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ei: Israel declares Gaza "enemy entity" (19 September 2007) : "On Wednesday, 19 September 2007, Israel's security cabinet unanimously declared the Gaza Strip an 'enemy entity.' The declaration, ostensibly in reaction to the firing of rockets from Gaza, was immediately backed by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and followed by a series of collective punishment measures that have crippled Gaza's already suffering economy. Israel has denied the importing of basic needs including medicine, severely limited exports, cut fuel supplies to the impoverished strip, and halted the movement of people to and from Gaza -- including those in need of urgent medical care."

AlterNet: Going Bankrupt: Why the Debt Crisis Is America's Greatest Threat Within the next month, the Pentagon will submit its 2009 budget to Congress and it's a fair bet that it will be even larger than the staggering 2008 one. Like the Army and the Marines, the Pentagon itself is overstretched and under strain -- and like the two services, which are expected to add 92,000 new troops over the next five years (at an estimated cost of $1.2 billion per 10,000), the Pentagon's response is never to cut back, but always to expand, always to demand more. After all, there are those disastrous Afghan and Iraqi wars still eating taxpayer dollars as if there were no tomorrow. Then there's what enthusiasts like to call "the next war" to think about, which means all those big-ticket weapons, all those jets, ships, and armored vehicles for the future. And don't forget the still-popular, Rumsfeld-style "netcentric warfare" systems (robots, drones, communicatio...

The Lessons of Violence : "The Gaza Strip is rapidly becoming one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world. Israel has cordoned off the entire area, home to some 1.4 million Palestinians, blocking commercial goods, food, fuel and even humanitarian aid. At least 36 people have been killed in Israeli strikes since Tuesday and many more wounded. Hamas, which took control of Gaza in June, has launched about 200 rockets into southern Israel in the same period in retaliation, injuring more than 10 people. Israel announced the draconian closure and collective punishment Thursday in order to halt the rocket attacks, begun on Tuesday, when 18 Palestinians, including the son of a Hamas leader, were killed by Israeli forces."

Al Jazeera English - News - Worldwide Anger Over Gaza Plight : "The Arab League and European Union have led worldwide calls for Israel to end its four-day blockade of the Gaza Strip that has caused untold suffering to more than a million people. After an emergency meeting in Cairo on Monday, delegates from the 22 Arab states called on the UN 'to carry out an international inquiry into Israeli crimes'. In a statement, the Arab League described the Gaza Strip as 'a disaster area' and appealed to the international community to provide the Palestinian people with necessary assistance."

ZNet - No “War on Terror” : "One of the most telling signs of the political naiveté of liberals and the Left in the United States has been their steadfast faith in much of the worldview that blankets the imperial state they call home. Nowhere has this critical failure been more evident than in their acceptance of the premise that there really is something called a 'war on terror' or “terrorism”[1]—however poorly managed its critics make it out to be—and that righting the course of this war ought to be this country's (and the world’s) top foreign policy priority. In this perspective, Afghanistan and Pakistan rather than Iraq ought to have been the war on terror's proper foci; most accept that the U.S. attack on Afghanistan from October 2001 on was a legitimate and necessary stage in the war. The tragic error of the Bush Administration, in this view, was that it lost sight of this priority, and diverted U.S. military action to Iraq and other theaters, reducing th...

News 10 Now | 24 Hour Local News | Watertown/North Country | Anti-war group says war crimes are "encouraged" : "WATERTOWN, NY - 'I was messed up in the head. It was okay for me. I laughed afterwards. We all did. It's just the way things go.' Iraq war veteran Jon Turner said it was almost expected of him to pull the trigger on people who didn't need to die. So he did. 'It was my decision,' Turner said. 'I made it. Now I have to live with the fact I see someone's eyes screaming at me after I shot them.' But Turner says it wasn't his choice to be encouraged to do it from higher ranking officers. He and three other veterans speaking out Saturday at the Different Drummer Cafe in Watertown said committing war crimes is not only the way things go, but it's unofficial policy."

Ethiopian Review | Woyanne rejects 'virtual' border : "Ethiopia Woyanne has dismissed a 'virtual' demarcation of its border with Eritrea, just a day after Asmara accepted the move by an independent boundary commission. The two nations have been deadlocked in a dispute over their 1,000km border since a 2002 decision by the Hague-based commission gave the flashpoint town of Badme to Eritrea. The commission, set up by a peace deal ending a 1998-2000 war, 'virtually' demarcated the border late last year based on the 2002 decision after the two sides failed to come to an agreement on their shared frontier."