Sugar Cubes

The money, promised over the next three years by Britain’s Brooke Hospital for Animals, will help to develop her resting stations for donkeys, mules and horses from Palestinian communities occupied by Israel.

“This is not a touchy-feely exercise, but a project based on common sense,” she said. “If the farmer looks after his donkey well, it will work a lot longer and be of greater value in the long run. Some of the animals are in a bad way, with awful saddle sore and cuts from where the harness rubs away at the skin. But with a bit of education and care we are already seeing results.”

Bill Swann, the international director of the Brooke, praised Miss Fensom’s vision. He said: “Lucy has recognised what is clearly a significant animal welfare need among animals belonging to poor communities and we hope that with our help her good start can be built on for even greater results.”

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Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted

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No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited… Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.

-Article 33 of the Geneva Convention

Laila El-Haddad, a mother from Gaza describes the terror she’s going through with her little son Yousuf, needless to say, that’s what every Palestinian in Gaza is giong through because of the sonicbooms Israel is using. Please read what she said:

Israel’s terror tactics in Gaza continue

After my last post, I tried in vain to go to sleep after taking a benadryl. I brought Yousuf to sleep with me (who now, if asked what sound a plane makes, says “BOOM!”). Exactly at fajir call to prayer, it started again. Two more insane sonic booms. I cry now when I think of them. I can’t get the near windows, I’m too afraid to be alone…

I have been face to face with Israeli helicopter gunships on rooftops in Jabaliya; I have been fired at by sniper towers in Rafah and Dair al-Balah; I have been tear gassed and even exposed to stun grenades in Ramallah protests; I lived through the daily and constant shelling of Beit Hanun and Jabaliya, the daily thuds which could be heard clearly from the main road where we live. But none of those things compares to what I heard yesterday. IT wasn’t just “bombing”-I’ve been under bombing before, many many times. These “shock waves” generated from supersonic flights are disorienting and nervewracking and torturous. ITs like being in the middle of an earthquake and a being under heavy bombardment all at once. ITs like being shaken in simulator; like being slammed against a wall.

As I searched online today for more information on sonic booms-to make sure I wasn’t crazy, I wasn’ overeacting, I found this description by someone who has also experienced them: “You never get used to it if you’re not prepared for the flypast. It’s the scream of a thousand banshees which come immediately before the crash that unnerves. If you believe the aircraft is gonna attack, you’re completely disorientated.”

In fact, last month, miscarriages increased sharply and children were driven to panic by Israeli jets systematically breaking the sound barrier over Gaza, according to a petition filed in the High Court by the Palestinain Centre for Human Rights and Israel’s PHysicians for Human Rights, with a medical opinion from renowned psychiatrist Dr. Eyad Sarraj.

Would the Israeli Army have ever dared to use such tactics when their precious settlers occupying Gaza? I don’t think so. Which makes me afraid for what the future mind hold.

I also found that Israel is the ONLY country to have used sonic booms, deliberately, as a weapon of war against a civlian population. When I spoke to the Israeli Army’s spokesperson today for an investigative piece I have decided to write on the matter, he explained that the intent is to harm the Palestinain population in Gaza, so they may put pressure on the fighters to stop firing rockets. Asked whether this wasn’t collecive punishment, he bluntly said “we don’t consider it so.”

They discipline Hamas, who has all the right in the world to defend the land, or what is left of it, by torturing a whole city! and they have the nerve to deny practicing collective punishment, which was-apprantly- part of the plan and most probably the reason they’ve evacuated the area in the first place.