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Wednesday, February 29, 2012

EU, NATO dismiss Abkhazia election

SUKHUMI, Georgia, Aug. 30 (UPI) -- The European Union and NATO say they don't recognize the results of this past weekend's election of Aleksandr Ankvab as the president of Abkhazia.

Ankvab, one of three candidates who were vying to replace the late President Sergei Bagapsh in the breakaway Georgian region, won with nearly 55 percent of the vote, Abkhazia's Central Elections Commission announced Saturday.

Ankvab was Bagapsh's vice president and was serving as acting president of the enclave, which is officially recognized as a nation only by Russia and a handful of other countries.

Ankvab bested Prime Minister Sergei Shamba and opposition leader Raul Khadzhimba, a former vice president, in the polling, which was Friday.

Shamba received 21 percent of the vote and Khadzhimba garnered 19.8 percent as 106,845 residents -- a 72 percent turnout -- participated, officials said.

Abkhazia, a small state with a population estimated at less than 200,000 and an area smaller than Connecticut, was recognized by Moscow as independent of Georgia after a brief 2008 war between Moscow and Tbilisi over it and another breakaway region, South Ossetia.

Georgia has refused to recognize the results of the Abkhazian election. The country's foreign ministry issued a statement blasting the "so-called presidential elections" in Abkhazia, denouncing "the Russian occupation forces and its proxy regime in Sukhumi" and calling the polling a "mockery of the international law."

Tbilisi accused Moscow of bringing in "several dozen of so-called 'international observers' in an attempt to legitimize the outcome of these 'elections,' and thus the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of people."

EU High Representative Catherine Ashton and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen each issued statements over the weekend in which they dismissed the Abkhazian presidential results and referred to it as a "Georgian region."

"In view of the reports today from Sukhumi in the breakaway region of Abkhazia in Georgia, that Mr. Alexander Ankvab has been elected as new president, this statement is to recall that the European Union does not recognize the constitutional and legal framework within which these elections have taken place," the statement from Ashton read.

"The European Union reiterates its support to the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Georgia, as recognized by international law."

Rasmussen, meanwhile, reiterated NATO's "full support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia within its internationally recognized borders" while adding it "does not recognize the elections held on August 26 in the Georgian region of Abkhazia."

Since the cease-fire agreement that ended the 2008 conflict, Russia and Georgia have traded accusations over ethnic cleansing in the breakaway regions and both have denounced the continuing problems of thousands of internally displaced people.

The international community has been meeting regularly on the Abkhazia and South Ossetia security and human rights situations through the Geneva Discussions, by which they are hoping to establish "non-use of force" and associated security agreements.

That is something Georgia supports but Russia opposes.

The EU and the United States have called on Moscow to withdraw its troops to positions held prior to the start of the 2008 hostilities and to allow humanitarian access to Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

"The Russian Federation's deployment of troops and weapons in the regions is inconsistent with its cease-fire commitments and clearly threatens stability," the U.S. State Department said earlier this year.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2011/08/30/EU-NATO-dismiss-Abkhazia-election/UPI-20901314698760/.

Target Syria, Iran together, lawmakers say

WASHINGTON, Aug. 31 (UPI) -- Syria and Iran are "partners in crime" and should be targeted equally by direct sanctions from Washington, a U.S. lawmaker said.

Washington and the rest of the international community have ratcheted up the sanctions pressure on Damascus as the regime's bloody crackdown continues. More than 2,000 people were killed at the hands of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, including hundreds killed during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Tehran, for its part, has earned the scorn of its Western adversaries for its poor human rights record. There's been little heard, meanwhile, from two of Iran's leading opposition members since their arrest in early spring.

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Washington should directly target each regime with equal fervor.

"The Iranian and Syrian regimes are partners in crime, and the U.S. should apply the same sanctions to both dictatorships," she said. "Both regimes brutally oppress their own citizens, and the Iranian regime is helping the Syrian regime with its ongoing bloody crackdown."

In a separate measure, Ros-Lehtinen proposed a measure to make funding for the United Nations voluntary. The world body, she said, is "plagued by scandal, mismanagement, and inaction."

The State Department said it opposes both measures.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2011/08/31/Target-Syria-Iran-together-lawmakers-say/UPI-75291314804808/.

Michigan sees future in wind energy

HARRISON TOWNSHIP, Mich., Aug. 30 (UPI) -- Developing wind energy in Michigan is providing economic stimulus to the state and redefining its workforce, a U.S. congresswoman said.

U.S. Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., whose district includes the eastern part of the state, toured a wind-energy project in the so-called thumb area. She said more than 80 percent of the workforce needed to build the Michigan Wind 2 site is coming from state labor pools.

"This wind farm is providing our area with clean energy, and is doing so by engaging the local community," she said in a statement.

Exelon Wind is building three wind farms in Michigan. The Wind 2 site will have 50 turbines spinning by the end of the year, supplying 90 megawatts of clean energy to Michigan consumers.

The thumb region is expected to become one of the more robust wind energy regions in the state. DTE Energy, a state utility company, aims to invest $225 million in three wind farms in the area.

Consumers Energy, another state utility, said it was doubling the amount of solar power it would purchase from its customers under a state plan that requires utility companies to get 10 percent of their energy from renewable resources by 2015.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2011/08/30/Michigan-sees-future-in-wind-energy/UPI-28001314714809/.

Gold mine backers hail Romania president

ROSIA MONTANA, Romania, Aug. 31 (UPI) -- Supporters of an effort to build a one of the world's biggest gold mines in Romania say they're encouraged by the public backing of President Traian Basescu.

A pro-mining industry and trade group said Monday it is thrilled with comments made last week by Basescu, who seemed to indicate the chronic waffling of the Romanian government on the controversial Rosia Montana Project is turning into qualified support more than a decade after the $1 billion project was announced.

"We hail the statements for support of the mining project in Rosia Montana made by the president of Romania," a statement from the Group for the Support of the Rosia Montana Project said.

The Romanian group, composed of local public authorities, universities, non-governmental organizations, mining industry associations and trade unions, the project is needed in country's Apuseni Mountains region, the English-language Romanian news Web site ACTMedia reported.

"The reality of Rosia Montana is that it is an underdeveloped area, with mining its only industry," the group said. "(There is a large) unemployed population and 80 percent of its people live at subsistence levels, with youth lacking any perspective."

The project, spearheaded by the Canadian mining company Gabriel Resources Ltd., has encountered stiff resistance from environmentalists and others, mainly because of its massive scale and the use of cyanide.

Rosia Montana, considered a world-class reserve, is estimated to hold gold resources of 10 million ounces and Gabriel has said it plans to produce an average 500,000 ounces a year at a cash cost of $400 an ounce, The Globe and Mail newspaper in Toronto reported.

With price of gold at an all-time high of $1,800 per ounce, the Romanian government is seeing its potential in a different light but is also responding to calls that it get a better deal from the investors.

A mine's controlling company, Rosia Montana Gold Corp., is 19.3 percent-owned by Bucharest through its Minvest Deva while Gabriel Resources holds 80.5 percent and other minority with shareholders control 0.23 percent of the company.

Basescu told an audience at the Danube Delta town of Sulina last week he backed the Rosia Montana gold and silver mining project, given that the world gold prices had risen so high, but that the state's profit-sharing arrangements with Gabriel need to be changed, ACTMedia said.

"I think the Rosia Montana project must be made," he said. "Romania needs it, on condition that the terms relating the sharing of the benefits from the operation of the gold and silver reserves of Rosia Montana be renegotiated."

Romanian Prime Minister Emil Boc also has stated his preference to have the terms of the deal revisited, saying last week he's awaiting the results of an environmental impact assessment as well as legal opinions on its EU aspects.

"I am no fan of this project for various reasons," he told Radio Romania Actualitati Friday. "In my opinion, the benefits to the Romanian government are not yet sufficient within the project framework the government has negotiated with the entrepreneurs, and surely it should be revisited."

Meanwhile, Gabriel Chief Executive Jonathan Henry said he's encouraged Bucharest seems to be moving ahead with the project.

"I'm cautiously optimistic," he told The Globe and Mail. "If the Romanian government did not want this project, we'd know by now."

