Tuesday, March 24, 2009

If Everyone Cared

From underneath the trees, we watch the sky
Confusing stars for satellites
I never dreamed that you’d be mine
But here we are, we’re here tonight

Singing Amen, I, I’m alive
Singing Amen, I, I’m alive

[Chorus:]
If everyone cared and nobody cried
If everyone loved and nobody lied
If everyone shared and swallowed their pride
Then we’d see the day when nobody died

And I’m singing Amen

Amen I, Amen I, I’m alive
Amen I, Amen I, Amen I, I’m alive

And in the air the fireflies
Our only light in paradise
We’ll show the world they were wrong
And teach them all to sing along

Singing Amen, I, I’m alive
Singing Amen, I, I’m alive
(I’m alive)

[Chorus x2]

And as we lie beneath the stars
We realize how small we are
If they could love like you and me
Imagine what the world could be

If everyone cared and nobody cried
If everyone loved and nobody lied
If everyone shared and swallowed their pride
Then we’d see the day when nobody died
When nobody died…

[Chorus]

We’d see the day, we’d see the day
When nobody died
We’d see the day, we’d see the day
When nobody died
We’d see the day when nobody died

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Israel annexing East Jerusalem?

A confidential EU report accuses the Israeli government of using settlement expansion, house demolitions, discriminatory housing policies and the West Bank barrier as a way of "actively pursuing the illegal annexation" of East Jerusalem.

The document says Israel has accelerated its plans for East Jerusalem, and is undermining the Palestinian Authority's credibility and weakening support for peace talks. "Israel's actions in and around Jerusalem constitute one of the most acute challenges to Israeli-Palestinian peace-making," says the document, EU Heads of Mission Report on East Jerusalem. 

The report, obtained by the Guardian, is dated 15 December 2008. It acknowledges Israel's legitimate security concerns in Jerusalem, but adds: "Many of its current illegal actions in and around the city have limited security justifications."

"Israeli 'facts on the ground' - including new settlements, construction of the barrier, discriminatory housing policies, house demolitions, restrictive permit regime and continued closure of Palestinian institutions - increase Jewish Israeli presence in East Jerusalem, weaken the Palestinian community in the city, impede Palestinian urban development and separate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank," the report says.

The document has emerged at a time of mounting concern over Israeli policies in East Jerusalem. Two houses were demolished on Monday just before the arrival of the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and a further 88 are scheduled for demolition, all for lack of permits. Clinton described the demolitions as "unhelpful", noting that they violated Israel's obligations under the US "road map" for peace.

The EU report goes further, saying that the demolitions are "illegal under international law, serve no obvious purpose, have severe humanitarian effects, and fuel bitterness and extremism." The EU raised its concern in a formal diplomatic representation on December 1, it says.

It notes that although Palestinians in the east represent 34% of the city's residents, only 5%-10% of the municipal budget is spent in their areas, leaving them with poor services and infrastructure.

Israel issues fewer than 200 permits a year for Palestinian homes and leaves only 12% of East Jerusalem available for Palestinian residential use. As a result many homes are built without Israeli permits. About 400 houses have been demolished since 2004 and a further 1,000 demolition orders have yet to be carried out, it said.

City officials dismissed criticisms of its housing policy as "a disinformation campaign". "Mayor Nir Barkat continues to promote investments in infrastructure, construction and education in East Jerusalem, while at the same time upholding the law throughout West and East Jerusalem equally without bias," the mayor's office said after Clinton's visit.

However, the EU says the fourth Geneva convention prevents an occupying power extending its jurisdiction to occupied territory. Israel occupied the east of the city in the 1967 six day war and later annexed it. The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.

The EU says settlement are being built in the east of the city at a "rapid pace". Since the Annapolis peace talks began in late 2007, nearly 5,500 new settlement housing units have been submitted for public review, with 3,000 so far approved, the report says. There are now about 470,000 settlers in the occupied territories, including 190,000 in East Jerusalem.

The EU is particularly concerned about settlements inside the Old City, where there were plans to build a Jewish settlement of 35 housing units in the Muslim quarter, as well as expansion plans for Silwan, just outside the Old City walls.

The goal, it says, is to "create territorial contiguity" between East Jerusalem settlements and the Old City and to "sever" East Jerusalem and its settlement blocks from the West Bank.

There are plans for 3,500 housing units, an industrial park, two police stations and other infrastructure in a controversial area known as E1, between East Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Ma'ale Adumim, home to 31,000 settlers. Israeli measures in E1 were "one of the most significant challenges to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process", the report says.

Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said conditions for Palestinians living in East Jerusalem were better than in the West Bank. "East Jerusalem residents are under Israeli law and they were offered full Israeli citizenship after that law was passed in 1967," he said. "We are committed to the continued development of the city for the benefit of all its population."

comment:

Talking about illegal activity, the very existant of Israel nationhood herself is illegal!


Thursday, March 5, 2009

Obama administration publish Bush's secret anti-terror memos

Obama administration releases secret Bush anti-terror memos.
Agence France-Presse
Published: Monday March 2, 2009

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Hours after Attorney General Eric Holder repudiated anti-terror methods enacted under former president George W. Bush, the Justice Department released nine internal memos and opinions it said gave legal grounding to the controversial policies.

The documents -- the first dating from the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks to the last from the months following the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq -- detail how Bush gave himself sole power over terror suspects.

"The power to dispose of the liberty of individuals captured ... remain in the hands of the president alone," said a 2002 opinion written by then-assistant attorney general John Yoo on US methods for transferring suspects.

"Congress can no longer regulate the president's ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements," according to another 2003 opinion written for Alberto Gonzales, then counsel for Bush, which detailed prerogatives for military interrogations.

In another potentially explosive opinion, Bush's administration also gave itself ample space to skirt international law.

The president's "power to suspend treaties is wholly discretionary," according to a memo intended for John Bellinger, who was then legal advisor to the National Security Council.

Self-applied boundaries for executive power gave the White House "unconstrained discretion to suspend treaty obligations of the United States at any time and for any reason," said Obama's Justice Department in a statement released alongside the memos.

The house-cleaning move comes as Obama's administration seeks to distance itself from Bush-era policies.

"Waterboarding is torture," Holder said earlier Monday in a speech to the Jewish Council of Public Affairs. "My Justice Department will not justify it, will not rationalize it and will not condone it," he said.

"The use and sanction of torture is at odds with the history of American jurisprudence and American values. It undermines our ability to pursue justice fairly, and it puts our own brave soldiers in peril should they ever be captured on a foreign battlefield."

Holder is currently leading a review of the treatment of terror suspects.

Obama ordered the review as one of his first acts in office, as he also ordered the closing of the infamous Guantanamo Bay detention center, the CIA's secret prisons abroad and special interrogation authorities for terror detainees.

In an executive order, Obama required that all interrogations conducted at US facilities worldwide follow the US Army field manual, which bars the use of waterboarding -- a form of simulated drowning -- and other harsh interrogation techniques.

"Living our values doesn't make us weaker, it makes us safer and it makes us stronger," Obama told a joint session of Congress in a primetime address last month.

"And that is why I can stand here tonight and say without exception or equivocation that the United States of America does not torture."

The president has also vowed "swift and certain justice for captured terrorists."

Many detainees at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have been held there for years without trial, and more than 200 inmates remain.

A Pentagon report in February said that conditions at Guantanamo were in line with the Geneva Conventions but also called for easing the isolation of high-security detainees.

More than 800 detainees have passed through Guantanamo since it was opened on January 11, 2002, as a place to ship suspects in the "war on terror" begun by Bush in the wake of the September 11 attack.

So here's the documents publish by the US Department of Justice in their website. The file is in adobe pdf format:

  • Memorandum Regarding Status of Certain OLC Opinions Issued in the Aftermath of the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 (01-15-2009)

  • Memorandum Regarding Constitutionality of Amending Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to Change the "Purpose" Standard for Searches (09-25-2001)

  • Memorandum Regarding Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities within the United States (10-23-2001)

  • Memorandum Regarding Authority of the President to Suspend Certain Provisions of the ABM Treaty (11-15-2001)

  • Memorandum Regarding the President's Power as Commander in Chief to Transfer Captured Terrorists to the Control and Custody of Foreign Nations (03-13-2002)

  • Memorandum Regarding Swift Justice Authorization Act (04-08-2002)

  • Memorandum Regarding Determination of Enemy Belligerency and Military Detention (06-08-2002)

  • Memorandum Regarding Applicability of 18 U.S.C. § 4001(a) to Military Detention of United States Citizens (06-27-2002)

  • Memorandum Regarding October 23, 2001 OLC Opinion Addressing the Domestic Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities (10-06-2008)
  • Wednesday, March 4, 2009

    Wish I could tag Obama

    Man I been tag, yea somebody tagged me, actually I hates tag and I think too much sinister in it, it goes without saying..pluss I don't want this get into me 'cause I could probable make it a lot sinister that ever.. :o]D 

    So let get it done quickie.

    10 Random Facts About Me

    Six names you go by: 
    1 matt 
    2 * 
    3 * 
    4 * 
    5 * 
    6 * 
    *Denote highly classified information, chuckles. 

