MOTION MARKET

2010-04-19T11:46:00.000-07:00

Occupation 101 Pics

2010-04-19T11:35:00.001-07:00

End Occupation in Israel...

2010-04-19T11:03:00.000-07:00

Barak urges end to occupation

Israel occupied the West Bank after
the 1967 Middle East war [AFP]

Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister, has said that his country must recognise that the world will not put up with decades more of Israeli rule over the Palestinian people.

Speaking to Israel Radio on Israel's Memorial Day on Monday, Barak acknowledged that there was no way forward in negotiations with the Palestinians other than to meet their aspirations for a state of their own.

"The world is not willing to accept - and we will not change that in 2010 - the expectation that Israel will rule another people for decades more," he said.

"It is something that does not exist anywhere else in the world.

"There is no other way, whether you like it or not, than to let them [the Palestinians] rule themselves."

Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians have been stalled since Israeli forces launched a 22-day offensive in the Gaza Strip in December 2008.

'Alienation'

Barak heads the Labour Party, the most moderate member of the government of Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and it was not clear if his remarks were his personal opinion or reflecting a changing attitude within the government.

He said that Netanyahu's government had "done things that did not come naturally to it",

such as adopting the vision of two states for two peoples and curtailing settlement construction.

in depth

"But we also should not delude ourselves. The growing alienation between us and the United States is not good for the state of Israel," he said.

Washington and its long-time ally have been at odds in recent months over Israel's continuing settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Barack Obama, the US president, recently issued a pessimistic assessment of peacemaking prospects, saying that his country could not force its will on the Israelis and Palestinians if they were not interested in making compromises.

The Israeli defence minister said that the way to narrow the gap with the US was to embark on a diplomatic initiative "that does not shy from dealing with all the core issues" dividing Israelis and Palestinians.

Chief among these are the status of Jerusalem, final borders and a solution for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 Middle East war.

Meanwhile, in an interview Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America", Netanyahu south to minimise differences with the US and said he would not accept Palestinian demands that Israel stop building in predominantly-Arab East Jerusalem.

He said that the US and Israel "have some outstanding issues. We are trying to resolve them through diplomatic channels in the best way that we can".

Later on Monday, Netanyahu told the audience at the national cemetery that Israel is eager for peace, but is ready to confront its enemies.

"We extend one hand in peace to all our neighbours who wish for peace. Our other hand grasps the sword of David in order to defend our people against those who seek to kill us," he said.

Israel's Memorial Day, which is dedicated to the nearly 23,000 fallen soldiers and civilian victims of attacks, is observed with a two-minute nationwide siren when people stand at attention, traffic is halted and everyday activities come briefly to a standstill.

At sundown on Monday, the sombre Memorial Day will switch to Israel's 62nd Independence Day celebrations.

BATMAN (CONTINUED)... YO... DOPE

2010-04-18T21:21:00.000-07:00

BATMAN

Batman Begins uses Chigaco and New York for its framework when crafting the architecture and the building schemes in the set for Gotham city.
The city of Chicago is the set for the film, but long ariel shots include other cities and New York is used.
Also, Bruce Wayne leaves the city for quite some time so we get a dance of Eastern architecture and the culture that goes along with it.

New York is referred to as "the Gotham City" but in Nolan's film he uses the old architecture of Chicago to portray what I think looks like an old New York or atleast a 50s or 60s New York. I don't know I was not alive. But I have seen pics and movies with that city featured.

I love Batman and the original is a favorite film of mine.
In my parents home my old room which is now the entertainment room is still
a entire wall mural of merely the Batman symbol.

Brazil Yo

2010-03-22T14:43:00.000-07:00

Brazil votes and I vote that this movie is too... scary for me, for sure.

Brazil Yo.
BRAZIL: NOT YOUR USUAL DYSTOPIAN CINEMATIC SCENARIO

1984 gets revisited in a film that is a fantastic mess and a visual feast to boot. Hold on to your pants because the city is not alright in this one and the inhabitants may eat you. For reals, this movie is no joke and scared me on five levels. The finale, torture scene, brought me to my knees, when I found out his dream was not a reality. It was just another dream. The city I experienced in this film engulfed me like an East Berlin struggling to mature with new technology. New technology is dirty and Soviet rugged and the italian socialiast stance of the buildings themselves would have made Mussolini proud. Vincere would sit up in his grave and admire these stone works. The monolithic grave-buildings hold the living dead. The dead are invisible and the the alive are truly, fully dead. Or at least they are deadened to the world outside the stifling stinking technology.
Tonight is so dark....

Terry Gilliam's daughter delivering a cleverly crude comment:

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'What can you say about Brazil? This masterpiece about love, escape from reality, and bureaucracy gone horribly wrong has been confusing audiences worldwide since 1985. Perhaps we should examine its origins with director/writer Terry Gilliam (of Monty Python fame), who spent months struggling with the head of Universal Studios, who wanted the entire film re-cut and given a more marketable ending. Thanks to Gilliam’s persistence, however, Brazil (in its original, unaltered form) will continue to mystify filmgoers for generations to come.'

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'So what exactly is this movie, this paragon of befuddlement? Jonathan Pryce plays Sam Lowry, an office worker living in a nightmarish world of inefficient technology, miscommunication, paranoia, government conspiracies, and ducts. Lots of ducts. In a dazzling juxtaposition of fantasy and reality, his dreams seem to provide the only outlet for escape. Yes, there’s a girl. Yes, Robert DeNiro and Michael Palin also star in this film. And yes, one of Brazil’s IMDB plot keywords is “Breakfast Machine.” If you’re not intrigued yet, consider this: you don’t even need to fill out a 27B/6. What more could you ask for?'

Vertigo & Metropolis

2010-03-22T11:10:00.000-07:00

Vertigo: YO

Movie posters exist for the most part to advertise a new film to people who happen to pass by a theatre or bus stop. American graphic designer Saul Bass (1920-1996) saw the potential for the medium to be more artistic and provocative when he began making posters for films back in 1954, starting with Otto Preminger’s Carmen Jones. He continued to team up with Preminger, Alfred Hitchcock and others to design stylized posters, and even branched out into movie title sequences.

Even if you don’t know him by name, you are likely to recognize Bass’ work, or at least his influence.

In 1955, Bass re-teamed with Otto Preminger to create the poster for his controversial movie The Man With the Golden Arm in which Frank Sinatra starred as a heroin addict. Bass used the arm as a centerpiece, and established his signature style using deconstruction, bright colors and sharp angles.

Additionally, Bass designed the opening title sequence, once again highlighting the arm.

In 1958, Bass worked with Alfred Hitchcock for the first time with the release of Vertigo, the faux-supernatural mystery with a twist.
This guy is not experiencing vertigo. I probably would be if I was sitting on his edge, too.

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis

“At last we have the movie every would-be cinematic visionary has been trying to make since 1927.” - AO Scott, NYT

Fritz Lang’s film was a wonder to me the first time I saw it. The images used in the film helped me to get lost in the dynamic world Lang created. The film has many layers and it includes three different settings. The first is the Babel Tower symbolizing paradise, then the world of the machines that is inhabited by the workers and lastly the catacombs beneath the city made up of ancient ruins. This last setting is the place that the workers go to meet and hear their spiritual guide and prophet Mariam.

There is a rhythm in the motion of the factory workers on the factory floor. They move in unison and in sync with there fellow workers. Their synchronicity is symbolized in their motions, ebbing and flowing like the current of an ocean, they appear to be one body accomplishing one great task.

In the film, the hero, Joh Frederson (Freder) is the rich playboy who is the son of the master and architect of the city. The workers do all the work and people like Freder live off the spoils of their labor. The children of the factory workers accompanied by Maria come to visit Babylon to see the world of their creator. Upon seeing them, Freder empathizes with them and makes it his mission to go and visit the world of the factory workers and understand their life.

