AnomalousNYC
flickr

As Israel struts around its enclosed little world, congratulating itself and scolding everyone else, the wails of its victims rise from the rubble that was once Palestine. To the ears of Israel, the screams of little girls makes a beautiful melody, the sound of a job well done, of a lesson learned.

The relatives of Mamdouh Abaid [photo] weep as his body is prepared for funeral. Mamdouh, age 17, was ripped to pieces by one of the thousands of israeli artillery shells Israel has been bombarding Palestinian cities with every day for weeks. Israel's latest terror campaign is, sadly, not particularly different from the terror campaign of last month, or the month before, or the month before that. The daily murder of random Palestinians, daily bombing and shooting, daily mass arrests and humiliation, daily torture and demonization, daily assaults and beatings, daily closing of schools, daily obstruction of basic food and water, the daily mockery and taunts of racist soldiers, the daily home demolitions and land confiscations - there is nothing new in any of this. Zionists have been happily abusing Palestinians for more than a century, and with each passing year, as Zionist butchery grows more wantonly violent, more malicious and obscene, Israelis grow more confident in the fundamental decency and "rightness" of Israel and the innate evil of "the Arab." As international relief workers warn of an entire generation of severely traumatized children, whose most chilling manifestation is a common condition referred to as "constant screaming," and as millions of besieged and deliberately impoverished people are systematically deprived by Israel of literally every basic requirement of human life - food, water, sleep, shelter, medical care - impartial observers warn that Israel's trajectory, moving deeper and deeper into a whirlpool of roaring ethnic hatred, is the trajectory of genocide.

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Stephen Lendman

[Illustration: Haneen Zoabi is a member of the Knesset representing the Balad party. She is a Palestinian Arab, who is also an Arab citizen of Israel. She is the first woman to be elected to the Knesset on an Arab party's list. (Wikipedia)]

Numerous previous articles explained Israel's hardline anti-democratic agenda, several accessed through the following links, here, here and here.

Now the latest. On January 5, Israel's Knesset, by a 47 - 16 vote, approved forming a parliamentary committee to investigate leftist Israeli organizations. Among them, B'Tselem issuing a same day press release headlined, "B'Tselem proud of its activities and completely transparent. The Knesset's decision is what harms Israel's international status," adding:

"We are proud of our work to promote human rights in the Occupied Territories, which is conducted legally and with complete transparency. Persecution and attempts at silencing will not stop us. In a democracy, criticism of the government is not only legitimate - it is essential. B'Tselem calls on all members of the Knesset to hold an informed debate on the information provided by human rights organizations, instead of harassing and smearing those who dare to question and criticize."

The statement continued, saying:

● the inquiry's purpose isn't to establish facts; it's to smear;
● B'Tselem's donor list is public information, available online;
● its financial reports are available at the NGO Registrar's office that just awarded B'Tselem a Certification of Proper Administration; and
● if MKs care about Israel's deteriorating international standing, "they should stop promoting parliamentary initiatives that will only cause it to plummet even further."

Israel's media are all over this story. In America, major broadsheets like the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Wall Street Journal ignored it, showing their usual one-sided support for Israel's worst crimes, belligerence and extremism, including by legislators.

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Robert Stevens and Paul Stuart
WSWS

"The defeat of the air traffic controllers [is] a critical factor in [the Spanish government's] bid to privatise Spain’s airports, the largest remaining state-run system in Europe."

The Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) government has stepped up its offensive against 2,200 air traffic controllers.

The controllers are currently under a State of Alert, imposed by the government by Royal Decree (1673/2010) on December 4. Under the order, the controllers have been forced to work under “military discipline” under the command of the Chief of Staff of the Air Force until the State of Alert ends. The order was imposed following a mass walkout by the controllers on December 3 to protest intolerable working conditions and attacks on their legal rights.

On December 29, Eduardo Esteban [Audio], the chief prosecutor of the Madrid Court, issued a letter demanding the prosecution of air traffic controllers on charges of sedition for stopping work on health and safety grounds over December 3-4. The government has now escalated the threat of prosecution to involve controllers “in general”, according to an insider at the Public Prosecutions office reported in El País.

Attorney General Cándido Conde-Pumpido is demanding sentences of up to eight years under article 20 of the 1964 Air Navigation Laws. This is the second law carried over from the dictatorship of General Franco deployed against air traffic controllers. The government’s declaration of a State of Alert was the first since the end of the Franco regime in 1975.

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Philip Giraldi
Antiwar

The record of the America’s law making body Congress and its judiciary since 9/11 has been nothing short of pathetic. The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 might well be described as one of history’s more spectacular euphemisms employed to gut a constitution, somewhat akin to Hitler’s "emergency act" in the wake of the Reichstag fire of 1933. It is better known as the Patriot Act I. Patriot Act I became law six weeks after the fall of the twin towers and was followed by the the Patriot Act II of 2006, the two laws together diminishing constitutional rights to free speech, freedom of association, freedom from illegal search, the right to habeas corpus, prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, and freedom from the illegal seizure of private property. The First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments in the Bill of Rights have all been discarded or abridged in the rush to make it easier to investigate, torture, and jail both foreigners and American citizens. The Patriot Act also incorporates the Financial Anti-Terrorism Act of October 17th, 2001, which permits the freezing of assets and investigation of individuals suspected of being financial supporters of terrorism. "Suspected" is the key word, as there is no oversight or appeal to the process.

The Military Commission Act of 2006 followed the Patriot Acts, creating military tribunals for the trying of "unlawful enemy combatants," including American citizens. Unlike a civil or criminal court, the accused needs only a two-thirds vote by the commission members present to be convicted. The act permits the indefinite jailing of suspects in a military prison without providing access to a lawyer or charging with a crime. The government is not required to produce any normally admissible evidence at a commission hearing and can rely on hearsay or even on information obtained overseas during torture to make its case. Detainees do not have access to any classified information being used against them and cannot cross examine or even know the identity of witnesses. The MCA suspends habeas corpus for anyone charged and forbids the application of the Geneva Conventions to mitigate conditions of confinement or to challenge the judicial process or verdict. The Geneva Conventions also cannot be invoked if the accused subsequently claims he was tortured or otherwise abused, protecting overly zealous interrogators from later charges of "war crimes." The act was also designed to cover all cases that were pending, meaning that it was retroactive.

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