November 30, 2009 34,000 Additional Troops Not Worth the Life of One Afghani Child, by Jay Jansen | OpEd News  Read more... An Open Letter to President Obama From Michael Moore | truthout  Dear President Obama, do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics... Read more... United Against Spitting, by Gilad Atzmon Three days ago the Israeli Right wing paper The Jerusalem Post published an exposé of the growing tendency of Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem to spit on their Christian neighbours..Father Samuel Aghoyan, a senior Armenian Orthodox cleric in Jerusalem's Old City, told the JPost “that he's been spat at by young Haredi (God fearing religious Jews) and national Orthodox Jews ‘about 15 to 20 times’ in the past decade”. Father Aghoyan added, "Every single priest in this church has been spat on. It happens day and night."... Read more... Interview with PA dissident: "I cannot just stay silent" | Electronic Intifada  Abdel Sattar Qassem outside his home in Nablus Abdel Sattar Qassem, a professor and author of numerous publications on Palestinian history and Islamic thought, is well-known for his pungent critiques of Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). As a result he has been imprisoned by both the Israelis and the PA. Most recently his car was blown up as a warning from the PA... Read more... Zionism - more than traditional colonialism and apartheid, by Lasse Wilhelmson 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 mustread classic] Read more... The truth of UK's guilt over Iraq, by Scott Ritter | The Guardian With its troops no longer engaged in military operations inside Iraq, Great Britain has been liberated politically to conduct a postmortem of that conflict, including the sensitive issue of the primary justification used by then Prime Minister Tony Blair for going to war, namely Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, or WMD. The failure to find any WMD in Iraq following the March 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of that country by US and British troops continues to haunt those who were involved in making the decision for war. The issue of Iraqi WMD, and the role it played in influencing the decision for war, is at the centre of the ongoing Iraq war inquiry being conducted by Sir John Chilcot.. Read more... Israeli youth evading military service | PressTV  Israeli soldiers The Israeli cabinet has held a meeting to seek initiatives to curb draft evasion, as 25 percent of military aged boys and 40 percent of girls evade military service. Israel's Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) who attended the meeting on Sunday recommended denying driver's licenses to those who rely on mental health deferment to dodge military service. "Those who get out of the army because of a mental health deferment can't be drivers," The Jerusalem Post quoted Katz as saying. The cabinet has decided to establish a committee to come up with ways to reduce the number of women who use religion as a reason to evade military service...Read more... In Afghanistan and at home, we're being driven off a cliff | Baltimore Sun ...So what can be expected to be achieved? There are murmurings about staying until a stable national government is in place in Kabul and the Afghans themselves are able to guarantee their own security. But we know there has never been a stable central government in that backward land. It's a tribal society, largely rural and famous for its ferocity and fearlessness, for a refusal to tolerate foreign occupation. Ask the Russians. It's always a mistake to presume certain knowledge of the future. We can only guess at how events play out over time. Think, however, of what the ancient Chinese sage Sun Tzu said about how "no nation has ever benefited from a long war."... Read more... Israeli War Criminal Welcomed in Australia, by Sonja Karkar | Palestie Chronicle  There is a danger that Australia could become a safe haven for Israeli war criminals The news that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was in Australia and was welcomed by the honourable members of our parliament came as somewhat of a shock. It is one thing to have allowed a man on corruption charges as well as facing war crimes indictments into Australia at all; it is another thing that he was listed as a distinguished guest in Hansard - the official record of parliamentary proceedings - and received a resounding “hear, hear” from our elected representatives...Read more... 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...But researchers and women’s groups pointed out that employment of Arab women in Israel is lower than almost anywhere else in the Arab world, including such employment blackspots for women as Saudi Arabia and Oman... Read more... Bilin activist continues to struggle despite injury, by Jody McIntyre | Electronic Intifada  Khamis Fathi Abu Rahmah after being shot with a tear gas canister by Israeli forces near Bilin Earlier this year, Khamis Fathi Abu Rahmah, 27, was shot in the head with a high-velocity tear gas canister while participating in a nonviolent demonstration against Israel's wall in the occupied West Bank near the village of Bilin. Israeli soldiers used the same weapon a few months later and killed his cousin, Bassem Abu Rahme... Read more... Where next for Palestinians?, by Ghada Karmi | Bitter Lemons Palestinian history is at one of its most serious and important junctures. The peace negotiations that commenced with the Oslo accords in 1993 are at an end. Even hardened devotees of the peace process with Israel have now given up and are adopting positions that threaten to disrupt the cozy status quo of the "peace process". The Palestinian president's announcement that he will not seek re-election, and the recent demand for UN recognition of a Palestine state on the 1967 territories are examples of this trend. It has become impossible for even the most pliant Palestinian leadership to ignore Israel's strategy of "talking and taking", its relentless colonization of the occupied territories, which doubled after the Oslo agreement and is ever more blatant and aggressive. The Palestinian maneuver, taking advantage of an assumed US frustration with Israeli intransigence on settlement building, is clearly designed to challenge the international community out of its inertia... Read more... November 29, 2009 America Is Deeply Involved In Afghan Drug Trade, by Glen Ford | Black Agenda Radio “U.S.-allied drug dealers are put in charge of the police and border patrol, while their rivals are placed on American hit lists.”  If you’re looking for the chief kingpin in the Afghanistan heroin trade, it’s the United States. The American mission has devolved to a Mafiosi-style arrangement that poisons every military and political alliance entered into by the U.S. and its puppet government in Kabul. It is a gangster occupation, in which U.S.-allied drug dealers are put in charge of the police and border patrol, while their rivals are placed on American hit lists, marked for death or capture. As a result, Afghanistan has been transformed into an opium plantation that supplies 90 percent of the world’s heroin... Read more... Alarming rate of addiction among Afghan women | PressTV Unprecedented levels of drug addiction among Afghan women have raised concerns as the lucrative narcotic industry hurtles onwards. The Governor of Helmand Gulab Mangal says women comprise of 30 percent of the 70,000 drug addicts in the southern Afghan province, the website for the British state broadcaster BBC reported in its Farsi edition. The percentage amounts to 13,000-14,000 women, he added... Read more... ...And a little child shall lead them, by Uri Avnery | Gush Shalom Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, has an idea. That happens to him quite often. One might almost say - too often. It goes like this: The US will turn its back on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The entire world will follow. Everybody is fed up with this conflict. Let the Israelis and the Palestinians sort out their problems by themselves. Sounds sensible. Why must the world be bothered with these two unruly children? Let them kick each other as much as they like. The adults should not interfere. But in reality this is an outrageous suggestion. Because these two children are not of equal strength. When an adult sees a 14-year old mercilessly mistreating a 6-year old, can he just look on?... Read more... Change Has Come to America, by Alfred Warkentin | Palestine Chronicle  There are thousands of Palestinian sympathizers in universities, synagogues, churches ...At one time the Democratic Party (Israel, after all, began as a socialist experiment) was the great supporter of Israel. Today it’s Republicans who tend to support Israel right or wrong. And it may well be that Israel’s greatest danger in the future comes from radical Republicans who seek automatic American hegemony in the Middle East through their battleship Israel, and their plans for American exceptionalism and eventual American empire. The far-reaching threat for Israel is that radical Republicans and Christian Zionists may push Israel one step too far..In 1925 few Americans knew about Zionists in Palestine. In 1967 nearly all Americans, remembering the Holocaust, supported the idea of an Israeli state. That support is not as pronounced now. Change has come to America...Read more... The Islamophobe quartet of the USA | Redress Information & Analysis Paul J. Balles turns the spotlight on four prominent American Islamophobes and argues that the acts they use to justify their statements "are no more related to the teachings of Islam than the paedophilia of a few priests is connected with Catholicism or the acts committed by Rabbi Meir Kahane of the Anti-Defamation League related to Judaism”... Read more... Imperial Inertia, by Jim Miles | Middle East Online Western governments for the most part blindly recite the common rhetoric of ‘terror’. But the real terror is that disseminated by the occupiers. All this, apart from the religious aspect and the US evangelistic right wing’s anticipation of Armageddon combined with Jewish zeal for a pure homeland, is about oil and other resources... Read more... Illegal Settlements in America, by Grant Smith | Antiwar  ...those Americans seeking a permanent end to Israeli settlement activities face a predicament similar to the Palestinians. Peace in the Middle East depends on reversing a peculiar manifestation of illegal Israeli settlements right here at home. These US settlements were built not on stolen land, but the strategic territory of US governance through violations of the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act... Read more... November 28, 2009 Ali Abunimah: BDS Conference keynote speaker | YouTube Ali Abunimah, co-founder of Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse delivers the keynote address at the 2009 Campus BDS Conference at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA... Watch... Letter from Mazin 11/28/09 ..The UN General assembly voted 29 November 1947 to recommend partition of Palestine to give the Zionist movement control over 55% of Palestine and leave the Palestinians with 45% of Palestine. The Palestinian natives were then more than 2/3rd of the population and owned 93% of the land. Jews constituted a third of the population (most of them illegal new immigrants) who had land ownership of less than 7%. In the planned "Jewish state", there would be almost an equal number of Christian and Muslim Palestinians as Jews. The Zionist movement accepted the idea of a Jewish state but rejected the other parts of the proposal: borders designated, Internationalization of Jerusalem, economic union, and no ethnic cleansing. There were no viable local leaders of Palestinians (decimated by the British between 1936-1939 and sold-out by dictatorial Arab regimes). The people (and here we are talking about Christians, Muslim, and Jewish native Palestinians) were however largely against partition of their country. The illegal "vote" at the UN (illegal because it violated the UN charter) succeeded because of significant pressure from the US government. President Truman pushed and pressured governments to adopt it because of his need for Jewish support in elections... Read more... What festive cheer will the West bring to the Holy Land this Christmas?, by Stuart Littlewood | Redress I&A Stuart Littlewood views the weasel words of Britain’s politicians who pretend to care for the Gaza Strip’s civilian population while supporting Israel’s criminal, genocidal policies, and the rank hypocrisy of its churchmen whose silence over the plight of the Strip’s Christian and Muslim communities speaks volumes about their lack of principles... Read more... The 'But For' costs: Why we’re Broke, by Jeff Gates | Intifada-Palestine Re: 3 Trillion Dollars down the Drain!: The Hidden Cost of War (video) Though brilliant in its simplicity and the ability to convey the scope and scale of this ongoing disaster, the presentation understates the long-term costs of this latest war. In addition, it provides no means to identify the parties that brought us to this perilous point...This sophisticated treason runs deep; its core is found in a shared mindset that took decades to imbed in the national psyche. From the perspective of mental manipulation, there’s little difference between displacing facts with beliefs in Iraqi WMD, ties to Al Qaeda, etc. and the imbedding in the national mindset of “consensus” beliefs that induced us to put our faith in the infallibility of unfettered financial markets. Both are frauds. Both induced a targeted population to freely embrace forces that systematically imperiled their freedom... Read more... How to Save the World in Ten Easy Steps: Step One, by Israel Shamir A Talk given at the Madrid Conference, November 2009 The world is ill; it is running a high fever. Global warming is just a metaphor for this febrile life we lead. The first thing is to lower the temperature – to cool it. While Obama’s team and their peers all over the world try to stimulate consumption and encourage growth by making credit cheaper and by titillating us with glossy pictures of new cars, phones, kitchen appliances and attractive females, we should take the opposite direction: that of reducing temptation. Let us remain blissfully ignorant of wonderful opportunities to update our present arsenal of appliances...Read more... Art of Palestinian Resistance in Cyber Warfare, by Bishop Don Corder | Intifada-Palestine ...Professor Robert Faurisson was esteemed by many to be a respected scholar, yet in September 1989; he was beaten severely by unknown assailants who called themselves “The Sons of the Memory of the Jews.” Faurisson was a Holocaust revisionist who..openly stated that the Holocaust was a hoax arising out of a deliberate tool to advance the interest of Jews at the expense of other peoples..January 24, 2005, the UN General Assembly commemorated the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. Following this session, a UN resolution was drafted to designate January 27 as the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust.It was through a sleight of hand that the Israeli delegation succeededin getting this resolution passed and shortly thereafter revisionistErnst Zündel was handed over by the United States to Canada, then byCanada to Germany where he is now serving a seven year sentence becausehe took the time to think for himself...