A lesson in citizenship
By Dan Rabinowitz

The decision by the Interior Ministry boundaries committee at the beginning of this month to reject Sakhnin's request to add 8,400 dunams to its municipal area and approve just 1,700 dunams in a problematic section is not trivial. It is a reminder of the permanent and dangerous gap here between boasting of democratic rules of the game and dictatorship of the majority.
Sakhnin is a provincial town of 25,000 inhabitants that provides services to a large rural area in the eastern Lower Galilee. The committee's decision to allow for the addition of a limited, hilly area to the east, most of it with no development possibilities, is a case of intentionally ignoring Sakhnin's potential for natural growth to the north and west. This isn't an example of sloppy planning or flawed understanding of proper urban dynamics, but rather an intentional decision. The territorial strangulation the committee has imposed on Sakhnin is part of a zero-sum game that characterizes the state's attitude toward the Palestinian population since its establishment. This is because in the Galilee, like everywhere else, what doesn't go to the Arabs goes to the Jews. Here, the big winner is the Misgav Regional Council. Following the panel's decision, the amount of municipal land per inhabitant (Jewish, of course) in Misgav will come to 36 times the amount of land per (Arab) inhabitant in Sakhnin.

The CIA's torture taxi

The trail of a secret spy plane leads to a mysterious outfit in Reno with ties to a prominent Nevada politico.

By A.C. Thompson and Trevor Paglen
THIS IS A story about an airplane, a Boeing 737 passenger jet.

This is also a story about torture, the war on terrorism, and the Central Intelligence Agency's practice of quietly snatching suspected terrorists and transporting them to dungeons in far-off lands, where, allegedly, they're detained indefinitely – without charges in any court of law in any country – drugged, beaten, threatened, and interrogated. –These two narrative threads, as you've probably guessed by now, are interwoven. A growing body of evidence suggests the plane you're about to read about is used by CIA agents to shuttle prisoners to clandestine jails around the world. And new clues, revealed here for the first time, link this airliner to a small office in Reno, Nev. – and to one of the biggest figures in Nevada politics.

• • •

The Boeing passenger jet in question, which trundled off the assembly line in Washington state in late 2001, looks unremarkable from the outside. Its paint scheme is low profile: The top half is painted white, the bottom is painted gray, and red and blue striping runs along the midsection of the vehicle and up the tail fin. There is no corporate logo of any sort on the aircraft. Stamped on the fuselage near the rear of the plane is a key clue to its shadowy life, a tracking code known as a "tail number," essentially the Federal Aviation Administration's version of a license plate.

FAA records show plane number N313P was initially purchased by a Massachusetts company called Premier Executive Transport Services Inc., a tiny firm that owned one other plane.

As soon as Premier acquired the Boeing, the company began making intriguing modifications to what is normally a short-range aircraft – mainly the sorts of things you'd do if you wanted to fly epic distances without stopping for gas. The changes are documented in a thick sheaf of FAA paperwork obtained by the Bay Guardian.

First, Premier tweaked the wings, installing "winglets," little vertical fins designed to help planes take off from short runways and under tough weather conditions and to boost fuel efficiency, and thus, range. Next, Premier put in an auxiliary fuel tank system, adding seven extra fuel cells, again increasing the vehicle's range. Then, in 2002, the plane was sent off to a hangar in Dallas, where technicians added a sophisticated data and antenna system, a 24-inch flat-panel TV, and a new "executive interior."

Around this time, a Bay Area guy, a brainy character with a background in science and a penchant for speaking in baffling aerospace jargon, became one of the first people to notice that something strange was going on with plane number N313P. We met this gentleman, whom we'll call Ray, on a blustery night in early December in a dimly lit burger joint in the East Bay suburbs. Ray's a hardcore planespotter, one of those somewhat eccentric hobbyists who spend their free time tracking the flights of aircraft by sifting through FAA data, airplane radio transmissions, and the Web postings and snapshots of other planespotters.

http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story.php?sid=121805214841#comments

Khaled El-Masri: America Kidnapped Me
Sunday, December 18 2005 @ 09:48 PM EST
Eventually my blindfold was removed, and I saw men dressed in black,
wearing black ski masks. I did not know their nationality.
By Khaled El-Masri

The US policy of "extraordinary rendition" has a human face, and it is
mine.

I am still recovering from an experience that was completely beyond
the pale, outside the bounds of any legal framework and unacceptable
in any civilized society. Because I believe in the American system of
justice, I sued George Tenet, the former CIA director, last week. What
happened to me should never be allowed to happen again.

I was born in Kuwait and raised in Lebanon. In 1985, when Lebanon was
being torn apart by civil war, I fled to Germany in search of a better
life. There I became a citizen and started my own family. I have five
children.

On Dec. 31, 2003, I took a bus from Germany to Macedonia. When we
arrived, my nightmare began. Macedonian agents confiscated my passport
and detained me for 23 days. I was not allowed to contact anyone,
including my wife.

To See and Be Seen: A Micropolitics of the Image
Maurizio Lazzarato

How to explain the failure of the project for a European constitution? That's what everyone would like to know. But the contemporary political landscape doesn't even offer the beginnings of an answer.

