The greatest contribution of these scholars is in mathematics. They founded Algebra; made Trigonometry an independent branch of mathematics; and achieved tremendous advances in other fields like Geometry and spherical geometry etc. In this case too the impetus for the development was provided by the Message. Al-Khwarizmi the founder of Algebra, was the first mathematician to work on the details of 'Arithmetic and Algebra of inheritance' besides the systematisation of the theory of quadratic equations. His treatise entitled 'Hisab Al-jabr wal muqabala', enjoyed tremendous popularity in the medieval West for centuries. Tabit ibn Qurrah of ninth century, who had translated the works of Euclid, Apollonius, Archimedes, and Ptolemy was another fine mathematician himself. The only surviving fragment of his original work contains an exceptionally brilliant chapter on the solution and properties of cubic equations.
Umar Khayyam, the famous poet, was another great mathematician. He invented the second and third degree of quadratic equations. The efforts of these mathematicians become all the more remarkable when we realise that they had not yet developed the symbolic algebra. Even for third degree equations, Khayyam had to write his problems and procedural steps in words and sentences.”
The algebraic symbols were introduced quite late. Al-Banna and Al-Marrakushi used them in thirteenth and fourteenth century. Later mathematicians like Qunfudh's and Al-Qalasadi's works of fourteenth and fifteenth century show quite a developed system of symbols for operations entailing extraction of square roots, exponentiation, and for unknown quantities in algebraic equations.
~ more... ~
See also: Glimpses of Renowned Scientists and Thinkers of Muslim Era
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Catholic bishop: 9/11 was an inside job
Bishop Richard Williamson speaks out against the official theory of the events of 9/11
Merchants of death: Exposing corporate financed holocaust in Africa
The UPC, FPRI, FNI—these are three of the scores of militias that have risen and fallen in Orientale since the war began in 1996 and, more poignantly, they are meaningless acronyms used to scramble the brains of western spectator-news-consumers.
First there was the Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A) that invaded Rwanda, and then came the Alliance for the Democratic Liberation of Zaire (ADFL) that marched across Zaire to unseat President Mobutu. Next came the "rebellion" with Jean-Pierre Bemba and the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), and all the different factions of the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie, or Congolese Rally for Democracy—RCD, RCD-G (Goma), RCD-K, RCD-K-ML—backed by Rwanda and Uganda.
Here are the comrades in arms who studied together at the Marxist University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania: Yoweri Museveni, Uganda's president; Laurent Desiré Kabila, the ADFL figurehead and assassinated president of the Democratic Republic of Congo; Meles Zenawi, president of Ethiopia; Isaias Afwerki, president of Eritrea; Africa scholar Mahmood Mamdani; former RCD leader Wamba dia Wamba; Paul Kagame, Rwanda's president; and John Garang (d. 2005), former leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and first president of South Sudan.
Both the RPF/A and SPLA waged successful covert guerrilla wars against governments that were considered "undesirable" by Washington; both achieved their objectives of seizing land and gaining control, and both insurgencies were covertly backed by U.S. Committee for Refugees official Roger Winter—a pivotal U.S. intelligence asset operating in Sudan and a dedicated ally of Yoweri Museveni, Paul Kagame and John Garang.
Winter's protégé is Susan Rice, Clinton's Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. Rice was one of the primary architects of the Pentagon's prized Africa Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI)—a euphemistically named entity created to project U.S. power in Africa, and run by U.S. Army Special Forces Command (SOCOM).[2]
The coups d'etat in Rwanda and Burundi occurred after the presidents Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira were assassinated on April 6, 1994. Similarly, more than a decade of covert U.S. military support for the SPLA, channeled through Uganda and Ethiopia, led to the Naivasha Peace Agreement of January 2005 and the creation of the autonomous country of South Sudan.
The "Rwanda genocide" began with the 1990 invasion of northern Rwanda by Ugandan forces that brutally targeted everyone in their path. By the time the RPF/A forces—comprised mostly of seasoned Ugandan troops—reached Kigali, more than 800,000 IDPs (internally displaced persons) were hovering around the capital city: they were terrified, they were homeless, they were hungry, they were angry and—justifiably—they took up arms. The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) and its Canadian General Romeo Dallaire clandestinely backed the illegal guerrilla war.[3]
The guerrilla wars in Rwanda and South Sudan were prosecuted much like the CIA-backed low-intensity guerrilla warfare, spawned by Washington, against populist movements in Honduras, Nicaragua, Chile and Guatemala. This is exactly what is playing out in Congo and Sudan today: low-intensity guerrilla warfare prosecuted by powerful shadow forces competing for land and loot.
