Kashmir: A Lawless Land

Kashmir: A Lawless Land

Posted on 31. Aug, 2010 by Marivel Guzman. Original Post by  Raja Mujtaba in Kashmir

Forced to accept Jingoistic emotion
‘Stone Pelting’ An Inevitable Affair In Kashmir

By Inshah Malik
(Opinion Maker Exclusive) The so-called ‘terrorist feelings’ of the young in Kashmir are fueled by the Pakistani intelligence agencies like ISI and Lashkar-e-Tayeba (LeT), this is how the Indian state justifies the murder of the 18 civilians in Kashmir since Jan 2010. Among these 18 civilians, 11 were children brutally eliminated by the ‘unruly mobs’ of CRPF personnel. The rationale behind using this expression for CRPF, which is believed to be a disciplined mechanism, is that it is devoid of the skills to deal with civilians. It is the state police that must do the job of stopping the protests. EN Rammoham, former IG of Kashmir spoke in an interview to DNA newspaper (Sunday, July 4) about the ethics of CRPF and has condemned the state police for not being efficient enough to tackle an angry mob. He also justified that CRPF should never be believed to act like police, precisely because they are never trained to use ‘lathis’, they are armed forces who are well equipped in fighting an armed insurgency and not angry people. Even after the solemn confessions of the CRPF authorities it has been actively employed to tackle protests. The mainstream media has often referred to the protests that occurred to condemn the civilian killings in Kashmir as ‘unruly mobs’.
The media at the centre has played in a direction to safeguard the State interests and allowed the one sided frenzy to go on air for hours and added fuel to the fire. The jingoistic nationalism forces most intelligent minds in India to uphold Kashmir as ‘atoot ang’ the integral part with or without its people. This emotion is so vehemently expressed in all debates and forums that it forces one to look back at the British colonial mentality which once sold Kashmir as a whole to Dogras. The obsession of holding on to Kashmir even on the basis of military might is fueling the people’s sentiment to feel repressed and colonized. The only sign of relief for them is to look back in history to the better off times and dream about them. One wonders if on one side India has been over the years repeating Kashmir to be its crown then why differential treatment among its people as a whole.
In a recent Bharat Bandh ‘protest’ staged against the hike in price initiated by the opposition political parties in India, 78 buses were burnt by the angry protesters and 24 drivers were injured in Mumbai alone but no CRPF was sent to control the ‘unruly mobs’ in Mumbai. Even in the worst of the Kashmir protests never has such large scale destruction of public property been carried out by the local people in a single day. Does labeling Kashmir a ‘disturbed area’ also give extra powers to the state to even subjugate anger with military might in Kashmir? Is Kashmir a stage where all kind of military might should be tested and flaunted? The answer is ‘No’ India has to stop somewhere,
The Freedom movement that has endured in Kashmir for almost sixty years has changed gears over time from non-violence to violence and then again to nonviolence in 2008. When the democratic voice of the people is crushed with bullets, their only resort is to throw stones. It has to be seen if CRPF was deployed to foil Bharat band and slogans answered with bullets wonder how many Indians wouldn’t pick up stones in self defense or attack. Not many.
The sentiment to regain the sovereignty that Kashmir enjoyed before 1947 is not new to its people and such sentiment cannot be labeled as ‘terrorism’. With time it has moved as crusts and troughs for people. During the course of time people have moved on into the tracks of development. There are good numbers of traders, bureaucrats who have not withstood this sentiment and excelled well and have shown interest in the Indian sponsored ‘demon-crazy’ in Kashmir. What happens later is where the emphasis needs to be made. If people of Kashmir moved on with almost 60% votes for National conference government headed by Omar Abdullah, there prime concerns were employment, good roads, electricity but none of this happened. This was the time people should have asked for demilitarization as well but instead of going ahead with development; the killing spree of Military has crippled people’s aspirations. They are back to the stage of 1990′s freedom aspiring sentiment where the central government doesn’t seek a single opportunity to criminalize the people of Kashmir. One must ask, if people are to be criminalized then what is India here for? ‘Water resources’? This from any conscious thinking brain is a deep rooted colonization.
Kashmiri Terrorism a Myth and Indian Democracy a blatant lie
The number of children killed, detained and subjected to army abuse stands witness that it is the force that creates the rebellion. Labeling their freedom struggle as terrorism is the biggest myth that Indian administration could ever devise to hide their shame of being a brute oppressor.
However, a creamy layer of Kashmir’s own people who have thrived on the benefits of this extended Indian rule preferred self experience in this stringent conflict. Living became easy till self appropriation was emphasized. In these circumstances, Aasiya residing in the upper town’s lavish colony in Bhagemehtab groomed her son up with ideas of freedom and goodness. Confronting the news of killings and disappearances of youth during protests in the recent past, She like many other women would disregard such acts of children saying ‘Uneducated parents would let their children go to pelt stones and the boys who indulge in pelting stones are ill mannered and bad’. Little did she know that education, political status and wealth were useless to avoid the wrath of this lawless State?
Aasiya’s Kitchen window is carved in this direction and she often spends time watching her son play, she hoots when her son Mohamed hits a six. On 2nd July, 2010, Mohamed, who is a class 11th student in a convent school, like every other day was playing in the locality’s only park. She heard a rush and quickly got to the window only to find that her son was chased by a mammoth battalion of CRPF, nervous about his safety she rushed out of her house.
Mohammed was playing when four children ran in his direction saying ‘run army is chasing us’. He ran with his bat still in his hand and thought in his mind that India was a democratic country he knows it from school, he should have just stayed and said that ‘Sir I am playing’. Thinking this in his mind he got into a neighbor’s house and army rushed at them and on gun point asked the house owner to bring the boys out.
‘I pleaded, also showed them my bat that I still held and in good English told ‘Sir I was just playing’ but they did not listen to me’ said Mohammed
Aasiya rushed to the spot and told the CRPF personnel that they just lived right here and have always been good people. She cried, yelled and did all she could only to realize a gun pointed and pushed on her chest. The Police van took away her son Mohamed and she fainted after chasing it till some distance.
Mohammed could not grasp a bit of what has happened?
On their way to ‘Thania Sadar’ Police station, the police van halted midway and asked the boys to get down.
They commanded us to pick up stones and face the camera; I trembled at this but was forced to do so, even while doing this I repeatedly said I did not do anything Sir.
Mohammed with four other boys was hung upside down for almost 5 hours and beaten ruthlessly till he fainted. He could not find a single local police officer but only CRPF personnel’s in the police station.
By the evening we were almost 24 boys and the youngest was a nine year old, they mercilessly thrashed him with gun butts and all he was mumbling was Oh God why don’t I die? I was repeatedly calling upon my mother in pain.
Mohammed is deeply wounded and shoved in painful memories of past four nights of trauma and abuse. He wants to become a doctor but after facing this brutal treatment at such a tender age of 16 what can he become? This is the question for the readers.
Stones are the weapons of the powerless
There are thousands like Mohammed who have witnessed tyranny in reply to hope. In the politicized milieu even the hope now withers away. The eighty thousand dead, their families their little boys and girls witness oppression. The feeling of losing a father, brother is deeply gloomy and impressive on the tender hearts. The boys and girls who need love and attention have to prove their identity to a foreign occupation. The ‘occupation’ does truly not know their language or culture. Children born anywhere in the world should not deserve bullets. There expressions are silenced but the graffiti all over the walls in the Kashmir vale including on the animals speaks out for them. GO INDIA GO, Leave Our Kashmir, is what the walls uniformly shout for them. Although their mouths are made shut and their movement crippled and playgrounds sealed under curfew their voices are heard because they are the voices of humanity.
In a solemn confession EN Rammoham who served in Kashmir during the peak of armed struggle in 1993 says, force commits excesses, fires on innocent people, and no action is taken by the commanders of that force. I know a number of cases where a force on patrol is ambushed. Say, three jawans are killed. Now the force looks around for three people — it could be farmers working in the nearby field — rounds them up and shoots them. This is plain, cold-blooded murder. But often the force commanders don’t take action against perpetrators of such crimes. The militants who fired at them escaped, and you round up four or five civilians and shoot them — is this way to conduct operations?
What to expect from the boys who are still grooming up and developing their intellect and behavior when the so-called ‘disciplined military apparatus’ wages war on them. Does India expect them not to pick up stones in self defense and in the wake of justice?
Inshah Malik is a PhD scholar at the Tata Institute of social sciences, Mumbai, India.
 Kashmir where is history when we can not even write what is going on in this moments, where is history, when the people is dying under an soffocating occupation that has gone for more than 63 years, and you do not even see it in the news, how you will see it in History Books.

