War is Unsuitable for Children: Another YouTube outrage
by Cindy Sheehan
…. The video was just yanked off of You Tube because it “violates the terms of service” but even before it was yanked, it had a warning: “This video is unsuitable for children.” The pictures of the dead and maimed Iraqi children were gruesome. War is gruesome. War is never pretty but the Iraqi war has been “Sanitized for your protection.” It’s not enough that adult males have been tortured but thousands of women and children have also been imprisone d and cruelly treated. I think it’s pretty gruesome that the US Military has held up to 6000 juveniles in its torture prisons in the Middle East and there has been rape and torture reported to individuals as young as 10 years old! [...] Once when I was in Amman, Jordan speaking with prominent Iraqis, a Sheikh told me that US soldiers burst into his home, severely beating him and raping his wife, all in the presence of his 14-year-old son…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=54609
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Israel Rejects Own Soldiers’ Accounts of Gaza Atrocities
By Mohammed Omer
FOR THE FIRST time in its history, the Israeli Military College has published very damaging statements and accounts by its own soldiers, describing their killing of innocent and mostly unarmed civilians and their wanton vandalism during Israel’s 22-day assault on the Gaza Strip. Israel launched its attack two days after Christmas and ended it two days before the inauguration of President Barack Obama. By the time it declared a unilateral cease-fire, more than 1,400 Palestinians were dead, including more than 440 children, 110 women, and 123 elderly and sick people, according to medical sources in Gaza. By comparison, 10 Israeli soldiers and three Israeli civilians died, four of the soldiers as a result of friendly fire. The Israeli soldiers’ personal statements and eyewitness accounts confirmed similar findings by human rights groups who interviewed civilians and eyewitnesses throughout Gaza. Many of those interviewed lost family, friends and neighbors, as well as farm animals, saw their homes, possessions and property reduced to rubble, and witnessed many war crimes committed during “Operation Cast Lead.”..
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Oh, People…People…
Arthur Silber
… So who exactly is ratcheting up tensions in this situation? North Korea, which is conducting tests and has not threatened to initiate the unprovoked use of whatever weapons it might be able to deliver sometime, somewhere — or the U.S. and South Korea, which are threatening “to intercept ships suspected of aiding nuclear proliferation”? The seizure of ships of a sovereign nation is certainly an act of war. When such seizure is predicated on suspicion, perhaps well-grounded, perhaps supported by absolutely nothing, we have moved into utter lawlessness. But the U.S. and its allies always represent Pure and Unalloyed Good, Now and Forevermore. And North Korea is Ultimate Evil; never mind the Ultimate Evil about which the United States claimed to have equally certain knowledge yesterday or all the days before that. Pure and Unalloyed Good does not require reasons. How shabbily unenlightened of you to demand otherwise…
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If it is on Palestinian land and inhabited by Jews: it is a colony. Period.
Marcy Newman, body on the line
…and yes, i mean Jews: the Zionist entity insists on being called a “Jewish state” that is an apartheid state in which Jews have special rights and non-Jjews have no rights. Of course, any Jew who lives in occupied Palestine is by definition a Zionist. But the Zionist entity’s laws specify these rights are for Jews. and these Jewish Zionists are the colonists occupying Palestinian land…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=54608
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Israelis get four-fifths of scarce West Bank water, says World Bank
Palestinians losing out in access to vital shared aquifer in the occupied territories
Rory McCarthy
A deepening drought in the Middle East is aggravating a dispute over water resources after the World Bank found that Israel is taking four times as much water as the Palestinians from a vital shared aquifer. The region faces a fifth consecutive year of drought this summer, but the World Bank report found huge disparities in water use between Isra elis and Palestinians, although both share the mountain aquifer that runs the length of the occupied West Bank. Palestinians have access to only a fifth of the water supply, while Israel, which controls the area, takes the rest, the bank said…
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Against the Tortured Logic of Obama’s Placebo Presidency: A Call for the Audacity of Hopelessness
By Phil Rockstroh
From time to time, events unfold that are so large in scope, so all-encompassing in their implications that one’s initial response is muted by an inability to categorize it all within the realm of experience. Previous reference points prove of little service. One’s image of oneself and one’s place in the world is under siege, perhaps even in danger of being torn away. One stares into the abyss, until the aby ss removes its dark shades and makes direct eye contact. The mind buzzes; one’s thoughts scuttle in circles like stunned insects. On a collective basis, we as a nation are living through such a time. At present, we are witnessing the descending spiral of Icarusian Capitalism; our sacred delusion of the perpetual ascendancy of a god-like market place lies broken in the dust. Malls and Mcmansions stand abandoned, desolate as the edifices of forgotten gods, as the come-ons of the salesmen of deregulated capitalism are churned to spittle amid a cacophony of collapsing market platitudes…
