Israel's response to "Palestine September" is to ask the Housing Protest Tent Cities to close anticipating violence.

...A few weeks ago, (click title to entry - thank you) the residents were strangers demonstrating against high housing costs in a country where prices for apartments have gone up 55 percent and rents 27 percent in five years. Now the tent city inhabitants are comrades in a cause. A single-issue protest has broadened into a younger generation’s demands for social justice and a fairer distribution of Israel’s resources.


“It started as a housing protest, but now it’s far wider,” said Adi Peled, a 30-year-old special education teacher. “Now there’s a unity in the air, a shared cause and common denominator that’s been missing from our alienated society.”


The housing crisis was a symptom, people said, of how middle-class and young Israelis are suffering despite the country’s booming economy. In a reverse image of the “tea party” movement in America, many Israelis are clamoring for more government involvement in the economy and greater redistribution of income. They say the government’s sell-off of state-owned companies and services in recent decades went too far and left people defenseless against the whims of the free market....


3,383 TENTS

...Three thousand, three hundred and eighty-three tents. (click here) That was the figure national police headquarters compiled from its seven districts around the country. Well in the lead was the Tel Aviv District, with 2,300 tents - 2,000 of them on Rothschild Boulevard; then the Central District, with 410; Jerusalem District, 245; Southern District, 200; Northern District, 130; Coastal District, 98. And finally, with a big round zero - "Nothing to report" - was the Judea and Samaria District.

The authorities' patience with the refugee camp on Rothschild is quickly running out. They have been dealing with complaints of theft and even of a few sexual assaults, some violent brawls, and ongoing requests from desperate neighbors for the removal of various hazardous items and obstacles. If there are many more disturbances of this kind, it is likely that Tel Aviv's municipality will issue eviction orders (even if as of this moment they deny entertaining such a notion ). After giving the residents time to pack up, it will vacate the tent camp by force - without infringing on demands for social justice, which will either be met or not by the powers-that-be, irrespective of what's happening on the boulevard....

The Palestinians and the United Nations have a very long relationship

In a telephone conversation (click title to entry - thank you) with Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Araby on Thursday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas discussed Arab diplomatic efforts being made to support the Palestinian decision to seek full membership at the United Nations (UN).

In early May, Araby initiated a major shift on Egyptian foreign policy when he revealed that Egypt fully supports Abbas plan to unilaterally declare an independent Palestinian state, and he urged the United States to do the same.

A Palestinian bid for membership in the UN General Assembly as an independent Palestinian state, set within the borders that existed before the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and East Jerusalem as its capital, are expected in September.

The Arab Ministerial Subcommittee of the Arab Peace Initiative are following all the necessary legal procedures for this action in accordance with UN regulations.

British Apache helicopters strike Libya

Where Have Libya's Children Gone?  (click here)

BRQ NetworkOf 'growing public and government concern in Western Libya is the whereabouts of 53 female and 52 male children', who were 'part of a government-run home for orphans and abused children that until February was operating in Misrata, now under rebel control,' writes Franklin Lamb.


The quality of life continues to degrade in certain areas of western Libya while public anxiety noticeably rises over missing Libyan children as the first week of an unusually stressful Ramadan passes...

...Walking around the "medina" off Omar Muktar Street near my hotel yesterday afternoon, the angst over deteriorating conditions is apparent. Shops, like homes, are now subject to rolling blackouts and quickly become hot and stuffy, discouraging would be customers from entering. Some food stores have to discard milk and other perishable items given the up to 11 hour power cuts that send temperatures above 100F. One gentleman on Rashid Street in downtown Tripoli said his family had not had power for five days and the pump that supplies water to his apartment building stopped working so they lack two essential utilities....

Libyan rebels capture part of Brega, push north (click title to entry - thank you)

By MICHAEL GEORGY | REUTERS

Published: Aug 12, 2011 12:54 Updated: Aug 12, 2011 12:54

SHALGHOUDA/BENGHAZI, Libya: Libyan rebels said they had captured part of the oil town of Brega on Thursday while their forces in the west pushed toward Zawiyah, trying to get within striking distance of Muammar Qaddafi’s capital.

Qaddafi is clinging to power despite a near five-month-old NATO air campaign, tightening economic sanctions, and a lengthening war with rebels trying to end his 41-year rule.

The rebels have seized large swathes of the North African state, but are deeply divided and lack experience, and Thursday’s gains in the east broke weeks of stalemate.

One rebel spokesman said the opposition had captured the residential districts of Brega but Qaddafi’s forces still hold western parts of the town where the oil facilities are located.

“It is liberated. It is under our control now,” spokesman Mossa Mahmoud Al-Mograbi said of the eastern part of the town.

The residential area where the fighting was taking place is about 15 km (9 miles) east of the oil terminal and sea port....

I don't believe the USA is needed in Iraq anymore.

Iraq bolsters Syria border force (click here)

Page last updated at 21:48 GMT,

Friday, 4 September 2009 


22:48 UK

Iraq has begun stationing thousands of extra police on its border with Syria to stop militants its says are crossing into Iraq to carry out bomb attacks.

