Winter Patriot Community Blog

February 18, 2012 - As Americans were gearing up for last week's Super Bowl championship, Haiti's president Michel Martelly was on a plane to the World Economic Forum to recruit players interested in what one businessman dubbed "the Super Bowl of Disasters" - Haiti's devastating 2010 earthquake. The Irish-owned cell phone company Digicel footed his trip there, and hosted a regional business tour complete with a gala ball before his return to a country still reeling from crisis conditions in housing, jobs, and basic rights....

February 18, 2012 - As I write this, Khader Adnan is near death, on the 63rd day of a hunger strike to protest his detention without charges by Israeli occupation authorities.... Unfortunately for Adnan, he was not a Jewish terror suspect. In July 2010, Jerusalem police arrested a Jewish extremist named Chaim Pearlman. Pearlman was the prime suspect in a cold-blooded settler stabbing spree that left four Palestinians dead. Pearlman had previously engaged in acts of random violence against Palestinians, while maintaining an active role in the Kach terrorist organization. For ten days, the Shin Bet intelligence service subjected him to harsh interrogations while denying him access to legal counsel...

February 18, 2012 - On 7 January 2012, DCI-Palestine interviewed the mother of two children who were victims of an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on 9 December 2012. Nine-year old Ramadan was instantly killed along with his father, and his brother, eight-year old Yousif was severely injured. One month later, Yousif is still in a critical condition and so far has only been able to move one leg. Since the end of Operation Cast Lead in January 2009, DCI - Palestine has documented the cases of 53 children killed and 112 injured as a result of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip....

February 18, 2012 - Two recent police attacks on young Black men in the Bronx--one the brutal beating of an unarmed man by a crowd of officers, and the other the fatal shooting of an unarmed man in front of his family in his own home--have intensified and focused the community's anger and outrage against the NYPD. These incidents are part of a pattern of routine harassment and abuse, punctuated by regular episodes of brutality. Police violence in New York City is by no means confined to the Bronx. But it is bound to be more commonplace in the borough with the lowest per capita income of the five and with a population that is 90 percent people of color. To Bronx residents, the police resemble an occupying army...

February 18, 2012 - A report published by Amnesty International (AI) on Wednesday documents widespread human rights violations by the very militia groups that fought to topple the Gaddafi government. The report, Militias threaten hopes for new Libya, describes the militias as being "largely out of control." Amnesty's representatives expressed grave concern over the near-universal impunity for crimes committed by the anti-Gaddafi militias... The report comes at the heel of a slew of abuses that human rights organizations have exposed over the last several months. In January, aid agency Doctors Without Borders (MSF) halted its work in detention centers in the Libyan city of Misrata. According to MSF general director Christopher Stokes detainees were brought to the doctors in the middle of torture sessions "in order to make them fit for further interrogation." At least 8,500 individuals remain in detention centers around the country. Earlier this month Human Rights Watch documented the story of Libya's former ambassador to France, Omar Brebesh, who was tortured to death after he voluntarily submitted to questioning in Tripoli over his work for the former regime...

February 18, 2012 - For years prominent corporate media pundits have told us that the world -- and the media -- would embrace a dramatic, non-violent Palestinian resistance movement. If only such a movement -- perhaps led by a Gandhi-like figure -- were to finally emerge, we are told, the media coverage will come, and sympathy from across the world will strengthen support for the Palestinian cause. This is nonsense -- there has been non-violent Palestinian resistance for years...

February 18, 2012 - ... The political crisis was created by Nouri al-Maliki. Political Stalemate I is the period that followed the March 2010 elections. Nouri's State of Law was predicted to win by a wide margin (predicted by Nouri) but his fantasies of being beloved were incorrect. Iraqiya (led by Ayad Allawi) bested Stated of Law. Because Nouri had the backing of the Barack Obama White House, he ignored the Constitution and used the Supreme Court of Iraq (which he controls) to issue questionable verdicts that benefited him. For eight months, Iraq was at a stalemate.... Nouri's a thug. If you ever doubted that, check out the latest actions of Nouri (and his 'independent' Supreme Court). Kitabat reports that Iraqi Red Crescent workers are seeing their children arrested. The Red Crescent. (Part of the International Red Cross.) Who will Nouri target next and how long will his sycophantic followers in the media continue to look the other way?...

February 18, 2012 - In the beginning there were engineers, soldiers and bulldozers. It was after the International Court of Law in The Hague had already barred construction of The Separation Wall within the West Bank, and before the Israeli High Court of Justice found the Wall's route in Bil'in illegal. It was after someone somewhere decided that more than 2,000 dunams of the village's agricultural lands were to be annexed to Israel by force, and before countless people would be arrested and injured, and two killed. The engineers marked which trees to uproot, and the villagers removed the marks. The soldiers came to disperse the demonstrations, and the demonstrators tied themselves to the olive trees. The bulldozers started tearing the land, and the activists stood in their way. Day after day. A battle for every tree and every yard...

February 18, 2012 - Ramallah: "Please take me to my father. I want to see him," is the only cry of five-year-old Mohammad Wael Eshtaiwi whose father is languishing in an Israeli prison. An inmate of the Negev Prison, Mohammad's father has been denied the right to meet his only son. "It is my right. I must see father and get to know him, wherever he is. As long as he is alive, I should see him," Mohammad told Gulf News. The little boy added: "I need my mother to accompany me to the prison and see my father," he said. "I do not want to see my father in a photo frame. I want to see him in person." Israeli authorities have refused a visit permit to Mohammad's mother, uncles and aunts but not the boy. However, under Israeli regulations, children cannot travel from the Balata Refugee Camp to Negev Prison alone...."The Israeli authorities have not refused Mohammad a visit permit. But they have not granted any of his blood relatives the necessary permit to accompany him to see his father," she told Gulf News...

