26 February 2012
Source: Kavkaz Center
The US military has created a plan for military intervention in Syria under the pretext of protecting the objects of chemical weapons, if there is a risk that it will be left without protection after the fall of the Assad regime, reports broadcasting company CNN, which cites UmmaNews.
For intervention in Syria, the US military will use at least 75,000 soldiers. US Department of Defense has developed such plan to ensure that in the case of a request by President Barack Obama to give him the following solution for Syrian crisis.
At the same time, Americans recognize that the occupation of Syria would be "extremely difficult" task, given the scale of the problems that have arisen in this country. This is related by senior US officials on condition of anonymity.
The priority of the US today is security of "Israel" and to prevent emergence of Jihad in Syria.
Currently the US is not yet ready to intervene in the Syrian conflict. Support for al-Assad is not reasonable solution, in the opinion of Americans, because of his overthrow was inevitable.
As a consequence, all the attention of the US switched to the rebels, the Americans are trying to give them full "friendly assistance" in order to place the opposition to them.
But now the ground for establishing in Syria a new puppet regime has not been prepared yet, which means that if a fall of Assad will occur in the near future, the possibility of large lesions in the Syrian jihad becomes a reality.
Syria, according to the US, has about 50 stores, manufacturing sites and laboratories to develop chemical weapons. They are located in particular in the cities of Hama, Homs, Al-Safir, and the port city of Latakia.
US Central Command examines possible options of invasion to Syria and holding of the "operation for the protection of chemical weapons."
As suggested by CNN, in spite of the stated number of 75 000 (almost the same as the current war in Afghanistan), the number of soldiers who may arrive in Syria, will be considerably less.
US officials continue to insist until a diplomatic solution of the Syrian track.
"In terms of a military action to secure a part of the country, that is not currently a policy we are pursuing", said White House spokesman Jay Carney on Wednesday.
The US intelligence community currently believes Syria's weapons sites are secured by the regime.
This was stated by the US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, speaking before Congress. However, as an anonymous senior US official said the "nightmare scenario" is what would happen if that situation changes and the regime suddenly fall apart, or the fighting gets to the point that the international community believes military intervention is necessary.
"Syria probably has one of largest programs in the world," said Leonard Specter with the Monterey Institute of International Studies. "It has multiple types of chemical agents."
Specter said the stocks include World War I-era gases like chlorine and phosgene as well as more modern nerve gases.
Speaking before Congress, the Director of National Intelligence Clapper said that in the case of the fall of the Assad regime, chemical weapons could be in the hands of the Mujahideen, "al-Qaeda."
"There would be kind of a vacuum that would lend itself to extremists operating in Syria which is particularly troublesome in light of the large network of chemical warfare, (chemical biological weapons), weapon-storage facilities and other related facilities that there are in Syria. We believe that "Al Qaeda" in Iraq is expanding its presence in Syria", Clapper said.
Department of Monitoring
Kavkaz Center
Monday, February 27, 2012
Egypt parliament to meet to elect constitution body
Feb 26, 2012
By Dina Zayed | Reuters
Source:Yahoo News Maktoob
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's military rulers invited parliament's two houses to convene on Saturday to elect an assembly tasked with writing the country's first constitution since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.
A tug-of-war has already begun over the shape of the future document that will define the balance of power between the army-backed executive and parliament, which wants to curb broad presidential powers.
Under an interim constitution, parliament is responsible for picking the 100-strong assembly that will write the new constitution to replace the one that helped keep Mubarak in power for three decades.
Political parties, led by the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party which emerged as a key player in the new parliament, have already been in talks over the make-up of the constituent assembly.
The parliamentary vote for the upper house finished last week, concluding the first elections since the popular uprising toppled Mubarak a year ago.
The earlier lower house election, which started in November, saw an unprecedented turnout and was hailed as Egypt's most democratic since military officers overthrew the king in 1952.
But an Egyptian court ruled last week that the voting system that elected the new parliament was unconstitutional, creating a fresh source of uncertainty which could hold up the functioning of the new legislature.
It is not clear whether the 100 members of the assembly will be selected just from parliament.
Under the expected arrangement, the assembly will include legal experts as well as members of parliament.
(Reporting by Dina Zayed; Editing by Alison Williams)
By Dina Zayed | Reuters
Source:Yahoo News Maktoob
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's military rulers invited parliament's two houses to convene on Saturday to elect an assembly tasked with writing the country's first constitution since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.
A tug-of-war has already begun over the shape of the future document that will define the balance of power between the army-backed executive and parliament, which wants to curb broad presidential powers.
Under an interim constitution, parliament is responsible for picking the 100-strong assembly that will write the new constitution to replace the one that helped keep Mubarak in power for three decades.
Political parties, led by the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party which emerged as a key player in the new parliament, have already been in talks over the make-up of the constituent assembly.
The parliamentary vote for the upper house finished last week, concluding the first elections since the popular uprising toppled Mubarak a year ago.
The earlier lower house election, which started in November, saw an unprecedented turnout and was hailed as Egypt's most democratic since military officers overthrew the king in 1952.
But an Egyptian court ruled last week that the voting system that elected the new parliament was unconstitutional, creating a fresh source of uncertainty which could hold up the functioning of the new legislature.
It is not clear whether the 100 members of the assembly will be selected just from parliament.
Under the expected arrangement, the assembly will include legal experts as well as members of parliament.
(Reporting by Dina Zayed; Editing by Alison Williams)
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Syrian tanks attack Homs, world outrage grows
35 minutes ago
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Alistair Lyon | Reuters
Source: Yahoo News Maktoob
AMMAN/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian tanks pushed into a rebel stronghold in the battered city of Homs on Thursday and U.N. investigators accused President Bashar al-Assad's government of crimes against humanity.
The plight of Homs and other embattled towns will dominate "Friends of Syria" talks in Tunis on Friday involving the United States, European and Arab countries, Turkey and other nations demanding that Assad halt the bloodshed and relinquish power.
Russia and China, which have jointly vetoed two U.N. Security Council resolutions on Syria, say they will stay away.
The meeting will call on Syria to implement an immediate ceasefire to give aid groups access to areas worst hit by the violence, according to a draft declaration obtained by Reuters.
The draft also "recognized the Syrian National Council as a legitimate representative of Syrians seeking peaceful democratic change," a phrase which appeared to fall short of full endorsement of the most prominent group opposed to Assad.
The exiled SNC is allied with the Free Syrian Army (FSA), made up of army deserters and insurgents who are resisting security forces that have sought to crush protests against Assad's 11-year rule, bolstered by his minority Alawite sect.
Syrian security forces lined up and shot dead 13 men and boys from one extended family, which has the same name as the FSA's commander Riad al-Asaad, in the village of Kfartoun in Hama province on Thursday, activists in Hama city said.
It was not immediately clear if the victims were related to Asaad, who is based in Turkey and comes from the northwestern province of Idlib.
Activists said three people were also killed in shelling of the nearby village of Soubin. The bodies of five Syrian workers who disappeared two days ago after crossing from Lebanon on their way to Hama were found on Thursday, they said.
CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
World outrage has swelled over the carnage in Syria, where thousands have been killed since the anti-Assad uprising flared in March, inspired by revolts against Arab autocrats elsewhere.
U.N. investigators said Syrian forces had shot and killed unarmed women and children, shelled residential areas and tortured wounded protesters in hospital under orders issued at the "highest levels" of the army and government.
In their report to the U.N. Human Rights Council, they called for perpetrators of such crimes against humanity to face prosecution and said they had drawn up a confidential list of names of commanders and officials alleged to be responsible.
The commission found that Free Syrian Army rebels had also committed abuses "although not comparable in scale."
Syrian authorities have not commented, but they rejected the commission's previous report in November as "totally false."
Rockets, shells and mortar rounds rained on the Baba Amro district, where armed insurgents are holed up with terrified civilians, for the 20th day in a row, activists said. The Sunni Muslim quarters of Inshaat and Khalidiya also came under fire.
Homs-based activist Abu Imad said tanks had entered the Jobar area in the south of Baba Amro.
"Explosions are shaking the whole of Homs. God have mercy," Abdallah al-Hadi said from the city, where more than 80 people, including two Western journalists and Syrian opposition citizen journalist Rami al-Sayed, were reported killed on Wednesday.
Western diplomats said it had not yet been possible to extract the bodies of Marie Colvin, an American working for Britain's Sunday Times, and French photographer Remi Ochlik.
Two journalists wounded in the same attack - British photographer Paul Conroy and French reporter Edith Bouvier, along with French photographer William Daniels, who was unhurt - were also awaiting evacuation from the Baba Amro neighborhood.
Bouvier, in a YouTube clip posted by activists, said she urgently needed an operation on a broken leg and appealed for a ceasefire and medical transport to neighboring Lebanon.
The Syrian Information Ministry rejected accusations that Syria was responsible for the deaths of journalists, who "infiltrated into the country on their own responsibility."
HUMANITARIAN ACCESS
U.S. officials said the Friends of Syria group would challenge Assad to provide humanitarian access within days to civilians embroiled in the intensifying conflict.
The army is blocking medical supplies to parts of Homs and electricity is cut off 15 hours a day, activists say. Hospitals, schools, shops and government offices are closed.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has been trying to get the government and rebel forces to agree daily two-hour ceasefires. Access for aid workers will also be the focus of a planned visit to Syria by U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos.
To further isolate Assad's government, the European Union will impose sanctions on seven Syrian cabinet ministers next week. It will also slap new curbs on the Syrian central bank, prohibit trade in precious metals with state institutions and ban cargo flights from Syria, a senior EU diplomat said.
The bloody siege of parts of Homs has aroused widespread international indignation, but the world has so far proved powerless to alleviate the predicament of civilians there.
Footage shot by activists in Homs shows blasted buildings, empty streets and doctors treating casualties in makeshift clinics in Baba Amro after nearly three weeks of bombardment.
Several hundred people have been killed in Homs by troops using artillery, tanks, rockets and sniper fire.
Residents fear Assad will subject the city to the same fate his late father Hafez inflicted on Hama, where many thousands were killed in the crushing of an armed Islamist revolt in 1982.
The United States, which so far has been against military intervention in Syria, has hinted that if a political solution were impossible it might have to consider other options.
Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich on Wednesday advocated arming Syrian rebels.
The state news agency SANA said three members of the security forces were killed and seven wounded by a bomb planted by "armed terrorists" near the city of Idlib. It also reported the funerals of 16 security force members killed by rebels.
Assad has called a referendum on a new constitution on Sunday, to be followed by a multi-party parliamentary election, which he says is a response to calls for reform. The plan is supported by his allies Russia and China but Western powers have dismissed it and the Syrian opposition has called for a boycott.
(Additional reporting by Dominic Evans, Erika Solomon and Mariam Karouny in Beirut, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Arshad Mohammed in London and Don Durfee and Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Robin Pomeroy)
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Alistair Lyon | Reuters
Source: Yahoo News Maktoob
AMMAN/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian tanks pushed into a rebel stronghold in the battered city of Homs on Thursday and U.N. investigators accused President Bashar al-Assad's government of crimes against humanity.
The plight of Homs and other embattled towns will dominate "Friends of Syria" talks in Tunis on Friday involving the United States, European and Arab countries, Turkey and other nations demanding that Assad halt the bloodshed and relinquish power.
Russia and China, which have jointly vetoed two U.N. Security Council resolutions on Syria, say they will stay away.
The meeting will call on Syria to implement an immediate ceasefire to give aid groups access to areas worst hit by the violence, according to a draft declaration obtained by Reuters.
The draft also "recognized the Syrian National Council as a legitimate representative of Syrians seeking peaceful democratic change," a phrase which appeared to fall short of full endorsement of the most prominent group opposed to Assad.
The exiled SNC is allied with the Free Syrian Army (FSA), made up of army deserters and insurgents who are resisting security forces that have sought to crush protests against Assad's 11-year rule, bolstered by his minority Alawite sect.
Syrian security forces lined up and shot dead 13 men and boys from one extended family, which has the same name as the FSA's commander Riad al-Asaad, in the village of Kfartoun in Hama province on Thursday, activists in Hama city said.
It was not immediately clear if the victims were related to Asaad, who is based in Turkey and comes from the northwestern province of Idlib.
Activists said three people were also killed in shelling of the nearby village of Soubin. The bodies of five Syrian workers who disappeared two days ago after crossing from Lebanon on their way to Hama were found on Thursday, they said.
CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
World outrage has swelled over the carnage in Syria, where thousands have been killed since the anti-Assad uprising flared in March, inspired by revolts against Arab autocrats elsewhere.
U.N. investigators said Syrian forces had shot and killed unarmed women and children, shelled residential areas and tortured wounded protesters in hospital under orders issued at the "highest levels" of the army and government.
In their report to the U.N. Human Rights Council, they called for perpetrators of such crimes against humanity to face prosecution and said they had drawn up a confidential list of names of commanders and officials alleged to be responsible.
The commission found that Free Syrian Army rebels had also committed abuses "although not comparable in scale."
Syrian authorities have not commented, but they rejected the commission's previous report in November as "totally false."
Rockets, shells and mortar rounds rained on the Baba Amro district, where armed insurgents are holed up with terrified civilians, for the 20th day in a row, activists said. The Sunni Muslim quarters of Inshaat and Khalidiya also came under fire.
Homs-based activist Abu Imad said tanks had entered the Jobar area in the south of Baba Amro.
"Explosions are shaking the whole of Homs. God have mercy," Abdallah al-Hadi said from the city, where more than 80 people, including two Western journalists and Syrian opposition citizen journalist Rami al-Sayed, were reported killed on Wednesday.
Western diplomats said it had not yet been possible to extract the bodies of Marie Colvin, an American working for Britain's Sunday Times, and French photographer Remi Ochlik.
Two journalists wounded in the same attack - British photographer Paul Conroy and French reporter Edith Bouvier, along with French photographer William Daniels, who was unhurt - were also awaiting evacuation from the Baba Amro neighborhood.
Bouvier, in a YouTube clip posted by activists, said she urgently needed an operation on a broken leg and appealed for a ceasefire and medical transport to neighboring Lebanon.
The Syrian Information Ministry rejected accusations that Syria was responsible for the deaths of journalists, who "infiltrated into the country on their own responsibility."
HUMANITARIAN ACCESS
U.S. officials said the Friends of Syria group would challenge Assad to provide humanitarian access within days to civilians embroiled in the intensifying conflict.
The army is blocking medical supplies to parts of Homs and electricity is cut off 15 hours a day, activists say. Hospitals, schools, shops and government offices are closed.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has been trying to get the government and rebel forces to agree daily two-hour ceasefires. Access for aid workers will also be the focus of a planned visit to Syria by U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos.
To further isolate Assad's government, the European Union will impose sanctions on seven Syrian cabinet ministers next week. It will also slap new curbs on the Syrian central bank, prohibit trade in precious metals with state institutions and ban cargo flights from Syria, a senior EU diplomat said.
The bloody siege of parts of Homs has aroused widespread international indignation, but the world has so far proved powerless to alleviate the predicament of civilians there.
Footage shot by activists in Homs shows blasted buildings, empty streets and doctors treating casualties in makeshift clinics in Baba Amro after nearly three weeks of bombardment.
Several hundred people have been killed in Homs by troops using artillery, tanks, rockets and sniper fire.
Residents fear Assad will subject the city to the same fate his late father Hafez inflicted on Hama, where many thousands were killed in the crushing of an armed Islamist revolt in 1982.
The United States, which so far has been against military intervention in Syria, has hinted that if a political solution were impossible it might have to consider other options.
Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich on Wednesday advocated arming Syrian rebels.
The state news agency SANA said three members of the security forces were killed and seven wounded by a bomb planted by "armed terrorists" near the city of Idlib. It also reported the funerals of 16 security force members killed by rebels.
Assad has called a referendum on a new constitution on Sunday, to be followed by a multi-party parliamentary election, which he says is a response to calls for reform. The plan is supported by his allies Russia and China but Western powers have dismissed it and the Syrian opposition has called for a boycott.
(Additional reporting by Dominic Evans, Erika Solomon and Mariam Karouny in Beirut, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Arshad Mohammed in London and Don Durfee and Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Robin Pomeroy)
Egypt puts ‘permanent’ end to Gaza electricity crisis
2012-02-23
Source; Middle East Online
GAZA CITY - Hamas has reached a "comprehensive agreement" with Egypt to permanently end the electricity crisis in Gaza, the Islamist movement said on Thursday.
