Media Banned From Gaza as Humanitarian Crisis Escalates

Israel is again preventing journalists from entering Gaza to report firsthand on the escalating crisis there as its military operation, codenamed Operation Cast Lead, enters its fifth day.

Israel imposed an unprecedented news blackout in November and banned foreign journalists from the Gaza Strip for an entire month.

This followed an Israeli cross-border military incursion into the coastal territory which broke the fragile ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, and set off the current cycle of violence.

The media ban was eventually lifted after the Foreign Press Association (FPA) in Israel petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court, and editors from a number of foreign media outlets sent a letter of protest to the Israeli government.

The foreign media is once again petitioning an Israeli court for permission to enter Gaza and cover the conflict.

Media outlets have had to rely on international human rights activists, aid organizations and Palestinian journalists based in Gaza to update them on unfolding events.

Meanwhile the number of civilian casualties continues to rise. The total Palestinian death toll now stands at 390 with 1,800 injured. Two Israeli Arabs and one Jewish Israeli have been killed in rocket attacks from Gaza.

The civilian toll on the Palestinian side is shooting up. On Sunday a family from the Jabaliya refugee camp near Gaza city lost five sisters, aged 4 to 17, when an Israeli air strike hit a mosque next to their home.

The same day seven teenagers from a UN Relief and Welfare Agency (UNRWA) school were killed when a missile hit them as they waited after school for a bus to take them home. The UN has called for an investigation into their deaths.

On Tuesday two sisters, aged 4 and 11, perished in an air strike as they rode in a donkey cart in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza.

The UN released a report on Monday stating that by a conservative estimate more than 60 Palestinian civilians had been killed.

On Wednesday Mahmoed Daher, spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Gaza told IPS, "Thirty-four children have been killed and 260 injured, many of them critically."

A Palestinian Health Ministry official, Moaiya Hassanain, went further and estimated that one-third of those killed were non-combatants. Children comprise 56 percent of Gaza's population of about 1.5 million.

Earlier in the year an Israeli operation into Gaza, codenamed Warm Winter, left 120 people, mostly civilians dead, including 33 children.

According to the Defense of Children International (DCI) Palestine branch, since the beginning of the year 700 Gazans and four Israelis have been killed.

"We attended to 15 seriously injured elderly people and more than 20 children in the last few days," said Sammy Hassan, a spokesman from Gaza's Shifa hospital.

"At one stage over 140 dead and injured were brought in at one go. Our staff was completely overwhelmed, we simply didn't have the resources to cope. The wounded and dying were lying in the corridors and on the floors," Hassan told IPS.

"We don't have sufficient medicine or properly functioning medical equipment to deal with the patients. Electricity is cut for a number of hours and fuel supplies for our emergency generator have run precariously low."

Ann Sophie Bonefeld, spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Jerusalem, said her organization was deeply concerned about the deteriorating humanitarian situation.

"There are shortages of blood, medicine and spare parts for essential medical equipment. Medical staff are overstretched and worried for their own safety," Bonefeld told IPS.

"It is imperative that the crossings into Gaza are opened in the next few days because these are Gaza's only link to the outside world now that the tunnels from Egypt have been destroyed," she added.

Israel's siege of Gaza, imposed after Hamas took over in June of last year, permits only a trickle of the barest humanitarian aid into Gaza.

In a separate incident, a boat carrying urgent humanitarian supplies from Cyprus was rammed and fired on by the Israeli navy as it approached Gaza on Tuesday.

On board were former US Democratic congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, a CNN news crew and a number of doctors and journalists. The CNN crew filmed the incident.

The boat, which was in international waters, was seriously damaged and forced to head to Beirut for emergency repairs as water started to flood the vessel.

And as Israel fights a military battle in Gaza, it is simultaneously fighting a diplomatic battle on the international front in an effort to justify the Gaza onslaught.

Karen Abu-Zayd, the UNRWA commissioner in Gaza, has said Israel may have breached a 48-hour lull in fighting when it launched its aerial onslaught over Gaza on Saturday.

"What we understood was that there was a 48-hour lull to be called, and this was called by the Israelis," Abu-Zayd said.

On the morning of Friday last week, the Israelis had said they would wait 48 hours until Sunday morning and then they would reevaluate the situation, according to Abu Zayd.

"There was only one rocket that went out on Friday, so it was obvious that Hamas was trying, again, to observe that truce to get this back under control," she said.

Israel's UN Mission referred any comment on the reported lull to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office in Jerusalem. Olmert's office did not answer telephone calls for comment early Tuesday morning.

[Source: AntiWar.com - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Will Chavez murder be finishing touch for the Bush Administration?

