Bangladesh Sweatshop Fire by Stephen Lendman
Corporate predators seek cheap labor worldwide. Countries like China, India, Honduras, Jordan, Haiti, and Bangladesh provide it. Transnational giants are unaccountable. Global sweatshops supply them. Workers endure horrific conditions. Some work up to 90 or more hours weekly. They're wage slaves. They earn sub-poverty pay. They're subjected to punishing harassment, beatings, sexual abuse, and rape.
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Over 290,000 Housing Mission units so far
So far, the Grand Housing Mission Venezuela has constructed 293,799 dwelling units since it was launched in 2011, informed Thursday the director of the Presidential Office for Special Plans and Projects, Francisco Sesto.This social project was launched in April 2011 with a view to end with the country's housing deficit.Its goal is to put up 350,000 houses between 2011 and 2012, for which authorities have announced the implementation of a phase to finish off the works.It is expected the construction of 2,650,000 houses during Hugo Chavez's next term in office (2013-2019), adding up to a total 3 million units, said Francisco Sesto.Sesto said the information from a building constructed on behalf of the presidential office, in downtown Caracas, where 96 families moved in.

This building was put up in a land previously used as parking lot. "There are decent houses now for our people in the heart of the capital" city, Sesto said.The Presidential Office is expected to complete 6,300 dwelling units in states Vargas and Caracas by December, Sesto added. This agency is just one of a large amount of organs working on the Housing Mission.Also on Thursday, 324 families received new homes in four buildings constructed by the same Office. A total 1,360 families moved in to new homes nationwide.

5 Jordanian “Jihadists” arrested on Syrian borders

The Salafi Jihadist movement in Jordan said that the Jordanian security forces arrested an armed group, attempting to infiltrate through the Syrian lands.A source in the movement said to United Press International that a member in the armed group that was arrested earlier is called Muhammad Abed Mousa, who comes from Erbed city.He pointed out that Mousa was accused for Targeting churches in the city in 2007.
The source said that persons of the Movement are attempting to enter the Syrian lands “individually”.A Jordanian security source announced earlier that the Jordanian security forces arrested 5 Jordanians and found large amounts of arms and ammo during sneaking into the Syrian lands.

McCain, Lévy Openly Conspire Against World Peace
Tony Cartalucci, Land Destroyer, Nov 29 2012

A recent event held by the neoconForeign Policy Initiative featured a “conversation” between John McCain and Bernard-Henri Lévy. Both men played a pivotal role in arranging and promoting the arming, funding, and diplomatic recognition of terrorists in Libya who have now overrun much of the country, committed large-scale atrocities, and left a US ambassador dead and a US consulate burnt to the ground. Despite this, they now openly seek to repeat their “success” in Syria. Watch FPI’s “The Consequences of Inaction in Syria” with several facts kept in mind:

1. Libya’s “freedom fighters” are verified terrorists. Benghazi, Libya was their epicenter.
2. These very same terrorists are now being purposefully armed, funded, and funneled into Syria, via NATO member Turkey.
3. The violence in Syria is the result of a premeditated USraeli-Saudi plan stretching back to 2007, as described by Seymour Hersh at the time.
4. The current “rebels” in Syria are sectarian-driven, genocidal members of the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda, already subjugating segments of Syria’s population along the Turkish-Syrian border to medieval, Saudi-inspired autocracy and barbarism.
5. The so-called “Syrian National Council” is run by a Western big-oil representative who openly admits he seeks to establish an “Islamic state” upon the ashes of secular Syria.
6. Worst of all, McCain and Lévy admit the US, French, European, and even Turkish people reject wholly the notion of intervention in Syria, as well as the fact that the International community has on numerous occasions blocked attempts to approve of meddling in Syria’s internal affairs, yet both men, and the interests they represent continue to conspire to push the conflict further, at the cost of more lives, and at the risk of unraveling regional stability.

Syria rebels have SA-7 (“cobra”)

Stevie Wonder Saw The Light After All…Pulls Out Of Idf Support Concert
Wonder’s representatives will claim that he did not know the nature of the group, the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, and that he believes such a performance would be incongruent with his status as a UN “Messenger of Peace,” according to a source who has read email exchanges between Wonder’s representatives and organizers of the event. Representatives for Wonder, who performed at a 1998 gala honoring Israel’s 50th anniversary, say the performance would be incongruent with his status as a UN ‘Messenger of Peace.

Pipeline colonialism
A First Nations group in Canada’s westernmost province has issued a letter to “the illegitimate colonial governments of Canada and British Columbia, and to all parties involved in the proposed Pacific Trails Pipeline project” warning against attempts to bring a natural gas pipeline through their territory:“Under Wet’suwet’en law, the people of these lands have an inalienable right to their traditional territories, and the right to defend it. Even by Canadian law, the Supreme Court Dalgamuukw case decision explicitly recognizes the authority of hereditary chiefs, not elected Indian Act bands or councils. As such, any further unauthorized incursion into traditional Wet’suwet’en territory will be considered an act of colonialism, and an act of aggression towards our sovereignty.”

Secretary of State Candidate Has a Major Financial Stake in ... KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE

OnEarth reports that Susan Rice, the presumptive frontrunner to become the next US secretary of state, is heavily invested in Canadian companies that stand to profit from the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which she would have the power to approve:“The current U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Rice owns stock valued between $300,000 and $600,000 in TransCanada, the company seeking a federal permit to transport tar sands crude 1,700 miles to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast, crossing fragile Midwest ecosystems and the largest freshwater aquifer in North America.Beyond that, according to financial disclosure reports, about a third of Rice’s personal net worth is tied up in oil producers, pipeline operators, and related energy industries north of the 49th parallel — including companies with poor environmental and safety records on both U.S. and Canadian soil. Rice and her husband own at least $1.25 million worth of stock in four of Canada’s eight leading oil producers, as ranked by Forbes magazine.”

