URUK Net 17 March, 2010 Part 2: Video: Israeli Apartheid and The Nakba

Video: Israeli Apartheid and The Nakba
 By Anthony Lawson*
March 17, 2010 – There can be absolutely no doubt that Israel has created an inhuman, illegal and utterly disgraceful Apartheid state, and the international community will never be able to excuse itself if it takes no action against this blatant, ongoing and in-plain-sight crime against humanity. Please join the millions of decent people around the world who are crying out against Israel’s ongoing persecution of the Palestinians. Send the link to this video to your elected representative and make sure he or she does something about it. You have to ask yourself: If I keep quiet , will it ever end?..

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EU Selling Torture Equipment
 By David Cronin
March 17, 2010 – Equipment designed for torturing prisoners is still being exported from European Union (EU) countries despite a four-year-old ban on such trade, according to a new report by Amnesty International. The human rights group has found that companies active in several of the EU’s 27 states have exploited loopholes in controls aimed at putting an end to the selling of instruments of torture. The EU rules – in force since 2006 – need to be widened to cover a number of devices that remain outside their scope, Amnesty has argued. It highlights how Nidec, a company trading from Spain, has been dealing in ‘stun cuffs’ in the past few years. Intended for restraining a detainee by placing them around his or her limbs, such cuffs inflict a painful electric shock. Unlike similar “stun belts”, the cuffs are not explicitly banned by the EU’s rules…

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Thank the Occupation
 Oh, Those “Disappointing” Iraqis
By YIFAT SUSSKIND
March 17, 2010 – It may be months before we know the final tally of Iraq’s March 7 parliamentary elections. But one thing is already clear. As The New York Times editorial page put it today, “Beyond the closeness of the race, the new results—disappointingly—show Iraqis once again voted mainly along sectarian and ethnic lines.” Oh, those disappointing Iraqis. You would never guess from the Times piece that sectarianism in Iraq, whether expressed in voting or in violence, is a direct outcome of US policy. Remarkably, in a country with almost no history of communal violence, US actions, from the invasion of 2003 to the present, helped transform a doctrinal difference between the Sunni and Shiite branches of Islam into a dangerous political divide. The US dismantled Iraq’s largely secular state bureaucracy in favor of a system that allocated seats in parliament, jobs and other resources according to ethnic and religious divisions. That system produced the so–called “Shiite list” that swept the first national elections held under US occupation in January 2005. It also produced a civil war. In the name of defeating the anti-US insurgency, the Pentagon armed and deployed openly sectarian Shiite and Kurdish militias to fight Sunnis and police Sunni neighborhoods…

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Dispatches: The Children of Gaza
 Putting a human face to the tragedy – Re-igniting the call for accountability
Dr. Hanan Chehata
March 17, 2010 – On Monday 15th March Channel 4 aired an episode of Dispatches entitled “The Children of Gaza”. It focused on the lives of a few of the children living in that small strip of Palestinian land whose lives were devastated when, 15 months ago, Israel launched its military attack on their homes, killing many of their parents and relatives, and shattering their already fragile existences. It showed how they have bravely tried to deal with their losses and bereavements and have tried to move on with their lives, and simultaneously how Israel has ensured that this is well near impossible as a result of the children’s literal incarceration in Gaza due to Israel’s illegal and ongoing siege. The documentary focused on how they have been struggling to deal with the fallout of their physical injuries as well as their psychological scars which, in all probability, they will never fully recover from. For once, this documentary was an opportunity for the children of Gaza themselves to speak out and to tell their own stories instead of it being told on their behalf by propagandists with a vested interest in how these children are portrayed…

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Pressure Drop: Brave Sir Dennis Ran Away
 Chris Floyd
March 17, 2010 – …Still, I admit I was pleasantly surprised to see Kucinich stand up against the health care bill, apparently on principle, especially as he was also sponsoring a bill to end the Afghanistan War at the same time. (I realize the latter was a wholly symbolic act — then again, all acts are symbolic to one degree or another; that is, they symbolize the moral stance behind the act, whether it is effective or not. Thus, “savvy” compromises on, say, appropriations for the Terror War or detainee policy or illegal surveillance symbolize an underlying acceptance of atrocity, tyranny and war crime.) But I suspected the fix was in when I saw reports that Kucinich was flying with Obama for a presidential appearance in Ohio. There was little or no chance that Kucinich would have been engaged in such high-profile hitchhiking if he was not already in the bag for Barack…

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Tony Blair got cash for deal with South Korean oil firm
 Solomon Hughes and David Leigh
March 17, 2010 – Tony Blair has received cash from a South Korean oil firm in a deal kept secret until the business appointments watchdog intervened, the Guardian has learned. After 20 months of secrecy, the former prime minister has now been overruled by the chairman of the advisory committee on business appointments, the former Tory cabinet minister Ian Lang. Lang this week ordered publication of Blair’s deal with UI Energy Corporation, which has extensive oil interests in the US and in Iraq…

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US Department of Justice Asked to Regulate AIPAC as a Foreign Agent of the Israeli Government
 March 17, 2010 – The US Department of Justice has been formally asked to begin regulating the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as the foreign agent of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A 392 page legal filing presented by a four person IRmep delegation in a two hour meeting with top officials of the Internal Security Section substantiated the following case for AIPAC’s immediate registration…

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Kandahar campaign already underway, general says
 Reuters
March 17, 2010 – Preliminary U.S. efforts to gradually retake full control of the Taliban’s birthplace Kandahar are already underway, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan said on Wednesday, offering few details. The campaign in Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city, is seen as a crucial test of President Barack Obama’s strategy to reverse Taliban momentum after more than eight years of war. General Stanley McChrystal says he envisions gradual operations to deliver security and governance, as opposed to one big military assault. That has raised questions about how to identify the new campaign in Kandahar and its surroundings, where NATO already has thousands of forces…

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