"A comprehensive agreement has been reached with Egyptian officials to put a permanent end to the electricity crisis in the Gaza Strip," Hamas spokesman Taher al-Nunu said in a statement.
He said the deal was the result of "intensive" efforts by the Hamas prime minister in the Gaza Strip, Ismail Haniya, during talks with Egyptian officials and the Islamic Development Bank.
The deal comes after the sole power plant in the impoverished territory was forced to shut down after running out of fuel -- a long-standing issue in Gaza, where an Israeli blockade limits imports and exports.
Nunu said the deal involved three stages, the first of which would see Egyptian companies pumping fuel directly to Gaza under the terms of contracts signed with the firms.
"The prices will be international prices and the fuel will be transferred in a way Egypt deems appropriate," the statement said.
The second part of the agreement will see the Islamic Development Bank fund a project to upgrade and increase the capacity of Gaza's power plant by 40 megawatts, it added.
The third phase of the deal will see Gaza's electricity grid connected to Egypt's and will seek to convert its power plant, which currently supplies around a third of the Strip's electricity, from diesel to gas.
Nunu said the Islamic Development Bank, founded by members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, would contribute $32.5 million (24.5 million euros).
Also on Thursday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it had delivered 150,000 litres of diesel to Gaza's health ministry.
"The fuel will help 13 public hospitals maintain essential health services for the next 10 days," the group said, adding that hospitals in the territory were now relying on generators for up to 18 hours a day.
Gaza has long suffered outages because of shortages at its power plant, which has a maximum capacity of 140 megawatts but for some years has only been able to generate around half of that when operational.
In recent weeks the situation has worsened because of a shortage of fuel, most of which is smuggled through cross-border tunnels from Egypt.
International aid agency Oxfam on Saturday warned that the lack of fuel meant Gaza was facing "a total collapse of essential services," and said only an end to Israel's blockade of the territory would solve its electricity shortage.
Israel imposed the blockade in 2006 following the capture of one of its soldiers in June of that year. It was tightened a year later after Hamas took over Gaza, with Israel restricting amounts of fuel allowed through the crossings.
Source; Middle East Online
GAZA CITY - Hamas has reached a "comprehensive agreement" with Egypt to permanently end the electricity crisis in Gaza, the Islamist movement said on Thursday.
"A comprehensive agreement has been reached with Egyptian officials to put a permanent end to the electricity crisis in the Gaza Strip," Hamas spokesman Taher al-Nunu said in a statement.
He said the deal was the result of "intensive" efforts by the Hamas prime minister in the Gaza Strip, Ismail Haniya, during talks with Egyptian officials and the Islamic Development Bank.
The deal comes after the sole power plant in the impoverished territory was forced to shut down after running out of fuel -- a long-standing issue in Gaza, where an Israeli blockade limits imports and exports.
Nunu said the deal involved three stages, the first of which would see Egyptian companies pumping fuel directly to Gaza under the terms of contracts signed with the firms.
"The prices will be international prices and the fuel will be transferred in a way Egypt deems appropriate," the statement said.
The second part of the agreement will see the Islamic Development Bank fund a project to upgrade and increase the capacity of Gaza's power plant by 40 megawatts, it added.
The third phase of the deal will see Gaza's electricity grid connected to Egypt's and will seek to convert its power plant, which currently supplies around a third of the Strip's electricity, from diesel to gas.
Nunu said the Islamic Development Bank, founded by members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, would contribute $32.5 million (24.5 million euros).
Also on Thursday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it had delivered 150,000 litres of diesel to Gaza's health ministry.
"The fuel will help 13 public hospitals maintain essential health services for the next 10 days," the group said, adding that hospitals in the territory were now relying on generators for up to 18 hours a day.
Gaza has long suffered outages because of shortages at its power plant, which has a maximum capacity of 140 megawatts but for some years has only been able to generate around half of that when operational.
In recent weeks the situation has worsened because of a shortage of fuel, most of which is smuggled through cross-border tunnels from Egypt.
International aid agency Oxfam on Saturday warned that the lack of fuel meant Gaza was facing "a total collapse of essential services," and said only an end to Israel's blockade of the territory would solve its electricity shortage.
Israel imposed the blockade in 2006 following the capture of one of its soldiers in June of that year. It was tightened a year later after Hamas took over Gaza, with Israel restricting amounts of fuel allowed through the crossings.
Hamas sets new terms for reconciliation with Fatah
Feb 23, 2012
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
Source:Reuters
(Reuters) - Hamas has set new terms for implementing a reconciliation deal with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's rival Fatah group, an official said Thursday, dimming even further chances the accord will be put into effect.
Abbas and Khaled Meshaal, Hamas's political chief in exile, agreed in Qatar earlier this month to form a unity government led by the Western-backed president.
But in a rift with the Islamist group's leadership outside the Gaza Strip, officials in the Hamas-ruled enclave swiftly criticized the accord, particularly its call for Abbas to serve as prime minister as well as president.
At an internal meeting chaired by Meshaal in Cairo on Wednesday, Hamas officials united behind new demands, said a Palestinian official involved in the talks. The terms seemed certain to be rejected by Abbas.
"Hamas demanded to keep the key ministries in the new government, including the ministry of interior," said the official. "It also demanded no change in the structure of security services in the Gaza Strip."
The interior ministry oversees the Hamas-run security services, and Palestinian political analyst Samir Awad said the new terms proved the group "was not prepared to abandon control of Gaza," territory it seized from Fatah in fighting in 2007.
Abbas has been seeking a unity government staffed by independents and technocrats to ensure it would not be boycotted by the West, which donates essential funds to his Palestinian Authority and refuses to deal with Hamas over it hostility toward Israel.
Other demands that emerged from the Cairo meeting included naming a Gaza-based deputy to Abbas and making his appointment as prime minister conditional on a vote of confidence in the Palestinian parliament.
The legislature has not been in session since the collapse five years ago of a short-lived Palestinian unity government.
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
Source:Reuters
(Reuters) - Hamas has set new terms for implementing a reconciliation deal with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's rival Fatah group, an official said Thursday, dimming even further chances the accord will be put into effect.
Abbas and Khaled Meshaal, Hamas's political chief in exile, agreed in Qatar earlier this month to form a unity government led by the Western-backed president.
But in a rift with the Islamist group's leadership outside the Gaza Strip, officials in the Hamas-ruled enclave swiftly criticized the accord, particularly its call for Abbas to serve as prime minister as well as president.
At an internal meeting chaired by Meshaal in Cairo on Wednesday, Hamas officials united behind new demands, said a Palestinian official involved in the talks. The terms seemed certain to be rejected by Abbas.
"Hamas demanded to keep the key ministries in the new government, including the ministry of interior," said the official. "It also demanded no change in the structure of security services in the Gaza Strip."
The interior ministry oversees the Hamas-run security services, and Palestinian political analyst Samir Awad said the new terms proved the group "was not prepared to abandon control of Gaza," territory it seized from Fatah in fighting in 2007.
Abbas has been seeking a unity government staffed by independents and technocrats to ensure it would not be boycotted by the West, which donates essential funds to his Palestinian Authority and refuses to deal with Hamas over it hostility toward Israel.
Other demands that emerged from the Cairo meeting included naming a Gaza-based deputy to Abbas and making his appointment as prime minister conditional on a vote of confidence in the Palestinian parliament.
The legislature has not been in session since the collapse five years ago of a short-lived Palestinian unity government.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
These Foods Have 'Invisible Thorns' Which Can Rip Apart Your Insides
February 18 2012
By Dr. Mercola
Source:Mercola.com
"You are what you eat" is one of the most profound and instructive sayings ever to be passed down to us through the ages, and thanks to an explosion of exciting new research into the way that food directly affects your genes, it can no longer be written off as merely a metaphorical expression.
In fact, food provides far more than just the material "building blocks" and "fuel" for the 'body-machine; it is also a source of genetic information, which is capable of informing the cells and processes within your body, for better or for worse.
What is quite amazing is the difference in biological response when comparing the right and wrong types of foods.
In fact, new research has revealed that eating the wrong plants can actually directly alter your genetic expression, which can lead to a myriad of diseases.
Micro-RNA Molecules from Your Food May Control Up to 30 Percent of Your Genes
Groundbreaking new research shows that microscopic RNA in the plants you consume enters your body and is actually capable of affecting the expression of up to 30% of your genes!
Never before could it have been imagined that your "genes" could be so profoundly affected by things you eat.
There is also the field of lectinology, which has opened our eyes to how plants – particularly grains and legumes – have a set of defenses, not unlike "invisible thorns," which can cause direct, non-immune mediated harm to a wide range of tissues and organs within your body.
Medical science is beginning to awaken to how profoundly food is intertwined with health and disease, and how nutrients affect genes, and how our genes respond to nutrients. This, in fact, is the field of study known as Nutrigenomics – something, I believe, you will be hearing far more about as the science begins to gain wider appreciation. It is a burgeoning new field, in fact launched soon after the completion of a working draft of the Human Genome project (2003), which failed to provide the long sought after "holy grail" of modern biology.
In a nutshell, the project failed to identify one gene for every one protein in the human body, forcing researchers to look to epigenetic factors -- namely, "factors beyond the control of the gene" – to explain how the body is formed, and how it works. What is the most important factor beyond the control of the gene? Diet.
Eating the Wrong Plants Can Mess With Your DNA Expression
Chances are you've never heard of micro RNA (miRNA) … but that doesn't mean it hasn't already been impacting your health … RNA is one of three major macromolecules, like DNA. Micro RNA are basically small pieces of RNA that interact with your genes, essentially stopping certain genes from being expressed.
MiRNA exists in human body fluid naturally; for instance, researchers have detected high expression levels of immune-related miRNAs in breast milk, particularly during the first 6 months of lactation. It's thought that this genetic material is transferred from mother to baby to help modulate the development of the infant's immune system. Cow's milk also contains miRNA, which is currently being explored as a possible new standard for the quality control of raw milk.
However, micro RNA also exists in plants, and for the first time research has shown that eating the wrong plants may transfer this plant miRNA to humans -- with potentially devastating implications.
The study, published in the September 2011 edition of the journal Cell Research, determined that microRNA from cooked plant foods like rice, wheat and potatoes can in fact collect in your blood and tissue, leading to a number of potential health problems.
The study further revealed that microRNA remains completely stable after not only cooking, but through the digestion process as well. Most importantly, the researchers found a significant quantity of microRNA in the human body, concluding that:
" … plant miRNAs are primarily acquired orally, through food intake."
So whenever you eat rice and certain other plant foods, including potatoes and wheat, you are ingesting genetic material that may turn certain genes "off." To date, microRNA has been implicated in a number of diseases ranging from cancer and diabetes to Alzheimer's disease. But what exactly is microRNA, and why is it so important?
"Gene Regulators" in Your Rice, Wheat and Potatoes
MicroRNA has been widely shown to alter many critical biological processes, including apoptosis – the process of programmed cell death and DNA fragmentation. As a result, the dysregulation of microRNAs has been linked to cancer and various other diseases. However microRNA are also responsible for regulating your genes on a very large scale. As mentioned, it has been estimated that miRNAs account for less than 1% of genes in mammals, but that up to 30% of genes are regulated by them.
Amazingly, microRNAs are known to regulate the flow of genetic information by controlling the translation or stability of something known as messenger RNAs, which is a molecule of RNA that carries valuable genetic coding information within your body.
What's more, this plant miRNA has been shown to interfere with human microRNA by mimicking it and binding to the receptors. In the study, researchers examined the two highest levels of these microRNAs in human participants, and found that it is shockingly prevalent among many dietary plant staples.
As results of the study show, three microRNAs were detected in rice and other foods including Chinese cabbage, wheat, and potato. Of course these are all highly common food staples for many families not only in the United States, but around the world. This means that you may be unknowingly consuming plant microRNAs that could be increasing your risk of cancer and other disease. Even more concerning is the fact that the study authors observed this effect in both healthy men and women, reporting:
"Upon investigation of the global miRNA expression profile in human serum, we found that exogenous plant miRNAs were consistently present in the serum of healthy… men and women."
What you eat, therefore, is who you are in the most literal sense possible.
This fact, while often overlooked, is fundamental in understanding how to optimize your health. If you eat the right foods, you thrive; eat the wrong foods, and you suffer. The problem is the field of nutrition is infused with the same intensity of impassioned debate and confusion as religion and politics – and rarely, only rarely do you get a clear picture of what is good for you, as an individual.
It can take a lifetime to figure out how to perfect a diet, particularly one suitable for you as an individual. The good news is that modern research is beginning to make headway in figuring out what is good for virtually all humans, at least in most cases. Certain foods appear to be problematic for many … and most grains continue to be at the top of this list.
Lectins: "Invisible Thorns" of the Plant Kingdom
MicroRNAs are only one component of plant foods that stretch beyond the scope of vitamins and minerals … Did you know, for instance, that many of the plants we consume for food, particularly grains and legumes, contain chemical and physical defenses that protect against being eaten?
These include anti-nutrients that interfere with the digestion of starches (anti-amylase), proteins (protease inhibitors), minerals (phytate), and many other similar molecules. Sprouting, fermentation, cooking and processing can sometimes reduce and/or eliminate these substances, but not in all cases.
There is one category, of particular interest, known as lectins. Lectins get their name from the Latin word legere, from which the word "Select" derives – and that is exactly what they do: they select (attach to) a very specific number of biological structures.
Lectins are capable of disrupting the health of the creatures that consume them, often piercing through the protective coating of their digestive tracts, and gaining entry into systemic circulation.
Wheat, for instance, contains an exceptionally small lectin known as wheat germ agglutinin or WGA, which is capable of attaching to the surface proteins of nearly all of its natural predators, from bacterial to fungi, worms to insects, mice to men.
Because all of the these creatures are composed, in part, of the biopolymer n-acetyl-glucosamine, and because WGA is designed to attach – exactly and exclusively – to this glycoprotein (part sugar, part protein), it is Nature's ingenious way of saying: "Hey, back off!" – at least when it comes to eating excessive amounts of the seed storage form of the mature grass plant, e.g. cereal grains.
In an article published on GreenMedInfo.com, Sayer Ji describes lectins as "invisible thorns," explaining:
"Nature engineers, within all species, a set of defenses against predation, though not all are as obvious as the thorns on a rose or the horns on a rhinoceros. Plants do not have the cell-mediated immunity of higher life forms, like ants, nor do they have the antibody driven, secondary immune systems of vertebrates with jaws. They must rely on a much simpler, innate immunity.
It is for this reason that seeds of the grass family, e.g. rice, wheat, spelt, rye, have exceptionally high levels of defensive glycoproteins known as lectins. These 'invisible thorns' are an ingenius means of survival."
Lectins were first discovered in castor bean casings, which contain the lectin ricin. Ricin is so toxic that only a dose the size of a few grains of salt can kill an adult if injected or inhaled. In fact, the US military investigated it for potential military use in the First World War. Like micro RNA, lectins are capable of directly affecting gene expression within cells.
The Very Real Danger of Genetically Engineered Foods
Given the fact that research now shows microRNA are appearing in humans who eat rice, it brings up many questions about the way the food we eat interacts with our physiology. While the Cell Research study had nothing specifically to do with genetically modified foods, the implications have everything to do with them.
MicroRNA appears to have dangerous implications for human health, so it stands to reason that genetic modification, which by definition involves organisms in which the genetic material (DNA) has been altered, may too. Further, it brings up a whole new way by which GM foods might harm human health, considering researchers have been using genes very similar to micro RNA to "turn off" certain plant genes.
As reported in The Atlantic:
"Researchers have been using this phenomena to their advantage in the form of small, engineered RNA strands that are virtually identical to miRNA. In a technique called RNA interference, or RNA knockdown, these small bits of RNA are used to turn off, or "knock down," certain genes.
RNA knockdown was first used commercially in 1994 to create the Flavor Savr, a tomato with increased shelf life. In 2007, several research teams began reporting success at engineering plant RNA to kill insect predators, by knocking down certain genes. As reported in MIT's Technology Review on November 5, 2007, researchers in China used RNA knockdown to make:
' ...cotton plants that silence a gene that allows cotton bollworms to process the toxin gossypol, which occurs naturally in cotton. Bollworms that eat the genetically engineered cotton can't make their toxin-processing proteins, and they die.'
