December 31, 2009 The two-state solution is starting to look impractical, by Jonathan Cook - The National Sunset over the town of Rafah: The biggest effect for Israel’s 1.3 million Palestinian citizens of its assault on Gaza last winter has been to smash any remaining illusions that there is a future for the minority in a Jewish state, the community’s leaders have agreed. They say that minority voters have almost completely abandoned Zionist parties, even left-wing ones, believing that none is really interested in a peaceful solution to the country’s conflict with the Palestinians...More and more Palestinian citizens are understanding that Israel is not serious about negotiations for peace. Read more... French Gaza Freedom March activist killed in Cairo | Press TV Organizers of the "Gaza Freedom March" report the death of a French citizen from injuries sustained at the hands of security forces during a demonstration in the Egyptian capital, Cairo. Marie Renee died in the Cairo Hospital. She was traveling with a French delegation of approximately 300 nationals, Ma'an news agency reported. Press TV presenter Yvan Ridley however didn't confirm the report... Read more... Peace with justice in 2010, by Mazin Qumsiyeh A year ago, in the midst of the savage attack on Gaza, we in the Palestinain Center for Rapprochement between People in Beit Sahour issued a call for action composed of 25 things that ordinary people can do (list below). Today we are gathering in Bethlehem (Nativity Square 4-6 PM) in the last day of the year. Bethlehemite Children will read the names of close to 400 children murdered in Gaza a year ago and to pledge that in 2010 we will intensify our efforts including with boycotts, divestments and sanctions... Read more... Is Israel spreading misinformation about Iran? (YouTube) | Russia Today Washington is pressuring Tehran to accept a U.N. deal on its nuclear program before the end of this year, but stories on Iran's nuclear intentions keep spreading. Recently reports were circulated that Kazakhstan could be selling uranium ore to Iran for enrichment. Are these stories true or is someone behind them?... Watch... Iran pro-government rallies follow deadly unrest | CBC News The Iranian government gave civil servants a day off to attend the rallies. Read more...Here, a woman holds a poster of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Revolution Square in Tehran on Wednesday. Tens of thousands of protesters rallied in the streets of Tehran Wednesday in support of the Iranian government and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme leader. State-sponsored rallies were being held across Iran as a show of strength following days of opposition demonstrations. Sunday's clashes between protesters and riot police were the most violent since the aftermath of June's disputed presidential election. Eight people were killed and 500 arrested in anti-government protests, held during the observance of Ashura, a solemn Shia festival, the government said... 2010: Welcome to Orwell's World, by John Pilger | Antiwar In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell described a superstate called Oceania, whose language of war inverted lies that "passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.’" Barack Obama is the leader of a contemporary Oceania. In two speeches at the close of the decade, the Nobel Peace Prize winner affirmed that peace was no longer peace, but rather a permanent war that "extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan" to "disorderly regions and diffuse enemies." He called this "global security" and invited our gratitude. To the people of Afghanistan, which America has invaded and occupied, he said wittily: "We have no interest in occupying your country."... Read more... Not Just Paranoia: Are Presidents Afraid of the CIA?, by Ray McGovern In the past I have alluded to Panetta and the Seven Dwarfs. The reference is to CIA Director Leon Panetta and seven of his moral-dwarf predecessors — the ones who sent President Barack Obama a letter on Sept. 18 asking him to “reverse Attorney General Holder’s August 24 decision to re-open the criminal investigation of CIA interrogations.” Panetta reportedly was also dead set against reopening the investigation—as he was against release of the Justice Department’s “torture memoranda” of 2002, as he has been against releasing pretty much anything at all—the President’s pledges of a new era of openness, notwithstanding. Panetta is even older than I, and I am aware that hearing is among the first faculties to fail. Perhaps he heard “error” when the President said “era.”... Read more... Obama is new words, but old tricks as US acts like empire (YouTube) | Russia Today Watch... The Horrors of Media Warfare | Middle East Online By associating lifeless images of bombed hills with the deadly loads of F-16s, our perceptions are not only conditioned but ultimately, it is our natural reaction to the deep agony and torment suffered by fellow humans that is curtailed, notes Ali Jawad... Read more... Arresting Peaceful Protesters in Occupied Palestine, by Stephen Lendman | Baltimore Chronicle For decades, Israel has met peaceful Palestinian protesters disruptively with violence, arrests and at times unprovoked killings. It's no surprise that targeting them and their leaders is now common practice in cities and villages like Jayyous and Bil'in... Read more... Reaching the Gates of Hell is Not So Easy, by Stuart Littlewood | Palestine Chronicle The Viva Palestina convoy is being given the run-around by Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak and his ’Awkward Squad’. My heart goes out to the 500 or so dedicated people from 17 different countries who brought their convoy of 200 vehicles almost to the gates of Gaza, only to be stranded at Aqaba just 4 hours short of their destination. And not only the 500 driving with the Viva Palestina convoy but the thousands of supporters, fund-raisers and donors back home who have worked for months to provide the medical supplies, the food, the transport and the countless other humanitarian items... Read more... The Votes of the Morons will Prevail: Israel Rules, by Paul Craig Roberts | Counterpunch On Christmas eve, the New York Times delivered forth a call for war. “There’s only one way to stop Iran,” declared Alan J. Kuperman, and that is “military air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.”...In the second decade of the 21st century, America’s Zionist wars against Islam will expand. America’s wars in behalf of Israel’s territorial expansion will complete the bankruptcy of America. The Treasury’s bonds to finance the US government’s enormous deficits will lack for buyers. Therefore, the bonds will be monetized by the Federal Reserve. The result will be rising rates of inflation. The inflation will destroy the dollar as world reserve currency, and the US will no longer be able to pay for its imports. Shortages will appear, including food and gasoline, and “Superpower America” will find itself pressed to the wall as a third world country unable to pay its debts... Read more... The New York Crimes: All The Lies Fit to Print, by Nima Shirazi | Palestine Think Tank The American political, academic, and media establishment has long been beating the drums of war with Iran and, as the author of New York Times' latest OpEd encouraging the US bombing of that country, University of Texas professor Alan J. Kuperman has now emerged as the Keith Moon of sensational jingoism and, considering his concept of reality, morality, and legality, is probably twice as crazy... Read more... Tactics of desperation: using false accusations of “anti-Semitism” as a weapon to silence criticism of Israel’s behaviour, by Ulli Diemer | Redress Information & Analysis Ulli Diemer argues that as world public opinion turns against Israel, its racist apartheid regime and its occupation, the Zionist state and its lobbies have turned to attempts to outlaw criticism of Israel by labelling it as “anti-Semitism” – attempts that need to be exposed and challenged as a serious threat to basic freedoms... Read more... Interview with Richard Falk Part 2 (YouTube) | Al Jazeera Professor Richard Falk describes himself as an American Jew, but it is his support of Palestinian rights that has earned him the profile and abuse that is threatening to overshadow five decades of achievements as a lawyer, an academic and an author. One year after Israel's war on Gaza, Al Jazeera talks to the UN special rapporteur on Palestine and asks him about his views on that war, the impact of the Obama presidency and the future of the peace process... Watch... Friend to the Jews, by Gary Krupp | NY Post Pius XII's real wartime record Unfairly tarred as Nazi sympathizer and anti-Semite A recent papal decree moved Pope Pius XII, among others, closer to sainthood -- returning to the forefront the controversy over his role in World War II and the Holocaust. Growing up Jewish in Queens, I never dreamt I would be defending the man I once believed to be a Nazi sympathizer and an anti-Semite. But my work since 2002 with my wife, Meredith, and the Pave the Way Foundation has led me to this point... Read more... Avatar, A Humanist Call from Mt. Hollywood, by Gilad Atzmon (Film Review) Avatar may well be the biggest anti War film of all time. It stands against everything the West is identified with. It is against greed and capitalism, it is against interventionalism, it is against colonialism and imperialism, it is against technological orientation, it is against America and Britain. It puts Wolfowitz, Blair and Bush on trial without even mentioning their names. It enlightens the true meaning of ethics as a dynamic judgmental process rather than fixed moral guidelines (such as the Ten Commandments or the 1948 Human Right Declaration)... Read more... Gaza, We'll Never Forget (a video by Haitham Sabbah) | Palestine Think Tank It only lasted 23 days, but following several years' blockade, the affect was devastating to the Palestinians penned into Gaza, part of Occupied Palestine. The total destruction meted out by the Israeli Army, with the backing of citizens of the Jewish State and the approval of their international friends and supporters, including the USA and EU, can be seen in this video. No one and nothing was secure, infants, women, the elderly, places of shelter, worship or education. No street, no home was left unscathed. No family was left in peace. There was no refuge, no shelter. We will never forget the carnage, the violence and the inhumanity of the Israeli "operation"... Read more... A Grandson's Christmas Present?: Jimmy Carter's Yuletide Apology, by Rannie Amiri | Counterpunch In an open letter released this month to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), former U.S. President Jimmy Carter apologized to the Jewish community, saying, “We must recognize Israel’s achievements under difficult circumstances, even as we strive in a positive way to help Israel continue to improve its relations with its Arab populations, but we must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel … I offer an Al Het [a Yom Kippur prayer for forgiveness] for any words or deeds of mine that may have done so.” Two questions arise after reading President Carter’s letter: Was it necessary? And why now?... Read more... Whistleblower exposing Israel nuke program faces court (YouTube) Mordechai Vanunu the man responsible for letting the world know about the Israeli nuclear program has appeared in court in Jerusalem. He is accused of meeting foreigners in violation of his early release conditions... Watch... How Myths Can Kill | Voltaire An old Palestinian man walking past the "separation” wall in Bethlehem beneath the poster of a mocking Jew, a bitterly ironic situation since the Palestinian is probably more “Hebrew” than his tormentors! According to Israeli Professor Shlomo Sand : “No population remains pure over a period of thousands of years… But the chances that the Palestinians are descendants of the ancient Judaic people are much greater than the chances that you or I are its descendents.” A millennium ago, Christian Crusaders slaughtered tens of thousands of Muslims to secure the Holy Land for Christian pilgrims, and even today many Israeli Jews resist compromises for peace because of the legends contained in the Torah, or Old Testament...Read more... U.S. Intelligence Found Iran Nuke Document Was Forged, by Gareth Porter - IPS U.S. intelligence has concluded that the document published recently by the Times of London, which purportedly describes an Iranian plan to do experiments on what the newspaper described as a "neutron initiator" for an atomic weapon, is a fabrication, according to a former Central Intelligence Agency official. Philip Giraldi, who was a CIA counterterrorism official from 1976 to 1992, told IPS that intelligence sources say that the United States had nothing to do with forging the document, and that Israel is the primary suspect. The sources do not rule out a British role in the fabrication, however... Read more... Gazans Have No Friends in Egypt, by Ahmed Amr | Media Monitors Network "See here's Egypt's problem. Its Foreign Minister has to convince the Americans that his government is doing its utmost to seal Gaza's border to fortify the Israeli siege. In the meantime, the journalists toiling to make a living at Al Ahram have been assigned the unenviable task of convincing the public that the same Egyptian government is doing its level best to deliver food and medicine to the internment camps in Gaza."... Turkey's Welcome Voice of Support, by Jeremy Salt | Palestine Chronicle Turkey has now turned into a conundrum for Israel and the US A week in politics is a long time, and all the rest of it, but it does seem that Turkish foreign policy has undergone a sea change since the election of the Justice and Development Party in 2002. Continuing difficulties in relationships with that amorphous package known as 'the west' is one reason. Excitement at the prospect of joining the EU has given way to cynicism. Angela Merkel is against accession, so is Sarkozy and the Pope (although he says different things at different times to different audiences). Criticism and often insults continue in the European Parliament and in European governments, no matter what Turkey does to try to meet European human rights standards. So it is probably fair to say that many if not most Turks are pretty fed up with the EU and as they have gained confidence in themselves and their country, many of them have concluded that, actually, we can do quite well without the EU...Read more... Gaza One Year Later, by Stephen Lendman A December 2009 report prepared by Oxfam International, Amnesty International UK, United Civilians for Peace, Christian Aid, and a dozen other international NGOs (called NGOs below) titled, "Failing Gaza: No rebuilding, no recovery, no more excuses" is hard-hitting and to the point. It says a year after Operation Cast Lead, extensive damage hasn't been repaired and thousands "are being prevented from rebuilding their shattered society." It's not from a lack of commitment or enough resources with over $4 billion in pledged aid. It's because Israel blocks goods and equipment from entering Gaza. The world community and Arab world do nothing to stop them, so much of the Strip still lies in ruins... Read more... A Single State, with Liberty and Justice for All | Rebel News It is time for our shared land to be the inclusive and diverse country it had been. Prior to the establishment of Israel, Palestine had been multi-religious and multi-cultural. Christians, Muslims and Jews, Armenians, Greek Orthodox, to name a few, all had a place there; and all lived in relative harmony. Other nations fought wars and waged epic struggles to attain the kind of coexistence that was already a reality in Palestine.But while the world strives toward the noble truth that we are all created equal, Israel legislates the notion of a Chosen People with exclusive rights and privilege for Jews. Where countries have worked to integrate their citizens to create the richness of diversity, Israel is working in reverse, employing racist policies to "Judaize" the land whereby property and resources are confiscated from Christians and Muslims for the exclusive use of Jews...Read more... A new talk on Youtube by Jonathan Cook I gave a talk to a visiting delegation from Belgium this month in Bethlehem. One of the group has put a video of much of my talk, in five parts, on Youtube. It covers a wide range of topics, including Israel's development of the homeland security industry, its economic dependence on US aid, its use of Gaza as a laboratory for experimentation in warfare, its need to promote a global clash of civilisations, and the increasing promotion of Jewish religious fundamentalism... [Jonathan is a British journalist who has been living in Nazareth for some years] Watch... No justice, no peace: interview with activist Haidar Eid, by Bianca Zammit, The Electronic Intifada On 31 December 2009, one year after Israel's devastating attacks on the Gaza Strip, activists plan to converge for the Gaza Freedom March. An unprecedented effort, the march draws inspiration from South Africa's struggle for liberation from apartheid and from Gandhi's tactics during the campaign for India's independence. The Electronic Intifada contributor Bianca Zammit recently interviewed the Gaza Freedom March Steering Committee member Dr. Haidar Eid about the effort...\ Read more... The Babylonian Talmud (Complete Soncino English Translation) | Rebel News Read more... Gaza's writing on the wall, by Toufic Haddad | Al Jazeera In the Gaza Strip graffiti is not only tolerated but encouraged For years, law enforcement agencies throughout the world have engaged in local crusades against what they regard as the scourge of graffiti. New South Wales in Australia recently passed an anti-graffiti law that could see juvenile offenders jailed for up to 12 months. New York state has made it illegal to sell spray paint to anyone under 18, and Singapore has even physically canned graffiti artists as punishment. But when it comes to the Israeli occupied and blockaded Gaza Strip, local government not only tolerates graffiti, but actually provides workshops on how artists can improve their technique...Read more... Gaza Freedom March: More From Yesterday, by Starhawk So, back to yesterday. I never made it over to the French Embassy, where the French contingent has been encamped, surrounded now by the Egyptian police and not allowed to leave although people have been allowed to pass in food and water. Our encampment in front of the World Trade Center (yep, that’s what it’s called!) that houses the UN was actually a lively and spirited demonstration, with women dancing and an Italian clown parading and the student contingent playing with a gigantic Palestinian flag... Read more... Democratizing Colonialism!!!, by Adib Kawar | Palestine Think Tank Colonizers try to justify their invasion and colonization of other peoples’ lands by means of various claims, unlike the earlier western colonizers of the 18th and 19th and early 20th centuries, modern colonizers try to justify their invasion of these lands by claiming that they are aiming at democratizing and liberating the targeted countries, peoples and lands... Read more... Hunger strike of activists in Egypt for Gaza, Palestine | Palestine Think Tank Main square in Aqaba, Jordan At 11:35 am, the time of the first attack, a group of humanitarians on the “Viva Palestina Convoy” will embark on an International Hunger Strike in the main square in Aqaba, Jordan. [It] will aim to highlight the ongoing illegal siege imposed on Gaza, and to remember the victims of the attacks who died during the 22 day bombardment by Israel. This International Hunger Strike will also highlight the refusal by Egypt, under Israeli pressure, to allow the humanitarian aid to reach the people in Gaza...Read more... Egypt: “Obama’s rent boy”, by Yvonne Ridley The activities of the rent boys who parade up and down Al-Shawarby Street in Cairo provide a good metaphor for the relationship between the Egyptian Government and its Israeli and US counterparts. Both are quite shameless and ruthless; prepared to do whatever it takes to please in order to secure a fistful of dollars. There is a significant difference, however. At least the male whores of Al Shawarby are honest about their trade as they hustle potential customers. Yes, they are shameless, but so is the Egyptian Government as it continues to enforce the brutal siege in Gaza for Israel's pleasure and America's dollars, and the tears it sheds for the besieged people of Gaza are of the crocodile variety. Today, their government stands before the people of Egypt completely naked, without honour, as the last fig-leaf of decency floats despairingly to the ground... Read more... One Day We'll All Be Terrorists, by Chris Hedges | Truthdig The image of Uncle Sam is seen behind shattered glass at Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America. He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. Hashmi is a U.S. citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support and two counts of making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. As his case prepares for trial, his plight illustrates that the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process. Hashmi would be a better person to tell you this, but he is not allowed to speak...The case against Hashmi, like most of the terrorist cases launched by the Bush administration, is appallingly weak and built on flimsy circumstantial evidence. This may be the reason the state has set up parallel legal and penal codes to railroad those it charges with links to terrorism. If it were a matter of evidence, activists like Hashmi, who is accused of facilitating the delivery of socks to al-Qaida, would probably never be brought to trial...the military recruitment center in New York’s Times Square. Read more... Israel resembles a failed state, by Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada ...Amid the endless, horrifying statistics a few stand out: of Gaza's 640 schools, 18 were completely destroyed and 280 damaged in Israeli attacks. Two-hundred-and-fifty students and 15 teachers were killed. Of 122 health facilities assessed by the World Health Organization, 48 percent were damaged or destroyed. Ninety percent of households in Gaza still experience power cuts for four to eight hours per day due to Israeli attacks on the power grid and degradation caused by the blockade. Forty-six percent of Gaza's once productive agricultural land is out of use due to Israeli damage to farms and Israeli-declared free fire zones. Gaza's exports of more than 130,000 tons per year of tomatoes, flowers, strawberries and other fruit have fallen to zero. That "much of Gaza still lies in ruins," a coalition of international aid agencies stated recently, "is not an accident; it is a matter of policy." This policy has been clear all along and it has nothing to do with Israeli "security."... Read more... Stoking the fires of fear and hatred, by Paul Balles | Rebel News David Harris is spreading his fear-mongering widely...To begin his fear stimulus, Harris writes, "Among today's many foreign policy challenges, Iran's nuclear programme may be the most daunting."...His next fear-prodding statement reads, "An Iran capable of producing – and delivering – nuclear weapons would have major global consequences." An American voice for Israel, Harris tries to drum up global fear of Iran, a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while Harris knows full well that Israel has over 200 nuclear warheads and Iran has none. Harris ignores the fact that Israel has been in attack-mode since its beginnings – ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, invasion and sponsorship of Sabre and Shatilla murders in Lebanon's refugee camps, slaughter in Gaza, military theft of the Golan Heights from Syria. On the other hand, Iran's military history has involved only defence. Harris chooses to ignore this damning fact. Actually, Harris, Director of the American Jewish Committee, started pumping fear of Iran into the heads of his readers some time ago... Read more... December 28, 2009 Welcome to Gaza's Killing Fields where Palestinian Children live | Uruknet So much has appeared in the international press and on the Internet that it would seem to be an exercise in redundancy to offer a perspective on the tragedy that befell the people of Gaza last year, especially the Gazan children. A devastating and colossal tragedy it certainly was; the Israeli attacks by sea, air and land were more brutal than anything the inhabitants of Gaza had ever endured previously... Read more... A Serious Man, the Poetic Side of Self-Hatred, by Gilad Atzmon (A film review) ...A Serious Man is a cinematic allegory of Jewish cultural detachment from nature. It is a masterpiece that elaborates on the abnormalities of the Jewish tribal existence. A Serious Man does not explicitly touch upon issues related to Israel, Zionism, occupation, organ harvesting or anything distinctly identified with the Jewish state. It instead reflects on Jewish Diaspora life, Jewish segregation and the misery of operating within the kosher tribal template. It is about Jewish alienation both natural and human... Read more, watch trailer... Amazing Speech by War Veteran (YouTube) Our real enemy is not the ones living in a distant land whose names or policies we don't understand; The real enemy is a system that wages war when it's profitable, the CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it's profitable, the Insurance Companies who deny us Health care when it's profitable, the Banks who take away our homes when it's profitable. Our enemies are not several hundred thousands away. They are right here in front of us - Mike Prysner Watch... A Monster Beyond Control?, by Alan Hart | Intifada-Palestine On the first anniversary of the beginning of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip – in my view it was a demonstration of Israeli state terrorism at its most naked - it’s not enough to say that the governments of the Western powers (and others) are complicit in Israel’s on-going collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians, 53% of whom are children. What is actually happening in the blockaded Gaza Strip, and less obviously on the occupied West Bank, is the continuation by stealth of Zionism’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine. My friend Professor Ilan Pappe, Israel’s leading “revisionist” (meaning honest) historian and author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, would and has put it another way. What we are witnessing is, in his words, “genocide in slow motion.” And that, really, is what the governments of the Western powers (and others) are complicit in... Read more, watch video... UN expert urges pressure on Israel to end blockade of Gaza, and the implementation of the Goldstone Report | ReliefWeb "People of conscience everywhere, as well as governments worldwide and the United Nations, should take note of the dire situation in Gaza," says the Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Richard Falk, one year after the start of the Israeli military campaign against the Gaza Strip. "The ordeal of the 1.5 million residents of Gaza affected by the Israeli blockade, over half of whom are children, has been allowed to continue without any formal objection by governments and at the UN,"... Read more... What was the Real Aim of the Gaza War?: Cast Lead 2, by Uri Avnery | Gush Shalom Did we win? This week marks the first anniversary of the Gaza War, alias Operation Cast Lead, and this question fills the public space. Within the Israeli consensus, the answer has already been given: Certainly we won, the Qassams have stopped coming. A simple, not to say primitive, answer. But that is how it looks to the superficial observer. There were the Qassams, we made war, no more Qassams. Sderot is thriving, the inhabitants of Beersheba go to the theater. Everything else is for philosophy professors. But anyone who wishes to understand the results of this war has to pose some hard questions... Read more... UN report highlights 'shrinking space' for Palestinians in Bethlehem Israeli measures have reduced the amount of land available in Bethlehem for Palestinian use, limited the area’s access to resources and restricted its potential for development, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says in a new report...Only 13 per cent of land in Bethlehem is available for Palestinian use, and much of it is fragmented, the report shows. In addition, Israel retains security control and jurisdiction over building and planning in 66 per cent of the governorate...Also, the Barrier route in Bethlehem reaches 10 kilometres into the West Bank. If completed, it will cut off some of the most fertile cultivated land in the governorate as well as 21,000 Palestinian villagers from the urban centre, according to the report... Read more... Was Israel's Gaza offensive worth it?, by Gideon Levy | Haaretz Gaza during Operation Cast Lead Today offers us an ironic conjuncture of commemorations: the fast of the 10th of the Hebrew month of Tevet and the first anniversary of Operation Cast Lead. On the day of the fast, which commemorates the Babylonian siege on Jerusalem, few Israelis are thinking about Gaza, under Israeli blockade for twice the time ancient Jerusalem was besieged. On the anniversary of the attack on Gaza, few people are doing any real soul-searching. One way or another, the year since December 27 was a year of shame for Israel, greater shame than any other time. It is shameful to be Israeli today, much more than it was a year ago. In the final tally of the war, which was not a war but a brutal assault...Read more... Gaza ceasefire in jeopardy as six Palestinians are shot, by Rachel Shabi | The Observer Eruption of violence comes as Israelis who opposed the war a year ago say they are being silenced and vilified...Israeli troops yesterday shot dead six Palestinians in two separate incidents, as evidence emerged that an increasingly fragile ceasefire between armed groups loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement and Israel appeared to be in danger of breaking down.... Read more... Living Under the Bombing of Gaza | Khulood Ghanem ...Khulood kept a diary every day of the Israeli assault. In March 2009, Khulood volunteered to help with translation for a CodePink Women for Peace delegation that managed to get into Gaza for International Women's Day. Two of the delegates -- Tacoma WA resident Linda Frank and Canadian-Israeli Sandra Ruch -- learned of the existence of Khulood's diary and asked Khulood for permission to read and make public this rare personal account of living under the bombing...Linda Frank brought playwright Edward Mast into the process to adapt the text into a performance piece which has been performed several times in the Seattle area. Plans to perform the piece in other cities include solidarity events with the Gaza Freedom March on December 31, when 1300 people from 42 countries will attempt to break the siege... Read more... Cracking Down on Peace: The Jailing of Jamal Juma,by Nadia Hijab | Counterpunch I remember the day I first met Jamal Juma. He was speaking at a United Nations conference in 2003 about the damage being done by Israel's Wall. The audience was shocked: Many had heard that Israel had started carving a Wall in the West Bank in 2002, but they had no idea it could already be seen from outer space. Yet this articulate, handsome Palestinian used facts and visual evidence to show how the Wall was expropriating yet more Palestinian land and separating Palestinian communities from each other. One picture Jamal showed us still breaks my heart: A middle-aged Palestinian farmer with a tear trickling down his cheek. The olive grove he had inherited from his father had just been bulldozed to make way for the Wall. He had not only lost his livelihood; he had also been unable to protect his family's trust, the symbol of everything that had gone into making them Palestinian. Now Jamal is in jail... Read more... "Jewish People, Decent People, Freedom, Democracy..." says Abe'le Foxman | Gilad Atzmon  Britain's Jews in crisis over national loyalty, identity and Israel | Redress Information & Analysis Britain’s leading Jewish institutions are facing their worst crisis in living memory as their loyalty to the United Kingdom and support for basic universal principles of human rights and common decency come under growing scrutiny. In recent weeks Redress Information & Analysis has been approached by a number of existing and former employees and volunteers of prominent Jewish bodies, all pointing to an acute internal crisis within their institutions... Read more... Indo-Israeli plan to counter Pakistan, terrorism, by Akhtar Jamal | Pakistan Observer Indian and Israeli military officials have discussed a new secret plan to jointly counter “threats” from Pakistan and ‘Islamic’ militants in Afghanistan. Reliable reports reaching here say that during a two-day meeting early this week held in New Delhi Indian Defence Secretary Pradeep Kumar and the Director-General of Israeli Defence Ministry Retired Brigadier-General Pinchas Buchris formulated a joint offensive strategy in this region... [Watch hilarious PR video from Raphael Defense Industries] Read more... Viva Palestina remains stuck in Jordan | Press TV  Viva Palestina aid convoy carrying humanitarian supplies to the besieged Gaza Strip remains stuck in Jordan while the medicines onboard are being spoiled in the desert heat. The convoy of 250 vehicles is stuck in the Jordanian port city of Aqaba awaiting a resolution to be passed between Viva Palestina organizers and Egyptian authorities that would allow the convoy enter the Gaza Strip, Press TV reported Sunday... Read more... Gaza: The Bad, Bad Neighbor, by Rolf Verleger | Moon of Alabama What would you do – the Israeli historian Professor Fania Oz-Salzberger wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung – if your neighbour constantly threw stones and Molotov cocktails at your apartment? Wouldn't you eventually pick up a gun and put an end to such activity? And if this neighbour surrounded himself with his children so you couldn’t attack him, wouldn't you then use a gun with telescopic sights? Didn’t Hamas behave in Gaza just like this neighbour when it fired rockets at Israeli cities? Therefore, wrote Professor Oz-Salzberger, Israel’s current war against Gaza was a just war. With such an example, one can indeed get across plenty of things with considerable clarity. For simplicity, let us call you and the family terrorized by the bad neighbour the landlord, and let us now look at the curious circumstances in the apartment house. The neighbouring apartment is Gaza... Read more... Gaza Freedom Marchers: 38 detained by Egypt | Maan News Agency. "Egyptian security forces detained a group of 30 internationals in their hotel in Al-Arish and another group of eight at the bus station. They also broke up a memorial action commemorating the Cast Lead massacre at the Kasr An-Nil Bridge," the statement asserted. The Freedom March plans to bring more than 1,300 international protesters to Gaza this week to denounce the blockade of the Palestinian territory. The detainees include Spanish, French, British, American and Japanese nationals. Another group of eight people, including American, British, Spanish, Japanese and Greek citizens, were detained at Al-Arish bus station in the afternoon of 27 December, the organizers said... Read more.... Gaza - Countdown to Genocide, by Sonja Karkar | AFP  They came one cold December day. Not fearless warriors but fearsome hoardes hell-bent on destruction of the genocidal kind that leaves no room for regeneration. That was one year ago in Gaza. The attack shocked a complacent world into finally seeing Israel’s merciless ferocity against the Palestinians already hounded, herded and imprisoned in compounds throughout their land, if not actually driven out. More than sixty years of Western devotion to Israel’s security was blown wide open as truth shattered spin in three weeks of carnage and devastation... Read more... Captain Courageous Witnessed: Dr. Kelly Assassinated!, by Leon Smith | Lone Star Iconoclast Dr. David Kelly, the UK scientist and war critic with connections to the BBC and the New York Times, predicted that he would be assassinated for daring to be right about the lack of Iraq WMD evidence while UK leaders chose to be wrong. His corpse, found on July 17, 2003 under mysterious circumstances, proved his prescience. At the time Tony Blair and George W. Bush were meeting in Washington to discuss their wobbly war, and to menace their critics. Coming when it did, Kelly's murder was something right out of Macbeth or Machiavelli. Captain Eric H. May, the U.S. journalist and war critic with connections to NBC and the New York Times, likewise predicted that he would be assassinated for speaking truth to power about the Iraq war. Ironically, May, a lifelong Texan, had contacts, even friendships, with Bush administration insiders... Read more... The Gaza Strip: still suffering from a 23-day war and the ongoing siege | Palestine Telegraph  One year has passed since Israel’s cruel 23-day war on the 1.5 million people of the Gaza. 1,400 people were brutally killed and tens of thousands were seriously wounded. It was 23 days that violated Palestinian human rights and put justice further out of reach. It was a war that utilized ‘state of the art’ phosphorous missiles to achieve levels of suffering and destruction that had not been seen in a generation. Tens of thousands of Gazans were made homeless and schools and hospitals were directly targeted. The horrific 23-day bombardment of Gaza finished last January. However, the siege of Gaza and the suffering of its people continue. While UN and NGO reports describe the bombardment of Gaza and its aftermath in the abstract, talking to Gaza’s children provides an important reminder of the human side of the pain inflicted by Israel... Read more... How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash, by Greg Gordon | McClatchy In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting. Goldman's sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation's premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies... Read more, watch video... How AIPAC Corrupts U.S. Politicians for Israel | Intifada-Palestine Greta van Susteren interviews James Traficant  We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.” (Statement of former Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon Oct. 3, 2001.) I say again AIPAC has a stranglehold on America. Call me what you will, but that is the gospel truth. I further state that if America does not stop AIPAC, America will be further damaged. In addition, in the long run, AIPAC will damage Israel as well. That is, if Israel is an innocent bystander in all this debacle. However, I doubt it...Read more... Can We Rescue the Republic Before the Dark Politics Take Over?, by Kirk Nielsen | AlterNet Did America slip into a semiliterate, polarized, pre-fascist state over the past decade or so, allowing greedy oligarchs and corporate elites to run the government? Two books I recently read offer reasonably persuasive evidence and arguments that the country did, and a third suggests that dictatorial mindsets could besiege Americans, with an assist from the Internet, if they don't come to their more deliberative senses. Each of the books offers an informed diagnosis of the dangers that widespread ignorance and ideological polarization pose for American democracy, though none offers a comprehensive treatment for the malaise... Read more... December 26, 2009 Another Childhood Nakba Memory, by Khalil Nakhleh | Electronic Intifada  I remember it was one Sunday afternoon, sometime around one or two o'clock, when my father barged running into the house shouting "we have to leave, we have to leave". His face was all red; his eyes shined with piercing outrage, uncertainty and incredulity... Read more... China's Manifest Destiny, by Sascha Matuszak | Antiwar Recent events have demonstrated a trend that has been sweeping across China since the Spy Plane Incident of 2001. China has finally, following the traumatic events of 2008, shaken off what little awe they may have had for foreigners. This truly is the end of the Western Age and the Dawn of the Chinese century... Read more... America Under Barack Obama, by John W. Whitehead | Lew Rockwell An Interview with Nat Hentoff "I try to avoid hyperbole, but I think Obama is possibly the most dangerous and destructive president we have ever had." ~ Nat Hentoff Nat Hentoff has had a life well spent, one chock full of controversy fueled by his passion for the protection of civil liberties and human rights. Hentoff is known as a civil libertarian, free speech activist, anti-death penalty advocate, pro-lifer and not uncommon critic of the ideological left.At 84, Nat Hentoff is an American classic who has never shied away from an issue... Read more... Villages challenge occupation on human rights day  Palestinian schoolchildren, teachers, villagers and internationals make Al-Tuwani is a Palestinian village in the south Hebron Hills of the occupied West Bank. The village, home to approximately 200 residents, is more than 1,000 years old. Al-Tuwani falls under Area C (which covers some 60 percent of the occupied West Bank), an outcome of the Oslo accords which means the Israeli army has full control over all security, planning and construction in the village. There is no running water and a diesel generator provides electricity for a few hours a day. Al-Tuwani's residents have faced repeated obstacles from the Israeli army to any type of development in the village, from halting construction of a medical clinic to confiscating electricity lines. