UN humanitarian chief calls for stronger steps against Ugandan rebels in DR Congo

On the eve of the anniversary of last year’s Christmas Day massacre of at least 477 civilians in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) by the rebel Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), the top United Nations humanitarian official called for stronger measures to protect civilians still vulnerable to attacks.

Security Council imposes sanctions on Eritrea

The Security Council today imposed arms and travel sanctions on Eritrea for supporting insurgents trying to topple the nascent government in nearby Somalia.

DR Congo: UN peacekeepers to use ‘all necessary means’ to protect civilians

Faced with widespread reports of massacres and other serious human rights abuses by Government soldiers and rebels in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the Security Council today again called on United Nations peacekeepers to “use all necessary means” to protect civilians from threats from any party.

Today on New Scientist: 23 December 2009

Today’s stories on newscientist.com, at a glance, including: a duck’s extraordinary appendage, future gadgets and Sherlock Holmes meets the chatbots

Pakistani Taliban Commander Orders Thousands of Guerrillas toAfghanistan to Counter US Military Build-up

Wednesday, December 23, 2009
12:39 Mecca time, 09:39 GMT

Fighters ’sent to Afghan Taliban’

The Taliban’s move come as the US orders more troops to Afghanistan

A senior Pakistani Taliban commander has said he has sent thousands of fighters into neighbouring Afghanistan to counter the rising level of US troops.

Waliur Rehman’s comments, made to the Associated Press, came in a report released on Wednesday.

“Since [Barack] Obama [the US president] is also sending additional forces to Afghanistan, we sent thousands of our men there to fight Nato and American forces,” Rehman said.

Rehman is a deputy to Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, and the man in charge of the group’s operations in South Waziristan.

The Afghan Taliban told Al Jazeera said they had no need for the help of Pakistani fighters and do not recognise their leadership.

The Pakistani army has been conducting a campaign against the Taliban in that region for several months and the offensive is believed to have pushed many of Taliban fighters in the area to flee.

There are thought to be as many as 10,000 fighters in South Waziristan, including hundreds of Uzbek fighters.

‘Confident performance’

The Pakistani military estimates it has killed about 600 Taliban fighters, but in his interview Rehman claimed to have lost fewer than 20 men.

Imran Khan, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Islamabad, said Rehman’s interview was likely an attempt to play down the effects of the military’s offensive in South Waziristan.

“They’re saying here that the Taliban is putting a spin on it - it’s a confident performance, but they’ve been forced into Afghanistan by the offensive [in South Waziristan],” he said.

“This is the Taliban saying we’ve not been forced by the Pakistani army, we’re going across voluntarily.”

The Associated Press interview with Rehman was conducted at a mud-brick compound in the Shaktoi area of South Waziristan on Monday.

The news agency also quoted Colonel Wayne Shanks, a US military spokesman in Afghanistan, as dismissing Rehman’s comments as simply “rhetoric”.

“We have not noticed any significant movement of insurgents in the border area,” he said.

Army targeted

Imtiaz Gul, an expert on the Pakistani Taliban, said that Rehman’s comment’s needed to be taken “with a pinch of salt”.

“If we look at the track record of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan [the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP], they have been exclusively concentrating on targeting Pakistani army, Pakistani people and government installations,” he told Al Jazeera.

“If Walid Rehman Mehsud has made this claim, this indicates perhaps a change in tactic or an attempt to divert attention from the TTP.

“Especially after the sweeping operation the army has conducted, they probably want to send a reassuring signal to their supporters that they are very much alive and kicking.”

In his interview Rehman also said his group would stop attacking Pakistani forces if Pakistan would sever its ties to the US.

“We would again become Pakistan’s brother if Pakistan ends its support for America,” he was quoted as saying.

He urged the US president to focus on concerns at home, saying: “He should know that Americans don’t want war … He should use this money for the welfare of his own people.”

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

UN expert urges Israel to end Gaza blockade as anniversary of campaign looms

Ahead of the first anniversary of the Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip, a United Nations independent expert is urging Israel’s European and North American allies to use the threat of economic sanctions to pressure the country into ending the blockade and calling for the swift implementation of the findings of the so-called Goldstone Report.

UNICEF starts handing out relief supplies in quake-affected Malawi

United Nations aid agencies have begun distributing relief supplies in northern Malawi, where a series of earthquakes this month have killed four people, injured more than 300 others and destroyed or damaged nearly 4,000 homes.

Obama and the Peace Prize: Contradictions, Strange Choices

FinalCall.com News

Obama and the Peace Prize: Contradictions, strange choices

By Brian E. Muhammad -Contributing Writer-
Updated Dec 21, 2009 - 9:45:08 AM

(FinalCall.com) - President Barack Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize Dec. 10 in Oslo, Sweden, where he delivered a speech expounding on the contrasts of war and peace.

The award was granted in October creating controversy about his qualifications for the prestigious honor. President Obama shares the distinction with past Laureates, Dr. Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Mother Theresa.