SPLA leader John Garang received military training at the School of the Americas, Fort Benning, Georgia. Paul Kagame received training at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. At the time he was sent for training, Kagame was Museveni's director of military intelligence; upon his return he assumed command of the army created, financed and trained by Uganda: the Rwanda Patriotic Army.
Both Garang and Kagame likely received "counter-insurgency" training through the Pentagon's International Military Education and Training Program (IMET). Since 1998, the IMET program has provided training to 318 RDF and 291 UPDF soldiers. Many other IMET soldiers who attended the notorious School of the Americas are today known human rights violators in Latin America.
In North Kivu province we find the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and the National Congress for the Defense of the People, the CNDP, created by self-appointed Rwandan "General" Laurent Nkunda. Here the media has historically cast General Nkunda as good, the FDLR as evil. Only recently has Nkunda come under any kind of "harsh" criticism.
The war in Eastern Congo is almost universally described with clichés about the "Rwanda genocide." The usual targets of white media racial profiling and hysterical academic polemics are the Hutu—the infamous Interahamwe and FDLR—the "killers" that "fled Rwanda after committing genocide" there. This is how millions of innocent Hutu people—comprising over 85% of the populations of Rwanda and Burundi—are collectively dehumanized.
Congolese Mai Mai militias are described as "nationalists" sometimes "wearing bathroom fixtures on their heads" and "shooting magic bullets." The Mai Mai are the closest thing to a people's or indigenous justice movement in Congo. The Mai Mai have most recently allied with the Congo's national army, the Armed Forces for the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC), and the Mai Mai are sometimes cast as good, but usually as evil.
In 2007 the Mai Mai and FLDR joined forces to form the Front for the National Liberation of Kivu (FNLK). Backed by the FARDC, the FNLK is purportedly vying for power against General Nkunda's CNDP. However, alliances are constantly shifting based on private profit and "warlord" fiefdoms, and ALL factions, at some point or other, have collaborated in war and resource plunder.
Western news stories throw the acronyms and names of militias around with little or no information about their rise or fall, and nothing substantive about foreign backers they collaborate with. Militias mysteriously appear and disappear. Indeed, the more you read about Congo from venues like the New York Times, Harper's, The New Yorker, or the Atlantic Monthly, the less you will understand. This is no accident, and—no, you are not dumb.
Take the militia FNI: but for the victims and their suffering, it makes no difference what the acronym stands for, it's all one big sadistic joke of language and power. The most significant fact to remember about this "F" "N" "I" is that they served as the private proxy army for the gold mining operations of Metalor, a Swedish firm, and AngloGold Ashanti, headquartered in South Africa and partnered with Barrick Gold.[4] Secondly, they were agents for Ugandan power brokers.
Anglo-Gold Ashanti directors include Sir Sam Jonah, who is also a director of shady mining-cum-military companies operating in Sierra Leone and connected to Tony Buckingham and other white-collar mercenaries. Buckingham affiliated companies—e.g. Heritage Oil and Gas, Branch Energy, Saracen Uganda—collaborate with the Museveni regime. Saracen's top shareholder is General Salim Saleh, half-brother of Yoweri Museveni, and Congo's nemesis, a Ugandan agent cited by the United Nations for war and plunder in Congo.
AngloGold Ashanti is the Anglo American mining conglomerate of the Oppenheimers and De Beers mining cartels of Britain and South Africa, interests deeply aligned with Belgian American intelligence insider Maurice Tempelsman—the godfather of covert operations in Africa. Tempelsman's diamond interests in Congo were, at least partially, displaced by the Israeli cartels of Dan Gertler and Benny Steinmetz.[5] It is a no-brainer that the Tempelsman gang backs Rwanda's occupation of eastern Congo.
