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The Big One Devastates Haiti
by Stephen Lendman
With all their woes, the last thing Haitians needed was the calamitous earthquake (the most severe in the region in over 200 years) that struck Port-au-Prince, surrounding areas, and other parts of the country on January 12 at about 5PM (2200 GMT), devastating the capital, possibly killing hundreds of thousands, injuring many more, and disrupting the lives of millions of people already overwhelmed by other crushing hardships.
An AP report said "journalists found the damage staggering even for a country long accustomed to tragedy and disaster." Many hundreds of thousands lost everything, including loved ones.
Truth Will Prevail
by Gilad Atzmon
The Israeli government doesn’t think twice before it orders a genocidal attack against civilians. Israeli military leaders do not think twice before they drop bombs on one of the most densely populated places on the planet. They also do not hesitate whether to use artillery shells against a UN refugee shelter. The Israeli people do not think twice before they approve en masse their army’s inhuman tactics. But for some bizarre reason, the Israelis are devastated to find out that the rest of humanity is coming to terms with their true nature. Once again it is a Turkish TV drama that exposes the Israelis for what they are. A murderous collective motivated by vengeance.
HELEN THOMAS 'WHY' QUESTION ANSWERED
Allen L Roland
Helen Thomas ~ the Watchdog of Democracy asks why are we hated in the Muslim world ?
White House Press correspondent Helen Thomas asked the pertinent question as to the motive of terrorists which the Obama administration avoids answering ~ but the answer is obvious to the world. The so called War on terror is a War of terror and we are the principle perpetrators of this ongoing Middle East criminal action against Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan:
Many are aware of America's refusal to discuss how America's preemptive illegal military actions and policies fuel terrorism throughout the Middle East and nowhere was that more evident than at a White House press conference last week with Janet Napolitano and Security advisor John Brennan. Senior White House correspondent Helen Thomas asked the prohibited " Why " question about the real motive of Terrorists, and kept asking as she received non-responses ~ until they all decided to ignore her. Here's the two minute video ~ http://ampedstatus.com/video.php
Israeli Democracy or Hypocrisy
by Stephen Lendman
An October 2007 Haaretz editorial titled "Democracy or hypocrisy" contrasted the "occupying Land of Israel to the democratic Israel" in calling for a "debate about Israel's control over the lives of Palestinians deprived of civil rights," saying its democracy is flawed and not addressing it is hypocrisy.
Throughout history, regimes rhetorically embraced democracy as cover for more despotic policies, no different today throughout the world in countries like India, Pakistan, America and Israel practicing what Michael Parenti calls "democracy for the few," (the) "shadier sides of US political life (in which) proponents of the existing social order have tried to transform practically every deficiency into a strength."
Fallen from a Great Depth
I am lying on my couch, trying to read. I do that a lot these days. Trying to read. Trying to accept that this is a slow time for me, a season of healing from old wounds and more recent ones, some self-inflicted. Trying to find a place of peace in an ecology that has shunned peace.
Although the blank screen saver has darkened the computer behind me, I can still hear you within the infinite waves of Twitter ever changing the guard; ranting, cajoling, flirting, pushing out declarations of fleeting news and grim prognostication. Beyond, I listen to black tires sighing along shining black streets, in them hearing old girlfriends and lost verse, burned books and crushed revolutions.
In contrast to my wish for both solitude and new friends, I have descended to what amounts to a basement apartment - the sort that has a couple of iron-barred windows right onto the sidewalk. I peer at your rustling feet there, revealing myself to you only for the short bus ride to and trudge back from a cigarette trip to the store. Lock the door. I own pepper spray now. Perhaps I am healing; but I still feel broken. There is nothing for it but time and emotional Kevlar ...
