Winter Patriot Community Blog

February 15, 2012 - "Senior ranking U.S. military leaders have so distorted the truth when communicating with the U.S. Congress and American people in regards to conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the truth has become unrecognizable." That's the assessment of a damning new report by Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, who returned in October from his second year-long deployment in Afghanistan and says military officials have misled the American public about how poorly the decade-long war is going. He argues that local Afghan governments are unable to provide the basic needs of the people and that insurgents control virtually all parts of Afghanistan beyond eyeshot of a U.S. base. We speak with Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone, who obtained a copy of the full report and published it last week. "Lieutenant Colonel Davis is on the right side of history, and the fact [is] that he believes in this and is willing to risk [his career]," Hastings says...

February 15, 2012 - ... "We accept that eight young Afghans died that day," said Air Commodore Mike Wigston, who led the investigation team and is director of air operations for the NATO joint command here. "The decision to bomb this group was made because they were seen as adult-sized and moving in a tactical fashion, and the commander was worried they were in a good position to attack" nearby NATO forces, Commodore Wigston said...Afghan relatives of those who died and Mohammed Tahir Safi, an adviser to President Hamid Karzai and the leader of the Afghan investigation team, said that those killed were young boys who had taken their sheep and goats to graze outside the village. They were cold and gathered under a rock and lighted a small fire to warm themselves. That was the place where they were struck by bombs. Photographs of the dead shown by Mr. Safi at a news conference this week included some of badly bloodied young boys and a couple of young men who might have been older. The father of one of the boys who was killed said that his son was 12 and that two nephews who were killed were younger...

February 15, 2012 - On February 15, Palestinian faction leaders began supportive hunger strikes. Gazans erected a sit-in tent near ICRC's Gaza City offices. Islamic Jihad leaders Sheikh Nafth Azzam, Ahmad Al-Mudallal, Dawood Shihab and Khader Habit joined with others and civil society organization members. Al-Mudallal said striking "support(s) the battle of dignity of Sheikh Khader Adnan. This is the least we can do (for) this legendary symbol." Palestinian Authority civil affairs minister Hussein al-Sheikh said PA officials were trying to free him and hold Israel responsible for his well-being....

February 15, 2012 - Before clashes broke out in Syria, the head of the Hamas Movement's Political Bureau, Khaled Meshaal, contacted the Syrian leadership and offered clear and frank advice regarding the need for political reform. He warned the regime that the wave of demand for reform sweeping the region would not stop at the Syrian borders, and that the Syrian people wished for freedom just like other Arab people. The leadership did not listen to the advice, and insisted that "this system of resistance and opposition" is different than any other, and that the Syrian people would not rebel against the regime. However, the heroic Syrian people surprised not only the regime, but the entire world with their patriotism, persistence and sacrifices for freedom...

February 15, 2012 - Palestinian hunger striker Khader Adnan petitioned Israel's Supreme Court on Wednesday to appeal his detention without charge, as thousands took to the streets in solidarity with him. Lawyer Jawad Bulus said he had lodged an urgent appeal with the Supreme Court to lift the administrative detention order in light of the rapidly deteriorating health of his client, Khader Adnan. "We filed an appeal this morning and requested an immediate hearing in front of the court due to the seriousness of his condition," Bulus told AFP. "We are awaiting an answer."...

February 15, 2012 - Two months ago, few of us knew the name Khader Adnan. Today, he is an inspiration to all of us. Two months ago he was kidnapped from his home by Israel. He was charged with no crime. He was abused by his captors and interrogators from the moment he was arrested. None of this is unusual in Palestine, every day people are kidnapped from their homes, abused, and held without charge. Torture is a routine matter for prisoners of the occupation. None of the abuse that Israel inflicted on Khader Adnan was new, it has happened to thousands, really hundreds of thousands of Palestinians under the occupation. It was all so routine that no one would bother to report on it, that is a specialty of the occupation, to make crimes so routine that they are not news....

February 15, 2012 - The issue is not about hummus, chocolate bars or Dead Sea vacations. It is about civil society taking full responsibility for its own action (or lack of). The issue is not exactly about Israeli products either, but rather about how even a seemingly innocent decision like buying Israeli dates may enable the continued subjugation of the Palestinian people. Because the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) highlights this, the reaction it often generates is charged and vehement. Many also react to the BDS because it actually works. Israeli supporters have every right to be concerned that their carefully customized discourse on Israel's infallibility (juxtaposed with Palestinian depravity) - which has been promoted for decades in various media and political outlets in the US and Western countries - is now simply falling apart....

