INTERNATIONAL

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 4 2012 (IPS) – Mahatma Gandhi said it with remarkable moral clarity – “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” That is indeed what happened in Gaza over eight days in November, with an estimated 160 Palestinians and six Israelis dead in the latest exchange of rockets and drones brought to an …

  Ruins of the Abu Khadra complex for civil adminstration following an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City. Credit: Mohammed Omer/IPS UNITED NATIONS, Nov 28 2012 (IPS) – A long outstanding international conference on a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East, scheduled to take place in Finland next month, has been postponed, giving rise to speculation on whether it will ever …

  U.N. General Assembly grants Palestine Non-member Observer State status. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas UNITED NATIONS, Nov 30 2012 (IPS) – Amidst thunderous applause – and the spontaneous unfurling of a Palestinian flag in the General Assembly hall – the U.N.’s highest policy-making body Thursday voted overwhelmingly to elevate Palestine from an “observer” to a “non-member state”. The final vote was …

  General David Petraeus, former CIA director Sometimes, generals purge politicians. In 1648, during the English Civil War, Colonel Pride and his troops removed those members of the Long Parliament who opposed military domination; the puppets who remained were called the Rump Parliament. This year, a cabal of generals evidently believed it could secure the White House for Mitt Romney …

SCANDAL: David Petraeus resigned as director of the CIA over his affair with biographer Paula Broadwell By Kimberly Dozier Saturday November 17 2012   Former CIA director David Petraeus told US lawmakers during private hearings he believed all along that the September 11 attack on the US consulate in Libya was a terrorist strike, even though the Obama administration initially …

  Al Jazeera's Nadim Baba, reporting from Gaza, has said that the search continues for survivors of an Israeli air strike that killed nine members of the same family in Gaza. Our correspondent said rescue workers worked frantically to pick up the debris from "the massive crater where the residential building stood". Five children were among the nine members of the …