The Children’s Crusade
Chris Floyd
Day after day, week after week, Barack Obama’s “Overseas Contingency Operations” keep churning through the bodies of children: sometimes with chemical weapons that sear their flesh and leave them maimed and disfigured for life; sometimes with carefully aimed bullets ripping through their organs and leaving them dead right on the spot. And in every such case, our brave and noble Terror Warriors — who, lest we forget, are upholding the highest values of world civilization, bringing hope a nd change to benighted lands and defending our sacred way of life — run screaming like spinsters in a hissy fit from the slightest hint of responsibility for their actions. Their first response, always, is to blame someone else: either the designated enemy of the day — or else the burned and shredded children themselves. This tendency was on vivid display this week in two stories from separate fronts in the ever-spreading Terror War…
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Probe sought after chemical strike burns Afghan girl
By Emma Graham-Harrison
Human Rights Watch has called on NATO-led forces in Afghanistan to release the results of an investigation into a March incident in which an 8-year-old girl was burned by white phosphorus munitions. The girl, Razia, was badly burned when her home was hit by a shell containing the chemical, which ignites on contact with air and can stick to flesh. U.S. military medical staff who treated the girl said she had white phosphorus on her face and neck. Two of her sisters were killed in the strike in the eastern province of Kapisa. The case, the first known example of civilian casualties from white phosphorus in Afghanistan, was first reported by Reuters on Friday. Razia’s father said Western forces had fired the shot…
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1-2-3 What Are We Fighting For?
Blaming the Dead Victims
By DAVE LINDORFF
We’re been here before, many times. The US causes massive civilian deaths through its indiscriminate use of heavy air power, and then tries to claim it’s the enemy’s fault for “hiding” among the civilians and “using them as shields.” In Vietnam, where the US was fighting against a local revolutionary movement that was seeking to overthrow the puppet regime backed by America, American planes routinely bombed and napalmed villages, claiming that the Viet Cong were hiding amongst the peasants. Women, old men and children would die in droves—several million of them by the time that war was over–and we’d be told it was all the fault of the Communists, who, we were told, had no regard for innocent life. In Iraq, we took a city of 300,000, Fallujah, and effectively leveled it. Anyone who died there was presumed to be an insurgent, though the truth was, the Marines encircling the city before the onslaught only allowed fleeing women, girls and male children who were under the age 12 to flee, sending older boys and men seeking to get out back into the city to meet their fate. Just this week, the brave Marines in Iraq blew away a 12-year-old boy after someone tossed a grenade their way….
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Danish doctors let wounded Afghans die
By Ron Ridenour, Free Afghanistan Blog of Denmark
…It has just come to light in the Danish media, however, that the country’s war-mongering is not limited to its politicians and their compliant soldiers—or rather “mercenaries” because no Dane is ordered to fight. One must volunteer for the wars and for so doing receive up to triple the income of ordinary soldiers. Danish doctors and nurses have become part of the occupying force and, like the mercenaries, decide who should live or die. These medical personnel care for the occupiers´ health, part of the “humanitarian” team accompanying the warriors. They serve the juggernauts as do the “rehabilitators” and “re-builders” under the occupying army, as revealed by the liberal capitalist daily, Politiken. In an article written by Christian Hüttemeier, “Danish doctors break Geneva Convention”, May 5, former Danish Red Cross’ general secretary, Joergen Poulsen, said that current medical practice by Danish doctors and nurses in Afghanistan violates the convention, because they are deciding to stop treatment of wounded Afghans….
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Israel kidnapped 2350 Palestinians since the beginning of this year
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC
Palestinian researcher, specialist in detainees’ affairs, former detainee Abdul-Nasser Farawna, stated Monday that the Israeli forces kidnapped since the beginning of this year until the end of April more than 2350 Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. He stated that some of the kidnapped residents were released later on while hundreds of them remained imprisoned in different detention and interrogation centers…
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Pope arrives in Israel, meanwhile police close down a Palestinian Press center in Jerusalem
Ghassan Bannoura – IMEMC
On Monday morning Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Israel for the second stage of his pilgrimage to the Middle East holy sites. He arrived from Jordan which he visited on Sunday…In Jerusalem, where the Pope is expected to visit on Tuesday, the Israeli police closed down a Press office that was set up by Palestinians in the city to provide Press services for local and international Media. The police came to th e Ambassador Hotel in East Jerusalem where the center was located and closed it down, organizers reported…
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Israel’s Judaization of Al-Quds: Legal Perspective
Al-Quds’ Status Under International Law
Prof. Mohammad Yaghi
Al-Quds (Jerusalem) was completely occupied by Israel in 1967, and formally annexed to Israel in 1980 to be its “undivided capital”. Yet, the de facto annexation of land cannot outweigh numerous UN resolutions rendering the Israeli occupation and Judaization of Al-Quds illegal under International Law. ..
