How Pathetic! Habila Urges Arab League to Stop Israeli Attacks. Where Does This Idiot Live?

Press TV


Habila, fully engaged in his typical media Jihad.

"Palestinian democratically elected Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has called on the Arab League to adopt effective measures to restrain Israeli aggressions toward the besieged Gaza Strip.

In a message to Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa on Tuesday, Haniyeh called on Arab nations to lodge a complaint at the UN Security Council over serious Israeli military threats against the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Information Center reported...."

Allan Nairn: As U.S. Loses Its Global Economic Edge, Its "One Clear Comparative Advantage is in Killing, and It’s Using It"

Democracy Now!
With Amy Goodman



"As 2010 draws to a close, what is the role of the United States in the world today? From the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the cuts to social programs here at home, where is there emerging hope for change around the world? We spend the hour with award-winning investigative journalist and activist Allan Nairn. "You vote for Democrat, you vote for Republican, you get the same thing on state murder, on preventable death. But we here have the right to rebel. We have to use it."...."

Al-Jazeera Video: Tunisia jobless protests rage

"Escalating unrest over unemployment in Tunisia, with a rare display of public protest in the capital.

Anti-government protests in Tunisia have spread to the capital.

The demonstrations began 10 days ago in a central rural region - where people are upset about poor living conditions.

And now, some of the country's trade unions have called for a "solidarity protest".

Al Jazeera's Bhanu Bhatnagar reports."

Real News Video: Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish tells the story of the death of his daughters during the Israeli attack on Gaza

A Former Palestinian "PM" Became Rich Selling Cement to Build Apartheid Wall; Now: Palestinian Developer Intends To Buy Settlement Construction Firm

In pursuit of profit, Palestinian capitalists would sell not just Palestine, but their own mothers.

"A construction firm headed by Palestinian businessman, Bashar Al Masry, intends to buy an Israeli Construction Firm that builds Jewish settlements in occupied East Jerusalem. The news angered residents of Nuf Zion settlement neighborhood in Jabal Al Mukabber, in East Jerusalem, as the firm supervises the construction there.Israeli Yedioth Aharonoth reported that the firm could be sold to an investment firm headed by Al Masri, an issue that angered the settlers living in Nof Zion. .....

Al Masri heads a development group registered in Cyprus, and most of the members of this group are businessmen from the United States. The group's consultant in Israel is Lawyer Dov Weisglass, who served as a consultant for the former Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon.

According to Yedioth Aharonoth, the brother of Jerusalem Mayor, Nir Barkat, owns 30% of the firm's stocks...."

"No Hope" Message From Gideon Levy on Visit to AIC In Beit Sahour

"Israeli journalist Gideon Levy left a message of no hope, on Tuesday night, during his visit to the Alternative Information Center in Beit Sahour, the PNN reported. “I don’t see any kind of hope from any direction.” Gideon Levy concluded addressing to the audience when he visited the Alternative Information Center (AIC) in Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem......

Speaking on a variety of issues, the renowned Israeli journalist focused on what he sees as the complicity of the Israeli media and society in crimes of the Occupation.

Highlighting a widespread lack of interest amongst Israelis in ending the occupation as well as a prevalent extreme ideology in government over a weak Israeli left, Levy said: “We used to joke that two Israelis would share three views, but today three Israelis all share one view,”. He added: “When it comes to the unofficial religion of Israel, namely security…the Israeli media has betrayed its mission. Many foreigners who come here are amazed to see how little the Israelis discuss their future, how little they know what’s going on a half an hour away from their homes, how little they want to know, how little they care.”

The Israeli journalist went on arguing that he views settlers as “the only effective, active group” remained in Israel, and that no change should be expected so long as there is a status quo in a largely apathetic Israeli society.

