Pulse

I just want to mark the arrival of a new site especially because I’ve already been linking to it but the Gaza assault sort of pushed out the time to properly welcome Pulse.

Pulse is a joint blog/website combining expertise from People’s Geography and The Fanonite, but hey let them explain, Ann of People’s Geography -

Dear friends and valued readers, I am pleased to announce PU L S E, a new joint political weblog initiated by myself and The Fanonite and joined by fellow editors Dave and Robin. We thought a joint site would be a great way to combine our efforts and achieve greater efficacy in cyberactivism for justice.

I would be deeply appreciative if you would consider adding our new site to your links and feeds and daily web-stops. PeoplesGeography.com remains and will continue with selective postings; P U L S E however will be the main game and a veritable hive of activity.

We hope it will have a lot to offer for the thinking dissenter and seeker of alternatives. Look forward to seeing you over there!

Muhammad of The Fanonite-

Dear Friends:
I am deeply humbled by all the words of encouragement and appreciation you have directed my way. Things were not turning out the way I had expected and as a result the hiatus turned out to be far longer than I had anticipated. I am still tied down by my responsibilities, but the outrages in Gaza have imposed their own demand. Ann and I agreed that we would be remiss in our responsibilties if we remained AWOL during this crisis. For this reason we have decided to launch a joint blog, Pulse, which you can find at Pulsemedia.org. We are also joined in this effort by Franklin Lamb, Robin Yassin-Kassab and Dave Thomson. As the activities on our own respective blogs would be mostly suspended from now on, I would encourage you all to update your bookmarks with the new URL (fanonite.org will soon also point to the new blog).

Thank you once again for your support, and your patience.

So welcome to http://pulsemedia.org/, add ‘em to your blogroll. They even offer some lovely music and today among many good posts I found this about racism within Israel between different ethnic Jewish groups very interesting, excerpt-

An immensely interesting and revealing piece that discusses the too-rarely broached internal racism of Israeli society by Smadar Levie (’Sacrificing Gaza to revive Israel’s Labor party‘). Israel’s racism against its own second class citizens (the Eastern Jews or Mizrahim, the Palestinian Israeli Arabs are third class citizens) is demonstrated in Ashkenazi Jews treatment. The Ashkenazi Jews who constuted the political elite settled the Eastern-orgin, darker-skinned Mizrahi Jews — whom they call “monkeys” and “indians” — in ethnically cleansed Palestinian towns as a demographic shield and buffer. “While the regime had endowed Ashkenazi left-wing kibbutzniks living in northern Israel with well-equipped air-conditioned underground shelters,” Levie notes, “it had failed to make corresponding provision for the neighboring Mizrahi agricultural cooperatives and development towns. After the war, the Mizrahim in the north publicly acknowledged, and with great bitterness, that they had been sacrificed for Israel’s military adventure.”

A Better Day

A lot of people are mentioning/playing this clip from Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 of Bush’s inauguration, compare and contrast-

So far though with regard to the Bush crime family there is nothing to celebrate, he got stole two full terms, he has not been hindered one bit. We shall see…

Schmange

Philip Weiss notes the Obama Whitehouse on foreign policy with regard to Israel-

Obama’s White House is now online. The White House’s foreign-policy agenda begins by vowing “to seek a lasting peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” But then three paragraphs of absolute support for Israel no matter what is very disappointing. Not a shock, but disappointing nonetheless. And of course not a word about the Gaza slaughter and destruction. Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.

I do notice belligerence towards Iran, no mention of Israeli nukes, they get to violate the NPT with impunity (well by not signing it and never officially recognising their large arsenal and America plays along, plus Bush also violated it)  but..they do mention talks with Iran without pre-conditions. Afghanistan is in their crosshairs, is there any chance they will stop chumming up with warlords and swapping one tyranny for another? And air war in Afghanistan is …well a tactic that needs to be ended. What is thankfully missing is deranged neocon zealotry. The imperial pragmatists are in charge, no more, no less.

Even The Choir Was In Uniform

No doubt he is a spectacularly capable politician but to remake America one must first dismantle empire, or the republic is doomed.

Oh but, Davros.

