Giving up on free speech

Censorious legislation is locked in by a one-way valve that only opens to let in more censorship.

Telegraph | Mar 18, 2009

by Dolan Cummings

Tory MP David Davies has proposed an amendment to the Policing Bill to make it an offence to incite hatred against military personnel. This follows the infamous demonstration in Luton last week, when radical Islamists disrupted a homecoming parade for Royal Anglian soldiers, wielding placards saying “Anglian Soldiers Go To Hell” and “Butchers of Basra”.

Coming so soon after the Convention on Modern Liberty in London, which was addressed by Davies’ Tory colleague and near-namesake David Davis, the proposal is a reminder that the political culture in Britain today in fact remains deeply antithetical to liberty.

While most of the British public, as well as the military, will have found the demonstration offensive, hatred of military personnel is hardly a serious social problem justifying further curbs on free speech.

Indeed, Davies’ motivation seems to be less a concern for vulnerable squaddies, who are surely more than capable of sticking up for themselves, than disgruntlement that Muslims who are themselves “protected” by legislation against incitement to religious hatred are nonetheless able to dish out abuse to others.

Speaking on the BBC’s Today programme on Saturday, Davies insisted that: “We don’t have an absolute right to free speech”. This is a familiar observation, invariably followed by calls for further restrictions. In this case, Davies has simply, and rather childishly, taken the text of the religious hatred legislation and substituted references to religious groups with “uniformed personnel on official duties”. For Davies, this is simply about giving soldiers “equal rights”.

Leaving aside the dubious equivalence between a religious identity and a military vocation, a better way to “even things out” would be to abolish the religious hatred legislation. Unfortunately, this seems to be unthinkable: censorious legislation is locked in by a one-way valve that only opens to let in more censorship.

This reflects a more general culture in which free speech is barely valued, and conflicts frequently take the form of competing demands for censorship. During the radio discussion, Davies offered Abu Omar, who was defending the Luton demonstration, a chance to be principled by calling for the police to drop charges against those people who were arrested for shouting abuse at the protestors. He declined with depressing predictability, denying their right to make known their own views about his views.

Nonetheless, it only ever takes one person to break the circuit by supporting free speech for his opponent, however offensive. This is the essence of free speech after all.

My colleague Josie Appleton of the Manifesto Club has called for “a new deal for public debate”, suggesting we all agree to reject the childish game of taking offence and demanding ever more censorship. In seeking instead to add further restrictions on free speech, Davies not only threatens the freedom of Islamist and other cranks, but devalues the principle of free speech for us all.

Senegalese president admits he ‘was’ a Freemason amid controversy

Many other leaders in West and Central Africa are reported to be active but “hidden” members.

NATION | Feb 13, 2009

By HAMADOU TIDIANE SY

Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade: © afrol News/UN Photo

Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade is again caught in the middle of a nationwide controversy, this time regarding his religious beliefs after revelations made by the French weekly l’Express about his membership of a freemason association.

In Senegal, a predominantly Muslim country, freemasonry is viewed very suspiciously.

It is usually associated with sectarianism, rejection of God, shady and satanic practices and more importantly as a practice incompatible with Islam.

Until the revelations were made, President Wade has always presented himself publicly as a devout Muslim and a member of the ‘mouride’ community, one of the main Muslim brotherhoods in the country.

The debate about Mr Wade’s religious allegiances started when on February 3, the French weekly l’Express published a story about several African heads of states having links with the freemason’s movement.

“In Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade was earlier initiated in Besançon (Eastern France) and is a ‘dormant mason’, the weekly wrote.

In a note sent to the French publication, the Senegalese president denied being a member anymore.

He said he resigned long ago. But he also openly admitted that he had been a member of a freemason movement in the past, out of “intellectual curiosity”, thus generating more controversy in the country where freemasons, rightly or wrongly, are viewed as a sect opposed to God’s supremacy.

In his answer to the article accusing him of being a freemason, Mr Wade wrote “It’s true, but I have to specify that I am not a ‘dormant mason’. I was deprived of my membership after a voluntary resignation.”

