Gitmo force-feeding manual reveals gruesome practices
Last week the U.S. government submitted to the District Court in Washington, D.C., the most recent standard operating procedures (SOPs) for force-feeding in the Guantánamo Bay detention facility. What remains of the documents, after redactions, is a shameful exercise in doublespeak that attempts to disguise what is really happening in...Some Chaldeans’ misconceptions about Muslims cannot be ignored
October 17th, 20140 Imam Sayyad Hassan Al Qazwini of Dearborn's Islamic Center of America shakes hands with Chaldean Bishop Ibrahim N. Ibrahim as Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako stands in the center.Being Chaldean and working as a reporter in Dearborn covering metro Detroit’s Arab and Muslim communities is not easy. It never has been. Over the years I...Attention next attorney general: More justice wanted
Secret laws, secret courts, secret evidence, secret dragnet snooping, too big to fail, too big to jail… the Department of Justice (DOJ) has not been fully living up to its name.As Attorney General Eric Holder prepares to step down, it is time to look forward and ask what his replacement must bring to the table for our country. The...What if ‘Islamic State’ Didn’t Exist?
What if the so-called "Islamic State" (IS) didn’t exist? In order to answer this question, one has to liberate the argument from its geopolitical and ideological confines. Flexible language Many in the media (Western, Arab, etc) use the reference “Islamist” to brand any movement at all whether it be political,...In Memoriam: Mustapha Al-Abed Hammoud : The loss of an extraordinary man
Hammoud, who hailed from the Lebanese village of Tebnine, never surrendered easily. He was an extraordinary man who lived a full life and excelled in every aspect and at all levels. Hammoud, the oldest son of a southern farmer, as he used to proudly describe his father, reached for the stars. He was fearless and stood head-to-head...Fighting ISIS: A coalition of uncertainty
One way to grasp the immense difficulty facing President Obama as he tries to forge an effective international coalition to oppose the Islamic State is to examine the difference between this effort and the last time the United States led a diverse group of countries to take on a conflict in the Middle East: Operation Desert Storm, in...Losing the plot: Israel’s premier to face new Gaza reality
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war-turned-genocide in Gaza has backfired badly - his strategy has helped resurrect Hamas, the very movement he tried desperately to crush.Aside from being a major military setback, Israel’s war on Gaza has also disoriented the policies of Netanyahu like never before. Since the...Winners and losers in Gaza: On victory and false victory
In the rush to analyze the outcome of Israel’s 51-day war in Gaza, dubbed Operation Protective Edge, some may have neglected an important factor: this was not a war by traditional definitions of warfare; thus the conventional analyses of victory and defeat is simply not applicable.That being the case, how can we explain Israeli Prime...The influence of the Saudi lobby in Washington
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia speaks with President Obama.Usually one speaks comically of the Arab lobby in Washington, D.C.. Since the oil boom in the 1970s, various Arab-American businesspeople and crooks traveled to the Middle East offering their services to Gulf regimes and promising—in return for large sums of money—to launch...The real threat from the “Islamic State” is to Muslims, not the west
"I was like any other regular Canadian. I watched hockey, I went to the cottage in the summertime, I loved to fish, I wanted to go hunting… I was a regular person," said Abu Muslim in the last video he recorded before his death. And then came his pitch: "Everyone can contribute something to the Islamic State, as it is obligatory on...Time to strengthen the United Nations
Sometimes, amid the heated political debate about what should done by the U.S. government in world affairs, a proposal cuts through the TV babble of the supposed experts with a clear, useful suggestion.That proposal came on August 17, when Pope Francis told journalists how he thought the world should cope with the challenge posed by...Honor journalist James Foley: Don’t watch the video
If the early reports are correct and journalist James Foley was, in fact, executed by the Islamic State, you can honor him -- and not play into the terroristic hands of that organization -- simply by not watching the video of his murder.Video voyeurism of the worst variety exists when we feast on the death of journalists who strive,...Hashtag Genocide: Gaza fought back
GAZA – My old family house in the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza was recently rebuilt by its new owner, into a beautiful three-story building with large windows adorned by red frames. In Israel’s most recent and deadliest war on Gaza, the house sustained significant damage. A large hole caused by Israeli missiles can be seen from...Local reaction to report smearing Dearborn fell short of its significance
Last week, The Intercept, an online news source, leaked a federal document that alleges Dearborn has the second highest number of "known or suspected terrorists" in the country. Within hours, it made headlines across the country and front page news in local media.The report was not only inaccurate, it was an insult to the city and the...Government Discontinues Processing EBT for Merchants
Does your business currently accept or plan to accept Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) in the future? If so please take note that effective September 21, the government will no longer process EBT transactions or provide free equipment to merchants who were not approved by the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) prior to March 21, due to......
