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By T.J. Stiles $23.88
By James Andrew Miller, Tom Shales $14.91
$35
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 Photo illustration from an image by Colin Grey (CC-BY)
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This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: Newt Gingrich blames Fox News; the Justice Department sues Apple; 46 million Americans without a safety net, and a history of Hamas.
Posted on Apr 13, 2012
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This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: Newt Gingrich blames Fox News; the Justice Department sues Apple; 46 million Americans without a safety net; and a history of Hamas.
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Syrian forces are shelling Homs while across the country, reports ITN’s Jonathan Rugman, “state brutality has failed to crush” the popular uprising.
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 Detail of a Banksy eddiedangerous (CC-BY)
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Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are scheduled to meet in Jordan on Tuesday, but don’t expect fireworks. Nothing has changed since Palestinians threw up their hands at continued Israeli settlement construction.
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 AP / Nasser Ishtayeh
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Even Israel’s pro-settlement conservative government is unnerved by extremist settler gangs (Defense Minister Ehud Barak prefers to call them terrorists) who have attacked targets including mosques and Israel Defense Forces officers. (more)
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Israeli Ambassador Nimrod Barkan huffed and puffed after his country’s Palestinian colony was admitted into the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on Monday. Washington, bound by law, promised to cut off all U.S. funding for the organization, whose mission “is to contribute to the building of peace.” (more)
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 Photo illustration from an image by Colin Grey
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Last week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: The Rev. Madison Shockley made a pilgrimage to Liberty Square, Dr. Marcia Dawkins traveled to the Holy Land, Reese Erlich reported from recently bombed Turkey and we compared Obama’s jobs bill to the WPA.
Posted on Oct 24, 2011
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Last week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: The Rev. Madison Shockley made a pilgrimage to Liberty Square, Dr. Marcia Dawkins traveled to the Holy Land, Reese Erlich reported from recently bombed Turkey and we compared Obama’s jobs bill to the WPA.
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 Photo illustration from an image by Colin Grey
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This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: Juan Cole reports from New York on Occupy Wall Street and Palestinians at the U.N. Also: The politics of immigration; women make less than men (still), and a jury convicts the Irvine 11.
Posted on Sep 29, 2011
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This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: Juan Cole reports from New York on Occupy Wall Street and Palestinians at the U.N. Also: The politics of immigration; women still earn less than men, and a jury convicts the Irvine 11. Pictured above, Nawaf Salam, Lebanon’s ambassador to the U.N.
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 AP / Seth Wenig
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By Juan Cole — It is often the little things that trip up empires and send them spiraling into geopolitical feebleness.
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 Avinash Kunnath (CC-BY)
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Barack Obama’s recent U.N. speech on “the pursuit of peace in an imperfect world” failed to impress Fidel Castro, who, in a newspaper column, called the text “gibberish” and asked, “Has any nation been excluded from the bloody threats of this illustrious defender of international peace and security?” (more)
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 AP / Tara Todras-Whitehill
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By William Pfaff — Most Americans would likely agree that the main shock delivered to Americans and the American government by the 9/11 attacks was that of vulnerability. Another such shock is impending.
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It’s a healthy serving of Chomsky three ways, as the celebrated intellectual stops by “Democracy Now!” to digest three of the biggest issues in the news.
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 Alex92287 (CC-BY)
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Fearing a mass uprising if Palestinians win statehood in the U.N. next month, the Israel Defense Forces are training settlers in the West Bank and equipping settlement security personnel with tear gas and stun grenades. The IDF is also designating a point for each settlement at which soldiers are free to shoot at the legs of protesters. (more)
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 AP / Adel Hana
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Nine Palestinians died and 29 were wounded in a series of Israeli airstrikes that began Wednesday and continued Thursday. The air raids were in retaliation for a recent terrorist attack that killed eight Israelis and for continuing rocket fire over the Israel-Gaza border.
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 AP / Alexandre Meneghini
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By William Pfaff — If the U.S. had gone seriously into the war, and behaved characteristically, Libya’s revolution would not have succeeded this week.
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 © 2011 Reese Erlich
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By Reese Erlich — As we walk on land ripe with eggplant and cucumbers, we can see the Israeli cities of Ashkelon and Sderot. The farm is so close to those communities that family members use an Israeli telecommunications company to get Internet access. But the family can’t export its crops.
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 Photo illustration from an image by Colin Grey
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This week on Truthdig Radio in collaboration with KPFK: Kids have a right to mock their teachers; Apple may be launching a preemptive strike against free speech; and the general’s son, Miko Peled, says Israelis and Palestinians must accept a one-state solution. Also, Tim DeChristopher, the hero who didn’t stand a chance.
Posted on Jun 22, 2011
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This week on Truthdig Radio in collaboration with KPFK: Kids have a right to mock their teachers; Apple may be launching a preemptive strike against free speech; and the general’s son, Miko Peled, says Israelis and Palestinians must accept a one-state solution. Also, Tim DeChristopher, the hero who didn’t stand a chance. Update: Full transcript.
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-160.jpg) Cesar (CC-BY-SA)
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Rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas recently decided to get over their differences and work together, but that’s easier negotiated than done. Hamas quickly rejected Fatah’s nominee for prime minister of an interim government, the pro-Western, U.S.-educated Palestinian politician Salam Fayyad.