And:
'Researchers at Monsanto and Devgen, a Belgian company, made corn plants that silence a gene essential for energy production in corn rootworms; ingestion wipes out the worms within 12 days.'
Humans and insects have a lot in common, genetically. If miRNA can in fact survive the gut then it's entirely possible that miRNA intended to influence insect gene regulation could also affect humans."
The research on micro RNA also has implications on the very doctrine by which biotech companies make claim to GM food safety: substantial equivalence (the idea that there is no difference between GM and non-GM crops). There is obviously much left to be discovered about how DNA and RNA interacts with human beings … and it is becoming increasingly clear that plants with altered DNA cannot be "substantially equivalent" to their natural counterparts. The Atlantic continues:
" … if companies like Monsanto want to use processes like RNA interference to make plants that can kill insects via genetic pathways that might resemble our own, some kind of testing has to happen. A good place to start would be the testing of introduced DNA for other effects -- miRNA-mediated or otherwise -- beyond the specific proteins they code for. But the status quo, according to Monsanto's website, is:
'There is no need to test the safety of DNA introduced into GM crops. DNA (and resulting RNA) is present in almost all foods. DNA is non-toxic and the presence of DNA, in and of itself, presents no hazard.'
Given what we know, that stance is arrogant. Time will tell if it's reckless. There are computational methods of investigating whether unintended RNAs are likely to be knocking down any human genes. But thanks to this position, the best we can do is hope they're using them. Given it's opposition to the labeling of GM foods as well, it seems clear that Monsanto wants you to close your eyes, open your mouth, and swallow."
How Can You Eat to Optimize Your Genetic Expression?
Given the knowledge that the food you consume ultimately becomes the life source of your entire body, it is important that you eat well not only to utilize vital nutrients but also to optimize your genetic expression.
This is cutting-edge information, but it is becoming very clear that there is far more to "food" than vitamins and minerals. Research has only scratched the surface into micro RNAs and their impacts on human health, but the preliminary research suggests they may provide one more method by which grains may harm your health.
For most, it appears healthy eating entails limiting carbohydrates from grains and potatoes, and instead focusing on carbs from vegetable sources. This is in line with the "Paleo" way of eating, which involves focusing on foods that are in line with your genetic ancestry, such as vegetables, nuts and grass-fed meats, while limiting sugars and grains. Cereals, potatoes and bread were non-existent prior to the dawn of agriculture, and there's reason to believe these foods are discordant with our ancient genome. We need to relearn what foods are ideal for our bodies not just to live on, but to thrive on.
You can find more information about how to eat to support positive genetic expression in my nutrition plan. Also keep in mind that your diet is but one way to influence your genetic expression. Your emotions, pharmaceutical drugs, exposure to pollutants, and even exposure to sunlight (vitamin D) and supplements like curcumin play a role in how your genes are expressed.
Source: Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering 2010; 12: 1-27
Source: Evolvify October 19, 2011
Source: Cell Research (2012) 22:107–126.
Source: The Atlantic January 9, 2012
Related Links:
The Hidden Epidemic Destroying Your Gut Flora
3 Ounces of This a Day May Be Harming Your Brain
These Two Natural Foods Will Throw Your Blood Sugar Out-of-Whack
By Dr. Mercola
Source:Mercola.com
"You are what you eat" is one of the most profound and instructive sayings ever to be passed down to us through the ages, and thanks to an explosion of exciting new research into the way that food directly affects your genes, it can no longer be written off as merely a metaphorical expression.
In fact, food provides far more than just the material "building blocks" and "fuel" for the 'body-machine; it is also a source of genetic information, which is capable of informing the cells and processes within your body, for better or for worse.
What is quite amazing is the difference in biological response when comparing the right and wrong types of foods.
In fact, new research has revealed that eating the wrong plants can actually directly alter your genetic expression, which can lead to a myriad of diseases.
Micro-RNA Molecules from Your Food May Control Up to 30 Percent of Your Genes
Groundbreaking new research shows that microscopic RNA in the plants you consume enters your body and is actually capable of affecting the expression of up to 30% of your genes!
Never before could it have been imagined that your "genes" could be so profoundly affected by things you eat.
There is also the field of lectinology, which has opened our eyes to how plants – particularly grains and legumes – have a set of defenses, not unlike "invisible thorns," which can cause direct, non-immune mediated harm to a wide range of tissues and organs within your body.
Medical science is beginning to awaken to how profoundly food is intertwined with health and disease, and how nutrients affect genes, and how our genes respond to nutrients. This, in fact, is the field of study known as Nutrigenomics – something, I believe, you will be hearing far more about as the science begins to gain wider appreciation. It is a burgeoning new field, in fact launched soon after the completion of a working draft of the Human Genome project (2003), which failed to provide the long sought after "holy grail" of modern biology.
In a nutshell, the project failed to identify one gene for every one protein in the human body, forcing researchers to look to epigenetic factors -- namely, "factors beyond the control of the gene" – to explain how the body is formed, and how it works. What is the most important factor beyond the control of the gene? Diet.
Eating the Wrong Plants Can Mess With Your DNA Expression
Chances are you've never heard of micro RNA (miRNA) … but that doesn't mean it hasn't already been impacting your health … RNA is one of three major macromolecules, like DNA. Micro RNA are basically small pieces of RNA that interact with your genes, essentially stopping certain genes from being expressed.
MiRNA exists in human body fluid naturally; for instance, researchers have detected high expression levels of immune-related miRNAs in breast milk, particularly during the first 6 months of lactation. It's thought that this genetic material is transferred from mother to baby to help modulate the development of the infant's immune system. Cow's milk also contains miRNA, which is currently being explored as a possible new standard for the quality control of raw milk.
However, micro RNA also exists in plants, and for the first time research has shown that eating the wrong plants may transfer this plant miRNA to humans -- with potentially devastating implications.
The study, published in the September 2011 edition of the journal Cell Research, determined that microRNA from cooked plant foods like rice, wheat and potatoes can in fact collect in your blood and tissue, leading to a number of potential health problems.
The study further revealed that microRNA remains completely stable after not only cooking, but through the digestion process as well. Most importantly, the researchers found a significant quantity of microRNA in the human body, concluding that:
" … plant miRNAs are primarily acquired orally, through food intake."
So whenever you eat rice and certain other plant foods, including potatoes and wheat, you are ingesting genetic material that may turn certain genes "off." To date, microRNA has been implicated in a number of diseases ranging from cancer and diabetes to Alzheimer's disease. But what exactly is microRNA, and why is it so important?
"Gene Regulators" in Your Rice, Wheat and Potatoes
MicroRNA has been widely shown to alter many critical biological processes, including apoptosis – the process of programmed cell death and DNA fragmentation. As a result, the dysregulation of microRNAs has been linked to cancer and various other diseases. However microRNA are also responsible for regulating your genes on a very large scale. As mentioned, it has been estimated that miRNAs account for less than 1% of genes in mammals, but that up to 30% of genes are regulated by them.
Amazingly, microRNAs are known to regulate the flow of genetic information by controlling the translation or stability of something known as messenger RNAs, which is a molecule of RNA that carries valuable genetic coding information within your body.
What's more, this plant miRNA has been shown to interfere with human microRNA by mimicking it and binding to the receptors. In the study, researchers examined the two highest levels of these microRNAs in human participants, and found that it is shockingly prevalent among many dietary plant staples.
As results of the study show, three microRNAs were detected in rice and other foods including Chinese cabbage, wheat, and potato. Of course these are all highly common food staples for many families not only in the United States, but around the world. This means that you may be unknowingly consuming plant microRNAs that could be increasing your risk of cancer and other disease. Even more concerning is the fact that the study authors observed this effect in both healthy men and women, reporting:
"Upon investigation of the global miRNA expression profile in human serum, we found that exogenous plant miRNAs were consistently present in the serum of healthy… men and women."
What you eat, therefore, is who you are in the most literal sense possible.
This fact, while often overlooked, is fundamental in understanding how to optimize your health. If you eat the right foods, you thrive; eat the wrong foods, and you suffer. The problem is the field of nutrition is infused with the same intensity of impassioned debate and confusion as religion and politics – and rarely, only rarely do you get a clear picture of what is good for you, as an individual.
It can take a lifetime to figure out how to perfect a diet, particularly one suitable for you as an individual. The good news is that modern research is beginning to make headway in figuring out what is good for virtually all humans, at least in most cases. Certain foods appear to be problematic for many … and most grains continue to be at the top of this list.
Lectins: "Invisible Thorns" of the Plant Kingdom
MicroRNAs are only one component of plant foods that stretch beyond the scope of vitamins and minerals … Did you know, for instance, that many of the plants we consume for food, particularly grains and legumes, contain chemical and physical defenses that protect against being eaten?
These include anti-nutrients that interfere with the digestion of starches (anti-amylase), proteins (protease inhibitors), minerals (phytate), and many other similar molecules. Sprouting, fermentation, cooking and processing can sometimes reduce and/or eliminate these substances, but not in all cases.
There is one category, of particular interest, known as lectins. Lectins get their name from the Latin word legere, from which the word "Select" derives – and that is exactly what they do: they select (attach to) a very specific number of biological structures.
Lectins are capable of disrupting the health of the creatures that consume them, often piercing through the protective coating of their digestive tracts, and gaining entry into systemic circulation.
Wheat, for instance, contains an exceptionally small lectin known as wheat germ agglutinin or WGA, which is capable of attaching to the surface proteins of nearly all of its natural predators, from bacterial to fungi, worms to insects, mice to men.
Because all of the these creatures are composed, in part, of the biopolymer n-acetyl-glucosamine, and because WGA is designed to attach – exactly and exclusively – to this glycoprotein (part sugar, part protein), it is Nature's ingenious way of saying: "Hey, back off!" – at least when it comes to eating excessive amounts of the seed storage form of the mature grass plant, e.g. cereal grains.
In an article published on GreenMedInfo.com, Sayer Ji describes lectins as "invisible thorns," explaining:
"Nature engineers, within all species, a set of defenses against predation, though not all are as obvious as the thorns on a rose or the horns on a rhinoceros. Plants do not have the cell-mediated immunity of higher life forms, like ants, nor do they have the antibody driven, secondary immune systems of vertebrates with jaws. They must rely on a much simpler, innate immunity.
It is for this reason that seeds of the grass family, e.g. rice, wheat, spelt, rye, have exceptionally high levels of defensive glycoproteins known as lectins. These 'invisible thorns' are an ingenius means of survival."
Lectins were first discovered in castor bean casings, which contain the lectin ricin. Ricin is so toxic that only a dose the size of a few grains of salt can kill an adult if injected or inhaled. In fact, the US military investigated it for potential military use in the First World War. Like micro RNA, lectins are capable of directly affecting gene expression within cells.
The Very Real Danger of Genetically Engineered Foods
Given the fact that research now shows microRNA are appearing in humans who eat rice, it brings up many questions about the way the food we eat interacts with our physiology. While the Cell Research study had nothing specifically to do with genetically modified foods, the implications have everything to do with them.
MicroRNA appears to have dangerous implications for human health, so it stands to reason that genetic modification, which by definition involves organisms in which the genetic material (DNA) has been altered, may too. Further, it brings up a whole new way by which GM foods might harm human health, considering researchers have been using genes very similar to micro RNA to "turn off" certain plant genes.
As reported in The Atlantic:
"Researchers have been using this phenomena to their advantage in the form of small, engineered RNA strands that are virtually identical to miRNA. In a technique called RNA interference, or RNA knockdown, these small bits of RNA are used to turn off, or "knock down," certain genes.
RNA knockdown was first used commercially in 1994 to create the Flavor Savr, a tomato with increased shelf life. In 2007, several research teams began reporting success at engineering plant RNA to kill insect predators, by knocking down certain genes. As reported in MIT's Technology Review on November 5, 2007, researchers in China used RNA knockdown to make:
' ...cotton plants that silence a gene that allows cotton bollworms to process the toxin gossypol, which occurs naturally in cotton. Bollworms that eat the genetically engineered cotton can't make their toxin-processing proteins, and they die.'
And:
'Researchers at Monsanto and Devgen, a Belgian company, made corn plants that silence a gene essential for energy production in corn rootworms; ingestion wipes out the worms within 12 days.'
Humans and insects have a lot in common, genetically. If miRNA can in fact survive the gut then it's entirely possible that miRNA intended to influence insect gene regulation could also affect humans."
The research on micro RNA also has implications on the very doctrine by which biotech companies make claim to GM food safety: substantial equivalence (the idea that there is no difference between GM and non-GM crops). There is obviously much left to be discovered about how DNA and RNA interacts with human beings … and it is becoming increasingly clear that plants with altered DNA cannot be "substantially equivalent" to their natural counterparts. The Atlantic continues:
" … if companies like Monsanto want to use processes like RNA interference to make plants that can kill insects via genetic pathways that might resemble our own, some kind of testing has to happen. A good place to start would be the testing of introduced DNA for other effects -- miRNA-mediated or otherwise -- beyond the specific proteins they code for. But the status quo, according to Monsanto's website, is:
'There is no need to test the safety of DNA introduced into GM crops. DNA (and resulting RNA) is present in almost all foods. DNA is non-toxic and the presence of DNA, in and of itself, presents no hazard.'
Given what we know, that stance is arrogant. Time will tell if it's reckless. There are computational methods of investigating whether unintended RNAs are likely to be knocking down any human genes. But thanks to this position, the best we can do is hope they're using them. Given it's opposition to the labeling of GM foods as well, it seems clear that Monsanto wants you to close your eyes, open your mouth, and swallow."
How Can You Eat to Optimize Your Genetic Expression?
Given the knowledge that the food you consume ultimately becomes the life source of your entire body, it is important that you eat well not only to utilize vital nutrients but also to optimize your genetic expression.
This is cutting-edge information, but it is becoming very clear that there is far more to "food" than vitamins and minerals. Research has only scratched the surface into micro RNAs and their impacts on human health, but the preliminary research suggests they may provide one more method by which grains may harm your health.
For most, it appears healthy eating entails limiting carbohydrates from grains and potatoes, and instead focusing on carbs from vegetable sources. This is in line with the "Paleo" way of eating, which involves focusing on foods that are in line with your genetic ancestry, such as vegetables, nuts and grass-fed meats, while limiting sugars and grains. Cereals, potatoes and bread were non-existent prior to the dawn of agriculture, and there's reason to believe these foods are discordant with our ancient genome. We need to relearn what foods are ideal for our bodies not just to live on, but to thrive on.
You can find more information about how to eat to support positive genetic expression in my nutrition plan. Also keep in mind that your diet is but one way to influence your genetic expression. Your emotions, pharmaceutical drugs, exposure to pollutants, and even exposure to sunlight (vitamin D) and supplements like curcumin play a role in how your genes are expressed.
Source: Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering 2010; 12: 1-27
Source: Evolvify October 19, 2011
Source: Cell Research (2012) 22:107–126.
Source: The Atlantic January 9, 2012
Related Links:
The Hidden Epidemic Destroying Your Gut Flora
3 Ounces of This a Day May Be Harming Your Brain
These Two Natural Foods Will Throw Your Blood Sugar Out-of-Whack
New mental health manual is "dangerous" say experts
Feb 9, 2012
By Kate Kelland
Source:Reuters
(Reuters) - Millions of healthy people - including shy or defiant children, grieving relatives and people with fetishes - may be wrongly labeled mentally ill by a new international diagnostic manual, specialists said on Thursday.
In a damning analysis of an upcoming revision of the influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychologists, psychiatrists and other experts said new categories of mental illness identified in the book were at best "silly" and at worst "worrying and dangerous."
"Many people who are shy, bereaved, eccentric, or have unconventional romantic lives will suddenly find themselves labeled as mentally ill," said Peter Kinderman, head of Liverpool University's Institute of Psychology at a briefing in London about widespread concerns over the manual.
"It's not humane, it's not scientific, and it won't help decide what help a person needs."
The DSM is published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and has symptoms and other criteria for diagnosing mental disorders. It is used internationally and seen as the diagnostic "bible" for mental health medicine.
