Winter Patriot Community Blog

March 4, 2012 - Clerical Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has tightened his grip on Iran's faction-ridden politics after loyalists won over 75 percent of seats in parliamentary elections at the expense of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a near-complete count showed. The widespread defeat of Ahmadinejad supporters - including his sister, Parvin Ahmadinejad - is expected to reduce the president to a lame duck after he sowed divisions by challenging the utmost authority of Khamenei in the governing hierarchy. The outcome of Friday's vote, essentially a contest between conservative hardline factions with reformist leaders under house arrest, will have no big impact on Iranian foreign policy, notably its nuclear stand-off with the West. But it will boost Khamenei's influence in next year's presidential election....

March 04, 2012 - A day after reducing the sentence of Palestinian political prisoner Hana Shalabi from six months to four months, Israeli authorities denied a request by the Palestinian Prisoner support group Addameer demanding that the arresting officer and two others accused of torturing Shalabi be forced to testify. Sunday marks the 17th day of Shalabi's open-ended hunger strike, which she vowed to continue despite the reduction in her sentence. On 23 February, Shalabi's 65-year old mother and 67-year old father joined her hunger strike in solidarity....

March 4, 2012 -- The leader of the business community in the Gaza Strip warned on Sunday that dozens of factories are at risk of closure due to Gaza's fuel crisis. Ali al-Hayik, the head of Gaza's Federation of Industries and the Palestinian Businessmen Association, called on the Hamas-led government to provide fuel to factories to avert an impending catastrophe for local industry. The government must take responsibility for the crisis and is tasked with supporting the private sector, al-Hayik said in a press statement...

March 4, 2012 - Holtzman's new book, coauthored with Cynthia Cooper, is called "Cheating Justice: How Bush and Cheney Attacked the Rule of Law and Plotted to Avoid Prosecution -- and What We Can Do About It."... I don't think it's an unfair criticism to object that a book has left out a large but intimately related topic, one that apears to have been carefully avoided. Partisan prosecution of crimes and non-crimes by Republicans under President Clinton has been aggravated by Republican defensiveness and Democratic spinelessness under Bush. But it is the Democratic switch to defending all presidential wrongdoing since 2008 that has put the largest nails into the coffin of legitimate rule by law in this country. Bush's crimes have been legitimized. Obama has claimed the power to torture as he deems necessary, the power to imprison and rendition as he sees fit, the power to murder any human being including U.S. citizens and children as he and he alone declares necessary, and powers of state secrecy that Nixon and Cheney never dreamed of. While Bush lied the Congress into a war that a reasonably intelligent 8 year old could have seen through, Obama has made the launching of wars a matter for the president alone. And that's just fine with Democrats...

March 4, 2012 - The arrest of Hana 'Shalabi, by the Zionist army two weeks ago,without proof that a criminal act has actually been committed,raises the urgent question of protection of prisoners released during the exchange operation last October, which managed to free 1,054 prisoners in exchange for the Zionist soldier Gilad Shalit, captured by the Palestinian resistance on June 25 2006, in his chariot inside the borders of Gaza... Hana 'Shalabi is not the only political prisoner to be thrown back in jail after being released. During the previous months, three other political prisoners released during the prisoners swap were arrested in the region of al-Khalil - without proof that a criminal act has actually been committed....

March 4, 2012 - Last week's lifting of a travel ban on a handful of US nationals accused of carrying out unlicensed NGO activities - and their subsequent departure from the country - triggered sharp reactions from parliamentarians on Sunday. A large number of members of the People's Assembly - the lower house of Egypt's parliament - used scheduled meetings of parliamentary committees to vent their anger at the lifting of the travel ban and for what they called "the double standards" inherent in US policy...

February 24, 2012 - Adnan symbolizes decades of merciless Israeli repression. He preferred death over living under its ruthless boot. Now, after Israel's promised April release, he struggles to live. Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-I) examined and him several times during Safed Hospital captivity. He's still there in deteriorated condition. Sixty-six days without food left him perilously close to death. After he agreed to again ingest food, PHR-I said he's "expected to go through a long and complicated recovery process." Its outcome is far from certain. PHR-I will issue regular updates...

February 24, 2012 - ...The Khan Younis Training Centre (KYTC), located near Rafah, at the southern end of the Gaza Strip, was set up by UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency) in 2007 to provide training for Gazan refugees and to inject skilled labour into the local economy. One of the programmes it offers is Autotronics, which includes diagnosis, maintenance & repair of automotive systems, injection & ignition systems and electronics & electrical systems. Ever since Hamas won the 2006 elections in Palestine and enforced their right to govern the Gaza Strip this tiny coastal enclave has been viciously blockaded by Israel, turning it into a prison. Nothing gets in or out without Israel's say-so....

