“We don’t have a very vibrant anti-war movement anymore,” lamented Medea Benjamin, founder of Code Pink, one of the anti-war movement’s most visible organizations. “The issues have not changed very much. … Now we have a surge [in Afghanistan] that we would have been furious about under George Bush, yet it’s hard to mobilize people under Obama. We have the same anti -war movement and not the same passion.”
From this extensive presentation of evidence and argument, the following conclusions
ineluctably emerge. In their zeal to bring charges against the defendants in this case, the prosecutors and investigators aggressively sought out statements the defendants had been compelled to make to government investigators in the immediate aftermath of the shooting and in the subsequent investigation. In so doing, the government’s trial team repeatedly disregarded the warnings of experienced, senior prosecutors, assigned to the case specifically to advise the trial team on Garrity and Kastigar issues, that this course of action threatened the viability of the prosecution. The government used the defendants’ compelled statements to guide its charging decisions, to formulate its theory of the case, to develop investigatory leads and, ultimately, to obtain the indictment in this case. The government’s key witnesses immersed themselves in the defendants’ compelled statements, and the evidence adduced at the Kastigar hearing plainly demonstrated that these compelled statements shaped portions of the witnesses’ testimony to the indicting grand jury.2 The explanations offered by the prosecutors and investigators in an attempt to justify their actions and persuade the court that they did not use the defendants’ compelled testimony were all too often contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility.
In direct contravention of Hulser’s unequivocal warnings, in January and February 2008, the government’s trial team interviewed all of the DSS agents who had conducted the September 16, 2007 interviews and specifically inquired about the details of the defendants’ statements during those interviews.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The divorce rate in the armed forces increased slightly again in the past year as military marriages continued to bear the stress of the nation's ninth year at war.
The Pentagon says that in the budget year that ended Sept. 30, there were an estimated 27,312 divorces among the nearly 765,000 married members of the active-duty Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
That's a divorce rate of about 3.6 percent, compared with 3.4 percent a year earlier.
Friday's reported 3.6 percent rate is a full percentage point above the 2.6 percent reported in 2001, just as the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on America propelled the United States into the war in Afghanistan.
"The force is under tremendous stress, and that stress finds its way into marriages," said Joe Davis, spokesman for the organization Veterans of Foreign Wars.
There's no comparable annual system for tracking the national or civilian divorce rate, though the Centers for Disease Control said in 2005 that 43 percent of all first marriages end in divorce within 10 years.
Benjamen Karney, lead researcher for the Rand Corp., which studied divorce in the military from 1996 through 2005, said there haven't been any studies on the military divorce rate for women. "It wasn't until my report came out in 2007 about divorce in the military that we learned that divorce in the military was substantially higher among females than males.This has been true for more than the last decade even when there was no war going on."
Karney said there is speculation, however. "One thought is that support services available for military families are geared for supporting civilian wives of male servicemen," he said. "Another possibility is that women who are service members are different than men in the military in important ways. It has been said that the military recruits the most traditional men in our society. But the military recruits the least traditional females in our society. They are not the women who are most invested in the general role assigned to women. A third possibility is that it may be more stressful to be a civilian husband of a military wife than it is to be a civilian wife of a military husband. We don't know the answers. But we recommend there needs to be more research done on women in the military."
In the eight years since Zawahiri made his claim, his vision of a grand west African front hasn't panned out. Islamists haven't attacked any foreign targets in Nigeria. There are no Nigerians in Guantánamo. Allegations about small cells surface now and again, but nothing has been proven yet. There's no strong anti-American sentiment in Nigeria, and there aren't any U.S. troops nearby to attack. "West Africa just has not been a fertile ground for jihadism," says Peter Lewis, director of the Africa program at the School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. "This doesn't translate into a regional Islamist network." The death-to-the-Westerners mantra just has no constituency there.
What Nigeria does have—and what the Boko Haram attacks actually reflect—is an immensely complicated (and often very nasty) local politics. Nigeria's mean poverty rate, the number of people living below $1.25 a day, soars above 70 percent, even as a tiny minority of wealthy, and often very corrupt, officials live decadently. Nowhere is the discrepancy between the haves and the have-nots more pronounced than in Nigeria's fertile northern regions, where the Boko Haram attacks are occurring. Unemployment is rife, even among college-educated youth. That's partly why northerners opted for alternate political systems, and Sharia law in particular—hoping that bypassing the existing system would guarantee them a bigger piece of the pie.
