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Death waits for no one in Balata refugee camp

Mohamed Farraj Balata refugee camp 21 October 2006



Skipper, the son of an electrician, grew up with his three brothers on the outskirts of the camp. Though his given name was Osama, most people in the camp called him “Skipper” and his close friends called him “Disco Skipper.” “Skipper” was a nickname given to him in school, and “Disco” came from his love for dancing. Skipper would be the first one dancing at all the wedding parties in the camp. Like many of his peers, in tenth grade Skipper left school to work for his father. However, he couldn’t stand working while the situation around him was worsening and his friends were being killed or arrested. His friend Ramzy says that Skipper would hang out with young men who were “wanted” by the Israeli army. Skipper was considered guilty by association and he too became “wanted.” 

"Nafas Beirut": A platform for artists bearing witness

19 October 2006



Espace SD and xanadu* present Nafas Beirut, a multimedia venue for artists bearing witness. The aim is to create a platform for artists, poets, writers and filmmakers to share their work produced during or in reaction to the Israeli siege of Lebanon of Summer 2006. Believing it crucial to highlight these works, Nafas Beirut documents the emotions and experiences, and brings artists and viewers together, historicizing the moment. Nafas Beirut is a platform for these immediate responses through a multimedia exhibition and a month long series of events including, video screenings curated by various organizations and collectives, concerts, an open mike poetry jam, and a lecture on the oil spill. 

Your Thoughts: Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East

19 October 2006



BNN’s Your Thoughts is brought to you by the BNN Under Department of Tahta Maintenance, the department that exists to recycle graphics in a low maintenance kind of way, in order that we have to struggle less on our budget to come up with original content. Partially original content is what cable news is all about, so we’re definitely making big strides on the road to media professionalism here in our corner of the truth-telling universe, or as Stephen Colbert might have put it — if he’d thought of it first — the “Truthiverse”. 

Most blue helmets now in place in southern Lebanon, says UN force chief

19 October 2006



Considerable progress has been achieved in southern Lebanon since the Security Council resolution ending the conflict between Israel and Hizbollah, and most of the expected force of blue helmets to monitor the cessation of hostilities has now been deployed, the senior United Nations commander in Lebanon said today. Briefing reporters at UN Headquarters in New York, Maj.-Gen. Alain Pellegrini said the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has 7,200 soldiers on the ground, including a contingent of 1,500 Germans that is part of the taskforce designated to protect Lebanon’s maritime boundary. 

Top UN envoy says only dialogue with all parties in the Middle East will bring peace

19 October 2006



Warning that “crisis and opportunity” exist side-by-side every day in the Middle East, the top United Nations envoy for peace in the region told the Security Council today that only simultaneous dialogue with all parties in the conflict will bring a lasting end to the bloodshed. “A serious and systematic search for peace in the region requires dialogue with all the parties in the conflict, pari pasu, to ensure that crises are managed and opportunities explored, and that developments on one track are not undermined by developments on another,” said Alvaro de Soto, the Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process. 

Palestinians apprehensive about CIA money

Khalid Amayreh 19 October 2006



Palestinian nationalist and Islamic leaders have strongly denounced efforts by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and affiliated foreign aide bodies to recruit Palestinian journalists, politicians and certain political groups to work against the Islamic group Hamas. Western news agencies last Friday reported that the US was quietly starting a campaign projected to cost up to $42 million to bolster Hamas’s political opponents ahead of possible early elections. The plan includes funding the Fatah group, providing training as well as offering “strategic advice” to politicians and some liberal secular parties opposed to Hamas. 

BBC publishes list of "key terms" used in Israel-Palestinian conflict

19 October 2006



The BBC Governors’ independent panel report on the impartiality of BBC coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict recommended that the BBC should make public an abbreviated version of its journalists’ guide to facts and terminology. The following list of terms used in the conflict, their definitions, and notes for their correct usage, reveals a news organization trying to find a balance between accurate reporting and leaning towards the semantics of the Israeli side in the conflict. 

Lebanon's irreplaceable cultural loss

Mulham Assir 19 October 2006



The loss inflicted by the Israeli war on Lebanon is measured in the 1,400 people killed, the thousands maimed (with more continuing to be killed and maimed by the hundreds of thousands of cluster bombs left behind), the hundreds of thousands displaced or left homeless, and the wholesale destruction of infrastructure essential to life. Colonial wars of aggression like the one waged by the US in Iraq or the slow genocide carried out by the Jewish state against the Palestinian people have a more profoundly destructive effect than the most brutal barbarian invasions of old because they aim deeper, into the very soul of the nations under attack. 

Fishermen survive on handouts

19 October 2006



Wissam Arab pointed sadly at shredded nets and broken pieces of wood in the dirty water in Beirut’s Ouzai Harbour. It is all that remains of his work over the past 11 years. Arab’s fishing boat was destroyed in the July-August conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. It lies 15 metres deep in the Mediterranean Sea, now polluted after an Israeli air strike on a nearby power plant created a massive oil spill. His livelihood is in tatters, he said. “The sea was my friend. Now, even divers are scared of going under the water to check on my boat. It was drowned by one of the rockets that hit the harbour,” Arab told IRIN. 

Photo of the Day: Only in Ramallah

19 October 2006



Photo of the Day is a BNN feature which offers a photograph on a day, and calls it “Photo of the Day”. This is not to imply that this is a regular feature, nor that this photo is truly the mother of all photos for the day in question. In this particular example, there is more than one photo, so a correct titling of the feature should really be “Photos of the Day”. However, this would become extremely confusing for branding reasons, kind of like the subject of these photos. Usual disclaimers apply.