“All propaganda has to bepopular and has to adapt its spiritual level to the perception of theleast intelligent of those towards whom it intends to direct itself.” –Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf. According to Robert Faurisson, “They knowthat to lose the ‘Holocaust’ is to lose the sword and the shield ofIsrael as well as a formidable instrument of political and financialblackmail.” Genius of the global propaganda machines employed tomaintain Israeli power and Palestinian nightmares can be distilled fromwhat is made available in ordinary sales classes and marketingliterature... Read more... Killing Arabs is Good for Them | Mantiq al-Tayr  Americans are the stupidest, most ill-informed people on the face of the planet and one of the reasons this is the case is the Jerusalem Washington New York Times Post [JEWNYTP] whose demise we pray for every day here at Mantiq al-Tayr...After fabricating ALL the evidence against Iraq, after more than a decade of horribly vicious, inhumane, ghastly sanctions that led to deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, after all that shit, the US, at the instigation of the Nazis, oh wait, it wasn’t the Nazis was it?... Read more... Chavez: Israel murderous arm of US | Al Jazeera Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's president, has branded Israel a murderous agent of the US during a visit to Caracas by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, his Iranian counterpart. Chavez's comments came after remarks earlier this month by Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, who said during a visit to South America that the Venezuelan leader and Ahmadinejad's days in power may be numbered. Addressing a joint news conference in the Venezuelan capital, Chavez said: "We know what the state of Israel stands for, a murderous arm of the Yankee empire. "What the president of Israel said, we take as a threat." Chavez broke relations with Israel earlier this year following its offensive in the Gaza Strip which he branded as genocide... Read more... One More for the Roadmap: What settlement freeze??, by Mary Rizzo | Palestine Think Tank I get the Israel Foreign Ministry press releases everyday. As I have often pointed out, they are somewhere between science fiction and fairy tales. To find a bit of truth in there takes effort. But today's really does seem to go beyond the beyond in its attempt to make one think there is a change in some kind of policy that will be "historic", of all things. Netanyahu is going to get the Roadmap back on track by freezing settlements? Oh boy. Let's have a look at that and see how this new fable is told before all the children of the world get sleepy and nod off to such a fanciful story... Read more... Political Prisoner Jalil Muntaqim Denied Parole, by Stephen Lendman | Dissident Voice On November 18, Jalil Muntaqim (formerly Anthony Bottom) was refused parole a day after his November 17 hearing. The board called his record exemplary, but still denied him. Muntaqim thanked everyone who wrote letters of support and said he’ll appeal the decision. Failing that, his next scheduled hearing is in June 2010. His earlier 2002, 2004 and 2006 hearings were also unsuccessful... Read more... Deception Has Always Been the Name of Zionism's Game, by Alan Hart | Dissident Voice Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu described his offer to temporarily restrict construction of all-new Jewish settlements on the West Bank excluding Arab East Jerusalem as a “far-reaching and painful step”, which was part of a policy he hoped would give a new impetus to peace talks. Netanyahu is not stupid. He knows that some of us know he is not remotely interested in peace on terms the Palestinians could accept. So what then is his real game plan of the moment? Simple. He is seeking to make peace with the Obama administration. And its response suggests that with the help of the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress he’s got that matter firmly under control... Read more... David Irving, the Thought Criminal | Issues & Views How is it possible, in these United States, that a group of people, who wish to get together to discuss a historical topic, must relentlessly hide their intention, obfuscate their meeting place, and keep their identities secret, if they don't wish to be hounded like wanted criminals? How is it that citizens who wish to meet peacefully do not have the protection of the law, in order to practice what the law supposedly guarantees, that is, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly?..Thomas Paine wrote, "He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression." Today, these 18th century warnings are nothing but corny words, not to be taken seriously by a people who would disgrace themselves by permitting the passage of unconstitutional "hate crime" laws... Read more... November 27, 2009 A Night Unto The Nations...., by Gilad Atzmon  Read more... False Flag Attacks in Argentina - AMIA and Israeli Embassy Bldgs, by Adrian Salbuchi (video) | Dprogram Argentina suffered its two worst terrorist bomb attcks in March 1992 and July 1994 against the Israeli Embassy and AMIA Jewish Mutual Building, respectively. Both were in Buenos Aires and show all the traces of False Flags. Regarding the AMIA attack, especially, Israel, Zionist organizations and the US have exerted enormous and blatant pressure so facts would be falsified, false evidence planted and Argentina’s authorities coaxed into accusing Iran, Hezbollah and Syria for the attack. And indeed, they have succeeded…! Watch... U.S. journalist says she was delayed at border, questioned about speech Amy Goodman alleges border guards repeatedly asked her if she was speaking about the Vancouver Winter Games An American author and broadcaster claims Canadian border officials questioned her about whether she would discuss the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games at a speaking engagement Wednesday evening in Vancouver.Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now , a radio and television show aired by public and college broadcasters across North America, was entering Canada around 6 p.m. Pacific time Wednesday evening, set to speak at the Vancouver Public Library in an event co-ordinated by a campus radio station at Simon Fraser University. “When I handed our passports over the border guard, they told us to pull over. We had to go over to the border facility. And they started asking me questions about what I was going to be speaking about. I was totally taken aback. They wanted to see my notes,"... Read more... Pro-Israel lobby group bankrolling Tories, film claims, by Ian Black |The Guardian 50% of MPs in the shadow cabinet are Conservative Friends of Israel members, according to Channel 4's Dispatches  Channel 4's film alleges that William Hague faced threats of a withdrawal of funding from CFI Pro-Israeli organisations in Britain look set to see their influence increase if the Conservatives win the next election, a film scrutinising the activities of a powerful but little-known lobby warns today. At least half of the shadow cabinet are members of the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), according to a Dispatches programme being screened on Channel 4. The programme-makers describe the CFI as "beyond doubt the most well- connected and probably the best funded of all Westminster lobbying groups"...after he described a retaliatory attack by Israel on Lebanon in 2006 as 'disproportionate' Read more... A Right of Return primer, by Ali Attar | Palestine Think Tank A referential drafting extracted from the Human Rights Covenants and human principles and the laws related to the principle that Palestinian Arabs should have the same human rights as the rest of the peoples of the world. Also included in English are excerpts from relevant Covenants... Read more... Tame Israel Lobby with Seven Principles of Public Life, by Stuart Littlewood | Palestine Chronicle The recent Channel 4 TV Dispatches programme, which probed the antics of the pro-Israel lobby in British politics, has opened up this hitherto forbidden subject to public debate. Basic questions now need answering – for example, why are agents of a foreign military power allowed to meddle in our democratic and parliamentary processes? That was the concern of a group of citizens nearly two years ago. They decided to press the Committee on Standards in Public Life to examine whether there was undue Israeli influence at the heart of British government. The Standards Committee, chaired by newly-appointed Sir Christopher Kelly (the same Kelly who is currently making heavy weather of investigating the way MPs have been fiddling expenses), refused to look into it. His reply, sent in a note from a member of his office staff, said: "I regret that the Committee on Standards in Public Life has no remit to help you in this matter."... Read more... Britain's ignorance of Iraq is already apparent, by Patrick Cockburn | The Independent  Sir John Chilcot's inquiry suggests UK was ill-informed about Iraqi politics Ever since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 senior British officials have gently hinted that what went wrong was the fault of the Americans and, if there is any blame left over, it belongs to Tony Blair. The first day of the Chilcot inquiry suggests, on the contrary, that British mandarins of the day had little more idea of the mechanics of Iraqi politics than the most rabid and jingoistic neo-cons in Washington. At no time, going by their evidence, did British officials in 2003 realise that the invasion of Iraq meant revolutionary change in the region. It would mean that the Sunni Arabs, who had traditionally ruled the country, would be displaced by the Shia and the Kurds. The Sunni were unlikely to go quietly... Read more... German Army Chief Resigns Over Afghan Civilian Killings, by Jason Ditz | Antiwar German Army chief General Wolfgang Schneiderhan has formally asked to be relieved of duty today following the release of images from the US warplane involved in the September Kunduz air strike showed that German officials were lying about situation leading up to the attack... Read more... Phil Carter's resignation from key detainee policy post, by Glenn Greenwald - Salon Phillip Carter is a lawyer, a former Army Captain, a veteran of the Iraq War and a very harsh critic of the Bush administration's detention and interrogation policies. He was a vigorous supporter of Barack Obama's campaign, and in 2008, became the Obama campaign's National Veterans Director. In April of this year, he was appointed the top Pentagon official for detainee affairs, but yesterday, he suddenly "quit without explanation just days after Obama confirmed in an interview with Fox News in Beijing that his administration would miss its Jan. 22 Guantánamo closure deadline.".. Read more... 69 cases of Palestinian olive trees destroyed, but no prosecutions, by Chaim Levinson | Haaretz  A Palestinian woman picking olives in a West Bank village near Nablus earlier this month. The human rights organization Yesh Din says not one of the 69 complaints filed during the past four years on damage to Palestinians' trees in the West Bank has resulted in an indictment. The organization released a report on the matter Tuesday and makes specific reference to damage caused to olive groves, central to the livelihood of Palestinian villagers. The olive harvest season is coming to an end in most parts of the West Bank this week, with the exception of those areas at higher elevations. Attacks targeting trees harvested by Palestinians - olive trees in particular, but also almond, fig, lemon and others - has been on the rise in recent years... Read more... Groups Denounce Obama Rejection of Landmine Treaty - IPS Human rights and disarmament activists reacted bitterly Wednesday to the decision by the administration of President Barack Obama, who will receive the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize next month, not to sign the 10-year-old treaty banning anti-personnel landmines. The U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines (USCBL), a coalition of scores of activist groups, called the administration's decision "shocking", while Human Rights Watch (HRW), one of the Campaign's most influential members, described it as "reprehensible"... Read more... The key question: is Blair a war criminal?, by Oliver Miles | The Independent The terms of reference for the new Iraq inquiry allow for the big unknowns to be tackled. And we might just get to the truth  Apocalypse then: The US's 'shock and awe' campaign in Iraq wreaked devastation. George Bush said he was inspired by the Old Testament Link...Obama Sells Out to the Neocons | New American The Obama administration is close to announcing its decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan. Reuters reports that the "final number [of troops added to the war zone] could reach 35,000 once U.S. trainers are factored in, but estimates on the number of trainers vary widely. Obama would not be drawn out on specifics but said he would have an announcement on how to proceed after this week's Thanksgiving holiday." This comes after months of deliberation where self-proclaimed leaders of the conservative movement have complained that Obama has been "dithering" in his decision to send more troops into the meat-grinder known as Afghanistan... Read more... Israel will release Barghouti in Shalit deal - Haaretz Israel will release Fatah strongman Marwan Barghouti as part of a deal to secure the release of abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat quoted Palestinian sources as saying Thursday. Barghouti is currently serving five life sentences in Israel for his role in a series of deadly terrorist attacks during the second intifada. According to the report, Israel will also release Ahmad Sadat, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Ibrahim Hamed, the former commander of Hamas' military wing and the mastermind behind the 2002 terror bombing at the Moment cafe in Jerusalem... Read more... November 25, 2009 Why They Hate Us: Lessons from Civil War Reconstruction | Stephen M. Walt  One of the many barriers to developing a saner U.S. foreign policy is our collective failure to appreciate why military occupations generate so much hatred, resentment, and resistance, and why we should therefore go to enormous lengths to avoid getting mired in them. Costly occupations are an activity you hope your adversaries undertake, especially in areas of little intrinsic strategic value. We blundered into Somalia in the early 1990s without realizing that we weren't welcome; we invaded Iraq thinking we would be greeted as liberators, and we still don't fully understand why many Afghans resent our presence and why some are driven to take up arms against us... Read more... Dumb and Dumber Wars | Antiwar Jeff Huber on dunces macabre ...The latest sanctioned leak says we’ll send another 34,000 troops to Afghanistan, and if Gen. Ray Odierno, the Desert Ox, has his way, we’ll have that many troops in Iraq through 2015 or whenever. God help America. We have no strategy. We have no achievable objectives. We have no idea what we’re doing...Read more... Targeting Muslim Charities in America - by Stephen Lendman In a December 2008 article, this writer explained that the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) was the largest American Muslim charity until the Bush administration bogusly declared it an enemy of the state and shut it down. On December 4, 2001, the Treasury Department declared HLF a terrorist group, froze its assets, and falsely claimed they were being used to funnel millions of dollars to Hamas. HLF's appeal was denied...It provided vital relief to Palestinian refugees in Occupied Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan as well as aid for the needy in Bosnia, Albania, Chechnya, Turkey, America, and elsewhere... Read more... Robert Faurisson: "A Revisionist breeze is blowing." | Curt Maynard  When Faurisson speaks, you'd better be listening. Above is a photo of Faurisson after he was attacked by a group of Jews in France. The beating didn't silence this heroic man, who will be remembered forever as a great revisionist and hero... Read more... The Einsatzgruppen and the Holocaust, by Joseph Bishop | Inconvenient History The history of the Holocaust, within the larger context of the Second World War has the unusual and unique facility of periodically transforming itself, albeit in a manner which serves perceived Jewish collective interests. This is important because the Holocaust is unlike any other conflict, war, event, or cause in history in that it remains deeply rooted in the public consciousness... Read more... Free Gaza! The Gaza Freedom March is gathering support from all over the world--it looks like there will be 1,000 international delegates from 40 countries, marching arm-in-arm with some 50,000 Palestinians from Gaza. Solidarity actions are planned in many places: at the Erez crossing in Israel, in Ramallah, and in many of the cities around the world where the Marchers are coming from.On the one-year anniversary of the Israeli invasion, this is a momentous, historic expression of international solidarity with the plight of Palestinians under siege in Gaza. It stands in stark contrast to the inaction of governments... Read more, endorse the march, sign up... Looking at the Gaza War (if they let us) | Palestine Think Tank  Sameh Brill is back! And he's produced the first of a new series of videos for the European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza. In this video we see news clips, but mostly… we see those who tell us that we weren't allowed access to see ANYTHING. Those people include Richard Falk, George Galloway, Ilan Pappe and others. Watch... Blackwater's Secret War in Pakistan, by Jeremy Scahill | The Nation At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus... Read more... Israeli Soldiers Expose War Crimes in Gaza | Pat Buchanan Soldiers who took part in Israel’s 2008 war on Gaza have spoken out on what they say happened during the 22-day offensive. Now the activist group Breaking the Silence has published soldiers’ testimonies saying crimes were committed, and even encouraged. See fifty-four testimonies of Israeli combat soldiers in the booklet here… Read more... God has left the building, by Sheila Samples | Media Monitors Network ...Anyone who has paid attention to the growing number of evangelical zealots over the past couple of decades must be aware that there is a growing chasm between Religion and Christianity. Today, the term, "religious Christians" is nothing if not oxymoronic. It seems when folks become apocalyptic frothing-at-the-mouth religious, they ultimately stray from the light and life of Christianity, while descending deeper into the darkness and death of Religion... [aka the "Christian" Zionists] Read more... Interview with Deborah Lipstatic: "Holocaust Denial is Pervasive, Growing, and Doomed", by Michael K. Smith | Legalienate  Deborah "the Lip" Lipstadt Speaking from the Bellevue psychiatric ward where she is undergoing evaluation for advanced schizophrenia, Holocaust Confirmer Deborah Lipstatic today declared, "The situation is critical and victory is at hand" in the war on Holocaust heresy. Lipstatic, Professor of Victimology at Coca Cola University in Atlanta, insisted that Holocaust denial is not a legitimate field of study and entirely worthless intellectually, which, she said, explains why she devotes herself night and day to refuting its claims...Read more... Could Obama's Apparent Surrender to the Zionist Lobby Turn out to be Good for Justice and Peace?, by Alan Hart | Intifada-Palestine I’m quite strongly inclined to the view that the answer is “No”, but the question is still worth asking. It was triggered in my mind by a phrase in the introduction to the lead story of the BBC’s World Service (Radio) news bulletins late on 17 November and early the following morning. The story was the Obama’s administration’s “dismay” at Israel’s decision to approve 900 new homes in occupied Arab East Jerusalem “in defiance of world opinion”. The words emphasized were those of a BBC scriptwriter, not a spokesman for the Obama administration... [Well, Mr. Hart, it's a hopeful thought, but I'll bet you 100 to 1 that Uncle Tom Obama will just continue to do what Massa tells him to do.] Read more... A desperate throw of the dice, by Ben White | Electronic Intifada Thirty years ago, Israel minister Ariel Sharon told Knesset members that while they "shouted" about the settlements, "we lay another foot of pipe, another mile of road and build another house." Successive Israeli governments have agreed with the country's founding prime minister David Ben-Gurion's own view that the "precondition for discussion with the Arabs" is to "establish a great Jewish fact in this country.".. Read more... Shooting the Messenger, by Ian Stuttard Al Jazeera's documentary on the deliberate killing and intimidation of journalists in conflict zones, has been nominated for a presitigious Emmy award.  