December 2010

Stop Operation Cast Lead 2: the moral shock and awe of global silence

by News Sources 12.31.2010

Richard Falk writes: It is dismaying that during this dark anniversary period two years after the launch of the deadly attacks on the people of Gaza, code-named Operation Cast Lead by the Israelis, that there should be warnings of a new massive attack on the beleaguered people of Gaza. The influential Israeli journalist, Ron Ren-Yishai, [...]

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Will an energy-independent, nuclear-armed Jewish state care too much about its global image?

by News Sources 12.31.2010

The Wall Street Journal reports: Two years ago, Ratio Oil Exploration LP, an energy firm here, employed five people and was worth about half a million dollars. Today it sits at the center of a gas bonanza that has investors, international oil companies, Israeli politicians and even Hezbollah, Israel’s sworn enemy, clamoring for a piece [...]

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Lebanon is staring into the abyss

by News Sources 12.31.2010

Fawaz Gerges writes: Once again, Lebanon is on the brink of major social and political upheaval. Rumours of an impending armed clash between Hezbollah and the pro-western governing coalition have spread like wildfire among the Lebanese people, who are hoarding food and arms in anticipation of the worst. On the surface of it, the current [...]

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Never again? Elderly Palestinian women called ‘whores’ on Yad Vashem tour, while racism explodes across Israel

by Paul Woodward 12.31.2010

Max Blumenthal writes: This week, a group of elderly Palestinian women were escorted to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance musuem to learn about the Jewish genocide in Europe. At the entrance of the museum, they were surrounded by a group of Jewish Israeli youth who recognized them as Arabs. “Sharmouta!” the young [...]

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What are the guardians of Israeli Jewish racial purity so afraid of?

by Paul Woodward 12.31.2010

Sayed Kashua makes fun of the Israelis who are afraid of their daughters being seduced by irresistible Arab men. You know, until now I was certain that the role of preserving the honor of women and shackling them with male bonds was something you had designated for us Arabs. What has happened that you enlightened [...]

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Why Netanyahu deserves to be man of the year

by News Sources 12.31.2010

Dimi Reider writes: Benjamin Netanyahu is not only one of the people who made 2010 what it was, but also one of the best prime ministers progressives ever had. To wit: The man has done more damage to the self destructive myth of Israeli exceptionalism than any leftist leader or thinker to date. For years, [...]

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‘Disappeared’ Pakistanis — innocent and guilty alike — have fallen into a legal black hole

by Paul Woodward 12.31.2010

Without a single reference to President Obama’s drone war in Pakistan, extrajudicial detention of prisoners at Guantanamo, the torture of suspected terrorists, CIA-run secret prisons, rendition, presidential authorization to assassinate US citizens, or the United States’ long history of supporting governments that use their power to suppress political dissent by making their opponents “disappear,” the [...]

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Not just a friend: one Palestinian’s view of Israeli activist Jonathan Pollak

by News Sources 12.30.2010

The Palestinian activist Ayed Morrar writes: I know that power – with all the authority, physical comfort, and quality of life it brings – strongly pushes a person into a world of material possessions, and people and things that stimulate their senses. Gradually, they start to protect this material paradise with walls to defend it [...]

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Lieberman represents Israel

by Paul Woodward 12.30.2010

In recent months, Israel’s political leaders and Israel’s stateside supporters have been railing against the so-called delegitimization movement. It’s debatable whether such a movement exists but even to the extent that it does, the effect it has had in tarnishing Israel’s image is minuscule in comparison to Israel’s own unintentional delegitimization efforts. The latest examples [...]

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Obama’s indiscriminate slaughter in Pakistan can only encourage new waves of militancy

by News Sources 12.30.2010

Mehdi Hasan writes: Speaking at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in May, Barack Obama spotted teen pop band the Jonas Brothers in the audience. “Sasha and Malia are huge fans, but, boys, don’t get any ideas,” deadpanned the president, referring to his daughters. “Two words for you: predator drones. You will never see it [...]

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When Americans stop being killed in Iraq it stops being called a war

by Paul Woodward 12.30.2010

Just as the State Department defines “terrorism” in terms of threats to American lives and threats to America’s national security, the war in Iraq is ceasing to be a “war” because fewer and fewer Americans are dying — as though the only blood that supports life is American blood; as though life itself only truly [...]

