When the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) this week began taking military action in the Gaza strip against Hamas (as the IDF announced on Twitter), Anonymous declared its own war as part of #OpIsrael. Among the casualties are thousands of email addresses and passwords, hundreds of Israeli web sites, government-owned as well as privately owned pages, as well as databases belonging to the Bank of Jerusalem and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Activism – Wendy Cockcroft: Since ACTA was decisively beaten on 4th July 2012, the first time a free trade agreement had been scuppered by the people of EU member nations, the big business lobbyists have taken heed and resolved to change in order to be more successful. Hence the secrecy. CETA and the EU-India trade agreement are the next big battles. We need your help.
The term “Free Trade Agreement” is a misnomer. The idea is to remove barriers, taxes, and tariffs, but since people can end up being shackled to a multinational corporation’s agenda, the only freedom is in the ability of the corporations to operate in ways that often end up utterly destroying local economies or harnessing law enforcement agencies to protect their interests. The worst part is that we the taxpayers have to foot the bill for our losses of national sovereignty and civil rights. We saw ACTA off in July, but there are two more major agreements to deal with and we need to be ready to contact our M.E.P.s when the time comes.
Cities Taken By Islamists Click on Image to Enlarge
Algeria: The Algerian government has given tacit approval for an African-led military intervention in Mali so long as there are no troops stationed on Algerian soil.
Comment: This means that Algeria will try to help by sealing its border with Mali once the intervention begins [never mind the Tauregs behind their lines].
Mali: Update. News services reported today that the prospect of a war in northern Mali against fundamentalist Islamists and al-Qaida affiliates advanced significantly after European governments promised to back an international force to retake the region from Islamist groups, provided it is led by soldiers from African countries.
While preparations continue to retake the north, foreign jihadists reportedly are arriving in northern Mali to reinforce the Islamic militants.
Comment: This week's major development is that the Europeans promised to finance the operations. The problems of operating in northern Mali are enormous, requiring extensive resources just to sustain supplies of ammunition, fuel, food and water, not to omit coordination between forces from different states. The supply problems alone would tax a modern military force from a single nation.
A multi-national operation compounds the problems exponentially, especially if English-speaking and French-speaking forces try to cooperate. France and its NATO allies must provide the communications, maintenance, intelligence and supply backbone or this intervention will stand no chance of success. It looks like another Libya operation. No matter how the operations are presented to the public, the US will be doing much of the heavy lifting because no other nation in the world can. That is why the US has an Africa Command.
Below the line: various map images and airports with runway lengths.
Every war is hell, particularly for civilians. And while every war produces deadly familiar impacts on the civilian population whether it is death and injuries due to combat or subsequent illness and death due to destruction of infrastructure sometimes the impact can be unique.
Sadly, such seems to be the case in Iraq which links the past war there with a “staggering” increase in birth defects in areas of the country where bombing and heavy fighting occurred.
A recent study, titled “Metal Contamination and the Epidemic of Congenital Birth Defects in Iraqi Cities” was underwritten by the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Michigan and which was published in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, focused on the cities of Basra and Fallujah, where serious fighting occurred during the war. According to the study:
The spent fuel pool at Fukushima Unit 4 is the top short-term threat to humanity, and is a national security issue for America. As such, it is disturbing news that the ground beneath unit 4 is sinking. Specifically, Unit 4 sunk 36 inches right after the earthquake, and has sunk another 30 inchessince then. Moreover, Unit 4 is sinking unevenly, and the building may begin tilting. An international coalition of nuclear scientists and non-profit groups are calling on the U.N. to coordinate a multi-national effort to stabilize the fuel pools. And see this. Given the precarious situation at Unit 4, it is urgent that the world community pool its scientific resources to come up with a fix.
Below is a BBC report of and Israeli “calorie” study drafted in support of Israel blockade policies for Gaza. To Israel's credit, an Israeli human rights group forced the release of this report, but it does nevertheless raise a question: What kind of government would authorize work on such a methodical report on this subject in the first place?
“In her reporting of the Eichmann trial for The New Yorker, which evolved into Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe Eichmann. She raised the question of whether evil is radical or simply a function of thoughtlessness, a tendency of ordinary people to obey orders and conform to mass opinion without a critical evaluation of the consequences of their actions and inaction.” (wikipedia)
Read the calorie study (Israeli study of Gaza food consumption to support blockade policy) as well BBC report below, and ask yourself how would you behave if someone was even thinking about doing this to you. Would you fight back with any weapons at your disposal or meekly submit?
An Israeli court has forced the release of government research detailing the number of calories Palestinians in Gaza need to consume to avoid malnutrition.
The study was commissioned after Israel tightened its blockade of the territory after Hamas came to power in June 2007.
. . . . . . .
‘Daily humanitarian portion'
The Israeli human rights group Gisha, which campaigns against Israel's Gaza blockade, fought a long legal battle to get the Israeli ministry of defence to release this document.
“How can Israel claim that it is not responsible for civilian life in Gaza – when it controls even the type and quantity of food that Palestinian residents of Gaza are permitted to consume?”
