Month: January 2009

Updated at 7:50 p.m. EST, Jan. 9, 2009 At least 12 Iraqis were killed and another 33 were wounded on a fairly active prayer day. Across Iraq, tens of thousands of demonstrators again protested against the Israeli operation in Gaza. No Coalition deaths were reported, but the U.S. military asserted its right to hold Iraqi … Continue reading “Friday: 12 Iraqis Killed, 33 Wounded”

The devastating Israeli firepower, unleashed largely on Palestinian civilians in Gaza during two weeks of fighting, is the product of advanced US military technology. The US weapons systems used by the Israelis – including F-16 fighter planes, Apache helicopters, tactical missiles and a wide array of munitions – have been provided by Washington mostly as … Continue reading “US Weaponry Facilitates Killings in Gaza”

CAIRO – Egyptian authorities have almost fully sealed the border with Gaza, preventing delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid. "The government has expressly forbidden the entry of aid convoys laden with food into the Gaza Strip," Emmad al-Din Moustafa, member of the Popular Committee for Aiding Gaza told IPS. "The continued border closure – like … Continue reading “Egypt Pulls Down the Shutters on Gaza Aid”

RAMALLAH – An international chorus of condemnation has blasted Israel over its human rights abuses in Gaza. Operation Cast Lead, into its 12th day, has now claimed the lives of over 700 Palestinians. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) demanded safe access Thursday for ICRC officials and Palestinian Red Crescent (PRC) ambulances to … Continue reading “Gaza Children Found Starving”

Israel has repeatedly claimed that it had “no choice” but to wage war on Gaza on December 27 because Hamas had broken a ceasefire, was firing rockets at Israeli civilians, and had “tried everything in order to avoid this military operation,” as Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni put it. This claim, however, is widely at odds … Continue reading “War of Choice: How Israel Manufactured the Gaza Escalation”

At long last. Change we can believe in. In choosing Leon Panetta to take charge of the CIA, President-elect Barak Obama has shown he is determined to put an abrupt end to the lawlessness and deceit with which the administration of George W. Bush has corrupted intelligence operations and analysis. First and foremost, the appointment … Continue reading “Obama Picks a Conscience for the CIA”

On Monday US Marines raised the Stars and Stripes over America’s $700 million embassy in Baghdad. Opined Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, America’s first ambassador to the new Iraq: “It is from the embassy that you see before you that we will continue the tradition of friendship, cooperation and support begun by the many … Continue reading “An American City on the Euphrates: US as Iraq’s Friend or Overlord?”

The news that Dennis Ross will be appointed the special envoy to Iran – and, more, that he will function as a Middle East “czar” – is “staggeringly bad news,” as Philip Weiss so trenchantly put it. The appointment, Weiss avers, is “illustrative of the fact that neoconservatism by one of its more amenable names … Continue reading “The Same Old Change”

Since the last blowout at Guantánamo on December 8, when dozens of reporters and relatives of victims of the 9/11 attacks watched as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and his alleged co-conspirators tried – and failed – to plead guilty so that they could die martyr’s deaths, few observers have witnessed the Commissions go through the … Continue reading “The Dying Days of the Guantánamo Trials”

Silent Night I always think that European history is a lie that Americans agree on! And I am always amused at the way in which Americans “hijack” part of our history, distort it, and incorporate it into their own national myths. There was indeed a Christmas truce in 1914. British and German soldiers did indeed … Continue reading “Backtalk, January 9, 2009”