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I am found of what happens in Middle East. Here I recollect and comment such eventsa.
Activists get set to launch new flotilla to break blockade of Gaza Strip (Haggai Matar) - 04-aug-2012
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August 3, 2012 - European activists are organizing a new flotilla in solidarity with residents of Gaza. Their boat is expected to leave the Baltic Sea in the coming weeks and pass through several harbors in the Mediterranean for events aimed at raising awareness, before reaching the sealed off Strip. Previous flotillas were intercepted by the Israeli Navy, which is expected to stop this trip too. Activists posted a clip on YouTube on Wednesday showing the Estelle, a ship they recently bought for the journey to the blockaded Gaza Strip. The ship is currently on its way to Oslo after going through maintenance work in Sweden, and it is due to leave for a two-to-three months’ long voyage to Gaza in the coming weeks to protest against the ongoing Israeli siege on the Strip...
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The Dark Side of the Olympics: Kettling Cyclists and Telling Fairytales About Our Heritage (Andy Worthington) - 04-aug-2012
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August 3, 2012 - I was at WOMAD last Friday when the £27 million Olympics Opening Ceremony took place, but a screen had been set up especially for the occasion, and I managed to catch everything from the 800 nurses celebrating the NHS, through the tour of Britain’s modern musical history, to the start of the athletes’ processions. The disorientation I felt initially has not gone away — a celebration of the NHS taking place while the current government, largely unopposed by the British people, has begun the process of destroying it, pushing through dreadful legislation despite the opposition of a majority of healthcare professionals, with the sole purpose of forcing the NHS to be prised open for private companies to profit as much as possible from it, while, over time, cutting the universal provision of services, especially to those who have little or no money...
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Gaza left in the dark at Ramadan (Mohammed Omer) - 04-aug-2012
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August 3, 2012 - When the lights go out, Palestinians in Gaza look for generators to switch on. And they find people to talk to. With so many power cuts over so long now, people are giving themselves the somewhat dubious comfort that human relations may have improved as a result of these power cuts. Mohammed Aljamal, like many Gazans, is discovering that improved communication with friends and family are the brighter side of life in the dark when there isn’t much work he can do...
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Israeli Authorities Detain 6-Year-Old Mentally Disabled Child (by Kelly Joiner) - 04-aug-2012
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August 3, 2012 - A six-year-old mentally disabled girl who was born in Israel to parents who migrated from Sierra Leone was detained Thursday morning by Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority. Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported that the girls’ family is in the process of appealing the rejection of their asylum request and has yet to receive a final decision from the Israeli Interior Ministry’s humanitarian committee. An NGO dedicated to the rights of children reported to Ha’aretz that the girl and her family were detained at 5 AM which violates a policy of not waking up children in the middle of the night...
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‘US drone strikes undermine Pakistani democracy’ says top diplomat (by Chris Woods) - 04-aug-2012
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August 3, 2012 - One of Islamabad’s most senior diplomats has told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism that ongoing CIA drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas are weakening democracy, and risk pushing people towards extremist groups. He also claims that some factions of the US government still prefer to work with 'just one man’ rather than a democratically-elected government, and accuses the US of 'talking in miles’ when it comes to democracy but of 'moving in inches.’..'What has been the whole outcome of these drone attacks is, that you have rather directly or indirectly contributed to destabilizing or undermining the democratic government. Because people really make fun of the democratic government – when you pass a resolution against drone attacks in the parliament, and nothing happens. The Americans don’t listen to you, and they continue to violate your territory.’...
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Syria News - August 2, 2012 (Warning: Graphic Videos) (Local Coordination Committees of Syria + Videos) - 04-aug-2012
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August 2, 2012 -The number of martyrs in Syria has risen to 130 thus far, including 4 women and 10 children. 50 martyrs were reported in Damascus and its suburbs, 25 in Daraa, 16 in Homs, 12 in Hama, 12 in Idlib, 8 in Deir Ezzor and 7 in Aleppo... Damascus: Yarmouk Camp for Palestinian refugees: As a result of the fierce shelling in the area, 16 martyrs were reported and more than 50 were wounded, many critically. Of the martyrs, the following have been identified: Mohammad Anbatawi, Ibrahim Tallouzi, Anas and Ibrahim (both children), Alaa Ghoneim, Yahia Alyan, and Fathi Hasan...Daraa: Busr Harir: Tens wounded and 13 martyrs are reported due to heavy shelling of the town
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Remembering Gore Vidal (by Stephen Lendman) - 04-aug-2012
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August 2, 2012 - Many labels characterize him: distinguished author, essayist, playwright, historian, acerbic sociopolitical/cultural critic, freethinker, intellectual, and humanist. In 2009, the American Humanist Association (AHA) named him honorary president. On July 31, Gore Vidal died from complications of pneumonia at his Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles home. He was 86. He'll be missed. Los Angeles Times writer Elaine Woo called him a "gadfly on the national conscience" and "literary juggernaut." He was that and much more...
