http://drivingtheporcelainbus.blogspot.com/2009/01/white-phosphorus-and-its-use-in-gaza.html
http://drivingtheporcelainbus.blogspot.com/2009/01/death-toll-continues-as-israel.html
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
10 Israeli soldiers choose jail over Gaza
Maan News Agency < read me
"If violence must be used, it should be used minimally, and that isn't what’s happening," he added. "Killing innocent civilians cannot be justified. Nothing justifies this kind of killing. It’s devilish."
Israel - Undemocratic. Bans Arab parties.
RedBedHead: Israel Bans Arab Parties, Supports Ethnic Cleansing
Perhaps it shouldn’t be any surprise given the present wholesale slaughter but then Israel likes to tell the world, particularly Europe and North America that they’re the only democratic country in a region ruled by despots and hereditary monarchs.
It makes it all the more interesting then that Israel’s Central Electoral Committee has just banned Arab parties. Mixed parties, like the Communist Party, are OK. Jewish parties are OK. But those Arabs – well, they’re traitors, aren’t they?
“Parliament spokesman Giora Pordes said the election committee voted overwhelmingly in favor of the motion, accusing the country's Arab parties of incitement, supporting terrorist groups and refusing to recognize Israel's right to exist.”
The motion was put forward by a far-right party. That it won support amongst Israel’s mainstream parties shows just how far Israel’s colonialism has caused the nation’s political consciousness to degenerate towards ethnic authoritarianism.
But then, the plan from the beginning has always been to “spirit the penniless Arab population” across the border and out of Israel, as Zionism’s founder Theodor Herzl put it. And that’s still the attitude today.
...
... the number of people living under Israeli rule at the present is only
slightly more than 50% Jewish. Fortunately for the “democratic, Jewish”
state the majority of Palestinians under their rule have no vote, no
civil rights and don’t even have independent control of their tax
collection.
Not very democratic.
However, in Gaza there is a
thriving democracy. In 2006, under the watch of international monitors
and the basis of one-person, one-vote, the population of the Gaza Strip
elected Hamas as the majority party in their Legislative Assembly.
Perhaps that example of democracy at work is part of what Israel wants to eliminate.
Shame on Canada. Let us bow our heads in shame.
Canada Reaching Up to Touch Botton: Vote Against Human Rights | Excited Delirium
In a new shameless low amongst what I was hoping would be the last of shameless lows with the Harpercrite regime, Canada has voted against a resolution to condemn the massive violations of human rights by Israel in Gaza.
Gaza, Israel, and the Verdict of History
Montreal Simon: Gaza, Israel, and the Verdict of History
Even as it continues to pound Gaza with shells and bombs, and more than 900 are now dead, including 400 women and children. And it prepares to launch an allout assault on Gaza's crowded cities.
Monday, January 12, 2009
More people would rather see the Coalition run things than the Conservatives
Accidental Deliberations: On legitimacy
Now, it's undoubtedly fair to say that the latest polls should be taken as reflecting only a portion of public opinion - as the previous ones should have been as well.
But when more people want to see the coalition in power than the Cons, it would defy belief to try to make the argument that the Cons could have any more democratic legitimacy than the coalition would based on current levels of popular support. And to the extent anybody wants to play the national unity card, it can't escape mention that the greatest regional legitimacy issue would involve the Cons' lack of support in the one region which has actually seriously threatened to separate in the past.
All of which is to say that the number of serious arguments against the coalition is rapidly dwindling. And with any luck, public opinion will keep turning in the coalition's favour just in time for it to come into being.
Coalition support overall: 42%
Conservative support overall: 33%
Sunday, January 11, 2009
"This time they mean to kill us. There is no escape."
World Report: "Blogging from Gaza," Just World News, compiled by Don Bacon, January 11, 2009.
The Gaza Blog:
'This is not like the previous invasions - this time they mean to kill us. There is no escape.'
The Gaza Blog:
'This is not like the previous invasions - this time they mean to kill us. There is no escape.'
