Pages: << 1 ... 1242 1243 1244 1245 1246 1247 1248 1249 1250 1251 1252 ... 1327 >>
THE WEB OF PRECARIOUSNESS “Chi non lavora, non fa l’amore”
Gaither Stewart
Precariousness looms like a black cloud over the continent of Europe. The fragility of human life and of the life style generations of westerners are accustomed to today rages like a modern plague. Precariousness is a contagious disease. It leaps from worker to worker, from class to class. No wonder that life in our times has never seemed more temporary. Permanence belongs to another age.
(Rome) A popular Italian evergreen from the 1970s depicts a contemporary conundrum for many Europeans: “Chi non lavora, non fa l’amore” go the lyrics. The woman tells her man, “If you don’t work, there will be no love-making in this house. If you strike and don’t bring home pay, I will strike too. No love-making here!” The worker goes back to his job and strikers beat him up and call him a scab. No sex if he strikes, beatings if he works. He is truly the superfluous and precarious man. His only hope is that the capitalist boss relents and grants the pay increases the union demands and lets love into his house again. But that, he must realize, is highly unlikely.
GMO Proliferation Bills
Stephen Lendman
Four in all so far plus another authorizing funding under a 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act. One is HR 875: "Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009." Introduced in the House on February 4 by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, (D, CT) whose husband has ties to Monsanto, with 39 co-sponsors, it's been referred to the Agriculture and Energy and Commerce Committees for consideration as follows:
-- discussion,
-- possible hearings,
-- "mark-up" to make changes and add amendments,
-- then a vote on further action - to either table or send to the full chamber for a vote, the regular procedure for House and Senate legislation.
The bill's text is deceptively innocuous. Its header reads:
Death squad leader 'was top CIA agent'
Gabriel Ronay
President Milosevic (left), Jovica Stanisic (center).
The late President Milosevic's secret police chief and organiser of Serb death squads during the genocidal ethnic cleansing of disintegrating Yugoslavia was the United States' top CIA agent in Belgrade, according to the independent Belgrade Radio B92.
The claim that from 1992 until the end of the decade, Jovica Stanisic, head of Serbia's murderous DB Secret Police, was regularly informing his CIA handlers of the thinking in Milosevic's inner circle has shocked the region.
Stanisic is said to have loyally served his two masters for eight years. He is facing war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
In the terrifying years of Yugoslavia's internecine wars, he acted as the willing "muscle" behind Milosevic's genocidal campaigns in Croatia, Kosovo and Bosnia, including Sebrenica. According to the charges he faces, Stanisic was "part of a joint criminal enterprise that included former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic and other Serbian politicians".
Fake faith and epic crimes
John Pilger
These are extraordinary times. With the United States and Britain on the verge of bankruptcy and committing to an endless colonial war, pressure is building for their crimes to be prosecuted at a tribunal similar to that which tried the Nazis at Nuremberg. This defined rapacious invasion as “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole”. International law would be mere farce, said the chief US chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson, “if, in future, we do not apply its principles to ourselves”.
That is now happening. Spain, Germany, Belgium, France and Britain have long had “universal jurisdiction” statutes, which allow their national courts to pursue and prosecute prima facie war criminals. What has changed is an unspoken rule never to use international law against “ourselves”, or “our” allies or clients. In 1998, Spain, supported by France, Switzerland and Belgium, indicted the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, client and executioner of the West, and sought his extradition from Britain, where he happened to be at the time. Had he been sent for trial he almost certainly would have implicated at least one British prime minister and two US presidents in crimes against humanity. Home Secretary Jack Straw let him escape back to Chile.
Student Merna foils Israeli bid to wreck family’s education hopes
Stuart Littlewood
Photo: "Merna in Azzeh Camp where she lives. The bright smile hides
a steely determination."
Bethlehem University has been closed a dozen times by Israeli storm-troopers and shelled by their tanks, but it remains one of those magical places in the Holy Land where you always feels good 'vibes'.
Meeting the students is a continual source of inspiration, as so many apply themselves to their studies with cheerful determination in spite of difficult family circumstances and almost insurmountable obstacles put in their way by the Occupation. So I enjoy the newsletters the Brothers regularly send me.
Their latest includes the heart-rending story of a young girl, Merna, an honors student in her final year majoring in English. For most people studying for a degree is tough enough, but this youngster also has to battle against armed intruders who invade her home and have systematically destroyed her family life.
