, Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem has never been recognized by the United Nations.

Huge poverty

Life in the Shuafat refugee camp contradicts this official Israeli line, which paints Jerusalem as a unified city whose residents benefit equally from municipal investment. In reality, the accessibility of services and overall quality of life remains drastically different on either side of the city.
The gravity of the situation in East Jerusalem is the product, first and foremost, of Israeli policy making. For decades Israel has pursued a policy that has led to the debilitation of East Jerusalem in every respect,” wrote the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) in a report released last month (“Policies of neglect in East Jerusalem,” [PDF]).
ACRI estimates that of the more than 360,800 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem, 78 percent live below the poverty line. Currently, 84 percent of the children in Jerusalem also live in poverty.
Both Israeli law and international law obligate the State of Israel to meticulously ensure the rights of East Jerusalem residents, and to seek unique solutions particular to their political situation. But over the past 45 years, both municipal and state authorities have instead conducted a policy of neglect and violation of the basic rights of the residents,” the report found.
Israel’s wall in the West Bank and checkpoints separating Palestinian neighborhoods from Jerusalem — which formerly acted as the bustling center of Palestinian economic, cultural and political life — has now made accessing the city an arduous, if not impossible, task.
It is estimated that 90,000 Palestinian Jerusalemites now find themselves on the other side of the wall, including residents of the Shuafat refugee camp.
The Shuafat camp is also an area which is very sensitive because the Palestinian Authority cannot go in, and the Israeli police also doesn’t want to go in,” explained Ilona Kassissieh, public information officer at the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA).

Few opportunities

UNRWA provides services to 5 million registered Palestinian refugees in camps throughout the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. In the Shuafat refugee camp, UNRWA operates three schools and a health clinic, and runs a variety of social programs.
Since the people have access to Jerusalem, they try to go and access the labor market in Jerusalem, but of course the opportunities are scarce. So there is a considerably high number of school dropouts and a high rate of unemployment,” said Kassissieh, adding that since most residents of the Shuafat refugee camp are youth, providing educational and social programs is crucial.
Twenty-five-year-old Bara’a Ghaith has lived in the Shuafat refugee camp her whole life. Now volunteering four days a week at the camp’s women’s center, she leads health-related workshops for children between the ages of 12 and 18.
Many older people don’t accept the way we work with children. But I’m trying to improve the quality of life and give the children more education and help with their confidence,” Ghaith said.
Most people in the camp are searching for a way to breathe. That’s all they are asking for.”

Justice upside down: a new study on Israel’s military courts

Justice upside down: a new study on Israel’s military courts

Israel uses imprisonment as a tool to oppress Palestinians who fight for freedom and resist the occupation of their homeland. Numerous Palestinian human rights activists have been arrested and detained. Palestinians from the West Bank – including East Jerusalem – and Gaza are tried by Israeli military courts, despite international humanitarian law’s preference for impartial civilian courts.
In a new booklet, Palestinian rights organization Addameer presents information about Palestinian political prisoners and the chaotic course of Israeli military court hearings. Volunteers and researchers working for Addameer witnessed hearings of Palestinians accused of “offenses” such as throwing stones, participation in demonstrations and other political activities. In their contributions they describe how prisoners, family members and lawyers were treated by the Israeli military during the hearings. A haunting picture of the shocking reality of the Israeli military courts arises from their impressions. A summary of the booklet is presented below.

750,000 Palestinians detained

Addameer summarizes the facts about the detention of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza in the first part of the booklet. Since 1967, an estimated 750,000 Palestinians have been detained under Israeli military orders, including 10,000 women. That is a frightening figure when one considers that 3.9 million Palestinians now live in the occupied Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Moreover, Israel has arrested around 8,000 Palestinian children since 2000.
As per 1 April this year, Israel was holding 4,610 Palestinian political prisoners, including seven females and 203 children, 31 of whom were under the age of 16. Among the prisoners were 27 Palestinian lawmakers, 322 administrative detainees who were held without charge or trial, and 456 prisoners from the Gaza Strip, who have been denied access to family visits since June 2007.