In the scene below in the underworld of the factory we see workers enveloped in clouds of smoke. Then there is an accident and an explosion. Workers are injured and then the screen changes and we get a view of the machine (labeled Moloch!) as a great pit of fire that the half naked workers are being horded into to be burnt alive as fodder for the machine. It’s a scary vision and our hero Freder looks on this vision with dismay. Then we return to reality to see workers being carried off from the accident in stretchers.
This apocalyptic vision gets Freder thinking and he later returns to the workers and disguises himself as a worker and he tries as the film goes on to become their saviour.
Fritz Lang’s cityscape scenes are amazing works of art and the imposing architecture serves the ultimate purpose of portraying a world of sinister power. I was impressed with the film and looked on at wonder at the city that Lang created.

Scene 2

This clip shows the children of the factory workers accompanied by Maria visiting Babylon to see the world of their creator. Freder empathizes with them and makes it his mission to go and visit the world of the factory workers and understand their life.

Written by jgr6860 in:Uncategorized|

2010-01-09T13:30:00.001-08:00

"Israeli Raiders"

Israel and Iran
The gathering storm
Jan 7th 2010 | JERUSALEM AND TEL AVIV
From The Economist print edition

As Israel pushes for sanctions against Iran, it also mulls options for war

Israeli AIr Force

SHORTLY after four in the afternoon on June 7th 1981, the late King Hussein of Jordan looked up from his yacht off the port of Aqaba and saw eight Israeli F-16 jets, laden with weapons and external fuel tanks, streaking eastward. He called his military staff, but could not find out what was going on. An hour or so later, the answer became clear. After a ground-hugging infiltration through Saudi Arabia, the jets climbed up near Baghdad and bombed Saddam Hussein’s Osiraq nuclear reactor.

Zeev Raz, the squadron’s leader (pictured bottom right), still recalls every phase of “Operation Opera”: his constant worries about running out of fuel; the risky move to jettison tanks, while the bombs were still attached to the wings, to reduce drag; and the loss of a key navigational marker. He overshot his target and had to loop back. He later discovered that his deputy, Amos Yadlin (now Israel’s military-intelligence chief), had slipped ahead and, annoyingly, dropped the first bombs. Somehow the Iraqis were surprised. King Hussein’s tip had not been passed on. And even though Iraq was then at war with Iran, there were no air patrols or active surface-to-air missile batteries. The Israelis encountered only brief anti-aircraft fire. In the cockpit video of the last and most exposed plane, Ilan Ramon (top left), who later died in the Columbia shuttle disaster in 2003, is heard grunting nervously. Their mission completed, the jets flew home brazenly on the direct route over Jordan.

The Osiraq raid, condemned at the time, is often seen these days as the model for “preventive” military action against nuclear threats. It set back Iraq’s nuclear programme and, after America’s two wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003, Saddam never built nuclear weapons. Such methods were repeated in September 2007, when Israeli jets destroyed a suspected nuclear reactor under construction in Syria. Now that Iran is moving inexorably closer to an atomic bomb, will the Israeli air force be sent to destroy its nuclear sites?

By Israel’s reckoning, Iran will have the know-how to make nuclear weapons within months and, thereafter, could build atomic bombs within a year. Even if Iran does not seek to realise its dreams of wiping out the Jewish state, Israeli officials say a nuclear-armed Iran would lead to “cataclysmic” changes in the Middle East. America would be weakened and Iran become dominant; pro-Western regimes would become embattled, and radical armed groups such as Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza would feel emboldened.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others could, in turn, seek their own nuclear arms. In a multi-nuclear Middle East, Israel’s nuclear arms may not ensure a stabilising, cold-war-style deterrent. “If Iran gets nuclear weapons, the Middle East will look like hell,” says one senior Israeli official. “I cannot imagine that we can live with a nuclear Iran.” For Israel, 2010 is the year of decision. Yet its ability to destroy the nuclear sites is questionable, and such a strike may precipitate a regional war, or worse.

Mr Raz, for one, thinks Israel cannot repeat the Osiraq feat. Iran’s nuclear sites are farther away; they are dispersed, and many are buried. The disclosure last year of a secret enrichment facility being dug into a mountain near Qom suggests that there are others undiscovered. “The Iranians are clever. They learnt well from Osiraq,” says Mr Raz. “There is no single target that you can bomb with eight aircraft.”

For Mr Raz, Israeli air power could, at most, set the Iranian nuclear programme back by a year or two—not enough to be worth the inevitable Iranian retaliation, which might include rockets fired at Israeli cities by Iran and its allies, Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. A more thorough action would require ground troops in Iran, but nobody is contemplating that.

Though he now works for a defence-electronics contractor and lives comfortably in a flat with a commanding view over Israel’s narrow coastal plain, Mr Raz exudes gloom. His four children, all adults, are applying for foreign passports—German ones, of all things. His eldest daughter, a mother of two, “does not think Israel is safe any more”—not just because of the prospect of a nuclear Iran, but because years of suicide-bombings and rockets have sapped belief in peace. Her siblings, he says, were persuaded to apply too.

This is a surprising admission, particularly from a kibbutz-bred former fighter pilot. Most Israelis still believe in the mystique of their air force. And for much of the past year Israel has been unusually calm. Palestinian suicide-bombings are very rare, and the morale-sapping showers of rockets have all but stopped (see chart above).

In Israel’s view this is thanks to the tough security measures it has taken, among them the contentious security barrier in the West Bank, and its willingness to go to war against Hizbullah in 2006 and against Hamas a year ago. “Deterrence is working wonderfully,” says one defence official. But both militias are rearming, partly thanks to help from Iran, with missiles of even greater range that could reach the crowded Tel Aviv region from either Gaza or Lebanon. And the lull has been bought at a serious cost to Israel’s diplomatic standing. An inquiry commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council and headed by a South African judge, Richard Goldstone, found that Israel (and to a lesser extent Hamas) may be guilty of war crimes in Gaza. Europe is regarded as increasingly hostile, a region where Israeli government and military officials travel warily to avoid war-crimes lawsuits.

There are doubts even about Israel’s great ally, America, after a spat over Jewish settlements in the West Bank. President Barack Obama may be clever, Israelis say, but he lacks the empathy with Israel shown by his predecessors, Bill Clinton and George Bush. One minister, Limor Livnat, recently said that Israel had “fallen into the hands of a horrible American administration”.

Israel thus finds itself in a paradoxical state: more secure for now, but acutely anxious about the future; closer than ever to some Arab regimes because of a perceived common threat from Iran and its radical allies, yet more demonised by its Western friends. Israelis see a global campaign of “delegitimisation” akin to efforts to isolate white-ruled South Africa. “I’m sure the Afrikaners felt like we feel now,” says Mr Raz.

For many Israeli strategists, the decision over whether to bomb Iran is the most important in decades—some say since the birth of the Jewish state in 1948. The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu—the son of a staunchly nationalist professor of Jewish history, and the younger brother of Yonatan “Yoni” Netanyahu, who died leading the famed rescue of hostages from Entebbe in 1976—is said to feel the weight of history. His office is adorned with portraits of two of his political idols. One is Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism. But the other, Winston Churchill, is unusual in a country that regards Britain as having betrayed the Zionist cause when it ruled Palestine.

Bibi as Winston
Mr Netanyahu draws inspiration from the British wartime leader for reasons both tactical and strategic. Political courage in Israel is often deemed to mean willingness to surrender, after decades of colonisation, the territories captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war; to act like Charles de Gaulle, who gave up Algeria. By holding up Churchill, Mr Netanyahu is saying that courage consists of holding tenaciously to one’s beliefs, regardless of popularity.

