While reading Martin Longman’s criticism of president Obama’s statement minimizing torture that I had commented on before, I noticed something that I had missed and that is that Obama actually called the torturers ‘patriots’. Here is what Obama said:
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Giles Fraser is British journalist who has had it up to here with what is going on in Gaza.
He says that he is fed up with the language of studied neutrality that reporters try to maintain in the Gaza conflict when they are constantly having to deal with dead children, blasted to bits by Israeli shelling, like fellow journalist Peter Beaumont who encountered a tear-stricken father who had gathered up the remains of his two-year old son in a plastic bag. The photograph on the right that accompanied Giles’s article is of a 40-day old baby who died as a result of Israeli attacks, one of the many that has led him to this state where he thinks that maintaining a studied distance is no longer possible for him.
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The British musician has written a letter that has been published where he wonders what has happened to the nation that he used to admire that it now allows itself to be identified so strongly with Israel, a country that is behaving in an unbelievably cruel and inhumane way towards the Palestinians.
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President Obama has admitted that the US has tortured people. He likely did this because the release of the US Senate report, even in redacted from, is expected to state unambiguously that the government tortured people and he wants to get ahead of the story.
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A woman in Gaza, who returned there last year to take care of her ailing mother who was not allowed to leave, describes the decisions she is faced with each night as she puts her three children (ages 2, 4, and 6) to bed.
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The Daily Show‘s Jon Stewart and Senior Black Correspondent Larry Wilmore (who is scheduled to take over Stephen Colbert’s time slot next year with his show Minority Report) discuss the controversial use by police of what are called chokeholds to restrain people that have resulted in deaths to black victims of it.
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Recall the time that senator Diane Feinstein accused the CIA of spying on the computers and email of her staffers who were preparing the 6,300 page secret report on the CIA’s torture practices? The charge was particularly irksome to the Obama administration since Feinstein is one of the most ardent supporters of the national security state and of government secrecy and its widespread surveillance practices, and losing her support was dangerous.
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In January 2009, Israel took advantage of the period before Barack Obama’s inauguration to unleash a yet another massive assault on Gaza, killing over 1,400 Palestinians, again mostly civilians and children. Operation Cast Lead, as it was called by Israel, created a major worldwide outcry because of the sheer brutality of the Israeli bombardment, similar to what is happening again now, and even led to a UN commission to investigate.
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Chris Gunness works for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza and is someone I’ve shown before commenting on the attacks by Israel on civilians in Gaza. In an interview with Al Jazeera, after describing the latest atrocity that killed 19 people in an attack on yet another UN school, he breaks down right after the interviewer thanks him for his time.
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Mark Regev is an Israeli spokesperson whom we saw earlier being grilled by UK Channel 4’s Jon Snow as he trotted out the usual line about all the civilians deaths in Gaza due to the Israeli bombardment somehow being the fault of the victims themselves.
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