Almost 100 percent conviction rate

The Israeli military court system is mainly used to prosecute Palestinians who are arrested by the Israeli military and charged with “security” violations and other crimes. Of those who are charged, 99.74 percent are convicted.
Israeli military orders define offenses using the categories of “hostile terrorist activity”, disturbance of public order, “classic” criminal offenses, illegal presence in Israel, and traffic offenses committed in the West Bank and Gaza. For example, all political parties belonging to the Palestine Liberation Organization are considered “illegal organizations.” Carrying a Palestinian flag is a crime and participation in a demonstration is deemed a disruption of public order. Pouring coffee for a member of an “illegal association” can be seen as support for a terrorist organization.
The Israeli military courts do not respect the fundamental right to a fair trial which includes the right to prompt notice of criminal charges, the right to prepare an effective defense, the right to trial without undue delay, the right to interpretation and translation, and the right to presumption of innocence.

Children tried as adults

Every year, Israel prosecutes about 700 Palestinian children from the West Bank in its military courts. Children aged between 16 and 18 years are tried and sentenced as adults. In addition, it is not the age at the time when the alleged offense was committed that is decisive, but the age at the time of sentencing. A child who is accused of committing an offense at 15 will be punished as an adult if he or she has turned 16 by the time of sentencing.
Palestinian children are commonly charged for stone-throwing which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years. Palestinian child detainees held for interrogation are routinely made to sign confessions written in Hebrew, a language few of them understand. These coerced confessions then serve as the primary evidence against them when they are prosecuted before the military courts. With no guarantee to a fair trial and the prospect of a harsh sentence, most children plead guilty, regardless of whether they actually committed the offense.

Humiliation of visitors to military courts

The second part of Addameer’s Eyes on Israeli Military Courts booklet gives the impressions of contributors who witnessed hearings in Israeli military courts. Here are some excerpts:
It was an outside prison, I thought. Here were the families of prisoners, made to wait patiently in the searing sun for their time to be called. Gates would open, guards would scream, several worried faces would stare, and one by one each family member would be accepted into another part of the prison. What was the purpose of acting with so much vehemence towards these people? Why yell and scream at old women and men, young boys and girls, who cared only about the future of their loved ones and not for the petty wickedness of those “in charge”? I was enraged but also sad. Peter Hamm on Ofer military court.

Chaos in the courts

The court visit seemed more like a visit to a prison – only with more security than the prisons I have visited in the United States. The Israeli military was running the entire show. The judge was from the military. The prosecutor was from the military. The translator was from the military. And other people in the courtroom whose roles I could not determine were also from the military. I would have thought that the military – known for its discipline – would have been able to create order in the courtroom. And yet in this court, there was no order. Abbas Khan on Ofer military court.
I understood quickly that there were no arguments being submitted, no testimony collected, nor any form of regular procedure I would associate with criminal proceeding. This was very much political. The judge was in charge: no doubting this. He issued commands, above the statements of others, and appeared not to hear that which he did not want to. Peter Hamm on Ofer military court.

Language as a weapon

In Israel’s military courts, language is a weapon. Everything is in Hebrew – the court transcripts, the “No Smoking” signs, the judges’ questions and pronouncements, the witness testimonies. You can’t be a successful defense lawyer unless you speak Hebrew and Arabic fluently. Language is a tool of exclusion, proclaiming, “Justice is on our terms, not yours.” Anonymous

Justice upside down

Having been to court rooms in both Canada and the United Kingdom, Israeli military justice, apparently, is a shadow of the norms, rules and regulations of standard civilian trials I am used to. More, it is an obvious farce that pits actors of such obviously unequal positions of bargaining power that to call it justice would be like calling up “down.” And this is aside from the real fact that justice administered by the occupier is a farce to begin with. Peter Hamm on Ofer military court.
Ofer military court is situated on Ofer compound in the occupied West Bank. It includes a prison and an army camp. According to Who Profits, a research project of the Coalition of Women for Peace (a grouping of Israeli and Palestinian activists), the British-Danish security firm G4S provided a perimeter defense system for the walls of the Ofer facility and installed a central command room inside, from which the entire facility can be monitored.
G4S is a target of the international boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for its role in the provision of services to the Israeli Prison Service, the Israeli army, the Israeli police and businesses located in Israeli settlements.