For a second example, media corporations have consistently blacked out the truth about the lucrative corporate "conservation" industry with articles like the recent New York Times production "Congo Violence Reaches Endangered Mountain Gorillas" (Jeffrey Gettleman, 11/18/08). Unreported however are the many accusations coming out of North Kivu that link the Jane Goodall Institute and Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund to local Mai Mai and FDLR: like every other militia, or occupation army, these factions have infiltrated villages and now prey on, intimidate and abuse the locals. The white agents working for Western "conservation" NGOs—and we know their names—are directly responsible for extortion, racketeering, land theft, human rights atrocities and for ripping apart the social fabric.[6]
"The commander of the Mai-Mai is Colonel Ntasibanga and the commander of the FDLR is Colonel Faraja," report Congolese locals who have been documenting the abuses (the facts are confirmed by a Spanish journalist). "We count already five people killed because of this [conservation] project… DFGF and JGI are without doubt corrupt… they are paying armed groups and forcing us off of our lands." [7]
The Gettleman NYT article, on the other hand, cites one of these agents, Samantha Newport, described as "a spokeswoman for Virunga National Park," who in fact works for Richard Leakey's organization Wildlife Direct, a shady paramilitary entity involving Walter Kansteiner.
~ more... ~
First there was the Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A) that invaded Rwanda, and then came the Alliance for the Democratic Liberation of Zaire (ADFL) that marched across Zaire to unseat President Mobutu. Next came the "rebellion" with Jean-Pierre Bemba and the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), and all the different factions of the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie, or Congolese Rally for Democracy—RCD, RCD-G (Goma), RCD-K, RCD-K-ML—backed by Rwanda and Uganda.
Here are the comrades in arms who studied together at the Marxist University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania: Yoweri Museveni, Uganda's president; Laurent Desiré Kabila, the ADFL figurehead and assassinated president of the Democratic Republic of Congo; Meles Zenawi, president of Ethiopia; Isaias Afwerki, president of Eritrea; Africa scholar Mahmood Mamdani; former RCD leader Wamba dia Wamba; Paul Kagame, Rwanda's president; and John Garang (d. 2005), former leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and first president of South Sudan.
Both the RPF/A and SPLA waged successful covert guerrilla wars against governments that were considered "undesirable" by Washington; both achieved their objectives of seizing land and gaining control, and both insurgencies were covertly backed by U.S. Committee for Refugees official Roger Winter—a pivotal U.S. intelligence asset operating in Sudan and a dedicated ally of Yoweri Museveni, Paul Kagame and John Garang.
Winter's protégé is Susan Rice, Clinton's Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. Rice was one of the primary architects of the Pentagon's prized Africa Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI)—a euphemistically named entity created to project U.S. power in Africa, and run by U.S. Army Special Forces Command (SOCOM).[2]
The coups d'etat in Rwanda and Burundi occurred after the presidents Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira were assassinated on April 6, 1994. Similarly, more than a decade of covert U.S. military support for the SPLA, channeled through Uganda and Ethiopia, led to the Naivasha Peace Agreement of January 2005 and the creation of the autonomous country of South Sudan.
The "Rwanda genocide" began with the 1990 invasion of northern Rwanda by Ugandan forces that brutally targeted everyone in their path. By the time the RPF/A forces—comprised mostly of seasoned Ugandan troops—reached Kigali, more than 800,000 IDPs (internally displaced persons) were hovering around the capital city: they were terrified, they were homeless, they were hungry, they were angry and—justifiably—they took up arms. The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) and its Canadian General Romeo Dallaire clandestinely backed the illegal guerrilla war.[3]
The guerrilla wars in Rwanda and South Sudan were prosecuted much like the CIA-backed low-intensity guerrilla warfare, spawned by Washington, against populist movements in Honduras, Nicaragua, Chile and Guatemala. This is exactly what is playing out in Congo and Sudan today: low-intensity guerrilla warfare prosecuted by powerful shadow forces competing for land and loot.
SPLA leader John Garang received military training at the School of the Americas, Fort Benning, Georgia. Paul Kagame received training at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. At the time he was sent for training, Kagame was Museveni's director of military intelligence; upon his return he assumed command of the army created, financed and trained by Uganda: the Rwanda Patriotic Army.
Both Garang and Kagame likely received "counter-insurgency" training through the Pentagon's International Military Education and Training Program (IMET). Since 1998, the IMET program has provided training to 318 RDF and 291 UPDF soldiers. Many other IMET soldiers who attended the notorious School of the Americas are today known human rights violators in Latin America.
