What is za purpose of your visit to Izrael?” This is the welcoming question that is asked by Israeli border security to anyone that travels to the Palestinian territories. For this Palestinian, it is to bring green energy to Palestine. Recognizing Palestine’s grave energy crisis, Khaled Al Sabawi takes you on his quest to “keep Palestine cool” using geothermal energy.
Information
Press and humanitarian aid (red cross) are not being allowed into Syria.
Every day the government forces attack their people.
Before the Syrian military/air force launches an attack against civilians, the government cuts the power- turns off land lines and cell phones- effectively blacking out the region so that the media, citizens, and livestreamers cannot broadcast images of the attack to the world- as im sure it doesnt look good when a government attacks its own people with such overwhelming force. We aim to change that with this game changer device;
a BGAN terminal is a device that allows a camera or computer to communicate with a satellite network regardless of the situation with cell or power. They are expensive, but the communication ability when in a blackout area under fire is PRICELESS.
1500 dollars down to rent one and $8.00 per megabyte transferred. So we are going to need to raise 2,000 to get started and 10,000 to ensure we can broadcast without interruption.
Lets crowdfund this thing like crazy, if 1000 people give 10 dollars, we are set! Lets keep the information flowing out of this heavily controlled country.
Max Blumenthal
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February 18, 2012 As I write this, Khader Adnan is near death, on the 63rd day of a hunger strike to protest his detention without charges by Israeli occupation authorities. Having been seized on December 17 in the middle of the night by Israeli soldiers, jailed without trial, humiliated and abused, Adnan is waging one of the longest hunger strikes in Palestinian history. A 33-year-old baker, Adnan has been an activist in the popular resistance faction Palestinian Islamic Jihad for several years, but has never been implicated in any act of violence. As with the more than 300 Palestinians held by Israel in administrative detention, Israeli military authorities refuse to say why Adnan was imprisoned. Human Rights Watch has demanded that Israel “immediately charge or release” Adnan, as has Amnesty International. But the Israeli authorities continue to ignore the pleas of human rights groups. Unfortunately for Adnan, he was not a Jewish terror suspect. In July 2010, Jerusalem police arrested a Jewish extremist named Chaim Pearlman. Pearlman was the prime suspect in a cold-blooded settler stabbing spree that left four Palestinians dead. Pearlman had previously engaged in acts of random violence against Palestinians, while maintaining an active role in the Kach terrorist organization. For ten days, the Shin Bet intelligence service subjected him to harsh interrogations while denying him access to legal counsel. Finally, Israeli High Court Justice Edmund Levy admonished the Shin Bet for refusing to produce evidence of Pearlman’s guilt. “Never in my life have I seen such behavior,” Levy claimed, despite having presided over numerous cases of Palestinian Israelis detained in a similarly lawless fashion. Haaretz, the liberal Israeli daily, reacted with shock to Pearlman’s treatment, proclaiming in an editorial that “the Shin Bet must mend its ways.” The editors declared that while prosecuting Jewish terrorism is important, “the ends do not justify the means.” “Even the war against terror must be conducted using legal means,” the Haaretz editors harumphed. After Justice Levy refused to extend Pearlman’s detention by 8 days, Pearlman was set free and greeted by a cheering crowd of Jewish extremists. The Israeli High Court has yet to demand evidence of Adnan’s guilt. Nor have any voices in the mainstream of Israeli opinion expressed their indignation at his treatment. Instead, a military appeals court has ruled that Adnan must stay in detention until at least May. One of Adnan’s hands and both of his feet are shackled to a bed at a hospital in Safed. His wife keeps a poster in the family’s living room that features his image above a caption. It reads, “My honor is more important than my food.” |
Khader Adnan’s current hunger strike, presumably to the death, is more than a little reminiscent of the IRA hunger strikes of 1981. As, no doubt, the Israeli occupation of Palestine is more than a little reminiscent of the British occupation of Ireland, most particularly during the Troubles.
