related update: central bank of libya is 100% state owned from activist post: It's perplexing to see a high level of support for the unprovoked bombing of Libya on so-called "progressive" websites. There has been an endless stream of humanitarian propaganda flowing from these sites trying to convince average liberals that the "human thing to do" is to rain down tomahawk missiles with depleted uranium to bring freedom and democracy to an oppressed people. Huffington Post ran a piece by Ed Schultz titled Why I Support President Obama's Decision to Invade Libya where he described his reasoning as follows:
video: gaza ground war begins from danger room: The ground war has begun. After eight days of air strikes, Israeli troops are moving into Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces say "infantry, tanks, engineering forces, artillery and intelligence, along with the support of the Israel Air Force, Israel Navy, Israel Security Agency and other security agencies" are all participating in the push. Tens of thousands of reservists are now being called up, as well. "The campaign won't be easy and it won't be short," Defense Minister Ehud Barak says. Already, there's been "a heavy exchange of fire" between Israeli forces and Hamas militants, Ha'Aretz reports. Israeli artillery has started to fall in Gaza. "Leaflets signed by the commander of the Israeli military were dropped over northern Gaza on Saturday morning, warning residents to 'leave the area immediately' to ensure their safety." CNN says. The week-plus-long air war killed nearly 450, and wounded another 2,050. The house-to-house fighting that lies ahead could be much deadlier. And questions still linger about what the Gaza strikes are designed to accomplish, really. The IDF says the ground assault's objective is "to destroy the terrorist infrastructure of the Hamas in the precise area of operation, while taking control of some of rocket launching area used by the Hamas in order to greatly reduce the quantity of rockets fired at Israel and Israeli civilians." But Israeli politicians are making are making noises about the need to "reach a situation in which we do not allow Hamas to govern."
israel sends ground troops into gaza from kurt nimmo: On Saturday, Israel graduated from its murderous bombing raids on Gaza to sending soldiers into the locked-down territory. “For the first time since the start of Operation Cast Lead, IDF ground troops entered the Gaza Strip on Saturday evening, exchanging fire with Hamas gunmen,” reports the Jerusalem Post. “The IDF said that a large amount of troops from the Armored Corps, Engineering Corps and Infantry Corps entered the territory with the purpose of destroying Hamas infrastructure… The IDF warned that terrorists using civilians as human shields would bear full responsibility for their fate.”
israelis leave voicemail messages before they bomb buildings from dpa: The Israeli Army has launched 'roof knocking' operations by which the occupants of the buildings in Gaza they about to bomb are warned beforehand, Israeli media reports said Friday. Warnings, issued by telephone, voicemail or SMS, were intended as a means of limiting civilian casualties in the conflict, the Haaretz newspaper said. Civilians were given 10 minutes to leave the premises. An Israeli Army spokesman declined to confirm the reports or respond to questions about such tactics being used in its ongoing confrontation with Palestinian militants. 'In some cases advance warnings are given to reduce the number of victims,' he said. The Israeli Army apparently used 'roof knocking' in its killing of senior Hamas official Nizar Rayan on Thursday, Haaretz reported. His family had received warning that the building was about to be attacked, but they had decided to remain inside, the newspaper said.
what helped the rise of hamas? USrael policies, of course from mcclatchy: In August 2005, when Israel unilaterally withdrew from the narrow coastal territory, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised it would make Israel safer. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hailed the move as “historic.” Israel had left behind a political vacuum, however. That, along with decisions by Israel, the U.S. and Palestinian rivals inadvertently boosted the militant Islamic group Hamas into power. Hamas is stronger than ever, and Israel’s air strikes risk bolstering it further, according to current and former U.S. officials, diplomats and analysts.
the american dream is about to become a nightmare from kboo: When the Soviet Union collapsed in the late 1980’s, it took just about everybody by surprise. Pundits in the United States said it was proof of the superiority of the capitalist system but people in other parts of the world wondered whether the US could suffer the same fate. Dmitry Orlov believes that the American Dream is about to become a nightmare and he examines the similarities and differences between the US and Soviet Union in his book Reinventing Collapse. He is interviewed by Marianne Barisonek.
top 5 lies about israel’s assault on gaza from foreign policy journal: Lie #1) Israel is only targeting legitimate military sites and is seeking to protect innocent lives. Israel never targets civilians.