Kashmir: Curfewed in the Vale

Kashmir: Curfewed in the vale

Posted on 27. Aug, 2010 by Marivel Guzman Original Post by: Raja Mujtaba in Kashmir

Indian Occupied Kashmir Is Worse Than Gaza, Why Is The World Sleeping Over It?

UK and USA Just To Sell Their Weapons Have Turned a Blind Eye; Shame On You

In Kashmir, civilians are being pushed to the brink of disaster amidst protests, curfews and killings. Anger is hurt turned inside out, as Dilnaz Boga explains.

Wounded on 26th August lying in hospitals

It’s been almost two months since we’ve been under curfew in the Kashmir Valley. It’s not the echoes in the empty streets decked up with razor wires that are disturbing, it’s the rising of the sun that brings with it the news of deaths by tear gas shells or bullets.

As journalists we are issued curfew passes by the government. Sometimes, the local police and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), India’s paramilitary, rip the passes to bits and prevent us from working. Getting past every street is an achievement, with the police and the paramilitary playing God. Last month, when the government imposed a media gag, the CRPF stood outside media offices, preventing us from moving out. Journalists were beaten and fired upon.

Since this January, the police and the CRPF, for ‘stone-throwing’, have gunned down over 60 unarmed protesters – mostly children as young as eight and teenagers. Doctors say that the injured have been shot mostly in the head and chest. No security personnel have perished in the fierce clashes. In the past month, the violence has intensified, with up to eight deaths a day. Just as the people mourn for one death, another one follows. What will happen next is a question on everyone’s minds.
Funeral processions, ambulances and bystanders have been shot at – their weapon of choice is an AK 47. Their reason: self-defence.
The killings have caused even more people to pour out on the streets to protest, because the justice mechanism is not in place.
Certain sections of the local press have reported that in the last month, 1,400 people, mostly teens, have been booked under draconian acts that the state uses as an instrument of suppression. Kashmir does not have juvenile homes, so the minors share cells with hardened criminals far away from home.
Nightmares follow them upon release, a lawyer tells me.
Misunderstanding Kashmir
For journalists, to confirm a death and report it is tricky. The Police Control Room rarely shares information. The authorities block the cellular phone signals of the area where the killing has taken place. The government has banned SMS service for the last two months. Busy doctors in hospitals, who have their hands full, help us confirm the killing. Law enforcement authorities withhold information, fearing a backlash.
On a recent trip to a village where a young protester had been shot, we managed to accompany his body from a city hospital. As the car swerved to avoid rocks put up by protesters on the road to south Kashmir’s Pampore, we did our best to try and keep up with the ambulance that was carrying the body of 24-year-old Rayees Ahmad, who had been shot by police and CRPF during protests. At that point, we were unaware of the fact that 19-year-old Nayeem Shah, shot in the same protest, had succumbed to his injuries.
Groups of young boys, with their faces covered, guided our three-car convoy to the hometown of the deceased. In the ambulance, Rayees’s friends wailed from the back of the vehicle, screaming to the pedestrians that his death must not be forgotten.
Indian media attributes this stone-throwing to Pakistan and the militant Islamist group Lashkar-e-Toiba. My compatriots, because of this propaganda, have always misunderstood Kashmir

Protestors at night in Srinagar

We entered the town to find streets lined with wailing women and angry men waiting to receive his corpse. Young boys reached out to walk with Rayees on their shoulders for one last time. The town rallied around them, chanting pro-freedom and anti-India slogans.
As helplessness turned to rage, residents threw stones and burnt tyres to vent their sadness at the death. Indian media attributes this stone-throwing to Pakistan and the militant Islamist group Lashkar-e-Toiba. My compatriots, because of this propaganda, have always misunderstood Kashmir.
Anticipating retaliation by the forces, we decided to turn back before the violence trapped us. We changed our route as we heard reports of the forces firing on an ambulance. We finally made it out of the picturesque village and into the city, bearing witness to yet another day of grief.
Freedom calls
Back in the city, calls from friends fill up the day as hardly any news manages to trickle out. The national media, on the other hand, chooses to demonize the stone-throwers, blaming the violence on ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency. This aggravates the locals.
With the internet as their only vent, youngsters post all kinds of messages on networking sites such as Facebook – angry, sad, frustrated, determined, but not confused. Everybody here wants freedom from India. This is Kashmir’s first intifada – young, fearless and spontaneous.
With people being cooped into their homes for long spells, tempers are running high. Families are finding it hard to get along
I requested a friend in the media from New Delhi to cover the unrest. With story ideas that ran in contradiction to state propaganda in mainstream media, her editor approved.
She arrived and we started shooting before sunrise to circumvent the curfew. Covering ground was difficult as we’d be stopped and asked to turn around everywhere we went on our way back before noon. The fact that we were not local media helped us commute.
After burning the midnight oil, and putting together four very difficult packages that covered the recent turmoil, she headed back only to be told by her channel’s head that the stories could only be screened on a Pakistani news channel. Nationalism and conforming to the state’s rules are two qualities that the Indian mainstream media excels at. After all, the fourth estate is one of the state’s arms – its propaganda tool, I learn in Kashmir.
With people being cooped into their homes for long spells, tempers are running high. Families are finding it hard to get

graveyards are being filled by the hour

along. Friends are more irritable, highly strung, sleepless, restless, depressed, helpless and very angry. They all want to step out of their homes. Some can’t even peep out of their windows as they hear gunshots. People have been killed putting up curtains in the safety of their homes. I manage to visit most of them, negotiating my way through groups of protesters, security personnel and empty streets. Some of my friends look like they just got released from jail. Others are unusually quiet. Some cry. Some even curse, saying that we should all get bombed together, instead of a few being shot every day. Anger is hurt turned inside out, said one.
Meanwhile, people in India are wondering why parents can’t keep their kids at home. Little do they know that when a teenager gets shot outside his home, and for a people who have never experienced justice, peace will always remain a far cry. As a teenager said, ‘I am living for nothing under this occupation, at least I will die for something.’ His friend, also a stone-thrower added, ‘I have nothing to lose and everything [freedom] to gain.
Courtesy New Internationalist

How to Incite Violence

Karl Shembri blog: Journey to Gaza, have compiled most of the stories that read with open and objected mind and free of any prejudgments you will find appealing to the cause of justice, and will make you regain some humanity lost due to indifference, a disease of the heart.

All his stories are part of the reality that Palestinians suffer every day, they every day struggle is painted with sorrow, blood from the martyrs, tears from the Mothers.
The pictures are more than eloquent to show you the truth. The images don't lie, even if you have some reserves on the sources. We have more photographers now than anytime in history, Palestine is a court room of witnesses, evidence every where you want to look, in every grave you can see the hand of the criminal.
The walls full of bullets holes can tell you a story, not written in the New York Times.


Palestine known for many as the Occupied Territories and the Stolen Land known in the Propaganda Machine as Israel.

Gaza is an enclave on the Mediterranean with rich resources in the sea, that since Israel named herself the occupier had not let them fish in peace or take advantage of their other natural resources.

They have rich agricultural lands, that have been partitioned due to the grab of land of Israel, first in the 1948 horrid date when 3/4 of the land of Palestine were stolen with official seal from the League of Nations. 


Then in 1967 than with an invented and crafted War of 6 days and with the blessings of the Arab leaders that played a pivotal role in that theater, they stole another 30 % of remained  Holy Land, and it has been with trickery and scripted operations that now more that 80 % of Palestine is under Israel control. 

