Common Dreams:
"In a startling and sinister escalation, Israeli troops stormed the West Bank's Aida refugee camp this week with tear gas blasting and a truck loudspeaker blaring a deadly, evidently unprecedented message to residents: 'People of Aida Refugee Camp, we are the Occupation army,' it proclaimed in Arabic. 'Throw stones and we will hit you with gas until you all die - the youth, the children, the old people...You will all die. We will not leave any of you alive.' The IDF forces raided the camp near Bethlehem in the Occupied Territories, the site of many earlier confrontations, after Palestinian youths had allegedly thrown stones at the Apartheid Wall bordering the camp. As the Israeli trucks rolled into camp randomly shooting tear gas and brazenly promising genocide, they were filmed by Yazan Ikhlayel, 17, on his iPhone from a community center above them. The Israelis went on to announce they had arrested 'one of your own' - Qassan Abu Aker, 25 - adding, 'We will slaughter and kill him while you watch if you do not stop throwing stones. Go home, or we will gas you until you die.'
Never mind the eerie echoes of the Holocaust here; such threats, said one human rights official, 'merely add words to the deed.' In fact, Israeli forces have long undertaken their promised project: Friday, an eight-month-old baby was one of three Palestinians killed by tear gas - which is often U.S.-made - and last week two others died from inhaling gas during clashes."
-->Our own US media always protects the American public from the vicious, apartheid occupation of the Palestinian people. What if Americans knew how Palestinians were treated by Israel? I like to think that we would rise up and demand an end to US support for this brutal and racist state.
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Common Dreams:
"EU Parliament Votes for Dropped Charges, Asylum Protection for Snowden
Resolution passed by European Parliament Thursday calls on member states to prevent whistleblower's extradition, rendition. ...
While the resolution is not binding, Wolfgang Kaleck, Snowden's lawyer in Berlin, told the Daily Dot in an email, 'It is an overdue step and we urge the member States to act now to implement the resolution.'
U.S.-based digital rights group Fight for the Future welcomed the news as well. Evan Greer, the organization's campaign director, said, 'We hope that this resolution leads to a binding agreement in the EU that allows Edward Snowden to move to whichever EU country he wants, and we hope he gets an epic party thrown in his honor when he arrives.'
'The battle over mass government surveillance is a decisive moment in the history of humanity, and it’s hard to think of anyone who has done more than Edward Snowden to educate the public about the grave risks that runaway spying programs pose to our basic human rights, the future of the Internet, and freedom of expression,' he added."
-->The NY Times wouldn't dare cross the national security state to carry this story. The "reasonable" opinion in the US is that Snowden broke the law and must come back for punishment. All expressions to the contrary, even by the European Union, just aren't reported in the major media.
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Common Dreams:
"A top scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) filed a whistleblower complaint Wednesday that accuses the agency of harassment and retaliation for his work showing harmful effects on monarch butterflies from a class of widely used insecticides know as neonicotinoids, or neonics.
The department reportedly imposed a 14-day suspension on Dr. Jonathan Lundgren, a senior research entomologist at the USDA, for publishing an unapproved report manuscript in a science journal on the 'non-target effects' of a widely used neonic strain and for travel violations ahead of a presentation on the results to a scientific panel. ...
Neonics have long been linked to dramatic population losses for butterflies, bees, and other pollinators, which environmental experts say threatens food security. ... The case also 'raises questions about whether USDA is suppressing other research adverse to the interests of the agrichemical industry,' said Gary Ruskin, co-director of consumer advocacy group U.S. Right to Know. 'Is this an isolated incident or part of a larger pattern? What else is USDA hiding about the health and environmental impacts of pesticides?' "
-->Readers of the NYT won't have to worry about the US Dept. of Agriculture selling out to the agrochemical industry. Our newspaper of record sold out long ago, and didn't even report this story.
