I'm Diane G, and will be producing the weekly hour, and am honored to have two of the Left Blogosphere's best writers, Gottlieb and Ed Encho as Co-Hosts of the Show.

This week we will open with a short introductory conversation, followed by a WWL take on current events.

In our second half hour, our special guest this week is Commander Jeff Huber, author of two books, and proprietor of the esteemed "Pen and Sword" blog.

Cmdr. Huber will be answering questions from a military expertise point of view about the fronts we are engaged in presently, as well as the Gaza Crisis.

Tune into to listen to the live stream, add commentary in the live chat area, or call in and talk directly to our Hosts or Guest. Make sure you tell me what Blog you post from, and we will shamelessly plug your blog on air too!

Details on how to use the BlogTalkRadio site below the fold.

Palestinian Girl, Israeli Troops

Korean television has video of a Palestinian girl confronting Israeli soldiers over their firing (rubber bullets?) at demonstrating Palestinian children and youth.

She is being identified by my facebook friends as Huwaida Arraf, a Detroiter married to Adam Shapiro, a University of Michigan Poli Sci graduate, and a founder of  International Solidarity Movement, a nonviolent activist organization.

Read More at Informed Comment

By David Edwards and Stephen C. Webster
The Raw Story

Doctor estimates 2,000 - 2,500 civilian casualties

Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor working in Gaza, told Sky News on Monday that that he believes Israel is deliberately attacking the Palestinian population, not just targeting Hamas as Israeli authorities have said numerous times.

"Just a little bit more than an hour ago, the Israelis bombed the central food market in Gaza City and we had a mass influx of about 50 injured and between 10 and 15 killed," said Gilbert, on the phone with Sky News.

"At the same time they bombed an apartment house with children playing on the roof and we had a lot of children also. This is really like from Dante's Inferno. It's like hell here now and it's been bombing all night. Up till now, close to 500 people have been killed and the number of casualties is getting to 2, 2 and a half thousand, which 50 percent are children and women."

Read More at The Raw Story

Phyllis Bennis: Where you decide to start the clock determines how you define the crisis Pt.1/3
The Real News

Several days into Israel's military operation in Gaza, The Real News speaks to Phyllis Bennis about the conflict. After giving a brief background on the events that led to the invasion of the Gaza Strip, Phyllis explains the various ways in which the United States facilitates Israel's activities. According to Phyllis, it is the unquestioning military and political support from Washington that makes Israel's actions possible.
Bio

Phyllis Bennis is a Senior Analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC. She is the author of Before and After: US Foreign Policy and the September 11 Crisis and Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the UN Defy US Power.

Her newest book Understanding the US-Iran Crisis: A Primer will be available in September 2008.

More at The Real News

By Joseph A. Palermo
The Huffington Post

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) assault on the Gaza Strip is a hasty maneuver designed to inflict maximum damage on Hamas in the waning days of the Bush Administration. The IDF seized the moment during the American political transition to create new "facts on the ground" in Gaza before the new president could alter the geopolitical status quo. On the surface it appears to have been a cunning move, but its shortsightedness will soon prove that it is just another pointless bloodbath.

"There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza," Israel's Foreign Minister and former Mossad agent Tzipi Livni assures us, and Israeli cabinet secretary, Oved Yehezkel, repeated the exact same line. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza disagrees and therein lays the rub. With casualties mounting and a collapsed medical system it's hard to believe there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Maybe Israel should allow in a few journalists to find out.

Wars against civilians are nothing new. In Vietnam the United States erased entire villages using the exact same arguments that Israel is using today: "Women and children are being killed because our heartless enemies locate their fighters amidst the civilian population and we have no choice but to . . . blah, blah, blah." Golda Meir said: "We can forgive them for killing our children, we cannot forgive them for making us kill theirs." That line was repeated ad nauseum during the June 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon that left over 18,000 people dead. I'm surprised I haven't heard it lately from the talking heads on CNN.

With Washington blocking for it the IDF has a free hand to do as it pleases in Gaza. They'll probably be a massacre somewhere before it's over. It's only a matter of time before we have another Sabra and Shitila or (more likely) another Qana. And then we'll be treated to lectures on situational ethics by the likes of Alan Dershowitz, William Kristol, and Michelle Malkin.

Read More at The Huffington Post

By Jennifer LaFleur
ProPublica

This story was co-published with the Columbia Journalism Review

As one of the most secretive presidential administrations in history gets ready to close up shop, it's closing a few more things -- records. Over the past few months, some federal agencies have issued rules that would eliminate public disclosure of information -- or, in some cases, make it more difficult for requesters to get information.

While the federal Freedom of Information Act regulates what government information may be withheld from the public, internal rules determine how that law is carried out at the agency level. Those rules also may restrict access to information.