Levy stated he would try to balance his discussion with an optimistic tone but could not dismiss the present realities on the ground. “If we were in the late eighties and I told you that very soon Soviet Russia is going to collapse, the Berlin Wall is going to collapse, and the apartheid regime in South Africa is going to collapse within months, without bloodshed—you would have thought that I was out of my mind…The only problem is that neither in South Africa, nor Soviet Russia, not even in Berlin, were there 300 or 400,000 settlers. It makes me quite helpless in describing an optimistic scenario.” he told the crowd in the AIC.

The journalist pointed out he is not a natural pessimist, but simply did not see a reason to foresee the current situation improving.

Towards the end of his presentation, he expressed concern for viewpoints like his own that are coming under increasing criticism and threat in Israel.

He shared with the public; “I can feel it, I can sense it, it’s becoming less and less pleasant—maybe more dangerous, I can’t judge it. I sleep well at night, and maybe out of stupidity. Maybe there are dangers around that I don’t see." "

In Money-Changers We Trust

By Robert Scheer
TruthDig

"Two years into the Obama presidency and the economic data is still looking grim. Don’t be fooled by the gyrations of the stock market, where optimism is mostly a reflection of the ability of financial corporations—thanks to massive government largesse—to survive the mess they created. The basics are dismal: Unemployment is unacceptably high, the December consumer confidence index is down and housing prices have fallen for four months in a row. The number of Americans living in poverty has never been higher, and a majority in a Washington Post poll said they were worried about making their next mortgage or rent payment......

And with the decisive assistance from both a Republican and Democratic president, all has worked out just as planned for the banks. Harper reports: “The last two years have been the best ever for combined investment-banking and trading revenue at Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and Morgan Stanley, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.”

It’s all wonderfully bipartisan. Recently it was announced that Carlos Gutierrez, commerce secretary under George W. Bush, had been named to a high position at Citigroup. For President Obama, there’s no cause for worry about the loss of indispensable talent from his administration. Orszag’s replacement as head of the Office of Management and Budget, Jacob J. Lew, was both a member of Rubin’s Hamilton Project and a former Citigroup executive—thus ensuring that government of the banks, by the banks, for the banks shall not perish from the Earth. "

Ikhras Video: Ziad Asali, ATFP host war criminal Tony Blair

By Ikhras.com



"While antiwar activists all over the world protest Tony Blair and demand that he face prosecution for war crimes, Ziad Asali and the American Task Force on Palestine beg to differ."

The virtue of speaking truth to power

Opponents of Assange, like those of my father, downplay his revelations while demanding his arrest for high crimes

By Patrick Cockburn

"One of the more satisfactory aspects of being a journalist is the discovery that the powerful are hyper-sensitive to any revelation about their activities. The degree of venom and hysteria expressed by the US government in attacking Julian Assange and WikiLeaks reflects this acute sense of vulnerability.

My father, Claud Cockburn, discovered this in 1933 when he left The Times and set up a radical newsletter called The Week, which was a sort of early precursor of Private Eye. His calculation was that there was plenty of information freely circulating in political and diplomatic circles that was hidden from the general public.....

WikiLeaks' publication of diplomatic cables and frontline military reports does not disclose many real secrets, but this should not obscure the vast importance of its revelations. It discloses to everybody, as my father had sought to do in the 1930s, facts and opinions that were previously only known to a few. Over the last six months its revelations have painted a unique picture of the world from the American point of view at a moment when US political, economic and military leadership is under stress as never before.

The embarrassment of the US government is not that it has lost any real secrets but that it can no longer pretend that it does not know about the often criminal actions of its own forces, or the unsavoury actions of its allies."

UAE 'held back full story of hotel assassination'

By Donald Macintyre
The Independent

"Authorities in the United Arab Emirates hesitated for nine days before deciding to reveal details of the assassination of Hamas militant Mahmoud al-Mabouh in a Dubai hotel in January, cables published by WikiLeaks reveal.

The eventual revelation by Dubai police of their suspicions over the killing exploded into a worldwide row which in which Israel stood accused of mounting the operations using copies of passports held by Israeli dual-nationals.

It led to the expulsion by Britain of a senior Israeli intelligence official – widely believed to have been the Mossad station chief – from London in the protest at the agency's clandestine use of the passports of at least 12 British citizens.....