Colombian Army Officers Implicated in Killings to be Promoted

Recent US news has been flooded with stories of generals David Petraeus and John Allen, both involved in what is perceived as improper conduct. The scandals cost Gen. Petraeus his position as head of the CIA and Allen’s promotion to command US troops in Europe. The speedy strict consequences in both cases contrast with the fate of four Colombian army officers who, despite their involvement in outrageous crimes, have been chosen for promotion. That is the case of Lieutenant Colonel Orlando Espinosa Beltran and Lieutenant Alejandro Jaramillo, who participated in the February 2005 San José de Apartadó Peace Community massacre. Jaramillo was even sentenced to 34 years in prison for murder by an appeals court last June.Officers chosen for promotionOther officers to be promoted to general include Emiro Barrios Jiménez and Jorge Navarrete Jadeth, who paid a thousand dollar booty for the extrajudicial killings of two civilians in Manizales (Caldas), one of the cases known as “false positives,” the killing of unarmed civilians to bolster the officers’ body counts.We learned about these cases from human rights defenders Jorge Molano and German Romero, who represent the victims in both cases. Both have received death threats, presumably due to their efforts to halt these promotions. In Molano’s view, promoting the officers amounts to “protection of those who are responsible for crimes, an invitation to emulate those actions, and a threat to the victims. It puts in doubt the seriousness of [Colombia’s] human rights policy.”The San José de Apartadó 2005 massacre

Victims of February 2005 massacre. Photos: Susana PimientoDuring the first week of February 2005, the Colombian Army was trying to recover from an ambush by FARC leftist guerrillas that resulted in 18 soldiers dying, an episode known as El Porroso, in Mutata (Antioquia). The army’s response was Operation Fenix, a joint military-paramilitary operation, carried out by troops of the Army’s 17th Brigade, along with over one hundred men belonging to the Heroes of Tolova death squads, a paramilitary group that had sown terror in the region for over a decade. Fenix was conceived by then-commander of Second Division, General Mario Montoya, and a group of high officials, including General Héctor Fandiño, the head of the 17th Brigade and the commander of the Velez Battalion - and currently a candidate for promotion - Colonel Orlando Espinosa Beltran.For five days, from February 18 to 22, the Army and death squads patrolled the San José region. Jaramillo commanded one of the platoons thatparticipated in the operation, which carried out one of the most brutal massacres of the last decade in the Colombian armed conflict. Among those killed were not only charismatic Peace Community leader Luis Eduardo Guerra, but three children (Diener, 11, Natalia, 6 and 18-month-old Santiago were chopped in pieces with machetes.

The cruelty of the massacre caused an international uproar and demand for justice and accountability. But in a country in which 98% of the crimes against civilians go unpunished, the Peace Community massacre proved no exception. Seven years later, despite mountains of evidence of how the operation was planned and carried out with collective Army participation, only a couple low-ranking officers have been convicted. Proceedings against higher-ranking officers, such as Generals Montoya and Fandiño, which require action by Colombia’s Prosecutor General, have been stalled for years in their preliminary phase. The generals haven’t even been requested to give a deposition, much less charged with any crime.Mid-ranking officers, including Espinosa and Jaramillo, were prosecuted and acquitted by a lower court in 2010. Last June, an appeals court confirmed the acquittal of Colonel Espinosa Beltran and other soldiers. The appeals court found four officers, including Alejandro Jaramillo, guilty of homicide and conspiracy, and sentenced them to 34 years each. Incredibly, to this day, the military has not even requested Jaramillo to report to serve his sentence. He continues his life as a free man and active duty officer.False Positives in Manizales On March 17, 2008, the head of the 8th Brigade, with headquarters in the coffee growing town of Manizales in Caldas state, Colonel Emiro Barrios Jimenez, and his deputy commander, Colonel Jorge Navarrete Jadeth, signed a receipt for a bounty paid to a civilian for information that lead to “the killing in combat of two (2) unidentified terrorists, male, allegedly members to criminal bands in the service of drug traffickers,” which took place on February 8, 2008.A planned military operation took the lives of Darbey Mosquera (23) and Alex Ramirez (31). José Didier Marín’s life was spared: when his turn came to be shot, the soldier’s rifle jammed and Marín was able to escape. Marin became a witness under protection.

As with many other “false positive” cases, the three victims were recruited by a deception in their hometown Pradera, in Valle state, transported to another town, Pereira and then, in taxi, taken to Java, on the outskirts of Manizales, where army officers were expecting to kill them, plant weapons on them, and report them as killed in combat.

