Hamas says new gov't boosts political chaos
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"This government will remain illegal and illegitimate and we will not recognize it or deal with it," Barhoum added.
The new government, led by the Western-backed Salam Fayyad, was sworn in in the West Bank city of Ramallah earlier in the day. It excludes Hamas which won the parliamentary elections in 2006.
Barhoum said that excluding Hamas in the government "meets the U.S. and Israeli desires which are against the interests of the Palestinian people and their rights."

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-05/20/content_11403652.htm



Israeli war jets strike on several Gaza Strip targets, one wounded
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Israeli warplanes on Tuesday night carried out a series of airstrikes on several targets in the Palestinian Gaza Strip, wounding one person and causing severe damages to two buildings, medics and witnesses said.
Earlier Tuesday, witnesses said that F16 warplanes hovered over Rafah town and then two explosions were heard after two bombs fired by the warplanes struck the borderline area and destroyed tunnels used by Palestinians for smuggling.
The Palestinians dug thousands of tunnels after Israel tightened its blockade on the enclave and prevented products to enter through crossings between Israel and Gaza. The tunnels are used for smuggling goods, food, medicine and fuels.
But Israel said that Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, and other militant groups are using the tunnels to smuggle weapons from Egypt into Gaza, used for carrying out attacks against Israel.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-05/20/content_11403775.htm


Unexceptional Americans: Why We Can’t See the Trees or the Forest
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More importantly, torture has been routinely practiced from the early days of the conquest of the national territory, and continued to be used as the imperial ventures of the “infant empire” — as George Washington called the new republic — extended to the Philippines, Haiti, and elsewhere. Keep in mind as well that torture was the least of the many crimes of aggression, terror, subversion, and economic strangulation that have darkened U.S. history, much as in the case of other great powers.
Accordingly, what’s surprising is to see the reactions to the release of those Justice Department memos, even by some of the most eloquent and forthright critics of Bush malfeasance: Paul Krugman, for example, writing that we used to be “a nation of moral ideals” and never before Bush “have our leaders so utterly betrayed everything our nation stands for.” To say the least, that common view reflects a rather slanted version of American history.

http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2009/05/19/unexceptional-americans-why-we-cant-see-the-trees-or-the-forest/


The tortured world of US intelligence By Roger Morris
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This is a vintage American chronicle with dramatic settings and dark secrets. The cast ranges from hearty boosters in Kansas to bitter exiles on the Baltic, from doomed agents dropped behind Russian lines across Eurasia to Islamic clerics car-bombed in the Middle East - all in a family saga of long-hidden paternity... such a sweeping history - the history, in this case, of that blind deity of havoc, the CIA - cannot come condensed or blog-sized. It is, necessarily, without apology, a long trail a-winding.

http://atimes01.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IF23Ak03.html