No one from the APA was immediately available for comment.
More than 11,000 health professionals have already signed a petition (at dsm5-reform.com) calling for the development of the fifth edition of the manual to be halted and re-thought.
Some diagnoses - for conditions like "oppositional defiant disorder" and "apathy syndrome" - risk devaluing the seriousness of mental illness and medical zing behaviors most people would consider normal or just mildly eccentric, the experts said.
At the other end of the spectrum, the new DSM, due out next year, could give medical diagnoses for serial rapists and sex abusers - under labels like "paraphilic coercive disorder" - and may allow offenders to escape prison by providing what could be seen as an excuse for their behavior, they added.
RADICAL, RECKLESS, AND INHUMANE
Simon Wessely of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London said a look back at history should make health experts ask themselves: "Do we need all these labels?"
He said the 1840 Census of the United States included just one category for mental disorder, but by 1917 the APA was already recognizing 59. That rose to 128 in 1959, to 227 in 1980, and again to around 350 disorders in the fastest revisions of DSM in 1994 and 2000.
Allen Frances of Duke University and chair of the committee that oversaw the previous DSM revision, said DSM-5 would "radically and recklessly expand the boundaries of psychiatry" and result in the "lexicalization of normality, individual difference, and criminality."
David Pilgrim of Britain's University of Central Lancashire said it was "hard to avoid the conclusion that DSM-5 will help the interests of the drug companies."
"Madness and misery exist but they come in many shapes and sizes," he said. "We risk treating the experience and conduct of people as if they are botanical specimens waiting to be identified and categorized in rigid boxes.
"That would itself be a form of collective madness for all those complicit in the continuing pseudo-scientific exercise."
Nick Craddock of Cardiff University's department of psychological medicine and neurology, who also spoke at the London briefing, cited depression as a key example of where DSM's broad categories were going wrong.
Whereas in previous editions, a person who had recently lost a loved one and was suffering low moods would be seen as experiencing a normal human reaction to bereavement, the new DSM criteria would ignore the death, look only at the symptoms, and class the person as having a depressive illness.
Other examples of diagnoses cited by experts as problematic included "gambling disorder," "internet addiction disorder" and "oppositional defiant disorder" - a condition in which a child "actively refuses to comply with majority's requests" and "performs deliberate actions to annoy others."
"That basically means children who say 'no' to their parents more than a certain number of times," Kinderman said. "On that criteria, many of us would have to say our children are mentally ill."
By Kate Kelland
Source:Reuters
(Reuters) - Millions of healthy people - including shy or defiant children, grieving relatives and people with fetishes - may be wrongly labeled mentally ill by a new international diagnostic manual, specialists said on Thursday.
In a damning analysis of an upcoming revision of the influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychologists, psychiatrists and other experts said new categories of mental illness identified in the book were at best "silly" and at worst "worrying and dangerous."
"Many people who are shy, bereaved, eccentric, or have unconventional romantic lives will suddenly find themselves labeled as mentally ill," said Peter Kinderman, head of Liverpool University's Institute of Psychology at a briefing in London about widespread concerns over the manual.
"It's not humane, it's not scientific, and it won't help decide what help a person needs."
The DSM is published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and has symptoms and other criteria for diagnosing mental disorders. It is used internationally and seen as the diagnostic "bible" for mental health medicine.
No one from the APA was immediately available for comment.
More than 11,000 health professionals have already signed a petition (at dsm5-reform.com) calling for the development of the fifth edition of the manual to be halted and re-thought.
Some diagnoses - for conditions like "oppositional defiant disorder" and "apathy syndrome" - risk devaluing the seriousness of mental illness and medical zing behaviors most people would consider normal or just mildly eccentric, the experts said.
At the other end of the spectrum, the new DSM, due out next year, could give medical diagnoses for serial rapists and sex abusers - under labels like "paraphilic coercive disorder" - and may allow offenders to escape prison by providing what could be seen as an excuse for their behavior, they added.
RADICAL, RECKLESS, AND INHUMANE
Simon Wessely of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London said a look back at history should make health experts ask themselves: "Do we need all these labels?"
He said the 1840 Census of the United States included just one category for mental disorder, but by 1917 the APA was already recognizing 59. That rose to 128 in 1959, to 227 in 1980, and again to around 350 disorders in the fastest revisions of DSM in 1994 and 2000.
Allen Frances of Duke University and chair of the committee that oversaw the previous DSM revision, said DSM-5 would "radically and recklessly expand the boundaries of psychiatry" and result in the "lexicalization of normality, individual difference, and criminality."
David Pilgrim of Britain's University of Central Lancashire said it was "hard to avoid the conclusion that DSM-5 will help the interests of the drug companies."
"Madness and misery exist but they come in many shapes and sizes," he said. "We risk treating the experience and conduct of people as if they are botanical specimens waiting to be identified and categorized in rigid boxes.
"That would itself be a form of collective madness for all those complicit in the continuing pseudo-scientific exercise."
Nick Craddock of Cardiff University's department of psychological medicine and neurology, who also spoke at the London briefing, cited depression as a key example of where DSM's broad categories were going wrong.
Whereas in previous editions, a person who had recently lost a loved one and was suffering low moods would be seen as experiencing a normal human reaction to bereavement, the new DSM criteria would ignore the death, look only at the symptoms, and class the person as having a depressive illness.
Other examples of diagnoses cited by experts as problematic included "gambling disorder," "internet addiction disorder" and "oppositional defiant disorder" - a condition in which a child "actively refuses to comply with majority's requests" and "performs deliberate actions to annoy others."
"That basically means children who say 'no' to their parents more than a certain number of times," Kinderman said. "On that criteria, many of us would have to say our children are mentally ill."
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Meshaal, Abbas, and The Doha Agreement
Monday, February 13, 2012
written by: Sheila Quinn
Source: A New Era
Within the last few days Meshaal, as the leader of Hamas, signed an agreement which is both illegal and unethical. I have read a number of articles about him and this agreement. My initial response was one of anger. I wanted to speak out against him ,but decided against it because I thought of it as an internal Hamas issue and a Palestinian issue.
But the more I read about it and the more I learn about it, the more angry I became. I have come to the conclusion that I was wrong. This agreement is not just an internal Hamas issue, nor an internal Palestinian issue-but an issue of The Islamic Nation. It is an issue that ALL Muslims have a right to speak on!
Why do I say this? Because, Palestine is a territory of The Islamic Nation. It's borders are between the ocean and The Jordan River. The Israeli State is an illegal state that has absolutely no legitimacy whatsoever. The U.N. partition of Palestine was conditioned upon the The Palestinians accepting it. They rejected such a partition. Only with their acceptance of the partition will The Israeli State become "legally" legitimate. The second reason is because Al- Aqsa Masjid (Al Aqsa Mosque)is in Palestine. Al-Aqsa has been-and is continuing to be- threatened with destruction.
For the last few weeks I have been reading different articles about Meshaal. Meshaal is from The West Bank. Meshaal is calling for a change in strategy. He is calling for adopting non-violent protests as a replacement for armed resistance. (Non-violent protests have proven to be ineffective with The Zionists. Fatah has used such strategy in The West Bank and the results are the loss of land and lives. Armed resistance is the only way to stop the aggression of The Zionists. Any other way has been proven to be impractical.) Hamas officials in Gaza have both the right-and the responsibility- to reject the agreement. They have every right in the world to refuse cooperation in its implementation. Since the agreement involves Gaza, the cooperation of the officials of Gaza are vital to it's implementation.
Hamas should continue to work for the liberation of all of Palestine through armed resistance. Any other way has been proven to be totally ineffective.
As for Abbas, he has proven himself to be a puppet of those who want to destroy Al-Aqsa Masjid (Al-Aqsa Mosque). He has proven himself to be a puppet of the global oligarchy- which includes the leadership of both The U.S. and The European Union. It is clear that the global oligarchy wants Al-Aqsa Masjid to be destroyed. It is clear that Abbas is their puppet. Others in the "interim government" may be technocrats, but Abbas is not! The Zionists are in the process of: stealing all of the West Bank; evicting all Muslims from Jerusalem, and destroying Al-Aqsa Masjid. Abbas and the leaders of Arab countries want peace with The Zionists??? All of them-including King Abdullah of Jordan- are puppets of the global oligarchy!
Until now Gaza has been a stronghold of Palestinian resistance-unlike The West Bank. Does Meshaal want to open up Gaza to The Zionists -like The West bank?
Here are some quotes from articles that I have read:
"Meshaal might be able to put down the unprecedented rebellion against him, but would need the good will and cooperation of Hamas leaders in Gaza to make the agreement work." ("Public rift as Hamas strongman in Gaza rejects unity deal")
"On Sunday, the head of the bloc of Hamas legislators in Gaza, Ismail al-Ashkar, alleged that Fatah has not carried out promised confidence building measures, such as releasing Hamas loyalists held in the West Bank." ("Public rift as Hamas strongman in Gaza rejects unity deal")
"MPs of the Hamas majority in the Palestinian parliament called on Thursday for the scrapping of a reconciliation accord with Fatah on constitutional grounds.
"After examining the question of Mahmud Abbas taking on the premiership as well as the presidency" and consultation with judicial experts, such a scenario was found to be contrary to the Basic Law, 31 MPs said in a statement." ("Hamas MP's call for scrapping of Fatah Deal")
"Meshaal has been based in Damascus since 2001, fearing for his safety and hoping to avoid the restrictions on his movement in Gaza. He has been the chief leader of Hamas' political wing since 2004."("Hamas political chief to step down")
Some References:
"Public rift as Hamas strongman in Gaza rejects unity deal" written by: Mohammed Daraghmeh, published by "The Daily Star" on February 13, 2012. Link: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2012/Feb-13/163004-public-rift-as-hamas-strongman-in-gaza-rejects-unity-deal.ashx#axzz1mH2Vz2A4
"Hamas MPs call for scrapping of Fatah deal" written by: Mahmud Hams, Published on:AFP – Wed, Feb 8, 2012 Source: Yahoo News Maktoob
"Hamas political chief to step down" Published on: Jan 21, 2012 By: AlJazeera Source: Yahoo News Maktoob
"The Association of Palestinian Scholars issues plea to Muslims to protect al-Aqsa" Published on: 13 February 2012 By: Middle East Monitor Link: http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/news/middle-east/3420-the-association-of-palestinian-scholars-issues-plea-to-muslims-to-protect-al-aqsa
written by: Sheila Quinn
Source: A New Era
Within the last few days Meshaal, as the leader of Hamas, signed an agreement which is both illegal and unethical. I have read a number of articles about him and this agreement. My initial response was one of anger. I wanted to speak out against him ,but decided against it because I thought of it as an internal Hamas issue and a Palestinian issue.
But the more I read about it and the more I learn about it, the more angry I became. I have come to the conclusion that I was wrong. This agreement is not just an internal Hamas issue, nor an internal Palestinian issue-but an issue of The Islamic Nation. It is an issue that ALL Muslims have a right to speak on!
Why do I say this? Because, Palestine is a territory of The Islamic Nation. It's borders are between the ocean and The Jordan River. The Israeli State is an illegal state that has absolutely no legitimacy whatsoever. The U.N. partition of Palestine was conditioned upon the The Palestinians accepting it. They rejected such a partition. Only with their acceptance of the partition will The Israeli State become "legally" legitimate. The second reason is because Al- Aqsa Masjid (Al Aqsa Mosque)is in Palestine. Al-Aqsa has been-and is continuing to be- threatened with destruction.
For the last few weeks I have been reading different articles about Meshaal. Meshaal is from The West Bank. Meshaal is calling for a change in strategy. He is calling for adopting non-violent protests as a replacement for armed resistance. (Non-violent protests have proven to be ineffective with The Zionists. Fatah has used such strategy in The West Bank and the results are the loss of land and lives. Armed resistance is the only way to stop the aggression of The Zionists. Any other way has been proven to be impractical.) Hamas officials in Gaza have both the right-and the responsibility- to reject the agreement. They have every right in the world to refuse cooperation in its implementation. Since the agreement involves Gaza, the cooperation of the officials of Gaza are vital to it's implementation.
Hamas should continue to work for the liberation of all of Palestine through armed resistance. Any other way has been proven to be totally ineffective.
As for Abbas, he has proven himself to be a puppet of those who want to destroy Al-Aqsa Masjid (Al-Aqsa Mosque). He has proven himself to be a puppet of the global oligarchy- which includes the leadership of both The U.S. and The European Union. It is clear that the global oligarchy wants Al-Aqsa Masjid to be destroyed. It is clear that Abbas is their puppet. Others in the "interim government" may be technocrats, but Abbas is not! The Zionists are in the process of: stealing all of the West Bank; evicting all Muslims from Jerusalem, and destroying Al-Aqsa Masjid. Abbas and the leaders of Arab countries want peace with The Zionists??? All of them-including King Abdullah of Jordan- are puppets of the global oligarchy!
Until now Gaza has been a stronghold of Palestinian resistance-unlike The West Bank. Does Meshaal want to open up Gaza to The Zionists -like The West bank?
Here are some quotes from articles that I have read:
"Meshaal might be able to put down the unprecedented rebellion against him, but would need the good will and cooperation of Hamas leaders in Gaza to make the agreement work." ("Public rift as Hamas strongman in Gaza rejects unity deal")
"On Sunday, the head of the bloc of Hamas legislators in Gaza, Ismail al-Ashkar, alleged that Fatah has not carried out promised confidence building measures, such as releasing Hamas loyalists held in the West Bank." ("Public rift as Hamas strongman in Gaza rejects unity deal")
"MPs of the Hamas majority in the Palestinian parliament called on Thursday for the scrapping of a reconciliation accord with Fatah on constitutional grounds.
"After examining the question of Mahmud Abbas taking on the premiership as well as the presidency" and consultation with judicial experts, such a scenario was found to be contrary to the Basic Law, 31 MPs said in a statement." ("Hamas MP's call for scrapping of Fatah Deal")
"Meshaal has been based in Damascus since 2001, fearing for his safety and hoping to avoid the restrictions on his movement in Gaza. He has been the chief leader of Hamas' political wing since 2004."("Hamas political chief to step down")
Some References:
"Public rift as Hamas strongman in Gaza rejects unity deal" written by: Mohammed Daraghmeh, published by "The Daily Star" on February 13, 2012. Link: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2012/Feb-13/163004-public-rift-as-hamas-strongman-in-gaza-rejects-unity-deal.ashx#axzz1mH2Vz2A4
"Hamas MPs call for scrapping of Fatah deal" written by: Mahmud Hams, Published on:AFP – Wed, Feb 8, 2012 Source: Yahoo News Maktoob
"Hamas political chief to step down" Published on: Jan 21, 2012 By: AlJazeera Source: Yahoo News Maktoob
"The Association of Palestinian Scholars issues plea to Muslims to protect al-Aqsa" Published on: 13 February 2012 By: Middle East Monitor Link: http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/news/middle-east/3420-the-association-of-palestinian-scholars-issues-plea-to-muslims-to-protect-al-aqsa
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Hamas MPs call for scrapping of Fatah deal
Feb 8, 2012
By Mahmud Hams | AFP
Source:Yahoo News Maktoob
MPs of the Hamas majority in the Palestinian parliament called on Thursday for the scrapping of a reconciliation accord with Fatah on constitutional grounds.
"After examining the question of Mahmud Abbas taking on the premiership as well as the presidency" and consultation with judicial experts, such a scenario was found to be contrary to the Basic Law, 31 MPs said in a statement.
It said after a meeting in parliament in Gaza City that the Basic Law calls for separation of the two posts, in contrast to Fatah which denies any violation of the law.
"On this basis, we call for all the signatory parties and the sponsor of the Palestinian reconciliation to reconsider and to respect the Basic Law," said the MPs of the Islamist movement which holds 74 seats in the 132-member parliament
Palestinian president Abbas, who also heads Fatah, and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal signed an accord in Doha on Monday placing Abbas at the head of an interim consensus government to supervise the run-up to elections.
The deal was hailed as a compromise after a bitter dispute over who would head the temporary government that had stalled a reconciliation deal signed by all Palestinian factions in April and May 2011.
By Mahmud Hams | AFP
Source:Yahoo News Maktoob
MPs of the Hamas majority in the Palestinian parliament called on Thursday for the scrapping of a reconciliation accord with Fatah on constitutional grounds.
