Nadia W. Awad

Israel has managed to do it again. Somehow, they have twisted a distressing event around completely and made themselves look like saints in the process. They have come out looking like the good Samaritans, while making life even more unbearable for about 60,000 Palestinian residents of Jerusalem. You may wonder what I’m talking about. I’m referring to a Jerusalem Post article along the lines of: ‘Israel removes checkpoint to make travel to Jerusalem easier for Palestinians.’ If only they would, but of course they won’t.

Imagine a wide, main road connecting two cities – Jerusalem and Ramallah. Now imagine somebody builds a large cement wall straight down the middle of it, so that on one side, you’re driving in Jerusalem, when on the other side, you’re driving in the West Bank. Obviously you can’t cross the road, unless you actually want to smash your car into cement. Confused? In an attempt to explain it more clearly, imagine you live in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Dahiyet Al Barid, just north of the city center, but your house happens to be confusingly on the West Bank side of the street and behind the gate. Now, intuitively, to get to the city center, you would drive south. Not according to Israel. If you drive south, you’ll just hit the wall or the iron gate. Instead, what you have to do is drive further north, go through the Qalandia checkpoint, turn around and drive back south again. Still confused? Probably – I still am. It’s one of those situations where you have to see it to believe (and understand) it.

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Chris Floyd

I. We reported here last week about another in the barrage of stories detailing civilian deaths at the hands of American-led forces in the "good war" in Afghanistan, now being escalated by Barack Obama. (And not only in Afghanistan; Obama is also rapidly expanding American attacks inside Pakistan to include forces there with little or no involvement with the war in Afghanistan -- along with the usual blood-fruit harvest of civilians, of course.)

In last week's post, we took note of Washington's claim that U.S. missiles had killed "15 militants" in a raid that Afghan officials said actually killed 13 civilians, including six women and two children. Today, the New York Times reports that Pentagon has now admitted that they did indeed kill 13 civilians in the raid, and only 3 militants -- precisely as the Afghan authorities had claimed.

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Tom Burghardt

On February 18, President Barack Obama ordered 17,000 additional U.S. troops deployed to Afghanistan. Obama's announcement will result in a major escalation of America's bloody occupation of that war-ravaged country.

Currently, some 36,000 U.S. troops are in Afghanistan, including some 6,000 sent in early January under orders by the outgoing Bush regime. In addition to U.S. forces, 32,000 troops from other NATO countries and a mix of "private military contractors" (armed mercenaries) occupy the Central Asian nation.

When coupled with increasingly bellicose rhetoric from the Pentagon and military strikes inside Pakistan, the prospects for regional war--with incalculable risks for the people of Central- and South Asia--have put paid Obama's electoral hyperbole that his would be a "change" administration.

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Joshua Frank

Barack Obama seems to be following a dirty legacy when it comes to his official energy policy, a policy that has left Appalachia with fewer mountaintops every year.

The price of oil per barrel fluctuated dramatically in the past year, and the U.S.'s dependency on foreign crude has become less stable as tensions in the Middle East have escalated. Over his long campaign, Obama laid out his strategy on how to deal with the crisis, which has been exacerbated by the war in Iraq and the potential confrontation with Iran, not to mention the oil speculator's dubious role in the money game. But sadly Obama has been echoing old solutions to our new 21st century environmental troubles. Mainly, where is our energy going to come from if oil supplies dwindle or prices skyrocket again? And how will this all affect the dire reality of climate change?

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