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Showing posts from July, 2014

Rwanda 1994 vs Gaza 2014: Samantha Power And The Age Of Genocide;

Rwanda 1994 vs Gaza 2014: Samantha Power And The Age Of Genocide; By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich “ Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity .”   Horace Mann July 28, 2014 " ICH " -   In her acclaimed book “A Problem From Hell; America and the Age of Genocide” (2003), Samantha Power, current American Ambassador to the United Nations, sharply criticized the United States deliberate inaction and its failure to prevent a genocide in Rwanda where up to one million lives were lost. As she explains it, Washington simply was not interested in stopping the death toll.   The thinking in Washington was: “Look, if something happens in Rwanda-Burundi, we don’t care . Take it off the list. It’s not- U.S. national interest is not involved and,” you know, “we can’t put all these silly humanitarian

The NSA’s New Partner in Spying: Saudi Arabia’s Brutal State Police

The NSA’s New Partner in Spying: Saudi Arabia’s Brutal State Police The NSA’s New Partner in Spying: Saudi Arabia’s Brutal State Police By Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain July 27, 2014 " ICH " - " The Intercept " -  The National Security Agency last year significantly expanded its cooperative relationship with the Saudi Ministry of Interior, one of the world’s most repressive and abusive government agencies. An April 2013 top secret memo provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden details the agency’s plans “to provide direct analytic and technical support” to the Saudis on “internal security” matters. The Saudi Ministry of Interior—referred to in the document as MOI— has been condemned for years as one of the most brutal human rights violators in the wor

Netanyahu’s ‘Telegenically Dead’ Comment Is Grotesque but Not Original

Netanyahu’s ‘Telegenically Dead’ Comment Is Grotesque but Not Original GAZA, PALESTINE - 2014/07/20: Palestinian medics carry the body of a child killed in Shijaiyah east of Gaza City, after Israel expanded its ground offensive on the Gaza Strip (Photo by Ibrahim Khader/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images) July 22, 2014 " ICH " - " The Intercept " - -   Benjamin Netanyahu, yesterday, on CNN, addressing worldwide sympathy for the civilian victims of Israeli violence in Gaza : They want to pile up as many civilian dead as they can. They use telegenically dead Palestinians for their cause. They want the more dead, the better. Joseph Goebbels, November 16,

Reaping What We Have Sown In Gaza

Reaping What We Have Sown In Gaza Reaping What We Have Sown In Gaza Those who turned Gaza into an internment camp for 1.8 million people should not be surprised when they tunnel underneath the earth. By Amira Hass July 22, 2014 " ICH " - " Haaretz " -- -   I’ve already raised the white flag. I’ve stopped searching the dictionary for the word to describe half of a boy’s missing head while his father screams “Wake up, wake up, I bought you a toy!” How did Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Greater Germany, put it? Israel’s right to defend itself. I’m still struggling with the need to share details of the endless number of talks I’ve had with friends in Gaza, in order to document what it’s like to wait for your turn in the slaughterhouse. For example, the talk I had on Sat

Gaza's children, most likely to be killed, live in state of 'shock and horror'

Gaza's children, most likely to be killed, live in state of 'shock and horror' Gaza’s children, most likely to be killed, live in state of "shock and horror" Submitted by Nora Barrows-Fr... on Tue, 07/22/2014 - 20:47 140722-palestinian-boy-gaza.jpg Israel’s indiscriminate attacks on Gaza have killed, injured and deeply traumatized Palestinian children. ( Eyad Al Baba / APA images ) Many children were killed or seriously injured in Israel’s massacre in Shujaiya on Sunday. ( Ashraf Amra / APA images ) “We have never seen it this bad for children,” says Ivan Karakashian of Defence for Children International-Palestine. ( Mohammed Asad / APA images ) Israel killed 19 children from one family DCI-Palestine lists the names of the children from the Abu Jami’ family in Khan Younis. “All were sheltering in their four-storey house when the strike occurred without warning ,” the organization says. Njoud Tayseer Ahmad Abu Jami’, 4 months Bisan Bassam Ahm

Israel's Gaza massacre boosts boycott calls in South Africa

Israel's Gaza massacre boosts boycott calls in South Africa This evening I gave an interview to Al Jazeera English (video above). I would like to develop some of the points I made. If military victory and strength are measured in the number of civilians, especially children , that an army can deliberately target and slaughter with sophisticated machines, then there is no doubt that Israel is winning in Gaza, and has always been the winner in Palestine. But even though it is still mercilessly killing civilians in Gaza as I write these words, Israel has, in political and strategic terms, already lost the “war” it launched on Gaza on the false pretext of stopping rockets. As I’ve argued repeatedly, and as the facts show , the easy and time-tested way for Israel not to receive rockets from Gaza is not to attack Palestinians in Gaza. Israel’s defeat in Gaza will be as significant as its defeat in Lebanon in 2006 (where it also “won” in terms of murdering civilians: 1