Bolivian Hate Radio

Reporters Without Borders (excerpt):-

An organisation that defends press freedom and free expression, Reporters Without Borders believes it has a duty to denounce the use of news media to incite racism, violence or murder. It was for this reason that the organisation condemned the behaviour of Jorge Melgar Quete, who was arrested on 13 October in Riberalta, in the northeastern department of Beni.

Melgar’s commentaries on Beni’s Canal 18 TV station were just hate-filled rants against the indigenous origins of many Bolivians and the country’s democratically-elected president. In an opinion piece published in the dailies La Razón and La Prensa on 21 October, Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-François Julliard voiced outrage at the fact that the media were being used to express such views.

For the same reason, as a warning, we are publishing on our website passages from “Nuestra Palabra”, a hate programme hosted by lawyer Luis Arturo Mendivil on Radio Oriental, a station he owns in the eastern city of Santa Cruz. Mendivil’s radio editorials glorify the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista, a radical Santa Cruz-based group that has carried out repeated physical attacks on state media such as Canal 7 TV and the Red Patria Nueva radio network because of their perceived support for the central government in La Paz.

Transcript (excerpt)-

Second editorial, 11 June 2008:
“I am not proud of being a Bolivian, as the collas would say. I am proud of being a camba, of being a Santa Cruz man to the core. I want to be an Amazonian. I want to take advantage of this piece of Latin America without having to keep the company of these ignorant brutes, these animals in human form. I will never stop calling them that, these drugged, alcoholic maniacs who yesterday or the day before tried to demonstrate their ferocity in La Paz like poor animals. When a human being takes the form of a two-legged animal, when a human being loses his rationality, when we listen to these brutes and imbeciles who govern us, each day we lose a bit, or a lot of what we aspire to become.

I was listening to this imbecile, this ignorant cretin who represents us on the international stage, I was listening to him say he was not satisfied with the ambassador’s statement but would consult lawyers. Obviously, it is a man with knowledge of international law who can maintain relations between peoples, and not this stupid donkey, this animal, this stone llama freak. We must develop every possible mechanism to oppose this proposed referendum which makes no sense, which is just a sexual infatuation between the government and Tuto Quiroga [former president and current head of Podemos, the main opposition party, who is regarded as traitor by the most radical supporters of autonomy]. We won’t let ourselves be screwed by these sell-outs. They are all in the same corner as this crazy government that wants to make us submit to a socialist-model economy that has failed all over the world.

Dazed & Confused

To be honest I find the inauguration bacchanalia in Washington rather horrific and as Israel has now done their usual of ‘changing the facts on the ground’ (possibly one of the most banal euphemisms for butchery and theft) they now suddenly scoot as new management enters the Whitehouse. Like a bad sitcom where instead of canned laughter it’s the rumble of ordnance detonating, a farce of burned flesh. This happened with Washington’s support and approval and with billions of US taxpayers dollars, now they go dancing on the backs of the dead and with ‘facts changed’ more fake negotiations can begin to mask the ongoing project of zionist colonisation. After all they have assured more hatred whose fruit can be used as a reason to dispatch more ‘defensive’ attacks from the Empire’s Mini-Me.

RAMALLAH, Jan 19 (IPS) – Humanitarian aid is being rushed into Gaza as Israel and Egypt open their borders temporarily to allow convoys of aid to pass through.

While Israeli drones circle the skies above, Hamas security men are back on the streets attempting to restore some semblance of law and order. Policemen are directing traffic. Several looters have been arrested.

Gazans who survived the battering inflicted by Israel’s 22-day military campaign, codenamed Operation Cast Lead, are venturing out and trying to pick up the pieces of their lives.

“People are feeling dazed and confused. Many are desperately trying to contact family members and friends on the few remaining phone lines that operate to see if they are still alive or if they are injured,” Abdallah Al-Agha from Khan Yunis in the south of Gaza told IPS.

“Others are leaving UN shelters for the first time in days to see if and what remains of their homes,” added Al-Agha.

Elena Qleibo, a Gaza-based aid worker from Oxfam and an ex-Costa Rican ambassador to Israel, said parts of Gaza resembled an apocalypse.