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The struggle for East Jerusalem

by News Sources 12.30.2010

Jesse Rosenfeld writes: Half way down a hill, sandwiched between Jerusalem’s Hadassa hospital and Hebrew University, sits the compact and overcrowded occupied East Jerusalem village of Issawiya. Before crossing the makeshift police checkpoint of concrete block obstacles at the edge of the University and entering the neighbourhood – which resembles more of a besieged West [...]

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Helen Thomas: thrown to the wolves

by News Sources 12.30.2010

Danny Schechter writes: In 1960, I was fixated on emulating the courageous media personalities of the times, from Edward R. Murrow to a distinctive figure I came to admire at presidential press conferences – a wire service reporter named Helen Thomas. In recent years, my faith in the power of dialogue in politics has been [...]

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My parents were executed under the unconstitutional Espionage Act — here’s why we must fight to protect Julian Assange

by News Sources 12.29.2010

Robert Meeropol writes: Rumors are swirling that the United States is preparing to indict Wikileaks leader Julian Assange for conspiring to violate the Espionage Act of 1917. The modern version of that act states among many, many other things that: “Whoever, for the purpose of obtaining information respecting the national defense with intent or reason [...]

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US-trained militias ready to join forces with the Taliban

by News Sources 12.29.2010

The Associated Press reported earlier this week: Tribal militias allied with the government helped block a Taliban advance in this corner of northwest Pakistan close to the Afghan border, but their success has come at a price: the empowerment of untrained, unaccountable private armies that could yet emerge as a threat of their own. Tensions [...]

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Mugabe doesn’t need an excuse for attacking Tsvangirai

by News Sources 12.29.2010

Robert I. Rotberg writes: President Robert Gabriel Mugabe is Zimbabwe’s curse. In his three decades in power, Mugabe has traded the country’s economic promise for withering decline. He’s turned what was once the breadbasket of the region into a deathtrap for its own citizens. He has crushed the opposition, cleared slums with bulldozers, ignored a [...]

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WikiLeaks’ gift to Robert Mugabe

by Paul Woodward 12.29.2010

The political and media establishment’s assault on WikiLeaks has had the unfortunate effect of creating two camps — one for which WikiLeaks is a band of cyber-terrorists and the other in which WikiLeaks’ embattled status fosters a sense that all challenges are unwarranted. At this point, I still believe that WikiLeaks’ actions pose a legitimate [...]

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Former CIA chief: ‘I thank god every day for the continuity’ between Bush and Obama

by News Sources 12.29.2010

On CNN on Sunday, former Bush officials lined up to praise President Obama: Former Central Intelligence Agency Director Michael Hayden, a retired Air Force general, also argued that Obama’s approach has been, by and large, the same — regardless of campaign rhetoric. “When one is in office, it’s, as the admiral has suggested, when one [...]

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New York art shoppers protected from seeing the word ‘Gaza’

by Paul Woodward 12.29.2010

Does this say more about the sensitivities of the Gagosian Gallery’s wealthy patrons or its owner, Larry Gagosian, or do they each find the mention of Gaza (and by implication, reference to Israel’s inhumane treatment of Gaza’s residents) offensive? At the New York Times, Robert Mackey reports: Four activists were forced to leave an art [...]

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World tired of paying bill for US military

by News Sources 12.29.2010

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New York Times sick of Israel

by Paul Woodward 12.29.2010

I have no idea how accurate the reporting is here, but Israel Today Magazine has a colorful account of what it headlines as an Israeli diplomat getting “ambushed” by the New York Times editorial team, under the direction of “rabid columnist” Tom Friedman. The New York Times, flagship of the liberal American media, has never [...]

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2011: A Brave New Dystopia

by News Sources 12.28.2010

Chris Hedges writes: The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The debate, between those who watched our descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right. Would we be, as Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and violent [...]

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Greenwald challenges Wired on its refusal to publish evidence on Manning

by News Sources 12.28.2010

Glenn Greenwald writes: For more than six months, Wired’s Senior Editor Kevin Poulsen has possessed — but refuses to publish — the key evidence in one of the year’s most significant political stories: the arrest of U.S. Army PFC Bradley Manning for allegedly acting as WikiLeaks’ source. In late May, Adrian Lamo — at the [...]

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America’s leading liberal Zionists are losing faith in Israel

by Paul Woodward 12.28.2010

Earlier this month, Tom Friedman bemoaned the fact that Israel’s leadership has become “disconnected from reality”. Then came the New Yorker‘s David Remnick warning Israelis about the way the American Jewish community is changing: A new generation of Jews is growing up in the US. Their relationship with Israel is becoming less patient and more [...]

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