Reactions to the announcement and acceptance speech was both positive and negative, with questions on whether it’s too soon for Mr. Obama to receive the prize because he’s at the beginning of his presidency. Furthermore, critics question accepting the prize while engaging two wars with an escalation of 30,000 troops for Afghanistan.

Some observers say the choice was an affirmation of hope in America’s new global posture of inclusiveness under Mr. Obama.

“They’re trying to give some credibility to him because he’s the first American president since Jimmy Carter to actually look at what’s necessary to establish peace, where other American presidents wouldn’t even talk,” said broadcaster and community leader Bob Law in a telephone interview.

“It’s as Gil Scott Heron who said ‘when America, Britain and France talk about peace, they meant, a piece of Angola and a piece of Mozambique, their piece,’ ” Mr. Law said.

In an October interview, journalist George Curry said the critical questions around Mr. Obama being chosen are valid. “Should a person conducting two wars be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize? That is a legitimate question,” opined Mr. Curry.

According to the nomination process, candidate names must be submitted by Feb. 1. Alfred Nobel, the award founder willed that the prize is given for accomplishments in the previous year.

“He had not been in office two weeks when the nomination was closed on this, so what did he accomplish in that time?” asked Mr. Curry.

“Congratulating and celebrating” the honor, Dr. Cornel West, Princeton University scholar and author, underscored the dilemma of being a war president with a peace prize.

“It’s difficult for any head of empire to be under the pressure of peace because you are head of the largest army in the world,” said Dr. West, speaking in Los Angeles, in remarks posted on line by www.Fora.TV.

In Oslo, President Obama’s central theme was on “just war,” suggesting armed conflict is justified under certain conditions like “last resort” or “self-defense.” The speech dubbed the “Obama doctrine” resonated with Mr. Obama’s most avid foes on the political right like former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who praised the speech.

Some eyebrows were raised when Obama described his acceptance of the prize—as compared to non-violence advocates Dr. King and Mahatma Gandhi—as “a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people.”

Zaki Baruti, of the Universal African Peoples Organization, disagreed with President Obama’s comparison. “One of the substantive things Gandhi and Dr. King were trying to effect was great social change by justice and equality, where as Obama is simply fulfilling ambitions of empire,” Mr. Baruti said.

Notwithstanding Mr. Obama’s effort to justify accepting the peace prize eight days after announcing a troop escalation in Afghanistan, historically the move is not a unique contradiction to the award.

In 1973, then U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was granted the prize. But inquiries have since arisen about Mr. Kissinger as a possible war “criminal at large” for his role in the bombing of North Vietnam, Cambodia and covert support for the overthrow and assassination of Chile’s President Salvador Allende in 1973.

The 1978 recipient was Menechem Begin, a Zionist terrorist and former Prime Minister of Israel, jointly shared with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Peace still eludes occupied Palestine.

In 1993, the prize went to President Nelson Mandela for his struggle and sacrifice to overcome racist White minority in South Africa. But the veracity of the choice was compromised in the eyes of many when it was shared with F.W. de Klerk, who served in the apartheid regime as a cabinet member and head of the state.

Such incongruity has existed since the beginning of the prize with the 1906 laureate, President Theodore Roosevelt. Mr. Roosevelt was chosen for mediating the end of the Russia-Japan war, although he has proven to be one of history’s most ardent warmongers.

The most overlooked contradiction of the prize may be the deadly contributions of founder Alfred Nobel, who became wealthy as an inventor and manufacturer of the high explosives nitroglycerin and dynamite. He was one of the largest manufacturers of war making materials of his time.

In a historical context, the Obama selection is only the latest in a long line of contradictions and strange choices.

FCN is a distributor (and not a publisher) of content supplied by third parties. Original content supplied by FCN and FinalCall.com News is Copyright 2009 FCN Publishing, FinalCall.com. Content supplied by third parties are the property of their respective owners.

Israel Admits to Organ Thefts From Palestinians

Monday, December 21, 2009
12:40 Mecca time, 09:40 GMT

Israel admits to organ thefts

Harvested organs were alleged to have been used by the military and in public hospitals

Israel has admitted that it harvested organs from the dead bodies of Palestinians and Israelis in the 1990s, without permission from their families.

The admission follows the release of an interview with Jehuda Hiss, the former head of Israel’s forensic institute, in which he said that workers at the institute had harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers.

In the interview, which was conducted in 2000 when Hiss was head of Tel Aviv’s Abu Kabir forensic institute, he said: “We started to harvest corneas … Whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family.”

Nancy Scheper-Hughes, who conducted the interview, told Al Jazeera on Monday that Hiss had said the “body parts were used by hospitals for transplant purposes - cornea transplants. They were sent to public hospitals [for use on citizens].

Guidelines ‘not clear’

“And the skin went to a special skin bank, founded by the military, for their uses”, such as for burns victims.

The practice is said to have ended in 2000.

The interview was also reported on Israel’s Channel 2 television, which quoted an Israeli military statement that said: “This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer.”

Israel’s health ministry said in the Channel 2 report that at the time the guidelines for transplants “were not clear” and that for the last 10 years “Abu Kabir has been working according to ethics and Jewish law”.