Fadel Shana'a, a Reuters cameraman, became the story when he was killed by Israeli shelling In the past, members of the media were considered to be neutral in time of war. They were much like paramedics in the sense that their main concern was not victory, but saving lives...Shana'a's jeep was clearly marked with the words 'Press' and 'TV'. Nevertheless, Israeli shell fire struck the jeep, tearing it apart. Fadel and three others died instantly. Shana'a's case is but one of many in recent years which has indicated that journalists reporting from conflict zones are no longer regarded as impartial by the combatants. As a result, increasing numbers of journalists have joined the casualty lists... Read more, watch... Rare letter by Albert Einstein condemning Judaic terrorism | On the Contrary ...This is rare courage. Revisionism is indeed fortunate to have in its ranks a defiant academic with impeccable credentials and so much to lose in terms of friends and prestige, who has forged ahead on behalf of the right to utter "heresy" and doubt the tender tenets of Holocaustolatry. He could have enjoyed a comfortable retirement. Instead he is now a target of a fanatical inquisition by haters who disguise their venom under the rubric of "tolerance." Some time ago Prof. McGowan acquired a valuable original letter written and signed by Albert Einstein, critical of Judaic terrorists. He is now offering this historic letter for sale... Read more... November 24, 2009 Gilad Atzmon: Far Beyond Chutzpah  “How come Barak, Israel’s Defence Minister, is under threat of being arrested in the UK while Khaled Mashaal, the leader of Hamas, roams London free of concern” asks Prof Alan Dershowitz, who is probably the leading defender of the Jewish state in America. In fact the question could be easily extended, one may wonder how come Dershowitz and his ilk are roaming freely between Western capitals considering the racist, nationalist expansionist ideology they promote, i.e. Zionism. At the end of the day, Dershowitz the loudest Zionist apologist in America is promoting a precept that has proved to be genocidal... Read more... President Clinton And Now Obama – Who The Bleep Does Netanyahu Think He Is?, by Alan Hart | Intifada-Palestine It’s not often that stories about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict make me laugh but one by Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East editor, did. Because he is the corporation’s correspondent supporters of Israel right or wrong most love to hate – from time to time they pressure the BBC to fire him – I imagine he enjoyed writing it. In a vivid background report for From Our Own Correspondent, headlined Tough Lessons for Obama on Mid-East peace, Jeremy recalled some of the “false dawns” of previous presidential peace efforts...After he (Netanyahu) had lectured the president about the Middle East, Mr. Clinton famously asked his aides:..“Who the fuck does he think he is? Who’s the fucking superpower here?”... Read more... Canada: Colvin's gagging and public smearing highlight callousness | Harper Index Harperites deaf to suffering of detainees, innocent or not, and quick to slag courageous whistleblower The reaction to diplomat Robert Colvin's report, that top advisors gagged him when he tried to report widespread torture of Afghan detainees captured by Canadians, revealed the Harper government's callousness in two ways. First, the government, according to Colvin, who served as a top diplomat in Afghanistan, willfully ignored urgent reports from him in 2006 and 2007 that all detainees, guilty and innocent, were subject to torture, including being beaten with rubber hoses and electrical cable, shocked with electrical current, and raped...Read more... The Higher Education Fiscal Crisis Protects the Wealthy, by Peter Phillips | Global Research Police are arresting and attacking student protesters on University of California (UC) campuses again. “Why did he beat me I wasn’t doing anything,” screamed a young Cal Berkeley women student over KPFA radio on Friday evening November 20. Students are protesting the 32% increase in tuition imposed by the UC regents in a time of severe state deficits. The Board of Regents claims that they have no choice. Students will now have to pay over $10,000 in tuition annually for a public university education that was free only a few decades ago... Read more... UK commanders disclose tensions with US in Iraq | Press TV Newly-leaked UK documents have revealed deep tension between British senior military commanders in Iraq and their American allies. Britain'sSunday Telegraph has published private statements made by top military figures and their political masters, revealing that during the first year of the conflict in May 2003 to May 2004, top UK officers said they found it hard to communicate with their US counterparts. The British chief of staff in Iraq Colonel J. K. Tanner even described the leading US officials as "a group of Martians" for whom "dialogue is alien"... Read more... The US Congressman who sold his soul to the Israel lobby | Intifada-Palestine  U.S. Congressman Tom Perriello Adam Shapiro tells the story of a hitherto principled friend and campaigner for justice and human rights, Tom Perriello, who ran for Congress and, once elected, betrayed all of his principles and became a mere tool of the pro-apartheid American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC.[It's a familiar pattern not only in the U.S., but in all of theWestern democracies - subservience to Zionism in exchange for money andpower - or else] Read more... Iran gains $5b on dollar to euro shift | Tehran Times Iran has gained $5 billion through its policy of shifting away from the U.S. currency in favor of the euro, Central Bank Governor Mahmoud Bahmani was quoted as saying on Monday... Read more... A Disconnect Between Cause and Effect: The Self-Delusionary American Tragedy, by Rev. William E. Alberts | Counterpunch President Obama is following in the footsteps of George W. Bush as America’s Disconnector-in-Chief. Obama went to Fort Hood, Texas, where 13 soldiers were killed and many wounded by military psychiatrist Major Nadal Malik Hasan, and continued the self-delusionary American tragedy of disconnecting cause and effect. Calling the shootings “even more incomprehensible” because the Americans were killed here and not on a foreign battlefield, Obama said, “It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But,” he continued, “this much we know—no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favor. And for what he has done,” Obama declared, “we know that the killer will be met with justice—in this world, and the next.”..Obama himself is “twist[ing] logic” by his overriding need to disconnect cause and effect... Read more... Gilad Atzmon - This Is Pure Genius! (video) Art and beauty are the way forward. [Ctr Alt Shift Film Competition Winner] Watch... Understanding Christian Zionism: The Scofield Bible, by Maidhc Ó Cathail | Intifada-Palestine  The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign (BDS) should widen its scope to target non-Israeli companies who contribute significantly to the oppression of Palestinians. As part of this broader strategy, priority should be given to one of the most egregious offenders, the prestigious British publisher, Oxford University Press. As unlikely as it may seem, the world’s largest university press is responsible for one of the greatest obstacles to justice for Palestinians – The Scofield Bible. Since it was first published in 1909, the Scofield Reference Bible has made uncompromising Zionists out of tens of millions of Americans. When John Hagee, the founder of Christians United for Israel, said that “50 million evangelical bible-believing Christians unite with five million American Jews standing together on behalf of Israel,” it was the Scofield Bible that he was talking about... Read more... Settlements Sans Regret: What's New? It's Always Been Like This, by Bouthaina Shaaban | Counterpunch No one has believed that the United Nations will respond positively to a Palestinian request for a resolution providing for the creation of a Palestinian state within the borders of 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital and the right of return for Palestinian refugees according to all international terms of reference and Security Council resolutions. Nevertheless, the way the subject was approached is worth considering carefully. This request coincided with Israel’s announcement of a new crime, adding 900 settlement units to the Gilo neighborhood in Jerusalem despite the “criticism” and “displeasure” of Europe and the White House and despite the calls of the UN Secretary General to stop building and revoke the decision. It is remarkable that some people have adopted the same language and terminology used by the Israelis in response to this criticism... Read more... Have Israeli Spies Infiltrated International Aiports?, by Jonathan Cook | Redress Info & Analysis South Africa deports airline official after investigation South Africa deported an Israeli airline official last week following allegations that Israel’s secret police, the Shin Bet, had infiltrated Johannesburg international airport in an effort to gather information on South African citizens, particularly black and Muslim travellers. The move by the South African government followed an investigation by local TV showing an undercover reporter being illegally interrogated by an official with El Al, Israel’s national carrier, in a public area of Johannesburg’s OR Tambo airport...Read more... November 23, 2009 Call for Support
The One Democratic State Group - Gaza
Please circulate widely
The ODSG, One Democratic State Group, is a Palestinian non-violent popular resistance group based in Gaza. We are Palestinian activists, from various backgrounds, who have come together to further peace with justice in the Middle East. We believe that the One State Solution is the only viable option that guarantees comprehensive peace in the Middle East. We believe that justice and peace can be achieved in the context of a single Democratic State that would include and benefit equally all current residents of historic Palestine--after the return of Palestinian refugees--irrespective of race, ethnicity or religion. We pledge to work actively towards this end.
We are also active in the Palestine-initiated campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. These measures, similar to those applied to South Africa during the apartheid era, are necessary to bring an end to Israel's genocidal policies towards Palestinians both within Israel and throughout the Occupied Territories. We believe that these non-violent measures should be maintained until Apartheid Israel recognizes the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self-determination and the establishment of a democratic state on Mandatory Palestine; a state for all of its citizens.
As we are not an NGO, all our funding comes from our own pockets. As our movement is now rapidly growing it is becoming more difficult to financially sustain our projects and hire greatly needed staff. Due to lack of funds we have been forced to freeze some of our projects.
Our current projects include the following:
In order to keep ODSG productively running, we are in need of your generous support and donations. We invite you to visit our website, and join us in our workin an act of people to people solidarity, and anti-apartheid activism for peace with justice.
You can make a donation via paypal through our website. If you are in the United States and would like to make a tax-deductible donation, contact us by using the form on our website or via email.
Through your help we will be able to make our vision a reality and thereby ensure that our children and grandchildren may live together in more just and equal world.
The One Democratic State Group Gaza, Palestine November 22, 2009 For a Secular Democratic State, by Saree Makdisi | Electronic Intifada  A WORLD CUT IN TWO:" At Qalandia checkpoint Israeli soldiers stop Palestinians ...There are, in short, two separate legal and administrative systems, maintained by the regular use of military force, for two populations -- settlers and natives -- unequally inhabiting the same piece of land: exactly as was the case in the colonial countries described by Fanon, or in South Africa under apartheid...There remains but one possibility for peace with justice: truth, reconciliation -- and a single democratic and secular state, a state in which there will be no "natives" and "settlers" and all will be equal; a state for all its citizens irrespective of their religious affiliation. Such a state has always, by definition, been anathema for Zionism. But for the people of Israel and Palestine, it is the only way out...[The book referred to after the article is Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, published in 2008] Read more... Barak: We must crush IDF refusal with an iron fist | Haaretz  Ubersturmfuehrer Barak Defense Minister Ehud Barak reiterated on Saturday his pledge to crack down on Israel Defense Forces soldiers who refuse to carry out orders, saying Israel should not hesitate to act forcefully to crush the phenomenon. "A country that wishes to live must put an end to refusal by the right and left with an iron fist," said Barak in a closed meeting... [Heil Hitler!] Read more... Obama Returns to Greater Middle East Mess, by Jim Lobe | IPS As Barack Obama arrives home from his weeklong tour of East Asia, he confronts a growing list of ever more urgent problems in the Greater Middle East that he inherited from George W. Bush's "global war on terror". From Palestine to Pakistan, Obama, who also faces a major fight in getting his top legislative priority - health care reform - through Congress, must make a series of critical decisions within a relatively short time. Some of those decisions could well determine Obama's foreign policy legacy, specifically whether he can pull the U.S. out of the hole Bush dug for it in the region or whether, inspiring rhetoric notwithstanding, he keeps digging... Read more... Telling It Like It Is: Don't like the Heat ?, by Layla Anwar | An Arab Woman Blues - Reflections in a sealed bottle...: You don't like the Heat ? Get out of the Kitchen. Yes, it's that simple. I am a firm believer in Simplicity. But am no simpleton. Been reading about the deteriorating mental health of your brave boys. Follow the simple piece of advice above... No need to cry wolf and no need for all those PTSDs. Get the fuck out now. That would be a long lasting, proven solution for your mental ills. No need, no more, to worry about suicide and burning your girlfriend alive once you're back home.... Get the fuck out. Out, as in OUT. And we will deal with the rest...Promise. You don't have resilience, you don't have what it takes... I don't want to rub it in, but face it...you don't. We are armed to our teeth.... CIA and others just panicked now with -- armed to our teeth. No need to panic. You are armed, we are armed...different kinds of arms...not found in your war manuals... Besides, you are on our territory... You don't like the heat ? Get the fuck out. Layla's blog... Are hate crimes legalizing treason?, by Jeff Gates | Veterans Today Winning wars in the Information Age largely depends on winning the battle for public opinion. Thus the opinion-shaping role of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) when it attacked a high profile California professor for his criticism of Israeli policy in Palestine. That ADL intimidation campaign successfully chilled debate on campuses nationwide during several time-critical months while a new president, promising the hope of change, reassessed U.S.-Israeli relations. His only change - endorsing more Israeli settlements on Palestinian land - quashed any hope of peace. This ADL silencing strategy offers a microcosm of how the U.S. was induced to war in Iraq based on false intelligence. From the provocation of September 11, 2001 until the invasion of March 2003, war-planners ignored, dismissed or sought to silence anyone critical of the spurious premises offered for war...The Pentagon warned six decades ago that Jewish extremists sought military and economic dominance over the entire Middle East. As the Joint Chiefs of Staff cautioned Harry Truman: "All stages of this program are equally sacred to the fanatical concepts of the Jewish leaders. The program is openly admitted by some leaders, and has been privately admitted to United States officials by responsible leaders of the presently dominant Jewish group-The Jewish Agency."