“The destruction wrought on Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza, and the Zeitoun suburb in eastern Gaza city is immense,” Qleibo told IPS. “The sewage is flowing in the streets. Electricity pylons, water and sewage works, municipal and medical buildings, and homes have been levelled.”

Initial estimates state that 15 percent or 20,000 of the Gaza Strip’s buildings have been damaged, with nearly 30,000 Palestinians forced to find shelter in UN Relief and Welfare Agency (UNRWA) shelters and with family.

Nearly 1,300 Gazans lost their lives, around a third of these children, with a total of more than half of the deaths civilian. The number of injured is pushing 4,000.

“People are extremely angry and the level of hate against Israel is very high. I have lived and worked in Gaza for many years and I have never seen such hatred from the population,” said Qleibo.

Gazans are not blaming Hamas, contrary to Israel’s wishes. “People laugh at Israel’s claims that this was a war against the Islamic resistance organisation and not one aimed at civilians.

“They see this as a war against all Palestinians. The number of civilians killed and maimed and the destruction wrought was way too extreme,” said Qleibo.

“The scale of death and destruction is most definitely counter-productive. Throughout this conflict so many experts and global leaders have highlighted there is no military solution to this conflict – an effective political solution is needed,” John Ging, the head of Gaza’s (UNRWA), told Maan News Agency.

UNRWA’s main compound in Gaza city, which feeds 750,000 Gazan refugees, half of the total population, was destroyed in an Israeli attack Jan. 15.

Ging said that 50 aid trucks entered Gaza Saturday, the day Israel announced its unilateral ceasefire.

“But we need hundreds of trucks. The needs are growing exponentially and the pipeline for humanitarian supplies is very narrow. Even those, such as Palestinian Authority (PA) employees, who were not dependent on UNRWA assistance, have become dependent. There is nothing on the market and there is no cash,” Ging told Maan.

“We cannot contemplate that the crossings will remain closed; there must be a better future. The ordinary people here during this siege have paid the price of this conflict and this operation. For them, their singular priority is access to restore dignity to their existence.

“The closures have driven thousands into aid dependency against their will – that has to end. A solution that prioritises the needs of the ordinary people must be found,” said Ging.

[More]

Trolls Ahoy

Israel forms ‘army of bloggers’ to combat anti-Zionist Websites

Israel and Egypt Planning a Round of Ethnic Cleansing

Via Jews San Frontieres:-

Israel and Egypt planning a round of ethnic cleansing
PLEASE SHARE WIDELY AND IMMEDIATELY

Under cover of announcing humanitarian relief for injured Palestinians, it is now emerging that Israel is planning the transfer of tens of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt.

Evidence of the Israeli transfer plan has been sent to London based Islington Friends of Yibna** [IFY]. Earlier today, Sat 17 Jan 09, IFY received a photo of tents [see attached] outside the main hospital in Egyptian Rafah, near the border with Gaza.

The white tents with no markings are being erected by the Egyptian Army, starting last night, Fri 16 Jan 09. The photo was taken this morning [Sat 17 January 09]. The soldiers stated that 5,000 tents were planned for refugees from Gaza.

Further information is available from our contacts in the Egyptian side of Rafah [Rafah was divided by Israel after it occupied Gaza and Sinai in 1967; Israel divided Rafah when Sinai was returned to Egypt].

From our contacts in Yibna Refugee Camp in Gaza we have learnt that, in the north east of Rafah, near the Egyptian border, Israeli tanks have surrounded and sealed off the Al Sarayh neighbourhood, for more than the last 48 hours. There are many injured people trapped there, the Israelis are not allowing access for the Red Cross and many people are dying of their wounds, isolated and with no medical treatment.

We have grave concerns that Israel will target the Al Sarayh neighbourhood to be the first to be transferred and that this might be within the next 24h.

While Al Sarayh is completely isolated, with no access even to the Red Cross, Israel can prepare and carry out its plans without any witnesses from the aid agencies to alert the international community. While preventing Al Sarayh from accessing any medical treatment, Israel would portray a transfer as an Israeli humanitarian gesture to allow them access to medical treatment in Egypt. Given that Israel has been bombing Al Sarayh non-stop Israel would portray a transfer as a humanitarian gesture to allow them to escape the killing fields of the constant Israeli bombardment [thus claiming they will be safer in Egypt and giving them the “choice”].

