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05.02 11 Baltimore City Students Win Awards in Md. History Day Competition

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05.15 Horrific Injuries Linked to BP Dispersant Corexit

05.15 'Last Call at the Oasis': Why Time Is Running Out to Save Our Drinking Water

05.14 German Government to Oppose Fracking

05.11 Petition calls on Brazilian president to veto 'catastrophic' forest code

05.11 Bans on School Junk Food Pay Off in California

05.11 When half a million Americans died and nobody noticed

05.10 Game Over for the Climate

05.10 Pollution: the great leveller

05.10 New study: Amish prove raw milk promotes health in children

05.10 Big Agriculture's Big Secrets: 9 Things You Need to Know About the Food You Eat

05.09 Noah Wyle on ‘unsexy’ Medicaid activism and how George Clooney and other ‘E.R.’ actors got so politicized [video]

05.09 Gloria Feldt: The War on Women [video]

05.02 Common Pesticide “Disturbs” the Brains of Children

05.02 Humans Still Evolving as Our Brains Shrink

05.01 Big Changes in Ocean Salinity Intensifying Water Cycle

Ref. High health-care costs: It’s all in the pricing - graphic

Ref. Dollars for Doctors - How Industry Money Reaches Physicians

Ref. 2010 Comparative Price Report Medical and Hospital Fees by Country - Graphics

Ref. Health at a Glance 2011 - OECD Indicators

Ref. : Why is Healthcare Absurdly Expensive in USA (Part 2) [Graphics] (Part 1 is here)

Video Health Care Systems in Less Corrupt Countries

“News” Media

05.03 Free Press Co-Founder Robert McChesney: Murdoch Hacking Scandal a "Moment of Truth" for U.S. Media [video]

05.01 News Corporation has sought to undermine elected governments

Daily The Daily Howler

Justice Matters

05.16 Is the filibuster unconstitutional?

05.15 MONEY UNLIMITED

05.11 How the Corporate Right Hijacked America's Courts to Enrich the Top 1 Percent

05.03 Supreme Court Favorability Reaches New Low

05.01 Eliot Spitzer’s challenge to DOJ as it investigates Wall Street: ‘Bring some cases’ - video

05.01 Laissez-faire with strip-searches: America's two-faced liberalism

US Politics, Policy & Culture

05.16 5 Ways Conservatives are Destroying the Institution of Marriage

05.16 Congress: The TSA Is Wasting Hundreds Of Millions In Taxpayer Dollars

05.16 The Economic Case for Same-Sex Marriage

05.16 If Information Is Power, What Is Lack Of Information? [video]

05.15 IMAGE: It doesn't have to be true, just credible...

05.15 WEDDING BELLS

05.15 Memo to Mitt: Time to Fess Up on Bullying

05.14 “The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.”

05.14 Hedges: How Our Demented Capitalist System Made America Insane

05.11 Why Atheists Have Become a Kick-Ass Movement You Want on Your Side

05.11 Fixable Error, New Insight, and Social Security

05.10 Ballot Access

05.10 Christian Conservatives vs. Sex: The Long War Over Reproductive Freedom

05.10 Patriotism! Super Rich Renounce US Citizenship to Make Tax Evasion Easier (And Other Ways the Wealthy Cut Ties to Country)

05.03 Out of the Margins, Into the Fray

05.03 Occupy May Day: Voices from the LA protests [video]

05.02 Jon Stewart Assails GOP for Their Hypocrisy on Obama Campaign Bringing Up Bin Laden [video]

05.02 Hamptons Home Prices Rise as Buyers Prefer Luxury Deals

05.02 The Administration Is Scared of Its Own Regulatory Shadow

High Crimes?
Economics, Crony Capitalism

05.16 “What Scares Me Isn’t $2 Billion Loss JP Morgan Made, What Scares Me is the Record $19 Billion in Profits” [video]

05.16 Accidentally Released - and Incredibly Embarrassing - Documents Show How Goldman et al Engaged in 'Naked Short Selling'