None of them were members of a criminal band, as the army reported. The three men were desperate for money, had a history of problems with the law and were contacted by an army soldier with the offer of a good paying job, a blackmailing operation. According to Human Rights Colombia, they fit the profile for the ideal victim of extrajudicial killings: “They were perfect bait to be presented as combatants. Their problems with the law would guarantee that they would be unlikely to be missed once they were killed.”In March 2012, a lower court in Manizales sentenced seven low-ranking Army officers to 42 and 43 years each for the extrajudicial killings of Darbey Mosquera and Alex Ramirez. Proceedings against the soldiers’ commanding officers, including Barrio Jimenez, have not gotten beyond an initial deposition.Bleak Prospects for Justice in ColombiaAs mentioned above, Colombia has a 98% impunity record for serious human rights violations. Recent legal reforms to the judicial system, made in the framework of peace talks between the Colombian government and the leftist FARC guerrillas to end the five decade armed conflict, would have the effect of only exacerbating this bleak scenario.On June 19, the Colombian Congress approved the Legal Framework for Peace, opening the door to a transitional justice system that would be applied to the guerrilla combatants and army soldiers. The law prioritizes cases against those most responsible for crimes against humanity and war crimes; conditionally dismisses all other cases; and suspends selected sentences. Among the beneficiaries of the suspension of selected sentences would likely be the very few top army officers who have ever been sentenced to lengthy sentences for serious crimes, thanks to the arduous effort of human rights defenders.Such victories can be counted with one hand and include, General Rafael Uscategui, sentenced to 40 years for the Mapiripan massacre; General Rito Alejo del Rio, head of the 17th Brigade and sentenced to 25 years for the brutal killing of a Marino Lopez Mena, an Afro-Colombian leader, in a joint military-paramilitary operation in the Urabá region; and, most notably, Colonel Jorge Plazas Vega, sentenced to 30 years for the disappearance of 11 persons in connection with the military’s retaking of the Palace of Justice in November 1985. Senate president and author of the bill, Roy Barreras, in a June 5 radio interview, conceded that the sentence of any army officer for a crime in the framework of the armed conflict, including Plazas Vega, could be terminated.Human rights defenders paid a steep price to achieve Plazas Vegas’ conviction: human rights lawyer Eduardo Umaña, who represented some of the victims of the case, was slain in 1998. Jorge Molano and German Romero have continued his work. Prosecutor Angela Buitrago lost her job, and the judge that convicted Plazas Vega, Stella Jara, received so many threats that she was forced into exile shortly after issuing the ruling.Another bill making its way through the Colombian Congress is a constitutional amendment that would send cases of human rights violations - including war crimes - to military jurisdiction. The bill, which has already passed six of the eight debates required for a constitutional amendment, has stirred an outcry in the Colombian and international human rights community. In an unprecedented move, eleven United Nations special rapporteurs and working groups sent a an open letter on October 22 to the Colombian Government and Congress stating that “such a reform would represent a historic setback to the progress achieved by the State of Colombia in the fight against impunity and respect and guarantee of human rights” and urged “the Government of Colombia and the Congress to seriously reconsider this constitutional reform project.” Three weeks later, over 230 organizationsissued a call to the Colombian government to withdraw the bill.

The Colombian Senate partially gave in to international pressure, expanding the list of crimes that would be excluded from military jurisdiction. The House version only included genocide, forced disappearances and crimes against humanity, which in itself excludes anything that is not systematic. The Senate sponsors of the bill submitted a report that added to the list extrajudicial executions, sexual crimes, forced displacement and torture. Still outside the civilian courts, are the crimes highlighted by the UN in its open letter, “arbitrary detention; cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; and other violations such as violence against the person and mutilation; taking of hostages; outrages upon personal dignity, including humiliating treatment; and the obligation to treat persons taking no active part in the hostilities humanely in all circumstances, without any distinction on grounds of ethnicity, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria, prohibited by virtue of common article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions.”The fact that both bills are being debated or have been passed in the framework of the ongoing talks between the FARC and the government makes them especially problematic. Undoubtedly, after five decades of war, Colombians yearn for peace, but nevertheless, whether peace can be achieved without justice continues to be a valid question. That is the big challenge for any transitional justice system.Furthermore, for a society that strives for reconciliation, the requirements to achieve such a goal acquire a new sense of urgency. As Ivan Cepeda so movingly articulated in his April 2011 speech in which he forgave the killing of his father, the elements needed for such reconciliation are justice, truth, reparation and a guarantee that the events will not re-ocurr.

 Read more…
[ed notes:also read..  
Even Those who Chose Peace Suffer in this War Zone  International Court Investigates Colombia for “False Positive” Killings

[Zionist response to UN vote]Israel permits construction of 3,000 units beyond green line
The forum of top nine ministers decided on Thursday to permit the construction of 3,000 more housing units in Jerusalem and the West Bank. It  was also decided to further the planning procedures of another 1,000 units in Jerusalem and the West Bank settlements, including the section connecting between Ma'aleh Adumim and Jerusalem.Israel is considering additional measures and a state official said that the continued building is in accordance with Israel's strategic interests map. The step was taken at the backdrop of UN General Assembly recognition of the  Palestinian Authority as an observer state. (Atilla Somfalvi, Ynet, Itamar
Eichner, Yedioth Ahronoth)

ZIONIST PIG EMIR OF QATAR SENTENCES POET TO LIFE FOR POEM  ... Qatari poet Mohamed Bin Rashid al-Deeb has been sentenced to life in prison for composing a poem last year deemed insulting to the country’s Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. Al-Ajami faced charges of “inciting the overthrow of the ruling regime” and was not present in the court. He has been jailed in solitary confinement for nearly a year. Meanwhile, Colum Lynch writes, “Two years after the start of the Arab Spring … Qatar’s carefully cultivated reputation as a U.S. partner — and as a neutral broker in the region — is increasingly muddled. With billions of dollars in natural gas and oil revenue, it is bankrolling a new generation of Islamists(ED NOTE:TERRORISTS) across the Middle East, raising questions about its vision for the region and whether some of its policies are in direct conflict with U.S. interests.”(ED NOTE:HOW COULD THEY BE IN CONFLICT,WHEN QATAR AND US GOV ARE BOTH TERRORISTS AND FACILITATE TERRORISM?)