WASHINGTON — The remains of the first American lost in the Gulf War have been found in Iraq, the military said Sunday, a sorrowful resolution of a nearly two-decade old question about the fate of Navy Capt. Michael "Scott" Speicher.
The Pentagon said the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology on Saturday positively identified the remains, buried in the desert and located after officials received new information from an Iraqi citizen about a crash.
Speicher's disappearance has bedeviled investigators since his fighter was shot down over the Iraq desert on the first night of the 1991 war.
The US army in Afghanistan has burned Bibles printed in local languages, a US colonel in Afghanistan has said, amid concerns they could have been used to try to convert Afghans.
"My understanding is that the [military] leadership confiscated these Bibles so that they could not be distributed around Afghanistan," Colonel Greg Julian told Al Jazeera on Wednesday.
"It was their best judgement at the time, that the best way to deal with it, was to destroy them and I understand that they were burnt."
Afghanistan's 2004 constitution states that "no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam" (Article 3) thus affirming that apostasy from Islam is punishable by death. On the other hand, the constitution's preamble affirms that the people of Afghanistan will respect the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which in Article 18 guarantees the freedom to change one's religion.
Non-Muslim Afghans who have never been Muslims have a measure of freedom in that they are permitted to "exercise their faith and perform their religious rites within the limits of the provisions of the law" (Article 2). This applies to Afghan Hindus, Sikhs and the one remaining member of Afghanistan's Jewish community. But it does not apply to Afghan Christians (or other non-Muslims) who have chosen to convert from Islam.
The current downward spiral began in December 2006, when Ethiopian troops, backed by U.S. intelligence and air and naval support, overthrew Somalia's Islamic Courts Union, a conservative Muslim regime that had ruled for just six months.
U.S. views on the Courts were influenced by Ethiopia's prime minister Meles Zenawi, a brutal dictator who is a staunch ally in the War on Terror and also a major recipient of U.S. humanitarian and military aid. Meles had his own reasons for toppling the Mogadishu regime: He accused the Courts of aiding separatists in the Ogaden desert, a vast, ethnically Somali region that lies within Ethiopia's borders. The two countries fought a war over the Ogaden in the late 1970s. These days, the region is the scene of brutal internal warfare, and may soon be familiar in the way of Darfur.
Gaza – Ma’an – Israel reopened commercial crossings into the Gaza Strip on Wednesday morning, without conditions, the Palestinian Authority told Ma’an.
The crossings had been closed in response to a deadly attack on an Israeli patrol near Gaza on Tuesday morning. One officer was killed in the attack and three others were injured, one seriously.
According to Ra’ed Fatouh, a Crossings Authority official, Israel informed the PA “that they reopened the borders in the Strip for dozens of trucks at 7:00am this morning.”
Israel’s continued truce violations are provocative and should be halted immediately, said a statement from the National Resistance Brigades (NRB), the armed wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) Friday.
Israel’s violations include the serious injury of two fishermen Thursday, repeated invasions from the border areas and artillery fire resulting in the death of three civilians since the Israeli ceasefire was called.
“These violations” said the NRB, “are provocative to the Palestinian resistance and if continued will force a response to the Israeli occupation.” The statement added that Israel is looking for a justification for re-launching its attacks on Gaza.
In a joint statement declared “We the Palestinian resistant factions, announce a ceasefire from our side in Gaza Strip. We confirm our stance and our demand for Israeli troops to withdraw from Gaza in a week, that Israel opens the borders, and crossing points for humanitarian aid convoys.”
The statement highlighted the factions’ readiness to respond to the Egyptian, Turkish, Syrian, and Qatari plans to for a permanent lifting of the siege, and opening of Gaza’s borders.
Hamas spokesperson Ayman Taha spoke out in favor of the decision, saying the party supported the initiative and also the decision to implement a boycott of Israel reached in the Doha Summit.
For Islamic Jihad spokesperson Daoud Shehab said the decision was based on consideration for the “common national interest” of the parties involved in the war, and to allow humanitarian aid convoys to enter Gaza.
Shehab told Ma’an, “The resistance won on the ground and now we will go onto the political battle.”
He explained that the decision is a natural extension of the role of resistance factions, and sought to establish the rights of Palestinians through the withdrawal of troops and the opening of borders.
When asked what will happen if Israel does not evacuate the Strip by Sunday 25 January, Shehab replied, “Then all options are open and no one would dare talk or hold us accountable because our decision isn’t out of weakness but out of common interest.”