05.16 Republican Party suckles at the breast of Big Business

05.16 Weisbrot and Krugman are Wrong: Greece cannot pull off an Argentina

05.15 Greek deadlock heightens fears of full European economic crisis

05.14 Why We Regulate

05.11 Indentured Servitude for Seniors: Social Security Garnished for Student Debts

05.11 Breaking Up Four Big Banks

05.11 Wall Street’s immunity

05.11 How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform

05.11 Michael Hudson: From the Democratic Party to European "Socialists", they manage crisis in the interests of finance [video]

05.10 Real Estate 4 Ransom -- locking up the Great American Dream

05.10 Quelle Surprise! Fed Defends Incompetent Bank Management Against Investors

05.10 Europe’s Problems Multiply

05.10 Michael Hastings & Glenn Greenwald on how media hype about ‘melodramatic’ terrorist plots helps sustain the [profitable] U.S. ‘War on Terror’ [video]

05.09 Ryan Shrugs: Overlooked GOP Budget Provision Would Fuel Offshoring With New Tax Incentives

05.09 Top 1% Fills Gov. Scott Walker’s Recall War Chest With $25 Million

05.09 ALEC Affiliated Corporations

05.09 Teachers’ Board Becomes Fifteenth Group To Drop ALEC

05.09 ALEC’s Top Five Anti-Environment ‘Model’ Laws

05.09 Special Rights for ALEC: Three States Exempt Stealth Corporate Lobbying Group From Lobbying Rules

05.09 A web of privilege supports this so-called meritocracy

05.03 How Wall Street Drives Up Gas Prices -- Ripping Us Off and Killing Jobs

05.03 Paul Krugman on How to Fix the Economy - and Why It's Easier Than You Think

05.02 There is an alternative to austerity

05.01 Under Catholic pressure Paul Ryan backs away from Rand, Objectivism

05.01 Tax Me, for F@%&’s Sake!

05.01 Tea Party Congressmen Accept Cash From Bailed-Out Bankers

05.01 Paul Krugman and Ron Paul discuss economics – as it happened

05.01 No alternative to austerity

International

05.15 IDF closes Palestinian school to make way for West Bank training zone

05.14 Noam Chomsky on:
WikiLeaks, Obama’s Targeted Assassinations and Latin America’s Break From the U.S. [video]
Occupy Wall Street "Has Created Something That Didn’t Really Exist" in U.S. — Solidarity [video]
Palestinian Hunger Strike a Protest Against "Violations of Elementary Human Rights" [video]

05.14 INFOGRAPHIC: Gas Spending Around The World

05.14 Graphic: Products of Slavery

05.14 Israel warned of volatile situation as Palestinian hunger strikers near death

05.14 How Right-Wing Extremists and Islamists Are the Same

05.14 Guatemala's land grab and massacre

05.11 U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam

05.11 Thousands of British police join anti-austerity protest

05.10 China Investment Corp. Stops Buying Europe Government Debt on Crisis Concern

05.09 Inside Syria's crackdown: 'I found my boys burning in the street'

05.03 “We Did Not Choose This War” and Other Hypocrisies

05.03 Jobless Rate Reaches New High in Euro Zone

05.02 Ken Vogel and Joel Rubin consider implications of Obama’s Afghanistan pact in terms of 2012 race [video]

05.02 Collapsing Afghanistan & Pakistan Refuse to Cooperate with Obama Photo Op

05.02 Free the torture report

05.01 What Did You Do In The War, Daddy?

05.01 Quebec students ignite the popular imagination

05.01 Occupy Wall Street Plans Global Protests in Resurgence

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  Just a wall?
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SLOW GENOCIDE:

Just a wall?

by TIM MORRIS
According to Israel the West Bank Barrier is a security measure. Opponents argue that it is set to become a de facto border, pre-empting final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and incorporating illegal settlements into Israel.