When Israel decided to brake Palestine even more with their intricate Wall of Shame, the world leaders applauded such move, with the almost shameful statement; "Israel has the right to defend itself", and  only the Intellectuals, the humanitarians, the activists, the Free Minders, the human rights organizations, the Criminal Court of the Hague and some other organizations repudiated such structure, than came to disrupted since its planning and inception the lives of millions of Palestinians, to even almost impossible situation.


Israel being an entity that does not respect human rights or civil rights or any kind made deaf ears to the finding of the International Court. As Israel see herself as the Queen of Imperfection and not Abiding Laws Entity. What we see is the normal operations of the dictatorship worse than her predecessors in South Africa, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Haiti and some others that were the worse of their kind.

By now Israel have ignored more that 400 United Nations Resolutions,and ignored every single Statute of the Geneva Convention.


We do not need to be political minds to see the injustice done to Palestinians, and we do not need to be peace activists to recognized the criminal activities of the IOF-Israel Occupier Forces every day committed to the unarmed non-violent resistant fighters.


The case  of Abdullah Abu Rahma the Palestinians Non-Violent Protester is being making waves  in the Internet for it s gruesome lack of justice and mockery of the Israel Military System.

His story and ordeal  is presented by Karl Shembrihttp://journeytogaza.blogspot.com/

                                               Abdullah in the Center
Last Tuesday, one of the Palestinian leaders of the weekly protests against the Israeli wall in the West Bank village of Bil’in was convicted in an Israeli military court and accused with organising illegal demonstrations against what is in itself an illegal separation fence robbing villagers up to 60% of their land.

Abdullah Abu Rahma makes no bones about his leadership in the beleaguered village surrounded by barbed wire, settlements, checkpoints and fences.

He is always on the frontline every Friday, after noon prayers, facing the full might of the Israeli military that greets the unarmed villagers with tear gas, bullets and stun grenades. I have seen him marching on in the fields towards armed soldiers, his hands held up, under a shower of acrid gas and gunfire.

The gentle and soft-spoken leader of the Bil’in Committee Against the Wall, together with the rest of his fellow villagers, are not new to harassment from the Israeli occupation. Night time incursions and arrests have become a daily feature in this farming village. A relative of Abdullah’s was shot in his leg as he was handcuffed and blindfolded in the hands of an Israeli battalion commander two years ago. Filmed by a young Palestinian girl from behind a window, the incident caused an uproar as it was doing the rounds on TV and the internet.

Then last year, a cousin of Abdullah’s, 31-year-old Bassem Abu Rahma, was killed by a tear gas canister shot in his chest by an Israeli soldier, as he was peacefully protesting against what on his side of the fence is called the “apartheid wall”.

His death had jolted Bil’in, as Bassem was a very loved, peaceful figure among young and old and beyond the village of less than 2,000 people. Known fondly as “the Elephant”, Abdullah had told me on the day of his funeral how he noticed Bassem’s cat sitting on his grave, and how on the morning when he would die he fed a bird he kept in a cage and freed it soon afterwards, before heading towards the mosque to prepare for the demonstration. The elephant who freed a bird, I thought.

Bassem’s death was also caught on tape in April last year. He is seen urging Israelis not to shoot as a foreigner was hit in her leg shortly before he is killed. He did not have a stone in his hands when the tear gas canister fired by an Israeli soldier hit him fatally in his chest.

Despite the tragedy felt by the whole community, Abdullah and Bassem’s relatives had insisted that nonviolence remained the only effective resistance against the occupation.

“It’s more effective than anything else, and that’s why the Israelis want to kill us,” Abdullah had told me, while the village was still in mourning. “They’re terrified, they want to stop us at all costs, because they are seeing other villages following our nonviolent path, and Israelis and international activists are joining us.”

Over the last years, Bil’in has inspired other Palestinian villages, even those in Gaza bordering with Israel, to hold their own demonstrations against the Israeli land grab.

The villagers’ creative and nonviolent demonstrations have given a new face to Palestinian resistance – from impersonating the anti-imperialist Avatar characters to shooting footballs towards Israeli soldiers during the World Cup. Of course not all Palestinians agree this is the best form of resistance – some say it still doesn’t change the realities of the occupation, and detractors say it is not peaceful at all as young Palestinians end up throwing stones at the soldiers. But if that is violence, what word would be appropriate to describe the Israeli clampdown on these unarmed demonstrators?

“We want to continue our strategy of nonviolent action,” Abdullah had told me after Bassem’s death. “If someone from here had to fire a machine gun towards the wall, then the Israelis would have every pretext to come with planes and tanks and bomb all the village. And they would tell the entire world ‘they shot at us’ and Europeans would say ‘the Israelis want to defend themselves, they have a right to kill Palestinians because they’re armed with guns’. But that’s not the case here. We have told all our people we are not against Israelis, we are not against Jews, we are not even against the soldiers. We are against the occupation. We need our land to live in peace, we need it for our children.”

The International Court of Justice had ruled the fence and accompanying land grab to be “contrary to international law” as far back as July 2004, while an Israeli Supreme Court ruled two years ago in a case filed by Bil’in’s mayor that there were not enough “security-military reasons to retain the current route that passes on Bil’in’s land”. In a separate, paradoxical Israeli Supreme Court ruling in 2007, the settlement of Mattiyahu East built on Bil’in’s land was legalised retroactively.

No wonder Abdullah had no trust in the Israeli courts when it was announced last year that Bassem’s killing would be investigated.

“What can you expect from the occupiers’ court?” he had told me as we chatted on the rooftop of the local mosque while mourners came to visit Bassem’s family.

The military court ruled earlier this year that Bassem’s case did not warrant to be investigated. The fence is still there, the land stolen from the villagers is called “a closed military zone” giving Israeli forces a pretext to shoot at anyone approaching the area.

Abdullah is now in a military prison awaiting Israeli justice. Whatever the sentence, Israel will have managed, once again, to prove that it speaks only the language of violence, just because it can.

Can Floods Lead to Taliban Resurgence

Can Floods Lead to Taliban Resurgence

Posted on 12. Aug, 2010 by Marivel Guzman from original post by Raja Mujtaba in Pakistan

By Sajjad Shaukat
On the onset, let me correct it that there are no Taliban in Pakistan, all that we are facing are criminals and terrorists pushed in here by Indo-Israeli network operating in Afghanistan. The western media who are under Zionist control have labeled them as Taliban only to defame this name that we use for students. It is highly objectionable to brand the criminals as Taliban. If this be the case then every student would be taken to be a terrorist then where would we educate our children and what would we call them? But for the sake of this paper I will refer them to as Taliban though they are not.
Pakistan has made numerous protests to the US and NATO command in Afghanistan to reign them in but to no avail.
The recent floods in Pakistan have provided a new level of devastation, especially in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where more than 4 million people have been affected by this natural disaster. The emerging landscape in areas where the water has receded is one in which bridges, roads, schools, health clinics, power facilities and sewage systems have been ruined or seriously damaged.
While Pakistan’s high officials and foreign media said that overall impact of the floods now exceeds that of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, but at the same time some foreign media has started a propaganda campaign that by availing the opportunity, the Taliban can again return and organise themselves. They are likely to get the sympathies of the flood-affected people.
In this connection, under the caption, ‘Flooding’s devastation in Pakistan is seen as opportunity for Taliban’, The Washington Post reported on August 9, 2010: “The slow-motion disaster underway in Pakistan as floodwaters seep into virtually every corner of the nation has devastated basic infrastructure and could open the door to a Taliban resurgence.”
The Post further elaborated, “Over the past year, Pakistan’s army has succeeded in driving Taliban fighters