... Read more... DEMJANJUK FIGHTS FOR LIFE | American Free Press Former Rep. Jim Traficant is again going to bat for an Ohio workman accused of being a Nazi camp guard John Demjanjuk is a retired auto worker from Cleveland. He was born in Ukraine, served in World War II as a Russian soldier, was captured and held as a prisoner of war. Demjanjuk's captors were soldiers of the German army. Today, as you read this column, Demjanjuk is standing trial for his very life once again. He is facing another Nazi war crimes indictment. Think about the dynamics of this dilemma for John Demjanjuk. He's being tried in Germany, by the very country who captured him. They say he was a Nazi war criminal. I don't know about you, but on its surface it just doesn't add up. Demjanjuk is not a war criminal and certainly was never a Nazi... Read more... Dirk Zimmermann - German 'Thought Criminal' Part 1 | YouTube A happily married 36-year-old German by the name of Dirk Zimmermann has sent German copies of Germar Rudolf's 'Lectures on the Holocaust' to various people in German public life. By this act, Dirk Zimmermann has made himself liable to prosecution under German 'Hate Speech' legislation. Rudolf is in prison and his book has been banned, as it questions and doubts the so-called 'Holocaust,' (a crime in modern Europe) which supposedly occurred during World War Two. This is a conscious act of 'denying the Holocaust.' Dirk Zimmermann is doing this to exercise his free conscience and inalienable right to freedom of thought, but ultimately for the protection of a free German society. [Poor translation, but one gets the idea] Watch... The Israel Lobby, the Neocons, and the Iranian-American Community, by Muhammad Sahimi | Antiwar Ever since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected Iran’s president in June 2005 and began using strong rhetoric against Israel, the neoconservatives and the Israel lobby have been trying to provoke a war against Iran, or at the very least persuade the United States and the international community to impose crippling sanctions on Iran. Their efforts have been multi-pronged, ranging from spreading exaggerations, half truths, and even outright lies about Iran’s nuclear program, to planting anti-Iran articles in the mainstream media, and pressuring the Congress to pass tough Resolutions for sanctions against Iran. The campaign has spread to cyberspace. Every popular Iranian website (such as Iranian.com) has some bloggers who strongly advocate crippling sanctions and even war with Iran, and support Israel’s position... November 21, 2009 As the Light onto the Nations, by Gilad Atzmon  Israeli tank during Israel's most recent (unsuccessful) invasion of Lebanon ‘Israel is the light onto the nations’ says the Torah. Indeed it is, and not just because the Torah says so. Israel is ahead of everyone else in many fronts. Take for instance, terrorizing civilian populations and practicing some of the most devastating murderous tactics upon elders, women and young..The Jerusalem post reported yesterday that the Chairman of NATO's Military Committee, Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola, visited Israel earlier this week to study “IDF tactics and methods that the military alliance can utilise for its war in Afghanistan.”.. [good luck with that..] Read more... Palin: Jewish settlements should expand - Monsters and Critics Sarah Palin, the failed Republican vice presidential candidate in the headlines again with a new book, disagrees with the Obama administration's call for an end to Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories. 'I believe the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead,' she told ABC News' doyen Barbara Walters in interview excerpts released Wednesday. The former Alaska governor, who was a surprise pick of John McCain for his running mate, has been widely derided as being uninformed on major issues and unqualified for the presidency, having never served in national office... Watch the Whacko from Wasilla being interviewed... (35 seconds)... Palestinian History and Identity in Israeli Schools, by Sa'id Barghouti | Palestine Think Tank  Children from Kufr Qasem develop their own activities to educate one another about history, This article is based on my personal experience as a teacher of Palestinian students in Israeli public schools and through my work as school inspector and history curriculum team coordinator for Arab schools from 1975 until 2004. During this period I was engaged in efforts at textbook reform, and on research about Israel's education system which I undertook for my doctoral dissertation...geography and their rights as part of Badil's Youth Education and Activation project Read more... World Condemns New Israeli Settlements | Palestine Chronicle More international community members condemn Israel over plans to authorize construction of 900 new housing units at Gilo, a settlement built illegally on Palestinian land occupied in the 1967 war... Read more... British TV documentary tackles taboo of Israel's lobby, by Diane Langford | Electronic Intifada For the first time a mainstream British television program has tackled the Zionist lobby head-on. Channel 4's Dispatches, broadcast on 16 November, promised to hold the pro-Israel lobby up to rigorous public scrutiny and it succeeded. Presented by Peter Oborne, former political editor of the right-wing weekly The Spectator, Dispatches revealed the cozy relationship between Britain's pro-Israel lobby and both the Conservative and Labour parties as well as its attempts to stifle criticism of Israel in the press... Read more... Tribute to Kahane Planned by Israeli Legislators, by Jonathan Cook | Electronic Intifada  Kahane, a US rabbi who emigrated to Israel, advocated the expulsion of all Arabs A plan by right-wing legislators in Israel to commemorate the anniversary this month of the death of Meir Kahane, whose banned anti-Arab movement is classified as a terrorist organisation, risks further damaging the prospects for talks between Israel and the Palestinians, US officials have warned. A move to stage the commemoration in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, is being led by Michael Ben-Ari, who was elected this year and is the first self-declared former member of Kahane's party, Kach, to become a legislator since the movement was banned 15 years ago...[Too much even for the Israelis to stomach then; mainstream now] Read more... Is the Israel lobby doing more harm than good?, by Anshel Pfeffer | Haaretz Three years ago I was invited, along with 30 other guests - mainly politicians and journalists - to a private dinner party given by one of Britain's richest Jews at a Jerusalem hotel. After a mediocre steak and some fantastic wine, we were addressed by our host. The British media were a disgrace, he told us, "real Goebbels-style." Their coverage of the Second Lebanon War had totally ruined his summer holiday. And the British politicians, many of whom he had donated to in the past, were with few exceptions "all pusillanimous hypocrites" who had criticized Israel's "disproportionate" response to Hezbollah's attacks. What was needed, he said, was a new "crack team" of media specialists to be based in London, to compile information, brief journalists and prepare instant responses to all the mendacious lies issued by the hostile press. He expected us all to applaud and congratulate him on his visionary idea, which he assured us he was willing to fund handsomely... Read more... History promises disaster in Afghanistan for blind America, by John R. MacArthur | Projo  Afghan tribal chiefs at the Khyber Pass during the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-80) If President Obama has ever heard of William L. Shirer, chances are it’s in connection with Nazi Germany. Nowadays, you can’t make assumptions about what people under 50 know and don’t know, but it’s a safe bet Obama recalls Shirer’s most famous book, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” even if he hasn’t read it...the other night I stumbled across a part of Shirer’s outstanding reporting career that provided a different, urgently pertinent lesson and might convince Obama of another argument against appeasement — in this case, appeasement of mad Army generals, mad neo-colonialist State Department officers, and mad neo-conservatives, all of whom think that Afghan tribesmen can be brought to heel by an American military occupation employing the latest counterinsurgency techniques...Read more... The Need to Boycott Israel (Part 1):"Talk plus discussion/debate by Omar Barghouti, organizer of PACBI (the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) | Filmed at the U of Minnesota Watch... Dr. Mads Gilbert: The ongoing and devastating siege of Gaza by Israel | YouTube Dr. Mads Gilbert of Norwac, one of the doctors allowed into Gaza to give emergency medical aid, described conditions to the world inside Gaza during Israel's barbaric attack. Things have only gotten worse since the war on Gaza. Israel has truned the strip into a concentration camp. One day the world will look back on these dark times in Palestine and call it genocide... Watch... Israel lobby goes after Human Rights Watch | YouTube America's leading human rights organization has accused Israel and its supporters of an "organized campaign" of false allegations and misinformation in an attempt to discredit the group over its reports of war crimes in Gaza. The campaign against Human Rights Watch has included accusations that the group's reports on the Jewish state are written by "anti-Israel ideologues" and that it has sought funds from Saudi Arabia. Watch... November 20, 2009 Zionist Control of Britain’s Government: 1940-2009, by William A. Cook  This week the British people listened to the Daily Mall’s Peter Osborne present, on Channel 4, his devastating account of the Jewish lobby’s control of their government. Now we know that virtually all the principal politicians in the UK of both parties, like their brothers across the lake in our House and Senate, take “contributions” from the Israeli lobby machine ensuring that the Anglo-American mid-east policies follow the dictates of the Israeli government...In 1941, the High Commissioner of Palestine, Harold MacMichael, Senior Palestine Mandate officer for the British Mandate forces in Palestine, sent the following “Top Secret” “Memorandum on the Participation of the Jewish National Institutions in Palestine in Acts of Lawlessness and Violence” to the Secretary of State, dated October 16th, a report prepared by The Palestine Police, Criminal Investigation Department:..Perhaps one of the most frightening observations MacMichael makes comes at the very end of his dispatch: “As matters now stand it seems to me inevitable that the Zionist Juggernaut which has been created with such intensity of zeal for a Jewish national state will be the cause of very serious trouble in the Near East.” Prophetic words indeed... Read more... Video interview with Norman Finkelstein: "Hamas is not obliged under international law to accept the legitimacy of the state of Israel." ...Hamas is not obliged under international law to accept the legitimacy of the state of Israel. If you go back for example 1947 Gandhi said he’ll accept the reality of Pakistan, but he would never accept the legitimacy of the state of Pakistan. Hamas is not expected to be held to a higher level of diplomacy than Gandhi..Gandhi said: ‘Pakistan is a reality which I’m forced to accept, but I don’t accept it as legitimate.’ And that’s the same position of Hamas... Read more, watch video... Internet Under Siege by Philip Giraldi | Antiwar It is ironic that President Barack Obama would travel to China and speak against government control over the internet. If the American Department of Homeland Security has its way new cybersecurity laws will enable Obama’s administration to take control of the internet in the event of a national crisis. How that national crisis might be defined would be up to the White House but there have been some precedents that suggest that the response would hardly be respectful of the Bill of Rights... [This article is a must read because Giraldi reports on the Zionist hasbarachiks - upwards of 100,000 of them at least - who are actively recruited and organized, many of them paid, to spread their lies and distortions on any websites that report critically on Israel or Zionism.] Read more... One Democratic State Group Seminar in Gaza | Palestine Video Watch... Hizballah in War and Peace, by Nicholas Noe | Palestine Chronicle  Hizballah finally feels confident enough to take a much-needed breather. Four and a half years after Syrian troops were unexpectedly cajoled out of Lebanon, and more than three years after the end of a (nearly) "open" war with Israel, the Shi'ite movement Hizballah appears not only militarily stronger, as many of its enemies attest, but also politically and ideologically more secure, confident and, to a certain degree, coherent. Indeed, as far as Hizballah is concerned, the March 14 movement that helped kick the Syrians out and that managed to maintain a narrow parliamentary majority in last summer's election (reportedly with the help of more than $750 million in Saudi financing) has effectively ceased to exist... Read more... Gilad Atzmon – Tractatus Logico Palestinicus | Sabbah 1 "What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about, we must pass over in silence." (Ludwig Wittgenstein 1918) 1.1 Humanism and ethics are ends worth fighting for. 2 The Palestinian liberation struggle is grounded on humanist and ethical arguments since it is based on moral rights, namely 'the right of return' and 'liberation'.1.2 Western politics and political discourse (on the other hand) are concerned with power and hegemony. 1.3 Hence, humanism and ethics are foreign to the Western political discourse and vice versa. 2.1 Since the Palestinian liberation struggle is a humanist cause, Western politicians and political discourse are foreign to the Palestinian struggle. Read more...2.11 As a result Western politics left, right and centre were not able to provide for the Palestinian people and their struggle over the period of decades of Zionist abuse... Record numbers go hungry in the US: America's economic pain brings hunger pangs, by Amy Goldstein | Washington Post USDA report on access to food 'unsettling,' Obama says  One in six of the population could not afford to buy sufficient food to stay healthy at some point last year. The nation's economic crisis has catapulted the number of Americans who lack enough food to the highest level since the government has been keeping track, according to a new federal report, which shows that nearly 50 million people -- including almost one child in four -- struggled last year to get enough to eat...Read more... Dying for Crooks: US Troops in Afghanistan, by James Bovard | Antiwar Transparency International reported yesterday that Afghanistan is the most corrupt nation in the world – except for Somalia. Heckuva achievement, if the only nation on earth that is more shady is one that is full of pirates… Karzai is making Marion Barry look like Mother Teresa.The Washington Post reported today that one of Afghanistan’s top ministers took a $30 million bribe to give a special deal to a Chinese mining company. The New York Times reported: “Everything seems to be for sale: public offices, access to government services, even a person’s freedom.” So what do Army recruiters say these days? Why in Hades would any American agree to risk his neck to prop up this band of thieves? Link... Honduran Dictatorship Is A Threat to Democracy In the Hemisphere, by Mark Weisbrot | Common Dreams A small group of rich people who own most of Honduras and its politicians enlist the military to kidnap the elected president at gunpoint and take him into exile. They then arrest thousands of people opposed to the coup, shut down and intimidate independent media, shoot and kill some demonstrators, torture and beat many others. This goes on for more than four months, including more than two of the three months legally designated for electoral campaigning. Then the dictatorship holds an "election." Should other countries recognize the results of such an election, to be held on November 29th? Latin America says absolutely not; the United States is saying, well, "yes we can"- if we can get away with it... Read more... The New York Mets and the business of terrorism, by Aaron Levitt, Electronic Intifada  By hosting an event in support of Hebron settlers at Citi Field, the New York Mets are supporting terrorism When I first learned that the New York Mets were hosting a fundraiser for the nonprofit Hebron Fund at Citi Field in support of the Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, I honestly assumed it was a joke, albeit a poor one. When I realized this was an actual, planned event, I still found it almost impossible to believe. This is because, even aside from the devastating impact of settlement expansion on the prospects for peace in the region, I have had the misfortune to see, repeatedly and at first hand, the fruits of the Hebron Fund's labors... Read more... Rabbi's Followers 'Terror Cell in Parliament', by Jonathan Cook |Counterpunch A plan by right-wing legislators in Israel to commemorate the anniversary this month of the death of Meir Kahane, whose banned anti-Arab movement is classified as a terrorist organization, risks further damaging the prospects for talks between Israel and the Palestinians, US officials have warned...Mr Ben-Ari is probably not the only former member of Kach in parliament. Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister and leader of the far-right Yisrael Beitenu party, the third largest in parliament, is believed to have joined Kach when he first arrived in Israel in the 1970s... [What? A terrorist cell in the government of a terrorist State? How shocking!] Read more... Netanyahu: The obscene liar, by Khalid Amayreh | Palestinian Information Center  Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is a manifestly fascist-minded demagogue who thinks that everything Jewish must override everything non-Jewish, regardless of all considerations. He is also a first-class liar who believes that lying to the world, including Jews, is the first line of defense against growing opposition to genocidal Israeli criminality. Indeed, like Nazi Germany, which waged war on Europe and killed or caused the death of millions in the name of self-defense, Israel is doing the same thing by threatening and attacking its neighbors, especially the helpless Palestinians who have been trying for decades to rid themselves of the Nazi-like Israeli occupation of their country... Read more... Israel Keeps Up Palestinian Evictions (video) | Global Research Watch... The Israeli Exception: Gilo and East Jerusalem, by Binoy Kampmark | Counterpunch In 1987, the conservative author Midge Decter described her association with Israel and those willing to place it above conventional judgment. ‘We know ourselves to be bound by ties so deep, so essential, so unconditional, that they are beyond daylight examination. To be a Jew is not an act, it is a fate. The existence of Israel is absolutely central to that fate. The rest is mere details – knowable, unknowable, makes no difference.’... Read more... Documentary: Settlers and the Olive Harvest 2009 (video) | B'Tselem In several events filmed by B'Tselem during October, settlers are seen hampering Palestinians from harvesting olives and stealing their crops. We also hear from the settlers who are involved in these actions. Watch... West Is East, When Israel Decides by Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler -- Antiwar The three-story, 36-room Cliff Hotel used to be a favorite for Western pilgrims in search of the "authentic Holy Land flavor" because of its extensive gardens; it was a favorite also among Jerusalem Palestinians for wedding parties...Five years ago, in the wake of the Palestinian Intifadah uprising, Israel began to build its concrete security wall to fend off would-be bombers coming into Jerusalem. Border police seized the hotel and turned it into a security outpost... Read more... November 19, 2009 Reality TV (Censored)  Max Blumenthal: Feeling the Hate In Jerusalem on Eve of Obama’s Cairo Address | Mondoweiss On the eve of President Barack Obama’s address to the Muslim world from Cairo, Egypt, I stepped out onto the streets of Jerusalem with my friend Joseph Dana to interview young Israelis and American Jews about their reaction to the speech. We encountered rowdy groups of beer sodden twenty-somethings, many from the United States, and all eager to vent their visceral, even violent hatred of Barack Obama and his policies towards Israel. Usually I offer a brief commentary on my video reports, but this one requires no comment at all. Quite simply, it contains some of the most shocking footage I have ever filmed. Watch... Feeling more hate in Jerusalem (video) | Mondoweiss Clayton Swisher of AlJazeera English in West Jerusalem, channeling the same vibe that Max Blumenthal got to. Nobody drinking, but one guy says he would kill Obama, and a few others say he’s an Arab or a Muslim. Oh, and two say he doesn’t understand "the Arab mentality." This is Israel today. Scary place. Can it change? Yes. Will have to. Watch... Does the Media have a Double Standard on Israel? - Max Blumenthal | YouTube Journalist Max Blumenthal discusses reactions to his controversial video "Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem," which he claims was banned from websites YouTube and the Huffington Post. Blumenthal cites reaction to the video as an example of what he views as a "clear double standard in the way Israel is reported." Watch... Feeling the Hate in Tel Aviv -- The Sequel to the Video YouTube Censored Max Blumenthal and Jesse Rosenfeld interview young Tel Aviv residents about Iran, Obama and right-wing laws limiting the speech rights of their Palestinian-Israeli neighbors. The shocking responses reflect the deepening of racist and authoritarian trends in Israeli society. Watch... An Open Wound: The Israel-Palestine conflict as a driver of interfaith discord, by Michael Shaik | Australians for Palestine  The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to those wishing to promote interfaith understanding between Jews, Christians and Muslims. After providing a brief sketch of the current situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the paper will describe the roles of Israel’s religious settler movement in the ‘redemption of the land’, the ‘Christian right’ in supporting Israel’s colonisation of Palestinian lands and of radical Islamic Jihadist organisations in exploiting the conflict to radicalise other Muslims. The paper will conclude with an examination of how initiatives seeking to promote interfaith understanding and Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation can founder because of a reluctance on the part of those involved to ‘take sides’... Read more... Breaking The Vessels, by Jeff Halper | Media Monitors OK, so the Palestinian Authority will not unilaterally declare an independent Palestinian state. In fact, the whole issue seems a misunderstanding. Concerned that the US has backtracked on a two state solution based on the 1967 borders and that Israel was getting the world used to the “fact” that the settlements and the Wall, rather than ’67 borders, now defined the parameters of a future Palestinian state (on only 15% of historic Palestine), the PA simply wanted the Security Council to reaffirm that principle. “What should we do while the Israeli government is busy with fait accompli actions,” asked Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, “but to turn to the Security Council to preserve the option of two states? We want the Security Council to declare that the two-state solution is the only option and that it would recognize the state of Palestine on the '67 borders and to live side by side with the State of Israel.”... [C'mon, Jeff, you know better than to cling to the two state charade - look deep within yourself and uproot that idiot voice that keeps insisting that there is any legitimacy to the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine.] Read more...The truth does not need hasbara, by Sonja Karkar | Australians for Palestine Hasbara is the Hebrew word for “explanation” and is used by Israel and its supporters to describe their efforts to re-shape public opinion and build up Israel’s image abroad. In fact, it is simply a euphemism for propaganda.  Israel’s recent attacks on Gaza and the shockwaves reverberating around the world from the extent of its savagery has caused a drastic re-think in Israel of how to shape its image in the wake of such sudden uncensored exposure. There was no doubt that Israel had a public relations disaster on its hands and spokespersons appeared almost robot-like as they tried to make their carefully crafted hasbara credible against the images emblazoned on front pages, the nightly television news and the spread of YouTube videos capturing the sickening detail of the death and destruction that Israel’s military arsenal rained down on the Palestinians... Read more... Rachel Maddow Interview with Former Evangelist Frank Schaeffer: Christian Right Is 'Trolling for Assassins' | Alternet .Schaeffer: "There is a crazy fringe [receiving] messages that have been pouring out of FOX News ... talking about doing away with Obama, asking God to kill him.".. Read more... The Criminalization of US Foreign Policy: From the Truman Doctrine to the Neo-Conservatives, by Michel Chossudovsky The World is at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. The US has embarked on a military adventure, "a long war", which threatens the future of humanity. At no point since the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, has humanity been closer to the unthinkable, a nuclear holocaust which could potentially spread, in terms of radioactive fallout, over a large part of the Middle East. There is mounting evidence that the Bush Administration, in liaison with Israel and NATO, is planning the launching of a nuclear war against Iran, ironically, in retaliation for Tehran's nonexistent nuclear weapons program. The US-Israeli military operation is said to be in "an advanced state of readiness". If such a plan were to be launched, the war would escalate and eventually engulf the entire Middle-East Central Asian region. The war could extend beyond the region, as some analysts have suggested, ultimately leading us into a World War III scenario... [That was from two years ago. And egged on by the Zionist horde (both Jewish and Christian), we are inching closer every day] Read more... Gaza braces for bitter winter, Mel Frykberg | The Electronic Intifada  Tents have been set up for families whose homes were destroyed Tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza living in tents and damaged homes face a wet, cold and miserable winter as Israel's blockade of the coastal territory continues to prevent the importation of building and reconstruction material...by the Israeli assault on Gaza nearly one year ago. Read more... The Zionist Con Game in America, by Paul Balles | Intifada-Palestine Paul J. Balles views the twisted logic and demeaning tone of American Zionists who casually falsify history and dismiss the rights of the Palestinian people in defence of Israel. Several days ago, David Harris, Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee, wrote an article for the Huffington Post complaining that later this month the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), will consider a proposed boycott of Israel. His complaint is typical of the kind of twisted logic used by American Zionists to advance Israel’s causes... Read more... Time for sanctions | Al-Ahram Weekly Effective, targeted sanctions against the symbols of Israeli occupation could break the deadlock of the stalled Arab-Israeli peace process, writes Ezzedine Choukri Fishere In July 2006, after a meeting of Arab foreign ministers, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa declared the Middle East peace process dead. Some found his statement premature and argued that the peace process was only "frozen". A few months later, in fact on Christmas Eve, the US administration intervened in order to resuscitate the ailing process, moving it to what would become the "Annapolis intensive care unit". The peace process was kept there on life support until the end of 2008, and then left to die quietly as the key actors exited the stage. Now that Israel has brought back the master of ceremonies, it is time to bury the dead... Read more... Palestinians Need Change -- Not Charades, by Rami Khouri | Agence Global  Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has reverted to an old political trick by saying he will resign and not run for re-election when the next presidential elections are held in early 2010 – and then immediately arranging a series of staged “rallies” in which ordinary people appear to cheer him and demand that he remain in office. The spectacle is as disheartening as it is old and empty, and it is an insult to the dignity and needs of the Palestinian people... Read more... Bantustans and the unilateral declaration of statehood, by Virginia Tilley | The Electronic Intifada The PA leadership in Ramallah is leading the Palestinian movement of independence to a dead end with its proposed unilateral call for Palestinian statehood. From a rumor, to a rising murmur, the proposal floated by the Palestinian Authority's (PA) Ramallah leadership to declare Palestinian statehood unilaterally has suddenly hit center stage. The European Union, the United States and others have rejected it as "premature," but endorsements are coming from all directions: journalists, academics, nongovernmental organization activists, Israeli right-wing leaders (more on that later). The catalyst appears to be a final expression of disgust and simple exhaustion with the fraudulent "peace process" and the argument goes something like this: if we can't get a state through negotiations, we will simply declare statehood and let Israel deal with the consequences. But it's no exaggeration to propose that this idea, although well-meant by some, raises the clearest danger to the Palestinian national movement in its entire history, threatening to wall Palestinian aspirations into a political cul-de-sac from which it may never emerge... Read more... They Cling Like Ticks: Iranian President Ahmadinejad Denies the Holocaust and Warns Europeans of the Zionists | MEMRI [It'sironic that MEMRI, one of the principle agencies in the U.S. devoted toZionist psyops, does an excellent job of making available to the publicthe most important voices in the Islamic world (in MEMRI's oftenconveniently mistranslated versions). In their delusional state theyassume that everyone else will perceive spokespeople from the MiddleEast as they do, as "terrorists" bent on "jihad" (a word that theyhabitually mistranslate). But for those of us not successfullyprogrammed (Zionized), they provide us with an excellent window intowhat some very intelligent, articulate and aware people from the Ummahave to say.] Watch... Israel's "Pathology", by Ira Chernus | truthout  From the outside, it looks like Obama and his advisers are drifting without a rudder, unable to guide themselves, much less the Israelis and Palestinians, toward the peace the president says he's committed to. Pundits chalk it up to the administration's ineptitude or the power of the Israeli lobby or the chaotic state of Palestinian politics, or all of the above. Perhaps, though, none of these factors ultimately make much difference. Perhaps it matters not a whit what the US or the Palestinians do, because the Israeli government and the bulk of Jewish Israeli voters are just too sick to move toward a just peace... Read more... How Alien Media is Suffocating Real Culture: Globalization Unchecked, by Ramzy Baroud | Counterpunch A Muslim family sits across of me in café, in a largely Muslim Asia country. An older woman shyly hunches over and desperately trying to avoid eye contact with the giant plasma screen TV, blazing loud music on the popular music video channel, MTV. The scantily dressed presenter introduces her ‘top song’ for the week. Beyonce, dressed in so very little, annoyingly reiterates that she is “a single lady.” The old woman’s son is mesmerized by what he sees. He pays no attention to his mother, young wife or even his own son who wreaks havoc in the coffee shop. The man’s T-Shirt reads: “what the fxxx are you looking at?”... Read more... November 18, 2009 Free Bethlehem Campaign in December | AAPER  Bethlehem is one of the most historically significant towns in Palestine. It is known as the birthplace of King David and of Jesus. And, for generations, it was a lively and bustling town. But, today, Bethlehem resembles an open-air prison, occupied by Israel's military and encircled by Israel's wall. These circumstances have caused Bethlehem's population, particularly its once-virbrant Christian population, to emigrate from the city in dramatic numbers. AAPER believes that it is important to educate Americans about the plight of today's Bethlehem... Read more... Letter from Mazin in Bethlehem: The squeeky wheels of hamsters and most politicians Many years ago my son had two pet hamsters who took turns running on a metal exercise wheel without of course getting anywhere (but occasionally we would let them run free in a room in the home). I was reminded of those two hamsters this week because politicians occasionally do the same running around without going anywhere by only verbally (thus only exercising their speech muscles). The Israeli regime just decided to continue violating International law by building 900 new units in the Jewish only colony of Gilo near us here in Bethlehem. The Bethlehem district has lost nearly 80% of its areas toIsrael and the remaining 20% (the concentration camp) is now very crowded with half of the population in the district being refugees or displaced Palestinians. Yet politicians ranging from German Chancellor to French foreign minister to British Prime Minister to the US president took turns repeating meaningless words about this action "delaying" or "harming" the "peace process" (as if there is a peace process or any possibility of a fair negotiations between the 4th strongest army in the world and an occupied colonized people). Ariel Sharon who is just as alive as the peace process used to pronounce it the "piss process"... Read more... A Science Fiction Story, by Fidel Castro | Dprogram I very much regret to have to criticize Obama knowing that there are in that country other could-be presidents worse than him. I am aware that that position in the United States is today a major headache. The best example of this is the report in yesterday's edition of Granma that 237 US members of Congress, or 44%, are millionaires. This does not mean that every one of them is an incorrigible reactionary but it is extremely difficult that they feel like the many million Americans who do not have access to medical care, who are unemployed or who need to work very hard to earn their living. Of course, Obama himself is no beggar; he owns millions of dollars. He excelled as a professional and his command of language, his eloquence and intellect are unquestionable. Also, he was elected president despite his being an African American, a first time occurrence in the history of his country's racist society, which is enduring a profound international economic crisis of its own making. This is not about being an anti-American as the system and its huge media intend to label its adversaries. The American people are not the culprits but rather the victims of a system that is not only unsustainable but worse still: it is incompatible with the life of humanity... Read more... Queen Esther: How Sarah Palin Made Herself Indispensable While Destroying the Republican Party, by Max Blumenthal | Tomdispatch ...If Palin is indeed a cancer on the GOP, why can't