Posts by Siun

Siun is a regular blogger for FireDogLake.

When the Women of Afghanistan Speak, Does Howard Dean Listen?
Posted by Siun on July 18, 2009 at 6:16 PM.

Governor Howard Dean was just on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! to discuss healthcare and did a great job of explaining the need for a public option – but sadly he fell back on tired pro-war propaganda when he addressed Goodman’s questions on Afghanistan (transcript from Rethink Afghanistan – full rush transcript will be available later at Democracy Now):

Howard Dean: Roughly 50% of the Afghan people are women. They will be condemned to conditions which are very much like slavery and serfdom in a 12th century model of society where they have no rights whatsoever. So I’m not saying we have to invade every country that doesn’t treat women as equal, but we’re there now we have a responsibility, and if we leave women will experience the most extraordinary deprivations of any population on the face of the earth. I think we have some obligation to see if we can try and make this work. Not just for America and our security interests, but for the sake of women in Afghanistan and all around the globe. Is this acceptable to treat women like this? I think not.”

Amy Goodman: We just interviewed an afghan parliamentarian, Dr. Wardak and she said the opposite. She said that yes, she agrees with you on the way women are treated, but this is worsening the treatment--that the increased number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan, the huge number of troops that are coming in right now, are alienating the Afghan population.

Governor Dean, have you asked Afghan women if they agree that our expanding war in Afghanistan is “an obligation. . . for the sake of women in Afghanistan and all around the globe?”

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

An Afghan Surge. . . in Civilian Casualties
Posted by Siun , Firedoglake on March 16, 2009 at 7:00 AM.

If you’ve been reading along with us on Sunday nights, you’ll remember that over and over we’ve reported on Afghan civilians being killed by US forces – in air strikes and in night raids. Each report follows a very similar pattern – US forces report some number of militants killed, then a report from local authorities appears saying something like, "No, actually that was just a family in our village (or a wedding party, or a…), and we want answers." Eventually, there’s a report that a US officer has visited the village, handed out a check… and expressed our deepest apologies – and then a commander in Kabul issues a very serious statement about how troubling the civilian casualties are, and how we are now going to change our approach and take all sorts of steps to protect civilians. The most recent of such statements included a promise to coordinate all raids with local Afghan forces.

During a recent visit to Afghanistan by Pierre Krähenbühl, Director of Operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross, who had worked in Kabul during the 1990s, called for more protection of Afghan civilians. In his report, he notes:

I cannot sufficiently stress the unbearable levels of individual and collective suffering that Afghan men, women and children have had to endure over three decades, and that they continue to endure at levels that defy belief.

And continues:

This brings me to the critical issue of civilians at risk in the current conflict. For the past three years the ICRC has repeatedly drawn attention to the increasingly severe impact of the conflict on the civilian population.

Never, however, has our concern been as acute as it is now. The conflict is intensifying and affecting wider parts of Afghanistan. Civilian casualties are significantly higher than a year ago…

This was a central issue during my visit. I raised the ICRC’s acute concerns about the protection of civilians with Generals McKiernan and Schloesser of the US armed forces and ISAF respectively. I emphasized in particular the constant obligation to make a distinction between those participating in hostilities and those who do not or, in the case of injured or captured fighters, who no longer directly participate in hostilities.

Mr. Krähenbühl also received assurances that the commanders shared his concern – but again, their assurances have not led to action.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Is General Petraeus Trying to Undercut Obama?
Posted by Siun , Firedoglake on February 10, 2009 at 7:35 AM.

More news is coming out about the Petraeus/Odierno/Keane effort to undercut President Obama and his plans to withdrawal from Iraq. As before, IPS's Gareth Porter is the one breaking the news -and his latest story is stunning.

This weekend, a number of reports described a January 21^st meeting between President Obama and his commanders. The story that circulated in McClatchy and the AP amongst others "appears to indicate that Obama is moving away from the 16-month plan he had vowed during the campaign to implement if elected."