    Three things you are wearing right now: 
    1.  Shorts. 
    2. T-shirts 
    3. nothing else, just enuf for the comfort of my reading/computer room enviroment. 

    Two things you want very badly at the moment: 
    1. Put my Opera bookmarks on diet. Due to my broad and vast interest and ponderable attitude, it getting harder to go back and find something, luckly opera browser got a build-in search function or else I need to get my hand dirty, I loves Opera and I abuse and hack into their **** a lot to serve my need and curiosities. ;D 
    2. More power and muscle to my prosessor, so that I won't be streaching their limit ways too often. it's no child play... 

    Three people who will do this: 
    1. Naval 
    2. Hajar 
    3. Aisha Zahaf 

    Sorry pal, guess I want to tag Barack Hussein Obama first and foremost, 'course he kept updating me on my email, well not only him really but his assistants too, but then my tag would be too wicket as I'll introduce some creative questioning.  
    Two things you did last night: 
    1. Downloading some files and analyst servers log. Well I do it concurrently so considered as one tho' 
    2. Translation on poodle project.  

    Two things you did today: 
    1. Cook 
    2. Reading political and replying my previous comment on others ppl's blog. 

    Two Things you ate today: 
    1. Rice 
    2. Banana 

    Two people you last talked to on the phone: 
    1. my mum. 
    2. unknow woman who simply said wrong number. 

    Two things you are going to do tomorrow: 
    1. Work on the much needy, (but left behind due to mytime constrain and priority) environmental project...hey me not a members of greenpeace okay ;p 
    2. Try to set an appointment with somebody somewhere in the corridor of power. 

    Favourite beverage: 
    1. Iced lemon tea 
    2. Just any cool beverege would do and no booze please.

    # ipv6: I myself not a great fan of this tag tig thingy. So I add this caution: There aint no compulsion ere tho'... 

    Tuesday, March 3, 2009

    Snoop Dogg joins the Nation of Islam but not Islam

    Yepp! Snoop Dogg has joins the Nation of Islam (NOI), at least that what appeal in the news, but unfortunately NOI is not and cannot be consider as Islamic group/movement.So by all account this rapper is not embrace Islam. What ever you guys want to lebel these group which was founded in Detroit, United States by Wallace Fard Muhammad with the self-proclaimed goal of resurrecting the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of the black men and women of America is more like a charity group with a bit of black supremacist ideology to me. Over the year, despite the strong accentuation and condemnation of the klu klux klan(kkk) and the like, secrectly/unknow to them they begun to subsribe to very ideas of the white supremacist themself with a heavy maniputation of the word of Islam of course.

    I have cover a bit about NOI in the past when I encounter one of their members or those who share the same ideology and the teaching of the Nation of Islam.


    Snoop Dogg joins the Nation of Islam.
    guardian.co.uk, Monday 2 March 2009

    Rapper Snoop Dogg ... has joined the US religious group made famous by Malcolm X.

    Rapper Snoop Dogg surprised fans and reporters alike this weekend by revealing he has joined the Nation of Islam. Speaking at the religious group's Saviours' Day convention in Chicago, the 37-year-old praised the group's supreme minister and national representative Louis Farrakhan. It is reported by the Associated Press that he also made a donation to the group of $1,000.

    Snoop Dogg, real name Calvin Broadus, talked about his reasons for joining the religious group in relatively loose terms. "I'm an advocate for peace. I've been in the peace movement ever since I've been making music," he told followers. "My whole thing is not about really trying to push my thing on you. It's just about the way I live, and I live how I'm supposed to live as far as doing what's right and representing what's right. That's why I was here today."

    The Nation of Islam was founded in 1930 with the aim of promoting the conditions of black Americans. The group's most famous convert is activist Malcolm X.

    Snoop Dogg's career has spanned nearly two decades and has been as controversial as it has been successful. He has been arrested numerous times, mainly for possession of marijuana, and was charged as an accomplice to the murder of Phillip Woldermarian in 1993. The rapper was found not guilty.

    He sought to reinvent himself as a family man with the recent reality show Snoop Dogg's Father Hood, which portrays his domestic side along with his wife and three children. However, he was prevented from entering the UK in 2007 following a previous violent incident at Heathrow airport.

    Discussing his religious beliefs at this weekend's Nation of Islam event, the Doggystyle rapper referred to himself as the "leader of the hip-hop community" and hinted that his affiliation with the group is not new. "It's about seeing yourself and what you can do to better the situation," Broadus said. "We're doing a lot of wrongs among ourselves that need correcting."

     
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