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Amnesty’s scandalous obliquity [*]
Khalid Amayreh
Palestinians incinerated to death by Israel’s White Phosphorous bombs
In an apparent effort to sound “balanced” and “unbiased,” the London-based human rights group, Amnesty International ( AI ) , has urged the international community to halt arms sales to the Israeli apartheid regime and the Palestinian Islamic liberation movement, Hamas.
A report issued by the group on Sunday, 22 February, pointed out that arms supplied to “the two sides” were used in attacks on civilians and civilian objects” which constituted war crimes. -Nontheless, a careful examination of the report shows a clear propensity on the part of AI to create a false symmetry between Hamas, a small liberation movement resisting a decades-old Nazi-like foreign military occupation, and Israel, a manifestly criminal state armed to the teeth, which has been committing every conceivable crime under the sun for the purpose of maintaining its colonialist occupation and brutal domination over the Palestinian people.
Anthony Cordesman: War Whore
Norman G. Finkelstein
"In fact Israel began its hasbara (propaganda) preparations six months before the massacre and a centralized body in the Prime Minister's Office, the National Information Directorate, was specifically tasked with coordinating Israeli hasbara. If the carefully orchestrated p.r. blitz ultimately did not convince, the problem was perhaps not that the whole world misperceived what happened or that Israel failed to convey adequately its humanitarian mission but rather that the scope of the massacre was so appalling that no amount of propaganda could disguise it, [...]."
Anthony H. Cordesman, a leading military analyst from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, published a "strategic analysis" of the Gaza massacre shortly after it ended. [1] He reaches the remarkable conclusion that "Israel did not violate the laws of war." The report is based on "briefings in Israeli [sic] during and immediately after the fighting made possible by a visit sponsored by Project Interchange, and using day-to-day reporting issued by the Israeli Defense Spokesman." Cordesman omits mention that Project Interchange is funded by the American Jewish Committee.
Ronald Reagan: Betrayer of Main Street America!
William Hughes
“When it came to corporate greed, the Great Communicator [Ronald Reagan] was also the Great Enabler.” - William Kleinknecht
The book is a scathing, and well deserved, indictment of that “empty suit” Ronald Reagan, and his ultra-grasping political creed, “Reaganism,” which directly led to the “Financial Meltdown of 2008.” The disastrous economic legacy of “hyper capitalism,” that this “free market” zealot sold the country, (1981-89), along with his mean-spirited “gutting of the public sector,” is fully documented by the author William Kleinknecht. Reagan is that same pious faker, who believed in “flying saucers” and let an astrologer set “his presidential schedule,” and “repeatedly misrepresented the past as a laissez-faire utopia.” The tome is entitled: “The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America.” It’s appropriate that the author had experience as a “crime reporter.” What he has written about, in a real sense, are enormous wrongs against the people--against the public good--that threaten the very existence of the Republic.
Dispatches from the Front Lines of Economic Crisis
Stephen Lendman
The more they do, the worse it gets, and world headlines confirm it. Recent ones include:
-- The New York Times, February 17: "After Manhattan's Office Boom, a Hard Fall;"
-- Washington Post, February 17: "Obama signs $787 billion stimulus bill; Dow Jones industrial average drops nearly 300 points;"
Dow theorist, Richard Russell, called it "one of the damnedest closes I've ever seen," within one point of the November 20 low, and added: "I thought President Obama outlawed torture in the US. Wall Street is not listening."
The next day both the Dow and Transportation averages hit new bear market lows. For Dow theorists like Russell and others, it's confirmation of lower ones to come.
Israel: Racism in the name of religion
Elana Maryles Sztokman
[Sep 23, 2008] There are moments when I find myself truly ashamed to be part of Israeli society. I had a moment like that recently as I stood outside the Supreme Court with women from Ahoti, a Sephardi feminist organization, waiting for a ruling on the religious girls' school in Emanuel where racism is so entrenched that parents will do all it takes to keep antiquated Jim Crow-like separations in place.
What is happening in the Beit Ya'acov school is nothing less than the formalization of racism. Here the school implements a policy in which Sephardi girls are not allowed to be in a class with Ashkenazi or hassidic girls, and they have different teachers, different classes and even different recess times and a fence between their yards just to ensure that the two groups do not mingle during the breaks.
