Winter Patriot Community Blog

March 5, 2012 - The explosion of national anger in Afghanistan after the revelation that U.S. soldiers dumped and burned copies of the Quran in an incineration pit has an uncanny familiarity with the history of previous foreign occupations of the country. Despite ceaseless official media campaign through the decade of U.S.-led war to convince us how well things were going for NATO, the battle for the hearts and minds in Afghanistan has not been won. Dozens of Afghans have been killed in violent demonstrations across the country. Relations between foreign forces and civilians on one hand, and the Afghan population on the other, have sunk to a new low...

March 5, 2012 - A Palestinian student was in critical condition on Monday after being hit in the head by a tear gas canister when Israeli troops attacked a protest near Ramallah, medics said. Medics at Ramallah's main hospital confirmed that 20-year-old Mohammed Abu Awad was in intensive care after an Israeli soldier shot a tear gas canister at his head. Palestinian security sources said the student had been injured as Israeli troops attacked a peaceful rally in support of a hunger-striking female prisoner near the Atara checkpoint, five kilometers north of Ramallah....

March 4, 2012 - Barack Obama has admonished Israel for "too much loose talk of war" with Iran and said the world has a responsibility to give sanctions an opportunity to discourage Tehran from pursuing a nuclear weapon. Speaking ahead of a meeting on Monday with the Israel prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, Obama sought to head off pressure for him to commit to military action against Tehran if it crosses specified "red lines" in its nuclear programme....

March 4, 2012 - US Attorney General Eric Holder is prepared to deliver a major policy speech at Northwestern University on Monday afternoon, explaining for the first time his Justice Department's rationale related to the President's putative power to order the assassination of American citizens without judicial oversight. The explanation has long been speculated at by legal experts and civil rights activists, as the Obama Administration is known to have a "kill list" and has assassinated multiple American citizens inside Yemen without providing any charges against them beforehand....

March 4, 2012 - US Attorney General Eric Holder is prepared to deliver a major policy speech at Northwestern University on Monday afternoon, explaining for the first time his Justice Department's rationale related to the President's putative power to order the assassination of American citizens without judicial oversight. The explanation has long been speculated at by legal experts and civil rights activists, as the Obama Administration is known to have a "kill list" and has assassinated multiple American citizens inside Yemen without providing any charges against them beforehand....

March 5, 2012 - A Palestinian student was in critical condition on Monday after being hit in the head by a tear gas canister when Israeli troops attacked a protest near Ramallah, medics said. Medics at Ramallah's main hospital confirmed that 20-year-old Mohammed Abu Awad was in intensive care after an Israeli soldier shot a tear gas canister at his head. Palestinian security sources said the student had been injured as Israeli troops attacked a peaceful rally in support of a hunger-striking female prisoner near the Atara checkpoint, five kilometers north of Ramallah....

March 5, 2012 - Amnesty International has expressed concern over the worsening health of Hana al-Shalabi, a Palestinian woman who has been on hunger strike since 16 February against her detention without charge or trial by Israeli occupation authorities. Al-Shalabi, 29, has vowed to continue her hunger strike despite an Israeli military court shortening the period of her "administrative detention" by two months. Currently detained at Hasharon prison, she previously spent more than two years in detention without charge or trial and was released in October 2011 as part of the Israel-Hamas prisoner exchange...

March 5, 2012 - Amnesty International has expressed concern over the worsening health of Hana al-Shalabi, a Palestinian woman who has been on hunger strike since 16 February against her detention without charge or trial by Israeli occupation authorities. Al-Shalabi, 29, has vowed to continue her hunger strike despite an Israeli military court shortening the period of her "administrative detention" by two months. Currently detained at Hasharon prison, she previously spent more than two years in detention without charge or trial and was released in October 2011 as part of the Israel-Hamas prisoner exchange...

March 5, 2012 - Afghanistan faces an acute problem of malnutrition and food insecurity, with children suffer from one of the highest levels of chronic malnutrition in the world, according to the latest data from the government and the World Bank. Fifty-four percent of Afghan children under five are chronically malnourished and 34 percent are underweight, says the report on Poverty and Food Security in Afghanistan: Analysis based on the National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment of 2007/08...

March 5, 2012 - Three relatives of Palestinian political detainees were arrested by Israeli soldiers on Sunday during a jail visit, the Palestinian Prisoners Society reported on Monday. According to the report, the incident took place at Rimon military detention facility. The Prisoners Society announced that troops stormed the visitors area and arrested 26 year old Daiyala Matar, and her 15 year old brother Saeed. They were visiting their brother Mohamed who is currently serving a life sentence after being detained since 2003 by the Israeli military....

March 4, 2012 - Sunday has ended with 62 martyrs fallen in Syria including 7 children, 3 women and 1 martyr who was tortured to death. The distributions are as follows: 17 martyrs in Homs (6 of whom were executed at the field in Baba Amr neighbourhood); 18 martyrs in Hama (including 13 died in the workers massacre in the area of Har Benafsah); 12 martyrs in Damascus Suburbs (including 8 who were killed in the town of Madaya); 4 martyrs in Daraa, 5 martyrs in Idlib, 2 martyrs in each of Damascus and Aleppo, and one martyr in each of Banyas and Deir Ezzor...Idlib: The regime's army gives the city one day to hand over the members of the Free Syrian Army and their weapons and cars or else the city will be stormed with tanks and heavy machinery. There are reports of 4 battalions of the regime's army being centered in the village Mastouma, ready to storm Idlib. Mastouma is the closest village to the city. The threat followed a meeting of the commanding officer with the elders of the city.

