By Glenn Greenwald

(source: Salon Media Group.com)

On so many levels, this is one of the most stunningly revealing things I've read in quite some time.  As I documented last week, the media's reluctance to describe IRS attacker Joe Stack as a "terrorist" reveals that this term has little to do with the act itself and everything to do with the demographic attributes of the actor:  namely, in the American political lexicon, "Terrorists" are Muslims who dislike the U.S., while Americans -- especially ones who are white and non-Muslim -- cannot, by definition, qualify.  Anyone who has doubts about that or who thought my argument was hyperbole should click on that link, which will direct you to an internal discussion among Newsweek editors and writers over their reluctance to use the term "Terrorist" to describe Stack and who they believe qualifies instead.

Aside from the suffocating denseness of their discussion -- most of them ramble on about who is and is not a "Terrorist" for three straight days without even attempting to define what that term means -- just look at how blatantly tribalistic and propagnadistic they are about its usage.  Many of them all but say outright that it can apply only to Muslims but never non-Muslim Americans.  The whole thing has to be read to be believed -- and what's most amazing is that they published it because they obviously though it was some sort of probing, intelligent discussion which would enlighten the public -- but let's just examine a few of the contributions.

(source: KashmirOnline)

In occupied Kashmir, APHC leader and the patron of Jammu and Kashmir Mahaz-e-Azadi, Muhammad Azam Inqilabi has condemned the stepped up human rights abuses by Indian troops.

In a statement issued in Srinagar, deplored the victimization of innocent Kashmiri youth by the troops. He denounced the killing of two youth, Wamiq Farooq Wani and Zahid Farooq in Srinagar.

By John Pilger

(source: AntiWar.com)

I phoned Rami Elhanan the other day. We had not spoken for six years and much has happened in Israel and Palestine. Rami is an Israeli graphic designer who lives with his family in Jerusalem. His father survived Auschwitz. His grandparents and six aunts and uncles perished in the Holocaust. Whenever I am asked about heroes, I say Rami and his wife Nurit without hesitation.  

Soon after when we met, Rami gave me a home videotape that was difficult to watch. It shows his daughter Smadar, aged 14, throwing her head back, laughing and playing the piano. "She loved to dance," he said. On the afternoon of 4 September, 1997, Smadar and her best friend, Sivane, had auditions for admission to a dance school. She had argued that morning with her mother, who was anxious about her going to the centre of Jerusalem. "I didn’t want to row," said Nurit, "so I let her go."

Apartheid is alive and well in a street in the Israeli-controlled West Bank

February 25, 2010 Edition 1

By Zenande Booi and Quinton Combrink

Apartheid South Africa demanded surplus quantities of moral blindness and monomaniacal creativity from those tasked with ensuring the separation between black and white. And then the systems of influx control, separate identity cards, and Bantustan development folded like a spectacular house of cards.

Off somewhere, in old age, sit those men who played God, either reconciled to their folly or nursing an injured pride while doggedly insisting on the unappreciated genius of their grand policy of separation.

It would surely add insult to injury for them to find out about the current arrangements in Shuhada Street in the Israeli-controlled West Bank. Not only is the separate-roads policy, of which Shuhada Street is a prime example, an absurdity that surpasses South Africa's separate beaches, but it is also part of a planned "policy of separation" - because that is the official terminology - alive and well in the 21st century.

(source: Russian T.V)

A feminist movement has accused the Israeli government of adopting a racist policy towards the country's Ethiopian Jews.

Activists believe black women are deliberately being given a controversial contraceptive drug to bring about a drop in the population – a claim the government denies.

Thousands of Ethiopians have immigrated to Israel since the 1980s, but their Jewish heritage has been questioned, while their social status continues to suffer.

For nearly four years, Racheli Mangoli has been running a youth center in one of Israel's poorer communities. Forty-five Ethiopian families live here, but throughout that entire time, only one Ethiopian baby has been born in this neighborhood, and that has alarmed Racheli.