Israel is NOT on a mercy mission. While presenting this transfer as a humanitarian gesture, allowing injured Palestinians and their families out across the Rafah border crossing for hospital treatment, the Israeli plan to ethnic cleanse Gaza and transfer Palestinians to Egypt is not new. This is an advanced stage in the Israeli plan to ethnic cleanse the 1.5 million Palestinians out of Gaza [e.g. see the video interview in English of the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger, a year ago, on 18 Jan 08, calling for the Palestinians in Gaza to be transferred to the Sinai desert as a humanitarian gesture]. Those forced now to leave, under the pretext of a humanitarian gesture, will never again be allowed back [just like they have never been allowed back to the homes from which they were ethnic cleansed in 1948]. The Palestinian refugees, ethnic cleansed from Gaza, would continue to be hunted down by Israel, even if they would be later transferred further into the Sinai desert.

It appears that the ceasefire agreement with Egypt [part of the Israeli “unilateral” ceasefire due to start on 17 Jan, 2400 GMT] paved the way to the erection of the tents by Egyptian forces and that Egypt agreed to allow Israel to ethnic cleansed dozens of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt, under the pretext of a humanitarian gesture.

Earlier this afternoon, PM Gordon Brown announced that injured children would be taken out of Gaza for medical treatment and food aid would be stepped up. IFY spoke with medics in the Egyptian Rafah, and they said that today the Egyptian soldiers rejected ALL the food they provided for Gaza, while on other days they allowed some food in [though in no way proportionate to the needs of 1.5 millions]. As for the medical treatment, that could be the cover story for the ethnic cleansing of dozens of thousands, especially as the tents are near the hospital.

By last week, more than 40,000 people in Rafah have already been forced out of their homes by the day and night Israeli bombardment, making transfer easier as there is now no need to get them out of their houses, many of which are now bombed ruins. There’s nothing left for the Palestinians in Gaza [even the cemetery in Rafah was bombed] and they have been terrorised for so long, that it is hard to estimate how much more violence Israel would need to exercise to force them to leave Gaza It is not anticipated that Israel would immediately ethnic 1.5million Palestinians in Gaza, but that it would pursue its completion when it feels there are international circumstances that would allow it.

For further information and updates please contact Yael Kahn on +44 (0)7880 731 865 or Rob Langlands on +44 (0)7977 490415

Islington_Yibna@yahoo.co.uk

The Israeli ‘Diet’

ISRAEL deliberately blocked the United Nations from building up vital food supplies in Gaza that feed a million people daily before the launch of its war against Hamas, according to a senior UN official in Jerusalem.

In a scathing critique of Israeli actions leading up to the conflict, the UN’s chief humanitarian co-ordinator in Israel, the former Australian diplomat Maxwell Gaylard, accused Israel of failing to honour its commitments to open its border with Gaza during several months of truce from June 19 last year.

“The Israelis would not let us facilitate a regular and sufficient flow of supplies into the Strip,” Mr Gaylard said.

The chief spokesman for Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Yigal Palmor, said the claims were “unqualified bullshit”.

“At no time was there a shortage of food in Gaza over the past three weeks,” Mr Palmor said.

Mr Gaylard, who is the UN Special Co-ordinator’s Office’s most senior representative in Israel, told the Herald that when Israel launched its surprise attack on Gaza on December 27, the UN’s warehouses in Gaza were nearly empty, with all food and equipment sitting in nearby port facilities. “The food was in Israel but we couldn’t get it in. This is before. The blockade was very tight.”

Of course they are denying their own infamous policy, from 2006-

Israel’s policy was summed up by Dov Weisglass, an adviser to Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, earlier this year. ‘The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger,’ he said.

Fake Truce

Alan Fisher, Al Jazeera’s correspondent on the Gaza-Israel border, said: “What the Israelis are doing by this unilateral declaration is taking all the power into their own hands and they will almost dictate now what happens, and when.

“Ehud Barak [the defence minister] has been quoted … as saying that Israel has achieved almost all its goals.

“So it would seem that Israel is happy now to call it quits to this operation, believing that it has done all it set out to do.

