Nahida Izzat, Exiled Palestinian

I often pondered as to why the name Holy Land was given to Palestine?

What is it about this land that justifies or legitimizes such a description when in fact that land, through myriad of foreign invasions has witnessed some of the cruelest, most barbaric, most unholy, most immoral human behaviour?

My latest visit to my Home-Land Palestine was a heartrending experience with shocking reality; a roller-coaster, a volcano of paradoxical emotions, an extraordinary visual and sensual intensive course, with daily, if not hourly, spiritual lessons.

While the visit itself did not last more than ten days, I however travelled through time, standing on the terrace of my grandparents, I saw what was, what is and what could be.

As I stood on that old terrace of my grandfather's house, facing the remains of the village of Lifta on one side and the construction of the Jewish colony Givat Shaul with its hideous buildings and eery cemetery on the other, what I saw was indescribable: a vivid screen shot of two extremes of human existence and endeavour, a visual manifestation of a bizarre reality of two paradoxical worlds narrating the tragedy of what had happened and is still happening to Palestine and the world:

In the horizon, there before my eyes, written the truth in plain indisputable language.

With poignant Lifta on my left I saw the past: organic, natural, native, sustainable, gentle, green, alive, flowing, timeless, tender, harmonious, modest, and exquisitely beautiful.

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Stephen Lendman

Israel's prison gulag is one of the world's most hellish. Palestinians held suffer horrifically. Inflicting pain and suffering is official Israeli policy. Rule of law principles are spurned.

Virtually all Palestinians held are political prisoners. Refusing food is their only resistance weapon. The Addameer Prisoner Support Group estimates about 2,000 now engage in open-ended hunger strikes. Most began on April 17, Palestinian Prisoners Day.

Israel responded as expected. More pain and suffering was inflicted. Detainees are attacked and beaten. Personal possessions were confiscated. Electricity was cut off. Salt for water is prohibited.

Transfers are made harsher locations. Solitary confinement is imposed. Visits by family members and lawyers are denied. Addameer said its attorneys can't get access.

Israel hopes tough tactics will undermine the will to resist. Instead it's hardened.

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Trevor Timm

This week [the House of Representatives now has approved Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act], the dangerous ‘cybersecurity’ bill that threatens to decimate Internet users’ privacy in the name of security. EFF and a wide variety of other groups have been protesting the law’s provisions giving companies the power to read users’ emails and other communications and hand them to the government without any judicial oversight whatsoever—essentially a giant ‘cybersecurity’ exception to all existing privacy laws.

We’ve already shown how the bill’s definition of ‘cyber threat information’ can lead the companies and government to surveil citizens for a host of reasons beyond critical cybersecurity threats. But we want to focus on one vital portion of the bill that is not getting enough attention: what the government can do with your private information once companies hand it over.

Even though CISPA is styled as a ‘cybersecurity’ bill, it explicitly allows the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA) to use your information for ‘national security’ purposes—expanding the bill far beyond its purported goal. Bill sponser Mike Rogers introduced a package of amendments [recently], but did not remove “national security” as one of the purposes for which information can be used.

The Erosion of Civil Liberties

In the past decade, the amorphous phrase “national security” has invaded many arenas of government action, and has been used to justify much activity that did not involve legitimate terrorist threats. The most obvious (and odious) example is the unfortunately named USA-PATRIOT Act, a law that was sold to the American public as essential to combating terrorism, but which has overwhelmingly been applied to ordinary American citizens never even suspected of terrorism.

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