Elisabeth Zimmermann
WSWS

The village of Mayen, near the city of Koblenz in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, is governed by a Social Democratic Party (SPD) administration. A Roma family originating from Kosovo had lived in Mayen since 1999. Despite the serious illness of one of the members of the family, Mrs. Borka T., the whole family was deported under inhumane conditions in early December to Kosovo. Just a month later, Mrs. T. died of a brain hemorrhage.

In the early hours of December 7, police picked up Mrs. Borka T. with her husband and her 14-year-old son Avdil from their home in Mayen. They were given just 30 minutes to pack a few personal belongings. They were then taken by police to Dusseldorf Airport and together with other refugees deported to Pristina, the capital of Kosovo.

Mrs. Borka T. was examined at Düsseldorf Airport by a doctor whose job was to give the okay for her deportation. Mrs. T.’s own specialist doctors had diagnosed her as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and neuralgia. Due to these symptoms, she received regular medication and therapy with the support of the Caritas organisation. These facts were known but ignored by officials at the airport.

The ailing woman’s condition was also swept aside by the local administration in Mayen-Koblenz, which ordered the deportation of the family. The Trier Administrative Court then upheld the deportation, knowing full well that no possibilities of treatment for the woman existed in Kosovo.

The Mayen-Koblenz administration denied any responsibility on its part even after the death of Borka T. was announced earlier this year. A spokesman merely declared that the authority had relied on the judgement of the Trier Administrative Court, which had stated that there were options for her treatment in Kosovo. The spokesman refuted any correlation between a lack of drugs and the woman’s death as absurd, declaring with cynicism: “Intracranial bleeding is always a possibility”.

Read more »

Stephen Lendman

Merriam-Webster defines racism as

"a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race."

It was the basis of South African apartheid and Nazi "master race" superiority above others, especially Jews.

Israel has no constitution. Basic Laws substitute, including statutes affirming exclusive rights for Jews. One is the right of return, granting them automatic citizenship. Goyim are denigrated and not wanted, especially Arabs. David Ben-Gurion once said:

"This is not only a Jewish state, where the majority of the inhabitants are Jews, but a state for all Jews, wherever they are, and for every Jew who wants to be here....This right is inherent in being a Jew." It applies to no one else.

Israel's Law of Citizenship or Nationality Law establishes rules so stringent against non-Jews that many Palestinians in 1948 were denied citizenship, despite family roots going back generations or longer.

On May 5, 2007, Professor Joseph Maddad's Palestine Remembered article headlined, "Israel's Right to Be Racist," discussed a "New anti-Semitism," saying:

"Anti-Semitism is no longer the hatred of and discrimination against Jews as a religious or ethnic group; in the age of Zionism, we are told, anti-Semitism has metamorphosed into something that is more insidious. Today, Israel and its Western defenders insist genocidal anti-Semitism consists mainly of any attempt to take away and to refuse to uphold the absolute right of Israel to be a Jewish racist state."

Israel will do anything to convince Arabs why it deserves to be racist, he said. It also makes peace provisional on "Palestinians 'recogniz(ing) its right to exist' as a racist state," meaning, at best, they'll be tolerated as lesser beings provided they accept inferiority and remain submissive, relinquishing all rights in return for nothing.

Read more »

Vera Macht
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

Death comes quickly at a place like this. On sunny winter days, when the smell of the night’s rain is still in the air, as if it would have brought some hope for the raped, barren land of Gaza, overrun hundreds of times by Israeli tanks and bulldozers. The land between the foothills of the village of Bait Hanoun and the Israeli border, guarded by watchtowers, soldiers, snipers, helicopters and drones. A land in which death is a regular guest. But despite all that, the 65-year-old Shaban Karmout probably had something like hope when he woke up on that winter morning. His house is in exactly this 300 meter wide strip of land in the so-called buffer zone. He has built his house 40 years ago, in 1971, when Gaza was already occupied by Israel, and yet he had thought to have a future there for himself and his family. Shaban began to plant fruits, his land was full of palms and trees, lemon, orange, clementine and almond trees were growing there. He had a good life.

But in 2003, just at the time of the almond harvest, the Israeli bulldozers came in the middle of the night. It took them three hours to raze the work of 30 years to the ground. Since the Israeli attack in 2009, he could no longer live there, too dangerous had the buffer zone become, where his home was, which has now been declared a closed combat zone by Israel. He had since lived in a rented small concrete house in the middle of the refugee camp near Bait Hanoun, in Jabalia, cramped in a tiny room with his large family. But he went back to his land, every morning, and worked there until the evening. He and his family had to make a living from something, after all. And so this morning, in the morning of the 10th January 2011, he woke up with hope, around 4 o’clock, and left for his fields. Full of hope he was because he and his neighbors had recently received a new well, their old one had been destroyed by an Israeli tank incursion. The Italian NGO GVC had built up the well, it was financed by the Italian government.

Read more »

Eric S. Margolis
ericmargolis.com

Oops! Something has gone terribly wrong with Washington’s plans for regime change in the Mideast. Wasn’t there supposed to be a US and British engineered revolution against Iran’s mullahs, followed by installation of a cooperative pro-western government and a bonanza for western oil companies?
The revolution came, all right, but in the wrong place. The explosion of popular fury in Tunisia that ousted its dictator of 23-years is sending shock waves across the Arab world and has alarm bells ringing in Washington.

Pay no attention to President Barack Obama’s pious bromides welcoming the revolution in Tunisia. The US, France and their Arab satraps are deeply worried that Tunisia’s popular revolution could spark similar uprising against the dictatorships or monarchies in other members of America’s Mideast Raj, notably Egypt.

It has come to light that Tunisia’s ruling elite had dinners and wine flown in from Paris at government expense for lavish parties in their beachside villas. Shades of the Iranian revolution, when women of the ruling elite in Tehran used to send their dirty laundry to Paris for hand washing, or fly to Paris to have their hair done for a soiree.

In a zesty bit of irony totally lost on the US media, just as a people’s revolution was ousting Tunisia’s brutal US-backed regime, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Qatar piously lecturing local oil monarchs on good government and the need to promote democracy.

Tunisia has not had much strategic importance since Carthage – whose ruins and great war harbor lie in a residential suburb of Tunis – fought Rome in the three Punic Wars. During World War II’s North Africa campaign, Tunisia was battled over by the British, Germans and Italians.

Since then, little Tunisia has been a backwater, known mainly for sunshine, cheap beach vacations, and as a refuge for Italian crooks.

Read more »