Amid a growing row, the two countries have traded insults and recalled their ambassadors in recent weeks.

Baghdad says members of the Baath Party of former leader Saddam Hussein, hiding in Syria, organised two attacks in Iraq on 19 August which killed about 100.

Damascus has dismissed Iraq's claims as immoral and illogical....

It would seem as though Iraq is taking on a very Anti-Western posture.

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Iraqis stir pot in Syria (click title to entry - thank you)

By: Samuel Segev

Posted: 08/9/2011 1:00 AM

TEL AVIV -- While the United States, France and Germany pledged to take more severe measures to punish Syrian President Bashar Assad for his cruel crackdown on his opponents, a new geo-strategic reality is quietly emerging in the Middle East.

Under strong Iranian pressure and without a public announcement, Iraq has reversed its attitude toward Syria and now supports Assad's rejection of Turkish and western pressures. In a public speech on Saturday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he had "lost patience" with Assad. He reminded the Syrian dictator of the fate of Saddam Hussein and of "a leader who was brought to court on stretchers and had to listen to his indictment while in bed and inside a steel box."

Erdogan also said Assad should be punished for the crimes he committed against his people.

The Turkish prime minister is sending his foreign minister, Ahmet Davotuglu, to Damascus today to verify the situation.

"Everything will be clear on Tuesday," Erdogan said. "We will know then if Assad honestly means to implement the reforms that he promised to implement so many times."

The Iraqi reversal of its attitude towards Syria also explains the sudden decision of Saudi Arabia to withdraw its ambassador from Damascus and the decision of the Gulf Co-operation Council to harshly criticize the Syrian regime…

AP: Bush Paper Details Iraq Spending Plan  (click here)

Mon Sep 22, 2003 7:35 PM ET 

By ALAN FRAM, Associated Press Writer 

WASHINGTON - The administration wants $100 million for an Iraqi witness protection program, $290 million to hire, train and house thousands of firefighters, $9 million to modernize the postal service, including establishment of ZIP codes. 

A Bush administration document, distributed to members of Congress and obtained by The Associated Press, goes far beyond the details officials have publicly provided for how they would spend the $20.3 billion they have requested for Iraqi reconstruction. 
The 53 pages of justifications flesh out the size of the task of rebuilding the country, almost literally brick by brick. It also paints a painstaking picture of the damage Iraq has suffered. 

"The war and subsequent looting destroyed over 165 firehouses throughout the country. There are no tools or equipment in any firehouse," according to the report, written by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-led organization now running Iraq. 

The report's estimated cost of rebuilding Iraq's fire service, including hiring and training 5,000 firefighters: $290 million. 

At another point, the report says the headquarters and three regional offices of the border police "will require complete renovation." Two thousand new recruits must be trained because the agency previously used conscripts, "almost all of whom deserted." 

Reviving that and other border protection agencies should cost $150 million, the report said. 

The proposal was part of the $87 billion plan that President Bush sent Congress on Sept. 7 for Iraq and Afghanistan. The biggest piece of that package was $66 billion to finance U.S. military operations in both countries and elsewhere....

Post-Saddam Iraq 'in a nutshell" (click here)

The reason Iraq is siding up to Syria is because they share something in common.  


What you might say?  


What indeed.  


How about Iranian Gas Pipeline?  


So much for economic sanctions.  After all, Europe simply doesn't like fueling with the Russian gas pipeline.

Investors Considering Iran-Iraq-Syria-Europe Pipeline (click here)

Written by Joao Peixe

Wednesday, 10 August 2011 02:46

Iranian Deputy Oil Minister Javad Owji told reporters in Tehran, "Seven international investors have announced their readiness tofinance, design, and construct the pipeline that will transport 110 million cubic meters of Iranian natural gas to Iraq, Syria, and European countries per day."Owji added that talks are underway to begin construction of the multi-billion-dollar project by March 2012, Mehr News Agency reported.

In July Iran, Iraq, and Syria signed a $10 billion contract for transiting Iranian natural gas from Iran's massive offshore South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf to Europe via a 3,100-mile pipeline crossing Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and subsequently submerging beneath the Mediterranean before surfacing in Greece, the EU’s first transit country. The pipeline is estimated to take 3-5 years to build….

Foreclosures for Soldiers. What a warm welcome home from JP Morgan Chase.

Army Spc. Aaron Collette is greeted upon his arrival at his father's Bend, Ore., home, which had been signed over to the bank two hours earlier. (Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times / August 11, 2011)

Could it be the 'timing' was no coincidence?

Just a guess.

...That Collette would lose his house and celebrate a homecoming on the same day was dismal coincidence. But the 59-year-old kitchen-and-flooring contractor, who has become an expert at testifying before legislative committees, giving television interviews and mobilizing public ire at the banking industry, is determined that, unlike the thousands of foreclosure stories playing out in quiet misery across America, this one will not end quietly....


Imagine that, an American soldier that actually isn't fighting to save banks, but, sincerely interested in the American Dream.  I'll be darn.