Saturday, January 10, 2009
International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people
International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network
We write with grief and rage as we watch the horrifying Israeli air and ground attacks on Gaza. As Jews committed to ending Zionism, the founding ideology of Israel, and all forms of colonialism, we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, who continue to struggle in the face of these attacks, much as they have against more than 60 years of ethnic cleansing and racism. As Joseph Massad recently wrote, Gaza is in uprising against genocide, and is receiving today the same indifference from the capitals of the West that the rebels in the Warsaw Ghetto received in 1943.
Bush - Signature authorized torture
The Bush Administration's Most Despicable Act - TIME <read me
"This is not the America I know," President George W. Bush said after the first, horrifying pictures of U.S. troops torturing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq surfaced in April 2004. The President was not telling the truth. "This" was the America he had authorized on Feb. 7, 2002, when he signed a memorandum stating that the Third Geneva Convention — the one regarding the treatment of enemy prisoners taken in wartime — did not apply to members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban. That signature led directly to the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. It was his single most callous and despicable act. It stands at the heart of the national embarrassment that was his presidency.
...
Incredibly, the Bush Administration decided to have SERE trainers instruct its interrogation teams on how to torture prisoners.
(Read "Shell-Shocked at Abu Ghraib?")
Remember that school Israel targeted a few days ago?
UN: IDF officers admitted there was no gunfire from Gaza school which was shelled - Haaretz - Israel News
"In briefings senior [Israel Defense Forces] officers conducted for foreign diplomats, they admitted the shelling to which IDF forces in Jabalya were responding did not originate from the school," Gunness said. "The IDF admitted in that briefing that the attack on the UN site was unintentional."
He noted that all the footage released by the IDF of militants firing from inside the school was from 2007 and not from the incident itself.
Smarter Men Have More Sperm
Smarter Men Have More Sperm | LiveScience
The smarter the men were, the more sperm they produced and the better their wee ones swam — and it didn't matter how old the men were or whether they smoked, drank or were obese.
The smarter the men were, the more sperm they produced and the better their wee ones swam — and it didn't matter how old the men were or whether they smoked, drank or were obese.
The realities of life in Gaza
Sudbury Against War and Occupation: What You Don’t Know About Gaza < read me!
NEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below
are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the
conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about
Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.
NEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below
are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the
conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about
Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Naomi Klein - Israel: Boycott, divest, sanction
Israel: Boycott, divest, sanction | rabble.ca < read me
It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.
Canadian Media fails (on purpose) to properly report what is happening in the Middle East.
Sudbury Against War and Occupation: Turn off the Canadian Media, Please <READ ME!
If national media help make a nation, then we all need to stop reading and listening to conventional Canadian media if we want to make a decent Canada. Benedict Anderson, perhaps the leading scholar of nationalism, wrote that the daily newspaper (along with other innovations like novels, maps, censuses, museums) played a key role in creating national consciousness. People in a country like Canada use their own media - public (CBC) and private (CanWest, TorStar, CTVglobemedia) - to know what is happening in their own country. Media are also an important part of forging a national identity. They are supposed to represent the broad spectrum of Canadian opinion. When they present information on the rest of the world, they do so from a Canadian perspective and have the Canadian audience in mind.
And today, if you want to have the first idea what is happening in Israel/Palestine (or most of the rest of the world), the best thing to do would be to turn them off completely.
In the face of a major ongoing crime like that of Israel's siege and assault on Gaza, Canadians turn to the Canadian media in good faith to try to learn and understand what is happening, who is to blame, and what they might be able to do to help the victims. On each of these counts, the Canadian media fails. But the days when Canadians would be stuck listening to local radio, picking up the local print newspaper, or watching local television packaged by Canadian media corporations for their consumption are over. There is, for the time being, media choice. And given the choice, on Israel/Palestine, it would be foolish to turn to the Canadian media.
Israel corrals up 110 civilians and then bombs them
Israel shelled Gaza Palestinians after evacuating them, UN says | World news | guardian.co.uk
Israeli soldiers evacuated about 110 Palestinians to a single-storey house in Zeitoun, south-east Gaza. The evacuees were instructed to stay indoors for their safety but 24 hours later the Israeli army shelled the house. About half the Palestinians sheltering in the house were children, OCHA said. The report also complains that the Israeli Defence Force prevented medical teams from entering the area to evacuate the wounded.