About 1,230 Gazans have been killed in Gaza since the offensive began, according to UN and Palestinian medical sources.

Israel decided on a unilateral ceasefire in preference to entering into an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire with Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, analysts said.

The unilateral truce allows Israel to avoid agreeing concessions with the Palestinian group, such as easing the 18-month-old blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has prevented medical aid and basic supplies from reaching the Palestinians.

Yes they will stop killing, no they will not treat Palestinians as human beings and the UK and the US will go along with this aggressors scam. This is not a truce just a lull in the extermination program. Good that they are standing down, but the problem remains, Israel is not a genuine seeker of a just and peaceful solution.

“They have killed his family.”

The below clip is an Israeli news show where a reporter has on his phone a doctor who is in Gaza who has just seen his family murdered by the IDF-

You may not be able to understand the language [Update: Second Video from Al Jazeera added which has subtitles, ht2 Rafael] but the embarrassed, shamed news presenters as they show what their country is so proud of doing and the anguish in the bereaved father’s voice go straight to the heart of the matter. I warn you, you will have an immediate emotional reaction to this. NB.- As Jews San Frontieres have noted the ADL now work with youtube in regard to dealing with ‘offensive’ content, this is the ADL condemning the UN for calling for a ceasefire, (that was in December some 850 deaths ago). Whatever good work the ADL have done in the past they are, under Abe Foxman, currently akin to a hate group, with a zionist agenda and we are seeing graphically in Gaza what that agenda entails. Contact youtube and insist they find better arbiters of what is offensive, people who don’t defend murder, before such clips begin disappearing. Below are rough transcripts of some of the call-

Transcript of first 2 minutes:

Eldar: …we have on the line Dr. Abu El-Eish, we have been talking with him over the past period… he [his home] was just shelled, his family is wounded, maybe I can replay…

Dr. Abu El-Eish: No one can get to us… (unclear)… Ya Rabi, Ya Rabi (my god).. [he continues to cry throughout while Eldar talks to the audience]

Eldar: They killed his family, over the past few days we have been… I think I’m a bit overwhelmed too because,… (tearing up) Dr. Abu El-Eish is a Tel Hashomer physician, [to the doctor] Abu El-Eish we are now in the studio, [back to the audience] and he kept fearing his family would get hurt, once this week he went on air to Gabi Gazit [another anchor], because this was the only way [apparently referring to the previous near-miss incident]…. In short, he was now hit, who was hurt Abu El-Eish?

Dr. Abu El-Eish: My girls, Ya Allah, Ya Allah

[around 1:00 into clip]

Eldar: He has eight children whom he has protected throughout the war, at his home in Beit Lahiya, maybe the only thing we can do is to ask someone who can, maybe in the IDF, Abu El-Eish can you tell me where your house is, maybe they will enable ambulances to get there

Dr. Abu El-Eish: (unclear) …to save them, to save them, but they are dead already they were hit in the head, it was in their heads [died] on the spot, on the spot, Shlomi, Ya Allah, … what have we done, what have we done [repeatedly]… they killed the family… [more screams in the background]

(Reuters) - Israeli television broadcast desperate cries for help from a Palestinian doctor on Friday after his children were killed in an Israeli attack in the Gaza Strip and troops later helped surviving members of the family.

The telephone calls created extraordinary scenes during evening news broadcasts as the doctor, a Hebrew-speaking physician who spoke regularly on Israeli television, said three of his children were killed in a tank strike and others were wounded.

“My girls were sitting at home planning their futures, talking, then suddenly they are being shelled,” he said in a voice shaking with emotion. “I want to know why they were killed, who gave the order?”

Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish is a gynecologist who worked in one of Israel’s main hospitals before Gazans were effectively sealed off behind an Israeli-led blockade on the Hamas-controlled enclave. He often gave interviews to Channel 10 television.

With Israeli journalists unable to report from the Gaza Strip independently, Aboul Aish acted as a Hebrew-speaking witness who told of the Palestinian civilians’ suffering under fire during Israel’s three-week-old offensive there.