Following the revelations, one Member of Parliament, Imam Mbaye Niang, who defends Islamic views said the president should resign.

The allegiance of francophone heads of state to freemason movements is a matter of great speculation here and a subject that comes up in the media every now and then.

According to l’Express, only the Gabonese president El Hadji Omar Bongo Ondimba openly admits his belonging to freemasonry while many other leaders in West and Central Africa are reported to be active but “hidden” members.

How ‘Doctor Death’, the world’s most wanted Nazi war criminal, became a Muslim

The ovens at Mauthausen. Up to 320,000 people were killed in the camp

Daily Mail | Feb 5, 2009

By Ryan Kisiel

Nazi hunters who have spent decades searching for a death camp doctor who performed hideous medical experiments on inmates expressed ’serious doubts’ yesterday over claims that he is dead.

Police in Germany also said they would continue to investigate whether Dr Aribert Heim, the perverted physician of the Mauthausen concentration camp known as ‘Dr Death’, did indeed die in Cairo 17 years ago to be buried in a pauper’s grave.

An American newspaper and a German TV station broke the news of his ‘death’ and his conversion to Islam – but it has not shaken those still on his trail.

Heim has headed the list of ‘Operation Last Chance’ – the name given to the hunt for the top ten surviving war criminals from Nazi Germany – for the last two years.

“The story raises more questions than it answers,’ said Efraim Zuroff, head Nazi hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Israel.

‘There’s no body, no corpse, no DNA, no grave – we can’t sign off on a story like this because of some semi-plausible explanation.

‘Keep in mind these people have a vested interested in being declared dead – it’s a perfectly crafted story; that’s the problem, it’s too perfect.’

Zuroff said ‘there was no doubt’ Heim had lived in Egypt.

‘But the question is whether he died in Egypt. We have serious doubts about that.’

He said German police had told him they had also not shut the case on Heim, the most notorious of surviving perpetrators of the Nazi killings of 6million Jews during the war, who has been missing since evading German police in 1962.

Heim has been accused of killing hundreds of inmates at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria by injecting petrol into their hearts, performing surgery and severing organs without anaesthesia, crimes which he documented himself, Zuroff said.

German TV station ZDF, in footage from a documentary being aired yesterday, showed Heim’s son Ruediger saying his father had died of cancer on August 10, 1992, after having spent 30 years in Cairo under an assumed name.

Zuroff said news of Heim’s death came as the Wiesenthal Centre was preparing to triple its reward for locating him to 1million euros, but that he was sceptical due to the lack of evidence and family interests in seeing the case closed.

Heim earned his position as the most wanted on Zuroff’s list with a CV that sends shivers down the spine.

At Mauthausen, Heim moved like a veritable angel of death among the prisoners who were terrified of falling ill and having to be treated by him.

Survivor Karl Lotter, who worked in his clinic as an orderly, told war crimes investigators after the war about a young prisoner not earmarked for death who came to see Heim with a swollen foot.

‘I think I have an infection,’ said the young man.

‘An infection, ah, well, we’ll see what we can do about that,’ said the doctor.

What he did about that was to anaesthetise him. He then castrated the boy, dissected a kidney and removed the second, then decapitated him.

The head was boiled to remove the flesh so the doctor could use the skull as a paperweight.

Lotter said: ‘Of all the camp doctors in Mauthausen, Dr Heim was the most horrible.’

Dr Aribert Heim, at the time, was just 27 years old.  So steeped was he in the twisted ideology of the Third Reich that he was known to all inmates simply as ‘Dr. Death’.

Aided by an SS pharmacist, Erich Wasicky, he murdered hundreds of inmates by injecting them with various liquids, including petrol, phenol, water and poison, all in the interests of seeing which killed them fastest.

He used a stopwatch to time the results, recording them meticulously in a ledger.
Heim, whose experimentation was compared to that of the Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele, also carried out amputations on prisoners without anaesthetic to see what level of pain a human could endure before expiring.

Organs were removed from conscious patients, including one case where the liver, spleen and bowel were excised.  In another case, Heim removed the tattooed flesh of a prisoner to make seat coverings for the camp commandant’s flat.