Porter reports that "a military source close to the general, who insisted on anonymity" contacted him after his report 'Generals Seek to Reverse Obama Withdrawal Decision' was published - and that source pitched the account of the January 21 meeting that was picked up in the weekend press:

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Gaza Update: Israel Says No to Restraint
Posted by Siun , Firedoglake on January 11, 2009 at 7:13 PM.

Prime Minister Olmert "slammed international calls for restraint by IDF forces in Gaza" during today's Israeli Cabinet meeting:

"For many years we've demonstrated restraint. We reined our reactions. We bit our lips and took barrage after barrage," said Olmert ...

Olmert called the war "an unprecedented national effort that restored the spirit of unity to the nation..."

Restraint was certainly not in evidence as Israeli forces entered Gaza City itself in a new escalation of the ground war. Israeli bombs also hit across the Gaza border in Egypt hurting two policemen and two children. Egyptian sources say that there is talk of more injured.

In Gaza itself, conditions are desperate. The WHO stated 4 days ago that "health services in Gaza, already depleted and fragile, are on the point of collapse if steps to support and protect them are not taken immediately" yet no relief is in sight. They note that there "is now a serious risk of outbreaks of communicable disease, such as acute respiratory infections, measles and acute watery diarrhoea, all of which have potential for high mortality among children." As markfromireland wrote in pointing to this report, "there's all sorts of things that kill the vulnerable during a war."

The ICRC (Red Cross/Red Crescent) notes in their latest Operational Update that ...

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Reports: Israel Targeting Medics and Ambulances
Posted by Siun , Firedoglake on January 6, 2009 at 8:38 AM.

Multiple sources are reporting that medics and ambulances have come under repeated attack in Gaza by Israeli forces. Aid workers are also reporting that even when Red Crescent ambulance teams contact the Red Cross and the Red Cross contacts the IDF to coordinate the ambulance mission, they are often prevented from reaching the injured.

Amira Hass in Ha’aretz told of one such case yesterday in “Wounded Gaza family lay bleeding for 20 hours." Oxfam reported the death of one of their medics on Saturday. Now Ma’an reports:

Midmorning on Sunday, Israeli warplanes bombed a house in the town of Beit Hanoun, where Palestinians were mourning the death of a paramedic who was killed on Saturday. Some 40 others were wounded in this most recent attack.

Rammatan (the source of CNN's footage from Gaza) adds:

Four Palestinian medical emergency members were murdered on Sunday night when an Israeli rocket hit their ambulance in the town of Beit Lahia, north of Gaza.

The death toll of the paramedics killed by the Israeli troops has climbed to 6 and more than 20 wounded.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

War on Gaza: More Civilian Deaths; Olmert Lies: 'No Humanitarian Crisis'
Posted by Siun , Firedoglake on January 5, 2009 at 11:12 AM.

On CNN yesterday, Olmert informed us that:

Israel would not "allow a humanitarian crisis to be created in the Gaza Strip."

"We will help supply food and medicines like any enlightened and moral country must do," he said.

Yet this morning, we read in the Independent about another loss caused by the actions of the “enlightened and moral country” - the death of the father of the paper's Gaza correspondent Fares Akram:

The phone call came at around 4.20pm on Saturday. A bomb had been dropped on the house at our small farm in northern Gaza. My father was walking from the gate to the farmhouse at the time. It was our beloved place, that farm and its two-storey white house with a red roof. Nestled in a flat fertile agricultural plain north-west of Beit Lahiya, it had lemon groves, orange and apricot trees and we had recently acquired 60 dairy cows.

It was the closest farm to the northern border with Israel. Ironically, we always thought the biggest danger there was not from Israeli troops, who usually went straight past if they were mounting an incursion, but from stray Hamas rockets aimed at the Israeli towns north of us.

But shortly before sunset on Saturday, as Israeli ground troops and tanks invaded Gaza in the name of shutting down Hamas rocket sites, the peace of that place was shattered and my father's life extinguished at the age of 48. Warplanes and helicopters had swept in, bombing and firing to open up the space for the tanks and ground forces that would follow in the darkness. It was one of those F16 airstrikes that killed my father.