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers in the nearby illegal settlements Ma'on and Havat Ma'on continually harass villagers and poison their livestock...the hour and a half walk along the dirt road to bring supplies to a school. Read more... Partition in Palestine is still the issue, by Henry Lowi | Redress Information & Analysis Only a democratic revolution will achieve justice Henry Lowi argues the case for a democratic revolution to overcome partition, to decolonize Palestine, to overthrow the Zionist regime, and to open up the prospects for peace, democracy and coexistence... Read more... Response to Defamatory Attacks and Call to Action | Labor for Palestine (U.S.) Labor for Palestine’s December 14 “Open Letter from U.S. Trade Unionists to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka: Boycott Apartheid Israel” has met with an overwhelmingly positive response. The Open Letter supports the growing international campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, by calling on trade unionists in the United States to Divest from State of Israel Bonds, support workers’ refusal to handle Israeli cargo, break ties with the racist Histadrut, and oppose U.S. military and economic aid for Israel... Read more... Have Americans Traded Freedom For Security?, by Paul Craig Roberts | Antiwar Obama’s dwindling band of true believers has taken heart that their man has finally delivered on one of his many promises — the closing of the Guantánamo prison. But the prison is not being closed. It is being moved to Illinois, if the Republicans permit. In truth, Obama has handed his supporters another defeat. Closing Guantánamo meant ceasing to hold people in violation of our legal principles of habeas corpus and due process and ceasing to torture them in violation of U.S. and international laws... Read more... December 25, 2009 Happy Hanukkkah!  C-SPAN coverage of Santa Claus asking Congress for a financial bailout of the North Pole - Present Giving Industry. If they dont approve his aid package, Christmas may be ruined. Watch... A Fistful of Poetry Resistance is the liberation of the spirit, it is the defiance against gravity. Resistance is to fight for the sake of hope, it is the struggle for the sake of beauty. Resistance is to form landscape out of words, to clothe the scenery with sounds that resemble a familiar language. But Resistance is not just about fighting, it is also to evoke feeling, to put anger into words, to put words into anger, to put meanings into shapes and vice versa. To write a poem is to defy the symbolic order. To write a poem is to resist. To write a poem is to say NO to oppression. To write a poem is to put yourself in the place of the other. Richard Jones is a poet of Resistance... - Gilad Atzmon Exclusive News on Viva Palestina Convoy to Gaza | YouTube Watch... The Christmas Truce of 1914, by Gary G. Kohl | Lew Rockwell  A cross, left near Ypres in Belgium in 1999, to commemorate the site A century ago, before the start of World War I (referred to in the history books as "The Great War" or, naïvely, "The War to End all Wars"), warfare as a means of settling disputes between nations was often regarded as an honorable undertaking. Military officers, which came from the aristocracy, were respected and honored because of their impressive uniforms and the medals and ribbons on their chests. Military veterans, dead or alive, were regarded as heroes and the acts of war they participated in were considered to be glorious. Many of the males on the planet seemed to look forward to the exciting act of going off to war...And then a spontaneous event happened at various spots on the 700-mile-long trench line that stretched between Belgium and France. The singing of Christmas carols started a chain of events that resulted in an event that was never to be repeated in the history of warfare after that night... of the Christmas Truce in 1914. The text reads 1914 The Khaki Chum's Christmas Truce 1999 85 Years Lest We Forget Read more... Israel's Latin American trail of terror, by Jeremy Bigwood | Third World Traveler "I learned an infinite amount of things in Israel, and to that country I owe part of my essence, my human and military achievements" said Colombian paramilitary leader and indicted drug trafficker Carlos Castao in his ghostwritten autobiography, Mi Confesin. Castao, who leads the Colombian paramilitaries, known by their Spanish acronym AUC, the largest right-wing paramilitary force to ever exist in the western hemisphere reveals that he was trained in the arts of war in Israel as a young man of 18 in the 1980s. He glowingly adds: "I copied the concept of paramilitary forces from the Israelis," in his chapter-long account of his Israel experiences. Castao's right-wing Phalange-like AUC force is now by far the worst human rights violator in all of the Americas, and ties between that organisation and Israel are continually surfacing in the press... Read more... I Volunteered For Obama in 2008, But His Support of Landmines Is the Last Straw, by Clancy Sigal | | AlterNet When friends of mine learn that I have broken my deal with Barack Obama, and no longer support the "light of the world" (as one English friend calls him), they passionately rally around his presidency, almost pleading with me to give him more time, to keep the faith, and asking, moreover: what choice do we have? A calling to account is not the same as "a lazy cry of betrayal." There's nothing lazy about it: since day one of the inauguration, many of us have been shocked to see Obama going into reverse on his campaign pledges faster than Lewis Hamilton in an F1 car... Read more... Mr. 10%: Our Man in Islamabad, by Eric Margolis | Huffington Post In my office hang photos of this writer with Pakistan's last four leaders. Two of them - Zia ul Haq and Benazir Bhutto - were murdered. Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was ousted in a military coup led by photo number four, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who was deposed last year by Pakistan's military. Either leading Pakistan is a job with very poor career prospects, or I'm a jinx. Take your pick. Now, in a delicious irony, Washington is finally getting the democracy it has been calling for in Pakistan - and it's the Mother of all Backfires... Read more... Helen Caldicott Slams Environmental Groups on Climate Bill, Nuclear Concessions, by Art Levine | Truthout  Dr. Helen Caldicott, the pioneering Australian antinuclear activist and pediatrician who spearheaded the global nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s and co-founded Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), has joined with left-leaning environmental groups here in an uphill fight to halt nuclear power as a "solution" to the global warming crisis. "Global warming is the greatest gift the nuclear industry has ever received," Dr. Caldicott told Truthout... Read more... US campaign for academic boycott gaining strength | Electronic Intifada ...While world leaders have tragically failed to come to Gaza's help, civilians everywhere are rallying to show their solidarity with the Palestinian people, with anniversary vigils taking place this week in New York, Washington DC, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, and many more cities and towns in the US and world-wide... Read more... Muslims Must Not Pay Price for Europe's Identity Crisis, by Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Think Tank It seems that the targeting of Muslims and Islam has become a kind of national theater in France. Unlike theater, however, the disturbing trend can, and will turn ugly – in fact to a degree it already has – if the French government doesn’t get a grip on reality. The world, including France, is a complex, multifaceted and fascinatingly diverse place; it cannot be co-opted to fit national specificities determined by a group of irritable far right racists with a distorted interpretation of themselves and others... Read more... Will Rowan Williams Bring a Smile to the Face of God?, by Stuart Littlewood | Palestine Chronicle  Dignitaries, emissaries, human rights delegations, fact-finding trippers… they come and go, but Gaza's suffering continues and day by day gets worse, thanks to the corrupted leadership of the international community who are the scandal of our age. But here's a spot of Christmas cheer for the starving, desolated Palestinians imprisoned in the tiny coastal enclave. Sometime in February they are likely to get a visit from none other than the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. At least, that's what his office at Lambeth Palace says... Read more... Netanyahu wary of 'Goldstone threat' | Press TV Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called a report by the UN Human Rights Council's Gaza war commission a real threat to Israel..."Goldstone is a codeword for an attempt to delegitimize Israel's right to self-defense," Netanyahu said in his Wednesday address to members of the Israeli parliament, Knesset... Read more... Welcome to Pashtunistan: the aim of America's secret war?, by Shaukat Qadir - The National Few people by now can be unaware of Blackwater, later known as Blackwater Worldwide and now as Xe. The private security agency formed in 1997 and based in North Carolina is owned by Erik Prince, a former member of the US Navy Seal special forces, and has long-standing links with both the CIA and the FBI. Its presence in Pakistan has been an open secret for some years. The investigative journalist and writer Jeremy Scahill, an authority on Blackwater and author of the bestselling Blackwater: the Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, revealed last month that it has been there since 2006. He says Blackwater is being employed for covert ops, essentially intended to target high-value al Qa’eda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, but it has also assisted in providing information for drone attacks and has kidnapped suspects and transported them covertly to the US for interrogation. In other words, it is an American agency with a license to kill or kidnap, thus exonerating official American agencies that might one day be held accountable... Read more... Gaza March Puts Spotlight on Civilian Suffering, by Andrea Bordé - IPS  More than 50,000 people are expected to take to the streets of Gaza on Dec. 31 for a mass march designed to send a message to the United States, a key supporter of Israel's army, that the situation in Gaza violates international human rights laws. The idea behind the "Gaza Freedom March" comes from CODEPINK, a women's peace group committed to drawing attention to the humanitarian crisis in the occupied Palestinian territories, among other campaigns... Read more... Tension Simmers in Iran, by William Pfaff | Antiwar The immense crowd of protesters that accompanied the funeral of the political dissident Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, and the even larger protest expected Sunday, identify either a pre-revolutionary situation in Iran, or that condition which the French call "fin de regime" — political decadence suggesting that the end may be near, but might also be very bad... Read more... December 24, 2009 World has betrayed Gaza: Rights groups | Press TV  More than a dozen human rights groups and charities have condemned the international community's failure to end Israel's crippling blockade of the Gaza Strip. Amnesty and Oxfam were among 16 UK-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which hurled criticism in a report against the world's silence toward the "collective punishment" of some 1.5 million Gazans... Read more... Israel vilifies its 'strong' critics, by Rev. Ted Pike | Rebel News On December 16-17, 500 lawmakers, diplomats and academics from over 50 nations met in Jerusalem to consider the threat of “mushrooming” criticism of Israel. The premise of “The Global Forum For Combating Global Anti-Semitism,” hosted by the government of Israel, is that mild criticism of Israel, her government, and military in their policies towards the Palestinians is permissible -- but if it becomes “strong” or emphasizes Nazi or apartheid imagery, it seeks the destruction of the Jewish state; it is anti-Semitic. This criterion is shared by the Anti-Defamation League and its Office of Global Anti-Semitism in the US State Department. Representatives of ADL (Abraham Foxman) and the State Department (Hannah Rosenthal, Special Envoy to Combat Anti-Semitism) were featured guests... Read more... The key 9/11 phone calls which now the government admits never happened (Video with David Ray Griffin) | The Vineyard of the Saker Watch... Israel threatens another large-scale Gaza war | Press TV  Israel has threatened another massive war against the Gaza Strip as the impoverished enclave continues to suffer in the aftermath of the devastating January offensive. Israeli planes have been dropping thousands of leaflets across Gaza, warning Palestinians against cooperating with the resistance fighters based in the coastal sliver. The leaflets also threaten Gazans with a new attack just ahead of the first anniversary of Israel's 22-day onslaught against the Palestinian territory... Read more... An Interview with Cindy Sheehan: Obama, Progressives and the Press, by Mike Whitney | Counterpunch Mike Whitney: President Barack Obama recently visited Dover Air Force Base where he was photographed with the flag-draped coffins of soldiers who were killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Why did Obama do this and what was your reaction? Cindy Sheehan: "I think Obama did this as a publicity stunt and used the dead troops (that he was responsible for killing) as props to show that he "cares" about the troops. This stunt was in the middle of the "discussions" about how many more troops to send to Afghanistan. (After he has already sent about 35,000.) It made me sick... Read more... Ridiculous "Study" Supposedly Finds Widespread Anti-Semitism on Progressive Websites, by Joshua Holland | Alternet Given how ubiquitous unsubstantiated charges of anti-Semitism have become in the debate over the Middle East conflict, I’m tempted to ignore the Institute for Global Jewish Affairs’ recent “report” supposedly exposing the liberal blogosphere as a teaming hotbed of raw Jew-hatred. It's easy to dismiss. It may dress itself as some sort of empirical research project, but the "study" is transparently devoid of any informational value, intellectually bankrupt and clearly the product of working backwards from a conclusion arrived at on ideological grounds... Read more... A Christmas Remembrance, by William A. Cook | Creative-i  “The white civilized man (is) the most ferocious animal on the face of the earth.” — (Herman Melville, 1840s) In 1841, Melville sailed aboard the Acushnet, a whaling vessel, on a three year trip to the South Seas. By July of 1842, Melville and a shipmate, Toby Greene, jumped ship revolting against the tyrannical powers that brutalized the crew by oppressing these men of many races. Having witnessed American warships firing their guns at naked islanders in the Marquesas, Tahiti, and Hawaii and watched “rapacious hordes of enlightened individuals” seizing the “depopulated land” from the natives, reducing them to starving “interlopers” in their own country, he realized that the superior white Christian civilization epitomized absolute savagery and that cannibals treated others with more humanity than these self-identified enlightened men. That understanding of the civilized white man struck me with its absoluteness, its certainty, its expressive force the moment I opened my file of little four year old Kaukab Al Dayah, whose tender face rests on top of the rubble of her home, an unsuspecting victim of white Zionist brutality that delivered her family a missile as a Christmas gift just over a year ago...Read more... Zionism modern Nazism | Cuthulan's Blog To be ANTI-ZIONIST is NOT ANTI-SEMITIC! For those BIGOTS that hide behind the “anti-semite”, Jew haters, label to anyone that is ACTUALLY ANTI -ZIONIST!!.. [There is a lot of useful information here. If you're put off by the caps and the tone of this piece, read the comment and Cuthulan's response.] Read more... A Pound of Flesh: Interest and Profit, by Stephen Fleischman | Counterpunch They fought about it in Shakespeare’s time. Shakespeare wrote a play about it. A character emerged depicting the essence of it. Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice”—a portrait of capitalism, in the period of transition from the feudal system. Can you take a pound of flesh and spill not a drop of blood? That was the restriction Portia, the self-proclaimed lawyer, tried to impose on Shylock in Shakespeare’s play. The pound of flesh was the interest Antonio would have to pay if he didn’t return the 3 thousand ducats he borrowed on time. Portia excoriated Shylock’s capitalist greed while defending his right to be a Jew, in a time of intense anti-Semitism... Read more... December 23, 2009 Oy Vey, The Mossad is Going Meshuge, by Gilad Atzmon  Mossad Seal Two young Mossad operatives recently hospitalized in psychiatric hospital in center of country. Mossad official assigned to them 24-hours a day to ensure that state secrets not revealed because of their unstable mental state. One of the large mental health hospitals in Israel was recently surprised to receive a young, good-looking patient in a psychotic state who was accompanied by a personal security guard, Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Sunday...[Well, considering that the whole country's crazy, maybe that's why they're building a wall around it.] Read more... The Earth Is Hiring: Paul Hawken's Inspiring Commencement Speech | Alternet When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was "direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful." No pressure there. Let's begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades... Read more... Israel Has Categorized All Forms of Resistance as Insurgency: Breaking Palestine's Peaceful Protests, by Neve Gordon | Counterpunch "Why," I have often been asked, "haven't the Palestinians established a peace movement like the Israeli Peace Now?" The question itself is problematic, being based on many erroneous assumptions, such as the notion that there is symmetry between the two sides and that Peace Now has been a politically effective movement. Most important, though, is the false supposition that Palestinians have indeed failed to create a pro-peace popular movement... Read more... The Old Testament and the War Crime in Gaza, by Gilad Atzmon  "You will chase your enemies, and they shall fall by the sword before you. Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight; your enemies shall fall by the sword before you.”Leviticus, Chapter 26, verses 7-9 As devastating as it may be, the Hebrew Bible saturation with violence and extermination of others may throw some light over the horrifying genocide conducted in Gaza by the Jewish state. In broad daylight, the IDF was using the most lethal methods against civilians as if their main objective is to ‘destroy’ the Gazans while showing ‘no mercy’ whatsoever...Read more... There is no Business like Shoah Business, by Gilad Atzmon According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz , Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz will demand between 450 million to 1 billion euros in reparations from Germany on behalf of Jews forced into slave labor during the Holocaust, it emerged on Sunday. Regardless of the question of what qualifies an Israeli minister to demand money on ”behalf of Jews” or even Israeli Jews, I wonder whether it is symbolic that this happens in the same week as Auschwitz’ entrance sign was stolen... [I took the sign and will return it in exchange for 450 million to 1 billion euros. Hey, I'm Jewish and I want a piece of the action!] Read more... Whenever I Hear the Word Bethlehem ... Palestine's Gift of Christmas, by Manuel Garcia | Counterpunch ...the history of crimes by fascists against European Jews in the 1930s and 1940s is skillfully exploited by Israeli public relations organizations, to badger Western public opinion and sow it with guilt, so as to extract money and acquiescence to Israeli aggression and land-theft... Read more... In Nightmares Begin Responsibilities: Why War Will Take No Holiday in 2010, by Tom Engelhardt | TomDispatch Excuse the gloom in the holiday season, but I feel like we’re all locked inside a malign version of the movie Groundhog Day. You remember, the one in which the characters are forced to relive the same 24 hours endlessly. Put more personally, TomDispatch started in November 2001 as an email to friends in response to the first moments of our latest Afghan War. More than eight years later... well, you know the story. Worse yet, the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll indicates that a startling 58% of Americans, otherwise in a mighty gloomy mood, support the president’s latest “surge” in Afghanistan which will extend that war into the dismal future. And worse than that, in Afghanistan as in Iraq, from the point of view of official Washington, next year won’t really count for much. The crucial decisions on both wars will evidently leapfrog 2010. So, on that score, we might as well just mark the year off on our calendars now... Read more... December 22, 2009 A Christmas Message From Australia To All Supporters Of Palestine | AFP  Christmas 2009 should remind us that there is still so much work to be done to free those who are suffering from human iniquities. Peace and good will are noble pursuits, but only if the same effort is put into breaking down the walls that are being deliberately erected to imprison and divide, to suppress and suffocate, and to deny a people their right to live as we wish to live our own lives... [There are a number of pertinent items in today's issue of AFP] Read more... Gaza must be rebuilt now, by Jimmy Carter | The Guardian We can wait no longer to restart the peace process. The human suffering demands urgent relief It is generally recognised that the Middle East peace process is in the doldrums, almost moribund. Israeli settlement expansion within Palestine continues, and PLO leaders refuse to join in renewed peace talks without a settlement freeze, knowing that no Arab or Islamic nation will accept any comprehensive agreement while Israel retains control of East Jerusalem... Read more... She Died for Palestine, by Dr Lasha Darkmoon | Occidental Observer  In memory of Rachel Corrie Like all things pure and precious Like holy bread and wine I love the radiant Rachel Who died for Palestine... Read more... Committing Treason for a Piece of the Pie, by Peter Chamberlin | Rebel News  If things were as they seemed, then the most powerful military force that the world has ever seen would have had no trouble defeating Afghan or Iraqi tribes, or the already decimated military of Saddam Hussein. But things are not as they seem on the nightly news; in fact, most things prove to be the exact opposite of how they are portrayed. In a country like America (and sadly, most countries want to be like America), the people prefer to believe whatever they are told... Read more... Fake Heritage, by Roy Tov  A friend recently sent me a copy of an email he got from “B’Ahavat Yisrael.” The email advertised their most recent campaign called “Save the Galilee.” In the email, people are asked to donate money so that land can be bought in the Galilee from Christians and Muslims. The texts in the email – and in their website – are appalling. They feature a mixture of ultra-nationalism and extreme Pharisaic doctrines; two examples – one of each other are these: “… because it is time to take our country back…” “Here he begins again!” are probably some readers thinking by now. It would be extremely easy to write a furious article about the ongoing crimes by the State of Israel and various organizations related to it. The sources are vast. Justice Goldstone called Israel a terrorist entity. Yet, I am sure that the readers would find such an approach as tiresome as I do. Instead, today I want to laugh at Israel..."One who purchases 4 cubits (amot) in the Land of Israel is assured a portion in the World to Come" from Midrash Zuta on Megilat Ruth (4:5) Read more... Zionist Dominance in the Obama Presidency, by Jeff Gates | Rebel News America Needs Pakistan's Help - Again (Part 2) Be not deceived by Barack Hussein Obama’s middle name or by the fact that he spent several childhood years in Indonesia. His political career is a product of a Westside Chicago Ashkenazi network with roots that trace directly back to organized crime of the 1920s. Top fundraiser Penny Pritzker traces her family lineage to grandfather Abe and great-grandfather Nicholas who served as lawyers for organized crime. She declined a nomination as Secretary of Commerce in the Obama Cabinet, a post typically offered top fundraisers. Her confirmation hearings could have proved a political embarrassment by reminding us of the suspect origins of “our” latest president... Read more... Kristol Clear: The Source of America's Wars, by Maidhc Ó Cathail | Intifada-Palestine  William Kristol of the Weekly Standard Americans feeling let down by Barack Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan should take careful note of those who welcomed yet another “surge.” It might help them to identify the source of their seemingly endless wars...Read more... 'Iran poses no threat' | Press TV  Richard Dalton Iran's military and political threat to GCC members has been blown out of proportion, the former British ambassador to Iran says. “The emphasis on the increased role and influence of Iran since the fall of Saddam Hussein has been exaggerated,” the UAE-based newspaper Gulf News quoted Richard Dalton as saying on Sunday... Read more... Free Jamal Juma! - Free the anti-Wall prisoners! | Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign  Jamal Juma’ was arrested by Israeli authorities on December 16. This arrest follows the imprisonment of Mohammad Othman, another Stop the Wall activist, and Abdallah Abu Rahmeh, a leading figure in the Bil’in popular committee against the Wall, as well as dozens more that are currently in prison for their action and advocacy against the Wall. This latest arrest is yet another escalation of Israel’s attack on Palestinian human rights defenders, which continues to clamp down on the right to freedom of expression and the right to association. Join the campaign for Jamal Juma’s release and for the freedom of the anti-Wall prisoners! It is crucial that global civil society stands in solidarity with their Palestinian counterparts... Read more... December 21, 2009 Steps to create an Israel-Palestine, by Jonathan Kuttab | LA Times A one-state solution in the area is not as far fetched as it might seem  For a while, it seemed that a two-state solution might actually be achievable and that a sovereign Palestinian state would be created in the West Bank and Gaza, allowing Jews and Palestinians at last to go their separate ways. But these days, that looks less and less likely. With Israel in total control of the territory from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River and unwilling to relinquish a significant part of the land, it's time to consider the possibility that the current situation -- one state, in effect -- will continue. And although Jewish Israelis may control it now, birthrates suggest that, sooner or later, Jews will again be a minority in the territory. What happens at that point is unclear, but unless continued military occupation and all-out apartheid is the desired path, now may be the time for Israelis to start putting in place the kinds of legal and constitutional safeguards that will protect all minorities, now and in the future, in a single democratic state of Israel-Palestine. This is both the right thing and the smart thing to do... Read more... Gaza Freedom March is determined to break the siege 1,360 International Delegates appeal to Egypt to let the March proceed Citing escalating tensions on the Gaza-Egypt border, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry informed us on December 20 that the Rafah border will be closed over the coming weeks, into January. We responded that there is always tension at the border because of the siege and that if there are any risks, they are risks we are willing to take. We also said that it was too late for over 1,360 delegates coming from over 42 countries to change their plans now. Although we consider this as a setback, it is something we’ve encountered—and overcome--before. No delegation, large or small, that has entered Gaza over the past 12 months has received a final OK before arriving at the Rafah border. Most delegations were discouraged from even heading out of Cairo to Rafah. Some had their buses stopped on the way. Some have been told outright that they could not go into Gaza. But after public and political pressure, the Egyptian government changed its position and let them pass... Read more... US Students Participate in Israel Boycott, by Hena Ashraf | Salem News The groundbreaking decision came after months of campaigning by the Students for Justice in Palestine group.  Sign at Hampshire College underscores the student's commitment Pro-Palestinian students in a US college are celebrating its decision to divest from firms serving the Israeli occupation of Palestine, a decision that has sparked a raging controversy. "We were able to educate and mobilize an entire community, the majority of our community," Aidan Kriese, an organizer from the Students for Justice in Palestine group (SJP) in Hampshire College, Massachusetts, told IslamOnline.net. "And the majority has made a decision." On February 7, Hampshire College became the first US institute of higher education to divest from companies involved in the Israeli occupation of Palestine...toward making the world a more sound place Read more... IOF Arrest Coordinator of the Popular Committee against the Wall & Settlements | Palestine Telegraph  IOF arrested Abdullah Abu Rahma, 39, the coordinator of the Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements in Bil'in, at down today after they raided his house in al-Tira town of Ramallah. Eyewitness said that a number of Israeli troops stormed al-tira town early today, surrounded the house of Abu Rahma, raided it and tampered with its contents leaving extensive havoc, before he was led to unknown destination... Read more... Obama told China: I can't stop Israel strike on Iran indefinitely | Haaretz U.S. President Barack Obama has warned his Chinese counterpart that the United States would not be able to keep Israel from attacking Iranian nuclear installations for much longer, senior officials in Jerusalem told Haaretz. They said Obama warned President Hu Jintao during the American's visit to Beijing a month ago as part of the U.S. attempt to convince the Chinese to support strict sanctions on Tehran if it does not accept Western proposals for its nuclear program... [standard Zionist MO; I'm gonna make you an offer you can't refuse] Read more... December 20, 2009 Auschwitz yet Again, by Gilad Atzmon  Early on Friday the famous "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Sets You Free) sign that hung over the entrance gate to the Auschwitz camp, was stolen. Commenting to the BBC on the theft of the Auschwitz sign, Rabbi Andrew Baker, the Director of the International Jewish Affairs of the rabid Zionist American Jewish Committee maintained that there should be no replicas to substitute the entrance monument... [In 1971, when I was a volunteer on a Kibbutz, one of the original Romanian residents, in a striking instance of selective forgetfulness, told me that the foundational idea of the kibbutz was that "Arbeit Macht Frei." Interesting, no?] Read more...Deep South calls in Iran to cure its health blues | Times Online In ground-breaking project, one of America’s poorest communities is turning to the Middle East to try to resolve its crisis As Marie Pryor shuffles along a Mississippi roadside collecting discarded drink cans to sell for a few cents, her breath comes in short puffs caused by a congenital heart defect. The same condition caused her granddaughter’s death earlier this year. The last place on earth she would look for help is Iran, a country widely regarded in America as the enemy... Read more... A Lesson on Nonviolence for Obama, by Eric Stoner | Antiwar In Oslo last week, President Barack Obama ironically used his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize to deliver a lengthy defense of the "just war" theory and dismiss the idea that nonviolence is capable of addressing the world’s most pressing problems. After quoting Martin Luther King Jr. and giving his respects to Gandhi — two figures that Obama has repeatedly called personal heroes — the new peace laureate argued that he "cannot be guided by their examples alone" in his role as a head of state...Unfortunately, this key part of Obama’s speech, which the media widely quoted in its coverage of the award ceremony, contains several logical inconsistencies and historical inaccuracies that tragically reveal Obama’s profound ignorance of nonviolent alternatives to the use of military force... Read more... Bethlehem honors Jerusalem and Gaza this Christmas season, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Human Rights Newsletter Groups in the Bethlehem area dedicate a series of events called Shepherds' Nights (December 23-25) to Jerusalem (increasingly being de-Palestinized) and hold a commemoration and protest asking to lift the siege on Gaza (December 31st). See program below and join us (also we could use volunteers, please email me if you can help). Here in Bethlehem, where the Prince of Peace was born in an area ruled by a tyrant ruler (King Herod while claiming Judaism engaged in slaughter of Aramaic speaking natives) who was supported by a world empire. Here where 2000 years later, natives are still engaged in a struggle against tyrant rulers supported by distant empires. Here where civil resistance flourished and where its history over millennia is yet to be told. Here where Jesus did not spare the money changers in front of the temple nor did the early Christian descendents (Muslim and Christian) spare the rulers from their anger at injustice starting a number of uprisings to challenge the brutality of occupation and colonization (we call such an uprising a shaking off or Intifada). Here where life is so abnormal today that visiting internationals no matter how prepared are always shocked to see concentration camps surrounded by walls, Nazi-like behavior of occupation soldiers brought from around the world to police native people, and Palestinian officials who keep accommodating the occupation and finding out that the demands of the occupation keep increasing. But here is also where love and hope grow and where people of all backgrounds (religions and ethnicities) get together to work for peace (and not just talk about it). Come and see... Read more... A call from Gaza | International Solidarity Movement This week marks one year since Israel began its attack on the Gaza Strip: a year since phosphorus bombs, dime bombs and other weapons of death and destruction were unleashed on a defenseless civilian population. A year since the people of the world demanded that Israel end its attack on Gaza. In this Israeli war of aggression on the occupied Gaza Strip, many of our civilians were massacred by Israel’s indiscriminate bombing, condemned by UN experts and leading human rights organizations as war crimes and crimes against humanity. This assault left over 1,440 Palestinians dead, predominantly civilians, of whom 431 were children. Another 5380 Palestinians were injured. We, the 1.5 million Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, the overwhelming majority of whom are refugees who were violently expelled from our homes by Zionist forces in 1948, were subjected to three weeks of relentless Israeli state terror, whereby Israeli warplanes systematically targeted civilian areas, reduced whole neighborhoods and vital civilian infrastructure to rubble and partially destroyed scores of schools, including several run by the UN, where civilians were taking shelter. This came after 18 months of an ongoing, crippling, deadly hermetic Israeli siege of Gaza, a severe form of collective punishment described by John Dugard,the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights as “a prelude to genocide.” ... Read more... People vs Total War Incorporated | The Brussells Tribunal The BRussells Tribunal are intellectuals, artists and activists who denounce the logic of permanent war promoted by the American government and its allies, affecting for the time being particularly one region in the world: the Middle East. It started with a people's court against the PNAC and its role in the illegal invasion of Iraq, but continued ever since. It tries to be a bridge between the intellectual resistance in the Arab World and the Western peace movements... Read more... December 19, 2009 Stunning Statistics About the War Every American Should Know, by Jeremy Scahill | Rebel Reports  Contrary to popular belief, the US actually has 189,000 personnel on A hearing in Sen. Claire McCaskill’s Contract Oversight subcommittee on contracting in Afghanistan has highlighted some important statistics that provide a window into the extent to which the Obama administration has picked up the Bush-era war privatization baton and sprinted with it. Overall, contractors now comprise a whopping 69% of the Department of Defense’s total workforce, “the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel in US history.” That’s not in one war zone—that’s the Pentagon in its entirety...the ground in Afghanistan right now—and that number is quickly rising. Read more... Ha'aretz says U.S. officials face 'pro-Israel' background check, by Stephen M. Walt | Foreign Policy There is an amazing story in Ha'aretz today on the "pro-Israel" litmus test that determines who is permitted to serve in the United States government. Here's the sort of lede you're not likely to read in the New York Times or Washington Post: Every appointee to the American government must endure a thorough background check by the American Jewish community. In the case of Obama's government in particular, every criticism against Israel made by a potential government appointee has become a catalyst for debate about whether appointing "another leftist" offers proof that Obama does not truly support Israel.".. Read more... Jews Banished 47 Times In 1000 Years - Why?, by Dick Eastman | Rense Why so often? Why across such a variety of nations and cultures??? Why does no other people on earth come near to this record of eliciting averse responses? In his book, L'antisémitisme son histoire et ses causes, published in 1894, noted Jewish author, Bernard Lazare, stated the following with regard to these expulsions of Jews, "If this hostility, even aversion, had only been shown towards the Jews at one period and in one country, it would be easy to unravel the limited causes of this anger, but this race has been on the contrary an object of hatred to all the peoples among whom it has established itself. It must be therefore, since the enemies of the Jews belonged to the most diverse races, since they lived in countries very distant from each other; since they were ruled by very different laws, governed by opposite principles, since they had neither the same morals, nor the same customs, since they were animated by unlike dispositions which did not permit them to judge of anything in the same way, it must be therefore that the general cause of anti-Semitism has always resided in Israel itself and not in those who have fought against Israel."