A court that sentenced him in absentia in 1979 said he ‘wallowed in the fear of death suffered by his victims while performing lethal operations on them without anaesthetics’.

Justice evaded Dr Death at war’s end, as it did for so many of his countrymen.  He didn’t even bother to flee at first, returning to Germany where he took up gynaecology.

But the past did catch up with him eventually.  In the 1960s, he was forced to flee Germany as prosecutors finally pieced together his crimes.

Ever since, he has been on the run, leaving behind an intriguing fortune, property and a divided family – divided between those who accuse his pursuers of a witch-hunt and those who want to know the truth, however painful that may be.

Following the allegations of his death back in 1992, the Baden-Wuerttemberg state police unit that investigates Nazi-era crimes is preparing a request asking Egyptian authorities to allow them to pursue the case in Cairo.

‘We want to attempt to find the body,’ said a spokesman for the German sleuths.
Heim’s son Ruediger told Germany’s ZDF television that his father fled to Egypt after authorities tried to arrest him at his Baden-Baden home.

The younger Heim contradicted previous statements that he had never had any contact with his father since that time, telling ZDF that he had met with him several times in Cairo, starting in the mid-1970s.

Last summer, Ruediger tried to have his father declared legally dead so that he could take control of an estimated €1.2million in investments in his name, saying that he would donate the money to charity.

The report said Heim was living under a pseudonym and had converted to Islam by the time of his death from intestinal cancer.  If still alive, he would be 94 today.

It was reported yesterday that a certified copy of a death certificate obtained from Egyptian authorities confirmed witness accounts that the man called Heim is believed to have used the name Tarek Hussein Farid.

The Egyptian official record states that Farid died in 1992.

‘Tarek Hussein Farid is the name my father took when he converted to Islam,’ said Rüdiger Heim.

In an interview in the family’s villa in Baden-Baden, Mr Heim, 53, admitted publicly for the first time that he was with his father in Egypt at the time of his death from rectal cancer.

He said: ‘It was during the Olympics. There was a television in the room, and he was watching the Olympics. It distracted him. He must have been suffering from serious pain.’

Guy Walters, author of Nazi war criminal book Hunting Evil, said: ‘Heim is one of the major criminals of the last century, and if true this revelation is hugely significant.

‘His experiments that he carried out on concentration camp victims were disgusting and he was currently being hunted for his crimes.

‘We like to think of South America as being the sanctuary of Nazis, but this proves that Islamic states were just as happy to play host to them after the war.

‘This was partly because some Islamic states agreed with the Nazis’ hatred of the Jews and also these people were wanted for their scientific knowledge.

‘There were always rumours during the 1950s that Egypt had Nazi scientists and they were working on weapons to launch against Israel.’

Although he was captured in a general round-up of leading Nazis by US forces in March 1945, he was released because his name did not appear on any of the lists of war criminals the Allies had quickly drawn up.

Heim became a gynaecologist in West Germany until 1962, when his past caught up with him in the form of the Austrian police, who were finally investigating him for his war crimes.

Heim was tipped off and he escaped, reportedly to Spain and then to Uruguay, where he opened up a gynaecological practice.

Since the 1960s, Heim had been able to live a relatively unmolested life, and quietly amassed a small fortune.

Leading Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre said he had not seen the documents, but if true, would be ‘earth shattering’ news.

Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal tipped of Israeli intelligence that Adolf Eichmann, credited for being the architect of the Holocaust, was living in Argentina.

In 1960, Mossad agents captured Eichmann, smuggled him to Israel where he stood trial and was executed for war crimes.

Indonesian Islamic group calls Lions and Rotary Clubs infidels with ties to Freemasonry and Zionism

Radical Group: Lions, Rotarians Are ‘Infidels’

Jakarta Globe | Feb 1, 2009

By Nivell Rayda

An ultra-conservative Islamic group called on Indonesian Muslims Sunday to quit two US-founded international business and social clubs, claiming they were linked to the Zionist and the Freemasonry movements and secretly supported Israel.

