Pakistan risks human catastrophe
Pakistan risks ‘human catastrophe’ Aljazeera.net Thousands of civilians trapped in Pakistan’s Swat valley, where the military is battling Taliban forces,… Read More »Pakistan risks human catastrophe
Wall power
Wall power
Sharon Dell
THE distance from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, reputed birthplace of Jesus of Nazareth, is a mere eight kilometres. But to get there, we had to cross on foot through the eight-metre-high concrete separation wall at the enormous Gilo checkpoint. It was mid-morning and the checkpoint, despite it being Easter, which is peak tourist time, was quiet. We were fortunate: I had read previously that thousands of West Bank workers with the requisite permits from the Israeli government start queuing from the Bethlehem side as early as 3 am every day to get to jobs in Jerusalem.
Once we were inside the checkpoint precinct, the “exit” signs guiding our passage confused our progress until it dawned on me that we were officially “exiting” the State of Israel.
Obamas afpak war engulfs pakistans swat valley
Obama’s AfPak war engulfs Pakistan’s Swat Valley
By James Cogan
A humanitarian catastrophe is taking place in areas of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP), as a result of the Obama administration’s expansion of the occupation of Afghanistan into the so-called "AfPak war".
Over the past seven years, ethnic Pashtun Islamist movements in NWFP and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) have lent assistance to the resistance being waged against the American-led forces in Afghanistan by the Pashtun-based Taliban, including by disrupting US and NATO supply routes through Pakistan.
Sri lanka distant voices desperate lives
Sri Lanka: Distant Voices, Desperate Lives – John Pilger
The Sri Lankan government used Israel’s actions in Gaza as their model for slaughter, Pilger writes.
In the early 1960s, it was the Irish of Derry who would phone late at night, speaking in a single breath, spilling out stories of discrimination and injustice. Who listened to their truth until the violence began? Bengalis from what was then East Pakistan did much the same. Their urgent whispers described terrible state crimes that the news ignored, and they implored us reporters to “let the world know”. Palestinians speaking above the din of crowded rooms in Bethlehem and Beirut asked no more. For me, the most tenacious distant voices have been the Tamils of Sri Lanka, to whom we ought to have listened a very long time ago.