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2011/08/31/Gold-mine-backers-hail-Romania-president/UPI-26701314787140/.

Brit schools expelled 1,200 kids under 8

LONDON, Aug. 31 (UPI) -- British Education Department figures revealed more than 1,200 students ages 7 and under have been permanently expelled from school in the past five years.

The figures revealed 1,200 of the young students, 80 of whom were only 4 years old, were booted from school and 53,000 under the age of 8 were temporarily suspended during the five-year period, The Sun reported Tuesday.

Dan Poulter, a Conservative member of Parliament, blamed the Labor Party for the loss of control in classrooms.

"The [government] coalition is introducing a range of measures to help bring order back," Poulter said.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2011/08/31/Brit-schools-expelled-1200-kids-under-8/UPI-33671314777600/.

Britain had cool summer

LONDON, Aug. 31 (UPI) -- The summer of 2011 was the coolest in Britain in almost two decades, preliminary figures reported Tuesday by the Meteorological Office showed.

The summer was also wetter than usual, The Independent reported. Meteorologists said rainfall from Aug. 1 to Aug. 29 was at 126 percent of normal, while sunshine was 76 percent of normal.

The average temperature for the month was 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) below normal, meteorologists said. This makes 2011 the chilliest summer since 1993.

The Met plans to release its full report on the meteorological summer of June, July and August Thursday.

Brian Gaze of TheWeatherOutlook said Britain's last run of high temperatures occurred in 2006.

"During the 1990s and 2000s, summer heat waves were more frequent than usual, and perhaps some people began to think this was the norm," he said. "During the last few years the run of poor summers has coincided with colder weather during the winter months."

The summer now coming to an end was wetter than last year although drier than those from 2007 to 2009.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2011/08/31/Britain-had-cool-summer/UPI-76211314770732/.

'Imam Moussa Sadr definitely alive'

Wed Aug 31, 2011

A senior member of the Lebanese Amal Movement has expressed confidence that Shia cleric Imam Moussa al-Sadr, who went missing in Libya more than three decades ago, is still alive.

“We have been in contact with Libyan opposition and revolutionaries during recent years, and they emphasized that Imam Moussa Sadr is alive… but believed he has been frequently transferred to different prisons in Libya,” said Khalil Hamdan in the Iranian city of Qom on Wednesday.

He stressed the significance of following up Sadr's case “with patience and precision,” and stated, “Based on the latest information, we believe that he is definitely alive,” Mehr news agency reported.

The top Amal official expressed hope that the cleric would be released in the near future thanks to further efforts by Iranian and Lebanese officials and his family.

Sadr, the founder of the Amal Movement, went missing during an official visit to the Libyan capital Tripoli in August 1978.

It is widely believed that the popular and highly revered Lebanese Shia cleric of Iranian descent was kidnapped on the orders of senior Libyan officials.

Accompanied by two of his companions, Mohammed Yaqoub and Abbas Badreddin, the top Shia cleric was scheduled to meet with Libyan officials.

In 2008, the Beirut government issued an arrest warrant for Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi over Sadr's disappearance.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.com/detail/196704.html.

Yemenis hold mass anti-regime demos

Wed Aug 31, 2011

Hundreds of thousands of Yemeni protesters have staged demonstrations across Yemen on Eid al-Fitr, the end of the holy month of Ramadan, calling for the implementation of their revolution's goals, Press TV reported.

Chanting anti-government slogans on Tuesday, protesters in the capital Sana'a called on the newly established national council to expedite the implementation of the objectives of the popular uprising in the Middle Eastern state.

“We as protesters confirm our determination to continue our revolution and we call for the swift implementation of our uprising's goals,” a protester said.

The demonstrators condemned the security forces' clashes with the country's tribesmen, calling for an end to Ali Abdullah Saleh's rule.

Similar rallies were held in other cities, including Taizz, where at least one protester was killed and many others injured in clashes with regime forces.

Earlier on Monday, Yemen's Saleh claimed that he was again ready to conditionally sign an agreement proposed by the [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council ([P]GCC), to “diffuse” the political crisis in his country.

The plan, drafted by the [P]GCC in April, includes three steps to be taken by both the opposition and the government. Embattled Saleh has already backed out of signing the deal three times.

However, on Monday, anti-government protesters took to the streets in the capital and rejected the initiative, calling it a US-Saudi plot to crush their revolution.

Hundreds of thousands of people have turned out for regular demonstrations in Yemen's major cities since late January, calling for an end to corruption and unemployment and demanding Saleh's ouster.

Hundreds of protesters have been killed and many more injured in the regime's brutal crackdown on Yemen's popular uprising.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.com/detail/196670.html.

Libyans Find Historic Hope

By Karlos Zurutuza

WAZZIN, Libya, Aug 24, 2011 (IPS) - "I’m 60 years old and I never thought I'd see this moment with my own eyes," Najib Taghuz tells IPS from the Tunisian-Libyan border. The engineer from the recently liberated town Gehryan is headed for Tunisia - his wife needs surgery on the left hand. But he hopes to return to a new Libya.

"When Gaddafi falls Libya will gain the right to say she has finally entered the 21st century," adds Taghuz. He wonders if he’ll be let into Tunisia with a souvenir he’s just grabbed on his way here - the shell of an anti-tank missile. "I really need to get this one across the border for my memories."

With the northern border between Tunisia and Libya closed – it was held by Gaddafi until a few days back - the southern rebel-held border crossing remains the only way in and out in the west of the war- torn country. The Dehiba-Wazzin post was taken over by rebels in April and controlled ever since as a vital hub for supplies into Libya’s Nafusa mountains.

With the Brega and Misrata fronts in a state of stalemate for months, Nafusa mountaineers have played a key role in the fast move towards Tripoli.

Activity at the border is hectic. But the joy of refugees returning home from the west of the country contrasts with the dismay of those still forced to flee Libya. "We did not feel safe back home in Tripoli,s so we drove all the way down here," Tripoli resident Hassan Harem tells IPS at the crossing.

"Conditions have been terrible for the last months: constant bombing by NATO aircraft, no fuel, often no food... after what we’ve all gone through we realized that we couldn’t cope with the shooting in the streets," adds Harem, a 32-year-old clerk who quit his job two months ago. But with a bit of luck, he says, he could return in just a few days.

Libyans are not the only ones fleeing across the southern border. Kadir Harthem, an ophthalmologist from Egypt, is one of the legion of foreign workers waiting to be evacuated by sea.

"Some colleagues said they were going to jump into a boat. As soon as I saw the opportunity I took my car and came down here." After seven years of working in Tripoli, he hopes to find a job back in Cairo.

Unlike the long and tiresome passport checks on the Tunisian side, the operation speeds up significantly on the side controlled by Libyan rebels: no need to fill forms, or open luggage for inspection. The rebel officer in command registers the passport in a database, and we are already in Libya.

Just three miles from there lies the town of Wazzin, which has very likely suffered the most among towns scattered around this bastion of stone 1,000 feet over the Libyan desert. Wazzin paid a price for its proximity to the disputed border. Attacks by Gaddafi’s forces turned this into a ghost town in ruins.

Just three weeks ago, this IPS reporter wasn’t able to find any Wazzin local to speak with. But after the recent NATO bombing of Ghezaia from where Gadaffi’s rockets were launched towards Wazzin, some locals have returned to rebuild their houses.

Just over 50 miles further into Libya is the checkpoint Nalut. Here three guerrilla fighters sitting under the shade beside the road are following the Tripoli events on live television.

"After driving away Gaddafi’s loyalists from their bases in the desert two weeks ago we managed to restore electricity. We needed seven days to repair the whole net but electricity is back to stay," a smiling rebel fighter in a Barcelona FC t-shirt and wearing a hat with the rebel flag tells IPS.

These are the days of Ramadan fasting. After sunset, and after prayers, guerrillas and local civilians gather daily in the town’s main square where the Red Crescent serves free dinner.

Rebel Akram says he will return his rifle back as soon as he can, and get back to reopening his grocery store.