The leader of the Indonesian Forum of Ulema and Muslims, or FUUI, which has forcibly stopped Christian church services and called for a ban on the Ahamdiyah Islamic sect, said that Muslims who did not quit the Rotary Club and Lions Club, which have chapters worldwide including in Indonesia, would be labeled as infidels.

“The Rotary Club and the Lions Club are the Zionists’ accomplices,” Athian Ali Muhammad Da’i said in a telephone interview from his headquarters in Bandung, West Java Province, on Sunday. “They gather funds and give them to America and the Israeli Zionists. We urge all Muslims to renounce membership in the Rotary Club and the Lions Club. Otherwise, they can consider themselves infidels.”

Da’i, who in 2002 issued a death fatwa against an Indonesian Muslim scholar for writing a commentary against conservative views on Islam, has been preaching about alleged links between the clubs and Zionism since last year. On his blog, fuui.wordpress.com, Da’i elaborates on his charges against the two clubs.

“The Lions Club and the Rotary Club have introduced Jewish ideals to their Muslim members,” he writes.

“They also seek information from the members, which are prominent figures in Indonesia’s government and society, which can be used for the Zionists’ political and economic agenda.”

Dean Boulding, vice president of the Jakarta-Menteng Rotary Club, the oldest and largest Rotary club in Indonesia, called the allegations “laughable,” saying such claims has been circulating since the club’s formation in the US city of Chicago in 1905.

“One of our co-founders was a Mason and several of the original Rotarians were also Masons, and in the early days meetings were occasionally held in Masonic halls,” Boulding said on Sunday. “But that was more than a century ago.”

The Rotary Club has more than 32,000 branches and 1.2 million members worldwide, and is open to anyone regardless of their political or religious affiliation.

The Freemasons are a secular fraternal organization dating back to the late 16th century.

“We are two entirely separate organizations. I don’t know why people still talk about such things,” Boulding said. “We build schools and pay for hospital treatment of poor children.”

Freemasonry was introduced in Indonesia during the Dutch colonial period, but was banned by founding President Sukarno for its ties with the Dutch and remains so today.

Financed by the British taxpayer, brutal torturers of the West Bank

Crackdown: Palestinian forces seize a man on the West Bank

Daily Mail | Jan 31, 2009

By David Rose

The horrific torture of hundreds of people by Palestinian security forces in the West Bank is being funded by British taxpayers.

An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has found that the forces responsible get £20million a year from the UK.

The victims – some left maimed – are rounded up for alleged involvement with the militant Islamic group Hamas, yet many have nothing to do with it.

They are targeted because the Fatah party, which runs the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority (PA) on the West Bank, is the bitter rival of Hamas, which controls the war-torn Gaza strip.

Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID) gave £76million in all to the PA last year for ‘security sector reform’ and fostering the rule of law.

About £3million goes directly to the PA police. Another £17million pays the salaries of the PA’s array of security organisations – including the Presidential Guard intelligence service and the feared Preventive Security Organisation.

Not only are PA forces carrying out torture, the authority ignores judges’ orders to release political detainees. Last month at least 30 journalists, teachers and students were arrested – as the crackdown on Hamas was praised by a senior Israeli defence official as a necessary ‘iron fist policy’.

But Professor Raid Neuerat, who teaches political science at the West Bank’s Nablus University, told how PA security men handcuffed him at gunpoint in front of his wife and four children, pulled a thick, soiled hood over his head then bundled him into their car. It is a five-minute drive from his house to the local Jenaid prison – but it lasted four hours.

‘Most of that time they beat me,’ said Prof Neuerat, 39. ‘They were hitting my head and spine with their rifle butts. By the time I arrived I had lost my sight in both eyes and could not move my legs.’

Prof Neuerat, like five other victims interviewed by The Mail on Sunday, said he has never been in Hamas.

‘I was lucky,’ he said. ‘The damage to my central nervous system was reparable. I was told my crime was something I said on television – that I had called the Hamas takeover of Gaza just that, a takeover, instead of a “coup”.’