This model carried special force on the question of Iran. As opposition leader, Mr Netanyahu recalled Churchill’s efforts to awaken the world to the danger of Nazi Germany. “It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany,” he said in 2006. Now that he is in power, pundits ask, might Bibi see himself as the Churchill of the Battle of Britain, fighting alone against Hitler and desperately trying to draw America into the war?

Iran is central to Mr Netanyahu’s thinking. It helps explain his surprisingly strong partnership with Ehud Barak, the leader of the Labour Party (and a former army chief of staff and prime minister), trusted as the only man able to handle the big security issues. It helps that he served in Sayeret Matkal, the elite commando unit once led by Mr Barak—and by brother Yoni.

Iran affects Mr Netanyahu’s calculations on the Palestinian issue too. He came to office convinced that tackling Iran was a bigger priority than peacemaking with Palestinians. This may have been a convenient argument for a sceptic of the “peace process”. In truth, a peace deal has been difficult ever since the Palestinian movement split violently in 2006 between the Islamists of Hamas who seized Gaza, and the more secular Fatah faction that clings on to bits of the West Bank (with Israeli and American help) under President Mahmoud Abbas. Mr Netanyahu argued that even if a deal were possible, a nuclear-armed Iran would unravel any agreements. But in the view of prominent Palestinians such as Ghassan Khatib, a former planning minister, peacefully resolving the nuclear stand-off would help push Hamas into more moderate positions.

Under pressure from Mr Obama, who argued that progress on the Palestinian issue would help galvanise an Arab coalition to confront Iran, Mr Netanyahu has since adjusted his positions. He belatedly accepted the idea of a Palestinian “state”, albeit a demilitarised one. And having upset the Obama administration by rejecting its demand for a complete halt to settlement-building, he later announced a unilateral, partial, ten-month suspension.

Something is now stirring. During a recent trip to Cairo, Mr Netanyahu seems to have offered enough to win praise from Egypt and start a new flurry of diplomacy that may yet lead to new peace talks. Mr Netanyahu’s aides now speak in Labour-like aphorisms: “We must make progress with Palestinians as if there is no Iran, and confront Iran as if there is no Palestinian issue,” says one. Perhaps there is a bit of de Gaulle in Mr Netanyahu after all. Or perhaps, as one Haaretz columnist, Aluf Benn, noted, the parallel is that Churchill brought America into the war, but lost the empire.

Mr Netanyahu has gone along with the Obama administration’s decision to talk directly to Iran. In contrast with the threats issued by the government of his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, his cabinet has been told to keep quiet about military planning, saying only: “All options are on the table”. As one aide puts it: “Those who know will not speak; and those who speak do not know.”

Clues in the wind
The few public signals seem contradictory. Mr Netanyahu has boosted the defence budget, and the army is planning to distribute gas masks to all citizens next month. Joint missile-defence exercises were held with America in October, and a simulated biological attack is to be rehearsed this month. Despite all this, Mr Barak seemed to recognise the difficulty of curbing Iran’s nuclear programme last month when he told a closed meeting with members of parliament that the Qom site “cannot be destroyed through a conventional attack”.

Two war games run recently by academics add to the despondency. In one, played out at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, America was ready to live with a nuclear Iran through containment and nuclear deterrence, and exerted strong pressure on Israel not to take military action. In another war game, held at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies and designed to explore diplomatic options, Iran continued to build up its stock of enriched uranium—even after a simulated Israeli commando raid on one facility under construction.

All this suggests that Israel is drawing up military options to attack Iran, but none of them is very appealing. This may explain Israel’s enthusiasm for sanctions. The emergence of an Iranian protest movement raises hopes that the regime could be restrained, perhaps even toppled, by stoking internal pressure.

America is rethinking the wisdom of targeting Iran’s most obvious vulnerability: its dependence, because of inefficient refining capacity, on imports of petrol and other fuels. Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, now says America will seek to impose penalties on the increasingly powerful Revolutionary Guard, “without contributing to the suffering of the ordinary [Iranians], who deserve better than what they currently are receiving.”

Mr Netanyahu’s lieutenants seem inclined the other way. They say ordinary Iranians will blame their government, not the outside world, for any sanctions; so the embargo should be as crushing as possible. Domestic instability should be encouraged. Only a direct threat to the survival of the regime, they believe, will make it think again about seeking nuclear weapons. It is a harsh view, but for Israel the alternatives are even worse.

http://www.economist.com/world/middleeast-africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15213442

2010-01-07T22:46:00.000-08:00

Anne Howeson

Anne Howeson

Anne Howeson

Anne Howeson

Anne Howeson

Lay flat... As Two Moved

2010-01-07T22:26:00.000-08:00

Two french girls walk to school.
They carried two handbags, loosely.
The horses raced on, galloping.
Slowing to a halt, unexpectedly,
The mare bit her reigns, nearly, in two.

Down the gutter, rainwater kept flowing.
Puddles became pools, pools became swollen.
The movement of her arms, underwater,
She was a smooth, slow dancing windmill.

Her smooth arms flaked no skin as my
coarse fingers caressed and wandered.
Her skin was light and in the dark I felt
her warmth.

Amino an acid and my animal.
Subject me to your shame.
Lie down and tell the truth.
Always keep quiet,
and speak your mind, to yourself,
and I cannot hear you.

She sat directly on my bed,
Then scooched over, laying
her shoulders on my stomach.
My bare floor.
Now, two shirts lie and fall
and lay flat as two moved.
John 15:9

- JGR

2010-01-04T13:31:00.000-08:00

RFE/RL/CIA funded Propaganda Photo

Signing of "National Security Act"

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Office in Munich

Radio Free Europe Balloons for dropping.

Radio Free Europe (RFE), broadcasting organization established in 1950 with the stated mission of promoting democratic values and institutions. Its original purpose was to broadcast news to countries behind the "Iron Curtain" during the cold war . In 1975, it was merged with Radio Liberty (RL), a similar enterprise that broadcast to the nations inside the Soviet Union. RFE receives most of its funding from the U.S. Congress. Until 1971, the funds were channeled through the Central Intelligence Agency; since that time the funds have been received in the form of grants through the Broadcasting Board of Governors of the U.S. Information Agency. The collapse of the USSR brought about changes including budget cuts and the relocation of headquarters from Munich, Germany, to Prague, the Czech Republic, in 1995. Broadcasts were ended in some areas but added in others. They are now sent to E and SE Europe, Russia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Middle East. They continue to include news, political commentaries, sports, and music, and to be written, produced, and broadcast by nationals from the audience countries. RFE/RL now broadcasts over shortwave, AM/FM channels, and the Internet.

1949: EASTERN EUROPE. The CIA creates its most important non-domestic propaganda network, Radio Free Europe. RFE's broadcasts are so filled with blatant lies, propaganda and misinformation that it is, oh sweet irony, a crime to publish transcripts of them in the land of the free lest the American public should become aware of the ludicrous lies being told by their government.

Why in God's name do we want to control the Earth? We want to rule Russia and we cannot rule Alabama. We who hate "n******" and "darkies " propose to control a world full of colored people. We are daily being pushed into a third world war on the assumption that we are sole possessors of Truth and Right and are able to pound our ideas into the world's head by brute force. What hinders us from beginning to reason now before we fight? We are afraid.
W.E.B. DuBois
Statement to the U. S. Senate, 1949

2010-01-01T17:07:00.000-08:00

LEGACY OF ASHES

The History of the CIA.

By Tim Weiner.

Illustrated. 702 pp. Doubleday.

‘Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA’ (July 22, 2007)

NY Times Book Review

By EVAN THOMAS

Published: July 22, 2007

Correction Appended

America’s foes and rivals have long overrated the Central Intelligence Agency. When Henry Kissinger traveled to China in 1971, Prime Minister Chou En-lai asked about C.I.A. subversion. Kissinger told Chou that he “vastly overestimates the competence of the C.I.A.” Chou persisted that “whenever something happens in the world they are always thought of.” Kissinger acknowledged, “That is true, and it flatters them, but they don’t deserve it.”

