Israeli defense forces fire on humanitarian workers

The United Nations and other international relief agencies have complained bitterly to Israel about soldiers firing on their relief workers, even when traffic has been coordinated in advance. “Several organizations are now seriously considering whether they should continue to work at all under these circumstances,” they said.

Despite numerous meetings with the military authorities, the relief agencies are subjected to unpredictable and sudden changes on the ground, whose purpose is often obscure and rarely explained.

Regardless of the growing anger among aid organizations, diplomatic sources said there was “no prospect” of the UN itself ending its program of feeding poor Palestinian families in the occupied territories, something it has been doing for five decades.

Earlier this year, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Swiss-based charity, decided it could no longer maintain food-distribution efforts in the West Bank. “This program was not designed to substitute for the responsibility of the occupying power, which is Israel,” said Vincent Bernard, a Red Cross spokesman in Jerusalem. Aid organizations , including the UN, are increasingly looking at the costs of subsidizing the occupation, expected to be over $1billion next year. (Independent (UK))

CIA tactics come home to roost

A technique to shoot down helicopters that CIA operatives taught to mujahadeen and Arab Islamists in Afghanistan in the 1980s is being used in guerrilla attacks on US troops in Iraq. The recent downing of US Black Hawk helicopters in Iraq is yet another example of how the aid supplied by the CIA to Islamist terrorists in the 1980s has contributed to the escalation and spread of terrorism everywhere in the world.

At least two of the US Black Hawk helicopters that crashed in Iraq recently were brought down by the same sophisticated technique — by taking out the ship’s vulnerable tail rotor with a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). As right-wing columnists and Web sites have been quick to point out, this is exactly the technique that brought down three Black Hawks in Mogadishu, Somalia, in October 1993. Three weeks after this devastating attack, the United States pulled out of Somalia, an event Osama bin Laden has cited as proof that America can be defeated.

These facts serve as yet another indictment of a dangerous system whereby small numbers of policy-makers, acting at the very highest levels of secrecy, are able to make ill-considered decisions that will have long-term, tragic effects worldwide. (Pacific News Service)

Torture on the rise in Colombia

In a new report released today, Amnesty International (AI) cautions that the widespread practice of torture carried out by

Colombian security forces, their paramilitary allies and armed opposition groups is on the rise in the country. The report was launched as the United Nations Committee Against Torture presented in Geneva its concluding observations on torture in Colombia.

According to findings in the report, during 2002 more than 4,000 civilians were killed for political motives; 1,000 people “disappeared”; more than 400,000 were displaced; and at least 2,700 people were abducted — 1,500 by armed opposition groups and paramilitaries.

”Amnesty International is deeply concerned by the climate of impunity that breeds passive, and even permissive attitudes toward torture and other human rights violations,” said Dr. William F. Schulz, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA (AIUSA). “The security forces and their allies as well as armed opposition groups seem to be running amok when it comes to abusing and torturing civilians.”

“The government has allowed torture to continue and even grow unchecked,” stated Eric L. Olson, Americas Advocacy Director for AIUSA. “Rather than confront the problem directly, alleged cases of torture are seldom investigated and few are held accountable. The government’s inaction feeds impunity and further encourages those inclined to use such degrading and inhuman practices.”
(Amnesty International)

British Law Lord outraged by Bush policies

One of Britain’s most senior judges has condemned the United States for its “monstrous failure of justice” in holding prisoners at the US base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Law Lord Johan Steyn will say in a speech in London, released to Channel 4 news, that the prisoners are being held illegally.

“The purpose of holding the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay was and is to put them beyond the rule of law, beyond the protection of any courts, and at the mercy of victors,” Steyn will say.

Nine Britons are held at Guantanamo, among 660 detainees held without charge as “enemy combatants” at the naval base.

Their treatment has appalled many Britons and human rights groups who believe the prisoners will be deprived of a fair trial.

“The procedural rules do not prohibit the use of force to coerce prisoners to confess,” Steyn’s speech said.

“The blanket presidential order deprives them all of any rights whatsoever. As a lawyer brought up to admire the ideals of American democracy and justice, I would have to say that I regard this as a monstrous failure of justice.” (Reuters)

New Iraqi ambassador hasn’t lived there for over 30 years

An Iraqi-American who has worked as a lobbyist in Washington was named yesterday as Iraq’s new ambassador to the United States.

The appointment of Rend Rahim Francke was made by Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari at a joint press conference. Zebari thanked Algeria for representing Iraq’s interests in the US capital since relations were broken after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

“I will sincerely express the ambitions of the Iraqi people and ... take care of the Iraqi community in the United States, which amounts to some 400,000 people,” Francke told reporters. “The Iraqi Embassy used to be a source of fear for this community, rather than being a place to render services.”