"I am 40 years old, two less than Gaddafi’s rule. I have not known any form of government other than his. I’ve always wondered what democracy was like and how long will we have to wait to enjoy it here in Libya." He may not have to wait long now.

Source: Inter-Press Service (IPS).
Link: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=104865.

People-Funded TV Challenges Big Business

By Emad Mekay

CAIRO, Aug 25, 2011 (IPS) - Egypt’s most organized political group, the Muslim Brotherhood, is tapping crowds as a new financing method for its nascent TV station and media outlets to be able to compete with well-oiled challengers in corporate and government- run media.

All television stations in Egypt are either owned by rich businessmen who made their wealth through close links to the former Hosni Mubarak regime, or by the government. The new financing model adopted by the Muslim Brotherhood could start a wave of public channels that resemble National Public Radio in the U.S. where the public, rather than the government or the rich, funds news content.

The group, that was once outlawed, has soft-launched its Misr 25, a round-the-clock general interest TV channel.

Named after the first day of the uprising that toppled Mubarak, it has been broadcasting non-stop footage of Tahrir Square flag-waving protests that unseated Mubarak after 30 years in office, all with patriotic songs eulogizing the achievements of the Egyptian people.

Hazem Ghurab, a veteran journalist who is running the channel, says Misr 25 differs profoundly from its business-funded competitors. "Our funding is crowd-sourced," he said in an interview. "Our model is the BBC and (Japan’s) NHK."

Misr 25 owners hail from the Brotherhood’s vast pool of members across the country who each invest a small amount or make a donation.

"This way we are far more professional and far more independent than those owned by businessmen who can be easily manipulated, intimidated or bought by regimes," said Ghurab, who last worked for Al Jazeera channel in Doha, Qatar.

On top of the public funding plan, Ghurab still sees major advertising market potential. People are waiting "impatiently", he says, to watch the Muslim Brotherhood channel. He believes they also constitute a sizable untapped advertising market made of the pious, who were mostly ignored by the country’s business elite and the former regime.

Television critic Mohammed Said of Shashaty weekly says the new funding model adopted by the Muslim Brotherhood sets it apart from the wave of new channels that have launched or are being prepared for launch after the fall of Mubarak.

"Most of the new entrants in the market so far are business people who were in bed with the previous regime," said Mohammed Said. "Their TV channels and the jobs they offer to reporters and top newspapers’ editors is their way of constructing a buffer zone between themselves and public oversight of their practices under Mubarak."

After the success of the revolution and under public and media pressure, several corruption investigations were opened into the practices of the country’s business elite under Mubarak. Some are now in jail or face further probes. Some of the possessions obtained fraudulently under Mubarak were ordered by courts to be returned to the state.

Fearing further public scrutiny and more damage to their investments, many businessmen who were closely associated with the corrupt Mubarak regime and who had no experience in media ownership have rushed to set up their own channels and media outlets.

One of Egypt’s richest people, Naguib Sawiris, whose family made billions in telecommunications and construction under Mubarak, is sponsoring two new TV channels. The channels will join his media holdings such as the news and public affairs channel OTV. The family have shares in various local newspapers.

Mohammed Al-Amin Ragab, business partner of one of Mubarak’s business symbols, real estate tycoon Mansour Amer, who was a member of the now disbanded National Democratic Party that ruled Egypt for 30 years, has launched a suite of channels under the name Capital Broadcasting Center, CBC.

Businessmen such as Al-Amin and Sawiris join a family of other money barons who discovered the power of media holdings since the time of Mubarak.

Among them is Sayed Al-Badawi, a pharmaceutical tycoon turned media investor. He owns Al-Hayat channels line-up that initially rallied against the anti-Mubarak revolution.

Cement mogul Hassan Rateb, who owns Al-Mehwar television, devoted airtime to discredit democracy activists during the first days of the revolution as foreign agents paid by Jews, Israel and the United States.

The country’s state-owned media-services company, Media Production City, now reports unprecedented boom in business. All of its studios have been rented out. The company, which owns sprawling cinematic sets on the outskirts of Cairo, will now build even more studios to cater or the rising demand.

"It is old money at it again. Businessmen are just buying clout. It is a classic case of conflict-of- interest," Mohammed Said of Shashaty said.

"This is why the crowd-sourced model of the Muslim Brotherhood promises to offer less biased news coverage than those channels owned by people who benefited under Mubarak. We are waiting to see what that will look like."

Source: Inter-Press Service (IPS).
Link: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=104881.

Dreaming of a Future After Gaddafi

By Karlos Zurutuza

NALUT, Libya, Aug 24, 2011 (IPS) - "We grabbed all these weapons from Gaddafi's compound just before NATO shelled the whole place," says rebel fighter Massud Askar in downtown Nalut. The 50-year-old rebel displays an Italian light semi-automatic rifle in his right hand and a hand grenade in the other.

"We broke into the compound at around 3 pm. We got all this stuff from Bab Aziziyah’s main entrance," adds the exultant fighter before heading out for the three-hour trip back to Tripoli, about 150 miles to the north.

Since the first rebel troops entered Libya’s capital a few days ago, this Berber mountain village has worked as a hub for fresh fighters bound for the country’s capital. In Nalut, heavy machine guns atop sand-camouflaged pick-ups are everywhere.

"We’re all heading down to Zawiya and Tripoli for the final battle, and we need all the Kalashnikovs and Fal rifles we can gather. Security is Nafusa is not an issue today as Gaddafi’s last followers are too busy on Tripoli’s outskirts to care about what we’re doing up here," rebel commander Essam Assad tells IPS.

The breaking news coming from Gaddafi’s strongholds has been the focus of attention. But others already venture to look ahead. Said Hafiz is concerned about his children’s schooling.

"They’re going to start school earlier than normal after the summer vacation but I wonder if that will be enough for the kids to catch up with the lessons," Hafiz tells IPS. Most local children have attended classes in makeshift tents in the middle of the Tunisian desert for the last five months.

"It’s not just about wasted time. Are the young generations going to stick to the propaganda boosted by the regime’s curriculum?" asks Ibrahim Walid, a local teacher until last February. Walid says he’s ready to help remove "Gaddafi's cosmology" from the school books.

But a 55-year-old local teacher has a more ambitious dream. "We’ve spent the last four decades under a regime that hated us, the Amazig people. I hope I can catch up with schooling in our own language before I retire."

The Amazig - also called "Berbers" - form Libya’s largest minority. They are estimated to be five to 10 percent of the Libyan population of six million. Living apart in the mountains - often in self-imposed exclusion - has helped keep alive their ancient language Tamazight.

Everyone wants to seize the moment. Walid Essam, a 30-year-old former lawyer, has been unemployed since the revolution started, like most local shopkeepers, clerks, lorry drivers and others.

"We have only two choices: either we languish in the middle of the Tunisian desert, or we take up a gun and fight the regime," Essam tells IPS next to his pick-up turned into to a war hot-rod, as he heads out to Tripoli.

The upper hand in the war has dramatically swung to the rebels’ side over the last few days. But a key question still remains unanswered: Where is Gaddafi?

"I’m sure he left for the Chadian border a week ago, otherwise we would have already grabbed him in Tripoli," local shopkeeper Abdul Rahman tells IPS.

Speculating about Gaddafi’s potential shelter, possibilities emerge from Algeria to Venezuela and from South Africa to Chad. Others venture further east.

"I might be wrong but he might well be in Syria. Whatever the case, I’m sure America is well aware of his whereabouts," 17-year-old Ahmed tells IPS in English he has "picked up from American TV series."

Following reports of four Italian journalists reportedly kidnapped in Zawiya on Wednesday after their driver was shot, concerns have grown about safety on the road to Tripoli.

"Journalists were jumping into cars bound for Tripoli in their dozens. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more incidents like this," Juma Khan, a Nalut resident, tells IPS.

Source: Inter-Press Service (IPS).
Link: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=104879.

Female Trafficking Soars in Iraq

By Rebecca Murray

BAGHDAD, Aug 27, 2011 (IPS) - Rania was 16 years old when officials raped her during Saddam Hussein’s 1991 crackdown in Iraq’s Shia south. "My brothers were sentenced to death, and the price to stop this was to offer my body," she says.

