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Gaza: A Dire life Zone Still Clings to Hope
Sameh A. Habeeb
Gaza Strip, 20, Nov, 2008- Following Israeli raids that killed around 15 Palestinians within one week, many rockets were fired into Israel in a reprisal of Israeli's provocation. As usual Israel started to blame Palestinians despite it was the one who initiated with violence again. The Israeli assault was an obvious breach of an agreed calm held with Palestinian fighting groups 5 months ago. It has provoked some Palestinians to fire some light rockets into Israel. Afterwards, Israel started a new phase of collective punishment and began more violent prevocational measures against 1.5 million people.
Extrajudicial Assassinations As Official Israeli Policy
Stephen Lendman
Extra-judicial killings are indefensible, morally abhorrent, and illegal under international laws and norms. Article 23b of the 1907 Hague Regulations prohibits "assassination, proscription, or outlawry of an enemy, or putting a price upon an enemy's head, as well as offering a reward for any enemy 'dead or alive.' "
Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states that "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person." UDHR also recognizes the "inherent dignity (and the) equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family."
So do "just war" principles that rule out gratuitous violence, assassinations, especially if premeditated, war against civilians, and so on, despite the difficulties of distinguishing between combatants, those who've laid down their arms, and the innocent in times of war - let alone dealing with "terrorism" or what one analyst calls the "twilight zone between war and peace." Others say it's justifiable resistance or "blowback" in response to state-sponsored violence and other crimes of war and against humanity.
G-20 Meets, Dines in DC, Does Nothing to Save the World Economy
By Kevin Zeese
People Need to Organize to Break the Bailout and Demand the Economy We Want
October saw an increase in bankruptcies -- 108,595, an average of 4,936 every business day.
President Bush hosted the G-20 summit –the official menu included fruitwood-smoked quail, thyme-roasted rack of lamb and baked Vermont brie with walnut crostini, along with three wines . . .
More than a quarter million U.S. households received a foreclosure filing in October. A total of 279,561 properties got a default notice, were warned of a pending auction or were foreclosed.
The PA is cheating the Palestinian people
By Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine
With fanfare, fireworks, military parades and a lot of rhetorical overindulgence, the American-backed Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas has been celebrating the 20th anniversary of the so-called “Independence Day.”
In 1988, the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who, too, had a hard time distinguishing reality from fiction, declared Palestine “an independent state,” although he knew well, as did the rest of the world, that a country thoroughly occupied and savaged by a Nazi-like foreign power can’t be truly independent, let alone sovereign, until it is fully liberated from the Jaws and claws of the foreign occupiers.
That was the same Arafat who in the mid 1990s toured the West Bank using his Egyptian-donated Russian-made helicopter, declaring one city after the other “liberated, liberated, liberated.” (The two helicopters, dubbed by Israel as the Palestinian air-force were later destroyed by the Israeli air force).
Some things are bigger than any of us
Mickey Z.
Why not embrace your outrage and frustration and let it challenge you, inspire you...
“One of the good things about everything being so fucked up—about the culture being so ubiquitously destructive—is that no matter where you look—no matter what your gifts, no matter where your heart lies—there’s good and desperately important work to be done.” - Derrick Jensen
In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Law was passed and both Northerners and Southerners were now legally required to turn in runaway slaves. One year later, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin (or Life Among the Lowly) as a serial in an antislavery paper, The National Era. In 1852, the Boston publishing company Jewett published it as a book and, as they are wont to say, the rest is history.
The GOP: Architects of Another 'Great Depression'
Len Hart
The GOP has dominated American economic policy since 1980 and with the exception of a brief period in Clinton's second term, the rich have gotten exceedingly richer and the poor, much, much poorer.
This gaping, growing inequality married to Bush's 'bailout', a failed example of corporate welfare and outright theft, has proven Karl Marx to have been absolutely correct. The nation now faces another Great Depression because it had not learned the lessons of Coolidge, Hoover, Reagan and Bush.
Unsettling Signs: Buzzwords, Politics and US Elections
Ramzy Baroud
There are a few buzzwords that every American politician, aiming for high office must utilize, even if disingenuously, to have a reasonable chance at getting elected.
President-elect, Barak Obama’s constant use of terms like ‘hope’ and ‘change’ contributed greatly to the overwhelming support he has experienced by the American public. Many, admiringly so, have overcome a legacy of racial division and prejudice that has defined America for decades, if not centuries. In that regard, voting to office a bi-racial candidate is truly an historic event.
Europe should speak to Hamas now
Khalid Amayreh
There is no doubt that Hamas, the main Palestinian Islamic movement, is becoming more rational, more pragmatic and more moderate, at least in comparison to its formative years. This is why it is imperative that member-States of the European Union (EU) either collectively or individually should initiate a meaningful dialogue with Hamas as soon as possible. Needless to say, such a dialogue would be expedient to all parties involved as well as to the cause of peace and stability in the Middle East.
Israel, along with her guardian-ally, the United States, and the bulk of EU States, sought to destroy Hamas by imposing an especially harsh blockade on occupied Palestine following Hamas’s electoral victory in 2006.
Index Research: US -Israel Missile Defense Cooperation
Sarah Meyer
Were the numerous 'missile shield' stories on 12 November 2008 designed to impress Obama and his AIPAC war hawk team with the need for a continuation of an obscenely expensive “NATO” Missile Defense programme? Could the US financial crisis be helped by lessening the absurd amounts of money given to Israel for its defense?
U.S. Installs Missile Defense Radar in Israel
12.11.08. nti. The United States has completed installation of a missile defense radar station in Israel that will be operated by the first permanent deployment of U.S. troops in the nation, Haaretz reported yesterday. The detachment would consist of about 120 personnel working under the U.S. European Command. … / Israel is particularly concerned about Iran’s missile capabilities. / In addition to the radar, the United States has agreed to rapidly provide missile launch detection data collected from U.S. satellites, according to Defense News. / “Since they threw in [the launch warnings], it's become a whole new ball game. We're looking at a very generous gift from the United States, even if it means we have to compromise on sovereignty by having U.S. troops deployed here,” the expert said. / The radar is the same model as the system the United States erected in Japan in 2006.
Beware of the Obama hype. What 'change' in America really means
John Pilger
My first visit to Texas was in 1968, on the fifth anniversary of the assassination of president John F Kennedy in Dallas. I drove south, following the line of telegraph poles to the small town of Midlothian, where I met Penn Jones Jr, editor of the Midlothian Mirror. Except for his drawl and fine boots, everything about Penn was the antithesis of the Texas stereotype. Having exposed the racists of the John Birch Society, his printing press had been repeatedly firebombed. Week after week, he painstakingly assembled evidence that all but demolished the official version of Kennedy’s murder.
This was journalism as it had been before corporate journalism was invented, before the first schools of journalism were set up and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around those whose “professionalism” and “objectivity” carried an unspoken obligation to ensure that news and opinion were in tune with an establishment consensus, regardless of the truth. Journalists such as Penn Jones, independent of vested power, indefatigable and principled, often reflect ordinary American attitudes, which have seldom conformed to the stereotypes promoted by the corporate media on both sides of the Atlantic. Read American Dreams: Lost and Found by the masterly Studs Terkel, who died the other day, or scan the surveys that unerringly attribute enlightened views to a majority who believe that “government should care for those who cannot care for themselves” and are prepared to pay higher taxes for universal health care, who support nuclear disarmament and want their troops out of other people’s countries.
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