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Dictator Mubarak keeps Egypt guessing on future
July 23, 2010
The Palestinian Authority: Redundant but Dangerous Language
July 23, 2010by Ramzy Baroud, Dissident Voice, July 22, 2010
Each time Israel fails to keep its ‘side of the bargain’, the Palestinian Authority responds with the same redundant language. The cycle has become so utterly predictable that one wonders why the Palestinian Authority officials even bothers protesting Israeli action. They must be well aware that their cries, genuine or otherwise, will only fall on deaf ears. They know that their complaints could not possible contribute to a paradigm shift in Israel’s behavior, or the US position on it.
KASHMIR – The Dispute That Continues to Rock South Asia
July 23, 2010
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The Conflict
July 18, 2010 (Axis of Logic) – A cartoon published in an American newspaper in 2002 showed former president George Bush sitting behind his desk in the Oval Office, utterly confused by a news report he was reading about India and Pakistan going to war over Kashmir. “But why are the two countries fighting over a sweater,” he asked Dick Cheney who stood by with his usual sly smile on his face.
Besides reflecting the intellectual capacity of the American president of the time, the cartoon was a realistic portrayal of the understanding that American leaders have generally shown of this longstanding dispute between Pakistan and India.
Obama’s Afghan War in Perspective
July 23, 2010By Gary Leupp, Counterpunch, July 22, 2010
Practically everyone now understands that the war in Afghanistan is going very badly. This is not because the Taliban and other “insurgent” forces are strong and their foreign foes weak. It is because of the Afghans’ indomitable spirit of independence that is only intensified by each civilian death due to house raids or bombs.
Republican Party chair Michael Steele says “This [war] isn’t something the U.S. wanted to engage in.” But it should be clear how we arrived at this point. And since sometimes we forget how many outrages have led to it, and how the disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are part of a continuum, let me try to sum it up.
Countering the Iraq War Spinners
July 23, 2010The Truth of the Iraq War is That We Destroyed Iraq
by Jodie Evans, CommonDreams.org, July 23, 2010
Almost eight years ago, I made my way to DC to meet up with Medea Benjamin and a few other friends to talk about what we could do to stop the Bush administration’s insane push toward invading an innocent country: Iraq. The next morning, eight of us were in front of the White House, on the steps of Congress and in the hearing for the resolution on Iraq; the day ended with two of us in jail. Our message was US Inspectors, Not US War. We had read articles about how the White House had been dreaming the invasion up over the summer and was waiting until September to push it because “you don’t launch a new product in August.” People’s lives were at stake, and they were treating war like the release of a new sports car.
Fleming: Vanunu’s Ongoing Persecution in Israel
July 23, 2010By Eileen Fleming, Consortiumnews.org, July 21, 2010
Editor’s Note: Mordechai Vanunu stands as one of the premier whistleblowers in the nuclear age, having exposed what has remained a topic never officially acknowledged by U.S. presidents and rarely discussed in the U.S. news media: Israel’s possession of a large and sophisticated nuclear arsenal.
In 1986, after turning over photographic evidence of Israel’s nuclear program to a London newspaper, Vanunu was lured to Rome, where he was kidnapped by Israeli agents who smuggled him back to Israel, where he was tried for treason and imprisoned for 18 years.
After his release in 2004, he was barred from speaking with foreign journalists and – when he resisted those restrictions – he was prosecuted again and returned to prison, as author Eileen Fleming describes in this guest article:
On May 23, 2010, Mordechai Vanunu began a three-month sentence in solitary confinement on charges of speaking to foreign media in 2004. On Sunday, July 11, 2010, his brother Meir was allowed to visit him for 30 minutes.
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Printer friendlyVanunu’s friend, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire, reported: “There was a glass window between them and they spoke via the phone. He wore a prison uniform. He is held in the hardest prison section there is in the prison. It has the most notorious criminals in the country, well known hard murder cases. All about a dozen are in severe isolation conditions.
“He is in a cell by himself for 24 hours a day, no window but a small wire covered crack at the top part of one wall. He has about an hour’s walk a day in a very tiny yard. He was simply thrown in a cell by the security agents, the door locked, and left to suffer there all alone. He has not spoken to anyone in all the seven weeks and this visit was (apart from a short visit of his lawyer 6 weeks ago) the first conversation he had in seven weeks.
Israeli aggression blocks peace talks
July 22, 2010Morning Star Online, July 22, 2010
A peaceful two-state solution is impossible unless the security council holds Israel to account for its “ongoing aggression, colonisation and provocation,” Palestine’s UN envoy warned the security council on Wednesday.
Riyad Mansour said abuses preventing the resumption of direct talks include the continuing construction of zionist settlements and the demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem.
He also cited the 900-plus military incursions in the West Bank and the arrest of more than 380 Palestinians in the last two months as further obstacles to the stalled peace process.
Palestinian Children Under Occupation
July 22, 2010
By Stephen Lendman, uruknet.info, July 21, 2010
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The Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations is a Beirut, Lebanon-based organization engaged in “strategic and futuristic studies on the Arab and Muslim worlds, (emphasizing) the Palestinian issue.” In July 2010, it published the latest in its “Am I Not a Human?” series titled, “The Suffering of the Palestinian Child under the Israeli Occupation,” saying: Palestinian children grow up “under the Israeli occupation, surrounded by cruelty, oppression, killing, starvation and destruction.” Yet, like all children, they dream of playing and living normally and safely. Instead, their father may be dead or in prison, their brother killed, their home destroyed, and their mother forced to give birth at an Israeli checkpoint, risking her and the newborn. |
Afghan conference endorses indefinite occupation
July 22, 2010By Bill Van Auken, wsws.org, July 22, 2010
The international foreign ministers conference held in Kabul Tuesday formally endorsed President Hamid Karzai’s proposed 2014 target for Afghan forces to assume the lead responsibility for the country’s security, while acknowledging that the foreign occupation will continue indefinitely.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proclaimed the conference, which lasted just five hours, a “turning point.” But there was little new presented at the gathering, and nothing to dispel the growing sense that after nearly nine years of occupation and war, the US-led project of installing a stable puppet regime and extending US hegemony in Central Asia is mired in crisis.
An Open Letter to the People of Israel about Mordechai Vanunu
July 22, 2010by Mairead Maguire, CommonDreams.org, July 21, 2010
Dear friends,
I write to ask for your help in gaining the freedom of a good man, a man of peace and a man of conscience.
In the Jewish scriptures there is great emphasis on justice and freedom and it is for such, for one man, that I write to seek your help.
He will not be aware that I am writing this Appeal, but I do so in the hope that, with your help, it will produce his freedom, and not cause more punishment and cruelty to be inflicted upon him.
I feel when I tell you the story, it will touch your hearts and there will be some among you who will be able to help him gain his freedom.
In May,2010, this man was returned to prison to serve three months for allegedly breaking his prison release restrictions and for speaking to Foreign Media. On Sunday July 11th , 2010, he had his first visit in seven weeks. His brother, Meir, was granted a 30 minute visit. There was a glass window between them and they spoke via the phone. He wore a prison uniform. He is held in the maximum security section. It holds the most notorious criminals in the country, for well known murder cases. About a dozen men are in severe isolation conditions.
Peace and Justice Post 