The sole holdout in the truce agreement is reportedly the secular leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which rejected a ceasefire had even begun.
In an interview with Qatar’s Al-Jazeera, PFLP Politburo member Maher At-Taher insisted that “the Israeli attack is continuing.”
The agreement appears to cover all Palestinian armed factions, not only Hamas.
"We in the Palestinian resistance movements announce a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip," Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official in Syria, said on Syrian TV. "And we demand that Israeli forces withdraw in one week and that they open all the border crossings to permit the entry of humanitarian aid and basic goods for our people in Gaza."
There is no mutual agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians -- each side has made its own unilateral declaration of a cease-fire.
In Tel Al-Hawa, Al-Quds Hospital went up in flames after it came under Israeli shelling. Workers at the Palestine Red Crescent facility said they fear the fire could cause an explosion due to the fuel stored in the hospital's warehouse.
Dr Bashar Murad, the head of emergency services at Al-Quds Hospital, told Ma’an that three Israeli missiles hit the hospital, two of them containing white phosphorus. Shrapnel from the bombs was scattered in the hospital but no one was injured. Fire has engulfed the hospital’s administration building, a storehouse, and a pharmacy.
Murad said that up to 600 people had fled Tel Al-Hawa and areas around the hospital.
Meanwhile, UN's relief agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, says Israeli shells struck their headquarters in Gaza City, injuring three workers. The compound includes the UNRWA offices, warehouses and a school. As many as 700 Palestinians had taken refuge in the compound, which is still on fire.
The United Nations is claiming that shells were laced with the controversial chemical weapon, white phosphorus.
Separately, Israeli forces attacked a media compound home to the Reuters news agency, NBC, and a number of Arab networks in Gaza City late on Thursday morning. Two journalists working for Abu Dhabi television were injured when at least one Israeli shell struck the building.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel said Monday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had been forced to abstain from a United Nations resolution on Gaza that she helped draft, after Mr. Olmert placed a phone call to President Bush.
I said, ‘Get me President Bush on the phone,’ ‘ Mr. Olmert said in a speech in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, according to The Associated Press. ‘They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn’t care: ‘I need to talk to him now,’ ‘ Mr. Olmert continued. ‘He got off the podium and spoke to me.’
Here's a political cartoon you're not likely to see in the world media. Yet, it sure 'hits the nail on the head.'
Israeli government officials claim Hamas is hiding fighters and weapons at the hospital, but the images from Shifa's emergency ward show families.
"We were hit with a rocket," a boy in the hospital said as his brother wandered in a daze, nursing an injury to his ear. Another child cried nearby, moaning for her mother as doctors tried to treat her injured limbs.
A nurse trying to set up an IV in another room said the hospital is treating five people from one family. Another woman wept for her 6-month-old child, who she said died after four days without food or water.
There are no rockets coming out of the West Bank. Yet the illegal Israeli occupation there continues and so does the ethnic cleansing, the land theft, the illegal settlements, the colonization, the demolition of Palestinian homes, the throttling of the economy, the abduction and 'administrative detention' of civilians and the massive interference with freedom of movement. Nothing has changed for West Bank Palestinians who DO NOT fire rockets. There is no sign of an end to their misery.
The bloody assault on Gaza therefore has much more to do with Israel's ambition to expand racial dominance in the Holy Land than crude and erratic rocket-fire. Hamas and the Palestinians holed up in Gaza are simply in the way of the Grand Plan and have to be removed or totally subdued.
The issue at hand is to find the right balance in America's ties with Israel. Driven by shared values and based on America's 60-year commitment to Israel's security and well-being, the special relationship is rock solid. But for the past 16 years, the United States has allowed that special bond to become exclusive in ways that undermine America's, and Israel's, national interests.
If Obama is serious about peacemaking he'll have to adjust that balance in two ways. First, whatever the transgressions of the Palestinians (and there are many, including terror, violence and incitement), he'll also have to deal with Israel's behavior on the ground. The Gaza crisis is a case in point. Israel has every reason to defend itself against Hamas. But does it make sense for America to support its policy of punishing Hamas by making life unbearable for 1.5 million Gazans by denying aid and economic development? The answer is no.
No matter the suffering its insistent attacks on Israel had caused the Palestinian people it has sought to govern, Hamas had kept firing those rockets for eight days, deeper and deeper into Israel, bringing 800,000 Israeli civilians into range.