In North Kivu province we find the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and the National Congress for the Defense of the People, the CNDP, created by self-appointed Rwandan "General" Laurent Nkunda. Here the media has historically cast General Nkunda as good, the FDLR as evil. Only recently has Nkunda come under any kind of "harsh" criticism.
The war in Eastern Congo is almost universally described with clichés about the "Rwanda genocide." The usual targets of white media racial profiling and hysterical academic polemics are the Hutu—the infamous Interahamwe and FDLR—the "killers" that "fled Rwanda after committing genocide" there. This is how millions of innocent Hutu people—comprising over 85% of the populations of Rwanda and Burundi—are collectively dehumanized.
Congolese Mai Mai militias are described as "nationalists" sometimes "wearing bathroom fixtures on their heads" and "shooting magic bullets." The Mai Mai are the closest thing to a people's or indigenous justice movement in Congo. The Mai Mai have most recently allied with the Congo's national army, the Armed Forces for the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC), and the Mai Mai are sometimes cast as good, but usually as evil.
In 2007 the Mai Mai and FLDR joined forces to form the Front for the National Liberation of Kivu (FNLK). Backed by the FARDC, the FNLK is purportedly vying for power against General Nkunda's CNDP. However, alliances are constantly shifting based on private profit and "warlord" fiefdoms, and ALL factions, at some point or other, have collaborated in war and resource plunder.
Western news stories throw the acronyms and names of militias around with little or no information about their rise or fall, and nothing substantive about foreign backers they collaborate with. Militias mysteriously appear and disappear. Indeed, the more you read about Congo from venues like the New York Times, Harper's, The New Yorker, or the Atlantic Monthly, the less you will understand. This is no accident, and—no, you are not dumb.
Take the militia FNI: but for the victims and their suffering, it makes no difference what the acronym stands for, it's all one big sadistic joke of language and power. The most significant fact to remember about this "F" "N" "I" is that they served as the private proxy army for the gold mining operations of Metalor, a Swedish firm, and AngloGold Ashanti, headquartered in South Africa and partnered with Barrick Gold.[4] Secondly, they were agents for Ugandan power brokers.
Anglo-Gold Ashanti directors include Sir Sam Jonah, who is also a director of shady mining-cum-military companies operating in Sierra Leone and connected to Tony Buckingham and other white-collar mercenaries. Buckingham affiliated companies—e.g. Heritage Oil and Gas, Branch Energy, Saracen Uganda—collaborate with the Museveni regime. Saracen's top shareholder is General Salim Saleh, half-brother of Yoweri Museveni, and Congo's nemesis, a Ugandan agent cited by the United Nations for war and plunder in Congo.
AngloGold Ashanti is the Anglo American mining conglomerate of the Oppenheimers and De Beers mining cartels of Britain and South Africa, interests deeply aligned with Belgian American intelligence insider Maurice Tempelsman—the godfather of covert operations in Africa. Tempelsman's diamond interests in Congo were, at least partially, displaced by the Israeli cartels of Dan Gertler and Benny Steinmetz.[5] It is a no-brainer that the Tempelsman gang backs Rwanda's occupation of eastern Congo.
For a second example, media corporations have consistently blacked out the truth about the lucrative corporate "conservation" industry with articles like the recent New York Times production "Congo Violence Reaches Endangered Mountain Gorillas" (Jeffrey Gettleman, 11/18/08). Unreported however are the many accusations coming out of North Kivu that link the Jane Goodall Institute and Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund to local Mai Mai and FDLR: like every other militia, or occupation army, these factions have infiltrated villages and now prey on, intimidate and abuse the locals. The white agents working for Western "conservation" NGOs—and we know their names—are directly responsible for extortion, racketeering, land theft, human rights atrocities and for ripping apart the social fabric.[6]
"The commander of the Mai-Mai is Colonel Ntasibanga and the commander of the FDLR is Colonel Faraja," report Congolese locals who have been documenting the abuses (the facts are confirmed by a Spanish journalist). "We count already five people killed because of this [conservation] project… DFGF and JGI are without doubt corrupt… they are paying armed groups and forcing us off of our lands." [7]
The Gettleman NYT article, on the other hand, cites one of these agents, Samantha Newport, described as "a spokeswoman for Virunga National Park," who in fact works for Richard Leakey's organization Wildlife Direct, a shady paramilitary entity involving Walter Kansteiner.
