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Juan Cole; public intellectual, prominent blogger, essayist and professor of history. (photo: Informed Comment) Palestinians Report Attacks on Journalists
he USG Open Source Center translates articles from the Arabic on the Israeli attack on newspapers and journalists in the Gaza Strip.
Death toll mounts from Israeli air strikes in Gaza
Israeli warplanes and naval gunboats intensified their attacks on Palestinian homes and institutions throughout the Gaza Strip over the weekend, bringing the death toll in the five days of aggression against the densely populated area to more than 75.
New York Times acknowledges conspiracy of silence over “fiscal cliff”
In an article published Thursday, the New York Times starts off with an extraordinary admission—that during the elections the Democrats and Republicans colluded to cover-up planned cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs that they were both planning to make after the elections.
Feminist voices in Islam: promise and potential
Religion is back in public space, and the thesis that modernization means the privatization of religion has been seriously questioned. Some religious and feminist dogmas need re-examination. What do ‘secular’ or ‘religious’ or ‘feminist’ mean in today’s contexts?
We are forbidden to say this: Gaza is a Concentration Camp
If one wanted to be momentarily charitable about people's absolute refusal to recognize the obvious, one might argue that a land area of approximately 140 square miles, containing a population of roughly 1.7 million people, could not possibly be a concentration camp. But size and the number of prisoners are not the distinguishing characteristics of a concentration camp. The most essential characteristic of a concentration camp is what is permitted, and what is not. Only one question matters: Under what conditions are the people within its borders permitted to live? http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33077.htm
5 Ways America Enables Israel's Atrocities
From green-lighting military operations in Gaza to giving unstinting diplomatic support at the United Nations, the U.S. government is wholly complicit in Israel's latest assault on Gaza.
100 Men, Women and Children Killed in Gaza as Obama Declares Full American Support for Israel
Sunday marked the deadliest day for Palestinians in Gaza, as Israel's heavy bombardment of the coastal strip killed yet more civilians. By Monday, the death toll had risen to over 100 people in Gaza--58 of them civilians.
Dissecting IDF Propaganda: The Numbers Behind The Rocket Attacks
To begin, Israeli spokespeople frequently remind the world that a million Israeli citizens are within range of Gaza rockets, twelve thousand of which have been fired into Israel in the last twelve years, inflicting thousands of injuries and several dead. http://www.countercurrents.org/nguyen191112.htm
Gaza Running Out Of Food, Water, Medical Supplies
Day 6 of Israel’s Gaza aggression has witnessed further escalation of Israeli attacks on civilians in Gaza with number of deaths mounting, hospitals facing shortage of basic supplies and increased suffering of the Gaza residents. In all, 1,350 targets in Gaza have been struck by Israel since the aggression began. http://www.countercurrents.org/cc191112.htm
Journalistic Cliches: 'Surgical Air Strikes', 'Rooting Out Terror', and 'Cyber-Terrorism' Cannot Conceal Reality Terror, terror, terror, terror, terror. Here we go again. Israel is going to “root out Palestinian terror” – which it has been claiming to do, unsuccessfully, for 64 years – while Hamas, the latest in “Palestine’s” morbid militias, announces that Israel has “opened the gates of hell” by murdering its military leader, Ahmed al-Jabari. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33087.htm
Puppet State America The United States government and its subject peoples think of the US as “the world’s only superpower.” But how is a country a superpower when its entire government and a majority of the subjects, especially those members of evangelical churches, grovel at the feet of the Israeli Prime Minister? How is a country a superpower when it lacks the power to determine its own foreign policy in the Middle East? Such a country is not a superpower. It is a puppet state. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33093.htm
War Criminal Defends War Criminals "No country on Earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders,” Says Man Who Regularly Bombs Pakistan and Yemen http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33090.htm Dreaming of Justice: Obama Threatens Israel
Clearly emboldened by his recent electoral victory, Barack Obama has embarked on a radical and historic change of direction regarding America’s relationship with Israel. During a state visit to Thailand this weekend, the president called on Israel to halt what he called a ‘gratuitous and murderous assault’ on the Gaza Strip. Obama dismissed Israel’s claims that it was acting in self-defence, and accused Israel of having deliberately provoked the latest confrontation, and engaging in the ‘collective punishment’ of a ‘defenceless’ civilian population.
Elites Will Make Gazans of Us All Gaza is a window on our coming dystopia. The growing divide between the world’s elite and its miserable masses of humanity is maintained through spiraling violence. Many impoverished regions of the world, which have fallen off the economic cliff, are beginning to resemble Gaza, where 1.6 million Palestinians live in the planet’s largest internment camp. These sacrifice zones, filled with seas of pitifully poor people trapped in squalid slums or mud-walled villages, are increasingly hemmed in by electronic fences, monitored by surveillance cameras and drones and surrounded by border guards or military units that shoot to kill. These nightmarish dystopias extend from sub-Saharan Africa to Pakistan to China. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33086.htm
Hostess To Pay $1.75 Million In Executive Bonuses After Blaming Unions For Bankruptcy
Hostess Brands, the maker of sweet snacks like Twinkies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week, will ask a bankruptcy judge today to approve a plan that will allow it to pay $1.75 million in bonuses to 19 of its executives. Hostess’ decision to file for bankruptcy came amid disputes with its union workers, who threatened a strike that Hostess said imperiled the company’s finances. The unions are now protesting Hostess’ request for the bonuses, though they are unlikely to prevail, CNN Money reports
Damn Right, George Bush Should Face Criminal Proceedings
ne thing brings together these four men - Hassan bin Attash, Sami el-Hajj, Muhammed Khan Tumani and Murat Kurnaz: they are all survivors of the systematic torture program the Bush administration authorized and carried out in locations including Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantánamo, and numerous prisons and CIA "black sites" around the world. Between them, they have been beaten, hung from walls or ceilings, deprived of sleep, food and water, and subjected to freezing temperatures and other forms of torture and abuse while held in US custody.
