Saturday, December 11, 2010

Rula Jebreal, a Palestinian beauty

مفاجأة خلال اجتماع استخباري بدمشق


مدير المخابرات السوري أقر بتسليم سعوديين

Al-Jazeera

"كشف موقع ويكيليكس أن مدير إدارة المخابرات السورية اللواء علي المملوك ظهر فجأة في اجتماع كان يعقده دبلوماسيون سوريون في 18 فبراير/شباط الماضي في دمشق مع مسؤولين أميركيين لبحث الوضع على الحدود العراقية السورية.

وقالت برقية للقائم بالأعمال الأميركي بدمشق تشارلز هنتر إن المملوك ظهر في الاجتماع الذي كان يعقده وفد أميركي برئاسة منسق مكافحة الإرهاب في الإدارة الأميركية دانيال بنجامين وفيصل المقداد نائب وزير الخارجية السوري، وإن الأخير فسر ذلك بأن الرئيس الأسد طلب من المملوك المشاركة في الاجتماع.

وأضاف المقداد أن المشاركة عبارة عن بادرة إيجابية تلي الاجتماع الذي عقده قبل ذلك بيوم واحد الرئيس بشار الأسد مع وليم بيرنز مساعد وزيرة الخارجية الأميركية هيلاري كلينتون.

نقطة انطلاق
وشدد المسؤول السوري -حسب نص البرقية- على أن الاجتماع ليس بداية لتعاون في مجال الأمن والاستخبارات بين سوريا والولايات المتحدة, لكن الجانب السوري قال إن المداولات قد تكون نقطة انطلاق لتعاون محتمل بين الطرفين في المستقبل.

وأشارت البرقية إلى أن المملوك تحدث عن العلاقة بين التقدم في الموضوعات السياسية الخاصة بالعلاقات السورية الأميركية والتعاون المحتمل في مجالي الأمن والاستخبارات قائلا إن الحدود العراقية السورية قد تكون نقطة لهذا التعاون.

وقالت البرقية إن المملوك والمقداد والسفير السوري بواشنطن عماد مصطفى كانوا يصغون بانتباه خلال الشرح الذي قدمه بنجامين عن تنظيم القاعدة والمقاتلين الأجانب والتهديدات المشتركة الأخرى.

وأفادت البرقية الدبلوماسية أن المقداد والمملوك عرضا ثلاثة محاور للتعاون الأمني والاستخباري مع الولايات المتحدة لخصتها بـ:

1- تمكين سوريا من القيام بدور ريادي في أي ترتيبات أمنية إقليمية.
2- أن يكون العمل السياسي جزءا من عمليات مكافحة الإرهاب و"المظلة السياسية" ضرورية لتحسين العلاقات الأميركية السورية لتسهيل التعاون بمجال مكافحة الإرهاب.
3- يجب القيام بتحرك في مجال العقوبات الاقتصادية وخصوصا من حيث الحصول على قطع غيار للطائرات وبينها طائرة الرئيس بشار، (فذلك أمر) مهم في إقناع الناس بأن التعاون مع الولايات المتحدة يجلب الفائدة لهم.

المقداد أوجز الموضوع على النحو التالي "الرئيس الأسد يريد التعاون ونحن يجب أن نتصدر هذا التعاون ولا تبقونا على قوائمكم" (الخاصة بالعقوبات).
....."

Al-Jazeera Video: The Listening Post - The information war



"On the show this week: it is a multi-faceted media story that has generated myriad news strands and angles but also legal complications. At the centre of it all is WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. He has become the human face of an information war that has left free speech activists on one side and cagey politicians on the other. The fight has drawn in some unlikely participants, from credit card companies to Swedish lawyers. Its uncharted waters for the media - some had to report the story while defending their coverage. It is an uncertain future for politicians who are desperately trying to shut down the website while putting out diplomatic fires across the globe. It is a moral dilemma for those who question the right to information over the danger of too much information. It is a lot of things, but mostly - it is a fascinating story!"

Al-Jazeera Video: Islamic Movement improves Arab life in Israel



"Israel's Arabs, who account for 20 per cent of the population, struggle with daily discrimination and living standards much lower than their fellow Jewish citizens.

Arab political parties say they are struggling for representation in the government to defend the rights of the minority group in the country, but are failing to put up a united front.

Sherine Tadros reports from Cana in northern Israel on why the Islamic Movement is emerging as the only group effective at providing social services for Arabs in the country."

Al-Jazeera Video: One on One - Zbigniew Brzezinski

Video: Beyond Words

Beyond Words from Al-Haq - Human Rights on Vimeo.

Obama's Base, by Mike Luckovich


(Click on cartoon to enlarge)

Why can't a Palestinian woman tell her own story?


By Robert Fisk

"....By chance, I read the text of Mortier's short but eloquent speech this week, a day before watching Julian Schnabel's new movie Miral, a feature film which follows the life of Rula Jebreal, a real-life Palestinian-Israeli woman who became a journalist, author and television presenter. Schnabel, who is Jewish, lives with Jebreal in New York. Their movie begins and ends with the death of Hind Husseini, a remarkable and courageous Palestinian woman who found orphans from the Jewish massacre of Arab villagers at Deir Yassin in 1948 and started a boarding school for girls that still exists in Jerusalem. Husseini died in 1994, but Rula was one of her pupils. Her childhood – losing her mother, choosing to be a well-educated woman, sucked into the intifada, arrested and brutalised by the Israelis – is the story of Miral.....

And yet... Israel's so-called "friends" in America and Britain also panned the film, primarily for two scenes. In the first, Rula is beaten into unconsciousness by an Israeli woman torturer. In the second, an Israeli bulldozer demolishes a Palestinian home. Crocodile tears on the floor, please. The Israelis have indulged in torture of both men and women for years – dozens of Amnesty International reports bear witness to this – and I have personally heard the screams of the tortured at what was Israel's proxy jail at Khiam in southern Lebanon. I have witnessed countless home destructions by Israeli troops in Jerusalem and the West Bank. Indeed, a day after I watched Miral, an al-Jazeera news broadcast showed real scenes of Israeli house evictions and bulldozing far more dramatic than the movie.

