July 10, 2016

Israel approves 13-million-dollar aid package to Jewish settlements after attacks 0 Comment(s)Print

Source: China.org

Israel occupied the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip territories during the 1967 Mideast War. The international community deems the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem as illegal, and a hindrance to a two-state peace solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israeli leaders greenlighted the construction of 42 housing units in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba in the southern West Bank last week, following the deadly attack there, in which 13-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel was killed by a Palestinian.

Israel blames the Palestinian Authority for incitement to violence amid the wave of unrest, whereas the Palestinians charge it is the result of 49 years of Israeli occupation and the dim prospects of resuming peace talks and establishing a Palestinian state, in accordance with the two-state solution. Endit

Read more: http://www.china.org.cn/world/Off_the_Wire/2016-07/10/content_38849370.htm

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The Lavon Affair

Around the time that Gamal Abdul Nasser became Egypt’s leader, David Ben Gurion had decided (partly out of spite) to step down as Prime Minister of Israel and let Moshe Sharett see if he could do a better job. Sharett was less of a ‘Hawk’ than Ben Gurion and, by 1954, had reached the point where he was on the verge of signing a peace treaty with Nasser of Egypt.

Nasser is usually depicted as one of the bad guys. Recently declassified State Department documents indicate the exact opposite. Documentary evidence [1948-54] shows Nasser expressing tolerance and respect for Israel to CIA officials, members of British Parliament, and two American Ambassadors. In October 1954 Nasser became one of the only heads of state to refuse military aid from the U.S. He preferred economic aid.

Then, in 1954, Israeli terrorists attacked American installations in Egypt!

Then the Israelis rigged it so the attacks would be blamed on Egyptians!

Then the Israelis got caught and put in Egyptian prisons.

...all of which convinced Egypt’s Nasser that the Israelis couldn’t be trusted, so he broke off the peace talks and took weapons from whomever offered them—including the Soviets.

Ben Gurion blamed the blundering terrorists on his Defense Minister, Pinchas Lavon—but several years later, Lavon found documents that proved Ben Gurion was behind it!

Ben Gurion’s motive was simple: he and Moshe Dayan wanted a war with Egypt and Sharett’s peace talks might deprive them of it.

In June 1955, Moshe Sharett [in his Diaries] wrote: ‘Dayan said, “above all, let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries, so that we may finally get rid of our troubles and acquire space.”’

Another of Sharett’s Diary entries for June 1955: ‘Ben Gurion himself said it would be worthwhile to pay an Arab a million pounds to start a war. What a slip of the tongue!’

The Sinai Campaign

In 1956 Israel attacked Egypt, then hoodwinked much of the world into thinking that Egypt was the aggressor. For the last year, every intelligence source available had confirmed the fact that there was no way the Israelis could lose the war. Even if all the other Arab armies joined to help Egypt, Israel’s Army was bigger and badder and more technologically advanced than all of them combined. The reason Israel was so antsy to attack Egypt is that Nasser, with Soviet help, was beginning to build a fair sized army. So Israel went in and demolished it in a couple days.

In addition, thousands of Arabs—citizens of Israel—were expelled from Israel’s Galilee region during the 1956 attack on Egypt. This previously unknown fact was revealed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who at the time was commander of Israel’s northern region. He said that 3,000 to 5,000 Arabs—Israeli citizens—were expelled by the Israeli Army to Syria at that time.

After the war, the occupying Israeli Army slaughtered hundreds of Palestinians and robbed homes in the Gaza Strip.

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http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/50s.html

July 5, 2016

Talib Kweli Joins Tom Morello-Organized Tour Protesting Trans-Pacific Partnership

Source: Billboard

The project is a partnership between Internet freedom nonprofit Fight for the Future and Firebrand Records, a label founded by Morello and Ryan Harvey. The tour's official site describes the TPP as an "anti-democratic deal between 12 countries that was negotiated in complete secrecy by government officials and hundreds of corporate lobbyists." It cites alleged threats to the environment, good-paying jobs, Internet freedom and general freedom of expression.

"Working people everywhere have had enough," said Morello in a statement. "The TPP is nothing short of a corporate takeover of our democracy. That's why people are rising up to stop it. Corporate lobbyists want to sneak the TPP through Congress quietly; that means it's time for us to get loud."