An artistic project can help us to ask the question of Europe differently, and to explore its evolution in a space that goes beyond the old dream of European Enlightenment. In fact, the projected constitution still postulated the unity and identity of the European peoples, a dream that lasted until the late nineteenth century (up to Nietzsche, for example), and was still at the foundations of European policy during the postwar period.

Timescapes presents us with an entirely different landscape. By exploring a European project that extends all the way to Tajikistan and other countries of the former Soviet Union, by way of the Balkans, Greece and Turkey, Timescapes reveals a Europe that is not frozen into nation-states, but an evolving Europe, in the process of becoming, open toward China. This project calls for the construction of highway and rail infrastructures, the construction of pipelines to bring oil, and of infrastructures to bring information, images and sounds. Following in the footsteps of Marco Polo, it claims to be a “new silk road.” Lacking any such evocative power, however, it's more prosaically called “Trans Asian Highways.”

The transportation of commodities, of raw materials, of labor power and information from China to Europe: this is an ambitiously neocolonial capitalist project that rediscovers Bismark's idea of constructing a rail corridor from Germany to the Orient (Berlin-Baghdad) but also continues the project of the “Highway of Fraternity” constructed by Tito's communist youth, in order to link Europe to the southeastern countries.

The project is established on the basis of macro-political policies that imply relations between the European institutions and the governments of the countries traversed by these infrastructures. Timescapes, on the contrary, explores the evolution of this geopolitical space and of the populations living there from the departure points of the micro-political dynamics of emigration, the forced displacement of populations, the “diasporic movements” that millions of people are obliged to follow, whether inside the different countries (internal emigration) or to Europe (external emigration).

U.S. COMING AROUND TO THE TRUTH
by Robert Fisk

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
(http://www.seattlepi.nwsource.com/)
Wednesday, December 7, 2005

Watching the pathetic, old, lie-on-its-back frightened Labrador of
the American media changing overnight into a vicious Rottweiler is
one of the enduring pleasures of society in the United States. I
have been experiencing this phenomenon over the past two weeks,
as both victim and beneficiary.

In New York and Los Angeles, my condemnation of the U.S. presidency
and Israel's continued settlement-building in the West Bank was
originally treated with the disdain all great papers reserve for
those who dare to question proud and democratic projects of state. In
The New York Times, that ancient luminary Ethan Bronner chided me
for attacking American journalists who -- he quoted my own words --
"report in so craven a fashion from the Middle East -- so fearful
of Israeli criticism that they turn Israeli murder into 'targeted
attacks' and illegal settlements into 'Jewish neighborhoods.' " It
was remarkable Bronner should be so out of touch with his readers
that he did not know that craven is the word so many Americans apply
to their groveling newspapers.

But the moment a respected Democratic congressman and Vietnam war
veteran in Washington dared to suggest the war in Iraq was lost, that
U.S. troops should be brought home now -- and when the Republican
response was so brutal it had to be disowned -- the old media dog
sniffed the air, realized that power was moving away from the White
House and began to drool.

On live TV in San Francisco, I could continue my critique of the
U.S. folly in Iraq uninterrupted. Ex-Mayor Willie Brown exuded warmth
toward this pesky Brit who tore into his country's policies in the
Middle East. It was enough to make you feel the teeniest bit sorry
-- though only for a millisecond, mind you -- for the guy in the
White House.

All this wasn't caused by that familiar transition from Newark to Los
Angeles International, where the terror of al-Qaida attacks is replaced
by fear of the ozone layer. On the East Coast, too, the editorials
thundered away at the Bush administration. Seymour Hersh, that blessing
to U.S. journalism who broke the Abu Ghraib torture story, produced
another black rabbit out of his Iraqi hat with revelations that
U.S. commanders in Iraq believe the insurgency is now out of control.

Compliments of Multitudes list:

Art, truth and politics

In his video-taped Nobel acceptance speech, Harold Pinter excoriated a
'brutal, scornful and ruthless' United States. This is the full text
of his address

Thursday December 8, 2005
Guardian

Harold Pinter delivering his Nobel lecture via video to the Swedish
Academy in Stockholm
Harold Pinter delivering his Nobel lecture via video to the Swedish
Academy in Stockholm. Photo: Janerik Henriksson/EPA

In 1958 I wrote the following:

'There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is
unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not
necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.'

I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to
the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them
but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What
is false?

Article continues
Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the
search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the
endeavour. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble
upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an
image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without
realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there
never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art.
There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each
other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are
blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment
in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can
I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That
is what they said. That is what they did.

Most of the plays are engendered by a line, a word or an image. The
given word is often shortly followed by the image. I shall give two
examples of two lines which came right out of the blue into my head,
followed by an image, followed by me.

The plays are The Homecoming and Old Times. The first line of The
Homecoming is 'What have you done with the scissors?' The first line
of Old Times is 'Dark.'

In each case I had no further information.

In the first case someone was obviously looking for a pair of scissors
and was demanding their whereabouts of someone else he suspected had
probably stolen them. But I somehow knew that the person addressed
didn't give a damn about the scissors or about the questioner either,
for that matter.

'Dark' I took to be a description of someone's hair, the hair of a
woman, and was the answer to a question. In each case I found myself
compelled to pursue the matter. This happened visually, a very slow
fade, through shadow into light.

I always start a play by calling the characters A, B and C.