"After examining the question of Mahmud Abbas taking on the premiership as well as the presidency" and consultation with judicial experts, such a scenario was found to be contrary to the Basic Law, 31 MPs said in a statement.
It said after a meeting in parliament in Gaza City that the Basic Law calls for separation of the two posts, in contrast to Fatah which denies any violation of the law.
"On this basis, we call for all the signatory parties and the sponsor of the Palestinian reconciliation to reconsider and to respect the Basic Law," said the MPs of the Islamist movement which holds 74 seats in the 132-member parliament
Palestinian president Abbas, who also heads Fatah, and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal signed an accord in Doha on Monday placing Abbas at the head of an interim consensus government to supervise the run-up to elections.
The deal was hailed as a compromise after a bitter dispute over who would head the temporary government that had stalled a reconciliation deal signed by all Palestinian factions in April and May 2011.
Public rift as Hamas strongman in Gaza rejects unity deal
February 13, 2012
By Mohammed Daraghmeh
Source: The Daily Star
RAMALLAH: A rare public rift broke open Sunday in the usually tightly disciplined Islamic movement Hamas over a reconciliation deal that would require it to relinquish key areas of control in the Gaza Strip.The deal, brokered by Qatar, was signed last week in Doha by Hamas’ top leader in exile, Khaled Meshaal, and the chief of the rival Fatah party, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The agreement is to end nearly five years of separate governments – Hamas in Gaza and Abbas in the West Bank – by establishing an interim unity government headed by Abbas that would prepare for Palestinian elections.
Senior Hamas figures in Gaza, who stand to lose most from the deal, said it was unacceptable, while top Hamas loyalists in the West Bank defended the agreement. The argument raised new questions about the ability of Abbas and Meshaal to implement the deal, seen as their best shot yet at healing the rift following Hamas’ violent takeover of Gaza in 2007.
Meshaal might be able to put down the unprecedented rebellion against him, but would need the good will and cooperation of Hamas leaders in Gaza to make the agreement work.
Gaza strongman Mahmoud Zahar, one of the masterminds of the Gaza takeover, said Meshaal did not consult with others in the movement before signing the deal. Giving Abbas the post of interim prime minister is “wrong” and “strategically unacceptable,” Zahar was quoted as telling the Egyptian news agency MENA Saturday.
On Sunday, the head of the bloc of Hamas legislators in Gaza, Ismail al-Ashkar, alleged that Fatah has not carried out promised confidence building measures, such as releasing Hamas loyalists held in the West Bank.
“If the elections are to heal all our chronic, complicated problems, how can we have transparent and fair elections under such conditions,” Ashkar said. “If this agreement is to work, we need to improve it.”
Last week, Ashkar’s parliament bloc came out against the agreement.
In contrast, Hamas lawmakers from the West Bank supported the Doha agreement across the board, according to statements and interviews published on Hamas’ official website. Such public debate is rare in the secretive, tightly organized Hamas.
The criticism of the Hamas leaders in Gaza highlights the vulnerability of the Doha agreement.
Abbas needs to satisfy international demands that the interim government – to consist of politically independent technocrats – is not a front for Hamas, shunned as a terror group. If it is seen as too close to Hamas, the Palestinians would likely lose hundreds of millions of dollars in Western aid. At the same time, he risks sabotage from Hamas leaders in Gaza if he tries to strip them of too much of their power.
“If Abbas forms his government with one color, it won’t work in Gaza,” said Raed Naerat, a West Bank analyst close to Hamas.
By Mohammed Daraghmeh
Source: The Daily Star
RAMALLAH: A rare public rift broke open Sunday in the usually tightly disciplined Islamic movement Hamas over a reconciliation deal that would require it to relinquish key areas of control in the Gaza Strip.The deal, brokered by Qatar, was signed last week in Doha by Hamas’ top leader in exile, Khaled Meshaal, and the chief of the rival Fatah party, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The agreement is to end nearly five years of separate governments – Hamas in Gaza and Abbas in the West Bank – by establishing an interim unity government headed by Abbas that would prepare for Palestinian elections.
Senior Hamas figures in Gaza, who stand to lose most from the deal, said it was unacceptable, while top Hamas loyalists in the West Bank defended the agreement. The argument raised new questions about the ability of Abbas and Meshaal to implement the deal, seen as their best shot yet at healing the rift following Hamas’ violent takeover of Gaza in 2007.
Meshaal might be able to put down the unprecedented rebellion against him, but would need the good will and cooperation of Hamas leaders in Gaza to make the agreement work.
Gaza strongman Mahmoud Zahar, one of the masterminds of the Gaza takeover, said Meshaal did not consult with others in the movement before signing the deal. Giving Abbas the post of interim prime minister is “wrong” and “strategically unacceptable,” Zahar was quoted as telling the Egyptian news agency MENA Saturday.
On Sunday, the head of the bloc of Hamas legislators in Gaza, Ismail al-Ashkar, alleged that Fatah has not carried out promised confidence building measures, such as releasing Hamas loyalists held in the West Bank.
“If the elections are to heal all our chronic, complicated problems, how can we have transparent and fair elections under such conditions,” Ashkar said. “If this agreement is to work, we need to improve it.”
Last week, Ashkar’s parliament bloc came out against the agreement.
In contrast, Hamas lawmakers from the West Bank supported the Doha agreement across the board, according to statements and interviews published on Hamas’ official website. Such public debate is rare in the secretive, tightly organized Hamas.
The criticism of the Hamas leaders in Gaza highlights the vulnerability of the Doha agreement.
Abbas needs to satisfy international demands that the interim government – to consist of politically independent technocrats – is not a front for Hamas, shunned as a terror group. If it is seen as too close to Hamas, the Palestinians would likely lose hundreds of millions of dollars in Western aid. At the same time, he risks sabotage from Hamas leaders in Gaza if he tries to strip them of too much of their power.
“If Abbas forms his government with one color, it won’t work in Gaza,” said Raed Naerat, a West Bank analyst close to Hamas.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Islamists Demand End to Security Harassment of Members
2012-02-02
By Banan Malkawi
Source:ammonnews.net
AMMONNEWS - The Islamic Action Front (IAF), the political arm of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, on Thursday called on the government to put an end to harassment and targeting of citizens based on political and ideological bases.
IAF Secretary General Hamzeh Mansour denounced threats and harassment of a Madaba resident during a visit to a security department to obtain a security clearance approval for his son to enroll in the Armed Forces' Supportive Medical Services Institute.
In a letter sent to Prime Minister Awn Khasawneh, Mansour said that a security officer harassed the father and threatened him after the man refused to admit his membership in the Muslim Brotherhood and his refusal to cooperate with the officer by becoming an informant against the movement.
Mansour considered the threat a "new proof that members of IAF are being targeted and deprived of their constitutional rights," adding that the incident reveals attempts by the security apparatus to breakup the social base of the movement.
The Islamist leader called on the Prime Minister to investigate the incident and put an end to what he caled "a policy of harassment and marginalization for political and ideological reasons."
By Banan Malkawi
Source:ammonnews.net
AMMONNEWS - The Islamic Action Front (IAF), the political arm of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, on Thursday called on the government to put an end to harassment and targeting of citizens based on political and ideological bases.
IAF Secretary General Hamzeh Mansour denounced threats and harassment of a Madaba resident during a visit to a security department to obtain a security clearance approval for his son to enroll in the Armed Forces' Supportive Medical Services Institute.
In a letter sent to Prime Minister Awn Khasawneh, Mansour said that a security officer harassed the father and threatened him after the man refused to admit his membership in the Muslim Brotherhood and his refusal to cooperate with the officer by becoming an informant against the movement.
Mansour considered the threat a "new proof that members of IAF are being targeted and deprived of their constitutional rights," adding that the incident reveals attempts by the security apparatus to breakup the social base of the movement.
The Islamist leader called on the Prime Minister to investigate the incident and put an end to what he caled "a policy of harassment and marginalization for political and ideological reasons."
Protests in Jordan garner some reforms, look for more gains
Mon 6 Feb 2012
Source: Egypt Independent
Amman--Amid the region’s revolutionary fervor, Jordanian dissent rose, with the opposition making political and economic demands and a monarchy attempting to appease protesters.
On Friday 25 February, some 10,000 Jordanians took to the streets of Amman to protest. More than 3,000 security forces had been deployed in the capital and the march went off without violence. Come early afternoon, protesters went home, leaving the city center empty.
Following the incident of 18 January, when eight protesters had been injured during clashes with pro-government supporters, relief was palpable. “The protest went without problems, nothing like the past week, and now it is finished. Here we don’t have a revolution like in Egypt and we don’t want to drive out the King” said Mustafa, a juice seller in the city center.
The Jordanian opposition has been calling for a constitutional monarchy in which the government would be appointed by the Parliament rather than by the King.
“Our demands are constitutional changes that relate to the elections and the supervision of the elections. We want a parliamentary government to be formed of the bloc that constitutes the majority of the parliament” Bani Ershed, secretary general of the Islamic Action Front party, the Muslim Brotherhood’s party, said.
Moreover, economic pleas have been expressed with growing disparities between rising prices and low incomes.
Many in Jordan affirmed that they are not for the king’s departure. Demonstrating with pictures of the king, people asked for constitutional reform. Muhammad who supports the demonstrations said, “We don’t want the King to step down but political reforms have to be implemented”.
“The King is the guarantor of domestic peace and national unity, it would be terrible if we were to follow Egyptian example,” said Fouad, a teacher.
Many Jordanians say that the king’s presence is key to preserving national unity between Jordanians of Palestinian and Bedouin origins.
Nonetheless, for Lina Ejeilat, editor of a Jordanian media initiative, 7iber.com, those fears are partly baseless. “The regime has managed to make people believe that Jordan is vulnerable… but I think these issues are overemphasized.”
Some argue that the lack of unified demands is a barrier to forming a popular base. “This split makes it very hard for popular mobilization” affirmed a Western diplomat in Amman who preferred to remain anonymous.
“Many people estimate that no democratic progress has been done and social inequalities are increasing… in addition, they point out to the lack of transparency of the state and want their demands to be answered by real measures and not appointments of new people,” added the diplomat.
According to analysts, citizens of Bedouin origins have been frustrated by the economic reforms implemented by King Abdallah that bolstered the private sector, mainly in Palestinian hands--38 out of 40 most important assets in Jordan are Palestinians.
On the other hand, Jordanians of Palestinian descent, who represent 60 percent to 70 percent of the country's population, are prevented from holding governmental and administrative positions.
Moussa, a Palestinian entrepreneur, complains that “there is no unity between Palestinians and Bedouins. Despite the fact that Palestinians have the same civil rights they don’t have access to the administration and army.”
In the meantime, despite the unprecedented number of participants and their growing demands, the movement does not gather a large support from the population.
“The situation is different in Jordan. It is not a popular initiative. Contrary to what occurred in Egypt, it is not people but political parties who are leading the movement,” said Fouad, who also said that people do not necessarily feel represented by the parties who mobilized those protests.
The protests were primarily mobilized by the Islamic Action Front and leftist parties.
Ejeilat agreed that some opponents to the government were not focusing on common demands, and that the pursuit of different demands is disturbing the unity of the movement.
But Ershed argued that the protests has not yet attained full momentum. “We are still in the beginning, we are planning to start an open strike in the capital. Next week will be a turning point if the demands are not met, there will be a major development in the number of protesters and the kind of events we organize”, he said.
For the western diplomat, “except from the Muslim Brotherhood there is no real proposal for reforms that could be widely accepted… But they are not strong enough to impose change”.
The king has adopted a reactive and soft approach to the events, in attempt to contain the situation. He appointed a new cabinet on 9 February and a committee to administer national dialogue had been formed in the immediate aftermath of the demonstrations.
Following the clashes that left eight persons injured, Jordanian police launched an investigation and arrested three suspects. The week after, no violence occurred and the demonstrations were heavily protected by police who even gave water and juice to demonstrators.
Nevertheless, the opposition insists that those measures are inefficient. “They are discussing legal changes while we want constitutional changes. The committee doesn’t have any power, it is a waste of time” said Ershed.
While economic reforms have long been an appeasement strategy, it appears insufficient amidst the growing revolutionary contagion in the region. “Jordan is in a delicate situation. People wait for the monarchy to implement democratic reforms by itself. But despite his reputation of economic reformer, King Abdallah has never step up political reforms,” added the diplomat.
Source: Egypt Independent
Amman--Amid the region’s revolutionary fervor, Jordanian dissent rose, with the opposition making political and economic demands and a monarchy attempting to appease protesters.
On Friday 25 February, some 10,000 Jordanians took to the streets of Amman to protest. More than 3,000 security forces had been deployed in the capital and the march went off without violence. Come early afternoon, protesters went home, leaving the city center empty.
Following the incident of 18 January, when eight protesters had been injured during clashes with pro-government supporters, relief was palpable. “The protest went without problems, nothing like the past week, and now it is finished. Here we don’t have a revolution like in Egypt and we don’t want to drive out the King” said Mustafa, a juice seller in the city center.
The Jordanian opposition has been calling for a constitutional monarchy in which the government would be appointed by the Parliament rather than by the King.
“Our demands are constitutional changes that relate to the elections and the supervision of the elections. We want a parliamentary government to be formed of the bloc that constitutes the majority of the parliament” Bani Ershed, secretary general of the Islamic Action Front party, the Muslim Brotherhood’s party, said.
Moreover, economic pleas have been expressed with growing disparities between rising prices and low incomes.
Many in Jordan affirmed that they are not for the king’s departure. Demonstrating with pictures of the king, people asked for constitutional reform. Muhammad who supports the demonstrations said, “We don’t want the King to step down but political reforms have to be implemented”.
“The King is the guarantor of domestic peace and national unity, it would be terrible if we were to follow Egyptian example,” said Fouad, a teacher.
Many Jordanians say that the king’s presence is key to preserving national unity between Jordanians of Palestinian and Bedouin origins.
Nonetheless, for Lina Ejeilat, editor of a Jordanian media initiative, 7iber.com, those fears are partly baseless. “The regime has managed to make people believe that Jordan is vulnerable… but I think these issues are overemphasized.”
Some argue that the lack of unified demands is a barrier to forming a popular base. “This split makes it very hard for popular mobilization” affirmed a Western diplomat in Amman who preferred to remain anonymous.
“Many people estimate that no democratic progress has been done and social inequalities are increasing… in addition, they point out to the lack of transparency of the state and want their demands to be answered by real measures and not appointments of new people,” added the diplomat.
According to analysts, citizens of Bedouin origins have been frustrated by the economic reforms implemented by King Abdallah that bolstered the private sector, mainly in Palestinian hands--38 out of 40 most important assets in Jordan are Palestinians.
On the other hand, Jordanians of Palestinian descent, who represent 60 percent to 70 percent of the country's population, are prevented from holding governmental and administrative positions.
Moussa, a Palestinian entrepreneur, complains that “there is no unity between Palestinians and Bedouins. Despite the fact that Palestinians have the same civil rights they don’t have access to the administration and army.”
In the meantime, despite the unprecedented number of participants and their growing demands, the movement does not gather a large support from the population.
“The situation is different in Jordan. It is not a popular initiative. Contrary to what occurred in Egypt, it is not people but political parties who are leading the movement,” said Fouad, who also said that people do not necessarily feel represented by the parties who mobilized those protests.
The protests were primarily mobilized by the Islamic Action Front and leftist parties.
Ejeilat agreed that some opponents to the government were not focusing on common demands, and that the pursuit of different demands is disturbing the unity of the movement.
But Ershed argued that the protests has not yet attained full momentum. “We are still in the beginning, we are planning to start an open strike in the capital. Next week will be a turning point if the demands are not met, there will be a major development in the number of protesters and the kind of events we organize”, he said.
For the western diplomat, “except from the Muslim Brotherhood there is no real proposal for reforms that could be widely accepted… But they are not strong enough to impose change”.
The king has adopted a reactive and soft approach to the events, in attempt to contain the situation. He appointed a new cabinet on 9 February and a committee to administer national dialogue had been formed in the immediate aftermath of the demonstrations.
Following the clashes that left eight persons injured, Jordanian police launched an investigation and arrested three suspects. The week after, no violence occurred and the demonstrations were heavily protected by police who even gave water and juice to demonstrators.