Francke was born in Baghdad but has not lived there full-time in more than 30 years. She became a US citizen in 1987.

During the previous regime, she was active in opposition circles, lobbying for prosecution of key figures in the Iraq leadership for war crimes and for building democracy in Iraq. (AP)

Pentagon launches semantic attack

Nearly 10,000 US troops have been killed, wounded, injured or become ill enough to require evacuation from Iraq since the war began, the equivalent of almost one Army division, according to the Pentagon.

Unlike the more than 2,800 American fighting men and women logged by the Defense Department as killed and wounded by weapons in Iraq, the numbers of injured and sick have been more difficult to track, leading critics to accuse the military of under-reporting casualty numbers.

Military officials deny they are fudging the numbers. But the latest figures show that 9,675 US troops have been killed, wounded, injured such as in accidents, or become sick enough to require airlifting out of Iraq.

“I don’t think even that is the whole story,” said Nancy Lessin of Boston, the mother of an Iraq war veteran and co-founder of Military Families Speak Out, a group opposed to the war in Iraq.

“We really think there’s an effort to hide the true cost in life, limb and the mental health of our soldiers,” Lessin said. “There’s a larger picture here of really trying to hide and obfuscate what’s going on, and the wounded and injured are part of it.” (Orlando Sentinel)

US military involvement in Colombia grows

The Colombian army’s recent success in assassinating at least four guerrilla commanders in the central Cundinamarca province has revealed the deepening US cooperation in Colombia’s counterinsurgency effort, which, while not a secret, has taken a back seat to American-led conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

No US official would comment on whether US cooperation extended to the recent assaults. But they acknowledge that since February US military advisers have aided the Colombian army’s counterinsurgency operations. In April, military personnel from the Special Forces Group, based at Fort Bragg, NC, completed training of an elite commando battalion.

“The commandos have been employed against high-value targets,” said a US official based in Colombia, who asked not to be named for security reasons. “(We’re assisting) in plans for operations down to division and brigade levels, looking at operational, logistical and intelligence components of a plan.” He stressed that there is no intention to send US advisers on combat missions.

The expanding role of US forces in both training and operational planning reflects last year’s vote by the US Congress to broaden its $3 billion aid to Bogota over four years and help Colombian President Alvaro Uribe wage a “unified campaign” against illegal drugs and the guerrillas, who have been waging a war with the central government for the past 40 years.

The decision came against the backdrop of President Bush’s global war on terrorism and Washington’s insistence thatFARC members are “narco-terrorists” involved in producing, processing and trafficking cocaine and heroin. (San Francisco Chronicle)

Kofi Annan reads writing on the wall

Israel has swatted aside a formal complaint by the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, over its refusal to halt construction of a wall that cuts deep into the West Bank and slices through Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.

Annan said the fence “could damage the longer-term prospects for peace by making the creation of an independent, viable and contiguous Palestinian state more difficult”.

Israel said it was speeding up construction and may take other “unilateral steps” if the Palestinians delay peace talks. “Our patience is running out,” the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, declared.

Israel claims the barrier of concrete, razor wire, ditches and electric fences is needed to stop suicide bombers who have killed more than 450 people in the three-year Palestinian Intifada. But Palestinians say the fence is a crude attempt to annex territory as well as being a strategic blunder that will only bring more bloodshed.

If completed as planned, the barrier will forcibly cut off some 240,000 Palestinians from their communities and leave 160,000 Palestinians in enclaves that will be almost completely encircled by a barrier. Palestinians face extraordinary delays getting through crossing points in the places where the wall is already completed. Even with a permit or ID card, gates are only opened for 15 minutes three times a day. Farmers are denied access to fields and employees to their jobs, creating intolerable hardship, according to the UN chief. (Independent (UK))

Venezuela closes border with Colombia; attempts to stave off fraud

Venezuela says it has closed parts of its border with Colombia to stop fraud in an campaign to force a referendum on President Hugo Chavez’s rule. The move was designed to stop unregistered voters from crossing into Venezuela to sign a petition.

The opposition, which wants to remove the president in a referendum, says the closure is illegal.

The president’s opponents have four days to gather the 2.4 million signatures needed for a vote.

The president’s critics accuse him of authoritarian rule and mismanagement.

Vice-President Jose Vicente Rangel said the border closures were a response to intelligence reports that people with fake Venezuelan identity cards were trying to cross over from Colombia. He said the move would not prevent the flow of trade between the two countries.

Members of Venezuela’s opposition were quick to criticize the measure, describing it as illegal and unconstitutional.

They accuse the government of trying to prevent Venezuelans living in Colombia from signing the petition. (BBC)