the Republican establishment retire her to a quiet life of moose hunting in the political wilderness? Why has her appeal only increased in the wake of her catastrophic political expeditions? Why won't she listen to, or abide by, conventional political wisdom?... Read more... The Complete Guide to Killing Non-Jews, by Gilad Atzmon  Read more... Italy: An attempt to outlaw defending freedom of speech, by Miguel Martinez | Palestine Think Tank ...The Zionist discourse, in recent years, has focused increasingly on the extermination of the European Jews during the Second World War, and this has led Antonio Caracciolo to touch another topic. As a liberal and legal scholar, he considers the attempt to introduce prison sentences against "Holocaust deniers" or "revisionists" incompatible with Articles 21 and 33 of the Italian constitution, which protect freedom of expression and of research. In this context, however, Antonio Caracciolo has refused to get involved in historical discussions, or to support any "revisionist" thesis. His blog - one of hundreds of thousands on the net in Italy - passed unnoticed for over two years, until a few days ago Italy's leading daily, La Repubblica, decided to make its existence front page news, under the more-than-misleading title: "'The extermination of the Jews is a legend", Holocaust denier professor, Rome University under shock"... [If the Italian Fascisti/Zionists succeed, Italy will become the 13th European country to outlaw speech/thought critical of Israel or Zionism, thereby falling completely under Zionist control like the others. - The Editor] Read more... Dying to prosecute Hasan, by Jerry Mazza | Online Journal The White House went ahead Thursday, according to the Washington Post, and charged Major Nidal M. Hasan with 13 counts of murder. It also reported that "Hasan has not cooperated with federal investigators seeking to interview him. His attorney, retired Col. John Galligan, told the Associated Press that military officials charged Hasan in the hospital without his Army lawyers present." Galligan went on to say, "What I find disturbing is that my client is in ICU, and he's 150 miles south of his defense counsel, and he's being served with the charges. Given his status as a patient, I'm troubled by this procedure and that I'm not there. I'm in the dark, and that shouldn't be the case. I am mad." That seems clear. The military officials are violating the rights of the accused... Read more... Pete Seeger's role in ending Israeli house demolitions (from Ha'aretz) | ICAHD  Jeff Halper with legendary singer and ICAHD supporter Pete Seeger Anyone who owns a radio probably knows the song "Turn, Turn, Turn" (To everything there is a season) very well. A number of versions of this song have become permanent fixtures on the play lists of most popular music radio stations. Here's what the listeners don't know: every time this song is played, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions receives a few dollars, which accumulate to "several thousand dollars every year," according to the committee's co-founder and coordinator...Read more... Leading Egyptian Newspaper raises Blood Libel | MEMRI [Note from the Editor: MEMRI is a leading Zionist disinformation agency based in Washington, DC. The reader might also want to take a look at the work of Israeli historian Ariel Toaff, Blood Passover: European Jews And Ritual Murder . Also see Alison Weir's article on organ harvesting in Israel, The New "Blood Libel"? Israeli Organ Harvesting.] The Blood Libel - the claim that Jews use the blood of Christians to make the Matzah (unleavened bread) eaten at Passover - is an ancient accusation against the Jewish people. In modern times, this claim has surfaced in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict...However, on the issue of Jewish use of Arab blood for religious worship there seems to be less of a disagreement. The government-sponsored daily Al-Ahram - the leading paper in Egypt - published an almost full-page article by columnist 'Adel Hamooda entitled, "A Jewish Matzah made from Arab Blood." Following are excerpts from this article:.. Read more... JFK and RFK died trying to stop the zionists from controlling America: Israel killed JFK, by Hesham Tillawi | Video [Who's to say? It's certainly plausible and consistent with their MO.] Watch video... The Suffering Goes On and On, by Ron Forthofer | Palestine Chronicle  The US and Europe are active partners in this crime against humanity ...Lost in all these maneuvers to sidetrack the Goldstone report is the fact that the Israeli attack was unnecessary. A ceasefire had effectively ended rocket firing into Israel for over four months until Israel broke the ceasfire in early November, 2008. After the ceasefire ended in mid-December, Hamas eventually offered a new ceasefire under the conditions that Israel would lift the siege on Gaza and stop its attacks. Israel's response was to initiate its long-planned attack. Also overshadowed in the dispute about the Goldstone report is the siege of Gaza that continues today. Eleven months before the Israeli attack, Karen Koning AbuZayd, commissioner general for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, wrote: "Gaza is on the threshold of becoming the first territory to be intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution, with the knowledge, acquiescence and - some would say - encouragement of the international community."..Read more... Exposing Britain's Pro-Israel Lobby: Channel 4 Makes Bold Start, by Stuart Littlewood | Palestine Chronicle Last night Channel 4's 'Dispatches' program set out to investigate the pro-Israel lobby in Britain, and to boldly go where no TV team had gone before. On the Dispatches website we were told that the lobby "aims to shape the debate about Britain's relationship with Israel and future foreign policies relating to it". So the program would be looking at "who they are, how they are funded, how they work and what influence they have, from the key groups to the wealthy individuals who help bankroll the lobbying". Political commentator Peter Oborne would explain how accountable, transparent and open to scrutiny the lobby was, particularly regarding its funding and financial support to MPs. So it was with mounting excitement that countless thousands of citizens here in an increasingly Zionist-ruled Britain awaited the screening of this daring program... Read more... Who is funding the rabbi who endorses killing gentile babies?, by Akiva Eldar | Haaretz  Rabbi Avraham Shapira Right-wing spokesmen, including some elected officials, rushed to place Yaakov "Jack" Teitel in the fringe group alongside Yigal Amir, Eden Natan Zada, Eliran Golan, Asher Weisgan, Danny Tikman and a few other "political/ideological" murderers. True, they acknowledge, there are among us several lunatic rabbis who agitate to violence. Really, just a handful; even a toddler could count them. The more stringent will note that unlike the Hamas government, our government does not pay the salaries of rabbis who advocate the killing of babies. Is that so? Not really...Jerking off at the Pentagon and CNN: On our new "huge, huge bomb" to use against Iran, by Glenn Greenwald | Salon Here is Wolf Blitzer and Barbara Starr talking last night on CNN about the Iranians and what the U.S. might to do them; it's really pitch-perfect:.. Read more... Our National Cognitive Dissonance, by Jeff Huber -- Antiwar "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on the Sunday gab circuit that rooting al-Qaeda out from Afghanistan is our only goal in that country. That's interesting, considering that the "maximum estimate," according to National Security Adviser James Jones, says there are at most 100 al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan. Since there are roughly 100,000 U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, we already outnumber them 1,000 to one. Why does Gen. Stanley McChrystal insist we need more troops to avoid mission failure?...Read more... November 17, 2009 November 11, 2009Britain must de-Zionise Itself Immediately, by Gilad Atzmon  On Monday the British TV broadcaster, Channel 4 screened Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby, a devastating expose of the Jewish lobby in the UK*. ‘We couldn’t find a conspiracy’ affirmed Peter Oborne the Daily Mail’s political commentator behind the film. He was right. After running the show for so many years, the Jewish lobby’s purchasing of British politicians and media presence is in the open... Crocodile Tears in the UN, by Eli Aminov | Hagada Hasmalit Shortly after the UN Commission on Human Rights adopted the Goldstone Report, the Israeli Ambassadress to the United Nations launched a whining bout of emotional blackmail against the commission: "Israel is the only state in the world which is being discriminated against by the commission and criticized more than any other state in the world!" she complained. Her Excellency the Ambassadress should be reminded of what actually makes Israel so globally unique... Israel gaffe reveals 'Iran ship photos' were forged | Press TV  Iran says labels reading 'Ministry of Sepah', a body that no longer exists, are enough to prove that the photos released by Israel are forged. After Israel released photos it said proved that a huge shipment of weapons for Hezbollah came from Tehran, Iranian news agencies publish evidence showing that the photos are forged. Israeli naval sources recently claimed that they found a large cache of Iranian-made arms when they stormed a vessel near Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea. They claimed that the ship was heading for the Hezbollah resistance movement, either in Lebanon or Syria. Iran instantly dismissed the claims, issuing a statement with which it condemned Israel's many acts of piracy in international waters...Read more... Scoundrel With Permission, by Uri Avnery | Gush Shalom When the TV news starts with a murder, people are relieved. This means that no war has broken out, no suicide bomb has exploded, no Qassam rocket has been launched at Sderot. Ahmadinejad has not test-fired a new missile that can reach Tel Aviv. Just another murder...Read more... The Beginning of the End of the Fourth Reich | Rebel News  Something has happened in recent years, a fundamental shift, a drastic change of political climate. I’m talking about the massive change of attitude towards that pesky little entity in the Middle-East which I refuse to call a state. It reminds me more of a lawless pirate island, a bit like18th century Singapore, terrorised by pirate chiefs and their murderous thugs. Why does this genocidal make-believe democracy of criminals and land robbers get away with ignoring international law and human rights like no other country?... Declassified FBI File Alleges an Israeli Intelligence Agent Worked at AIPAC | Reuters An agent of the Israeli intelligence service worked on the staff of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) according to a newly declassified FBI file. An August 13, 1984 secret communication from the FBI Washington Field Office (WFO) to the FBI director states, "WFO files disclose that AIPAC is a powerful pro-Israel lobbying group staffed by U.S. citizens. WFO files contain an unsubstantiated allegation that a member of the Israeli Intelligence Service was a staff member of AIPAC.".. Read more... Zionism: The Monsters That Walk Among Us | Desertpeace  Chutzpah is not a strong enough word to describe the situation reported below. Imagine your home taken away from you illegally, the lands around your home as well. Imagine being forced into a filthy refugee camp where you have been staying for over sixty one years. Now imagine settlements built on YOUR property to house those that stole YOUR land. Now imagine one of those illegal settlers, who just happens to be Israel’s Foreign Minister, saying the following... 'A World Without Nuclear Weapons' Might Still Be Possible, by Phyllis Bennis  "The day I graduated from university was the best day of my life," says Ahmed from Beit Hanoun ...His grave eyes looked wholly unconvinced. "The day I graduated from university was the best day of my life," he firmly repeated. And then he added, more to himself than to me, "I wish I could erase all my memories of my time in school."... Justice Goldstone at Brandeis, Harry Clark Read more...  ...The rest of the world and most Americans opposed the Israeli strikes on Gaza last December and January that resulted in the killing of 1,400 Palestinians, with 13 Israelis also killed. And there was wide criticism of the silence not only of the Bush/Cheney administration, but also of President-elect Barack Obama. The UN-authorized investigation by the widely respected South African jurist Richard Goldstone, himself a Jew, pointed to war crimes by both Israel and Hamas, although the inquiry’s harshest criticism landed on Israel for the staggering civilian death toll. This finding led Israel’s Likud government to activate its powerful U.S. lobby, which pressed the House of Representatives to denounce the Goldstone report, which the House did on a 344-36 vote... Read more... Read more...  The Treasury Department’s assistant secretary David Cohen addressed the American Bankers Association on Monday. Cohen implored the assembled executives to understand that money laundering sometimes involves “good money being put to bad use,” a standard the G7 Financial Action Task Force adopted way back in 1989. Cohen outlined Treasury’s efforts to “detect, deter and deny” money launderers access to the financial system by naming and shaming “facilitators” from the Gulf petroleum producers to Mexico. He also warned that there would be “reputational and legal consequences” for banks that didn’t pull at the yoke of expanded Treasury powers assumed under Executive order 13224 (PDF). Audience members were visibly uneasy during camera pans. There was little interest in questioning the Treasury’s new employee. Perhaps with good reason. James G. Carr, the chief federal judge in northern Ohio, recently ruled that Treasury was acting unconstitutionally when it froze a US charity under suspicion of terrorist ties. US courts are only beginning to weigh in on the vast new powers assumed by Treasury... November 16, 2009 In Jon We Trust, by Maidhc Ó Cathail | Intifada-Palestine  Daily Show with Jon Stewart Appalled by the Bush administration’s foreign policy, and feeling let down by a compliant news media, many young Americans turned to Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show for some critical insight into what had gone so terribly wrong with their country, as well as some light relief from the horror of it all. Ironically, it seemed to many that the comedian’s fake news show was the only place where one could learn the truth about the “war on terror” and other disastrous Bush-era policies. Summarizing the phenomenon, author Gene Healy wrote, “An enormous chunk of Generation Y, those born roughly after 1977, gets its political information from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, a comedy news program devoted to the idea that we’re led by fools.”..Read more... Interview with single-state and BDS activist Dr. Haidar Eid | Dialogue ...As a One Democratic State supporter, it is amongst the corollaries of such a belief that Israel is a settler colonialist, Apartheid state and the methods- or, tools of struggle- used against Apartheid South Africa can be used as a model in our struggle against Apartheid Israel. Transforming of Israel from an ethno-religious Apartheid state into a democracy should be the objective of every single person believing in liberal democracy in general. And, therefore, we think that the only solution to bring this conflict to an end caused by the establishment of a racist Apartheid state is only through democratic means by de-Zionising the state of Israel and making it a state for all of its citizens disregarding race, religion, ethnicity or gender... Read more... The Israeli Occupation of America: How Israel Gained Control of American Foreign Policy and Public Opinion, by Hesham Tillawi | Intifada-Palestine  I came from a country occupied militarily by Israel to the land of “the free and the brave” only to find out it too was occupied politically by Israel. The Palestinian people, holding on to whatever shred of hope they can, are counting on the day Americans see the error of their ways and change their opinion of the whole Middle East situation and understand it for what it truly is - A conquered, oppressed people living a hellish existence under a maniacal, occupying power and who will then contact their representatives in Congress and have them put the heat on Israel in fulfilling the agreements she made years ago with the PLO such as Oslo, Taba, Camp David, Wye River, the Road Map, or even Annapolis. The sad fact however is that the Americans -as much as they champion themselves as a “free people” - are in no better shape than the Palestinians... Read more... Huge rise in birth defects in Falluja | The Guardian Iraqi former battle zone sees abnormal clusters of infant tumours and deformities Doctors in Iraq's war-ravaged enclave of Falluja are dealing with up to 15 times as many chronic deformities in infants and a spike in early life cancers that may be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting. The extraordinary rise in birth defects has crystallised over recent months as specialists working in Falluja's over-stretched health system have started compiling detailed clinical records of all babies born... Read more... Israeli judge rules legal system discriminates against Arabs, by Jonathan Cook - The National  Israeli teenagers demonstrated during the Gaza conflict, An Israeli judge made an historic ruling last week when he decided that an Arab teenager needed “protection” from the justice system and ordered that he not be convicted despite being found guilty of throwing stones at a police car during a protest against Israel’s attack last winter on Gaza...but very few arrests were made, a UN report said Read more... Zionism and the Media, by Donald Dinelli | Intifada-Palestine I. Introduction Read more...II. Zionist Owners and CEOs of Media Conglomerates and Media Companies III. Journalists: Zionist, Conservative, and Dumb IV. Zionist Media Organization V. Zionists Continue Their Attack on America’s Freedom of Speech VI. Mossad and the Media – Israel’s Disinformation Network VII. Studies of Pro-Israel Media Bias in Newspapers Palestine and the Art of War, by Bishop Donald Corder | Intifada-Palestine Perhaps the most profound tribute to General Sun Tzu’s work entitled the Art of War is written 1400 years later in the 1988 Vietnam Magazine’s interview with Colonel Harry G. Summers. Colonel Summers shared the following exchange, “But America’s fighting forces did not fail us. You know, you never beat us on the battlefield,” I told my North Vietnamese counterpart during negotiations in Hanoi a week before the fall of Saigon. He pondered that remark a moment and then replied, “That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.” Sun Tzu says: ‘The consummate leader cultivates the moral law, and strictly adheres to method and discipline; thus it is in his power to control success.’