Nevertheless, the opposition insists that those measures are inefficient. “They are discussing legal changes while we want constitutional changes. The committee doesn’t have any power, it is a waste of time” said Ershed.
While economic reforms have long been an appeasement strategy, it appears insufficient amidst the growing revolutionary contagion in the region. “Jordan is in a delicate situation. People wait for the monarchy to implement democratic reforms by itself. But despite his reputation of economic reformer, King Abdallah has never step up political reforms,” added the diplomat.
Bill Gates backs climate scientists lobbying for large-scale geoengineering
A small group of leading climate scientists, financially supported by billionaires including Bill Gates, are lobbying governments and international bodies to back experiments into manipulating the climate on a global scale to avoid catastrophic climate change.
The scientists, who advocate geoengineering methods such as spraying millions of tonnes of reflective particles of sulphur dioxide 30 miles above earth, argue that a "plan B" for climate change will be needed if the UN and politicians cannot agree to making the necessary cuts in greenhouse gases, and say the US government and others should pay for a major programme of international research.
Solar geoengineering techniques are highly controversial: while some climate scientists believe they may prove a quick and relatively cheap way to slow global warming, others fear that when conducted in the upper atmosphere, they could irrevocably alter rainfall patterns and interfere with the earth's climate.
Geoengineering is opposed by many environmentalists, who say the technology could undermine efforts to reduce emissions, and by developing countries who fear it could be used as a weapon or by rich countries to their advantage. In 2010, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity declared a moratorium on experiments in the sea and space, except for small-scale scientific studies.
Concern is now growing that the small but influential group of scientists, and their backers, may have a disproportionate effect on major decisions about geoengineering research and policy.
"We will need to protect ourselves from vested interests [and] be sure that choices are not influenced by parties who might make significant amounts of money through a choice to modify climate, especially using proprietary intellectual property," said Jane Long, director at large for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US, in a paper delivered to a recent geoengineering conference on ethics.
"The stakes are very high and scientists are not the best people to deal with the social, ethical or political issues that geoengineering raises," said Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace. "The idea that a self-selected group should have so much influence is bizarre."
Pressure to find a quick technological fix to climate change is growing as politicians fail to reach an agreement to significantly reduce emissions. In 2009-2010, the US government received requests for over $2bn(£1.2bn) of grants for geoengineering research, but spent around $100m.
As well as Gates, other wealthy individuals including Sir Richard Branson, tar sands magnate Murray Edwards and the co-founder of Skype, Niklas Zennström, have funded a series of official reports into future use of the technology. Branson, who has frequently called for geoengineering to combat climate change, helped fund the Royal Society's inquiry into solar radiation management last year through his Carbon War Room charity. It is not known how much he contributed.
Professors David Keith, of Harvard University, and Ken Caldeira of Stanford, are the world's two leading advocates of major research into geoengineering the upper atmosphere to provide earth with a reflective shield. They have so far received over $4.6m from Gates to run the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (Ficer). Nearly half Ficer's money, which comes directly from Gates's personal funds, has so far been used for their own research, but the rest is disbursed by them to fund the work of other advocates of large-scale interventions.
According to statements of financial interests, Keith receives an undisclosed sum from Bill Gates each year, and is the president and majority owner of the geoengineering company Carbon Engineering, in which both Gates and Edwards have major stakes – believed to be together worth over $10m.
Another Edwards company, Canadian Natural Resources, has plans to spend $25bn to turn the bitumen-bearing sand found in northern Alberta into barrels of crude oil. Caldeira says he receives $375,000 a year from Gates, holds a carbon capture patent and works for Intellectual Ventures, a private geoegineering research company part-owned by Gates and run by Nathan Myhrvold, former head of technology at Microsoft.
According to the latest Ficer accounts, the two scientists have so far given $300,000 of Gates money to part-fund three prominent reviews and assessments of geoengineering – the UK Royal Society report on Solar Radiation Management, the US Taskforce on Geoengineering and a 2009 report by Novin a science thinktank based in Santa Barbara, California. Keith and Caldeira either sat on the panels that produced the reports or contributed evidence. All three reports strongly recommended more research into solar radiation management.
The fund also gave $600,000 to Phil Rasch, chief climate scientist for the Pacific Northwest national laboratory, one of 10 research institutions funded by the US energy department.
Rasch gave evidence at the first Royal Society report on geoengineering 2009 and was a panel member on the 2011 report. He has testified to the US Congress about the need for government funding of large-scale geoengineering and, according to a financial statement he gave the Royal Society, also works for Intellectual Ventures. In addition, Caldeira and Keith gave a further $240,000 to geoengineering advocates to travel and attend workshops and meetings and $100,000 to Jay Apt, a prominent advocate of geoengineering as a last resort, and professor of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Apt worked with Keith and Aurora Flight Sciences, a US company that develops drone aircraft technology for the US military, to study the costs of sending 1m tonnes of sulphate particles into the upper atmosphere a year.
Analysis of the eight major national and international inquiries into geoengineering over the past three years shows that Keith and Caldeira, Rasch and Prof Granger Morgan the head of department of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University where Keith works, have sat on seven panels, including one set up by the UN. Three other strong advocates of solar radiation geoengineering, including Rasch, have sat on national inquiries part-funded by Ficer.
"There are clear conflicts of interest between many of the people involved in the debate," said Diana Bronson, a researcher with Montreal-based geoengineering watchdog ETC.
"What is really worrying is that the same small group working on high-risk technologies that will geoengineer the planet is also trying to engineer the discussion around international rules and regulations. We cannot put the fox in charge of the chicken coop."
"The eco-clique are lobbying for a huge injection of public funds into geoengineering research. They dominate virtually every inquiry into geoengineering. They are present in almost all of the expert deliberations. They have been the leading advisers to parliamentary and congressional inquiries and their views will, in all likelihood, dominate the deliberations of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as it grapples for the first time with the scientific and ethical tangle that is climate engineering," said Clive Hamilton, professor of Public Ethics at the Australian National University, in a Guardian blog.
The scientists involved reject this notion. "Even the perception that [a small group of people has] illegitimate influence [is] very unhealthy for a technology which has extreme power over the world. The concerns that a small group [is] dominating the debate are legitimate, but things are not as they were," said Keith. "It's changing as countries like India and China become involved. The era when my voice or that of a few was dominant is over. We need a very broad debate."
"Every scientist has some conflict of interest, because we would all like to see more resources going to study things that we find interesting," said Caldeira. "Do I have too much influence? I feel like I have too little. I have been calling for making CO2 emissions illegal for many years, but no one is listening to me. People who disagree with me might feel I have too much influence. The best way to reduce my influence is to have more public research funds available, so that our funds are in the noise. If the federal government played the role it should in this area, there would be no need for money from Gates.
"Regarding my own patents, I have repeatedly stated that if any patent that I am on is ever used for the purposes of altering climate, then any proceeds that accrue to me for this use will be donated to nonprofit NGOs and charities. I have no expectation or interest in developing a personal revenue stream based upon the use of these patents for climate modification.".
Rasch added: "I don't feel there is any conflict of interest. I don't lobby, work with patents or intellectual property, do classified research or work with for-profit companies. The research I do on geoengineering involves computer simulations and thinking about possible consequences. The Ficer foundation that has funded my research tries to be transparent in their activities, as do I."• Get the Guardian's environment news on your iPhone with our new app. You can also join us on Twitter, Facebook and Google+
The scientists, who advocate geoengineering methods such as spraying millions of tonnes of reflective particles of sulphur dioxide 30 miles above earth, argue that a "plan B" for climate change will be needed if the UN and politicians cannot agree to making the necessary cuts in greenhouse gases, and say the US government and others should pay for a major programme of international research.
Solar geoengineering techniques are highly controversial: while some climate scientists believe they may prove a quick and relatively cheap way to slow global warming, others fear that when conducted in the upper atmosphere, they could irrevocably alter rainfall patterns and interfere with the earth's climate.
Geoengineering is opposed by many environmentalists, who say the technology could undermine efforts to reduce emissions, and by developing countries who fear it could be used as a weapon or by rich countries to their advantage. In 2010, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity declared a moratorium on experiments in the sea and space, except for small-scale scientific studies.
Concern is now growing that the small but influential group of scientists, and their backers, may have a disproportionate effect on major decisions about geoengineering research and policy.
"We will need to protect ourselves from vested interests [and] be sure that choices are not influenced by parties who might make significant amounts of money through a choice to modify climate, especially using proprietary intellectual property," said Jane Long, director at large for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US, in a paper delivered to a recent geoengineering conference on ethics.
"The stakes are very high and scientists are not the best people to deal with the social, ethical or political issues that geoengineering raises," said Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace. "The idea that a self-selected group should have so much influence is bizarre."
Pressure to find a quick technological fix to climate change is growing as politicians fail to reach an agreement to significantly reduce emissions. In 2009-2010, the US government received requests for over $2bn(£1.2bn) of grants for geoengineering research, but spent around $100m.
As well as Gates, other wealthy individuals including Sir Richard Branson, tar sands magnate Murray Edwards and the co-founder of Skype, Niklas Zennström, have funded a series of official reports into future use of the technology. Branson, who has frequently called for geoengineering to combat climate change, helped fund the Royal Society's inquiry into solar radiation management last year through his Carbon War Room charity. It is not known how much he contributed.
Professors David Keith, of Harvard University, and Ken Caldeira of Stanford, are the world's two leading advocates of major research into geoengineering the upper atmosphere to provide earth with a reflective shield. They have so far received over $4.6m from Gates to run the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (Ficer). Nearly half Ficer's money, which comes directly from Gates's personal funds, has so far been used for their own research, but the rest is disbursed by them to fund the work of other advocates of large-scale interventions.
According to statements of financial interests, Keith receives an undisclosed sum from Bill Gates each year, and is the president and majority owner of the geoengineering company Carbon Engineering, in which both Gates and Edwards have major stakes – believed to be together worth over $10m.
Another Edwards company, Canadian Natural Resources, has plans to spend $25bn to turn the bitumen-bearing sand found in northern Alberta into barrels of crude oil. Caldeira says he receives $375,000 a year from Gates, holds a carbon capture patent and works for Intellectual Ventures, a private geoegineering research company part-owned by Gates and run by Nathan Myhrvold, former head of technology at Microsoft.
According to the latest Ficer accounts, the two scientists have so far given $300,000 of Gates money to part-fund three prominent reviews and assessments of geoengineering – the UK Royal Society report on Solar Radiation Management, the US Taskforce on Geoengineering and a 2009 report by Novin a science thinktank based in Santa Barbara, California. Keith and Caldeira either sat on the panels that produced the reports or contributed evidence. All three reports strongly recommended more research into solar radiation management.
The fund also gave $600,000 to Phil Rasch, chief climate scientist for the Pacific Northwest national laboratory, one of 10 research institutions funded by the US energy department.
Rasch gave evidence at the first Royal Society report on geoengineering 2009 and was a panel member on the 2011 report. He has testified to the US Congress about the need for government funding of large-scale geoengineering and, according to a financial statement he gave the Royal Society, also works for Intellectual Ventures. In addition, Caldeira and Keith gave a further $240,000 to geoengineering advocates to travel and attend workshops and meetings and $100,000 to Jay Apt, a prominent advocate of geoengineering as a last resort, and professor of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Apt worked with Keith and Aurora Flight Sciences, a US company that develops drone aircraft technology for the US military, to study the costs of sending 1m tonnes of sulphate particles into the upper atmosphere a year.
Analysis of the eight major national and international inquiries into geoengineering over the past three years shows that Keith and Caldeira, Rasch and Prof Granger Morgan the head of department of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University where Keith works, have sat on seven panels, including one set up by the UN. Three other strong advocates of solar radiation geoengineering, including Rasch, have sat on national inquiries part-funded by Ficer.
"There are clear conflicts of interest between many of the people involved in the debate," said Diana Bronson, a researcher with Montreal-based geoengineering watchdog ETC.
"What is really worrying is that the same small group working on high-risk technologies that will geoengineer the planet is also trying to engineer the discussion around international rules and regulations. We cannot put the fox in charge of the chicken coop."
"The eco-clique are lobbying for a huge injection of public funds into geoengineering research. They dominate virtually every inquiry into geoengineering. They are present in almost all of the expert deliberations. They have been the leading advisers to parliamentary and congressional inquiries and their views will, in all likelihood, dominate the deliberations of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as it grapples for the first time with the scientific and ethical tangle that is climate engineering," said Clive Hamilton, professor of Public Ethics at the Australian National University, in a Guardian blog.
The scientists involved reject this notion. "Even the perception that [a small group of people has] illegitimate influence [is] very unhealthy for a technology which has extreme power over the world. The concerns that a small group [is] dominating the debate are legitimate, but things are not as they were," said Keith. "It's changing as countries like India and China become involved. The era when my voice or that of a few was dominant is over. We need a very broad debate."
"Every scientist has some conflict of interest, because we would all like to see more resources going to study things that we find interesting," said Caldeira. "Do I have too much influence? I feel like I have too little. I have been calling for making CO2 emissions illegal for many years, but no one is listening to me. People who disagree with me might feel I have too much influence. The best way to reduce my influence is to have more public research funds available, so that our funds are in the noise. If the federal government played the role it should in this area, there would be no need for money from Gates.
"Regarding my own patents, I have repeatedly stated that if any patent that I am on is ever used for the purposes of altering climate, then any proceeds that accrue to me for this use will be donated to nonprofit NGOs and charities. I have no expectation or interest in developing a personal revenue stream based upon the use of these patents for climate modification.".
Rasch added: "I don't feel there is any conflict of interest. I don't lobby, work with patents or intellectual property, do classified research or work with for-profit companies. The research I do on geoengineering involves computer simulations and thinking about possible consequences. The Ficer foundation that has funded my research tries to be transparent in their activities, as do I."• Get the Guardian's environment news on your iPhone with our new app. You can also join us on Twitter, Facebook and Google+
The seed emergency: The threat to food and democracy
written by:Dr Vandana Shiva
Source: AlJazeera
New Delhi, India - The seed is the first link in the food chain - and seed sovereignty is the foundation of food sovereignty. If farmers do not have their own seeds or access to open pollinated varieties that they can save, improve and exchange, they have no seed sovereignty - and consequently no food sovereignty.
The deepening agrarian and food crisis has its roots in changes in the seed supply system, and the erosion of seed diversity and seed sovereignty.
Seed sovereignty includes the farmer's rights to save, breed and exchange seeds, to have access to diverse open source seeds which can be saved - and which are not patented, genetically modified, owned or controlled by emerging seed giants. It is based on reclaiming seeds and biodiversity as commons and public good.
The past twenty years have seen a very rapid erosion of seed diversity and seed sovereignty, and the concentration of the control over seeds by a very small number of giant corporations. In 1995, when the UN organised the Plant Genetic Resources Conference in Leipzig, it was reported that 75 per cent of all agricultural biodiversity had disappeared because of the introduction of "modern" varieties, which are always cultivated as monocultures. Since then, the erosion has accelerated.
The introduction of the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement of the World Trade Organisation has accelerated the spread of genetically engineered seeds - which can be patented - and for which royalties can be collected. Navdanya was started in response to the introduction of these patents on seeds in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade - a forerunner to the WTO - about which a Monsanto representative later stated: "In drafting these agreements, we were the patient, diagnostician [and] physician all in one." Corporations defined a problem - and for them the problem was farmers saving seeds. They offered a solution, and the solution was to make it illegal for farmers to save seed - by introducing patents and intellectual property rights [PDF] on those very seeds. As a result, acreage under GM corn, soya, canola, cotton has increased dramatically.
Threats to seed sovereignty
Besides displacing and destroying diversity, patented GMO seeds are also undermining seed sovereignty. Across the world, new seed laws are being introduced which enforce compulsory registration of seeds, thus making it impossible for small farmers to grow their own diversity, and forcing them into dependency on giant seed corporations. Corporations are also patenting climate resilient seeds evolved by farmers - thus robbing farmers of using their own seeds and knowledge for climate adaptation.
Another threat to seed sovereignty is genetic contamination. India has lost its cotton seeds because of contamination from Bt Cotton - a strain engineered to contain the pesticide Bacillus thuringiensis bacterium. Canada has lost its canola seed because of contamination from Roundup Ready canola. And Mexico has lost its corn due to contamination from Bt Cotton.
