The Palestinian Authority demanded Thursday that Washington take “serious steps” against Israeli settlement building, and promised an “unprecedented” response, after the Jewish state announced plans to build 1,500 new homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
“It is time for the American administration to take serious steps against what the government of Israel is doing,” Nimr Hammad, an adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, told AFP.
Israeli Housing Minister Uri Ariel invited bids for 1,500 new homes in Jewish settlements in retaliation for the announcement of a new Palestinian government backed by Hamas, his office said earlier Thursday.
Ariel said the move was only the tip of the iceberg and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat also said he saw the announcement of the building tenders as a harbinger of more Israeli moves.
“We believe this latest announcement is a clear sign that Israel is moving toward a major escalation, such as new settlement construction, the annexation of occupied territory and forcible transfer,” Erekat said. “In light of the Israeli announcement, we are carefully studying and weighing our response.”
Erekat accused the international community of apathy in acting against the settlements and allowing Israel to become bolder.
Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina warned the Palestinians would “respond in an unprecedented way to this step,” but did not elaborate.
“These tenders come at the same time as the world announces is support for the Palestinian unity government. Israel should realize that its settlement policy is unacceptable,” Abu Rudeina said.
Abbas swore in a new merged administration for the West Bank and Gaza with the support of Israel’s Islamist foe Hamas. Israel is boycotting what it calls a “terror government” but both the European Union and the United States have said they will work with it.
Washington has said that persistent settlement expansion by Israel was a major factor in the collapse of US-brokered peace talks earlier this year and on Thursday US envoy to Israel Dan Shapiro condemned the new tenders.
The corporate media silence on Fukushima has been deafening even though the melted-down nuclear power plant’s seaborne radiation is now washing up on American beaches.
Ever more radioactive water continues to pour into the Pacific.
At least three extremely volatile fuel assemblies are stuck high in the air at Unit 4. Three years after the March 11, 2011, disaster, nobody knows exactly where the melted cores from Units 1, 2 and 3 might be.
Radioactive groundwater washing through the complex is enough of a problem that Fukushima Daiichi owner Tepco has just won approval for a highly controversial ice wall to be constructed around the crippled reactor site. No wall of this scale and type has ever been built, and this one might not be ready for two years. Widespread skepticism has erupted surrounding its potential impact on the stability of the site and on the huge amounts of energy necessary to sustain it. Critics also doubt it would effectively guard the site from flooding and worry it could cause even more damage should power fail.
Meanwhile, children nearby are dying. The rate of thyroid cancers among some 250,000 area young people is more than 40 times normal. According to health expert Joe Mangano, more than 46 percent have precancerous nodules and cysts on their thyroids. This is “just the beginning” of a tragic epidemic, he warns.
The American corporate media have been dead silent or, alternatively, dismissiveabout the radiation now washing up on our shores, and about the extremely dangerous job of bringing intensely radioactive fuel rods down from their damaged pools.
Fukushima’s General Electric reactors feature spent fuel pools perched roughly 100 feet in the air. When the tsunami hit, thousands of rods were suspended over Units 1, 2, 3 and 4.
According to nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen, the bring-down of the assemblies in Unit 4 may have hit a serious snag. Gundersen says that beginning in November 2013, Tokyo Electric Power removed about half of the suspended rods there. But at least three assemblies may be stuck. The more difficult half of the pile remains. And the pools at three other units remain problematic. An accident at any one of them could result in significant radiation releases, which have already far exceeded those from Chernobyl and from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
At least 300 tons of heavily contaminated Fukushima water still pour daily into the Pacific. Hundreds more tons are backed up on site, with Tepco apologists advocating they be dumped directly into the ocean without decontamination.
Last month, Mike Carlowicz of NASA Earth Observatory noted that as of May 6, half of the U.S. was experiencing some level of drought conditions.
More recently, BI's Dina Spector chronicled the problems facing California's Central Valley, known as the "nation's salad bowl," which is has been hard hit by drought.
Overall, the Beige Book was pretty solid, showing economic activity expanded in all 12 of the Federal Reserve's Districts.
Following the report, the markets are little changed, keeping with the recent pattern of notably low volatility in financial markets.
"Agriculture conditions proved challenging in many Districts, with drought conditions reported by some Districts and excessive moisture reported in others. Drought conditions existed in parts of the San Francisco District, particularly in California and Arizona, resulting in a reduction in crop plantings and reduced herd sizes. Dallas also noted widespread drought conditions, especially in the Texas panhandle, as did the Chicago District in parts of Iowa. On the other hand, rains delayed plantings of crops in parts of the Atlanta and Minneapolis Districts. Planting progressed well overall in the Chicago District and in Idaho as reported by San Francisco. Minneapolis and San Francisco reported a loss of hogs due to a fatal virus, contributing to higher hog prices. More generally, low cattle supplies and strong demand resulted in high beef prices in Minneapolis and Kansas City. Both Kansas City and Dallas reported problems with the quality and quantity of the winter wheat crop, though winter wheat crops were generally in good condition in the St. Louis District."
Tyrants Have Always Spied On Their Own People
Spying has been around since the dawn of civilization.
Keith Laidler – a PhD anthropologist, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a past member of the Scientific Exploration Society – explains:
Spying and surveillance are at least as old as civilization itself.
University of Tennessee history professor Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius agrees:
Espionage and intelligence have been around since human beings first began organizing themselves into distinct societies, cities, states, nations, and civilizations.
Unfortunately, spying hasn’t been limited to defense against external enemies. As documented below, tyrants have long spied on their own people in order to maintain power and control … and crush dissent.
Laidler notes:
The rise of city states and empires … meant that each needed to know not only the disposition and morale of their enemy, but also the loyalty and general sentiment of their own population.
Benevolent rulers don’t need to spy on their own people like tyrants do. Even the quintessentialdefender of the status quo for the powers-that-be – Cass Sunstein – writes:
As a general rule, tyrants, far more than democratic rulers, need guns, ammunition, spies, and police officers. Their decrees will rarely be self-implementing. Terror is required.
The collection of data concerning the activities of US citizens did not take place for benign purposes.
Initially, American constitutional law experts say that the NSA is doing exactly the same thing to the American people today which King George did to the Colonists … using “general warrant” type spying.
Franklin Graham, son of legendary Christian evangelist Billy Graham, urged fellow Christians last week to support the State of Israel, on both moral and religious grounds.
Speaking at a solidarity event at the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC, the younger Graham, himself an accomplished minister and evangelist, said the Bible makes clear that modern Israel should be an important issue for Christians.
“I support Israel not only because I worship a Jew, but because of what the Bible says about Israel and the future of Israel,” he said.
Graham’s remarks come at a time when more and more Evangelical Christians are abandoning support of Israel in favor of a new theology of social justice that serves Palestinian nationalist aspirations.
One of the talking points of this new theology is that modern Israel can not and must not be directly associated with the Israel of the Bible, that today’s Jewish state is not, as people like Franklin Graham preach, a fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
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