Power outages lead to the death of three children in Gaza

http://palsolidarity.org/2012/04/beit-hanoun-remembers-vittorio-when-he-spoke-you-had-to-listen/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+palsolidarity+%28International+Solidarity+Movement%29 

When Mike Wallace questioned Israeli story of ’90 massacre, he got called into the owner’s office, Philip Weiss
The late Mike Wallace was often called a “self-hating Jew,” and it seems clear from his obits that it didn’t really bother him. Community loyalty wasn’t big on his list. In this book of Jewish proclamations inspired by the last words of Daniel Pearl, Wallace says he got along better with Gaddafi and Arafat than he did with Menachem Begin. It appears that at least three of his four wives were not Jewish, and in this obit at the Forward, Barry Lando shows how Mike Wallace seems to have agreed with anti-Zionist Rabbi Elmer Berger that Jewish nationalism imposed a dual loyalty claim on Jews.

Omran Al-Mokaddemi: From Gafsa to Palestine and Back

‘When I put this on my website, some people will say, Those people are just terrorists.’Philip Weiss
When I was in Palestine in February, I visited my friend Beesan Ramadan in Nablus. Beesan is 22 and a little bit famous: all internationals go to see her. I met her last year, not long after Angela Davis met her with the women of color delegation. People seek Beesan out because she is articulate, gracious– and yes, she is also a feminist in a society that is not especially tolerant of that movement.
https://mondoweiss.net/2012/04/when-i-put-this-on-my-website-some-people-will-say-those-people-are-just-terrorists.html

Bahraini Regime Officially Escalates Repression against Peaceful Protesters
Al Khalifa officially announced on Wednesday it was escalating measures against peaceful protesters, with regime forces had staged a campaign of attacks and arrests in cities and towns across the country.
http://www.almanar.com.lb/english/adetails.php?eid=52289&cid=23&fromval=1

Ecclestone insists on Bahrain GP despite human rights abuses
Next week’s Bahrain Grand Prix will go ahead unless local officials decide otherwise, Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone said on Thursday, despite warnings from Amnesty International of continued human rights abuses.”The race is on the calendar, it’s scheduled. The only people that can do anything about it is the national sporting authority in the country that can ask for it to be withdrawn from the calendar,” he told Reuters at the Chinese Grand Prix. “Unless it gets withdrawn by the national sporting authority in the country, then we’ll be there.”
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/ecclestone-insists-bahrain-gp-despite-human-rights-abuses?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AlAkhbarEnglish+%28Al+Akhbar+English%29
 

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2012/04/bahrain-update_10.html

Bahrain Crisis between Hunger Strike and Grand Prix Boycott, Juan Cole
The crisis in Bahrain continues to boil along, despite the harsh crackdown of the Sunni monarchy on the protest movement (made up largely of the Shiite majority, but also supported by some Sunni parties). The crackdown has left about 83 dead in the past year, and hundreds have been imprisoned. Abd al-Hadi al-Khwajah, a protester and hunger striker that the Bahrain authorities have sentenced to life imprisonment, is in very bad health.

Shock Doctrine in Egypt: Sharif Abdel Kouddous on Post-Mubarak Economic Crisis, Presidential Race
As Hosni Mubarak’s former spy chief Omar Suleiman announces he will run for president and Egypt teeters on the edge of an economic crisis, we discuss the state of post-revolution Egypt with Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, based in Cairo. Suleiman headed Egypt’s intelligence services for more than 18 years, becoming a close U.S. ally and playing a key role in the Bush administration’s extraordinary rendition program. Now he joins a crowded field of candidates in the presidential election set to begin May 23. Kouddous notes Egypt’s economy has reached a critical juncture, as the country faces a large budget deficit and is running out of its foreign currency reserves even as it relies on imports for key food staples, such as wheat. “We don’t know where we stand in terms of the Constitution, where the elections stand. Egypt’s revolution still is up in the air,” Kouddous says. He is in New York to to accept this year’s Izzy Award for Special Achievement in Independent Media for his reporting on the Egyptian revolution.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Says Oil Embargo Won’t Hurt Iran
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran proclaimed defiantly on Tuesday that the country had such plentiful reserves of money that it could survive for years without exporting any oil.

Saudi dissident
“Intimidation secures the kingdom’s equilibrium. In a recent interview, a newspaper editor complained about the regime’s reach and power; the following day his office called to ask that his name not be mentioned for fear of reprisal.  Al-Qahtani has no such reservations. A formertalk show host, he believes, on his good days, that a high profile offers a degree of protection.  ”I tell the interrogators: ‘I want you to send me to prison. I want to see what’s happening inside,’ ” he said, adding that such publicity could increase international pressure. “If I went to jail it would raise awareness. The authorities don’t want to do that. It might be too costly for them. Yet they have to do something. I really think they want to understand me. I have another interrogation tomorrow.”    Unease over the kingdom’s stability has seeped into the mechanism of power itself. Al-Qahtani’s organization has taken on the case of army Capt. Ghazi Al-Harbi, who was released recently after spending seven years in prison on allegations by the Interior Ministry that he belonged to a cadre of officers plotting a mutiny.   Al-Harbi, who said he was targeted to offer up other names in a wider purge, sat recently in a reception hall on the outskirts of Riyadh celebrating his new freedom with family and clansmen. The men-only crowd ate dates, sipped tea and listened to verse read by a tribal poet.  ”I had no access to the evidence against me. I was in jail five years before I saw a judge,” he said. “They tied my hands behind my back and hanged me on a wall with my feet dangling. They beat me. They accused me loudly of being anti-Muslim and then they put me on a wing with Islamist extremists to incite them to kill me.”  He added: “They wanted me to confess but I did nothing wrong. What they did to me will remain for the rest of my life. I trust no one now.”
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2012/04/saudi-dissident.html

Syria calm after UN truce deadline
A fragile cease-fire brokered by the U.N. took hold in Syria on Thursday with regime forces apparently halting widespread attacks on the opposition but still defying demands by international envoy Kofi Annan to pull troops back to barracks.
http://news.yahoo.com/syria-calm-un-truce-deadline-094414868.html
 

The Day Hafez al-Assad Died
The day Hazfez al Assad died, I was having lunch with a friend. We were eating pasta at a family owned Italian restaurant in Ras Beirut when the news was announced. With everyone else, we stared at the small television. The owner kept changing the channel, and each time the news was confirmed. I don’t remember if we finished lunch. But I do remember that when we went outside the streets seemed deserted. Beirut is not a quiet city, but that day it seemed as if sound had retreated from picture. My father called and demanded that I come home. Less than five minutes later my friend received the same call from her mother. No one knew what would happen next. The questions, I suppose, were obvious: Would a power struggle erupt in Syria? Would it erupt in Lebanon? Would “the war” return? What would Israel do?
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/4986/the-day-hafez-al-assad-died

The Simple Truths of the Syrian Uprising
Syrian activists and others have become so engrossed in minute details they can no longer see the big picture: the reason for the Syrian uprising in the first place. It is as if the details have become larger than the general picture. The minutiae have come to the forefront, obscuring what was obvious and clear. Thus, we find that the debate has become contradictory and sharp: To get rid of the regime or to negotiate with it? Foreign intervention or self-reliance? Are there gunmen or aren’t there? What are the the advantages of having weapons over not having them? Unity or fragmentation of the opposition, which is better?… And other details that must be discussed.
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/simple-truths-syrian-uprising?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AlAkhbarEnglish+%28Al+Akhbar+English%29