... Read more... They Are Afghan; They Decry NATO's War, by Pierre Barbancey | Truthout  This 2007 photo was taken in Kunduz, where the Taliban have recently established new bases. The Taliban surf on the population's rejection of a corrupt government sustained by foreign armies that kill civilians. Women make the point that violence against them increases incessantly...Read more... Spain, El Principito and more, by Mazin Qumsiyeh The Air France jet landed in Madrid and I stepped out quickly through the impressive airport to the luggage area. There was no need for border passport check as the trip from Paris to Madrid is an internal European trip. No more are these national borders of utility and they are only being enforced between nation states like Jordan and Syria and Palestine/Israel (nation states created ironically by Europeans!). I walk through the airport noting the clean marble floors, beautiful arts, lighting that invokes museums, sharply dressed serious people going about from one area to another or shopping in the hundreds of shops in the spacious airport. These images are only intruded upon by thoughts of what to expect in Spain. Past and present melt together: conquistadores, bull fights, Al-Andalusia, Spanish conquests of the America, King Ferdinand, beautiful folkloric dancing, good foods etc… But my interest is always people of the present. Ofcourse I had met and worked with many Spanish activists before and we received many delegations in Palestine... Read more... Israel: EU official's 'occupation' remark casts pall on ties, by Akiva Eldar - Haaretz Government officials in Jerusalem harshly criticized the new European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, for her scathing remarks about the "Israeli occupation" in her maiden speech. Ashton on Tuesday leveled scathing criticism at Israeli policy in her first speech as the European Union's first high representative for foreign affairs and security policy... Read more... Understanding the Bombing of WTC6, by Christopher Bollyn | Rebel News  "We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers An amazingly callous Netanyahu told the New York Times on 9-11 that theterror attacks were "very good" for U.S.-Israeli relations. Hissubsequent comments about how Israel was benefiting from 9-11 were madein Hebrew at Bar-Ilan University, a religious Zionist school, and weredirected at an audience that is well aware of Israel's involvement in9-11. These comments were not meant to be translated for worldwidereading (the original article was published in the Hebrew languagenewspaper Maariv) and should be seen as a sort of public confession inwhich the leader of the Likud, Israel's right-wing entremist movement,sought to rationalize the Israeli false-flag terror atrocity on theUnited States. Joe Lockhart, spokesman for President Bill Clinton,described Netanyahu as "one of the most obnoxious individuals you'regoing to come into - just a liar and a cheat. He could open his mouthand you could have no confidence that anything that came out of it wasthe truth." It's high time for an international arrest warrant to beput out for Netanyahu and Ehud Barak to be tried for terrorism and warcrimes...and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq." - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Bar-Ilan University, April 2008 Read more... Can Blair be tried for war crimes? | Al Jazeera Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, has admitted that he would have gone to war against Iraq even if he knew there were no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the country. Yet, at the time it was the supposed WMDs that justified the action. So what does this mean for the public inquiry into the war? And can Blair now be prosecuted for war crimes? Inside Story discusses with guests Clare Short, a member of the British parliament, David Cole, the managing director of the Atlantic Council, a UK-based think tank on international affairs, and Anas al-Tikriti, the spokesman for the British Muslim Initiative... Watch... The Truth About America And Pakistan, by Jeff Gates | Veterans Today America Needs Pakistan’s Help -- Again (First Installment in a 5 Part Series) Ordinary Americans need the assistance of Islamabad now more than at any time in the past six decades. That aid lies not in combating “Islamo fascism” but in countering the influence inside the U.S. of Israeli war-planners known for their expertise at provoking extremism. To grasp what must be done requires a review of three related developments. First is a policy-making legacy from the era of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Second is a little known account of an Israeli attempt to corrupt policy-making in Indonesia, home to the world’s largest Muslim population. Third is confirmation that, by its steady growth in influence over the past six decades, Israel is now shaping U.S. policy to advance a Judeo-fascist agenda... Read more... December 18, 2009 Yad Va Shame on You!!!, by Gilad Atzmon Debunking Antisemitism Studies and Yehuda Bauer in Particular  Yehuda Bauer Holocaust studies is an emerging pseudo intellectual, academic trend. It basically allows rabid Zionists to elevate their discussions on ‘what is really wrong with the goyim’ into a university qualification...Read more... ABQ Billboard Against Military Aid to Israel | YouTube [The Holy Inquisition will probably force the city to have it taken down, but it's encouraging.] View...Revisiting the 'Good War's' Aftermath: Emerging Truth in an Ocean of Myth, by Dwight Murphey | Rebel News Review of After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation, by Giles MacDonogh  Those who honestly chronicle human events, present or past, are a rare and honorable breed. We should certainly ennoble them within the pantheon of our earthly gods. As we do so, we will no doubt include those who, not out of alienation against the West or the United States or its people but out of a thirst for truth, are bringing to light the awful events that followed in the wake of World War II (as well as the enormities that were committed as part of the way in which the war was fought against civilian populations... Read more... U.S. tax dollars fund rabbi who excused killing gentile babies, by Akiva Eldar | Haaretz The White House condemns the torching of a mosque, yet respectable Americans contribute to a yeshiva whose rabbi said it's okay to kill gentile babies. It is no surprise that the American administration tacitly, if unenthusiastically, accepted the excuse that the map of national priority zones the cabinet approved on Sunday does not violate the decision to freeze construction in the settlements. How can President Barack Obama object to furthering education in a settlement like Yitzhar, located in the heart of the West Bank? After all, his own tax revenues contribute to the flourishing of the Od Yosef Chai Shechem yeshiva, the settlement's crowning glory. This is the same yeshiva whose rabbi said it is permissible to kill gentile babies because of "the future danger that will arise if they are allowed to grow into evil people like their parents."... Read more... The Gaza Freedom March: A Historical Overview for a Historic Movement, by Barnabe Geisweiller | Foreign Policy Journal  On Jan. 18, 2009, after 22 days of war, the lives of all Gazans were entangled and broken in the strip’s rubble-filled craters. People worked to retrieve the bodies which lay rotting under heavy slabs of concrete and mangled iron rods. Gaza’s overcrowded cemeteries now had to accommodate over 1,300 more corpses. One year later, bombed-out buildings still stand, pockmarked and gutted, vestiges of more hopeful times, buildings morphed into unwanted monuments of war. Little is allowed into the territory located on the Mediterranean Sea. But later this month, hundreds of international activists will attempt to enter the strip via Egypt to take part in the Gaza Freedom March. The march, as it is envisaged, will be a historic non-violent protest in a region known for a history of violence... Read more... Obama is a disaster for the Middle East, with Robert Fisk | American Buddhist Net Watch video... New sin of 'Holocaust Inversion' worse than sin of 'Holocaust Denial' | Jerusalem Post Candidly Speaking: Far more negative, far more dangerous  Equating IDF soldiers with Nazi soldiers is just one strategy of 'Holocaust inversion.' [Yes, I prefer to equate Israel with Nazi Germany] The Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism has assembled in Jerusalem this week for its annual conference. The gathering of such a distinguished group of Jewish and non-Jewish legislators and others of distinction for the express purpose of condemning anti-Semitism in itself represents a remarkable achievement, and would not have been possible without the involvement of the government of Israel. In fact, without the dedication, enthusiasm and skill of Foreign Ministry coordinator and forum chairwoman Aviva Raz-Schecter, it would never have taken off altogether... [It would be nice to think that we've got them on the run, or at least running scared.] Read more...U.S. Silent About Taliban Guarantee Offer on Al Qaeda, by Gareth Porter | IPS The Barack Obama administration is refusing to acknowledge an offer by the leadership of the Taliban in early December to give "legal guarantees" that it will not allow Afghanistan to be used for attacks on other countries. The administration's silence on the offer, despite a public statement by Secretary of State Hilary Clinton expressing scepticism about any Taliban offer to separate itself from al Qaeda, effectively leaves the door open to negotiating a deal with the Taliban based on such a proposal. The Taliban, however, has chosen to interpret the Obama administration's position as one of rejection of its offer... Read more... The Lobby Within, by Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle  This is a continuation of a terrible legacy that goes back decades. A just and peaceful solution to the protracted Palestinian-Israeli conflict is only possible when the US ceases to block every attempt made towards it.This assertion might raise many questions, for example, just how is one to define a just and peaceful resolution? And for what reasons would the US obstruct such a possibility, considering that stability in the Middle East is, or at least should be a top American priority?...Read more... John Kaminski on Jewish control of the American mind | YouTube John Kaminski is one of the best American writers on the subject of Jewish supremacy. He was a journalist for mainstream newspapers for many years until he could not stand the propaganda beginning to take over after Reagan passed his "deregulation" laws which caused and allowed Jewish organizations to monopolize American media. In 15 years, ownership of US media went from over 250 families and corporations, to just 5 today of which all are owned by Jews... Watch... What To Buy & NOT Buy For Holiday Gifts, and More..., by Anna Baltzer  On December 31st, in the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King, Jr., and all nonviolent resistance to injustice, more than a thousand delegates from 42 countries around the world will join an estimated 50,000 Gazans in a historical march to break the siege of Gaza... Read more... Mercenaries and assassins: The real face of Obama's "good war", by Bill Van Auken | WSWS Reports that mercenaries employed by the notorious Blackwater-Xe military contracting firm participated in CIA assassinations in Iraq and Afghanistan have further exposed the real character of so-called “good war” that is being escalated by the Obama administration. Citing former employees of the firm and US intelligence agents, the New York Times reported Friday that Blackwater gunmen, ostensibly contracted as security guards, “participated in some of the CIA’s most sensitive activities—clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees.”... Read more... December 17, 2009 To Schlep Them to Justice in Safety, by Gilad Atzmon  ...Yaalon and his fellow retarded Hasbara campaigners better internalise the obvious fact: it is Israel's actions that de-legitimize the Jewish state and the Zionist cause. It is Israeli actions and Israel’s Jewish supportive lobbies that bring the level of Jew hatred to a new height. Israel is not that young anymore. It is 61 years old and it better start to take responsibility for its actions... Read more... Growing Up Empty: The Hunger Epidemic in America, by Lynnell Hancock | Mother Jones Most Americans may find it hard to accept that millions in this nation are suffering from hunger - an affliction most often associated with war-torn Africa or flood-ravaged Bengal. It flies in the face of everything we've been told about our nation's prosperity. First the Clinton and then the Bush administration have led us to believe that poverty is under control, pointing to the mass exodus from the welfare rolls since the 1996 reforms were launched. The $27 billion cut in food stamps? Justified, lawmakers told us, because the poor are working and feeding themselves. Hunger, it is commonly understood, has long since vanished, along with the 7 million people who no longer receive public assistance... Read more... No-Fault Espionage, by Philip Giraldi | Antiwar It is interesting to note what happens to espionage cases in the United States. If you spy for China, or Cuba, or Iran you will be exposed, excoriated in the media, locked up and denied bail, convicted, and sentenced to many years in a federal prison. Spying is serious business and the harsh punishment most often fits the crime because when spies steal highly sensitive defense and policy information they are not only betraying their fellow citizens, they are also making all Americans less secure. And the spying is only slightly less serious when American technology is being targeted. When spies acting for a foreign country steal sensitive technology with commercial applications that is developed at great cost either by the US government or private companies, their betrayal is also taking away the livelihoods of thousands of American workers who rely on the competitive edge of US technology to keep their jobs. Spies are traitors in every sense of the word, unless, of course, if one is spying for Israel... Read more... Did the Traitor Abbas Instigate the Gaza Massacre?, by Kawther Salam  Kawther Salam Did the Palestinian Authority plan and even instigate the war crimes on Gaza together with Israel? Is the PA also actively involved in urging the UN to postpone the vote on the report of the Goldstone, which accuses Israel of committing war crimes against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip? If these allegations are true, and the PA was involved in these inhuman crimes, then it is the duty of all human rights organizations to add the name of the President of the Palestinian Authority, and Tayeb Abdel-Rahim to the list of the Israeli war criminals involved in the massacre of Gaza last January...Read more... No-Fault Espionage, by Philip Giraldi | Antiwar It is interesting to note what happens to espionage cases in the United States. If you spy for China, or Cuba, or Iran you will be exposed, excoriated in the media, locked up and denied bail, convicted, and sentenced to many years in a federal prison. Spying is serious business and the harsh punishment most often fits the crime because when spies steal highly sensitive defense and policy information they are not only betraying their fellow citizens, they are also making all Americans less secure. And the spying is only slightly less serious when American technology is being targeted. When spies acting for a foreign country steal sensitive technology with commercial applications that is developed at great cost either by the US government or private companies, their betrayal is also taking away the livelihoods of thousands of American workers who rely on the competitive edge of US technology to keep their jobs. Spies are traitors in every sense of the word, unless, of course, if one is spying for Israel... Read more... Get the War Criminals Arrested Now!, by Khalid Amayreh in Occupied Jerusalem | Intifada-Palestine  The recent arrest warrant issued in London for former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is more than justified. This woman, along with two other Israeli leaders, Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak, stood at the helm of the Israeli government that ordered, supervised and charted the genocidal onslaught against the Gaza Strip this time last year. She was a chief participant in the decision-making process who also supervised the progress of the hideous massacre from the beginning to the end... Read more... Austria: Genocide Charges against Ehud Barak, by Kawther Salam | Palestine Think Tank Yesterday, at almost the same time when Ehud Barak was being given military honors at the defense ministry, genocide charges against him were being presented at the office of the Austrian prosecutor, only about 15 minutes walking distance away... Read more... War crime case against Tony Blair is now rock-solid, by Neil Clark | The First Post  A trial would be warmly welcomed by millions – so what happens next? Tony Blair's extraordinary admission on Sunday to the BBC's Fern Britton - that he would have gone to war to topple Saddam Hussein regardless of the issue of Iraq's alleged WMDs - is sure to give fresh impetus to moves to prosecute our former prime minister for war crimes...Read more... Targeting Lawyers - The Case of Paul Bergrin, by Steve Lendman The Constitution's Sixth Amendment assures defendants in "all criminal prosecutions" the right to speedy, public, fair trials with "the Assistance of (competent) Counsel for his (or her) defense" provided free if unable to pay for it. The Fourteenth Amendment holds government subservient to the law and guarantees due process respect for everyone's legal right to judicial fairness on matters relating to life, liberty, or property. In America and elsewhere, defending unpopular clients is a long, honored tradition. So is upholding the law and challenging unfettered power that defiles it. Yet doing it risks lawyers being criminalized for doing their job too vigorously or making enemies of powerful, influential government or business officials in the process... Read more... Obama: A Monument to Hip-ocrisy, by Mary Rizzo | Palestine Think Tank  The ultimate "Uncle Tom" Barack Obama is a very handsome man. He has the charisma of a showman. He speaks very well, and what’s more, he can even dance. It’s not clear whether that is sufficient criteria to make one into a president, oops, not “a” president but “The President”, but it certainly was enough to get one elected for the position. And yet, Obama is nothing if not humble. He recognised that he really didn’t (yet) deserve the world’s most important honour, the Nobel Peace Prize, but he also recognised last week that while he is “The President”, someone else is “The Boss”... Read more... Israeli feminists decry militarization of Israeli education system | Electronic Intifada New Profile, the feminist movement to civilize Israeli society, wrote Minister of Education Gideon Saar this morning, strongly condemning his recent instructions to prohibit its members' participation in high school debates convened by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) on questions of human rights and freedom of expression... Read more... Israeli-style “justice” for Palestinian student Berlanty, by Stuart Littlewood | Palestine Chronicle  Berlanty is being persecuted by the illegal invader and occupier Stuart Littlewood views the justification given by Israel’s UK embassy for the terrible treatment meted out to 21-year-old Palestinian student Berlanty Azzam, who was abducted, blindfolded, handcuffed and dumped in Gaza just weeks before she was due to complete her degree at Bethlehem University in the occupied West Bank...Read more... US Contemplates More of the Scarcely Believable in Afpak, by William Pfaff | Antiwar The writer David Halberstam, author of a cruel analysis of the people who gave America the Vietnam War, The Best and the Brightest, observed that "no matter how small the initial step, a policy has a life and a thrust of its own, it is an organic thing. More, its thrust and its drive may not be in any way akin to the desires of the president who initiated it." He had a hard time making his Vietnam-era interlocutors agree, as part of being one of the military and civilian best and brightest is that you didn’t need advice from journalists. It is another characteristic of official life that you are discouraged from applying lessons from experience and history... Read more... December 16, 2009 Beware the Psychopath, My Son, by Clinton Callahan | Dissident Voice  My choice for poster boy of this phenomenon would be Joe Lieberman I make the effort to share this information because it gives me, at last, a plausible answer to a long-unanswered question: Why, no matter how much intelligent goodwill exists in the world, is there so much war, suffering and injustice? It doesn’t seem to matter what creative plan, ideology, religion, or philosophy great minds come up with, nothing seems to improve our lot. Since the dawn of civilization, this pattern repeats itself over and over again...[As my source for this link put it, "Under the title 'Beware the Zionist, my Son', a very similar book could be written."] Read more... “Wake Up, Gentlemen”, by Simon Johnson | The Baseline Scenario The guiding myth underpinning the reconstruction of our dangerous banking system is: Financial innovation as-we-know-it is valuable and must be preserved. Anyone opposed to this approach is a populist, with or without a pitchfork. Single-handedly, Paul Volcker has exploded this myth. Responding to a Wall Street insiders‘ Future of Finance “report“, he was quoted in the WSJ yesterday as saying: “Wake up gentlemen. I can only say that your response is inadequate.”... Read more... The Battle for Israel's Soul | Unreported World - Channel 4 Unreported World travels to Israel to reveal how the rapid growth of Jewish 'fundamentalists' is creating tension within Israeli society and endangering any negotiations on a peace deal with the Palestinians. Reporter Evan Williams and director Alex Nott begin their journey in the Mea Sharim district of Jerusalem. It's the heartland of ultra-Orthodox Jews known as the Haredi, or 'those who fear God'. They find a poor, overcrowded part of the city where everyone is wearing clothes in the style of 18th-century Europe, from where most of their ancestors came. 'We are the real Jews,' says one community leader, 'everyone else in Israel just happens to be born Jewish.'... Israel's Leaders on the Run | Gilad Atzmon  "Israelis are not terrorists, they are actually the embodiment of terror." ...as many of us predicted for more than a while the tide is changing. Now Israeli political and military leaders are finally being chased. Haaretz reported today that Foreign Secretary David Miliband, the man who last week appointed a Zionist Jew to be the next British Ambassador to Israel, announced today that Britain would “no longer tolerate legal harassment of Israeli officials in this fashion.”...Read more... Spymaster sees Israel as world cyberwar leader | Reuters Israel is using its civilian technological advances to enhance cyberwarfare capabilities, the senior Israeli spymaster said on Tuesday in a rare public disclosure about the secret program... Read more... Sanctioning Iran a Dangerous, Illegal Move, by Rep. Ron Paul | Antiwar I rise in strongest opposition to this new round of sanctions on Iran, which is another significant step toward a U.S. war on that country. I find it shocking that legislation this serious and consequential is brought up in such a cavalier manner. Suspending the normal rules of the House to pass legislation is a process generally reserved for "non-controversial" business such as the naming of post offices. Are we to believe that this House takes matters of war and peace as lightly as naming post offices?... Read more... Ramzy Baroud's new book - a promotional film |Gilad Atzmon  ...The book's author, Ramzy Baroud, was born and raised in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. He was witness to much of Gaza's tumultuous history. "Gaza's story is the most fascinating story there is, yet somehow it's reduced to a few simple, redundant, and misleading clichés that barely grab attention anymore," Baroud said. "I am determined to challenge and change that... Read more, watch... Heroism in a Vanishing Landscape: Resistance in Bethlehem's Villages, by Ellen Cantarow | Counterpunch ...Christ’s birthplace crucified by Israel’s segregation wall; 25 foot-high concrete punctuated by militarized watch towers surrounds the entire town. PEACE BE WITH YOU reads a huge legend on the wall without (apparently) the slightest trace of irony; stenciled in English. Hebrew, and Arabic, it’s signed, ISRAELI MINISTRY OF TOURISM. What lies beyond Bethlehem – the Bethlehem province or “governate,” – is equally shocking, though invisible to the casual visitor. According to a May, 2009, UN report, Bethlehem governate’s total land mass is 660 square kilometers, but only 13 per cent remains for Palestinians to use... Read more... Blair, Obama and the Narcissist's Defense, by Chris Floyd | Counterpunch In recent days we have all witnessed two vomitous eruptions of moral nullity that would tax the powers of a Voltaire or a Vidal to do them proper justice; they quite o'er-crow the meager gifts of a hack like me. But I will sketch a few observations here nonetheless, if only to add one more small voice to those few who bear witness to the evils perpetrated by our unaccountable leaders... Read more... Mass Preemptive Arrests in the Danish Police State: Report From Cop-enhagen, by David Rovics | Counterpunch  The signs up all over the airport and various places elsewhere in town are calling it Hopenhagen, but everybody I know is calling it Cop-enhagen, which seems far more appropriate. The international media has been giving this lots of coverage, and rightly so. Of course much of the media is unable to walk and chew gum at the same time, so other things, such as the reason the protests are happening in the first place, can get lost... [To hear some of the music of this great political singer/songwriter go here] Read more... When Dialogue is NOT our Hope | Dissident Veteran for Peace "... no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end." —character of O'Brien in 1984 by George Orwell I hesitate to discuss the limitations of dialogue because of the danger that people will use them as escape hatches whenever the work become too demanding or too threatening. Nevertheless, we must acknowledge that there are occasions when dialogue is not the appropriate action...Read more... December 15, 2009 British court issued Gaza arrest warrant for former Israeli minister Tzipi Livni | The Guardian  Former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni A British court issued an arrest warrant for Israel's former foreign minister over war crimes allegedly committed in Gaza this year – only to withdraw it when it was discovered that she was not in the UK, it emerged today. Tzipi Livni, a member of the war cabinet during Operation Cast Lead, had been due to address a meeting in London on Sunday but cancelled her attendance in advance. The Guardian has established that Westminster magistrates' court issued the warrant at the request of lawyers acting for some of the Palestinian victims of the fighting but it was later dropped. The warrant marks the first time an Israeli minister or former minister has faced arrest in the UK and is evidence of a growing effort to pursue war crimes allegations under "universal jurisidiction". Israel rejects these efforts as politically motivated, saying it acted in self-defence against Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza...Read more... Open Letter to Noor Ali, by Michelle Kinnucan | Zionists Out of the Peace Movement To defeat the aggressors is not enough to make peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war. —Ludwig von Mises. The General Assembly ... determines that zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination. —UN GA Resolution 3379 On January 30, 2009, the Ann Arbor News published an op-ed piece by Noor Ali entitled "In crisis, humanity should unite us." This open letter is a response to that op-ed. Dear Noor Ali: In the Ann Arbor News, you write about Tamar Weaver, "a Jewish Israeli American who attends the Beth Israel Congregation" and her "concern for humanity." If Tamar Weaver has a "concern for humanity" then why is she a member of the Beth Israel Congregation where they affirm "without any hesitation or equivocation the legitimacy of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish state," where they send their children to Israel and pose them with armed Israeli soldiers, and where the Rabbi explains to the congregation how to justify torture under Jewish religious law?... Read more... Guantanamo Detainee Deaths, by Stephen Lendman | OpEd News  Under the direction of Professor Mark Denbeaux, Seton Hall University School of Law's Center for Policy & Research (CP&R) published 15 "GTMO Reports," including profiles of detainees held, allegations against them, and discrepancies in government accounts explaining reasons for reported deaths. An earlier report analyzed unclassified government data (obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests) based on evidentiary summaries of 2004 military hearings on whether 517 detainees held at the time were "enemy combatants." Most were non-belligerents. In fact, a shocking 95% were seized randomly by bounty hunters, then sold to US forces for $5,000 per claimed Taliban and $25,000 for supposed Al Qaeda members. At least 20 were children, some as young as 13... Read more... Binyamin Netanyahu must decide whether to strike Iran's nuclear facilities | Times Online The moment is fast approaching when Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, may have to make the most difficult decision of his career — whether to launch a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities and risk triggering a conflagration that could spread across the Middle East... [It's truly amazing to me how the Zionist psychopaths (and sycophants like this one) can make pure insanity sound almost rational.] Read more... What Americans Need to Know about Mordechai Vanunu, by Eileen Fleming | Dissident Voice  I’m not a traitor. I’m a man with a conscience who did what he did out of a deep belief after much thought and many doubts. But I knew that I had to do it, that I had no choice… somebody had to do it… I contributed my share by making public what the public ought to know and they shut my mouth behind the prison walls. – Mordechai Vanunu Mordechai Vanunu was released from Ashkelon prison to open air captivity in east Jerusalem on April 21, 2004 after 18 years-most all in solitary — on April 21, 2004. In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu was clubbed, drugged, bound and kidnapped from Rome by the Mossad because he told the truth and provided the photographic proof of their clandestine 7-story underground WMD facility in the Negev. In the case of Mordechai Vanunu, Americans need to know that the restrictions that have held him captive in Jerusalem come from the Emergency Defense Regulations which were implemented by Britain against Palestinians and Jews after World War II...Read more... "Saving Israel" or assisting it to commit suicide?, by Alan Hart | Sabbah Report I had to struggle with myself to decide which of two headlines was most appropriate for this article – the one above or "The hard core of lunatics are pulling up the drawbridge". A Jewish friend in Canada drew my attention to an article in the Jewish Ledger, an independent weekly newspaper in Westport, Connecticut. The headline over it is "Saving Israel" Expert says American Jews key to Israel's survival. I have rarely read such dangerous nonsense. It's the voice of Zionism, deluded as ever, but with more than a hint of panic... Read more... "The Foolish Symbols of Christianity": Israel's Religious Right Discovers the War on Hanukkah, by Joshua Holland | AlterNet It makes them batty to hear it, but you can't tell me that, whatever their faith, the really hard-core religious conservatives aren't all cut from the same cloth. Only the deit(ies) they worship varies. So here in the U.S., the FOX knuckleheads cooked up that pernicious "war on Christmas," supposedly launched by the liberals who run Wal-Mart, with their dastardly and generic "Happy holidays!' crap. And in Israel?... Read more... Obama and Western Civilizations: Hypocritical Rhetoric and Righteous Holocausts, by Mohamed Khodr | Palestine Think Tank  Professor Samuel Huntington in his book "The Clash of Civilizations" wrote: "Hypocrisy, double standards, and "but nots" are the price of universalist pretensions". Such has been the history of western "civilizations" marked by the arrogance of power, a sense of supremacy, a manifest destiny to colonize and civilize the weaker darker peoples through enslavement, genocides, abuse of human rights, theft of their natural resources, and frank racism that white is beautiful and good and dark is evil and savage. The British Prime Minister during World War I, David Lloyd George, best expressed imperial racism when he said: "We insisted on the right to bomb niggers"... Read more... J Street: "The center of of American Jewish thought" | Zionists Out of the Peace Movement It is a fact that the Jewish religion is above all Jewish nationalism ... One must be a Jew first and a human being second. —Moses Hess, Rome and Jerusalem, as quoted in The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time by Moshe Menuhin. Why, then, does truth generate hatred ... unless it be that truth is loved in such a way that those who love something else besides her wish that to be the truth which they do love. ... Therefore, they hate the truth for the sake of whatever it is that they love in place of the truth. —Augustine of Hippo, Confessions Below are two excerpts from a recent Atlantic Monthly interview with Jeremy Ben-Ami, executive director of J Street, which bills itself as "the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement.".. [Yep, just what we need, a kinder, gentler form of ZioNazism] Read more... U.S. Interventions - 1945 to the Present, by William Blum Below is a list of the countries that the U.S. has bombed since the end of World War II, compiled by historian William Blum. A Brief History of U.S. Interventions: 1945 to the PresentIn no instance did a democratic government, respectful of human rights, result. |
COUNTRY | YEAR(S) |
China 1945-46 Korea 1950-53 China 1950-53 Guatemala 1954 Indonesia 1958 Cuba 1959-60 Guatemala 1960 Congo 1964 Peru 1965 Laos 1964-73
Vietnam 1961-73 Cambodia 1969-70 Guatemala 1967-69 Grenada 1983 Libya 1986 ElSalvador 1980s Nicaragua 1980s Panama 1989 Iraq 1991-2003 Sudan 1998
Afghanistan 1998-2002 Yugoslavia 1999
The engine of American foreign policy has been fueled not by a devotion to any kind of morality, but rather by the necessity to serve other imperatives, which can be summarized as follows:
* making the world safe for American corporations;
* enhancing the financial statements of defense contractors at home who have contributed generously to members of congress;
* preventing the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model;
* extending political and economic hegemony over as wide an area as possible, as befits a "great power."
