Closing the book on the Bush era, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

Closing the book on the Bush era

One year ago on New Year's Eve, we offered this gloomy assessment of the legacy of President George W. Bush:

"It has been an enormously eventful seven years for the United States and for the world. By and large, the changes have not been for the better. The United States is deeper in debt, politically polarized, militarily overextended and more deeply distrusted around the world than it was when the president took office."

It was harsh judgment; couched in considerable relief that only one year remained of the Bush presidency.

As it turned out, though, even that one final year of Bush and his policies brought additional turmoil for the nation and the world.

The anti-regulation climate he created helped thrust the U.S. economy into its worst meltdown since the Great Depression, and his years of blissful inattention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict opened the way for a dangerous aerial bombardment war between Israel and Islamic militants in Gaza.

This day, the first of 2009, couldn't have raced here fast enough. Neither will Jan. 20, when Barack Obama will take the oath as the nation's 44th president.

Repeat that name and pinch yourself. Seven years ago, in the fearful aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, how much would anyone have been willing to wager that Bush would be succeeded by an African American president by the name of Barack Obama?

http://newageislam.com/closing-the-book-on-the-bush-era/islamic-world-news/d/1088

Life in Gaza: 'Hungry, freezing, and terrifying', Islam and the West, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and the West

Life in Gaza: 'Hungry, freezing, and terrifying'

Ibrahim asked me: "How much does it cost to travel outside Gaza?" I was telling him we have to wait and see, when my phone rang. It was a recorded message from PalTel [the Palestinian phone company] saying it had nothing to do with the messages being left by the Israelis on people's phones telling them to leave houses with wanted men or weapons. My son Ismail, who is 11, always goes to buy bread but today he refused to go alone. So I drove him and on the way he said: "Baba, don't drive near any mosques." He was afraid we might be bombed because several mosques have been attacked. When he we got the bakery he had to wait for two and half hours to get the sack of loaves they are allowing each family. When we got home Ibrahim started asking me: "When the crossings open, is it easy for everyone to leave?" The weather is freezing and we have no power – except for two to three hours a day – and no cooking gas. We're put blankets round us to keep warm. I do have a generator but I've only got five or six litres of fuel and I have to conserve it. I use it just long enough to heat the water for my wife and the girls to have a shower and to charge my mobile, which is very important. As mosques with Hamas connections are getting attacked we're worried again they are going to bomb the one next door. So we went back to my in-laws' house in western Rimal, behind Shifa hospital.

http://newageislam.com/life-in-gaza---hungry,-freezing,-and-terrifying---/islam-and-the-west/d/1095

Gaza under fire, Islam and the West, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and the West

Gaza under fire

John Pilger

Published 08 January 2009

They know that the horror now raining on Gaza has little to do with Hamas or, absurdly, "Israel's right to exist". They know the opposite to be true: that Palestine's right to exist was cancelled 61 years ago and that the expulsion and, if necessary, extinction of the indigenous people was planned and executed by the founders of Israel. They know, for example, that the infamous "Plan D" of 1947-48 resulted in the murderous depopulation of 369 Palestinian towns and villages by the Haganah (Israeli army) and that massacre upon massacre of Palestinian civilians in such places as Deir Yassin, al-Dawayima, Eilaboun, Jish, Ramle and Lydda are referred to in official records as "ethnic cleansing". Arriving at a scene of this carnage, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, was asked by a general, Yigal Allon: "What shall we do with the Arabs?" Ben-Gurion, reported the Israeli historian Benny Morris, "made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand and said, 'Expel them'".

The order to expel an entire population "without attention to age" was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, a future prime minister promoted by the world's most efficient propaganda as a peacemaker. The terrible irony of this was addressed only in passing, such as when the Mapam party co-leader Meir Ya'ari noted "how easily" Israel's leaders spoke of how it was "possible and permissible to take women, children and old men and to fill the road with them because such is the imperative of strategy. And this we say . . . who remember who used this means against our people during the [Second World] War . . . I am appalled."

http://newageislam.com/gaza-under-fire--/islam-and-the-west/d/1109

Unusually large US weapons shipment to Israel: Are the US and Israel planning a broader Middle East war?, Islam and the West, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and the West

Unusually large US weapons shipment to Israel: Are the US and Israel planning a broader Middle East war?

By Michel Chossudovsky

18 Jan 2009

The Pentagon has entrusted a Greek merchant shipping company to deliver the weapons to Israel:

The US is seeking to hire a merchant ship to deliver hundreds of tons of arms to Israel from Greece later this month, tender documents seen by Reuters show. The US Navy's Military Sealift Command (MSC) said the ship was to carry 325 standard 20-foot containers of what is listed as "ammunition" on two separate journeys from the Greek port of Astakos to the Israeli port of Ashdod in mid-to-late January.

A "hazardous material" designation on the manifest mentions explosive substances and detonators, but no other details were given (Ibid). It is worth noting that a similar unusually large shipment of US ordinance to Israel was scheduled in early December: "Tender documents indicate that the German ship hired by the US in early December also carried a massive cargo of weapons that weighed over 2.6 million kg [2600 tons] and filled up to 989 standard 20-foot containers to Ashdod from North Carolina" (Press TV, 10 Jan 2009)

Are these large shipments of ordinance connected to the invasion of Gaza?

The request by the Pentagon to transport ordinance in a commercial vessel, according to Reuters, was made on December 31, 4 days after the commencement of the aerial bombings of Gaza by F16 Fighter jets.

http://newageislam.com/unusually-large-us-weapons-shipment-to-israel--are-the-us-and-israel-planning-a-broader-middle-east-war?---------/islam-and-the-west/d/1131

Holocaust: A Melodrama at UN Council

Holocaust: A Melodrama at UN Council

Libya draws a parallel between the Palestinian suffering in Gaza and the Nazi-orchestrated Holocaust against the Jewish minorities in Germany in mid-Twentieth century

By Hassan Tahsin

The callous conduct of the Western representatives coincided with the alarm bells sounded by the United Nations’ agency for the relief of Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, about an impending human catastrophe in Gaza. Ten months of blockade and sanctions have deprived the Gaza people of primary education, hygiene and dignity, the agency said. UNRWA officials said that their relief operations would grind to a halt unless they got fuel for running their hospitals.

http://www.newageislam.com/holocaust--a-melodrama-at-un-council/islam-and-the-west/d/73