The house was reduced to little more than powder, and of Dad there was nothing much left either. "Just a pile of flesh," my uncle, who found him in the rubble, said later with brutal honesty…

Another story – this one from Oxfam:

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Israel's Ground Invasion of Gaza Continues
Posted by Siun , Firedoglake on January 4, 2009 at 9:00 AM.

Updates will appear on this page as more information becomes available. These updates will be clearly marked.

Update #4 -- Cluster Bombs:

There’s more evidence today of Israeli use of cluster bombs, originally noted by Laura Doty at Oxdown. The Times of London features a photo in it’s coverage (see Gaza Conflict slide show) with the following description:

An artillery round sends out bomblets above Gaza City, which continues to be attacked by Israeli forces

(h/t Brandon of VoteVets who points in email to this description of the weapons seen).

The use of cluster bombs - which have a large footprint when initially dropped and then remain a threat for decades - in a location like the Gaza Strip which is so packed with people is horrifying.

Conditions in Gaza continue to worsen:

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Gaza Update: Some Foreign Nationals Allowed to Flee, Leaving Family Behind
Posted by Siun , Firedoglake on January 3, 2009 at 11:02 AM.

On Friday, Israel allowed a few hundred Gaza residents who hold foreign passports to leave the Gaza Strip. They brought with them reports of the conditions currently faced by those left behind:

The evacuees told of crippling shortages of water, electricity and medicine, echoing a U.N. warning of a deepening humanitarian crisis in the besieged Gaza Strip in the seven-day-old Israeli campaign.

The U.N. estimates at least a quarter of the 400 Palestinians killed by Israeli airstrikes on Hamas militants were civilians.

Jawaher Hajji, a 14-year-old U.S. citizen who was allowed to cross into Israel, said her uncle was one of them -- killed while trying to pick up some medicine for her cancer-stricken father. She said her father later died of his illness.

"They are supposed to destroy just the Hamas, but people in their homes are dying too," Hajji, who has relatives in Virginia, said at the Erez border crossing between Gaza and Israel.

And:

The women, dragging confused, frightened children, had to leave behind Palestinian husbands and fathers denied permission to leave by Israel. Anastasia Gabir, 33, a pregnant mother wearing an Islamic head scarf and towing a small daughter, said: “It has been horribly hard the past week. They bombed near our house, hitting another house and a police station. The kids were very scared.” Her daughter screamed as an Israeli artillery unit fired a salvo of shells into Gaza.

Karolina Katba, 15, was leaving with her mother and sister to stay with relatives in Volgograd. She was worried about her father, a Palestinian pharmacist in Gaza City. “I didn't say goodbye to him because I was crying too much,” she said.

As of midnight PST, 425 Palestinians had been killed, and approximately 2,000 wounded.

One missile killed three Palestinian children aged between eight and 12 as they played on a street near the town of Khan Yunis. One was decapitated.

Madth Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor at Gaza's Shifa hospital who could not save a boy who had both feet blown off said: "This is a murder. This is a child."

Israel continues to block access to Gaza by international journalists. Perhaps Israel is afraid that if they actually saw and reported on conditions in Gaza, their reports might be similar to those of Amira Haas from Ha'aretz. Greg Mitchell at Editor and Publisher points to one of her recent columns:

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Shoe-Thrower's Trial Postponed
Posted by Siun , Firedoglake on January 1, 2009 at 4:02 AM.

Aswat al Iraq reports that Al Zaida's trial, scheduled to begin yesterday, was postponed:

A lawyer of Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaydi, who threw a pair of shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad two weeks ago, ruled out a trial session for his defendant tomorrow.

"The defense committee has requested the Court of Cassation to change the legal description, in accordance with which al-Zaydi will be tried under Article 223 of the penal code," a member of the committee, Ahlam al-Lami, told Aswat al-Iraq.

"We have also submitted a plea for his release on bail," Lami added. If found guilty, al-Zaydi may face an up to seven-year jail sentence.

