Month: January 2009

The Israeli propaganda machine has called up its allies in the media and Congress to make sure that no one will condemn the invasion of Gaza, which has killed and wounded thousands of Palestinians, most of them civilians and many of them children. The pictures of small bodies lined up to be buried are convincing … Continue reading “Pure Propaganda From the Papers of Record”

Updated at 8:05 p.m. EST, Jan. 12, 2008U.S. Vice President-elect Joe Biden took a secret trip to Baghdad as a series of bombs killed or injured dozens of people in the capital. At least 10 Iraqis were killed and 39 more were wounded in Baghdad. An unknown number of Iraqi soldiers were killed or wounded … Continue reading “Monday: 2 GIs, 10 Iraqis Killed; 39 Iraqis Wounded”

Why is Israel pounding Gaza? Well, we know the official explanation, which goes something like this: if you Americans were being targeted by crude, albeit potentially lethal, rockets from, say, Mexico, on a daily basis, how would you respond? Israel, we are told, had to take on Hamas. As Barack Obama put it, while campaigning … Continue reading “Gaza Is the Future”

The gang over at The New Republic has been scrambling to develop and publicize a case that the choice of former Clinton White House chief of staff (and before that OMB director and eight-term congressman from northern California) Leon Panetta to head the CIA was something other than a serious misstep possibly resulting from something … Continue reading “Was Panetta Picked in a Panic?”

Author’s note: Kathy Kelly, a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, is writing from Arish, a town near the Rafah border between Egypt and Gaza. Bill Quigley, a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola New Orleans, and Audrey Stewart are also in Egypt and contributed to this article. As I write, we can … Continue reading “Tunnel Vision”

Seven years ago, on Jan. 11, 2002, when photos of the first orange-clad detainees to arrive at a hastily erected prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba were made available to the world’s press, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reacted to the widespread uproar that greeted the images of the kneeling, shackled men, wearing masks and blacked-out goggles … Continue reading “Seven Years of Guantánamo,
Seven Years of Torture and Lies”

Last month the Congressional Commission on Strategic Posture issued an interim report, on the basis of which one of its co-chairmen, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, publicly predicted this week that President-elect Obama will soon face a "serious crisis with Iran." Iran? Now, Perry was SecDef in the early 1990s when the International Atomic … Continue reading “A Serious Crisis With Iran?”

Updated at 8:59 p.m. EST, Jan. 11, 2009At least nine Iraqis were killed and 11 more were wounded in the latest attacks. Also, a U.S. soldier was killed during a roadside bombing late yesterday in Baghdad. There seems to be some difficulty in getting news reports out of Iraq this weekend, as some of the … Continue reading “Sunday: 1 US Soldier, 9 Iraqis Killed; 11 Iraqis Wounded”

Although the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush and Israeli leaders have depicted the ongoing crisis in Gaza as part of a larger struggle against Iran and its "proxies," Tehran’s involvement with the Palestinians is rather limited. Despite their condemnation of Israel’s actions and the waves of pro-Hamas demonstrations across Iran, its rulers have … Continue reading “Tehran Opts for ‘Moral Support’ in Gaza War”

RAMALLAH – United Nations report that Israel ordered civilians into a building and then shelled it marks yet more evidence of widespread targeting of civilians in the Gaza assault. The UN report calls for a war crimes investigation into Israel’s shelling of a civilian building in Gaza city Jan. 4. It described the shelling as … Continue reading “Israel Also Fighting the UN”