But that's not the point. The film has been abused as (of course) "anti-Semitic", the same old slander that's been spat at me for more than half my life. The real problem, of course, is that Palestinian cinema is slowly coming of age, and Israel's supposed "friends" want to stop it in its tracks. The sin of Miral is that it exists. The plight of a young Arab woman – ultimately another victim of the Great War (ergo, the Balfour declaration) – should not be told. All manner of spurious movies about Israel – including the awful Exodus – can be made and loved. I once watched a Hollywood film in which Israeli troops rushed to the Sabra and Chatila camps in 1982 to save the lives of Palestinians being massacred; in reality, the Israelis sent the murderers into the camps, watched while they slaughtered the innocent – and did nothing. I was there.

So I called Rula Jebreal in New York from my home in Beirut and told her frankly what I thought of Miral. But we both agreed that the real reason for the political/racial attacks on her movie was its existence. "Why can't a Palestinian woman tell her own story?" she asked. And she is absolutely right, even if only one cinema in New York is showing the movie. My advice to her was twofold: never apologise if you've done nothing wrong, and never, never, never, never, never give up. Thank you, Churchill!....."

Foreign Office memo shows 2002 plan to sell Iraq invasion to UK media


Strategy for bringing the media onside was drawn up six months before UN gave approval for an attack on Saddam

Chris Ames and Richard Norton-Taylor
guardian.co.uk, Friday 10 December 2010

"The Foreign Office was planning for the possibility that Britain might attack Iraq without UN approval more than six months before the invasion, according to a hitherto classified document written shortly before a meeting between Tony Blair and George Bush at Camp David.

The document, drawn up by John Williams, press adviser to the then foreign secretary, Jack Straw, spells out ways to soften up the media, including "critics like the Guardian". Under the heading Not taking the UN route, Williams wrote: "Our argument should be narrow, and put with vigour – Iraq is uniquely dangerous."

His memo, titled Iraq Media Strategy, is dated 4 September 2002, when the government was still trying to get UN support for military action and when Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, was advising that clear UN authority was needed. The document was also written as Whitehall and MI6 were being wound up by No 10 to provide much-needed ammunition for the government's Iraq weapons dossier......"

موقع "الأخبار" ما زال معطلاً... ولكنها متوفرة...


"لا يزال موقع صحيفة "الأخبار" البيروتية معطلاً بعد اخترافه امس من قبل قراصنة في اعقاب،على ما يبدو، نشر الصحيفة وثائق حصرية تتعلق بدول عربية سربها موقع ويكيليكس.
وقد تمكنت الصحيفة من نشر صفحاتها اليوم وأمس عبر موقع المدونات الألكترونية وورد بريس
:


The Rabbit Warns against Political Interference in STL


Al-Manar

"11/12/2010 Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on Friday that nobody will take seriously the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) investigating the 2005 assassination of Rafiq Hariri if there is interference in its ruling.

In an interview with French broadcaster TF1, Assad said: "If the decision of the tribunal is based on evidence, everybody will accept its conclusions, not only Syria but also Lebanon."
"If there is a decision based on a simple suspicion or political interference, then at that moment nobody will take the tribunal's conclusions seriously," Assad stated at the end of a two-day visit to France...."

Racists Unto the Nations: Rabbis say 'no housing for Arabs'


Hundreds of Israeli rabbis have signed a religious edict forbidding Jews from renting or selling homes to Arabs.

Mya Guarnieri
Al-Jazeera

"Hundreds of Israeli rabbis have signed a religious edict forbidding Jews from renting or selling homes or land to Arabs and other non-Jews. The public letter instructs Jews to "ostracise" those who disobey the order, which is widely viewed as an attack on the country's Palestinian citizens.

When the decree was announced on Tuesday, it had been signed by 50 rabbis, many of who are employed by the state of Israel as municipal religious leaders. Despite sharp public criticism, another 250 rabbis have added their names to the proclamation.

It is the latest battle in the ongoing religious campaign against non-Jews.....

Democracy under attack

Neve Gordon, the author of Israel's Occupation, remarked: "The rabbis are just an expression of the sentiment."

Some landlords have refused Arab tenants for years, Gordon added. "It's not new. What's new is the feeling that one can express this [without] shame ... and when you lose shame you've reached an extremely dangerous situation."

Gordon emphasised that this shift is not limited to the religious community.

"We shouldn't understand this outburst as an island. It has to do with the loyalty oath and other legislation that is now in the Knesset," Gordon said, referring to the controversial bill that would force non-Jews who seek citizenship to pledge allegiance to Israel as a Jewish state.

Human rights groups are concerned about scores of other bills, including one that would allow communities to turn potential residents away due to their ethnic, religious, or socioeconomic background, and another that would punish any citizen - Jewish or Arab - who participates in the global campaign to boycott Israeli products.

Gordon called such legislation "proto-fascist" and remarked that "the democratic elements of [Israel] are under intense attack"."

Friday, December 10, 2010

Wikileaks donations going well despite Visa, Mastercard shutdown

"Olafur V. Sigurvinsson, co-founder of the Swiss-Icelandic web host DataCell, says that donations to Wikileaks have only been increasing over the last few days.

After both Visa and Mastercard stopped allowing donations to the whistle-blowing website, DataCell started helping people to donate directly by bank transfer. “The credit card companies are just not a part of the transactions. There are just as many donations as before, if not more, but they are just transferred direct,” Sigurvinsson told DV. “We have assisted some 2,000 people with that just today.”

He added that emails have been pouring in all day and that people are very upset because there is nothing illegal about Wikileaks...."

The Story of Elias Murr, Saboteur


A Damning Wikileaks Revelation

AN IMPORTANT PIECE

By RANNIE AMIRI
CounterPunch

"When Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers crossed into southern Lebanon and were caught snooping around the village of Ayta al-Shab on July 12, 2006, it was the pretext needed for Israel to launch a vicious 34-day land, sea and aerial assault on the country. The offensive’s principal objective—the destruction of Hezbollah—was not achieved. Two years after the war’s end we now learn, thanks to WikiLeaks, that Lebanese Defense Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Elias Murr gave Israel strategic military advice on how to finish the job....

Israel’s inside man

The diplomatic cable of note was first published in Lebanon’s leftist Al-Akhbar daily on Dec. 7 [1]. It recounts a March 2008 meeting that took place in Beirut between U.S. Chargé D'affaires Michele Sison (who later became ambassador to Lebanon) and Defense Minister Murr. In the conversation with Sison, Murr made suggestions and offered Israel advice on how best to defeat Hezbollah in a war he believed was imminent......