This in the name of fighting a supposed moral crusade against what cold warriors convinced themselves, and the American people, was the existence of an evil International Communist Conspiracy, which in fact never existed, evil or not. The United States carried out extremely serious interventions into more than 70 nations in this period...* enhancing the financial statements of defense contractors at home who have contributed generously to members of congress;
* preventing the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model;
* extending political and economic hegemony over as wide an area as possible, as befits a "great power."
[We can now add Pakistan, and since the U.S. and Israel are joined at the hip, throw in Syria and Egypt, not to mention Palestine. And they're gearing up for more.]
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Obama Declares War On Pakistan, by Webster Tarpley | Rense
Obama's West Point speech of December 1 represents far more than the obvious brutal escalation in Afghanistan -- it is nothing less than a declaration of all-out war by the United States against Pakistan . This is a brand-new war, a much wider war now targeting Pakistan , a country of 160 million people armed with nuclear weapons. In the process, Afghanistan is scheduled to be broken up. This is no longer the Bush Cheney Afghan war we have known in the past. This is something immensely bigger: the attempt to destroy the Pakistani central government in Islamabad and to sink that country into a chaos of civil war, Balkanization, subdivision and general mayhem...
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American fascism: by political definition the US is now fascist, not a constitutional republic, by Carl Herman | LA County Examiner
We hold these Truths to be self-evident...
...The definition of “fascism” has some academic variance, but is essentially collusion among corporatocracy, authoritarian government, and controlled media and education. This “leadership” is only possible with a nationalistic public accepting policies of war, empire, and limited civil and political rights...Read more...
Documentary on Palestinian History | Russell Means Freedom
Russell Means has lived a life like few others in this century - revered for his selfless accomplishments and remarkable bravery. He was born into a society and guided by way of life that gently denies the self in order to promote the survival and betterment of family and community. His culture is driven by tradition, which at once links the past to the present. The L.A. Times has called him the most famous American Indian since Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. His indomitable sense of pride and leadership has become embedded in our national character...
Watch...
Mordechai Vanunu on Israel's nuclear blackmail: an interview with Hesham Tillawi
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The True History of the 20th Century, by Tacitus Laevus
[Consider this tour de force a pre-Christmas present - enjoy!]
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The world's most heroic whistleblower
Below is the transcript of an eye-opening interview that took place between peace activist Mordechai Vanunu and talk show host Hesham Tillawi on the television program Current Issues...Read more...
The True History of the 20th Century, by Tacitus Laevus
"We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." -George Orwell
It is undeniable that history has been falsified time and time again in - well - history. But it is not so often realised that this was far more so in the 20th century than in any other period in history, despite the vast amount of documentation that existed, and even exists today, to prove that 20th century history is, well, full of it. Or rather, empty of it: for it has totally, but totally, neglected to mention the most important part of 20th century history: viz., the History of the Clowns...[Consider this tour de force a pre-Christmas present - enjoy!]
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For Palestinians, Every Day Is Kristallnach, by Paul Craig Roberts | Information Clearing House
The Israel Lobby has such power over America that even former President Jimmy Carter, a good friend of Israel, is demonized for using the polite term--apartheid--for the genocide that has occurred over the decades during which American “Christian” preachers, together with bought-and-paid-for politicians, justified Israel’s policy of slow genocide for Palestine. Israelis who still have a moral conscience - a small part of the population - endeavor to use moral protests against the inhumanity of the Israeli government. Israelis Jeff Halper and Angela Godfrey-Goldstein lead the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition (ICAHD), a non-violent, direct-action group established to oppose and resist Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes in the Occupied Territories...
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Christian Support for Killing Iraqis, by Jacob G. Hornberger
Among the things about the Iraq War that I have never been able to understand is how American Christians have been able, in good conscience, to support this war. After all, no one can deny that neither Iraq nor the Iraqi people ever attacked the United States. That makes the United States the aggressor — the attacker — in this particular conflict. How could American Christians support the killing of Iraqis in such a war of aggression? How could they reconcile this with God's sacred commandment, Thou shalt not murder...
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The Israel Lobby has such power over America that even former President Jimmy Carter, a good friend of Israel, is demonized for using the polite term--apartheid--for the genocide that has occurred over the decades during which American “Christian” preachers, together with bought-and-paid-for politicians, justified Israel’s policy of slow genocide for Palestine. Israelis who still have a moral conscience - a small part of the population - endeavor to use moral protests against the inhumanity of the Israeli government. Israelis Jeff Halper and Angela Godfrey-Goldstein lead the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition (ICAHD), a non-violent, direct-action group established to oppose and resist Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes in the Occupied Territories...
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Christian Support for Killing Iraqis, by Jacob G. Hornberger
Among the things about the Iraq War that I have never been able to understand is how American Christians have been able, in good conscience, to support this war. After all, no one can deny that neither Iraq nor the Iraqi people ever attacked the United States. That makes the United States the aggressor — the attacker — in this particular conflict. How could American Christians support the killing of Iraqis in such a war of aggression? How could they reconcile this with God's sacred commandment, Thou shalt not murder...
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Jewish edict: Kill all Palestinian prisoners if Shalit not returned | Palestine Information Center
The council of Jewish rabbis called the "Sanhedrin" has issued an edict allowing the killing of all Palestinian prisoners if the Israeli captured soldier Gilad Shalit was not returned safe. Hebrew daily Yediot Ahronot quoted a statement by the Sanhedrin on Friday as saying that releasing Shalit in return for the release of "criminals" as what happened in past exchange deals is considered "capitulation". The council called for pursuing other means to liberate Shalit including targeting "killers in our jails", referring to the Palestinian prisoners. It called for a large-scale war on Gaza with the declared aim of eliminating Hamas once and for all. The council urged the Israeli government to encourage settlements to boost their presence in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and along the Jordan River...
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2010 Forecast: Transition from Globalization to World Government, by Adrian Salbuchi
Salbuchi from Argentina proposes a Model that helps to understand the dynamics of what is currently taking place in the world, which he defines as the overlapping and increasingly violent process that marks the end of Globalization and the birth of World Government. This three part video also explores 12 Key Factors that will trigger this Transition...
Watch Part One, Part Two, Part Three
The council of Jewish rabbis called the "Sanhedrin" has issued an edict allowing the killing of all Palestinian prisoners if the Israeli captured soldier Gilad Shalit was not returned safe. Hebrew daily Yediot Ahronot quoted a statement by the Sanhedrin on Friday as saying that releasing Shalit in return for the release of "criminals" as what happened in past exchange deals is considered "capitulation". The council called for pursuing other means to liberate Shalit including targeting "killers in our jails", referring to the Palestinian prisoners. It called for a large-scale war on Gaza with the declared aim of eliminating Hamas once and for all. The council urged the Israeli government to encourage settlements to boost their presence in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and along the Jordan River...
Read more...
2010 Forecast: Transition from Globalization to World Government, by Adrian Salbuchi
Salbuchi from Argentina proposes a Model that helps to understand the dynamics of what is currently taking place in the world, which he defines as the overlapping and increasingly violent process that marks the end of Globalization and the birth of World Government. This three part video also explores 12 Key Factors that will trigger this Transition...
Watch Part One, Part Two, Part Three
There is a tremendous struggle to be waged, to force Israeli introspection, and change, by Ali Abunimah | Mondoweiss
I want to talk about a little bit of history, not too much, and then I want to talk about where I think BDS fits in to where we’re going in the struggle for justice, and why I think it’s going to work...
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Funding Israel's Military: The U.S. Pipeline,by Seth Sandronsky
Millions of Americans face home foreclosures, health care, job and pension losses. However, none of these crises currently threatens to alter the flow of their tax dollars to Israel's government. It takes these greenbacks and buys F-16 jets made by Lockheed Martin to drop bombs on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. This aggression is an effect of the U.S. military-industrial complex. Talk about a Goliath-like edifice. Consider what euphemistically goes by the term of the U.S. defense lobby. It contributed $10.5 billion to donkeys and elephants in the 2007-2008 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. "Lockheed Martin is the industry's top campaign contributor," the CRP adds...
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I want to talk about a little bit of history, not too much, and then I want to talk about where I think BDS fits in to where we’re going in the struggle for justice, and why I think it’s going to work...
Read more...
Funding Israel's Military: The U.S. Pipeline,by Seth Sandronsky
Millions of Americans face home foreclosures, health care, job and pension losses. However, none of these crises currently threatens to alter the flow of their tax dollars to Israel's government. It takes these greenbacks and buys F-16 jets made by Lockheed Martin to drop bombs on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. This aggression is an effect of the U.S. military-industrial complex. Talk about a Goliath-like edifice. Consider what euphemistically goes by the term of the U.S. defense lobby. It contributed $10.5 billion to donkeys and elephants in the 2007-2008 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. "Lockheed Martin is the industry's top campaign contributor," the CRP adds...
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US Cutting Gaza Lifeline, by Ann Wright | Information Clearing House
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Making an American 'Impenetrable Underground Wall' the Laughing Stock of the World—Leave It to the People of Gaza
No doubt at the instigation of the Israeli government, the Obama administration has authorized the United States Army Corps of Engineers to design a vertical underground wall under the border between Egypt and Gaza. In March, 2009 the United States provided the government of Egypt with $32 million in March, 2009 for electronic surveillance and other security devices to prevent the movement of food, merchandise and weapons into Gaza. Now details are emerging about an underground steel wall that wil be 6-7 miles long and extend 55 feet straight down into the desert sand. The steel wall will be made of super-strength steel put together in a jigsaw puzzle fashion. It will be bomb proof and can not be cut or melted. It will be "impenetrable," and reportedly will take 18 months to construct. The steel wall is intended to cut the tunnels that go between Gaza and Egypt... Read more...
Truth on the West Bank | The Australian
Tom Gross (The Australian, December 8) may have visited a West Bank, but I am not sure if it was the same place, west of the river Jordan, that I visited five weeks ago. The picture he is painting is completely different from what I saw. Of course, Gross's experience will likely differ from mine. He is probably travelling as an Englishman, with Israel giving him far more freedom of movement than me in my own country as a Palestinian. His drive from Jerusalem to Nablus, as he describes it, is nothing short of fiction to the Palestinians living in the West Bank. Jerusalem, the birthplace of my mother, is, in fact, completely off limits to us. As for the prosperous economy Gross is describing, let's get the facts straight. We are talking about a primitive and predominantly agricultural economy strangled by more than 41 years of conflict and occupation...
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Our Murderers in the Sky, by Scott Ritter | Truthdig
War is hell, as the saying goes. Murder, on the other hand, is a crime. In this age of the “long war” pitting the United States against the forces of global terror, it is critical that the American people be able to distinguish between the two. The legitimate application of military power to a problem that manifests itself, directly or indirectly, as a threat to the legitimate national security interests of the United States, while horrible in terms of its consequences, is not only defensible but mandatory. The true test of a society and its leaders is the extent to which every effort is made to both properly define a problem as one worthy of military intervention and then exhaust every option other than the use of force...
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Macdonald blasts 'sycophant' Blair | The Guardian
One of Tony Blair's most senior civil servants has launched a savage attack on the former Prime Minister over the Iraq war. Sir Ken Macdonald, who was director of public prosecutions for much of Mr Blair's premiership, accused him of "sycophancy" towards Washington and using "alarming subterfuge" to mislead the British people into the conflict...
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Tom Gross (The Australian, December 8) may have visited a West Bank, but I am not sure if it was the same place, west of the river Jordan, that I visited five weeks ago. The picture he is painting is completely different from what I saw. Of course, Gross's experience will likely differ from mine. He is probably travelling as an Englishman, with Israel giving him far more freedom of movement than me in my own country as a Palestinian. His drive from Jerusalem to Nablus, as he describes it, is nothing short of fiction to the Palestinians living in the West Bank. Jerusalem, the birthplace of my mother, is, in fact, completely off limits to us. As for the prosperous economy Gross is describing, let's get the facts straight. We are talking about a primitive and predominantly agricultural economy strangled by more than 41 years of conflict and occupation...
Read more...
Our Murderers in the Sky, by Scott Ritter | Truthdig
War is hell, as the saying goes. Murder, on the other hand, is a crime. In this age of the “long war” pitting the United States against the forces of global terror, it is critical that the American people be able to distinguish between the two. The legitimate application of military power to a problem that manifests itself, directly or indirectly, as a threat to the legitimate national security interests of the United States, while horrible in terms of its consequences, is not only defensible but mandatory. The true test of a society and its leaders is the extent to which every effort is made to both properly define a problem as one worthy of military intervention and then exhaust every option other than the use of force...
Read more...
Macdonald blasts 'sycophant' Blair | The Guardian
One of Tony Blair's most senior civil servants has launched a savage attack on the former Prime Minister over the Iraq war. Sir Ken Macdonald, who was director of public prosecutions for much of Mr Blair's premiership, accused him of "sycophancy" towards Washington and using "alarming subterfuge" to mislead the British people into the conflict...
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Occupation Industries: The Israeli industrial zones | Corporate Watch
In a climate in which the call for a consumer boycott of Israeli goods is finally gaining strength, one area of Israel’s economy is, as yet, surprisingly under-researched. Most of Israel’s industrial zones in the West Bank are connected to illegal residential settlements and provide an indispensable economic backbone to the local settler economy. Mishor Adumim is the second largest industrial zone in the Occupied Territories and the one through which the Palestinians have the most to lose...
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Thoughts about 9/11 on Pearl Harbor Day, by Jerry Mazza | Online Journal
I am thinking of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. It only took two hours. The attacks on the World Trade Center occurred on a cool blue Tuesday morning within several hours, though Tower 7 fell into its footprint at 5 p.m. About 2,400 Americans were killed at Pearl. About 2,800 on 9/11. On December 8, 1941, FDR declared war on Japan, who had declared war on us the day before. A few days after 9/11, Bush declared the War on Terror on Afghanistan, surrogate for the Muslim World. 9/11 had 19 Muslim scapegoats and Osama bin Laden. Pearle Harbor had military scapegoats...
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Australia's pro-Israel stance ignores Palestinians' plight, by Michael Shaik | The Age
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Walid Khalidi at the UN on Jerusalem, Parts 1-5 | Australians for Palestine
Jerusalem has been the subject of attack for a very long time, but in recent weeks, the evictions of Palestinians from their homes on to the streets to make way for Jewish settlers from abroad has been most disturbing. The distinguished Palestinian intellectual Walid Khalidi gives a fascinating overview of Jerusalem’s history and Israel’s true intentions in that regard. The five part video is definitely worth watching.
Watch...
Gaza Power Strip | IEEE Spectrum
The Palestinian power plant has endured bombings, embargoes and blockades: Can it ever fully power Gaza's grid? Within days, the plant’s desperate engineers came up with a novel solution: They hooked up 170 twelve-volt car batteries to restart the plant’s turbines. To everyone’s amazement, including the engineers themselves, the impromptu kludge actually worked. ”It was an abnormal situation,” notes Rafiq Maliha, one of the plant’s managers...
Read more...
In a climate in which the call for a consumer boycott of Israeli goods is finally gaining strength, one area of Israel’s economy is, as yet, surprisingly under-researched. Most of Israel’s industrial zones in the West Bank are connected to illegal residential settlements and provide an indispensable economic backbone to the local settler economy. Mishor Adumim is the second largest industrial zone in the Occupied Territories and the one through which the Palestinians have the most to lose...
Read more...
Thoughts about 9/11 on Pearl Harbor Day, by Jerry Mazza | Online Journal
I am thinking of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. It only took two hours. The attacks on the World Trade Center occurred on a cool blue Tuesday morning within several hours, though Tower 7 fell into its footprint at 5 p.m. About 2,400 Americans were killed at Pearl. About 2,800 on 9/11. On December 8, 1941, FDR declared war on Japan, who had declared war on us the day before. A few days after 9/11, Bush declared the War on Terror on Afghanistan, surrogate for the Muslim World. 9/11 had 19 Muslim scapegoats and Osama bin Laden. Pearle Harbor had military scapegoats...
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Australia's pro-Israel stance ignores Palestinians' plight, by Michael Shaik | The Age
A Palestinian demonstrator waves his national flag opposite Israeli soldiers.
In April, a UN conference against racism in Geneva was boycotted by nine Western nations — who all gave the same reason for not attending. Israel, the US, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Canada, Germany, Italy, Poland and Australia refused to attend because as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd declared at a lunch of the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce, Australia (and the other nations) could not support a conference that reaffirmed the Durban Declaration and Program of Action because it "singled out Israel". Although the declaration's only direct mention of Israel recognised its right to security, its mild expression of "concern about the plight of the Palestinian people under foreign occupation" and its recognition of "the inalienable right of Palestinian people to self-determination and the right to an independent state" were apparently too much for the Australian Government, whose flourishing relationship with Israel has been one of the few bright spots in what has been a tough year for Israeli diplomacy...Read more...
Walid Khalidi at the UN on Jerusalem, Parts 1-5 | Australians for Palestine
Jerusalem has been the subject of attack for a very long time, but in recent weeks, the evictions of Palestinians from their homes on to the streets to make way for Jewish settlers from abroad has been most disturbing. The distinguished Palestinian intellectual Walid Khalidi gives a fascinating overview of Jerusalem’s history and Israel’s true intentions in that regard. The five part video is definitely worth watching.
Watch...
Gaza Power Strip | IEEE Spectrum
The Palestinian power plant has endured bombings, embargoes and blockades: Can it ever fully power Gaza's grid? Within days, the plant’s desperate engineers came up with a novel solution: They hooked up 170 twelve-volt car batteries to restart the plant’s turbines. To everyone’s amazement, including the engineers themselves, the impromptu kludge actually worked. ”It was an abnormal situation,” notes Rafiq Maliha, one of the plant’s managers...
Read more...
Human rights groups march in Tel Aviv for democracy | Jerusalem Post
An estimated 4,000 people took part in a human rights march in Tel Aviv on Friday. The march, the first of its kind in Israel, included activists for more than a hundred organizations and ended in a mass rally in front of the Tel Aviv Museum...
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Hug-An-American Day | Palestine Think Tank
The following are excerpts from press releases that have been issued by American individuals and groups apologizing for senseless acts of violence committed by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan including but not limited to Operation Desert Storm; Operation Desert Fox; Operation Enduring Freedom; Operation Iraqi Freedom; Operation Vigilant Resolve; Operation Achilles; Operation Phantom Fury; Operation Mountain Thrust; each using white phosphorus or depleted uranium or cluster bombs; the death of each Iraqi child under sanctions; the bombardment of a wedding party in Afghanistan; the desecration of holy sites in Najaf; murders committed by Blackwater; shock and awe in Baghdad; and other such mass killings of innocent Afghanis and Iraqis. American tourists, students and visiting scholars currently residing in the Middle East are invariably “appalled by the attack that took place” in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are prompt to issue such consternation on the same day. In order to clear their conscience of responsibility from the unilateral wars perpetrated in their names, Americans go to great lengths to make clear that each “attack is absolutely deplorable.”...
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An estimated 4,000 people took part in a human rights march in Tel Aviv on Friday. The march, the first of its kind in Israel, included activists for more than a hundred organizations and ended in a mass rally in front of the Tel Aviv Museum...
Read more...
Hug-An-American Day | Palestine Think Tank
The following are excerpts from press releases that have been issued by American individuals and groups apologizing for senseless acts of violence committed by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan including but not limited to Operation Desert Storm; Operation Desert Fox; Operation Enduring Freedom; Operation Iraqi Freedom; Operation Vigilant Resolve; Operation Achilles; Operation Phantom Fury; Operation Mountain Thrust; each using white phosphorus or depleted uranium or cluster bombs; the death of each Iraqi child under sanctions; the bombardment of a wedding party in Afghanistan; the desecration of holy sites in Najaf; murders committed by Blackwater; shock and awe in Baghdad; and other such mass killings of innocent Afghanis and Iraqis. American tourists, students and visiting scholars currently residing in the Middle East are invariably “appalled by the attack that took place” in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are prompt to issue such consternation on the same day. In order to clear their conscience of responsibility from the unilateral wars perpetrated in their names, Americans go to great lengths to make clear that each “attack is absolutely deplorable.”...
Read more...
George F. Kennan on the Escalation in Afghanistan, by David Bromwich | Antiwar
In January and February 1966, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, J. William Fulbright, held a series of televised public hearings to discuss the deepening military involvement of the United States in Vietnam. Fulbright summoned to testify three pro-Administration witnesses (Secretary of State Dean Rusk, AID Administrator David E. Bell, and General Maxwell D. Taylor, Ret.) and two non-Administration witnesses (Lieutenant General James M. Gavin and Dr. George F. Kennan, former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union)...
Read more...
Marwan Barghouti: The Equalizer, by James Gundun | Palestine Chronicle
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Return of the Antiwar Right, by Jack Hunter | The American Conservative
For eight long years under George W. Bush, conservatives endorsed a don’t ask, don’t tell foreign policy–they did not really ask why their country was at war and Republican leaders did not tell, or bother, Americans with any of the gory details. Missions were accomplished, we fought them over there so we didn’t have to fight them here and troops were supported by simply supporting the wars they fought, with little to no dissent. But why were we fighting? What was “victory?” How many had to die? What was the cost? Conservatives did not ask-Republican politicians did not tell. But some Republicans are finally asking...
Read more...
Settlers attack West Bank mosque and burn holy Muslim books | Times Online
Read more...
It's Time to Leave Afghanistan, by Rep. Ron Paul -- Antiwar
...In late 1986 Soviet armed forces commander, Marshal Sergei Akhromeev, told then-Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, "Military actions in Afghanistan will soon be seven years old. There is no single piece of land in this country which has not been occupied by a Soviet soldier. Nonetheless, the majority of the territory remains in the hands of rebels." Soon Gorbachev began the Soviet withdrawal from its Afghan misadventure. Thousands were dead on both sides, yet the occupation failed to produce a stable national Afghan government. Eight years into our own war in Afghanistan the Soviet commander’s words ring eerily familiar...
Read more...
War Criminal and WMD Enthusiast Shimon Peres Wants to Talk To You | Gilad Atzmon
Watch...
In January and February 1966, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, J. William Fulbright, held a series of televised public hearings to discuss the deepening military involvement of the United States in Vietnam. Fulbright summoned to testify three pro-Administration witnesses (Secretary of State Dean Rusk, AID Administrator David E. Bell, and General Maxwell D. Taylor, Ret.) and two non-Administration witnesses (Lieutenant General James M. Gavin and Dr. George F. Kennan, former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union)...
Read more...
Marwan Barghouti: The Equalizer, by James Gundun | Palestine Chronicle
Barghouti is the most potent political threat Israel would face since Arafat.
Conflicting inhabitants of the Holy Land, if nothing else, must surely agree that the universe works in strange ways. God by any name operates beyond human understanding. Deep inside an Israeli prison cosmic balance awaits in Marwan Barghouti, Fatah strongman and political game-changer, who sits a step away from freedom. Of course this step might be a mile wide and a year long, and if Israel had its way Barghouti would never see daylight again. Releasing a man convicted in an Israeli civilian court of five murders and implicated in dozens more is no sure thing - a PR disaster - but Israel only has itself to blame for Barghouti's potential resurrection...Read more...
Return of the Antiwar Right, by Jack Hunter | The American Conservative
For eight long years under George W. Bush, conservatives endorsed a don’t ask, don’t tell foreign policy–they did not really ask why their country was at war and Republican leaders did not tell, or bother, Americans with any of the gory details. Missions were accomplished, we fought them over there so we didn’t have to fight them here and troops were supported by simply supporting the wars they fought, with little to no dissent. But why were we fighting? What was “victory?” How many had to die? What was the cost? Conservatives did not ask-Republican politicians did not tell. But some Republicans are finally asking...
Read more...
Settlers attack West Bank mosque and burn holy Muslim books | Times Online
The graffiti says 'Price tag, greetings from Effi'.
Price tag is a term used by settlers for taking revenge on local
Palestinians after clampdowns on their activities by the Israeli army
Suspected extremist Jewish settlers today attacked a mosque in the northern West Bank, burning holy books and spraying threatening graffiti in Hebrew on the building, Palestinian officials and Israeli police said. Extremists broke into the mosque in the village of Yasuf, near the city of Nablus, and burned Korans and copies of the Hadith, or sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, and prayer carpets, while spraying slogans on the floor reading “Price tag – greetings from Effi.” A pile of ash on a scorched carpet was all that remained of around 100 holy books, The Times found...Price tag is a term used by settlers for taking revenge on local
Palestinians after clampdowns on their activities by the Israeli army
Read more...
It's Time to Leave Afghanistan, by Rep. Ron Paul -- Antiwar
...In late 1986 Soviet armed forces commander, Marshal Sergei Akhromeev, told then-Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, "Military actions in Afghanistan will soon be seven years old. There is no single piece of land in this country which has not been occupied by a Soviet soldier. Nonetheless, the majority of the territory remains in the hands of rebels." Soon Gorbachev began the Soviet withdrawal from its Afghan misadventure. Thousands were dead on both sides, yet the occupation failed to produce a stable national Afghan government. Eight years into our own war in Afghanistan the Soviet commander’s words ring eerily familiar...
Read more...
War Criminal and WMD Enthusiast Shimon Peres Wants to Talk To You | Gilad Atzmon
Watch...
December 12, 2009
Is Israel a democracy? It's conditional, by Chibli Mallat | The Daily Star
Israeli children attacking Arab woman in Hebron
On December 6, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel released a 73-page report on democracy and human rights in Israel, entitled on “Human Rights – On Condition, Democracy – On Condition.” The chapters of the report develop the characteristic list of an authoritarian state:...
Read more...
Barnaby Joyce Warns Of 'Economic Armageddon': US Government 'May Default On Debt' | The Age
Tony Abbott's new finance spokesman, Barnaby Joyce, believes the American Government may default on its debt, triggering an ''economic Armageddon'' that will make the recent global financial crisis pale into insignificance. He has also proposed that the Federal Government should introduce laws allowing it to break up the assets of the four main banks - and use them to force banks to hold down interest rates...
Read more...
The hypocrisy of al-demoqratia, by Ramzy Baroud | Online Journal
Read more...
We Need to Embarrass Ourselves: Cindy Sheehan's Lesson, by David Macaray | Counterpunch
One of the most astonishing and demoralizing comments I ever heard was in response to Cindy Sheehan’s August, 2005, anti-war demonstrations outside George W. Bush’s Prarie Chapel Ranch (near Crawford, Texas). A commentator declared that, by protesting in so public and defiant a fashion, Sheehan had, in fact, “embarrassed” herself...
Read more...
Israeli prisons as revolutionary universities, by Khaled al-Azraq, writing from Nafha prison | Electronic Intifada
Read more...