February 18, 2012 - Libya has sent military forces to stem clashes between rival tribes over control of territory in the far southeast of Libya, the armed forces chief said on Saturday, as more people were reported killed in the violence. Clashes broke out late last week in the remote city of Al Kufra and have continued since, highlighting the challenge of policing the sparsely populated desert. Dozens of people have been killed, the tribes have said...

February 18, 2012 - If these were "normal" circumstances, we could deal with it. I remember not long ago when we would complain because the power was out for 12 hours a day. Now I long for those days. These aren't normal times, these are worse than even "shitty" times. This is no life. Every day, every hour, I think: what time is the power coming, how long has it been off now? When will the water come? The drinking water truck has stopped coming around. The people who purify the water can't do so without electricity, and they can't deliver the water without gas. We're not asking for a lot: water and electricity...

February 17, 2012 - Thousands of residents of Falluja, in Anbar province, demonstrated today in support of the Syrian people with the participation of tribal sheikhs, religious leaders and mass organizations. Sheikh Hameed Dulaimi, clergyman, told Aswat al-Iraq that the demonstration took place after Friday mid-day prayers in support of the Syrian people. "This demonstration is a reminder to Premier Nouri al-Maliki and the local government in Anbar province that thieves and murderers are doomed to death," he added...

February 18, 2012 - I call on the international community to demand that the Israeli government immediately release Khader Adnan from administrative detention. As I write this plea, Khader Adnan is finishing his sixty-second day on hunger strike in protest of Israel's inhumane and unlawful policy of administrative detention. Since Israel illegally occupied the Palestinian Territories, it has used administrative detention to arbitrarily arrest Palestinian after Palestinian and hold them indefinitely, without any charge. Israel has adopted this policy in order to suppress Palestinian people and their voices....

February 18, 2012 - Syrian security forces fired live rounds and tear gas at thousands of people marching Saturday in a funeral procession that turned into a protest in Damascus, activists said. It was one of the largest demonstrations in the capital since the 11-month-old uprising against President Bashar Assad began. At least one person was killed, activists said, and several others were reported wounded. CNN reported that the protest - which activists estimated involved 15,000 to 30,000 people -took place just over a mile from Assad's palace...

February 18, 2012 - Recent years have seen Israel escalate its campaign to push Palestinians and Bedouin out of their homes. According to the UN, nearly 1100 Palestinians and Bedouin were displaced by Israeli house demolitions in 2011 - approximately 80 percent more than 2010. So where is the Bedouin Intifada? The Israeli state continues to Judaize the Negev (Naqab) desert. This "development" includes last year's Prawer plan. The plan recommends that Israel relocate between 30,000-40,000 Bedouin citizens, ripping them away from their villages and relocating them in impoverished townships to clear the area for Jewish-only settlements...

February 18, 2012 - Day 62 and counting. Adnan's hunger strike continues. On February 15, Israel let his wife Randa see him for the second time. She said "(h)is health has drastically deteriorated from the last time I saw him" a week ago. "I expect the worst. He insists on continuing with the hunger strike." He wants to live but will die for justice... He's held administratively without charge. He committed no crimes yet faces imminent death. He lost over a third of his weight. His life force is slowly ebbing. His muscles, heart, stomach, and immune system are dying. His entire system could stop functioning any time. Israel wants him dead. So far, pleas on his behalf are ignored...

February 18, 2012 - Yousef Thayafeen, 37, lives with his wife and their five children in Wa'r al Beik, an area bordering the town of Anata, a suburb of East Jerusalem cut off from the city by the separation wall. Yousef's five siblings and their families also live in the small encampment. Late at night on 25 January, Israeli soldiers arrived, equipped with bulldozers, and informed the families they had five minutes before all six structures would be destroyed. The soldiers had brought a team to remove the entire contents of these homes. When Yousef asked the men, who had begun to throw items of furniture out on to the grass, to be more careful, one soldier hit him across the face, Yousef says, knocking him to the ground...

February 18, 2012 - The industrial street in Fallujah District is subject to a radioactive contamination resulting from military operations that were carried out in the past years, a source told Alsumaria stressing that health authorities fear the outbreak of cancer diseases as a result of this contamination. "Two metal pieces were the reason behind closing all shops in the industrial street of Fallujah District," the source revealed. Regardless of how much the aforementioned statement sounds weird, it actually occurred when health groups in Anbar Province carried out a scan operation, in cooperation with the provincial Environment Department, where they discovered radioactive materials. This contamination is the result of military operations led in 2003 and 2004 by US forces, authorities in charge of the scan declared....

February 18, 2012 -- Detained hunger-striker Khader Adnan is going forward with his hunger strike against unjust practices in Israeli jails, his wife said Saturday, dismissing reports to the contrary. Randa Adnan denied a report in a Gaza-based newspaper quoting her as saying Khader would stop his strike in the event that religious authorities found it to be in conflict with Islamic regulations. "What media outlets in Gaza claimed I said is false," she told Ma'an....