“Murr told us that Israel would do well to avoid two things when it comes for Hizballah. One, it must not touch the Blue Line [the line demarcating the Israeli-Lebanese border] or the UNSCR 1701 areas [the buffer zone patrolled by United Nations peacekeepers] as this will keep Hezbollah out of these areas. Two, Israel cannot bomb bridges and infrastructure in the Christian areas. The Christians were supporting Israel in 2006 until they started bombing their bridges.”

Murr tried to determine how long the invading Israeli forces would take to “clean out” Hezbollah fighters from the Beka’a valley so he could determine the amount of supplies needed to support Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) troops stationed in an area sympathetic to Hezbollah:

“Murr was especially concerned for members of the 1st and 8th Brigades in the Beka’a valley. Murr thinks that these units will be cut off from HQ support while Israel is conducting operations against Hizballah in the Beka'a … The LAF will move to pre-position food, money, and water with these units so they can stay on their bases when Israel comes for Hizballah—discreetly, Murr added.”.....

The unanswered questions
Who else in the government, then and now, knew about Murr’s actions?
What authority did he have in asking the U.S. to spy on Hezbollah locations in Lebanon without government approval?
How much of what Murr said to Sison did then-Army Commander Michel Suleiman know? Was he aware that Murr passed on military advice to the IDF?
What was Suleiman’s reaction to Murr’s instruction for the army to stand down should Israel attack?
The cable read: “Defense Minister Murr told us that he promised Sleiman the political cover for LAF inaction.”

Is Suleiman, Lebanon’s current president, also complicit?

There are petitions circulating calling for Murr to resign or be fired. When one betrays the defense of his nation to a foreign power, it does not call for a simple resignation letter or job termination. It requires a thorough judicial inquiry. After the WikiLeaks memo is authenticated and its veracity confirmed, Murr must stand trial for treason. "

Al-Jazeera Video: WikiLeaks' Swedish bunkers



"The US has said that it was investigating the ongoing cyber attacks against the websites of companies that have cut ties with WikiLeaks, the Whistle-blowing website.

In recent days, supporters of the website have hacked into the websites of companies like Mastercard, Visa, and Paypal after Wikileaks itself had become the victim of similar attacks.

But as Nazanine Moshiri discovered, the secret to its survival lies deep underground in Sweden."

Al-Jazeera Video: Israel's unwanted citizens



"Palestinian citizens of Israel are complaining about a string of policies, which they say are designed to drive them out of Israel.

First, a bill requiring them to pledge allegiance to a Jewish state was passed by the Israeli cabinet.

Now the Knesset is debating whether to stop Arab Israelis from living in cities where there's a Jewish majority.

So who are Palestinian-Israelis and how did they become citizens of a state that doesn't want them?

Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros reports."

Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg: Julian Assange is Not a Terrorist

Democracy Now!
With Amy Goodman



"WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will remain in a London prison until a British court takes up a Swedish request for extradition for questioning on sexual crime allegations. An international group of former intelligence officers and ex-government officials have released a statement in support of Assange. We speak to one of the signatories, Daniel Ellsberg, the famous whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War in 1971. "If I released the Pentagon Papers today, I would be called a terrorist," Ellsberg says. "Bradley Manning and Julian Assange are no more terrorists than I am, and I am not."...."

Hussein Ibish And The Good Old Days


".......Abunimah and other pro-Palestine activists are is still calling out anti-Semites while they continue to defend the same Palestinian rights Ibish articulated so well in those old days. The Palestinian activist community condemns all racists including the rabid racists Ibish now describes as partners for “cooperation towards peace.” Those long lost days are indeed gone Hussein, and you now have a new set of friends and colleagues, but unfortunately you appear to have lost much more. It didn’t take very long to replace your old friends with new ones from among the folks at the Israeli embassy, AIPAC, and The Israel project. In fact, your descent unlike your friend Christopher Hitchens, was a very short-term process. You quickly made new friends and completed your metamorphosis, but unfortunately you can’t ever find a replacement for self-respect, and it took you less than a 140 characters to remind us all just how low you have sunk."

It’s Payback Time!


The cyberwar begins

by Justin Raimondo, December 10, 2010

"The headlines are ablaze with news of the war – no, not that war, or that war, or even this warI’m talking about the “cyberwar” being waged against the enemies of WikiLeaks, not only the American and Swedish governments, but also the corporate collaborators who have done their best to drive WikiLeaks into the ground.

A group of computer-savvy warriors for truth and justice, who call themselves “Anonymous,” have brought down the internet operations of MasterCard, Visa, and FinancePost (the Swiss that abruptly terminated WikiLeaks’ account), as well the site of the Swedish prosecutors’ office and that of the odious “feminist” lawyer, Claes Borgstrom, who is fronting for the CIA’s sex-smear-frame-up of Julian Assange.

This cyberwar, which was started by the US, has two sides going at it......

One last thing: these “hactivists” have been denounced as “nihilists,” and “anarchists” (as if the two terms are synonymous, which they are not), but this is just regimist propaganda designed to scare people into accepting an ever-tightening tyranny that is reacting in a way that seals its own doom. It is not “nihilism” to oppose our rulers and their “new world order” of client states and perpetual war: it is patriotism of the highest order, patriotism in the service of liberty. They think they can stop the rising tide of rebellion by arresting a 16-year-old boy in the Netherlands – but can they arrest the over 40,000 people who have so far downloaded the Low Orbit Ion Cannon, the hi-tech weapon of choice that brought down MasterCard? Of course not. They can only rule by fear, and smear – but only if we let them.

Of course, Antiwar.com does not endorse illegal acts, nor do we urge people to engage in them. But this war, the Cyberwar I, was started by the Powers That Be – and now let them fight it, even as they realize that they cannot win. "

What the Leaks Reveal, by Dave Brown


Lebanon holds its breath over leaked revelations


By Robert Fisk in Beirut

"Julian Assange may claim that WikiLeaks' disclosure of US documents is for the good of the world, but in Lebanon they have had an incendiary effect. The Hezbollah party is using the cables as proof of UN involvement with Washington – and thus, by extension, with Israel – and politicians are desperately denying that they gave intelligence information to the Americans about Hezbollah's secret communications system.