March 4, 2012 - There are so many basic things most of us take for granted....like, electricity. But in Gaza - especially these days - it's a precious commodity. Power (of the electrical kind) has been rationed to some extent ever since I started visiting Gaza in 2009. As a freelance writer, it became part of my daily routine to shift from place to place in search of a good wifi connection - although, I should note, it was never good enough to down- or upload videos easily, back-up my computer or conduct a clear Skype conversation for any length of time....

March 4, 2012 -It was on this day, February 29, 1948, that 28 British soldiers were killed as a mine exploded under the Cairo-Haifa train. Lehi, also known as Stern Gang, a Zionist terrorist group, claimed responsibility. But the Cairo-Haifa attack was only one of several acts of terrorism that Israeli Zionists employed. And the Stern Gang was just one of several terrorist organizations working to establish a Jewish-Israeli state in Palestine. Israel, then, was born on a wave of Zionist terrorism. Some the West would like to see Palestinians and Palestinian statehood quietly go away, to suffer in silence and to die in darkness. But even now as electricity is slowly being cut from the Gaza Strip, not to mention a harsh economic blockade that for years has caused immense suffering, terror comes to mind....

March 4, 2012 - Clerical Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has tightened his grip on Iran's faction-ridden politics after loyalists won over 75 percent of seats in parliamentary elections at the expense of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a near-complete count showed. The widespread defeat of Ahmadinejad supporters - including his sister, Parvin Ahmadinejad - is expected to reduce the president to a lame duck after he sowed divisions by challenging the utmost authority of Khamenei in the governing hierarchy. The outcome of Friday's vote, essentially a contest between conservative hardline factions with reformist leaders under house arrest, will have no big impact on Iranian foreign policy, notably its nuclear stand-off with the West. But it will boost Khamenei's influence in next year's presidential election....

March 04, 2012 - A day after reducing the sentence of Palestinian political prisoner Hana Shalabi from six months to four months, Israeli authorities denied a request by the Palestinian Prisoner support group Addameer demanding that the arresting officer and two others accused of torturing Shalabi be forced to testify. Sunday marks the 17th day of Shalabi's open-ended hunger strike, which she vowed to continue despite the reduction in her sentence. On 23 February, Shalabi's 65-year old mother and 67-year old father joined her hunger strike in solidarity....

March 4, 2012 -- The leader of the business community in the Gaza Strip warned on Sunday that dozens of factories are at risk of closure due to Gaza's fuel crisis. Ali al-Hayik, the head of Gaza's Federation of Industries and the Palestinian Businessmen Association, called on the Hamas-led government to provide fuel to factories to avert an impending catastrophe for local industry. The government must take responsibility for the crisis and is tasked with supporting the private sector, al-Hayik said in a press statement...

March 4, 2012 - Holtzman's new book, coauthored with Cynthia Cooper, is called "Cheating Justice: How Bush and Cheney Attacked the Rule of Law and Plotted to Avoid Prosecution -- and What We Can Do About It."... I don't think it's an unfair criticism to object that a book has left out a large but intimately related topic, one that apears to have been carefully avoided. Partisan prosecution of crimes and non-crimes by Republicans under President Clinton has been aggravated by Republican defensiveness and Democratic spinelessness under Bush. But it is the Democratic switch to defending all presidential wrongdoing since 2008 that has put the largest nails into the coffin of legitimate rule by law in this country. Bush's crimes have been legitimized. Obama has claimed the power to torture as he deems necessary, the power to imprison and rendition as he sees fit, the power to murder any human being including U.S. citizens and children as he and he alone declares necessary, and powers of state secrecy that Nixon and Cheney never dreamed of. While Bush lied the Congress into a war that a reasonably intelligent 8 year old could have seen through, Obama has made the launching of wars a matter for the president alone. And that's just fine with Democrats...

March 4, 2012 - The arrest of Hana 'Shalabi, by the Zionist army two weeks ago,without proof that a criminal act has actually been committed,raises the urgent question of protection of prisoners released during the exchange operation last October, which managed to free 1,054 prisoners in exchange for the Zionist soldier Gilad Shalit, captured by the Palestinian resistance on June 25 2006, in his chariot inside the borders of Gaza... Hana 'Shalabi is not the only political prisoner to be thrown back in jail after being released. During the previous months, three other political prisoners released during the prisoners swap were arrested in the region of al-Khalil - without proof that a criminal act has actually been committed....

March 4, 2012 - Last week's lifting of a travel ban on a handful of US nationals accused of carrying out unlicensed NGO activities - and their subsequent departure from the country - triggered sharp reactions from parliamentarians on Sunday. A large number of members of the People's Assembly - the lower house of Egypt's parliament - used scheduled meetings of parliamentary committees to vent their anger at the lifting of the travel ban and for what they called "the double standards" inherent in US policy...