Lie #2) Hamas violated the cease-fire. The Israeli bombardment is a response to Palestinian rocket fire and is designed to end such rocket attacks.
Lie #3) Hamas is using human shields, a war crime.
Lie #4) Arab nations have not condemned Israel’s actions because they understand Israel’s justification for its assault.
Lie #5) Israel is not responsible for civilian deaths because it warned the Palestinians of Gaza to flee areas that might be targeted.
US weapons 'killing innocent civilians' in gaza from raw story: As Israeli warplanes continue to bomb Gaza, attention is turning to the role of American-made weapons in the deadly attacks, which have now killed over 400 and wounded 2000, including many civilians. CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr believes that Israel's use of American weapons against civilians "is becoming very problematic." She notes, for example, that the 2000 pound bomb which killed a Hamas leader and members of his family on Thursday "is part of the billions of dollars that Israel has spent buying weapons from the United States."
US media coverage of gaza invasion largely biased towards israel from editor & publisher: Israel launched its much-anticipated invasion of Gaza on Saturday. For over a week, U.S. media had provided largely one-sided coverage of the conflict, with little editorializing or commentary arguing against broader Israeli actions. Most notably, after more than eight days of Israeli bombing and Hamas rocket launching in Gaza, The New York Times had produced exactly one editorial, not a single commentary by any of its columnists, and only two op-eds (one already published elsewhere). The editorial, several days ago, did argue against the wisdom of a ground invasion - but even though that invasion had become ever more likely all week the paper did not return to this subject. Amazingly, the paper has kept that silence going in Sunday’s and even Monday’s paper, with no editorial or columnist comment on the Israeli invasion - beyond a hawkish pro-invasion contribution by William Kristol. It’s as if the Times is waiting for the invasion to be over and adapt its position to the outcome. The Washington Post did manage to work up an editorial for Sunday which, in the usual contortionist manner, found the invasion “justified” but also highly “risky.”
depleted uranium found in gaza victims from press tv: Medics tell Press TV they have found traces of depleted uranium in some Gaza residents wounded in Israel's ground offensive on the strip. Norwegian medics told Press TV correspondent Akram al-Sattari that some of the victims who have been wounded since Israel began its attacks on the Gaza Strip on December 27 have traces of depleted uranium in their bodies. The report comes after Israeli tanks and troops swept across the border into Gaza on Saturday night, opening a ground operation after eight days of intensive attacks by Israeli air and naval forces on the impoverished region.
norwegian doctor in gaza: israel targeting civilians from raw replay: Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor working in Gaza, told Sky News that that the number of civilians injured and killed in Gaza proves that Israel is deliberately attacking the population.
why obama is silent on gaza? from blacklisted news: If you look a few months back to when Obama was speaking at AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, you’ll find your reasons why he is silent on the current Gaza situation. As of right now, the Israeli government is invading and pillaging Gaza and not a word from Obama. His spokesman David Axelrod claims that he isn’t commenting because “..There is only one president at a time,” yet that didnt stop him with nearly every other issue such as the Mumbai attacks, and the Russia/Georgia conflict. Here is why: At the AIPAC in mid 2008, Obama speaks of a “strong commitment to make sure that the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable today, tomorrow and forever.” Implying that no matter what war crimes and atrocities the government of israel commits, the United States run by Obama will always lend support. “We must preserve our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance and continuing work on the Arrow and related missile defense programs..” Here are other quotes from Obamas AIPAC speech, illustrating exactly why he is not saying anything about the Gaza attack. Read the full speech by Obama at AIPAC here.
