Silence Kills: Media complicity in another Israelis human rights abuse

In the West Bank, part of Palestinian land, ramadan is not the only news story.  But you won't hear about the other story in the corporate media.

Update: The Israeli government has since admitted to human rights abuses by intentionally cutting off water to the West Bank.  But they still blame the Palestinian authority for the Israeli government's own actions.

The Israeli government has cut off the entire water supply to the West Bank.  Cut off all water.  As daily temperatures soar to 35°C or higher.

There are only two reasons to commit a human rights violation like this against a civilian populations:

1) To kill as many of the population as possible while protect by media silence and a US veto.

2) To drive people into such desperation that they decide to leave their homeland and allow an occupying invader to take it.

As if Israeli policy toward the West Bank and Gaza has ever been any different.

West Bank Palestinians Without Clean Water After Israel Cuts Off Supplies

“Mekorot, the main supplier of water to Palestinian towns and cities, siphoned off water supplies to the municipality of Jenin, several Nablus villages and the city of Salfit and its surrounding villages,” Al Jazeera reported.

Daytime temperatures are reaching 95 degrees and some people have not had access to drinking water for 40 days, according to Ayman Rabi, the executive director of the Palestinian Hydrology Group.

[...]

"Israel allocates to its citizens, including those living in settlements in the West Bank deemed illegal under international law, between three and five times more water than the Palestinians," Martin Asser wrote. "This, Palestinians say, is crippling to their agricultural economy."

Lip Service: The hypocrisy of punishing and celebrating dissidents

Barack Obama is "paying tribute" to Muhammad Ali after Ali's death.  In reality, Obama is paying lip service to the ideals of standing up to injustice and criminality while gutlessly doing the opposite and punishing those who dare or blow whistles.

Ali stood up against the illegal war in Vietnam at the risk of his freedom and his career, while at the height of his career.  He was not only punished by a corrupt government with a false prosecution and jail time, he also endured a corrupt media's attacks upon his character.  He was labelled a "coward" and "communist" by the US populace.  It is only in retrospect that people are calling him a hero for doing what was right.

The reality is far different today.  People like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning also stood up and did what was right, speaking out against illegal wars and war crimes.  For doing so, they are vilified by a corrupt government and a cowardly and complicit media.  One is a political prisoner of conscience, incarcerated for telling the truth that her government lied and committed a war crime.  The other is living in exile, called a "coward" by a government that murders people with impunity, that intentionally bombs hospitals to kill doctors and aid workers.

This sort of hypocrisy isn't anything new.  Back in World War I, England imprisoned people who refused to take part in that war, after first threatening to murder them (so-called "executions").  As with Ali in the US, the UK government now wants to celebrate people that it tried to punish. 

This isn't about morality and doing what's right. It's propaganda and more lies being sold both at home and abroad. 

The message is clear: It's okay to have refused to be part of war crimes fifty years ago.  But if you refuse to commit war crimes now, you're a "coward".  The scum who call pacifists "cowards" for refusing to fight in illegal wars and war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq are dishonestly trying to claim the moral standing of those who refuse to take part in wars.

Holocaust Recognized: Turkey livid after Germany calls it the Armenian genocide

In a long overdue move, the German government has officially recognized the mass murder of a million and a half Armenians as genocide.  It shouldn't have taken this long, considering how aware Germany is of its own history.

Denying the Armenian genocide is as appalling as denying the genocide of six million jews during World War II.  How strange that Israel has been one of Turkey's strongest backers in denying the Armenian genocide.
 Knowing better doesn't guarantee that people will do better.

German MPs recognise Armenian 'genocide' amid Turkish fury

The German parliament has approved a resolution declaring that the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War One was a "genocide".

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their people died in the atrocities of 1915. Turkey says the toll was much lower and rejects the term "genocide".
[...]

In the latest response:

- Turkey's Prime Minister Binali Yildirim blamed a "racist Armenian lobby" for the resolution

- Armenia's Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian said it was a "valuable contribution" to the "international recognition and condemnation of the Armenian genocide"

[...]

More than 20 nations, including France and Russia, as well as Pope Francis, have recognised the 1915 killings as genocide.