After contamination, biotech seed corporations sue farmers with patent infringement cases, as happened in the case of Percy Schmeiser. That is why more than 80 groups came together and filed a case to prevent Monsanto from suing farmers whose seed had been contaminated.
As a farmer's seed supply is eroded, and farmers become dependent on patented GMO seed, the result is debt. India, the home of cotton, has lost its cotton seed diversity and cotton seed sovereignty. Some 95 per cent of the country's cotton seed is now controlled by Monsanto - and the debt trap created by being forced to buy seed every year - with royalty payments - has pushed hundreds of thousands of farmers to suicide; of the 250,000 farmer suicides, the majority are in the cotton belt.
Seeding control
Even as the disappearance of biodiversity and seed sovereignty creates a major crisis for agriculture and food security, corporations are pushing governments to use public money to destroy the public seed supply and replace it with unreliable non-renewable, patented seed - which must be bought each and every year.
Inside Story: Averting a world food crisis
In Europe, the 1994 regulation for protection of plant varieties forces farmers to make a "compulsory voluntary contribution" to seed companies. The terms themselves are contradictory. What is compulsory cannot be voluntary.
In France, a law was passed in November 2011, which makes royalty payments compulsory. As Agriculture Minister Bruna Le Marie stated: "Seeds can be longer be royalty free, as is currently the case." Of the 5,000 or so cultivated plant varieties, 600 are protected by certificate in France, and these account for 99 per cent of the varieties grown by farmers.
The "compulsory voluntary contribution", in other words a royalty, is justified on grounds that "a fee is paid to certificate holders [seed companies] to sustain funding of research and efforts to improve genetic resources".
Monsanto pirates biodiversity and genetic resources from farming communities, as it did in the case of a wheat biopiracy case fought by Navdanya with Greenpeace, and climate resilient crops and brinjal (also known as aubergine or eggplant) varieties for Bt Brinjal. As Monsanto states, "it draws from a collection of germ-plasm that is unparalleled in history" and "mines the diversity in this genetic library to develop elite seeds faster than ever before".
In effect, what is taking place is the enclosure of the genetic commons of our biodiversity and the intellectual commons of public breeding by farming communities and public institutions. And the GMO seeds Monsanto is offering are failing. This is not "improvement" of genetic resources, but degradation. This is not innovation but piracy.
For example, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) - being pushed by the Gates Foundation - is a major assault on Africa's seed sovereignty.
Agribusiness
The 2009 US Global Food Security Act [PDF] also called the Lugar-Casey Act [PDF], "A bill to authorise appropriations for fiscal years 2010 through 2014 to provide assistance to foreign countries to promote food security, to stimulate rural economies, and to improve emergency response to food crisis, to amend the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and for other purposes".
The amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act would "include research on bio-technological advances appropriate to local ecological conditions, including genetically modified technology". The $ 7.7bn that goes with the bill would go to benefit Monsanto to push GM seeds.
An article in Forbes, titled "Why Uncle Sam Supports Franken Foods", shows how agribusiness is the only sector in which US has a positive trade balance. Hence the push for GMOs - because they bring royalties to the US. However, royalties for Monsanto are based on debt, suicidal farmers and the disappearance of biodiversity worldwide.
Under the US Global Food Security Act, Nepal signed an agreement with USAID and Monsanto. This led to massive protests across the country. India was forced to allow patents on seeds through the first dispute brought by the US against India in the WTO. Since 2004, India has also been trying to introduce a Seed Act which would require farmers to register their own seeds and take licenses. This in effect would force farmers from using their indigenous seed varieties. By creating a Seed Satyagraha - a non-cooperation movement in Gandhi's footsteps, handing over hundreds of thousands of signatures to the prime minister, and working with parliament - we have so far prevented the Seed Law from being introduced.
India has signed a US-India Knowledge Initiative in Agriculture, with Monsanto on the Board. Individual states are also being pressured to sign agreements with Monsanto. One example is the Monsanto-Rajasthan Memorandum of Understanding, under which Monsanto would get intellectual property rights to all genetic resources, and to carry out research on indigenous seeds. It took a campaign by Navdanya and a "Monsanto Quit India" Bija Yatra ["seed pilgrimage"] to force the government of Rajasthan to cancel the MOU.
This asymmetric pressure of Monsanto on the US government, and the joint pressure of both on the governments across the world, is a major threat to the future of seeds, the future of food and the future of democracy.
Dr Vandana Shiva is a physicist, eco-feminist, philosopher, activist and author of more than 20 books and 500 papers. She is the founder of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, and has campaigned for biodiversity, conservation and farmers' rights, winning the Right Livelihood Award [Alternative Nobel Prize] in 1993.
Source: AlJazeera
New Delhi, India - The seed is the first link in the food chain - and seed sovereignty is the foundation of food sovereignty. If farmers do not have their own seeds or access to open pollinated varieties that they can save, improve and exchange, they have no seed sovereignty - and consequently no food sovereignty.
The deepening agrarian and food crisis has its roots in changes in the seed supply system, and the erosion of seed diversity and seed sovereignty.
Seed sovereignty includes the farmer's rights to save, breed and exchange seeds, to have access to diverse open source seeds which can be saved - and which are not patented, genetically modified, owned or controlled by emerging seed giants. It is based on reclaiming seeds and biodiversity as commons and public good.
The past twenty years have seen a very rapid erosion of seed diversity and seed sovereignty, and the concentration of the control over seeds by a very small number of giant corporations. In 1995, when the UN organised the Plant Genetic Resources Conference in Leipzig, it was reported that 75 per cent of all agricultural biodiversity had disappeared because of the introduction of "modern" varieties, which are always cultivated as monocultures. Since then, the erosion has accelerated.
The introduction of the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement of the World Trade Organisation has accelerated the spread of genetically engineered seeds - which can be patented - and for which royalties can be collected. Navdanya was started in response to the introduction of these patents on seeds in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade - a forerunner to the WTO - about which a Monsanto representative later stated: "In drafting these agreements, we were the patient, diagnostician [and] physician all in one." Corporations defined a problem - and for them the problem was farmers saving seeds. They offered a solution, and the solution was to make it illegal for farmers to save seed - by introducing patents and intellectual property rights [PDF] on those very seeds. As a result, acreage under GM corn, soya, canola, cotton has increased dramatically.
Threats to seed sovereignty
Besides displacing and destroying diversity, patented GMO seeds are also undermining seed sovereignty. Across the world, new seed laws are being introduced which enforce compulsory registration of seeds, thus making it impossible for small farmers to grow their own diversity, and forcing them into dependency on giant seed corporations. Corporations are also patenting climate resilient seeds evolved by farmers - thus robbing farmers of using their own seeds and knowledge for climate adaptation.
Another threat to seed sovereignty is genetic contamination. India has lost its cotton seeds because of contamination from Bt Cotton - a strain engineered to contain the pesticide Bacillus thuringiensis bacterium. Canada has lost its canola seed because of contamination from Roundup Ready canola. And Mexico has lost its corn due to contamination from Bt Cotton.
After contamination, biotech seed corporations sue farmers with patent infringement cases, as happened in the case of Percy Schmeiser. That is why more than 80 groups came together and filed a case to prevent Monsanto from suing farmers whose seed had been contaminated.
As a farmer's seed supply is eroded, and farmers become dependent on patented GMO seed, the result is debt. India, the home of cotton, has lost its cotton seed diversity and cotton seed sovereignty. Some 95 per cent of the country's cotton seed is now controlled by Monsanto - and the debt trap created by being forced to buy seed every year - with royalty payments - has pushed hundreds of thousands of farmers to suicide; of the 250,000 farmer suicides, the majority are in the cotton belt.
Seeding control
Even as the disappearance of biodiversity and seed sovereignty creates a major crisis for agriculture and food security, corporations are pushing governments to use public money to destroy the public seed supply and replace it with unreliable non-renewable, patented seed - which must be bought each and every year.
Inside Story: Averting a world food crisis
In Europe, the 1994 regulation for protection of plant varieties forces farmers to make a "compulsory voluntary contribution" to seed companies. The terms themselves are contradictory. What is compulsory cannot be voluntary.
In France, a law was passed in November 2011, which makes royalty payments compulsory. As Agriculture Minister Bruna Le Marie stated: "Seeds can be longer be royalty free, as is currently the case." Of the 5,000 or so cultivated plant varieties, 600 are protected by certificate in France, and these account for 99 per cent of the varieties grown by farmers.
The "compulsory voluntary contribution", in other words a royalty, is justified on grounds that "a fee is paid to certificate holders [seed companies] to sustain funding of research and efforts to improve genetic resources".
Monsanto pirates biodiversity and genetic resources from farming communities, as it did in the case of a wheat biopiracy case fought by Navdanya with Greenpeace, and climate resilient crops and brinjal (also known as aubergine or eggplant) varieties for Bt Brinjal. As Monsanto states, "it draws from a collection of germ-plasm that is unparalleled in history" and "mines the diversity in this genetic library to develop elite seeds faster than ever before".
In effect, what is taking place is the enclosure of the genetic commons of our biodiversity and the intellectual commons of public breeding by farming communities and public institutions. And the GMO seeds Monsanto is offering are failing. This is not "improvement" of genetic resources, but degradation. This is not innovation but piracy.
For example, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) - being pushed by the Gates Foundation - is a major assault on Africa's seed sovereignty.
Agribusiness
The 2009 US Global Food Security Act [PDF] also called the Lugar-Casey Act [PDF], "A bill to authorise appropriations for fiscal years 2010 through 2014 to provide assistance to foreign countries to promote food security, to stimulate rural economies, and to improve emergency response to food crisis, to amend the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and for other purposes".
The amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act would "include research on bio-technological advances appropriate to local ecological conditions, including genetically modified technology". The $ 7.7bn that goes with the bill would go to benefit Monsanto to push GM seeds.
An article in Forbes, titled "Why Uncle Sam Supports Franken Foods", shows how agribusiness is the only sector in which US has a positive trade balance. Hence the push for GMOs - because they bring royalties to the US. However, royalties for Monsanto are based on debt, suicidal farmers and the disappearance of biodiversity worldwide.
Under the US Global Food Security Act, Nepal signed an agreement with USAID and Monsanto. This led to massive protests across the country. India was forced to allow patents on seeds through the first dispute brought by the US against India in the WTO. Since 2004, India has also been trying to introduce a Seed Act which would require farmers to register their own seeds and take licenses. This in effect would force farmers from using their indigenous seed varieties. By creating a Seed Satyagraha - a non-cooperation movement in Gandhi's footsteps, handing over hundreds of thousands of signatures to the prime minister, and working with parliament - we have so far prevented the Seed Law from being introduced.
India has signed a US-India Knowledge Initiative in Agriculture, with Monsanto on the Board. Individual states are also being pressured to sign agreements with Monsanto. One example is the Monsanto-Rajasthan Memorandum of Understanding, under which Monsanto would get intellectual property rights to all genetic resources, and to carry out research on indigenous seeds. It took a campaign by Navdanya and a "Monsanto Quit India" Bija Yatra ["seed pilgrimage"] to force the government of Rajasthan to cancel the MOU.
This asymmetric pressure of Monsanto on the US government, and the joint pressure of both on the governments across the world, is a major threat to the future of seeds, the future of food and the future of democracy.
Dr Vandana Shiva is a physicist, eco-feminist, philosopher, activist and author of more than 20 books and 500 papers. She is the founder of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, and has campaigned for biodiversity, conservation and farmers' rights, winning the Right Livelihood Award [Alternative Nobel Prize] in 1993.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Stories from Hama: Memories of Painter Khaled Al-Khani. Part 2
Feb 2,2012
Source:http://7ee6an.wordpress.com
Introduction to Part 2.
We continue with the memories of renowned Syrian painter from Hama, Khaled Al-Khani. In this segment, Khaled mixes his memories of events he witnessed, as a six-year-old child, with those he heard during the great escape from the massacre of 1982 and in subsequent years.
Khaled tells horrific tales of images, feelings, sounds, smells that have remained with him and with most survivors of the Hama massacre until today. But above all, these are also stories of both those who perished in the bombardments and mass executions as well of those who survived to share the pain and the long-lasting scars that can only be left by excessive brutality and deliberate savagery. The material is not for the weak heart or sensitive reader.
Today, Thursday, 2 February, 2012, and at 9:00 PM Damascus time, Orient TV is airing a 30 minute film by Journalist Emma Sulieman “Why do I paint Um-Ibrahim” “لماذا ارسم أم ابراهيم”. The promo for the film can be viewed here. Orient TV has a direct online broadcast as well.(http://orient-tv.net/orient_live.php)
Part 1 of Stories from Hama, Memories of Painter Khaled Al-Khani.
Stories from Hama: Memories of Painter Khaled Al-Khani. Part 2.
After our great escape from the massacre of Hama; a human history event resembling no other massacre but itself, and after fleeing from the images, the sounds, the smell of blood, the taste of stale bread, and the voices of women being raped and men and children grappling with death having been shot, and after the destruction of our city as if an earthquake had befallen it, we reached the point of no return, and we headed to the countryside, barefoot and half naked. They displaced us from our homes, killed whomever they wanted killed, and launched us on a journey even more painful than what has preceded it.
In the village, we were received with the utmost hospitality and honor, which goes to show the fact that all of the Syrian people knew of the corrupt regime’s lies. We remained as refugees in that village, where we finished the second school semester. My father was martyred. His properties were either stolen or destroyed. We stayed there until the start of the following school year when we returned to Hama and lived with one of my maternal aunts through an act of nurturing and pain sharing. Later, one of our relatives managed to find my lost paternal aunt, about whom we had no information whatsoever, in the countryside. I remember that I did not expect to ever see her like that. She was a queen, but all had changed. I hugged her for hours, while my siblings and our mother (all of us) sobbed hysterically. My aunt later told of the arrest of my father in the shelter we passed by and that she never saw him alive after that but had learned of his death from some people. We sobbed and sobbed. Sobbing first, before even greeting each others, became the norm in Hama when people met face to face as they exchanged visits. For years, the house we stayed at was a home for many displaced because of the complete destruction of several neighborhoods such as Al-Baroudyyeh, Al-Kilanyyia, Al-Zanbaqa and Shimali, (الباروديه، الكيلانية، الزنبقة، شمالي ) and many more. There was barely a house in Hama which did not have martyrs and detainees, and this at the least.
We went back to our schools after tremendous suffering, humiliation, oppression, and hunger. I swear to you that in my grade (second grade), there were only two kids who were not orphaned. So, just imagine how much we suffered in order to overcome our internal crisis, and we still have not done that to date.
Then the regime (and it does not even deserve being called a regime), inflicted new torments. It never stopped arresting people. Many of the generation slightly older than mine were arrested and many remain disappeared until now. Their names are well-known to the people of Hama. To further torment the people of Hama, and to prove that we were humiliated, broken, and stepped all over, the ruling gang started releasing some of the prisoners who were not liquidated in Tadmor only on their self-proclaimed national holidays that had no connection whatsoever to their actual deeds; days like the “corrective movement” and the “birth of the party” and so on.
Over the years, the people of Hama became used to that. On each of these occasions, they flocked to the southern entrance of the city (i.e., Homs highway، طريق حمص) and the scene would go as follows:
Women, children and men, or for that matter, all of the people of the city , stop buses and cars coming from Homs’s direction and search while shouting, each, the name of their own disappeared with nonstop crying. The scene lasts throughout the day in a chaotic and crushed state with the search for the disappeared continuing in mind-boggling and logic defying ways. Sometimes the people may find their disappeared; may be three or four only, and the entire city would return demoralized with their voices too subdued to even express their inner pain. Those who find their prisoners are not more fortunate than those who do not, for most of the surviving prisoners are very weak and powerless, and I swear that they brake the heart more than those who perished.