A few years later, in 1979, Iranian revolutionaries seized the American embassy in Tehran. They captured a C.I.A. case officer named William Daugherty and accused him of running the agency’s entire Middle Eastern spy network while plotting to assassinate Ayatollah Khomeini. Daugherty, who had been in the C.I.A. for only nine months, tried to explain that he didn’t even speak the native tongue, Persian. The Iranians seemed offended that the Americans would send such an inexperienced spy. It was “beyond insult,” Daugherty later recalled, “for that officer not to speak the language or know the customs, culture and history of their country.”

The C.I.A. never did have much luck operating inside Communist China, and it failed to predict the Iranian revolution of 1979. “We were just plain asleep,” said the former C.I.A. director Adm. Stansfield Turner. The agency also did not foresee the explosion of an atom bomb by the Soviet Union in 1949, the invasion of South Korea in 1950, the popular uprisings in Eastern Europe in the 1950s, the installation of Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962, the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the explosion of an atom bomb by India in 1998 — the list goes on and on, culminating in the agency’s wrong call on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction in 2002-3.

Tim Weiner’s engrossing, comprehensive “Legacy of Ashes” is a litany of failure, from the C.I.A.’s early days, when hundreds of agents were dropped behind the Iron Curtain to be killed or doubled (almost without exception), to more recent humiliations, like George Tenet’s now infamous “slam dunk” line. Over the years, the agency threw around a lot of money and adopted a certain swagger. “We went all over the world and we did what we wanted,” said Al Ulmer, the C.I.A.’s Far East division chief in the 1950s. “God, we had fun.” But even their successes turned out to be failures. In 1963, the C.I.A. backed a coup to install the Baath Party in Iraq. “We came to power on a C.I.A. train,” said Ali Saleh Saadi, the Baath Party interior minister. One of the train’s passengers, Weiner notes, was a young assassin named Saddam Hussein. Weiner quotes Donald Gregg, a former C.I.A. station chief in South Korea, later the national security adviser to Vice President George H. W. Bush: “The record in Europe was bad. The record in Asia was bad. The agency had a terrible record in its early days — a great reputation and a terrible record.”

And yet the myth of the C.I.A. as an all-knowing, all-powerful spy agency persisted for years, not just in the minds of America’s enemies but in the imagination of many American television-watchers and moviegoers. Among those fooled, at least initially, were most modern presidents of the United States. The promise of a secret intelligence organization that could not only spy on America’s enemies but also influence events abroad, by sleight of hand and at relatively low cost, was just too alluring.

When presidents finally faced the reality that the agency was bumbling, they could be bitter. Reviewing the C.I.A.’s record after his two terms in office, Dwight Eisenhower told the director, Allen Dulles, “I have suffered an eight-year defeat on this.” He would “leave a legacy of ashes” for his successor. A fan of Ian Fleming’s spy stories, John F. Kennedy was shocked to be introduced to the man described by C.I.A. higher-ups as their James Bond — the fat, alcoholic, unstable William Harvey, who ran a botched attempt to eliminate Fidel Castro by hiring the Mafia. Ronald Reagan went along with the desire of his C.I.A. director, William Casey, to bring back the mythical glory days by “unleashing” the agency — and his presidency was badly undermined by the Iran-contra affair.

In Weiner’s telling, a president trying to use the C.I.A. resembles Charlie Brown trying to kick the football. The role of Lucy is played by scheming or inept directors. Dulles is particularly egregious, a lazy, vain con artist who watches baseball games on television while half-listening to top-secret briefings (he assesses written briefings by their weight). Casey mumbles and lies and may have been almost mad from a brain tumor by the end. Even the more honorable directors, like Richard Helms, can’t resist telling presidents what they want to hear. To fit the policy needs of the Nixon White House in 1969, Helms doctored a C.I.A. estimate of Soviet nuclear forces. In a draft of the report, analysts had doubted the Soviet will or capacity to launch a nuclear strike. Helms erased this crucial passage — and for years thereafter, until the end of the cold war, the C.I.A. overstated the rate at which the Soviets were modernizing their arsenal. The C.I.A.’s bogus intelligence on Iraq in 2002-3, based on the deceits of dubious sources like the one known as Curveball, was hardly unprecedented. To justify the Johnson administration’s desire for a pro-war Congressional resolution on Vietnam in 1964, the intelligence community manufactured evidence of a Communist attack on American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Weiner, a reporter for The Times who has covered intelligence for many years, has a good eye for embarrassing detail. High-ranking officials, it appears, were often the last to know. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Robert M. Gates, who is now the secretary of defense but at the time was the first President Bush’s deputy national security adviser, was at a family picnic. A friend of his wife’s joined the picnic and asked him, “What are you doing here?” Gates asked, “What are you talking about?” “The invasion,” she said. “What invasion?” he asked. A year earlier, when the Berlin Wall fell, Milt Bearden, the leader of the C.I.A.’s Soviet division, was reduced to watching CNN and deflecting urgent calls from White House officials who wanted to know what the agency’s spies were saying. “It was hard to confess that there were no Soviet spies worth a damn — they all had been rounded up and killed, and no one at the C.I.A. knew why,” Weiner writes. (The American agents in Moscow had been betrayed by the C.I.A. mole Aldrich Ames.)

Weiner is not the first reporter to see that the C.I.A.’s golden era was an illusion. After the 1975 Church Committee hearings exposed the agency as “the gang that couldn’t shoot straight,” various authors began to deconstruct the myth of the C.I.A., most notably Thomas Powers in “The Man Who Kept the Secrets.” But by using tens of thousands of declassified documents and on-the-record recollections of dozens of chagrined spymasters, Weiner paints what may be the most disturbing picture yet of C.I.A. ineptitude. After following along Weiner’s march of folly, readers may wonder: Is an open democracy capable of building and sustaining an effective secret intelligence service? Maybe not. But with Islamic terrorists vowing to set off a nuclear device in an American city, there isn’t much choice but to keep on trying.

Evan Thomas, an editor at large at Newsweek, is the author of “The Very Best Men: The Daring Early Years of the C.I.A.”

Correction: August 5, 2007

A review on July 22 about “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA,” by Tim Weiner, referred incorrectly to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Gates was George H. W. Bush’s deputy national security adviser, not his “top intelligence adviser”; he did not became the director of central intelligence until November 1991.

2009-12-31T14:29:00.000-08:00

"Individualism: the isolated action of a person alone in a social environment must dissappear. It is very easy to claim that in capitalism the individual has the option to satisfy or to express true human nature. A child has one toy and wants two. That child gets two toys and wants four. This is human nature is it not. But when a whole society behaves in this same way or it becomes a monopoly oppressing the less fortunate, is that human nature? It is then that someone has to stand up and do something. Yes, we are individuals that have accepted the challenge and responsibility to lead in the name of a society as a whole." - E.G.

2009-12-30T18:21:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The United States and its allies are weighing focused sanctions against Iran's leadership rather than broad-based penalties that they fear could harm the protest movement, officials and diplomats said.

Increasingly frustrated by Iranian defiance over its nuclear program, the Obama administration has been crafting a "menu" of sanctions that could be imposed by the United Nations or in concert by the United States and its European allies.

U.S. officials, congressional aides, and Western diplomats said the administration has grown increasingly cool to broad-based sanctions targeting the oil sector with the aim of destabilizing the Iranian economy.

Such measures, while favored by a growing number of U.S. lawmakers, would not only be a hard sell in the UN Security Council and Europe, but could have unintended consequences like undercutting Iranian public support for the opposition movement, officials and diplomats said.

"This is not about trying to bring Iran to its economic knees. It is about stopping the nuclear weapons program," said a Western diplomat.

