International Glance
Thanks to Naomi Campbell's clueless testimony before the U.N. Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague, the manufactured non-scandal of "blood diamonds" is once again being trundled before the collected gullibility of the world.
The parallel occurrences of diamonds and internecine mayhem in Africa are in no way causative—certainly no more than by any other commercial commodity found in the continent. When was the last time we heard of "blood manganese," or "blood copper," or, for that matter, "blood bananas" or "blood cut flowers"?
The Truth About Blood Diamonds
Displacing the Bedouin
It's hard to understand why Israel is pushing a significant sector of its citizens toward extremism and crime. Twice last week employees of the Israel Lands Administration, with the help of a large police contingent, demolished the homes of around 300 residents in the unrecognized Bedouin village of Al-Arakib in the Negev.
Most of them, citizens of the State of Israel, including many children, were left not only without homes, but humiliated, frustrated and shocked. Both times the police were brutal, and neither time did the state offer an alternative, compensation or assistance, either material or psychological, for the people whose village was demolished and world was destroyed. That's how a country treats its citizens.
Donna Shalala Detained at Ben-Gurion
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala was detained and interrogated for two hours at Ben-Gurion Airport last month, according to The Chronicle for Higher Education’s blog The Ticker.
Shalala is currently serving as president of the University of Miami; she was on her way back to the U.S. following a visit to Israel as part of a delegation of U.S. university presidents. An Israeli media report stated that she was subjected to a “humiliating” security debriefing and asked “invasive” personal questions because of her last name.
Israeli suspected of running Ukraine organ trafficking ring
According to the report, the network operated for over three years and recruited donors via the internet. Most of the donors were young women who agreed to sell a kidney for $10,000.
The organs were then allegedly transferred to Israelis in need of a kidney transplant, which cost over $200,000, said the head of the Ukrainian organization for combating human trafficking during a press conference following the arrests.
Israel Cannot Handle Its Past
Israel cannot handle its past. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu decided this week to extend from 50 to 70 years the time state archives remain classified. Israel realizes that it has too much to hide.
Haaretz reported this week (in its Hebrew edition only), that the first documents will be released to the public only in 2018 (1948+70). Many of the documents that are stored in the archive are relevant to the history of the first 20 years of the Jewish state: the mass expulsion of the Palestinian people, the massacres in Deir Yassin, Tantura and many others, the 1956 Suez conflict, the Israeli nuclear project and so on. Disclosing such documents may bring to light some facts that could “shatter myths and cause embarrassment to many entities and individuals” said the Israeli paper. I guess that president Shimon Peres is one of those ‘many individuals’.
Report: U.S. companies transferred funds to suspects in Dubai hit
Investigators in the United States probing the assassination of a senior Hamas official have drawn links between U.S. companies and suspects in the case, bringing them closer to identifying them, according to an American press report Saturday.
The findings show U.S. authorities playing a great role in the probe than previously revealed, the Wall Street Journal reported.
U.N. Sanctions Dropped Against 5 Senior Taliban
Five Taliban have been struck off a U.N. Security Council list of militants subject to sanctions -- a move sought by Kabul to ease reconciliation talks with insurgents, the United Nations said on Friday.
Their removal from the U.N. blacklist followed a review of the list of Taliban and al Qaeda members maintained by a Security Council committee. Two of the five were delisted because they were dead, the committee said in a statement issued by the U.N. Department of Public Information.
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