Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Aljazeera:
"The Israeli parliament has passed a law that allows the minister of interior to revoke the residency rights of any Palestinian in Jerusalem on grounds of a 'breach of loyalty' to Israel. ...

Under the new measure, Israel's Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, leader of the ultra-Orthodox political party Shas, will be able to strip the residency documents of any Palestinian whom he deems a threat. Hanan Ashrawi, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), described the law as "an extremely racist piece of legislation. 

'By unethically stripping the residency of Palestinians from Jerusalem and depriving the rights of those Palestinians to remain in their own city, the Israeli government is acting in defiance of international law and is violating international human rights and humanitarian laws,' said Ashrawi."

-->The ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem is about the same as the ethnic cleansing of the entire West Bank. No mainstream US media reported this, including the NYT. No wonder Americans don't know about Israeli war crimes.

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Common Dreams:
"Citing a raging humanitarian crisis as well as constitutional law, more than three dozen legal scholars, human rights advocates, and former officials urged  the U.S. Senate on Thursday to back a proposal that would end U.S. involvement in the war in Yemen.

Yale Law School professor Bruce Ackerman, Nobel Peace Laureates Jody Williams and Tawakkol Karman, and former U.S. ambassador Stephen Seche were among the experts who sent a letter to every senator asking them to support a resolution proposed by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), and Mike Lee (R-Utah) to remove U.S. forces from the conflict in Yemen, as no military action there has been authorized by Congress.
'We strongly encourage you and your Senate colleagues to co-sponsor and vote for S.J. Res 54, which defends the constitutional linchpin of Congress's sole authority to declare war and promises to help end what aid groups consider the worst humanitarian crisis in the world,' the letter stated."

-->The NYT didn't think this story was worth printing. Our "newspaper of record" has a hard time coming out against US military action, even though the bombing of Yemen is approaching a genocide. 

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The Guardian UK:
"Nearly half of US arms exports over the past five years have gone to the war-stricken Middle East, with Saudi Arabia consolidating its place as the world’s second biggest importer, a report has shown.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) said on Monday that global transfer of major weapons systems between 2013 and 2017 rose by 10% compared with the five-year period before that, in a continuation of an upward trend that began two decades ago. 

The US, which is the world’s biggest exporter, increased its sales between those two periods by 25%. It supplied arms to as many as 98 states worldwide, accounting for more than a third of global exports."

-->Oh how sweet those wars in the Middle East are to US weapons makers. Billions are being made on the backs of homeless families and starving children. A virtual heaven on earth for Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Bechtel, Textron to name the top six US firms. Why spoil the gravy train by reporting this story? The NYT, notoriously in bed with these weapons makers, didn't print this study.