Winter Patriot Community Blog

May 17, 2012 - The Local Coordination Committees in Syria deplores the situation of the Syrian National Council. The situation reflects the Council and the Opposition's furthering from the spirit and demands of the Syrian Revolution. Furthermore, it reflects their distance from directions towards a civil state, democracy, transparency and the transfer of power desired in a New Syria. In recent months, we have witnessed apparent political deficits in the Syrian National Council and a lack of consensus between the Council and the revolutionary movement. Furthermore, the council continues to marginalize a majority of the representatives of the revolutionary movement such as members of the Council's General Assembly....

May 17, 2012 - Summary: Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law in the OPT continued during the reporting period (10 - 16 May 2012): Shooting: During the reporting period, IOF wounded 46 Palestinian civilians, including 3 journalists and 4 children, during the dispersion of peaceful demonstrations organized in protest to the construction of the annexation wall and settlement activities in the West Bank, in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and on the 64th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba - the uprooting of the Palestinian people from their lands in 1948. Dozens of civilians also suffered from tear gas inhalation. IOF also arrested 5 demonstrators, including a Palestinian woman and a female Polish human rights defender. In the Gaza Strip, on 10 May 2012, Israeli naval troops arrested two Palestinian fishermen in the northern Gaza City, but released them later. IOF also confiscated the fishing boat....

May 17, 2012 - A human rights organization that assists foreigners received threats of arson and rape within hours of Interior Minister Eli Yishai's remarks that African asylum seekers are "infiltrators" and most are "criminals" who "damage the Zionist project." The NGO has filed an incitement complaint against Yishai. The Hotline for Migrant Workers received three phone calls yesterday from unknown individuals who threatened to burn the office and seemed to threaten sexual violence against volunteers and employees. The calls came less then three hours after Yishai's remarks on Army Radio...

May 17, 2012 - The camera follows heavily armed Israeli security personnel raiding a prison dormitory, shouting at the prisoners to get out of bed, and that they would be shot if they didn't obey orders. The prisoners can be heard screaming in terror at the surprise attack. It was a night of brutal and lethal violence that Israeli participants would describe as one that was "beautiful" and "happy." One of the Israeli attackers shouts, amid flashes, flame and smoke: "I want to open these gates and take care of these little sons of whores." Other Israelis shout vulgar Arabic insults at the prisoners regarding their mothers...

May 17, 2012 - A prominent journalist has told Amnesty International how Syrian government forces tortured and detained him in deplorable conditions before deporting him to Jordan on Monday. Salameh Kaileh, a 57-year-old Jordanian national of Palestinian descent, has lived and worked in the Syrian capital Damascus since 1981. On 24 April, plain clothes officials from Syria's Air Force Intelligence arrested him during a raid on his flat in Barzah, a Damascus suburb. Amnesty International considered him to be a prisoner of conscience, held solely for exercising his right to freedom of expression. "The main reason for my arrest, from what I understood, is a conversation I had on Facebook with a friend outside Syria about my position on the revolution and my opinion about the Muslim Brotherhood and so on," Kaileh told Amnesty International.Following his arrest, Kaileh was held at a Syrian Air Force Intelligence branch in Damascus, where he was insulted and beaten for days...

May 17, 2012 - Israel's long known open secret is its formidable nuclear arsenal. Less is known about its chemical and biological weapons (CBW) capability. More on that below.In 1986, Dimona nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu revealed documents showing what many long suspected. Israel had been secretly developing, producing and stockpiling nuclear weapons for years. Experts called his information genuine. They revealed sophisticated technology able to amass a formidable nuclear arsenal. Today it's more potent than ever....

May 17, 2012 - Growing numbers of activists are beginning to counter U.S. Drone attacks into Pakistani territory. The activists are confronting the U.S., but increasingly now the Pakistani government for allowing such attacks to continue. The Tehreek Insaf party led by former Pakistani cricket captain Imran Khan first stepped up the political heat against the Drones. Civil society groups, including Pakistani lawyers, and now also groups from the U.S. and Britain have joined the campaign."We believe Drone strikes are illegal according to international law because they kill innocent people," Imran Khan told IPS from Islamabad. "The U.S. or any other country has no right to violate frontiers of an independent state."...

May 17, 2012 - The site of the legendary hanging gardens of Babylon is in danger of being wrecked by an oil pipe. The historic area in modern-day Iraq has seen many invasions over the years, from Roman to American, but now faces a domestic threat. The magnificent gardens allegedly built for a king's homesick wife in the 6th century BC were one of the Ancient World's seven wonders...Iraq's Oil Ministry plans to extend a strategic route to export oil through six provinces at the center and south of the country...US troops turned ancient Babylon into a military base, damaging the historical site by "digging, cutting, scraping and leveling", according to a 2009 UNESCO report. The world-famous Ishtar Gate and Processional Way were among key structures damaged, while contents of the Nebuchadnezzar and Hammurabi museums and of the Babylon Library and Archive were stolen and destroyed during the war. Now, Babil Fortress that has withstood Assyrian, Roman, Islamic and American invasions, is under threat from the new Iraqi government's desire for cheap oil exports...

May 17, 2012 -- In the week Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, he ordered bombing attacks on Yemen, killing a reported 63 people, 28 of them children. When Obama recently announced he supported same-sex marriage, American planes had not long blown 14 Afghan civilians to bits. In both cases, the mass murder was barely news. What mattered were the cynical vacuities of a political celebrity, the product of a zeitgeist driven by the forces of consumerism and the media with the aim of diverting the struggle for social and economic justice. The award of the Nobel Prize to the first black president because he "offered hope" was both absurd and an authentic expression of the lifestyle liberalism that controls much of political debate in the west. Same-sex marriage is one such distraction....