We know a man who was released from prison and we went to greet him. Praise to God, he was in a good mental state because they had taken him out of Tadmor prison into Sydnaya prison for recuperation six months before his release. I swear that his skeleton was clearly visible and his color was inhumanly white because he had not seen the sun for years. He told me everything about their imprisonment in Tadmor, and one of strangest stories was about a prisoner in his cell who started displaying symptoms of ruptured appendix and suffered great pain for days. They knew that they could not ask for help from the warden who used to monitor them from a hole in the ceiling because if they asked for help and informed the warden of their friend’s pain, the jailers’ solution would have been to liquidate him with the utmost expediency. The prisoners therefore decided to operate on their friend in the dormitory in complete silence. Imagine that! the prisoner’s abdomen was cut open using a piece of tin while some prisoners held him to prevent him from moving and others closed his mouth with a piece of cloth. The surgery was carried out by a doctor who made the surgical needle from the same tin, and I am not sure what kind of threads he used to sew the wound. The operation was performed without making a single sound. This was a reality of fear and repression and a clarity of fate inside the prisons of the corrupt regime.
*****
I will tell some harrowing images that can only reflect the logic of the barbarians who violated my city in 1982.
While inside the washing room in Omar Ibn-Alkhattab mosque, the door opened and five adolescent girls were let in, and what a scene….. The lower halves of their clothes were full of blood, and while we the children did not pay attention to this sign, which was beyond our comprehension, some of the women, seeing this, fell down in seizures. We did not understand the rising crescendo of Surat-Yassin (سورة يسين), the Takbeer (تكبير), and the increasingly louder crying, but we joined everyone crying in a way I have never encountered again in my life because nothing like this could have happened any where else, and god willing, never will such happen anywhere else again.
The adolescent girls were taken to a small back part of the washing room after the scene of their blood filled our hearts. The older women tried to help the bleeding that was staining the place (how indecent are you as you demonstrated and confirmed your savagery, O’ barbarians). Then, and in a scene that causes the soul a great disturbance and horribly breaches serenity with pain shared until today, some women began to take off their underwear and hand them to the girls. Us children were shell-shocked, as we could not understand what was happening in front of our eyes, why were women taking off their underwear to cover our violated virtues? The women, who joined forces even managed to stop the horrible bleeding. At first, some women asked for assistance from the soldiers, but the soldiers refused, laughed, and mocked us with excessive vulgarity as if they were not born to mothers but sprang out of cold stones and as if they have never known God, but only bullying coercion. The women tried to embrace the wounded girls to ease their panic, and only after long hours, our minds achieved the contentment of the restless and tired soul, mainly as one form of survival instinct. We, the children, began to playfully approach the wounded girls to alleviate their pain. I still remember their faces, they looked horrified as if they came out of a barn full of rabid wolves.
The girls told the women what happened to them. They refused to respond to the wolves’ demand, and the wolves hit them with brutality far beneath human imagination. Beating them, verbally assaulting and stripping them by tearing their clothes, they violated the young girls’ hymens with most inhuman barbaric means. Sex was not their only motive, they were sick with infinite sadism that violated the girls’ souls before their bodies, these were the monstrous beasts who yoked our necks.
****
In the same place, one woman told about her elderly handicapped grandmother, who had sent them off in hope that they will survive this dark blood bath and stayed behind with her wheel-less walker.
They were in the Al’aseeda (العصيدة) neighborhood right after the army had bombed it with artillery and had entered it as killers immediately executing many men and horribly mutilating their bodies in the worst possible means. Never hesitant to murder even children, the soldiers arrested those left alive. I swear, I know a man who was a child then, and I saw and spoke with him s few weeks ago, and he told me of the state of the bodies of his maternal uncles, and that when they fled, they had to step over the bodies of their loved ones to get out. What a way to say good-by, and what a horrible death. He has been carrying his pain with him to the day, and he told me “I’m afraid of their might, and I can’t resist my fear. Forever they raped my peace of mind”. He naively asked me, “we will be victorious over them, won’t we?” I laughed, me who hasn’t laughed in months and confirmed our victory while hesitantly smiling. But I know that we will be celebrating our victory.
Grandmother (um Ibrahim) decided to get everyone from the neighborhood out, and herein, everyone means only children and women. She walked with them supported by her walker under snipers’ bullets and artillery shells, climbing uphill until they reached the beginning of the “Hadher, حاضر” neighborhood. Um Ibrahim became tired and she could not walk anymore so she stayed in the house of one of my paternal aunts and her husband after she sent them to their unknown destiny like a flock of swallows among beasts. Grandmother Um Ibrahim had no other choice, and she was well aware that these killers are not human and that everyone must escape the blood bath that threatened them every moment. In the wash room, when the women talked about Um Ibrahim and how she shouted at them sending them off to their escape, every one read Al-Fatiha, “الفاتحة” for her soul thinking that she was wiped by the barbarism she decided to confront. But Um Ibrahim was stronger than the canon, and as my aunt and her husband decided to escape from the ever rising death, she released them and stayed in their home decidedly defiant.
For a week, Um-Ibrahim remained in my aunt’s house with all doors wide open. The soldiers entered the house, went out, stole and demolished its contents, all the while Um-Ibrahim screamed in their faces scaring them and shaking their fake sense of bravery. She did not bow to the killers. Instead, she defended the house with her courage as a symbol of righteous defense of the entire violated city. Her steadfastness humiliated them and their leaders, and they started obeying her dictates and discovered that she was the victor with her walker. They decided to blow up the houses of the entire neighborhood intending for her to witness the level of their inhumanity. So they took her out of the house to the middle of the street, and she sat on a chair in the middle of the bloodied street for three days throughout which, Um Ibrahim, in this wilderness, never negotiated or even maneuvered. She announced her presence like a palm tree, a flagpole and a flag, never asking for help from anyone. Some soldiers, taken by her glory, started to help her in her physical needs. Um Ibrahim swore that she never feared them because they were too small for her vision to a point where they became invisible to her. She insisted that God sent her all what she needed while she stayed to tell the killers that we will return, exact justice, honor our martyrs with individual headstones refusing to leave them to a mass grave, and that “contrary to your belief, you will never be victorious”. In the end, it was by God’s mercy that some people, also on their own escape journey, found her and carried her; she who refused to be carried, to the villages with the other dispossessed.
…. to be continued
Source:http://7ee6an.wordpress.com
Introduction to Part 2.
We continue with the memories of renowned Syrian painter from Hama, Khaled Al-Khani. In this segment, Khaled mixes his memories of events he witnessed, as a six-year-old child, with those he heard during the great escape from the massacre of 1982 and in subsequent years.
Khaled tells horrific tales of images, feelings, sounds, smells that have remained with him and with most survivors of the Hama massacre until today. But above all, these are also stories of both those who perished in the bombardments and mass executions as well of those who survived to share the pain and the long-lasting scars that can only be left by excessive brutality and deliberate savagery. The material is not for the weak heart or sensitive reader.
Today, Thursday, 2 February, 2012, and at 9:00 PM Damascus time, Orient TV is airing a 30 minute film by Journalist Emma Sulieman “Why do I paint Um-Ibrahim” “لماذا ارسم أم ابراهيم”. The promo for the film can be viewed here. Orient TV has a direct online broadcast as well.(http://orient-tv.net/orient_live.php)
Part 1 of Stories from Hama, Memories of Painter Khaled Al-Khani.
Stories from Hama: Memories of Painter Khaled Al-Khani. Part 2.
After our great escape from the massacre of Hama; a human history event resembling no other massacre but itself, and after fleeing from the images, the sounds, the smell of blood, the taste of stale bread, and the voices of women being raped and men and children grappling with death having been shot, and after the destruction of our city as if an earthquake had befallen it, we reached the point of no return, and we headed to the countryside, barefoot and half naked. They displaced us from our homes, killed whomever they wanted killed, and launched us on a journey even more painful than what has preceded it.
In the village, we were received with the utmost hospitality and honor, which goes to show the fact that all of the Syrian people knew of the corrupt regime’s lies. We remained as refugees in that village, where we finished the second school semester. My father was martyred. His properties were either stolen or destroyed. We stayed there until the start of the following school year when we returned to Hama and lived with one of my maternal aunts through an act of nurturing and pain sharing. Later, one of our relatives managed to find my lost paternal aunt, about whom we had no information whatsoever, in the countryside. I remember that I did not expect to ever see her like that. She was a queen, but all had changed. I hugged her for hours, while my siblings and our mother (all of us) sobbed hysterically. My aunt later told of the arrest of my father in the shelter we passed by and that she never saw him alive after that but had learned of his death from some people. We sobbed and sobbed. Sobbing first, before even greeting each others, became the norm in Hama when people met face to face as they exchanged visits. For years, the house we stayed at was a home for many displaced because of the complete destruction of several neighborhoods such as Al-Baroudyyeh, Al-Kilanyyia, Al-Zanbaqa and Shimali, (الباروديه، الكيلانية، الزنبقة، شمالي ) and many more. There was barely a house in Hama which did not have martyrs and detainees, and this at the least.
We went back to our schools after tremendous suffering, humiliation, oppression, and hunger. I swear to you that in my grade (second grade), there were only two kids who were not orphaned. So, just imagine how much we suffered in order to overcome our internal crisis, and we still have not done that to date.
Then the regime (and it does not even deserve being called a regime), inflicted new torments. It never stopped arresting people. Many of the generation slightly older than mine were arrested and many remain disappeared until now. Their names are well-known to the people of Hama. To further torment the people of Hama, and to prove that we were humiliated, broken, and stepped all over, the ruling gang started releasing some of the prisoners who were not liquidated in Tadmor only on their self-proclaimed national holidays that had no connection whatsoever to their actual deeds; days like the “corrective movement” and the “birth of the party” and so on.
Over the years, the people of Hama became used to that. On each of these occasions, they flocked to the southern entrance of the city (i.e., Homs highway، طريق حمص) and the scene would go as follows:
Women, children and men, or for that matter, all of the people of the city , stop buses and cars coming from Homs’s direction and search while shouting, each, the name of their own disappeared with nonstop crying. The scene lasts throughout the day in a chaotic and crushed state with the search for the disappeared continuing in mind-boggling and logic defying ways. Sometimes the people may find their disappeared; may be three or four only, and the entire city would return demoralized with their voices too subdued to even express their inner pain. Those who find their prisoners are not more fortunate than those who do not, for most of the surviving prisoners are very weak and powerless, and I swear that they brake the heart more than those who perished.
We know a man who was released from prison and we went to greet him. Praise to God, he was in a good mental state because they had taken him out of Tadmor prison into Sydnaya prison for recuperation six months before his release. I swear that his skeleton was clearly visible and his color was inhumanly white because he had not seen the sun for years. He told me everything about their imprisonment in Tadmor, and one of strangest stories was about a prisoner in his cell who started displaying symptoms of ruptured appendix and suffered great pain for days. They knew that they could not ask for help from the warden who used to monitor them from a hole in the ceiling because if they asked for help and informed the warden of their friend’s pain, the jailers’ solution would have been to liquidate him with the utmost expediency. The prisoners therefore decided to operate on their friend in the dormitory in complete silence. Imagine that! the prisoner’s abdomen was cut open using a piece of tin while some prisoners held him to prevent him from moving and others closed his mouth with a piece of cloth. The surgery was carried out by a doctor who made the surgical needle from the same tin, and I am not sure what kind of threads he used to sew the wound. The operation was performed without making a single sound. This was a reality of fear and repression and a clarity of fate inside the prisons of the corrupt regime.
*****
I will tell some harrowing images that can only reflect the logic of the barbarians who violated my city in 1982.
While inside the washing room in Omar Ibn-Alkhattab mosque, the door opened and five adolescent girls were let in, and what a scene….. The lower halves of their clothes were full of blood, and while we the children did not pay attention to this sign, which was beyond our comprehension, some of the women, seeing this, fell down in seizures. We did not understand the rising crescendo of Surat-Yassin (سورة يسين), the Takbeer (تكبير), and the increasingly louder crying, but we joined everyone crying in a way I have never encountered again in my life because nothing like this could have happened any where else, and god willing, never will such happen anywhere else again.
The adolescent girls were taken to a small back part of the washing room after the scene of their blood filled our hearts. The older women tried to help the bleeding that was staining the place (how indecent are you as you demonstrated and confirmed your savagery, O’ barbarians). Then, and in a scene that causes the soul a great disturbance and horribly breaches serenity with pain shared until today, some women began to take off their underwear and hand them to the girls. Us children were shell-shocked, as we could not understand what was happening in front of our eyes, why were women taking off their underwear to cover our violated virtues? The women, who joined forces even managed to stop the horrible bleeding. At first, some women asked for assistance from the soldiers, but the soldiers refused, laughed, and mocked us with excessive vulgarity as if they were not born to mothers but sprang out of cold stones and as if they have never known God, but only bullying coercion. The women tried to embrace the wounded girls to ease their panic, and only after long hours, our minds achieved the contentment of the restless and tired soul, mainly as one form of survival instinct. We, the children, began to playfully approach the wounded girls to alleviate their pain. I still remember their faces, they looked horrified as if they came out of a barn full of rabid wolves.
The girls told the women what happened to them. They refused to respond to the wolves’ demand, and the wolves hit them with brutality far beneath human imagination. Beating them, verbally assaulting and stripping them by tearing their clothes, they violated the young girls’ hymens with most inhuman barbaric means. Sex was not their only motive, they were sick with infinite sadism that violated the girls’ souls before their bodies, these were the monstrous beasts who yoked our necks.
****
In the same place, one woman told about her elderly handicapped grandmother, who had sent them off in hope that they will survive this dark blood bath and stayed behind with her wheel-less walker.
They were in the Al’aseeda (العصيدة) neighborhood right after the army had bombed it with artillery and had entered it as killers immediately executing many men and horribly mutilating their bodies in the worst possible means. Never hesitant to murder even children, the soldiers arrested those left alive. I swear, I know a man who was a child then, and I saw and spoke with him s few weeks ago, and he told me of the state of the bodies of his maternal uncles, and that when they fled, they had to step over the bodies of their loved ones to get out. What a way to say good-by, and what a horrible death. He has been carrying his pain with him to the day, and he told me “I’m afraid of their might, and I can’t resist my fear. Forever they raped my peace of mind”. He naively asked me, “we will be victorious over them, won’t we?” I laughed, me who hasn’t laughed in months and confirmed our victory while hesitantly smiling. But I know that we will be celebrating our victory.
Grandmother (um Ibrahim) decided to get everyone from the neighborhood out, and herein, everyone means only children and women. She walked with them supported by her walker under snipers’ bullets and artillery shells, climbing uphill until they reached the beginning of the “Hadher, حاضر” neighborhood. Um Ibrahim became tired and she could not walk anymore so she stayed in the house of one of my paternal aunts and her husband after she sent them to their unknown destiny like a flock of swallows among beasts. Grandmother Um Ibrahim had no other choice, and she was well aware that these killers are not human and that everyone must escape the blood bath that threatened them every moment. In the wash room, when the women talked about Um Ibrahim and how she shouted at them sending them off to their escape, every one read Al-Fatiha, “الفاتحة” for her soul thinking that she was wiped by the barbarism she decided to confront. But Um Ibrahim was stronger than the canon, and as my aunt and her husband decided to escape from the ever rising death, she released them and stayed in their home decidedly defiant.
For a week, Um-Ibrahim remained in my aunt’s house with all doors wide open. The soldiers entered the house, went out, stole and demolished its contents, all the while Um-Ibrahim screamed in their faces scaring them and shaking their fake sense of bravery. She did not bow to the killers. Instead, she defended the house with her courage as a symbol of righteous defense of the entire violated city. Her steadfastness humiliated them and their leaders, and they started obeying her dictates and discovered that she was the victor with her walker. They decided to blow up the houses of the entire neighborhood intending for her to witness the level of their inhumanity. So they took her out of the house to the middle of the street, and she sat on a chair in the middle of the bloodied street for three days throughout which, Um Ibrahim, in this wilderness, never negotiated or even maneuvered. She announced her presence like a palm tree, a flagpole and a flag, never asking for help from anyone. Some soldiers, taken by her glory, started to help her in her physical needs. Um Ibrahim swore that she never feared them because they were too small for her vision to a point where they became invisible to her. She insisted that God sent her all what she needed while she stayed to tell the killers that we will return, exact justice, honor our martyrs with individual headstones refusing to leave them to a mass grave, and that “contrary to your belief, you will never be victorious”. In the end, it was by God’s mercy that some people, also on their own escape journey, found her and carried her; she who refused to be carried, to the villages with the other dispossessed.
…. to be continued
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