Category: World News & Politics

After Annapolis; Peace Or More Illegal Israeli Settlements?

On the heals of the Annapolis peace conference in which Israel and the Palestinians agreed to move forward on bringing peace to the region and launching talks on final status issues, which are supposed to end up with the establishment of an independent Palestinian state; Israel doesn’t seem to want to stop building illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land, and it has been revealed that money will be put aside to construct 740 new buildings next year.

The construction ministry’s proposed budget for 2008 includes 500 apartments for the Har Homa area in east Jerusalem, and 240 at Maale Adumim, just outside Jerusalem and one of Israel’s biggest West Bank settlements.

Despite calls to freeze all settlement activity, Israel insists it will continue to build.

That shows how much Israel is really “committed” to the peace process, and how it will do anything to undermine it and keep things going as they are with it taking more and more land from the Palestinians, tightening the siege around them even more and doing as it pleases with total disregard to Palestinian lives and rights.

The quartet, that is supposed to be pushing for peace; the United Nations, that useless puppet; and the whole world just sit around watching.

Of course in the end, the failure of any peace negotiations will be pinned on the Palestinians, as usual, and things will go on like they have been for years; until we approach the end of another US president’s term and they suddenly feel like leaving on a bright note: that they at least gave Middle East peace a shot.

I don’t know why we even bother let our hopes get lifted by these peace conferences, agreements, negotiations and crap anymore. It’s obvious that until Israel is held accountable for its actions just like Palestinians are, there will be no peace!

10 Forgotten Humanitarian Crises That Still Largely Exist

I just came across an article about ten humanitarian crises that should have gotten more coverage in the year 2007, but didn’t, and that have been more or less forgotten, even though they still largely exist.

–Colombia: Internal refugee crisis after four decades of civil conflict Large numbers of Colombians live in areas controlled by militia or guerrillas, with basic human rights under threat and unpredictable violence.
– Sri Lanka: The civil war between the government forces and the separatist Tamil Tigers, taking a horrendous civilian toll.
– Somalia: Violence and increasingly ferocious guerrilla style attacks surpassing even Darfur in its horror and hopelessness.
– Burma: High levels of malaria and HIV made unimaginably worse by the negligence of a regime that spent only 1.4 per cent of its budget on health care.
– Niger, West and East Africa and South Asia: Malnutrition leading to the deaths of five million children under the age of five.
– Chechnya: Torture, abduction, and wars leaving psychological and physical scars on the civilian population with large numbers of people suffering from high levels of anxiety, insomnia and depression.
– Zimbabwe: Inflation at 12,000 per cent, three million fleeing the country, 85 per cent unemployment, collapsed health care system, 3,000 people dying every week from HIV/Aids.
– Central African Republic: Hundreds of civilians executed and at least 100,000 people caught in the crossfire of rival armed groups, fled their villages and are hiding in forests and bush.
– Democratic Republic of Congo: Hundreds of thousands of homeless people hiding in the forest because their villages are no longer safe, scavenging food to stay alive, trying to dodge the rampant cholera, and in the case of women avoiding sexual violence.
– World: 500,000 people to be diagnosed with multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis this year. There have been no major advances in treatment of the disease since the 1960s.

[Source: 10 humanitarian crises forgotten (but not gone) – Belfast Telegraph]

IDF in Gaza: You are the law. You are God.

A quote by an IDF soldier that gives a clear picture of the Israeli forces’ illegal actions in Gaza and the state of mind that drives them.

“The best thing is that you’re not obliged to follow any laws or rules. You feel like you are the law. You are the law. You decide. It’s as if the moment you leave Israel and pass through the Erez Checkpoint into the Gaza Strip, you are the law. You are God.”

— Comment by one of the IDF soldiers interviewed by Israeli psychologist Nofer Ishai-Karen.

[Via: Lawrence of Cyberia]

Another Arab Journalist Jailed For Doing Their Job

First there was Taysir Alluni, the Al-Jazeera reporter, who was sentenced to jail for 7 years in 2005 because of an interview he did with Osama Bin Laden in 2001, accused of collaborating with Al-Qaeda.

Then there was Sami Al Haj, the Al-Jazeera cameraman, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2001 while he was going for a journalistic assignment in Afghanistan, and has been held in Guantanamo Bay ever since.

And now, there is Pulitzer prize-winning Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, who has been imprisoned by the U.S. military in Iraq since April 2006 without a trial or even being charged. The military claimed then that he had suspicious links to insurgents, but now they’re saying that he is a “terrorist” who had “infiltrated the AP.”
In the 19 months since he was picked up, Bilal has not been charged with any crime, with the military sending out a mix of ever-changing, false or overblown claims.
And now even though the military says they’ll be taking him to court in an Iraqi court, there’s still nothing about the date, what charges will be brought against him, what evidence they have or anything.
The common belief is that Bilal’s crime was taking photographs the U.S. government did not want its citizens to see.

Who’s next on the list of journalists, simply doing their job, to be thrown in jail under the claim they’re terrorists, just because they’re Arabs and covering something the US and its allies don’t want covered?

Al Gore And IPCC Win Nobel Peace Prize

Well most of you must already know the news by now; I’ve been expecting it and was pretty sure it would happen, and even though I’m a bit late, I just had to write about it: US Former Vice President Al Gore and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) won the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change.

Gore, whose film “An Inconvenient Truth” won an Oscar earlier this year, has made climate change the focus of his public life in the years since he lost the 2000 US presidential election.

There’s a lot of talk today going on about how Al Gore shouldn’t have won the nobel prize, and how its value is being wasted on him and the other environment advocates.

Personally, I think the people saying that are the same kind of people who got us into this environmental mess in the first place. There’s nothing that we have that is more valuable than our planet, if people who actually care and want to make a difference in this area aren’t worthy of this award, then I don’t know who is.

Al Gore now joins Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jimmy Carter among prominent U.S. politicians to have won the prestigious prize.

New Zealand Commits to 90% Renewable Energy by 2025

New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clarke announced New Zealand’s intention to commit to 90% renewable electricity by 2025.

The country already uses 70% renewable electricity, primarily hydro- and geothermal power and will continue to increase its use of renewables over the next 20 years.

The Prime Minister also gave a brief outline of further goals, which included a 2040 target of reducing by half per capita emissions from transport and widely introducing electric vehicles. She also stated the goal of achieving a net increase in forest area of 250,000 hectares (617,000 acres) by 2020.

This is the kind of news we need to be hearing more and more of from all over the world. That’s when we’ll know there is hope for our planet.

[Source: Renewable Energy Access]
[Via: EcoGeek]

Britain Aims to Abolish Gasoline and Diesel Cars by 2040

Good to see some people are thinking of moving beyond petroleum…

As part of an admirable but highly optimistic plan for a “Zero-Carbon Britain” by the year 2050, British Liberal Democrats announced plans to completely abolish gasoline- and diesel-powered cars by 2040. To aid them in their quest, the politicians proposed increasing Britain’s car tax by

Jimmy Carter Calls For Balanced Middle East Debate In US

“We must always make clear our commitment to the security of Israel, but we cannot be peacemakers if American government leaders are seen as knee-jerk supporters of every action or policy of whatever Israeli government happens to be in power at the moment

[…]

Under AIPAC pressure, there are few significant countervailing voices in the public arena, and any balanced debate is still practically nonexistent in the U.S. Congress or among presidential hopefuls

[…]

The American friends of Israel who demand such subservience are in many cases sincere and well-intentioned people, but on this crucial issue, they are tragically mistaken. Their demands subvert America’s ability to bring the Israelis what they most desperately need and want