May 17, 2012 - According to the Honduran newspaper, Tiempo, as well as the Honduran human rights group, COFADEH, the agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), dressed in military uniforms, killed at least four and possibly six civilians in a raid which took place on Friday, May 11. The victims included two pregnant women and two children. The newspaper Tiempo did not pull any punches, writing that those killed "were humble and honest citizens." Apparently, the DEA agents fired from helicopter gunships upon a boat carrying civilians on the Patuca back to their community of Ahuas which itself is located in the Mosquito coast of Honduras. According to Tiempo, the DEA mistakenly fired upon the civilian boat because it was well-lit while the intended target -- a boat carrying drug traffickers -- was floating down the river without its lights on...

May 17, 2012 - All 27 foreign ministers of the European Union have strongly spoken out against Israeli demolitions in Area C of the West Bank. Since the beginning of 2011 not less than 60 EU-funded projects have been demolished while 110 others are currently at risk. Several analysts claim the Israeli authorities are specifically targeting EU-funded projects. Area C comprises about 60 percent of the West Bank and is under full Israeli military and civilian control under the Oslo Accords. The EU's focus on this area is a consequence of alarming reports that show an increase in Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes and infrastructure, including projects paid for with European taxpayer money....

May 17, 2012 - Palestinian medical sources reported Thursday that seven Palestinians were wounded when Israeli soldiers fired several artillery shells into the Al-Shujaeyya neighborhood, in Gaza. The shelling came after the army carried out two invasions in the northern and southern parts of the Gaza Strip. Adham Abu Salmiyya, spokesperson of the Medical and Emergency Services in Gaza, stated that two of the seven wounded residents suffered serious injuries; the remaining five suffered moderate wounds...

May 17, 2012 - Missile strikes by US drones claimed the lives of at least a dozen civilians in Yemen's southern Abyan province Tuesday, as Washington escalated its military intervention in the impoverished Arab country. The attack took place in the town of Ja'ar, which together with the provincial capital of Zinjibar and several other towns was seized by Islamist insurgents during the protracted popular uprising against the US-backed regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was forced to relinquish his post last February. Saleh's former vice president and successor, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, has aligned himself even more closely with Washington, taking his orders from the US embassy and American special operations "advisers" who have been sent back into the country after being withdrawn during the recent popular upheavals...

May 16, 2012 - The number of martyrs in Syria has gone up to 40 thus far, including a child and 21 martyrs during the Shammas Massacre in Homs last night. In addition, 26 martyrs were reported in Homs,5 in the Damascus Suburbs, 4 in Daraa, 3 in Idib,1 in Hama and 1 in Deir Ezzor...Daraa: The number of wounded and martyrs has risen after an ambulance was targeted by the security forces gunfire and other ambulance cars and doctors were prevented from aiding them....Damascus Suburbs: Kesweh: The UN Observers came to the city for a brief period, no longer than 5 minutes, to visit one street. They did not leave their vehicles, nor speak with any residents...

May 16, 2012 - Yesterday Palestinians all over the world marked Nakba-day, which commemorates the forced exodus of hundreds of thousands of their kin after the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948. It is a day when Palestinians remember the fatal events 64 years ago and remind each other that they will not give up until Palestine is free. Together with thousands of people I took to the streets of Ramallah, joined by a group of amazing women and their children. Even my colleague and friend who is very pregnant and passed her due date defied the sun and the crowds of people to be part of this day. The children had only half a day of school which was reflected in the crowd where children, dressed in school uniforms, carrying Palestinian flags looked like they had done this a hundred times before. A little girl walked by me wearing a hair band with a piece of yellow cardboard attached that had "We will return" written on it in Arabic....

May 16, 2012 - ...While methodically mobilizing the Democratic Party's left wing to politically co-opt the movement, the Obama administration simultaneously schemed with law enforcement to "disrupt and crush the Occupy Movement." Heavily redacted documents from the Department of Homeland Security show the broad outlines of "a national campaign of spying, disruption and repression against Occupy activists."...

May 16, 2012 - Here's a small story out of Gaza, one not likely to get picked up much in the Western press but which speaks volumes about the nature of Israel's continuing control over life in Gaza, despite the 2005 withdrawal: Israel allowed on Monday the export of Palestinian-made clothes from the Gaza Strip for the first time in at least five years, a Palestinian official said. Raed Fattouh, who coordinates supplies into Gaza, said a truck carrying 2,000 pieces of mainly woolen garments were exported through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing towards an Israeli seaport en route to Britain...

May 6, 2012 - British-Danish security firm G4S has been severely criticized for its operations in the occupied Palestinian territories and in prisons and detention centers in Israel, including those housing children and "administrative detainees" held without charge or trial. On 17 April Palestinian organizations called for action against G4S for its role in Israeli prisons where Palestinian political prisoners from the occupied territories are held in contravention of international law...

May 6, 2012 - This month saw a 7 percent increase in the number of children prosecuted in the Israeli military courts and imprisoned. This is the fourth consecutive month in which a rise in the number of children in detention has been recorded. There has been a 63 percent increase in the number of children held in military detention since December 2011. This month also saw a 7 percent increase in the number of young children (12-15 years) being detained...