By Paul Bignell
Tuesday, 19 April 2011

Plans to exploit Iraq’s oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world’s largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.

Graphic: Iraq’s burgeoning oil industry

The papers, revealed here for the first time, raise new questions over Britain’s involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair’s cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Click here to continue reading “Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq” By Paul Bignell.

By Mohammad ⋅ April 18, 2011

The Israeli press is ablaze this morning with the news that the killers of the Fogel family in the illegal colony of Itamar in the occupied West Bank have been found. After several weeks of besieging the village of Awarta, arresting virtually all of its inhabitants, and causing extensive property damage, the Israeli authorities have announced that two teenagers from the village have admitted to carrying out the killings.

This particular case has been quite interesting, because of the fact that all Palestinian factions publicly distanced themselves from it and denied responsibility for carrying it out. Despite the Israeli government immediately blaming it on Palestinian ‘terror’ without any proof and using the death of the Fogels as an excuse to further expand the illegal colonization of the West Bank, a gag order was placed on the investigation as rumors and theories grew about who the actual culprit may have been.

Click here to continue reading “Itamar Killers Found?” by Mohammad.

by Sebastiao Nascimento
Monday, April 18, 2011

One has to die to become a hero, to hit the headlines and to have TV crews around the house, but does one have to die to stay human? I recall Vittorio in the Christmas of 2005, detained and incarcerated in the Ben Gurion Airport, the scars left by the handcuffs that cut his wrists, the denial of any contact with the consulate, the farcical process. And I recall Easter that same year, when just across the Allenby Bridge at the Jordanian border the Israeli police blocked his entrance in the country, put him on a bus and, seven against one (one of the seven was a policewoman), they beat him up “with skill”, without leaving any external marks, like the real professionals they are, then hurling him to the ground and throwing at his face, as a last scar to add to the others, the hair they had ripped off him with their machines.

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By Ramzy Baroud
18 April 2011

“Dear Mary,” wrote Italian justice activist Vittorio Arrigoni to a friend. “Do you [know who] will be on the boats?… I’m still in Gaza, waiting for you. I will be at the boat to greet you. Stay human. Vik.”

“Mary” is Mary Hughes Thompson, a dedicated activist who braved the high seas to break the Israeli siege on Gaza in 2008.

Click here to continue reading “Staying human: The legacy of Vittorio Arrigoni” by Ramzy Baroud.