out of key
sanctuaries in South Waziristan and the Swat Valley. But the damage from the floods could jeopardize those gains, unless infrastructure is quickly rebuilt—an undertaking that will cost billions of dollars and will probably take years.”
However, it is misperception of The Washington Post including other western media as the fact of the matter is that the flood in Pakistan cannot lead to the Taliban resurgence. In this context, army officials are of the opinion that they are aware that the Taliban could try to seize the opportunity but they will not let that happen. Brig. Gen. Tippu Karim, who is overseeing relief efforts for Swat and other northwestern areas made it clear saying: “We have not let down our guard. The safeguards are still in place… reconstruction will be the top priority as soon as Pakistan can get past the immediate challenge of rescuing stranded residents and providing them with food and shelter.”
These floods have diminished the propaganda of the west and the militants against Pakistan, because Pakistan’s armed forces which are helping the flood victims round the clock and have visited various camps—focusing on evacuating people from flood affected areas, distributing food, water, medicine and conveying dead bodies. The relief efforts particularly addressed the Northern Areas, evacuating hundreds of stranded people every day. In this respect, Pak Army has been performing excellent services in the flood-affected areas, which include more water bottles, ready-to-eat meals and cartons of dry rations and boats. Apart from army, Pakistan Air Force helicopters besides evacuation and distribution also delivered medical staff and medicine. PAF has continued the relief operations in the flood affected areas of the country. The entire C-130 fleet along with helicopters is engaged in flood relief operations.
Pakistani navy boats spread across miles of flood waters as the military took a lead role in rescuing survivors from a devastating disaster
It is mentionable that the Pakistan military which had played a dominant role during natural disasters such as in the earthquake of 2005 has come to the fore during the present floods.
It is notable that our army which has already broken the backbone of the Taliban in Buner, Swat, Dir, South Waziristan and other tribal agencies through successful military operations is now busy in fighting Taliban insurgents in some areas. Despite its engagement in a different war, Pak Army has been performing a remarkable job in the regions which have been affected by the floods.
The women and men from troubled areas have highly appreciated all Pakistan’s armed forces, saying that they are saving them. Besides, various leaders of the civil society, political parties and media of our country including the general masses have also immensely praised the positive role of Pak Army in connection with the areas affected by the floods.
Islamic charities including ones that are known fronts for banned militant groups have also begun distributing assistance in some areas, as have western nongovernmental organizations. But for the most part, residents said they are receiving no aid at all from these entities.
It is of particular attention that more than 10 million people have been affected by the present floods. And billions of dollars are needed to rehabilitate the homeless people, reconstruction of roads, bridges, schools, hospitals and other infrastructure, while being a developing country, Pakistan government lacks resources in this regard. This fact has also been realized by the United Nations Organisation which recently revealed that destruction caused by the floods in Pakistan is more than that of the tsunami.

There is no doubt that although some countries, particularly the United States have provided aid to Pakistan in relation to the flood-affected areas, yet it is not enough and they have only fulfilled formality in this respect. For example, the US military has sent six helicopters, 91 troops and hundreds of thousands of meals from neighboring Afghanistan to help with relief efforts in Swat. In fact, each district which was cut off from the others, where the communications networks were jammed and where local roads were destroyed needs much help. Thousands of displaced villagers are still waiting for aid.
As regards the resurgence of the Taliban, the current army leadership is very clear that there is a war that needs to be waged.  If Pakistan’s armed forces leave the flood victims to their fate and if the only saviors for them are charity funds of terrorist organisations then there could be chances of Talibans’ return. And sooner than later, these organisations can start recruiting some of them into their ranks. But quick action by our defence forces has diminished the prospects of Talibans’ resurgence. Besides, people of the affected areas know very well that criminal activities of the Taliban militants such as kidnappings, beheadings, car-snatchings etc. had made life miserable. They wanted to impose their own self-style system of Shariah which was quite opposite to the real Islamic values. Hence, people have no sympathy for the Taliban and they do not favour return of these militants.
Now the right hour has come that setting asides politics and without waiting for foreign aid—by recognising the scale of disaster and suffering which is so huge, we must donate and help the flood victims.
Sajjad Shaukat writes on international affairs and is author of the book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations

Palestinian Cause is a Matter of Humanity

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5310

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI, SECRETARY GENERAL, PALESTINIAN NATIONAL INITIATIVE: I think it's my duty to present to you the reality of the situation in Palestine, because I believe you have the right to know the truth. It is especially important to do that, given the fact that, unfortunately, most of the media outlets do not present to you the reality as they should, and in many cases, as I found in my work, most of the Western media is definitely influenced by a certain narrative, usually the Israeli narrative, when describing the situation. So, of course, when I present that to you, you're not going to see that I'm neutral. I'm not neutral, and I don't claim that. I am a Palestinian who's defending [the] Palestinian cause, but who is defending justice in the region for everybody. But I will try to be as objective as I could. But presenting the truth, and the reality, too, is very important, because as once a great writer and feminist said, Virginia Woolf, she said nothing has happened till it's been described. And there are big parts of our history that were lost because they were not described, and we've promised ourself that we will not let this happen to us again. I will try to explain to you the situation not because—you will notice in my talk I'm not going to talk about the Palestinian rights from the perspective of nationalism, because this is not my goal. As a matter of fact, I think even if I wasn't a Palestinian, if I was born somebody else, Canadian, maybe, or anybody else, and knew the situation, I would be doing exactly what I'm going to do today, because this is an issue of justice that concerns not only Palestinians or Arabs or Christians or Muslims; it concerns all humanity. That's how I see it. The second thing I will do is to try to explain to you this rise of a very powerful movement of nonviolence in Palestine and why the rise of this movement is so important, why it is promising, but why also it is so important that it is supported by strong international solidarity movement to guarantee its success. And then maybe I will try to explain what you can do to help in this situation. But let us first start with the situation. It is important to mention that the whole idea of two-state solution is not new. It's something that goes back to 1947. Originally, the Palestinians—before most of them got dispossessed in 1948 by the Israeli troops, Palestinians opted and wanted to have one democratic state in Palestine with everybody living together, side by side, with equal rights and equal duties. The world community pushed for another kind of solution, which is two states, and in 1947 the United Nations decided on the so-called partition plan, which would allocate 55 percent of the land of historic Palestine to Israelis, to Israel, and 45 percent to Palestinians. At that time, Palestinians represented 70 percent of the population of Palestine and owned more than 90 percent of the land. Yet Israel was established not on 55 percent but rather on 78 percent. What remained was only the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which is only 22 percent of the historic Palestine, and this area was occupied by Israel in 1967. In 1988, the PLO, being the representative of the Palestinians, decided to accept a very painful compromise, and that compromise was that they would agree with a two-state solution, where Palestinian state would be established in the West Bank and Gaza Strip only. That means Palestinians accepted to have a state in less than half of what they should have had, according to the same United Nations resolution which gave Israel its legitimacy. And many Palestinians thought this would lead to peace. That was the basis of Oslo Agreement. And to the great surprise of the Palestinian negotiators, when they went to Camp David in 1999, this was the map offered to them by the Israelis, where the state would be without Jerusalem, without borders, without many areas in the West Bank that include many of the settlements, and most important, without most of the water resources in the West Bank. And as if this was not enough, Prime Minister Sharon, at the time, of Israel, and then later Netanyahu, came up with this plan, which is to take away even more parts of the West Bank, specifically the whole area of the Jordan Valley, and to transform the concept of statehood into nothing but clusters of ghettos or bantustans. So it is important to recognize how the whole idea of statehood over years was reduced gradually from 45 percent to 22 percent, which Palestinians accepted, down to 18 percent, and then later to less than 11 percent in fragmented territories. Did this happen by accident? No. It happened according to a plan. And that plan was developed back in 1967, when the Israeli foreign minister at the time, Yigal Allon, decided to develop this plan, which was adopted by the Israeli establishment, to deal with a problem that the Israelis faced when they occupied us in '67. That problem was we did not leave as they expected. The people decided to learn from the experience of '48. And although their life was at risk, their decision was: we will stay even if we will be killed. And that created the so-called demographic problem for Israel, because they didn't expect to occupy the West Bank and Gaza and find all these people. So the Yigal Allon plan was about how to contain the so-called demographic factor, and the Allon plan was was about building settlements around Jerusalem in the Jordan Valley, and then up in the north and in the south, to enclave Palestinian cities and villages into these clusters of ghettos or bantustans. And that's exactly what happened. This is how the West Bank looked like back in 1967. All the yellow spots you see on the map are Palestinian communities—villages, towns, or refugee camps. There wasn't a single Jewish colony or settlement. First they built settlements—all these red spots. Then they created a series of checkpoints. (I put on the map only half of the military checkpoints, which amount to 630 today, because if I put all the checkpoints on the map, you will see a completely black map.) Then came the wall. The wall was nothing but another factor in a matrix which was designed to appropriate as much land as possible. The wall, contrary to what many people think, is not a wall on the borders between West Bank and Israel. It is not separating Israelis from Palestinians. It is a wall that, in 85 percent of the time, is built inside the occupied Territories, and in most of the time it is separating Palestinians from Palestinians. They claim that the wall was built for security reasons. This is not true. This map shows you the so-called Oslo map. On this map you can see in these dark brown spots the areas that were given to the Palestinian Authority to control. Now, of course, Israel has taken back everything they gave, because there isn't any security (complete control of the Palestinian Authority) anywhere. But during the implementation of Oslo—it started in '94—contrary to what Oslo agreement said, Israel did not redeploy from 90 percent of the West Bank as it should have, but redeployed only [inaudible] these dark spots, and allowed the Palestinian Authority to have some kind of functional authority in the yellow areas, like collecting garbage or controlling the sewage systems, where they existed. But the rest of the white area, this whole white area, which is called Area C, more than 60 percent of the West Bank was maintained under Israeli complete control. That means that if I have a land in Area C, I will not be allowed—. That was a deterioration, by the way, from before Oslo, because after Oslo, if I had to plant a tree in many of the pieces of the land in the Area C, even if I own the land, I would need a permit from the Israeli military. Nobody could build a house, put a water pipe, or build a school without Israeli permits. The only map that looks like this in modern history was this map, the map of the bantustans in the South African apartheid system. Then in some bantustans you have governments. In one of them you had even a king. But that meant nothing, because all these governments were under the control of the apartheid regime, as much as today the Palestinian Authority, whether in West Bank or Gaza, is also under the Israeli occupation. During 42 years of what has become the longest occupation in modern history, and after 62 years of dispossessing more than half of the Palestinian people, who became now more than 5.5 million refugees spread all over the world—including some of those who are living here in Canada—during this period of time, Israel has developed a system of apartheid. I know that for some Israelis it is a harsh word. I know some people find it difficult to use this word. And I invite you wholeheartedly to give me another expression, if you can, to describe this situation today where Israel controls more than 85 percent of our water in the West Bank and allows Palestinians to use no more than 50 cubic meters of water per capita per year, while it allows Israeli settlers to use 2,400 cubic meters per year, 48 times more than us. How would you describe a situation when Israelis make on average a GDP of $26,000 per year, while Palestinians make only $1,000, but we are obliged to buy products at Israeli market price because of an imposed tax [inaudible]? We even have to pay double the price that Israelis pay for water and double the price that they pay for electricity. What is even worse is the fact that most of our main roads in the West Bank, after 42 years of occupation, have been confiscated and have become segregated, and they are exclusive for Israeli people, soldiers, or illegal settlers, while Palestinians who dare to go and drive on them and walk on them could be sentenced, according to the most recent military order, could be put in jail for 7 years. Segregation of roads did not exist even during the time of Jim Crow laws in the United States. They did not exist even during the worst time of apartheid in South Africa. This is the wall. In the Canadian press, you frequently come across a description of the wall as a "fence". Sometimes they call it a "barrier". A fence is nothing harmful. We all know that. But this fence is 8 to 9 meters high. It's going to be 850 kilometers in length. It would be three times the length and twice as high as Berlin wall used to be, the same Berlin wall which was heavily criticized for decades as an awful structure, and which the humanity celebrated the 20th anniversary of its downfall last November. A wall that is depriving people from freedom of movement. A wall that is destroying today our economy, destroying our health system, destroying our ability to get proper education. This is a woman standing on the roof of her two-floor building in Bethlehem. Her house is surrounded by the wall from all directions. I visited her recently, and she told me she cannot go to the roof of her own house anymore, because the Israeli army told her she needs a military permit to go to the roof of her own house. And when she asked why, they told her, because your presence could be a threat to the wall. This is the main road between Jerusalem and Ramallah. I am a medical doctor by education. I practiced medicine for 15 years in Jerusalem. I was born in Jerusalem. But since five years, I'm forbidden, like most Palestinians, from entering Jerusalem even with a permit. The situation in Jerusalem is horrifying. It's a situation where serious discrimination exists. If a man or a woman who has Jerusalem ID tries to get married to another spouse from the West Bank, let's say, he or she will not be able to grant the husband or the wife the citizenship of Jerusalem, which means the husband or the wife cannot come to live in Jerusalem. And if the person who is from Jerusalem goes to live with his wife in the West Bank, he will lose citizenship in Jerusalem. We know of a case recently when a husband and a wife were trying to solve their problem, and they were presented to a judge, an Israeli judge. All the thing that the judge cared about [sic] was how the husband and the wife were not living together and yet they managed to have three children. What is apartheid? Apartheid is a system when you have two different sets of laws for two different people living in the same area. Any Jewish immigrant from Brooklyn or Siberia would be granted immediately the citizenship in the airport when he arrives to Israel, and that person could live not only in Jerusalem but anywhere in any of the illegal settlements in the West Bank without losing the citizenship. If this is not apartheid, then what is apartheid? This road to Jerusalem does not exist anymore. It is already separated by this wall that is dividing Palestinians from Palestinians. On the right side of this photo, you see a man who is a Palestinian, and on the left side you see a woman who's also Palestinian. I once watched a very good movie. I'm sure many of you have seen it. It's called The Pianist. And I was touched by that movie. That movie shows the suffering of the Jewish people during the time of the Holocaust and during the time of the Second World War. And I happen to be informed about that suffering, whether in the Holocaust or in other times, and nothing from what I'm telling you today negates, denies, or undermines the suffering of the Jewish people, whether in the Holocaust or during pogroms of Russia or during the Inquisition time or in other times. Nothing is denying that. But that suffering of the people during the Holocaust does not by any means justify the suffering of the Palestinian people today, because, first of all, we were not responsible for the suffering of the Jewish people. We were not part of it. As a matter of fact, Palestine was one of the safe havens where Jews and Jewish people lived side by side with Christian and Muslim Palestinians, in harmony, before the rise of the Zionist movement. And I am sure—I tend to think—sometimes I dream about this and think, if those who suffered during the Holocaust and died would come back to life, I am sure they will be today supportive of the Palestinian rights, because they would not accept injustice that they were also subjected to. That's why when I was watching the movie The Pianist, I could not stop myself from thinking about Qalqilyah, a city with 46,000 people located in the north of the West Bank. You see an air photo in the slides here which shows you the city surrounded by a huge white structure from all directions. It's the wall, which is enclaving the city, leaving only one little passage, a small road that is 8 meters width, which has a gate, and the gate has a key, and the Israeli soldiers hold the key, and they can shut off the city any time they want. This is how it looks from the air. You can see the wall surrounding the city. And on the left side you can see a highway [inaudible] which was also built on the land of Qalqilyah. But this road is exclusive for Israelis. The people of Qalqilyah would not be allowed to reach that road, as much as they would not be allowed to reach the land of their farms around the city. The only thing that changed in this picture is that recently the Israeli side has painted the wall and planted trees so that the drivers on the highway would not be hurt by the image of this terrible wall. Nobody, of course, thought of what's happening on the other side. And today, tens of thousands of people are enclaved in clusters behind the wall, between the wall and the borders with Israel. They cannot go west and they cannot go east. They cannot go to schools or universities, or to hospitals. If they want to cross, they need permits, which have to be renewed every one or two or three months. But even if they have military permits to cross, they can cross only according to the schedule that is established here by the Israeli army, which says people can cross only between 7:40 in the morning and 8:00, from 2:00 to 2:15 p.m., and 6:45 to 7:00 p.m.—50 minutes a day. You can imagine what happens to a woman in labor if she has to give birth—and you know that labor doesn't come to women according to a schedule. You can imagine what happened to some people who had heart attacks and suffered for hours before they were allowed to cross the gate. As a matter of fact, 80 women, 80 Palestinian women, had the great unpleasant experience of having to give birth in front of soldiers at checkpoints or in front of the gates. And they lost—one-third of them lost their babies. Nothing in the world can justify this image, when children have to line behind the gates and wait for the Israeli soldiers to cross. I know that recently here in Canada and in some other places there is a lot of talk about anti-Semitism, and anybody that dares to criticize the Israeli policy would automatically be accused of anti-Semitism. Well, let me tell you that the way I see it in this picture, what I see here is also anti-Semitism, where an Israeli soldier is practicing anti-Semitism against Palestinian children, who are Semites, too. In this picture you see, in the upper part, a farm. In the lower part you see what remained of the farm after the wall was built in the village of Falamiya. This used to be a market in another village called Nazlat 'Isa. This, what remained of the market after the wall was built. This is a house that was cut into two pieces so that the wall would be built. And this is how close the wall is to people's houses. This is how a settlement looks like. And this is how a Palestinian village looks like near that settlement. This is how it looks when people cross the checkpoints. They could be delayed for hours. But maybe one of the worst suffering is happening today in Gaza. The Israeli government claims that it has left Gaza, but the reality is that it is still controlling all the passages to Gaza, controls the water around Gaza (and that's why any fisherman who dares to cross more than 5 miles into the sea would be shot at), and controls the airspace, as well. This little, tiny sector, which is only 360 square kilometers, with 1.5 million people living in it, has been put under terrible embargo and siege for the last 3 years. And last year the Israeli army used all its arsenal to attack that little sector. Sixty F-16 jet fighters were used to attack the Gaza area, and within three minutes they killed 240 people. The total outcome was 1,440 deaths among Palestinians, mostly civilians, including 412 children. Five thousand three hundred were injured, including 1,855 children. Had we have the population of the United States [sic], we would be talking about approximately 250,000 people killed and around 1 million people injured within a period of three weeks. Twenty-five thousand houses have been demolished partially or completely. The world community met in Sharm el-Sheikh and pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild the houses. After a year and a half, not a single house or school or hospital has been rebuilt, because Israel has not allowed a single sack of cement or piece of glass to enter Gaza, and the whole international community is incapable of convincing Israel to allow construction material to reach Gaza. In our research we did recently, we found out that 90 percent of the people who had to leave their homes during the attacks went back, and they are now living in these destroyed houses because they have no other place to go to. But one of the most painful things to me was the fact that when the Israeli army was leaving the inside of Gaza area, they destroyed, on their way out, 352 remaining factories for no reason whatsoever. All these images are images of factories that were destroyed completely.