For weeks, the Hezbollah's secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, has been denouncing the UN's tribunal into the murder of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri as an American-Israeli plot. He says that anyone giving security information to the Americans is an Israeli spy.....

The UN tribunal's forthcoming accusations – which may be mercifully delayed – have already caused the Beirut government to divide into opposing camps. Now the US cables reveal that the UN has indeed been cooperating with the United States, asking for aerial reconnaissance pictures of the Bekaa Valley and sending DNA samples from Mr Hariri's suspected killer, Ahmad Abu Adass, to FBI headquarters for examination.

One of the most damaging reports is a conversation between the Lebanese defence minister Elias Murr and then US ambassador Jeffrey Feltman.....

Yet more dangerous still is a 2008 cable stating that former Lebanese telecommunications minister Marwan Hamadeh provided the US with maps detailing locations of Hezbollah's communications network. The network, according to former US ambassador Michele Sison, "covers the Palestinian camps, and the Hezbollah training camps in the Bekaa.......

All of this is causing the Lebanese to hold their breath for more revelations. And for those named in the cables to hold their breath even more fearfully. "Sister" Syria is known to have taken its own revenge for much less. As for the Hezbollah, their MP for Tyre, Hassan Fadlallah, says the cables prove "that the US is using the court and the investigation committee as a tool to target the [Hezbollah] resistance"."

The returning issue of Palestine's refugees


It's 62 years since the UN passed a resolution on the rights of Palestinian refugees – rights Israel must recognise for peace

Saeb Erekat
guardian.co.uk, Friday 10 December 2010

"Before his murder in 1948, Lord Folke Bernadotte, the first UN mediator to the Arab-Israeli conflict, stated: "It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent [Palestinian] victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes, while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine." Lord Bernadotte paid for his candour with his life as Jewish militants assassinated him under the direction of Yitzhak Shamir, the man who would later become prime minister of Israel.

Less than three months after his death, as the war of 1948 ground to a close, and nearly three-quarters of the entire indigenous Palestinian population had been displaced by Israeli forces, the UN passed general assembly resolution 194, calling for the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes and to be awarded compensation for their losses......

When negotiations resume once again[The clown is already "negotiating" in Washington, D.C. He was born to "negotiate"; his pay that is.] , the world must not abandon the refugees of Palestine, nor attempt to coerce their representatives to do so either.

Israel's recognition of Palestinian refugee rights and its agreement to provide reparation and meaningful refugee choice in the exercise of these rights will not change the reality in the Middle East overnight, nor will it lead to an existential crisis for Israel. What it will certainly do is mark the beginning of a new reality that will no longer be rooted in repression, denial of rights, and discrimination. In other words, it will lead to a lasting peace – the kind of peace envisaged by Lord Bernadotte and hoped for by Palestinians and Israelis alike."

John Pilger: Why are wars not being reported honestly?


The public needs to know the truth about wars. So why have journalists colluded with governments to hoodwink us?

John Pilger

The Guardian, Friday 10 December 2010

"In the US Army manual on counterinsurgency, the American commander General David Petraeus describes Afghanistan as a "war of perception . . . conducted continuously using the news media". What really matters is not so much the day-to-day battles against the Taliban as the way the adventure is sold in America where "the media directly influence the attitude of key audiences". Reading this, I was reminded of the Venezuelan general who led a coup against the democratic government in 2002. "We had a secret weapon," he boasted. "We had the media, especially TV. You got to have the media."

Never has so much official energy been expended in ensuring journalists collude with the makers of rapacious wars which, say the media-friendly generals, are now "perpetual". In echoing the west's more verbose warlords, such as the waterboarding former US vice-president Dick Cheney, who predicated "50 years of war", they plan a state of permanent conflict wholly dependent on keeping at bay an enemy whose name they dare not speak: the public.....

In my film, I asked Assange how WikiLeaks dealt with the draconian secrecy laws for which Britain is famous. "Well," he said, "when we look at the Official Secrets Act labelled documents, we see a statement that it is an offence to retain the information and it is an offence to destroy the information, so the only possible outcome is that we have to publish the information." These are extraordinary times."

WikiLeaks cables cast Hosni Mubarak as Egypt's ruler for life


US ambassador tells Hillary Clinton that president will win rigged election next year, his 30th in power

Simon Tisdall
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 9 December 2010

"Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's long-serving president, is likely to seek re-election next year and will "inevitably" win a poll that will not be free and fair, the US ambassador to Cairo, Margaret Scobey, predicted in a secret cable to Hillary Clinton last year.....

Scobey's candid view, in a cable dated May 2009, is that Mubarak, 82, who heads the Arab world's most populous and influential nation, is most likely to die in office rather than step down voluntarily or be replaced in a plausible democratic vote. "The next presidential elections are scheduled for 2011 and if Mubarak is still alive it is likely he will run again and, inevitably, win," Scobey writes......

"Mubarak continues to state that in his view Iraq needs a 'tough, strong military officer who is fair' as leader. This telling observation, we believe, describes Mubarak's own view of himself.".....

In Mubarak's view US pressure for reform in the Shah's Iran pre-1979, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and US support for elections in Gaza that brought Hamas to power in 2006 were all policies that backfired calamitously....."

WikiLeaks cables, day 11: summary of today's key points


There are no fewer than 251,287 cables from more than 250 US embassies around the world, obtained by WikiLeaks. We present a day-by-day guide to the revelations from the US embassy cables both from the Guardian and its international media partners in the story

US embassy cables: every day's revelations at a glance

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Lebanese Newspaper Site Downed for Covering WikiLeaks


Paper Printed Cables Embarrassing to Lebanese Officials

Antiwar.com

"A private Arabic-language newspaper in Lebanon, al-Akhbar, has been knocked down by a series of coordinated hacking attacks against their internal information systems, in apparent retaliation for the paper’s heavy coverage of the WikiLeaks cables.

Earlier in the week the site found itself banned in Tunisia for reprinting a cable detailing corruption in the Tunisian President’s family. But the bigger news seems to have been its coverage of Lebanon itself.


