Apple Rejects App That Tracks U.S. Drone Strikes

Wired
Chris Bonnington

It seemed like a simple enough idea for an iPhone app: Send users a pop-up notice whenever a flying robots kills someone in one of America’s many undeclared wars. But Apple keeps blocking the Drones+ program from its App Store — and therefore, from iPhones everywhere. The Cupertino company says the content is “objectionable and crude,” according to Apple’s latest rejection letter.

It’s the third time in a month that Apple has turned Drones+ away, says Josh Begley, the program’s New York-based developer. The company’s reasons for keeping the program out of the App Store keep shifting. First, Apple called the bare-bones application that aggregates news of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia “not useful.” Then there was an issue with hiding a corporate logo. And now, there’s this crude content problem.

Begley is confused. Drones+ doesn’t present grisly images of corpses left in the aftermath of the strikes. It just tells users when a strike has occurred, going off a publicly available database of strikes compiled by the U.K.’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which compiles media accounts of the strikes.

iOS developers have a strict set of guidelines that must be adhered to in order to gain acceptance into the App Store. Apps are judged on technical, content and design criteria. As Apple does not comment on the app reviews process, it can be difficult to ascertain exactly why an app got rejected. But Apple’s team of reviewers is small, sifts through up to 10,000 apps a week, and necessarily errs on the side of caution when it comes to potentially questionable apps.

Apple’s original objections to Drones+ regarded the functionality in Begley’s app, not its content. Now he’s wondering if it’s worth redesigning and submitting it a fourth time.

“If the content is found to be objectionable, and it’s literally just an aggregation of news, I don’t know how to change that,” Begley says.

Begley’s app is unlikely to be the nextAngry Birds or Draw Something. It’s deliberately threadbare. When a drone strike occurs, Drones+ catalogs it, and presents a map of the area where the strike took place, marked by a pushpin. You can click through to media reports of a given strike that the Bureau of Investigative Reporting compiles, as well as some basic facts about whom the media thinks the strike targeted. As the demo video above shows, that’s about it.

It works best, Begley thinks, when users enable push notifications for Drones+. “I wanted to play with this idea of push notifications and push button technology — essentially asking a question about what we choose to get notified about in real time,” he says. “I thought reaching into the pockets of U.S. smartphone users and annoying them into drone-consciousness could be an interesting way to surface the conversation a bit more.”

But that conversation may not end up occurring. Begley, a student at Clay Shirky’s lab at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, submitted a threadbare version of Drones+ to Apple in July. About two weeks later, on July 23, Apple told him was just too blah. “The features and/or content of your app were not useful or entertaining enough,” read an e-mail from Apple Begley shared with Wired, “or your app did not appeal to a broad enough audience.”

Finally, on Aug. 27, Apple gave him yet another thumbs down. But this time the company’s reasons were different from the fairly clear-cut functionality concerns it previously cited. “We found that your app contains content that many audiences would find objectionable, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines,” the company e-mailed him.

It was the first time the App Store told him that his content was the real problem, even though the content hadn’t changed much from Begley’s initial July submission. It’s a curious choice: The App Store carries remote-control apps for a drone quadricopter, although not one actually being used in a war zone. And of course, the App Store houses innumerable applications for news publications and aggregators that deliver much of the same content provided by Begley’s app.

Wired reached out to Apple on the perplexing rejection of the app, but Apple was unable to comment.

Begley is about at his wits end over the iOS version of Drones+. “I’m kind of back at the drawing board about what exactly I’m supposed to do,” Begley said. The basic idea was to see if he could get App Store denizens a bit more interested in the U.S.’ secretive, robotic wars, with information on those wars popping up on their phones the same way an Instagram comment or retweet might. Instead, Begley’s thinking about whether he’d have a better shot making the same point in the Android Market.

Palestinians pressured not to seek international probe into Arafat's death

Sign of the Times

The Palestinians' efforts to launch an international probe into the 2004 death of ex-leader Yasser Arafat face serious obstacles, a Palestinian official said Tuesday.

The obstacles stem from the opposition by some countries including the United States and France, the official said on condition of anonymity.

The United States has put pressure on the Palestinian leadership not to seek such an investigation because it can lead to some negative consequences on the Middle East peace process, which has been stalled since 2010, according to the official.

The amount of pressure mounted on the Palestinian leaders might foil their efforts to stage an international probe into Arafat's death, the official added.

The debate about ex-leader's death renewed last week after Arab satellite channel al-Jazeera aired an investigative report indicating that Arafat was poisoned with toxic radioactive polonium.