Qatar arms Syria militants with antiaircraft missiles

Qatar has supplied the militants in Syria with antiaircraft missile systems to be used against the Syrian army, a report says.

According to a report published by the Washington Post on Thursday, US Middle Eastern intelligence officials said the militants had acquired “as many as 40 shoulder-fired missile systems in recent weeks,” and “at least some” of the weaponry was provided by Qatar.Recently, there has been a rise in weapons trafficking from Turkey into Syria.Qatar has provided most of the weapons smuggled to militants in Syria across the Turkish border, the Post stated.Intelligence officials, who closely track the flow of arms into Syria, say the militants are using the recently-acquired devices with “increasing effectiveness against Syrian helicopters and military jets,” the report added.Syria has been the scene of unrest since March 2011. Many people, including large numbers of security forces, have been killed in the turmoil.The Syrian government says some Western governments, especially the United States, and their regional allies including the Saudi regime, Qatar and Turkey are fanning the flames of violence in the country.On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that the US administration “is considering deeper intervention to help push [Syrian] President Bashar al-Assad from power.”In addition, the French Foreign Ministry said on November 26 that Paris had allocated 1.2 million euros (1.5 million dollars) in emergency aid to the newly-formed Syrian opposition, known as the National Coalition.

Justice requires action to stop subjugation of Palestinians by Desmond Tutu
A quarter-century ago I barnstormed around the United States encouraging Americans, particularly students, to press for divestment from South Africa. Today, regrettably, the time has come for similar action to force an end to Israel's long-standing occupation of Palestinian territory and refusal to extend equal rights to Palestinian citizens who suffer from some 35 discriminatory laws.
I have reached this conclusion slowly and painfully. I am aware that many of our Jewish brothers and sisters who were so instrumental in the fight against South African apartheid are not yet ready to reckon with the apartheid nature of Israel and its current government. And I am enormously concerned that raising this issue will cause heartache to some in the Jewish community with whom I have worked closely and successfully for decades. But I cannot ignore the Palestinian suffering I have witnessed, nor the voices of those courageous Jews troubled by Israel's discriminatory course.Within the past few days, some 1,200 American rabbis signed a letter — timed to coincide with resolutions considered by the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (USA) — urging Christians not "to selectively divest from certain companies whose products are used by Israel." They argue that a "one-sided approach" on divestment resolutions, even the selective divestment from companies profiting from the occupation proposed by the Methodists and Presbyterians, "damages the relationship between Jews and Christians that has been nurtured for decades."While they are no doubt well-meaning, I believe that the rabbis and other opponents of divestment are sadly misguided. My voice will always be raised in support of Christian-Jewish ties and against the anti-Semitism that all sensible people fear and detest. But this cannot be an excuse for doing nothing and for standing aside as successive Israeli governments colonize the West Bank and advance racist laws.I recall well the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail in which he confesses to his "Christian and Jewish brothers" that he has been "gravely disappointed with the white moderate … who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action;' who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom. ..."King's words describe almost precisely the shortcomings of the 1,200 rabbis who are not joining the brave Palestinians, Jews and internationals in isolated West Bank communities to protest nonviolently against Israel's theft of Palestinian land to build illegal, Jewish-only settlements and the separation wall. We cannot afford to stick our heads in the sand as relentless settlement activity forecloses on the possibility of the two-state solution.If we do not achieve two states in the near future, then the day will certainly arrive when Palestinians move away from seeking a separate state of their own and insist on the right to vote for the government that controls their lives, the Israeli government, in a single, democratic state. Israel finds this option unacceptable and yet is seemingly doing everything in its power to see that it happens.Many black South Africans have traveled to the occupied West Bank and have been appalled by Israeli roads built for Jewish settlers that West Bank Palestinians are denied access to, and by Jewish-only colonies built on Palestinian land in violation of international law.Black South Africans and others around the world have seen the 2010 Human Rights Watch report which "describes the two-tier system of laws, rules, and services that Israel operates for the two populations in areas in the West Bank under its exclusive control, which provide preferential services, development, and benefits for Jewish settlers while imposing harsh conditions on Palestinians." This, in my book, is apartheid. It is untenable. And we are in desperate need of more rabbis joining the brave rabbis of Jewish Voice for Peace in speaking forthrightly about the corrupting decadeslong Israeli domination over Palestinians.These are among the hardest words I have ever written. But they are vitally important. Not only is Israel harming Palestinians, but it is harming itself. The 1,200 rabbis may not like what I have to say, but it is long past time for them to remove the blinders from their eyes and grapple with the reality that Israel becoming an apartheid state or like South Africa in its denial of equal rights is not a future danger, as three former Israeli prime ministers — Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert and David Ben Gurion — have warned, but a present-day reality. This harsh reality endured by millions of Palestinians requires people and organizations of conscience to divest from those companies — in this instance, from Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions and Hewlett Packard — profiting from the occupation and subjugation of Palestinians.Such action made an enormous difference in apartheid South Africa. It can make an enormous difference in creating a future of justice and equality for Palestinians and Jews in the Holy Land.