stealing gaza: an experiment in provocation from brian eno: It's a tragedy that the Israelis - a people who must understand better than almost anybody the horrors of oppression - are now acting as oppressors. As the great Jewish writer Primo Levi once remarked "Everybody has their Jews, and for the Israelis it's the Palestinians". By creating a middle Eastern version of the Warsaw ghetto they are recapitulating their own history as though they've forgotten it. And by trying to paint an equivalence between the Palestinians - with their homemade rockets and stone-throwing teenagers - and themselves - with one of the most sophisticated military machines in the world - they sacrifice all credibility.
update2: video: cnn confirms israel broke cease fire from bediertv: Rick Sanchez does the research and finds that Israel violated the terms of the ceasefire first by killing 6 Gazans on November 4. Shouldn't media outlets check the facts before running with a story?
update3: bbc blackout on gaza from london daily news: The London Daily News has learned there is an informal news blackout at BBC Radio over the mounting public outrage following the Gaza incursion by Israeli troops. According to sources, radio station phone in's have been screening out any callers wanting to talk about the Israeli air strikes and ground offensives in the Middle East. The BBC's Have Your Say comment sites are being heavily moderated - its main board 'How can a truce be achieved in Gaza?'has had half of its 4,500 comments rejected on the basis of defamation, incitement to crime and hate, harassment, abuse, threats, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, homophobic or racially offensive language. On the board 'Are the Israeli strikes on Gaza justified?' Half of the 5,000 comments have also been removed for breaking the House Rules stated above.
update4: anti-israeli protests continue globally from press tv: The Israeli incursions into Gaza have triggered protests all over the world with demonstrators calling for an immediate ceasefire. Public fury at the Israeli violence targeting the residents of Gaza has brought thousands of people in Turkey, Argentina, Mexico, Bolivia, Lebanon and Austria to the streets.
and if you think this is bad, you ain't seen nuthin' yet... from cnn: An extensive federal report released Monday concludes that roughly one in four of the 697,000 U.S. veterans of the 1990-91 Gulf War suffer from Gulf War illness.
That illness is a condition now identified as the likely consequence of exposure to toxic chemicals, including pesticides and a drug administered to protect troops against nerve gas.
newsflash! georgia fired first from times online: Two former British military officers are expected to give crucial evidence against Georgia when an international inquiry is convened to establish who started the country’s bloody five-day war with Russia in August. Ryan Grist, a former British Army captain, and Stephen Young, a former RAF wing commander, are said to have concluded that, before the Russian bombardment began, Georgian rockets and artillery were hitting civilian areas in the breakaway region of South Ossetia every 15 or 20 seconds. Their accounts seem likely to undermine the American-backed claims of President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia that his little country was the innocent victim of Russian aggression and acted solely in self-defence.
russian nuke sub accident claims 20 lives from danger room: An accident on board a Russian nuclear submarine has claimed at least 20 lives, the worst submarine disaster in nearly a decade. According to Russian news reports, the ship in question is the K-152 Nerpa, an Akula-class attack submarine. The accident occurred during sea trials in the Pacific Ocean; Russian news agency RIA-Novosti reports the incident was caused by the "unsanctioned activation" of the boat's fire-extinguishing system. The sub returned to Bolshoi Kamen, a port in Russia's Far East, the BBC adds. Over 200 individuals were on board, including civilian shipbuilding contractors. RIA-Novosti reports that incident happened in the boat's forward compartment; the nuclear reactor was not affected and radiation levels were described as "normal." A torpedo accident on the Russian submarine Kursk in 2000 claimed the lives of 118 sailors. The accident - and the botched response - were a public relations disaster for then-Russian President Vladimir Putin in his first year in office. (Click here for Putin's video appearance on "Larry King Live"; Asked what happened to the Kursk, Putin smirks: "Ona utonula" - "she sank.") The Nerpa incident comes as Russia reasserts its military power and prepares to overhaul its nuclear forces; Russia is currently sending a naval squadron to Venezuela to take part in a military exercise. The Russian media are responding swiftly to this one. Here's a link to the Russian Wikipedia page for the Nerpa and a list of the latest headlines in Russian.
