After Afghan massacre, Washington says airstrikes will go on
Bill Van Auken
In the final days of his trip to Washington, President Hamid Karzai demanded an end to US airstrikes in Afghanistan. In response, US National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones (ret.) insisted that the bombing of Afghan villages will continue, whether the country’s supposed sovereign government likes it or not. The juxtaposition of Karzai’s and Jones’ remarks speaks volumes about the nature of the US war in Afghanistan. It is a dirty, colonial-styl e intervention in which Washington dictates policy to a puppet government while unleashing military violence against an increasingly hostile population…
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Remembering Jenin
Stephen Williams
The Martyrs’ Cemetery is but a few meters from Jenin Refugee Camp. On a warm, sunny day I stood in front of the memorial to the victims of the massacre of 2002 and remembered them, as I had long promised to do. I remembered the forgotten. It is not an imposing monument; had the victims been Israeli, a more grandiose memorial would have been built, perhaps with a museum, perhaps with a carefully-maintained eternal flame. I was disappointed at first. Is this what I had travelled from Occup ied Jerusalem to see? Through Ramallah, Nablus and those checkpoints manned by bored, surly adolescent soldiers? But then I understood; the victims were ordinary people- men, women and children- trying to live ordinary lives, until they came face to face with an extraordinary interruption; the appearance of the highly-mechanised, US- resourced Israel Defence Force at their very their doorsteps…
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Israel allows 93 Christians to leave Gaza during pope visit, denies 400 others
Ma’an News
Israel granted permits to 93 Palestinian Christians to leave Gaza to attend a papal mass in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, and turned down applications for more than 400 others, a church official in Gaza said on Monday. Amin Sabbagh of the Latin Patriarchate in Gaza said that Israel refused to allow anyone under the age of 35 to leave Gaza. Israeli officials have confirmed that they imposed some restrictions on allowing the faithfu l to leave Gaza, citing “security concerns.”…
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The Pope is welcomed, but….
By Khalid Amayreh in occupied East Jerusalem
As hospitality is a key Arab-Muslim character, the Pope of the Vatican, Benedict XVI, should be accorded all the respect he deserves as the religious leader of hundreds of millions of Roman Catholics, many of them stand alongside Muslims in rejecting the criminal policies and practices of the Israeli state. The recent genocidal blitz against the effectively imprisoned and thoroughly starved people of Gaza is only one example of Israeli criminality, a criminality that can be compared with the evil deeds of the worst offenders in history. I understand that the Vatican often refrains from calling the spade a spade for a variety of reasons. We are talking after all about a unique religious-political entity that is expected to satisfy and please a whole spectrum of people with different, even discordant, political orientations. However, it is only fair and just to expect the Pope to denounce, politely but strongly, acts and behaviors that Jesus Christ would have denounced…
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Obama’s Middle East Imperialism
Shamus Cooke
The velvet gloves are off and the reality of Obama’s Middle East plans are being revealed: a bare-fisted pummeling of Afghanistan and Pakistan — with Iraq’s fate yet to be determined. The media have been preparing this for months, with incessant talk about the alleged “troop drawdown” in Iraq, the “surge” in Afghanistan and the “immediate threat” that supposedly is represented by Pakistan. It’s now crystal clear that zero “change” will be forthcoming when it comes to U.S. forei gn policy, minus a strategic shifting of troops. This fact was highlighted recently when Obama asked for an additional $83.4 billion in “emergency spending” to fight the Iraq/Afghan/Pakistan wars. It must be noted that so-called “emergency funds” were precisely the avenue Bush chose to fight his wars, enabling him to skirt the already-gigantic military budget…
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alone and impoverished
Eva Bartlett, In Gaza
Hadwa lives among the same cluster of impoverished shacks and broken cement houses as the other al Bateran families I’d already met. It seems the lane holds sad story after sad story, a micro-segment of Gaza’s overall suffering under siege and warfare, and every encounter of the extended al Bateran family alone reinforces this. Hadwa said she used to receive aid but that the Ramallah government cut it in the past two years. She takes what she can get from her relatives, but l ives hand-to-mouth day by day…
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Prisoner Who Tied Iraq to Al-Qaeda Found Dead in Libyan Jail
Brad Friedman
British journalist and historian Andy Worthington, an expert and author on Guantanamo, reports that the man who had supplied a key false tie between Iraq and al-Qaeda — after being tortured in Egypt, where he had been rendered by the U.S. — has died in a Libyan prison. “Dead of suicide in his cell,” according to a Libyan newspaper. Worthington has excellent coverage of the story tonight, which, he says, is “ablaze” in the Arabic media, but so f ar unreported in all but one English language outlet….
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Israel ‘using tourist sites to assert control over East Jerusalem’
Peace groups say government’s secret plans with settler groups could prevent two-state solution
Rory McCarthy
Israel is quietly extending its control over East Jerusalem in alliance with rightwing Jewish settler groups, by developing parks and tourist sites that would bring a “drastic change of the status quo in the city”, according to two Israeli groups. Ir Amin, a group working for a shared Jerusalem, said the purpose of the “confidential” pla n was to link up several areas of East Jerusalem surrounding the Old City with the goal of asserting Israeli control and strengthening its claim to Jerusalem as its capital city. Israel captured East Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it, a move not recognised by the international community…
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Lebanon displays tools it says Israel used to spy
Hussein Malla (AP)
Lebanese police displayed sophisticated devices Monday that they said Israel used to spy on Hezbollah, including a water cooler fitted with sensors to survey the landscape. Other devices shown to reporters and photographers included a car battery charger that the police said was used to store and transmit data and USB flash drives containing detailed maps of Lebanon. Some of the maps showed bridges and military outposts that were hit by Israeli warplanes during the 2006 war with Hezbollah, police said…
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