Cast out for bringing ‘shame’ to her family, Rania ran away to Baghdad and soon fell into living and working in Baghdad’s red light district.

Prostitution and sex trafficking are epidemic in Iraq, where the violence of military occupation and sectarian strife have smashed national institutions, impoverished the population and torn apart families and neighborhoods. Over 100,000 civilians have been killed and an estimated 4.4 million Iraqis displaced since 2003.

"Wars and conflicts, wherever they are fought, invariably usher in sickeningly high level of violence against women and girls," Amnesty International states.

Rania worked her way up as a sex trafficker’s deputy, collecting money from clients. "If I had four girls, and about 200 clients a day - it could be about 50 clients for each one of them," she explains.

Sex costs about 100 dollars a session now, Rania says. Many virgin teenage girls are sold for around 5,000 dollars, and trafficked to popular destinations like northern Iraq, Syria and the United Arab Emirates. Non-virgins are about half that price.

Girls who run away to escape domestic violence or forced marriage are the most vulnerable prey for men working for pimps in bus stations and taxi stands. Some girls are also sold into marriages by family relatives, only to be handed over to trafficking rings.

Most of Iraq’s sex traffickers are predominantly female, running squalid brothels in neighborhoods like the decrepit Al-Battaween district in central Baghdad.

Six years ago, a raid by U.S. troops on Rania’s brothel brought her nefarious career to an abrupt end. The prostitutes were charged along with everyone else for abetting terrorism.

Imprisonment changed Rania’s life. While she served time in Baghdad’s Al-Kadimiyah lock-up – where more than half the female inmates serve time for prostitution – a local women’s support group befriended her. Today she works for them as an undercover researcher, drawing on her years of experience and connections to infiltrate brothels throughout Iraq.

"I deal with all these pimps and sex traffickers," Rania says, covered in black, with black, lacquered fingernails and gold bracelets. "I don’t tell them I’m an activist, I tell them I am a sex trafficker. This is the only way for me to get information. If they discover that I’m an activist I get killed."

In one harrowing experience, Rania and two other girls visited a house in Baghdad’s Al-Jihad district, where girls as young as 16 were held to cater exclusively to the U.S. military. The brothel’s owner told Rania that an Iraqi interpreter employed by the Americans served as the go-between, transporting girls to and from the U.S. airport base.

Rania’s co-workers covertly took photos of the captive teenagers with their mobile phones, but were caught. "One girl went crazy," Rania recalls. "She accused us of spying. I don’t know how we escaped," she exclaims. "We had to run away - barefoot!"

Before the Gulf War in 1991, Iraq enjoyed the highest female literacy rate across the Middle East, and more Iraqi women were employed in skilled professions, like medicine and education, than in any other country in the region.

Twenty years later Iraqi women experience a very different reality. Sharia law increasing dominates everyday life, with issues like marriage, divorce and honor crimes implemented outside of the court system, and adherence to state law.

"Many factors combined to promote the rise of sex trafficking and prostitution in the area," a Norwegian Church Aid report said last year.

"The US-led war and the chaos it has generated; the growing insecurity and lawlessness; corruption of authorities; the upsurge in religious extremism; economic hardship; marriage pressures; gender based violence and recurrent discrimination suffered by women; kidnappings of girls and women; the impunity of perpetrators of crimes, especially those against women; and the development of new technologies associated with the globalization of the sex industry."

The International Organization of Migration (IOM) estimates 800,000 humans are trafficked across borders annually, but statistics within Iraq are very difficult to pin down.

Although the Iraqi constitution deems trafficking illegal, there are no criminal laws that effectively prosecute offenders. Perversely, it is often the victims of trafficking and prostitution that are punished.

IOM is currently working with an inter-ministerial panel to lobby for a new reading of the revised counter-trafficking law, which has been stalled by the government since 2009.

"We have reports about trafficking both inside and out of Iraq," says senior deputy minister, Judge Asghar Al-Musawi, at the Ministry of Migration and Displacement.

"However, I admit that Iraqi government institutions are not mature enough to deal with this topic yet, as the departments are still in their growing phase."

Human Rights Watch (HRW) says the government has done little to combat the issue. "This is a phenomenon that wasn’t prevalent in 2003," says HRW researcher, Samer Muscati.

"We don’t have specific statistics. This is the first part to tackle the problem; we need to know how significant and widespread the problem is. This is something the government hasn’t been doing. It hasn’t monitored or cracked down on traffickers, and because of that there is this black hole in terms of information."

Zeina, 18, is an example of an invisible statistic. According to the local Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), she was 13 when her grandfather sold her to a sex trafficker in Dubai for 6,000 dollars. She performed only oral sex with customers until a wealthy man paid 4,000 dollars to take her virginity for one night.

After four years of prostitution, Zeina finally escaped the United Arab Emirates and returned back to her parents in Baghdad. She approached the authorities and took her grandfather to court. However, Zeina has since disappeared. OWFI has learned she was sold again, this time by her mother to a sex trafficker in Erbil.

OWFI director Yanar Mohammed says her office has been threatened for their advocacy against the lucrative trafficking industry, especially reporting on an infamous brothel owner in Al-Battaween district known as Emam.

"In each house there are almost 45 women and it is such a chaotic scene where women get treated like a cheap meat market," describes Mohammed. "You step into the house and see women being exploited sexually, even not behind closed doors. So the woman who runs these houses makes an incredible income, and has a crew around her to protect what she does."

Emam is said to enjoy close ties with the Interior Ministry, and has never had one of her four houses shut down. Despite OWFI’s expose, her operations are unaffected.

Mohammed sighs. "Iraq has a whole generation of women who are in their teens now, whose bodies have been turned into battlefields from criminal ideologies."

Source: Inter-Press Service.
Link: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=104911.

Military Trials on the Rise After Mubarak

By Cam McGrath

CAIRO, Aug 30, 2011 (IPS) - Amr El-Beheiry’s trial in a military court lasted just five minutes. The 33-year- old Egyptian was arrested on Feb. 26 and sentenced without a lawyer present to five years in prison for breaking curfew and assaulting a public official during a demonstration in Cairo.

He is just one of thousands of civilians tried in military courts since the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) assumed power in February during the uprising that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak. The special courts, which often group dozens of defendants together before a military judge, are notorious for their quick and severe sentences. Defendants are regularly denied access to legal counsel and verdicts cannot be appealed.

Mubarak used such intrinsically unfair trials against citizens who challenged his regime: Islamists, disobedient workers, and various political opponents. Egypt’s military rulers appear to have borrowed from the ex-dictator’s playbook.

"Military trials are a tool in the SCAF’s hand," says lawyer Ahmed Ragheb, executive director of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center. "They are using military courts because they provide more control than civil courts, which have independent judges and legal accountability."

According to Ragheb, over 12,000 Egyptians have been sentenced in military courts in the last six months. By comparison, less than 2,000 civilians were tried in military courts during Mubarak’s 30-year rule.

"Unfortunately, military trials have become the norm and civil trials the exception," Ragheb told IPS.

Activists who have seen their peers arrested and tried in military courts, often on what they claim are trumped up weapons and assault charges, say the wholesale use of military trials in recent months is aimed at sending a strong message: criticism of the regime will not be tolerated.

Since Mubarak’s ouster, protesters have demanded faster reforms and accused the ruling military council of seeking to protect its own interests, as well as members of the former regime. They say the SCAF has attempted to discredit the revolution by labeling civil protesters thugs and foreign agents.

One group of female protesters arrested in March was allegedly forced to undergo "virginity checks" and threatened with prostitution charges.

"They want to beat us and humiliate us to make people afraid to join demonstrations," says 23-year-old Eman Hussein, whose parents have tried to prevent her from joining protests.

Rights organizations have warned of recurrent abuses of civilians serving sentences in military prisons. Former detainees speaking at press conference said they were subject to frequent beatings and humiliation by their jailers, including being forced to strip naked in front of their cellmates.

"It is very humiliating to stand naked in front of 180 people," said Mohamed Soliman, a civilian detainee who was released after spending nearly two months in a military prison.

Military leaders have denied allegations of torture and abuse.