Obama’s Policy on Civil Liberties: Bush Lite?
Ivan Eland
Barack Obama entered the presidency as one of the most rhetorically pro-civil liberties politicians in recent memory. And shortly after taking office, he drew applause from friends of liberty for promulgating executive orders closing Guantanamo and CIA secret prisons, ending CIA torture, suspending kangaroo proceedings at military tribunals, and pledging more openness than the secretive Bush administration. Unfortunately, instead of prosecuting Bush administration officials, including George W. Bush, for violating criminal statutes against torture, illegal wiretapping of Americans, and other misdeeds—thus avoiding the bad precedent of giving a president a free pass on illegal acts—Obama appears ready to vindicate the prior administration’s anti-terrorism program by adopting Bush Lite.
The Battle for Bil'in
eileen fleming
[Bil'in, Feb. 23, 2009] For four years, the beleaguered agricultural village of Bil'in in the West Bank has resisted the route of Israel's Wall; which in Bil'in is composed of miles of electrified-barbed wire fencing that denies the landowners access to their legally owned land.
The Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that The Fence must be moved and the stolen land restored to the Bil'in villagers; but civil and military authorities have not complied and last week, night time raids by Israel escalated.
The Separate and Unequal Rule
Nadia W. Awad
Israel has managed to do it again. Somehow, they have twisted a distressing event around completely and made themselves look like saints in the process. They have come out looking like the good Samaritans, while making life even more unbearable for about 60,000 Palestinian residents of Jerusalem. You may wonder what I’m talking about. I’m referring to a Jerusalem Post article along the lines of: ‘Israel removes checkpoint to make travel to Jerusalem easier for Palestinians.’ If only they would, but of course they won’t.
Imagine a wide, main road connecting two cities – Jerusalem and Ramallah. Now imagine somebody builds a large cement wall straight down the middle of it, so that on one side, you’re driving in Jerusalem, when on the other side, you’re driving in the West Bank. Obviously you can’t cross the road, unless you actually want to smash your car into cement. Confused? In an attempt to explain it more clearly, imagine you live in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Dahiyet Al Barid, just north of the city center, but your house happens to be confusingly on the West Bank side of the street and behind the gate. Now, intuitively, to get to the city center, you would drive south. Not according to Israel. If you drive south, you’ll just hit the wall or the iron gate. Instead, what you have to do is drive further north, go through the Qalandia checkpoint, turn around and drive back south again. Still confused? Probably – I still am. It’s one of those situations where you have to see it to believe (and understand) it.
Updates: Child Sacrifice and Gitmo Torture, Progressive Style
Chris Floyd
I. We reported here last week about another in the barrage of stories detailing civilian deaths at the hands of American-led forces in the "good war" in Afghanistan, now being escalated by Barack Obama. (And not only in Afghanistan; Obama is also rapidly expanding American attacks inside Pakistan to include forces there with little or no involvement with the war in Afghanistan -- along with the usual blood-fruit harvest of civilians, of course.)
In last week's post, we took note of Washington's claim that U.S. missiles had killed "15 militants" in a raid that Afghan officials said actually killed 13 civilians, including six women and two children. Today, the New York Times reports that Pentagon has now admitted that they did indeed kill 13 civilians in the raid, and only 3 militants -- precisely as the Afghan authorities had claimed.
Surging towards a US-NATO Military Disaster: Obama's Escalating War in Central and South Asia
Tom Burghardt
On February 18, President Barack Obama ordered 17,000 additional U.S. troops deployed to Afghanistan. Obama's announcement will result in a major escalation of America's bloody occupation of that war-ravaged country.
Currently, some 36,000 U.S. troops are in Afghanistan, including some 6,000 sent in early January under orders by the outgoing Bush regime. In addition to U.S. forces, 32,000 troops from other NATO countries and a mix of "private military contractors" (armed mercenaries) occupy the Central Asian nation.
When coupled with increasingly bellicose rhetoric from the Pentagon and military strikes inside Pakistan, the prospects for regional war--with incalculable risks for the people of Central- and South Asia--have put paid Obama's electoral hyperbole that his would be a "change" administration.
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