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Pope walks out of meeting after PA official criticizes Israel
Ma’an News
Pope Benedict XVI left an interfaith meeting in Jerusalem early on Monday following a harshly worded attack on Israel by an Islamic judge, according to news reports. The chief Islamic judge of the Palestinian Authority, Sheikh Tayseer Rajab Tamimi, had criticized Israel for “murdering women and children in Gaza and making Palestinians refugees, and declared Jerusalem the eternal Palestinian capital,” according to the Jerusalem Post. Following his rem arks, and before the meeting had officially ended, the pope reportedly left, although Israel’s Army Radio said Benedict shook Tamimi’s hand before leaving…
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Fatah-Hamas Reconciliation Looking Distant
By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa Al-Omrani
Doubts have arisen about a Fatah-Hamas reconciliation ahead of a new round of talks. The last talks between the two Palestinian factions failed to bridge outstanding differences. “The talks yielded agreement on some points,” an official Egyptian source was quoted as saying in the state press. “But other major issues remain under discussion by the two factions’ respective leaders.” On Apr. 27 and 28, delegations from the two groups held a series of closed- door discussions in Cairo – in the presence of Egyptian mediators – aimed at laying the groundwork for a Palestinian national unity government. The meetings represented the fourth round of Egypt-sponsored reconciliation talks between Fatah, led by U.S.-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, and resistance faction Hamas…
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Muslims, Christians Denied Al-Quds Shrines
By Khalid Amayreh, IOL Correspondent
Like most Christians in the occupied West Bank, Fadi Hazboun, who lives in Bethlehem, is denied free access to Christian holy places in Al-Quds (occupied East Jerusalem), such as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Hazboun, 35, says Al-Quds has been effectively off-limit to most Palestinians since the 1993 Oslo Accords. “It is probably naïve to expect true religious freedom under a sinister military occupation,” he contends. “After all, the occ upation and freedom are an oxymoron since the former is meant to hurt, harm, torment, savage and kill.”..
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Ir Amim: Israel plans to establish parks, roads and Jewish sites in east J’lem
Palestinian Information Center
The Israeli Ir Amim society revealed Sunday an official secret scheme prepared by the Israeli government in cooperation with Zionist settlement organizations to establish a number of parks, roads and archaeological sites around the old city in occupied east Jerusalem in order to make a radical change in the holy city. According to the details reported by the Haaretz newspaper, this scheme falls within a broader se ttlement project aimed to control the “sacred basin” in the old city where many of the Palestinian historical sites have already been turned by the IOA into Jewish places…
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Resisting Dispossession in Jerusalem
Tony Davies
If you go half a kilometre north along the Nablus Road from St George’s Cathedral, you will see a tent where Palestinians living in the Sheikh Jarrah district of East Jerusalem are protesting against orders for their houses to be demolished. If you visit the tent, you will be given coffee and can learn about the eviction of Mohammed and Fawzi Al Kurd and their five children from the house the family has lived in since 1956. In 2001 settlers occupied part of their home. The Israeli Supreme Court ordered the settlers out, but the order was never implemented. At 4 am on 9 November 2008, Israeli soldiers evicted the Al Kurds. The following day a tent was erected for them but the Israeli military removed it and replacements – the present one is the sixth…
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Israel’s psychological siege
David Cronin
Palestinians in Gaza have a colloquial term to describe the buzzing of Israeli warplanes that is an ever-present feature of their lives: zanana. The gallows humor of likening instruments of death to honey bees might suggest that the people of this crowded sliver of land on the Mediterranean have found a way of coping with the occupation that has lasted more than four decades. Yet the planes also remind Palestinians of what they fear most: that they could come under fresh attack at any time…
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How much Politics can the Pope Take?
MIFTAH
…Let’s hope Pope Benedict XVI sees this when he visits Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Yes, politics may not be the most important aspect of his trip given that he is the leader of the Catholic faith, but he cannot deny the political dimensions of the place if he is to fulfill the goal for which he is coming. Israel cannot continue to claim it is democratic and allows freedom of worship as it oppresses and denies those living under its occupation of this very thing. Palestinian Chris tians and Muslims alike suffer from Israel’s repressive measures for the simple fact that they are not Jewish. If this does not symbolize intolerance, I don’t know what would…
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Pope calls for a Palestinian homeland
By Richard Boudreaux
Reporting from Jerusalem — Pope Benedict XVI, arriving in Israel on a pilgrimage across the Holy Land, put himself at odds with the country’s new government today by calling for an independent Palestinian homeland alongside the Jewish state. “I plead with all those responsible to explore every possible avenue in the search for a just resolution of the outstanding difficulties, so that both peoples may live in peace in a homeland of their own, within secure and int ernationally recognized borders,” Benedict said in a speech minutes after landing at Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport…
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US: 12 million children face hunger and food insecurity
Naomi Spencer
More than 12 million children are threatened with the risk of inadequate food and hunger in the US, according to a new report from the food bank advocacy Feeding America. Significantly, the study found that more than 3.5 million children under the age of five face hunger. This figure amounts to fully 17 percent—one in every six—of American children age five and under…
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