Murr had angrily claimed the comments in the cable were “out of context,” but the claims ring true, as Lebanon’s military stayed on base during the last Israeli invasion. As Israel killed some 1,200 civilians in the last invasion in 2006, the seeming encouragement from Murr to launch another attack (and at a time when Israeli officials insist another invasion is “inevitable”) was likely to anger many. It is exactly the sort of truth for which the WikiLeaks cables were released, and also exactly the sort of truth for which censorship seems to be enjoying a renaissance the world over."

Latest Cartoon by Emad Hajjaj


Sexual Harassment??....
Sure!

Al-Akhbar's hacker

By Angry Arab

"The hacker has posted a message requesting that a picture of the Servitor of the Holy Places be posted on Al-Akhbar's site. "



Here it is As'ad:



Or how about this one:

Supporters Foil Attempts to Shut Down WikiLeaks

US Efforts to Censor Whistleblower Meet With Failure

Antiwar.com

".....But 10 days later the site is not only surviving, but thriving. Having been abandoned by Amazon.com the site relocated to OVH, and that host is eagerly resisiting French government efforts to oust WikiLeaks from their server.

Even if they eventually succeeded, WikiLeaks has had an outpouring of support leading to hundreds if not thousands of mirrors cropping up. WikiLeaks.Antiwar.com automatically redirects users to the most efficient and up-to-date website based on their current connection....."

في العمق - وثائق ويكيليكس و الأمن القومي العربي

Azmi Bishara on Wikileaks and Arab National Security
Al-Jazeera Video

AN EXCELLENT INTERVIEW
Don't Miss it if You Know Arabic!
(Scroll down for more new posts)

Latuff on Wikileaks



Courtesy of Uruknet

Read Al-Akhbar's issue of today: لقراءة موقع الأخبار وعدد اليوم


Courtesy of Angry Arab

Israel turns blind eye to racist state-employed rabbis


Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 9 December 2010

"Jews must not rent homes to "gentiles." That was the religious decree issued this week by at least fifty of Israel's leading rabbis, many of them employed by the state as municipal religious leaders. Jews should first warn, then "ostracize" fellow Jews who fail to heed the directive, the rabbis declared.

The decree is the latest in a wave of racist pronouncements from some of Israel's most influential rabbis.....

Shapira, who advocates killing non-Jewish babies, receives large sums from the education ministry for his yeshiva -- a seminary where he spreads his message of hate. Religious students also receive extra subsidies unavailable to normal students to encourage their attendance at such yeshivas.

The rabbis exert their influence on the youngest and most impressionable too. When the new school year started in September, 52 percent of Jewish children in first grade attended a strictly religious school.

Pupils in some of the most religious schools, Rachlevsky pointed out, are taught that Jews sit above nature, which comprises four categories: "inanimate," "vegetable," "animal" and "speakers" -- or non-Jews, who are considered no more than talking animals."

Al-Jazeera Video: Cyberwar erupts over WikiLeaks



"A cyberwar is being waged over WikiLeaks. It began after MasterCard, PayPal and Visa refused to take payments for WikiLeaks, which runs on donations.

In retaliation, a hacker group calling itself "Anonymous", launched Operation Payback: targeting the credit card companies, with what are called "Denial of Service" attacks.

They managed to temporarily take down Visa and MasterCard's main websites.

But the companies say transactions were not affected.

Now, Twitter and Facebook have suspended the accounts of the "Anonymous" group.

Twitter was being seen as a rallying point for the so-called "hacktivists".

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Kevin Anderson, a technology journalist and a specialist in New Media, shares his views on the cat-and-mouse game being played out on the internet."

Al-Jazeera Video: WikiLeaks controversy sparks cyber war



"Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, may now be sitting in a UK prison, but it has not stopped his website and supporters from causing more chaos and controversy.

One of the world's biggest credit card websites, Mastercard, has been hacked in what appears to be a revenge attack for blocking donations to WikiLeaks, along with a number of other sites that have recently distanced themselves from the whistleblowing website."

Palestine 2011: The Breaking Point


A GOOD PIECE

By Jeff Halper
Palestine Chronicle

".......We are at the cusp of another such moment today, and we still have time - though not much time - to organize. Activist and civil society groups abroad should ask their Palestinian and Israeli counterparts for their evaluation of the political moment and suggestions on what to do should the Palestinian Authority collapse together with the "peace process." Thought should be given over how to transform the BDS campaign and the infrastructure of resistance it is creating from a blunt instrument into one capable of more focused resistance - of mobilizing churches, trade unions and universities, for example, and by priming sympathetic politicians to act when the moment arrives? In the absence of an ANC-type organization to direct us, we have a much more difficult job of communicating and of coordinating our actions. But we are in touch with one another. The political moment looming just weeks or months ahead demands our attention.

Life in the Occupied Territories is about to get even more difficult
, I believe, but perhaps we are finally approaching the breaking point. If that is the case, we must be there for the Palestinians on all the fronts: to protect them, to play our role in pushing the Occupation into unsustainability, to resist re-occupation, to act as watchdogs over political "processes" that threaten to impose apartheid in the guise of a two-state solution and, ultimately, to ensure that a just and lasting peace emerges. As weak and failed attempts by governments head for collapse, we must pick up the slack. 2011 is upon us."

Leaks and Leakers


by Philip Giraldi, December 09, 2010

"Call me Saul on the road to Damascus. I have seen the light. As a former intelligence officer, I was initially appalled at the leak of a quarter of a million classified documents by someone who had responsibility for protecting them. I was highly skeptical of the entire WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning saga but following the leaks has convinced me that there is a lot of material that deserves a public airing to demonstrate to the American people how Washington is pursuing a senseless policy almost everywhere in the world. I have been particularly mortified in reading the accounts of meetings of US Ambassadors and Undersecretaries of State with their foreign counterparts, encounters revealing an unbelievable arrogance derived from the Bush Administration dictum "you are either with us or against us." Persian King of Kings Darius addressing his satraps could not do it any better.....

The United States should not be mounting a huge international campaign to silence WikiLeaks, nor will it be successful. Nor should it attempt to "regulate" the internet, which is the inevitable next step. And the attempts to personally punish Assange, which might succeed, are a measure of how low America and its allies in Europe and Australia have sunk. He has broken no law even in an age of Patriot Acts and Military Commissions and the charges against him in Sweden appear to be a set-up. Once upon a time there was a rule of law in the United States and a presumption of innocence until proven guilty, but no longer. Ultimately WikiLeaks will rise and fall based on its credibility and its ability to tell stories that are being suppressed elsewhere and that the public believes should be heard. WikiLeaks must be allowed to speak."