In the play that became The Homecoming I saw a man enter a stark room
and ask his question of a younger man sitting on an ugly sofa reading
a racing paper. I somehow suspected that A was a father and that B was
his son, but I had no proof. This was however confirmed a short time
later when B (later to become Lenny) says to A (later to become Max),
'Dad, do you mind if I change the subject? I want to ask you
something. The dinner we had before, what was the name of it? What do
you call it? Why don't you buy a dog? You're a dog cook. Honest. You
think you're cooking for a lot of dogs.' So since B calls A 'Dad' it
seemed to me reasonable to assume that they were father and son. A was
also clearly the cook and his cooking did not seem to be held in high
regard. Did this mean that there was no mother? I didn't know. But, as
I told myself at the time, our beginnings never know our ends.

CIA's secret jails open up new transatlantic rift

· Hundreds of flights landed in Germany over 2 years
· Seizure of innocent people likely to embarrass Rice

Luke Harding in Berlin
Monday December 5, 2005
The Guardian

The US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's meeting with Germany's
new chancellor Angela Merkel tomorrow is likely to be a tricky affair.
What should have been a chance to repair the damaging rift between the
countries over Iraq is fast being eclipsed by something else - a new
transatlantic row between the US and the European Union over the CIA.

During the weekend there were further revelations about the role of
the CIA in kidnapping suspects. According to yesterday's Washington
Post, the agency carried out a number of "erroneous renditions" -
grabbing suspects off the street who later turned out to be innocent.

Article continues
In total, "about three dozen" people may have been wrongly seized, the
paper said. One of them was Khaled Masri - a German national who
shared the same name as a top al-Qaida terrorist.

The CIA kidnapped him in Macedonia on Dec 31 2003, and flew him to
Afghanistan, where he spent five months in appalling conditions. After
realising its mistake, the administration debated whether to inform
"the Germans" of the blunder, eventually dispatching the US ambassador
to Germany, Daniel Coats, to tell the government, the paper said.

"They picked up the wrong people, who had no information. In many
cases there was only some vague association with terrorism," one CIA
officer told the Post. The embarrassing details are likely to increase
pressure on Ms Rice to give a forthright account of the CIA's
behaviour during her visit to Europe this week.

Yesterday the magazine Der Spiegel also gave further details that
suggest that Europe was used as a major transit hub. It revealed that
after September 11 2001, the CIA flew to Germany 437 times. Two CIA
aircraft landed 132 and 146 times in 2002 and 2003 respectively, the
magazine said, citing German government figures.

Compliments of Multitudes List:

`In India we are at the moment witnessing a sort of fusion between
corporate capitalism and feudalism ˜ it's a deadly cocktail'

Arundhati Roy in conversation with Amit Sengupta
In Intellectual Engagement: Arundhati Roy
Photos by K. Satheesh

fame is also a gruesome kind of capitalism, you can accumulate it,
bank it, live off it. but it can suffocate you
I start with an old question: When Tehelka was being cornered you had
said there should be a Noam Chomsky in India. Later you had once told
me that `I am not an activist'. What is this idea of Noam Chomsky in a
context like India?

I think essentially that whether it is an issue like Tehelka being
hounded or all the other issues that plague us, much of the critical
response is an analysis of symptoms; it's not radical. Most of the
time it does not really question how democracy dovetails into
majoritarianism which edges towards fascism, or what the connections
are between this kind of `new democracy' and corporate globalisation,
repression, militancy and war. What is the connection between
corruption and power?

At one point when the Tehelka expose happened, I thought, thank God
the BJP is corrupt, thank God someone's taken money, imagine if they
had been incorruptible, only ideological, it would have been so much
more frightening. To me, pristine ideological battles are really more
frightening.

In India we are at the moment witnessing a sort of fusion between
corporate capitalism and feudalism ˜ it's a deadly cocktail. We see it
unfolding before our eyes. Sometimes it looks as though the result of
all this will be a twisted implementation of the rural employment
guarantee act. Half the population will become Naxalites and the other
half will join the security forces and what Bush said will come true.
Everyone will have to choose whether they're with "us" or with the
"terrorists". We will live in an elaborately administered tyranny.

But look at the reaction to the growing influence of the Maoists ˜
even by political analysts it's being treated as a law and order
problem, not a political problem ˜ and like militancy in Kashmir and
the Northeast, it will be dealt with by employing brutal repression by
security forces or arming local people with weapons that will
eventually lead to a sort of civil war. That seems to be perfectly
acceptable to Indian `civil society'.

Those who understand and disagree with the repressive machinery of the
State are more or less divided between the Gandhians and the Maoists.
Sometimes ˜ quite often ˜ the same people who are capable of a radical
questioning of, say, economic neo-liberalism or the role of the state,
are deeply conservative socially ˜ about women, marriage, sexuality,
our so-called `family values' ˜ sometimes they're so doctrinaire that
you don't know where the establishment stops and the resistance
begins. For example, how many Gandhian/Maoist/ Marxist Brahmins or
upper caste Hindus would be happy if their children married Dalits or
Muslims, or declared themselves to be gay? Quite often, the people
whose side you're on, politically, have absolutely no place for a
person like you in their social, cultural or religious imagination.
That's a knotty problem? politically radical people can come at you
with the most breathtakingly conservative social views and make
nonsense of the way in which you have ordered your world and your way
of thinking about it? and you have to find a way of accommodating
these contradictions within your worldview.

