[Peace-discuss] Fw: Informed Comment

[Jenifer Cartwright]

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From: Informed Comment <jricole at gmail.com>
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Sent: Monday, October 21, 2013 3:24 PM
Subject: Informed Comment
 


Informed Comment 
 
Informed Comment   
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Israeli Settlers Chop down more Palestinian Olive Trees (having destroyed 800,000 since 1967) 
Posted: 21 Oct 2013 12:31 AM PDT
Israeli settlers over the weekend used chain saws to destroy some 100 Palestinian olive trees in Qaryut village near the West Bank city of Nablus.
Construction of new homes by Israeli squatters on the Palestinian West Bank has increased by 70% in 2013, encouraged by the far-right Likud government.  There are now 515,000 Israeli squatters in the West Bank, not counting Palestinian territory annexed to the district of Jerusalem. 
Israelis are estimated to have destroyed some 800,000 olive trees since Israel militarily occupied the Palestinian West Bank in 1967.  Israel’s systematic contravention of the 1949 Geneva Convention and the 1907 Hague agreement on treatment of populations in occupied territories has long since rendered the occupation illegal (if not a crime against humanity), as well as leaving millions of Palestinians stateless and without the rights of citizenship.  Their property is therefore not secure, since they have no state to back up their property rights, and their economic security is constantly threatened.  It is forbidden to military occupiers to flood their own citizens into occupied territories, as result of abuses during World War II by the Axis powers.
There is a strong psychological impact to the vandalism against Palestinian olive trees, since these symbolize the attachment of Palestinians to their land.  Palestinians are descended from the ancient Canaanites and Jews and have been farming that land for millennia.
Olive cultivation is worth $100 million a year to Palestinians, with poor villagers often being the main beneficiaries.
PressTV reported on a similar attack by Israeli settlers on Palestinian olive trees last winter at al-Qusra 
Sanders: Climate Change more Menacing than Terrorism (Germanos) 
Posted: 20 Oct 2013 09:05 PM PDT
Andrea Germanos writes at Commondreams.org:
In a newly published interview, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) blasts the "unfettered capitalism" that has collapsed the middle class, and the corporate power fueling climate change, which poses a "far more serious problem than Al Qaeda."
 Sanders speaking about the government shutdown’s impacts. (Photo: AFGE/cc/flickr) Speaking with economics writer Jonathan Tasini for the interview with Playboy, the 72-year-old Independent senator said that "one of the untold stories of our time is the collapse of the American middle class." It's due, in part, to "the decline of trade unions," which means that workers "have less power to negotiate contracts and less political clout."
It's a system that has brought immense inequality, he says.
"We are in the midst of intense class warfare, where the wealthiest people and the largest corporations are at war with the middle class and working families of this country, and it is obvious the big-money interests are winning that war."
It's a "hypercapitalist society," where there are even efforts to "privatize water, for God’s sake," and the function of the current health care system is "to make as much money out of it as possible," he told Tasini.
When Tasini told Sanders, "You make the U.S. sound like a banana republic in which a handful of families control all the economic and political power," Sanders responded simply, "Yes, it is. In more technical economic terms I would call it an oligarchy."
It's a system that has put corporate interests above people—and the planet.
"You have the entire scientific community saying we have to be very aggressive in cutting greenhouse gas emissions," Sanders told Playboy. "Yet you’re seeing the heads of coal companies and oil companies willing to sacrifice the well-being of the entire planet for their short-term profits. And these folks are funding phony organizations to try to create doubt about the reality of global warming."
It's "incomprehensible," he said, that "[b]ig business is willing to destroy the planet for short-term profits."
"And because of their power over the political process, you hear a deafening silence in the U.S. Congress and in other bodies around the world about the severity of the problem. Global warming is a far more serious problem than Al Qaeda."
As for any hopes Sanders supporters have that the senator will make a bid for the White House, he told Tasini, "I am at least 99 percent sure I won’t."
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Mirrored from Commondreams 

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