What’s Behind the War on WikiLeaks


by Ray McGovern, December 09, 2010

"WikiLeaks has teased the genie of transparency out of a very opaque bottle, and powerful forces in America, who thrive on secrecy, are trying desperately to stuff the genie back in.

How far down the U.S. has slid
can be seen, ironically enough, in a recent commentary in Pravda (that’s right, Russia’s Pravda):

"What WikiLeaks has done is make people understand why so many Americans are politically apathetic… After all, the evils committed by those in power can be suffocating, and the sense of powerlessness that erupts can be paralyzing, especially when … government evildoers almost always get away with their crimes. …

"So shame on Barack Obama, Eric Holder and all those who spew platitudes about integrity, justice and accountability while allowing war criminals and torturers to walk freely upon the earth. … The American people should be outraged that [their] government has transformed a nation with a reputation for freedom, justice, tolerance and respect for human rights into a backwater that revels in its criminality, cover-ups, injustices and hypocrisies."

Odd, isn’t it, that it takes a Pravda commentator to drive home the point that the Obama administration is on the wrong side of history...."

WikiLeaks vs The Machine


US government tells firms to pull plug on whistleblowing website as hackers cause chaos with revenge attacks on Assange's 'enemies'

The Independent

"The American corporations blamed for trying to silence WikiLeaks are under sustained attack from a loose global alliance of anonymous cyber hackers.

As the 39-year-old Australian editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks languished in Wandsworth Prison accused of sex offences, the financial and technological giants that withdrew support from the website in the face of pressure from the US government were hit by online hacking attacks, paralysing their net operations. MasterCard's website was downed.

Another of the companies, PayPal, confirmed that it had only stopped collecting donations for WikiLeaks after intervention from the US State Department – fuelling suspicions that the US is leaning on businesses to strangle support for the website, which is involved in the embarrassing leak of 250,000 American diplomatic cables....."

Israeli rabbis' racist decree strikes at the soul of Judaism


Telling Jews not to rent houses to Arabs is religious fascism. So far, the state has failed to intervene

Mya Guarnieri
(Mya Guarnieri is a Tel Aviv-based journalist and writer.)

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 8 December 2010

"More than 50 of Israel's leading rabbis have issued a religious decree forbidding Jews from renting or selling homes or land to non-Jews – namely, Arabs, migrant workers and African refugees. The letter was signed by rabbis across the country (many of whom are employed by the state as municipal religious leaders) and urged Jews to first warn and then "ostracise" fellow Jews who disobey the edict.

It's just the latest wave in a rising tide of religious fascism.....

Israel is handing the reins over to religious fascists – men who say Jews shouldn't rent to Arabs, migrant workers, or African refugees; settlers who build illegally and imperil any hope for peace and Palestinian sovereignty.

It's an ominous sign for the future. What's next? Will they find a way to claim that those of us who speak out, people like me, are no longer Jews? Will we then be subject to religious decrees that ban employers from hiring us and demand that landlords evict us? "

Collaborators in Washington to Appease Zionist Lobby and Pick Up Their Paychecks




Al-Manar

"09/12/2010 Palestinian premier Salam Fayyad and chief negotiator Saeb Erakat were on Thursday flying to Washington to hold talks with top US officials over the crisis in “peace talks.”

Fayyad was to hold talks with Hillary Clinton early on Friday ahead of a conference at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at which the secretary of state was to give a keynote address outlining a new strategy for advancing the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process.”

Fayyad was also expected to address delegates at the conference, as was Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, who also left for Washington late on Wednesday.

The forum was to take place just days after Washington admitted defeat in its efforts to secure an Israeli freeze on settlement building -- the Palestinians' condition for resuming direct peace talks....."

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

A Great Cartoon by Emad Hajjaj


In the News: Netanyahu Thanked Abbas for Helping in Putting Out the Fires in Carmel.

Netanyahu to the Puppet:
Thanks for the Help; Got to Go....
To Demolish Your House!

Shalom!

ويكيليكس: سوريا رفضت توسّلات إيرانية للإنضمام إليها في حال وقوع حرب مع إسرائيل


ويكيليكس: سوريا رفضت توسّلات إيرانية للإنضمام إليها في حال وقوع حرب مع إسرائيل

"واشنطن- ذكرت برقية دبلوماسية أمريكية كشفها موقع ويكيليكس أن سوريا رفضت (توسّلات) إيرانية بالالتزام بالانضمام إليها في حال وقوع حرب بينها وبين إسرائيل أو بين حزب الله وإسرائيل.
ويعود تاريخ البرقية الموجهة من السفارة الأمريكية في دمشق إلى وزارة الخارجية في واشنطن إلى كانون الأول/ ديسمبر 2009 وكشف عنها الثلاثاء وتنقل عن مصدر دبلوماسي سوري لا تذكر إسمه أن سوريا قاومت توسلات إيرانية للالتزام بالانضمام إلى طهران إذا اندلعت حرب بين إيران وإسرائيل أو حزب الله وإسرائيل.

وقال المصدر إن مسؤولين إيرانيين كانوا في سوريا (لجمع الحلفاء) تحسباً لضربة عسكرية إسرائيلية، مشيراً إلى أن الإيرانيين كانوا أكيدين من حصول الضربة الإسرائيلية وكانوا يناقشون موعدها.

وتابع المصدر إن الرد السوري كان إبلاغ الإيرانيين بألاّ يتطلعوا إلى سوريا أو حزب الله أو حماس "لخوض هذه الحرب"، وقال: قلنا لهم إن إيران قوية بما يكفي لتطوير برنامجها النووي بنفسها ومحاربة إسرائيل، مضيفاً "نحن ضعفاء جداً".

وقال المصدر انه رغم أن الإيرانيين يعرفون أن سوريا تدين التهديدات الإسرائيلية وستدين أية عمليات عسكرية إسرائيلية ضد إيران، ولكنهم لم يكونوا راضين عن الرد السوري.