The SCAF recently acknowledged the right to a fair trial enshrined in the UN International Declaration of Human Rights, but said military trials were necessary due to the spiraling crime rates that accompanied the uprising that led to Mubarak’s ouster. It insisted that only cases of "thuggery" associated with weapons, rape or assault of military personnel were being referred to military courts.

"No civilian should be tried in front of military courts," SCAF member Major-General Mamdouh Shaheen told reporters. "But in this emergency situation... military courts took the place of civilian courts until they were able to work."

Adel Ramadan, a lawyer at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, claims security has improved and the country’s civil courts are capable of handling the additional caseload. He says all citizens, even suspected thugs, are entitled to a fair trial and those sentenced in military courts should be released or retried in a civil court.

He also voices concern over what amounts to a parallel justice system. While civilians have been referred to military courts for hasty trials, Mubarak and his former security officials are being tried in civilian courts on charges of killing nearly 850 protesters during the uprising.

"There is a perception that fair trials are only for the privileged," says Ramadan.

The SCAF has done little to dispel this perception. Military courts continue to rule on cases ranging from petty theft to violent crime, handing down sentences of six months to 25 years in prison. At least a dozen defendants, including minors, have received death sentences.

Reversals are rare, but do happen. Earlier this month the SCAF pardoned blogger Loai Nagati, who was arrested while documenting clashes between police and protesters in Cairo on Jun. 28, and activist Asmaa Mahfouz, who was accused of inciting the public against the military council in a posting on her Twitter account. They were released followed a massive outcry over the charges. The release appeared aimed at appeasing the public.

Mona Seif, coordinator of the ‘No to Military Trials’ campaign, says the military council has calculated its response, releasing a handful of prominent activists while showing no clemency for thousands of poor and disenfranchised detainees.

"The only cases in which the army released civilian detainees or promised a retrial were those in which it faced intense media pressure," she says. "Media and social networking campaigns have helped secure the release of a few political activists, but now we are trying to draw attention to the thousands of regular citizens still in military prisons who are not part of these networks."

Source: Inter-Press Service (IPS).
Link: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=104925.

Hariri Bombing Indictment Based on Flawed Premise

Analysis by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON, Aug 29, 2011 (IPS) - The indictment of four men linked to Hezbollah in the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri made public by the Special Tribunal on Lebanon Aug. 17 is questionable not because it is based on "circumstantial evidence", but because that evidence is based on a flawed premise.

The evidence depends on a convoluted theory involving what the indictment calls "co-location" of personal mobile phones associated with five distinct networks said to be somehow connected with the plot to murder Hariri.

The indictment, originally filed Jun. 10, says that, if there are "many instances" in which a phone is "active at the same location, on the same date, and within the same time frame as other phones", but the phones do not contact each other, then it is "reasonable to conclude from these instances that one person is using multiple phones together".

Based on that assumption the indictment asserts that "a person can ultimately be identified by co-location to be the user of a network phone."

On that reasoning, one of the four accused, Salim Jamil Ayyash, is said to have participated in a "red" network of phones that was activated on Jan. 5, 2005, only contacted each other, and ceased operations two minutes before the blast that killed Hariri. The "red" network is presumed to have been used by those who carried out surveillance as well as prepared the logistics for the bombing.

But Ayyash is also linked by "co-location" to a "green" network that had been initiated in October 2004 and ceased to operate one hour before the attack, and a "blue" network that was active between September 2004 and September 2005. The only basis for linking either of those two sets of mobile phones to the assassination appears to be the claim of frequent "co-location" of Ayyash's personal cell phone with one of the phones in those networks and one red phone.

But the idea that "co-location" of phones is evidence of a single owner is a logical fallacy. It ignores the statistical reality that a multitude of mobile phones would have been frequently co-located with any given phone carrying out surveillance on Hariri in Beirut over an hour or more on the same day during the weeks before the assassination.

In the area of Beirut from the parliament to the St. George Hotel, known as Beirut Central District, where the "red" network is said to have been active in carrying out its surveillance of Hariri, there are 11 base stations for mobile phones, each of which had a range varying from 300 meters to 1,250 meters, according to Riad Bahsoun, a prominent expert on Lebanon's telecom system. Bahsoun estimates that, within the range of each of those cell towers, between 20,000 and 50,000 cell phones were operating during a typical working day.

Given that number of mobile phones operating within a relatively small area, a large number of phones would obviously have registered in the cell tower area and in the same general time frame - especially if defined as an hour or more, as appears to be the case - as at least one of the red network phones on many occasions.

The indictment does not state how many times one of Ayyash's personal phones was allegedly "co-located" with a "red" network phone.

To prove that Ayyash was in charge of the team using the red phones, the indictment provides an extraordinarily detailed account of Ayyash's alleged use of red, green and blue phones on seven days during the period between Jan. 11 and Feb. 14, the day of the assassination.

But according to that information, during the final nine days on which the red network was active in surveillance of Hariri, including the day of the bombing itself, Ayyash was in phone contact with the red and blue networks on only three days – a pattern that appears inconsistent with the role of coordinating the entire plot attributed to him.

The most senior Hezbollah figure indicted, Mustafa Amine Badreddine, is accused of involvement only because he is said to have had 59 phone contacts with Ayyash during the Jan. 5-Feb. 14 period. But those phone contacts are attributed to the two Hezbollah figures solely on the basis of co-location of their personal mobile phones with two phones in the "green" network on an unspecified number of occasions – not from direct evidence that they talked on those occasions.

Evidence from the U.N. commission investigating the Hariri assassination suggests that investigators did not stumble upon the alleged connections between the four Hezbollah figures and the different phone networks but used the link analysis software to find indirect links between phones identified as belonging to Hezbollah and the "red phones".

In his third report, dated Sep. 26, 2006, then Commissioner Serge Brammertz said his team was using communications traffic analysis for "proactive and speculative" studies.

Brammertz referred in his next report in December 2006 to the pursuit of an "alternative hypothesis" that the motive for killing Hariri was a "combination of political and sectarian factors". That language indicates that the "proactive and speculative" use of link analysis was to test the hypothesis that Shi'a Hezbollah was behind the bombing.

This is not the first time that communications link analysis has been used to link telephones associated with a specific group or entity to other phones presumed to be part of a major bombing plot.

In the investigation of the Buenos Aires terror bombing of a Jewish community center in 1994, the Argentine intelligence service SIDE used analysis of phone records to link the Iranian cultural attaché, Mohsen Rabbani, to the bombing, according to the former head of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's Office on Hezbollah, James Bernazzani.

Bernazzani, who was sent by the White House in early 1997 to assist SIDE in the bombing investigation, told this reporter in a November 2006 interview that SIDE had argued that a series of telephone calls made between Jul. 1 and Jul. 18, 1994 to a mobile phone in the Brazilian border city of Foz de Iguazu must have been made by the "operational group" for the bombing.

SIDE had further argued that a call allegedly made on a mobile phone belonging to Rabbani to the same number showed that he was linked the bombing plot.

Bernazzani called that use of link analysis by SIDE "speculative" – the same word that Brammertz used to describe the U.N. investigation's employment of the same tool. Such speculative use of link analysis "can be very dangerous", Bernazzani said. "Using that kind of analysis, you could link my telephone to [Osama] bin Laden's."

Source: Inter-Press Service (IPS).
Link: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=104920.

Syria force surrounds town after defections: residents

George Haddad
Tuesday, 30 August 2011

Global Arab Network - An armored Syrian force surrounded a town near the city of Homs and fired heavy machineguns after the defection of tens of soldiers in the area, activists and residents said.

One woman, 45 year-old Amal Qoraman, was killed and five other people were injured, they said, adding that tens of people were arrested in house to house raids in the town of 40,0000.

Since the demise of Muammar Gaddafi's rule in Libya, activists and residents have reported increasing defections among Syrian troops, as well as more intense street protests in a five-month-old uprising against President Bashar al Assad.

Syrian authorities have repeatedly denied army defections have been taking place. They have expelled independent media since the uprising began in March.

Activists say there have been desertions in eastern Deir al-Zor province, northwestern Idlib province, the Homs countryside and the outskirts of Damascus, where security forces fought gunbattles with defectors Sunday.

