July 2010

Do disclosures of atrocities change anything?

by News Sources 07.31.2010

At Counterpunch, Alexander Cockburn writes: The hope of the brave soldier who sent 92,000 secret U.S. documents to Wikileaks was that their disclosure would prompt public revulsion and increasing political pressure on Obama to seek with all speed a diplomatic conclusion to this war. The documents he sent Wikileaks included overwhelming documentary evidence – accepted [...]

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Secrets worth revealing

by Paul Woodward 07.31.2010

“Dr Ellsberg, do you have any concern about the possibility of going to prison for this?” “Wouldn’t you go to prison to help end this war?” Ellsberg responded when asked by reporters about the repercussions he might face after leaking the Pentagon Papers. The 40-year old former US military analyst who was then working for [...]

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Obama administration in danger of establishing ‘new normal’ with worst Bush-era policies

by News Sources 07.30.2010

The Obama administration has repudiated some of the Bush administration’s most egregious national security policies but is in danger of institutionalizing others permanently into law, thereby creating a troubling “new normal,” according to a new report released today by the American Civil Liberties Union. “Establishing a New Normal: National Security, Civil Liberties, and Human Rights [...]

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Taliban hunt Wikileaks outed Afghan informers

by News Sources 07.30.2010

Channel 4 News reports: The Taliban has issued a chilling warning to Afghans, alleged in secret US military files leaked on the internet to have worked as informers for the Nato-led coalition, telling Channel 4 News “US spies” will be hunted down and punished. Speaking by telephone from an undisclosed location, Zabihullah Mujahid told Channel [...]

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One man’s terrorist

by News Sources 07.30.2010

Larry Derfner writes: In the hypocrisy that characterizes Israel’s view of Palestinians, this is the height of it: The greatest denouncers of Palestinian violence against Israel also tend to be the greatest defenders of pre-state Zionist violence against Britain. After electing [Menachem] Begin prime minister, we elected Yitzhak Shamir, who had been one of the [...]

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Time for a free and independent Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip

by News Sources 07.30.2010

Geoffrey Aronson writes at Foreign Policy: Prime Minister David Cameron during his recent visit to Turkey warned that the Gaza Strip “cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.” Britain, however, along with the rest of the European community, and of course, Washington, are ambivalent guardians of the self-described prison camp run [...]

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To avert disaster, stop isolating Hamas now

by News Sources 07.30.2010

Chris Patten writes in the Financial Times: As we all know, peace will come to the Middle East when Israel and Palestine agree to a two-state solution, with a viable Palestinian state rising from the rubble of more than 60 years of turbulence to live peacefully alongside Israel within the 1967 borders as modified through [...]

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Tension mounts in Lebanon

by News Sources 07.29.2010

Nicholas Noe (co-founder of Mideastwire.com) writes at Foreign Policy: With the announcement from Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah this week that Hizbullah members may be indicted for the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Raifk Hariri, one thing is now (publicly) clear, no matter what one may think about the integrity of the Special Tribunal for [...]

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Andrew Bacevich: the United States, Israel, and the failure of the western way of war

by TomDispatch 07.29.2010

Reprinted with permission of TomDispatch.com If you ever needed convincing that the world of American “national security” is well along the road to profligate lunacy, read the striking three-part “Top Secret America” series by Dana Priest and William Arkin that the Washington Post published last week.  When it comes to the expansion of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), which claims 17 [...]

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The student who lost an eye protesting in Israel — but none of her vision

by Paul Woodward 07.29.2010

“I guess I can be grateful to the IDF for giving me the chance to see the world in a new way.” This is Emily Henochowicz’s wry observation after having been hit in the face by a tear gas cannister fired by a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces in Jerusalem on May 31. The [...]

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Good guests don’t overstay their welcome

by Paul Woodward 07.29.2010

“Be a good guest. Treat the Afghan people and their property with respect,” Gen David Petreaus advises his forces in a new counterinsurgency manifesto. Maybe during his tenure in Tampa, Florida, Petreaus used to shop regularly at Target and thus has a more elastic definition of the word “guest”, but the way I understand the [...]

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Israel’s latest act of ethnic cleansing

by Paul Woodward 07.28.2010

Electronic Intifada reports: Early morning on 27 July, Israeli bulldozers, flanked by helicopters and throngs of police, demolished the entire Bedouin village of al-Araqib in the northern Negev desert. Despite their land rights cases still pending in the court system, hundreds of al-Araqib villagers were instantly made homeless a month after Israeli police posted demolition [...]