February 24, 2012 - Israel was the focus of discussions by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) earlier this month. Israel is obliged to submit a report to the Geneva-based committee on how it has implemented the rights enshrined in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) every two years. However, Israel waited until this year to submit a series of reports that were formally due in 2006, 2008 and 2010....

February 24, 2012 - The ''friends'' of Syria meeting in Tunis have demonstrated the extent of their impotence in tackling the violence taking place in the country, which has seen more than seventy people killed today, anti-regime activists say. Meanwhile the Red Cross is engaged in a very difficult negotiation in Homs in order to evacuate journalists to Lebanon, who have been wounded in the heavily bombarded Bab Amro area over recent days. The much-awaited meeting in Tunisia, which has seen more than 50 representatives from nations and international organisations, started in the afternoon....On the humanitarian level, the 'friends of Syria' have set a ''48-hour ultimatum'' to Damascus to provide help to civilians who have been injured in the violence. The draft document does not specify the precise nature of the consequences for the Syrian regime should the ultimatum not be kept... The United States went no further than the statement, from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that if Assad refuses humanitarian aid for his people, his hands will be even more ''blood-soaked''....

February 24, 2012 - U.S. intelligence agencies don't believe Iran is actively trying to build an atomic bomb. A highly classified U.S. intelligence assessment circulated to policymakers early last year largely affirms that view, originally made in 2007. Both reports, known as national intelligence estimates, conclude that Tehran halted efforts to develop and build a nuclear warhead in 2003. The most recent report, which represents the consensus of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, indicates that Iran is pursuing research that could put it in a position to build a weapon, but that it has not sought to do so. Although Iran continues to enrich uranium at low levels, U.S. officials say they have not seen evidence that has caused them to significantly revise that judgment. Senior U.S. officials say Israel does not dispute the basic intelligence or analysis....

February 24, 2012 -- Thousands of Palestinians rallied in the southern West Bank city of Hebron on Friday, commemorating the anniversary of a deadly shooting in Hebron's revered mosque. The protesters, marching from the Wasaya Rasul Allah mosque in southern Hebron, demanded the city's main thoroughfare be reopened after Israeli forces shut it off shortly after extremist settler Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Palestinians at prayer. Israeli forces deployed throughout the city in advance to prevent the demonstrations, an Israeli army spokesman said. Soldiers detained six Palestinians from the march, including coordinator of Youth Against Settlement....

February 24, 2012 - President Barack Obama condoned America's drone program last month, dismissing allegations that it's caused more harm than good. In Pakistan, the families of civilians killed in these strikes are pleading with the UN to tell America otherwise. Reprieve, a legal action charity based out of London, UK, has delivered a complaint to the United Nations on behalf of the families of slain Pakistani civilians. More than a dozen families in Pakistan have appealed to Reprieve for assistance after their own pleas for the abandonment of drone use in their country have been ignored by the US. Now with the aid of the British-based organization, they hope that the UN will intervene and put an end to American drone attacks....

February 24, 2012 - Israeli soldiers Friday opened fire and killed Talat Ramiyeh, 23, during demonstrations near the Israeli army checkpoint at Qalandia, south of Ramallah, according to medical sources. Some reports said Ramiyeh was killed outside al-Ram, south of Qalandia checkpoint when residents marched to the outskirts of the town to protest Israeli police actions against Palestinians at al-Aqsa Mosque earlier in the day....

February 24, 2012 - Scores of citizens on Friday staged a massive demonstration in al-Tahrir square in central Baghdad, on the eve of the first anniversary of mass protests in which 16 people were killed across the country last year. "The demonstrators' requests include political reforms, improvements in services such as electricity, offering job opportunities and fighting corruption," Aswat al-Iraq news agency correspondent said. They underlined that they will continue their protest on Saturday (Feb. 25) in memory of the first demonstration against corruption....

February 24, 2012 - Palestinians are demonstrating in Gaza City in solidarity with Syrian anti-government protesters. The group mostly students hoisted Palestinian and Syrian flags and burned images of President Bashar Assad .They shouted "Bashar go to hell" ..."leave us Palestinians alone we have enough killers "...we don't need you... Hamas police reportedly authorized the protest.

February 24, 2012 - On Thursday 23rd February, al-Aqsa Mosque was attacked for the second time by Israeli settlers at dawn. Seventy-one settlers broke into al-Aqsa Mosque under the protection of Israeli policemen who arrested six Palestinians who were praying at the Mosque and closed its main entrances, according to the Defense Committee member Silwan Fakhry Abu Diab, during his statement to PNN....