At least 40 light tanks and armored vehicles, and 20 buses of troops and military intelligence members deployed at dawn at the entrance of Rastan, 20 km (12 miles) north of Homs and began firing heavy machineguns at the town, two residents said.

"The tanks deployed at both banks of the highway, which remained open, and fired long bursts from their machineguns at Rastan," one of the residents, who gave his name as Raed, told Reuters by phone.

He said defections began in the town when it was stormed by tanks three months ago to crush large street protests against Assad in an assault that killed dozens of civilians.

Security forces killed Monday a former officer who had played a key role in coordinating army defections, activists said.

Mostapha Selim Hezbollah, a former air force officer in his 40s', was shot dead when his car was ambushed near the town of Kfar Nubul in Idlib province, which borders Turkey, they said.

"It was a targeted assassination. A companion who was with him in the car was badly wounded but we managed to get him to a hospital. The attack happened just before 'iftar' (breaking of fast). We don't know yet if it was security police or troops who fired at them," one of the activists told Reuters by phone.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is based in Britain, said five other people were killed earlier in military assaults on several towns in Idlib.

Source: Global Arab Network.
Link: http://www.english.globalarabnetwork.com/2011083011514/Syria-Politics/syria-force-surrounds-town-after-defections-residents.html.

Algeria not immune to Arab spring revolt

- Asmaa Malik
Monday, 29 August 2011

Global Arab Network - Algeria could be swept by an Arab Spring-style revolt if the government does not urgently fix social and political problems, the country's leading Islamist opposition politician said.

Sheikh Abdallah Djaballah, 54, head of a party called the Front for Justice and Development, said the government had tried to appease anger by handing out cash, but had failed to address a lack of democracy at the root of Algeria's problems.

"The sources of tensions may unify and become a tsunami that will destroy everything," Djaballah told Reuters in an interview.

"The regime wanted to fix the problem financially by saying that the crisis is social and that raising wages will be enough... It is true that the social aspect of the crisis is real, but the key problem remains political."

Algeria, an important gas supplier to Europe and a U.S. ally in its fight against al Qaeda, has been shaken by unrest and strikes since the beginning of this year, with people demanding better pay and lower prices.

The government of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, 74, feared the strikes and protests could lead to the kind of revolt which toppled long-standing rulers in Egypt and neighbouring Tunisia.

Bouteflika responded by using energy revenues to give hefty pay rises for almost all public employees and to raise subsidies on basic foodstuffs.

To relieve pressure for political change, he also lifted a 19-year-old state of emergency, promised to give the opposition a voice in state media and set up a commission to recommend political reforms.

Since then the number of protests has fallen sharply, but the problems are still there, said Jaballah, who wears a beard, like most Islamists, but also dresses in Western clothes.

"If someone has cancer, you cannot just give them a sedative and this is what the government has been doing so far," he said.

Source: Global Arab Network.
Link: http://www.english.globalarabnetwork.com/2011082911337/Algeria-Politics/algeria-not-immune-to-arab-spring-revolt.html.

Scientists announce amazing findings: chocolate offers huge protection from heart disease and stroke

Tuesday, August 30, 2011
by: S. L. Baker, features writer

(NaturalNews) All regular readers of NaturalNews know that researchers have discovered chocolate (especially the organic, not junked up with additives and sugar type) contains phytochemicals which appear to promote good health. But no one has had much of a clue about the specifics of some of those benefits on the cardiovascular system -- until now. Scientists at the European Society of Cardiology Congress currently underway in Paris just announced that chocolate provides huge protection from heart disease as well as stroke.

That's great news because, despite the billions of dollars spent on mainstream medicine's drugs and surgical interventions, the battle against cardiovascular disease obviously needs some serious help. Currently, the World Health Organization (WHO) predicts that by 2030 nearly 23.6 million people will die yearly from heart disease.

So just imagine the fluttering of hearts in Big Pharma offices if they found a no side effect, easy to produce drug that actually worked to lower the risk of developing heart disease in the first place by almost 40 percent. The demand and profits to be made would be enormous. While there is no such medication, it turns out that eating chocolate regularly appears to accomplish what pills can't.

For a new study, which was just published in the online version of the British Medical Journal, Dr. Oscar Franco and colleagues from the University of Cambridge carried out a large scale investigation of existing research on chocolate. In all, they looked at research involving over 100,000 participants with and without existing heart disease. Then the scientists evaluated the effects of eating chocolate on cardiovascular events including heart attacks and stroke.

For each of seven studies that were analyzed, the research team compared the group with the highest chocolate consumption against the group with the lowest consumption (to minimize bias, they factored in differences in the way each study had been designed). Bottom line: the highest levels of chocolate consumption were associated with an astounding 37 percent reduction in cardiovascular disease and an almost 30 percent reduction in stroke compared with lowest levels of chocolate eating.

The studies did not differentiate between dark or milk chocolate and included consumption of chocolate bars, drinks, biscuits and desserts -- which raises an obvious question not answered by the new research analysis. Would the cardiovascular protection be even more pronounced if the chocolate didn't include extra sugars, unhealthy fats or chemical additives found in many chocolate drinks and candy bars?

The authors of the study did warn their findings need to be interpreted cautiously because commercially available chocolate products are often loaded with calories, so eating too much of these can lead to weight gain and be harmful to health in general. However, in a statement to the media, they concluded that given the health benefits of eating chocolate, "initiatives to reduce the current fat and sugar content in most chocolate products should be explored."

Source: NaturalNews.
Link: http://www.naturalnews.com/033463_chocolate_heart_disease.html.

Iran sues Russia over missing missiles

Tehran (UPI)
Aug 30, 2011

Iran has filed a lawsuit at the International Court of Justice in a bid to force Russia to sell it the powerful S-300PMU air-defense system under an $800 contract Moscow abrogated in 2010, citing U.N. sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear program.

But Moscow's move in reneging on the 2007 deal was largely political, and if its relations with the West deteriorate it could decide to deliver the five mobile units it agreed to sell the Iranians.

Much will depend on how important Moscow views its relations with Iran.

Russia has been a key arms supplier to the Islamic republic in the past and is building a nuclear reactor on the Persian Gulf coast at Bushehr, despite repeated U.S. objections.

It's likely the S-300s could become a major pawn in Russia's relationship with the United States.

Right now Moscow is looking to the West to help modernize strategic economic sectors, so it's unlikely it will accede to pressure from Tehran in a legal dispute that could drag on for years.

Iran's ambassador to Moscow, Mahmoud-Reza Sajjadi, said Aug. 24 Tehran rejects the Russian claim that air-defense systems fall under the U.N. sanctions and expects the court to authorize the delivery of the missiles.

Iran made a down payment of $170 million after the contract was signed in December 2007.

Tehran wanted to take delivery of the S-300s as soon as possible because it was concerned at the time that Israel would unleash pre-emptive airstrikes against its nuclear program.

The S-300 is considered one of the world's most advanced air-defense systems, ranking alongside the all-altitude MIM-104 Patriot system built by the Raytheon Co. of Massachusetts.

It would be a formidable addition to Iranian air defenses around key nuclear installations.

The system, developed by NPO Almaz of Moscow, can engage multiple targets, missiles as well as aircraft, at ranges of more than 100 miles at low and high altitudes.

U.S. military officers said the S-300 would be a "game-changer" for Iran if it ever received the mobile batteries.

At present, the Iranian air-defense system does not have anything remotely as powerful as the S-300.

Israeli aircraft could penetrate without too much trouble, although there would be losses. But with S-300s in place it would be immensely more difficult to knock out any nuclear sites and losses would be much higher.

Russia has sold the S-300PMU to most of the former Soviet republics as well as to China and North Korea.

The United States and Israel pressed Moscow hard not to deliver the missiles to Iran, and this is understood to have influenced Moscow when Tehran demanded the S-300s be delivered.

The U.N. sanctions, imposed in June 2010, supposedly provided a convenient way out for the Russians.

"The promise of the sale to Iran has served as leverage for Moscow in its negotiations with the United States, and Moscow does not want to lose that leverage," observed U.S. security think tank Stratfor.

