Joint Declaration on World Democracy

A call for visionary leadership to abolish war and create enforceable global law

WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, are leaders with a long-term vision for the planet.

We believe in global democracy as a goal;

we envision a world beyond the absolute sovereignty theory of the nation-state, in which the sovereignty of the world's people is primary.

We expect that the people of the world will someday, perhaps in our lifetimes, demand and achieve a well-governed world democracy.

We further declare that it is time to envision such a goal for humankind; in fact, we see no other long-term means for the survival of our species and of the planet itself.

We therefore call for the careful evolution of our institutions of global governance toward genuine planetary democracy and enforceable global law.

Enduring world peace, economic justice, and environmental protection are not utopian ideals; we declare these to be real and achievable goals.

Humankind can best realize these goals, we believe, by setting an intention for creating a world legislature along with individual accountability before world law.

Above all, we hold the vision of an epochal change in human affairs that will put an end to the war system. Just as slavery has been declared illegal, we call for the complete abolition of war.

TOWARD THESE ENDS, we call on leaders in all walks of life to educate all people everywhere about their innate sovereignty and their right to self-government.

Let us seize the opportunity to reinvent our world by working for the great goal of one world democracy and the rule of global law, by supporting immediate efforts to:

Educate everyone, and especially today's young activists, about the need for global law.We believe that generations to come will realize the imperative of enforceable global law through world democracy.

Support efforts to build awareness of world citizenship and to protect human rights.We envision the day when there will be a universal bill of rights that will protect the rights of all people.
Foster grassroots movements for world democracy, including global political parties.

We encourage the world's people to express their innate sovereignty at the individual and global levels.

Start now to create an advisory world legislature or United Nations Peoples' Assembly.Let's begin to take steps on the way to the long-term goal of a truly representative government for all humanity.

Expand the work of ICC and the International Court of Justice at the Hague.Let's move more deliberately toward a genuine world judiciary that can apply global law to individuals and states.
Learn from regional federations of states such as the United States, Europe, and Africa.We encourage the study of these precedents so that we can build toward the coming federation of all nations.

We know that achieving a world democracy under enforceable law could take much time--and to get there, we must take intermediate evolutionary steps. But we believe that leadership in these times means affirming that our goal represents the best hope of humankind.

THE SIGNATORIES BELOW hereby represent that they wholeheartedly support this declaration, and will work in their spheres of influence to achieve the goals stated herein:

Global Government Organizations

SIGN THE PLEDGE FOR WORLD DEMOCRACY!

Israel lifts blockade of fuel deliveries to Gaza

Israel on Wednesday resumed fuel shipments to the sole power plant in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army said a day after officials said supplies would last for only 30 hours before it shut down.

"A million liters of fuel for the central power plant are being transferred today through Nahal Oz, which opened this morning," said an army spokeswoman, referring to the fuel terminal on the Israeli border with northern Gaza.Israel cut fuel supplies for Gaza's power plant by half and halted the supply of petrol and diesel after Palestinian militants attacked the terminal two weeks ago, killing two Israeli civilian employees.

It resumed shipments of fuel for the plant several days later, but stopped deliveries again last week after another attack killed three Israeli soldiers near Nahal Oz.On Tuesday Kanaan Obeid, vice president of Gaza's power authority, warned that the plant's fuel supply would last only another 30 hours, which would mean it would have to shut down on Wednesday night.

The Gisha Legal Centre for Freedom of Movement sent a request to Israel's attorney general warning that the cuts "violate the state's commitment to the Israeli supreme court to permit a minimum amount of fuel to enter Gaza."The plant provides around 30 percent of the territory's electricity, with most of the rest supplied from Israel and a small amount from Egypt.Israel slapped a punishing blockade on Gaza after the Islamist Hamas movement seized control of the territory in June

Iraq lawmakers move to ban toy guns

Children imitating sectarian divides in war games

Iraqi lawmakers, alarmed at the exceptional levels of violence children are exposed to daily, are about to pass a bill to ban the import of toy guns, an MP said on Wednesday.