Arafat died three weeks after arriving at a French hospital near Paris in November 2004. No conclusive reason was given for his death. Before airlifted to France, Arafat had been ill for more than two years, confined by Israel in his West Bank headquarters.

On Monday, the Palestinian leadership asked Swiss scientists to come to the West Bank and take samples of Arafat's remains for additional tests.

The experts are from the Lausanne-based Institute of Radiation Physics, which al-Jazeera hired for testing Arafat's personal belongings.

Following al-Jazeera's report, the Palestinian leaders said they have no problem exhuming Arafat's body from his West Bank grave if his family requests more tests to be done on his remains.

Netanyahu Government On Lockdown As Chance to Attack Iran's Nuclear Facilities Is Running Out Fast

Business Insider

The mood in Jerusalem is hardening as Israel is running out of time to decide whether or not to launch an attack on Iran's nuclear sites, reports Michael Stott of Reuters.

Despite heavy international pressure, Iran continues to enrich uranium for what it says are peaceful purposes while Israel and the West worry that Tehran is trying to build a nuclear weapon.

Experts told Reuters that most of Iran's nuclear program — which Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu considers an existential threat to the state of Israel — will be buried deep underground within a few months, thereby making a strike even riskier and more difficult than it already is.

Consequently, Netanyahu's government is on lockdown — recent public pronouncements are no longer warning of a strike but instead are reiterating President Barack Obama's position that diplomatic pressure and economic sanctions should be given time to work.

But Netanyahu has also been making moves to consolidate power: last week he reached a deal to join forces with the opposition Kadima party and its Iranian-born leader Gen. Shaul Mofaz, which gives the coalition 94 out of 120 in the Knesset (i.e. Israel's house of representatives).

The move concerns American officials who were expecting Israeli elections in September because now there is little to stop Netanyahu from ordering an attack.

‘West doesn’t care what Bahrain does to its people’

Russia Today



Demonstrators run through a cloud of tear gas fired by police during a protest in the village of Diraz, west of Manama April 21, 2012

The pro-democracy protests in Bahrain have been going on for more than a year now but the West will keep on turning a blind eye to human rights in the country as long as it acts in accordance with US interests, says journalist Patrick Henningsen.

Some 7,000 marched on Saturday calling for democratic reforms while denouncing this year’s Bahrain Formula One Grand Prix. They say the event glorifies the repressive Sunni government, which has been cracking down on the massive protests by the Shia majority for the past year.

Police fired dozens of rounds of tear gas in the village of Diraz outside the capital Manama on Saturday evening to keep anti-government demonstrators away from a main road on the eve of the global sporting event.

One demonstrator was found shot dead after overnight clashes with security forces, adding fuel to the fire of the protesters’ outrage.

The government has spent US$ 40 million on hosting the Grand Prix and is refusing to cancel the event, hoping to demonstrate that the country is back to normal after the unrest of the Arab Spring.

But the Bahraini people disagree with their government. Opposition activist Sayed Ahmed says the people think the race is “racing on our blood.”

Fukushima Updated: What They Won’t Tell You

Larry Flynt
Karl Grossman

The “whole world” is being “exposed to the radiation from Fukushima,” explains nuclear physicist Dr. Michio Kaku, professor of physics at the City University of New York. The still-ongoing catastrophe at the sixreactor Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan has caused radioactivity to be “circulating around the entire Earth.”

Major health impacts can be expected in Japan, of course, but also wherever the Fukushima radioactivity has fallen or will fall, including in the United States, say toxicologist Janette D. Sherman, M.D., and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano of the Radiation and Public Health Project. Already, they’ve discovered that infant mortality in parts of the United States has increased substantially as a result of Fukushima fallout.

Dr. Sherman and Mangano cross-checked data on infant mortality from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with records of fallout from the EPA and found that infant mortality had spiked by an average of 35% in eight cities west of the Rocky Mountains and by 48% in Philadelphia during a tenweek span immediately following the March 11, 2011, Fukushima accident. While Philadelphia and cities in Washington (Seattle), Oregon (Portland), Idaho (Boise) and northern California (Sacramento, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, San Jose and Berkeley) reported drastic increases, infant mortality nationwide in this period rose 2.3%. Infant mortality—defined as the death of children from birth to one year old—is considered an early measure of radiation effects because there is rapid growth and cell division at this stage, increasing the impacts of radioactivity.

Cancer is a consequence of radiation that often takes years to manifest. “A global increase in cancer can be expected from the Fukushima discharges,” Dr. Sherman predicts. The radioactive iodine released will produce thyroid cancer, she notes, and “thyroid irregularities” have already been found in children evacuated from the Fukushima area. Cesium-137—another poison discharged in large quantities from Fukushima—will cause cancer in “soft tissues in the body, notably the breast tissue and the pancreas.” And strontium-90, yet another poison released in large amounts, “goes to the bone to cause leukemia.”