Rotting in denial
Khalid Amayreh
Israel's reputation destroyed, its character exposed; but for Israel's leaders, any and all atrocities it commits are to be forgiven, reports Khalid Amayreh in occupied East Jerusalem
Facing unprecedented outcry over its recent genocidal blitzkrieg on the Gaza Strip, Israel is once again denying the obvious and accusing its accusers and critics of having a "fixation on Israel" and of "harbouring anti- Semitism".
Israeli officials and spokespersons have become more nervous than usual as they are increasingly asked to respond to charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by Israeli forces during their recent 22-day onslaught on the Gaza Strip.
Since the end of the devastating war, local and international human rights organisations have amassed a vast body of irrefutable evidence corroborating and proving beyond doubt war crime allegations made by the victims, their relatives, visiting doctors and humanitarian relief workers.
Finally, Talking the Lobby’s Role in America
Karin Friedemann
 |
Most Americans would prefer to keep their lights on than to personally finance Israel’s existence
It finally seems acceptable, even within polite circles, to discuss the role of the Israeli Lobby on US foreign policy. AIPAC’s recent success in deposing the almost National Security Chief Chas Freeman stimulated much free thought worldwide.
Freeman made it clear that he blamed certain “unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country whose aim is to prevent any other view other than its own from being aired.”
Freeman further stated, “The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonour and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth.”
Aftermath (7) “I know every inch of this land…”
PCHR-Gaza
Jamal al-Bassyuni (far right) and local activists from Beit Hanoun
celebrate Palestinian Land Day Photo: ©Malian
In this new series of personal testimonies, PCHR looks at the aftermath of Israel’s 22 day offensive on the Gaza Strip, and the ongoing impact it is having on the civilian population.
As farmer Jamal al-Bassyuni plucked a stalk of ripening wheat, a posse of young men danced in his field. The dancers were flanked by a lively crowd, many of them women wearing the traditional Palestinian embroidered thob dress. Despite the nearby rubble of destroyed houses, and tracts of land laid to waste by bulldozers and tanks, the mood was defiantly sunny. Local farmers and their supporters were celebrating Palestinian Land Day. Land Day was launched in 1976, as a commemoration of the deaths of six Palestinian citizens of northern Israel killed by the Israeli military as they demonstrated against expropriation of their land. It has become an important symbolic day of action across the Occupied Palestinian Territory, highlighting the plight faced by farmers like Jamal Bassyuni and his family, who live in Izbat Beit Hanoun on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip.
Widespread Lies: An American Woe
Emily Spence
While on a recent business trip, I heard the jet's stewardess announce, "And we thank any American troops onboard for their hard work to keep America free. We, especially, thank them for doing this in dangerous, far away places. We appreciate their honor and service on behalf of the great American way. They are true heroes doing whatever it takes to keep our freedom truly free at home."
In response, I felt like calling out, "Excuse me, but how is destroying a country like Iraq keeping us free? How is warring to secure the ME oil fields for companies like Exxon-Mobile keeping us free? How is slaughtering countless civilians in dangerous, far away places (as you call them) keeping us free? Were Iraq and Afghanistan dangerous to be as a tourist before our country's initial aggressive assaults? Perhaps our invasions fomented increased dangers from terrorists both abroad AND here. So, please stop spreading dangerous propaganda. It does us all a disservice!"
Instead I kept quiet because in the land of the free, free speech is curtailed. As a result, I'd have wound up arrested by airport security forces for "creating a disturbance" were I to contradict the flight attendant.
American NLG Lawyers Release New Findings that Israel Violated International Law, US Domestic Law in Gaza
National Lawyers Guild
[URUKNET] Israel violated international law by targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure, misusing weapons, deliberately denying medical care to the wounded and attacking medical personnel, the National Lawyers Guild Delegation to Gaza said today upon releasing a 37 page report containing new evidence on the facts surrounding Israel’s 22 day military offensive in Gaza. The full report can be viewed at www.nlg.org. Photos are also available upon request.
"Our findings join a growing chorus of voices—which include Israeli soldiers themselves—asserting that Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians during the Gaza offensive," said Radhika Sainath, one of the attorneys who initiated the seven-day fact-finding delegation to Gaza. "On a number of occasions, Israeli soldiers shot and killed young children as well as unarmed civilians holding white flags—both violations of the laws of war."
<< 1 ... 1242 1243 1244 1245 1246 1247 1248 1249 1250 1251 1252 ... 1327 >>