February 15, 2012 -- Reporters Without Borders on Wednesday condemned violence used by Israel against photojournalists covering demonstrations against Israel's West Bank barrier. Reporters Without Borders "deplores the total impunity enjoyed by the soldiers responsible for these abuses," the Paris-based press freedom watchdog said in a statement. The statement referred to incidents in January and February in which soldiers injured photojournalists in Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah, and in Kufr Qaddoum, near Qalqiliya, and others sites in the occupied West Bank...

February 15, 2012 - Armed militias operating across Libya commit widespread human rights abuses with impunity, fuelling insecurity and hindering the rebuilding of state institutions, warned Amnesty International in a new report released today, a year on from the start of the February 2011 uprising. The report Militias threaten hopes for new Libya, documents widespread and serious abuses, including war crimes, by a multitude of militias against suspected al-Gaddafi loyalists, with cases of people being unlawfully detained and tortured - sometimes to death. African migrants and refugees have also been targeted, and revenge attacks have been carried out, forcibly displacing entire communities - while the authorities have done nothing to investigate the abuses and hold those responsible to account....

February 15, 2012 - What does the European Union have to say about the plight of Palestinian hunger striker Khader Adnan? Not one word. I have just entered Adnan's name into the search facility on the website for the EU's diplomatic service. The result: zero hits. A moment later, I searched under the words "Gilad Shalit" and received 230 hits. Catherine Ashton, the bloc's foreign policy chief, publicly sympathised with the family of Shalit at every conceivable opportunity, never acknowledging that the Israeli soldier belonged to an army of occupation and was taking part in acts of aggression against the Palestinian people when he was captured...

February 14, 2012 - Now, it is going to be almost impossible for teachers to make ends meet if they have to move away from home. Having a job at all is also highly uncertain.The reason is that the troika, in close collaboration with the unelected Greek government imposed by the troika, has decided on more public sector sackings. The plans are part of the second memorandum agreement between the troika and the Greek government. This memorandum includes cuts of 14.3 billion euros between 2012 and 2015, starting with 3.3 billion euros this year.With 11 million Greek people, these sums come up to a high amount per head. This is all the more shocking if we consider that a huge proportion of Greek people live in extreme poverty. The number of Greek people living at or below the poverty line is more than 3 million and rising...

February 14, 2012 - Now, it is going to be almost impossible for teachers to make ends meet if they have to move away from home. Having a job at all is also highly uncertain.The reason is that the troika, in close collaboration with the unelected Greek government imposed by the troika, has decided on more public sector sackings. The plans are part of the second memorandum agreement between the troika and the Greek government. This memorandum includes cuts of 14.3 billion euros between 2012 and 2015, starting with 3.3 billion euros this year.With 11 million Greek people, these sums come up to a high amount per head. This is all the more shocking if we consider that a huge proportion of Greek people live in extreme poverty. The number of Greek people living at or below the poverty line is more than 3 million and rising...

February 14, 2012 - Behind the open hostility and rhetoric that the US and Syria display to one another, there lies an entirely different face. Behind the open hostility and rhetoric that the US and Syria display to one another, there lies an entirely different face. One which goes the very heart of the Syrian uprising - a face which presents the countries more as allies, and less as foes. On 6 May 2002, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, included Syria within the infamous 'Axis of Evil' that George W Bush spoke of earlier in that year. At the same time that such open statements were being made, Canadian citizens: Maher Arar, Abdullah Almalki, Muayyad Nureddin, Ahmad Abou El Maati and the German, Mohammed Haydar Zammar, were being tortured in various Syrian prisons, the most feared being Fara' Falastin. All of the men had been placed on US watch lists with Arar being the only one to have been rendered by the US from the US mainland to Jordan, and then subsequently taken to Syria...

February 14, 2012 - Behind the open hostility and rhetoric that the US and Syria display to one another, there lies an entirely different face. Behind the open hostility and rhetoric that the US and Syria display to one another, there lies an entirely different face. One which goes the very heart of the Syrian uprising - a face which presents the countries more as allies, and less as foes. On 6 May 2002, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, included Syria within the infamous 'Axis of Evil' that George W Bush spoke of earlier in that year. At the same time that such open statements were being made, Canadian citizens: Maher Arar, Abdullah Almalki, Muayyad Nureddin, Ahmad Abou El Maati and the German, Mohammed Haydar Zammar, were being tortured in various Syrian prisons, the most feared being Fara' Falastin. All of the men had been placed on US watch lists with Arar being the only one to have been rendered by the US from the US mainland to Jordan, and then subsequently taken to Syria...