The deaths of more than 1,150 Palestinians, some 700 of them civilians by one independent count, have left the Israeli public largely unmoved. An overwhelming majority backs a war to end Hamas rocket fire that, before the offensive, had killed 18 people and disrupted life in southern towns over recent years.

Channel 10 correspondent Shlomi Eldar, who said he had planned a live on-air interview with Aboul Aish on Friday evening, produced a mobile phone in the studio, letting viewers here the voice of Aboul Aish: “My God, my girls, Shlomi,” he said. “Can’t anybody get to us, please?”

Eldar told his audience: “They have killed his family.”

He said three of Aboul Aish’s children were killed and two were seriously wounded. Building up the sense of drama, cameras followed him as left the studio, saying he would try to help arrange for their transfer for treatment, and safety, in Israel.

Surviving members of the family were later shown being transferred to Israeli ambulances and taken out of Gaza. Aid agencies have complained that Israel has not done enough to help Gaza’s hospitals and allow the transfer of some wounded people.

Aboul Aish’s brother was also wounded and Eldar said two of his brother’s children had also been killed in the incident.

The Israeli army said troops fired on Aboul Aish’s house because a sniper had fired on soldiers from the building.

Aboul Aish responded: “All that was ever fired out of our house was love, hugs and acts of peace, nothing else, ever.”

Friday! Alexei Sayle’s Stuff- Families in Debt

And being the generous performer he is, he isn’t actually in this sketch from Stuff Series 3. I think that is noticeable about the show, although it is obviously Alexei Sayle’s show the entire ensemble (yes ok that is Angus Deayton, before ubiquity, scandal and dodgy clip shows… still Nighty Night allowed him to impress again) get their own chances to shine and his ego is not so out of control he must be in every second of the program. Made in 1991 this spoof of TV charity-a-thons satirically looking to raise people’s debt to help financiers, makes it

1. Very prescient.
2. A sad fact that you can tell the truth through comedy because it is dismissed as a lesser artform.
3. Appallingly pathetic that the country just never wises up to the ways of the ruling class.

Burma, Iraq, Peru, Gaza

Jotman posts about a change in Thailand relations with Burma-

Irrawaddy reports that Thailand’s new PM Abhisit said it is time for “change” in regards to Thailand’s policy with regards to Burma…What this could mean in practice remains unclear, but considering that Thailand has been one of the junta’s staunchest defenders, it is a hopeful sign that a Thai PM would acknowledge this much.

Meanwhile yesterday was Muntadhar al-Zeidi’s birthday, he was 30 and still in jail-

“Muntadhar was in a good shape, his wounds were healed and his morale was high. Yesterday was his birthday and some patriotic officers there organized a party for him and brought birthday cake,” his other brother Dhargham told The Associated Press.

The brother who met with Muntadhar was taken by bus to the detention center and two army officers supervised the meeting. The journalist is being held alone in a comfortable room with a bed and a TV set, his brother said. “He is being visited frequently by doctors. The food is very good,” the brother added.

The visit was allowed after it was reported he had only been allowed 2 visitors and was in bad shape, so this is in part a PR stunt with of course enough time passed for his healing to be well advanced and one brother carefully shadowed by guards. Any bets how long he has had a decent cell and TV? And how free are the family to speak out, in a ‘democracy’ built through death by George ‘now I am admitting to torture’ Bush.

Peru, there is more to come on the Majaz Mine/Monterrico Metals torture, my previous and Otto’s latest, the mine manager who according to one witness ordered the torture, Andrew Bristow, refuses to discuss it. But this isn’t going away the Human Rights National Coordinator of Peru organisation (CNDDHH) is sending a representative to London in the next few days. So ex-ambassador Richard Ralph and the former UK owners might get some attention for their roles in the illegal mine and torture-

