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I am found of what happens in Middle East. Here I recollect and comment such eventsa.
Military Resistance 11E13: Now and Forever (Thomas F Barton) - 22-may-2013
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May 20, 2013 - The United States may keep a force of 6,000 to 12,000 troops in Afghanistan after 2014, when Afghan forces will be responsible for security across the country, a top American Senator has said. "We are planning to keep a force of perhaps 6,000 to 12,000 after 2014 when all combat forces are to be out of Afghanistan," Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said during a Congressional hearing...
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Deep in Enemy Territory – Fast Times in Palestine (By Pamela Olson) - 22-may-2013
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May 20, 2013 - A friend from college named Cameron was in Israel visiting family for Passover. He was an adventurous soul, a world traveler and entrepreneur, with curly brown hair, blue eyes, and a slim athletic build. When his family learned I was in the Holy Land, they invited me to their Passover seder — until they realized I lived in Ramallah, at which point they promptly rescinded the invitation.Cameron was a strong supporter of Israel and hawkish on security issues, but he was embarrassed by his family’s behavior. I told him he could make it up to me by visiting the West Bank for a week and seeing the occupation for himself. To my pleasant surprise he agreed. In order not to upset his family, he told them he was heading to the Sinai for a week. He arrived in Ramallah just as the Dancing Traffic Cop was beginning his shift in Al Manara. Tall, lanky, and graceful, wearing reflective silver aviator sunglasses, the man didn’t just direct traffic. He made a show of it. Cameron and I watched in amazement as his long arms moved in quick, precise, exaggerated arcs and twirls to match his intricate, impeccable footwork....
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Syrian army displays an old Israeli-made Jeep as "proof of aid to rebels" (Video) (By Amos Harel) - 22-may-2013
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May 20, 2013 -The Syrian army on Monday displayed an Israeli-made Jeep it said was captured from a rebel organization during recent battles for control of Qusayr, a Syrian city near the Lebanese border. Damascus claimed the vehicle was proof of Israeli and U.S. aid to the Syrian opposition...The vehicle is identifiable as a relatively old, armored model of the Sufa Jeep, which is manufactured in Israel under license from Chrysler.Such vehicles have been used by the IDF for decades in the territories and were used by Israeli forces in the South Lebanon buffer zone until Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. The IDF license number, 669491, is clearly visible in the clip, as are the maximum speed limits and other markings typical of IDF vehicles.A preliminary IDF investigation conducted after the vehicle's capture was reported showed the Jeep was taken out of IDF service at least 10 years ago. It is thought that the Jeep may have been left behind in Lebanon in 2000, or sold as army surplus. The IDF Spokesman's Office confirmed that the model in the video has not been used by the IDF for more than 10 years ..
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Guantanamo Force-Feeding Constitutes Torture (by Stephen Lendman) - 22-may-2013
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May 20, 2013 - Guantanamo detention constitutes torture, abuse and ill-treatment. Long-term detention compounds it. Force-feeding increases unconscionable pain and suffering. Doing so violates core rule of law principles. Around 130 of 166 Guantanamo detainees refuse food. They're hunger striking for justice. They began in February. They passed 100 days. They'd rather die than endure injustice. Their only escape route is death. Pentagon officials at first maintained silence. Belatedly they admitted what's well-known. They consistently downplayed it. Now they admit 102 detainees refuse food. At least 130 are involved. Obama dismissively said nothing. His belated acknowledgement reflected disdain for their pain and suffering...
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Is France to Start Killing People 'the American Way'? (By François Sergent) - 22-may-2013
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May 20, 2013 -War without a battlefield, without direct confrontation and without any risk to the attackers. Drones change not only the art of war, but also blur the laws of war. And American monopoly currently only shared by Israel, drones have become the weapon of choice of the "war against terror" - a phrase coined by George W. Bush after the September 11 - then continued and expanded by Obama. From Somalia to the frontiers of Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan, dozens of suspected terrorists, including senior al-Qaeda leaders, have been killed by missiles launched by drones operated from the comfort of sanitized bases in Virginia. These men were killed secretly and without trial, in the manner of extrajudicial executions. As sophisticated as these unmanned aircraft have become, however, hundreds of civilian men, women and children, have fallen - collateral victims of this shadowy war...
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Palestinian Refugees From Syria Especially Vulnerable (By: Samar El Yassir) - 22-may-2013
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May 20, 2013 - ... More than 50,000 Palestinians already have sought refuge in Lebanon. Thousands more arrive each month. They arrive with the clothes they are wearing and few or no resources to survive on their own. So they seek shelter with other Palestinian families who have been living for decades in Lebanon’s already overcrowded refugee camps. UNRWA, understandably, has been overwhelmed by the sudden influx and the challenge it presents to care for them.