On Dec. 9, the Department of Energy[2] proposed a rule that would eliminate the agency's "public interest balancing test" in determining whether to release information to the public. That test allowed the agency to release documents that would otherwise be exempt from disclosure if, in their opinion, releasing them would serve the public interest. According to the agency's summary of the rule, the test imposed "an additional burden on DOE." The agency also increased the photocopying fee paid by FOIA requesters to 20 cents per page. The agency currently charges five cents for copies of paper documents and 10 cents per page for printouts of microfilm. Getting in a final rule before the Obama administration takes over would be a stretch. DOE is accepting public comments on the proposed rule until Jan. 8. But the agency might be able to put a final rule in place before FOIA guidance is issued by the new U.S. Attorney General.

Read More at ProPublica

By Mark Mazzetti and Carol Hulse
The New York Times

WASHINGTON - Leon E. Panetta, a former congressman and White House chief of staff, has been selected by President-elect Barack Obama to head the Central Intelligence Agency. The choice, disclosed Monday by Democratic officials, immediately revealed divisions in the party as two senior lawmakers questioned why Mr. Obama would nominate a candidate with limited experience in intelligence matters.

The job was the last unfilled major post for Mr. Obama, who has criticized the agency for using interrogation methods he characterized as torture. Democratic officials said Mr. Obama had selected Mr. Panetta for his managerial skills, his bipartisan standing, and the foreign policy and budget experience he gained under President Bill Clinton.

Mr. Panetta has himself been a sharp critic of the agency's interrogation practices. Some Democrats expressed strong support for the choice, with Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader, describing him as "one of the finest public servants I have ever served with and dealt with since he left the White House."

But Mr. Panetta, 70, was also widely described as a surprising and unusual choice to head the C.I.A., an agency that has been notoriously unwelcoming to previous directors perceived as outsiders.

Read More at The New York Times

Israel's current assault on Gaza has sparked controversy in the mainstream press. But for all their differences, critics and supporters share a fundamental assumption: that Israel, as a Western industrial democracy, accepts the Enlightenment idea of the absolute value of individual human lives, and recognizes the inalienable rights that stem from it.. Against this background, Israeli officials are seen as facing a tragic dilemma: how to confront threatening forces who do not share these values - Islamic extremists -- without sacrificing their own moral standards. Thus, supporters of the action in Gaza ask how else but with deadly military force can Israel protect its citizens from rocket attacks, while the critics insist that the bombing, with its high human costs, is anyway a poor means of ensuring Israel's security.. The critics, of course, are correct. But in their tacit endorsement of the "clash-of-cultures" frame, they let Israel off the moral hook. The current assault is not governed by a painful recognition of conflicting demands of human rights; rather it is animated by profound racism, tribalism, and the ancient doctrine of collective guilt.

To see why I say this it is only necessary to engage in a simple thought experiment. Suppose Hamas terrorists were hiding out in Tel Aviv (or Los Angeles, or London, for that matter -- the exercise is equally illuminating applied to the U.S. and or any other "civilized" Western state). Would an assault of the sort we have seen against Gaza even be contemplated? Would Israeli officials grimly but dispassionately calculate the cost-benefit ratio concerning a massive aerial assault on Jewish neighborhoods? Would American and European officials condone such an attack? Would the pundits express their sympathy with Israel's terrible dilemma? Of course not! The very idea of such an action would be recognized immediately as morally outrageous, and anyone who proposed it would be treated with contempt. You can hear the voices: What, are we just like Hamas and Al Qaeda? They don't respect human life, but we do.

Read More at CounterCurrents

(This classic Dave Barry column was originally published Feb. 29, 2004.)

I haven't attempted to ski for years, but recently I decided to take another stab at it. I was hoping they'd done something about the gravity problem.

Gravity is the biggest drawback to skiing. Without gravity, it would be a carefree activity: You'd put on your skis, head for the slopes and just . . . HOVER for a while. Then it would be time for ``apres ski''

(French for ''no longer skiing''). Instead, you have gravity. Huge amounts of it. Ski areas are located smack dab on top of giant gravity piles called ``mountains.'' Most areas also use machines to make more gravity at night. Thus powerful forces are always trying to suck you, the skier, down the mountain and into large fixed objects such as buildings. This is why the Number One Rule of Skiing Safety is: ``Never go up the mountain without a good reason, such as it is summer.''

This lesson was driven home to me dramatically the first time I tried skiing, which was in 1964 at a ski area in southern New York State, where much of the time, instead of snow, you ski on frozen mud (or, as we say in ski-area terminology, ``excellent conditions''). I went with my friend Lanny Watts, who knew how to ski, and who -- after watching me fall down repeatedly while I was still in the parking lot -- decided that the best way for me to learn would be to go straight to the top of the mountain and see what happened. What happened was, I slid off the chairlift and went back down the mountain very fast.

Read More at The Miami Herald

From NPR

Weekend Edition Sunday, January 4, 2009 · Last year was the most violent year in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, with civilians often paying the highest price. About 1,200 men, women and children considered non-combatants were killed in 2008.