Upcoming Dragon Hunter movie
Dragon Hunter: It's Time for Some Serious Dragon Slayage
Watch the trailer.
This looks VERY cheesy, but could be fun.
Watch the trailer.
This looks VERY cheesy, but could be fun.
My Atheism is not a rejection of your god
Uniform Velocity: My Atheism Is Not A Rejection Of Your God
it is impossible to hate what one views as non-existent, but I do take issue with the actions carried out in the name of religion and the anthropomorphic attributes placed upon a supposed 'higher being".
Canada condones war crimes
Bill Longstaff: Canada condones war crimes
The Isreali assault on Gaza is unequivocally a criminal act. To cite only one item of international law Israel has violated, I offer Article 33 of Convention IV of the Geneva Conventions relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War:
No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.
Israel's massive collective punishment of the Gazan people clearly violates this article. Staunchly defending Israel's behaviour, as our government is doing, just as clearly puts this country in the position of condoning, indeed supporting, war crimes.
I am usually proud of my country and very happy to be living here, but sometimes I am ashamed of it.
Robert Fisk: Counting the lies and the dead
Rusty Idols: Robert Fisk: Counting the lies and the dead. <READ ME!
And our leaders will huff and puff and remind the world that Hamas originally broke the ceasefire. It didn't. Israel broke it, first on 4 November when its bombardment killed six Palestinians in Gaza and again on 17 November when another bombardment killed four more Palestinians
And our leaders will huff and puff and remind the world that Hamas originally broke the ceasefire. It didn't. Israel broke it, first on 4 November when its bombardment killed six Palestinians in Gaza and again on 17 November when another bombardment killed four more Palestinians
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Red Cross Reports Grisly Find In Gaza
stageleft:. life on the left side : Red Cross Reports Grisly Find in Gaza < read me.
Israel Accused of Blocking Aid to Wounded
The
International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday that it had
found at least 15 bodies and several children — emaciated but alive —
in a row of shattered houses in the Gaza Strip and accused the Israeli
military of preventing ambulances from reaching the site for four days.
Red
Cross officials said rescue crews had received specific reports of
casualties in the houses and had been trying since Saturday to send
ambulances to the area, located in Zaytoun, a neighborhood south of
Gaza City. They said the Israeli military did not grant permission
until Wednesday afternoon.
In an unusual public statement
issued by its Geneva headquarters, the Red Cross called the episode
“unacceptable” and said the Israeli military had “failed to meet its
obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and
evacuate the wounded.”
(more)
The Right-Wing running scared of the rise of Jack Layton and the NDP
blogging a dead horse: The Layton factor (or why Robert Silver can't take success for an answer) < read me.
The party has increased its seats in every election since Layton became
leader and in the Commons has rewritten the 2005 budget to make key
investments that are building affordable housing and putting buses on
the roads right now.
And as the willingness of Liberals to agree
to the coalition policy agreement shows, Layton's NDP understands the
modern economy better than any “tax cuts will save us all” Liberal or
Tory government ever has.
Layton's (latest) accomplishment has
been the unprecedented coalition agreement reached with Mr Dion with
the tacit support of Bloc MPs – a feat considered impossible by Ottawa
insiders. No New Democrat leader has come this close to producing a
stronger economy or fundamentally changing the culture of Ottawa
before. As a result, Layton is in the strongest position among his
party and Canadians who want change.
The party has increased its seats in every election since Layton became
leader and in the Commons has rewritten the 2005 budget to make key
investments that are building affordable housing and putting buses on
the roads right now.
And as the willingness of Liberals to agree
to the coalition policy agreement shows, Layton's NDP understands the
modern economy better than any “tax cuts will save us all” Liberal or
Tory government ever has.
Layton's (latest) accomplishment has
been the unprecedented coalition agreement reached with Mr Dion with
the tacit support of Bloc MPs – a feat considered impossible by Ottawa
insiders. No New Democrat leader has come this close to producing a
stronger economy or fundamentally changing the culture of Ottawa
before. As a result, Layton is in the strongest position among his
party and Canadians who want change.
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