Gulf seafood deformities alarm scientists

Al Jazeera
Dahr Jamail


Eyeless shrimp and fish with lesions are becoming common, with BP oil pollution believed to be the likely cause.



New Orleans, LA - "The fishermen have never seen anything like this," Dr Jim Cowan told Al Jazeera. "And in my 20 years working on red snapper, looking at somewhere between 20 and 30,000 fish, I've never seen anything like this either."

Dr Cowan, with Louisiana State University's Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences started hearing about fish with sores and lesions from fishermen in November 2010.
Cowan's findings replicate those of others living along vast areas of the Gulf Coast that have been impacted by BP's oil and dispersants.

Gulf of Mexico fishermen, scientists and seafood processors have told Al Jazeera they are finding disturbing numbers of mutated shrimp, crab and fish that they believe are deformed by chemicals released during BP's 2010 oil disaster.

Along with collapsing fisheries, signs of malignant impact on the regional ecosystem are ominous: horribly mutated shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, eyeless crabs and shrimp - and interviewees' fingers point towards BP's oil pollution disaster as being the cause.

Eyeless shrimp

Tracy Kuhns and her husband Mike Roberts, commercial fishers from Barataria, Louisiana, are finding eyeless shrimp.

"At the height of the last white shrimp season, in September, one of our friends caught 400 pounds of these," Kuhns told Al Jazeera while showing a sample of the eyeless shrimp.

According to Kuhns, at least 50 per cent of the shrimp caught in that period in Barataria Bay, a popular shrimping area that was heavily impacted by BP's oil and dispersants, were eyeless. Kuhns added: "Disturbingly, not only do the shrimp lack eyes, they even lack eye sockets."

Eyeless shrimp, from a catch of 400 pounds
of eyeless shrimp, said to be caught
September 22, 2011, in Barataria Bay, Louisiana

"Some shrimpers are catching these out in the open Gulf [of Mexico]," she added, "They are also catching them in Alabama and Mississippi. We are also finding eyeless crabs, crabs with their shells soft instead of hard, full grown crabs that are one-fifth their normal size, clawless crabs, and crabs with shells that don't have their usual spikes … they look like they've been burned off by chemicals."

On April 20, 2010, BP's Deepwater Horizon oilrig exploded, and began the release of at least 4.9 million barrels of oil. BP then used at least 1.9 million gallons of toxic Corexit dispersants to sink the oil.

Keath Ladner, a third generation seafood processor in Hancock County, Mississippi, is also disturbed by what he is seeing.

"I've seen the brown shrimp catch drop by two-thirds, and so far the white shrimp have been wiped out," Ladner told Al Jazeera. "The shrimp are immune compromised. We are finding shrimp with tumors on their heads, and are seeing this everyday."

While on a shrimp boat in Mobile Bay with Sidney Schwartz, the fourth-generation fisherman said that he had seen shrimp with defects on their gills, and "their shells missing around their gills and head".
"We've fished here all our lives and have never seen anything like this," he added.

Ladner has also seen crates of blue crabs, all of which were lacking at least one of their claws.

Egypt’s disqualified presidential candidate says military rulers have no intention of handing over rule

Washington Post
Leila Fadel

Diqualified Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate Khairat al-Shater
states that he does not believe that the Egyptian military will relinquish power.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s disbarred presidential candidate, Khairat el Shater, said Wednesday that Egypt’s military rulers have no intention of truly handing power over to civilian rule, but instead are trying to rig the election outcome in their favor.

Shater warned that his elimination from the race was a sign of forgery to come in the presidential election and called the process a “crime against the Egyptian people.”

“The military council is not about a true transition of power,” he said, accusing the council of trying to fix the election in favor of a candidate they could control.

In the same breath, he asked Egyptians to support the Brotherhood’s backup candidate and said the elections should be held on time.

Egypt’s presidential electoral commission on Tuesday permanently disqualified 10 candidates, including three front-runners, upending the contest just weeks before the vote and drawing accusations that the pillars of the Hosni Mubarak regime are still firmly in place.

The decision by a panel of Mubarak-era judges was expected to spark protests, especially from ultraconservative voters angry at the exclusion of their preferred candidate, Hazem Abu Ismail, who preaches a puritanical form of Islam known as Salafism. Hundreds of his rowdy devotees gathered at the commission’s headquarters Tuesday, chanting “God is great,” while security forces surrounded the building.