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Turkey’s diplomatic persistence with Iran may pay off

by Paul Woodward 07.28.2010

The Wall Street Journal reports: Iran has pledged to stop enriching uranium to the higher grade needed for a medical research reactor if world powers agree to a fuel-swap deal it outlined earlier this year with Turkey and Brazil, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Wednesday. The offer marks the latest in an international tug-of-war [...]

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War against Iran more likely — thanks to Wikileaks

by Paul Woodward 07.28.2010

If the release of the Pentagon Papers epitomized the value of government leaks as a means of speaking truth to power, Wikileaks at this point can claim no such distinction. As if to underline the extent to which the Afghan war logs are making the fog of war more, not less, dense, Katrina vanden Heuvel [...]

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Afghan war logs in search of good journalism

by Paul Woodward 07.27.2010

“[T]he task of good journalism is to turn this raw material — who, when, where, how, how many — into something that emotionally engages people who can apply levers on decision-making,” said Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at a press conference in London on Monday. And there’s the rub, since the war logs offer a resource [...]

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Tom Engelhardt: all the strangeness of our American world in one article

by TomDispatch 07.27.2010

The opposites game By Tom Engelhardt Have you ever thought about just how strange this country’s version of normal truly is?  Let me make my point with a single, hardly noticed Washington Post news story that’s been on my mind for a while.  It represents the sort of reporting that, in our world, zips by with next [...]

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Ellsberg: ‘These documents are not the Pentagon Papers’

by Paul Woodward 07.26.2010

In an interview with Der Spiegel, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange when asked why he published the Afghan war logs, said: These files are the most comprehensive description of a war to be published during the course of a war — in other words, at a time when they still have a chance of doing some [...]

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Bush’s negligence doesn’t absolve Obama of his responsibilities

by Paul Woodward 07.26.2010

True to form, the administration’s response to the biggest intelligence leak ever has been tactical and clichéd. “The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security,” National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones said [...]

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The Afghanistan war logs

by Paul Woodward 07.25.2010

The White House’s response to Wikileaks’ release of 92,000 classified military documents covering operations in Afghanistan from 2004 until 2009 has been to say the accounts are unreliable, irrelevant and cover a period preceding the announcement of President Obama’s new strategy. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor, drew reporters’ attention to a report in The Guardian [...]

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Facebook prohibits the word “Palestinian”

by Paul Woodward 07.25.2010

The folks at Palestinian Refugee ResearchNet thought they’d create a Facebook page only to discover: Facebook blocks the term “Palestinian”! (H/t Jillian C York.) Are Palestinians the only group so blocked from making pages? Well, not really… after a little fiddling around, I discovered that al-Qaida Refugee ResearchNet and Nazi Refugee ResearchNet are filtered too. [...]

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Jacob Weisberg throws his weight behind the boycott

by Paul Woodward 07.25.2010

“Don’t boycott Israel,” says the headline in Newsweek. Jacob Weisberg, editor-in-chief at Slate and author of the piece calls a boycott a “repellent idea” with consequences that are “intrinsically vile.” But pointing out the “sheeplike, liberal opinion” of celebrities like Meg Ryan is unlikely to break up the flock. Indeed, Weisberg must vastly overestimate his [...]

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The democratic state solution

by Paul Woodward 07.24.2010

One-state solution? Two-state solution? Isn’t it time for a democratic state solution? In response to an article in Haaretz on proposals for a one-state solution coming from the Israeli right, Uri Avnery warns that the “attractive leftist vision of the one-state solution may grow up into a rightist monster.” Avnery writes: The regime described here [...]

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Avrum Burg: Israeli democracy has lost its internal substance

by Paul Woodward 07.24.2010

Avrum Burg, former MK from the Labor Party, Speaker of the Knesset, and head of the Jewish Agency, has a new political vision: The time has come for an Israeli party, a Jewish-Arab party, that will carry the banner of total commitment to equality, without a trace of discrimination and racism. It will be without [...]

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Mustafa Barghouti: the rising non-violent movement in Palestine

by Paul Woodward 07.24.2010

“… if those who suffered during the Holocaust and died would come back to life, I am sure they will be today supportive of the Palestinian rights, because they would not accept injustice that they were also subjected to.” (Full transcript at Pulse.) Share

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