"Our children see too much violence on TV, they have it on their video games, they hear their parents talk about violence every day. It is rampant in the streets," parliamentary committee on women and children chairwoman Samira al-Mussawi told AFP.Saying the bill has already been approved by the cabinet, Mussawi expects it to come before parliament before the end of the week.

According to Mussawi, children do not distinguish between toy guns and the real thing.

"They use them without knowing the reality of violence or killing," she said.

"We have to stop importing these kinds of toys and give our children others that will help them develop their brains.

"The lawmaker called on the education ministry to introduce subjects in schools dealing with matters such as non-violent conflict resolution and reconciliation.

Members of her committee, she added, backed efforts by the Iraqi army to curb the number of toy guns on the streets by going to schools and asking children to hand in plastic weaponry in return for other, creative toys.

Plastic toy guns, many imported from China, flood the shelves of toy stores, with shopkeepers saying the weaponry is the top seller, both for boys and for girls. Prices range from 5,000 to 40,000 dinars (four to 32 dollars), with the MP7AI rifle the favorite, as it resembles the type of weapons children see in American movies, shopkeepers told AFP.

Teachers say Iraqi kids play cops and robbers as do children in most countries, but that they also play war games, based on what is happening in the streets of their towns and cities. In some neighborhoods, it's police versus "terrorists", or army versus al-Qaeda. In other areas war games reflect the bitter sectarian divides

-- one side gets to be Shiite militiamen, the other Sunni insurgents.The only psychological study carried out in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 was on children by the Association of Psychologists of Iraq (API) in 2006.

It found that the violence was profoundly affecting them."The only things they have on their minds are guns, bullets, death and a fear of the U.S. occupation," said API spokesman Marwan Abdullah when he released the report.

Egypt jails 25 Islamists for up to 10 years

An Egyptian military court on Tuesday jailed 25 members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood for up to 10 years for financing a banned organization and acquitted 15 others, a court official said.

The Brotherhoood's number three Khayrat al-Shater and fellow leader Hassan Malek were jailed for seven years while seven other Islamists were jailed in absentia for 10 years.Sixteen others were jailed for between 18 months and five years, the source said.

The Islamists were sentenced following a repeatedly delayed verdict that has no right of appeal because it is issued by a military tribunal.

Jordan prison unrest continues after 3 dead

Inmates at a prison north of the Jordanian capital of Amman set fire to their cells on Tuesday a day after three rioting prisoners died in clashes with security forces at another jail, police said. "A number of prisoners convicted of murder and robbery inflicted injuries on themselves and set fire to their cells this morning at Swaka prison" north of Amman, police spokesman Mohammed Khatib said in a statement.

"They were showing solidarity with inmates who rioted on Monday at Muaqqar prison (in southeast Amman), but police tackled the situation and evacuated the inmates from the cells for their own safety."
Khatib did not elaborate, but a security source told AFP that the prisoners were protesting at being segregated from other convicts.

On Monday, three Muaqqar inmates were killed and dozens were injured in clashes with police after prison authorities decided to segregate them from others.They also cut themselves with sharp tools and set fire to their cells.

In March 2006, inmates at Juweideh prison south of the capital rioting for the same reason briefly held prison officials hostage

Iraqi blogger: Baghdad after Saddam

Iraq's first blogger, Salam Pax, was in Baghdad on April 9, 2003. He watched cautiously as the US military entered the capital and took down Saddam Hussein's government.

But hopes for a better future were soon replaced with fears of looters taking the city apart brick by brick.

Five years later, he recounts the trials and tribulations experienced by Iraqis who woke up for the first time in 24 years without a government led by Saddam Hussein.

The collected weblog has been published by Guardian Books under the title The Baghdad Blog. He also made 19 short documentaries about life in Iraq after the war and was awarded Royal Television Society's award for innovation in 2003.

The events in Baghdad in early April five years ago were so overwhelming that it took three days and a succession of four-hour TV news snippets for the predicament to sink in.

Electricity had been cut off for a couple of days and we had been using a small power generator for four hours during the day and night mainly to check the news.

My uncles and aunts were all staying at our house … we thought that if we were going to be shocked and awed into democracy, we really ought to go through the experience together.