In addition to Shater, a multimillionaire and the Muslim Brotherhood’s top strategist, Mubarak’s controversial former spy chief and vice president, Omar Suleiman, also was disqualified, according to state television.

Authorities Bar 3 Leading Candidates in Egypt Race

New York Times
David D. Kirkpatrick

From left: Khairat el-Shater, the leading strategist of the Muslim Brotherhood;
Omar Suleiman, Hosni Mubarak’s former vice president and intelligence chief;
and Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, an ultraconservative Islamist.

The Egyptian election authorities eliminated three of the country’s leading presidential candidates in one broad stroke on Saturday night in an unexpected decision that once again threw into disarray the contest to shape the future of Egypt after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.

The High Election Commission struck down 10 candidates in all, including the three who have generated the most passion in this polarized nation: Khairat el-Shater, the leading strategist of the Muslim Brotherhood; Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, an ultraconservative Islamist; and Omar Suleiman, Mr. Mubarak’s former vice president and intelligence chief.

A little more than a month before the vote begins, the ruling raised new doubts about the credibility of the election, which is supposed to inaugurate a new democracy after decades of authoritarian rule. It capped a year of opaque decisions behind closed doors, shifting ground rules and timetables, conspiracy theories about who holds true power, turbulence in the streets and growing political polarization during the military-led transition after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.

And it comes at a time when the stakes of the presidential race have risen higher than ever: the Islamist majority in Parliament has clashed with the liberal minority over the writing of a constitution and with the military over the control of the government. Some warned it could set off new street protests.

At the same time, the commission, composed of five senior judges appointed by Mr. Mubarak, appeared to prove its independence, shutting down the candidate most linked to the Mubarak government and defying an angry mob of Islamists outside its door. It disqualified each of the candidates on narrow, technical grounds.

When Mike Wallace questioned Israeli story of ’90 massacre, he got called into the owner’s office

MondoWeiss 
Phillip Weiss

The late Mike Wallace was often called a "self-hating Jew," and it seems clear from his obits that it didn't really bother him. Community loyalty wasn't big on his list.

In this book of Jewish proclamations inspired by the last words of Daniel Pearl, Wallace says he got along better with Gaddafi and Arafat than he did with Menachem Begin. It appears that at least three of his four wives were not Jewish, and in this obit at the Forward, Barry Lando shows how Mike Wallace seems to have agreed with anti-Zionist Rabbi Elmer Berger that Jewish nationalism imposed a dual loyalty claim on Jews. Lando excerpts a 1958 interview of Abba Eban:

Wallace: Now then, Mr. Eban, regarding the American Jew and the State of Israel, the anti-Zionist rabbi, Dr. Elmer Berger, has written, “The Zionist-Israeli axis imposes upon Jews outside of Israel, Americans of Jewish faith included, a status of double-nationality,” a status which he deplores…. Your own Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion wrote back in 1953, “When a Jew in America speaks of our government to his fellow Jews, he usually means the government of Israel, while the Jewish public in various countries view the Israeli ambassadors as their own representatives.”

Wallace: Would a Jew, in your estimation, be any less a Jew if he were opposed to Zionism and to Israel?

Eban: In my own personal interpretation, I would say that a man who opposed the State of Israel and the great movement which brought it about would be in revolt against the most constructive and creative events in the life of the Jewish people.

Wallace: But Judaism is a religion, sir.

Great.

Al Aqsa massacre

I keep saying that I want to change American Jewish identity because we won't change American policy without changing the Jews; Jews are just too powerful in American establishment. And my thesis is amply demonstrated by another anecdote in the Barry Lando obit, where he shows how prevalent Jews are in the media, emphasizing that CBS is owned by a Jew, that many of the network's producers are Jewish, and that Wallace's social circle was Jewish too.

Lando explores an episode Linda Lotz described the other day here: Mike Wallace's role in exposing an Israeli massacre of Palestinians on the Haram al Sharif in 1990. Lando, himself Jewish, was a producer on the story:

But the one piece involving Mike that sparked the widest outrage involved the deaths of 17 Palestinians, shot down by Israeli police on Jerusalem’s ultra-sensitive Temple Mount (called Haram al Sharif in Arabic) on October 8, 1990.

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Contaminated Ocean's Food Chain, Study Finds

International Business Times
Ryan Villarreal

Zooplankton form the base of the ocean's food web and are typically fed upon by fish larva and smaller crustaceans, said Dr. David Kimmel of East Carolina University. Whether or not these larger organisms have accumulated significant amounts of toxic compounds, or has entered the human food chain, has yet to be determined.

"That is certainly one of the questions we would like to see answered with more research," said Dr. Mitra in a phone interview.

