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NOVANEWS By Sherwood Ross Too little has been written about the cowardice of CIA and Pentagon torturers and even less about the stoic courage of their victims. Irrespective of what they might have done, there can be no question that those suffering illegal and criminal tortures are, in fact, more courageous than their tormentors. After all, how much courage does it take to pummel a man tied to a chair or chained to a wall? Answer: a lot less than it takes to withstand the blows you know that are coming. CIA interrogators don’t have even the “sporting” attitude of the schoolyard bully who attacks a weaker child. That might be called a “fair fight” as the weaker could put up a defense.  But those five-man teams that torture the defenseless, by definition, have got to be the most cowardly thu...

NOVANEWS http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/02-11 [Remembering Howard Zinn on July 4th] by Howard Zinn On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed. Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred? These ways of thinking -- cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on -- have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power. National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa...

NOVANEWS BEIRUT — Lebanon's top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, 75, was hospitalised in Beirut for internal bleeding on Friday, hospital officials said. "Doctors are monitoring him closely in the intensive care unit and they said he is stable, but they still cannot make a prognosis," one official told AFP on condition of anonymity. The grand ayatollah rose in the ranks of Lebanon's Shiite community decades ago and was considered the spiritual guide of militant group Hezbollah when it was founded in 1982 with the support of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard. He gained political leverage during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war, but his ties to Hezbollah strained as the war progressed and he distanced himself from the party's ideological ties to Iran. He nonetheless re...

NOVANEWS Turkey’s Erdogan: Standing Against Israel as the New Hero of Islamic World July 2, 2010  by Michael Leon   By Kourosh Ziabari The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stirred up international appreciation after he courageously blasted the Tel Aviv leaders for the bloody massacre of the peace activists aboard the Freedom Flotilla convoy of humanitarian aids which was heading towards the besieged Gaza strip to break the three-year-long blockade of the war-stricken enclave. The beleaguered Gaza strip has been grappling with deteriorating economic and social situation over the past three years and needs urgent humanitarian aids to be disentangled from the growing crisis it’s facing. More than 80% of the Gaza strip’s 1.5m population lives under poverty threshold. The unem...

On the Medal of Honor in Iraq and Afghanistan July 2, 2010  by Michael Leon   By Joe ‘Ragman’ Tarnovsky It has been a point of contention that no living military personnel have been awarded the Medal of Honor in Iraq and Afghanistan since our Nation has sent these brave men and women into battle in those two wars. It is hard for me to believe, being a Vietnam Combat Veteran, that in Afghanistan and Iraq there is not a living soldier, sailor, marine or airman deserving of the military’s top award for valor. Since America has been at war in these two countries only six Medals of Honor have been awarded to our troops which have all been bestowed upon the recipient posthumously. Of these six recipients, three of these men jumped on live hand grenades to save the lives of their buddies that ...

Rights Group Files FOIA Requests Regarding Israel Attack on Flotilla Delivering Aid to Gaza July 2, 2010  by Michael Leon Questions Asked Regarding U.S. Knowledge of, and Response to, Attack that Killed One U.S. Citizen, Others Injured and Detained July 1, 2010, Washington, D.C. – Yesterday, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed eight Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests regarding the United States government’s knowledge of, and actions in relation to, the May 31, 2010 attack by Israel on a flotilla of six vessels in international waters seeking to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, and U.S. policy towards the blockade of Gaza, which has entered its fourth year. The FOIA requests were made to a number of U.S. departments and agencies, including the Coast Guard, the Depa...

NOVANEWS Rupert Murdoch’s London Times Published Forged Iran Nuke Document, U.S. Intelligence Concludes July 2, 2010 by Michael Leon   U.S. Intelligence found Iran nuke document was forged By Gareth Porter WASHINGTON (IPS) – U.S. intelligence has concluded that the document published recently by the Times of London, which purportedly describes an Iranian plan to do experiments on what the newspaper described as a “neutron initiator” for an atomic weapon, is a fabrication, according to a former Central Intelligence Agency official. Philip Giraldi, who was a CIA counterterrorism official from 1976 to 1992, told IPS that intelligence sources say that the United States had nothing to do with forging the document, and that Israel is the primary suspect. The sources do not rule out a British...

NOVANEWS Dear,As we head into this holiday weekend where we celebrate the birth of our nation, I thought I would report to you what we have accomplished this last week. For weeks we've asked members of Congress to demand a timeline for our withdrawal from Afghanistan. As part of the vote on the latest funding bill for the war last night, we got 162 votes in support of that legislation. That wasn't enough to take us over the top, but last year we only got 138 votes for the same idea -- so Congressional support for ending this wrong-headed war is growing. We also asked you to consider participating in a national civil dialogue last week about the federal budget, a project called "America Speaks." The results of that large-scale discussion are in, and were amazingly in line wi...

NOVANEWS July 1, 2010 by Michael Leon   Feeling pleasure in killing Muslims in millions … By Asif Haroon Raja Obama has several times referred to extremism in Pakistan as cancer, but fails to divulge the whole truth as to who injected this fatal disease in the body of Pakistan . He again chided Pakistan of getting out of Indian obsession and to fully concentrate towards the main threat of terrorism. It is an established fact of history of South Asia that India itself suffering from cancer of terrorism has been transferring infection to all its neighbors. It had inflicted the cancer of Tamil Tiger insurgency in Sri Lanka , which remained afflicted with this disease for 25 years. It is to the credit of Sri Lanka that after suffering from this fatal disease for so long, its security forces...

NOVANEWS From: Richard Hatcher [mailto:Richard.Hatcher@bcu.ac.uk] Protest Stall Saturday 10th July 12 till 2pm Birmingham Bull Ring outside Waterstones We will be handing out leaflets to Publicise the Public Meeting on the 13th Please come along if you are able to help. NO MORE ACADEMIES! Public meeting 13th July, Council Chamber Birmingham Council House, Victoria Square 7-9PM ALL WELCOME