2 Articles on Turkey's continued efforts at silencing its own voices of dissent:

FIVE COLUMNISTS FACE UP TO 10 YEARS IN PRISON
+
PRICE OF INDEPENDENCE

FIVE COLUMNISTS FACE UP TO 10 YEARS IN PRISON

Reporters without borders, France
Dec. 7, 2005

Reporters Without Borders today criticised Turkey's prosecution of
five journalists, who face prison sentences of between 6 months and
10 years, as "further diminishing" the country's freedom of expression
at a time when it is hoping to join the European Union.

The prosecutor-general announced on 3 December he would prosecute
the five - well-known columnists Ismet Berkan, Murat Belge, Erol
Katircioglu and Haluk Sahin of the centre-left paper Radikal and Hasan
Cemal of the centrist daily Milliyet - for criticising the Istanbul
administrative court's ban on a university conference in September
about the Armenian question.

The threatened punishment was "totally out of proportion" to the
offence, the worldwide press freedom organisation said. "Turkey refuses
to allow its journalists to criticise its own institutions. We note
that the European Court of Human Rights only yesterday condemned Turkey
for jailing a member of the Party for Democracy and Peace (DBT) ".

"The prosecution of these prominent liberal commentators shows that
legal action against journalists has become harsher since the new
criminal code came into force on 1 June," it said.

The journalists, who all work for the large media group Dogan, are
due to appear before an Istanbul magistrates' court on 7 February
next year to answer a complaint by the Union of Jurists, a Turkish
pro-nationalist association of lawyers.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: BIG OIL'S OCCUPATION OF IRAQ
by Heather Wokusch

CommonDreams.org
Saturday, December 3, 2005

The Bush administration's covert plan to help energy companies
steal Iraq's oil could be just weeks away from fruition, and the
implications are staggering: continued price-gouging by Big Oil,
increased subjugation of the Iraqi people, more US troops in Iraq,
and a greater likelihood for a US invasion of Iran.

That's just for starters.

The administration's challenge has been how to transfer Iraq's
oil assets to private companies under the cloak of legitimacy, yet
simultaneously keep prices inflated.

But Bush & Co. and their Big Oil cronies might have found a simple
yet devious solution: production sharing agreements (PSAs).

Here's how PSAs work. In return for investment in areas where fields
are small and results are uncertain, governments occasionally grant
oil companies sweetheart deals guaranteeing high profit margins and
protection from exploration risks. The country officially retains
ownership of its oil resources, but the contractual agreements are
often so rigid and severe that in practical terms, it can be the
equivalent of giving away the deed to the farm.

Since Iraq sits on the world's third largest oil reserves, the
PSA model makes little sense in the first place; Iraq's fields
are enormous and the exploration risks are accordingly miniscule,
so direct national investment or more equitable forms of foreign
investment would be in order. But as a comprehensive new report by
the London-based advocacy group PLATFORM details, the PSA model "is
on course to be adopted in Iraq, soon after the December elections,
with no public debate and at enormous potential cost."

PLATFORM's "Crude Designs: The Rip-off of Iraq's Oil Wealth" points out
that the proposed agreements (with US State Department origins) will
prove a bonanza for oil companies but a disaster for the Iraqi people:

"At an oil price of $40 per barrel, Iraq stands to lose between $74
billion and $194 billion over the lifetime of the proposed contracts,
from only the first 12 oilfields to be developed. These estimates,
based on conservative assumptions, represent between two and seven
times the current Iraqi government budget."

"Under the likely terms of the contracts, oil company rates of return
from investing in Iraq would range from 42% to 162%, far in excess
of usual industry minimum target of around 12% return on investment."

Of course, given the current political chaos, Iraqi citizens have
little power over whether their politicians sign the proposed PSA
agreements. That critical decision could be left to con-men like the
former Interim Oil Minister Ahmad Chalabi, who recently met with no
less than Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice during his red-carpet visit to
the White House. One can assume the topic of Iraq's proposed PSAs
came up more than once.

http://www.ww4report.com/node/1338

WAR ON TRUTH AT GUANTANAMO
Detainees Launch Non-Violent Resistance Behind Pentagon's Iron Veil

by Tanya Theriault

The veil of secrecy at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, when
tugged at, continues to reveal the inhumane treatment of detainees held
there. Since January 2002, the US has been imprisoning men (at present 505)
from some 30 to 40 countries - primarily Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and
Yemen - indefinitely, without legal process, as "enemy combatants," so as to
dodge the requirements of the Geneva Conventions on torture. Reports of
torture and abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo continue to come from a variety
of sources. Amnesty International has called the detention of the inmates
"unlawful and arbitrary," and found conditions at the prison to be "cruel,
inhumane and degrading." The International Committee of the Red Cross took
the rare, bold step of making public the abuse and mental deterioration of
inmates as a result of their indefinite and often solitary imprisonment,
calling interminable detention of prisoners "tantamount to torture." What is
hidden about the detention camp at Guantanamo should terrify us, as what we
know now to be true makes us tremble in shame.

In a mounting effort to address their abusive treatment and detention
without charge or trial, many of the prisoners have engaged in hunger
strikes. The Department of Defense (DOD) has maintained sole control of who
can enter the camps and under what conditions - including restricting legal
access - and what those who do enter can hear or say about it. For this
reason, the existence of such protests by prisoners has been little known.
With the recent release of internal DOD memos and FBI interviews with
detainees (obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under freedom of
information legislation), as well as statements from former detainees and
accounts from prisoners' counsel, it is now evident that detainees have been
protesting their detention by hunger strikes and in other ways since 2002.