Broad-based sanctions aimed at destabilizing the overall economy "would just feed into Iranian paranoia" about the West, according to the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Eight people were killed in antigovernment protests on December 27, and Iran has expanded its crackdown on the groups, arresting at least 20 opposition figures.

U.S. President Barack Obama has condemned what he said was the "iron fist of brutality" used to quell the protests and demanded the immediate release of detainees.

Year-End Deadline

Iran has rebuffed the West's year-end deadline to accept an enrichment fuel deal aimed at calming international fears it is trying to build nuclear weapons.

A senior Obama administration official said Washington had given up hope of a breakthrough with Iran by January 1, and played down the prospect of Western powers taking concrete steps against Tehran immediately after the deadline passes.

The official said discussions over what sanctions to impose were unlikely to begin in earnest within the UN Security Council before mid-January.

Negotiations could take several months.

Support for tougher sanctions against Iran has increased in the U.S. Congress, but Obama administration officials have privately told leading lawmakers that the White House does not at this time support legislation that would curb Iranian imports of gasoline and other refined oil products.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said the administration wanted to "ensure that any legislation that emerges preserves the necessary flexibility to pursue the president's policy."

Diplomats said Washington knows that there is little chance of garnering international support for sweeping economic penalties aimed at the broader economy, citing resistance from Russia and China for far more modest penalties.

Menu Of Sanctions

The targeted sanctions being considered by the White House include expanding travel and other restrictions for individuals and institutions with close ties to the leadership and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, officials said.

Some European states favor more sanctions targeting the country's financial and insurance sector, diplomats said.

Officials and experts said the sanctions debate was prompted by the resilience of the opposition protests, which began when a June presidential election returned hard-liner Mahmud Ahmadinejad to power.

"Up until now, the [U.S.] administration thought of sanctions only in the context of altering the Iranian government's nuclear calculations. I think they're now thinking a lot harder about what types of punitive measures would be helpful and hurtful to the cause of democratic reform in Iran," said Karim Sadjadpour, an expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Imposing targeted sanctions against the Revolutionary Guard makes sense because it "potentially kills several birds with one stone," he said, referring to the Guard's oversight of the country's nuclear program, its contacts with militant groups across the region and its role reining in the protests.

"If the Obama administration can deprive them of the ability to sign billion-dollar deals with multinational corporations and turn them into an international pariah, I don't think many tears will be shed for them among the Iranian opposition," Sadjadpour added.

2009-12-29T11:23:00.001-08:00

Nickname "Che" derived from Guevara's habit of punctuating his speech with the interjection che, a common Argentine expression for a friend or hey!

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna was born in Rosario, Argentina into a middle-class family of Spanish-Irish descent. Celia de la Serna y Llosa, his mother, had lost her parents while she was still a child. Celia was raised by her religious aunt and her older sister, Carmen de la Serna, who married in 1928 the Communist poet Cayetano Córdova Itúrburu. Guevara's family was liberal, anti-Nazi and anti-Peronist, and not very religious. With Celia's fortune, the family lived comfortably, although Ernerto Guevara Lynch, Ernesto's father, managed to spend much of it in his unlucky business ventures. In his youth Guevara read widely and among his reading list in the 1940s were Sartre, Pablo Neruda, Ciro Alegría, and Karl Marx's Das Kapital. He also kept a philosophical diary and in Africa 1965 Guevara planned to write a biography of Marx.

In 1953 Guevara graduated from the University of Buenos Aires, where he was trained as a doctor. During these years Guevara read Stalin and Mussolini but did not join radical student organizations. He made long travels in Argentina and in other Latin America countries. At the same time his critical views about the expanding economic influence of the United States deepened. In 1952 he made journey with his motor bike, an old Norton 500 single, around South America. The journey opened his eyes about the situation of the Indians and was crucial for the awakening of his social conscience. Like Jack Kerouac later in his book On the Road (1957), Guevara recorded his impressions in The Motorcycle Diaries. "The person who wrote these notes died the day he stepped back on Argentine soil," Guevara wrote in his diary. "Wandering around our 'America with a capital A' has changed me more than I thought."

After witnessing American intervention in Guatemala in 1954, Guevara radicalized and become convinced that the only way to bring about change was by violent revolution. He wrote in a letter to home: "Along the way, I had the opportunity to pass through the dominions of the United Fruit, convincing me once again of just how terrible these capitalist octopuses are. I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned comrade Stalin that I won’t rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated." In Guatemala Guevara met Hilda Gadea. They married 1955 and had one child. Guevara was arrested with Fidel Castro in Mexico for a short time. He had joined Castro's revolutionaries to overthrow the Batista government. In 1956 they loaded 38-feet long motor yacht Granma full of guerrillas and weapons and sailed to Cuba, landing near Cabo Cruz on December 2.

Che Guevara and Fidel Castro

Che Guevara taker prisioner in Bolivia. Few hours before his murder.

They made their base in the mountains of Sierra Maestra, attacking garrisons and recruiting peasants to the revolutionary army. In the areas controlled by the guerrillas, Guevara started land reform and socializing process. In spite of his chronic asthma, Guevara enjoyed the hard conditions and war. Land reform become the slogan, the "banner and primary spearhead of our movement" as Guevara described it in an interview, that made eventually peasants participate in the armed struggle. Guevara was respected by his men, although considered violent - he shot Eutimio Guerra who had cooperated with dictator Fulgencio Batista's army.

In the mountains Guevara met Aleida March in 1958, 24-year-old revolutionary fighter, and she became Guevara's second wife in 1959. He continued to write his diary and composed also articles for El Cubano Libre. A selection of Gurvara's articles, which he wrote between 1959 and 1964, was published in 1963 as PASAJES DE LA GUERRA REVOLUCIONARIA. For the media Cuba was a hot subject - New York Times, Paris Match and Latin American papers sent reporters to the mountains to make stories of the revolutionaries. At the same time when Guevara was in the mountains, his uncle was Ambassador to Cuba.

Guevara rose to the rank of major and led one of the forces that invaded central Cuba in the late 1958. After the conquest of power in January 1959 Guevara gained fame as the leading figure in Castro's government. He attracted much attention with his speeches against imperialism and US policy in the Third World. He argued strongly for centralized planning, and emphasized creation of the 'new socialist man'. In his famous article, 'Notes on Man and Socialism', he argued that "to build communism, you must build new men as well as the new economic base." The basis of revolutionary struggle is "the happiness of people," the the goal of socialism is the creation of more complete and more devoped human beings.

Che Guevara's body aften been killed.

Che Guevara´s Monument at La Higuera (Bolivia), where he got killed.

In a discussion on September 14, 1961 Guevara opposed the right of dissidents to make their views known even within the Communist Party itself. However, privately Guevara was critical of the Soviet bloc, but so was also Nikita Khruschev. When the executions of war criminals started Guevara acted as the highest prosecuting authority. The condemned were soldiers found guilty of murder, torture and other serious crimes. Because Guevara was a doctor, one of his friends once asked how he could work in such a position. Guevara's answer was like from Western movies: "Look, in this thing you have to kill before they kill you." In 1959 Guevara adopted formally the nickname Che and was granted honorary Cuban citizenship. He was visited by such intellectuals as de Beauvoir, and Sartre who saw in him the "most complete human being of our age". The most famous picture of Guevara was taken by Alberto Diaz Gutiérrez, known professionally as Korda. He declined to take royalties when the picture became worldwide icon. When a British advertising agency appropriated the image for a vodka ad Korda rejected the idea: he never drank himself," said the photographer, "and drink should not be associated with his immortal memory."

