Rarely would a state get such an easy run from the media after killing so many civilians, many of whom were children, in what the BBC now calls the 'flare-up' of violence.

Last night a ceasefire came into effect after a week of attacks on Gaza which left over 150 Palestinians dead (at least 40 of them children) and rocket fire into Israel which left 5 Israelis dead.

Before the news of the ceasefire became the front-page headline on the BBC News website, the headline story for the entire day concerned the bus bombing in Tel Aviv, which injured 21 civilians.

Luckily this attack did not result in civilian deaths, however it was still deemed more newsworthy than the 13 Palestinians in Gaza who were killed by air strikes that same day.

The news coverage was another glaring example of the different value assigned to life by our media, depending on which side of the Gaza border it resides.

Walking along the cracked sidewalk that charts my route home from college, my head was filled with thoughts of Gaza and the recent 'ceasefire' and the fact that 160 Gazans had been ruthlessly slaughtered in eight days. As I ambled along, constating how lucky I was not to have to fear the sound of F16's or a sudden missile strike or being burnt alive by white phosphorous, I was stopped dead in my tracks by an unusual sight. Scattered on the ground in front of me were many bloody feathers, and lying right in the middle of the sidewalk, as if placed there by someone, was the head of a pigeon. Blood still dripped from its severed spinal cord, right below the neck. Light still shined from its eye. I asked a girl who happened to be standing next to me if she'd ever seen a bad omen. She just shrugged and walked away.

The rockets slammed in, two in succession, just after 11.30 at night. When Huda Tawfil had shaken herself awake through the confusion and terror, her first thoughts were for her baby. Seeing what she did through the smoke and flames, she burst into tears.

The 20-year-old started digging through the rubble with her hands as other members of the family ran into the room and joined in. She then cradled her little girl on the way to hospital in her husband's car. There was an emergency operation, but the injuries from the shrapnel proved to be too severe.

The name of Hanin Tawfil was added to a growing and particularly grim list from the latest Gaza conflict. Out of 104 civilians killed and 970 wounded, 34 and 274 respectively were children; dozens of others who survived have been orphaned and left traumatised by the violence.

The figures are startling even by the vicious standards of the recent bloodlettings in this region. It is, of course, the case that rockets fired from Gaza by Palestinians, often indiscriminately, had led to casualties among young boys and girls in Israel. But the ministry of defence in Tel Aviv had repeatedly stressed in the course of this mission that its attacks were surgical and all efforts possible had been made to avoid collateral damage.

Channel Islands and Isle of Man will be among those ordered to reveal names behind hidden accounts

Radical plans to force the UK's tax havens to reveal the names behind hidden companies, account holders and trusts have been drawn up by the Treasury.

The news has delighted tax justice campaigners, who predict that the move, which is expected to be unveiled in the chancellor's autumn statement and come into force in 2014, will have major consequences for those trying to hide their money offshore.


A leaked document reveals that the UK plans to impose its own version of the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (Fatca) on the crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man, as well as its overseas territories, such as the Cayman Islands.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, moving quickly to nip a new scandal in the bud, ordered the dismissal on Saturday of government officials allegedly involved in a bribery ring, including the country's deputy attorney general.

Federal police raided government offices in Brasilia and Sao Paulo on Friday and arrested six people for running an influence peddling ring that sold government approvals to businessmen in return for bribes.

Among those under investigation are the former personal secretary of ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Rosemary de Noronha, who has headed the regional office of the presidency in Sao Paulo since 2005.

The bribery scandal erupted on the heels of Brazil's biggest political corruption trial that sentenced some of Lula's closest aides to prison terms for buying support in Congress for his minority Workers' Party government after taking office in 2003.

Rousseff, Lula's chosen successor, was not affected by the vote-buying scandal and she has built on his popularity by gaining a reputation for not tolerating corruption. But the ruling Workers' Party was rocked by the scandal which tarnished Lula's legacy even though he was not implicated.

The new corruption case could further hurt the standing of Lula, who remains Brazil's most influential politician.

The body of the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat will be exhumed on Tuesday, eight years after his death, in an investigation to establish if he was murdered, a Palestinian official said on Saturday.
Ramallah - A French court opened a murder inquiry in August into Arafat's death in Paris after a Swiss institute said it had discovered high levels of radioactive polonium on his clothing, which was supplied by his widow, Suha.

Tawfiq al-Tirawi, in charge of the Palestinian committee overseeing the investigation, told reporters in Ramallah on Saturday "it is a painful necessity" to exhume the body of Arafat, who came to symbolize the Palestinian quest for statehood throughout decades of war and peace with Israel.

Tirawi said the Palestinians had "evidence which suggests Arafat was assassinated by Israelis". Israel denies any involvement.

The exhumation and renewed allegations of Israeli involvement could stir further tension between the Palestinians and Israel, which are observing a truce after a week of fierce fighting in Gaza.

Any positive results for polonium could rekindle Palestinian hostility toward Israel and suspicions that a local collaborator may have poisoned him under directions from the Jewish state.

Russian warships anchored off the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea to prepare the evacuation of Russians in the area, should the conflict in Gaza escalate, The Voice of Russia quoted a Russian Navy Command source on Friday.

"The detachment of combat ships of the Black Sea Fleet, including the Guards missile cruiser Moskva, the patrol ship Smetliviy, large landing ships Novocherkassk and Saratov, the sea tug MB-304 and the big sea tanker Ivan Bubnov, got the order to remain in the designated area of the Eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea for a possible evacuation of Russian citizens from the area of the Gaza strip in case of escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict", the spokesperson said.