On April 7, my father woke up everyone because he had heard on the radio that the US army had entered Baghdad.

The 15 members of my extended family sat silently in front of the television set and watched a live feed from a US network showing American tanks rolling towards a presidential palace in central Baghdad.

It almost felt like watching an implausible scene in a science fiction film. This was followed two days later by footage of the Saddam statue in Firdous square being pulled down.

No more Saddam

We watched with disbelief.

Could Saddam really be gone now? We stayed home with our doors locked and waited for the retaliation of the Iraqi army, but there was nothing.

Days later we would see Iraqi military uniforms tossed in ditches as if the army just disappeared into thin air.

Then the images of the looting started appearing on all the news channels. This time we watched with anger and my uncles returned to their own homes to make sure their belongings did not get 'liberated' as well.

In rapid succession, we moved within three days from fear of being bombed to hope for a better future and back to fear of the chaos on the street.

We could tell from the events unfolding in the street three days after the coalition forces moved into Baghdad how this invasion would likely conclude.

Iraqis have never really recovered from the chaos of those early days.

But the truth is I chose not to dwell on what was happening in the streets and held on instead to a hope for a better future.

And with every little step forward we would look at each other and say 'it's happening'. But these forward steps were usually just blips of good news in what felt like an endless stream of bad news.

Corpses

But it has become increasingly difficult today to remember what good I had once been hoping would come out of the war and regime change.

I am left with a lot of bad memories.

There were days when the Red Crescent was begging for volunteers to assist in retrieving the corpses from the streets and giving them proper burial.

The local hospital's garden had to be converted into a makeshift cemetery after the electricity went out; there was no way the bodies could be stored in refrigerated morgues until they were identified by next of kin.

My mother, after going out only once after Baghdad was taken by coalition forces, decided she we would never venture outside her front yard again.

Not until I promised her that stability had returned to the streets.

That never really happened.

Painful memories

Going out in the city became an exercise in blocking out painful images and scenes; in some cases there were areas of the city you plainly avoided.

Have you seen what has happened to Baghdad's book market? I would rather have the image of that street as I remember it in my mind than the reality of what is left of it today.

Eventually, we had to leave our home when my neighbourhood was taken over by Sunni militias - all my Shia uncles and aunts also left their homes with all their belongings. Then came the walls which transformed an ethnically mixed and vibrant city into a series of sectarian ghettos.

And can one ever forget the neverending Iraqi civilian casualties.
To be honest, I still have no idea how to refer to April 9, 2003. For a while, one of our shortlived early governments called it "Baghdad Liberation Day" but that feels like a contradiction in terms as foreign forces stormed the city and that usually is described as an invasion.

On the other hand, I never really could bring myself to describing it as the "Fall of Baghdad".

I thought we were never going to let that happen although after five years of mostly death and bloodshed my beloved city is certainly not what it used to be.

I don't want to say fallen. But Baghdad is unquestionably and deeply hurt.

Salam Pax is and Iraqi documentary film-maker and the author of The Baghdad Blog. He graduated as an architect from Baghdad university but turned to blogging in 2002.

Saudi blogger makes Bible version of 'Fitna'

and ghrorg human rights movies re-presenting the film

A Saudi blogger has made the Christian equivalent of the anti-Quran film "Fitna" in an attempt to discredit the recently released video by Dutch MP Geert Wilders.

The six-minute video called "Schism" by 33-year-old Saudi blogger Raid Al-Saeed takes violent Biblical texts out of context and intersperses them with fiery rants by a Christian fundamentalist youth leader in Texas.

"I made it in less than 24 hours," Saeed told Saudi daily Arab News, adding that he was not promoting hatred against Christianity, but trying to prove that it is wrong to judge Islam by watching Fitna

It is easy to take part of any holy book out of context and make it sound like an inhumane book," he writes at the end of the short video.

"This is what Geert Wilders did to gather supporters for his hateful ideology

."Saeed said YouTube initially removed his video with a message that the clip violated its terms. But he wrote back, asking why his movie was removed while "Fitna" remained online and re-posted the film on March 2.