From 1961 to 1965 Guevara was minister for industries, and director of the national bank, signing the bank notes simply 'Che'. He traveled widely in Russia, India and Africa, meeting the leading figures of the world, among others Jawaharel Nehru and Nikita Khruschev. Guevara was also the architect of the close relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union. Although good relationships with Moscow become the cornerstone of Castro's foreign policy, Guevara followed the emergence of the Maoists. In 1965 Guevara made public his disappointments in Algiers and described the Kremlin as "an accomplice of imperialism". Guevara's dismissal from the ministry followed immediately on his return from Algiers.

To test his revolutionary theories Guevara resigned from his post as a politician. He had published highly influential manuals Guerrilla Warfare (1961) and Guerrilla Warfare: A Method (1963), which were based on his own experiences and partly chairman Mao Zedong's writings. President John F. Kennedy had Guerrilla Warfare rapidly translated for him by the CIA. Guevara stated that revolution in Latin America must come through insurgent forces developed in rural areas with peasant support. The is no need for right precondition for revolution - guerrilla warfare can begin the activities. In his last article, 'Vietnam and World Struggle', Guevara outlined his global perspectice for revolutionary struggle, and stressed the dual role of hate and love.

"And he did have a saving element of humor. I possess a tape of his appearance on an early episode of "Meet the Press" in December 1964, where he confronts a solemn panel of network pundits. When they address him about the "conditions" that Cuba must meet in order to be permitted the sunshine of American approval, he smiles as he proposes that there need be no preconditions: "After all, we do not demand that you abolish racial discrimination…." A person as professionally skeptical as I.F. Stone so far forgot himself as to write: "He was the first man I ever met who I thought not just handsome but beautiful. With his curly reddish beard, he looked like a cross between a faun and a Sunday-school print of Jesus…. He spoke with that utter sobriety which sometimes masks immense apocalyptic visions." (Christopher Hitchens in New York Review of Books, July 17, 1997) During his disappearance from public life Guevara spent some time in Africa organizing the Lumumba Battalion which took part in the Congo civil war. He was not happy how Laurent Kabila fought against Joseph Mobutu, although his first impression on Kabila was positive. "Africa has a long way to go before it reaches real revolutionary maturity," Guevara concluded in his diary.

In 1966 Guevara turned up incognito in Bolivia where he trained and led a guerrilla war in the Santa Cruz region. In his manual Guerrilla Warfare, Guevara had stressed that the guerrilla fighter needs full help from the people of the area, it is an indispensable condition, but Guevara failed to win the support of the peasants and his group was surrounded near Vallegrande by American-trained Bolivian troops. "The decisive moment in a man's life is when he decides to confront death," Guevara once said. "If he confronts it, he will be a hero whether he succeeds or not. He can be a good or a bad politician, but if he does not confront death he will never be more than a politician." After Guevara was captured, Captain Gary Prado Salmón put a security around him to be sure that nothing happened. Guevara told him, "don't worry, captain, don't worry. This is the end. It's finished." (from the document film 'Red Chapters,' 1999) Guevara was shot in a schoolhouse in La Higuera on October 9, 1967, by Warrant Officer Mario Terán of the Bolivian Rangers at the request of Colonel Zenteno. Terán was half-drunk, celebrating his borthday. Guevara's last words were according to some sources: "Shoot, coward you are only going to kill a man." In order to make a positive fingerprint comparison with records in Argentina, Guevara's hand were sawed off and put into a flask of formaldehyde. They were later returned to Cuba. Guevara's corpse was buried in a ditch at the end of the runway site of Vallegrande's new airport. "Che considered himself a soldier of this revolution, with absolutely no concern about surviving it," said Fidel Castro later in Che: A Memoir.

Che Guevara did have some last words before his death; he allegedly said to his executioner: "I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man."

2009-12-29T10:59:00.001-08:00

2009-12-19T15:59:00.000-08:00

Snow was being cleared from the M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore ahead of an NFL game on Sunday

A winter storm is gripping the eastern US, dumping more than 1ft (30cm) of snow in some areas, snarling up travel and cutting power supplies.

Storm-related incidents claimed five lives and forecasters warned of 40mph (64km/h) winds in what may be the worst snowstorm in a decade.

Snowfall is due to reach 22in overnight in the Baltimore-Washington DC area, the heaviest since 2003.

The storm system is moving north toward New York and Boston.

Forecasters say the cities could be in for more than 14in of snow.

In Washington, a snow emergency was declared and the capital's Reagan National Airport has been shut down for the night.

Most flights from Baltimore were cancelled and there were long delays for passengers using Philadelphia and New York.

Roads have been badly affected, too, with one transport official calling it a very serious storm.

As Washington's Union Station filled with travellers, some of them sprawled out on the floor, the passenger train service Amtrak said delays between Washington and Boston were averaging between 30 and 60 minutes.

At least two trains to Boston apparently departed more than four hours late.

Traffic accidents

In Virginia, several hundred motorists became stranded in their vehicles and had to be rescued by the National Guard, using Humvees.

Washington DC is preparing for its worst winter since 2003
Some 500 people sought warmth and refuge in emergency shelters.

Three people died in the state. One was killed when a car hit a tree, a second died of exposure and a third was also apparently killed in a road traffic accident.

In Ohio, two people were killed in accidents on snow-covered roads hit by the same storm system.

The US National Weather Service said the storm was expected to reach as far north as Massachusetts on Sunday.

Heavy snow is expected to fall from North Carolina to New York, with major cities bracing themselves for a foot or more of snow.

The US National Weather Service warned that weather conditions in the Washington area had made travel "extremely treacherous".

"Do not travel," it warned drivers.

"If you must travel, have a winter survival kit with you. If you get stranded, stay with your vehicle."

Empty malls

Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty asked residents to sit out the weekend snowstorm at home where possible.

Those who did venture out were treated to nearly desolate stores on what is usually one of the busiest shopping days of the year, The Associated Press reports.

In snow-bound areas, there were virtually no queues to get a picture with a mall Santa on the last weekend before Christmas, it adds.

"It's nice because no one's here," said shopper Nnika White, out buying a drum set for her boy of two in Richmond, Virginia.

"For shopping, it's great, but the roads are very, very bad," she added.

US President Barack Obama, arriving back at Andrews Air Force Base in Virginia from the Copenhagen climate conference, travelled into Washington by motorcade rather than helicopter because of the weather.

The storm system originated over the Gulf of Mexico, unleashing flash floods in much of the US south-east.

The rain turned to snow as the storm tracked north-eastward into sub-freezing temperatures.

2009-12-11T14:06:00.000-08:00

2009-12-09T11:40:00.000-08:00

09 December 2009 - 12H40

Nuclear scientist, former minister among 11 'held by US'Iran claimed on Tuesday the US is holding a former deputy defence minister and 10 other Iranian citizens. Tehran only named nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri (photo), accusing Washington of abducting him during a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.

By News Wires (text)

REUTERS - Iran believes the United States is holding a former deputy defence minister who disappeared in 2007 and 10 other Iranian nationals, according to a list carried by the semi-official Mehr news agency on Wednesday.

Separately, a Saudi official denied Iran's claim that Riyadh handed an Iranian nuclear scientist to the United States, saying the kingdom had searched in vain for him on its territory.

"Saudi authorities searched for him after being informed of his disappearance in

Medina and at all the hospitals, hotels and centres in Mecca -- even at his place of residence -- but they could not find him," Saudi Foreign Ministry media chief Osama al-Nogali said.

On Tuesday, the Iranian Foreign Ministry's spokesman said 11 Iranians were being detained in the United States, naming only the missing scientist, Shahram Amiri. U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, speaking to reporters in Washington, declined to comment on the situation.

The list on Mehr also named former deputy minister Ali Reza Asgari and included a former ambassador to Jordan.

Iran and the United States have had no diplomatic relationship for three decades and are embroiled in a long-running row over Tehran's nuclear programme, which the West suspects is aimed at making bombs. Iran denies the charge.

Iran's foreign ministry was "seriously following" the cases of the 11 Iranians held in the United States through legal and diplomatic channels, Mehr said.