Most frightened victims did not want to be named. But they all gave similar descriptions of the brutality.

One man of 29, a married teacher with a young child, said there are two categories of torture  – ‘mini ’ and ‘maxi’.

The commonest ‘mini’ method, known as ‘shabah’, involves hanging up shackled victims by their arms. The teacher told how he was held in a cellar at Jenaid prison last month.

‘First they shackled my hands behind my back, tied a rope round the shackles and looped it over a beam. They pulled until I was standing on tiptoes, just still able to take some weight on my legs. Then they jerked the rope so it all came on to my arms and held me there until I was on the point of passing out. They were laughing, saying it would dislocate my shoulders. They did it over and over for five or six days.’

Sometimes sharp-edged sardine cans were placed under his heels, so that when weight came back on his legs, they inflicted deep cuts. Two other victims independently described this, too.

After ten days, frustrated by his denials of holding weapons or collecting money for Hamas, he said they stripped him naked and whipped him with an electric cable. ‘Then they let me go.’

Prof Neuerat has a dossier of victims’ experiences which includes cases of  ‘maxi torture’: one man was forced to sit in a large tyre hung from a beam. Then, while he was suspended helplessly, his tormentors attacked his buttocks and thighs with an electric drill.

Another victim, Majd al-Barghouti, was beaten to death by PA interrogators last year. His death has been documented by human rights groups. Prof Neuerat showed a photo of one victim who, he said, was left paralysed from the neck down by a beating.

Palestinian security forces arresting a fellow Palestinian during an operation to search for illegal weapons in the West Bank villages of Yatta and al-Samu’a, south of Hebron

Amar al-Masri, 42, a wealthy landowner, told how he and his wife, Kholoud, 40, were detained – leaving no one to care for their five children. He endured repeated shabah, saying the reason was that Kholoud had won a seat on Nablus Council, representing a non-Hamas ‘citizen’s coalition’, also seen as a rival to Fatah. He said: ‘Our only crime has been to get involved in the democratic process. Britain is a democratic country. Why are you supporting these things?’

The Independent Commission on Human Rights, an official body established under Palestinian law, last month investigated 29 cases of torture.

A British diplomat in Jerusalem said: ‘Obviously we are very aware of problems with the Palestinian security forces. We are working hard to improve their standards across the board – including human rights standards.’

The DFID said it ‘utterly condemns any unlawful harm to or detention of people and is working with the human rights groups to ensure these allegations are fully investigated’.

Preventive Security chief Akram Rajoub denied any torture. He said: ‘These are Hamas allegations.’

Saudi Religious Police Get Tough on Black Magic

Asharq Alawsat | Jan 22, 2009

By Khaled al Oweigan

Sources within the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice [CPVPV] in Saudi Arabia have revealed to Asharq Al-Awsat that the CPVPV will move to combat magic and those who practice it, and regulate the exercise of legitimate spiritual healing, by instituting a system designed to deal with such practices which are against Islamic Shariaa Law.

Sources close to the CPVPV leadership in the Saudi capital of Riyadh revealed that a number of legal consultancies were studying the draft version and procedural guidelines of this project. Asharq Al-Awsat managed to obtain a copy of this draft which gives the police the right to deal with witches and sorcerers, and the means to identify and convict them.

A study of this project [to combat witchcraft and sorcery] was carried out by the Center for Research and Study which is affiliated to the CPVPV and which put a number of legal opinions on the table including; a definition of magic, witchcraft, divination, fortune-telling and other similar practices, a scientific definition to magical practices, and a model in order to help uncover such practices.

The study, also clarified the signs and symbols that can be used in the practice of magic, as well as the tools used to control magic, while also advising that a system of cooperation be initiated between the various authorities involved in this fight against such practices and those who perform them.

The study also suggested that information be used in the fight against magic, and that the public be warned against it, as the CPVPV has been attempting to do.

The CPVPV also revealed that a number of cases involving magic were discovered in the general public, and so they [CPVPV] do have the ability to prove such cases officially.

Previous cases involving magic prosecuted by the CPVPV revealed the spread of witchcraft and magic throughout the country, and this is as a result of the number of arrested, and the information provided by the relevant authorities involved n the project to address these practices.