~ more... ~
And now for a world government
I have never believed that there is a secret United Nations plot to take over the US. I have never seen black helicopters hovering in the sky above Montana. But, for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible.
A “world government” would involve much more than co-operation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force.
So could the European model go global? There are three reasons for thinking that it might.
First, it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues facing national governments are international in nature: there is global warming, a global financial crisis and a “global war on terror”.
Second, it could be done. The transport and communications revolutions have shrunk the world so that, as Geoffrey Blainey, an eminent Australian historian, has written: “For the first time in human history, world government of some sort is now possible.” Mr Blainey foresees an attempt to form a world government at some point in the next two centuries, which is an unusually long time horizon for the average newspaper column.
But – the third point – a change in the political atmosphere suggests that “global governance” could come much sooner than that. The financial crisis and climate change are pushing national governments towards global solutions, even in countries such as China and the US that are traditionally fierce guardians of national sovereignty.
~ more... ~
Peltier family members work to revive support
By DAVE KOLPACK
10 Dec, 2008
FARGO, N.D. (AP) – After following Leonard Peltier's movement from one federal prison to another, a group seeking to free him has settled in the same city where he was convicted more than 30 years ago in the execution-style killings of two federal agents.
Peltier's sister, Betty Ann Peltier-Solano, and niece, Kari Ann Cowan, are trying to revive a group that went dormant a few years ago. They have changed its name from the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee to the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee, and they hope political changes will help their cause.
“There has been a lot of depression, with him being in jail for nothing and being so far away,” Peltier-Solano said from the committee's Fargo headquarters, which is filled with Peltier's artwork. “I just felt like hopeless. Now that I'm here and doing this, I feel more like I'm doing something.”
Peltier, 64, is serving two life sentences for the deaths of FBI agents Ronald Williams and Jack Coler, who were shot in the head at close range after being injured in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. His trial was held in Fargo.
Peltier says tribal officials on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation, where he grew up, have agreed to take him as part of a prison transfer. He believes he has the legal right to parole.
“The law says they have to grant me parole,” Peltier told The Associated Press. “I want to go home to North Dakota.”
Peltier's supporters, who say he was framed, plan a rally in front of the federal courthouse in Fargo on Friday. American Indian activist and actor Russell Means is scheduled to speak.
“Somehow they've made an industry out of Leonard Peltier and raising money,” said Drew Wrigley, the North Dakota U.S. attorney who in 2005 argued against one of Peltier's failed appeals.
“That's their right to do that,” Wrigley said. “We are going to continue to fight to uphold a just verdict. He should be in prison for the rest of his natural life.”
Peltier-Solano and Cowan said they believe Barack Obama's election may open the door for Peltier's release. Cowan saw momentum for a presidential pardon when Bill Clinton was president but said Clinton changed his mind at the last minute.
“He was packing his stuff. He was ready to go,” Cowan said of Peltier.
Former South Dakota Gov. Bill Janklow, a Republican who was that state's attorney general in 1975 and was at the scene of the killings, argued against a pardon in a one-on-one meeting with Clinton.
“Look, it's not my job to decide whether he gets out,” Janklow said. “But the first step might be the acknowledgment of wrongdoing. Leonard Peltier is an uncaring, unrepentant, cold-blooded murderer.”
Peltier has been shifted among several federal prisons in recent years, including Leavenworth, Kan., Terre Haute, Ind., and Lewisburg, Pa., where he currently is held. His relatives say he has a number of health problems including diabetes, arthritis and the loss of vision in one eye after suffering a minor stroke.
David Hill, one of Peltier's former AIM associates who calls himself an adviser to the defense committee, said another legal appeal is coming.
Hill said that when Peltier was convicted, he was told he would eligible for parole in 30 years. Parole in the federal system was eliminated in 1984, but Peltier qualifies under a grandfather clause, Hill said.
“The law mandates that he be released if he hasn't been a problem since he's been in prison. And he's been a model prisoner,” Hill said. “As Indian people, we will no longer tolerate him being in prison like this – illegally, unjustly, immorally.”
