“Israeli, Syrian representatives reach secret understandings”

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/813817.html

Will we still be talking/hinting about Syria as part of the Axis of Evil?

“In a series of secret meetings in Europe between September 2004 and July 2006, Syrians and Israelis formulated understandings for a peace agreement between Israel and Syria.

The main points of the understandings are as follows:

# An agreement of principles will be signed between the two countries, and following the fulfillment of all commitments, a peace agreement will be signed.

# As part of the agreement on principles, Israel will withdraw from the Golan Heights to the lines of 4 June, 1967. The timetable for the withdrawal remained open: Syria demanded the pullout be carried out over a five-year period, while Israel asked for the withdrawal to be spread out over 15 years.

# At the buffer zone, along Lake Kinneret, a park will be set up for joint use by Israelis and Syrians. The park will cover a significant portion of the Golan Heights. Israelis will be free to access the park and their presence will not be dependent on Syrian approval.

# Israel will retain control over the use of the waters of the Jordan River and Lake Kinneret.

# The border area will be demilitarized along a 1:4 ratio (in terms of territory) in Israel’s favor.

# According to the terms, Syria will also agree to end its support for Hezbollah and Hamas and will distance itself from Iran.”

Give alternative Iraq plan, Bush dares critics

Lest Mr. Bush has forgotten, let me remind him that there was a great big bi-partisan report offering an alternative and a list of suggestions.

I don’t recall an increase of troops in that plan.

So Bush + Team, please review the plan right here!

A small excerpt on this topic.

Sustained increases in U.S. troop levels would not solve the fundamental cause of violence in
Iraq, which is the absence of national reconciliation. A senior American general told us that adding U.S. troops might temporarily help limit violence in a highly localized area. However, past experience indicates that the violence would simply rekindle as soon as U.S. forces are moved to another area. As another American general told us, if the Iraqi government does not
make political progress, “all the troops in the world will not provide security.” Meanwhile, America’s military capacity is stretched thin: we do not have the troops or equipment to make a substantial, sustained increase in our troop presence. Increased deployments to Iraq would also necessarily hamper our ability to provide adequate resources for our efforts in Afghanistan or respond to crises around the world.

4 January 2007

I’m 29-years-old. I’ve been handicapped since 18 January, 2006, when I lost my leg in an explosion while I was working as a waiter in a Baghdad restaurant.

On the same day I lost my brother Muhammad, who was working with me at the restaurant. He was only 19-years-old and didn’t survive his injuries.

In March of last year, I lost my mother, Suheiya, and my father Dawood. They were killed inside our home. A militia member asked them to leave the neighbourhood but they refused because they were too old. They were shown no mercy and were brutally shot dead.
I’m still a bachelor because my fiancee broke up with me last September after I became handicapped.

In addition to all this, I lost my only uncle, Abu Omar, his wife, and their four children, while they were trying to flee the country to Syria. Insurgents stopped them, accused my uncle of being a traitor and shot dead the entire family.

But, life must go on and we find other ways to survive. I’m still a bachelor because my fiancee broke up with me last September after I became handicapped. Since the death of my parents I have been living with my sister Sahar and her husband, but the latest tragedy occurred two weeks ago.

Sahar and her husband were driving to work when their car exploded. Both died instantly. She had 90 percent burns and her husband’s body was found in pieces.

I don’t have anyone now. Neighbours are trying to help me find a place to live because the house was rented and I don’t have money to pay for it, and all my relatives have been killed or are abroad.

Thousands of Iraqis are suffering like me. Lives are being lost due to sectarian violence. The government this week said that 12,000 people died last year but it is a lie because for sure the number is much higher. And if they don’t take urgent action, this year could be the worst for Iraqis.

I’m now an adult orphan, with no one to turn to for help. The sectarian violence is everywhere and I cannot move alone anymore. I hope someone can help me to survive because I would rather die and join my dead family members than go begging for food in the streets.

This item comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian news and information service, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. All IRIN material may be reposted or reprinted free-of-charge; refer to the copyright page for conditions of use. IRIN is a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

What is funny about certain forms of idealists is that they don’t even know they are idealists. Atheists such as these believe in an idealic vision where the weak are simply eliminated by the virtue of human goodness.

It’s not happening:

Two hundred years after the abolition of the slave trade by the UK Parliament in 1807, there are more slaves in the world than ever before; some estimate as many as 27 million.* It is easier and cheaper to buy and sell humans today than it was at the height of the transatlantic slave trade; in the 1800s, slaves were precious commodities, now they can be traded for just a few British pounds. Slavery may be forgotten, but it is not yet gone.

TurbanTip to Seekers Digest:

OpenDemocracy – Slavery in the 21st Century
March 2007 marks the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade. openDemocracy presents the first of a series of five photo-essays documenting contemporary forms of slavery around the world.

“A $79.95 Opportunity to Breeze Through Security” – NY Times

“Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’d rather take a whack up the side of the head with a sack of cobblestones than wait in a long line to be treated badly when my turn comes. “

Saad’s blog entry on the subject is great.

http://sadp.blogspot.com/2005/09/for-sale-security-of-american-people.html

I am really impressed with this fatwa, especially in the light of the fact that the American media is clamoring all over this:
Click Here for CAIR’s Endorsed Fatwa

It’s all over the airwaves here and its positively wimpy in comparison.