FSA Terrorists' Desperate Propaganda: Boy Digs Own Grave in ...
► 1:02► 1:02	www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJA4j-lBEFINEW5 hours ago - 1 min

Recordings: This Is How MP Saqr Epuips Syria Rebels

Al-Akhbar Lebanese newspaper started Thursday publishing recordings that unveil some of Future MP Okab Saqr's involvement in supporting Syrian rebels.The published facts illustrated only part of Saqr's role in supplying weapons and providing logistic support, under the directions of former Prime Minister Saad Hariri.In this context, the three episodes included documented information and testimonies from sources close to Saqr. It unveiled some audio recordings related to arming, management, military operations, bombings, and assassinatingMoreover, the daily noted "the recordings were obtained from a source close to Saqr, who works in one of the operation rooms that were established to support the rebels."There are three military operation rooms located in the Turkish cities of Antioch, Adana and Istanbul," the source said, and pointed out "there is a special building for Saqr in Florea, Istanbul."He further uncovered that "meetings are held from time to time at Saqr's residence.""Around 20 young men from various Syrian provinces direct these rooms and coordinate with armed opposition groups leaders in order to provide the necessary funding and arms as well as to direct the move of fighters to areas under siege or attack," the paper added.In parallel, it unveiled that "all such moves are under the supervision of Turkish and Qatari intelligence officers."The "al-Akhbar" source also stated "all this was going under the name of "Space", a term adopted to refer to communication devices operating via satellite, specifically Chandelier devices and Iridium.""We believe that Saqr ruined our revolution with his crazy actions," he added, and noted "we objected the decision to send arms to inhabited areas. However, he insisted on his hysterical decisions without any concern for people's life."Furthermore, the source underscored that "the Lebanese MP distributed money to the leaders of armed groups, without distinction between the assassin, the mercenary, and the national rebels.""Saqr refused on more than one occasion to provide financial aid to wounded civilians or refugees on the grounds," he clarified.Here's one of the text of one of the recordings between MP Saqr and one of the leaders of the armed Syrian opposition.Abu Numan (commander of one of the militant groups): as-Salm Alikoum [Peace be upon you]Saqr: Waliakom [You Too] Abu Numan: Sir, we are greatly trapped and besieged. Two more days and our region will fall due to artillery and bombardment. They are shelling us from all sides. Please we need help. We want weapons.Saqr: Tell me what do you need specifically? The kind and amounts?Abu Numan: I mean, in reality, we want around RPGs and 20 throwers, and if possible 250 thousand Russian bullets and 300 qualitative guns.Saqr: All of this, what area are you talking about?Abu Numan: Izaz, Tel Rifat Andan, and the entire Aleppo countryside. You know the situation. Since yesterday, they are surrounding us from three sides of Idlib. And the Shabiha are emerging from inside Aleppo.Saqr: Who will receive the weapon and where? How will the operation be done?Abu Numan: As usual, the delivery is to be divided. Abu Bara will be there with young people and cars to transfer them to Aleppo. The need is big and the shelling continues while the groups are separated. There is no ammunition. Every fighter has only one or two bullet storages and the consumption is great. So, please manage it. God protect you. I don't know what to say. After God, we have no body but you.
Saqr: You'll be present in the delivery?Abu Numan: No, my brother Abu Nour will be there with the fighters and cars. As usual they will receive them from you.

Targeting Palestinian children with “pinpoint accuracy”
Felicity Arbuthnot, Global Research, Nov 28 2012

We saw the faces of those who’ll throw our children
Out of the window of this last space
We will die here, here in the last passage.
Here and here our blood will plant its olive tree.
– Mahmud Darwish, 1943-2008

The al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights has now assessed the destruction caused to Gaza and to its 1.6 million people living in an area of land 25 miles long and between 4 and 7 miles wide. The destruction of nearly all necessary to maintain civil society is so surgical as to make it impossible not to believe that the stated aim of Israel’s Interior Minister Eli Yishai to “send Gaza back to the Middle Ages,” Gilad Sharon’s to “Flatten all of Gaza,” or MK Michael Ben-Ari’s exhortation “There are no innocents in Gaza, mow them all down,” were not aberrations but reflected Israeli government intentions. In the first five days of the Gaza onslaught, the Israeli military state that they carried out 1,350 air strikes on the tiny strip, blockaded since electing Hamas in 2006. Gaza had its life support collectively removed the same year as Ariel Sharon was connected to it. The al-Mezan Centre’s initial findings on death and destruction are chilling and shaming, but were out of date just 24 hours later. In an extensive list, damaged or destroyed schools now stand at 52, the deaths at 168.Hugh Naylor wrote in the UAE National:

The Headmistress of the UN-sponsored al-Bureji girls preparatory school, Hanan Abu Yousif was stunned when she found her school in pieces on Satuday morning. “The school that used to win competitions has been turned to rubble.”

Exactly what threat the clinics, the schools, the HQ of the Palestinian Paralympic Committee, now rubble, posed to Israel’s security is unknown. Just the remains of a wall with a sign proclaiming the latter’s name and its aim: “For The Disabled Sports” are all that is left. Three youth clubs were also destroyed. It is also hard to know what threat the dead pose to the State of Israel. Three cemeteries were also bombed. Article 77 of the Geneva Convention, 1977, states:

Children shall be the object of special respect and shall be protected against any form of indecent assault. The Parties to the conflict shall provide them with the care and aid they require, whether because of their age or for any other reason.

What rubbish. Hugh Naylor again reports that on Nov 15, 14-year-old Nader Basioni, sleeping in the same room as his brother, saw 9-year-old Faris decapitated when metal from an air strike on “a near by field” tore through the family home. Nader said:

His head was gone except for a piece of skin of his face. I’m afraid to go to sleep because I see him in my dreams. It’s the same thing over and over. Fares is gone. He’s dead.