Using these resources, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) issued a
report in September, "The Guantanamo Prisoner Hunger Strikes and Protests,"
detailing the history of prisoners' acts of protest. CCR is a New
York-based, non-profit legal organization representing 40 of the prisoners.
Over a year and a half has passed since the US Supreme Court, in Rasul vs.
Bush (argued by CCR), decided that detainees can challenge their detention
and the conditions of their imprisonment in federal court. It is evident by
the increasing intensity of the hunger strikes, that prisoners' frustrations
and despair has grown as the government has stalled any legal progress.

PARAGUAY: THE PENTAGON'S NEW LATIN BEACHHEAD

In addition to the military activity, the FBI also has plans for Paraguay.
On October 26, FBI Director Robert Mueller arrived in the country to "check
on preparations for the installation of a permanent FBI office in
Asunción...to cooperate with security organizations to fight international
crime, drug traffic and kidnapping."

Bruce Kleiner, US press attaché in Asunción, quoted in In These Times, said
that joint exercises between the US and Paraguayan military have been going
on since 1943. He said the current exercises usually involve less than 50
personnel, and last for two weeks at a time. According to Kleiner, there are
no US military personnel at Estigarribia.

"I don't believe in the arguments being put forth by the Secretary of
Defense or the Embassy in Asuncion," responded Jorge Ramon de la Quintana, a
former Bolivian military officer and current political analyst. "The
military presence in Paraguay reflects a series of perceived threats by US
Southern Command... this is the return of the Domino Theory."

Orlando Castillo, a Paraguayan activist involved in the struggle against the
US military presence in his country through the human rights group Service,
Peace and Justice, said the goal of the US military in Paraguay is to secure
the region's vast water reserves, "debilitate the southern bloc, to set up
offices of US security agencies primarily to monitor the region, and from
Paraguay be able to destabilize the region's governments, especially if Evo
Morales wins the elections in Bolivia."

Paraguayan and US officials contend that much of the recent military
collaborations focus on health and humanitarian efforts. However, a recent
Washington Times article reported that "of the 13 military exercises at the
base in Mariscal, only two involved medical training."

The Re-Occupation
by Anthony Iles & Benedict Seymour

In protest against evictions, sell offs and corruption in Hackney east London, a group of locals, activists and squatters this week reoccupied a café, successfully preventing its demolition by developers. Anthony Iles reports on this unusual counter-attack against the neoliberal ‘regeneration’ of the city

Broadway Market is a victorian street in Hackney, an increasingly fashionable borough in the east end of London. The street runs picturesquely from London Fields down to the Regent’s canal. A short stroll from the trendy bars of Hoxton and Shoreditch, over the last few years it has developed its own rash of middle-class boutiques, delis and gastropubs. While some celebrate the gentrification-fuelled ‘rebirth’ of Broadway Market and the consolidation of its ‘brand identitity’ with the advent of an organic farmer’s market catering to inhabitants of the area’s mushrooming yuppy apartments, less affluent residents have mainly been victims, not beneficiaries, of this striking transformation.

The locals, however, have not taken the process lying down. Demonstrations and protests accompanied earlier phases of the re-colonisation of Broadway Market, with local people and activists protesting the notoriously corrupt Hackney Council’s attempt to sell off its assets to the lowest (and most corporate) bidder. Although much of the damage has been done, people’s anger toward the council and the private interests they seem to serve has only intensified.

This week the struggle against the top-down ‘regeneration’ of the area took a new turn. On Sunday 27 November a group of locals, housing activists and experienced squatters moved into number 34 Broadway Market, a building which until 4 months ago had been the home of well loved local institution, the Francesca Cafe. The previous tenant and for thirty years proprietor of the cafe, Calogero ‘Tony’ Platia was evicted on 1 July 2005. The grounds for this were dubious to say the least. Tony was well known in the local area, was up to date with his rent and remained a valued part of the neighbourhood. Like other long term, now long gone, businesses in the street, the café had definitely suffered in the previous decades as local manufacturing industry moved out, but the influx of expensive upscale boutiques did at least bring the cafe new customers. Tony had plans for the café and it looked like maybe he just might get something out of the supposed regeneration of the area after all.

AGENTS SAY SECRET JAILS WERE SHUT IN A HURRY
By Daniel McGrory

The Times
December 07, 2005

THE CIA was accused yesterday of shutting down two secret prisons
holding al-Qaeda terror suspects in Eastern Europe before Condoleezza
Rice's tour of the region.

The suspects were reportedly hurriedly moved to a new CIA-run
facility hidden in a North African desert to allow the US Secretary of
State to tell her European hosts that nobody was being held on their
soil. Intelligence chiefs are also preparing new flight plans to avoid
refuelling stops at European airports by aircraft operated by the CIA.

Renegade CIA officers who oppose the reported use of torture by fellow
agents are alleged to be leaking details of the whereabouts of some
of America's most highly valued detainees to campaigners.

