TimesOnline: "White phosphorus bombs used by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip were produced and supplied by American arms manufacturers, according to an Amnesty International report that called for a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel."
Haaretz: "The Immigrant Absorption Ministry announced on Sunday it was setting up an 'army of bloggers', to be made up of Israelis who speak a second language, to represent Israel in 'anti-Zionist blogs' in English, French, Spanish and German.
Volunteers who send the Absorption Ministry their contact details by e-mail, will be registered according to language, and then passed on to the Foreign Ministry's media department, whose personnel will direct the volunteers to Web sites deemed 'problematic'."
The facts are the greatest problem for Israel, which has become a racist, theocratic nation engaged in ethnic cleansing:
MondoWeiss: "Writer Jean-Moise Braitberg has written a letter to Israeli president Shimon Peres demanding that his grandfather's name be removed from Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. The letter is reported to have been printed first in Le Monde, 10 days ago. Here's a text online:
Mr. President of the State of Israel,
I am writing to ask you to intervene on my behalf to whom ever it may concern, to withdraw from the Yad Vashem Memorial dedicated to the memory of Jewish victims of Nazism, the name of my grandfather Moshe Brajtberg, gassed in Treblinka in 1943, as well as the other members of my family who perished in different Nazi concentration camps during the second world war.
I ask of you Mr. President, to accede to my demand, because what happened in Gaza recently, and in a wider perspective, the fate imposed on the Palestinian people over the past sixty years, disqualifies totally, in my view, Israel as the center on Remembrance of the Evil done to the Jews and therefore to all of Humanity."
SteveLendman: "Enough is enough. After 61 years of Palestinian slaughter, displacement, occupation, oppression, and international dismissiveness and complicity, global action is essential. Israel must be held accountable. World leaders won't do it, so grassroots movements must lead the way.
During the week of March 1 - 8, the fifth annual Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) will be held - last year in over 25 cities and this year likely many more in the wake of the Gaza war and subsequent world outrage. IAW is part of the growing global BDS movement - from Abu Dis to Atlanta, Barcelona to Bethlehem, Chicago to Copenhagen, Halifax to Hebron, New York to Nablus, Washington to Waterloo, and on and on in an effort to make it unstoppable."
11:39:02 AM
Bloomberg: "Two WG Trading officers were charged with conspiracy in what federal authorities called a $550 million securities-fraud scheme dating back to 1996.
Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh, officers of the broker- dealer based in Greenwich, Connecticut, were among four suspects charged yesterday in Manhattan. In a related lawsuit, securities regulators accused the two, former minority owners of the New York Islanders professional hockey team, of misappropriating $554 million in client money to live a lavish lifestyle that included the purchase of horses, horse farms, automobiles and collectible Steiff teddy bears."
Guardian: "A new row over bankers' pay is looming after Northern Rock said that it would pay bonuses to junior and senior management despite making a loss of £1.4bn last year."
Americablog: "Who would have guessed that it's a Labour Party minister scaring the postal union into accepting full privatization or else they lose everything? From the conservatives, of course, but from the left? Peter Mandelson is the minister who lost his temper because the Starbucks CEO properly recognized that Europe is in trouble and the UK is the worst off of the bunch. Privatization of trains and the subway in the UK has been a failure - unless you like high prices and shoddy service - so it's a mystery why anyone wants to promote even more of it. It's also interesting to see that banks are going in the opposite direction under New Labour.
Now more than ever, why are so many on the left running from being considered a leftist? The right wing ideology is failing on a grand scale, so if anything, it's the right that ought to be running."
PSLWeb: "There is no doubt that the U.S. economy is mired in a deep and worsening crisis - a crisis that has spread worldwide. According to a recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report, 3.6 million jobs have been lost since December 2007. In January alone, 11.6 million people were out of work.
The official unemployment rate has jumped from 7.2 percent to 7.6 percent. In Latino communities, it is as high as 9.7 percent. In African American communities, it has soared to 12.6 percent - the highest level since 1994.
But even those figures are deceiving: They do not include those who have stopped looking for work or are working part-time because they cannot find full-time work. The real unemployment rate is in the double digits.
The past year has seen a continued rise in foreclosures. According to recent data, almost 3 million foreclosures were filed in 2008 on 2 million properties, an 81 percent increase from 2007 and 225 percent more than 2006.
For millions of people, job losses and foreclosures are not just statistics but real personal disasters. Suicide hotlines have noted a spike in calls, particularly those related to finances, in the past year.
The U.S. government has acted to address this crisis by bailing out the biggest banks and corporations with $8 trillion of taxpayer money and loan guarantees with nearly no strings attached - even as these companies lay off millions of workers and pay obscene executive bonuses.
The owners of big banks and corporations like Washington Mutual, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch and Countrywide have not used the bailout money to loosen credit or hire more workers, but rather to line their own pockets.
The present economic crisis, along with the others before it going back to the early 19th century, have their roots in the capitalist system itself. These crises are the product of the relentless pursuit of profits that pits capitalist against capitalist, eventually leading to more being produced than can be sold for a profit. Unable to unload their inventories or find customers for services provided, the capitalists slash production, eliminate jobs and effectively aggravate the very crisis they seek to escape.
Until the system is undone and replaced by one that does not serve the interests of the rich minority at the expense of the working majority, these crises will continue."
BailOutThePeople: "In 2009, more and more lives are going to be devastated by the biggest global economic crisis since the depression of the 1930s. This crisis is the challenge of a lifetime for those of us who have made a commitment to fighting for the rights of people. What we do or fail to do will prove decisive in the coming battle over whose interests in society shall prevail.
Part of the legacy of Dr. King is the understanding that no election or president - however historical and inspiring - can be a substitute for a mass movement in the struggle against war or for social and economic rights.
The following draft program is a work in progress. Like the Fightback - it will grow: A real jobs program that guarantees either a union wage job or income to all; an immediate moratorium on foreclosures, evictions, layoffs, utility shut-offs and prison construction; an indefinite extension of unemployment benefits; expand unemployment insurance to all who are unemployed; no cutbacks in social programs including tuition hikes and public transportation fare hikes; health care for all, no privatization; stop all federal raids, arrests and deportations of undocumented workers; reconstruction in the Gulf Coast; fight for right of return of Katrina/Rita survivors guided by a people's elected reconstruction authority; prosecute racist killer police and set up civilian police accountability boards; a cleanup now of communities impacted by environmental racism and establish elected environmental control authorities; support anti-war GIs and veterans' organizations' demands including those for health care, benefits and jobs."
11:20:28 AM
