Winter Patriot Community Blog

May 4, 2012 - The National United Front, opposing foreign military bases in Afghanistan, on Friday denounced the Strategic Partnership Agreement with the United States as imperialistic. "History won't forgive supporters of this imperialistic pact. They will be condemned by Afghanistan's present and future generations," a statement from the party said. It asked parliamentarians to stake out a clear position on the agreement that would pave the way for a long-term presence of US forces in Afghanistan. The presence of foreign troops meant continued war in the country and scuttling the Afghan-led recociliation process, the statement added...

May 4, 2012 - Given the contrasting reactions of Western leaders to the case of the former Ukrainian prime minister and that of the Palestinians in Israeli jails, one may think that the latter are from a different planet. In Ukraine, a single politician, Yulia Tymoshenko, has gone on hunger strike in protest against her ill-treatment; leading politicians and the media across the West to scream in righteous indignation. In their worthy efforts to end her ordeal, a growing number of EU officials are considering a boycott of the Euro 2012 football championships due to begin in Kiev next month. This is all well and good. It may be that the outrage is based on damning evidence that Mrs Tymoshenko has been maltreated for political reasons. In Palestine, meanwhile, more than 1,700 prisoners have entered their third week of hunger strike in protest against their degrading and inhuman treatment at the hands of their Israeli jailers. There hasn't been a whimper of protest from Berlin, London or Paris. Is the silence due to ignorance? Definitely not....

May 4, 2012 - According to a new scientific study there is "a strong correlation of birth defects newborns and parent's exposure to attacks with white phosphorus": at the registation at birth 27% of parents with birth defect children declared exposure to white phosphorus while only 1.7% of parents with normal children made the same declaration. The report entitled "Birth Defects in Gaza: Prevalence, Types, Familiarity and Correlation with Environmental Factors", published today by International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, was carried out by a team of Palestinian and Italian researchers at the Al Shifa hospital, where 28% of total births in Gaza Strip occur...

May 4, 2012 - ....John Brennan claimed that the drone strikes are legal under the 2001 authorization of military force, but as law scholar Bruce Ackerman has noted, that Congressional resolution authorized force against those responsible for the September 11 attacks and those who harbored them, not against unknown people in Yemen whose reported behavior fits a "profile" of suspected terrorist activity. On Monday, Brennan acknowledged that U.S. drone strikes have killed innocent civilians. But Brennan claimed civilian deaths have been "exceedingly rare." This raises the question of what Brennan's notion of "exceedingly rare" is. The New America Foundation has estimated that the "non-military fatality rate" of drone strikes is 13%. Is something that happens 13% of the time "exceedingly rare"? About 14% of days are Sundays. Are Sundays "exceedingly rare"?...

May 1, 2012 - According to data that the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) provided to Adalah in a letter on 28 February 2012, there were 19,561 prisoners in detention facilities managed by the IPS, 4,631 of them were classified as "security prisoners." 4,275 of the security prisoners were Palestinians who are living in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza, 340 are Palestinians citizens of Israeli, two were from the Golan Heights, and fourteen were Jewish security prisoners. From the Palestinian prisoners classified as security prisoners who are from the West Bank and Gaza, 533 have life sentences. According to data and reports provided by human rights organizations, Israel holds about 320 Palestinians from the West Bank in administrative detention according to Adameer. In prisons under the responsibility of IPS, 1,355 Palestinian prisoners who were convicted for illegal presence in Israel are classified as security prisoners...

May 1, 2012 - Although US officials declare that the number of civilians reported by independent sources as having been killed in Pakistan by Obama's drone missiles is "much too high", they don't say what their own assessed figure might be. They claim that only "several dozen" have died. And the President of the United States says that several dozen is not a 'huge number' of dead innocents. Either these people don't know the figures or they don't care about them. What's five dozen dead kids, after all? Are they important? Of course not. So tap the mouse, flick the switch, hit the keys, because it's all in the best interests of "compressing the kill chain" that the soaring drones roam and reap their harvest in blood. And get this, and get it good - all these missile strikes that kill people are against "militant suspects." Got it? - "I suspect you are a militant, therefore I am going to kill you."...

May 1, 2012 - Although US officials declare that the number of civilians reported by independent sources as having been killed in Pakistan by Obama's drone missiles is "much too high", they don't say what their own assessed figure might be. They claim that only "several dozen" have died. And the President of the United States says that several dozen is not a 'huge number' of dead innocents. Either these people don't know the figures or they don't care about them. What's five dozen dead kids, after all? Are they important? Of course not. So tap the mouse, flick the switch, hit the keys, because it's all in the best interests of "compressing the kill chain" that the soaring drones roam and reap their harvest in blood. And get this, and get it good - all these missile strikes that kill people are against "militant suspects." Got it? - "I suspect you are a militant, therefore I am going to kill you."...

May 2, 2012 - Ambassador Michael Oren insists that in all the Middle East, Christians have it the best in Israel, but a history of dispossession paints a more complex picture. The writer asserts Palestinian Christians are emigrating due to Israel's discriminatory policies, and calls attention to upcoming resolutions by churches in the United States to divest from Israeli companies that profit from the occupation...

May 2, 2012 -- Israeli forces bombed an open area in the northern Gaza Strip at dawn Wednesday, with no injuries reported. Later Wednesday morning, Israeli military vehicles entered a border area in southern Gaza, and locals reported the sound of heavy gunfire. An 200-square-meter area near the border was leveled by 15 Israeli military vehicles, near Khuzaa village east of Khan Younis, eyewitnesses said...

