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Wartime Censorship and Postwar Ignorance
Recently an Israeli far right wing cabinet official was murdered, prompting a big crackdown on Palestinians, outrage in Israel. This comes after a year of constant assasinations of Palestinian officials using Israeli helicopter gun ships and jets, these sort of extra-judicial assassinations being a recurring feature of the response of the Israeli government. Needless to say the outpouring of grief when one of their own officials was assassinated seems hypocritical in context, in particular when you compare scorecards. "A year of assasinations - the balance sheet - Israel’s assassination policy gave Hammas control of Nablus, revived the PFLP, and turned Bethlehem into a chaos of armed groups. Israeli excuses started with the need to prevent attacks, and devolved into the elimination of apparent suspects in long past crimes (not to mention the moral catastrophe)." http://oznik.com/kolhair08.html
Offsite : The Israel IndyMedia Site had a piece on the assassination - Mythical transformations: Ze'evi is Sainted by Israel establishment - "Political opinions in Israel have not changed much in the wake of the assassination; if anything, the prevalent mood is more tribal than ever. Zeevi, after his death, found a place in the centre of Israeli politics. This is far more than he could have hoped for while still among the living. Figures from across the spectrum of political opinion attended his funeral, and not simply because they felt they had to."
Reports are circulating in recent days about the treacherous nature of Afghan politics.
Offsite: A writer looks back on media censorship during the Gulf War
In an inconvenient coincidence, a book came out recently describing Operation Northwood, a plan during the sixties to have the U.S. military commit acts of terrorism in the States which would then be used as the pretext for an invasion of Cuba.
Whitewash
"Khalil al-Mughrabi was playing soccer with a group of children in Rafah on Saturday, July 7th, 2001, when a burst of gunfire hit him in the head, killing him and wounding two of his friends, ages 10 and 12. B'Tselem obtained internal documents from the office of the Military Advocate General which reveal how the military cleared the soldiers who caused the death of an eleven year-old Palestinian boy, covered up the incident, refrained from opening an investigation by the Military Police, and issued a false statement regarding the circumstances of the death."
The B'tselem human rights group has a full report on the incident that can be downloaded in either RTF format (compatible with most word processors) or in Word format ... (right click on the links and choose 'save link as' or 'save target as', depending on your browser, to save the file to your drive if you don't have a plug in to handle the download).
'Landover Baptist' (a satire site) has published The Top Ten Biblical Ways to Fight the Taliban
Offsite : Salvation Army caves in to the religious right ... After being threatened with empty Christmas kettles this year, the "the charity rescinds domestic partner benefits. Within a few days after the Western Territory of the Salvation Army decided to provide domestic partners benefits for its employees, the national organization buckled under intense pressure from the Christian Right and nixed the idea. This action came only days after several high-profile Christian Right organizations unleashed a heavy-duty offensive on the Salvation Army's national leadership."
A report on the HIPC - heavily indebted poor countries initiative
The International Forum on Globalization (IFG) is an alliance of sixty leading activists, scholars, economists, researchers and writers formed to stimulate new thinking, joint activity, and public education in response to economic globalization.
Representing over 60 organizations in 25 countries, the International Forum on Globalization associates come together out of a shared concern that the world's corporate and political leadership is undertaking a restructuring of global politics and economics that may prove as historically significant as any event since the Industrial Revolution. This restructuring is happening at tremendous speed, with little public disclosure of the profound consequences affecting democracy, human welfare, local economies, and the natural world.
www.ifg.org/index.html
Saturday morning (November 17), thousands gathered in front the Canadian Supreme Court in Ottawa before marching on the G-20 summit. IMC-Madison reporter John Hamilton was there, and spoke with Antonia Juhasz of the International Forum on Globalization.
(mp3, 10:19)
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