President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez has repeatedly told that during the last weeks of George W. Bush`s presidency in the United States the Bolivarian republic and he, Chavez, personally would be in danger. The way he called on his allies to be on alert was described in the pro-American mass media and by the opposition members as “persecution mania” and “paranoid fear of death”. They said nobody had ever made an assassination attempt on him and would hardly do it in future.

“Washington's high-ranking officials have long decided on how to get rid of me”- Hugo Chavez said citing reliable source in the ally countries in Western hemisphere, in Europe and in the US. He even hinted that he had the sources of information even in the U.S. Embassy in Caracas.

There are enough stories how the United States eliminated the unwanted Latin American politicians. Remember a Colombian 'populist' Jorge Eliecer Gaitan (killed in April of 1948), an Ecuador President Jaime Roldos (died in air crash in May, 1981), the leader of Panama Omar Torrijos (also died in a strange air crash in August, 1981). As a rule, Chavez mentions Salvador Allende, who was President of Chile until his death during the coup d'etat in 1973. Then the CIA and the U.S. military intelligence organized the coup to let Augusto Pinochet succeed Allende. All those politicians did not find support in the U.S and thus were doomed.

If we trace the chain of accusations Mr. Chavez has been facing over the past few years from members of the Bush administration, we'll see that there is only one more political leader who arises such hatred among the U.S establishment-Fidel Castro. However, after Fidel officially stepped down, they view Chavez as their major rival in Latin America. He is opposed to the U.S in all spheres: he carries out independent oil policy, tries to diversify energy supplies (treating China as the most preferable partner), takes steps to modernize the army of Venezuela with the help of Russia and China, welcomes a multipolar world model and supports “populist regimes” in Latin America.

Hugo Chavez initiated the creation of the South American military block to promote integration processes on the continent- a move which Washington could have hardly been happy about. All American military chiefs, who headed the U.S Southern Commandment, warned Chavez against such steps. The situation resulted in U.S preventive measures aimed at establishment of additional bases in the region, the 'revival' of the Fourth Fleet in the South Atlantic, a boost to the space surveillance system in Venezuela and all its allies, especially Brazil.

The strategic flights of the Russian Tu-160 bombers over the Caribbean and the Atlantic waters, their stay at the “Libertador” base in Maracay and the forthcoming visit of the squadron of the Russian North Fleet led by the “Piotr the Great” nuclear-powered cruiser provoke even greater annoyance of the White House hawks.

The conspirators failed to kill Chavez during the coup in early April of 2002. He was detained, but while he was transported from one place to another, there were always some loyal officers behind him to prevent the tragedy. They told the guards they would provide an adequate response if Chavez is assassinated.

After the coup failed, the U.S special services intensified the work aimed against the Venezuelan President. The journalistic dossier I compiled during the years in Venezuela consists of a few heavy volumes. If we add some video reports from the ultra-conservative Venezuelan and North American TV channels, containing straightforward statements against Hugo Chavez, and hundreds volumes of the so-called “anti-Chavez” literature, which is traded freely in Venezuela,- we`ll be able to imagine how intense are the impulses coming from numerous fanatic terrorists and the opposition members.
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Seven Days In October

These are the Seven Days in October that will change the World!
Cheney-Bush, Bernanke, Pelosi & Paulson have successfully destroyed 'trust' and have replaced this universal value with 'fear,' compounded by public paranoia over the chaos they've created; in an uncertain world where there are no longer any laws that govern governments or money-changers!
The public is paying for this charade with trillions of dollars that was their money until this depression was created to bleed us; in direct and opposite proportion, to the trillions in bailouts that have gone, or will soon go, into the private pockets of the money-changers at the top.

Welcome to Democracy Now! What about this latest news?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, what upsets the Europeans and the foreigners is that the US plan has done nothing at all about the debt crisis itself. It's bailed out the creditors, but not a penny of the actual debts, the subprime mortgage debts, are addressed. Without any of the media knowing, the Federal Reserve over the last few months has given $850 billion of cash for trash already. This is what the $700 billion discussion in Congress was supposed to be about, but the Fed, without anyone knowing, has already been exchanging these securities. And the securities essentially have been swapped by the US bankers to their pals and not done anything at all to write down the actual subprime debts. There's a big attempt to blame the victim now. And if you add up all of the subprime bad loans and defaults, that's altogether $1 trillion. So far, the government has given away $6 trillion already to Wall Street. That's much more than any of the subprime debt. And the volume of derivative trade has been estimated at $450 trillion, an unbelievable amount. So nobody has any idea about how much money is at stake.
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