The Hijazi family too have suffered the unimaginable. In 2008, 17-year-old Mohammed was killed in an Israeli air strike. His parents were gifted with the arrival of another baby, whom they named Mohammed in his memory. Last week this small pre-school threat to the fourth most powerful military on earth, and his 2-year-old brother Suhaib, died in an attack along with their father Fouad and mother Amna. Trauma continues to engulf a third generation of Gaza’s children, families. And that famed “pinpoint accuracy” stuff has done well. Media images include a beautiful pigtailed 4-year-old, looking in to the camera with the huge eyes of the innocence of life’s threshold. Then she is in a hospital, unconscious, four great ugly suture lines criss-crossing her right cheek, from mouth to ear to hairline, blackened eyes swollen until it seems they might burst. “Pinpointed” seemingly, were two dead boys probably about nine years old, one with his stomach near eviscerated, remnants of his leg placed on his body. The other, his leg made meat, exposed bone, blood drenching his jaunty blue and white matelot-style sweat shirt. Four so, so small children, lay together on a trolley in the morgue, blue jeans, brightly coloured, now bloodied tops were also part of military accuracy, the frozen faces of parents and relatives recording them to memory for the last time before they washed them, wrapped them and laid them under the earth.

And did anyone in authority in the “only democracy in the Middle East” note the image of the father kissing the face of a dead toddler, his arms collecting her to him for a last time, this lost little threat to a neighbouring State? And another peril: the blood-soaked child lying across his father’s lap, the young father’s head buried on his lifeless form? A 9-year-old girl lost the fingers of her right hand, her mother is working to explain that her artistic passion can be achieved as well with her left. Pinpointing doesn’t get more accurate than the fingers of a small right hand. 3-year-old Ranan Yousef Arafat, blue-eyed, smiling, her green hair-ribbons matching her green top, must have had them worried. She was reduced to a form shrivelled, blackened, near unrecognizable, and heart-shreddingly pathetic. 7-year-old Nisma Kalajar may never talk again. She suffered a head fracture after falling from the third-floor family apartment when it was targeted in a drone strike. Did the three toddlers swaddled for burial, their father, his face contorted in his grief, being restrained by relatives as he tried to throw himself on them, somehow retrieve them, really pose a threat to the Israeli State?

Or another limp, lifeless mite cradled in the arms of his father, being in turn held tightly by another man to prevent him falling to the ground in grief? The images are without end, another father kissing the face of his baby daughter, his arms round his other two lifeless, pre-school-age children; Iyad Abu Khawsah, 18 months, so frail, ethereally slender, lying in the arms of a stricken-faced morgue attendant. In a hospital corridor a child of perhaps 12 leant against a wall, his face a mask of grief, despair, bewilderment. He clutched his baby brother, forehead swathed in bandages, in his arms. Their parents had been killed in the attack. Sitting on a hospital trolley next to his prone mother was a child about the same age of that bandaged little brother. He had his chubby hand on one side of her face, and his knee wedged against the other side. Her great eyes looked up at his scratched, smudged face. He sat there shoeless, in black, yellow and brown top and just a diaper, patiently waiting for her to wake up. She never will. When 11 members of the Dallou family were annihilated with 5 children, their home reduced to a large crater, the IDF declared it a “mistake in identification of the right home,” a blatant admission that targeting homes is a norm, in yet further defiance of a swathe of international law. The direct targeting of civilians is a breach of the laws of armed conflict. Additional Protocol I of 1977 states:

The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited.

Israel, naturally, has not ratified Protocol I, “but this provision, prohibiting direct attacks on civilians, is generally recognized as customary law, universally applicable regardless of ratification.” It has to be wondered how a country that also holds the world record for defying UNSCRs continues to get away with “prohibited” attacks, massacres, thefts, displacements, and the spreading of terror or threat of it on a near-ongoing basis. Further, forgotten it seems, amid the deafening silence of the UN and its seemingly now mute Sec-Gen (even his spineless predecessor Kofi Annan used to respond to illegal annihilations with “regrettable” or “unfortunate”) are two UN Resolutions. UNGAR3236 of Nov 22 1974 affirms “the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people in Palestine to self-determination without external interference” and “to national independence and sovereignty.” Reaffirmation of a Palestinian State is in UNSCR1397 of Mar 12 2002, which affirms “a vision of a region where two states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side within secure and recognized borders.” If, as seems near certain, Palestine moves from “Observer entity” to “Non-member observer State” at the UN on Nov 29, which Vera Jelinek, Dean of New York University’s Center for Global Affairs says “implies recognition of statehood,” regained nationhood of what remants remains of Palestine’s unstolen land edges closer. Will Israel accept this with grace, or will it return to Gaza to inflict a “final solution” on a people also enduring, as Iraq before it, a near-Middle-Age siege? As al-Mezan points out in their Report:

The failure of the international community to make timely, effective interventions to protect civilians and condemn violations of international law, including the failure of the UNSC to issue a statement, illustrates that the international community continues to apply political standards on human rights and international law issues, an attitude that could allow for violations of international law to recur in the future.

Incidentally, it is an ironic coincidence that the onslaught on Gaza began on the anniversary of German forces murdering 9,000 Jewish people in Slonim, Belarus on Nov 14t 1941, in “Operation Barbarosa.” In India, Nov 14 was Universal Children’s Day, which is celebrated there on the birthday of Jawahalal Nehru, who said:

When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it, always.