Another question the researchers would like to see answered is how long the oil compounds will remain in the zooplankton, but it requires sustained observation over a long period of time.

The zooplankton themselves, do not seem to have been negatively impacted in terms of population, said Dr. Mike Roman at the University of Maryland, though they serve as a conduit for energy and matter, including the toxic compounds, to move up the food chain.

The research team was funded to test its hypothesis about the presence of oil compounds in zooplankton, and the results of its study are viewed as something to build upon in determining the full ecological impact of the oil spill.

Dr. Roman said there needs to be long-term monitoring systems in place in the Gulf to examine various levels of the ecosystem and how they have been impacted by the spill.

Bahrain Medics Show Trial: This Is Not Syria, Therefore No Western Outcry

Global Research
Finian Cunningham

Bahrain’s disgraceful show trial of medical staff is set to continue, with news this week that 20 doctors and nurses are to be retried in a civilian court on trumped-up charges of subversion against the US-backed regime.

The medics were already sentenced by a military tribunal (a military tribunal!) to up to 15 years in prison after months of being held in illegal detention, denied legal counsel and subjected to torture.

Moving their case to a civilian court is presumably meant to signal a concession by the regime. But what it illustrates is that the Al Khalifa royal rulers of Bahrain are unreconstructed despots who are implacably set against accepting any kind of democratic reform.

The persecution of the majority Shia population – 70 per cent of the island – by an unelected Sunni elite is business as usual as epitomized by the vindictive targeting of medics whose only “crime” was that they treated hundreds of people injured in the state’s brutal crackdown against the pro-democracy movement.

Recently, Washington has been doing its PR best to present the monarchy in the Persian Gulf kingdom as being belatedly open to reform – this after a year of unrelenting repression against a largely peaceful pro-democracy uprising.

Bahraini grassroots activists are concerned that sections of the official opposition belonging to the Shia Al Wefaq political society are being groomed by the US State Department to accept a “compromise deal” with the royal rulers that would effectively see the monarchy remaining in power and the status quo merely being given a facelift.

Afghanistan Crimes: Absolving Higher-Ups

The People's Voice
Steve Lendman

Murder anywhere is bad enough. Nuremberg chief prosecutor Robert Jackson called preemptive aggressive war killing "the supreme international crime against peace."

Convicted Nazi war criminals were hanged. American ones keep killing with impunity.
On March 11, up to 20 US Special Forces (trained killers) murdered 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children aged 2 - 12 while they slept. Two women were also raped before soldiers killed them. Bodies of all victims were then burned to conceal evidence.

It wasn't an isolated incident. It happens regularly in all US wars. Rarely is anyone held accountable, especially responsible parties up the chain of command to the top. More on that below.

On March 22, The New York Times headlined, "US Sergeant Faces 17 Counts of Murder in Afghan Killings," saying:

Sergeant Robert Bales "is accused of walking away from his remote base in southern Afghanistan and shooting and stabbing members of several families in a nighttime ambush."
He alone was charged for what up to 19 others committed.

"The Army has not suggested a motive."

Commanders deploy similar death squads regularly to kill with impunity. Bales is the exception that proves the rule. Like others occasionally charged, it's done to absolve higher-ups. Guilt goes right to the top.

In his 1948 book titled, "Politics Among Nations; the Struggle for Power and Peace," Hans Morganthau discussed post-WW II political realism and power politics.

His vision was darkly Hobbesian. He called international law, world organizations, and morality "irrelevant" when nations go to war. Winning alone matters. At issue is gaining absolute power at the expense of rule of law principles, democratic values, targeted countries, and most people everywhere.
 
Today's America reflects his might over right theme. It's likely worse than he imagined, given weapons able to destroy humanity and perhaps one day do it.

In his book titled, "Protesting Power: War, Resistance, and Law," Francis Boyle wrote:

Blix: US, Israel source most of IAEA allegations

PressTV

A former chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency has challenged a report delivered by the IAEA in November on Iran’s nuclear activities, pinpointing that the agency receives unverified intelligence, mostly from the US and Israel.

In an exclusive interview with Qatar-based news network, Al Jazeera, on Saturday, Hans Blix stated that the IAEA received information from a variety of sources, mostly from the United States and Israel.

“My view is that they must assess it very carefully and critically because otherwise they can be pulled by their noose,” he asserted.

“I remember from inspections in 2002 and 2003 that there was a famous document that allegedly to be a contract between Iraq and Niger for the import of yellow cake of uranium oxide quoted by [former US] President [George W.] Bush in his State of the Union message. The IAEA had it for one day and concluded that it was a forgery. [Former IAEA head, Mohamed] ElBaradei then announced it was not authentic. That shows how careful you have to be,” Blix stated.