Lost actress Evangeline Lilly will act as an emcee at all of the events, and help facilitate a teach-in associated with each of the concerts.

Read more: http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/7424077/talib-kweli-tour-rock-against-tpp-trans-pacific-partnership

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Despite What Media Says, TPP Isn’t About Free Trade — It’s About Protecting Corporate Profits

Concerns that the TPP would lead to even more job losses “are real and I think that the political discussion is responding to those concerns from both parties,” Melinda St. Louis, director of international campaigns at Public Citizen, told The Intercept. But, she noted, “I do think that the trade aspects of the TPP are a small part of it. It’s only six of 30 chapters that have to do with trade and goods really at all. The rest of it is about setting global rules.”

One of the proposed TPP rules, for instance, involves the expansion of copyrights, which would impose anti-competitive costs on economies.

The agreement has been harshly criticized by humanitarian organizations like Doctors Without Borders, which deploys thousands of doctors overseas to offer medical care to those who cannot afford it, because it expands monopoly protections and patents for various pharmaceutical drugs.

For instance, the agreement requires the countries involved to offer eight years of market exclusivity, or five years plus other mechanisms, to assure “comparable market outcome” for a class of pharmaceutical products called biologics. These cutting-edge, biologically manufactured drugs have been used to treat Crohn’s disease, arthritis, and other common ailments — and expanding market exclusivity means there is less room for competitors to produce lower-cost generic drugs to compete.

https://theintercept.com/2016/07/05/despite-what-media-says-tpp-isnt-about-free-trade-its-about-helping-corporations/

July 5, 2016

Amnesty: Syrian armed groups committing war crimes

Source: Al Jazeera

Amnesty International, a UK-based rights group, said on Tuesday that al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, Nureddin Zinki, the Levant Front and Division 16 were committing "war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law with impunity.

"Many civilians live in constant fear of being abducted if they criticise the conduct of armed groups in power or fail to abide by the strict rules that some have imposed," said Philip Luther, Amnesty's director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme.

The report was based on interviews with about 70 individuals living or working in the northern provinces of Idlib and parts of Aleppo, areas controlled by rebels.


The abuses were committed over four years by five armed groups, including some backed by the US and other regional powers, Amnesty said.

Read more: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/amnesty-syria-armed-groups-committing-war-crimes-160705045105228.html

July 5, 2016

Following Anti-Semitism Charges, Trump Super PAC's Absurd Counter-Attack on Clinton

Source: AlterNet

Completely ignoring Donald Trump’s own sordid history with white supremacists and neo-Nazis, a super PAC supporting the presumed Republican presidential candidate recently launched a website absurdly attempting to link Democratic rival Hillary Clinton with the Ku Klux Klan.

Thursday, the pro-Trump anti-Clinton group "Crippled America" sent an email request to donors asking for money to air an advertisement on Clinton and the 2013 Benghazi attacks, Raw Story reports. The email was sent from info@KKKlinton.com, a website showcasing the Clintons' friendship with the late Sen. Robert Byrd, a reformed KKK member who eventually disavowed the hate group. The site includes a video touting the relationship between Clinton and Byrd, along with a pop-up that reads, “This image is of Hillary Clinton kissing Senator Robert Byrd who was, until his death, an avid racist who Hillary Clinton praised at his funeral and throughout her Husband’s presidential runs.”

Read more: http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/pro-trump-super-pac-tries-link-clinton-kkk

July 5, 2016

Amidst tide of violence, Israel approves more settlements

Source: CBS

Israel captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 1967. Most of the world considers settlement construction illegal or illegitimate.

Their construction continues to be one of the main sticking points hindering a movement towards reconciliation between the two sides, and are often the focus of violence by Palestinians.

Last week, a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli teenager to death in her bedroom in the in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba. Israelis civilian security officers shot and killed the assailant, identified as Mohammed Tarayreh, 19, from the nearby Bani Naim village. One officer was stabbed before Tarayreh was killed.

Over the last nine months, Palestinians have carried out dozens of attacks that have killed 33 Israelis and two Americans. About 200 Palestinians have been killed during that time, most identified as attackers by Israel.

