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POPSIsrael's Front-Line Thugs The security forces are, of course, by no means scared to act when it suits them. Palestinian demonstrations are routinely put down with excessive force: rocks flung by pre-teens are countered with rubber bullets, tear gas, and – often – live and indiscriminate fire. But when it comes to clamping down on violence emanating from the settler community, a different set of rules apply, and the authorities' reeking hypocrisy is exposed as endemic to the way in which they view the different strands of Israeli society. Via Philip Weiss
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POPS'Worse than apartheid' Nablus is closed off by six checkpoints. Until 2005, one of them was open. "The checkpoints are supposedly for security purposes, but anyone who wants to perpetrate an attack can pay NIS 10 for a taxi and travel by bypass roads, or walk through the hills. The real purpose is to make life hard for the inhabitants. The civilian population suffers," says Said Abu Hijla, a lecturer at Al-Najah University in the city. In the bus I get acquainted with my two neighbours: Andrew Feinstein, a son of Holocaust survivors who is married to a Muslim woman from Bangladesh and served six years as an MP for the ANC ; and Nathan Gefen, who has a male Muslim partner and was a member of the right-wing Betar movement in his youth. Gefen is active on the Committee against AIDS in his AIDS-ravaged country.
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POPS'They've Stolen our Water, now our SEA' "The illegality of the actions and orders of the army cries out to the heavens. This is a clear case of misusing security considerations as camouflage for achieving other goals which are unrelated to security matters and unacceptable." The Association of Civil Rights (Acri) petition said.
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POPSIsrael delays treatment for Gaza toddlers Testimony of a Palestinian father whose sons have cystic fibrosis. They have to go to a hospital in Jersusalem once every month to get them treatment, but Israel is giving them a hard time by refusing to give the parents a permit to go to Jerusalem. By the way, earlier this father had another son die due to CF because the Israeli government would not let him travel to the West Bank to get a CT scan.
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POPSFBI threatens to sic Egyptian government on suspect's family After 9/11, an Egyptian student in the US was picked up by the FBI, which mistakenly thought he owned an aviation transceiver found in a hotel room. When the FBI interrogated him, agents threatened to make sure Egyptian security "gives family hell." Higazy confessed to owning the transceiver (but later an airline pilot admitted it was his). This information was contained in a court decision letting Higazy's lawsuit against the FBI proceed. Subsequently, the court removed this decision from its website and replaced it with a redacted version...which removed the information about the FBI threats! Unfortunately, the US news media (Washingon Post, New York Times) have failed to cover this aspect of the story.
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POPSAnd she's not talking about Bush... Either she hasn't been giving this advice to her own boss or he hasn't been listening. In this case, she's referring to Russia and the concentration of power in the Kremlin.
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POPSHow 700 settlers wrecked a town of 150,000 Palestinians International observers here say the settlers regularly toss debris and dirty water into the Arab market below, now largely shuttered in a city where unemployment stands at 60 percent. Asked whether Arabs and Jews can share Hebron, Maraga, his hair and beard a gray fuzz, looked up at the chain-link canopy. ... Hemmed in and harassed, the Palestinians are fleeing today. Nearly half the homes in and around the Israeli-controlled Old City of Hebron have been vacated, the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem recently reported. The group also said that more than three-quarters of the Palestinian shops and restaurants in the casbah and adjacent commercial districts have been shuttered, many by military order. Via Marx Sawicky .
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POPSBush admin: Undermining Iranian democracy Similar warnings were delivered to U.S. officials by others, including Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council. "We had talks with the State Department and with lawmakers," Parsi told TIME. "We pointed out the dangers. Our advice was not taken into consideration. Things have turned out worse than we expected." Parsi says that, in the past, individual democracy activists have been arrested without a pretext, but that the Bush Administration's program gave the regime an opportunity to go after as many as 10,000 non-government organizations and their memberships. "There is tremendous self-censorship going on," Parsi says. "They know that the money has made them targets." Via Garance Franke-Ruta
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POPSThe Betrayal of Captain America Conservative film critic Michael Medved accuses the Captain America comic book of promoting "a destructive cynicism and mistrust of the United States Government".
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POPSChomsky misrepresents Kennan This clip is Chomsky quoting a State Dept memo, written in 1948 by George Kennan, that makes it appear as if Kennan is endorsing the US engaging on a sinister plan to maintain economic disparities between itself and other countries. Chomsky wrote this in his 1993 book What Uncle Sam Really Wants . In fact, Chomsky omits the fact that Kennan was really arguing against the US trying to beat back communism in Asia. Kennan was really advocating letting Asia go and maintaining a sphere of influence limited to Japan and the Philippines.
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POPSIsrael forbids transporting Palestinians in Israeli vehicles The penalties prescribed in the order are also discriminatory. Whereas an Israeli who violates the order is tried in a civilian court, where he will not expect a stiff punishment, the Palestinian violator is tried in a military court, where the defendant can anticipate a sentence of up to five years in jail and loss of magnetic card, thus preventing the person from obtaining various permits from the Israeli authorities. Protests that Israel is not practicing apartheid are growing increasingly hollow. Via Electronic Intifada
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POPSDavid Corn on Jeane Kirkpatrick A post-junta truth commission found that the Argentine military had "disappeared" at least 10,000 Argentines in the so-called "dirty war" against "subversion" and "terrorists" between 1976 and 1983; human rights groups in Argentina put the number at closer to 30,000. The Argentina generals were especially fond of torture and had a taste for going after Jews, whom they believed were members of a worldwide communist conspiracy. Yet Kirkpatrick was willing to put this all aside and even attended a dinner--thrown to honor her--at the Argentine embassy in Washington the night Argentina foolishly invaded the Falkland Islands in 1982.
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