Devastated family remembers cheerful boy cut down by Israeli fire on Gaza beach

Devastated family remembers cheerful boy cut down by Israeli fire on Gaza beach The day before he was killed, “Ismail came home carrying fresh fish and began joking with his brothers and sisters. He seemed unusually cheerful and happy,” his mother Sahar Baker told The Electronic Intifada at her home in Gaza’s Beach Camp just twenty-four hours after her son’s brutal slaying. “I asked him, my son, why did you go to the beach while the situation is dangerous? He answered, we were playing as we wanted to play, why should we be afraid?” Sahar said. Ismail Muhammad Baker, nine years old, was killed along with his cousins Ahed Atif Baker and Zakaria Ahed Baker, both ten years old, and eleven-year-old Muhammad Ramiz Baker when Israeli fire targeted them on a beach near Gaza City’s seaport on 16 July.

The boy who clung to the paramedic: the story behind the photo

The boy who clung to the paramedic: the story behind the photo “I want my father!” He was carried in by a paramedic and immediately rushed to the intensive care unit, which is right next to the ER. He clung to the paramedic, crying, “I want my father, bring me my father!” until he had to be forced to let go.

Border Children: ‘They Don’t Speak English, But They Understand Hate’

July 17, 2014 " ICH " - " Truthdig " - -  Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas put a prominent, public face on the immigration crisis this week when he was detained by the U.S. Border Patrol in McAllen, Texas. After a number of hours and a national outcry, he was released. He first revealed his status as an undocumented immigrant three years ago in a New York Times Magazine article, and has since made changing U.S. immigration policy his primary work. Vargas was in Texas to support the thousands of undocumented immigrant children currently detained there by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Border Children: ‘They Don’t Speak English, But They Understand Hate’

NBC News Pulls Reporter from Gaza After Witnessing Israeli Attack on Children

NBC News Pulls Reporter from Gaza After Witnessing Israeli Attack on Children Report No Evil NBC News Pulls Reporter from Gaza After Witnessing Israeli Attack on Children By Glenn Greenwald July 17, 2014 " ICH " - " The Intercept " - Ayman Mohyeldin, the NBC News correspondent who personally witnessed yesterday’s killing by Israel of four Palestinian boys on a Gazan beach and who has received widespread praise for his brave and innovative coverage of the conflict, has been told by NBC executives to leave Gaza immediately. According to an NBC source upset at his treatment, the executives claimed the decision was motivated by “security concerns” as Israel prepares a ground invasion, a claim repeated to me by an NBC executive. But late yesterday, NBC sent another

Gaza needs more than condemnation

  Protesters demonstrate against Israel’s attacks on Gaza at the Hague on 12 July. ( Robert Soeterik ) Gaza needs more than condemnation The Palestinians of Gaza, naively, went to the polling station in January 2006, mistakenly believing the Bush doctrine of bringing democracy to the Middle East — in spite of him being responsible for the brutal massacre of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan. People voted, but not for the preferred choice of the Israelis, or their American backers and the Arab dictators. The Palestinian choice was against the peace process industry, against the fiction that is the ever-slippery two-state solution , against the corruption of the Oslo -era nouveau riche . The outcome was a surprise not only for the Oslo camp, but also for the winners themselves: Hamas . And Palestinians, especially those in Gaza, were made to pay a heavy price for this transgression: the imposition of a severe siege described by Israeli

Israel’s Incremental Genocide in the Gaza Ghetto

Israel’s Incremental Genocide in the Gaza Ghetto Ever since June 1967, Israel searched for a way to keep the territories it occupied that year without incorporating their indigenous Palestinian population into its rights-bearing citizenry. All the while it participated in a “peace process” charade to cover up or buy time for its unilateral colonization policies on the ground. With the decades, Israel differentiated between areas it wished to control directly and those it would manage indirectly, with the aim in the long run of downsizing the Palestinian population to a minimum with, among other means, ethnic cleansing and economic and geographic strangulation. The geopolitical location of the West Bank creates the impression in Israel, at least, that it is possible to achieve this without anticipating a third uprising or too much int

