World food crisis drives up un aid funding need
The global food crisis is largely responsible for driving up the United Nations’ need for funding to confront disasters and… Read More »World food crisis drives up un aid funding need
Zionism – Breaking News
A presidential tour guide to Isarael
By Robert Bloom
(source: NYTimes)
“The reports about the demise of the special relationship aren’t just premature, they’re just flat wrong,” the [Israeli] prime minister said. He publicly invited Mr. Obama to visit Israel, and the president said, “I’m ready.”
Dear Mr. Obama,
When you travel to Israel (formerly known as Palestine), be sure to visit some of the great tourist sites in Israel (formerly Palestine):
*The countless checkpoints, where Palestinians are humiliated and mistreated every hour of every day (and don’t forget to ask to see the several locations where Palestinian women have lost their children and/or died in childbirth at these places because the Israelis wouldn’t process them through);
*The handsome and loving wall that keeps families apart and prevents Palestinians from getting to work. As an added benefit, this could be the model for the ever-expanding wall that many americans would like to see at the Mexican border;
Fraud violence mass abstention election debacle in Afghanistan
By Patrick Martin
(source: World Socialist Website)
Saturday’s parliamentary election in Afghanistan was a predictable debacle, characterized by widespread fraud and violence, and largely boycotted by the Afghan population. Officials of the US-dominated government of President Hamid Karzai said 3.6 million people cast ballots, far below the 6 million ballots claimed for last year’s presidential election, which was rigged to ensure Karzai’s reelection.
The 3.6 million ballots represents barely 31 percent of the 11.4 million registered voters, but the Karzai government tried to boost that figure to 40 percent, arguing that the 2.2 million people registered in areas where voting could not be conducted because of security concerns should be excluded from the total of registered voters.
The Independent Election Commission (IEC) has previously said that 16.7 million people have been registered to vote since 2003, which would make the turnout only 21 percent. Whatever number is chosen, however, there is no dispute that the turnout was low, except in certain neighborhoods in Kabul, the capital city, under tight control by US and NATO forces.
Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak effectively conceded that the political influence of the Taliban was growing, telling the press, in explanation of the low turnout, “One possibility is that the propaganda of the enemy affected the psyche of the people.”
Read More »Fraud violence mass abstention election debacle in Afghanistan
Egypts uprising its implications for Palestine
By Ali Abunimah
(source: Electronic Intifada)
We are in the middle of a political earthquake in the Arab world and the ground has still not stopped shaking. To make predictions when36are so fluid is risky, but there is no doubt that the uprising in Egypt — however it ends — will have a dramatic impact across the region and within Palestine. If the Mubarak regime falls, and is replaced by one less tied to Israel and the United States, Israel will be a big loser.
As Aluf Benn commented in the Israeli daily Haaretz, “The fading power of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s government leaves Israel in a state of strategic distress. Without Mubarak, Israel is left with almost no friends in the Middle East; last year, Israel saw its alliance with Turkey collapse” (Without Egypt, Israel will be left with no friends in Mideast). Indeed, Benn observes, “Israel is left with two strategic allies in the region: Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.” But what Benn does not say is that these two “allies” will not be immune either.
Over the past few weeks I was in Doha examining the Palestine Papers leaked to Al Jazeera. These documents underscore the extent to which the split between the US-backed Palestinian Authority in Ramallah headed by Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah faction, on the one hand, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, on the other — was a policy decision of regional powers: the United States, Egypt and Israel This policy included Egypt’s strict enforcement of the siege of Gaza. If the Mubarak regime goes, the United States will lose enormous leverage over the situation in Palestine, and Abbas’ PA will lose one of its main allies against Hamas.
Already discredited by the extent of its collaboration and capitulation exposed in the Palestine Papers, the PA will be weakened even further. With no credible “peace process” to justify its continued “security co-ordination” with Israel, or even its very existence, the countdown may well begin for the PA’s implosion. Even the US and EU support for the repressive PA police-state-in-the-making may no longer be politically tenable. Hamas may be the immediate beneficiary, but not necessarily in the long term. For the first time in years we are seeing broad mass movements that, while they include Islamists, are not necessarily dominated or controlled by them.