Winter Patriot Community Blog

February 18, 2012 - ... The political crisis was created by Nouri al-Maliki. Political Stalemate I is the period that followed the March 2010 elections. Nouri's State of Law was predicted to win by a wide margin (predicted by Nouri) but his fantasies of being beloved were incorrect. Iraqiya (led by Ayad Allawi) bested Stated of Law. Because Nouri had the backing of the Barack Obama White House, he ignored the Constitution and used the Supreme Court of Iraq (which he controls) to issue questionable verdicts that benefited him. For eight months, Iraq was at a stalemate.... Nouri's a thug. If you ever doubted that, check out the latest actions of Nouri (and his 'independent' Supreme Court). Kitabat reports that Iraqi Red Crescent workers are seeing their children arrested. The Red Crescent. (Part of the International Red Cross.) Who will Nouri target next and how long will his sycophantic followers in the media continue to look the other way?...

February 18, 2012 - In the beginning there were engineers, soldiers and bulldozers. It was after the International Court of Law in The Hague had already barred construction of The Separation Wall within the West Bank, and before the Israeli High Court of Justice found the Wall's route in Bil'in illegal. It was after someone somewhere decided that more than 2,000 dunams of the village's agricultural lands were to be annexed to Israel by force, and before countless people would be arrested and injured, and two killed. The engineers marked which trees to uproot, and the villagers removed the marks. The soldiers came to disperse the demonstrations, and the demonstrators tied themselves to the olive trees. The bulldozers started tearing the land, and the activists stood in their way. Day after day. A battle for every tree and every yard...

February 18, 2012 - Ramallah: "Please take me to my father. I want to see him," is the only cry of five-year-old Mohammad Wael Eshtaiwi whose father is languishing in an Israeli prison. An inmate of the Negev Prison, Mohammad's father has been denied the right to meet his only son. "It is my right. I must see father and get to know him, wherever he is. As long as he is alive, I should see him," Mohammad told Gulf News. The little boy added: "I need my mother to accompany me to the prison and see my father," he said. "I do not want to see my father in a photo frame. I want to see him in person." Israeli authorities have refused a visit permit to Mohammad's mother, uncles and aunts but not the boy. However, under Israeli regulations, children cannot travel from the Balata Refugee Camp to Negev Prison alone...."The Israeli authorities have not refused Mohammad a visit permit. But they have not granted any of his blood relatives the necessary permit to accompany him to see his father," she told Gulf News...

February 18, 2012 - Libya has sent military forces to stem clashes between rival tribes over control of territory in the far southeast of Libya, the armed forces chief said on Saturday, as more people were reported killed in the violence. Clashes broke out late last week in the remote city of Al Kufra and have continued since, highlighting the challenge of policing the sparsely populated desert. Dozens of people have been killed, the tribes have said...

February 18, 2012 - If these were "normal" circumstances, we could deal with it. I remember not long ago when we would complain because the power was out for 12 hours a day. Now I long for those days. These aren't normal times, these are worse than even "shitty" times. This is no life. Every day, every hour, I think: what time is the power coming, how long has it been off now? When will the water come? The drinking water truck has stopped coming around. The people who purify the water can't do so without electricity, and they can't deliver the water without gas. We're not asking for a lot: water and electricity...

February 17, 2012 - Thousands of residents of Falluja, in Anbar province, demonstrated today in support of the Syrian people with the participation of tribal sheikhs, religious leaders and mass organizations. Sheikh Hameed Dulaimi, clergyman, told Aswat al-Iraq that the demonstration took place after Friday mid-day prayers in support of the Syrian people. "This demonstration is a reminder to Premier Nouri al-Maliki and the local government in Anbar province that thieves and murderers are doomed to death," he added...

February 18, 2012 - I call on the international community to demand that the Israeli government immediately release Khader Adnan from administrative detention. As I write this plea, Khader Adnan is finishing his sixty-second day on hunger strike in protest of Israel's inhumane and unlawful policy of administrative detention. Since Israel illegally occupied the Palestinian Territories, it has used administrative detention to arbitrarily arrest Palestinian after Palestinian and hold them indefinitely, without any charge. Israel has adopted this policy in order to suppress Palestinian people and their voices....

February 18, 2012 - Syrian security forces fired live rounds and tear gas at thousands of people marching Saturday in a funeral procession that turned into a protest in Damascus, activists said. It was one of the largest demonstrations in the capital since the 11-month-old uprising against President Bashar Assad began. At least one person was killed, activists said, and several others were reported wounded. CNN reported that the protest - which activists estimated involved 15,000 to 30,000 people -took place just over a mile from Assad's palace...

February 18, 2012 - Recent years have seen Israel escalate its campaign to push Palestinians and Bedouin out of their homes. According to the UN, nearly 1100 Palestinians and Bedouin were displaced by Israeli house demolitions in 2011 - approximately 80 percent more than 2010. So where is the Bedouin Intifada? The Israeli state continues to Judaize the Negev (Naqab) desert. This "development" includes last year's Prawer plan. The plan recommends that Israel relocate between 30,000-40,000 Bedouin citizens, ripping them away from their villages and relocating them in impoverished townships to clear the area for Jewish-only settlements...