He added that ship crew members will continue routine combat training, maintenance of equipment and weapons along with other military services.

Meanwhile, Israeli troops fired on Gazans surging toward Israel's border fence Friday, killing one person but leaving intact the fragile two-day-old cease-fire between Hamas and the Jewish state.

The truce, which calls for an end to Gaza rocket fire on Israel and Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, came after eight days of cross-border fighting, the bloodiest between Israel and Hamas in four years.

In a letter to the U.N. Security Council, the Palestinian U.N. observer Riyad Mansour called the situation in Gaza "extremely fragile" and said Israel's cease-fire violations and other illegal actions risk undermining the calm that was just restored.

European Union leaders failed to agree on the 27 nation bloc's next seven-year budget, replaying the clash between rich and poor countries that has stymied the response to the euro debt crisis.

National chiefs plan another summit early next year, when northern countries including Britain and Germany may have the upper hand in seeking to cut subsidies to lesser-developed southern and eastern economies clamoring for EU investment.

"Anything short of admitting that our talks have been extraordinarily complex and difficult would not reflect reality," Jose Barroso, head of the European Commission, which manages the subsidy programs, told reporters after a two-day meeting in Brussels.

Britain's defense of its cash-back guarantee and France's clinging to farm aid gave the summit the flavor of EU negotiations in the 1970s or 1980s, diluting efforts to equip Europe with a budget to make it more competitive. Eastern and southern countries said reduced financing for public-works projects would condemn them to lag behind the wealthier north.

The euro rose to $1.2977 at 7 p.m. in Brussels from $1.2880 late yesterday. The Euro Stoxx 50 index rose 0.9 percent to 2,557.03.

In the EU's last budget round, it took two summits, in June and December 2005, to strike a bargain. No date was set for the next negotiations. In the absence of an accord by late 2013, the EU would roll over its annual budget.

An Interview With John Pilger

Dennis Bernstein: Noted Documentary Filmmaker, John Pilger, is somebody who knows a great deal about the Gaza Strip, and about the extreme conditions Palestinians there have been forced to endure under a Brutal Israeli Occupation. Pilger has actually made two films about it with the same name, twenty-five years apart: "Palestine is Still the Issue." Pilger, a London based Australian journalist, is a widely respected, Emmy award winning documentarian. His articles regularly appear world-wide in newspapers such as the Guardian of London, the Independent, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times.

JP: Thank you Dennis.

DB: You know a great deal about the situation. You've made not one film, Palestine is the Issue, but two. Let me get your initial response to we're continuing to hear reports of massive bombing and injury, and death to civilian life, to children.

JP: Well, the first thing is the....we should be disgusted. That is a normal, human response, to this. And the second is that we ought not to be surprised, but we should understand this has nothing to do with Hamas, or rockets. It is an ongoing assault on the Palestinian people. And especially the people of Gaza, which began a very long time ago and the plan is to effectively get rid of them as an entity. And I'm not exaggerating, it's often difficult to reach back to the history in times like this, but it's very important that we contextualize it.

The infamous Plan D that was executed in the late 1940s just before Israel came into being was to expel the population of Palestine; to get rid of them. And 369 villages were attacked, the people thrown out, the record is there. Historical record is very clear, Israeli historians, Benny Morris through, have documented this, the Hebrew archives have thrown it up.

The sum of it is that we see a form of genocide under way in Palestine. And this is the later stage. And what your listeners should be in no doubt about is that although Israelis are doing the bombing, it's really the United States that is really pushing the buttons. Because it's only Israelis who are flying, the American planes. Those are American planes supplied for this very exercise, and if you look at the response of President Obama you understand that this is, in effect, an American/Israeli assault on a people who live in effectively in an open prison.

The United Nations special reporter, Richard Falk has likened their situation to the Warsaw Ghetto. When in Warsaw and Poland the Jewish Ghetto there rose up against the Nazis, who were crushed. These days fascism is not a word easily used, nor should it be. But we have as close to a fascist state in Israel, and those historic parallels that Faulk draws, actually to be correct. So we're seeing an historical process at work here, and it is up to the rest of the world to recognize that, and do something about it.

DB: John, you've, as I mentioned in the introduction made not one film but two films with almost the same name, about twenty-five years apart. And that's Palestine is the Issue...why did you...

JP: Palestine is Still the Issue...

Incrementalism has proved depressingly effective as a tool for getting most people to quietly surrender their rights piecemeal. For gradually habituating them to an ever-diminishing circle of liberty. When the circle finally closes and their rights no longer exist at all, they hardly notice - because by that time, most of their rights have already been taken.

The final surrender is met with a shrug rather than a scream of outrage.

Think how Americans have been habituated to arbitrary search and seizure. Something like the TSA would simply not have been tolerated if it came out of the blue sky circa 1980. And no, the terrr attacks of nineleven did not "change everything." Getting people to accept "sobriety checkpoints" beginning around 1980 changed everything. Accept that - and something like Gate Rape is inevitable.

The same process works just as well when it comes to dismantling due process - and removing limits on what the government may not do to us. We didn't get to legal strip searches for jaywalking or littering in one fell swoop. Nor rendition, torture as policy - and presidential kill lists. It is a matter of getting them - getting us - to tolerate "A" so that "B" will be accepted in turn.

This is how the citizens of the United States will be disarmed.

No sudden, mass ban or attempt at confiscation - because that would probably lead to open violence on a large scale and they - people like Dear Leader Obama and his Vyshinsky, AG Eric Holder, know this.