In 2007, Iran's police chief suggested that Asgari, who disappeared in Turkey that year, had been kidnapped by Western intelligence services. Israel and the United States have denied any involvement in the disappearance.

At the time, Turkish newspapers reported that Asgari had information on Iran's nuclear programme. Turkish, Arabic and Israeli media have suggested Asgari defected to the West, but his family dismissed that.

"There are documents and evidence showing he has been transferred to the United States," Mehr said.

Amiri, a researcher working for Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, disappeared during a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in June. Media reports said he wanted to seek asylum abroad.

Three months after he disappeared Iran disclosed the existence of its second uranium enrichment site, near the central holy Shi'ite city of Qom, further heightening tension over the Islamic state's atomic activities.

Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia, a key regional ally of the United States, shares its fears that Iran's nuclear energy programme is aimed in part at acquiring nuclear weapons and opposes Tehran's backing for Shi'ite and anti-U.S. militant groups in the region such as Lebanon's Hezbollah.

http://www.france24.com/en/20091209-teheran-accuses-washington-holding-nuclear-scientist-10-other-iranian-citizens?autoplay=

2009-12-09T11:25:00.000-08:00

Palestinian student Berlanty Azzam speaks to the press on the Gaza Strip side of Erez crossing terminal with Israel following a court hearing with her lawyer and Israeli authorities in November 2009. Israel's top court on Wednesday upheld a decision under which Azzam was deported from Bethlehem to Gaza just two months before she was due to complete her bachelor's degree.09 December 2009

Israel top court upholds deportation of Palestinian to Gaza
Palestinian student Berlanty Azzam speaks to the press on the Gaza Strip side of Erez crossing terminal with Israel following a court hearing with her lawyer and Israeli authorities in November 2009. Israel's top court on Wednesday upheld a decision under which Azzam was deported from Bethlehem to Gaza just two months before she was due to complete her bachelor's degree.
Palestinian student Berlanty Azzam speaks to the press on the Gaza Strip side of Erez crossing terminal with Israel following a court hearing with her lawyer and Israeli authorities in November 2009. Israel's top court on Wednesday upheld a decision under which Azzam was deported from Bethlehem to Gaza just two months before she was due to complete her bachelor's degree.

AFP - Israel's top court on Wednesday upheld a decision under which a Palestinian student was deported from Bethlehem to Gaza just two months before she was due to complete her bachelor's degree.

"I am very disappointed, and I don't understand why Israel is preventing me from continuing my studies," said Berlanty Azzam, 22, who was a student at the Vatican-sponsored Bethlehem university before she was forcefully removed because her ID had a Gaza address.

"They don't claim that my return to Bethlehem University poses a security risk, and studying at a Palestinian university is my right and the right of every Palestinian student," she said.

Azzam was handcuffed and blindfolded when she was sent to Gaza on October 28, according to the Israeli human rights group Gisha which had petitioned the court to allow her to return.

The Supreme Court's ruling upheld the state's decision that Azzam may not return to the West Bank because she had lived there since 2005 without the necessary Israeli permit.

The state admitted that Azzam had received a permit to travel to the West Bank via Israel in 2005 but argued that she should have obtained a further authorisation to remain there, even though it admitted none existed at the time, according to Gisha.

Israel controls the Palestinian population registry and since 2000 has not permitted address changes from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank.

Azzam's lawyer, Yadin Elam said it is "absurd" and contrary to international law that a Palestinian should need an Israeli permit to live in the West Bank.

"I cannot imagine why the state of Israel is so insistent on preventing Palestinian young people, against whom it makes no security claims whatsoever, from accessing higher education," he said.

Like Azzam, an estimated 25,000 Palestinians could be forcibly sent to Gaza because their addresses are registered there, according to Gisha.

Residents of Gaza cannot leave the tiny enclave, except in some medical emergency cases, because of an embargo Israel imposed after the Islamist Hamas movement seized power there in 2007.

2009-12-07T13:51:00.001-08:00

2009-12-07T13:35:00.000-08:00

Kenyans start to embrace daring fashion

Women modelling Kenyan fashion designs

By Kevin Mwachiro
BBC News, Nairobi

Kenya's fashion designers are trying to step into the spotlight and overturn their somewhat dull reputation.

Within East Africa, Kenyans are renowned for being the worst dressed.

Practical and predictable would be the best description of Kenyans' fashion sensibilities.

Jeans, T-shirts and suits - one size too big - make up many a wardrobe, with a colour palette of grey and brown.

People are willing to invest in Kenyan designs and now can be heard name-dropping at functions
Writer Judy Munyinyi, Nairobi

But now more and more Kenyans are embracing local fashion labels.

Designers who have worked, showcased or studied abroad are injecting a badly needed new lease of life to the industry.

Their collections are bold, bright and, for Kenya, daring.

"I think we have all decided to come back to our roots, we are using a lot of local materials and promoting a lot from our own country," said Rachel Maithya, who runs the fashion label, ki2.

"I'm using a lot of fabric and I'm trying to make it in a modern and very fashionable way, to have also the young people wanting to wear that and want to be seen around with that."

Shopaholic's paradise

But the industry faces two major obstacles - second-hand clothes markets and cheap Chinese imports.

Women modelling Kenyan fashion designs
A dress by a local designer can cost upwards of $100

Sunshine boutiques, as the markets are commonly known, are a shopaholic's paradise.

Despite offering employment opportunities and choice for the consumer, they pose a major hurdle to the growth of the fashion industry.

In the 1980s, the country's textile industry was the leading manufacturing sector.

But the government has not helped much in trying to revive the industry.

During this year's budget, import duties on second-hand clothes were lowered, making foreign-made clothes even cheaper.

Cheap chic

In the markets, wooden shacks are draped with a wide array of clothes.

Whole outfits can be mixed and matched for less than $10 (£6).

Advertisement

A look at Kenya's catwalk fashion

Cheap, cheerful and chic.

In comparison, a single dress by a designer can cost upwards of $100.

Critics of the industry argue that the prices of most outfits being made by the local designers are too expensive, exclusive and lack originality, borrowing heavily from the 'Wests' - Western countries or West Africa.

But Kevin Mbugua, the style editor of Adam Magazine, points out that it is impossible for local designers to compete against a sector where an item like a shirt could cost less than $1.

Lack of exposure

Designer John Kaveke boasts 10 years' experience in the industry with his label, Kaveke.

He and his fellow designers defend their high prices, placing the blame on the high cost of production, the lack of affordable local produced textiles and the fact that their creations are one-of-a-kind.

model wearing Kenyan designer dress
A lot of Kenyans are turning their backs on boring clothes

Though to him, these are secondary issues.

He says the key problem facing the fashion industry is the lack of exposure for Kenyan designers.

David Ohingo, a Nairobi resident and creative, agrees: "There isn't enough marketing done to promote local designers. It's too costly for them to employ teams to sell their work. It is expensive for them to get the word out."

Most designers sell directly from their workshops.

There are only a few who have opened shops but a group of designers have got together and opened a store under a collective label.

Names like Sura Zuri, Moo Cow, Kooroo, Rialto designs, Kiko Romeo, Monica Kanari and Spice may not yet make the fashion racks or the pages of international fashion magazines.

But they are slowly getting noticed.

Writer Judy Munyinyi notes: "The industry is growing, the people who helped start the industry have grown and have become more established and recognised. There is a lot more recognition for Kenyan designers.

"A lot more Kenyans are willing to patronise the industry even if not that often. People are willing to invest in Kenyan designs and now can be heard name-dropping at functions."

The demise of Kenya Fashion Week four years ago dealt a heavy blow to what had been hailed as a promising industry.

But recent events like the Africa Fashion Fair and the Festival for African Fashion and Arts are showcasing Kenyan designers.