Kiryat Arba is a settlement adjacent to the city of Hebron, which has been a flashpoint of violence in the recent wave of attacks. There, about 850 Israelis live in heavily fortified enclaves amid some 200,000 Palestinians. Jews and Muslims revere Hebron as the burial place of the biblical Abraham.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-teen-girl-stabbed-death-bedroom-palestinian-west-bank-settlement/

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While it is widely reported that the resulting war eventually included five Arab armies, less well known is the fact that throughout this war Zionist forces outnumbered all Arab and Palestinian combatants combined – often by a factor of two to three. Moreover, Arab armies did not invade Israel – virtually all battles were fought on land that was to have been the Palestinian state.

Finally, it is significant to note that Arab armies entered the conflict only after Zionist forces had committed 16 massacres, including the grisly massacre of over 100 men, women, and children at Deir Yassin. Future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, head of one of the Jewish terrorist groups, described this as “splendid,” and stated: “As in Deir Yassin, so everywhere, we will attack and smite the enemy. God, God, Thou has chosen us for conquest.” Zionist forces committed 33 massacres altogether.[4]

By the end of the war, Israel had conquered 78 percent of Palestine; three-quarters of a million Palestinians had been made refugees; over 500 towns and villages had been obliterated; and a new map was drawn up, in which every city, river and hillock received a new, Hebrew name, as all vestiges of the Palestinian culture were to be erased. For decades Israel denied the existence of this population, former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once saying: “There were no such thing as Palestinians.”[5]

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/

July 5, 2016

POLITICS Pro-Donald Trump Super PAC Tries To Tie Hillary Clinton To The KKK

Source: HuffPo

Byrd disavowed his KKK affiliation decades before his death, despite what the Crippled America PAC page claims. He went on to become majority leader of the Senate and the longest-serving senator.

In the 1940s, Byrd joined the KKK and recruited other members for the organization, eventually winning a leadership position. He later distanced himself from the group, although he acknowledged it would forever be an “albatross“ around his neck.

“I know now I was wrong,” he said in 2005. “Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times ... and I don’t mind apologizing over and over again. I can’t erase what happened.”

When Byrd died in 2010, the NAACP even put out a statement praising Byrd for how far he had come from his racist youth.

“Senator Byrd reflects the transformative power of this nation,” then-NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous said. “Senator Byrd went from being an active member of the KKK to a being a stalwart supporter of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and many other pieces of seminal legislation that advanced the civil rights and liberties of our country.”

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kkklinton_us_577ab7f4e4b0a629c1aa8f46?section=

July 4, 2016

Common Chemicals Harmful To Children's Brain Development

Source: Parent Herald

The authors of the study said that these common chemicals are harming the brain development of children from the fetus stage and continuing to later years, according to AFP News as posted in Yahoo News. "The human brain develops over a very long period of time, starting in gestation and continuing during childhood and even into early adulthood," Schantz was quoted as saying.

Two chemicals, PBDEs and phthalates, reportedly disrupt the function of the thyroid hormone. This hormone is necessary for healthy brain development in children. There have been studies that some phthalates are associated with deficit in attention, lower IQ and disorderly conduct in children.

Government Action On Chemicals

According to a report from UPI, the authors question the government's method for evaluating scientific evidence about contamination of the environment. The authors have suggested that there needs to be a new framework in evaluating the danger posed by chemicals.

Schantz, a comparative biosciences professor at the University of Illinois, reportedly said that there is no current information on the effect of most chemicals to the brain development of children. "They just haven't been studied. And if it looks like something is a risk, we feel policymakers should be willing to make a decision that this or that chemical could be a bad actor and we need to stop its production or limit its use."


Read more: http://www.parentherald.com/articles/52608/20160704/common-chemicals-harmful-childrens-brain-development.htm

June 27, 2016

Private Prison CEO Unconcerned About Hillary Clinton’s Pledge to End His Industry

Source: The intercept

Private prisons have received a great deal of criticism this election cycle, first with Bernie Sanders campaigning to end for-profit incarceration, followed by Clinton taking up a similar pledge.

After The Intercept revealed that the Clinton campaign had received campaign donations from private prison lobbyists, a number of activist groups confronted Clinton, leading her to announce that she would no longer accept the money and later declaring that “we should end private prisons and private detention centers.”

But Corrections Corporation is apparently not concerned. Asked about prospects under Trump or Clinton, Hininger argued that his company has prospered through political turnover by taking advantage of the government’s quest for lower costs.

Read more: https://theintercept.com/2016/06/27/private-prison-trump-clinton/