The UN nuclear agency’s current Director General Yukiya Amano issued a report on November 8, accusing Iran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear energy program.

Iran dismissed the report as “unbalanced, unprofessional, and prepared with political motivation and under political pressure mostly by the United States.”

Tehran argues that, as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the IAEA, it has the right to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

The IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities, but has never found any evidence of diversion in the country's nuclear activities.

Blix likewise noted that Iran had been very cooperative as to allowing the IAEA experts to visit the Parchin military base, situated some 28 kilometers (18 miles) southeast of the capital Tehran.

He highlighted that it was typical for any country to be rather reluctant and not let international inspectors go anywhere in such venues. Nevertheless, Iranians have been more open than most other countries, he said.

Israel, always vociferous in its accusations against Iran’s nuclear energy program, is itself widely known to possess between 200 and 400 nuclear warheads. Tel Aviv, however, refuses to allow its nuclear facilities to come under international regulatory inspections and rejects all the regulatory international nuclear agreements.

Blix also called on the Western states to support Iran’s bid to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) and assist the Islamic Republic’s civilian nuclear program.

Furthermore, the former IAEA chief condemned the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, stressing that such actions could not deter Tehran's nuclear energy program. 

US defends vote against Palestinian rights

PressTV

The United States has defended its vote against a recent UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution ordering a first probe into the impact of illegal Israeli settlements on the rights of Palestinians.

US State Department Spokesperson Victoria Nuland said during a briefing in Washington, DC on Friday that the country had opposed the resolution because it “further politicizes the situation,” according to a transcript of her comments posted on news website, enewspf.com.

The 47-member council passed the resolution on Thursday, with 36 votes in favor, singular disapproval on the part of Washington, and 10 abstentions.

“We strongly opposed the creation of this fact-finding mission to Israel, a mission…which further politicizes the situation and distracts attention from what really needs to happen, which is for these parties to get back to the table,” Nuland said.

About 500,000 Israelis live in more than 100 settlement units built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds (Jerusalem) and the number of the settlers is increasing.

In September 2010, Israel resumed settlement construction in the occupied Palestinian territories after a 10-month partial freeze, prompting the Palestinian Authority to break off direct talks with Tel Aviv.

On February 22, Israeli officials announced a decision to authorize the building of 500 new illegal settler units in the West Bank settlement of Shilo. The officials also said more than 200 settler homes built ‘without a permit’ by the Tel Aviv regime in the Palestinian territory would be “legalized.”

The United Nations says the Israeli settlement activities are illegal and “will not be recognized by the international community.”

HSN/HN

US Navy in military build-up to battle Strait of Hormuz 'blockade'

Russia Today

The US Navy has confirmed it is doubling the number of minesweepers in the Persian Gulf in an apparent move to prepare for a possible standoff with Iran over the crucial oil export route.

An additional four minesweeper and four minesweeping helicopters will join the four ships already patrolling the Persian Gulf.

The overall number of US minesweepers in the region will total eight, America’s head of naval operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert reported.

While saying sanctions and political measures are preferable to respond to Iran’s controversial nuclear program, looks like the US is getting ready for plan B.

The US has been working of an array of military measures to counteract Iran, with President Obama saying “no options are off the table.”

The Pentagon has recently asked for an additional $100 million dollars to beef up its military presence in the Persian Gulf.

About one fifth of the world’s oil passes through The Strait of Hormuz.

Earlier Tehran promised to block the primary route of oil exports from the region in retaliation to new US and EU-backed sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

In January, General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed Iran indeed has the ability to block the Strait of Hormuz “for a period of time,” and the US must get ready to reopen it in case of a blockade.

New Video Showing Israeli Soldiers Abusing A Cuffed, Blindfolded Palestinian

IMEMC
Saed Bannoura

Snap Shot From The Video On Youtube

A new video showing Israeli soldiers abusing a cuffed and blindfolded Palestinian detainee was released after being shot by a hidden camera in Ni’lin village, near the central West Bank city of Ramallah.

The video shows a cuffed and blindfolded Palestinian youth who was kidnapped during the weekly nonviolent protest against the illegal Israeli Annexation Wall and Settlements. These protests are organized by the local residents, along with Israel and International peace activists.

The cuffed Palestinian is seen on the ground while the soldiers are just moving him around, dragging his feet sometimes, and placing him in a sitting position against a wall next to another blindfolded and cuffed Palestinian.

