By Iqbal Tamimi
10 May 2009

The Palestinian prisoner Fatima Alziq is a mother of nine children one of them is baby Joseph. Her children are deprived of their right of meeting their mother and their baby brother Joseph who was born fifteen months ago inside the prison. Her children suffer a collective punishment like most Palestinian children. All children need their mothers; Fatima’s children are no exception.

Fatima a 40 year old mother from the Gaza Strip was deprived of her right to see any of her children since the day she was arrested two years ago by the Israeli authorities. She and her niece Rawda Habeeb were arrested at the Eretz crossing in Bait Hanoun when they were on their way to a hospital in Israel for a medical operation needed for Rawda. Her husband Mohammed is suffering and struggling day in day out since then with 8 children who keep requesting to see their mother and their baby brother who was born a prisoner too.

[Read the report]

Agence France-Presse
Caracas, 10 May 2009

Venezuela has claimed that three Dominicans and one Frenchman arrested by police on Friday may have been plotting to overthrow president Hugo Chavez.

The four were arrested as police seized arms and explosives including sniper rifles, grenades, machine guns and half a kilo of C4.

“There is a sector of the irrational opposition in this country that still cherish the idea of spoiling the revolutionary process,” Interior Minister Tarek El Aissami said.

The Frenchman, named as Laurent Frederic Bocquet, was arrested in airport on Margarita Island, in the north east of the country, while trying to flee the country.

El Aissami said the Frenchman, apparently the leader of the group, had “military training in addition to being a sharpshooter.

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The State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism 2008

New mercenaries ‘made in Spain’

day thirty. | by Warsan Shire

your aunt gave birth
to still cities
hiroshima a cyst in her stomach
mogadishu a lump in her breast
everyone in your family
told her to
stop
loving
so hard
you won’t find a man who wants
to kiss an atlas
dont map out stars on your back
like that
where you gonna find
a man who wants to join
your constellations with his tongue
push out falestine from under your
tongue xayati
let damascus drip from your neck
and wash out the havana of
your ribs
your dreams are too large
too big
stifiling
they make everyone around you
hold their breath
what man wants a woman
covered in continents
teeth small colonies
stomach an island
what man wants to
watch the world
from his bedroom
face a small riot
hands a civil war
arms freckled
with an immigrants story home
behind your ears
a refugee camp
a body littered entirely
with ugly things

but god,
doesn’t she wear the world well.

read more poetry | listen to readings

Seven Jewish Children – a Play for Gaza (website)

via:
An open letter to Caryl Churchill from a Palestinian Mother

Seven Palestinian Children
A response to Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children:

Tell her Bassem always smiled. Tell her that Bassem was killed because he wanted to live on and tend his own land in Bil’in. Tell her Bassem wasn’t involved in any ‘violent’ protest. Tell her he was telling the soldiers to stop throwing tear gas projectiles because a woman was wounded. Tell her when people ask ‘Where is the Palestinian Gandhi’ that Bassem is one of many Palestinian Gandhis. Tell them the morning that Bassem was killed he gave medicine to Hamis, whose skull was broken because he wanted to live on and tend his own land in Bil’in. Tell her that people from all of the surrounding villages came to Bassem’s funeral. Tell her that Bassem still walks with us.

[Read more]

As rage spreads in Afghanistan after US bombing that killed up to 130 people, unnamed Pentagon officials are spinning another cover-up. Defiant Obama moves ahead with troop increase.

By Jeremy Scahill

As President Barack Obama prepares to send some 21,000 more US troops into Afghanistan, anger is rising in the western province of Farah, the scene of a US bombing massacre that may have killed as many as 130 Afghans, including 13 members of one family. At least six houses were bombed and among the dead and wounded are women and children. As of this writing reports indicate some people remain buried in rubble. The US airstrikes happened on Monday and Tuesday. Just hours after Obama met with US-backed president Hamid Karzai Wednesday, hundreds of Afghans—perhaps as many as 2,000— poured into the streets of the provincial capital, chanting “Death to America.” The protesters demanded a US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

[Read the report]