Thursday, August 20, 2015

Truthdig:
"In an interview with the U.K.‘s Prospect magazine, former President Jimmy Carter is brutally frank in saying that all hope for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict has ended. 'At this moment, there is zero chance of the two-state solution,' he said, according to journalist Bronwen Maddox.

That judgment is widely shared and not so controversial. It is what he said next that ruffled feathers in Israel: 'The Netanyahu government decided early on to adopt a one-state solution … but without giving them [the Palestinians] equal rights.' In this sentence, he accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of having pursued, upon his election in 2009, a deliberate policy of relentlessly annexing and colonizing the Palestinian West Bank, ensuring that it will end up as part of Israel. At the same time, he said, Netanyahu conspired to ensure that the 4.2 million Palestinians under Israeli occupation remain stateless and without rights. ...

Carter wasn’t done with Netanyahu. Not only is the two-state solution dead, the Palestinian West Bank being entirely stolen, the Palestinians doomed to be ruled by the Israelis in perpetuity—but Israeli society and politics are such that in the single state now forming under Netanyahu’s iron fist, Palestinians 'will never get equal rights.' "

-->The NYT didn't cover this interview with Carter. Too much truth for our newspaper of record.

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Common Dreams:
"With the idea of paid maternity leave gaining traction as a means of recruiting workplace 'talent' or used as a talking point on the campaign trail, an In These Times investigation published on Tuesday reveals the sad reality for millions of U.S. families. In the United States, only about 13 percent of U.S. workers have access to any form of paid family leave, which includes parental leave and other time off to care for a family member, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

'[M]ost Americans don’t realize quite how out of step we are,' writes journalist Sharon Lerner for ITT. 'With the exception of a few small countries like Papua New Guinea and Suriname, every other nation in the world—rich or poor—now requires paid maternity leave.'

For those who are able take time off after a child's birth, particularly those who are paid during that time, the benefits are many: healthier babies, more opportunities to bond, lower rates of family poverty, and decreased chances of infant death. Further, women whose workplaces support their leave typically have more work opportunities and greater lifetime earnings."

-->The NYT doesn't like to shed light on how out of step our vicious capitalist system is. The newspaper declined to print this story.

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Electronic Intifada:
"Three months after Ferguson erupted in protest over the police killing of unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department (SLMPD) added an Israeli weapon called skunk to its protest-crushing arsenal, arms industry news website Defense One has confirmed. 
Skunk is a crowd control 'malodorant' developed by the Israeli police in collaboration with Odortec, an Israeli company that specializes in scent-based weapons, and tested on Palestinians. 

Released at high pressure from a water cannon, canister or grenade, skunk liquid emits an odor - described as a mix of rotting animal carcass, raw sewage and human excrement - that sticks to walls, clothing, hair and skin for days to weeks and is impossible to wash away without a special soap that is only accessible to police.

Ramallah  based activist and writer Mariam Barghouti once told The Electronic Intifada that 'the water lingers on your skin to a point when you want to rip your skin off.' First deployed by Israeli armed forces in 2008, skunk water has become a fixture in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem."

-->The NYT acknowledges that pepper spray is in the Ferguson police arsenal, but not skunk spray from the Israeli military. Protect Israel is the guiding principal for stories like this; The NYT did not print the story.