Where the Crimes Go Unpunished: Who Cares About Gaza?, by Brian Cloughley | Counterpunch
Gaza? Where’s that? Have you heard about it recently? It doesn’t figure on the list of important matters for consideration by the world’s presidents and prime ministers. It has vanished from the media. Most people couldn’t care less about a generation of Palestinians who are subjected to viciously inflicted privation by an imperialist nation that has lost touch with humanity...
Read more...
Israel premier wants to grant new credits to West Bank settlements | Jordan Times
Read more...
Israeli Occupation, Colonialism and Apartheid, by Stephen Lendman
The Cape Town, South Africa-based Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) "conduct(s) large-scale, policy-relevant, social-scientific projects for public-sector users, non-governmental organisations and international development agencies," and disseminates its findings widely...Given South Africa's past, the HSRC had an "obvious interest" in pursuing these issues. After 15 months of research, its report concluded that: "....Israel, since 1967, has been the belligerent Occupying Power in the OPT, and that its occupation of these territories has become a colonial enterprise, which implements a system of apartheid."...
Read more...
President Obama 'creating torture impunity' | PressTV
Read more...
Still Underwater: Bernanke's Faux Recovery, by Mike Whitney | Counterpunch
...The Fed has never initiated policies which provide unlimited guarantees for underwater financial institutions. Nor has it ever poured more than a trillion dollars directly into the financial system by creating excess reserves at the banks and direct purchases of long-term assets. (Quantitative Easing) All of this is new. Naturally, this ocean of liquidity has produced price distortions which have been confused with real recovery. The S&P has soared more than 60 percent in the last 9 months, even though the yield on short-term Treasuries are at historic lows...
Read more...
UK report says WMD claim was based on taxi driver’s tale, by David Sapsted | The National
The intelligence claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that could be launched within 45 minutes apparently came from a taxi driver. The launch time for WMDs was a central plank in the British prime minister Tony Blair’s and the US president George W Bush’s justification for the 2003 invasion. No such weapons were ever found, however, and yesterday a report compiled by Adam Holloway, a member of the British House of Commons defence committee, alleged that one basis for the claim was a conversation between two Iraqi officers that the taxi driver heard in 2001...
Read more...
Making Friends with Israel, by Gilad Atzmon
In case you want to learn how to appeal to the Jews, British diplomat Matthew Gould gives a free lesson. Haaretz reported yesterday that Gould, the newly appointed British Ambassador to Israel, wasn't too connected to his Jewish roots until he served in Tehran. Seemingly, now he knows where he belongs. "Being posted in Iran made me go to shul more regularly", says the new Ambassador. "I did it to reach out to the Jewish community in Iran and to show that Western embassies were watching out for its welfare," Gould explains. "I was determined to go to shul to show both the Jewish community and the Iranian authorities that I was Jewish and not embarrassed of it."...
Read more...
Israeli children attacking Arab woman in Hebron
Read more...
Barnaby Joyce Warns Of 'Economic Armageddon': US Government 'May Default On Debt' | The Age
Tony Abbott's new finance spokesman, Barnaby Joyce, believes the American Government may default on its debt, triggering an ''economic Armageddon'' that will make the recent global financial crisis pale into insignificance. He has also proposed that the Federal Government should introduce laws allowing it to break up the assets of the four main banks - and use them to force banks to hold down interest rates...
Read more...
The hypocrisy of al-demoqratia, by Ramzy Baroud | Online Journal
In Palestine, the price for democracy was even higher.
So this is how democracy works? In 2004, France banned headscarves and school principals chased after young “defiant” Muslim girls who continued to cover their heads in school. Now, following a national referendum, Switzerland has banned the construction of minarets, because minarets also somehow symbolize oppression. Thanks to the dedicated action of the far-right Swiss People’s Party, the Alpine skies will be free from the snaking menace, which would spread intolerance and taint the splendor of Swiss architecture. In between these two peculiar events, the targeting of Muslims in Western countries and the subjugation of entire Muslim nations all over the world has never ceased. Not for a day...Read more...
We Need to Embarrass Ourselves: Cindy Sheehan's Lesson, by David Macaray | Counterpunch
One of the most astonishing and demoralizing comments I ever heard was in response to Cindy Sheehan’s August, 2005, anti-war demonstrations outside George W. Bush’s Prarie Chapel Ranch (near Crawford, Texas). A commentator declared that, by protesting in so public and defiant a fashion, Sheehan had, in fact, “embarrassed” herself...
Read more...
Israeli prisons as revolutionary universities, by Khaled al-Azraq, writing from Nafha prison | Electronic Intifada
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been held as political prisoners
by Israel in its attempt to repress the national movement for liberation
Let me start by saying that the role of the Palestinian prisoners' movement in educating its cadre, and thereby contributing to Palestinian "national education" is a large topic, and one worthy of much more discussion and research. As a Palestinian political prisoner who has spent the past 20 years in Israeli jails I would like to highlight some of the general characteristics of the prisoners' movement's struggle to build a system of self and collective education as a central part of developing a patriotic and revolutionary culture that can be a pillar of the liberation movement...by Israel in its attempt to repress the national movement for liberation
Read more...
Where the Crimes Go Unpunished: Who Cares About Gaza?, by Brian Cloughley | Counterpunch
Gaza? Where’s that? Have you heard about it recently? It doesn’t figure on the list of important matters for consideration by the world’s presidents and prime ministers. It has vanished from the media. Most people couldn’t care less about a generation of Palestinians who are subjected to viciously inflicted privation by an imperialist nation that has lost touch with humanity...
Read more...
Israel premier wants to grant new credits to West Bank settlements | Jordan Times
A Palestinian boy from a Kurd family, who were evicted from their house
last week, is held by his father as UNRWA commissioner Karen AbuZayd
talks to the press in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah
Israel's premier wants to list some West Bank settlements as national priority zones and grant them $28 million in credits, his office said on Thursday, Agence France-Presse reported. The plan to be submitted to the Cabinet on Sunday would include new settlements in the list of communities designated as national priority zones that are entitled to additional state funding. The announcement came two weeks after a controversial decision not to grant building permits for settlements in the occupied West Bank for the next 10 months while allowing construction already under way to continue. The new credits would benefit 110,000 settlers, according to the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They can be used for vocational training programmes and other educational or cultural activities. The communities being considered are mainly outside the large settlement blocs Israel wants to annex under any peace accord with the Palestinians...last week, is held by his father as UNRWA commissioner Karen AbuZayd
talks to the press in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah
Read more...
Israeli Occupation, Colonialism and Apartheid, by Stephen Lendman
The Cape Town, South Africa-based Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) "conduct(s) large-scale, policy-relevant, social-scientific projects for public-sector users, non-governmental organisations and international development agencies," and disseminates its findings widely...Given South Africa's past, the HSRC had an "obvious interest" in pursuing these issues. After 15 months of research, its report concluded that: "....Israel, since 1967, has been the belligerent Occupying Power in the OPT, and that its occupation of these territories has become a colonial enterprise, which implements a system of apartheid."...
Read more...
President Obama 'creating torture impunity' | PressTV
An activist during waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning
A US civil rights group says that President Barack Obama by creating impunity is following his predecessor into allowing torture policies to continue in the country. The American Civil Liberties Union said on Thursday that the US president has failed to provide accountability on torture. Director of ACLU's National Security Project Jameel Jaffer said "the Bush administration constructed a legal framework for torture and now the Obama administration is constructing a legal framework for impunity." ...Read more...
Still Underwater: Bernanke's Faux Recovery, by Mike Whitney | Counterpunch
...The Fed has never initiated policies which provide unlimited guarantees for underwater financial institutions. Nor has it ever poured more than a trillion dollars directly into the financial system by creating excess reserves at the banks and direct purchases of long-term assets. (Quantitative Easing) All of this is new. Naturally, this ocean of liquidity has produced price distortions which have been confused with real recovery. The S&P has soared more than 60 percent in the last 9 months, even though the yield on short-term Treasuries are at historic lows...
Read more...
UK report says WMD claim was based on taxi driver’s tale, by David Sapsted | The National
Read more...
Making Friends with Israel, by Gilad Atzmon
In case you want to learn how to appeal to the Jews, British diplomat Matthew Gould gives a free lesson. Haaretz reported yesterday that Gould, the newly appointed British Ambassador to Israel, wasn't too connected to his Jewish roots until he served in Tehran. Seemingly, now he knows where he belongs. "Being posted in Iran made me go to shul more regularly", says the new Ambassador. "I did it to reach out to the Jewish community in Iran and to show that Western embassies were watching out for its welfare," Gould explains. "I was determined to go to shul to show both the Jewish community and the Iranian authorities that I was Jewish and not embarrassed of it."...
Read more...
December 11, 2009
On World Day of Human Rights: A Call to End the Policy of Racism against Palestinian People | Palestine Telegraph
The tenth of December marks the sixty-first anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in which the United Nations proclaimed the establishment of an international standard to measure violations against the sanctity of human life and dignity. This celebrated occasion comes at a time when there are still places in the world where people witness the most severe human rights violations. In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli government continues to impose a hermetic economic and political siege on the Palestinian people to the point of causing de-development of their economy. Israel persists in their aggressive policy of the appropriation of land and house demolitions, uprooting trees, targeted shelling of civilians, and obstructing Palestinian's access to their agricultural land, water, and fishing resources...
Read more...
Boiling Point: Hijacking the Planet for Power and Privilege, by Chris Floyd | OpEd News
The mind boggles. Who ever would have thought, even in their darkest, most paranoid dreams, that the Copenhagen climate change talks would be hijacked by a handful of rich nations seeking to give themselves more power and riches while imposing new burdens and new injustices on the rest of the world? And that amongst this avaricious, duplicitous elite one would find the government of a man who now bears the Nobel laurel for his unstinting dedication to the welfare of all humanity?..
Read more...
The mind boggles. Who ever would have thought, even in their darkest, most paranoid dreams, that the Copenhagen climate change talks would be hijacked by a handful of rich nations seeking to give themselves more power and riches while imposing new burdens and new injustices on the rest of the world? And that amongst this avaricious, duplicitous elite one would find the government of a man who now bears the Nobel laurel for his unstinting dedication to the welfare of all humanity?..
Read more...
Yeswecanistan: The Peace Candidate Myth, by William Blum | Counterpunch
...Obama used one form or another of the word "extremist" eleven times in his half-hour talk. Young, impressionable minds must be carefully taught; a future generation of military leaders who will command America's never-ending wars must have no doubts that the bad guys are "extremists", that "extremists" are by definition bad guys, that "extremists" are beyond the pale and do not act from human, rational motivation like we do, that we — quintessential non-extremists, peace-loving moderates — are the good guys, forced into one war after another against our will. Sending robotic death machines flying over Afghanistan and Pakistan to drop powerful bombs on the top of wedding parties, funerals, and homes is of course not extremist behavior for human beings...
Read more...
...Obama used one form or another of the word "extremist" eleven times in his half-hour talk. Young, impressionable minds must be carefully taught; a future generation of military leaders who will command America's never-ending wars must have no doubts that the bad guys are "extremists", that "extremists" are by definition bad guys, that "extremists" are beyond the pale and do not act from human, rational motivation like we do, that we — quintessential non-extremists, peace-loving moderates — are the good guys, forced into one war after another against our will. Sending robotic death machines flying over Afghanistan and Pakistan to drop powerful bombs on the top of wedding parties, funerals, and homes is of course not extremist behavior for human beings...
Read more...
A Policy of Annihilation, by Richard Girard | OpEd News
...The American way of war has always had a remarkable degree of moral inconsistency associated with it. From the beginning, we have the example of George Washington, who insisted upon the humane treatment of prisoners of war (in sharp contrast to the way American soldiers were treated by their British captors). Contrast this with Andrew Jackson, whose practices in the early Indian Wars and the War of 1812 were brutal, presaging America's wars and policy against the Native American population for the rest of the century...
Read more...
Obama's Big Sellout, by Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone
Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers "at the expense of hardworking Americans." Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it's not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing.
PFLP Press Release: Israeli forces mass arrest Palestinian activists | Electronic Intifada
Occupation military forces raided several towns, villages and camps in the Nablus area on 9 December 2009, engaging in a mass arrest campaign targeting alleged members and supporters of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), two days before the 42nd anniversary of the Front will be commemorated with large marches and activities throughout Palestine. PFLP sources noted that the occupation military have ramped up their targeting of the PFLP at a time when their ongoing negotiations with the Palestinian resistance to release prisoners in exchange for captured occupation soldier Gilad Shalit have focused on the release of imprisoned PFLP General Secretary, Comrade Ahmad Saadat...
Read more...
No-sama bin Laden, by Philip Giraldi | Antiwar
Monday’s revelation from Defense Secretary Robert Gates that "I think it has been years" since the US government has had any solid information about Osama bin Laden should come as no surprise to readers of Antiwar.com, which has been questioning the rationale for the global war on terrorism ever since it was a twinkle in Dick Cheney’s eye. Gates also commented that US intelligence believes that the fugitive terrorists might well be moving about in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The "where’s Waldo" narrative provided by Gates is somewhat shocking in light of the billions of dollars that have been spent in the search for the slippery Saudi, but it is even more significant in that it completely undercuts the Barack Obama Administration’s case for increasing the number of American troops in Afghanistan...
Read more...
Is the War Over Yet?: Loose in Obamalandia, by John Ross | Counterpunch
Each Friday afternoon since Bush's illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq in March 2003, my old friend Janine V. has been standing with Women In Black here near the 101 off-ramp as a silent reminder of the on-going Bush-Obama genocide in the Middle East. In the early days of this heroic now-nearly eight year-old vigil, patriotic motorists, often on their way to the local Tsuri Indian Casino to swill at the Firewater Lounge, would hurl invectives and sometimes loaded beer cans at the women. But as the war settled into a daily grind and the U.S. body count climbed incrementally towards 5000, the insults and the beer cans diminished and a few locals now even honk their horns in support...
Read more...
...The American way of war has always had a remarkable degree of moral inconsistency associated with it. From the beginning, we have the example of George Washington, who insisted upon the humane treatment of prisoners of war (in sharp contrast to the way American soldiers were treated by their British captors). Contrast this with Andrew Jackson, whose practices in the early Indian Wars and the War of 1812 were brutal, presaging America's wars and policy against the Native American population for the rest of the century...
Read more...
Obama's Big Sellout, by Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone
Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers "at the expense of hardworking Americans." Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it's not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing.
Then he got elected...
Read more...PFLP Press Release: Israeli forces mass arrest Palestinian activists | Electronic Intifada
Occupation military forces raided several towns, villages and camps in the Nablus area on 9 December 2009, engaging in a mass arrest campaign targeting alleged members and supporters of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), two days before the 42nd anniversary of the Front will be commemorated with large marches and activities throughout Palestine. PFLP sources noted that the occupation military have ramped up their targeting of the PFLP at a time when their ongoing negotiations with the Palestinian resistance to release prisoners in exchange for captured occupation soldier Gilad Shalit have focused on the release of imprisoned PFLP General Secretary, Comrade Ahmad Saadat...
Read more...
No-sama bin Laden, by Philip Giraldi | Antiwar
Monday’s revelation from Defense Secretary Robert Gates that "I think it has been years" since the US government has had any solid information about Osama bin Laden should come as no surprise to readers of Antiwar.com, which has been questioning the rationale for the global war on terrorism ever since it was a twinkle in Dick Cheney’s eye. Gates also commented that US intelligence believes that the fugitive terrorists might well be moving about in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The "where’s Waldo" narrative provided by Gates is somewhat shocking in light of the billions of dollars that have been spent in the search for the slippery Saudi, but it is even more significant in that it completely undercuts the Barack Obama Administration’s case for increasing the number of American troops in Afghanistan...
Read more...
Is the War Over Yet?: Loose in Obamalandia, by John Ross | Counterpunch
Each Friday afternoon since Bush's illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq in March 2003, my old friend Janine V. has been standing with Women In Black here near the 101 off-ramp as a silent reminder of the on-going Bush-Obama genocide in the Middle East. In the early days of this heroic now-nearly eight year-old vigil, patriotic motorists, often on their way to the local Tsuri Indian Casino to swill at the Firewater Lounge, would hurl invectives and sometimes loaded beer cans at the women. But as the war settled into a daily grind and the U.S. body count climbed incrementally towards 5000, the insults and the beer cans diminished and a few locals now even honk their horns in support...
Read more...
This Holocaust survivor stands with Gaza - Will you? | CodePink
It's strange to see President Obama accepting a Peace Prize as he escalates a war. As a Holocaust survivor whose parents perished at Auschwitz in 1942, I know all too well what war looks like. I also know what peace looks like and I can tell you this: Sending 30,000 more U.S. troops to fight in one of the poorest countries in the world, Afghanistan, is not making peace. As President Obama accepts a Peace Prize he does not deserve, it's a good time to model what real peacemaking looks like. That's why-at the ripe age of 85-I'll be joining the Gaza Freedom March on December 31. Over 1,000 peacemakers from around the world will join hands with 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza as we walk together to the Israeli border. As Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists, and members of many faiths we will come together as one humanity to condemn the brutal invasion of Gaza one year ago and demand that Israel lift the siege that has brought 1.5 million people to the brink of disaster...Peace is not just making nice speeches, as President Obama did in Cairo when he told the Arab world that "we understand that the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable" and that America would not turn its back on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for justice and dignity.
That is why I am asking you to help us "walk the talk" by supporting the Gaza Freedom March.
With love for all humanity, Hedy Epstein
Read more...
The ADL: Managing White Rage, by Kevin MacDonald | Occidental Observer
A recent Haaretz article on the state of the Jewish world contained thefollowing: "In general today, one of the long-term challenges for theAmerican Jewish community is evident in demographic forecasts thatpredict that in two or three decades, certain minority groups areexpected to become a majority in the United States. A recent ADL pollshowed that 12 percent of Americans hold anti-Semitic views — but amongAfrican-Americans, the figure is 28 percent, and among foreign-bornHispanics it is 35 percent"...
Read more...
Let My Kafka Go!: Israel's Ridiculous Ownership Claims, by Mary Rizzo | Palestine Think Tank
...Once again, Israel is demanding rights to something that does not belong to them. In this case, it does not belong to them or to the Jewish people, and not even to the Hoffe sisters, but belongs to the legacy of Franz Kafka. If we consider his expressed wishes to have a ritual bonfire made of all his writing, and even Dora had burnt some of his stories and a theatrical piece upon his request, we can imagine that this entire situation would not have pleased him in the slightest. With the pressure being made to surrender this material under certain conditions, it is likely that the world may never have access to the material which is rumoured to be quite voluminous and varied, and the study of this giant in literature will remain hindered. All of this due to the Israeli need of claiming rights and ownership to something, for its absolute determination to horde everything that it thinks it has an “ethnic” right to. Is there such a thing as Jewish literature, and is it determined by style or by “blood”, and is Kafka an exemplar of it? Would Kafka himself have identified his work as being patrimony of “the Jewish people” or, would he have felt that others were playing with his fate, just like his most famous character Josef K. thought?...
Read more...
It's strange to see President Obama accepting a Peace Prize as he escalates a war. As a Holocaust survivor whose parents perished at Auschwitz in 1942, I know all too well what war looks like. I also know what peace looks like and I can tell you this: Sending 30,000 more U.S. troops to fight in one of the poorest countries in the world, Afghanistan, is not making peace. As President Obama accepts a Peace Prize he does not deserve, it's a good time to model what real peacemaking looks like. That's why-at the ripe age of 85-I'll be joining the Gaza Freedom March on December 31. Over 1,000 peacemakers from around the world will join hands with 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza as we walk together to the Israeli border. As Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists, and members of many faiths we will come together as one humanity to condemn the brutal invasion of Gaza one year ago and demand that Israel lift the siege that has brought 1.5 million people to the brink of disaster...Peace is not just making nice speeches, as President Obama did in Cairo when he told the Arab world that "we understand that the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable" and that America would not turn its back on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for justice and dignity.
That is why I am asking you to help us "walk the talk" by supporting the Gaza Freedom March.
With love for all humanity, Hedy Epstein
Read more...
The ADL: Managing White Rage, by Kevin MacDonald | Occidental Observer
A recent Haaretz article on the state of the Jewish world contained thefollowing: "In general today, one of the long-term challenges for theAmerican Jewish community is evident in demographic forecasts thatpredict that in two or three decades, certain minority groups areexpected to become a majority in the United States. A recent ADL pollshowed that 12 percent of Americans hold anti-Semitic views — but amongAfrican-Americans, the figure is 28 percent, and among foreign-bornHispanics it is 35 percent"...
Read more...
Let My Kafka Go!: Israel's Ridiculous Ownership Claims, by Mary Rizzo | Palestine Think Tank
...Once again, Israel is demanding rights to something that does not belong to them. In this case, it does not belong to them or to the Jewish people, and not even to the Hoffe sisters, but belongs to the legacy of Franz Kafka. If we consider his expressed wishes to have a ritual bonfire made of all his writing, and even Dora had burnt some of his stories and a theatrical piece upon his request, we can imagine that this entire situation would not have pleased him in the slightest. With the pressure being made to surrender this material under certain conditions, it is likely that the world may never have access to the material which is rumoured to be quite voluminous and varied, and the study of this giant in literature will remain hindered. All of this due to the Israeli need of claiming rights and ownership to something, for its absolute determination to horde everything that it thinks it has an “ethnic” right to. Is there such a thing as Jewish literature, and is it determined by style or by “blood”, and is Kafka an exemplar of it? Would Kafka himself have identified his work as being patrimony of “the Jewish people” or, would he have felt that others were playing with his fate, just like his most famous character Josef K. thought?...
Read more...
Israeli settlers threaten 'Holocaust' in occupied Palestine | The Vineyard of the Saker
The BBC reports this morning that Jewish settlers are suspected of being behind an attack on a mosque in the north of the occupied West Bank. Attackers set fire to bookshelves and a large area of carpet in the mosque, and sprayed graffiti in Hebrew on a wall...Israeli human rights groups have accused the police and army of running inadequate investigations into such incidents. One group reported that nine out of 10 investigations into alleged attacks on Palestinians by settlers end without anyone being charged....One of the slogans sprayed on the wall of the mosque in Yasuf read: "Get ready to pay the price," Israeli public radio reported. Another read: "We will burn you all." Interesting choice of words, in particular from adepts of the "Holocaust religion"...
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A review of Norman Finkelstein's The Holocaust Industry, by Richard Hoste | Occidental Observer
If you’re like me and have been through the American education system, you as a child may have never learned a word of Greek or Latin, the history of the Bible or been assigned to read a work by a great philosopher. You probably do remember, however, learning about Martin Luther King, the Klan and the “six million who perished.” What gets placed in a curriculum is a zero-sum game and Western civilization had to lose for the cult of victimhood to win.But unlike other unfortunates we’re supposed to feel sorry for, the Jews are successful, and the crimes against them didn’t take place in the United States. For them to become a protected class, the holocaust, a historical event, had to be turned into The Holocaust, a religious one...
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David Becomes Goliath, a book by Alan Hart | Clarity Press
This is the second volume in the series, ZIONISM: The Real Enemy of the Jews, the inside, true story, monumental and moving, of Zionism’s colonial enterprise and the conflict it provoked in and over Palestine that became Israel; a conflict which shows no sign of ending and contains, some fear, the seeds of a doomsday catastrophe for the region and possibly the whole world... “In this extraordinary book, Alan Hart has succeeded in elucidating for us the immediate and long term dangers involved in the unconditional Western support for Zionism and its oppressive policies against the Palestinians. The author provides us with a chilling exposure of how this embrace developed and continues to endanger the Jewish existence and fuels the anti-Semitism that refuses to disappear. Motivated by a genuine concern for peace in Israel and Palestine and beyond in the world at large, Alan Hart has written not only a strong indictment of Zionism, based on both research and personal experience, but also provided us with a charter for a better future.” - Ilan Pappe: Leading Israeli revisionist historican, author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
The BBC reports this morning that Jewish settlers are suspected of being behind an attack on a mosque in the north of the occupied West Bank. Attackers set fire to bookshelves and a large area of carpet in the mosque, and sprayed graffiti in Hebrew on a wall...Israeli human rights groups have accused the police and army of running inadequate investigations into such incidents. One group reported that nine out of 10 investigations into alleged attacks on Palestinians by settlers end without anyone being charged....One of the slogans sprayed on the wall of the mosque in Yasuf read: "Get ready to pay the price," Israeli public radio reported. Another read: "We will burn you all." Interesting choice of words, in particular from adepts of the "Holocaust religion"...
Read more...
A review of Norman Finkelstein's The Holocaust Industry, by Richard Hoste | Occidental Observer
If you’re like me and have been through the American education system, you as a child may have never learned a word of Greek or Latin, the history of the Bible or been assigned to read a work by a great philosopher. You probably do remember, however, learning about Martin Luther King, the Klan and the “six million who perished.” What gets placed in a curriculum is a zero-sum game and Western civilization had to lose for the cult of victimhood to win.But unlike other unfortunates we’re supposed to feel sorry for, the Jews are successful, and the crimes against them didn’t take place in the United States. For them to become a protected class, the holocaust, a historical event, had to be turned into The Holocaust, a religious one...
Read more...
David Becomes Goliath, a book by Alan Hart | Clarity Press
This is the second volume in the series, ZIONISM: The Real Enemy of the Jews, the inside, true story, monumental and moving, of Zionism’s colonial enterprise and the conflict it provoked in and over Palestine that became Israel; a conflict which shows no sign of ending and contains, some fear, the seeds of a doomsday catastrophe for the region and possibly the whole world... “In this extraordinary book, Alan Hart has succeeded in elucidating for us the immediate and long term dangers involved in the unconditional Western support for Zionism and its oppressive policies against the Palestinians. The author provides us with a chilling exposure of how this embrace developed and continues to endanger the Jewish existence and fuels the anti-Semitism that refuses to disappear. Motivated by a genuine concern for peace in Israel and Palestine and beyond in the world at large, Alan Hart has written not only a strong indictment of Zionism, based on both research and personal experience, but also provided us with a charter for a better future.” - Ilan Pappe: Leading Israeli revisionist historican, author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
December 10, 2009
America's Terrorist Ally: A Closer Look at Israel's Role in Terrorism, by Jeff Gates | Veterans Today
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“It’s very good….Well, it’s not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy (for Israel)”.
Response of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when asked on September 11, 2001 what the attacks meant for U.S.-Israeli relations. Game theory war-planners rely on mathematical models to anticipate and shape outcomes with staged provocations. For the agent provocateur, the reactions to a provocation—as well as the reactions to those reactions—thereby become predictable within an acceptable range of probabilities. With ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan poised to expand to Iran and Pakistan, it is time to take a closer look at how conflicts are catalyzed-by way of deception...Read more...
Normalising the Crime of the Century, by John Pilger | Information Clearing House
I tried to contact Mark Higson the other day only to learn he had died nine years ago. He was just 40, an honourable man. We met soon after he had resigned from the Foreign Office in 1991 and I asked him if the government knew that Hawk fighter-bombers sold to Indonesia were being used against civilians in East Timor. “Everyone knows,” he said, “except parliament and the public.”“And the media?” “The media – the big names – have been invited to King Charles Street (the Foreign Office) and flattered and briefed with lies. They are no trouble.” As Iraq desk officer at the Foreign Office, he had drafted letters for ministers reassuring MPs and the public that the British Government was not arming Saddam Hussein. “This was a downright lie”, he said. “I couldn’t bear it”. Giving evidence before the arms-to-Iraq enquiry, Higson was the only British official commended by Lord Justice Scott for telling the truth. The price he paid was the loss of his health and marriage and constant surveillance by spooks. He ended up living on benefits in a Birmingham bedsitter where he suffered a seizure, struck his head and died alone. Whistleblowers are often heroes; he was one...
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I tried to contact Mark Higson the other day only to learn he had died nine years ago. He was just 40, an honourable man. We met soon after he had resigned from the Foreign Office in 1991 and I asked him if the government knew that Hawk fighter-bombers sold to Indonesia were being used against civilians in East Timor. “Everyone knows,” he said, “except parliament and the public.”“And the media?” “The media – the big names – have been invited to King Charles Street (the Foreign Office) and flattered and briefed with lies. They are no trouble.” As Iraq desk officer at the Foreign Office, he had drafted letters for ministers reassuring MPs and the public that the British Government was not arming Saddam Hussein. “This was a downright lie”, he said. “I couldn’t bear it”. Giving evidence before the arms-to-Iraq enquiry, Higson was the only British official commended by Lord Justice Scott for telling the truth. The price he paid was the loss of his health and marriage and constant surveillance by spooks. He ended up living on benefits in a Birmingham bedsitter where he suffered a seizure, struck his head and died alone. Whistleblowers are often heroes; he was one...
Read more...
Breaking News in the case of Bishop Richard Williamson | On the Contrary
The German State Prosecutor has excluded the possibility of a pre-trial, out-of-court settlement in the case of Roman Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson's alleged "Holocaust denial" statements which were filmed in Germany in 2008 and broadcast on Swedish television earlier this year. A possible trial date is said to be considered for late February or early March. The 28-year-old female judge in the case desires Bishop Williamson to be personally present at the trial, so that "he can explain what were his motives in saying what he said on Swedish television." She "wishes to judge his answers in person." Bishop Williamson, an English native, currently resides in London, after being fired from his position as rector of his seminary in Argentina. He was then expelled from the country by the government under pressure from Zionist groups...
Link...
The German State Prosecutor has excluded the possibility of a pre-trial, out-of-court settlement in the case of Roman Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson's alleged "Holocaust denial" statements which were filmed in Germany in 2008 and broadcast on Swedish television earlier this year. A possible trial date is said to be considered for late February or early March. The 28-year-old female judge in the case desires Bishop Williamson to be personally present at the trial, so that "he can explain what were his motives in saying what he said on Swedish television." She "wishes to judge his answers in person." Bishop Williamson, an English native, currently resides in London, after being fired from his position as rector of his seminary in Argentina. He was then expelled from the country by the government under pressure from Zionist groups...
Link...