.. Read more... What's next?, by Khaled Amayreh | Al-Ahram Weekly Whatever lies ahead after Abbas's notification of not seeking the Palestinian presidency again, the status quo ante is over for good The recent decision by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas not to seek a second term in office has already thrown into question the continued survival of the Oslo peace process as well as the future of the PA itself. Most Palestinians have interpreted Abbas's decision as a frank -- though belated -- admission of the failure of the peace process with Israel...Read more... HAS THE GOD OF THE JEWS LOST HIS MIND? | Desertpeace  When we have a situation where the religious leaders of a nation have gone mad, is that an indication that the God they supposedly serve has also gone mad?... Read more... "Palestinians Must Be Afforded Their Own Humanity", by Yousef Munayyer | Palestine Center In a seemingly inconceivable move, the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s representative to the United Nations did not support the advancement of the Goldstone report detailing human rights violations during Israel’s 22-day campaign against Gaza. Putting the politics behind this maneuvering aside, this act highlights a dangerous attitude within Palestinian international relations and the so-called “peace process.” What I am talking about is the tension between individual human rights and the prerogative of an elite few who can chose to ignore the necessity of those rights for political purposes. Despite the fact that religious tension and territorial claims are featured in the Israeli/Palestinian debate, the conflict has little to do with either. Rather, this has always been a conflict over the rights of a people – the Palestinians – to that which they are entitled but have thus far been denied... Read more... "My film makes you part of Gaza's reality", by Adri Nieuwhof | Electronic Intifada  A scene from To Shoot an Elephant shows the body of Palestinian paramedic Arafa Abdel Daim after he was killed by Israel's assault on Gaza Directed by Alberto Arce and Mohammed Rjuailah, To Shoot an Elephant is a documentary film that offers an eyewitness account from the Gaza Strip during Israel's assault last winter. During the attacks, when the Israeli military banned foreign journalists from entering the Strip, Arce managed to stay inside Gaza and filmed how medical teams and hospitals were targeted by Israeli forces while performing their duties. One day after receiving the Anna Lindh Journalist Award for conflict reporting for his articles on Gaza published by the Spanish daily newspaper El Mundo, Arce won the Best Director prize at the Dei Popoli Film Festival in Florence on 7 November 2009...Read more... Open Letter From the Peace Movement to President Obama on His Upcoming Decision Regarding the Afghan War, by Cynthia McKinney | Global Research Dear Mr. President: According to press reports, you intend to decide between November 7 and November 11 whether or not to send tens of thousands of American soldiers to Afghanistan. We are writing in advance of that decision to add our voice to those of Sen. Feingold, many House Democrats, and of a clear majority of Americans in urging you not to escalate this war, but rather to announce an immediate cease-fire followed by a withdrawal of all US troops in the fastest way consistent with the safety of our forces. We urge you to end the policy of using Predator drones to assassinate Pakistani civilians on the territory of their own country, in defiance of all concepts of international law. We also call upon you to cease all covert CIA and Pentagon operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran... Read more... What You Didn't Know About The War | YouTube This video is mandatory viewing for all supporters of the war(s). Narration by Dahlia Wasfi... Watch video... A glimmer of hope, by Ziyaad Lunat and Max Ajl | The Electronic Intifada  Next month the Gaza Freedom March will travel to Gaza on the anniversary The Obama Administration proved twice recently that it intends to continue to consider Israel above the law. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton caused consternation amongst the US's allies in the Palestinian Authority and across the region by declaring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's intention to "restrict" settlement activity in the West Bank "unprecedented." Netanyahu's restriction restricts very little. Three thousand housing units that are already approved will be built. Netanyahu announced plans for building a new settlement in Jerusalem, Ma'aleh David, while settlers continue their violent assault against Palestinians, intending to expel them from the city. Last week, settlers invaded a Palestinian house, backed by a court order. The US responded with a statement calling Israel's moves "unhelpful," but did nothing to stop them...of the Israeli assault in solidarity with Palestinians in the territory Read more... British Authorities Probing New Claims Soldiers Tortured, Raped Iraqi Prisoners, by Jason Leopard | t r u t h o u t Britain's Ministry of Defense has launched an investigation into new claims that soldiers sexually abused Iraqi detainees and subjected them to mock executions, hooding, and used dogs to incite fear--interrogation methods that were also used by US soldiers and personally approved by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The charges come on the heels of Britian's complete withdrawal from Iraq last summer... [Like Israel investigating its own war crimes - good luck] Read more... The Fifty-Year War, by Jonathan Schell | The Nation  I was about to write that there can be no military solution to the war in Afghanistan, only a political one. But I almost fainted with boredom and had to stop. Who, as President Obama lengthily ponders his decisions regarding the war, wants to repeat a point that's been made 11,000 times before? Is there anyone on earth who doesn't know by now that you can't win a guerrilla war without winning the "hearts and minds" of the people? The American public has known this since the American defeat in Vietnam. The formerly colonized peoples of the Third World, whose hearts and minds were the ones contested, know it. American officialdom knows it..Today, even the general in charge in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, now asking for 40,000 or more troops, knows it... Read more... Academic Witchhunts in Israel: Campus Watch Copy Cats, by Jonathan Cook | Counterpunch Right-wing groups in Israel want to create a climate of fear among left-wing scholars at Israeli universities by emulating the “witch-hunt” tactics of the US academic monitoring group Campus Watch, Israeli professors warn. The watchdog groups IsraCampus and Israel Academia Monitor are believed to be stepping up their campaigns after the recent publication in a US newspaper of an Israeli professor’s call to boycott Israel. Both groups have been alerting the universities’ external donors, mostly US Jews, to what they describe as “subversive” professors as a way to bring pressure to bear on university administrations to sanction faculty staff who are critical of Israeli policies. “I have no hesitation in calling this a McCarthyite campaign,” said David Newman, a politics professor at Ben Gurion University, in Israel’s southern city of Beersheva. “What they are doing is very dangerous.”.. Read more... November 15, 2009 An Appeal to the American People, by Alan Hart | Intifada-Palestine  Alan Hart Author Alan Hart opens Volume One of the American edition with an Appeal to the American People. The following is the text of it. If all of our children, wherever they live, are to have the prospect of a future worth having, the world needs America’s best, not what it had under the neo-conned regime of President George “Dubya” Bush—its worst. This Englishman, who first began to ask himself why things are as they are in the world when he was covering the war in Vietnam, knows America well enough from coast to coast to have a good idea of what your best is. Deep down, you Americans are the most idealistic people on earth. This suggests to me that if all of you were properly informed about why what is happening in the Middle East is happening, you would want to make your democracy work to cause your government to play its necessary and leading role in stopping the countdown to catastrophe for all of us. I believe, for example, that if all Americans had been properly informed long ago about the cause and effect relationship of Israeli occupation and Palestinian violence, there would have been pressure on Congress and the White House long ago for an end to Israeli occupation of Arab land grabbed in the 1967 war. In that event the conflict in and over Palestine, which I describe as the cancer at the heart of international affairs, could have been cured and would not now be threatening to consume us all... Write and Leave Behind Your Own Truth: An Interview with Palestinian Author Ghada Karmi | ODSG Ghada Karmi is a Palestinian physician and author based in London. Since her autobiography In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story was first published in 2002 by Verso Books, it has been translated into forty languages. The late Edward Said described the memoir as “…the story of a fascinating woman…humanly rich and interesting.” On a speaking tour throughout the US to promote the newly-released second edition of In Search for Fatima, Mrs. Karmi visited Columbia University at the behest of an Arab cultural group, Turath. While there, she sat down with TFT associate editor Aseel Najib to discuss her work... Read more, listen to interview... Gates Invokes New Authority to Block Release of Detainee Abuse Photos, by Jason Leopard | t r u t h o u t  Censored! - Blood on the floor and walls of a cell at Abu Ghraib Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has blocked the release of photographs depicting US soldiers abusing detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, invoking new powers just granted to him by Congress that allow.s him to circumvent the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and keep the images under wraps on national security grounds...Read more.. Time to Celebrate Checkpoint Apartheid | ODSG Israeli military-controlled checkpoints have been the bane of Palestinian travel since the early 1990s when Israel began establishing them throughout the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip as a means to prevent and control Palestinian movement. According to the latest comprehensive survey conducted by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OCHA), there are 634 physical obstacles to movement throughout the West Bank, including 93 staffed checkpoints and 541 unstaffed obstacles (earthmounds, roadblocks, road barriers, etc.) Collectively, these obstacles create a hermetic network of control valves which Israel opens and shuts at will. While Israeli settlers implanted throughout the West Bank have unrestricted access through these checkpoints, Palestinians find themselves increasingly confined to reservation-like ghettoes, deprived from any kind of normal educational, medical, social, economic, or familial existence... Read more... Spotlight on Palestine: an interview with Stuart Littlewood | Palestine Think Tank "Lawlessness must have painful consequences for the lawless, not their victims." - Stuart Littlewood  British writer and photographer Stuart Littlewood talks to Angie Tibbs about his experience of Israel's occupation in Gaza and the West Bank, and comments on how British and American collusion, under the auspices of the Jewish lobby, is helping to sustain the world's most lawless, brutal and unjust occupation regime... Read more... Palestinians denied access to water | aljazeera Palestinian farmers in the West Bank, or "water pirates" as Israeli occupation forces prefer to call them, are siphoning off drinking water pipes in an effort to secure water to irrigate their farmland. Water is an increasingly disputed resource between Israel and the Palestinians. A World Bank report has accused Israel of using four times more water than Palestinians from the so-called Mountain Aquifer that bridges Israel and the territory and runs along the West Bank... Read more... President Obama’s opportunity to speak truth to power, Part 2 – Rahm Emanuel does it for him, by Alan Hart | PTT  When I wrote and posted Part 1 of this article, I was, of course, aware that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of President Obama speaking truth to the power of Jewish America as it was represented at the General Assembly of The Jewish Federations of North America. The words I put into his mouth could only have been spoken by him if he was going to be true to his statement to Netanyahu and Abbas – “We must all take risks for peace”.... Read more... Israel: Forging NATO Missile Shield, Rehearsing War With Iran, by Rick Rozoff | Dandelion Salad “This is the most complete air missile defense system we’ve ever done anywhere in the world.” The distance between Tel Aviv and Tehran is 993 miles [1,598 kilometers), so the U.S. missile radar overshoots the mark by almost 2,000 miles. Enough to cover all of eastern and most of southern Russia where the bulk of that nation's strategic missile forces are stationed. The United States and Israel have just completed the largest joint interceptor missile exercises ever conducted by the two nations and, in terms of scope and sophistication, possibly the most comprehensive joint live-fire anti-ballistic missile drills held by any combination of countries...Read more... Israeli Confessions – The Founding Fathers and Mother of Israel, by Earlaiman | PTT Only by their actions have they spelled out more clearly their deliberate and premeditated intent, which provides more than adequate self-incrimination for condemnation and conviction as perpetrators of War Crimes, Genocide, and other Crimes Against Humanity. When will enough be enough? When the last Palestinian is dead? When they go on, and go after the rest of the Arab Middle East? When they continue on, and come after you? Hear it from their own mouths! See it on your own TV and read about it in your own press today… if you happen to live outside of the USA... Read more, watch video... Lebanese Students Advise Obama How to Get it Right, by Franklin Lamb | Palestine Chronicle  Students at the University of Beirut If those in Lebanon watching the news on 11/12/09 blinked they might have missed an interesting news item. It appeared at approximately 4:20 pm on Narharnet.com, the pro-US/Saudi news website. The news item read "4:16 pm, American Ambassador Michele Sison (sp) departed Lebanon for her country." Ten minutes later the item disappeared and, as it turned out, the ten minutes was exactly how long it took for the US Embassy security and press office to inform Beirut media outlets that "the American Ambassadors movements are to be reported at least one hour after they occur not one minute." The hasty departure of Ambassador Michele Sisson, according to the US Foreign Relations Committee office, may have been because the Obama administration is preparing for a 'deep review' of its 9 months effort in Lebanon and the region, debriefing key officials arriving from the area to participate... Read more... Israel 'personally attacking human rights group' after Gaza war criticism | The Guardian Human Rights Watch denies having political agenda or seeking funds from Saudi Arabia  The Goldstone report, which HRW supported, accused Israel of a disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population. America's leading human rights organisation has accused Israel and its supporters of an "organised campaign" of false allegations and misinformation, including "extremely personal attacks" on its staff, in an attempt to discredit the group over its reports of war crimes in Gaza. Human Rights Watch (HRW) ties the campaign – which has included accusations that the group's reports on the Jewish state are written by "anti-Israel ideologues" and that it has sought funds from Saudi Arabia – to a statement by a senior official in the Israeli prime minister's office in June pledging to "dedicate time and manpower to combating" human rights organisations... Read more... Poll: Most Israelis Support Peace Talks With Hamas, by Jason Ditz | Antiwar As Talk of New War Continues, Israeli General Notes Hamas Curbing Rockets In a poll that shows a stark disconnect between