The latest leak, reported by ABC News yesterday, was that 11 suspects
were recently moved after revelations that the CIA was holding them in
Poland and Romania â€" Dr Rice's latest stop on her European tour. The
detainees are said to include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is believed
to have orchestrated the September 11 attacks on the US.

The Re-Occupation
by Anthony Iles & Benedict Seymour

In protest against evictions, sell offs and corruption in Hackney east London, a group of locals, activists and squatters this week reoccupied a café, successfully preventing its demolition by developers. Anthony Iles reports on this unusual counter-attack against the neoliberal ‘regeneration’ of the city

Broadway Market is a victorian street in Hackney, an increasingly fashionable borough in the east end of London. The street runs picturesquely from London Fields down to the Regent’s canal. A short stroll from the trendy bars of Hoxton and Shoreditch, over the last few years it has developed its own rash of middle-class boutiques, delis and gastropubs. While some celebrate the gentrification-fuelled ‘rebirth’ of Broadway Market and the consolidation of its ‘brand identitity’ with the advent of an organic farmer’s market catering to inhabitants of the area’s mushrooming yuppy apartments, less affluent residents have mainly been victims, not beneficiaries, of this striking transformation.

The locals, however, have not taken the process lying down. Demonstrations and protests accompanied earlier phases of the re-colonisation of Broadway Market, with local people and activists protesting the notoriously corrupt Hackney Council’s attempt to sell off its assets to the lowest (and most corporate) bidder. Although much of the damage has been done, people’s anger toward the council and the private interests they seem to serve has only intensified.

This week the struggle against the top-down ‘regeneration’ of the area took a new turn. On Sunday 27 November a group of locals, housing activists and experienced squatters moved into number 34 Broadway Market, a building which until 4 months ago had been the home of well loved local institution, the Francesca Cafe. The previous tenant and for thirty years proprietor of the cafe, Calogero ‘Tony’ Platia was evicted on 1 July 2005. The grounds for this were dubious to say the least. Tony was well known in the local area, was up to date with his rent and remained a valued part of the neighbourhood. Like other long term, now long gone, businesses in the street, the café had definitely suffered in the previous decades as local manufacturing industry moved out, but the influx of expensive upscale boutiques did at least bring the cafe new customers. Tony had plans for the café and it looked like maybe he just might get something out of the supposed regeneration of the area after all.

SEIZED, HELD, TORTURED: SIX TELL SAME TALE
Ian Cobain

The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/)
Tuesday December 6, 2005

Mamdouh Habib, 49, an Australian citizen, was caught up in the
rendition system after being arrested near the Pakistani-Afghan border
shortly after the 9/11 attacks. His lawyers say he was bundled aboard
a small jet by men speaking English with American accents and flown
to Egypt, the country where he was born. For the next six months,
they say, he was held in a Cairo jail, where he was hung from hooks,
beaten, given shocks from an electric cattle prod, and told he was
to be raped by dogs.

Habib also says that he was shackled and forced into three torture
chambers: one filled with water up to his chin, requiring him to
stand on tiptoe for hours, a second with a low ceiling and two feet
of water, forcing him into a painful stoop, and a third with a few
inches of water, and within sight of an electric generator which his
captors said would be used to electrocute him.

He made statements - which he has since withdrawn - declaring that he
had helped train the 9/11 attackers in martial arts. Habib was moved
to Afghanistan and then to Guantanamo. Last January he was released
without charge and allowed to return to his wife and three children
in Sydney.

Maher Arar, 34, a Canadian citizen, was seized in September 2002
while travelling through JFK airport in New York, on his way home
after a holiday in Tunisia. After being questioned for 13 days
about a terrorism suspect - the brother of a work colleague - he
was handcuffed, placed in leg irons, and put aboard an executive
jet. Hearing the crew describe themselves as members of the "special
removals unit", and discovering he was bound for Syria, the country
where he was born, he begged them to return to the US. The crew,
he says, ignored his pleas and suggested he watch a spy film that
was being shown on board. After landing in Jordan, Arar says he was
driven to Syria, where he was held in a small underground cell which
he likened to a grave. His hands were repeatedly whipped with cables,
he says. He added that he would eventually confess to anything put
to him. Arar was released a year later after the Canadian government
took up his case. The Syrian ambassador in Washington announced that
no terrorist links had been found. Arar is suing the US government.

TURKEY'S NIGHTMARE: VIOLENCE IN THE EAST PLACES AN OBSTACLE ON THE ROAD TO EUROPE
By Vincent Boland

FT
December 5 2005 02:00

Shortly before lunch on Wednesday November 9, a stranger entered the
Umut Kitapevi bookshop in Semdinli, a town of about 15,000 people set
in the high mountains of Kurdish Turkey, close to the Iran and Iraq
borders. He removed two grenades from the pockets of his bulky jacket,
primed them, threw them on the floor and fled. Seconds later, the
little shop exploded in a swoosh of dust, shrapnel and flying books.

Mehmet Zahir Korkmaz, a taxi driver who was preparing lunch in the
back room of the shop, was gravely injured and later died. Seferi
Yilmaz, the shop's owner and the apparent target of the attack,
survived. When townspeople, alerted by Mr Yilmaz, apprehended the man
and an accomplice they found documents and maps in their car linking
them with the military.