Writing at CounterPunch, Bruce Levine asks, "Are Americans Too Broken for the Truth to Set Us Free?":
Reflections on What I Seek to Live By
By Norm Lowry
“We are all born & someday we’ll all die…to some degree alone. What if our aloneness isn’t a tragedy? What if our aloneness is what allows us to speak the truth without being afraid? What if our aloneness is what allows us to adventure; to experience the world as a dynamic presence—as a changeable, interactive thing?” Rachel Corrie
My 2009 included investing just short of six months in the Lancaster PA (USA) County Prison; the result of a choice to speak out pointedly against the injustices fomented by my birth-country (USA) against the world's peoples, as well as her own. Having lived for most of my life, blind & deaf to the truth of such travesties, it was an honor to make such an investment. Though well aware that it would be impossible to atone for my past failures to engage against the grand lies, I am utterly committed to standing in the gap (for the balance of my life) by simply saying "NO" to all that is injustice...no matter the personal cost.
FOREIGN-MADE, COMPOUNDED DISASTER - Haiti
Editorial by Carolyn Bennett
Instead of vacuous mourning, fix fundamental wrongs against Haiti
Yesterday's 7.2 earthquake in Haiti sadly compounds people's problems, deepens their poverty and disarray - thousands are said to have died in the impact and aftershocks; however, this occurrence in nature is not the fundamental cause, indeed the criminal cause of decades of poverty and crisis on this Caribbean island of 10 million Americans.
Israeli Prohibitions Against Free Expression and "Enemy Alien" Contacts
by Stephen Lendman
Adalah is the legal center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel advocating on their behalf in a nation affording rights only to Jews. In September 2009, its report titled "Prohibited Protest" exposed how Israel's law enforcement authorities restricted free expression protests against Operation Cast Lead.
It shows how police, the State Prosecutor's Office, General Security Services (GSS or Shabak), the courts, and even academic institutions used or supported arrests and imprisonments to stop Israeli Arabs and supportive Jews from protesting against the war.
Researchers collected data from the police spokesman, political and social activist testimonies, Adalah legal complaints during and after the war, an analysis of court decisions on detainee arrests, and general information reported by the media and various other Israeli human rights organizations.
Israel's law enforcement apparatus acted repressively, "far beyond any reasonable criterion." For example, on December 30, 2008, after 200 Arab demonstrator arrests, the commanding officer of the Northern District of the Police, Maj. Gen. Shimon Koren, declared that while protests could take place, police would show zero tolerance for law breakers.
Yemen On, Lather, Rinse, Repeat Cycle
By Ahsan at the Five Rupees Blog
The security-policymaking community in the U.S. works in very predictable ways. Any time a country no one in the U.S. is really familiar with comes up in the news due to some plausible connection to organized terrorism, the following things happen:
1. There is indignation and disgust directed at the government du jour. Government du jour, you see, has been concentrating on Country X With Lots Of Brown People for the longest time, but what it has missed is that Country Y -- which, incidentally, also has Lots Of Brown People -- is also crucial to the war on terrorism.
2. People who have no idea about Country Y With Lots Of Brown People suddenly feel the need to opine on it. This, by the way, is the most entertaining step -- as long as you're not from Country Y With Lots Of Brown People. Nothing is funnier than watching an entire industry of pundits, writers, op-edders, think tankers, cable news invitees, foreign policy "experts" and bloggers pretend to know what the fuck they're talking about.
Of course, if you happen to be from Country Y With Lots Of Brown People, you begin to get worried, because any time the American punditocracy starts talking about you, only bad things happen. This is why I cried myself hoarse during the Pakistan hysteria in the middle of last year, and why I am thoroughly enjoying the Yemen hysteria now.
WELCOME TO PRISON-PRONE AMERICA
Re-reported, edited by Carolyn Bennett
"American primary and secondary schools fail to educate because that is not their function, Dmitry Orlov writes. "Their function is to institutionalize children at an early age." In due course inmates of the U.S. education enterprise "will go on to other institutions - jails, psychiatric hospitals, the military."
"… There is a reason why jails, hospitals and schools are often architecturally indistinguishable: they are but different parts of the same system, representing different phases of the institutionalization life cycle."
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