In a survey we conducted in January to determine their needs, we discovered more than 90% of refugee families have no income, making it impossible for them to afford the cost of living in Lebanon, which is considerably higher than in Syria. Most exhausted much of their savings during the conflict and flight to Lebanon.Nearly all the Palestinian refugees interviewed in the survey cite food as their biggest expense. Families struggle to provide three meals a day ...
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New Sleaze Allegations Tarnish JPMorgan Chase's 'Teflon Don' (By Tom Burghardt) - 22-may-2013
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May 20, 2013 - While Barack Obama's "favorite banker" continues to receive the royal treatment in Washington, new sleaze allegations threaten to further tarnish the golden boy image of "teflon don" Jamie Dimon, the CEO and Chairman of JPMorgan Chase. Wearing multiple hats, Dimon is the Chairman of The Business Council, a long-time member of the Council on Foreign Relations, The Trilateral Commission, a "Class A" Director of the New York Federal Reserve and Advisory Board member of the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, that is, until the Council was foreclosed on earlier this year. It doesn't hurt that JPM's embattled capo di tutti capi is also a leading light and Executive Committee member of The Business Roundtable, a corporatist "association of chief executive officers of leading U.S. companies with more than $7.3 trillion in annual revenues and nearly 16 million employees."...
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Israeli report on al-Dura case is vengeful and ‘surreal,’ says Haaretz — but ‘NYT’ treats it as gospel (by Philip Weiss) - 22-may-2013
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May 20, 2013 - Famously, 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura was killed in the second intifada, during a shootout in Gaza in September 2000; haunting footage of the boy's cowering with his father, first broadcast on French public television, became a symbol of the brutality of the occupation. But this weekend the Israeli government produced a report asserting that the boy and his father may well have escaped the shootout unscathed...Barak Ravid in Haaretz says the report is "surreal" because it comes out 13 years after the event, then he goes on to describe it as vengeful and : The report also appears to be a campaign of revenge launched by the State of Israel against a single French journalist, Charles Enderlin, who first reported Mohammed al-Dura's death. ...
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Walking Tours Connect Palestinians to Their Past (By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours) - 22-may-2013
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May 20 , 2013 - A reddish-brown dome sits atop an ancient stone house, used hundreds of years ago for prayer. It peeks out from the surrounding trees as the rolling green valleys and hills of the central West Bank stretch out into the distance. This shrine, known as the Al-Khawass shrine, sits 540 metres above sea level in the Palestinian village of Deir Ghassaneh. It is one of several stops along the Sufi trail, which begins in the valley below and takes visitors and locals alike back in time to when Sufism, a mystical form of Islam, was widespread in the area."I want foreigners to know Palestinian culture, our culture. And I want Palestinians to take [steadfastness] from it. This is your home. Be proud of the land, of the homeland," explained Rafat Jamil, director of tours and a guide at the Rozana Association...
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U.K.: Where reading can send you to jail (By: Corinne Purtill) - 22-may-2013
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May 20, 2013 - In the deepening investigation of the Boston Marathon bombings, federal officials have reportedly found copies of the Al Qaeda magazine Inspire and other extremist materials on a computer belonging to Katherine Russell, the widow of suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev. If these reports are true, and if this case took place in the U.K., no other evidence would be needed to arrest and prosecute Russell, 24. Simply having a copy of Inspire — or any other material deemed "likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism" — is a crime here....
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The Prisoners' Diaries - Palestinian voices from the Israeli Gulag (Review by Ramona Wadi) - 22-may-2013
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May 20, 2013 - Edited and published during the Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike, The Prisoners' Diaries is a distressing fragment of testimonies from Palestinians whose deterioration in Israeli jails has become a fact of life, rather than a blatant violation of human rights. The resilience against the occupation and a lack of global outrage against torture and apartheid practices resonated with irregular frequencies within the international community, as leaders relegate human rights to the vestiges of redundant diplomacy. As the epitomes of the hunger strike, Samer Issawi and Ayman Sharawna, seem to have faded from public scrutiny, this book serves as a reminder of the reality experienced by hundreds of prisoners who have, at some point, been incarcerated and subjected to torture in Israeli prisons. The brief narrations manage to dissolve the facade of statistics and portray the humanitarian aspect - estranged families, poverty, illness, death and the metaphor of time experienced as a perpetual waiting and loathed dependence on an entity responsible for the deterioration of life as envisaged by the occupying power...