Jordan was CIA's top rendition location: HRW

The CIA secretly transported at least 14 war on terror detainees to Jordan between 2001 and 2004, making it the top "rendition" destination at that time, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.

"While a handful of countries received persons rendered by the United States during this period, no other country is believed to have held as many as Jordan," the rights group said in a statement.

The prisoners were interrogated and tortured by Jordan's General Intelligence Department, according to a new Human Rights Watch report that documents eight previously unknown cases of rendition.

GID officials who met with Human Rights Watch in Amman in 2007 denied receiving CIA prisoners and denied using torture.

But the rights group said the denials were unconvincing "given the weight of credible evidence showing otherwise.

"The report is "based largely on firsthand information from Jordanian former prisoners who were detained with the non-Jordanian terrorism suspects," it said."We've documented more than a dozen cases in which prisoners were sent to Jordan for torture," said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director at Human Rights Watch.Prisoners rendered to Jordan included at least five Yemenis, three Algerians, two Saudis, a Mauritanian, a Syrian, a Tunisian, and one or more Chechens from Russia, the group said.

They may also have included a Libyan, an Iraqi Kurd, a Kuwaiti, one or more Egyptians, and a national of the United Arab Emirates.

The report includes an excerpt of a note handwritten by a rendered prisoner while in Jordanian custody in late 2002.

The prisoner is now at the U.S. war on terror prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Ali al-Hajj al-Sharqawi wrote that GID interrogators beat him "in a way that does not know any limits.""They threatened me with electricity, with snakes and dogs .... [They said] we'll make you see death .... They threatened to rape me," the note said.A common torture method was falaqa, by which prisoners are given extended beatings on the bottoms of their feet.

"Just about everyone at GID was beaten with sticks," a Jordanian former prisoner told Human Rights Watch.

"People were beaten on their feet. They did it in the basement.""Outsourcing torture is not only wrong, it's illegal," Mariner said. "And the U.S. can't say it doesn't torture if it sends people to countries that do."

Palestinian tale of kindness plays in West Bank

For the first time, a documentary about a Palestinian boy whose tragic death saved the lives of five Israeli children

– thanks to his father – has been screened in the West Bank.

The documentary -- "The Heart of Jenin"

– tells the story of 12-year-old Palestinian boy, Ahmad al-Khatib, who was shot dead by Israeli troops when they mistook his toy gun for a real weapon.The shooting happened in the West Bank town of Jenin on Nov. 2, 2005.

At the time, Israeli soldiers had orders to "shoot anything that moved," one soldier said in the documentary.

The shot to Ahmad's head proved fatal, killing the boy from Jenin refugee camp. Ahmad's father Ismael al-Khatib later decided to donate his boy's organs to patients at the Haifa hospital where his son was pronounced dead."If I can't help my son to recover, then may be I can help other kids," he says in the documentary.

Five Israeli children received Ahmad's life-saving organs. The feature length documentary – directed by Marcus Vetter and Lior Geller –was screened at the German-French Cultural Center in Ramallah on March 27, the first time the film was shown in the Palestinian territories for a general audience.Palestinian cinemas refused the film because Geller is Israeli, said Farid Maajari, director of the cultural center.

Storyline

The Heart of Jenin follows Ahmad's father Ismael on his journey through Israel, visiting the children who found life through his son's death.Ahmad's kidneys went to the daughter of a Jewish settler in Occupied Jerusalem and a Bedouin boy from the Negev Desert region. His heart went to a Druze family in northern Israel. Two other beneficiaries chose not to participate in the documentary.

The extraordinary donation was approved not only by the boy's grief-stricken mother and father, but religious and political scholars too.

In the movie, Jenin's mufti approves organ donations. The opinion is backed by the Jenin commander of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.

"We have no problem with Jews as Jews.

There's no problem as long as this will save lives," says Zakaria Zubeidi.In the movie, the father of the Jewish girl said he did not want to meet the donor family and would have preferred if they were Jewish.