"Furthermore, actually delivering the missile systems to Iran would cause a major break in relations between Russia and the West at a time when Russia is looking to the West for assistance, increasing cooperation with the United States and strengthening its relationships with Western European powers."

As it is, Russia has another reason not to provide Iran with the S-300s: It's expected to wrap production of the system this year.

Moscow has been replacing its own deployed S-300s with the more advanced S-400 over the past few years.

It's believed to be ahead of schedule in developing the S-500s system, which could be ready for production by the end of 2012.

But, Stratfor cautioned, if Moscow's dealings with the West go sour, it would still have stocks of S-300s, including those it will be replacing, to send to Iran if it decided the geopolitical climate had changed.

And it could also use third parties to make the deliveries, as it has in the past to mask politically sensitive arms sales.

"Russia is planning to replace S-300s with S-400s in its allied neighboring countries, like Belarus, Armenia and Kazakhstan," Stratfor said.

"Any Iranian officials' visits to such countries could indicate whether Russia is in fact delivering the S-300s to Iran, as Tehran's ability to acquire the system cannot be ruled out."

Source: Space War.
Link: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Iran_sues_Russia_over_missing_missiles_999.html.

China tightens security in restive Xinjiang

Beijing (AFP)
Aug 30, 2011

China has banned pigeon flying and tightened airport security in the run-up to an international trade fair in Xinjiang after a series of deadly attacks in the restive region, state media said Tuesday.

A low-altitude no-fly zone over the provincial capital Urumqi also prohibits kites and hot-air balloons during the China-Eurasia Expo which begins Thursday, the official Xinhua news agency and local government said.

Airports in a dozen cities across China, including Beijing and Shanghai, have increased security checks for Urumqi-bound flights, requiring passengers to remove their belts and shoes, Xinhua and airport officials said.

The new measures reportedly caused lengthy queues, flight delays and even fights among frustrated passengers at Beijing Capital International Airport on Sunday.

Armed police are guarding the convention center in Urumqi where leaders from China and neighboring countries will meet, while an elite police counter-terrorism unit had been deployed to Kashgar and Hotan which were hit by the recent violence, Xinhua said.

"Security is paramount," Yu Xiudong, a senior member of the China-Eurasia Expo organizing committee, was quoted saying.

"We should make meticulous preparations against all security emergencies to ensure a safe expo."

Xinjiang has seen several outbreaks of ethnic violence in recent years as the mainly Muslim Uighur minority bridles under what it regards as oppression by the government and the unwanted immigration of ethnic Han Chinese.

Tensions boiled over again in July when two knife attacks as well as clashes between ethnic Uighurs and police killed more than 40 people in the resource-rich and strategically vital region.

Officials and state media have blamed the unrest on "terrorists" but some experts say the government has produced little evidence of an organized terrorist threat, adding the violence stems more from long-standing local resentment.

In July 2009, China was hit by its worst ethnic violence in decades when Uighurs savagely attacked Han Chinese in Urumqi -- an incident that led to deadly reprisals by Han on Uighurs several days later.

The government said around 200 people were killed and 1,700 injured.

The trade convention in Urumqi will be held from September 1-5 and is expected to attract leaders from regional countries including Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, who is due to arrive in China later Tuesday.

Source: Space War.
Link: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/China_tightens_security_in_restive_Xinjiang_999.html.

WikiLeaks says hit with cyberattack

San Francisco (AFP)
Aug 30, 2011

Controversial anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks said Tuesday it was fending off a cyberattack after being lambasted for releasing more supposedly confidential US diplomatic cables.

"WikiLeaks.org is presently under cyberattack," the organization said in a terse message on microblogging service Twitter.

The message provided a link to a cablegatesearch.net website where digital copies of the political documents could be viewed.

The online assault came hours after US officials voiced renewed concern over the risks to individuals after WikiLeaks made public more US diplomatic cables, many of which contained the names of sensitive sources.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland would not confirm the authenticity of the latest documents, but said "the United States strongly condemns any illegal disclosure of classified information.

Source: Space War.
Link: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/WikiLeaks_says_hit_with_cyberattack_999.html.

Protesters condemn arrest of youth in Indian-controlled Kashmir

SRINAGAR, KASHMIR (BNO NEWS) — Families and relatives of more than 73 youth who were arrested during clashes on Saturday protested outside the police station in downtown Srinagar in Indian-administered Kashmir on Tuesday, the Hindustan Times reported.

Female protesters with sticks in their hands blocked the main road in the city center, causing a major traffic jam and affecting shoppers. The women condemned the arrests and accused police of arresting innocent people.

Police claimed that 300 motorcycle-borne youth pelted stones at Nowhatta police station in the city center at about 10.30 p.m. local time on Saturday. “The miscreants were riding motorcycles and tossed two petrol bombs on police. Six policemen were injured and two of them are in serious condition,” a police officer was quoted as saying.

However, eyewitnesses’ accounts contradict the police’s version. A local said police confronted a group of youth who marched on the streets raising pro-freedom slogans after finishing night prayers. “They were confronted by the police, which resulted in a clash. Suddenly, the police started rounding up whoever was on the road,” the local added.

Inspector general of police Shiv Murari Sahai told the Hindustan Times that the cases are being looked in. “Sit-ins will not deter us. We will book those involved in the stone-pelting incident. But if there are minor charges, youth will be released. So far no final decision has been taken,” said Sahai.

The court on Monday granted bail to 40 youth while 33 were sent to judicial remand. However, those who were granted bail have not been handed over to their families as of late Tuesday.

The arrests came shortly after chief minister Omar Abdullah announced amnesty to youths involved in over 1,200 cases of stone pelting in last summer’s unrest.

Tuesday, August 30th, 2011

Source: WireUpdate.
Link: http://wireupdate.com/wires/19780/protesters-condemn-arrest-of-youth-in-indian-controlled-kashmir/.

Former U.S. employee of Akamai pleads guilty to spying for Israel

BOSTON (BNO NEWS) — A Massachusetts man has pleaded guilty to a charge of foreign economic espionage for exchanging sensitive information with a person who he believed was an Israeli spy, officials said on Tuesday. The man worked for Akamai when he committed the crimes.

Elliot Doxer, 43, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Denise J. Casper to a charge of providing trade secrets over an 18-month period from the finance department of Akamai Technologies to an undercover federal agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer.

In 2006, Doxer sent an email to the Israeli consulate in Boston stating that he worked in the finance department of Akamai Technologies and was willing to provide any information that might help Israel. His main desire “was to help our homeland and our war against our enemies,” Doxer said in later communications.

From October 2007 to March 2009, Doxer exchanged information with a federal agent posing as an undercover Israeli intelligence officer. Among this information was an extensive list of Akamai’s customers, its contracts, as well as a list of the company’s employees, including their contact information.

The former Akamai worker also described the company’s security systems and said he could travel to Israel or support special and sensitive operations in his local area if needed. The information was never in real danger of actual exposure because it was disclosed only to an undercover agent.

U.S. District Judge Casper has scheduled the sentencing for November 30 when Doxer could face a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, a three-year term of supervised release and a $500,000 fine. Doxer’s prosecution is the first in Massachusetts for foreign economic espionage and only the eighth in the United States.

Akamai Technologies is a content delivery network which provides cloud-based services to optimize web and mobile content applications, including HD video and secure e-commerce. It had a revenue of just over a billion U.S. dollars in 2010.

Tuesday, August 30th, 2011

Source: WireUpdate.
Link: http://wireupdate.com/wires/19782/former-u-s-employee-of-akamai-pleads-guilty-to-spying-for-israel/.

Palestinians in Jordan refugee camp long to return

John Ridley
The Electronic Intifada
30 August 2011

The market is busy, shop and stall owners are shouting to advertise their wares to the crowds on the street; food and essential goods only. Behind the main street more traders sell secondhand goods, mostly clothes and shoes, piled on rickety tables or heaped onto tarpaulins lying on the ground. Shoppers rummage through the piles in the hope of finding clothing at an affordable price.

The sense of community is apparent, everyone has a purpose, many stop to welcome me, or just shake hands and say “hello.”