Why Obama is Subjected To Blackmails

Why Obama is Subjected To Blackmails

Posted on 08. Aug, 2010 by Wayne Madsen in Hot Topics

SPECIAL REPORT. Obama and Emanuel: members of same gay bath house club in Chicago

By Wayne Madsen
President Obama and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel are lifetime members of the same gay bath house in uptown Chicago, according to informed sources in Chicago’s gay community, as well as veteran political sources in the city.
The bath house, Man’s Country, caters to older white men and it has been in business for some 30 years and is known as one of uptown Chicago’s “grand old bathhouses.” WMR was told by sources who are familiar with the bath house that it provides one-year “lifetime” memberships to paying customers and that the club’s computerized files and pre-computer paper files, include membership information for both Obama and Emanuel. The data is as anonymized as possible for confidentiality purposes. However, sources close to “Man’s Country” believe the U.S. Secret Service has purged the computer and filing cabinet files of the membership data on Obama and Emanuel.
Members of Man’s Country are also issued club identification cards. WMR learned that Obama and Emanuel possessed the ID cards, which were required for entry.
Obama began frequenting Man’s Country in the mid-1990s, during the time he transitioned from a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School to his election as an Illinois State Senator in 1996. Emanuel, reportedly joined Man’s Country after he left the Clinton White Hosue and moved back to Chicago in 1998, joining the investment firm of Wasserstein Perella and maintaining his membership during his 2002 campaign for the U.S. 5th District House seat vacated by Rod Blagojevich, who was elected governor.
Man’s Country appears to be a “one stop shopping” center for gay men. The club’s website advertises steam rooms, “fantasy rooms,” bed rooms, male strippers, adult movies, and lockers.
However, Man’s Country was not the only location for Obama’s predatory gay sex activities. The Chicago gay community is aware that Obama often made contacts with younger men at his famous “pick-up basketball” games. It was at these “pick up” matches where Obama first met Emanuel and a young Democratic campaign worker and senior bank vice president named Alexi Giannoulias. Currently running for Obama’s old U.S. Senate seat now occupied by Roland Burris, Giannoulias successfully ran for Illinois Treasurer in 2006 after being drafted for the run by Chicago’s Democratic machine.
The Blagojevich trial: “Sex, Lies, and Audio tapes” — Fitzgerald’s US Attorney’s Office part of White House cover-up of gay sex in the Second City
Giannoulias was a vice president and senior loan officer for his father’s bank, Broadway Bank, from 2002 to 2006. Broadway Bank made real estate loans to Antoin “Tony” Rezko, the chief of Rezmar Corporation. On May 13, 2008, Rezko was found guilty, after being indicted by a grand jury at the behest of the U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois Patrick J. Fitzgerald, of six counts of wire fraud, six counts of mail fraud, two counts of corrupt solicitation, and two counts of money laundering. Rezko has been in solitary confinement at the Metropolitan Detention Center at Van Buren and Clark in Chicago since June 2008. However, Rezko has not yet been officially sentenced to a federal prison. A Syrian-American, Rezko is considered to be a flight risk, even though his one-time fortune of $50 million has been reduced to zero.
One Republican politician in Chicago told WMR that Rezko will be a prime witness for Blagojevich’s defense. “Figure it this way, Rezko’s been in solitary confinement in the city jail since June 0f 2008 . . . if he is released to appear at Blagojevich’s trial as the primary witness, everyone expects him to squeal like a pig,” said the Republican politico.
In 2005, Rezko reportedly engaged in a complicated real estate “flip” through which his wife Rita and Obama agreed to split an empty lot adjoining a home that Obama bought in Chicago’s Kenwood district. The deal saw Obama buy the home for $1.65 million, which was $300,00 below market value. Obama then bought a strip of the adjoining property from Mrs. Rezko, a speculative deal that stood to make Obama a handsome profit. Since Rezko’s conviction, the property has has reportedly gone into bankruptcy. Giannoulias’s Broadway Bank was seized by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation on April 23, 2010, reportedly as Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner was on his way to Chicago to present the bank with a bailout check. Geithner quickly changed his plans.
Giannoulias, Broadway’s then-senior loan officer, has denied being involved in the decision to loan money to Rezko.
Blagojevich’s trial judge, U.S. District Court judge James Zagel, a crony of former Illinois Republican Governor Jim Thompson, ruled that all 500 hours of phone calls intercepted and taped by Fitzgerald could not be played during Blagojevich’s trial as demanded by Blagojevich and his defense lawyers. Blagojevich demanded that Fitzgerald “show up in court and explain to everybody . . . why you don’t want those tapes that you made played in court.”
WMR has learned that the tapes may contain salty references Obama’s and Emanuel’s private lives.
WMR attempted to interview Blagojevich’s senior defense lawyer Sam Adam to no avail but other informed sources told us that the tapes, if played, would highlight the corruption of not only Obama, Emanuel, and other member of Obama’s Chicago “brain trust” but also Fitzgerald himself. WMR was told that Fitzgerald’s tactics have included providing sex and drugs to imprisoned felons to get them to provide perjured testimony at federal trials.
It is exactly the type of federal prosecutorial misconduct by Fitzgerald that former Republican Governor said was used by state prosecutors when he commuted the death sentences of Illinois’s death row population. Ryan was indicted by Fitzgerald for fraud and he is currently serving out a federal prison sentence.
Blagojevich’s trial was scheduled to begin on June 3 and Fitzgerald’s main interest was to keep the trial focused on Blagojevich, especially after he managed to “flip” Blagojevich’s former chief of staff John Harris to testify against the impeached and ousted governor. WMR learned from informed sources that one lawyer on Harris’s defense team is involved in a gay partner scandal that was discovered by the attorney’s wife.
Some of the wiretaps may reveal that it was not Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s longtime friend and current White House policy adviser who was Obama’s top candidate to fill his U.S. Senate seat, but the young 32-year old “pick up basketball” friend of Obama, Giannoulias, then serving his second year as state Treasurer. However, Obama had avoided campaigning for Giannoulias in Illinois and there were initial indications that the president had “thrown Giannoulias under the bus,” according to some Democratic political circles in Chicago. However, Obama has since had a change of heart and began to campaign for him.
Mutiple Chicago sources report that Republicans who see Giannoulias’s Obama connections as providing an edge in his Senate race this year should not celebrate prematurely. Giannoulias’s GOP opponent, U.S. Representative Mark Kirk, a Naval Reserve intelligence officer, has also been identified as a closeted gay man. Kirk divorced his wife last year after an eight-year marriage. They had no children.
In addition, U.S. Representative Aaron Shock, who took over the House seat vacated by Obama’s Republican Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, is, according to Chicago Boy’s Town sources, a habitué of Minibar, a noted gay bar in Chicago’s gay district. For an extremely young first term member of the House, observers were surprised when GOP Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia named Shock as a Deputy Minority Whip.