Rename America As "The United States of Goldman, Sachs" | Grant Lawrence's blog
In view of Goldman, Sachs’ pervasive influence over Washington and the bailout that benefitted it so extensively, America’s name should be changed to the “United States of Goldman, Sachs,” a law school dean said. Since the government bailout that saved GS’s bacon, (and “about $85 billion worth of its bacon”) writes Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, “We now live in the United States of Goldman, Sachs.” So Americans could now change their coinage, their music, the wording of their anthems, the names of their warships, and even the name of their continent to reflect the bounty Congress hath showered upon the New York bank...
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In view of Goldman, Sachs’ pervasive influence over Washington and the bailout that benefitted it so extensively, America’s name should be changed to the “United States of Goldman, Sachs,” a law school dean said. Since the government bailout that saved GS’s bacon, (and “about $85 billion worth of its bacon”) writes Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, “We now live in the United States of Goldman, Sachs.” So Americans could now change their coinage, their music, the wording of their anthems, the names of their warships, and even the name of their continent to reflect the bounty Congress hath showered upon the New York bank...
Read more...
Israeli war criminal Moshe Ya'alon meets with top Mexican government officials, by La Voz de Aztlan
The former Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces and present Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs of Israel is in Mexico City meeting with top federal officials of the Felipe Calderon Administration. According to reliable news sources in Mexico, the purpose of the meetings is to establish close cooperation in the areas of "hemispheric security", "military intelligence" and in strategies to combat "organized crime". Ya'alon met today with Mexico's "Drug Czar" Genaro García Luna who serves as Secretary of Public Security in President Calderon's federal cabinet. Present also at today's meeting with Garcia Luna and Ya'alon was the Israeli Ambassador to Mexico, Yosef Livne and the Chief of Intelligence for the Federal Police Maribel Cervantes Guerrero. Moshe Ya'alon is a bonifide war criminal in the Middle East. He has admitted playing a central role in the 2002 assassination of Palestinian government official Salah Shehadeb in Gaza City. The assassination, in the form of a bomb strike on Mr Shehadeb's home, also killed seven members of the neighbouring Mattar family and 15 others. Various nations have issued arrest warrants for Ya'alon and it is puzzling why Mexico is making "hemispheric security" agreements with him...
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The former Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces and present Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs of Israel is in Mexico City meeting with top federal officials of the Felipe Calderon Administration. According to reliable news sources in Mexico, the purpose of the meetings is to establish close cooperation in the areas of "hemispheric security", "military intelligence" and in strategies to combat "organized crime". Ya'alon met today with Mexico's "Drug Czar" Genaro García Luna who serves as Secretary of Public Security in President Calderon's federal cabinet. Present also at today's meeting with Garcia Luna and Ya'alon was the Israeli Ambassador to Mexico, Yosef Livne and the Chief of Intelligence for the Federal Police Maribel Cervantes Guerrero. Moshe Ya'alon is a bonifide war criminal in the Middle East. He has admitted playing a central role in the 2002 assassination of Palestinian government official Salah Shehadeb in Gaza City. The assassination, in the form of a bomb strike on Mr Shehadeb's home, also killed seven members of the neighbouring Mattar family and 15 others. Various nations have issued arrest warrants for Ya'alon and it is puzzling why Mexico is making "hemispheric security" agreements with him...
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Years Of Deceit: Us Openly Accepts Bin Laden Long Dead, by Gordon Duff | Veterans Today
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Bin Laden Never Mentioned In McChrystal Report Or Obama Speech
"Hunt For Bin Laden" A National Shame
Conservative commentator, former Marine Colonel Bob Pappas has been saying for years that bin Laden died at Tora Bora and that Senator Kerry's claim that bin Laden escaped with Bush help was a lie. Now we know that Pappas was correct. The embarassment of having Secretary of State Clinton talk about bin Laden in Pakistan was horrific. He has been dead since December 13, 2001 and now, finally, everyone, Obama, McChrystal, Cheney, everyone who isn't nuts is finally saying what they have known for years. However, since we lost a couple of hundred of our top special operations forces hunting for bin Laden after we knew he was dead, is someone going to answer for this with some jail time? Since we spent 200 million dollars on "special ops" looking for someone we knew was dead, who is going to jail for that? Since Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney continually talked about a man they knew was dead, now known to be for reasons of POLITICAL nature, who is going to jail for that?...Read more...
Israel accused of interrogating medical patients from Gaza, by Rory McCarthy | The Guardian
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Obama does a Louis XVI, by Eric Margolis
American would not have won independence from Great Britain without generous military and financial support from France and its monarch, Louis XVI. But France spent itself into bankruptcy supporting the American colonists. France’s financial ruin was a major cause of the ensuing French Revolution that cost the unfortunate Louis his head. Wars are hugely expensive. Money plays as great a role in them as soldiers and weapons. US Congressman David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat who is chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, has come up with a novel idea: American should pay for the wars they are currently waging...
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Israelis shot mental patient 'under controversial military directive', by Jonathan Cook | The National
The fatal shooting by Israeli soldiers of an Israeli man earlier this week as he tried to scale a fence into the Gaza Strip was reportedly part of a drastic procedure the army was supposed to have phased out several years ago. The Israeli media reported that Yakir Ben-Melech, 34, had bled to death after he was shot under the "Hannibal procedure", designed to prevent Israelis from being taken captive alive by enemy forces. One critic, Uri Avnery, a former Israeli legislator and leader of Gush Shalom, a small radical peace group, defined the procedure as meaning: “Liberate the soldier by killing him”...
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The Erez crossing, where people from Gaza cross into Israel for medical treatment.
Many say they have been pressed to become informants.
Israeli security agents held a Palestinian patient for three weeks without charge, interrogated him repeatedly and offered access to hospital care if he agreed to become an informant, the Guardian has learned. The treatment of Abd al-Karim al-Atal, 28, is the latest in a series of cases over the past two years in which patients from Gaza referred for hospital treatment in Israel have been held without charge and pressed to become Israeli collaborators, human rights groups say. Atal, who is losing his sight, is still waiting for a permit to travel from his home in the Jabaliya refugee camp, in Gaza, to an eye hospital in east Jerusalem for a cornea transplant operation now scheduled for tomorrow. Physicians for Human Rights, a leading Israeli rights group, says the pressure exerted on these patients amounts to coercion, which is illegal under the fourth Geneva convention, and may even constitute a breach of the UN convention against torture...Many say they have been pressed to become informants.
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Obama does a Louis XVI, by Eric Margolis
American would not have won independence from Great Britain without generous military and financial support from France and its monarch, Louis XVI. But France spent itself into bankruptcy supporting the American colonists. France’s financial ruin was a major cause of the ensuing French Revolution that cost the unfortunate Louis his head. Wars are hugely expensive. Money plays as great a role in them as soldiers and weapons. US Congressman David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat who is chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, has come up with a novel idea: American should pay for the wars they are currently waging...
Read more...
Israelis shot mental patient 'under controversial military directive', by Jonathan Cook | The National
The fatal shooting by Israeli soldiers of an Israeli man earlier this week as he tried to scale a fence into the Gaza Strip was reportedly part of a drastic procedure the army was supposed to have phased out several years ago. The Israeli media reported that Yakir Ben-Melech, 34, had bled to death after he was shot under the "Hannibal procedure", designed to prevent Israelis from being taken captive alive by enemy forces. One critic, Uri Avnery, a former Israeli legislator and leader of Gush Shalom, a small radical peace group, defined the procedure as meaning: “Liberate the soldier by killing him”...
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Jews not Zionists
Prof. Joel Kovel, author of "Overcoming Zionism"
Contrary to common perception, Jewish anti-Zionism is not restricted exclusively to the well know Jewish anti-Zionist movements such as Satmar and Neturei Karta. There are in fact many Jewish movements, groups and organizations whose ideology regarding Zionism and the so-called "State of Israel" is that of the unadulterated Torah position that any form of Zionism is heresy and that the existence of the so-called "State of Israel" is illegitimate. No one has had to create any antagonism between our Torah and Zionism because such antagonism exists by virtue of the essence of Judaism itself, which can never tolerate the heresy of Zionism. Zionism is wrong from the Torah viewpoint, not because many of its adherents are lax in practice or even anti-religious, but because its fundamental principle conflicts with the Torah...
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China attacks rich states at summit | Al Jazeera
China has lashed out at the developed world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases for setting themselves what it called unremarkable - and even deceptive - targets for cuts. After weeks of low-key diplomacy, with China pushing hard for a strong commitment from developed countries at the international climate talks in Copenhagen, Su Wei, the head of the Chinese delegation, singled out the US, the EU and Japan for criticism...Last month, China announced a 45 per cent cut in "carbon intensity" by 2020, the first time it set specific targets for cutting carbon emissions and a move Beijing sees as sacrificial and worthy of reciprocation by developed nations...
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China attacks rich states at summit | Al Jazeera
China has lashed out at the developed world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases for setting themselves what it called unremarkable - and even deceptive - targets for cuts. After weeks of low-key diplomacy, with China pushing hard for a strong commitment from developed countries at the international climate talks in Copenhagen, Su Wei, the head of the Chinese delegation, singled out the US, the EU and Japan for criticism...Last month, China announced a 45 per cent cut in "carbon intensity" by 2020, the first time it set specific targets for cutting carbon emissions and a move Beijing sees as sacrificial and worthy of reciprocation by developed nations...
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December 9, 2009
Is Israel more secure now?, by Edward Said | LRB
'The world is closing on us, pushing us through the last passage, and we tear off our limbs to pass through.' Thus Mahmoud Darwish, writing in the aftermath of the PLO's exit from Beirut in August 1982. 'Where shall we go after the last frontiers, where should the birds fly after the last sky'? Nineteen years later, what was happening then to the Palestinians in Lebanon is happening to them in Palestine. Since the al-Aqsa Intifada began last September, Palestinians have been sequestered by the Israeli Army in no fewer than 220 discontinuous little ghettoes, and subjected to intermittent curfews often lasting for weeks at a stretch. No one, young or old, sick or well, dying or pregnant, student or doctor, can move without spending hours at barricades, manned by rude and deliberately humiliating Israeli soldiers. As I write, two hundred Palestinians are unable to receive kidney dialysis because for 'security reasons' the Israeli military won't allow them to travel to medical centres. Have any of the innumerable members of the foreign media covering the conflict done a story about these brutalised young Israeli conscripts trained to punish Palestinian civilians as the main part of their military duty? I think not...
[We miss your voice - RIP]
Read more...
The Great Wall of Israel, by Ellen Cantarow and Tom Engelhardt | Antiwar
Try to imagine this: An American president visits Israel and in a speech given close to the vast "separation wall" Israel continues to build in part through Palestinian territory, says: "Mr. Netanyahu, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for Israel and the region, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Netanyahu, open this gate! Mr. Netanyahu, tear down this wall!" ..
A Wolfowitz in Sheep's Clothing, by Maidhc Ó Cathail | Media Monitors Network
Paul Wolfowitz, the chief architect of the Iraq War, now wants the United States to help refugees. No, not the estimated 4.8 million Iraqis forced to flee their homes in a war he and other pro-Israeli neoconservatives planned as far back as 1992. Instead, the unlikely humanitarian, having brought "democracy" to the Iraqi people in 2003, has turned his attention this year to "the plight of North Korean refugees in China."...
Read more...
GRITtv on Occupation and Blowback From Latin America to Afghanistan (Video)
GRITtv host Laura Flanders looks at the effects of past US intervention in Latin America and through interviews connects it to the current situations in Afghanistan and Iraq. On this topic Flanders interviews: Christian Parenti of the Nation, Rev. Luis Barrios, chair of the Department of Latin American & Latina/o Studies at John Jay College in New York, Bill Quigley, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and independent journalist Jeremy Scahill...
Watch...
Refocus the debate on the dispossession, by Karen AbuZayd | Electronic Intifada
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The Matrix of Control: from Israel to the World | Palestine Think Tank
An interesting interview with the international coordinator of Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) Jimmy Johnson speaking about the extension of Israel's matrix of control internationally, from Palestine outward...
Watch...
Arundhati Roy Disturbs Democratic Daydreaming | Palestine Chronicle
Arundhati Roy is an unusual Indian woman. Instead of acting the graceful upholder of traditional values, she goes on challenging the hard core of establishment thinking. Roy is India's leading commentator on such evils as militaristic imperialist capitalism, Hindu-supported genocide of Muslims, and dam disasters. In her latest book, Listening to Grasshoppers; Field Notes on Democracy, she hammers at perhaps the most central of all contemporary sacred pillars, i.e. that of democracy, which in her words "have metastasized into something dangerous"...
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At Leviev Store, Protesters Tell Business Leaders "No Business as Usual with Apartheid Israel" | Adalah-NY
25 New York City human rights advocates caught the Israel Business Leaders Delegation to the United States by surprise this morning with a noisy protest outside their "breakfast reception amidst the Leviev jewelry collection" at the Leviev store on Madison Avenue. Groups worldwide have conducted a successful campaign for the boycott of Leviev's companies due to their involvement in Israeli settlement construction in violation of international law, and human rights abuses in the diamond industry in Angola...
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New Academic Research: Anti-Semitism up, Islamophobia down, by Gilad Atzmon
One-quarter of Europeans believe that "Jews have too much influence" 31% agree that "Jews in general do not care about anything or anyone but their own kind." 45.7% of the Europeans somewhat or strongly agree that "Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians." About 37.4% agree with the following statement: "Considering Israel's policy, I can understand why people do not like Jews."...
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'The Freeze' is just another scene in Israel's masquerade, by Gideon Levy | Haaretz
Like every production, be it a flop or a hit, the future of this show will also be decided by the audience. In the meantime, as the first act shifts into high gear, the viewers are yawning. The government and the settlers are proud to introduce "The Freeze," a show in which both sides play - in quite unconvincing fashion - already scripted parts...
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Bilin teenager: "They arrested my father to discourage the struggle", by Jody McIntyre | Electronic Intifada
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A Christmas Guide: Washington's New Lebanon Policy, by Franklin Lamb | Counterpunch
...To many Lebanese, their new Prime Minister's openness and sports ethic, symbolizes a new and promising atmosphere at Lebanon's Grand Serail, also known as Government Palace, the Headquarters of the Prime Minister located a few blocks from Parliament. A positive and welcomed change from the tensions of the 2006-2007 'tent city' days in Riad Solh Square when the opposition and the Bush administration- backed Fuad Siniora government faced each other for more than a year,separated by the Lebanese army, the former glaring up at their adversaries from scores of tents and the latter peeking down from behind pulled back office curtains...
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Boycott of Ahava Dead Sea products makes an impact, by Adri Nieuwhof | Electronic Intifada
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Ramping up Afghanistan war to control Caspian oil and gas transport routes, by Jerry Mazza | Online Journal
..The 800-pound gorilla standing in the auditorium at West Point is still waiting for an answer to why Obama made his surge-speech for 30,000 more troops and $30 billion to pay for them. That gorilla wonders "why" Obama pitched so hard for the US to stay and surge through Afghanistan and Pakistan. The reasons given were that the Afghanistan Taliban and Al Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden were the people that attacked us on 9/11, which was an iteration of George W. Bush's reasons for the War on Terror. They are as phony now as the day Bush promised to smoke out Bin Laden...
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Israel to build wall on border with Egypt | Palestine Telegraph
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to build a wall on the border with Egypt to prevent African migrants from changing Israel's racial balance. Netanyahu believes building a wall alongthe southern borders with Egypt is an "unavoidable and strategic" measure, which Tel Aviv must take to ensure that thousands of migrants do not cross over from Africa...
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'The world is closing on us, pushing us through the last passage, and we tear off our limbs to pass through.' Thus Mahmoud Darwish, writing in the aftermath of the PLO's exit from Beirut in August 1982. 'Where shall we go after the last frontiers, where should the birds fly after the last sky'? Nineteen years later, what was happening then to the Palestinians in Lebanon is happening to them in Palestine. Since the al-Aqsa Intifada began last September, Palestinians have been sequestered by the Israeli Army in no fewer than 220 discontinuous little ghettoes, and subjected to intermittent curfews often lasting for weeks at a stretch. No one, young or old, sick or well, dying or pregnant, student or doctor, can move without spending hours at barricades, manned by rude and deliberately humiliating Israeli soldiers. As I write, two hundred Palestinians are unable to receive kidney dialysis because for 'security reasons' the Israeli military won't allow them to travel to medical centres. Have any of the innumerable members of the foreign media covering the conflict done a story about these brutalised young Israeli conscripts trained to punish Palestinian civilians as the main part of their military duty? I think not...
[We miss your voice - RIP]
Read more...
The Great Wall of Israel, by Ellen Cantarow and Tom Engelhardt | Antiwar
Try to imagine this: An American president visits Israel and in a speech given close to the vast "separation wall" Israel continues to build in part through Palestinian territory, says: "Mr. Netanyahu, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for Israel and the region, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Netanyahu, open this gate! Mr. Netanyahu, tear down this wall!" ..
[Getting the ghetto entirely hermetically sealed, bristling withhorrendous armament, won't help - Robert Frost, when he wrote Good Walls Make Good Neighbors, wasn't talking about stolen land, with those expropriated just on the other side]
Read more...A Wolfowitz in Sheep's Clothing, by Maidhc Ó Cathail | Media Monitors Network
Paul Wolfowitz, the chief architect of the Iraq War, now wants the United States to help refugees. No, not the estimated 4.8 million Iraqis forced to flee their homes in a war he and other pro-Israeli neoconservatives planned as far back as 1992. Instead, the unlikely humanitarian, having brought "democracy" to the Iraqi people in 2003, has turned his attention this year to "the plight of North Korean refugees in China."...
Read more...
GRITtv on Occupation and Blowback From Latin America to Afghanistan (Video)
GRITtv host Laura Flanders looks at the effects of past US intervention in Latin America and through interviews connects it to the current situations in Afghanistan and Iraq. On this topic Flanders interviews: Christian Parenti of the Nation, Rev. Luis Barrios, chair of the Department of Latin American & Latina/o Studies at John Jay College in New York, Bill Quigley, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and independent journalist Jeremy Scahill...
Watch...
Refocus the debate on the dispossession, by Karen AbuZayd | Electronic Intifada
The 60th anniversary of UNRWA, which provides aid to Palestinian refugees, is a regrettable one.
Sixty years ago today the United Nations General Assembly voted into existence a temporary body known as UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. UNRWA's task was to deal with the humanitarian consequences of the dispossession of some three quarters of a million Palestine refugees forced by the 1948 Middle East War to abandon their homes and flee their ancestral lands. Just two decades later, the 1967 war generated another spasm of violence and forced displacement, culminating in the occupation of Palestinian territory. Today, anguished exile remains the lot of Palestinians and Palestine refugees. The occupation of Palestinian land persists, there is no Palestinian state and the human rights and fundamental freedoms to which Palestinians are entitled under international law do not exist...Read more...
The Matrix of Control: from Israel to the World | Palestine Think Tank
An interesting interview with the international coordinator of Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) Jimmy Johnson speaking about the extension of Israel's matrix of control internationally, from Palestine outward...
Watch...
Arundhati Roy Disturbs Democratic Daydreaming | Palestine Chronicle
Arundhati Roy is an unusual Indian woman. Instead of acting the graceful upholder of traditional values, she goes on challenging the hard core of establishment thinking. Roy is India's leading commentator on such evils as militaristic imperialist capitalism, Hindu-supported genocide of Muslims, and dam disasters. In her latest book, Listening to Grasshoppers; Field Notes on Democracy, she hammers at perhaps the most central of all contemporary sacred pillars, i.e. that of democracy, which in her words "have metastasized into something dangerous"...
Read more...
At Leviev Store, Protesters Tell Business Leaders "No Business as Usual with Apartheid Israel" | Adalah-NY
25 New York City human rights advocates caught the Israel Business Leaders Delegation to the United States by surprise this morning with a noisy protest outside their "breakfast reception amidst the Leviev jewelry collection" at the Leviev store on Madison Avenue. Groups worldwide have conducted a successful campaign for the boycott of Leviev's companies due to their involvement in Israeli settlement construction in violation of international law, and human rights abuses in the diamond industry in Angola...
Read more...
New Academic Research: Anti-Semitism up, Islamophobia down, by Gilad Atzmon
One-quarter of Europeans believe that "Jews have too much influence" 31% agree that "Jews in general do not care about anything or anyone but their own kind." 45.7% of the Europeans somewhat or strongly agree that "Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians." About 37.4% agree with the following statement: "Considering Israel's policy, I can understand why people do not like Jews."...
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'The Freeze' is just another scene in Israel's masquerade, by Gideon Levy | Haaretz
Like every production, be it a flop or a hit, the future of this show will also be decided by the audience. In the meantime, as the first act shifts into high gear, the viewers are yawning. The government and the settlers are proud to introduce "The Freeze," a show in which both sides play - in quite unconvincing fashion - already scripted parts...
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Bilin teenager: "They arrested my father to discourage the struggle", by Jody McIntyre | Electronic Intifada
Adeeb Abu Rahme during a protest against the wall in Bilin.
The end of November marked the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, a time to see family and friends and for people to eat together. But for many Palestinians, the Eid was not so festive. Rajaa Abu Rahmah, aged 19, only has one wish this holiday -- to see her father freed from prison...Read more...
A Christmas Guide: Washington's New Lebanon Policy, by Franklin Lamb | Counterpunch
...To many Lebanese, their new Prime Minister's openness and sports ethic, symbolizes a new and promising atmosphere at Lebanon's Grand Serail, also known as Government Palace, the Headquarters of the Prime Minister located a few blocks from Parliament. A positive and welcomed change from the tensions of the 2006-2007 'tent city' days in Riad Solh Square when the opposition and the Bush administration- backed Fuad Siniora government faced each other for more than a year,separated by the Lebanese army, the former glaring up at their adversaries from scores of tents and the latter peeking down from behind pulled back office curtains...
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Boycott of Ahava Dead Sea products makes an impact, by Adri Nieuwhof | Electronic Intifada
Bathrobe brigades in Amsterdam informing people about the dirty secrets
of Ahava beauty products in front of a store that sells the product.
The international campaign to boycott Ahava beauty products has recently won the support of a Dutch parliamentarian and an Israeli peace group. During the past few months, activists in Canada, the UK, Ireland, Israel, the United States and the Netherlands have campaigned against the sale of Ahava products because of the company's complicity in the Israeli occupation...of Ahava beauty products in front of a store that sells the product.
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Ramping up Afghanistan war to control Caspian oil and gas transport routes, by Jerry Mazza | Online Journal
..The 800-pound gorilla standing in the auditorium at West Point is still waiting for an answer to why Obama made his surge-speech for 30,000 more troops and $30 billion to pay for them. That gorilla wonders "why" Obama pitched so hard for the US to stay and surge through Afghanistan and Pakistan. The reasons given were that the Afghanistan Taliban and Al Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden were the people that attacked us on 9/11, which was an iteration of George W. Bush's reasons for the War on Terror. They are as phony now as the day Bush promised to smoke out Bin Laden...
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Israel to build wall on border with Egypt | Palestine Telegraph
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to build a wall on the border with Egypt to prevent African migrants from changing Israel's racial balance. Netanyahu believes building a wall alongthe southern borders with Egypt is an "unavoidable and strategic" measure, which Tel Aviv must take to ensure that thousands of migrants do not cross over from Africa...
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Galloway urges Muslims to help lift Gaza blockade | Press TV
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British Member of Parliament George Galloway
A British lawmaker has called on Muslims and all freedom-seeking people across the world to make efforts to lift blockades on the Gaza Strip and help the oppressed Palestinians. People in Gaza are in dire need of food, medicine and fuel...He strongly criticized Western countries and the British government for providing all-out support for Israel and said in the absence of the West support for the Palestinian people, Muslims are duty-bound to help them. The British government regards itself as the closest ally of Israel while most British people oppose Israel's crimes and have expressed their sympathy with the oppressed Palestinian people, the lawmaker said... Read more...
Savvy to a Fault: Coming to Terms With Imperial Power, by Chris Floyd | Empire Burlesque
To me, this quote from Thoreau expresses the only rational, moral and humane stance that a citizen can take toward the vast and brutal machinery of the American imperial state in our time. The crimes of this state are monstrous, and mounting. But what is worse is that these crimes are not aberrations; they are the very essence of the system -- they are its goal, its product, its lifeblood...
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"How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it." - Henry David Thoreau
To me, this quote from Thoreau expresses the only rational, moral and humane stance that a citizen can take toward the vast and brutal machinery of the American imperial state in our time. The crimes of this state are monstrous, and mounting. But what is worse is that these crimes are not aberrations; they are the very essence of the system -- they are its goal, its product, its lifeblood...
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Preaching peace, flexing muscle, Eric Margolis | Toronto Sun
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America's 'surge' may only expand, intensify and prolong the Afghan conflict
Obama faced the choice between guns (Afghanistan) or butter (his national health plan). The Nobel Peace Prize winner chose guns. As expected, Obama will rush 30,000 new troops into the Afghan quagmire and arm-twist reluctant allies to contribute more token forces. Confusingly, Obama promised some of the 100,000 U.S. garrison will begin withdrawing in 2011. The president insisted his objective remains destroying al-Qaida. But al-Qaida barely exists in Afghanistan. Only a handful remain in Pakistan. His real target may be Pakistan. Obama's plan mirrors the Bush administration's Iraq "surge" that candidate Obama sharply criticized. The Soviets also tried the same surge tactic during their Afghan occupation...Read more...
Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends
Sol Metz and Henry Herskovitz first traveled to Palestine in 2002. Shocked at the treatment decent Palestinians were receiving at the hands of Zionist army, and impressed with the decency, courage and humanity of the Palestinian people, both men returned to Ann Arbor desirous of telling their stories. Henry had meetings with Rabbi Rob Dobrusin of Beth Israel Congregation, Rabbi Bob Levy of Temple Beth Emeth, and Rabbi Aharon Goldstein of Chabad House. All three Rabbis denied Henry access to their congregation at a time of their choosing. Frustrated, Henry gathered Jewish and non-Jewish activists in the Fall of 2003, and decided to take our message to the congregants. Beth Israel was selected (a) because their name literally means “House of Israel”, and (b) this was Henry’s synagogue of choice for 15 years attending Yom Kippur services...
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Sol Metz and Henry Herskovitz first traveled to Palestine in 2002. Shocked at the treatment decent Palestinians were receiving at the hands of Zionist army, and impressed with the decency, courage and humanity of the Palestinian people, both men returned to Ann Arbor desirous of telling their stories. Henry had meetings with Rabbi Rob Dobrusin of Beth Israel Congregation, Rabbi Bob Levy of Temple Beth Emeth, and Rabbi Aharon Goldstein of Chabad House. All three Rabbis denied Henry access to their congregation at a time of their choosing. Frustrated, Henry gathered Jewish and non-Jewish activists in the Fall of 2003, and decided to take our message to the congregants. Beth Israel was selected (a) because their name literally means “House of Israel”, and (b) this was Henry’s synagogue of choice for 15 years attending Yom Kippur services...
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Jews Against Zionism, by Stephen Lendman
They're numerous, outspoken, and range from secular to orthodox to one group calling itself "True Torah Jews Against Zionism." They believe that "traditional" Jews don't support Zionism, an ideology they call "contrary to Jewish law and beliefs and the teachings of the Holy Torah."...Torah Jewry says that believing Zionism protects Jews is "probably the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the Jewish People" and accuses Zionists of fostering global anti-Semitism. "Indeed, hatred of Jews and Jewish suffering is the oxygen of the Zionist movement, and from the very beginning has been (used) to deliberately incite hatred to justify the existence of the Zionist state - this is, of course, Machiavellianism raised to the highest order."...
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Israel Slips the Snare of ‘Particular Concern’, by Kevin Mink | Antiwar
Leave it to the State Department to soft-pedal religious extremism in the Middle East. Oh, not in, say, Iran or Saudi Arabia. In the most recent edition of the department’s annual Report on International Religious Freedom, both are designated "Countries of Particular Concern," members of a select group chastised for their extreme intolerance. Which is as it should be. But where is State’s acknowledgment of the happenings – from the absurd to the inhumane – in another, nearby country, where religious chauvinism has lately reached depths equaling those among any of its neighbors? I’m talking, of course, about the state of Israel – a place unfit, it seems, for any "particular concern" from Hillary & Co...
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They're numerous, outspoken, and range from secular to orthodox to one group calling itself "True Torah Jews Against Zionism." They believe that "traditional" Jews don't support Zionism, an ideology they call "contrary to Jewish law and beliefs and the teachings of the Holy Torah."...Torah Jewry says that believing Zionism protects Jews is "probably the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the Jewish People" and accuses Zionists of fostering global anti-Semitism. "Indeed, hatred of Jews and Jewish suffering is the oxygen of the Zionist movement, and from the very beginning has been (used) to deliberately incite hatred to justify the existence of the Zionist state - this is, of course, Machiavellianism raised to the highest order."...
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Israel Slips the Snare of ‘Particular Concern’, by Kevin Mink | Antiwar
Leave it to the State Department to soft-pedal religious extremism in the Middle East. Oh, not in, say, Iran or Saudi Arabia. In the most recent edition of the department’s annual Report on International Religious Freedom, both are designated "Countries of Particular Concern," members of a select group chastised for their extreme intolerance. Which is as it should be. But where is State’s acknowledgment of the happenings – from the absurd to the inhumane – in another, nearby country, where religious chauvinism has lately reached depths equaling those among any of its neighbors? I’m talking, of course, about the state of Israel – a place unfit, it seems, for any "particular concern" from Hillary & Co...
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A Strategy Revolution: A Game Theory Approach to Palestinian Resistance, by Mary Rizzo | Palestine Think Tank
Anyone who has witnessed the events in Palestine/Israel has been able to notice a cycle that repeats itself continually between the two groups of people. It can be summed up in two words: action/reaction. Sometimes the action is carried out to elicit a reaction (which we can define then as a provocation). A provocation has as its goal to incite or irritate another, sometimes it can be the prelude to the “true action” and sometimes it is there just to demonstrate something...
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US Foreign Policy and the Cult of ‘Expertise’, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar
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Anyone who has witnessed the events in Palestine/Israel has been able to notice a cycle that repeats itself continually between the two groups of people. It can be summed up in two words: action/reaction. Sometimes the action is carried out to elicit a reaction (which we can define then as a provocation). A provocation has as its goal to incite or irritate another, sometimes it can be the prelude to the “true action” and sometimes it is there just to demonstrate something...