Scheper-Hughes, who is a professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley, said that she made the interview public because of the controversy last summer over allegations of organ harvesting made by a Swedish newspaper.

In August the Aftonbladet newspaper ran an article alleging that the Israeli army had stolen body organs from Palestinian men after killing them.

Israel denied the claims, calling them anti-Semitic, and the incident raised tensions when Sweden refused to apologise for the article, saying that press freedom prevented it from intervening.

‘Conflict deaths’

Donald Bostrom, the journalist who broke the story in Aftonbladet, told Al Jazeera: “UN staff came to me and said that you have to look into this very serious issue. Palestinian young people were disappearing in the areas and five days later they appear back in the villages with an autopsy done on them against the will of the families.

“We need to know who are the victims. Mothers need to know what happened to their sons.”

Bostrom said that there is no proof that people were killed for their organs but that an investigation is needed to find out whether there was a policy in place or if the bodies used were random.

Bostrom added that Hiss is the “main key” to solving such unanswered questions, but that there would also be other people involved who could help uncover the truth.

Scheper-Hughes said that some of the dead Palestinians from whom organs were harvested were killed during military raids.

“Some of the bodies were definitely Palestinians who were killed in conflicts,” she told Al Jazeera.

“Their organs were taken without consent of families and were used to serve the needs of the country in terms of hospitals as well as the army’s needs.”

‘Technically illegal’

She said that Hiss told her “that the people who did the harvesting were sent by the military. They were often medical students”.

“He did it informally and without permission, and it was technically illegal,” she said.

The military establishment gave their “sanction and approval” to the procedures, according to Scheper-Hughes.

During his interview with Scheper-Hughes, Hiss said that the eyelids of bodies were glued shut to prevent the removal of corneas being found out.

Hiss was dismissed as head of Abu Kabir in 2004 over irregularities in the use of organs, but charges against him were eventually dropped. He still holds the position of chief pathologist at the institute.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

Why I Want to March in Gaza, By Pam Rasmussen

Why I want to march in Gaza

Pam Rasmussen, The Electronic Intifada, 23 December 2009

Peace and justice activists will soon travel to Gaza to show their support for Palestinians under siege

On 29 December, I will attempt to cross into the Gaza Strip along with 1,300 other peace and justice activists from 43 countries. Some of us have traveled to Gaza previously. It will be my third visit since the Israeli invasion, which destroyed or damaged more than 50,000 homes and 90 percent of private industry.

But this time is different. The date of our arrival marks one year since the attack, and little has changed. Due to the ongoing blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt, with the acquiescence of the United States and the European Union, few homes have been rebuilt, unemployment is nearing 50 percent, children at two-thirds of the schools are studying without notebooks and pencils, and babies are suffering from nitrate poisoning due to contaminated water. Enough is enough. It’s time to do something dramatic: It’s time for the Gaza Freedom March.

The idea for the march grew out of a CODEPINK: Women for Peace delegation to Gaza in June. Norman Finkelstein — the Jewish scholar and critic of Zionist racism — envisioned a global convergence of justice activists, arriving the week of the one-year mark to protest the ongoing siege. That “convergence” will soon become a reality — if, that is, Egypt doesn’t stand in the way by refusing to open the Rafah crossing as it is threatening to do. The 1,300 internationals will be joined by an estimated 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza, when we march on 31 December from Abed Rabbo (a community in which nearly every building was destroyed during the invasion) to the Erez crossing into Israel. Likewise, on the other side of the crossing in Israel, peace activists will stage their own, companion march.

But why march in Gaza? As so many people have asked me, why not help the millions of needy people here at home, instead of a people thousands of miles away who seem destined to be embroiled in a never-ending conflict? There is indeed a multitude of worthy causes — both domestic and international. In 2007, the UN’s Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), John Dugard, issued a harshly critical report on Israel’s human rights record. He addressed this question by explaining: “[T]here is no other case of a Western-affiliated regime that denies self-determination and human rights to a developing people and that has done so for so long. This explains why the OPT has become a test for the West, a test by which its commitment to human rights is to be judged.” The “facts on the ground” in Palestine have only worsened in the three years since then, culminating with Israel’s disproportionate attack on Gaza.

In addition, Americans like me are partly responsible for the suffering of so many innocent people, since our government gives Israel $7 million per day in mostly military aid, with virtually no strings attached — far more than to all the countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined. Americans are therefore considered by much of the world as responsible for Israeli violations of human rights. In addition, the US has blocked any UN Security Council censure of Israel 42 times.

But perhaps the most important reason I am going back to Gaza and on the Gaza Freedom March is that ever since I first set foot on Palestine’s blood- and tear-soaked land in 2007, I have felt embraced heart and soul by the people. The type of society I want to live in knows no borders between the privileged and everyone else. But if lines must be drawn — or, in this case, walls and barbed-wire fences built — then I will stand with the Palestinians.

Pam Rasmussen is a peace activist and communications professional from Maryland who recently received a Community Human Rights Award for her work on behalf of Palestinians from the UN Association of the National Capitol Area. She can be contacted at peacenut57@yahoo.comcom.