Man’s Country, one of Chicago’s “grand old bathhouses” and located at 5015 North Clark Street in Chicago’s “Boystown,” was a frequent hangout for State Senator Obama and Rahm Emanuel
Sources in Chicago’s gay community report that Obama was attracted to Man’s Country’s older white clientele because he generally enjoys being fellated by older white men. Obama would regularly be seen at Man’s Country on Wednesdays.
Obama reportedly has never engaged in reciprocal activity. The sources also confirm the allegations made during the 2008 campaign by Larry Sinclair, a Chicago visitor who revealed that in 1999 he engaged in such oral sex activity and crack cocaine use with then-State senator Obama on two occasions, once in the back of a Chicago limousine operated by Five Star Limousine Service, and the other at a Chicago area motel, the Comfort Suites in Gurnee, Illinois.
After revealing details of the encounter at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, Sinclair was arrested by Washington Metropolitan Police on a fugitive warrant issued by Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, the son of Obama’s vice presidential running mate, Senator Joe Biden. Sinclair was charged with a misdemeanor count of theft of money orders, however, the state of Delaware declined prosecution. Beau Biden later declined to run for his father’s old Senate seat because of his duties to prosecute a major pedophilia case involving Lewes, Delaware pediatrician Dr. Earl Bradley. There are reports that Biden’s office helped to cover up Bradley’s activities, including failing to authorize search warants for Bradley’s office and computer.
Chicago’s “DLC” — not the Democratic Leadership Council but the “Down Low Club” — a gay matchmaking service
WMR spoke to several well-placed sources in Chicago who reported that Jeremiah Wright, the pastor of Obama’s former church of 20 years, Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC) on Chicago’s south side, ran what was essentially a matchmaking service for gay married black professional members of the church, including lawyers and businessmen, particularly those with children. The matchmaking club was called the “Down Low Club” but references to it over the phone and email simply referred to the group with the code phrase “DLC.” The ruse, according to our sources, was to make anyone who was eavesdropping on the communications believe that the references were to the Democratic Leadership Council, also known as the DLC.
The gay DLC’s services were intended to keep ensure TUCC’s gay members avoided posting solicitations on web services like Craig’s List and refrain from cruising gay bars. The strategy was to protect them from getting busted and being “outed.”
Among the members of the gay “DLC” were Obama and TUCC’s choir director, Donald Young, an openly gay man who reportedly had a sexual relationship with Obama. Two other gay members of the church were Larry Bland and Nate Spencer. Young and Bland were brutally murdered, execution style, in late 2007. Bland was murdered on November 17, 2007 and Young on December 24, 2007. The latter was killed by multiple gunshot wounds. Spencer reportedly died on December 26, 2007, official cause of death: “septicemia, pneumonia, and HIV.”
“DLC” members often went on camping trips arranged by TUCC. Wright reportedly was the head of the “DLC” matchmaking services and ensured that its members protected each other.
The “DLC’s” clientele included Obama and other gay members of TUCC, including, reportedly Young, Bland, and Spencer. Fox 32 Chicago reported that Bland’s mother, Josephine Bland, was so upset at her son inviting men into their home as a result of contacting them through gay web sites like “Adam4Adam,” she moved out.
The gay community in Chicago knows to keep away from the TUCC and “DLC” stories because of the “creepiness” of the operation and the suspicious deaths of the three TUCC gay black men.
Although Obama protected his alternate life style through the secretiveness of the “DLC,” he was not so careful when he proclaimed he was a state senator while frolicking at Man’s Country in uptown Chicago.
Love: Obama’s personal trainer
Reggie Love, a former Duke basketball and football player and unsuccessful National Basketball hopeful, currently serves as Obama’s personal trainer and White House “special assistant” — he has been called Obama’s “body man” – who receives a salary of $104,000 a year. Love is also reportedly one of Obama’s regular gay sex partners. Love joined Obama’s Senate staff in a senior staff position in 2006.
Media General’s tabloid, the National Enquirer, proffered a story last year about Michelle Obama being furious about the relationship between her husband and his “body man.” The Enquirer’s sister tabloid, The Globe, later floated a story about Obama having a relationship with a Democratic campaign official named Vera Baker. WMR has been told that this relationship was a clever ruse to throw off speculation about Obama’s actual past sex partners. Baker has apparently left the United States for relatively more obscurity in Martinique. Media General’s tabloids have scooped the mainstream media on sex scandals involving Bill Clinton and Gennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinsky, Tiger Woods, and John Edwards and Rielle Hunter.
WMR’s Chicago sources believe the Secret Service records of presidential candidate Obama’s activities in Chicago would show that Obama regularly arrived at Love’s Chicago residence at 9:00 am and departed at 9:15 am. Sources told WMR that while 15 minutes is much too short for a personal training exercise, it is ample time for fellatio.
Bill Frist, “Brokeback Mountain,” and Obama
In 2006, after Obama became the junior senator from Illinois, WMR’s sources in the Congressional Black Caucus reported that there were persistent rumors of gay trysts between Obama and then-GOP Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee. The allegations at the time seemed unbelievable.
However, based on Obama’s penchant for receiving fellatio from older white men, a column written by The Washington Post’s “In the Loop” columnist Al Kamen on April 7, 2006, some four months into Obama’s Senate term, may have expanded relevance. Kamen reported he received an invitation to attend Frist’s “5th Annual VOLPAC ’06 Weekend” in Nashville from April 21st to 23rd and that the invitation card required one to “unbuckle the cowboy’s pants and look inside to see what this was all about.” Kamen opined that the invitation seemed “a bit too ‘Brokeback Mountain.’”
The invitation advertised that the shindig would feature “one-of-a-kind music and special friends,” although Kamen said there was no indication what made the “friends” so “special.” Kamen then wrote, “The back of the card shows the cowboy from behind with a red flowered handkerchief sticking out of his right pocket. Wait a minute — wasn’t there something about how this used to be some kind of code in the gay community years ago? A way to signal each other in crowded, noisy bars? So we checked the GayCityUSA.com’s Hanky Codes. Sure enough, there it was in the chart explaining what they mean: red hanky in right pocket. Oh, dear.”

