Tag: Pulse

Rice is aid, pasta not

Another excellent report by Mel Frykberg, this time about Israel’s relentless punishment of Palestinians through the continuing obstruction of the delivery of desperately-needed aid  – including such items as pasta, paper and hearing aids – to Gaza.

Red-faced and unusually tongue-tied Israeli officials were forced to try and explain to United States Senator John Kerry during his visit to Israel last week why truckloads of pasta waiting to enter the besieged Gaza Strip were not considered humanitarian aid while rice was.

Kerry, chairman of the US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, visited the coastal territory on a fact-finding mission. The purpose of the visit was to assess the humanitarian situation on the ground and the level of destruction wrought by Israel’s three-week military assault on Gaza, codenamed Operation Cast Lead.
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Manchester University Occupation Continues – Day 27

As the student occupation at the University of Manchester enters its 27th day, preparations are underway for a national demonstration to take place this Wednesday, March 4, 2pm at the University’s Student Union.

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Given Vice-Chancellor Alan Gilbert’s persistent refusal to discuss the students’ demands, the rally will be a crucial test of strength for the growing pro-Palestinian student movement in the UK, which has already scored several victories.

For frequent updates and more information about the occupation visit the students’ blog.

A national demonstration has been called in support of the student occupations. It’s crucial that we have as much representation from different Universities, Colleges and Schools as possible.

We in Manchester have been in occupation for almost four weeks now, yet the University has so far refused to negotiate with us. The University still invests in the arms trade, leading to some students having to disrupt a DSTL stall (an agency of the MoD) at an official graduate recruitment fair.

The Vice Chancellor Alan Gilbert has threatened expulsion for students who are involved.

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Focus on Gaza: Policing Gaza

Focus on Gaza is a weekly Al Jazeera show that offers a rare look at what life is like for ordinary people inside the Gaza Strip.

In this episode: It has been two months since Israel’s war on Gaza began with a devastating air strike on a police academy. Lauren Taylor reports from Gaza on the impact of that strike on the affected families and on the job of policing itself. Also, host Imran Garda talks to Usama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official, about attempts at Palestinian reconciliation. And, in the first of our weekly glimpses into family life in Gaza, we catch up with the incredible story of the Samouni children.

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Gazan children psychologically damaged

Al Jazeera reports that Gazan children are psychologically damaged from the war.

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The Israel lobby and the fate of Palestine

alexander-cockburnAlexander Cockburn on the Israel lobby and the fate of Palestine recorded in San Francisco on September 29, 2002.

The Israel Lobby and the fate of Palestine (29:04): MP3

On May 2, 2002, barely two weeks after what has become widely described in the international press as a massacre in the Palestinian refugee camp at Jenin, the US Congress took an extraordinary vote.

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Palestinian NGO seeks UK human rights justice

Al-Haq, a Palestinian NGO  with the help of the Gaza Legal Aid Fund (facebook), is to take UK Government officials to court over policy that assists Israel in its illegal activities in Gaza.

Al-Haq, an independent Palestinian non-governmental organisation will tomorrow, Tuesday 24 February 2009 begin historical legal proceedings against the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, David Milliband, Defence Secretary, John Hutton and Trade & Industry (now the Secretary of State for Business Enterprise, and Regulatory Reform), Peter Mandelson.

Al Haq are making an application for judicial review of a policy decision by the three Secretaries of State that they will not change their position with respect to the UK’s relations with Israel so that the UK Government is fully compliant with international law.
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Amnesty International Urges Immediate Arms Embargo on Israel

Amnesty International released a report today detailing the indiscriminate use of weapons by Israel in the latest war on Gaza. Having found undeniable evidence of the IDF’s use of US-made weapons against civilians – hence war crimes – it is calling on the new Obama administration and the UN Security Council to impose “an immediate and comprehensive arms embargo” on Israel and Hamas. Here is The Guardian‘s brief summary of the report.

Detailed evidence has emerged of Israel’s extensive use of US-made weaponry during its war in Gaza last month, including white phosphorus artillery shells, 500lb bombs and Hellfire missiles.

In a report released today, Amnesty International detailed the weapons used and called for an immediate arms embargo on Israel and all Palestinian armed groups. It called on the Obama administration to suspend military aid to Israel.

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Understanding the Crisis – Markets, the State and Hypocrisy

In this interview, Noam Chomsky offers his views on the current global economic crisis, exploding many of the myths, double standards and hypocricies of mainstream media commentary.

SAMEER DOSSANI: In any first year economics class, we are taught that markets have their ups and downs, so the current recession is perhaps nothing out of the ordinary. But this particular downturn is interesting for two reasons: First, market deregulation in the 1980s and 1990s made the boom periods artificially high, so the bust period will be deeper than it would otherwise. Secondly, despite an economy that’s boomed since 1980, the majority of working class U.S. residents have seen their incomes stagnate — while the rich have done well most of the country hasn’t moved forward at all. Given the situation, my guess is that economic planners are likely to go back to some form of Keynesianism, perhaps not unlike the Bretton Woods system that was in place from 1948-1971. What are your thoughts?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well I basically agree with your picture. In my view, the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in the early 1970s is probably the major international event since 1945, much more significant in its implications than the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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EU Paying for Gaza Blockade

David Cronin of IPS describes the EU’s complicity in Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza.

European Union aid has been given to an Israeli oil company which has reduced the supply of fuel to Gaza as part of an economic blockade internationally recognised as illegal, Brussels officials have admitted.

Almost 97 million euros (124 million dollars) in funds managed by the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, were handed over directly to the firm Dor Alon between February 2008 and January this year. Under orders from the Israeli authorities, Dor Alon has been rationing the amount of industrial diesel brought into Gaza in order to deprive its 1.5 million inhabitants of electricity. Power cuts have been a regular occurrence in Gaza because of Israeli actions undertaken since the militant party Hamas won an unexpected victory in Palestinian legislative elections during 2006.

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Still Homeless in Baghdad

With 1.6 million internally displaced persons and an unemployement rate of 40-65%, Dahr Jamail reports about the plight of Iraqi families dispossessed and left homeless by the war.

“We only want a normal life,” says Um Qasim, sitting in a bombed out building in Baghdad. She and others around have been saying that for years. Um Qasim lives with 13 family members in a brick shanty on the edge of a former military intelligence building in the Mansoor district of Baghdad.
Five of her children are girls. Homelessness is not easy for anyone, but it is particularly challenging for women and girls.

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