al-CIAda 'plotting new attacks on US' from presstv: America's nemesis Osama Bin Laden is reportedly planning a new terror attack against the US that would 'outdo by far' the 9/11 attacks. A source close to the al-Qaeda leadership in Yemen has warned in a report that a new attack against the US will aim 'to change the world [both] politically and economically'. The report published by an Arabic-language newspaper in London, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, claimed that Bin Laden is closely supervising preparations for the attack, which will be far greater than those of 9/11.
plans for auschwitz found in berlin apartment from afp: Original plans for the construction of the Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz, including a gas chamber and crematorium, have been found in a Berlin apartment, a newspaper reported Saturday. The daily Bild published copies of some of the 28 plans, which the head of Germany's federal archives, Hans-Dieter Krekamp, called "authentic proof of the systematically planned genocide of the Jews of Europe." Bild gave no indication of where, when or by whom the plans were found.
fanta was developed for the nazis from edwin black: Refael Bigio in Montreal remembers the moment that the regime of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser seized his family’s property. He was driving to the factory with his father that traumatic August day in 1962. Police cordons surrounded the buildings at 14 Aswan Street in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis. As Bigio and his father nervously stepped up the stairs, a policeman barked that the government had nationalized the business. "Give me the keys," he demanded. Once inside the offices, policemen and soldiers demanded the keys to the vault as well.
The nightmare of dispossession suffered by approximately one million Jews throughout the Arab world had finally descended upon the Bigio family. Brutal jailings and intimidation against Bigio family members culminated in a forced penniless exodus from the nation. The Bigios, along with a million other Jews across the Arab world, were expelled with just a few dollars in their pockets. The family fled to Canada. But the Bigios never forgot the life they knew in Egypt—or their assets.
The Bigio assemblage of warehouses and manufacturing buildings sprawled across 10,000 square meters in the midst of bustling Heliopolis traces its main commercial life to the 1930s when Bigio’s grandfather first bought the land and built a shoe polish plant. Eventually, the family business added a tin container operation to hold the shoe polish, and from that expanded into general tin plating. Eventually they produced tin bottle caps for soda. In 1942, at the height of World War II, a Coca-Cola licensed bottler became the family’s tenant, bottling the world-famous cola. Later the fruity drink called Fanta that Coca-Cola originally developed for the Nazi military was added. In the fifties, the Coca-Cola licensed bottler in Egypt expanded greatly, the plant was moved to a nearby location, and in 1959 Coca-Cola in Atlanta signed a major license agreement with the Bigios to produce the bottle caps.
the mystery of lost US nuclear bomb from bbc: The United States abandoned a nuclear weapon beneath the ice in northern Greenland following a crash in 1968, a BBC investigation has found. Its unique vantage point - perched at the top of the world - has meant that Thule Air Base has been of immense strategic importance to the US since it was built in the early 1950s, allowing a radar to scan the skies for missiles coming over the North Pole. The Pentagon believed the Soviet Union would take out the base as a prelude to a nuclear strike against the US and so in 1960 began flying "Chrome Dome" missions. Nuclear-armed B52 bombers continuously circled over Thule - and could head straight to Moscow if they witnessed its destruction. Greenland is a self-governing province of Denmark but the carrying of nuclear weapons over Danish territory was kept secret. But on 21 January 1968, one of those missions went wrong.
