Free Republic

Palestinian artist, Haled Jarar, hung his photographs on the fence of the Hawara checkpoint; the "Activestills" collective covered the streets of Tel Aviv with photos of squatters. Two exhibits, two protests Yael Ivri Published: 02.06.07, 19:18 On Saturday at midday a Palestinian artist living in Ramallah, drove up to the Hawara checkpoint south of Nablus, his car contained his debut exhibition. The photo exhibition, part of a campaign called "30 days against checkpoints" initiated by the Palestinian HASM rganization, was hung on the Hawara checkpoint fence for three hours. Some 200 visitors, including Israeli and foreign peace activists, as well...

Missouri: Police Roadblock Harassment Caught on TapeSt. Louis County, Missouri threaten to arrest a teenager for refusing to discuss his personal travel plans. A teenager harassed by police in St. Louis, Missouri caught the incident on tape. Brett Darrow, 19, had his video camera rolling last month as he drove his 1997 Maxima, minding his own business. He approached a drunk driving roadblock where he was stopped, detained and threatened with arrest when he declined to enter a conversation with a police officer about his personal travel habits. Now Darrow is considering filing suit against St. Louis County Police. "I'm...

Hope gives way to disappointment as Palestinians wait for crossing to open Laila al-Hadad Published: 11.27.06, 10:33 My family and I are on our way back to Gaza from the US. We flew in to Cairo last week, and from there embarked on a five hour taxi ride to the border town of al-Arish, 50 km from the border with Gaza. We rest in al-Arish for the night. We carried false hopes the night before last, hopes transmitted down the taxi driver’s grapevine, the ones who run the Cairo-Rafah circuit, that the border would open early that morning. So we...

Palestinian family says Border Guard officers refused to allow ambulance into refugee camp to transfer heart attack victim to hospital unless convoyed by IDF jeep; man dies on way to Hadassah Hospital Residents of the Shuafat refugee camp in the West Bank blamed the death of a man who suffered a heart attack last Friday on tight security procedures imposed by Israeli security forces. Family members said soldiers ignored their pleas to allow an ambulance access to the camp to evacuate Omar Abu Kamel, 41, and held up a second ambulance. Omar died on the way to Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital...

PINE VALLEY – A race to avoid the Border Patrol yesterday ended when a speeding car flipped and ejected five passengers, killing one of them, authorities said. Three of the four survivors were hospitalized with life-threatening injuries, said Officer Brian Pennings of the California Highway Patrol. The fourth survivor was less seriously injured. The car, a blue Ford Probe, failed to stop at a checkpoint on westbound Interstate 8 east of Pine Valley, said Richard Kite of the Border Patrol. He said agents headed after the Probe and came upon it, overturned, on Olde Highway 80 just west of Pine...

Police have identified the two men who ran a checkpoint at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base on Tuesday morning and crashed into a barrier. The driver, Fidel Antonio Lopez-Sanchez, 28, suffered critical injuries and remains hospitalized. Lopez-Sanchez was driving a 1999 Dodge truck when he crashed into a traffic barrier aimed at stopping unauthorized base entry to the gate at Swan and Golf Links roads, police said. In Lopez-Sanchez's clothes, police found a small amount of what they believe may be cocaine. Under his feet, officers found a loaded revolver. The passenger, Saul Cazares Carrillo, 24, of Three Points, may be...

Authorities are trying to determine why two men in a pickup truck ran a checkpoint at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base this morning, crashing into a traffic barrier aimed at stopping unauthorized base entry. Terrorism is not thought to be a motive at this point, but military officials and civilian police hope to learn what prompted the pair to speed past the control gate at Swan and Golf Links roads without stopping for required identification checks. Both occupants of the 1999 Dodge truck were taken to University Medical Center with serious injuries. The men were not carrying identification and were unconscious...

Vandals defaced the newly erected entry sign to the Kalandia terminal north of Jerusalem, daubing on it the infamous Auschwitz inscription "Arbeit macht frei," (Work Liberates). Security forces deployed at the recently refurbished checkpoint accused members of Machsom Watch, saying that its members were responsible for defacing the sign, which is decorated with a painted flower and the inscribed (in Arabic, Hebrew and English) with the slogan "The hope of us all." Adi Dagan, spokeswoman for the Machsom Watch checkpoint-monitoring group, vehemently denied the charges. However, Hava Halevy, a member of the women's group told The Jerusalem Post that she...

British TV channel broadcast this week claims Jesus' parents' historical trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem would have been rendered impossible today, due to IDF restrictions. Israel Foreign Ministry outraged Had Jesus' parents Joseph and Mary tried to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem nowadays, they would find it to be a near impossible task due to the IDF roadblocks and the West Bank security fence, a BBC reporter claimed in a televised broadcast this week. The news story, by BBC correspondent in Israel Matthew Price, has brought the already shaky relations between the U.K. television channel and Israel to a new...

In 2002, Congress mandated that Border Patrol checkpoints in The Tucson Sector start rotating locations every week or two. Since that time, a General Accounting Office study shows, agents in the sector have made significantly fewer apprehensions.