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US Foreign Policy and the Cult of ‘Expertise’, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar
Americans want our rulers to mind their own business abroad – and good luck with that!
The news that Americans want the U.S. government to mind its own business when it comes to foreign affairs has our Washington elite in a panic. The explanatory notes accompanying a new Pew poll [.pdf] describe the "rise in isolationist sentiment" that started during George W. Bush’s second term and continues in the age of Obama. The agonized hand-wringing is all too apparent in the use of the "isolationist" epithet and even in the way the question was asked: should the U.S. "mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own"? Forty-nine percent – the highest proportion "in nearly half a century of polling" – answered yes. And that’s not all: a gob-smacking 76 percent agreed the U.S. should "concentrate more on our own national problems and building up our strength and prosperity here at home," as opposed to "think[ing] in international terms."...Read more...
Surprising Results of CFR Survey: What the U.S. Elite Really Thinks About Israel, by Jeffrey Blankfort | Counterpunch
The Council on Foreign Relations is always near the top of the Left's list of bogeymen that stand accused of pulling the strings of US foreign policy. It is right up there with the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission, right? Wrong. If that was the case, those arguing that US support for Israel is based on it being a "strategic asset" will have a hard time explaining a Pew Research Center survey on America's Place in the World, taken of 642 CFR members between October 2 and November 16. The Pew poll not only reveals that the overwhelming majority, two-thirds of the members of this elite foreign policy institution, believes that the United States has gone overboard in favoring Israel, it doesn't consider Israel to have have much importance to the US in the first place...
[If that's true, then how do they get away with it? I guess that discretion is the better part of valor - you don't mess with the mafia - the Editor]
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HRW reports Afghan women in dire straits | Press TV
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Shattering Israel's image of 'democracy', by Ben White | | The Guardian
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Is the Government Out of Money or is Obama Out of His Mind?: The Problem is Lack of Jobs, Not Lack of Resources, Marshall Auerback | Counterpunch
The government of the largest economy has run short of money. At least that is what Mr. Obama sought to convey at his “jobs summit” last week. The President said he would entertain “every demonstrably good idea” for creating jobs, but he cautioned that “our resources are limited.” What a confidence inspiring notion! How can we possibly solve the problem of unemployment in these circumstances? The preposterousness of the statement is only matched by the paucity of economic understanding that it manifests. For the hundredth time, Mr. President, a government which issues its own sovereign currency cannot go broke. It cannot “run out of dollars”...
Trial and Error, by Nebojsa Malic | Antiwar
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The Council on Foreign Relations is always near the top of the Left's list of bogeymen that stand accused of pulling the strings of US foreign policy. It is right up there with the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission, right? Wrong. If that was the case, those arguing that US support for Israel is based on it being a "strategic asset" will have a hard time explaining a Pew Research Center survey on America's Place in the World, taken of 642 CFR members between October 2 and November 16. The Pew poll not only reveals that the overwhelming majority, two-thirds of the members of this elite foreign policy institution, believes that the United States has gone overboard in favoring Israel, it doesn't consider Israel to have have much importance to the US in the first place...
[If that's true, then how do they get away with it? I guess that discretion is the better part of valor - you don't mess with the mafia - the Editor]
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HRW reports Afghan women in dire straits | Press TV
A rights group says the situation for women in Afghanistan is dismal
A new Human Rights Watch report has criticized Afghanistan's government for failing to protect women from crimes such as rape and murder. "Women will not seek help because of their fears of police abuse and corruption, or their fears of retaliation by perpetrators of violence," said the report, which was published Monday. The situation for women in Afghanistan is dismal in every area, according to the report that is based on 120 interviews from different provinces...Read more...
Shattering Israel's image of 'democracy', by Ben White | | The Guardian
In the Negev, an area targeted for so-called 'development', lies the Israel that its government does not want to be seen
A struggle over land, home demolitions, and an Israeli government working with Jewish agencies to "develop" the land for the benefit of one group at the expense of another. It could be a picture of the illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, but in fact, it's inside Israel – in the Negev...Read more...
Is the Government Out of Money or is Obama Out of His Mind?: The Problem is Lack of Jobs, Not Lack of Resources, Marshall Auerback | Counterpunch
The government of the largest economy has run short of money. At least that is what Mr. Obama sought to convey at his “jobs summit” last week. The President said he would entertain “every demonstrably good idea” for creating jobs, but he cautioned that “our resources are limited.” What a confidence inspiring notion! How can we possibly solve the problem of unemployment in these circumstances? The preposterousness of the statement is only matched by the paucity of economic understanding that it manifests. For the hundredth time, Mr. President, a government which issues its own sovereign currency cannot go broke. It cannot “run out of dollars”...
[Uncle Tom Obama will say and do whatever he's told to by his handlers. It's an oddity of our time that the representatives of the zionist-military-industrial-congressional-media mafia chose to have an articulate, subservient black man act as the front guy for USA Inc. - the Editor]
Read more...Trial and Error, by Nebojsa Malic | Antiwar
World Court Ponders Kosovo "Independence"
In October 2008, the government in Belgrade gloated for one whole day because the UN General Assembly allowed it to request an advisory opinion from the World Court (International Court of Justice) concerning the "independence" of its occupied province of Kosovo. Only Albania and three South Pacific states joined the U.S. in opposing the request. That may have been slightly embarrassing for Washington, but did absolutely nothing to derail its pet project in the Balkans...Read more...
December 7, 2009
You Want to Understand Anti-Semitism? Just Look in the Mirror, by Gilad Atzmon
Benjamin Weinthal, the Jerusalem Post’s correspondent in Berlin wondered earlier this week whether Germany has learned from its Nazi history? The question is in itself very intriguing. Considering its past, one may expect Germany to oppose any form of racist, discriminatory, expansionist and nationalist ideology. Bearing in mind Israelis are considered the ‘Nazis of our time’ by more than just a few commentators, one may expect the Germans to advise the Israelis what not to do. One may also expect Germany to stand by the Palestinians for the Palestinians are, de facto, the last victims of Hitler...
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All Too Familiar on Afghanistan, by Laura Flanders | The Nation
The President talked about America's enduring values again at West Point Tuesday night, and then he laid them out, a whole lot of values one can only wish would endure a little less. The President began his address to the nation on Afghanistan in the traditional style of his predecessor, setting the tone for troop deployments by recalling 9-11 and terror and fright. Then came the retelling of the traditional Al Qaeda story, the one that omits any mention of Saudi Arabia or Israeli occupation or post-Gulf War US bases -- in fact any mention of politics...
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Benjamin Weinthal, the Jerusalem Post’s correspondent in Berlin wondered earlier this week whether Germany has learned from its Nazi history? The question is in itself very intriguing. Considering its past, one may expect Germany to oppose any form of racist, discriminatory, expansionist and nationalist ideology. Bearing in mind Israelis are considered the ‘Nazis of our time’ by more than just a few commentators, one may expect the Germans to advise the Israelis what not to do. One may also expect Germany to stand by the Palestinians for the Palestinians are, de facto, the last victims of Hitler...
All Too Familiar on Afghanistan, by Laura Flanders | The Nation
The President talked about America's enduring values again at West Point Tuesday night, and then he laid them out, a whole lot of values one can only wish would endure a little less. The President began his address to the nation on Afghanistan in the traditional style of his predecessor, setting the tone for troop deployments by recalling 9-11 and terror and fright. Then came the retelling of the traditional Al Qaeda story, the one that omits any mention of Saudi Arabia or Israeli occupation or post-Gulf War US bases -- in fact any mention of politics...
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UN Plan: World Religion and Poverty For Americans, by Rollin Stearns | Henry Makow
In the 1970s my wife and I lived in a Yoga community, or ashram, on thirty acres in rural Connecticut. It was quiet and peaceful, in many ways idyllic. We grew most of our own food. We had some cottage industries and published a magazine and some books. And we lived very simply. There were about 40 of us, mostly young, from widely varied backgrounds. Some of us were married, but most were single, the men and women living on separate floors of the old mansion where we lived. We were a little, self-sufficient world, or so it seemed. But one way we were not self-sufficient (and this seemed good to us) is spiritually. We had a guru, a Hindu swami named Satchidananda. With a flowing orange robe and a flowing beard, which was growing gray, he was like a father and we were his kids. There was a great feeling of security in his presence. If we had questions, personal or moral or spiritual, he seemed to have the answers. I don't say this sarcastically. He was, in fact, a wise and benevolent figure. Although he never made this claim for himself, we all believed he was "enlightened," which in the Hindu view is something akin to being God...
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Escape from Israel, Escape from Error, by Ro'i Tov - book review by Leland Lehrman
When a person's heart sets on the road to understanding, acknowledges the need to abandon imperial doctrine, and internalizes the moral filter that instinctively guides us from truth to good policy, saints and angels jump from cars and airplanes to lend us the wings that carry us from error. So it was, that fateful day - as I planted Kucinich for President signs on a street corner - that a former military intelligence officer leaped from his Bronco to congratulate me on my choice of candidate and ask if I was aware of the problems with the official story of 9/11...
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In the 1970s my wife and I lived in a Yoga community, or ashram, on thirty acres in rural Connecticut. It was quiet and peaceful, in many ways idyllic. We grew most of our own food. We had some cottage industries and published a magazine and some books. And we lived very simply. There were about 40 of us, mostly young, from widely varied backgrounds. Some of us were married, but most were single, the men and women living on separate floors of the old mansion where we lived. We were a little, self-sufficient world, or so it seemed. But one way we were not self-sufficient (and this seemed good to us) is spiritually. We had a guru, a Hindu swami named Satchidananda. With a flowing orange robe and a flowing beard, which was growing gray, he was like a father and we were his kids. There was a great feeling of security in his presence. If we had questions, personal or moral or spiritual, he seemed to have the answers. I don't say this sarcastically. He was, in fact, a wise and benevolent figure. Although he never made this claim for himself, we all believed he was "enlightened," which in the Hindu view is something akin to being God...
Read more...
Escape from Israel, Escape from Error, by Ro'i Tov - book review by Leland Lehrman
When a person's heart sets on the road to understanding, acknowledges the need to abandon imperial doctrine, and internalizes the moral filter that instinctively guides us from truth to good policy, saints and angels jump from cars and airplanes to lend us the wings that carry us from error. So it was, that fateful day - as I planted Kucinich for President signs on a street corner - that a former military intelligence officer leaped from his Bronco to congratulate me on my choice of candidate and ask if I was aware of the problems with the official story of 9/11...
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Height of Kitsch: Thanks Germany, But No Thanks, by Uri Avnery | Palestine Chronicle
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The anti-Semites have become anti-Muslims; same lady in a different robe
It would have been the epitome of political kitsch. Binyamin Netanyahu and ten of his ministers were to hold a joint meeting with Angela Merkel and ten members of the German cabinet. What for? To demonstrate Germany’s love for Israel. At the last moment, Netanyahu announced that he was sick, and the meeting was canceled. I imagine that Netanyahu was not very sorry about this. What did he need it for? In any case the Israeli government is already getting from Germany anything it wants...Read more...
Yes to Gravestones - No to Goldstone's, by Mohamed Khodr | Palestine Think Tank
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The Choice for Israel: Civil war for peace or the end of Zionism?, by Alan Hart | Intifada Palestine
I have been writing about what must happen in America if there is to be more than a snowball’s chance in hell of peace on the basis of an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians. (The main point I’ve been making is that unless and until enough Americans are made aware of the truth of history, no American president will have the space to break the Zionist lobby’s stranglehold on Congress). In this article, with thanks to an analysis by Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell, I’m looking at what must happen in Israel if the countdown to catastrophe is to be stopped. Polish-born Sternhell is one of the world’s leading experts on fascism. To my knowledge he has never said so, but I would be surprised if he didn’t have moments when he asked himself if he was witnessing the emergence of it, fascism, in Israel. In his work the Founding Myths of Israel, he wrote that the conquest of 1967 had “a strong flavour of imperial expansionism”...
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The Proclamation Of An Independent Palestine: Long Live Palestine, Long live the Palestinians
"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed".
–Martin Luther King, Jr.
It's time to declare your Palestinian State independently of what Israel, America or the world will do. Israel can't do more than it's already done to you for 61 years. What are they going to do? Occupy you, imprison you, bomb you, murder your children, evict you from your homes and bulldoze them to rubble, destroy your schools, hospitals, clinics, ambulances, mosques and churches; burn your olive farms, deprive you of food, water, and medicines, humiliate and beat you at checkpoints, constantly annex your land for illegal, violent, hate filled settlers; prevent you from praying at Al Aqsa mosque, ethnically cleanse you from Jerusalem, prevent you from visiting your families, deny you residency permits and employment, prevent you from performing Hajj (Pilgrimage to Mecca), dishonor your women, turn off your electricity, use you as human shields—what more can they possibly do to you that they've not already done...–Martin Luther King, Jr.
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The Choice for Israel: Civil war for peace or the end of Zionism?, by Alan Hart | Intifada Palestine
I have been writing about what must happen in America if there is to be more than a snowball’s chance in hell of peace on the basis of an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians. (The main point I’ve been making is that unless and until enough Americans are made aware of the truth of history, no American president will have the space to break the Zionist lobby’s stranglehold on Congress). In this article, with thanks to an analysis by Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell, I’m looking at what must happen in Israel if the countdown to catastrophe is to be stopped. Polish-born Sternhell is one of the world’s leading experts on fascism. To my knowledge he has never said so, but I would be surprised if he didn’t have moments when he asked himself if he was witnessing the emergence of it, fascism, in Israel. In his work the Founding Myths of Israel, he wrote that the conquest of 1967 had “a strong flavour of imperial expansionism”...
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Palestinian Cyber Warfare for a Post Imperial America, by Bishop Donald Corder | Intifada-Palestine
Like a moat filled with waters populated by alligators, reptiles and Pro-Israeli lobbyist so are American political leaders separated from following the heart and will of the people. Death of the American soul requires Palestine and the rest of the world to challenge itself, to dig deeply within its own heart and find the courage to formulate new visions in the national paradigms. Ignoring the ever present and looming truths of this day’s realities will not serve us well; rather let us accept the sobering scenario and eventuality, “We Must Save Ourselves!” The mind of the global must evolve from despairing over how bad is the Zionist specter and rather formulate ways to mobilize our collective assets in the advancement of our own agendas...
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Like a moat filled with waters populated by alligators, reptiles and Pro-Israeli lobbyist so are American political leaders separated from following the heart and will of the people. Death of the American soul requires Palestine and the rest of the world to challenge itself, to dig deeply within its own heart and find the courage to formulate new visions in the national paradigms. Ignoring the ever present and looming truths of this day’s realities will not serve us well; rather let us accept the sobering scenario and eventuality, “We Must Save Ourselves!” The mind of the global must evolve from despairing over how bad is the Zionist specter and rather formulate ways to mobilize our collective assets in the advancement of our own agendas...
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Walled in by Myth and Deceit, by William A. Cook | Dissident Voice
Ben Gurion “…realized that the holy book could be made into a secular national text, serve as a central repository of ancient collective imagery, help forge the hundreds of thousands of new immigrants into a unified people, and tie the younger generation to the land.” – Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People, 108)
Of what possible significance has Sand’s comment today as America watches in utter disbelief and dismay the demise of the President of Change and Hope into an obsequious and obedient Golem of Israel, subservient to Netanyahu and Lieberman?..Read more...
Riz Khan Interviews Shlomo Sand - Changing perspectives on Israel (video)
Watch...
Obama delivers -- when it comes to war | International Journal of Socialist Renewal
When US President Barack Obama announced his plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan by sending 30,000 more troops to the war-torn country, he delivered on two campaign promises. The first was a campaign trail pledge to re-focus US military power on the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. This was mostly ignored by enthralled voters. The second was made more quietly to his many campaign donors in the defense industry. This promise was happily recognized by war hawks throughout Washington. The resulting troop surge into an already war-ravaged Afghanistan will lead to more of the same -- further Afghan civilian casualties, more dead US soldiers and the continuance of a military campaign in an unwinnable war. Good news for military contractors, bad news for the rest of us...
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It's All AIPAC of Lies, by Jim Traficant | American Free Press
American Israel Public Affairs Committee—AIPAC. The single most powerful lobby in the world. So powerful that Washington politicians carefully weigh each and every vote they cast based on the approval of this lobby. Yes, a foreign lobby has that much clout, power and control over American leaders and thus, the American people. AIPAC has become so overpowering that they have risen above government investigations and mainstream media scrutiny. So powerful that the following statement was NEVER reported in America’s newspapers, magazines, or electronic media: "Every time we do something you tell me that America will do this and America will do that. I want to tell you something very clear; don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it"...
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When US President Barack Obama announced his plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan by sending 30,000 more troops to the war-torn country, he delivered on two campaign promises. The first was a campaign trail pledge to re-focus US military power on the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. This was mostly ignored by enthralled voters. The second was made more quietly to his many campaign donors in the defense industry. This promise was happily recognized by war hawks throughout Washington. The resulting troop surge into an already war-ravaged Afghanistan will lead to more of the same -- further Afghan civilian casualties, more dead US soldiers and the continuance of a military campaign in an unwinnable war. Good news for military contractors, bad news for the rest of us...
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It's All AIPAC of Lies, by Jim Traficant | American Free Press
American Israel Public Affairs Committee—AIPAC. The single most powerful lobby in the world. So powerful that Washington politicians carefully weigh each and every vote they cast based on the approval of this lobby. Yes, a foreign lobby has that much clout, power and control over American leaders and thus, the American people. AIPAC has become so overpowering that they have risen above government investigations and mainstream media scrutiny. So powerful that the following statement was NEVER reported in America’s newspapers, magazines, or electronic media: "Every time we do something you tell me that America will do this and America will do that. I want to tell you something very clear; don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it"...
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Palestinian Reflections on American Political Ideology, by Dr. Haidar Eid | Palestine Chronicle
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Hezbollah manifesto and Hassan Nasrallah press conference | Vineyard of the Saker
These are important documents for the future of the Middle-East, in particular at a time when the Obama Administration is executing a major military escalation in Afghanistan and Pakistan and when the USraelian Empire is poised to strike at Iran. I encourage you to read these documents. I have received the full translation of the recently adopted Hezbollah Manifesto and a transcript of the subsequent press conference by Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. These are long documents and rather than posting them here I have made them available for download at this location:..
Read more...
Zionism - more than traditional colonialism and apartheid, by Lasse Wilhelmson | Rebel News
The Jewish colonisation of Palestine under the Zionist slogan "the land without people to the people without a land" started almost a hundred years ago and reached its first climax with the proclamation of The Jewish State of Israel in 1948. A second climax is now in the offing through the ongoing colonisation of the West Bank and Gaza. A Jewish state needs a substantial majority of Jews in the population. This has been insured by means of immigration, terror and expulsion of the native Palestine population. Jewish hegemony in Israel today is secured through a system of apartheid inherent in all aspects of Society, be it law, administration or religion. Israel lacks a constitution and fixed boarders, which is fully consistent with Zionism's call for continual expansion...
Read more...
Canada's Olympic Crackdown, by Amy Goodman | Truthdig
Going to Canada? You may be detained at the border and interrogated. I was, last week. I was heading from Seattle to give a talk at the Vancouver Public Library. My detention provoked outrage across Canada, making national news. It has serious implications for the freedom of the press in North America...
Read more...
Diplomacy That Will Live in Infamy, by James Bradley | NYT
Sixty-eight years ago tomorrow, Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. In the brutal Pacific war that would follow, millions of soldiers and civilians were killed. My father — one of the famous flag raisers on Iwo Jima — was among the young men who went off to the Pacific to fight for his country. So the war naturally fascinated me. But I always wondered, why did we fight in the Pacific? Yes, there was Pearl Harbor, but why did the Japanese attack us in the first place?
White phosphorus over Gaza
The question that begs for answers is why does America hate us Palestinians?
Dr Haidar Eid’s article “Palestinian Reflections on American Political Ideology” is a brilliant, powerful statement on the true condition of humankind and the world in which we live. The oppressed, persecuted and expendable peoples have known it for a long time, but now even people hit by the economic collapse are beginning to realise that regardless of skin colour, it is the adrenalin-inducing elements of dominance and privilege of the First World over the masses that are recklessly dooming us all. Thus, to whom can the Palestinians appeal when principles and lives are considered so cheap by our leaders drunk on power that they don’t lose a moment’s sleep when committing young men and women to illegal wars and barely blink at the carnage they wreak on other innocents? - Sonja Karkar, AFP The question that begs for answers is why does America hate us Palestinians?
Read more...
Hezbollah manifesto and Hassan Nasrallah press conference | Vineyard of the Saker
These are important documents for the future of the Middle-East, in particular at a time when the Obama Administration is executing a major military escalation in Afghanistan and Pakistan and when the USraelian Empire is poised to strike at Iran. I encourage you to read these documents. I have received the full translation of the recently adopted Hezbollah Manifesto and a transcript of the subsequent press conference by Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. These are long documents and rather than posting them here I have made them available for download at this location:..
Read more...
Zionism - more than traditional colonialism and apartheid, by Lasse Wilhelmson | Rebel News
The Jewish colonisation of Palestine under the Zionist slogan "the land without people to the people without a land" started almost a hundred years ago and reached its first climax with the proclamation of The Jewish State of Israel in 1948. A second climax is now in the offing through the ongoing colonisation of the West Bank and Gaza. A Jewish state needs a substantial majority of Jews in the population. This has been insured by means of immigration, terror and expulsion of the native Palestine population. Jewish hegemony in Israel today is secured through a system of apartheid inherent in all aspects of Society, be it law, administration or religion. Israel lacks a constitution and fixed boarders, which is fully consistent with Zionism's call for continual expansion...
Read more...
Canada's Olympic Crackdown, by Amy Goodman | Truthdig
Going to Canada? You may be detained at the border and interrogated. I was, last week. I was heading from Seattle to give a talk at the Vancouver Public Library. My detention provoked outrage across Canada, making national news. It has serious implications for the freedom of the press in North America...
Read more...
Diplomacy That Will Live in Infamy, by James Bradley | NYT
Sixty-eight years ago tomorrow, Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. In the brutal Pacific war that would follow, millions of soldiers and civilians were killed. My father — one of the famous flag raisers on Iwo Jima — was among the young men who went off to the Pacific to fight for his country. So the war naturally fascinated me. But I always wondered, why did we fight in the Pacific? Yes, there was Pearl Harbor, but why did the Japanese attack us in the first place?
[plus ca change, plus la meme chose]
Read more...December 5, 2009
EU: Israel illegally annexing Al-Quds | Press TV
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Letter from Mazin: A Day in Palestine
December 3, 2009 passes, just another day among 365 days of the year. But no day here is boring. I videotape at length (mostly for another project) but put a tiny bit on youtube to give you a visual to accompany this description since I am still experimenting with video productions but hopefully will get better with time. Anyway, here are some of the events and interactions
Read more...
An ultra-Orthodox Jew stands face-to-face with a Palestinian woman
who was evicted along with her family from their house by Israeli settlers
in the mostly Arab East Jerusalem Al-Quds neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
The European Union accuses Israel of actively pursuing the annexation of East Jerusalem Al-Quds, undermining hopes for peace with Palestinians. Diplomats in Brussels say an EU meeting on Monday is to likely to discuss the stalled Middle East peace process, which is continuously being obstructed by Israel... who was evicted along with her family from their house by Israeli settlers
in the mostly Arab East Jerusalem Al-Quds neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
Read more...
Letter from Mazin: A Day in Palestine
December 3, 2009 passes, just another day among 365 days of the year. But no day here is boring. I videotape at length (mostly for another project) but put a tiny bit on youtube to give you a visual to accompany this description since I am still experimenting with video productions but hopefully will get better with time. Anyway, here are some of the events and interactions
Read more...
Report finds new Israeli war doctrine targets civilians | Electronic Intifada
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) released today a new report which exposes the shifts in Israel's combat doctrine as evidenced in the prosecution of operation "Cast Lead" and from numerous public oral and written statements made by high ranking military officers and senior Israeli government officials...
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A War That Can't be Won: Pakistan Creates Its Own Enemy, by Muhammad Idrees Ahmad | Counterpunch
...With the inducement of aid dollars, Pakistan with its poorly equipped army is trying to achieve what the US and Nato have failed to accomplish in Afghanistan. But the longer the military operations continue the more regions are likely to slip from under its control as the numbers of the aggrieved multiply, the military stretches thin and vulnerabilities increase. Already the insurgency has spread to parts of Punjab. Yet a form of military metaphysics prevails among the Pakistani elite and western commentators, who continue to hope that militancy can be bombed out of existence. Anti-war voices are denounced as Taliban sympathisers...
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Press Release: Gaza Freedom March less than one month away | Electronic Intifada
The Gaza Freedom March that will take place in Gaza on 31 December is an historic initiative to break the siege that has imprisoned the 1.5 million people who live there. Conceived in the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and nonviolent resistance to injustice worldwide, the march will gather people from all over the world to march - hand in hand - with the people of Gaza to demand that the Israelis open the borders...
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Suleiman and Nasrallah's Clarion Call: Lebanon - an End to Sectarian Politics?, by Rannie Amiri | Counterpunch
...A clarion call has thus been issued for Lebanon to advance beyond its sectarian nature and adopt a political structure which eschews sectarianism and instead implement one based on equitable, and proportional, representation. It is time for Lebanon to embrace it...
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Editorial: The Value of Fear | Palestine Monitor
So far, the PLO's policy of negotiation hasn't brought
more than a symbolic number of prisoners home
"We do not negotiate with terrorists". The mantra has long been a cherished value of western democracies. In reality all the major powers have at some stage been lowered to discussions with militants, from Northern Ireland to Iraq. Now Israel seems on the verge of granting their fiercest enemies of Hamas a major coup with the mooted released of up to 1,000 prisoners. What message does this send?...more than a symbolic number of prisoners home
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Ideological Smokescreens: Obama and the Dying Empire, by Fran Shor | Counterpunch
Old habits die hard, especially imperialist ones. Imperial imperatives, whether economic, geopolitical, or ideological, persist because the ruling elites are dependent on them. In order to conceal imperialist objectives, presidents and other leaders of the US political class rely on the rhetoric of national security and America’s supposed benevolent global purpose...
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O=W, by William S. Lind | Antiwar
"O=W" is a bumper sticker beginning to show up on liberals’ cars. After the president’s speech Tuesday night at West Point, I suspect it will spread rapidly...It should not come as a surprise. America is now a one-party state. The one party is the Establishment party, which is also the war party. Unless you are willing to cheer permanent war for permanent peace, you cannot be a member of the Establishment...
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Obama Steals Bush’s Speechwriters, by Matthew Rothschild | The Progressive
If you closed your eyes during much of the President’s speech on Afghanistan Tuesday night and just listened to the words, you easily could have concluded that George W. Bush was still in the Oval Office. Or, at the very least, that Obama had stolen his speechwriters...
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quiet with the philosopher | In Gaza
After stopping in at the Jabaliya/Dawwar Zimmo Red Crescent office yesterday, to catch up with some of the bravest people I know -the medics- I went by Ibrahim's Gaza War cemetary. Run by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the cemetary grounds have been kept for over five decades by Ibrahim, and now by his sons. My reason for stopping by yesterday was to gather some information on gravestones for someone outside of Gaza. But actually, I just like the place, particularly Ibrahim. He's a mixed bag: a grandfather, a philosopher, a host -100% Palestinian-, enthusiastic like a child, a teacher.
Read more, view photos...
British pro-Israel Jewish newspaper launches attack on Middle East news website | Redress Information & Analysis
Read more...
Afghanistan and Elkhart, Indiana: The Twin Frauds of Obama, by Paul Craig Roberts | Counterpunch
Goldman Sachs senior executives are arming themselves with New York gun permits, according to Alice Schroeder on Bloomberg.com. The banksters “are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.” One can understand why the banksters are worried. The company, now known as Gold Sacks, has a large responsibility for the financial crisis and the fraudulent “securities” that wrecked the world economy and Americans’ pensions. A former Gold Sachs CEO had control of the US Treasury during the Bush regime from which he diverted $750 billion to bail out the banks, thus supplying them with free capital. Gold Sachs made $27,000 million during the first three quarters of 2009 and is paying out massive bonuses, leaving the busted taxpayers with the debt and interest charges...
Read more...
EU: Consider East Jerusalem As Capital of Palestine, by Mohamed Khodr | Palestine Think Tank
..Many of us search for an avenue, act, effort or voice to demand that Israel stop being treated as a separate nation on this planet, a nation above all divine and human laws, a nation that can get away with ethnic cleansing, murder, wars, invasions, genocides and war crimes without any accountability to the rest of humanity including you and me. If you seek such an avenue then here's the unique opportunity to do so....
Read more...
Imposing idiot sanctions on Iran is a direct route to war, by Simon Jenkins | The Guardian
Britain has no interest in bullying Iran over nuclear proliferation. The very trap that led to Iraq and Afghanistan looms again
What is the difference between Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran? The answer, future historians may relate, is none. At the dawn of the 21st century, all three states were ruled by nasty undemocratic regimes to which America and its allies took exception. Antagonism began with hectoring ostracism. This led to economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation and bloodcurdling threats of "other measures". Finally a pretext was drummed up for military intervention, for bombing, invasion, occupation and appalling destruction...
Read more...
The Israel Lobby Celebrates Espionage in New York, by Grant Smith | Antiwar
The recent sting operation against former NASA scientist Stewart Nozette involved an undercover FBI employee posing as Mossad agent. Meeting in the posh Mayflower hotel in Washington, the agent set up clandestine payments in exchange for highly classified information. Nozette began delivering requested classified national defense information believing it to be destined for Israel while confidentially assuring the FBI agent that he thought he was already spying for Israel. This allegedly occurred under Nozette's prior "consulting" contract with Israel Aerospace Industries, a major military contractor. Although the US has traditionally ignored, forgiven, or quashed investigations into Israeli espionage, the cost to America's national security and economy may now have pushed law enforcement agencies toward a tipping point. Ironically, this very week, the Israel lobby is celebrating in New York the biggest clandestine operation ever conducted against US industries and workers...
Read more...
