Exceptionally Awful
Arthur Silber
A few words about “exceptionalism,” in two respects: with regard to America the Most Virtuous, the Uniquely Good, and the Highest Tippy-Top of Everything Possible in All the Universes; and with regard to the performance of the majority of liberals and progressives since the dawning of the Age of Obama. As long-time readers will know, my evaluation of the intellectual rigor and moral courage of Democrats and most liberals and progressives has been negative in the extreme for several years now. As a friendly reminder (just cuz I’m that kind of guy), here’s a post I wrote immediately before the 2006 elections. All the predictions I made came true! Except that the post-election record compiled by the Democrats was far, far worse than I had anticipated….
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Ministry of prisoners: Israel deliberately kidnaps and maltreats children
Palestinian Information Center
The Palestinian ministry for prisoners’ affairs in Gaza said Tuesday that the IOF troops deliberately kidnap Palestinian children under age 18, physically attack them and use violent ways to interrogate them. In a statement received by the PIC, the ministry underlined that the international conventions prohibit the detention of children except in limited special cases on condition that they are well treated and given t heir rights provided for by international law. The statement highlighted that Israel does not respect any of these conventions and systematically kidnap children as many as it can from their homes, schools or during their presence on the streets and at the checkpoints…
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UK medics go on hunger strike after being refused entry into Gaza
Haroon Siddique
Three British medics began a hunger strike in Egypt today to protest against being refused entry into Gaza for a humanitarian mission. Their aim is to establish a cardiac surgery unit at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, which currently has no such facility, and to help train medical students and junior doctors there. But the British medics have been denied access to the Palestinian territory at the Rafah crossing since the beginning of May…
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Bill Clinton Named New UN Envoy to ‘Stabilize’ Haiti, a Country He Helped Destabilize
By Jeremy Scahill
Former US President Bill Clinton has been named by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon as his special UN envoy to Haiti. Clinton will reportedly travel to the country at least four times a year. “[It’s] an opportunity to bring in resources to address the economic insecurity that plagues Haiti,” says Brian Concannon, a human rights lawyer who works extensively in Haiti. “But if the nomination is to be more than a publicity stunt, the UN needs to honestly shed a spotlight on the international community’s role in creating that instability, including unfair trade and debt policies, and the undermining and overthrowing of Haiti’s constitutional government.”Shining such a spotlight on those who created the instability, as Concannon suggests, would mean examining Clinton’s own role as president of the US during one of Haiti’s most horrifyingly dark periods…
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Salves Under The Inhuman Israeli Occupation
Kawther Salam
The Israeli military occupation under the criminal brigade of Lt. Col. Udi ben Muha has turned the Palestinians who live in the heart of Hebron into slaves who have no rights even in their own houses in Dict01the heart of the city where their families have lived for centuries. In Hebron, the Palestinians are not allowed to repair the doors, the windows, the electricity, the kitchen … even when the feces and the dirt overflow the toilets of Palestinian houses, it is not permissible for them to repair the defects in the toilet without asking the office of the criminal commander for permission…
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Just a Suggestion…
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
I have a suggestion to President Obooma and his administration, a suggestion that will end the “war on terror” once and for all, and will make the whole world a safer place… This is what I propose. Why surge in Afghanistan when you can surge in Pakistan? Commit a few thousands of your bravest boys and girls, in the Northern Provinces. Do not content yourselves with air power. You need to be physically there. You know, fight the fight…Don’t rely on the Pakistani go vernment. Go for it yourselves, no one can scratch your own backs like your own nails. Try it, it will be fun, a cakewalk. I can promise you that the Pashtuns there will welcome you with flowers and candies, just like they did in Afghanistan and just like we did in Iraq. But they are more hospitable than us. Wallah, they will even make you dance the Hulahoop, on one leg. Ya’ani, you know — a break dance. Come on be a sport. Do it, for the sake of the “war on terror.” So we can finally be rid of YOUR terror once and for all…
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Swat valley could be worst refugee crisis since Rwanda, UN warns
Declan Walsh
The human exodus from the war-torn Swat valley in northern Pakistan is turning into the world’s most dramatic displacement crisis since the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the UN refugee agency warned. Almost 1.5 million people have registered for assistance since fighting erupted three weeks ago, the UNHCR said, bringing the total number of war displaced in North West Frontier province to more than 2 million, not including 300,000 the provincial gove rnment believes have not registered. “It’s been a long time since there has been a displacement this big,” the UNHCR’s spokesman Ron Redmond said in Geneva, trying to recall the last time so many people had been uprooted so quickly. “It could go back to Rwanda.”…
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It’s Now or Almost Certainly Never
Is Obama Up to the Challenge of Dealing with Netanyahu?