The Final Solution to the Palestinian Question
James Petras, Nov 28 2012

For the past 45 years, the state of Israel has been dispossessing millions of Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories, confiscating their lands, destroying homes, bulldozing orchards and setting-up ‘Jews-only’ colonial settlements serviced by highways, electrical systems and water works for the exclusive use of the settlers and occupying soldiers. The process of Israeli territorial expansion throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem has greatly accelerated in recent years, converting Palestinian-held territory into non-viable isolated enclaves, like South Africa’s Bantustans, surrounded by the Israeli soldiers who protect violent settler-vigilantes as they assault and harass Palestinian farmers at work in their fields, beat Arab children on their way to school, pelt Palestinian housewives as they hang their laundry, and then invade and defecate in Palestinian mosques and churches. Israel’s strategic goal is to impose ‘Greater Israel’ on the region: to take over all of historical Palestine, expel the entire non-Jewish population, and subsidize ‘Jews-only’ settlements for settler-immigrants, often from the US and former USSR. While bulldozers and tanks have dispossessed Palestinians in the West Bank for decades, missiles and bombs have become the ‘weapons of choice’ for uprooting and eliminating the Palestinians in Gaza. In just 8 days, Israel’s latest blitzkrieg resulted in the killing of 168 Palestinians, including 42 children and 100 civilians, the wounding of 1,235, the destruction of over 1,350 buildings, and the further traumatizing of over 1.7 million children, women and men fenced in the world’s largest concentration camp. According to the Israeli Defense Minister, the Jewish State dropped “1,000 times more bombs onto Gaza” than the Palestinians fired back into Israel.

The current Israeli offensive began with the gruesome assassination of a prominent Hamas leader, Ahmed Jabari, and immediately escalated into an assault on the entire Palestinian population of Gaza. Secure in the knowledge that the Palestinians had no capacity to retaliate with similar weaponry, the Israeli High Command ordered the systematic destruction of civilian life, workplaces and densely populated neighborhoods. Over 75% of the casualties have been non-combatants; almost half are children, women and the elderly. The Israeli propaganda machine and its fifth column in the US fabricated and repeated the Big Lie that the Jewish state was ‘defending itself.’ Right. With only six (mostly military) deaths and 280 wounded (the majority non-threatening) versus the nearly 200 Palestinians, mostly civilians, slaughtered. The US Zionist Power Configuration embedded in the policy centers of the US executive, the Congress and both political parties, parroted this line. All the major US TV networks and print media reproduced verbatim Israeli Foreign Office press handouts about Israel’s ‘defensive’ genocide, while entire Palestinian families were being buried under the rubble of their bombed apartments. Death and destruction, planned and executed with the unanimous support of all the major Israeli political parties and leaders, enthralled the mass of its Jewish citizens. Indeed, over 80% of Israeli Jews supported the terror blitz against Gaza. Russia Today reported:

A new wave of hatred towards Palestinians is sweeping through Israel, from public figures to the man in the street.

The Israeli Interior Minister declared:

Gaza should be bombed into the Middle Ages.

Israeli demonstrators in Tel Aviv shouted:

They don’t deserve to live, they must die! May your children die! Now we must go back there and kick out all Arabs!

Rabbi Yaakov Yosef, the son of a former chief rabbi, made a speech in the Cave of the Patriarchs in occupied Hebron where he blessed the Israeli soldiers and urged them “to slaughter their enemy.” Even more to the point, Israel Katz, Israel’s Transport Minister, said:

Gaza must be bombed so hard that the population will have to flee into Egypt.

Avi Dichter, the Minister of Home Front Defense, incited the Israeli military to “re-format” Gaza, that is to erase its population with bombs. Almost half of Israeli Jews considered Netanyahu’s terror bombing of Gaza insufficient, opposed the ceasefire and demanded the bloody assault against the Palestinian population of Gaza continue. Almost a third thought their government should have sent ground forces into Gaza, an invasion which would have led to tens of thousands of Palestinian casualties and total destruction of their vital infrastructural lifelines. Netanyahu and his allies in power now confront a new, totalitarian mass opposition that openly embraces a genocidal ‘Final Solution’ to the Palestinian problem. The parallels between the pronouncements and actions of Nazi Germany and Zionist Israel are overwhelming. The bloodlust in Israel goes far beyond psychopathic raving of a few deranged rabbis and marginal politicians. It extends from the top Cabinet members to the average citizen. In Israel, almost an entire people, over 80% of Jews, support the terror bombing and slaughter of the people of Gaza with varying degrees of intensity. Setting aside the profound sociopathic disorders of the raging and racist multitude in Israel, what is politically more significant are the totalitarian rants of leading Israeli public figures, published as editorials in such newspapers as the JPost, where Gilad Sharon wrote:

We need to flatten all of Gaza. There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing.

MK Michael Ben-Ari wrote:

There are no innocents in Gaza. Mow them down.

These outbursts reveal Israel’s strategic goal: genocide at the service of Greater Israel, the bloody purge of 5 million Palestinians, the creation of a 100% ‘pure’ Jewish State. Overseas (mostly US) Zionist-Jewish media moguls, Ivy-League university academics, billionaires, US Congress people and government officials finance, underwrite, propagandize for and promote with single-minded perseverance the defense of Israel’s most heinous war crimes, its violations of international law and its ongoing crimes against humanity. During the entire period of the recent Israeli blitzkrieg, Israel’s fifth column, the CPMAJO, the NYT and the rest of the major US press rose to the dirty task of giving unconditional support for Israel’s war crimes. Vocal support from the White House and by extension the leaders of the EU echoed Netanyahu’s lies. In order to grasp the media whitewash of these ongoing crimes against humanity, one could compare the US press reports on Israel’s bombing of Gaza to those which would have appeared in the leading fascist newspapers at the time of Hitler’s ‘defensive’ attacks on Poland and Belgium and the bombing blitz of civilians in London.