1. Beating with the weapons, instruments, kicking, punching; including both women. This caused, besides hematomas, bruises and bleeding, a broken jawbone of at least one of the victims.
2. Remaining tied in forced positions during long periods of time. Besides, of being forced to walk on a dangerous and rough surface (steep, mountain zone) with noshoes and blindfolded. During this the victims tell having felt strong fear of being thrown over the cliff by the police staff.
3. Asphyxia and trouble breathing as well as exposure to toxic products.
4. Prolonged exposure to cold and damp with little clothing, even wet in sierra zones. Including massive exposure to parasite insects.
5. Deprivation of sleep and obliged to remain seated.
6. Deprivation of water and food, during the first 24 hours of detainment.
7. Deprivation of access to toilet facilities and general hygiene, obliged to perform their physiological processes in front of third persons.
8. Death threats and greater physical aggressions, the prolongation of the detention, drug trafficking accusations and terrorism accusations, among other insults and humiliation.
9. Sexual abuse, rape threats directed in general to men and women at the moment of detention. Both women kidnapped were threatened repeatedly of being raped and submitted to different kinds of sexual abuse like touching and blows to their sexual zones.
10. Exposure to others torture.
11. Forced partial nudity.
12. Deprivation of sight.

Full pdf- Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos- Majaz Mine

My instinct on reading that is while such treatment is not new in the oppressors arsenal since the Bush regime it has become more prevalent and easier to get away with, such is the metastasizing cancer of torture. However this case can be pursued and those responsible sanctioned, although some other worrying news from Peru shows the government using the war-on-terror ™ to repress ‘leftists’ and journalists. The British connection to the Majaz torture though does present possibilities for cases to be brought here, not that we don’t have our own corrupt authoritarian government to deal with too.

The attack on the UN infrastructure in Gaza, buildings and essential workshops, as well as Palestinian hospitals, schools and University show Israel is after destroying  very fabric of Palestinian society, to bomb them back into the stone age. To take land, call it a security zone while imprisoning Gaza in the open air, possibly the world’s largest concentration camp. The removed story (I guess Haaretz ran foul of Israel’s omnipresent military censors..only democracy etc) of IDF soldiers using Hamas uniforms to prosecute special ops also includes a detail that they used an ambulance as a military vehicle for their infiltration, another war crime and ironically something they accuse Hamas of ad nauseam, maybe they knew to bring up the accusation because by dressing as Hamas and using an ambulance they were making it true, like The Sun’s story of Islamic Terror!! which was entirety created by… The Sun.

Israel may be achieving some of its racist colonial zionist goals but it has (at least outside America) lost the war of public opinion, another tip to add to boycotts 729-

Keep an eye on the goods bar code: Israel’s country prefix is 729.

Although as Craig Murray points out there is a law in America that makes it illegal to boycott Israeli goods unless the government sanctions it, land of the free…

And should you still be wondering in some ahistorical fug why the anger in Gaza-

In 2000, Doron Almog, then the chief of the southern command, began policing the boundaries of Gaza: ‘We established observation points equipped with the best technology and our troops were allowed to fire at anyone reaching the fence at a distance of six kilometres,’ he boasted, suggesting that a similar policy be adopted for the West Bank. In the last two years alone, a hundred Palestinians have been killed by soldiers merely for getting too close to the fences. From 2000 until the current war broke out, Israeli forces killed three thousand Palestinians (634 children among them) in Gaza.

New Labour Use Runway Betrayal To Cover Up Expense Secrecy Bid

You can’t leave them alone for a friggin’ minute, John McDonnell’s protest notwithstanding they did their predicted runway scam but also while everyone was horrified at that they pulled a sneaky one for their own corrupt wallets-

The government is to exempt details of all MPs’ and peers’ expenses from being disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act, and nullify all past requests by journalists and campaigners to get them published.

The decision was announced in a parliamentary order today published at the same time as the government announced controversial decisions on the third runway at Heathrow and compensation for millions of Equitable Life policyholders.

Harriet Harman, the leader of the house, is to use a special parliamentary order that can become law within 24 hours after being debated by MPs and peers next week.

It comes just as MPs were about to be forced, following a victory by campaigners at an information tribunal, to publish 1.2m expenses receipts, covering the period between 2005 and 2008.

So let ‘em know they are rumbled-

theyworkforyou.com

writetothem.com

Pope is Catholic

How fucked do you have to be that it’s a headline-

Water Boarding is Torture

This is not a cause for celebration it is merely a statement of fact, celebration is when the sentences for war criminals are handed down (not holding my breath, not a water boarding joke). Gee, maybe the media won’t call it ‘interrogation’ anymore, whadya reckon?