It seems a heightened sense of national pride and the desire to outwardly display forms of patriotism are forcing the Kenyan fashion industry to finally step out of the shadows.

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2009-12-05T13:55:00.000-08:00

Surge in East Jerusalem Palestinians losing residency
05.12.09 - 20:43
Israel stripped a record number of Palestinians of their right to live in East Jerusalem last year, an Israeli rights group has said.

ImageSome 4,570 people had their residency rights removed, more than a third of the total number since Israel took control of East Jerusalem in 1967.

Palestinians fear an attempt to reduce their presence in Jerusalem, which both they and Israel claim as their capital.

Israel says most of those stripped of their rights were living abroad.

Palestinians living in East Jerusalem were offered Israeli citizenship after Israel occupied the area in 1967 and later annexed it.

Many refused, not wanting to recognise Israeli sovereignty, and were instead given residency.

But, according to the Israeli rights organisation Hamoked, if these Palestinians live abroad for seven years, or gain citizenship or residency elsewhere, they lose their Israeli residency.

Hamoked obtained the figures from the Interior Ministry using the Freedom of Information Act.

The organisation said that some of those who had lost their citizenship may now be stateless, or may not even be aware they have lost their residency.

Family visits and students studying abroad would be affected, it said.

Hamoked executive director Dalia Kerstein said the phenomenon had "reached frightening dimensions".

Israel's interior ministry said it had carried out a "comprehensive check" that people listed as residents of Israel had their lives centred in the country, and many were found to be living abroad.

Former Israeli Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit, who initiated the survey, told the BBC "it is a very normal, regular idea that people who are not living here for a long time" are not supposed to be residents.

He said those who had appealed had been approved to stay.

"The state of Israel pays billions of shekels a year in stipends to people who don't even live here," he told Haaretz.

The figures come amid Palestinian fears that Israel is trying to increase its control over East Jerusalem and cut it off from the West Bank, through the building of the West Bank barrier, house demolitions and evictions.

The right-leaning government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu maintains that Jerusalem is Israel's "eternal, undivided capital".

But it says recent demolitions and evictions are simply issues of law enforcement.

On Tuesday, a draft document leaked to Haaretz suggested the EU was considering hardening its stance on the city.

According to the newspaper, the document called for East Jerusalem to become the capital of a future Palestinian state.

The EU has never recognised Israel's annexation of the east of the city, which is illegal under international law.

Its formal position has been that the city's status is to be decided in negotiations, although some EU leaders have called for it to be a future shared capital.

Israel's foreign ministry reacted angrily to the reports, saying the apparent move by Sweden, which holds the EU presidency, "harms the European Union's ability to take part as a significant mediator... between Israel and the Palestinians".

It said the EU should be pressuring the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table, but the step would have "the opposite effect."

About a third of Jerusalem's residents - a quarter of a million people - are Palestinians with Israeli residency or Israeli-Arabs, who have Israeli citizenship.

Israel's annexation of the east of the city has never been recognised by the international community.

http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7669

http://www.france24.com/en/20091205-martial-law-election-linked-massacre-philippines-major-clans-arroyo-ampatuan

2009-12-05T13:44:00.000-08:00

Martial law is imposed after election-linked massacre

The military chief in the southern Philippine province of Maguindanao has taken over as local governor after martial law was imposed following an election-related massacre last month.

AFP - The Philippines on Saturday announced the imposition of martial law in a southern province to quell a rebellion by a powerful clan accused of being behind the massacre of 57 people.

President Gloria Arroyo placed Maguindanao province under military control late on Friday in an effort to contain heavily armed militias belonging to the provincial governor and other members of his Muslim clan, authorities said.

"There's a rebellion in the area," Justice Secretary Agnes Devanadera said. "It was practically an overthrow of government."

Arroyo's controversial move is the first time martial law has been declared in the Philippines since the reign of dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who had the whole of the country under martial law from 1972 to 1981.

Authorities insisted martial law was necessary to rein in swarms of heavily armed gunmen loyal to the Ampatuan clan who had threatened violence if their leaders were taken into custody.

Within hours of the declaration, special forces detained the province's governor and clan patriarch, Andal Ampatuan Snr, who had ruled Maguindanao since 2001 with Arroyo's support and the backing of a private army.

More than 4,000 government soldiers were deployed in Shariff Aguak, the provincial capital, and other Ampatuan strongholds, the military said.

By nightfall on Saturday, 32 people had been taken into custody, including five members of the Ampatuan family and 20 of their militiamen, national police chief Director General Jesus Verzosa told reporters in Manila.

The militiamen were arrested in a raid on an Ampatuan warehouse that also netted 340,000 rounds of ammunition for M16 assault rifles, Verzosa said.

But he warned that the many gunmen not yet rounded up were likely to fight back.

"So far, there has been no firefight but we expect there will be an engagement because they are armed," he said.

Andal Ampatuan Jnr, a son of the patriarch, is already in a Manila detention centre after being charged with 25 counts of murder for the November 23 massacre that took place in a farming area near Shariff Aguak town.

Police allege he and 100 of his men shot dead the occupants of a convoy that included relatives of his rival for the post of governor in next year's elections, as well as a group of journalists.

The rival, Esmael Mangudadatu, said the killings were carried out to stop him running for office.

The military said one of the triggers for martial law was the discovery on Thursday of a huge cache of weapons buried a few hundred metres (yards) from the family's compound in Shariff Aguak.

The cache included three anti-tank recoilless rifles, mortars, machine guns, rifles and pistols, and thousands of rounds of ammunition -- enough to arm two battalions or about 1,000 soldiers.

Devanadera said local governments had stopped functioning as a result of efforts by forces loyal to the Ampatuans to foment rebellion.

But Arroyo's critics said martial law was not justified and might be unconstitutional.

They also warned it might be a prelude to her seizing similar control of other parts of the country or even part of a bid to remain in power after the constitution requires her to step down next June.

"We believe there's no basis for the implementation of martial law," said opposition Senator Benigno Aquino, the front-runner in next year's presidential elections.

Muslim rebels fighting for an independent homeland have been waging a rebellion on Maguindanao and other parts of Mindanao island since the late 1970s. The conflict has claimed more than 150,000 lives, the military says.

Arroyo's government has used Muslim clans such as the Ampatuans to rule these areas, and allowed them to build up their own armies as part of a controversial containment strategy against the insurgents.

Andal Ampatuan Snr and Jnr were members of Arroyo's ruling coalition until last week.

2009-12-02T13:28:00.000-08:00

News Middle East

Palestinian man hit in car attack

Violence erupted in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday when a Palestinian man entered a petrol station at the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba in the occupied West Bank and stabbed two settlers.

But that was not the end of the story. According to the Israeli army, the Palestinian was then shot by a soldier, after which a car, apparently driven by a settler, ran over the wounded Palestinian, twice, with Israeli soldiers all around.

Jacky Rowland reports.

*Viewers may find some of the images disturbing.

2009-11-29T19:20:00.001-08:00

Matteo Scalera's work inspired by The Master and Margarita

Maia Oprea's painting entitled The Master and Margarita

Marina Korenfeld's etching of The Master and Margarita

Marina Korenfeld’s etchings evoke a quest for the mysterious, with a use of a symbolism that is profound, emotionally gripping, and visually stunning. Born in Odessa, Ukraine, with her father an accordion teacher and her mother a drama coach, her home was visited by artists, musicians, actors, comedians, and poets, creating an atmosphere that shaped and prepared her for a life in the arts. At Odessa's Theater and Art College, Marina majored in puppetry, "an absolutely marvelous experience in a hard-working environment," in a city rife with political instability and crime. While also studying Classical Figure Drawing, Portraiture, Watercolor, Oil Painting, and the history of art and theater, one Marina’s puppet creations was selected for Odessa's Art Gallery, its largest museum.