But just beyond the bustling market lays the reality of Baqaa. Mahmood, my guide, explains — “Four generations of refugees have grown up with little hope of escaping poverty, let alone reaching their true potential; despite their hardships the community remains strong.”

The UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), runs services in Baqaa camp, although UNRWA does not itself run the refugee camps. It works alongside all the charities in the camp. The UN, being politically-funded, is restricted to running the school, health center, some food distribution and other projects.

Unlike the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), who are responsible for all non Palestinian refugees world-wide, UNWRA was established with no mandate to assist Palestinians in resettlement, either in Palestine or another country.

Apart from the run-down appearance, the school looks like any other “city center” school. Children play happily on the tarmac surface during their short breaks between lessons. At the entrance fly the flags of Jordan, Palestine and the United Nations.

The school has sixty students in each class and runs four shifts per day; not surprisingly half of the children do not finish basic education. Yet, some do succeed at school — last year the top ten Jordanian graduates came from the camps; there is an escape through education — if you are exceptional and have financial support.

A life in the space of one bed

Today the camp, just 1.5 square kilometers in size, houses 250,000 residents; each family, usually eight to ten persons spanning three generations, is allocated just 96 square meters.

Putting this into perspective, each person is allocated a space slightly larger than a double bed, their space to live in — sleep, keep belongings, wash, cook, perform personal hygiene, study, play — their whole live in the space taken by one bed.

The homes are rudimentary concrete structures with corrugated panels or plastic sheets for roofs, more substantial roofing is not allowed; this would imply the home was a permanent building.

The unemployment, overcrowding, lack of proper ventilation, inadequate garbage collection, poor water and sewage systems make the camp a breeding ground for disease. Mahmood struggles to express his emotion, “Every family faces devastation, then hope, followed by devastation — eventually everyone becomes anaesthetized to hope. The mortality statistics, whether through illness or suicide, are just numbers, they lose all meaning.”

Mahmood takes me to a narrow gateway, the entrance to a small patch of ground between two houses. “Behind every door you find tragic circumstances, orphans, mental and physical illness, widows, birth defects, nothing prepares you,” he says.

In 1948, Fatima was a young girl in her late teens living in al-Dawayima, a small Palestinian village near Hebron. “We were farmers and had land, we grew figs, olives and wheat,” she says. As a reminder of those better days she keeps one solitary olive tree growing in the small yard of her home.

She and Abdul Rahman, her brother, had expected peace and comfort in the years ahead but in the space of just a few hours their lives and the lives of everyone they knew changed forever. She remembers every detail of 29 October 1948.

Al-Dawayima was the site of one of the larger, little-known massacres of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing that led to Israel’s establishment. “Our parents among the dead, we fled for our lives, leaving our home with nothing more than the clothes on our back.” Sixty-three years on, Fatima still has nothing.

Along with many survivors, they walked to the Hebron Hills where they hid, before walking onto a makeshift camp in Jericho. There would be no peace for Fatima or her brother; during the war of June 1967, along with 300,000 Palestinians, they fled Jericho and the West Bank for exile in Jordan.

Since 1968 she has lived in Baqaa with her brother Abdul Rahman and his disabled son; both disabled by arthritis, neither can walk more than a few tens of yards.

“We walked day and night until reaching Baqaa; this was to be our new home,” she says. Under canvas, many died in the harsh Jordanian winters; steel prefabricated huts eventually replaced the tents. “The huts were dry, an improvement on the canvas tents, but as protection against the cold we dug underground shelters.”

Living underground for twenty years

In September 1972, Israel began aerial bombing of Baqaa in response to Palestinian attempts to recapture their homeland. The underground shelters became protection from the bombing raids; the whole camp was destroyed.

Unable to afford to replace their hut, they lived below their nine-meter by nine-meter plot of ground for twenty years. “Finally, with the help of charity we managed to build a small concrete shelter.” The elderly brother, sister and disabled son now live in this one room, with rags on the floor to sleep on. They can afford no mattresses or furniture.

“We keep hens in the yard, feeding them stale bread; eggs are our main diet. Two to three times a week, more fortunate Baqaa residents provide us with a meal. Many hundreds of people in the camp live in the same poverty as us.”

Despite the hardship, Fatima is a joy and inspiration. She is now in her mid-seventies, but as I left her home, smiling, she told me that when she returns to Palestine she will be ready to get married.

With every family we meet, the stories keep coming. The narrow alleyways between the houses are cold, dark and damp, very little sunlight reaches the streets or into the homes. Toilets, bathrooms and excess rain water empty into the same sewage pipes, too small to meet demand in heavy rain, raw sewage overflows into the roads. No matter how hard the residents try, keeping their homes and the camp clean and healthy is almost impossible.

The houses are in dreadful condition inside and out, the personal stories even worse: illness, death, finance, or other tragedies.

“We’ve kept our keys”

In 1948, Abdullah’s grandparents, married just five years, were raising their young family in the coastal city of Jaffa. “My grandfather came from a trading family, buying and selling citrus fruit from the orchards for export,” Abdullah says. “We were not rich, but we wanted for nothing. As the escalating violence reached Jaffa, my grandparents decided the family should leave the city.”

The family packed for a short trip, they would return home in a week or two when things settled down. They covered their furniture, locked the door and left, heading for Ramallah on foot, carrying just the provisions they could manage — and the key to the door of the house.

Every family I visited showed me their house keys. The key has come to symbolize the right of return for Palestinian refugees worldwide.

“Countless people walked together towards an unknown destination, we walked until dusk, resting in orchards overnight. My mother was six months old and very ill, doctors had said that she would not survive.” The family was in great difficulty, carrying four young children and provisions. “On the first night, my grandparents begged the owner of an orchard to care for their dying child until she passed away.” Another refugee intervened, leaving his few possessions, he carried her for two days until they reached the safety of Ramallah.

Finally, the refugees arrived at the emergency shelters, home from 1948 until 1967. “My grandmother, with help from the Quakers, supported the family by selling crochet and knitting to people in Ramallah.” In 1967 the Israelis again declared war on the Palestinians, forcing a second wave of expulsions. “Again we were refugees, left with nothing.”

Exhausted, after days of walking, they arrived in Baqaa on the Jordanian East Bank; home was to be a canvas tent, allocated to the family by the United Nations.

“By 1972, most tents had been replaced by steel shelters, but we were not left in peace to rebuild our lives, Israelis continued fighting Palestinians. In September of that year Israel again attacked us, this time dropping bombs from aircraft onto Baqaa, killing thousands and destroying the camp.”

Heart-breaking tragedy

Abdullah’s mother survived; she is now 63 and lives with him, his wife, their four daughters and three sons.

Just two weeks before I met Abdullah and his mother Ayishah, Abdullah’s five-year-old daughter had died of cholera. Fighting tears, Abdullah told me, “Cholera is very common in all the refugee camps, caused by sewage in the streets when we have heavy rain.”

As a Palestinian refugee arriving in Jordan after 1967, Abdullah has no nationality and can only find simple work outside the camp, for which police approval is needed. “Palestinians, even those with Jordanian nationality, have differently-colored identity cards; we face discrimination everywhere in our lives. Once a refugee, always a refugee.”

Abdullah now works for an imam in a mosque. “I earn very little money, but it is better than nothing and reduces my dependence upon charity.”

The edge of Baqaa to the roundabout of the main Damascus-Amman highway is fewer than 20 meters. Few people know what lies behind the tatty shops, workshops and second hand tire stands fronting the road. Not many from Amman turn into the camp, unless they want to buy vegetables from the market stalls at a fraction of the price they would pay in supermarkets.

Our car turns onto the highway, in less than five minutes we are in Amman, driving past the highly respected Queen Rania Hospital for Children and the upmarket City Mall. Baqaa is just far enough outside Amman to be forgotten. The world may look away but the forgotten people of Palestine will still be there.

Note: This article was amended to correct language which suggested UNRWA runs Baqaa refugee camp. UNRWA does not run refugee camps, but provides services to refugees living in the camps.

Source: Electronic Intifada.
Link: http://electronicintifada.net/content/palestinians-jordan-refugee-camp-long-return/10330.