[ed notes:click link to read more...

US overseeing mysterious construction project in Israel
Walter Pincus, WaPo, Nov 28 2012

The US Army Corps of Engineers plans to supervise construction of a five-story underground facility for an IDF complex oddly named “Site 911” at an IAF base near Tel Aviv. Expected to take more than two years to build at a cost of up to $100m, the facility is to have classrooms on Level 1, an auditorium on Level 3, a laboratory, shock-resistant doors, protection from nonionizing radiation and very tight security. Clearances will be required for all construction workers, guards will be at the fence, and barriers will separate it from the rest of the base. Only US construction firms are being allowed to bid on the contract, and proposals are due Dec 3, according to the latest Corps of Engineers notice.

Site 911 is the latest in a long history of military construction projects the US has undertaken for the IDF under the US Foreign Military Sales program. The 1998 Wye River Memorandum has led to about $500m in US construction of military facilities for Israel, most of them initially in an undeveloped part of the Negev Desert, supposedly to ensure there were bases to which IDF forces stationed in the West Bank could be redeployed. As recorded in the Corps’ European District magazine, Engineering in Europe, three bases were built to support 20,000 troops, and eventually the IAF moved into the same area, creating Nevatim air base. A new runway 2.5 miles long was built there by the Corps along with about 100 new buildings and 10 miles of roads. Over the years, the Corps has built underground hangers for Israeli fighter-bombers, facilities for handling nuclear weapons, though Israel does not admit having such weapons, command centers, training bases, intelligence facilities and simulators, according to Corps publications. Within the past two years the Corps, which has three offices in Israel, completed a $30m set of hangars at Nevatim, which the magazine describes as a “former small desert outpost that has grown to be one of the largest and most modern air bases in the country.” It has also supervised a $20m project to build maintenance shops, hangars and headquarters to support Israel’s large Eitan UAV.Site 911, which will be built at another base, appears to be one of the largest projects. Each of the first three underground floors is to be roughly 41,000 sq ft, according to the Corps notice. The lower two floors are much smaller and hold equipment. The notice says that security concerns are so great that non-Israeli employees hired by the builder can come only from “the US, Canada, Western Europe countries, Poland, Moldavia, Thailand, Philippines, Venezuela, Romania and China. 

[ed notes;these people from countries highligthed will be most likely agents trained by mossad to conduct false flag attacks in their respective countries...

Nuclear Christmas, false flag in America to blame on Iran

There are strong confirmations that one or more nuclear weapons, known to have been stolen but kept from the public to “prevent panic,” may well be deployed in American cities by extremist elements with probable ties to a foreign intelligence agency.This scenario was the basis of the television show “Jericho” several years ago. However, this time there are real culprits and real motivations, both the overthrow of the government of the United States and the naming of Iran as a “scapegoat.”The plot has been tracked to groups within the Pentagon, several government agencies and wealthy and powerful extremist backers of Netanyahu and, in particular, the “Gulf Cartel” operating from Mexico that has penetrated nearly all levels of government, law enforcement and the military across the country.Using surprisingly direct language, President Obama has officially confirmed this conspiracy. Six days ago, the President of the United States, on his official public website, issued a warning about “government insiders” who were planning “violent acts” against the “government and the nation.”Despite the public nature and seriousness of this announcement and the draconian measures alluded to in order to “mitigate” the threat, no member of the opposition party which usually jumps on any and every word the president says has mentioned anything.Moreover, there has been a total press blackout on this press release, which is prominently displayed on the White House website. Those we have spoken with at the highest levels of the military and key intelligence and law enforcement agencies indicate they have never seen a statement of this kind and find it shocking.All find it frightening and for good reason.Sources within the intelligence community have confirmed that key former military personnel, some employed by the government to provide security for nuclear facilities, others with training in the assembly and detonation of “special weapons,” are being sought and actively recruited by “militant extremists” who represent, for the most part, powerful international corporations.Though this group was initially tracked down through counter-narcotics investigations, their membership includes at least one major hedge fund, top law firms, major media players and even religious organizations.We keep returning to the White House warning:“…to deter, detect and mitigate actions by employees who may present a threat to national security… These threats include… violent acts against the Government and the Nation…”When all major media and political groups chose to suppress reporting of this threat, a press release that, normally, would have been turned against President Obama in order to label him a “wild conspiracy theorist,” this became more than real, it became genuinely terrifying.

[ed notes:click link to read more...

Buenos Aires begins largest trial of crimes against humanity in Argentina
A court in Argentina has begun a large trial of the so-called Dirty War crimes that were committed during the country’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship. - The trial of 68 former officials, who are facing some 800 charges of kidnap, torture and murder associated with an elite naval college, began on Wednesday in the capital Buenos Aires, AFP reported. During the seven-year junta period, almost 5,000 people were sent to the infamous Naval School of Mechanics (ESMA), which served as a secret detention camp in Buenos Aires. Only a fraction survived the camp’s horrors, and most of the bodies of those who perished have never been recovered. Other victims were sedated, put on airplanes and tossed into the Atlantic Ocean.

[ed notes:click link for whole article...its good that these trials are taking place,but there needs to be focus and demands to prosecute these monsters main backers wich were of course the U.S. govt!!! see... Kissinger and Argentina: a case study in US support for state terror  On 30th Anniversary of Argentine Coup: New Declassified Details ...  also see... Brazil: How the USA backed the dictatorship · Global Voices unfortunatly none of these trials and commissions investigating these crimes are seeking to put washingtons war criminals who were responsible for operation condor to begin with on trial,wich should be the real aim!