Calls to the Iraqi Embassy at (202) 483-7500 supporting the request for bail -- and asking for the charges to be dismissed would be great. Let's make sure they know we have not forgotten.

Photo from Raed in the Middle of the petition to free Al Zeidi which Raed coordinated and delivered yesterday to the office of the Iraqi ambassador in Washington, DC. with 4,000 signatures.

Gaza Update: No Truce
Posted by Siun , Firedoglake on December 31, 2008 at 7:21 AM.

Latest reports indicate that Israel has rejected the French call for a 48 hour truce to allow humanitarian supplies to enter Gaza but may consider other cease fire options later. While there were fewer Israeli air strikes overnight- in part due to bad weather, more details of civilian casualties in Gaza are appearing:

On the fourth day of airstrikes in Gaza Tuesday, one of Israel's many targets was a Hamas military commander's home within the teeming Jabaliya refugee camp. He wasn't there, but seven civilians died as a result of that attack...

Israelis claim the high ground by arguing that even though they fight terrorists who deliberately target civilians, they try to uphold a spirit of "purity of arms" by avoiding civilian casualties as much as possible.

Critics counter that by putting Palestinian towns under blockade and going after militants in civilian areas, Israel makes noncombantants targets.

For Ziad Koraz, whose nearby home was damaged in the attack on the government compound Tuesday, that violence gratuitously puts Gazan civilians at risk, the Associated Press reported.

"More than 17 missiles were directed at an empty government compound, without regard for civilians who lived nearby," Mr. Koraz said. "If someone committed a crime, they should go after him, not after an entire nation."

Sunday, we had Time magazine’s reports of Israelis gathering to watch and cheer the air strikes on Gaza. Today we learn of more:

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Why Israel Won't Allow Journalists into Gaza
Posted by Siun , Firedoglake on December 30, 2008 at 9:11 AM.

Overnight, the Jerusalem Post carried a story, "Navy Sends Activist Boat Back to Cyprus," which said:

The navy has turned back a boat trying to carry pro-Palestinian protesters to the Gaza Strip, officials said Tuesday

Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the boat ignored an Israeli radio order to turn back early Tuesday. He said the boat tried to outmaneuver the navy ship and crashed into it, lightly damaging both vessels. The navy then escorted the boat to the territorial waters of Cyprus.

In a report from  AFP, Israeli authorities said is was all just a mistake:

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told AFP that the naval vessel tried to contact the aid boat by radio for identification and to inform it that it could not enter Gaza.

"After the boat did not answer the radio, it sharply veered, and the two vessels collided, causing only light damage," Palmor said.

The Israeli spokesman accused the pro-Palestinian activists of "seeking provocation more than ever."

But this time, a reporter, Karl Penhaul from CNN, was actually on the boat -- and gave the report you see above as the events were happening:

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Gaza Update: The Hospitals Are Full and More
Posted by Siun , Firedoglake on December 29, 2008 at 8:12 PM.

Latest reports are that Israeli air attacks on Gaza have started up again, with another 10 already killed this evening according to CNN. These new casualties will further impact the already overwhelmed medical resources of the strip. Earlier today Allegra Pacheco, deputy head of the UN humanitarian office in the occupied Palestinian territory, reported to UN radio:

ALLEGRA: What we see on the ground is that more and more of the attacks are killing and injuring civilians. It's very hard for civilians not be injured or even killed when the buildings they are living (in) or their residencies are right next to a target. We're talking about some very powerful type of weaponry that, again, may hit its target but there are the after effects in the surrounding areas. For example, our offices today were quite badly damaged from an air strike that targeted another building, but it also damaged our cars, our offices, and now we won't be able to use our offices.

SAMIR: Will you update us on the humanitarian situation in Gaza Strip?