Message to Teheran: Go, Man, Go!: Obama's Unjust Iran Policy, by Bill Christison | Counterpunch
It takes only two paragraphs to demonstrate the foolishness and utter injustice of President Obama's present policy toward Iran. In this world of nation-states, Iran has at least as much right to possess nuclear weapons as the far smaller Israel. The very existence, for over 40 years now, of Israeli nuclear weapons is almost certainly the dominant reason why Iran, while alleging the contrary, continues to move toward acquiring its own nuclear deterrent. If the U.S. president really wants to stop Iran from going nuclear, he has plenty of means and power to pressure Israel to dismantle its own nukes. He is simply unwilling to do so...
Read more...
Court appeal for men imprisoned for distributing Hoffman's satire | On the Contrary
In Britain, in Leeds Crown Court, on July 10, 2009, Simon Sheppard received a sentence of 4 years and 10 months and Stephen Whittle two years and four months. Mr. Sheppard's sentence comprised 12 months concurrent on three counts relating to distribution of Tales of the Holohoax, a satirical comic book by Michael Hoffman...
Read more...
Gilad Atzmon: "Ethics and morality are far more crucial than some UN decision" | The Vineyard of the Saker
It is a huge pleasure for me to share with you the transcript of a Q&A by email which I did recently with Gilad Atzmon. I first discovered Gilad the jazz musician years ago when I myself was still playing jazz guitar and only later did I learn of his political activism. Having since read as much of his writings as I could find, I now consider him to be one of the most intelligent, well-informed and insightful political activists ever. What I most love and respect in Gilad are his absolute commitment to the truth and his equally forceful determination to speak that truth to power; I can only begin to imagine the vitriolic hatred which Gilad elicits from the Zionist crazies which he relentlessly denounces...
Read more...
Coffee with Bradley Smith: Elie Wiesel, a ludicrously unreliable survivor |YouTube
Let's agree that one ideal of the university is to promote intellectual freedom, and one ideal of the professorial class is to teach students to honor it. Yet this is not true in Holocaust Studies. There, if students express doubt about "eyewitness" testimony, for example, even if it is demonstrably false, dishonorable or both, they understand they run the danger of being accused of being "hateful." Consider eyewitness testimony given by Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel...
Watch...
Desperate Obamanoids Cite al-CIA-duh to Justify Afghan Escalation, by Kurt Nimmo | Infowars
Read more...
Ron Paul: Obama Is Preparing for Perpetual War, by Steve Watson | PrisonPlanet
Read more...
A hero stands up to cowboys: Richard Colvin has demonstrated a rare level of integrity and courage, by Linda McQuaig | Straight Goods
In an inaugural address to 2,000 soldiers in the Ottawa Congress Centre in February 2005, Gen. Rick Hillier declared: "When Canadian troops go overseas, they expect sex." Within a split second, he corrected himself:"... success." It was clearly a slip of the tongue. But, according to someone who was there, it also fit the mood of the room. After years of feeling like an emasculated army of peacekeepers, Canadian soldiers finally had a real fighting man at their helm. No more girlie-man peacekeeping,boys! We're gonna make war!...
Read more...
After stopping in at the Jabaliya/Dawwar Zimmo Red Crescent office yesterday, to catch up with some of the bravest people I know -the medics- I went by Ibrahim's Gaza War cemetary. Run by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the cemetary grounds have been kept for over five decades by Ibrahim, and now by his sons. My reason for stopping by yesterday was to gather some information on gravestones for someone outside of Gaza. But actually, I just like the place, particularly Ibrahim. He's a mixed bag: a grandfather, a philosopher, a host -100% Palestinian-, enthusiastic like a child, a teacher.
Read more, view photos...
British pro-Israel Jewish newspaper launches attack on Middle East news website | Redress Information & Analysis
Redress Information & Analysis calls on its readers to support the Middle East Online website, which is facing a smear campaign led by the British pro-Israel newspaper, the Jewish Chronicle.
Something rather strange - or sinister - is happening at the British Jewish newspaper, the Jewish Chronicle. Over the past few days the Jewish Chronicle has begun to single out websites that criticize the State of Israel and its pernicious ideology, Zionism. This is rather odd, you might think, coming at a time when the world is beginning to wake up to the criminal, racist nature of the Jewish state and the fraudulent, underhand activities of its stooges and agents of influence around the world - the lies, the disinformation and the purchase of foreign politicians and media figures...Read more...
Afghanistan and Elkhart, Indiana: The Twin Frauds of Obama, by Paul Craig Roberts | Counterpunch
Goldman Sachs senior executives are arming themselves with New York gun permits, according to Alice Schroeder on Bloomberg.com. The banksters “are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.” One can understand why the banksters are worried. The company, now known as Gold Sacks, has a large responsibility for the financial crisis and the fraudulent “securities” that wrecked the world economy and Americans’ pensions. A former Gold Sachs CEO had control of the US Treasury during the Bush regime from which he diverted $750 billion to bail out the banks, thus supplying them with free capital. Gold Sachs made $27,000 million during the first three quarters of 2009 and is paying out massive bonuses, leaving the busted taxpayers with the debt and interest charges...
Read more...
EU: Consider East Jerusalem As Capital of Palestine, by Mohamed Khodr | Palestine Think Tank
..Many of us search for an avenue, act, effort or voice to demand that Israel stop being treated as a separate nation on this planet, a nation above all divine and human laws, a nation that can get away with ethnic cleansing, murder, wars, invasions, genocides and war crimes without any accountability to the rest of humanity including you and me. If you seek such an avenue then here's the unique opportunity to do so....
Read more...
Imposing idiot sanctions on Iran is a direct route to war, by Simon Jenkins | The Guardian
Britain has no interest in bullying Iran over nuclear proliferation. The very trap that led to Iraq and Afghanistan looms again
What is the difference between Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran? The answer, future historians may relate, is none. At the dawn of the 21st century, all three states were ruled by nasty undemocratic regimes to which America and its allies took exception. Antagonism began with hectoring ostracism. This led to economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation and bloodcurdling threats of "other measures". Finally a pretext was drummed up for military intervention, for bombing, invasion, occupation and appalling destruction...
Read more...
The Israel Lobby Celebrates Espionage in New York, by Grant Smith | Antiwar
The recent sting operation against former NASA scientist Stewart Nozette involved an undercover FBI employee posing as Mossad agent. Meeting in the posh Mayflower hotel in Washington, the agent set up clandestine payments in exchange for highly classified information. Nozette began delivering requested classified national defense information believing it to be destined for Israel while confidentially assuring the FBI agent that he thought he was already spying for Israel. This allegedly occurred under Nozette's prior "consulting" contract with Israel Aerospace Industries, a major military contractor. Although the US has traditionally ignored, forgiven, or quashed investigations into Israeli espionage, the cost to America's national security and economy may now have pushed law enforcement agencies toward a tipping point. Ironically, this very week, the Israel lobby is celebrating in New York the biggest clandestine operation ever conducted against US industries and workers...
Read more...
Message to Teheran: Go, Man, Go!: Obama's Unjust Iran Policy, by Bill Christison | Counterpunch
Read more...
Court appeal for men imprisoned for distributing Hoffman's satire | On the Contrary
In Britain, in Leeds Crown Court, on July 10, 2009, Simon Sheppard received a sentence of 4 years and 10 months and Stephen Whittle two years and four months. Mr. Sheppard's sentence comprised 12 months concurrent on three counts relating to distribution of Tales of the Holohoax, a satirical comic book by Michael Hoffman...
Read more...
Gilad Atzmon: "Ethics and morality are far more crucial than some UN decision" | The Vineyard of the Saker
It is a huge pleasure for me to share with you the transcript of a Q&A by email which I did recently with Gilad Atzmon. I first discovered Gilad the jazz musician years ago when I myself was still playing jazz guitar and only later did I learn of his political activism. Having since read as much of his writings as I could find, I now consider him to be one of the most intelligent, well-informed and insightful political activists ever. What I most love and respect in Gilad are his absolute commitment to the truth and his equally forceful determination to speak that truth to power; I can only begin to imagine the vitriolic hatred which Gilad elicits from the Zionist crazies which he relentlessly denounces...
Read more...
Coffee with Bradley Smith: Elie Wiesel, a ludicrously unreliable survivor |YouTube
Let's agree that one ideal of the university is to promote intellectual freedom, and one ideal of the professorial class is to teach students to honor it. Yet this is not true in Holocaust Studies. There, if students express doubt about "eyewitness" testimony, for example, even if it is demonstrably false, dishonorable or both, they understand they run the danger of being accused of being "hateful." Consider eyewitness testimony given by Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel...
Watch...
Desperate Obamanoids Cite al-CIA-duh to Justify Afghan Escalation, by Kurt Nimmo | Infowars
Clinton and Gates dredge up al-CIA-duh during Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony on Capitol Hill
It's another example there is absolutely no difference between the Bush and Obama administrations, the lamentations of Dick Cheney not withstanding.Bilderberg doorstop and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Bush era leftover Secretary of War and Destruction Robert Gates have mounted a corporate media defense campaign in favor of Obama's widely condemned mass murder escalation in Afghanistan...Read more...
Ron Paul: Obama Is Preparing for Perpetual War, by Steve Watson | PrisonPlanet
"Congressman addresses warmongers, directly asks Gates, Clinton if they support Bush doctrine of "preventive war"
In comments before the House and during a televised interview yesterday,Congressman Ron Paul pointed out that with the decision to increase troop presence in Afghanistan and into Pakistan, president Obama is preparing to continue on the path of "perpetual war for perpetual peace"...Read more...
A hero stands up to cowboys: Richard Colvin has demonstrated a rare level of integrity and courage, by Linda McQuaig | Straight Goods
In an inaugural address to 2,000 soldiers in the Ottawa Congress Centre in February 2005, Gen. Rick Hillier declared: "When Canadian troops go overseas, they expect sex." Within a split second, he corrected himself:"... success." It was clearly a slip of the tongue. But, according to someone who was there, it also fit the mood of the room. After years of feeling like an emasculated army of peacekeepers, Canadian soldiers finally had a real fighting man at their helm. No more girlie-man peacekeeping,boys! We're gonna make war!...
Read more...
December 3, 2009
Accessory vs. Perpetrator, by Gilad Atzmon
German State Prosecutors Hans-Joachim Lutz announced yesterday that Mr John Demjanjuk, 89, is accused of being an ‘accessory’ of the death of 27,900 Jews. Many of us may not understand what the legal notion of ‘accessory’ stands for. An ‘accessory’ is a person who assists in the commission of a crime, but who does not actually participate in the commission of the crime as a joint principal. Bearing that in mind. I wonder what Demjanjuk’s court case is there to serve?...
Read more...
Obamathink on Afghanistan: Escalate to Exit, by Stephen Lendman | OpEd News
Ahead of his address to the nation on December 1, The New York Times broke the news in an Eric Schmitt article titled, "Obama Issues Order for More Troops in Afghanistan," saying: During a late November 29 Oval Office meeting with top Pentagon brass, "Obama issued orders to send about 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan (over the next six months in) what may be one of the most defining decisions of his presidency." Compounding months of public betrayal, it's perhaps another outrage that will make him a one-term president, the way Vietnam ended Lyndon Johnson's hope for a second term...
Read more...
9/11: Pentagon Aircraft Hijack Impossible | Pilots for 9/11 Truth
Read more...
German State Prosecutors Hans-Joachim Lutz announced yesterday that Mr John Demjanjuk, 89, is accused of being an ‘accessory’ of the death of 27,900 Jews. Many of us may not understand what the legal notion of ‘accessory’ stands for. An ‘accessory’ is a person who assists in the commission of a crime, but who does not actually participate in the commission of the crime as a joint principal. Bearing that in mind. I wonder what Demjanjuk’s court case is there to serve?...
Read more...
Obamathink on Afghanistan: Escalate to Exit, by Stephen Lendman | OpEd News
Ahead of his address to the nation on December 1, The New York Times broke the news in an Eric Schmitt article titled, "Obama Issues Order for More Troops in Afghanistan," saying: During a late November 29 Oval Office meeting with top Pentagon brass, "Obama issued orders to send about 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan (over the next six months in) what may be one of the most defining decisions of his presidency." Compounding months of public betrayal, it's perhaps another outrage that will make him a one-term president, the way Vietnam ended Lyndon Johnson's hope for a second term...
Read more...
9/11: Pentagon Aircraft Hijack Impossible | Pilots for 9/11 Truth
Flight Deck Door Closed For Entire Flight
Newly decoded data provided by an independent researcher and computer programmer from Australia exposes alarming evidence that the reported hijacking aboard American Airlines Flight 77 was impossible to have existed. A data parameter labeled "FLT DECK DOOR", cross checks with previously decoded data obtained by Pilots For 9/11 Truth from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) through the Freedom Of Information Act...Read more...
Ukrainian kids, new victims of Israeli 'organ theft' | Press TV
An international Israeli conspiracy to kidnap children and harvest their organs is gathering momentum as another shocking story divulges Tel Aviv's plot to import Ukrainian children and harvest their organs. The story brings to light the fact that Israel has brought some 25,000 Ukrainian children into the occupied entity over the past two years in order to harvest their organs. It cites a Ukrainian man's fruitless search for 15 children who had been adopted in Israel. The children had clearly been taken by Israeli medical centers, where they were used for 'spare parts'...
Read more...
An international Israeli conspiracy to kidnap children and harvest their organs is gathering momentum as another shocking story divulges Tel Aviv's plot to import Ukrainian children and harvest their organs. The story brings to light the fact that Israel has brought some 25,000 Ukrainian children into the occupied entity over the past two years in order to harvest their organs. It cites a Ukrainian man's fruitless search for 15 children who had been adopted in Israel. The children had clearly been taken by Israeli medical centers, where they were used for 'spare parts'...
Read more...
Abolish the Fed and Return Money Creation Power to Congress, by Stephen Lendman | Chicago Indymedia
In her extraordinary book, "Web of Debt," financial writer Ellen Brown tells "the shocking truth about our money system, (how it) trapped us in debt, and how we can break free." She quotes banker/developer Reed Simpson saying: "Credible evidence (reveals) a world (banking) power elite intent on gaining absolute control over the planet and its natural resources, including its subservient human (ones)." It's the Bilderberg Group classless society idea of rulers, serfs, and no middle class by controlling the world's money. What Baron MA Rothschild (1818 - 1874) meant by saying: "Give me control over a nation's currency and I care not who makes its laws."...
In her extraordinary book, "Web of Debt," financial writer Ellen Brown tells "the shocking truth about our money system, (how it) trapped us in debt, and how we can break free." She quotes banker/developer Reed Simpson saying: "Credible evidence (reveals) a world (banking) power elite intent on gaining absolute control over the planet and its natural resources, including its subservient human (ones)." It's the Bilderberg Group classless society idea of rulers, serfs, and no middle class by controlling the world's money. What Baron MA Rothschild (1818 - 1874) meant by saying: "Give me control over a nation's currency and I care not who makes its laws."...
Read more...
Israel strips more Palestinians of Jerusalem status | Reuters
Israel stripped Palestinians of Jerusalem residency status last year at a faster rate than at any time in the history of the Jewish state, an Israeli rights group said on Wednesday, citing official Israeli statistics. "Revocation of residence has reached frightening proportions," said Dalia Kerstein, executive director of Israel's HaMoked Center for the Defense of the Individual...
Read more...
Will the Church Act to Save the Children of Gaza This Christmas?, by Stuart Littlewood | Palestine Chronicle
Israel strips more Palestinians of Jerusalem status | Reuters
Israel stripped Palestinians of Jerusalem residency status last year at a faster rate than at any time in the history of the Jewish state, an Israeli rights group said on Wednesday, citing official Israeli statistics. "Revocation of residence has reached frightening proportions," said Dalia Kerstein, executive director of Israel's HaMoked Center for the Defense of the Individual...
Read more...
Will the Church Act to Save the Children of Gaza This Christmas?, by Stuart Littlewood | Palestine Chronicle
Dare one suggest, bring a smile to the face of God..
Read more...Dear Archbishop,
Two years ago, on returning from Gaza and the West Bank, I wrote about the dire conditions and the British government's complicity in the crippling blockade, and reminded prime minister Gordon Brown that Gaza was formerly entrusted to Britain under mandate, which was reason for us to feel a special responsibility. I urged him: “Go see for yourselves the misery, the human tragedy and the devastation you have heaped on these nice people. Feel the pain and weep. Then amaze us. Do something courageous for once. Lift the cruel siege. End the 90 years of betrayal that has so shamed Britain."..
"My Name is Rachel Corrie" and Israel's waning impunity, by Charlotte Silver | Electronic Intifada
On 19 November 2009 the play My Name is Rachel Corrie, was staged at Stanford University. Amanda Gelender produced the play as a part of her Stanford senior thesis. Amanda is my friend and was also my college classmate. We worked together in several campus political organizations, including the student-led Israel divestment campaign. I attended opening night and along with a sold-out audience was struck by the poignancy of the play and Amanda's subtle and deeply moving performance. Rachel Corrie was a 23-year-old American woman who traveled to Gaza in 2003 during the second Palestinian intifada. She was killed by a Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer operated by an Israeli soldier as she attempted to prevent the Israeli army from demolishing the home of a Palestinian family...
Read more...
On 19 November 2009 the play My Name is Rachel Corrie, was staged at Stanford University. Amanda Gelender produced the play as a part of her Stanford senior thesis. Amanda is my friend and was also my college classmate. We worked together in several campus political organizations, including the student-led Israel divestment campaign. I attended opening night and along with a sold-out audience was struck by the poignancy of the play and Amanda's subtle and deeply moving performance. Rachel Corrie was a 23-year-old American woman who traveled to Gaza in 2003 during the second Palestinian intifada. She was killed by a Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer operated by an Israeli soldier as she attempted to prevent the Israeli army from demolishing the home of a Palestinian family...
Read more...
Shock And Outrage At Settler Violence.. And A Voice Of Terror From A US Prison | Desert Peace
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Risking Israel's ire, US takes 1,350 Palestinian refugees | CSM
The US is generally reluctant to resettle Palestinians, but these are refugees from Iraq who have been targeted since the invasion...
See also Urgent Help Needed to Support Palestinians Arriving in the US from Iraq
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Hezbollah's New Manifesto: The 'Rebirth', by Franklin Lamb | Palestine Chronicle
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Switzerland's minaret ban | Al Jazeera
On Sunday, Switzerland held a vote on whether or not to ban the further construction of minarets - towers attached to mosques which, in Islamic countries, are used to broadcast the call to prayer, but which in Switzerland, as in most European countries, are largely considered decorative additions. In a result that flew in the face of opinion polls which had predicted a 'no' vote, 57 per cent voted in favour of the ban...
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Inside Israeli jails, the Real victims of a Cry for Justice, by Jesse Rosenfeld | Intifada Palestine
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The Blood Oath, by Alan Hart | Intifada Palestine
“Mr. President, will you take a call from Prime Minister Netanyahu in five minutes? He says it’s urgent, very urgent.” “Rahm, I can tell from the tone of your voice that you’re not asking me a question. You’re giving me an order.” Rahm Emanuel smiled...“Mr. President, there’s some background to this problem that you may not be aware of. Back in 1980, General Sharon signed an oath with his blood. He did it at a meeting with very many senior IDF officers. They all signed the oath with their blood. Down the years since then, the same oath has been signed by many others with their blood...The conversation above is imaginary but the blood oath is not. I tell the true story of it in Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. My source was Ezer Weizman when he was Israel’s minister of defense...
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Israeli Spy Jonathan Pollard
The following two reports show what the illegal settlers are made of and what type of scum supports them…Read more, watch video...
Risking Israel's ire, US takes 1,350 Palestinian refugees | CSM
The US is generally reluctant to resettle Palestinians, but these are refugees from Iraq who have been targeted since the invasion...
See also Urgent Help Needed to Support Palestinians Arriving in the US from Iraq
Read more..
Hezbollah's New Manifesto: The 'Rebirth', by Franklin Lamb | Palestine Chronicle
Nasrallah outlined his party's vision for the Lebanese state
Like many liberation and resistant movement 'Manifestos', 'Charters' or 'Declarations' issued to the public early in its founding - the African National Congress, Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, Algerian FLN, and various “Sons of Liberty” groups during the American Revolution, come to mind - Hezbollah has been criticized by its detractors over the years for some language in its 1985 “Open Letter” manifesto. Some have urged Hezbollah to remove ‘controversial language” such as the call for an Islamic Republic in Lebanon- even though the Party has made clear that establishing an Islamic Republic of Lebanon is no longer a priority and emphasizing that Lebanon’s diversity is respected, valued and permanent. Others have called Hezbollah’s 1985 manifesto ‘too religious” and too dogmatic for a broad international appeal political document...Read more...
Switzerland's minaret ban | Al Jazeera
On Sunday, Switzerland held a vote on whether or not to ban the further construction of minarets - towers attached to mosques which, in Islamic countries, are used to broadcast the call to prayer, but which in Switzerland, as in most European countries, are largely considered decorative additions. In a result that flew in the face of opinion polls which had predicted a 'no' vote, 57 per cent voted in favour of the ban...
Read more...
Inside Israeli jails, the Real victims of a Cry for Justice, by Jesse Rosenfeld | Intifada Palestine
Mohammad Othman
Amid the growing media fever over a possible prisoner swap involving the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held by Hamas, another young captive has a less visible public profile – but personifies Israel’s chokehold on Palestinian self-expression...Read more...
The Blood Oath, by Alan Hart | Intifada Palestine
“Mr. President, will you take a call from Prime Minister Netanyahu in five minutes? He says it’s urgent, very urgent.” “Rahm, I can tell from the tone of your voice that you’re not asking me a question. You’re giving me an order.” Rahm Emanuel smiled...“Mr. President, there’s some background to this problem that you may not be aware of. Back in 1980, General Sharon signed an oath with his blood. He did it at a meeting with very many senior IDF officers. They all signed the oath with their blood. Down the years since then, the same oath has been signed by many others with their blood...The conversation above is imaginary but the blood oath is not. I tell the true story of it in Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. My source was Ezer Weizman when he was Israel’s minister of defense...
Read more...
Facebook, Twitter, Israel's new battle ground | Press TV
The Israeli military has announced that it will begin recruiting computer experts for a planned Internet and new media department unit..The spokesman explained the new department would target the Internet's social networking sites to create a direct link with international audiences rather than addressing them through the regular media. The plan was presented at the Monday conference alongside another initiative by the Israeli Information and Diaspora Ministry to train people to represent Israel independently on the Internet and other domains...
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[cranking up the hasbara industry yet another notch; maybe they're getting nervous]
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Iran says no legal basis for IAEA resolution | Press TV
Days after the issuance of a resolution by the UN nuclear watchdog against Iran's nuclear work, the country's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says the resolution has no legal basis as Iran's activities are not in breach of the nuclear pact. Speaking to Press TV on Tuesday, Iran's envoy to the IAEA Ali Asghar Soltanieh said the Islamic Republic, which is a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has not committed any breach of its obligations...
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Uri Gopher - Istikbal | YouTube
A personal perspective on what it feels to raise a child in Israel, for a Jewish-Israeli who does not buy into his country's Ethos and who wants no part in the continued self-defeating denial of reponsibility to the tragic fate of the Palestinian people. Inspired by the work of "Zochrot" activists...
[beautiful, sad, true]
Watch...
Afghanistan - Here We Go Again, by Robert Scheer | truthdig
It is already a 30-year war begun by one Democratic president, and thanks to the political opportunism of the current commander in chief the Afghanistan war is still without end or logical purpose. President Barack Obama’s own top national security adviser has stated that there are fewer than 100 al-Qaida members in Afghanistan and that they are not capable of launching attacks. What superheroes they must be, then, to require 100,000 U.S. troops to contain them...
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The Israeli military has announced that it will begin recruiting computer experts for a planned Internet and new media department unit..The spokesman explained the new department would target the Internet's social networking sites to create a direct link with international audiences rather than addressing them through the regular media. The plan was presented at the Monday conference alongside another initiative by the Israeli Information and Diaspora Ministry to train people to represent Israel independently on the Internet and other domains...
Read more...
[cranking up the hasbara industry yet another notch; maybe they're getting nervous]
Read more...
Iran says no legal basis for IAEA resolution | Press TV
Days after the issuance of a resolution by the UN nuclear watchdog against Iran's nuclear work, the country's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says the resolution has no legal basis as Iran's activities are not in breach of the nuclear pact. Speaking to Press TV on Tuesday, Iran's envoy to the IAEA Ali Asghar Soltanieh said the Islamic Republic, which is a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has not committed any breach of its obligations...
Read more...
Uri Gopher - Istikbal | YouTube
A personal perspective on what it feels to raise a child in Israel, for a Jewish-Israeli who does not buy into his country's Ethos and who wants no part in the continued self-defeating denial of reponsibility to the tragic fate of the Palestinian people. Inspired by the work of "Zochrot" activists...
[beautiful, sad, true]
Watch...
Afghanistan - Here We Go Again, by Robert Scheer | truthdig
It is already a 30-year war begun by one Democratic president, and thanks to the political opportunism of the current commander in chief the Afghanistan war is still without end or logical purpose. President Barack Obama’s own top national security adviser has stated that there are fewer than 100 al-Qaida members in Afghanistan and that they are not capable of launching attacks. What superheroes they must be, then, to require 100,000 U.S. troops to contain them...
Read more...
Economics 666
WTO Chief Pascal Lamy: Free Trade and Interdependence Help Promote Freedom, Human Rights and Civil Liberties | Democracy Now
The World Trade Organization convenes today in Geneva for its seventh ministerial. Investigative journalist Greg Palast files a report from Geneva where he interviews WTO Director General Pascal Lamy to see how much the organization and its priorities have changed over the past 10 years...
Read transcript, watch interview...
Arming Goldman With Pistols Against Public, by Alice Schroeder | Bloomberg
“I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank...
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The World Trade Organization convenes today in Geneva for its seventh ministerial. Investigative journalist Greg Palast files a report from Geneva where he interviews WTO Director General Pascal Lamy to see how much the organization and its priorities have changed over the past 10 years...
Read transcript, watch interview...
Arming Goldman With Pistols Against Public, by Alice Schroeder | Bloomberg
“I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank...
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"Mr. Chairman, we have in this Country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks, hereinafter called the Fed. The Fed has cheated the Government of these United States and the people of the United States out of enough money to pay the Nation's debt. The depredations and iniquities of the Fed has cost enough money to pay the National debt several times over... This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people of these United States, has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our Government. It has done this through the defects of the law under which it operates, through the maladministration of that law by the Fed and through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it."
Rep. Louis T. McFadden (D-PA)
Chairman
Committee on Banking & Currency
US House of Representatives
Congressional Record/Page 12595
1932
Rep. Louis T. McFadden (D-PA)
Chairman
Committee on Banking & Currency
US House of Representatives
Congressional Record/Page 12595
1932
Audit the Fed! Ben Bernanke: Beneath the Banksters, by Martin Mayer | Institutional Risk Analyst
We start this issue of The Institutional Risk Analyst with a comment from our friend Martin Mayer, Guest Scholar of The Brookings Institution and author of various books about money and finance. The last sentence of Mayer's 2002 book, The Fed, reads:
"The tragedy for all of us would be if the Fed's and the Treasury's and the Congress's reverence for people who make a lot of money left us unprotected against some sudden revelation of the truth that becomes obvious only in hindsight, that a lot of them don't know what they're doing."
But of course the banksters know precisely what they are about. Mayer's comments on auditing the Fed are below, followed by our thoughts on the start of Ben Bernanke's Senate confirmation process. As this issue of The IRA goes to press, several members of the Senate have stated that they do not know if there are sufficient votes to confirm Bernanke for a second term as Fed Chairman...Read more...
More Arrests in America's War on Islam, by Stephen Lendman | OpEdNews
A November 24 "hatemail" underscores the issue, titled "Muslims in America - violent clashing of cultures, basic incompatibility of Western thought and Muslim theocracy," then quoting Denver radio talk show host Peter Boyles (know.com) saying: "Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims."..
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Our Lie-Based Reality, by Peter Chamberlin | Therearenosunglasses
Our government cannot function without the trust of the people. Without unshakeable faith that the people will allow the government to proceed, the governing coalitions of politicians will not dare to implement their own plans. Fear of popular reprisals (which could diminish their power) restrains even the most devious politicians from acting. Even Hitler himself would not have dared to proceed with his vile plans, if he hadn’t believed that the people would let him get away with it. When government plans are so repulsive that no sane person would support them, then it becomes necessary to construct a false version of reality to spoon-feed the people, in order to gain the requisite trust, and with it, the people’s consent. This is our current situation in America and throughout the Americanized world...
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Jews don't need enemies - Gilad Atzmon (Video)
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We are all Palestinians now, by Maidhc Ó Cathail | Media Monitors Network
...On September 16, Gilad Atzmon, an Israeli expatriate, told the Cambridge Forum: “As the picture of the current economic disaster becomes ever more clear, it becomes rather obvious, to me at least, that the ideology and the people who are directly responsible for the mass killing of millions of Iraqis and the displacement of many other millions, the people who keep the Palestinians starved behind walls, are unfortunately very much the same people who are responsible for a class genocide of millions of disenfranchised Americans who are now on the brink of total dispossession.”...
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Hasbara Author vs Iran's Bomb | Gilad Atzmon
Hasbara author David Aaronovitch is pretty much unstoppable. The man who together with the Jewish Chronicle writer Nick Cohen encouraged the war in Iraq, is now warning us about the evolving Iranian bomb. “Wake up”, he urges us in The Times, “this threat is too big to ignore”. As if more than one million Iraqis killed in a war he advocated were not enough, the enthusiastic Hasbara author has a new conflict to propel...
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Discrimination, Not Culture, Keeps Families in Poverty: Israel's Arab Women Workers Need Not Apply, by Jonathan Cook | Counterpunch
Israel’s finance minister was accused last week of trying to deflect attention from discriminatory policies keeping many of the country’s Arab families in poverty by blaming their economic troubles on what he described as Arab society’s opposition to women working. A recent report from Israel’s National Insurance Institute showed that half of all Arab families in Israel are classified as poor compared with just 14 per cent of Jewish families. Yuval Steinitz, the finance minister, told a conference on employment discrimination this month that the failure of Arab women to participate in the workforce was damaging Israel’s economy. Eighteen per cent of Arab women work, and only half of them full time, compared with at least 55 per cent of Jewish women...
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