Storm leaves thousands of Metro Detroit residents in limbo
On Monday, August 11, the metro Detroit region was hit hard with torrential rains, causing many communities to become inundated with several inches of precipitation in a relatively short period of time. As a result, thousands of metro Detroit residents experienced sewage backup onto their property. The law regarding the rights and...On heroes and preachers: Gaza’s new resistance paradigm
"Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? In Israeli prison, of course!" was the title of an article by Jo Ehrlich. published in Modoweiss.net on Dec 21, 2009. That was almost exactly one year after Israel’s concluded a major war against Gaza. The so-called Operation Cast Lead (December 27, 2008 – January 18, 2009) was, until then, the......
The war Netanyahu cannot possibly win
When the bodies of three Israeli settlers – Aftali Frenkel and Gilad Shaar, both 1 and Eyal Yifrach, 19 – were found on June 30 near Hebron in the southern West Bank, Israel went into a state of mourning and a wave of sympathy flowed in from around the world. The three had disappeared 18 days earlier in circumstances that remain...The White House Iftar Dinner: Striving for more than a seat at the table
“Should Muslim-Americans attend the Washington, DC Iftar?" I asked the women across the dinner table, after digesting the heated exchanges about the White House Iftar Dinner on my social media timelines. “Who cares?" Responded the 51 year-old, single-parent Muslim-American from Detroit. The debate of the day among...The White House Iftar Dinner: Striving for more than a seat at the table
“Should Muslim-Americans attend the Washington, DC Iftar?" I asked the women across the dinner table, after digesting the heated exchanges about the White House Iftar Dinner on my social media timelines. “Who cares?" Responded the 51 year-old, single-parent Muslim-American from Detroit. An immigrant from Iraq, raising...Letter to the editor: Complacency or solidarity: Where do we stand?
The Presbyterian Church of the USA convened its General Assembly in Detroit last month and made history. The Church voted to divest more than $20 million from three U.S. corporations that profit from the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The divestment recommendations came from the Church’s own official committee responsible for......
Israelis excel at vengeance, not Palestinians
Shock and anger have engulfed Israeli and Palestinian societies since they learned last week of the barbarous murder of children from their communities. Hours after three Israeli teenagers’ bodies were located, long after their abduction, a Palestinian youth, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, was kidnapped, beaten and burned to death, apparently as...Why Bush and Blair should be prosecuted for war crimes
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently stated that air strikes and drones should be used once again on Iraq to stem recent gains by extremists in that country. Blair is oblivious of the responsibility he shares with former U.S. president George W. Bush on account of one of the most serious breaches of international law......
Kerry’s Cairo remarks further downgrade human rights in U.S. policy
On Sunday, June 22, Secretary of State John Kerry spoke in Cairo following his meetings with Egyptian Foreign Minister, Sameh Shoukry and Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.Although bilateral ties had been strained by the military removal of the former elected President Mohamed Morsi in 2013 and by the widespread violations of...Hillary’s haughty hyperbole!
Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton greets people as she signs copies of her book "Hard Choices" at a Costco store in Arlington, Virginia June 14. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts Last Sunday’s New York Times Book Review section featured a one page interview with Hillary Clinton, author of the just released Hard Choices,......