Rumors about Obama and Frist ran amok in Congressional Black Caucus circles in 2006.
Although Frist ran on the pledge of only serving two terms, he became Senate Majority Leader with all the perks of the office. WMR’s sources in Chicago’s gay community revealed that Frist’s Majority Leader predecessor, Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, was also known to seek the services of male prostitutes. Frist, who said he planned to run for President in 2006, decided against a run for the White House and also declined a run for Tennessee governor in 2010.
With the rumor mill running at full speed in 2006, it is obvious why Frist abandoned politics so quickly for the medical business. Frist later endorsed Obama’s health care proposals. A year later, when GOP Senator Larry Craig was arrested while soliciting for sex in a men’s toilet stall at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, he changed his mind about immediately resigning his Senate seat.  Knowing about his colleagues’ behavior, he dug in his heels and completed his term in January 2009.
Rahm the “Sugar Daddy”
Obama’s chief of staff Emanuel, who won a scholarship to the Joffrey Ballet but turned it down to attend college, is married and, like Obama, has children, in Emanuel’s case, a son and two daughters.
However, Emanuel, who is 50, also travel frequently with a male companion, a wealthy Chicago real estate developer, some five to six years his senior. WMR has learned from Chicago’s gay community as well as political sources that Emanuel and his friend have gone together on a trip to India, skiing vacations, and soon plan a vacation in Florida, sans Mrs. Emanuel and the kids.
In Chicago’s gay community, Emanuel is known as “sugar daddy,” promising young men with perks and lucrative positions if they sleep with him. On occasion, Emanuel has been with older men, such as his travel companion, but his preference is young, according to WMR’s sources. Emanuel also often uses bicycling and basketball venues to make his approaches. Being an Emanuel “basketball buddy” is a key to professional success.
WMR spoke to one member of the gay community in Chicago who had first hand knowledge of one of Emanuel’s bed partners, an older man who runs a non-profit symphony organization.
Obama’s other sex partners
WMR has previously reported on Obama’s past trysts with Alabama Democratic U.S. Representative Artur Davis, a current primary candidate for governor of Alabama. Although not in the same class, Obama and Davis attended Harvard Law School during an overlap of their attendance at the law school.
The information on Davis and Obama was gathered by opposition researchers for former Alabama Representative Earl Hilliard, who Davis defeated in the 2002 Democratic primary. Recently, WMR was informed by sources in Alabama that Attorney General Eric Holder traveled three days ago to Alabama to inform Davis that if he loses his primary race, he would be nominated by Obama to fill the job of U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama, a position still held by Bush-appointee Leura Canary, one of the main prosecutors of convicted and jailed former Alabama Democratic Governor Don Siegelman.
Chicago sources also informed WMR of another past gay partner of Obama, Massachusetts Democratic Governor Deval Patrick.

Men who have reportedly had sexual relations with Barack Obama Donald Young, TUCC Choir director Larry Sinclair, gay escort Reggie Love, White House presidential assistant and Obama’s “body man” Artur Davis, US Representative from Alabama and gubernatorial candidate Bill Frist, former GOP Senate Majority Leader Deval Patrick, Governor of Massachusetts

The Clear and Present Blackmail Threat
Leading secret alternate life styles, Obama and his chief of staff provide classic blackmail threats. Considering Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, who is reputedly  a semi-open lesbian, the question must be posed how much Obama’s and Emanuel’s own covert life styles led to the decision to nominate Kagan, someone with no experience on a judicial bench.
Similarly, the fact that so much is known about Obama’s and Emanuel’s trysts in Chicago begs another important question. If politicians, gay community activists, and journalists in the Windy City are aware of Obama’s and Emanuel’s highly blackmailable gay life styles, the same can certainly hold true for the executives of one of Chicago’s corporate headquarters — that of BP America’s Production Operations.
Throw in the intelligence agencies of America’s allies, friends, enemies, and the situation becomes a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. He has written for several renowned papers and blogs.
Madsen is a regular contributor on Russia Today. He has been a frequent political and national security commentator on Fox News and has also appeared on ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, and MS-NBC. Madsen has taken on Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity on their television shows.  He has been invited to testifty as a witness before the US House of Representatives, the UN Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and an terrorism investigation panel of the French government.
As a U.S. Naval Officer, he managed one of the first computer security programs for the U.S. Navy. He subsequently worked for the National Security Agency, the Naval Data Automation Command, Department of State, RCA Corporation, and Computer Sciences Corporation.
Madsen is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), Association for Intelligence Officers (AFIO), and the National Press Club.

Israel Classifies its Past as Top Secret

By Lawrence Davidson Posted by Marivel Guzman

Israel is a land built on myths. It is, of course, not unique in this. Indeed in this way Israel is very much like its patron, the United States. In order to build and maintain a mythical status a nation must create a picture of itself from its very inception and pass that picture down generation upon generation. 

For the U.S. it is the idea that the nation is a beacon of both democracy and capitalism unto the world and what it does in terms of foreign policy, and even when at war, is always done altruistically. For Israel, the myth is that the nation is democratic and the last bastion of safety for the world’s Jews.

Everything it does, even when that amounts to imperial expansion, is done defensively. In order to maintain these myths one must control history. 

The story line must be taught in the schools and supported by the nation’s multiple media sources. One must raise up a population that is so well inculcated with its mythic worldview that if something occurs which contradicts it, it can be readily dismissed as an exception to the rule.

In the case of the United States, two hundred years of indoctrination and a long term status as a great power has allowed its myths to survive, in the minds of its own people, the horrors of Viet Nam, Iraq and now Afghanistan.

Israel is a much younger nation with only three or so generations of indoctrination under its psychological belt, so to speak. And, while it may be a regional superpower, its reputation in the Middle East is built on fear. 

With the rest of the world that reputation is associated with equally unstable and temporary attitudes, like Holocaust guilt. In essence, apart from the convinced Zionists, Israel’s sustaining national myths are still fragile.

A number of years ago Israel applied its law that required the government archives to be opened for public review and research following a thirty year waiting period for political affairs and fifty years for military affairs. 

This brought many of the government documents referring to seminal years of 1947 and 1948 into the open. The result was a serious, evidence based, revision of the founding legends of Israel. In other words, the state lost momentary control of its own history. The result undermined the nation’s mythic self-image amongst observers outside of Israel and caused significant unease within the country.

So powerful was the reaction of the elites against this revised interpretation of the past that the “new historians” who brought it forth are now either teaching abroad or have, as in the case of Benny Morris, recanted. In the interim things have only gotten worse for the Zionist defenders of the idealized Israel. Multiple invasions of Lebanon and the essentially defenseless Palestinian cities and towns, the slaughter of the innocent, the reduction of Gaza to an open air prison, the on-going confiscation of land and property in the Occupied Territories, rampant settler violence, and the repeated election of racist governments have resulted in a worldwide civil society effort to isolate Israel and induce it to reform itself in the same manner as South Africa. 

Except in the United States, Israel’s claim to act only in self-defense is not seen as credible and the accusation that all who disagree are anti-Semites not taken seriously. Yet outside disenchantment, as dangerous as it might be in the long run, is not nearly as threatening as the erosion of one’s domestic population’s adherence to their national myths. That adherence must be maintained at all cost otherwise the nation will metamorphose into something that no longer supports its present elites. 

The fate of the “new historians” has demonstrated just how determined the Israeli establishment is to prevent that sort of erosion. That being the case, Israel’s present Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has extended for an additional twenty years the period during which government archives can remain closed. 

The Haaretz article announcing this decision says that the Prime Minister acted because of “pressure from the intelligence agencies,” but Netanyahu probably did not need much convincing. The period of time for which documents will now remain classified include such events as the 1954 Lavon Affair, the 1956 Sinai invasion, and the 1967 war which saw the heinous attack on the USS Liberty and the seizure of the Golan Heights. 

The State Archivist, Yehoshua Freundlich told Haaretz that “some of the material was selected classified because ‘it has implications over [Israel’s] adherence to international law.’” This is probably an understatement.

To add insult to injury, Haaretz reports that there is a good possibility that the government’s decision to classify much of Israel’s past as top secret will mean that “archives that had already been made public would again be hidden away.” 

If you study the new historians’ revisionist history of Israel you are struck by the Machiavellian behavior of men like David Ben Gurion who made a profession of being “economical with the truth.” 

So devious were many of Israel early establishment figures that their political competitors, such as the neo-fascist Ze’ev Jabotinsky and the terrorist Menachem Begin, appear almost refreshing in their frightful honesty. 

Today we have the worst of all worlds in Israel–leaders who are both terrorists and shockingly devious. Now by their own admission, today’s Zionist leaders must hide away their nation’s sins lest the entire world turn away from Israel, and perhaps even their own citizens begin to fear that their national myths cannot stand honest and objective examination.

 

America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood (University Press of Florida, 2001), Islamic Fundamentalism (Greenwood Press, 2003), and, co-author with Arthur Goldschmidt of the Concise History of the Middle East, 8^th and 9^th Editions (Westview Press, 2006 and 2009). His latest book is entitled Foreign Policy, Inc.: Privatizing American National Interest (University of Kentucky Press, 2009). Professor Davidson travels often and widely in the Middle East. He also has taken on the role of public intellectual in order to explain to American audiences the impact of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.