وسئل المصدر في الوثيقة عن النصيحة التي كانت سوريا تعطيها لإيران، فقال إن سوريا إلى جانب تركيا وقطر كان تستعد لاشتباك عسكري إسرائيلي إيراني في المستقبل القريب. وأضاف "أبلغني مسؤولون عسكريون انهم رصدوا طائرات إسرائيلية من دون طيار تتجسس فوق مواقعنا".

وأشار إلى أن بعض المسؤولين السوريين اعتبروا طائرات الاستطلاع الإسرائيلية بمثابة مؤشر على أن إسرائيل قد تسعى الى تعطيل محطات الرادار المضادة للطائرات كجزء من خطة لإرسال طائرات حربية في الأجواء السورية أثناء توجهها إلى إيران.

وقال "نتوقع أن نستيقظ ذات صباح في وقت قريب لنعلم أن هجوماً إسرائيلياً وقع. ثم نتوقع الرد الإيراني. عندها سنبدأ نحن وتركيا وقطر العمل على التوسط لوقف إطلاق نار ومن ثم التوصل إلى حل طويل الأجل يشمل البرنامجين النوويين للبلدين. هذا هو أفضل سيناريو لأن السيناريوهات الأخرى سيئة بالنسبة لنا وللمنطقة".

وأضاف: نأمل أن تعترف الولايات المتحدة بجهودنا الدبلوماسية لحل أزمة إقليمية وتعطينا بعض الفضل للعب دور إيجابي.
"

From Jefferson to Assange

By Robert Scheer
TruthDig

".......Actually Ellsberg’s position, as morally strong as it was, was weaker than that of Assange, in that the former Marine and top Pentagon adviser was working at the government-funded Rand Corp., where he had agreed to rules about the handling of classified information, including the Pentagon Papers. Assange operates under no such restraints and is an even clearer example of the journalist who ferrets out news and attempts to report it. He had no special clearance that provided him access, and what he did was no different from what the editors of The New York Times did in publishing news that was fit to print.

It is outrageous for any journalist, or respecter of what every American president has claimed is our inalienable, God-given right to a free press, not to join in Assange’s defense on this issue, as distinct from what increasingly appear to be trumped-up charges that led to his voluntary arrest on Tuesday in London in a case involving his personal behavior. Abandon Assange and you abandon the bedrock of our republic: the public’s right to know."

Real News Video: Wikileaks and the Diplomacy of Secrecy

Gareth Porter, Investigative Journalist and Ray McGovern, Retired CIA Analyst discuss Wikileaks


More at The Real News

Naked emperor hails sex by surprise

By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

"For a "Western democratic" system trying to shut down WikiLeaks at all costs, the bizarre Swedish sex saga leading to Julian Assange's arrest is oh so convenient. But while they can jail the messenger, they can't keep the message captive. All the world now knows the emperor's genuflecting to freedoms of the information age was just a mask to hide the sordid mud-wrestle that is the real making of diplomacy.....

The US government doesn't even register that Spain may want to extradite George "Dubya" Bush for war crimes; but all stops will be pulled, and maybe even laws bent, to get an Assange extradition (for the record: that's impossible under current US espionage laws). And this from a government that in nine years was incapable of finding the "terrorists" who, according to the official narrative, actually killed over 3,000 people.

"Sex by surprise" and its derived dodgy charges may eventually keep Assange in jail. Yet this won't kill the messenger - not to mention the message. It's all over the net, via BitTorrent - and it's totally viral (mirrored in 748 sites already, and counting). Moreover, two, three, a million Assanges will spring up. And they will have learned their lesson: if you want to show the emperor is naked, you've got to be as careful with your sex partners as you are with your sources."

The Russians Did Better ... So Why Did They Lose?

US Now in Afghanistan Longer Than Soviets

By PATRICK COCKBURN
CounterPunch

Kabul.

".......Some US officials wonder if they might not learn something from Soviet failures and successes. One tells of how a visiting delegation from Central Asia, which included a former Soviet general, visited a US base in east Afghanistan. Enthusiastic American officers explained the different ways they were trying to fight the insurgents and win the loyalty of the people. Eventually the general cut them off and said wearily: “We tried all that when we were here and it didn’t work then, so why should it work now.” "

Attorney: WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange Endangered by Bail Denial in London; Still No Charges Filed in Sweden

Democracy Now!
With Amy Goodman



"WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will remain in custody until at least December 14th, when a British court will take up a Swedish request for extradition. Assange hasn’t been charged with a crime but is wanted for questioning in Sweden on allegations of unlawful sexual contact with two women. Assange has maintained his innocence and called the case a political witch-hunt that has intensified with WikiLeaks’ release of secret U.S. diplomatic cables. We speak with his attorney, Jennifer Robinson......."

OPERATION PAYBACK: MasterCard site partially frozen by hackers in WikiLeaks 'revenge'


'Operation: Payback' hacks into MasterCard site over payment network's decision to cease taking donations to WikiLeaks

The Guardian

"The website of MasterCard has been hacked and partially paralysed in apparent revenge for the international credit card's decision to cease taking donations to WikiLeaks.

A group of online activists calling themselves Anonymous appear to have orchestrated a DDOS ("distributed denial of service") attack on the site, bringing its service at www.mastercard.com to a halt for many users.

"Operation: Payback" is the latest salvo in the increasingly febrile technological war over WikiLeaks. MasterCard announced on Monday that it would no longer process donations to the whistleblowing site, claiming it was engaged in illegal activity.

The group, which has been linked to the influential internet messageboard 4Chan, has been targeting commercial sites which have cut their ties with WikiLeaks. The Swiss bank PostFinance has already been targeted by Anonymous after it froze payments to WikiLeaks, and the group has vowed to target Paypal, which has also ceased processing payments to the site. Other possible targets are EveryDNS.net, which suspended dealings on 3 December, Amazon, which removed WikiLeaks content from its EC2 cloud on 1 December, and Visa, which suspended its own dealings yesterday......."

Julian Assange in the Honey Trap

How they snared him

by Justin Raimondo, December 08, 2010

"Anyone who doubts the unmitigated evil of the US government and its international enablers has only to look at the disgraceful persecution of Julian Assange to see Washington’s brazen malevolence in full flower. As the WikiLeaks web site continues to release daily examples of US incompetence, bullying, venality, and corruption, the response from the Imperial City has been a coordinated campaign of lies, smears, and what can only be described as utter filth.