It also shows the one of the soldiers standing next to him with his foot raised close to the head of the youth, posing as if he is going to crush his head while filming the abuse using what seems to be his mobile phone.

There have been several incidents where soldiers filmed themselves abusing detained Palestinians at roadblocks, and in other areas in the occupied territories.

In many other incidents, soldiers were caught on tape abusing the Palestinians, similar to the case of Ashraf Abu Rahma who was kidnapped in 2008, during a nonviolent protest against the Wall in Bil’in village, near Ramallah, and one soldiers had him stand near the military jeep while another soldier shot him in the leg at a close range.

Several soldiers even posted on Facebook videos they took of themselves or fellow soldiers while abusing Palestinians in the occupied territories.

In 2010, Israeli soldier Eden Abergil posted pictures on her personal Facebook page posing in front of Palestinians detained, cuffed and blindfolded at a roadblock in the West Bank.

THE NEXT TIME SOMEONE TELLS YOU ZIONISM IS NOT RACISM…..

Desert Peace

SHOW THEM THE PROOF THAT IT IS!

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Start with these links….

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ISRAELI RACISM MUCH WORSE THAN I THOUGHT IT WAS

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RACISM WILL DESTROY ISRAEL, NOT IRANIAN NUKES

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KAHANE WAS RIGHT

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DON’T CALL ME INVENTED! ~~ CALL ME A PALESTINIAN FROM PALESTINE!!

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The above are all recent examples … now watch the following video;

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Don’t miss the comment at 1:02 (might be official US policy one day)

Shoes For Ki-Moon Because Eggs And Tomatoes Are Expensive

 

Today Thursday February 2 2012, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived in the besieged Gaza concentration camp, coming through the Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing in the northern border of the Gaza Strip

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived in the besieged Gaza concentration camp, coming through the Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing in the northern border of the Gaza Strip.

Ban Ki-moon was welcomed in a very special way at the border of Gaza, where dozens of Palestinian families of prisoners and victims of the Israeli genocide and war crimes who lost their loved ones, among them children and members of their families during the continued Israeli invasions on Gaza.

Also present were a number of Palestinians deported to Gaza by the Israeli occupation from Bethlehem and the West Bank. They all blocked the passage for the convoy of Ki-moon and hurled shoes, sticks, stones, chairs at him as an expression of their anger for the visit and his refusal to meet with them and listen to their humanitarian problems, in the same way as met during a previous visit to Israel with family of war criminal Gilad Shalit.

According to the Palestinian protesters: "eggs and tomatoes are very expensive in Gaza, therefore we were not able to buy them to throw them at the convoy of the Secretary General of the United Nations Ban ki-Moon. The protesters only had their shoes and other things to throw. After they threw their shoes, they collected them and put them on". They said "Sorry Mr. Ban Ki-moon, the economic situation in Gaza under the blockade is very much deteriorated, and eggs and tomatoes are not available".

Abdullah Kandil, the spokesperson of the of prisoners families, stated that "the Palestinians sit-in blocked the convoy of Ban Ki-moon for some time in protest against the immoral and inhumane position of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who refused to meet with the families of prisoners languishing in the jails of the Israeli occupation."

Kandil said in his statement that "the protesters threw chairs, stones and shoes at the convoy Ban Ki-moon, holding signs that read 'Enough of Ban Ki-moon bias for Israel’, 'Where is the United Nations since the blockade of Gaza’ and 'Where is the United Nations when the the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) members are kidnapped??".

Mr. Abed El-Nasser Ferwana , a former Palestinian prisoner and a well known specialist in
prisoners affairs said "the Palestinian protest is a symbolic message to Mr. Ban Ki-moon that Palestinians from Gaza want to have the right to visit their children and loved ones at Israeli jails". He added: "Ban ki-Moon should make more efforts to release the Palestinian prisoners". He wondered why Mr. Ban ki-Moon, always when he visits Gaza, avoids the meeting with the families of Palestinian prisoners.

The Palestinian protesters raised the pictures of a number of prisoners, especially the Palestinian leadership of the "Fatah", among them Marwan Barghouti and Palestinian Legislative Council Speaker Aziz Dweik, who were kidnapped by the Israeli occupation.

Ismail Ibrahim al-Thawabta, Palestinian journalist from Gaza, forwarded me an Arabic letter titled: "بان كي مون لا أهلا ولا سهلا", what means in English "Ban Ki-moon you are not welcome in Gaza", where he expresses his deep anger and concern about the double standards policy of the UN Secretary General . He wrote: "We can not understand what kind of irresponsible policy Ban Ki-moon works by, and why previously he sat with the family of the Israeli prisoner Gilad Shalit who was captured while he was carrying a rifle to hunt the Palestinian children in the Gaza refugees camps. Ki-moon expressed his deep hope for the release of Shalit, while he ignores over 6.500 Palestinian prisoners at Israeli jails, among them hundreds of children and the sick people?!"

