YONATAN SHAPIRA BASSAM ARAMIN ELIK ELHANAN Currently in Washington, D.C., Shapira was a captain in the Israeli Air Force as a Black Hawk pilot. In 2003 he wrote a noted “Pilot’s Letter” refusing to serve in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Aramin is a former Fatah fighter who served seven years in jail from the age…

ROBERT POLLIN Author of the books Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity and The Macroeconomics of Saving, Finance, and Investment, Pollin said today: “U.S. and global financial markets are mired in a severe crisis due to the collapse of the U.S. housing bubble and the subprime mortgage market. A…

The Washington Post reports today in a piece headlined “U.S. Boosts Its Use of Airstrikes In Iraq” that: “The U.S.-led coalition dropped 1,447 bombs on Iraq last year, an average of nearly four a day, compared with 229 bombs, or about four each week, in 2006. … In Afghanistan, where U.S. and NATO bombings picked…

ISABEL MacDONALD Communications director for the media watch group FAIR, MacDonald said today: “NBC’s exclusion of Kucinich from the Jan. 15 Democratic debate represents a particularly egregious example of preempting voter choice by the GE-owned network. “After inviting Kucinich to the debate, the network arbitrarily changed the criteria for participation, and disinvited him. When a…

I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. … There is something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that would praise you when…

CRAIG HOLMAN Holman is government ethics lobbyist for Public Citizen, which has launched the web page White House for Sale that keeps tracks of money to candidates; they just updated their numbers Tuesday, below. He said today: “The practice of bundling, which allows candidates to take unlimited unregulated cash pulled together from connected operatives, has…

Reuters is reporting: “Indonesia’s ailing former President Suharto has pneumonia and is developing a blood infection which could lead to blood poisoning, causing a further deterioration in his health, his doctors said on Tuesday. Doctors have been battling to save the 86-year-old former strongman, who ruled the vast Southeast Asian nation for more than three…

Bush is continuing his Mideast trip, meeting Tuesday with Saudi King Abdullah and Wednesday with the Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. MADAWI AL-RASHEED Available for a limited number of interviews, Al-Rasheed is author of A History of Saudi Arabia and Contesting the Saudi State: Islamic Voices from a…

The World Health Organization reports on findings just published in the New England Journal of Medicine: “A large national household survey conducted by the Iraqi government and WHO estimates that 151,000 Iraqis died from violence between March 2003 and June 2006.” LES ROBERTS Roberts is co-author of a study published in October 2006 by the…

FRANCIS BOYLE Professor of international law at the University of Illinois, Boyle is author of Palestine, Palestinians and International Law. He said today: “Contrary to what many are saying — that Bush has not accomplished much in his trip to the Mideast — he has accomplished a great deal of harm. “Bush called for ‘new…