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Media, ACLU to argue against censorship at Guantnamo (By CAROL ROSENBERG | McClatchy Newspapers) - 04-aug-2012
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August 2, 2012 — The chief war court judge has agreed to let media and civil liberties lawyers argue for openness at the start of a pre-trial hearing at Guantanamo in the death-penalty case of five alleged conspirators in the Sept. 11 attacks. A consortium of 14 media groups, including The Miami Herald, and the American Civil Liberties Union separately filed motions protesting protective orders that shield the public from access to secret information in the case...
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FBI ‘Primer’ Instructs Interrogators to Break Detainees Through Isolation (By: Kevin Gosztola) - 04-aug-2012
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August 2, 2012 - A "primer" from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) seems to encourage the use of isolation to break down prisoners in overseas prisons. Published in 2011, it advocates the use of this coercive measure to break detainees ahead of interrogations, which violates or runs contrary to FBI policy. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) obtained the "primer" through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Devon Chaffee, Legislative Council for the ACLU, says it is the first document she has seen "that’s written by an FBI agent" and "explicitly recommends that FBI agents recommend that detainees be put in isolation."...
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Dispossession, a love story (by Akiva Eldar) - 04-aug-2012
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August 2, 2012 - Defense Minister Ehud Barak has a weakness for real estate images, primarily "premium" real estate. Israel is to him a nice villa, the home of good and law-abiding Israeli citizens surrounded by a teeming jungle of bad and law-breaking Arabs. The story of D., a resident of the Mitzpeh Yair outpost in the southern Hebron Hills, is a fairly routine one in the kingdom of the defense minister and shows that the rules of the jungle have taken over Barak’s villa. The story started in 2001, when residents of the illegal outpost began to set their sights on the lands of the Awad family from the nearby town of Sussia. Whenever members of the family of shepherds wanted to tend to the fields where they grow pasture for their flocks, ruffians from the outpost came out and chased them away, threatening with weapons, violence and invective...
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Saudi ex-detainee to sue Israeli regime for his illegal detention (Palestinian Information Center) - 04-aug-2012
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August 2, 2012 -- The lawyer of the Saudi ex-detainee who spent about six years in Israeli jails said his client Abdulrahman Al-Atwi has the right to file a lawsuit against the Israeli regime for detaining him for years without any guilt or evidence. Lawyer Kateb Al-Shammari told the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan that if his client decided to file a lawsuit and demand financial recompense, he would coordinate with international lawyers specialized in such cases... Shammari also noted the health condition of his client Atwi declined psychologically and physically during his detention..
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In Video: “Our Children Are Ready Too” (Palestine News Network) - 04-aug-2012
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August 2, 2012 - ...Maariv also revealed that the Israeli video shows two Israeli kids building the Jewish temple on the beach. They get the attention of their father who drops the newspaper that displays the picture of Mursi on the ground. That was considered an insult for president Mursi. While the Palestinian video shows a similar scene of two Palestinian children building al-Aqsa mosque and making a three-dimensional map of Palestine on the beach. They then call their father who is seen to be writing "No God but Allah" on a piece of paper and places it as a flag on the top of Al-Aqsa mosque. At the end of both videos, the Israeli video makes a provocative statement that says, "The Children are Ready". The Palestinian video responded by another provocative statement, "Our Children are Ready Too."..
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A 24-hour fast for many Yemenis (Qais Ghanem) - 04-aug-2012
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August 2, 2012 - ...In the midst of all this, the governments of Yemen and the world seem to have forgotten that such situations of extreme starvation, displacement and hopelessness are exactly where social upheaval, violence and terrorism thrive. They are all busy fighting terrorism either with regular Yemeni military forces or with American drones, at enormous cost, when such funds should be re-directed towards saving the lives and ameliorating the sufferings of millions of starving Yemenis; for it is estimated that ten million Yemenis, about 40 per cent of the population, are what is termed "food-insecure".And while this is all happening, we read about the numerous visits by the Yemeni minister of this and minister of that portfolio, flying first class to all sorts of Arab and non-Arab capitals, coordinating the fight against Al Qaida, when they should be ensuring basic food, water and sanitation for those forgotten and neglected Yemenis....