The delayed acknowledgment followed talks at the highest levels of the UAE government, where officials discussed whether "to say nothing at all, or to reveal more or less the full extent of the UAE's investigations". Police initially described the killers as an "experienced criminal gang" and only later said they were "99 per cent sure" that Mossad was to blame. In one of the cables, US Ambassador to the UAE Richard Olson describes the local authorities' dilemma. "The statement was carefully drafted not to point any fingers, but the reference ... to a gang with western passports will be read locally as referring to the Mossad."

Another cable sent from the embassy in Dubai establishes that senior UAE officials asked the American ambassador and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to launch urgent enquiries into "cardholder details and related information for credit cards reportedly issued by a US bank to several suspects" in the murder. While there is no evidence the request was acted on in Washington, the embassy asked for it to be processed urgently."

2010: The Best and the Worst

AN EXCELLENT COMMENT
by Justin Raimondo, December 29, 2010

"Last year, around this time, I initiated what I called the Antiwar.com Awards – a year end tribute to the best, and the worst, people and institutions that impact our lives and the life of our nation and the world. And what good is a tradition unless one endeavors to keep it going? So here’s the 2010 edition, for your delectation:

Man of the Year – This is really Men of the Year, because it’s a joint award: Pfc. and political prisoner Bradley Manning and Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks and Public Enemy Number One of the Powers That Be. Much has been said and written about the pros and cons of Assange’s project to inject a little transparency into the opaque mysteries of how and why US foreign policy is formulated and carried out the way it is, and I won’t repeat much of that here.

Suffice to say that I fully subscribe to Assange’s theory of the state [.pdf] as a criminal conspiracy, and thoroughly approve of his strategy to bring the current gang to heel. What’s interesting, however, is how polarizing his persona has become, and how quickly it has been detached from his considerable accomplishments. The propaganda campaign against him – directed, no doubt [.pdf], from here – has been quite successful, and quite a show, bearing all the hallmarks of a distinctively American operation (it’s all about sex). And, again typically, it involves the eager “mainstream” media to a great extent – thank you Kevin Poulsen, John F. Burns, and all the Little People who made this award possible. By targeting Assange you have underscored his value to the world’s peoples, and reminded us what shills you are.......

Speaking of the King and his Court, the Interventionist of the Year award can only go to Barack Obama, who has managed to keep the United States involved in more major simultaneous military conflicts than any President in US history – and is actively seeking to break his own record. In spite of our much-vaunted “withdrawal,” we’re still in Iraq, and it doesn’t look like we’re leaving any time soon – which is why Prime Minister Maliki has lately reminded us of our self-imposed “deadline.” We’re hip-deep in Afghanistan, and will soon be in over our heads – but that hasn’t stopped this administration from wading into Pakistan proper, not to mention Yemen and Somalia, where we’re knee deep in vicious internecine conflicts that have little to do with a serious “terrorist” threat to America. Here is an ideological chameleon who managed to shut down the antiwar movement by adopting their colors and lulling much of the “progressive” antiwar left to sleep. And what he didn’t shut down by persuasion he’s intent on shutting down by means of legal persecution, as the arrests of antiwar activists in Minneapolis, Chicago, and North Carolina, and the grand jury investigation into their activities, makes all too clear. Remember, it was a “progressive” president named Woodrow Wilson who ruthlessly crushed dissent during the Great War, and it was the Wilson administration that originated the same Espionage Act Eric Holder’s Justice Department will use to prosecute Julian Assange, if they ever get their hands on him.

God willing, they will not, but I’m pessimistic. The US government cannot afford to let Assange stay free: his successful defiance is proof of their weakness, which – if WikiLeaks isn’t stopped – will prove fatal to their regime of secrecy and plunder. 2011 is the year this issue – the issue of a free media, and whether real dissent is going to be allowed – is going to be resolved, one way or the other. "

How a man setting fire to himself sparked an uprising in Tunisia

A relatively minor incident has become the catalyst for a wave of protests that may end the presidency of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali

A GOOD COMMENT
By Brian Whitaker
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 28 December 2010

"Watching events in Tunisia over the past few days, I have been increasingly reminded of an event in 1989: the fall of the Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu. Is the Tunisian dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, about to meet a similar fate?