Israel firing experimental weapons at Gaza's civilians, say doctors

Israel firing experimental weapons at Gaza's civilians, say doctors Using Gaza as a laboratory DIME  munitions were developed by the US Air Force in 2006 and have since been tested repeatedly on the people of Gaza, who have long served as involuntary lab rats  for Israel’s weapons industry. DIME bombs contain tungsten, a cancer-causing metal that helps to produce incredibly destructive blasts which slice through flesh and bone, often decapitating the lower limbs of people within the blast radius. Renowned Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert , who witnessed the horrific injuries caused by DIME bombs during Israel’s 2009 Gaza onslaught, told The Electronic Intifada over the phone from al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City that patients are showing up with DIME-related injuries. “A good number of the injuries seen here are consistent with the use of dense inert metal explosives, or DIME, that we saw during the 2009 attack and also in 2006,” said Gilbert. “The bodies are pretty muc

NSA 'spied on prominent Muslim-Americans' - Americas - Al Jazeera English

NSA 'spied on prominent Muslim-Americans' - Americas - Al Jazeera English An online magazine has reported that the National Security Agency (NSA) and the FBI covertly scanned the emails of five prominent Muslim-Americans under the US government's secret surveillance programme aimed at national security threats. The article in the Intercept , a venture by journalist Glenn Greenwald, said on Wednesday that the targets included a lawyer, a Republican political operative, a university professor and two civil rights activists. The Intercept said all five denied any involvement in terrorism or espionage and had not been accused of any crimes. The magazine questioned whether the government obtained legal permission for its surveillance. The account said that a three-month investigation using classified documents obtained from former NSA contract systems analyst Edward Snowden showed that "the system for authorising NSA surveillance affords the government

Israel is deliberately targeting civilians in Gaza

Israel is deliberately targeting civilians in Gaza The UN says 77 percent of Palestinians killed in Israel’s relentless bombing campaign on the besieged Gaza Strip have been civilians. A report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs details Israel’s current assault, now it in its sixth day. With over 150 killed , including an alarming number of women and children, and the death toll in Gaza rising by the hour, Israeli officials insist they are doing all they can to avoid civilian casualties. Using precision guided missiles, the Israeli army claims it is only bombing people and infrastructure “ affiliated with Hamas terrorism ” — and the international community is buying it. What is not being discussed, however, is who and what constitutes a Hamas affiliate. Hamas is more than just a militant organization, it is the political party that was democratically elected in 2006 to govern the Gaza Strip and West Bank . Hamas’s control means that alm

Bombing of Gaza children gives me “orgasm”: Israelis celebrate slaughter on Facebook

Bombing of Gaza children gives me “orgasm”: Israelis celebrate slaughter on Facebook Israel’s latest assault  on the besieged Gaza Strip has been accompanied by yet another sharp increase in incitement against Palestinians and solidarity activists on social media outlets, such as Facebook and Twitter . Facebook groups have been set up to call for the collective punishment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Others host incitement against Palestinian students at Israeli universities, including posting pictures of and personal information about individual students. The radical and violent anti-Palestinian climate in Israel is not divorced from reality. After more than a week of Israeli government threats to do so, commandos launched the first ground incursion into the northern Gaza Strip early Sunday morning, reported Ma’an News Agency. At the time of writing, there have been no Israeli deaths as a result of rockets fired by armed Palestinian groups in Gaza, though muc

The Atrocity

The Atrocity By Uri Avnery Again without any purpose. Again with the certainty that after it’s all over, everything will essentially be the same as it was before. But I can hardly hear the sirens which warn of rockets coming towards Tel Aviv. I cannot take my mind off the awful thing that happened in Jerusalem. IF A gang of neo-Nazis had kidnapped a 16-year old boy in a London Jewish neighborhood in the dark of the night, driven him to Hyde Park, beaten him up, poured gasoline into his mouth, doused him all over and set him on fire – what would have happened? Wouldn't the UK have exploded in a storm of anger and disgust? Wouldn't the Queen have expressed her outrage? Wouldn't the Prime Minister have rushed to the home of the bereaved family to apologize on behalf of the entire nation?

The Mindlessness of a Manifesto

The Mindlessness of a Manifesto July 12, 2014 " ICH " -  This sentence from Kagan’s Neo-Conservative Manifesto reads like so much flotsam in a cesspool of scattered feces. It emanates from a mindless, bloated root chakra that has abandoned all except instinctive self-survival. It is deficient in understanding and wisdom, a mind surviving in an isolated tribe, a being guided only by fear of everlasting victimhood. How does one read this flotsam? We don’t need to read it, we are witnessing its last throes today in Gaza as the consequences of neo-conservative “superior power” unfurls before the world once again and the desperation of neo-conservative idiocy splashes over the screen for the world to witness. What is it that we witness? Israel garbed in the armor of the American flag, fielding America’s w