He added: "The United Nations policy of marginalization towards the Palestinian prisoners and detainees at the Israeli prisons, where they are denied the most minimal humanitarian rights, visits, medical treatment, where they are routinely tortured,  does not express a sincere, logical and humanitarian policy of the UN, but it clearly serves the dictator criminal regime of the Israeli occupation, the israeli executioners, at the expense of prisoners and Palestinian refugees".

Mr. Thawabta continued: "The clear message which must be understood by Ban Ki-moon is that he should be ashamed of his blood, that he is called to respect his age and position as UN Secretary General, and that therefore he has to stop selling out to inhuman political decisions against Palestinians in the favour of Israel. It is quite simply, the thousands of prisoners and their grieving families are human beings, and it is time to stop the policy of double standards of the UN and to look at the facts with impartiality, with respect and according to the International laws and treaties which deal with the Israeli occupation".

Banks legally immune in return for $20 billion relief to homeowners

Common Dreams

In last night's State of the Union speech President Obama announced the creation of a committee to investigate "the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages."
All across the US, Occupy protestors have been "reclaiming" foreclosed homes and boarded up properties in what some are calling a "tactical shift" in the movement which has targeted the inequality in the distribution of wealth in the US. The 'investigation' announcement came just as a bank-friendly 'settlement' is about to be announced by the state attorney generals. Reports of the settlement talks, the 'too-big-to-fail' banks -- Bank of America, Wells Fargo & Co, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup and Ally Financial Inc -- would provide $20 billion to $25 billion of 'relief' to homeowners in exchange for being exempted from lawsuits for improper foreclosures and abuses in mortgage loans.

The findings of the new 'investigation' would come after the settlement gives the banks a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Matt Taibbi wrote on the proposed settlement: "The current proposed deal is a huge giveaway to the banks, a major shafting to most of the investors, and would probably give homeowners either next to nothing or some cosmetic reward, i.e. a little bit of principal forgiveness, counseling, etc. If the Obama administration was serious about helping actual human beings through this settlement, then it would be fighting for homeowners to get the same bailout the banks would get. If the banks are getting a trillion or more dollars of legal immunity, why shouldn’t homeowners get that much debt forgiveness? Or, half that much? A quarter?"

Democratic state attorneys general and Obama administration officials met on Monday in Chicago to discuss the terms of the settlement. An announcement on the deal is expected any day.

President Obama last night:

"And tonight, I am asking my Attorney General to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis. This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans. "

* * *

Bloomberg News reports:

Obama Will Create Unit to Investigate Mortgage Misconduct After Protests

President Barack Obama said he will create a mortgage crisis unit that includes federal and state officials to investigate wrongdoing by banks related to real estate lending. [...]

“This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans,” Obama said in the speech.

US Condemned for Arming Egyptian Regime

Global Research
Bill Van Auken

Documents made public by Amnesty International show that Washington repeatedly shipped additional arms and munitions to the regime in Egypt even as it hypocritically deplored “excessive force” by police and troops and called for an end to “violence.” The human rights group condemned the US State Department for issuing successive arms export licenses for the purpose of shipping crowd control munitions to Egypt. These shipments were approved in the middle of violent repression of demonstrators fighting for the ouster of US-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak and, subsequently, during protests calling for an end to rule by his successors in the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). The latest of these shipments arrived at the port of Adabiya, near Suez, on November 26, just a day after millions of Egyptian workers and youth took to the streets demanding an end to the SCAF military junta. Over the course of the previous week, security forces had carried out a bloody crackdown, killing at least 40 people and wounding thousands. In a number of cases demonstrators were killed with live ammunition, while in others, so-called “less-lethal” weapons were used in such a way, such as firing tear gas canisters at head level and close range, as to take lives. The November 26 shipment, according to Amnesty, included at least seven tons of “ammunition smoke,” which includes tear gas and other riot control munitions. The repressive materials came from Combined Systems, Inc. (CSI) in Jamestown, Pennsylvania, which, in addition to CS tear gas grenades, markets numerous other “less-lethal” munitions ranging from rubber baton rounds to flash-bang grenades and pepper spray. The human rights group reported that the shipment was organized by the defense logistics company Nico Shipping, with the munitions loaded onto a Danish ship, the Marianne Danica, at the US Military Ocean Terminal in Sunny Point, North Carolina on October 13.