After 22 years in power, Ceausescu's end came suddenly and somewhat unexpectedly.......

Reporting of these events has been sparse, to say the least. The Tunisian press, of course, is strictly controlled and international news organisations have shown little interest: the "not many dead" syndrome, perhaps. But in the context of Tunisia they are momentous events. It's a police state, after all, where riots and demonstrations don't normally happen – and certainly not simultaneously in towns and cities up and down the country.

So, what we are seeing, firstly, is the failure of a system constructed by the regime over many years to prevent people from organising, communicating and agitating.

Secondly, we are seeing relatively large numbers of people casting off their fear of the regime. Despite the very real risk of arrest and torture, they are refusing to be intimidated.

Finally, we are seeing the breakdown of a long-standing devil's compact where, in return for submitting to life under a dictatorship, people's economic and welfare needs are supposedly taken care of by the state.....

Most Arab regimes rely on patronage networks to keep themselves in power but Ben Ali's support base looks comparatively small and increasingly fragile, as the US ambassador noted last year in one of the WikiLeaks documents. He described a regime that has lost touch with the people, a regime that tolerates no advice or criticism and whose corruption has become so blatant that "even average Tunisians are now keenly aware of it".

Ben Ali may try to cling on, but his regime now has a fin de siècle air about it. He came to power in 1987 by declaring President Bourguiba unfit for office. It's probably just a matter of time before someone else delivers that same message to Ben Ali."

Video: The War On Democracy: US vs Latin America

A GREAT FILM
By John Pilger

The War On Democracy (English subtitles) from John Pilger on Vimeo.

قمع مظاهرة في تونس.. بالصور

"قمعت قوات الشرطة أمس مظاهرة حاشدة وسط العاصمة تونس نظمتها نقابات عمالية منضوية تحت لواء الاتحاد العام التونسي للشغل، للتعبير عن تضامنها مع أهالي ولاية سيدي بوزيد التي انطلقت شرارة الاحتجاجات فيها قبل 11 يوما ضد ما وصف بتفشي البطالة والفساد.

واشتبك مئات المتظاهرين مع الشرطة أمام مقر الاتحاد بالعاصمة، بعدما حاولوا كسر الحاجز الأمني للتظاهر في قلب العاصمة، مما أدى إلى سقوط بعض الجرحى.
"

Two years after Operation Cast Lead, Gaza remains imprisoned

By Jody McIntyre
The Independent

(Left: Jody McIntyre.)

"It feels strange to spend time over the Christmas period in a quiet Yorkshire village with family; this time last year, I was on my way to the Gaza Strip. It was the second time I had travelled to Gaza; the first time was in March 2009, just a few months after Israel had launched Operation Cast Lead, a twenty-two day assault on the Strip, in which 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed. Hard to describe as a conflict, a massacre perhaps, but a tragedy undoubtedly....

As the South African freedom fighter Steve Biko once said, “The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” The State of Israel can oppress the Palestinians for another sixty-three years, but it will never defeat their spirit, or win their minds."

Christian extremists assist Israel in displacing Negev Bedouin

Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 28 December 2010

"Half a million trees planted over the past 18 months on the ancestral lands of Bedouin tribes in Israel's Negev region were bought by a controversial Christian evangelical television channel that calls itself God-TV.

A sign posted a few kilometers north of Beersheba, the Negev's main city, announces plans to plant a total of a million trees over a large area of desert that has already been designated "God-TV Forest."

The Jewish National Fund (JNF), an international non-profit organization in charge of forestation and developing Jewish settlements in Israel, received $500,000 from God-TV to plant some of the trees, according to the channel's filings to US tax authorities last year.