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"I’m afraid of dying" without returning home, says Nakba survivor (Rami Almeghari) - 22-may-2013
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May 20, 2013- It was the hardest trip that Zeidan Mahmoud Abu Naser has taken in his life. In May 1948, his village of Beit Jirja was attacked by Zionist gangs. Their vehicles and weapons "were more sophisticated than anything we had," he recalled. He was forced to leave and to seek refuge in Gaza. "We left behind our crops of wheat. We even left food right in the middle of our home," he said, recalling how he traveled in a donkey-drawn carriage, along with his parents, six brothers and two sisters. The trip took half a day but it was "psychologically devastating," he added...
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Israel resumes use of sniper units to disperse Palestinian demonstrations (Middle East Monitor) - 22-may-2013
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May 20, 2013 -The online edition of the Israeli newspaper Maariv revealed on Sunday that the Israeli army has recently resumed using snipers units to disperse Palestinian demonstrations; a practice it had abandoned for a short period.The newspaper reported that this technique was used at the end of last week near the settlement of Beit El in eastern Ramallah. Tutu rifles (0.22 inch calibre bullets) were used injuring five Palestinian youths. The newspaper added that the soldiers carried out their commanders direct orders to open fire on the demonstrators after the army had exhausted the normal methods of crowd dispersal - tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition ..
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Obama DOJ formally accuses journalist in leak case of committing crimes (Glenn Greenwald) - 22-may-2013
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May 20, 2013 -It is now well known that the Obama justice department has prosecuted more government leakers under the 1917 Espionage Act than all prior administrations combined - in fact, double the number of all such prior prosecutions. But as last week's controversy over the DOJ's pursuit of the phone records of AP reporters illustrated, this obsessive fixation in defense of secrecy also targets, and severely damages, journalists specifically and the newsgathering process in general. New revelations emerged yesterday in the Washington Post that are perhaps the most extreme yet when it comes to the DOJ's attacks on press freedoms. It involves the prosecution of State Department adviser Stephen Kim, a naturalized citizen from South Korea who was indicted in 2009 for allegedly telling Fox News' chief Washington correspondent, James Rosen, that US intelligence believed North Korea would respond to additional UN sanctions with more nuclear tests - something Rosen then reported. ...
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Investigate Israel’s killing of US teen, rights group tells Obama (Maureen Clare Murphy) - 22-may-2013
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May 20, 2013 - The Center for Constitutional Rights called on US President Barack Obama last week to break his three-year silence over Israel’s 2009 killing of 18-year-old US citizen Furkan Doğan during its siege on the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara ship in international waters. The CCR states in its 16 May letter : Recently, the Israeli government apologized to Turkey, acknowledging "a number of operational mistakes" that might have led to the loss of life or injury. Despite these admissions, the US still has not publicly called upon Israel to provide any detailed information on Furkan’s death or made any public call for accountability regarding his killing. The silence from the US in relation to the killing of its citizen and eight other civilians effectively results in impunity. Furthermore, it sends a message that the government will tolerate the killing of US human rights defenders by Israel....
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Pentagon Seeks Another $79 Billion for Afghan War (Jason Ditz) - 22-may-2013
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May 20, 2013- Pentagon officials have submitted a new request for another $79.4 billion for "overseas contingency operations," essentially to pay for the 2014 fighting of the Afghan War. The request is above and beyond the $526 billion the Pentagon is already seeking for 2014, which was supposed to include the war’s costs. Requests for supplemental war funds are nothing new for the Pentagon, but the latest request comes in the context of a growing budget crisis in Afghanistan, with the 2013 "contingency funds" already burned through as costs continue to soar....
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Qusayr resisting all-out attack (ALEX ROWELL) - 22-may-2013
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May 20, 2013 - The streets of the western Syrian town of Al-Qusayr were enveloped in clouds of grey cement powder on Sunday as President Bashar al-Assad's air and ground forces, backed by Lebanese Hezbollah militiamen, commenced a long-awaited major assault on the lynchpin rebel-held town and its surrounding villages. Humanitarian observers including the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, have warned that this may lead to massacres reminiscent of those in the coastal towns of al-Bayda and Banias earlier in the month. At least 58 Qusayr residents were killed Sunday – many of them civilians – and over 600 wounded in continuous air and artillery strikes, according to local opposition spokesman Hadi al-Abdallah. He also claimed some 30 Hezbollah fighters had been killed by rebel forces. Syrian state TV reported 100 opposition militants dead, with no mention of regime casualties. NOW was unable to reach the Hezbollah press office for confirmation of the Party's losses...