This outpouring of satanic bile has been disgorged onto the front pages of the world’s newspapers in retaliation for the “crime” of revealing the everyday machinations and cynical maneuverings of the US government as it rampages, loots, and murders its way across the face of the earth. In doing so, Assange and WikiLeaks have violated the first principle of the new world order, which is that they (the governments of the world) have every right to know what we’re saying in the privacy of our own homes: in our emails, our phone conversations, and anywhere else we (falsely) believe we’re free from prying eyes and ears. However, we have no right to know what they are doing, in our name – with our tax dollars – and to believe otherwise is “treason.” ......

Truth is on trial – and a conviction would be fatal not only to WikiLeaks, but for the cause of liberty itself. This is an issue that the ruling elite is counting on to plug the giant hole in their armor called the internet. We can’t afford to lose this one – at least without inflicting some pretty heavy damage on the enemy.

Assange is the first high-profile political prisoner is a new age of repression and fear. If he is martyred to the cause of liberty, let his bravery and determination serve as an example and an inspiration to us all. But we don’t need any more martyrs: we need living activists, like Assange, who are willing to take on the States of the world. We must tirelessly work to free him, and in the process free ourselves."

Qatar's the star – and Washington is worried


The latest cables released by Wikileaks show that the emirate's growing power is seen as a threat elsewhere

By Robert Fisk

"Despite the leaked US diplomatic reports on Qatar and their claim that it is a major source of "terrorist" funding, Washington would do well not to mess with the Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.

He is the only world leader to march out of an American vice-president's office in fury after just seven seconds. And his Al-Jazeera television station – for truly it does belong to him – has revolutionised reporting in the Middle East. Qatar may be tiny but in the region, it is very, very big indeed....."

This case must not obscure what WikiLeaks has told us


A GOOD COMMENT

By Johann Hari
The Independent

"Every one of us owes a debt to Julian Assange. Thanks to him, we now know that our governments are pursuing policies that place you and your family in considerably greater danger. Wikileaks has informed us they have secretly launched war on yet another Muslim country, sanctioned torture, kidnapped innocent people from the streets of free countries and intimidated the police into hushing it up, and covered up the killing of 15,000 civilians – five times the number killed on 9/11. Each one of these acts has increased the number of jihadis. We can only change these policies if we know about them – and Assange has given us the black-and-white proof.

Each of the wikileaks revelations has been carefully weighed to ensure there is a public interest in disclosing it. Of the more than 250,000 documents they hold, they have released fewer than 1000 – and each of those has had the names of informants, or any information that could place anyone at risk, removed.....

Here’s some examples. The Obama administration has been denying that it has expanded the current “war” to yet another country, Yemen. Now we know that is a lie. Ali Abdulah Saleh, the Yemeni dictator, brags in these cables to a US diplomat: “We’ll continue to say the bombs are ours, not yours.”......

Whatever that judgment turns out to be, we will never unlearn or unknow the great truths Julian Assange has brought us. The hysterical state-power hacks saying he is “a terrorist” should go tell it to all the tortured Iraqis, all the terrorized Honduran democrats, and all the bombed Yemenis whose story he has – at last – brought out from the sealed-away world of Top Secret cables. "

WikiLeaks cables, day 9: summary of today's key points

There are no fewer than 251,287 cables from more than 250 US embassies around the world, obtained by WikiLeaks. We present a day-by-day guide to the revelations from the US embassy cables both from the Guardian and its international media partners in the storyUS embassy cables: each day's revelations at a glance

WikiLeaks cables: Saudi princes throw parties boasting drink, drugs and sex


Royals flout puritanical laws to throw parties for young elite while religious police are forced to turn a blind eye

Heather Brooke
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 7 December 2010

"In what may prove a particularly incendiary cable, US diplomats describe a world of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll behind the official pieties of Saudi Arabian royalty.
Jeddah consulate officials described an underground Halloween party, thrown last year by a member of the royal family, which broke all the country's Islamic taboos. Liquor and prostitutes were present in abundance, according to leaked dispatches, behind the heavily-guarded villa gates.

The party was thrown by a wealthy prince from the large Al-Thunayan family. The diplomats said his identity should be kept secret. A US energy drinks company also put up some of the finance.

"Alcohol, though strictly prohibited by Saudi law and custom, was plentiful at the party's well-stocked bar. The hired Filipino bartenders served a cocktail punch using sadiqi, a locally-made moonshine," the cable said. "It was also learned through word-of-mouth that a number of the guests were in fact 'working girls', not uncommon for such parties."

The dispatch from the US partygoers, signed off by the consul in Jeddah, Martin Quinn, added: "Though not witnessed directly at this event, cocaine and hashish use is common in these social circles."....."

Naomi Klein on the Rape Fabrication


Rape is being used in the #Assange prosecution in the same way that women's freedom was used to invade Afghanistan. Wake up! #wikilieaks

WikiLeaks cables: Syria stunned by Hezbollah assassination


Leaked US reports reveal Assad regime shocked at killing of founder member of Syrian-backed Lebanese militant group

Ian Black, Middle East editor
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 7 December 2010

" Syrian officials were stunned by the mysterious assassination of a senior Hezbollah operative in Damascus two years ago, triggering a blame game between rival security services and frenzied speculation across the Middle East about who did it.

US reports from February 2008, revealed by WikiLeaks, described how the regime of President Bashar al-Assad was shocked when Imad Mughniyeh was murdered by a sophisticated bomb planted in his car. Mughniyeh, a founder member of the militant Lebanese Shia movement, was wanted by the US, Israel, France and other governments. Hezbollah is backed by Iran and Syria.

"Syrian military intelligence and general intelligence directorate officials are currently engaged in an internecine struggle to blame each other for the breach of security that resulted in Mughniyeh's death," the US embassy reported......

US diplomats reported that the killing led to tensions between Syria and Iran, perhaps because Tehran shared Khoja's suspicion of Syrian complicity in the affair.

It took more than a year for Syrian-Iranian relations to improve, with a low-profile visit to Damascus in late 2009 by the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's (IRGC) elite al-Quds force, Qassem Suleimani, described by a Lebanese source as being at "the business end" of Hezbollah's military activities. US officials speculated that Soleimani's long absence was "perhaps a reflection of lingering tensions between Iran and Syria that erupted after the assassination of Mughniyeh"......"