February 14, 2012 - The "tide of war is receding" is a phrase President Barack Obama has employed ad nauseam-once in his State of the Union address, twice in the course of remarks last month at the unveiling of the Pentagon's new military strategy document, once again during his speech at the United Nations, also in his announcement of troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, and in a Veteran's Day address. The constant repetition of this hackneyed metaphor is aimed at obscuring the obvious-that US militarism has escalated dramatically under the Democratic president and its tide threatens to engulf the entire planet....

February 15, 2012 - Israeli forces arrived before sunrise on Monday, 13 February to demolish a newly completed community facility that residents refer to as a cultural cafe' in the Wadi Hilweh area of Silwan in occupied East Jerusalem. The bulldozers arrived without any prior warning. The Israeli-controlled Jerusalem municipality and the National Parks Authority carried out the demolition with Israeli police officers closing off the street and even preventing some nearby families to leave their homes while the demolition was underway. Palestinians living in Silwan and other areas of occupied East Jerusalem are facing increased attacks from the Israeli authorities and Israeli settlers...

February 14, 2012 - ...For as soon as Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri issued a statement calling for what he described as jihad in Syria, others rushed to say that what is happening in the country has Al Qaeda backing, and that this represents evidence of the Al Qaeda movement's presence in Syria. However this is an over-simplification, if not part of an explicit desire to collude against the unarmed Syrian people! One might ask: how? The answer is simple, for al-Zawahiri's statement on Syria is not the first of its kind, for he has issued similar statements lauding the Syrian revolution many months ago, long before the revolution reached its peak. Al-Zawahiri also hailed the Arab Spring; indeed his statements about the Syrian revolution pale in comparison to his statements of support for the Egyptian revolution, the Tunisian, revolution, not to mention the revolution in Libya, where he warned the Libyan people against the aspirations of NATO. Al-Zawahiri even called on the people of Algeria to revolt against their ruling regime. So why did nobody show any concern over these statements, whilst today we find people trying to say that the Syrian revolution is backed by Al Qaeda?...

February 14, 2012 - The number of martyrs has risen to 49 thus far, including 3 defected soldiers (Damascus Suburbs) and 3 women. The remainder include, 11 in Idlib, 10 in Aleppo, 9 in Homs, 4 in Daraa, 4 in Deir Ezzor, 3 in Hama, 6 in Damascus Suburbs, 1 in Lattakia, and 1 in Damascus...Hama: The regime's army is violently shelling the neighborhood of Hamidieh. There are reports of many martyrs in the streets, but the residents cannot reach them due to the continuing shelling...Homs: Qusair: Martyrdom of farmers: Muhammad Mahmoud Muhebbuddin, Abdulbaset Muhammad Harba and Abdullah Muhyiddin Shasuddin after they were abducted and slaughtered by security forces which are positioned at Hamed Amer checkpoint, and then thrown on the road near the security checkpoint...The Occupied Golan: Majdal Shams: Kameel Khater, who was freed from Israeli detention, and now he's forced to stay inside his home announced his food-strike in objection to the massacres commited by the Syrian regime... Hama: More than 100 persons were injured after the regime's army shelled the Midani Hospital in the Hamidieh district.

February 14, 2012 - Former Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Michael Sabbah said the current municipality of Jerusalem is trying to turn the city into a Jewish one. He told the Italian news Agency AKI, that turning the holy city of Jerusalem into a mono-ethnic city will only cause war instead of stability and peace. The city should maintain its holistic nature that welcomes all people, and should have a special political status by becoming the capital of both, Palestine and Israel...

February 14, 2012 - Today the systematic dispossession of the Palestinian people continues unabated and largely unchallenged by the United States and the European Union. Barriers to Palestinian mobility, social and political development are visible everywhere. While Jewish-Israeli citizens pass freely, more than 500 police and military checkpoints regulate Palestinian movement between the occupied West Bank and Israel. Passing through these checkpoints on a recent fact-finding tour organized by the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, we witnessed Palestinians endure a daily ritual of subordination, humiliation and suspicion....