By MUSTAFA BARGHOUTHI
I cannot recall a more important meeting between an American president and an Israeli prime minister than today’s meeting between President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Will the Obama administration have the courage to challenge Netanyahu, or will all the talk of change dissolve in the face of a concerted one-two punch from Netanyahu and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee? I am increasingly convinced that if Obama fails to speak out now, it will doom the two-state solution forever. Further fiddling in Washington — after eight years of it — will consign Jerusalem, the West Bank and the two-state solution to an Israeli expansionism that will overwhelm the ability of cartographers to concoct a viable Palestinian state…
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Gaza: Rising Again After the Assault
By Erin Cunningham
Khuza’a is a small farming village perched on a gentle slope east of Khan Younis. Its fertile farmland once produced fruit and vegetables for export to Israel, whose own lush plains are just 500 metres from Khuza’a's centre, and are visible through the town’s narrow streets. But the relative quiet of this rural border town, about 25 kilometres southeast of Gaza City, was shattered Jan. 10 when Israeli forces launched an all-out, three-day assault that killed 16 civil ians and destroyed many of Khuza’a's houses and its agricultural land. Perilously close to the border with Israel, Khuza’a was the only place outside of the cities in Gaza’s north – which were effectively severed from central and southern Gaza by Israeli troops Jan. 5 – to suffer a full-blown ground invasion during Israel’s three-week war that ended Jan. 18…
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LEBANON: Tough life for Palestinians in neglected “gatherings”
IRIN news
For the last 30 years Ali Mohammed Hindawi, aged 84, has lived alone in a rusty tin shack in south Lebanon, without water, electricity or a toilet, sleeping among chickens, flies and litter, and separated from his family by displacement and poverty. “What do I think about at night? I think about my situation, that this is not a life for me,” said the frail old man, barely able to sit up after weathering another winter of freezing temperatures and dow npours. “It is the life of a dog. All I want is to spend my last few years in a good way.” Hindawi is one of tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon who live in unofficial “gatherings”, collections of homes built without official permission and left largely unserviced, by either the Lebanese state, the Palestinian Authority (PA) or the UN Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA…
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Hamas, Fatah split on Obama remarks to Netanyahu
Ma’an News
The Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority said US President Barack Obama’s remarks to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were “encouraging,” while Hamas called them “deceptive” in their remarks Tuesday. “The statements by Mr Obama are encouraging while those by Prime Minister Netanyahu are disappointing,” Palestinian presidential aide Nabil Abu Rudeinah said, according to Reuters. Hamas however, was not encouraged by Obama’s statements…
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Report: Hamas leader Mash’al ousted deputy over opposition to Iran
Ma’an News
Senior Hamas leader Khalid Mash’al dismissed his deputy, Mousa Abu Marzouq and another leader because of their reported opposition to the dictates of Syria and Iran, according to the Kuwaiti newspaper “Politics.”…”The elections have many changes but still many details are hidden by Hamas … the removal of Abu Marzouk and Al-Alami were the result of pressure from Syria and Iran on Mash’al,” the newspaper’s source said. According to the report, M ash’al was personally strengthened in the internal elections, which saw him reelected as the head of the group’s powerful Political Bureau. Mash’al is opposed to reconciliation with Fatah…
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Jeremy Scahill: “Little Known Military Thug Squad Still Brutalizing Prisoners at Gitmo Under Obama
Democracy Now!
Jeremy Scahill reports the Obama administration is continuing to use a notorious military police unit at Guantanamo that regularly brutalizes unarmed prisoners, including gang-beating them, breaking their bones, gouging their eyes and dousing them with chemicals. This force, officially known as the Immediate Reaction Force, has been labeled the “Extreme Repression Force” by Guantanamo prisoners, and human righ ts lawyers call their actions illegal…
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Al Masry denies reports on an agreement on unified security forces in Gaza
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC
Hamas leader, member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Mosheer Al Amsry, stated Monday that the talks about a unified Hamas-Fateh security force in Gaza to man the Rafah terminal are yet another failed attempt to pressure Hamas. Al Masry added that what is needed is a full partnership in Gaza and the West Bank. He also said that talks on such a plan are an implementation of what he described as “the American-Zionist plan “…
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