While most civilians were killed by militants, the number of Afghans who died at the hands of Western forces increased by 21 percent, according to a United Nations tally. The majority of victims died in military air strikes and during Western missions to target insurgents.

"Afghans are very, very angry, but surprisingly, their anger is directed mainly at Western forces because many people here believe the West is leaving a trail of innocent victims in their war on terror," Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, who reports for NPR from Afghanistan, tells Liane Hansen.

Nelson says a good example is what happened during a joint U.S.-Afghan operation against the Taliban in the town of Azizabad in August.

The ground and air operation had gone after a Taliban leader in the village, and when U.S. and Afghan special forces units showed up to arrest the target, he and his men apparently fired first, resulting in a battle that lasted for hours. When it was over, 90 civilians were dead, 60 of them children, according to the Afghan government and the U.N. The death toll is still disputed by U.S. officials.

More at NPR

Editors note: Marty, I have no solutions, I wish that I knew of one. I wish to see no more pictures of the slaughter of innocents, of people or their children, of Palestinians or Israelis. But, I know that I will because I cannot turn my head. Nor can you. I feel sorry for us, you and I, all of us. For half a century and more,
we have known only war. Bob

First I saw a young protester telling a CNN reporter in Trafalgar Square, "Every single day, as soon as we turn on the TV, we see children there die in the hospitals, adults dying, children dying on the floor. Why, why, why? Why do children have to die? Why do innocent children have to die on the floor? Why?"

And I thought, She's right, those children in Gaza are innocent, every human life is precious, civilians aren't combatants. Doesn't everyone deserve basic human rights like food and water and life itself?

But then I thought, Where was she when 80 or 90 Hamas rockets a day were raining down on Israel? Where were all the television cameras when innocent children in Ashkelon and Sderot were being maimed and killed?

But then I saw pictures of massive devastation in Gaza on the front pages of the newspapers, and I thought, What good does it do if Israel appears to act like its enemies?

But then I heard Shimon Peres tell George Stephanopoulos that Hamas "did things which are unprecedented in the history even of terror. They made mosques into headquarters. They put bombs in the kindergartens, in their own homes. They are hiding in hospitals." Where were all the people of Gaza rising up in outrage when Hamas used them as human shields?

Read More at The Huffington Post

Posted by Digby, Hullabaloo

This is particularly important, since the press has only asked Obama about this one time.

Over the holiday break I wrote a post about and initiative spearheaded by Ari Melber of the Nation and Democrats.com to ask President-elect Obama if he will appoint a special prosecutor to investigate war crimes in the Bush administration over at Change.gov. (In a previous round, it was the sixth most asked question, and the new administration has only agreed to answer the first five, so it went unanswered. )

This time, through their efforts, it's number one. This is particularly important, since the press has only asked Obama about this one time, last April. And a lot has happened since then, most obviously the fact that Vice President is all over television admitting to war crimes as if he's proud of it.

Democrats.com quotes Melber saying:

"With so few journalists directly asking the President-Elect about these issues, however, it is up to the rest of us to put accountability and the rule of law on the agenda."

Voting remains open:

  1. Sign in at http://change.gov/openforquest...
  2. On the left menu, click "Additional Issues." Bob Fertik's question will appear at the top.
  3. Look right for the checkbox, mouseover it so it goes from white to dark, then click to cast your vote

More at AlterNet

By Taghreed el-Khodary
The New York Times

GAZA - A missile hit their uncle's house, which was made of concrete and so, the Basal family had thought in taking refuge there, safer than their more flimsy one. Fida Basal, 20, was not there when it struck. But her sister, Hanin, 18, was.

On Sunday, the day after Israel began its ground invasion of Gaza, Fida found Hanin at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. One of Hanin's legs, her sister was told, had been amputated.

"I want her leg now!" Fida screamed at her mother, blaming her for moving them to the concrete house. "God has no mercy! You get me her leg now!"

Her uncle lost both legs in the missile strike on Sunday. Another woman found only half of the body of her 17-year-old daughter in the Shifa morgue. "May God exterminate Hamas!" she screamed in a curse rarely heard these days. In this conflict, many Palestinians praise Hamas as resisters, but Israel contends the group has purposely endangered civilians by fighting in and around populated areas.

The scene at the hospital, a singular and grisly reflection of the violence around it, was both harrowing and puzzling. A week ago, after Israel began its air assault, hundreds of Hamas militants were taken to the hospital. Yet on Sunday, the day Israeli troops flooded Gaza and ground battles with Hamas began, there appeared not to be a single one.

The casualties at Shifa on Sunday - 18 dead, hospital officials said, among a reported 30 around Gaza - were women, children and men who had been with children. One surgeon said that he had performed five amputations.

"I don't know what kind of weapons Israel is using," said a nurse, Ziad Abd al Jawwad, 41, who had been working 24 hours without a break. "There is so much amputation."

Read More at The New York Times