The joint-taskforce comprising the CPVPV and the appropriate security agencies was adopted in order to combat what the CPVPV leadership called “the manifestations of this problem, and to define the responsibilities of the parties involved in order to reduce the spread [of magic]” while also recommending that incentives be given to the security agencies that combat magic and witchcraft.

The study also called for regulations to be put in place with regards to the role of telecommunication and Internet service providers to protect the public from communication and television channels that promote magic, while also penalizing those that perpetrate such crimes. It also called for the results of the study to be incorporated into the provision of Islamic Shariaa law, basic law, and criminal law.

The rationale behind the CPVPV study, was to seek to fill the vacuum by making legal and regulatory determinations, as well as clarify the burden of evidence for magic and witchcraft cases as being scientific and practical, while also increasing the number of those involved in combating such cases, from the security agents on the ground, including the men of the CPVPV, to investigators, and judges.

Dutch Lawmaker, Charged With Insulting Islam, Fears Prison Sentence

Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders. Reuters

Fox News | Jan 22, 2009

By Joel Mowbray

A member of parliament in the Netherlands who has been charged with “insulting” Muslims says he fears he will be found guilty and sent to prison in only a few months.

An appeals court on Wednesday overturned a previous decision by prosecutors not to charge Geert Wilders, and ordered that he stand trial.

“The decision of the court today was so strong that there is a real chance unfortunately that there will be a guilty verdict,” Wilders told FOXNews.com. “In fact, it was so bluntly motivated that it already looks like a verdict instead of just ordering the public prosecutor to start a trial.”

Wilders, who produced a controversial film that was highly critical of the Koran last year, says he faces a maximum of two years in prison if convicted. He said he had expected to be charged, and he has retained legal assistance from a U.S.-based nonprofit to help him defend himself.

Prosecutors initially declined last year to charge the right wing politician after he issued his short film, “Fitna,” which juxtaposes Koranic verses over footage of violence committed by Islamic terrorists.

But, the Netherlands allows private citizens to petition the courts to compel prosecution. In Wilders’ case, eight parties, including a politician from an opposing party, asked the courts to force prosecutors to bring criminal charges.

A three-judge appeals panel on Wednesday ruled that Wilders’ insults to Islam were so egregious that the principle of free speech was not sufficient defense.

“The court considers [Wilders' film] so insulting for Muslims that it is in the public interest to prosecute Wilders,” a summary of the court’s decision said. The court explained that Wilders’ claims in “Fitna” and other media statements were “one-sided generalizations … which can amount to inciting hatred.”

Wilders on Wednesday defiantly stood by the public statements that could put him in prison.

“I lost my freedom already four and a half years ago in October 2004, when my 24-hour police protection started because of threats by Muslims in Holland and abroad to kill me,” he said.

“So of course I don’t want to go to jail as a criminal, but I don’t fear losing my freedom since I already lost my freedom in 2004.”

For several months, Wilders has been receiving pro bono assistance from a U.S.-based nonprofit called the Legal Project, whose aim is to protect free speech in what it says is a worldwide campaign to silence critics of “militant” Islam.

Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes founded the Legal Project following a slew of cases in which authors and activists were sued for alleged hate speech against Muslims and Islam, including several cases in the United States.

“The Legal Project helped me when I was in the United States, arranging meetings with important legal scholars and elected officials,” Wilders told FOXNews.com. “They also helped bring public attention to my case, which hopefully will help me raise money for my legal defense fund.”

Brooke Goldstein, a human rights attorney and director of the Legal Project, said Wilders’ case indicates that free speech is increasingly under assault. “Geert Wilders could be going to jail for making admittedly harsh criticisms of Islam that actually echo statements made by Muslims,” Goldstein said.

“Even if he prevails at trial, the damage to free speech will be done. Who wants to risk the time, cost and public harassment of a criminal trial?”

Goldstein said criminal prosecutions for hate speech or incitement are unlikely in the U.S. because of the First Amendment, but she said the mere threat of a lawsuit can stifle speech, especially when they concern corporations that must focus on turning a profit.