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Israeli lawmakers approve jail terms for ‘Jewish state’ denial
Ma’an News
Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, gave preliminary approval to a bill that would mandate year jail term for anyone who speaks against Israel’s status as a Jewish state on Wednesday morning. The bill, which still needs final approval before coming law, passed after a heated debate with a vote of 47 to 34 and one abstention. The measure was originally introduced by Zevulun Orlev, a member of a right-wing religious nationalist party, Habayit Hayehudi ( Jewish Home). The bill’s passage comes three days after lawmakers advanced a bill that would ban all commemorations of Nakba Day, on which Palestinians, including those who are Israeli citizens, remember their expulsion of 1948…
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Topic for the Day: This Blog is a Disgusting Insult to All Right-Thinking People
Chris Floyd
…The “defense” of “Bushco” that I outlined in the post would entail exposing, in the most public way possible, decades — centuries — of atrocity, lies, corruption and evil. Such revelations, on such a scale, would make it very difficult, if not impossible, to maintain the deceits — and the deep-rooted self-deceptions — necessary to perpetuate this system and its depredations, thus leading to what I believe would be a better world, with less war, less torment, less suffering. I’m sorry if this admittedly almost hopeless desire disgusts and insults you.
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=54605
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Israel Steals Palestinian Heritage, History!
Karin Friedemann (LETTER FROM AMERICA)
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayad has made a formal complaint to the Canadian government regarding the intention of Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum to collaborate with the Israel Antiquities Authority to host “Dead Sea Scrolls: Words that Changed the World” from June 27 to January 3, 2010. Palestinian Archaeological Department Director-General Hamdan Taha explains, “The exhibition would entail exhibiting or displaying artifac ts removed from the Palestinian territories… I think it is important that Canadian institutions would be
responsible and act in accordance with Canada’s obligations.” The Israeli exhibition violates international conventions or protocols that Canada has ratified and that protect cultural property during armed conflict…
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Israel to demolish more homes in East Jerusalem
IMEMC
The Jerusalem Municipality handed on Tuesday orders to demolish 17 Palestinian homes in different parts of East Jerusalem under the pretext that they were constructed without a permit. The orders are regarding 17 homes in Al Ashqariyya, Beit Hanina, Shu’fat, Al Esawiyya and Jabal Al Mokabbir and Silwan. Lawyers representing the residents started the legal process in an attempt to stop or freeze the demolishing orders…
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Ex-Taliban official describes torture at Bagram: ‘They were beating me… until I was unconscious.’
Think Progress
In an interview with CNN, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef — a close ally of Taliban leader Mullah Omar and Afghanistan’s former ambassador to Pakistan — described his detention experiences at Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Base and at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Zaeef has since been freed and claims he is no longer a member of the Taliban. “He says he is still bitter about his time there. Closing Guantanamo Bay, he told CNN, is only part of the justice those detained there deserve”: “It was a bad stain on American history,” he said. “If they are closing Guantanamo for justice, they have to bring the people who are torturing people, who abuse people, to justice.” [...] “I didn’t see a worse situation in my life than Bagram,” recalled Zaeef. “They were beating me, they put me in the snow, in the cold, until I was unconscious.”…
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ETHNIC CLEANSING AND GENOCIDE ARE NOT MATTERS TO POKE FUN AT
Desertpeace
Yesterday I posted a satirical speech that was written by Greg Felton. It appeared to be a speech delivered by the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki Moon. I thought ( and hoped ) that the speech was for real, but in reality I fell for an April Fool’s joke in May. Ethnic cleansing and genocide are not matters to poke fun at. There were, however, some valid points in the mock speech that I wish to address here today….. points that make th e status of Israel as a member of the United Nations look like an April Fool’s joke as well…. but unfortunately at the expense of the entire Palestinian population…
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