May 2, 2012 - At least eleven people died and dozens were injured when plain clothed men, attacked protesters camping outside the ministry of defense in Abbasiya, Cairo, early Wednesday morning. Official sources in ministry of interior have informed Reuters that the death toll in the Abassiya clashes has increased to 11 while there are 49 injured officially documented on Wednesday. Unconfirmed reports coming from the field hospitals in the area speaks about a death toll that reached up to 20 and over 60 injured....

May 1, 2012 - Tuesday ended with the fall of 45 martyrs slaughtered by the regime's forces, including an entire family and defected soldiers. The distributions are as follows; 18 in the regime's massacre in Idlib, 8 in Hama, 8 in Homs, 4 in Deir Ezzor, 3 in Damascus Suburbs (Dumair, Harasta, and Qatna), 2 in Daraa, 2 in Aleppo and 1 in Raqqa...Idlib: The local Coordination Committees document 141 martyrs ,including 9 children and many wounded as well as several destroyed homes were the outcome of the regime's army's operations in the province since the entry of the UN observers to Syria under the Syrian regime's consent to a cease-fire and withdrawal of the military appearance from cities. The UN observers entered Idlib city last week for the first time. Several areas have witnessed violent shelling and continuous gunfire, accompanied by raid and arrest of activists campaigns since the UN observers arrival...

May 1, 2012 - Much has been written on Israeli policies seizing Palestinian land and building illegal 'Jewish only' colonies in the West Bank. However the discrimination against the original natives, the non-Jewish Israeli citizens, has gone unnoticed for 64 years. The creation of Israel in May 1948 on the land of Palestine resulted in the expulsion of roughly 85 per cent of the indigenous and the annexation of 92 per cent of their land. Nearly 150,000 Palestinians remained in what later became Israel....

May 1, 2012 - The conviction of Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, is said to have sent an unequivocal message to current leaders: that great office confers no immunity. In fact it sent two messages: if you run a small, weak nation, you may be subject to the full force of international law. If you run a powerful nation, you have nothing to fear. While anyone with an interest in human rights should welcome the verdict, it reminds us that no one has faced legal consequences for launching the illegal war against Iraq. This fits the Nuremberg Tribunal's definition of a "crime of aggression", which it called "the supreme international crime". The charges on which, in an impartial system, George Bush, Tony Blair and their associates should have been investigated are far graver than those for which Taylor was found guilty....

May 1, 2012 - This past weekend in our politics, it was look-how-far-over-to-the-dark-side-we've-crawled time. Just as the various celebrity journalists, celebrity politicians, and celebrity celebrities were about done yucking it up at the White House Correspondents Dinner - and can I just say, for the record, that this is the biggest circle-jerk for the largest circle of jerks that there ever has been, like Guinness-level? - we had an unrepentent torturer shilling for his new book, baring his fangs on 60 Minutes and daring someone to throw him into the clink at The Hague, and another drone strike on behalf of the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. If there is one thing that would possibly get me to vote for Buddy Roemer and/or the Hemp Party, it would be the dozens of ways, tacit and otherwise, that this administration made peace with the savagery of the previous one, and then proceeded to find ways to be savage itself that seem more capable of stroking the liberal-hawk G-spots....

May 1, 2012 - Sitting in the warm Spring sun, 72-year-old Um Jawad Shalloul chatted with family members and neighbors in her new home, built on the site of a former Israeli settlement near Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. "We are nine family members here and we all were displaced from our original home in the Khan Younis refugee camp in 2004, when an Israeli army bulldozer knocked it down during the second intifada," Shalloul told The Electronic Intifada, adding, "I had some health complications in the past years of displacement due to the hard life me and my family have endured."...

May 1, 2012 - In the wake of Osama bin Laden's summary execution one year ago, many predicted that the War on Terror would finally begin to recede. Here's what has happened since then: *With large bipartisan majorities, Congress renewed the once-controversial Patriot Act without a single reform, and it was signed into law by President Obama; Harry Reid accused those urging reforms of putting the country at risk of a Terrorist attack. * For the first time, perhaps ever, a U.S. citizen was assassinated by the CIA, on orders from the President, without a shred of due process and far from any battlefield; two weeks later, his 16-year-old American son was also killed by his own government; the U.S. Attorney General then gave a speech claiming the President has the power to target U.S. citizens for death based on unproven, secret accusations of Terrorism. * With large bipartisan majorities, Congress enacted, and the President signed, a new law codifying presidential powers of worldwide indefinite detention and an expanded statutory defintion of the War on Terror...

May 1, 2012 - Israeli forces on Tuesday demolished farm buildings near Hebron in the southern West Bank, witnesses said. Israeli army vehicles and bulldozers demolished two stables, measuring 750 square meters and 400 square meters, as well as a poultry barn and two sheds, locals told Ma'an. The structures belonged to Iyad Muhammad Rajabi, his brother Imad and their cousins Sharif and Mahmoud....

May 1, 2012 - Washington ended a month-long pause in its campaign of drone attacks in Pakistan's tribal areas Sunday, killing four "suspected militants" in North Waziristan and provoking a formal protest from the government in Islamabad. The strike by the remotely piloted aircraft on Miranshah, the capital of North Waziristan, part of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, expressed Washington's unconcealed contempt for the Pakistani government, which had publicly conditioned a resumption of its full collaboration in the so-called AfPak war on a halt to the drone attacks...

May 1, 2012 - On April 26, the House passed HR 3523: Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) of 2011 248 - 168. A companion S. 2105: Cybersecurity Act of 2012 awaits Senate consideration. Obama promised a veto if passes. He lied. He does it repeatedly. The Senate will pass or defeat what he wants. More than likely, it'll make cosmetic changes agreed to by House/Senate negotiators. Either that or they'll draft a new bill, under a new name, little different from CISPA to matter. Last year, Obama promised to veto the draconian FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. It authorizes detaining US citizens indefinitely without charge or trial based solely on suspicions, baseless allegations or none at all....