The Peltier committee said the case will be handled by Portland, Ore., attorney Marc Blackman, who did not return phone messages left by The Associated Press.
Said Wrigley, “It's our position that parole is not an option that should be exercised.”
The change to a Democratic president means that a new federal prosecutor likely will be named to replace Wrigley, who said the Peltier case was the first file he read when he took over as the state's top federal prosecutor seven years ago.
“I was 5 or 6 years old when that case was first handled here,” Wrigley said. “Down the road, there's going to be someone else out there, maybe someone who hasn't even decided to be a prosecutor, who will be doing everything he or she can to ensure that Leonard Peltier stays in prison.”
~ Native Times ~
10 Dec, 2008
FARGO, N.D. (AP) – After following Leonard Peltier's movement from one federal prison to another, a group seeking to free him has settled in the same city where he was convicted more than 30 years ago in the execution-style killings of two federal agents.
Peltier's sister, Betty Ann Peltier-Solano, and niece, Kari Ann Cowan, are trying to revive a group that went dormant a few years ago. They have changed its name from the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee to the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee, and they hope political changes will help their cause.
“There has been a lot of depression, with him being in jail for nothing and being so far away,” Peltier-Solano said from the committee's Fargo headquarters, which is filled with Peltier's artwork. “I just felt like hopeless. Now that I'm here and doing this, I feel more like I'm doing something.”
Peltier, 64, is serving two life sentences for the deaths of FBI agents Ronald Williams and Jack Coler, who were shot in the head at close range after being injured in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. His trial was held in Fargo.
Peltier says tribal officials on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation, where he grew up, have agreed to take him as part of a prison transfer. He believes he has the legal right to parole.
“The law says they have to grant me parole,” Peltier told The Associated Press. “I want to go home to North Dakota.”
Peltier's supporters, who say he was framed, plan a rally in front of the federal courthouse in Fargo on Friday. American Indian activist and actor Russell Means is scheduled to speak.
“Somehow they've made an industry out of Leonard Peltier and raising money,” said Drew Wrigley, the North Dakota U.S. attorney who in 2005 argued against one of Peltier's failed appeals.
“That's their right to do that,” Wrigley said. “We are going to continue to fight to uphold a just verdict. He should be in prison for the rest of his natural life.”
Peltier-Solano and Cowan said they believe Barack Obama's election may open the door for Peltier's release. Cowan saw momentum for a presidential pardon when Bill Clinton was president but said Clinton changed his mind at the last minute.
“He was packing his stuff. He was ready to go,” Cowan said of Peltier.
Former South Dakota Gov. Bill Janklow, a Republican who was that state's attorney general in 1975 and was at the scene of the killings, argued against a pardon in a one-on-one meeting with Clinton.
“Look, it's not my job to decide whether he gets out,” Janklow said. “But the first step might be the acknowledgment of wrongdoing. Leonard Peltier is an uncaring, unrepentant, cold-blooded murderer.”
Peltier has been shifted among several federal prisons in recent years, including Leavenworth, Kan., Terre Haute, Ind., and Lewisburg, Pa., where he currently is held. His relatives say he has a number of health problems including diabetes, arthritis and the loss of vision in one eye after suffering a minor stroke.
David Hill, one of Peltier's former AIM associates who calls himself an adviser to the defense committee, said another legal appeal is coming.
Hill said that when Peltier was convicted, he was told he would eligible for parole in 30 years. Parole in the federal system was eliminated in 1984, but Peltier qualifies under a grandfather clause, Hill said.
“The law mandates that he be released if he hasn't been a problem since he's been in prison. And he's been a model prisoner,” Hill said. “As Indian people, we will no longer tolerate him being in prison like this – illegally, unjustly, immorally.”
The Peltier committee said the case will be handled by Portland, Ore., attorney Marc Blackman, who did not return phone messages left by The Associated Press.
Said Wrigley, “It's our position that parole is not an option that should be exercised.”
The change to a Democratic president means that a new federal prosecutor likely will be named to replace Wrigley, who said the Peltier case was the first file he read when he took over as the state's top federal prosecutor seven years ago.
