US – Features

(source:Abdel Bari Atwan’s Website)

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is implementing changes to British Law aimed at protecting Israeli war criminals implicated in atrocities carried out by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip from arrest and prosecution.This step follows on from a pledge made by Brown to Tzipi Livni after a warrant for her arrest was issued by a British judge should she step foot in the UK [in December 2009].

That the British judiciary should be so flagrantly compromised to satisfy Brown’s Israeli friends -whose hands are stained with the blood of Palestinian women, children, and innocent people whose bodies were torn part by Israeli rockets and phosphorus bombs – is a historical disgrace which casts shame on British democracy, the principle of separation of authorities, and the value of championing the downtrodden and victims of crime.

Read More »Britain to shield Isaraeli war criminals

By Dina Jadallah

(source: VOC/Counterpuch.com)

On the surface and viewed from the perspective of dominating powers, their designated minions, and entrenched cohorts, it may appear that the Nakba is diminishing.  Several facts corroborate that view:  the passage of time, the very dispossession and dislocation of millions, the tendency of official Palestinian "leadership" to accept whatever scraps they are given, the seemingly insurmountable military superiority of Israel and its main backer, the United States, to name a few.

Discursively also, talk of the Nakba has been curtailed, especially among official Palestinian Authority officials and Arab governments.  It has been increasingly replaced by details and technicalities that avoid dealing with the crux of the Palestinian predicament.

Read More »Nakba vs 2 state solution

By Alex Lantier

(source: World Socialist WebSite)

The Contact Group, an assembly of foreign ministers from Western and Arab countries backing the Benghazi-based Libyan rebels of the Interim Transitional National Council (INC), met yesterday in Doha, Qatar. The meeting highlighted the INC’s role as a stooge of the imperialist powers, particularly the US, Britain and France, who are promoting it as their proxy force in a bitter civil war in Libya.

Qatar and Britain hosted the conference, with British Foreign Secretary William Hague issuing a statement in the early evening demanding that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi step down as Libyan head of state. Hague declared, “Gaddafi and his regime have lost all legitimacy and he must leave power.” The conference praised the continued bombing of Libya by NATO forces, declaring: “These have exerted significant pressure on Gaddafi, protected civilians, including Benghazi, from violent attack and averted a humanitarian disaster.”

The conference also agreed to fund the INC: “Participants agreed that a Temporary Financial Mechanism could provide a method for the INC and international community to manage revenue to assist with short-term financial requirements and structural needs in Libya.”

INC member Mahmoud Chammam called on the US government to “liberate the funds” of the Gaddafi regime—that is, an estimated $30 billion of Libyan oil earnings held by Western banks. Normally used to pay for Libyan social spending and public sector workers’ salaries, these funds would be stolen by the major banks to pay for INC weapons and supplies.

Read More »Contact group meeting in doha plans imperialist carve up of Libya

Regional leaders and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon are holding a crisis meeting aimed at ending the latest fighting in eastern Congo.

Seven African leaders are attending the African Union summit in Nairobi. Officials hope to get Congo and Rwanda to implement earlier commitments to end eastern Congo’s instability and disarm the numerous militia groups in the area.

The conflict in eastern Congo is fueled by festering ethnic hatred left over from the 1994 slaughter of a half-million Tutsis in Rwanda
and Congo’s civil wars.

Todays’ meeting follows a series of visits by high-level European Union and American officials to push for a diplomatic solution to the fighting that has displaced tens of thousands in the eastern Congo
region of North Kivu.

Sapa-AP

Read More »Un chief African leaders discuss congo crisis