Lyric:
Khader Adnan, Bobby Sands
Khader Adnan grew up near Jenin City
You could say he was a product of his time
Ever since he was a kid he’d get arrested
Though he was never charged with any crime
Spending half his life in prison
A life lived like so many of his friends
Arbitrary and indefinite detention
Never knowing if your jail time would end
Khader Adnan was arrested last December
Again he wasn’t told the reason why
He was shackled, he was beaten, he was tortured
There beneath the Middle Eastern sky
Perhaps there was a moment when he realized
That right then, with his body, he’d say no
But from then on he refused to eat another meal
Like in Belfast not many years ago
Khader Adnan grew up in a war zone
But all the tanks and planes were only on one side
It was a type of war that they call occupation
Settlement, removal, fratricide
And anyone who talked about resistance
Who thought they did not deserve to be a slave
Would be looking down the barrel of a gun
And often find themselves inside an early grave
Khader Adnan loves his wife and daughters
And he likes to eat his daily bread
But in prison he can’t see his children
Or live life with the lady that he wed
So on behalf of all the children without fathers
He decided he had to strike a blow
He said I will have dignity or death
Like in Belfast not many years ago
Each time Khader Adnan was arrested
In prison he would learn a little more
And soon he became the teacher
And he’d talk about the times that came before
They talked about civil disobedience
They talked about the ballot and the gun
They talked about the Occupied Six Counties
And the H Blocks in 1981
Khader Adnan talked of perseverance
And how someday their people might be free
How someday they might hear their children laughing
Unafraid, how someday things could be
And then at 3:30 on one morning
The soldiers came, their rifles pointed low
And they took Khader Adnan from his family
Like in Belfast not many years ago
They say Khader Adnan is a terrorist
Just like they said of Bobby Sands
Because he dares speak out against injustice
Because he dares to make a stand
Because he dares believe that he is human
And he does not deserve to live this way
Because he dares to consider an alternative
Because he dares imagine a new day
Khader Adnan lost his liberty before he was born
To fight for life it’s death he must embrace
But just like others come before him
There are others waiting to take his place
And even the great powers can lose interest
In supporting such a vicious status quo
Because you can’t break a man who won’t be broken
Like in Belfast not many years ago
Breaking news/a good day for free speech: despite extensive efforts by the new Amcha Initiative to get Israeli historian Ilan Pappe booted from Cal State University campuses, where he is scheduled to speak next week, the presidents of Cal State Fresno, Cal State Northridge, and Cal Poly have taken a strong, unanimous stand in support of free speech on college campuses.
If you’re near any of these campuses, please go hear Ilan Pappe speak the week of February 20th. He’s a brave, important scholar whose analysis and insights are invaluable to understanding Israel and Palestine. He’s speaking at Cal State Northridge, Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo and Cal State Fresno.
In the attempt to censor Pappe, who is a Jewish Israeli, UC Santa Cruz Hebrew lecturer Tammy Rossman-Benjamin, under the aegis of her new group, “The Amcha Initiative: Protecting Jewish Students,” recently sent a letter to the president of the CSU system against Pappe and his CSU hosts. The letter is a prime example of doublespeak, emphasizing – using bold font and capital letters – that “are NOT asking that these three events be cancelled or that Ilan Pappe be censored.” (emphasis in original)
What, then, were they asking for? For the Cal State campuses and Cal Poly to “rescind all … sponsorship and support” from the Pappe events. What does that mean, exactly? Removing the events from campus and preventing the faculty from hosting Pappe in their official capacity. So no, that wouldn’t exactly be censoring Pappe – he could still speak off-campus, we presume – but it would surely be censoring the faculty who invited him, making a mockery of the freedom of intellectual inquiry and free speech that are so essential to college campuses.
(continued here)
[youtube http://youtu.be/4PT266SxBVc?]
Funeral at Mezze (Damascus) yesterday , 18/02/11
See this also here : http://www.ustream.tv/channel/kafarsousah1 at Mezze
an arrest and guess what is expecting him in jail ?
If Mezzeh, Duma, Daraya, Jdeidet Artuz, Zamalqa, Harasta, Arbeen, Barze, Tadamoun are waking up, what remains with the regime?
Only Jaramana, Old Town, Abbassiin, Abu Rumaneh and Malki. And of course the MOUKHABARAAT and SHABBIHA.
CLICK ON IMAGE
Syrian President Bashar Assad should resign if he doesn’t want to repeat the fate of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, while Russia and China should help him to do so, the Middle East expert Tariq Ali told RT.
British historian and journalist Ali considers it unlikely that Syrian president will step down on his own accord.
“He has to be pushed out,” Tariq Ali insists, for which “the Syrian people are doing their best”.
Pressure is being mounted outside Syria by Turkey and NATO for intervention – that would be disastrous and bring enormous bloodshed, like in Libya, believes Tariq Ali.
The expert says both Assad and his father have spilled enough Syrian blood and that “this family is unacceptable”.
“Syria needs a non-sectarian national government to prepare a new constitution,” Tariq Ali stressed.
He expressed hope that all the most influential parties, like Russia, China, Iran and even Hezbollah must realize that it is time for President Assad to go and to do so, no peacekeeping force is needed.
Tariq Ali agrees that mounting international pressure on Bashar Assad is needed because simple economic sanctions will not bring the desired results. Countries like Iran and China would not abide them, so it is time for Russia and China to realize they need Assad no more.
He believes that once Assad falls, the new government will keep good relations with Iran, because this will be in the interest of the new democratic government.
“If the Assad clan refuses to relinquish their stronghold on the country, sooner or later something disastrous will happen,” Tariq Ali predicts, threatening a foreign intervention and recalling the inglorious deaths of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi lynched by mobs inspired by the west.
“That is the future that stares them in the face, there is no other future,” Tariq Ali said.
“The fact is that the overwhelming majority of people in Syria want the Assad family out – and that is the key thing that we have to understand and he [Assad] should understand,” Tariq Ali claims.
He also warns about letting Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood take control of the Syrian government. Even if it becomes a moderate one, religious minorities will most probably be targeted to divert attention from economic and social problems.