ALLEGRA: This is a situation that is compounded by an already difficult situation that has been going on since the blockade was imposed more than a year ago. There are shortages of electricity-most people are only getting electricity for about five, six hours a day. Running water is available for 60 per cent of the population once every five to seven days. There are long lines for bread, and the medical situation, the Israelis have opened the crossings in the last few days to get medical supplies in but there were shortages of several pharmaceuticals and some emergency kits in the hospitals as well as one of the key humanitarian concerns is the shortage of different kinds of fuel that are needed in the Gaza Strip. One is an industrial fuel to power the Gaza electric plant. There's also fuel for cooking gas; there's a shortage of that so people cannot cook at home. And then fuel for diesel to operate all the back-up generators that are used when the power outages occur, especially the hospitals. Many of the hospitals are running on back-up generators.

I have also just received the following update via email from Sameh Habeeb, a Gazan journalist and peace activist whose blog Gaza Today is a very good resource.

Sameh begins by noting that the “Humanitarian situation is still suffocating and no longer people are getting bread nor gas nor power.”

He then reports that as of this afternoon:

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Gaza Update: 'Closed Military Zone'
Posted by Siun , Firedoglake on December 29, 2008 at 10:31 AM.

Overnight, the BBC is reporting that Israel has declared the region around Gaza "a closed military zone," which is seen as sign that a ground invasion is about to begin (no link available yet). The Gaza death toll (at 1:25 p.m. PST) is 307, there are unconfirmed reports that captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was among those wounded by the Israeli attack on Gaza, and the Israeli navy has now joined the attack.

The Israeli air force is apparently very happy with the performance of a "new bunker-buster missile that it received recently from the United States" (Israel ordered 1,000  GBU-39 in September) and while "Col. Moshe Levy was interviewed by several Arab news outlets during which he stressed that Israel was not against the Palestinian public in Gaza but was operating against Hamas":

Defense officials said Sunday that Israel would, however, not hesitate to target the homes of civilians who protected Hamas terrorists throughout the operation.

While sorting through Gaza news last night, I ran across three essays worth reading. Two were published today in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, the last one, by Nir Rosen, appeared in the Guardian.

In the first, Amira Hass explains that the Gaza strike is not against Hamas, it's against all Palestinians:

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Israeli Attack on Gaza: Bombs Fall as Children Go to School
Posted by Siun , Firedoglake on December 27, 2008 at 2:04 PM.

Israel's attack today came at the time of day when, as Fikr Shallpoot, a health worker and resident in Gaza told the BBC, children leave the morning school session and the afternoon students arrive. (Please listen to this report, it is very informative but sadly the BBC does not allow embedding) At least 200 Gazans were with more than 700 wounded. One target was the Gaza City police station where a graduation ceremony was taking place (this is raw footage from the aftermath of the attack and is graphic):

And Israel has announced this is just the beginning:

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Saturday that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) will deepen and widen its offensive in the Gaza Strip as much as needed. Barak also vowed during an afternoon in a press conference that it's "time to fight," adding that "tough times lay ahead." The Israeli minister explained "there is a time for cease-fires and a time to fight, and now is the time to fight."

Israel is also launching a PR campaign to gain international support for its actions, claiming they are simply protecting themselves. Viewing the videos of Gazan reactions to the air strikes, it is clear that rather than diminishing attacks on Israel, these air strikes will simply further inflame the situation and harden Hamas' resolve. As Hamas spokesman Al-Nunu said:

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Signs of Abuse? Iraqi Shoe-Throwing Journalist Kept from Court
Posted by Siun , Firedoglake on December 17, 2008 at 11:56 AM.

Al Zaida was scheduled to appear in court today for the first hearings of charges against him for this weekend's shoe toss. But Iraqi officials did not let him appear and his family is very worried about what this means:

The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at United States President George W. Bush has appeared before a judge in his jail cell because he is too injured to appear in a courtroom, his brother says.

The al-Zaidi family went to Baghdad's Central Criminal Court expecting to attend a hearing, his brother, Dhargham, said.

He said the family was told that the investigative judge went to see al-Zaidi in jail, and to return in eight days, Associated Press has reported.

"That means my brother was severely beaten and they fear that his appearance could trigger anger at the court,'' Dhargham said.

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