Even individuals participating in what they consider basic free-speech activities can find themselves in legal crosshairs, Goldstein said.

One Legal Project client is former CIA official and NYPD counterterrorism consultant Bruce Tefft, who was sued by a Muslim police officer for “workplace harassment” after he allegedly sent anti-Muslim e-mails to a voluntary recipient list of police officers.

Gaza death toll soars past 500 as Israel is accused of using banned phosphorus shells

Rain of fire: An Israeli missile explodes, sending scores of incendiary shells pouring down on the northern Gaza Strip as a major building burns

Daily Mail | Jan 5, 2009

By Matthew Kalman

Speculation mounted last night that Israel might have been using banned white phosphorus shells in its assault on Gaza.

As troops and tanks advanced, artillery shells were fired that caused a screen of dense white smoke.

Blobs of phosphorus cause severe burns to anyone caught under them and their use as a military weapon is forbidden in civilian areas under the Geneva Treaty of 1980.

Israel admitted to using the weapon during its 2006 military operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

But the Israeli military last night denied using the controversial weapon in Gaza.

‘Israel uses munitions that are allowed for under international law,’ said spokesman Captain Ishai David, refusing to discuss the type shells used during the Gaza incursion.

Another Israeli military expert said the explosions simply produced ‘a great deal of smoke that blinds the enemy so that our forces can move in’.

British experts said that if white phosphorus had been used in an area as densely populated as Gaza then Israel might have committed a war crime.

‘If phosphorus was deliberately fired at a crowd of people someone would end up in The Hague,’ Charles Heyman, a former major in the British Army, told the Times.

Meanwhile civilians were claimed to have borne the brunt of the casualties on the first full day of Israel’s invasion of Gaza as the death toll from the nine-day onslaught soared past 500 yesterday.

Israeli forces used tanks, artillery and aircraft to protect thousands of advancing troops as they effectively split the Palestinian territory in two with Gaza City surrounded on all sides.

Israeli president Shimon Peres said: ‘We intend neither to occupy Gaza nor crush Hamas but to crush terror. And Hamas needs a real and serious lesson. They are now getting it.’

An Israeli newspaper said the army’s guiding principle was to use overwhelming force and do everything to protect its soldiers, even if that resulted in civilian casualties.

Israel says the ground operation was necessary because rocket attacks from Hamas fighters had continued despite eight days of aerial attack to wipe out bases of the Islamic militant group. Hamas claimed yesterday it had captured two Israeli soldiers but Israel said it had no knowledge of the claim.

Last night the death toll from the first 24 hours of the ground invasion was said to be at least 42 Palestinians, most of them civilians as shells slammed into houses and Gaza’s main shopping district. Israel also suffered its first military death of the nine-day conflict when a soldier was killed and 30 others wounded, two seriously. Gaza health officials said among the victims were a 12-year-old girl, five members of the same family, and another eight civilians killed by a tank shell as they fled their home for the safety of a nearby school.

A foreign doctor working for the Red Crescent said: ‘Civilians are being killed … shells are severing people’s legs, shrapnel is going into people’s bodies and into homes, a lot of people are being cut down. Everyone is terrified.’

Among the casualties was a Palestinian paramedic working for an Oxfam-funded organisation. He was killed when a shell struck a civilian ambulance. Another paramedic lost his foot and a driver was injured in the same incident.

The latest deaths brought the toll in the Gaza Strip since the start of Operation Cast Lead to 512. The Israeli cabinet, meeting in Tel Aviv to be near the military command HQ, signalled that the operation could last a considerable time as leaders brushed aside growing international calls for an immediate ceasefire.

It emerged yesterday that Gordon Brown made a last-ditch attempt to stop the invasion of Gaza in a phone call to Israeli premier Ehud Olmert. He also asked Hamas leaders to stop firing rockets but both appeals were turned down.

Tens of thousands of Israeli reservists are to be called up this week. ‘The government did everything before deciding to launch the operation,’ said Olmert. ‘This is an unavoidable operation.’