February 18, 2012 - Day 62 and counting. Adnan's hunger strike continues. On February 15, Israel let his wife Randa see him for the second time. She said "(h)is health has drastically deteriorated from the last time I saw him" a week ago. "I expect the worst. He insists on continuing with the hunger strike." He wants to live but will die for justice... He's held administratively without charge. He committed no crimes yet faces imminent death. He lost over a third of his weight. His life force is slowly ebbing. His muscles, heart, stomach, and immune system are dying. His entire system could stop functioning any time. Israel wants him dead. So far, pleas on his behalf are ignored...

February 18, 2012 - Yousef Thayafeen, 37, lives with his wife and their five children in Wa'r al Beik, an area bordering the town of Anata, a suburb of East Jerusalem cut off from the city by the separation wall. Yousef's five siblings and their families also live in the small encampment. Late at night on 25 January, Israeli soldiers arrived, equipped with bulldozers, and informed the families they had five minutes before all six structures would be destroyed. The soldiers had brought a team to remove the entire contents of these homes. When Yousef asked the men, who had begun to throw items of furniture out on to the grass, to be more careful, one soldier hit him across the face, Yousef says, knocking him to the ground...

February 18, 2012 - The industrial street in Fallujah District is subject to a radioactive contamination resulting from military operations that were carried out in the past years, a source told Alsumaria stressing that health authorities fear the outbreak of cancer diseases as a result of this contamination. "Two metal pieces were the reason behind closing all shops in the industrial street of Fallujah District," the source revealed. Regardless of how much the aforementioned statement sounds weird, it actually occurred when health groups in Anbar Province carried out a scan operation, in cooperation with the provincial Environment Department, where they discovered radioactive materials. This contamination is the result of military operations led in 2003 and 2004 by US forces, authorities in charge of the scan declared....

February 18, 2012 -- Detained hunger-striker Khader Adnan is going forward with his hunger strike against unjust practices in Israeli jails, his wife said Saturday, dismissing reports to the contrary. Randa Adnan denied a report in a Gaza-based newspaper quoting her as saying Khader would stop his strike in the event that religious authorities found it to be in conflict with Islamic regulations. "What media outlets in Gaza claimed I said is false," she told Ma'an....

February 17, 2012 - The number of documented demonstrations that set out this Friday according to the Local Coordination Committees in Syria has reached 613 demonstrations, most of which occurred in Idlib, which witnessed 158 demonstrations, followed by Aleppo with 89 demonstrations, then by Hama with 87 demonstrations. In Homs, 57 demonstrations set out, in Daraa 54... The number of today's martyrs has risen to 61 now, among them three children and 12 soldiers who were publicly executed in Daraa. 16 martyrs fell in Daraa (Jassem, Hara), 17 fell in Homs, 6 fell in Mazzeh in Damascus, 5 martyrs fell in Deir Ezzor, 6 fell in Aleppo, 3 in Hama,4 in each of Idlib and Damascus Suburbs (Yabroud, Artouz,Douma)...

February 17, 2012 - While top officials representing rival Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, signed yet another unity agreement on February 6 in Doha, Qatar, Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan crossed the 50-day mark of his hunger strike. His health was rapidly deteriorating... Ultimately, Hamas-Fatah unity based on halving the spoils of whatever imagined power they may have over occupied and oppressed people will in no significant way alter the fate of hunger-striker Adnan. Neither will it reclaim one inch of the Occupied Territories, or revive the long-dormant Palestinian national project around new, truly unifying and all-encompassing priorities. Frankly it is absurd to witness Palestinian factions lobbying among and seeking exclusive approval, funding and backing of countries near and far, while millions of Palestinians carry on facing the reality of sieges, walls, barbed wires and machine guns...

February 17, 2012 - Israel's use of national parks to expropriate Palestinian land and prevent development in East Jerusalem is the subject of Bimkom's latest, January, report. Bimkom, a group of Israeli planners and architects advocating for planning rights, has studied the state's strategy of making "green" settlements as a more convenient alternative to building its controversial Jewish-only housing enclaves alongside Palestinian communities in occupied East Jerusalem...

February 17, 2012 - Fifty supporters of justice arrived at the occupied territories of Palestine on 4th February. They were all more or less prepared for ten days of an intense experience; exploring discrimination and separation, hatred and fear. Despite the diversity among the people, a common ground was established even before take-off: a desire to show solidarity with the people of Palestine and contribute to their struggle of existence...

February 17, 2012 - The uprising against the regime of Col. Muammar Gaddafi started in Libya one year ago, on February 15, 2011. France and Britain conducted the supporting military operation with great difficulty and much deeper involvement than they had planned, hoping initially for a quick colonial campaign. The desultory guerrilla warfare waged by the rebels was transformed into a victory by direct foreign intervention - both the air and missile strikes of the NATO forces against Gaddafi loyalists as well as all kinds of secret missions, from sending instructors and advisers to the direct participation of special forces in the assault on Tripoli....

February 17, 2012 - Members of Colonel Gaddafi's former government outside Libya say they are starting a political movement aimed at radical change, the BBC has learnt. In a message which appears to be genuine, one of Gaddafi's senior officials said they wanted to prevent the outbreak of another civil war... The former senior official told the BBC that most of the leadership of what he calls "Green Libya" were forming the Libyan Popular National Movement. In a statement posted on several websites the group said the situation in Libya "is becoming worse every day. "There's very little interest from the international media in the many horrors that have taken place. We are reorganising ourselves outside Libya in an inclusive political movement that would encompass all Libyans who understand the terrible reality of Libya," it said...