The attempt to assassinate Mr Yilmaz, a separatist who had served a
long prison sentence for membership of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers
Party (PKK), did more than destroy an unlikely outpost of learning
in a depressed town. It sparked serious civilian unrest: at least six
people died in the days that followed in riots and demonstrations here
and in nearby towns. Two members of the security forces were charged
in connection with the attack, a fact that has put Turkey's military
in the dock and caused a rift between the generals and the government.

Out of the blue, it reawakened Turkey's worst nightmare: that the
war between the state and Kurdish separatists that killed at least
35,000 people and disfigured the country's political, economic and
moral life from 1984 to 1999 may not, after all, be over. "This is
not my personal problem," Mr Yilmaz says, standing in the wreckage
of his bookshop. "This is the Kurdish problem."

Turkey has many problems to address as it seeks membership of the
European Union but none has such power to thwart its ambitions. Inside
the country are perhaps 18m citizens - there is no official census
data - who do not consider themselves Turkish but Kurdish and who,
to a greater or lesser degree, refuse to be assimilated. A former
Turkish foreign minister once observed that Turkey's route to Europe
led through its Kurdish regions.

WHAT'S TO BE DONE ABOUT DARFUR? PLENTY
By Nicholas D. Kristof

The New York Times
November 29, 2005 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final

In 1915, Woodrow Wilson turned a blind eye to the Armenian genocide. In
the 1940's, Franklin Roosevelt refused to bomb the rail lines leading
to Auschwitz. In 1994, Bill Clinton turned away from the slaughter
in Rwanda. And in 2005, President Bush is acquiescing in the first
genocide of the 21st century, in Darfur.

Mr. Bush is paralyzed for the same reasons as his predecessors. There
is no great public outcry, there are no neat solutions, we already
have our hands full, and it all seems rather distant and hopeless.

But Darfur is not hopeless. Here's what we should do.

First, we must pony up for the African Union security force. The single
most disgraceful action the U.S. has taken was Congress's decision,
with the complicity of the Bush administration, to cut out all $50
million in the current budget to help pay for the African peacekeepers
in Darfur. Shame on Representative Jim Kolbe of Arizona -- and the
White House -- for facilitating genocide.

Mr. Bush needs to find $50 million fast and get it to the peacekeepers.

Second, the U.S. needs to push for an expanded security force
in Darfur. The African Union force is a good start, but it lacks
sufficient troops and weaponry. The most practical solution is to
"blue hat" the force, making it a U.N. peacekeeping force built
around the African Union core. It needs more resources and a more
robust mandate, plus contributions from NATO or at least from major
countries like Canada, Germany and Japan.

PENTAGON PAYS IRAQI PAPERS TO PRINT ITS 'GOOD NEWS' STORIES
Jamie Wilson in Washington

The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/)
Thursday December 1, 2005

Faced with suicide bombings, claims of Iraqi death squads, and
kidnappings, the Pentagon has come up with an innovative solution
to solving the problems in Iraq: buying good news. Using defence
contractors or intermediaries posing as freelance reporters, the
military has been paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written
by a military propaganda unit lauding the US mission.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the articles are translated
into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers where they are often
presented as unbiased accounts by independent journalists. Records
obtained by the newspaper indicate the US has paid to publish dozens
of articles since the operation began this year, with headlines such
as "Iraqis insist on living despite terrorism" and "more money goes
to Iraq's development".

One military official told the LA Times the military has also bought
an Iraqi newspaper and taken control of a radio station, both used
to channel pro-American messages. The propaganda offensive is said
to have caused unease among some senior military officials at the
Pentagon and in Iraq, especially when the US is promising to promote
democratic principles.

At a press conference on Tuesday defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld
said the number of "free" media organisations in Iraq was one of its
great success stories, offering a "relief valve" for the Iraqi public
to debate the issues of the day.

A senior Pentagon official told the LA Times: "Here we are trying
to create the principles of democracy in Iraq. Every speech we give
in that country is about democracy. And we're breaking all the first
principles of democracy when we're doing it."

At the heart of the operation is a contract the Pentagon has with a
small Washington based firm, Lincoln Group, whose Iraqi staff help
translate and place the stories, posing as freelance reporters or
advertising executives.

Abuse worse than under Saddam, says Iraqi leader

· Allawi in damning indictment of new regime
· Bush prepares way for US troop pull-out

Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor
Sunday November 27, 2005
_The Observer_ (http://www.observer.co.uk/)

Human rights abuses in Iraq are now as bad as they were under Saddam
Hussein and are even in danger of eclipsing his record, according to
the country's first Prime Minister after the fall of Saddam's regime.

'People are doing the same as [in] Saddam's time and worse,' Ayad
Allawi told The Observer. 'It is an appropriate comparison. People
are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons
that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things.'

In a damning and wide-ranging indictment of Iraq's escalating human
rights catastrophe, Allawi accused fellow Shias in the government of
being responsible for death squads and secret torture centres. The
brutality of elements in the new security forces rivals that of
Saddam's secret police, he said.

Allawi, who was a strong ally of the US-led coalition forces and was
prime minister until this April, made his remarks as further hints
emerged yesterday that President George Bush is planning to withdraw
up to 40,000 US troops from the country next year, when Iraqi forces
will be capable of taking over.

Allawi's bleak assessment is likely to undermine any attempt to
suggest that conditions in Iraq are markedly improving.