Israel's wallThe Israeli government began building the Separation Wall in June 2002. Now half-completed, it is projected to run for almost 700km. Almost 75% of its total length is inside the West Bank, rather than along the Green Line, the internationally-recognised border between the state of Israel and the West Bank. In some areas – notably in occupied East Jerusalem and around the Palestinian city of Qalqilya – the Wall is an eight-metre high structure of solid concrete. Twice the height of the Berlin Wall, many of these sections have armed sniper towers every 300 metres. Elsewhere it is part concrete/part fence. It is surrounded by a buffer zone with trenches, barbed wire, electrified fencing, thermal imaging, video cameras, aerial drones and other security measures.

The Wall cuts deep into the West Bank – one section penetrates 14km into Palestinian territory – in order to envelop Israel’s extensive network of settlements and their planned expansion areas. Fifty-six Jewish settlements – home to over 170,000 settlers – will lie between the Wall and the Green Line. When the additional Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem are taken into contact, three quarters of the 425,000 settlers will be living behind the Wall. If current plans are implemented the Wall will annex 10% of the territory of the West Bank. The total construction cost is over $2 billion – six times the annual budget of UNRWA.

The Wall has been the subject of four UN resolutions, one – vetoed by the US – in the Security Council and three in the General Assembly. In July 2004 the General Assembly overwhelmingly reaffirmed the judgement of the International Court of Justice that the wall is in violation of international law and called on Israel to demolish it or relocate it to the Green Line. However, the international community has taken no substantive action to stop the construction of the Wall in occupied Palestinian territory.

The Wall itself takes the West Bank’s most valuable agricultural lands and water resources, along with Palestinian East Jerusalem. Settlement expansion to the east of the Wall and Israeli control over the Jordan Valley will take more of the lands and resources necessary for a future Palestinian state. Without access to these vital land and water resources, or the Palestinian capital East Jerusalem, there can be no viable Palestinian state. Without a viable Palestinian state, there can be no viable peace.

Negotiations Affairs Department, Palestine Liberation Organization
The lands between the Wall and the Green Line have been declared by Israel as a ‘seam zone’ where all residents and landowners must obtain a permit to remain in their homes and on their lands. When the Wall is finished some 65,000 Palestinians will require permits to cross the Wall into the rest of the West Bank. In areas where it is completed, schoolchildren living in the seam zone and attending schools on the Palestinian side and farmers wishing to go to market have to queue up awaiting the arrival of an Israeli military jeep to come and open the gate. Gates generally close at four o’clock in the afternoon. Palestinian ambulances are not allowed to enter the seam zone. Some Palestinians who have not renewed their Israeli-issued ID cards are now permanently trapped inside the seam zone, afraid that if they go through the gate into the West Bank they will be barred from returning to their families. Fearful for their security, some parents have stopped sending their daughters to school on the other side of the Wall. Because the ICJ declared not just the Wall but the gate system and the permits illegal, the UN and NGOs are not applying for permits for their local staff, thereby jeopardising their ability to continue mobile health services and supplementary food distribution.

If, as many suspect, Israel intends the Wall to become its permanent international border the seam zone will be formally annexed by Israel. There is speculation that, instead of offering seam zone residents Israeli citizenship, they will be exchanged for an equal number of Jewish settlers who will relocate behind the Wall.
Republished with permission of Forced Migration Review, a magazine available online at www.fmreview.org as well as in print. FMR is the in-house journal of the Refugee Studies Centre, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford. FMR is distributed to relief and development NGOs, human rights agencies, Red Cross/Crescent offices, UNHCR, OCHA, UNDP, UNICEF and other UN agencies, bilateral donors, refugee camps, research institutes, foreign and interior ministries and university, national and public libraries. The full text of all English language FMR articles is at Latest & Back Issues. The English edition of FMR is searchable at fmo.qeh.ox.ac.uk/fmo/index.asp.

Information in this article is derived from: Tim Morris is one of the Editors of FMR. Email: fmr@qeh.ox.ac.uk


Copyright © 2006 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved.

Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent.

This story was published on November 3, 2006.
 


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