Eideard

Israeli border guards demonstrate their respect for civil dissent
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has described Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip as a violation of the Geneva Conventions and called on the Israeli government to lift it.

The organisation called the blockade “collective punishment“, a crime under international law. It described Gaza as a territory plagued by frequent power cuts, a ruined economy, and a collapsed health care system…

“Gazans continue to suffer from unemployment, poverty and warfare, while the quality of Gaza’s health care system has reached an all-time low…”

Beatrice Megevand-Roggo, the head of the ICRC’s Middle East operations, told Al Jazeera that the organisation – which traditionally remains neutral – was reluctant to publicly criticise the blockade. But she said three years of quiet efforts to ease the embargo did not result in any progress.

“The result has not been what we expected, and we thought that after three years the situation was dire enough, serious enough, to speak out publicly to try to break this closure of Gaza,” she said…

In Luxembourg on Monday, foreign ministers from the European Union condemned the Gaza blockade as “unacceptable and counterproductive,” and called for immediate and unconditional opening of crossings for humanitarian aid…

B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organisation, released its own report on Monday documenting dire conditions in the Palestinian territories. The group noted that 95 per cent of Gaza’s factories have closed, that 98 per cent of residents suffer from blackouts, and that 93 per cent of Gaza’s water is polluted…

Meanwhile, Congress and the White House works to maintain a special relationship founded in guilt from 3 or 4 generations ago.

If the U.S. government, today, lived up to the standards it admits to selling out – when 20 million Jews and Slavs, Eastern Europeans and Russians were being slaughtered by Nazi Germany – unconditional support of the Israeli government would come an immediate halt.

Israel’s coastal defense against foreign invaders

Israel is easing its Gaza embargo to allow snack food and drinks into the Palestinian enclave…following an international outcry over Israel’s raid on an aid flotilla.

Hamas, the Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip, said the territory needs cement — banned by Israel and essential for reconstruction after a December 2008-January 2009 war — not soft drinks.

An Israeli official said the new product list, announced hours before U.S. President Barack Obama was to host Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Washington, was unrelated to Israel’s May 31 takeover of the convoy that challenged its Gaza blockade.

The talks between Obama and Abbas are expected to focus on ways to ease the embargo, which has drawn mounting international criticism since Israeli commandos…killed nine pro-Palestinian activists.

The Palestinian officials, based in the West Bank, said that as of next week, Israel will allow a wider variety of food, such as potato crisps, biscuits, canned fruit and packaged hummus, as well as soft drinks and juice, into the Gaza Strip.

“They will send the first course. We are waiting for the main course,” Palestinian Economy Minister Hassan Abu Libdeh said in Ramallah. “We are waiting for this unjust siege to end.”

It is wholly unsurprising that a government consumed with egregious and bigoted ideology treats other nations – captive nations – as imperial nations have always treated their servants.

The right-wing Israeli government needs to be thrown out of office. If the nation of Israel, that minority of residents within the current boundaries of Israel who are allowed to vote, continues to maintain crap politicians in office – they deserve the disdain they receive from the rest of the world.

Bored by the status updates of your friends? Want to get rid of your online teenage years and delete your MySpace account? Tired of living your life so that you have something to tweet about?

Then get reality back, and commit social media suicide with Web2.0 Suicide Machine.

The Dutch website created by your unfriendly neighbourhood medialab moddr is designed to end users’ social lives on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn in a spectacular way.

No, users don’t just delete their account. The website makes a feast out of the decision as it shows you how it unfriends person after person on Facebook, or removes bit by bit the people you follow on Twitter…

To commit social media suicide you only need to select the social network on the website, enter the user name and your password. You even can send out your last words, which are displayed alongside your profile picture on a memorial page that Suicide Machine maintains.

The project seems to be quite successful. Since its launch in December, 56,243 friends have been unfriended, 202,386 tweets have been removed and 856 people quit their online lives, according to Suicide Machine’s figures.

But Facebook didn’t see the funny side of the site. The social network, which has just announced it has 350 million members, started to prevent its use by blocking Suicide Machine’s IP address yesterday, thus making it impossible to use the website to unfriend people…

So while Suicide Machine works well with Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace, the only option for Facebook is at the moment to die hard.

Children peering through hospital walls smashed in the last Israeli putsch
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Aid agencies have strongly criticised the international community for failing to help bring an end to Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

The charities made the accusation in a report published just ahead of the anniversary of Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip. They…condemn not just Israel, but the world community.

In the words of Oxfam’s director, Jeremy Hobbs, “world powers have failed and betrayed Gaza’s ordinary citizens“.

The charities call for more pressure to be exerted on Israel to end what they describe as its illegal collective punishment of Gazans.

A spokesman for the Israeli prime minister told the BBC that Israel remains committed to humanitarian supplies of food, medicine and power.

Just not committed to an adequate quantity – of those supplies. They starve the Gaza ghetto as the Nazis did to Warsaw.

But he said that sanctions will remain in place as long as Hamas is, as he put it, committed to destroying Israel and killing Israelis.

A “logic” that is equally offensive to anyone examining those sections of Zionist politics calling for the extermination of Arabs.

“The Soldiers won’t let us Live in Peace”
Daylife/AP Photo by STR

Hundreds of Mexicans blocked roads and bridges into the United States in a cartel-funded protest of army operations against drug gangs, said Mexican police. About 300 protesters carried signs complaining about army operations in the northern city of Monterrey. Small groups also blocked bridges that connect the border city of Reynosa with Texas, police said.

“These protesters are residents, but there is a movement behind them,” said Nuevo Leon state police chief Aldo Fasci in Monterrey, Mexico’s wealthiest city. Last week, Fasci said organized crime was paying people to protest against the army.

One woman at the protest who declined to be named told Reuters she came with a neighbor who had been paid to come.

The northern states of Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas, home to Monterrey and Reynosa, are the main trafficking routes into Texas for the powerful Gulf Cartel and its feared armed wing, the Zetas, who are notorious for beheading their enemies.

The tactic ain’t new. Especially in Mexico. Paying for “spontaneous” demonstrations during elections is an established tradition. Though it is pretty amazing that some of these thugs think demonstrations against the Army attacking drug gangs will have any effect.

OTOH – they obviously can count on the gullible mass of American media types to accept these actions at face value. With the exception of border newspapers from Texas to California, with the prominent exception of Reuters, U.S. journalists are parroting the slogans about “an army out of control” – and ignoring the drug cartel connections.

Daylife/AP Photo by Sebastian Scheiner

The Israeli navy boarded a freighter trying to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip on Thursday and escorted it to the port of Ashdod where 20 passengers were being questioned, the military said.

It was the first apparent attempt by a foreign ship carrying aid to reach the Palestinian coastal enclave since Israel ended its 22-day offensive in the Gaza Strip two weeks ago.

A military official said humanitarian aid found on the ship would be transferred to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Video footage released by the army showed boxes piled up in one corner of the ship and no weapons were found.

Israel Radio said those aboard the Tali, a cargo vessel flying the flag of the West African state of Togo, would be returned by land to Lebanon, from where the ship sailed. The military official said the ship’s 20 passengers, including 10 journalists, were being questioned.

“Once the questioning is completed we will make a decision on their fate,” a military spokesman said.

The Israelis have plenty of experience at deciding the fate of civilians.

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