He said Arabs only want to kill Israelis, apparently oblivious to the actions of Ahmad's father who donated his son's kidney to save the settler girl.After the screening in Ramallah, German director Vetter told the audience the film was banned from the Tel Aviv film festival allegedly for technical reasons.

"Some people said the film is biased towards the Palestinians because it tackles the death of the child and focuses on checkpoints, collective punishment, and the destruction of Jenin refugee camp," Vetter said.

Ismail al-Khatib now runs a music school for children in Jenin.

"Without peace, only killing will remain. Children from Palestine and Israel and all the world will die," Khatib said.

Jordan slams HRW report on 'rendition' prisoners

Jordan has blasted as "erroneous" a Human Rights Watch report that the U.S.
spy agency secretly transported at least 14 prisoners to the kingdom between 2001 and 2004.
"The report is erroneous and inaccurate.
It is based on individual allegations, unobjective foundation and wrong conclusions," State Minister for Information Nasser Judeh said on Tuesday.

The U.S.-based rights watchdog said the Central Intelligence Agency secretly transported at least 14 "war on terror" detainees to Jordan between 2001 and 2004, making it the top "rendition" destination at that time.
The prisoners, it said, were sent for interrogation and torture by Jordan's General Intelligence Department.
"While a handful of countries received persons rendered by the United States during this period, no other country is believed to have held as many as Jordan," HRW said.
Judeh said Jordan hopes that "such reports in the future would be based on accurate and objective information, instead of relaying on individual information and take them for granted as facts.
"Judeh said Jordan is a party to the U.N.
Convention against Torture, and that the country's laws criminalize torture."Members of terrorist organization target the kingdom by giving false information to human rights groups, hindering efforts to fight terror," he said.

killing the civilian people by the israeli's forces

this documentarian movies shows the largest masscare and most dirty by the israeli's forces against the civilian people in palestine ( in jinin and nablus) in the year 2001

Egypt police and protesters clash, strike foiled

Egyptian police clashed with protesters in the Nile Delta city of Mahalla on Sunday, firing tear gas and arresting at least 150 after plans for a strike at the city's textile factory were scrapped under pressure from security forces. Angry residents demanding an end to price hikes and soaring inflation set two schools ablaze and burnt tires along the city's railway.

Workers at the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in Mahalla had planned a strike on Sunday to demand higher pay, but security pressure and internal divisions prevented it from taking place.Around the country, plans for a general strike -- inspired by the Mahalla action -- fizzled out after the government made good on its warning to take firm action against protesters by arresting dozens of people.

Among those detained were opposition leaders including Islamist journalist Mohammed Abdel Qudoos and Magdi Hussein who heads the suspended Labour party.

Bloggers and members of other opposition parties, including the Nasserist and the liberal Ghad parties as well as from the protest movement Kefaya, were also arrested.

Analysts said that even though a massive strike did not take place nationally, the call to strike was significant in itself.

"We must not underestimate the call. Even if it did not have a large effect, it's the first time such a call has been made," Mustafa Kamel al-Sayyed, a politics professor at the American University in Cairo, told AFP.

He said the move "reflects a general feeling of discontent in the country." It is unclear who initiated the call which snowballed after some 25,000 employees at the textile plant in Mahalla announced plans to strike from Sunday over low salaries and price hikes.

In Mahalla, the strike was called off after pressure from security forces and internal divisions, employees said.

A strike would have been considered illegal without the backing of unions which are linked mainly to the ruling National Democratic Party.

Sky-rocketing food prices in Egypt this year have been met in recent weeks by a rumbling wave of popular discontent and unprecedented strikes and demonstrations.

On Saturday the interior ministry threatened "immediate and firm measures against any attempt to demonstrate, disrupt road traffic or the running of public establishments and against all attempts to incite such acts.

" The interior ministry insisted that all public institutions, including schools and state-run factories, should open for business as usual.

And it accused "provocateurs and illegal movements" of having "spread false rumours and called for protests, demonstrations and a strike on Sunday.

" The state-owned daily Al-Ahram warned that those inciting or participating in the strike could go to jail. The UN's World Food Program said this month that the average household expenditure in Egypt had risen by 50 percent since January 1