Winter Patriot Community Blog

May 6, 2012 -- A human rights group has submitted an appeal to Israel's courts to allow doctors to visit hunger-striking prisoner Bilal Diab. Physicians for Human Rights submitted an appeal based on the recommendation of Ahmad Tibi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset. "After 68 days on hunger strike, Bilal Diab's medical condition has become serious and he must be checked by a doctor from outside the prison service," a statement from the group said...

May 6, 2012 - Professor Muhammad Taqa, Prominent Dean* of Baghdad College of Economical Sciences, was arrested last Wednesday (at 4 pm) by security forces from the Almaliky office. Dr. Taqa is a well-known Professor of Economy in Iraq. He is the dean of Baghdad College for Economical Sciences since 1996. He published about 50 research reports and 6 books on International Economy and Globalization. As a responsible educator he kept his college students attending classes during the Arabic Month of Muharam, while other colleges and university students and faculty members went out in Sectarian Marathons in the streets, weeping and crying the death of prophet Mohammad's grandson, Al Hussein 1400 years ago!! As ordered by high education minister Ali Al-deeb. As an expert, Prof Taqa was invited to the Iraqi Parliament cessions. He criticized the Maliky government's economic policies and the authoritarian government of Iraq. A good reason to be arrested for....

May 7, 2012 - A mother and her five children were among 20 civilians killed in two separate airstrikes in the southern Helmand and northwestern Badghis provinces, officials said on Monday. The first incident took place late on Friday when an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) helicopter missed its target and dropped bombs on a house in the Fatih Mohammad Pech area of Sangin district in Helmand, the governor's spokesman said. Daud Ahmadi told Pajhwok Afghan News instead of striking a militant hideout, the foreign forces killed a mother, her three daughters and two sons...

May 6, 2012 - The director of the "Yusuf Assedik" Foundation, Firas Amri, said in a press release that 40 captives from the Palestinians inside the green line have taken part in the open hunger strike since its start on Palestinian Prisoners' Day on 17 April, including 20 prisoners in Gilboa prison, and 20 others in Nafha prison. The Palestinian human rights activist affirmed that the supportive activities in 1948-occupied Palestine for the prisoners in the occupation jails will continue mentioning several events organized by 1948-Palestinians in solidarity with prisoners....

May 6, 2012 -- The Gaza government's health ministry on Sunday warned of a "humanitarian catastrophe" resulting from an impending collapse of the health system as stocks of medicine in the Israeli-blockaded territory continued to decline sharply. "Gaza hospitals are suffering from a huge crisis as 186 items of medications had run out totally from the ministry's warehouses and that large types of medicines will also be depleted in the next three months, said Director of the General Administration for Pharmaceuticals, Munir Al-Barsh. He said that some hospital wards had run the risk of closure due to the severe shortage of medicines and medical supplies, but stressed that service at the wards would continue even at a minimum....

May 6, 2012 - The amazing global effort to end poverty and militarism! An inspiring presentation by Food Not Bombs co-founder Keith McHenry. Most people would elect to end hunger and poverty but many of the people running for office have another agenda, cutting social services while transferring our tax dollars to wealthy military contractors and their corporate friends. While elected officials cut social services like unemployment insurance, food stamps, education, health care and other basic necessities they pass laws against the poor and evict the occupations seeking to defend the 99%. Food Not Bombs volunteers face arrest for sharing meals in public in cities all over the United States. The heavy police state repression of our constitutional rights to protest and seek a peaceful future will not stop us. Food Not Bombs has worked for 32 years to end the policies of NATO, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and other exploitive institutions...

May 6, 2012 - On Friday, 4th May, Israel's channel 2 revealed that Israeli occupation army appointed Lt. Col. Eisner, who attacked a Danish ISM activist in the face with his rifle at the end of the confrontation on April 14, as a deputy commander of the Tactical Training Center in Tze'elim. In his new position, Eisner will be responsible for training battalions of infantry and armor in battlefield simulations. A Hebrew-language newspaper reported that through a private conversation taped by a third part and was broadcasted on Channel 10, Israeli officers and students from the military school supported Eisner....

May 6, 2012 - Courage comes in many forms. Perhaps none stand out more than willingness to die for justice. An estimated 2,500 Palestinian detainees began open-ended hunger strikes on April 17 - Palestine Prisoners Day. Others haven't eaten much longer. Some are perilously close to death. On May 5, Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahleh refused food for the 68th day. A previous article described their grave condition. Six others are also imperiled....

May 6, 2012 - Palestinian political prisoners illegally held in Israeli jails are on hunger strike and some are near death. The population of strikers includes 200 child prisoners, 27 Palestinian legislative council members, and 456 prisoners from Gaza who have not been allowed family visits since 2007 . Meanwhile, colonization continued a relentless pace. Ramzy Baroud and Jeff Halper argue that Israel is "fixing" the outcome and is an "end-game" scenario to take over most of the West Bank and leave us in small cantons . Yet, judging from my research into the carefully planned Zionist project, such plans are not end games but mileposts to give the Zionists time to consolidate gains in preparation for the next round of expansion in precisely the way Ben Gurion described it to his son in 1937...

May 6, 2012 - In 2004, Fallujah, Iraq became the theater of major violence. But even though the sounds of this harsh battle have died down a long time ago the consequences are only showing now. And they are of the toxic kind. Babies are born with malformations, kids are affected with leukemia, and cancer has multiplied. The situation reminds one of 1945 post atomic Hiroshima. Meanwhile, in the USA, the marines who took part in the battle are developing strange diseases. What really happened in Fallujah? Which weapons were used? White phosphorus? Depleted uranium? Has a generation of Iraqis been sacrificed?...