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More Alleged Abu Ghraib Torturers Slipping Through Fingers of Justice? (Kelley Beaucar Vlahos) - 22-may-2013
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May 20, 2013 - This may ultimately come as no surprise, but yet another party connected to the torture and abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib circa 2004 may get off with little more than a slight taint on their reputation. At this point it is part of the record in at least two official investigations including the Taguba Report and the commonly known "Fay Report," that that the Arlington, Va.-based private contractor CACI had fielded interrogators who helped to intimidate, harass and physically assault prisoners at Abu Ghraib. That much was detailed in the official military investigations, no matter what CACI says, and everyone can access them easily enough...
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Fox News Journalist Pursued by Obama Justice Department as ‘Co-Conspirator’ in Leak (By: Kevin Gosztola) - 22-may-2013
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May 20, 2013 - The extent of the administration of President Barack Obama’s attacks on the First Amendment has been confirmed to include having the Justice Department pursue a Fox News journalist as a "co-conspirator" in a leak investigation.The investigation involves Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a State Department employee, who has been under investigation for possibly leaking classified information on North Korea to Fox News reporter James Rosen. The Washington Post characterizes the case as one that "bears striking similarities to a sweeping leaks investigation disclosed last week in which federal investigators obtained records over two months of more than 20 telephone lines assigned to the Associated Press." Except, it is worse...
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Israeli Army Kidnaps Two Palestinian Fishermen In Northern Gaza (Saed Bannoura) - 22-may-2013
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May 20, 2013 - The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), based in Gaza, has reported that the Israeli Navy kidnapped, on Sunday at night, two Palestinian fishermen near the coast of Beit Lahia city, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. The PCHR said that the soldiers kidnapped Mahmoud Zayed, 27, and his brother Khaled, as they were fishing in Palestinian territorial waters, and took them to an unknown destination before confiscating their boat. The soldiers also prevented Palestinian fishermen in the area from fishing and forced them back to the shore...
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Israel is world's largest drone exporter (Harriet Sherwood) - 22-may-2013
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May 20, 2013 - Israel is the world's largest exporter of drones, mainly to Europe, Asia and Latin America, in a trade worth more than $4.6bn (£3bn) over the past eight years. A study by the business consultancy Frost and Sullivan found that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) account for almost 10% of Israel's military exports. Sales have declined from a peak in 2010, but Israel has recently signed a $100m deal, not included in the figures, with India to upgrade its drones. Just over half of Israel's drone exports were to Europe, including a substantial number to the UK. Less than 4% of UAV sales were to America...
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Living in Hell, Iraqi Christians Dream of Paradise (By Karlos Zurutuza) - 22-may-2013
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May 20, 2013 - ... After Iraqi Mandaeans were quite literally decimated – nine out of 10 have either died or fled since 2003 – the local Christian community has suffered significantly over the last decade. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees reports that about half of that population has left the country since 2003. The Assyrian Council of Europe, an independent non-governmental organisation, goes further, pointing to the Iraqi Constitution as one of the culprits of marginalisation faced by minorities in Iraq...
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Four Palestinian Prisoners and Five Jordanian Prisoners on Open Hunger Strike; Military Court to Consider Request from PLC member Ahmed Sa‘adat for a Visit from his Granddaughter (Addameer) - 22-may-2013
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May 20, 2013 - Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association’s Research and Documentation Unit has learned that 4 Palestinian prisoners are on open hunger strike. They are making several demands from the Occupation authorities and the Israeli Prison Service (IPS). Addameer can also confirm that 5 Jordanian prisoners are on hunger strike in order to shed light on their cause and are demanding family visits. Addameer has gathered the following information concerning the hunger strikers: 1. Detainee Ayman Abu Daoud (30 years old) from Al-Khalil (Hebron). He has been on hunger strike since 14 April 2013 in protest of his re-arrest after his release as part of the most recent prisoner exchange deal on 18 October 2011. Abu Daoud was released as part of the deal after having spent 7 years of his 36-year sentence in prison. Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) want him to serve the rest of his previous sentence (a remaining 29 years) on the basis of Article 186 of Military Order 1651, as amended in September 2011...
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Israel Approves Nearly 300 New Homes in Beit El Settlement (By Tadas Blinda) - 22-may-2013
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May 20, 2013 - On Wednesday, May 8 2013, Israel approved the construction of 296 new homes in the Beit El settlement near Ramallah. This move is likely to increase tensions as US Secretary of State John Kerry is seeking to revive peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians that have stalled since 2010.The plan was announced two days after Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ordered a freeze on tenders for new settler houses in the West Bank to avoid harming US efforts in bringing Israel and the Palestinians back to the negotiations. This approval comes as part of a compensation plan for settlers evicted from the unauthorized Ulpana outpost, built on the outskirts of Beit El settlement, in return for their cooperation in evacuating the 5 homes orded to be demolished by the Supreme Court on July 1 2012...
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continua / continued
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