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Israel set to approve hotels in settlements as part of "Greater Jerusalem" scheme (Middle East Monitor) - 04-aug-2012
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August 2, 2012 - The Israeli government is set to approve government grants for building hotels in the 1967-Occupied Palestinian Territories, particularly in Occupied Jerusalem, which will speed up the establishment of Israel's plans for "Greater Jerusalem". Haaretz newspaper has described the government's decision to approve a draft resolution as the first of its kind. An Israeli law of 1959 only allows governments to give loans and grants for construction purposes within Israel itself. The latest move will give the go-ahead for hotels to be built inside illegal settlements on occupied territory near Jerusalem, the most notable being Ma'aleh Adumin and the Gush Etzion bloc to the south of the city ...
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Iraq: Britain's War against Truth (By Felicity Arbuthnot) - 03-aug-2012
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August 2, 2012 - In the last several days, the shreds of Britain’s threadbare claim to democracy have been ripped away. The refusal by the current Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government to disclose documents integral to the decision to join the US in invading, occupying, destroying and dismantling the entire civil authority, and infrastructure of the very State of Iraq, follows their Labour predecessors, the invasion’s co-architects. The Iraq Inquiry findings under Sir John Chilcot’s Chairmanship will now be delayed for over another year...
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Iraq snapshot - August 2, 2012 (The Common Ills) - 03-aug-2012
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August 2, 2012. Chaos and violence continue, Nouri fumes as Turkey visits Kirkuk, Allawi makes a high profile stop in the region, is the Dept of Veterans Affairs violating US law, what is controlling ownership, and more... AFP reports that there was an attack on a police patrol in Taji yesterday which led to the deaths of four police officers and that there was an attack on a Taji prison in which four other police officers were killed. Alsumaria reports that the attack started with a bombing at the gate and then assailants stormed the prison where they clashed with prison guards -- they state officials have not released the death tolls -- and they remind something similar happened in Baghdad Tuesday when a car bombing outside the counter-terrorism center was followed by assailants attempting to storm the center leading to five deaths and twenty-seven people being injured...
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Listen to the Lion: The Enduring Legacy of Gore Vidal (Chris Floyd) - 03-aug-2012
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August 2, 2012 - If the Republic still existed, if it was even a shadow of what it was meant to be (and never was), then bells would tolling across the land and flags would be flying at half-mast, in sorrowful honor for one of its true sons. Gore Vidal is dead. The loss is great. His was a unique sensibility: artistic, caustic, unsentimental, casting a Yeatsian cold eye on the human comedy, and in this way -- with no false pieties, no dogma, no ideological crutches -- revealing, with inescapable clarity, the rank injustices and murderous hypocrisies of power, and the ludicrous pretenses of power's sycophants...
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Statement to the People of Syria Regarding the Transitional Government (Local Coordination Committees of Syria) - 03-aug-2012
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August 2, 2012 - As more and more areas slip out of the regime’s control in Syria, and as the regime nears its collapse, the need for a national transitional government has become paramount. Such a government is needed to help organize the civilians in liberated areas to help coordinate the revolutionary bodies and their activities in Syria. A transitional government is also needed to represent the revolution on the international level. Despite being a "transitional" government, it is going to be the political leader of Syria that will repeal the Assad era forever. Therefore, the transitional government should be formed after extensive and careful consultations among different political parties, the Local Coordination Committees, and the Free Syrian Army... Unfortunately, we, among millions of Syrians, have noticed hasty attempts by certain individuals and committees to form this much-needed government. We have felt, on occasion, that these hasty attempts have crossed the line over the values of our great revolution and have insulted the martyrs and sacrifices the Syrian people have made over the last year and a half, in addition to the sacrifices made over the past decades of dictatorship...
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Illegal Drone Wars (Hasan Qureshi) - 03-aug-2012
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August 2, 2012 - ... Let there be no doubt though – USAF/CIA drone strikes within Pakistani territory are illegal both under international and national law. Here are just some of the violations which occur every time a US drone violates Pakistani airspace and commits targeted murder: The Drone Strikes violate Security Council resolution 748, U.N Doc S/RES/508 (1992) on the definition and protection of a state’s sovereignty. The Drone Strikes violate Article 51 of the U.N Charter by making a mockery of the rules of self-defense. The US has shown Pakistan no evidence of attacks being mounted on ISAF forces from Pakistani soil, therefore their plea of self-defense is without grounds. And even if it does hold true, then under the same principle, Pakistan has a right to launch missiles against these very bases from which drones are flown from....