Study: 78% of Palestinians in Jerusalem live below poverty line

Study: 78% of Palestinians in Jerusalem live below poverty line

9 June 2012
SHUAFAT REFUGEE CAMP, occupied East Jerusalem (IPS) - A group of Palestinian Jerusalemites steps down from a crowded bus to let two Israeli soldiers climb aboard and check identity cards, below the aluminum roof of this newly operational checkpoint terminal.
Outside, Israel’s concrete wall snakes around the Shuafat refugee camp, an overcrowded and depressed Palestinian neighborhood that, while within the geographical boundaries of Jerusalem, is almost entirely cut off from the rest of the city.
It’s a five-star checkpoint,” Fadi Abbasi said. Abbasi is in charge of projects and fundraising at the Shuafat refugee camp’s only women’s center, which offers psychosocial, educational and empowerment services to women and children.
More than 20,000 Palestinians live in the Shuafat refugee camp. About half are Jerusalem residents and carry blue ID cards; they must now cross the checkpoint on their way to work and school, and to get services in the rest of Jerusalem.
The Israelis are looking to make us visitors in Jerusalem, not residents,” Abbasi said. “Without work, without income, without any services from the municipality, they don’t give us a chance to build or do anything.”
More than 30,000 right-wing Israelis marched through Palestinian neighborhoods on 20 May to mark Jerusalem Day, the 45th anniversary of Israel’s takeover of East Jerusalem in 1967 and the so-called “reunification” of the city. While Israel declared Jerusalem its “eternal and indivisible” capital in 1980, Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem has never been recognized by the United Nations.

Huge poverty

Life in the Shuafat refugee camp contradicts this official Israeli line, which paints Jerusalem as a unified city whose residents benefit equally from municipal investment. In reality, the accessibility of services and overall quality of life remains drastically different on either side of the city.
The gravity of the situation in East Jerusalem is the product, first and foremost, of Israeli policy making. For decades Israel has pursued a policy that has led to the debilitation of East Jerusalem in every respect,” wrote the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) in a report released last month (“Policies of neglect in East Jerusalem,” [PDF]).
ACRI estimates that of the more than 360,800 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem, 78 percent live below the poverty line. Currently, 84 percent of the children in Jerusalem also live in poverty.
Both Israeli law and international law obligate the State of Israel to meticulously ensure the rights of East Jerusalem residents, and to seek unique solutions particular to their political situation. But over the past 45 years, both municipal and state authorities have instead conducted a policy of neglect and violation of the basic rights of the residents,” the report found.
Israel’s wall in the West Bank and checkpoints separating Palestinian neighborhoods from Jerusalem — which formerly acted as the bustling center of Palestinian economic, cultural and political life — has now made accessing the city an arduous, if not impossible, task.
It is estimated that 90,000 Palestinian Jerusalemites now find themselves on the other side of the wall, including residents of the Shuafat refugee camp.
The Shuafat camp is also an area which is very sensitive because the Palestinian Authority cannot go in, and the Israeli police also doesn’t want to go in,” explained Ilona Kassissieh, public information officer at the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA).

Few opportunities

UNRWA provides services to 5 million registered Palestinian refugees in camps throughout the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. In the Shuafat refugee camp, UNRWA operates three schools and a health clinic, and runs a variety of social programs.
Since the people have access to Jerusalem, they try to go and access the labor market in Jerusalem, but of course the opportunities are scarce. So there is a considerably high number of school dropouts and a high rate of unemployment,” said Kassissieh, adding that since most residents of the Shuafat refugee camp are youth, providing educational and social programs is crucial.
Twenty-five-year-old Bara’a Ghaith has lived in the Shuafat refugee camp her whole life. Now volunteering four days a week at the camp’s women’s center, she leads health-related workshops for children between the ages of 12 and 18.
Many older people don’t accept the way we work with children. But I’m trying to improve the quality of life and give the children more education and help with their confidence,” Ghaith said.
Most people in the camp are searching for a way to breathe. That’s all they are asking for.”
All rights reserved, IPS - Inter Press Service (2012). Total or partial publication, retransmission or sale forbidden.