“I was 5 or 6 years old when that case was first handled here,” Wrigley said. “Down the road, there's going to be someone else out there, maybe someone who hasn't even decided to be a prosecutor, who will be doing everything he or she can to ensure that Leonard Peltier stays in prison.”
~ Native Times ~
Americans behind pogroms in Hebron
By kawther.salam
The video below shows the pogrom by the illegal jewish colonists in Hebron in the West Bank against Palestinians. Many if not most of these terrorists are US citizens. Many others are citizens of England, 
The last example of this shameless kind of criminals is the American Morris Abraham: after even the Israeli courts rejected the claims of property to the building of the Al-Rajabi family, because the documents used to substantiate the claim to the property were obvious falsifications, the colonists around Baruch Marzel “imported” this American citizen from New York, who claims that he is the descendant of a jewish family expelled from Hebron in the 1920s and that the property belongs to him. Neither claim can be verified independently, and both are most probably preposterous. What IS verifiable about Mr. Abraham is that he finances the terrorist activities of the jewish colonizers in Hebron, which this time have surpassed everything they did in the past. Is it not time that the USA put him and others like him in jail for financing international terrorism, and have all their their assets frozen?
Footage filmed by Jamal Abu-Sa'ifan, a Palestinian resident of Hebron, documenting a terrorist Israeli settler shooting two members of his family.
The event occurs following the eviction settlers from a Palestinian house they occupied in Hebron. Settlers attacked the nearby house of the Abu-Se'ifan family, and during ensuing clashes, a settler fired his handgun at Hosni Abu-Se'ifan (40), who was hit in the chest and is in stable condition, and his father, 'Abd al-Hai Abu-Sa'ifan (65) who was moderately wounded in his arm. The two were taken to a Hebron hospital. The video shows other members of the family manage to overcome the shooter, later more terrorist settlers from the nearby settlement Kiryat Arba arrives and the scene, and fires their weapon toward the Palestinian family.
Get video code from:
YouTube (until they ban it as they usually do):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bV-dy8p7TM
BlipTV: http://blip.tv/file/1542543
DailyMotion: http://tinyurl.com/6kxfom
In the hours after the eviction, the terrorist Jewish settlers rioted in Hebron, throwing stones at police and Palestinians and setting fire to Palestinian trees and attacking Palestinian homes.
Update
on Saturday evening, and was told that only in Hebron there were over 30 injured, over 40 cars with tires slashed or otherwise vandalized and two more houses burnt; that now even people who lived in areas where there had never been troubles were scared of the settlers. It also became clear that the news getting out of the West Bank is being censored and that, as horrible as this video is, far more is going on than what is known outside - there is no information from the rest of the West Bank. The IDF has declared all of Hebron as a “military zone” in order to let the settlers free hand in their reign of terror.
See more photos of the pogroms here
~ Kawther Salam ~
Will Bush walk off scot-free?
In his Nov. 16 interview on CBS's “60 minutes,” President-elect Barack Obama reiterated his pledge to shut down Guantanamo Bay and end U.S.-sponsored torture. Both actions would be “part and parcel of an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world,” he said.
Obama's advisers are similarly encouraging him to look to the future and avoid the appearance of seeking vengeance for past practices. But many legal experts insist it's as important not to let those responsible for diminishing America's moral stature get away scot-free.
“When we speak about accountability, we're not talking about vengeance,” lawyer and writer Scott Horton told at a packed forum on torture at New York University School of Law last week. “We're really talking about the future.” President George W. Bush “has set a precedent that we cannot let stand.”
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who also attended the forum, added: “Accountability is one of the most important questions before the country. It's critical to preventing a recurrence of the lawbreaking that clearly has been done [by this administration].”
[ ... ]
“Hitler could not pardon himself and the Nazi general staff for war crimes committed during World War II,” said Golove. “Even if he could have pardoned them under German law, that wouldn't have had any effect at the Nuremberg Tribunal.”
As Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights noted at the NYU forum, “You cannot pardon war crimes and torture. Maybe here, but they're not going to walk so freely in Europe.”
The center and prosecutors abroad have already sought to bring administration officials to trial in Germany, France, Italy and Spain, among other countries. Although charges probably wouldn't land any U.S. officials behind bars, it could at least put a crimp in their travel plans — and prompt investigations that might further tarnish the Bush legacy.
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[ via Information Clearing House ]