A coalition of Jewish and Bedouin human rights groups have denounced the project, accusing God-TV and the JNF of teaming up to force the Bedouin out of the area to make way for Jewish-only communities.....

Repeated destruction of al-Araqib's crops by spraying them with herbicides was ruled illegal by Israel's Supreme Court in 2004.

Efforts to move 90,000 Bedouin off their lands close to Beersheba have been intensifying since 2003, when the Israeli government announced plans to move them into a handful of townships.

The Bedouin have resisted, complaining that the official communities are little more than urban reservations that languish at the bottom of the country's social and economic tables."

Divided we stand: the tragedy of Egyptian opposition

The institutional opposition has been unable to comprehend, let alone represent, industrial and agricultural workers' movements

A GOOD COMMENT

Roberto Roccu
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 28 December 2010

"......Coming from and being largely limited to these social groups, the institutional opposition has been unable to comprehend, let alone represent, the two most relevant movements arising from lower social strata.

On one hand, the movement for workers' rights has gained significant concessions from the government since the first strikes in the textile sector in Mahalla al-Kubra in 2007, and has since gathered momentum and progressively extended its reach towards other manufacturing sectors. On the other hand, following the full implementation of Law 96 of 1992 – also known as "the law for throwing peasants out of their land" – that has to date led to the eviction of more than one million farmers, a peasant movement has emerged in the countryside, though it faces continued repression, as reported by Land Centre for Human Rights.

By its glaring inability to take these grievances seriously, the institutional opposition has condemned itself to continuing irrelevance in parliamentary life and has prevented a credible political articulation of the economic and social demands of both industrial and agricultural workers, ignoring that these movements could indeed constitute the much-needed popular support for a political opposition to the Mubarak regime......"

2011

by Paul Craig Roberts, December 28, 2010

"The year 2011 will bring Americans a larger and more intrusive police state, more unemployment and home foreclosures, no economic recovery, more disregard by the U.S. government of U.S. law, international law, the Constitution, and truth, more suspicion and distrust from allies, more hostility from the rest of the world, and new heights of media sycophancy.

2011 is shaping up as the terminal year for American democracy. The Republican Party has degenerated into a party of Brownshirts, and voter frustrations with the worsening economic crisis and military occupations gone awry are likely to bring Republicans to power in 2012. With them would come their doctrines of executive primacy over Congress, the judiciary, law, and the Constitution and America’s rightful hegemony over the world.....

As 2011 dawns, public discourse in America has the country primed for a fascist dictatorship.The situation will be worse by 2012. The most uncomfortable truth that emerges from the WikiLeaks saga is that American public discourse consists of cries for revenge against those who tell us truths. The vicious mendacity of the U.S. government knows no restraint. Whether or not international law can save Julian Assange from the clutches of the Americans or death by a government black ops unit, both executive and legislative branches are working assiduously to establish the National Security State as the highest value and truth as its greatest enemy.

America’s future is the world of Winston Smith."

Short Video: Second Anniversary of the Gaza Massacre. برومو الحرب على غزة - غضب الشارع 2

Courtesy of Arabs48.com

US Declined to Help in Dubai Probe of Mabhouh Assassination: Wikileaks

Al-Manar

"28/12/2010 A Wikileaks cable shows that the United States has declined a request from the United Arab Emirates to assist an investigation into the assassination of a top Hamas commander.

A cable sent from the embassy in Dubai less than a month after the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhoh in a Dubai hotel in January 2010 reveals that senior U.A.E. officials asked the American ambassador and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to probe urgently "cardholder details and related information for credit cards reportedly issued by a U.S. bank to several suspects" in the murder.

The WikiLeaks cable not only proved that the request was indeed made but that it was recorded in a secret State Department cable. By not accepting the request, the Obama administration harmed the Dubai investigation efforts and assisted Israel instead.

The U.S. last year denied reports that it had received a request for assistance from Dubai, but a recently released WikiLeaks cable proves otherwise....."