How hunger strikers "tied the hands of the occupation": a view from Israeli prison

9 June 2012
Palestinians have achieved three consecutive victories in the last few months. In October 2011, there was the release of prisoners (the exchange deal involving the kidnapped Israeli soldier).
Then there was a series of individual hunger strikes, which lasted for unparalleled periods of time. These began with Khader Adnan, who went on hunger strike to protest against the Israeli policy of administrative detention.
Adnan’s action spurred an open-ended hunger strike by prisoners, started by more than a thousand prisoners on 17 April. It ended on 14 May, with more than 2,000 prisoners taking part. The strike began a new page in the history of the Palestinian struggle for liberation, written by the prisoners along with their Arab and international supporters.
The agreement signed on 14 May 2012 between the authorities in charge of the strike and Israel — with Egyptian and international mediation and guarantees — confirmed that the prisoner movement not only scored a major achievement, but realized a clear victory. We can now speak of two periods, the before and after, with the watershed moment being the hunger strike of 2012.

Clear aims, coordination and preparation

From the beginning, the strike had several strong points. The most important of these was the clarity of its aims — key goals achievable through struggle and determination. These goals fused with the significant and highly conscious coordination between the prisoners on strike and those leading it inside the prisons, and between the latter and the wider political authorities outside.
Strong points became clear. There was no detailed involvement with everyday demands and issues. Thereby, a situation was avoided where larger aims would become entangled with specific demands. This tied the hands of the occupation, which could not manipulate these aims.
A huge role was also played by the strong, clear approach to the media taken by the leadership of the strike, while Israel failed in its attempts to broadcast a contrary view. There was also an accurate reading of Palestinian, Arab and international realities. A central goal was determined through prior planning — the possibility of reviving the Palestinian popular movement and making the most of the significant Egyptian role as a principal party to support the strike and guarantee the achievement of its goals. This risk proved worthwhile as was evident in the Egyptian sponsorship of the agreement to end the strike.
Another significant achievement was the clear preparation and the impressive readiness of the international solidarity movements to launch their campaigns all over the world, particularly in Europe and America, to support the prisoners in their fight for freedom. They declared 17 April as Palestinian Prisoners’ Day.
This resulted in international public pressure in favor of the Palestinians’ right to confront the collusion of their government with the Israeli occupiers. These movements adopted a clear discourse on the humanitarian and political rights demanded by the prisoners. They also proved the importance of cumulative efforts to internationalize the cause of the prisoners and the cause of Palestine.
The strike adopted an approach which has blown the policy of “postponement” — imposed by Israel with official American and European support — out of the water. This is what happened in Oslo, where crucial components of the Palestinian issue were postponed to fit the policy of dictation and domination over the Palestinian leadership.
One of the issues postponed under that formula was the release of prisoners, but this too was brought back to the top of the official Palestinian agenda by the strike. The strikers refused to accept that the prisoners were pawns under the mercy of the occupation.
The strike also succeeded in neutralizing the negative effect of Israeli public opinion by not addressing it at all. This is because if it had moved, it would have gone against the just demands of the prisoners. It is a colonialist public opinion, extremely hostile to Palestinian rights, and therefore cannot support its own victims.