May 6, 2012 - The Taliban is stronger now than before President Barack Obama ordered a surge of troops to Afghanistan, two senior U.S. lawmakers said on Sunday, contradicting the administration's assessment of the insurgency. "I think we both say that what we found is the Taliban is stronger," Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein told "Fox News Sunday" in an interview that included House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, who agreed with her statement. The two lawmakers returned last week from a trip to Afghanistan....

May 6, 2012 - Sectarian strife is a distinctive American industry. Its awakening began in our fellow nation Iraq where it was used as an impure instrument to weaken the resistance after attacking Iraq's unity. This instrument was intended to control the explosive situation that was developing in the face of a divisionary occupation. It did, indeed, awaken strife and ignited a struggle between the Sunni and Shiite communities. Systematic and planned attacks on both sides, which did not spare residential areas, has led to the possibility of a civil war - a possibility that continues to threaten the unity of this brother nation by reducing it to a series of competing rival states. The American occupation laid the foundation for such strife and assured both its continuity and its sustainability through L. Paul Bremer's constitution. His constitution destroyed the unity of Iraq and its people by establishing an entity based on confederation, doctrinarian attitudes and sectarian quotas....

May 6, 2012 - Although President Obama's top counter-terrorism adviser says caution is exercised when making drone attacks, official U.S. announcements often state that suspects are killed. This very word betrays the fact that every drone attack is a crime because it is illegal in any civilized society to kill suspects. The Pentagon and CIA killings are murder, pure and simple. (Only last week, Washington announced it killed four "suspected militants" by drone attack in Pakistan, resulting in a formal protest from Islamabad "strongly condemning" the killings. "Such attacks are in total contravention of international law and established norms of interstate relations," the Pakistan statement underscored.)...

May 6, 2012 - WHILE Pakistan has strongly condemned the US drone attack in North Waziristan on Saturday killing more than ten persons, the US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta in an interview said the strikes would continue even if Islamabad keeps opposing them. This is a true reflection of the imperialistic arrogance of the defence chief of the super power having no regard for the sovereignty and honour of an ally in the war on terror. The drone strike was the second since parliament approved a list of recommendations that included a call for an immediate end to the drone attacks causing collateral damage and violating Pakistan's sovereignty...

May 6, 2012 - -Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahleh are at risk of death as they enter their 69th day of hunger strike in protest of their administrative detention. In spite of their rapidly deteriorating health, the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) is still denying regular access to them by independent Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-Israel)-Addameer and PHR-Israel are outraged by the blatant breach of medical ethics committed by the IPS in regards to these most urgent cases and by the negligence of the Israeli High Court judges who have yet to make a decision regarding their petition. After continual denial of access to Bilal Diab and news of his further deterioration, PHR-Israel submitted an urgent appeal to the District Court yesterday, 5 May, demanding that the IPS allow a PHR-Israel doctor to visit him, and for his family to visit him immediately....

May 6, 2012 - Two firebombs were thrown at the Tel Aviv home of African residents on Saturday night, Israeli daily Haaretz reported. It is the second such attack of its kind in the last two weeks targeting African residents in south Tel Aviv. In late April, firebombs were thrown at a kindergarten and apartments used by the African community. A 20-year-old Israeli resident of the neighborhood was questioned by police about the attacks and a protest took place a day later in the Shapira area to express solidarity with African asylum seekers...

May 5, 2012- The number of martys in Syria has risen to 27 thus far today. 9 martys were reported in Aleppo, 8 in Barzeh in Damascus, 7 in Homs, 3 in Idlib, and 1 in Daraa... Damascus: Barzeh: Eight martyrs fell after the violent shelling on Barzeh Orchards...Homs: Ghanto: The number of martyrs who fell from bombing the city has risen to 5. They are: Sam Mobarak, Hesham Mobarak, Hamzeh Al-Easa, Zakaria Al-Raes, and Ahmad Jokhdar...

May 5, 2012 - The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal will be hearing the second charge of Crime of Torture and War Crimes against former U.S. President George W. Bush and his associates namely Richard Cheney, former U.S. Vice President, Donald Rumsfeld, former Defence Secretary, Alberto Gonzales, then Counsel to President Bush, David Addington, then General Counsel to the Vice-President, William Haynes II, then General Counsel to Secretary of Defense, Jay Bybee, then Assistant Attorney General, and John Choon Yoo, former Deputy Assistant Attorney-General. The charge reads as follows: The Accused persons had committed the Crime of Torture and War Crimes, in that: The Accused persons had wilfully participated in the formulation of executive orders and directives to exclude the applicability of all international conventions and laws, namely the Convention against Torture 1984, Geneva Convention III 1949, Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Charter in relation to the war launched by the U.S. and others in Afghanistan (in 2001) and in Iraq (in March 2003)....

May 5, 2012 - It was once known as Iraq's City of Mosques. But today Fallujah is known as a place where large numbers of children are born with deformities and many people there die from rare cancers. Now, new reports have linked the causes to depleted uranium munitions and white phosphorous shells that were used by U.S. forces during the brutal siege of the city in November 2004. There was an abortive siege of Fallujah in April 2004 following the public abduction and murder of four American mercenaries by a mob. But the ferocious November siege in that year stands out as a war crime for which the Bush administration should be held accountable....

May 5, 2012 - He clicked his prayer beads shoving a heavy breath out of two enormous nostrils that, I imagined, tumbled over a thick mustache before joining the air. In fact, it looked more like a broom than a mustache. His voice was cluttered and laden with years. He is seventy one. I almost closed my eyes, taking in as much aura as my lungs allowed. It was a mixture of baked cookies, stench, and coffee. A young woman sneaked out of a clay-and-cement shack holding a tray of coffee close to her chest. She bent down and placed it on a plastic table in the middle of a circle of which I, Hajj Othman, a friend of mine and her father formed the contour....