'We are hearing about secret police, secret bunkers where people are
being interrogated,' he added. 'A lot of Iraqis are being tortured or
killed in the course of interrogations. We are even witnessing Sharia
courts based on Islamic law that are trying people and executing them.'
He said that immediate action was needed to dismantle militias that
continue to operate with impunity. If nothing is done, 'the disease
infecting [the Ministry of the Interior] will become contagious and
spread to all ministries and structures of Iraq's government', he said.

Secret EU report launches scathing attack on Israel
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem

The Independent/UK
Published: 25 November 2005

European governments should consider direct intervention in an attempt
to curb the systematic measures being undertaken by Israel to increase
its control and population in the historically - and legally - Arab
eastern sector of Jerusalem, a highly sensitive EU report concludes.

The confidential report, prepared by top diplomats representing
the 25 EU governments in the city, warns that the chances of a
two-state solution are being eroded by Israel's "deliberate policy"
- in breach of international of law - of "completing the annexation
of East Jerusalem".

European Foreign Ministers this week vetoed planned publication
of the report - which also warns that rapid expansion of Jewish
settlements in and around East Jerusalem, along with use of the
separation barrier to isolate East Jerusalem from the West Bank,
"risk radicalising the hitherto relatively quiescent Palestinian
population of East Jerusalem".

The report provides the most detailed and remorselessly critical
account yet produced by a Western international body of Israel's
policy in East Jerusalem, which has been occupied since its seizure
in the 1967 Six Day War. It points out that Jerusalem "is already one
of the trickiest issues" on the road to a final peace deal between
Israel and the Palestinians. It adds that, as a result of the measures,
"prospects for a two state solution with East Jerusalem as the capital
of Palestine are receding".

Among the recommendations in the report, drafted in October during
the British EU presidency which ends next month, the EU is urged to
consider a series of steps including direct support for projects that
help Palestinians to conduct legal battles against house demolitions,
which it points out tripled in the city during 2004, and the persistent
refusal to grant building permits to all but a small minority of
Palestinians. The report also suggests holding meetings with the
Palestinian leadership in East Jerusalem, presumably to demonstrate
that - contrary to the Israeli government's goal of Jerusalem as its
"undivided capital" - it sees East Jerusalem as the future capital
of a Palestinian state.

The EU foreign ministers' meeting was widely reported in Israel to have
decided against publication of the report in its present form because
of the risk to its relationship with the Jewish state especially when
for the first time Israel has given its blessing to the EU having a
key security role in the region by monitoring the Rafah crossing point
from Gaza into Egypt. The EU will be represented at senior level at
a ceremonial opening of the crossing by the Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas today.

The 11-page report, leaked to The Independent, says the E1 project
for a major expansion of Ma'ale Adumim, the largest Israeli West
Bank settlement, to join it to Jerusalem "threatens to complete the
encircling of the city by Jewish settlements, dividing the West Bank
into two separate geographical areas."

No wonder al-Jazeera was a target
By ROBERT FISK

The Independent - United Kingdom; Nov 26, 2005

On 4 April 2003, I was standing on the roof of al-Jazeera's office
in Baghdad. The horizon was a towering epic of oil fires and burning
buildings.

Anti-aircraft guns in a public park close to the bureau were pumping
shells into the sky and the howl of jets echoed across the city. I was
about to start a two-way interview with al-Jazeera's head office in
Qatar when an American rocket came racing up the Tigris river behind
me. Its rail- train 'swish' brought a cry from the Qatar technician
who picked up the sound on his earphones.

'Was that what I think it was?' he asked. I fear so, I replied, as
the white-painted cruise missile zipped beneath one of the Tigris's
bridges and disappeared upstream. After finishing my 'stand-upper'
"television demands rooftop scenes from Baghdad even to this
day, when most of the reporters are confined to their offices and
hotels by teams of hired mercenaries" I descended to the al-Jazeera
newsroom where the Jordanian-Palestinian bureau chief, Tareq Ayoub,
was trying to put together his next report. You, I told him, have
the most dangerous television office in the history of the world.

I remarked how easy a target his Baghdad office would make if the
Americans wanted to destroy its coverage "seen across the Arab world"
of civilian victims of the Anglo-American bombing of Iraq. 'Don't
worry, Robert,' Tareq had replied. 'We've given the Americans the
exact location of our bureau so we won't get hit.' Three days later,
Tareq was dead.

POLITICIANS' SILENCE ON IRAQ SPEAKS VOLUMES
by Dexter J. Kamilewicz

The Portland Press Herald (Maine)
Monday, November 28, 2005

Last February, I wrote a column for the Portland Press Herald about
the conflict I felt as my son, Ben, was preparing to go to a war I
don't support.

I was worried that he might be killed, but I knew that he would also be
put in the position of killing others. I questioned why we were at war
in Iraq, and I was angry at those who voted for it and supported it.

The reality Ben knows in Iraq today is very different from the made-up
version that the Bush administration tries to shove down our throats.

The Iraqis do not want us to occupy their country. They are angry
at us for devastating their country, for killing and maiming their
citizens and for destroying their economy.

Ben has come close to being killed a number of times, and he has
killed. He is shot at and mortared constantly, and he has had to pick
up a dead friend. The stress on him is unrelenting and mind-numbing.

Why are he and tens of thousands of our soldiers being subject to that
kind of treatment for a year or more at a time? Why are we really at
war in Iraq?