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Julian Assange is right to fear US prosecution (Michael Ratner) - 03-aug-2012
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August 2, 2012 - As the drama unfolds over Julian Assange's bid for political asylum in Ecuador, a troubling irony has emerged: the besieged founder of WikiLeaks is seeking refuge in this small Andean nation because he fears persecution from the United States, a nation whose laws famously grant asylum to people in precisely Assange's situation. Indeed, the US has demonstrated its commitment to be a safe haven for those being persecuted for their political beliefs by recognising that journalists punished for expressing political opinions in places like China meet the criteria for asylum under the US's own laws...
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Child malnutrition remains high in West Bank and Gaza (IRIN News) - 03-aug-2012
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August 2, 2012 - At a glance, the latest data on post-assistance food security in the West Bank and Gaza Strip - released by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) last week - seems to warrant optimism. 2011 was the second straight year in which the number of those living in food insecurity declined in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). In the Gaza Strip, the percentage dropped from 60 in 2009 to 44 in 2011; in the West Bank, food insecurity rates have decreased 5 percent in the same two-year period to 17 percent. But, as UNRWA itself admits, a deeper look into the numbers is less encouraging. In the West Bank, Palestinians who live in refugee camps have actually experienced a rise in food insecurity - from 25 percent in 2009 to 29 percent in 2011...
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SYRIA: Three million people need food aid - UN (IRIN News) - 03-aug-2012
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August 2, 2012 - The Syrian conflict has left up to three million people in need of food assistance and agricultural support in the next year, according to the UN and the Syrian government. Family income has dropped; the cost of fuel is rising; remittances are down; farmers and herders have lost their assets and livelihoods; the wheat harvest has been delayed; and deforestation is rising, the World Food Programme (WFP), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the Syrian Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform found in a joint assessment conducted in June...
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Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (26 July – 01 Aug.2012) (The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR)) - 03-aug-2012
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August 2, 2012 - Summary: Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law in the OPT continued during the reporting period (26 July – 01 August 2012): Shooting: On 30 July 2012, IOF killed a Palestinian worker and wounded 3 others at al-Zaeem checkpoint, east of occupied Jerusalem. During the reporting period, IOF used force to disperse peaceful demonstrations organized in protest to the construction of the annexation wall and settlement activities in the West Bank. As a result, 3 Palestinian civilians, including a child, and a Swedish human rights defender, were wounded. Dozens of demonstrators also suffered from tear gas inhalation....
In the Gaza Strip, IOF continued to fire at Palestinian fishing boats. During the reporting period, PCHR documented two attacks in this regard, which did not cause casualties.
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Property Demolished for Illegal Settlement Expansion (by Craig Harrington) - 03-aug-2012
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August 2, 2012 - Israeli forces closed a road near Bethlehem in preparation for the demolition of Palestinian property.The Israeli military frequently confiscates land in the West Bank near the illegal separation barrier. On Thursday morning Israeli bulldozers began demolishing structures on privately owned land in Beit Jala, a community near Bethlehem, reports Ma’an News. Raji Zeidan, the Mayor of Beit Jala, stated months ago that Israeli forces had begun harassing residents of certain neighborhoods. Families living near valuable agricultural land or the illegal settlements are often targeted after Israelis demand room for expansion into the West Bank...
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A Statement of Condemnation of the lack of Professionalism of Osama Ali Suleiman (Rami Abdul-Rahman) & its Syria Observatory for Human Rights (Various undersigned) - 03-aug-2012
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August 2, 2012 - We the undersigned express our deep condemnation of the unprofessional news, which does not meet the minimum ethics of Human Rights or honorable media activities that Mr. Osama Suleiman (Rami Abdul-Rahman) has been publishing about the Syrian Revolution for the following reasons: First: when he equals the executioner and the victim: through propagating false claims about imaginary numbers of the security and army elements killed, and that are stated only by Mr. Osama Suleiman (Rami Abdul-Rahman) who does not rely on any documentation of the numbers he gives. Second: provoking sectarian tensions: especially in the areas where different sects live together by pretending that the crimes of the security forces are just sectarian fighting, the thing that is not true. Such behaviour of Mr. Osama does participate in generating certain reactions that do not serve but the regime in this sensitive stage of the national uprising longing for freedom in Syria....
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continua / continued
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