Israeli aircraft continued to pound missile silos and explosives tunnels laid by Hamas to destroy advancing tanks up and down the strip. They also bombed smuggling tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border.

Israeli navy gunships imposed a 20-mile exclusion zone and pounded targets along the shoreline. At least two senior militant commanders were killed when helicopter gunships targeted their vehicles.

One Palestinian family said they were forced to abandon their home and seek refuge with relatives after Hamas gunmen took up positions inside their apartment building in a crowded residential district. ‘We will fight till our last breath,’ said Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan. ‘Your invasion of Gaza will not be a cakewalk. Gaza will be your cemetery and you have no choice but to end the aggression and lift the blockade.’

An Israeli soldier fires tear gas during clashes with Palestinian protesters demonstrating against the Israeli strikes on Gaza

An Israeli soldier fires tear gas during clashes with Palestinian protesters demonstrating against the Israeli strikes on Gaza

Despite the fighting, Hamas managed to fire more than 30 rockets across the border into southern Israel, and nearly one million Israelis were forced to spend the day beside bomb shelters as sirens wailed warning of incoming rocket fire. Some rockets scored direct hits on houses, but there were no serious casualties.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas flew to New York in an effort to wring some action out of the UN Security Council, which has yet to agree on a resolution calling for a ceasefire.

Muslims taken off jet for alleged remarks

BBC | Jan 3, 2009

Nine Muslims were ordered off a US domestic flight after passengers heard one of them make what they thought were suspicious remarks.

Shortly after boarding the New Year’s Day AirTran flight from Washington DC to Florida the Muslims were led off the plane by federal air marshals.

The group, eight of them US citizens, were later cleared for travel and have received an apology from AirTran.

One of them said he felt they had been forced off because of their appearance.

The men had beards and the women wore traditional Muslim headscarves.

Atif Irfan, a lawyer from Virginia was travelling to a religious retreat in Florida with his wife, his brother and his brother’s family, including three children, aged seven, four and two, the Associated Press reported.

They were joined by his brother’s sister-in-law and a family friend.

Mr Irfan said when he boarded Thursday’s flight, he mentioned something to his wife and sister-in-law about having to sit in the back.

“My wife and I are generally very careful about what we say when we step on the plane,” he said, adding that they have received suspicious looks in the past.

“We’re used to this sort of thing – but obviously not to this extent.”

Forced to rebook

Shortly after taking their seats, they were approached by federal air marshals and taken off the plane for questioning, Irfan said.

Federal officials ordered the rest of the passengers from the plane and re-screened them before allowing the flight to depart about two hours behind schedule.

Mr Irfan said after his group was cleared by officials to travel, AirTran refused to put them on another flight and they were forced to rebook with another airline.

An Airtran statement said “we apologise to all of the passengers – to the nine who had to undergo extensive interviews from the authorities and to the 95 who ultimately made the flight,”.

“We regret that the issue escalated to the heightened security it did,” it added, but said “the steps taken were necessary.”

Airtran said it would reimburse the Muslims for the replacement tickets and has offered to take them back to Washington for free.

The Bektashi Begat the Shriners?

“[The Bektashi] are even said to be affiliated to some of the French Masonic Lodges. One thing is certain; the order now consists almost exclusively of gentlemen of education, belonging to the Liberal, or Young Turk party.”

- Richard Davey, The Sultan and His Subjects [1897] (Gorgias Press LLC, 2001), p. 65.

Conspiracy Archive | Dec 23, 2008

I’m not that familiar with the Bektashi Order , but it turns out that this politico-mystical secret society – directly or indirectly – was the inspiration behind the Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine.

Freemasons Dr. Walter M. Fleming, 33°, and William J. Florence, 32°, founded the Shriners in 1870. And in recounting the origins of their Order, Florence and Fleming corroborate the above statement by Richard Davey.

While in Marseilles, France, because he was known to be a Mason, Florence was invited to an exoteric ceremony at a Bokhara Shrine. Soon after, he visited Algiers, and there too was permitted to witness other proceedings in a Bokhara Temple.

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