Although both fatwas seem to have the same intentions the CAIR fatwa really addresses none of the topics at hand, relies on no scholarly precedents, and in my opinion, opens the doors for a rebuttal with a similar ‘my ayat, my hadith, my interpretation’ approach to fatwas.

This fatwa shared on Deenport lessons really demonstrates the knowledge required of an islamic scholar and automatically commands the respect and authority that a legacy and community of scholarship provides.

Sure, when Iraq made some aggressive moves in the past, the world could point and blame Saddam. Considering the possibility that this democracy lasts beyond 30 years, what happens when a new generation who has grown up under American sanctions reaches the age of assuming power? What are the next steps when American resentment is what the Iraqi’s eventually choose?

This is similar to what is occuring in Palestine today. Although he is actually an elected leader, Yasser Arafat does not meet the ‘needs’ of the American/Israeli governments. It is interesting to note that while you hear the current administration treating democracy as a form of political baptism for Iraq and Afghanistan, you hear little about implementing ‘democracy’ in Palestine.

This is because a form of democracy is already in place in Palestine, it’s just not what the West wants. The West has always desired control of the Middle Eastern governments, and I fear how they will try to establish that control in a democracy.

I suppose that at the next Palestinian elections one will probably hear the voting booth respond after casting the ballot, “Invalid entry, please try again. It’s either that or get your home run over by tanks and bombs.”

Democracy will eventually lead both America and Muslim countries to a clash of the type we can only imagine. If democractic countries behave contrary to American’s goals, the only recourse is to blame the people themselves.

How much farther is blaming them from bombing them? At what point do they cease to become collateral damage, and become the target themselves? Hey, it’s one way to influence a vote. It seems that America has no issues with attacking people or turning a blind eye to a third party doing so, when they feel that ‘they voted for it’.

We’ve moved from intimidating dictators to intimdating the people.

I think we’ve ushered in a new highway to hate.

I think that there is room in our Islamic literature for something akin to Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations”, which defined capitalism. The more I think about it, the more I think I want to be involved in such a project. I will ask Sheykh Haddad his opinion.

The discussion of the beheading of Mr. Berg came up today and it was a real attention-getter.

The main issue seemed to me to be that some Christian Americans are expecting outrage from Muslims/Arabs. I will count myself as one Muslims who is outraged that such a thing occurred. But, a lot of things outrage me everyday! Maybe I am being desensitized, but we have children missing here and rapists and murderers in America as well. Why expect additional outrage because murder occured in Iraq? Iraq is a war-zone, and America is not. I am actually more outraged that things like this are happening in my own country: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20040512-1339-ca-xianamurder.html

Compare the murders by insane individuals to the authorized abuses of prisoners who are paid by my tax money, and I feel that what outrages me ‘more’ is the prison abuse scandal. Neither the beheading nor the murder above were committed by people that I feel betrayed my trust and the trust of Americans. We expect and pay our military to fight for what Americans believe in, I don’t have expections such as that from al-Qaeda and the child molester above.

I think the idea here is that non-Muslim Americans feel Muslims should feel ‘especially’ responsible for this beheading, and hence should apologize. I think the question that is at the root of this is, do -I- feel responsible?

I can easily answer, “No”. I don’t agree with anything terrorists do and I actively write about the problems in their irrational belief system. These are people that would kill me along with Mr. Berg, with no second thoughts.

Should I apologize for their actions? It seems irrational to expect me to apologize for my own enemy.

I’ve also noticed a tendency to merge Iraqi’s / Arab’s / al-Qaeda / Muslims into one large group, when it is not at all one big Borg-like entity. There are clear differences between the educated and uneducated, between the religious and nonreligious, between the murderers and the law-abiding citizens.

Grouping al-Qaeda with Iraqi’s is really in effect giving them more power, which is what they want.

Iraq’s are not ruled by al-Qaeda (Thank Allah!). They have no authority to take revenge for the Iraqi state or it’s people. Al-Qaeda cannot be allowed to usurp such authority from the Iraqi civilians with such an act. Iraqi prisoners are not vindicated by this beheading at all, and such an act cannot be used as an alternative form of judgement to deny them any damages.

There is also a difference between when a nation-state, representing millions of people, acts and when a terrorist organization acts. A nation is ruled by law, al-Qaeda is ruled by Osama’s instructional cave-video of the week. We as Americans should be outraged our military was used in such a way. To expect Iraqi’s to be similarly outraged that a terrorist organization acted in such a way is simply an act of mixing people and groups together.

Iraqi’s will be outraged as much as an Italian or a Russian. In fact, the only thing that would differentiate my anger, if I was an Iraqi, was that these people are saying that such beheadings are retaliation for actual abuses to my people. What I would want is answers, punishment, or monetary damages in the least.

Random acts of reckless retribution will only appeal to the most ignorant and uninvolved people, for those who families were not hurt at all by the abuses in the prison.

Who are these ‘al-Qaeda’ foreigners to be judge, jury, executioner for criminal acts that occured to the Iraqi people by the occupying American forces? Let’s stop talking about a few murderers here and there for whom the law does not matter. Instead, let’s talk about actual recompense and change of policy for the hundreds of people still in prison.

Incredibly damaging to the American image overseas. Damaging enough internally to at least open discussions about Rumsfeld resigning.