horror of US depleted uranium in iraq threatens the world from tehran times: American and British use of DU is a crime against humanity which may, in the eyes of historians, rank with the worst atrocities of all time. War vets who’ve returned from Iraq are sitting on DU death row. All this, a net result of the White House’s reaction to 9/11. I’m horrified. The people out there — the Iraqis, the media and the troops — risk the most appalling ill health. And the radiation from depleted uranium can travel literally anywhere. It’s going to destroy the lives of thousands of children, all over the world. We all know how far radiation can travel. Radiation from Chernobyl reached Wales and in Britain you sometimes get red dust from the Sahara on your car... Britain and America not only used DU in this year’s Iraq war, they dramatically increased its use — from a minimum of 320 tons in the previous war (1991) to a minimum of 1500 tons in this one. And this time the use of DU wasn’t limited to anti-tank weapons — as it had largely been in the previous Persian Gulf war — but was extended to-the guided missiles, large bunker busters and 2000 pound mega-bombs used in Iraq’s cities.
from dr doug rokke: (Note: Dr. Doug Rokke is the former Director of the U.S. Army's Depleted Uranium Project. It was his task to clean up the radioactive battlefields of the Gulf War. Today, this leading opponent of nuclear warfare is vitally concerned that sand contaminated by radioactive munitions exploded in the Middle East has been shipped to Idaho for burial. And more, much more. He asked me to call his warning to public attention.)
During the summer of 1991, the United States military had collected artillery, tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, conventional and unconventional munitions, trucks, etc. at Camp Doha in Kuwait.
Recently the emirate of Kuwait required the United States Department of Defense to remove the contamination. Consequently, over 6,700 tons of contaminated soil sand and other residue was collected and has been shipped back to the United States for burial by American Ecology at Boise Idaho.
pentagon abandons active-duty time limit from ap/yahoo: The Pentagon has abandoned its limit on the time a citizen-soldier can be required to serve on active duty, officials said Thursday, a major change that reflects an Army stretched thin by longer-than-expected combat in Iraq.
The day after President Bush announced his plan for a deeper U.S. military commitment in Iraq, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters the change in reserve policy would have been made anyway because active-duty troops already were getting too little time between their combat tours. britain working "hand in glove" with US over iraq from german press agency/raw story: The British government Thursday welcomed the decision by US President George W Bush to send more troops to Iraq but said the government in London had no plans to increase current troop levels of around 7,200. A spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair, asked after a cabinet meeting whether the British leader specifically backed the US decision, said the UK was "working hand in glove" with its coalition partners and the Iraqi government in the conflict. depleted uranium 'killing italian troops' from bbc: Italian soldiers are still dying following exposure to depleted uranium in the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, their relatives say.
Troops who served during the wars in the 1990s believe they have contracted cancer and other serious illnesses from extended exposure to the munitions.
The US says it fired around 40,000 depleted uranium rounds during the Bosnian and Kosovo conflicts.
cia gets the go-ahead to take on hizbollah from telegraph: The Central Intelligence Agency has been authorised to take covert action against Hizbollah as part of a secret plan by President George W. Bush to help the Lebanese government prevent the spread of Iranian influence. Senators and congressmen have been briefed on the classified "non-lethal presidential finding" that allows the CIA to provide financial and logistical support to the prime minister, Fouad Siniora...
It authorises the CIA and other US intelligence agencies to fund anti-Hizbollah groups in Lebanon and pay for activists who support the Siniora government. The secrecy of the finding means that US involvement in the activities is officially deniable.
canadian coins bugged, US security agency says from cbc: Canadian coins containing tiny transmitters have mysteriously turned up in the pockets of at least three American contractors who visited Canada, says a branch of the U.S. Department of Defence.
Security experts believe the miniature devices could be used to track the movements of defence industry personnel dealing in sensitive military technology.
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from razor's edge: They're the headlines you don't see, the words that don't make the page- but if they did, these stories would cause quite a stir. Project Censored is a United States media research group and they've released their 2012 list of the top 25 censored stories. Number one on the list is the startling revelation that more US soldiers commit suicide than die in combat.