Don't forget to go to dustcircle.com and VOTE for which book we'll be giving away in December. There's also a Donation button, if you're inclined to give toward this site. Also, have you written a book? We'd like to read and review it. :)
Getting the US elections out of proportion
On the eve of the US elections the Arab media has been full of analyses and forecasts about the consequences of the results and their potential impact on the turbulent Middle Eastern area with its conflicts, crises and revolutions.
Less than three days after Sandy made landfall on the East Coast of the United States, Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute blamed New Yorkers’ resistance to big-box stores for the misery they were about to endure. Writing on Forbes.com, he explained that the city’s refusal to embrace Walmart will likely make the recovery much harder: “Mom-and-pop stores simply can’t do what big stores can in these circumstances,” he wrote.
Beyond Bayonets and Battleships: Space Warfare and the Future of U.S. Global Power Amid all the post-debate media chatter, however, not a single commentator seemed to have a clue when it came to the profound strategic changes encoded in the president’s sparse words. Yet for the past four years, working in silence and secrecy, the Obama administration has presided over a technological revolution in defense planning, moving the nation far beyond bayonets and battleships to cyberwarfare and the full-scale weaponization of space. In the face of waning economic influence, this bold new breakthrough in what’s called “information warfare” may prove significantly responsible should U.S. global dominion somehow continue far into the twenty-first century. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32990.htm US Elections: The Empty Politics of Duopoly In the nation that gave birth to the marketing concept of branding, it is to be assumed that politicians would eventually adopt the same techniques used to promote consumer products – enter Obama. After eight years under the Bush administration, America desperately needed change. Instead of any meaningful structural reform, America ushered in a global super star whose charm and charisma not only resuscitated American prestige, but also masked the continued dominance of deregulators, financiers, and war-profiteers. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32989.htm
Restoring Democracy In The United States
The Occupy Wall Street movement's slogan, “We are the 99%”, points to the fact that a very small power elite, perhaps only 1% of the population, has a hugely disproportionate amount of economic and political power in the United States. In this sense, the United States is no longer a democracy, since neither the economic system nor the government serve the will and needs of the people. http://www.countercurrents.org/avery101112.htm
US Violates Agreement; Punishes Iran
In its latest act of blatant hypocrisy, the Obama administration has sanctioned Iran over internet and media censorship . The Administration's pretentious concern for the Iranian peoples' welfare is all the more offensive in light of the harsh, illegal, and life-threatening sanctions imposed on that nation, aptly described byThe New England Journal of Medicine as a “ war against public health ” ( Gowans ). http://www.countercurrents.org/ulrich101112.htm
Palestine Entangled: The Politics of Money
Working under the umbrella of Viva Palestina Malaysia (VPM), the group shows solidarity through empowerment projects: interest free loans for micro projects, providing employment for women, supplying thousands of solar lamps aimed at ending the persistent darkness for many families, and more. http://www.countercurrents.org/baroud101112.htm
Occupy Sandy Offers Aid to Hurricane Victims
he sanctuary at the Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew on Clinton Avenue is brimming with donated clothes, children's books and diapers. The church's heavy wooden doors are open and the air inside is cool. Volunteers in wool hats and down jackets flit about, chatting with each other as they assemble care packages with toothbrushes and toothpaste and load cars with cleaning supplies and bottled water to deliver to neighborhoods devastated by Hurricane Sandy.
Full Speed Ahead for Food Movement, Despite GMO-Labeling Loss
upporters of California's Proposition 37 are not giving up the fight after Tuesday's rejection. In fact, they're saying that the organizing around the initiative helped forge a diffuse group of individuals interested in healthy food into a powerful, organized movement.
Will Obama Fulfill His 2007 Promise to Label GMOs?
ith the passing of election day 2012, massive awareness was spread throughout the country thanks to the California GMO labeling bill known as Proposition 37. While the bill did not passthrough California legislation due to the many dirty tactics employed by the 'No on 37' campaign such as falsely using FDA backing and even sending out fake voting flyers, it has truly invigorated the discussion on proper GMO labeling. Labeling that was promised back in 2007 by the newly re-elected Barack Obama.
Supreme Court to Review Key Section of Voting Rights Act
he Supreme Court said Friday it will review a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that has been the federal government's most forceful tool in protecting minority rights at the polls. The decision ensures that race and civil rights will be the hallmark of the current Supreme Court term.
If We Call Obama "Progressive," Are We Ignoring His Record?
Broadcaster Tavis Smiley and professor and activist Dr. Cornel West discuss President Obama’s re-election, and what kind of president we have on our hands.
Christian Teacher Burned Crosses onto Students' Arms and Pushed Creationism -- Now He's Claims His "Free Speech" Was Violated?
A teacher who allegedly burned students and contested validity of evolutionary theory filed a lawsuit charging that his right to free speech and academic freedom had been violated.
Climate-lovers are happy about some of the hawks elected on Tuesday. But they're also cheering the unceremonious dismissal of several congressional climate villains. That includes four of the lawmakers that the League of Conservation Voters deemed the"Flat Earth Five" and spent $3 million to unseat
he USG Open Source Center translates articles from the Arabic on the Israeli attack on newspapers and journalists in the Gaza Strip.