Locals and tourists watched in dismay Tuesday as workers pulled up wooden crosses and ripped out a reconstructed section of the Berlin Wall, fulfilling a court order to dismantle a private memorial to people killed at the East German border. Bailiffs and workers arrived at dawn to take down the memorial erected by owners of the nearby Checkpoint Charlie museum. The owners had refused to remove it after their lease on the land expired in December. "Where are the Berliners?" asked 59-year-old resident Wilfried Gordan, among the scattered crowd that watched in the rain as a crane prepared to move...

Despite the distribution of a video of the Arab suicide bomber who intended to blow up a hospital by the IDF, nearly all foreign news agencies chose to boycott the story altogether. An outraged former undersecretary to US President Ronald Reagan and candidate for Republican Presidential nominee, Gary Bauer wrote a scathing critique of the world media’s decision to avoid the story. Excerpts from Bauer’s letter: ”If you don't get the Fox News Channel then you didn't see any of the dramatic footage of the Israeli army's arrest yesterday of a 21-year old, female Palestinian homicide-bomber, strapped with 25 pounds...

A 14-year-old Palestinian youth wearing a bomb belt with two pipe bombs was arrested by soldiers at the Hawara checkpoint outside of Nablus on Sunday afternoon. According to a Central Command officer, the youth's behavior aroused soldiers' suspicions, and one of the officers demanded that the youth lift his shirt, which revealed the bombs ready for use. The officer said the boy also had a cigarette lighter and that he had planned to blow up near soldiers at the checkpoint. Since the beginning of the year, 50 Palestinian minors wearing explosives or attempting to smuggle weapons through checkpoints have been...

Clash at Iraq checkpoint kills 15 A civilian injured in the Ramadi clash is rushed to hospital Clashes in the Iraqi city of Ramadi have left 12 insurgents, two Iraqi civilians and one Iraqi soldier dead, the US military says. The fighting between US and Iraqi forces and insurgents started when a checkpoint manned by US marines came under attack. Ramadi, to the west of Baghdad, has been a centre of insurgent violence. Earlier, the US military reported that its forces killed 12 insurgents in a clash on Monday near the Syrian border. It says nine were killed when...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 30 - The car carrying the Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena that was struck with a deadly hail of gunfire as it sped toward Baghdad International Airport on March 4 ignored warnings from American soldiers who used a spotlight, a green laser pointer and warning shots to try to stop it as it approached a checkpoint, the American military said in a report released Saturday evening. The gunfire killed Nicola Calipari, an Italian intelligence agent who was in the back seat with Ms. Sgrena. The driver and Ms. Sgrena were wounded. Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, the ground...

NBC News has learned that a preliminary report from a joint U.S.-Italian investigation has cleared the American soldiers of any wrongdoing and provides new details into the shooting. Intelligence agent Calipari had just negotiated Sgrena's release from Iraqi kidnappers on March 4 when the two and a driver headed for the Baghdad airport in a compact rental car. It was dark when the Italians turned onto a ramp leading to the airport road where the U.S. military had set up a temporary checkpoint. The investigation found the car was about 130 yards from the checkpoint when the soldiers flashed their...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military decided Tuesday to conduct an accelerated inquiry to learn why American troops opened fire, killing an Italian intelligence agent and wounding an Italian journalist he helped rescue from insurgents in Iraq (news - web sites). The decision to fast-track the investigation into the attack, which has strained relations with Italy, a key American ally, came as the military also opened an inquiry into the shooting death of a Bulgarian soldier. That death appeared to be another friendly fire incident on the same day.

"RAIN OF FIRE?" By Michelle Malkin   ·   March 08, 2005 04:15 PM Photos of Giuliana Sgrena's car are available at http://www.repubblica.it. Click on "IMMAGINI l'auto colpita dai soldati Usa" beneath top story to view more pics. I can't see a single bullet hole. [Ed. note: besides the one in the circle that Rusty Shackleford points out, that is.] LGF posted about this earlier today. Update: Reader Steve Gregg writes: Ms. Sgrena's car appears remarkably intact having driven through, in her words, a rain of fire, and being fired upon by a tank, as she seems to claim. In Picture 3...

You'll remember that Giuliana Sgrena claimed her car was shot at "300 or 400 times", among other lies she told that I listed here. It was easy to dismiss that claim as a lie on the spot, but it's even easier now that La Republica has posted photos of the car, but the AP posted clearer images. And thanks to LGF, here they are: As you can see, there's virtually no damage to the car at all. Here's some low-quality photos of an armoured car hit 36 times: We can safely say that an ordinary car hit 300-400 times will...

Italy's foreign minister said Tuesday that the car carrying an intelligence officer killed by U.S. fire in Iraq last week was not speeding up and did not receive signals to stop, countering suggestions by American authorities. Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini, speaking to parliament, also ruled out suggestions that the shooting that killed Nicola Calipari was the result of an ambush, but reiterated the government's demands for a full explanation from Washington. Fini was the first Italian official to openly dispute the U.S. account, and his comments put fresh pressure on Washington to get to the bottom of the matter. President...