Only one victorious side

There is a difference between achieving specific matters within a wider set of demands and achieving all the goals of a decisive act of struggle. There is also a difference between a clear victory and a case in which each side thinks they’ve won. The outcome of the strike, as expressed in the agreement, is clear — there is only one victorious side, the prisoners.
This was the first time that negotiations were carried out directly with those involved in the case. It is also the first time a decision has been made by the occupier — the General Security Service (Shabak or Shin Bet) — not the Israeli Prison Service, which in the scale of Israeli oppression is just a subcontractor of the Shabak and the security services.
The strike neutralized the Israeli Prison Service and the longer it went on the more direct the dealings with the principal player, the Shabak, became. This is because of the strength of the strike and its solid basis. It forced the Israeli apparatus to reveal itself, because it limited its ability to manipulate and maneuver.
But the most important issue here is the success of the strike in removing the strategic oppression tools the Shabak has used for decades, particularly the laws of administrative detention and solitary confinement in prisons. In this way, the rules of a deeply rooted, coercive game were broken.
As a result of its strength, the strike also revealed the hostility and criminality of the Israeli judicial system, which since its conception has been an instrument to whitewash the racist colonialist project, the Israeli state’s crimes. It gave them legitimacy, justifying administrative procedures, the British mandate’s emergency laws, and continuous solitary confinement, all under the guise of security. And here we saw the Shabak forced to back down over some of them, confirming that the Israeli judicial system played and still plays the role of “palace guards” for the ruling security apparatus.
As for the popular international movement, which turned into official efforts, the Arab role, particularly the Egyptian, and the carrying out of multi-sided negotiations (the prisoners, Israel, Egypt and international pressure) — all these created a new atmosphere, an equation more akin to real negotiations than simply an occupying country dealing with its victims. The strike also confirmed that Israel’s power is not absolute, that its strength and sway can crumble in the face of targeted Palestinian efforts.

Dissolving divisions and boundaries

It is true that the strike was not comprehensive. It was Hamas who took the decision to launch it, along with Islamic Jihad, and with the support of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Members of the Palestine Liberation Organization/Fatah took part in it. Those who initiated the strike kept their word when they guaranteed that all factions were represented in the authoritative body and leadership of the strike, each according to their role and numbers.
Although the strike included no more than a third of the prisoners, with Hamas being the most heavily represented, this in no way weakens its legitimacy. There might have been an argument prior to the strike about declaring it officially, but the moment it began, it became the prisoners’ strike. It became the responsibility of those prisoners taking part in it, and even those who were not, to make it succeed, support it, and share responsibility for it.
The strike proved that when our people or the prisoners’ movement engage in large-scale battles with the occupying oppressive state, the whole nation gets involved.
It is worth confirming that support for the Palestinian cause and Palestinian rights in their entirety is above political factions, rendering such divisions marginal and the people united. When the struggle of our people in Galilee, the Triangle, the Naqab desert and the coast meets with that in Jerusalem, Gaza, the West Bank and those in exile, all boundaries between our people dissolve.

Mobilizing every corner of the homeland

Reconciliation is not the goal of the Palestinian people, it is the responsibility of the political factions involved. The goals of the Palestinian people are return, freedom, liberating the homeland and the people, and self-determination. What is more important than reconciliation is the unity of the struggle and its integration on the basis of the fundamentals of Palestinian rights, not on curtailing them.
This is where the strike succeeded in mobilizing an unprecedented Palestinian movement in every corner of the homeland. With the support of the international movement, this turned the equation on its head in the last stages of the strike, when the prisoners became the ones holding the occupiers and the prisons under siege.
The Palestinian popular movement was followed by an important and effective movement. The initiative launched by the prisoners’ affairs ministry, the freed prisoners, the leadership of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization is a promising model for overcoming factional divisions.
It is now clear that coordination is possible, roles can be complementary, even if the divisions continue. It is clear that the unity of the goal and the people over the prisoners’ struggle is the basis. This is an integrated working model which is capable of achieving victories.
In his last speech in February 1965, Malcolm X said: “The only thing power respects is power.” This is one of the most important lessons of the strike. How do we create this power through determination and justice, and how do we use it well as prisoners and as a people? We must not forget that the most important goal of the prisoners, and the people, is freedom, and that requires more power. The hunger strike in 2012 is a victory on the road to freedom.
Ameer Makhoul is a Palestinian civil society leader and political prisoner at Gilboa Prison.
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