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 AP / Muhammed Muheisen
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By Larry Gross — When I was a youngster learning Jewish history in Jerusalem’s schools, the story was clear and even simple. “A land without people for a people without land.” Well, there are several striking problems with this aphorism.
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Miko Peled, peace activist and son of a well-known Israeli general, talks about his new book, “The General’s Son,” and what he calls the “three myths” of Israeli history.
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 AP / Ariel Schalit
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For the second time in three weeks, Israeli forces opened fire on pro-Palestinian protesters, killing as many as 20 (that figure comes from Syrian television by way of the BBC, and is disputed by Israel).
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.png) CNN
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Addressing the U.S. Congress, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explicitly rebuked President Obama’s call for Israel to return to its 1967 borders, and he held his country up as a shining example of democracy in the Middle East. (more)
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 White House / Pete Souza
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Former “60 Minutes” producer Barry Lando imagines what the president might have said to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
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Speaking to the AIPAC conference on Sunday, the president said “The status quo is unsustainable” and “Delay will undermine Israel’s security and the peace that the Israeli people deserve.” He also softened his call in a Thursday speech for a return to the 1967 borders, which didn’t go over well with Israel’s hard-liners—like the prime minister.
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 White House / Pete Souza
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While the White House is promising that President Barack Obama’s big Middle East speech on Thursday will make news, Obama will avoid the biggest story this week: the inflamed Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which claimed a few more lives Sunday.
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 AP / Amr Nabil
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By Lauren Unger-Geoffroy — Palestine is the unifying force and focus of the entire Muslim/Arab world. The one thing that always remains on the people’s minds and lips, that pulls this whole wild wave of shift together, is Egypt’s solidarity about Palestine and resentment of Israel.
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 AP / Mohammed Zaatari
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As many as 13 are dead and scores more injured after Israeli forces shot at protesters Sunday. Crowds gathered near the borders of Gaza, Lebanon and Syria to condemn the founding of Israel. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said of the dead, “Their blood will not go to waste.” (more)
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 Masa__Israel (CC-BY-ND)
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has condemned the recent reunification of Palestinian leadership, met Thursday with French President Nicolas Sarkozy to forestall attempts by Palestinians to win national recognition in the U.N. (more)
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By William Pfaff — Barack Obama’s successor will inherit the hypocrisy of past American policy choices in the Middle East and find himself the enemy of the governments that eventually will have replaced the unseated Tunisian, Egyptian, presumably Libyan (and other) despotisms of recent memory.
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In the documentary “Budrus,” Palestinians of all stripes and Israelis work together to save a village from Israel’s security barrier.
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 AP / Sebastian Scheiner
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By Juan Cole — As the decade draws to a close, it is clear that the bright hopes inspired by Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech have markedly faded, and the disappointments have outweighed achievements in the most important arena for contemporary American foreign policy.
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 AP / Rodrigo Abd
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By Juan Cole — A Republican victory has the potential to keep the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan, derail the beleaguered peace process and worsen U.S. security.
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 Wikimedia Commons
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Motivating by either a renewed hope for peace in the Middle East or a desire for political power, Israel’s Labor Party has threatened to walk out of the country’s coalition government unless serious negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis get under way in the coming weeks.
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 AP / Hatem Moussa
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There seems to be a constant perp walk of Israeli soldiers since the war in Gaza two years ago. This week the hand of justice has turned to investigate several senior Israeli officers who allegedly authorized an airstrike that killed at least 21 Palestinians in Gaza in 2009.
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 AP / Sebastian Scheiner
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With a 10-month moratorium on settlement construction in the West Bank about to expire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is urging Israeli settlers to show restraint. President Barack Obama has prodded Israel to extend the moratorium, and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas says Israel must choose between peace and the continuation of Jewish settlements.
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 White House / Pete Souza
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Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority could implode before they even get off the ground. Hillary Clinton and George Mitchell will have their chaperoning cut out for them, with the PA threatening to withdraw if Israel resumes settlement construction and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announcing a plan to do just that.
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By William Pfaff — There is no serious reason to consider direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority anything other than a political pantomime, although believers—if such remain—may pray for a miracle.
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 AP / Emilio Morenatti
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By Chris Hedges — Desperate Israeli politicians, watching opposition to their apartheid state mount, have proposed a perverted form of what they term “the one-state solution.”
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Today on the list: Why academics are still flipping out about television, how Israeli conservatives may be pushing for a one-state solution, and the human brain’s “Life of Brian” mechanism.
Posted on Aug 9, 2010
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We all know the violent side of occupation, but what about the environmental? It may sound ridiculous, but Israeli settlements are dumping untreated waste into a canal that runs into the West Bank while the Israeli government is banning attempts by Palestinians to divert or treat that waste.
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 Flickr / DonkeyHotey (CC-BY-ND)
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Israel’s oldest daily newspaper, Haaretz, condemns the Netanyahu government’s “farce” of an inquiry into the deadly flotilla raid: “The conclusions of an ostensible probe are intended to justify retroactively the decision to blockade Gaza ... and to use deadly force on the deck of the Mavi Marmara.”
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 White House / Pete Souza
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A White House statement calls the $400 million aid package announced Wednesday “a down payment on the United States’ commitment to Palestinians in Gaza, who deserve a better life and expanded opportunities, and the chance to take part in building a viable, independent state of Palestine, together with those who live in the West Bank.”
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Robert Scheer addresses reader questions and comments about his most recent column and Israel’s deadly attack on the aid flotilla.
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