Israeli public opinion and the hawkish government elected in the nation earlier this year, a full 57 percent of Israelis were supportive of the idea of peace talks with Hamas...Read more... Fort Hood Shooting, by Mark Benjamin | Salon The media's silly Fort Hood coverage Everyone wants to debate terrorism and political correctness, but the real story is the failure of Army medicine... Read more... November 14, 2009 The economic toll on Gaza after Israel's attacks | AIC Executive Summary of The Economy of the Occupation Bulletin 20-21: Cast Lead: Israel Attacks Gaza  The Israeli military offensive against the Gaza Strip from 27 December 2008, to 18 January 2009, was the most violent and deadly offensive by Israel since the second Intifada began. According to the UN, 1,434 Palestinian residents of Gaza were killed by the Israeli forces, and over 5,000 were injured. Thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed, and the Gazan economy remains in ruins. Israel has been controlling and limiting the amounts of international aid that are allowed into the Gaza Strip, and has thus caused a mounting humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including an acute shortage in clean drinking water, food, medical supplies, power, construction and repair materials, and sanitation. The Israeli military offensive against the Gaza Strip from 27 December 2008, to 18 January 2009, was the most violent and deadly offensive by Israel since the second Intifada began. According to the UN, 1,434 Palestinian residents of Gaza were killed by the Israeli forces, and over 5,000 were injured. Thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed, and the Gazan economy remains in ruins. Israel has been controlling and limiting the amounts of international aid that are allowed into the Gaza Strip, and has thus caused a mounting humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including an acute shortage in clean drinking water, food, medical supplies, power, construction and repair materials, and sanitation... Read more... A thorn in the world’s side | Ynet Israel in midst of freefall on global front, yet we’re preoccupied with nonsense I’ve been invited to deliver a lecture about Israel’s economy and society at Oxford University. As it is a short lecture, and a respectable forum, I gladly accepted the offer. The invitation was extended about six months ago. Yet now, as my trip approaches, I feel concern. I’m hesitating...An Israeli professor who quietly left a prestigious British university told me: “My academic and social life there was intolerable. Colleagues stayed away from me as if I was a leper. I was not invited to meetings, which were shifted from university buildings to private residences in order to keep me out. The fact I openly expressed leftist views was to no avail. My objection to the occupation and endorsement of a return to the 1967 borders made no difference. In practice, I became ostracized...Today you are a welcome guest in the British and European academic world only if you reject the very existence of the colonialist and imperialistic creature that methodically commits war crimes, known as Israel,” he said. “Today it isn’t enough to condemn Bibi and Barak; in order to be accepted by academia outside of Israel one must condemn the Balfour Declaration.”... [Good news at last! Some people, in British academia at least, are beginning to wake up from the Zionist induced state of hypnosis, and they're not happy about it.] Read more... Was Homeland Security Created to Protect Those Who Deceived the U.S.?, by Jeff Gates | Veterans Today  Joe Lieberman at the 2008 Republican Convention Was Fort Hood really the target of a terrorist attack? The first clue to the real culprit emerged when Senator Joe Lieberman sought to blame this mass murder on the U.S. military. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, he promised hearings on how the Pentagon protects its personnel from domestic terrorists. Will Lieberman, an avowed Zionist, use this incident to insist that the U.S. do more to protect Jewish nationalists? More importantly, what do his concerns mean for homeland security? Joe Lieberman has an ally in Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security. In April, this former Arizona governor warned about potential terrorism from U.S. troops returning from deployment in the Middle East. Though roundly attacked, she defended her position, calling it an "assessment not an accusation." When Army Major Nidal Hasan killed U.S. troops on the nation's largest military base, was this evidence of "militant Islam"? Or did this military psychiatrist snap under pressure while treating returning vets on a base averaging ten suicides a month? Is there an undisclosed agenda behind those seeking to portray this act as the work of "Islamo fascists"?...Read more... Time to head home, by Eugene Robinson | Washington Post The most dreadful burden of the presidency -- the power to send men and women to die for their country -- seems to weigh heavily on Barack Obama these days...Sending more troops will mean more coffins arriving at Dover, more funerals at Arlington, more stress and hardship for military families. It would be wrong to demand such sacrifice in the absence of military goals that are clear, achievable and worthwhile. And what goals in Afghanistan remotely satisfy those criteria?.. Read more... An Open letter from a Palestinian Resident of Gaza to the President of the United States of America, from Haidar Eid | Znet You will probably not read this letter due to your busy schedule and the huge number of messages you receive from Presidents, Kings, Princes, Sheiks, and Prime Ministers. Who is a Palestinian academic from GAZA, after all, to have the guts and write an open letter to the President of the United States of America? What has triggered this letter is a picture of your Excellency sitting with the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said. That, of course, happened before 2004.i.e, before you underwent a process of metamorphosis which I personally think is unprecedented in history. Seeing you with Edward Said, I must say, surprised me...It is precisely the incongruity between the photograph and these policy shifts that has prompted this letter... Read more... Why is Saudi Arabia going on a weapons shopping spree in Russia? | The Vineyard of the Saker It appears that Russia and Saudi Arabia are negotiating a huge weapons deal as a way to reward Russia for not selling S-300 missiles to Iran.  S-400 Russian media outlets are reporting that Saudi Arabia is negotiating a 2 billion dollars weapons deal with Russia which would include the sale of 150 helicopters (30 Mi-35 and 120 Mi-17), over 150 T-90C tanks, about 250 BMP-3 (infantry combat vehicle) armored vehicles and several dozens of anti-aircraft systems and complexes including the brand new S-400 Triumf missile system. In the meantime, Russia is also clearly delaying the sale of its S-300 missile system to Iran prompting some angry remarks from Iranian Chief of Staff of Iran's Joint Armed Forces Hassan Firouzabad. Is this all a coincidence?...Read more... Activists protest against 'Shimon Hitler' in Brazil | Press TV Dozens of demonstrators voice strong disapproval of the Israeli President's visit to Brazil and of Tel Aviv's crimes against humanity during weeks-long military aggression on the Gaza Strip. "War criminal, go home" the protesters shouted at Peres as he arrived in Sao Paulo, where he was due to speak at a conference of local industrialists. The protesters waved Lebanese as well as Palestinian flags and carried banners condemning Israel... Read more... The U.S. Jew whose Iran views rile Israel intelligence officials, by Akiva Eldar | Haaretz Hillary Mann Leverett and her partner and husband, Flynt Leverett, make the Iran desk staffers in the Israeli intelligence community see red. For the past two years the Leveretts, both of whom are former U.S. National Security Council and State Department officials, have preached relentlessly against using sanctions and threats against Iran. In late September, a harsh op-ed they wrote condemning the Obama administration appeared in The New York Times. In it they argued that the lofty talk of "openness" and the promise of "dialogue" with the Iranians are just empty rhetoric. On their Internet site, in lectures, in interviews and in their journal articles, they present assessments and proposals for action that are different from, and sometimes nearly the opposite of, those that politicians and experts in the West and in Israel present the public. They are critical of the U.S. support of Israel's nuclear ambiguity and are horrified by the possibility of Israel attacking Iran's nuclear installations... Read more... Why the Afghan Surge Will Fail, by Conn Hallinan | Antiwar Before the Obama administration buys into General Stanley McChrystal’s escalation strategy, it might spend some time examining the August 12 battle of Dananeh, a scruffy little town of 2,000 perched at the entrance to the Naw Zad Valley in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province. Dananeh is a textbook example of why counterinsurgency won’t work in that country, as well as a case study in military thinking straight out of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland... Read more... Blair faces Iraq war inquiry | Press TV  Former British prime minster Tony Blair is due to present evidence to an investigative panel probing the premier's contentious war policies in Iraq. An independent panel of inquiry is to delve into Blair's controversial decision to follow a US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, dragging a large contingent of UK troops into the Middle Eastern country, in order to overthrow the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein on grounds of his alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) threats... Read more... The Things We Do to Make It Home: No More Star Spangled Eyes, by Ron Jacobs | Counterpunch ...I had another friend named Loren. Like so many others, he was drafted into the Army against his will. When he got his orders to go to Vietnam, he took a truck from the motor pool where he worked and ran it through several gates and a couple of parked cars in the Officer’s Club parking lot at the Colorado Army base he was stationed. He did six months in the stockade and was thrown out of the Army. He celebrated by going to a rock festival and ended up in Berkeley. His father didn’t speak to him for years, but it was worth it to Loren just to have avoided the war. After reading Things We Do To Make It Home, one wishes once again that more soldiers would follow Loren's example and just refuse to fight... Read more... Letter from Mazin: The smell of misery and the feeling of hope I have not been to Beirut since I was five years old (but I do remember some things of it) and I was a bit nervous since much has happened in the decades since. Lebanon and Palestine together with Jordan and Syria have always been connected; only after the British and French decided to divide us and give part of the land to European Jews to replace the natives that we became separated and disconnected... Read more... November 13, 2009 Life in Occupied Palestine, by Anna Baltzer A Must Watch Video (in 3 parts)  If you have ever wanted to learn about the question of Palestine/Israel and did not know where to begin or thought it much too complicated to understand, this 3-part video presented by Anna Baltzer gives an excellent and empathic account of not only Israel’s occupation, but also the historical background to the tragic Palestinian narrative that has been buried under Zionist spin with Western collusion since the creation of Israel. It will soon become clear that the conflict is actually an audacious colonial takeover aimed at permanently dispossessing Palestinians of their land and denying their history, identity and heritage by any means whatsoever to achieve the Zionist goal of an exclusively Jewish state. Anna Baltzer, who is herself Jewish, brings us back to the basic principles of right and wrong regardless of our ethnic backgrounds and/or religious and political views. - Sonja Karkar Read more, watch videos... Goldstone to Haaretz: U.S. does not have to protect Israel blindly Judge Richard Goldstone told Haaretz Thursday that President Shimon Peres' remarks criticizing him were "specious and ill-befitting the head of State of Israel." Peres was quoted Wednesday as calling Goldstone "a small man, devoid of any sense of justice, a technocrat with no real understanding of jurisprudence," who was "on a one-sided mission to hurt Israel." In Thursday's interview by e-mail with Haaretz, Goldstone said: "I am content to be judged by my actions over the course of my career both in terms of my professional judicial career and my voluntary service." Goldstone also said he had anticipated that the report would engender considerable criticism... Read more... "Shotvarfet": Hear, and Understand, the Veterans Themselves, by Arthur Silber | Once Upon a Time ...So the myths prevail. Our wars are always noble, fought for the purest of motives. Our warriors are similarly noble, engaged in a high-minded crusade. They butcher and slaughter, and are butchered and slaughtered themselves, so that "civilization" might be preserved. Never mind that many of the warriors themselves would not agree. Never mind that the front-line soldiers know that war is insanity, and only insanity. Never mind the overwhelming, senseless, futile, endless horror of what actually happens in combat, and the details that never reach the public... Read more... Is It Really Over?: The Disastrous Presidency of Mahmoud Abbas, by Rannie Amiri | Counterpunch After five long years, and at great expense to a state hoped-to-be-called Palestine, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has finally realized that subservience to the United States and Israel pays little in dividends. Indeed, what he has done to the cause of Palestine, the unity of its people, and the advancement of their rights has been nothing short of unmitigated disaster... Read more... 'Nuke Gaza' is next, by Jeff Gates | Al-Ahram Weekly When it comes to Israel the buck stops in Washington, having enabled and continued to support its worst excesses  Israel's "legitimacy" will not last. Of course, that assumes its legitimacy was deserved. That issue also is now called into question in light of the consistency of Israeli behaviour over the past six decades. The emerging issues are: When and how will the recognition of Israel's nation-state status be withdrawn? How will Tel Aviv behave in the interim? Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman may have tipped his Masada hand when he reportedly told Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Israel might use nuclear weapons against Gaza. The threat to Israel is not the 1.5 million Gazans who reside in the world's largest open- air prison. The threat is fast-growing global outrage at the abuse it inflicts on Palestinians, commencing with the ethnic cleansing of 400-plus villages 61 years ago. Not since 1948 has this enclave of extremists mounted such a public relations offensive. Christian Zionist president Harry Truman trusted Jewish Zionist lobbyists when he solicited assurances that they would not become what they immediately became: a racist theocratic state with an expansionist agenda destined to create serial crises in the region. The merciless global agenda pursued by colonial Zionists is the single greatest threat to world peace, as confirmed yet again by Lieberman's warning... Read more... How Could This End Well?: Short Cuts in Afghanistan, by Tariq Ali | Counterpunch It’s been a bad autumn for Nato in Afghanistan, with twin disasters on the political and military fronts. First, Kai Eide, the UN headman in Kabul, a well-meaning, but not very bright Norwegian, fell out with his deputy, Peter Galbraith, who as the de facto representative of the US State Department had decreed that President Karzai’s election was rigged and went public about it. His superior continued to defend Hamid Karzai’s legitimacy. Astonishingly, the UN then fired Galbraith. This caused Hillary Clinton to move into top gear and the UN-supported electoral watchdog now ruled that the elections had indeed been fraudulent and ordered a run-off. Karzai refused to replace the electoral officials who had done such a good job for him the first time and his opponent withdrew. Karzai got the job... Read more... In Your Face: Morris Herman interviews Gilad Atzmon Watch videos... Russia-India-China: The Bush curse, by Eric Walberg Moscow is trying to draw India and China closer to put out the flames now flaring across the continent, from the Caucasus and Central Asia, to Iran and Pakistan... Read more... US Moves to Seize Four Mosques, Claiming Secret Iranian Control, by Jason Ditz | Antiwar  Worshipers at Imam Ali Mosque in Queens, NY In a move being touted as “a sharp blow against Iran,” the United States government is attempted to seize four Shi’ite mosques across the United States, calling it the largest ‘anti-terror’ seizure ever and claiming the non-profit which operates them is secretly a front for the Iranian government...Read more... The plunder of Iraq’s oil | WSWS The awarding of development rights over the huge West Qurna oilfield in southern Iraq to Exxon-Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell last Thursday once again underscores the criminal character of the continuing US-led occupation. As the direct result of the Iraq war, major American and other transnational energy conglomerates are now gaining control over some the largest oilfields in the world... Read more... Signing of Colombia Bases Deal Could Set the Stage for 'Expeditionary Warfare', by Moira Birss | Common Dreams After several months of secrecy and controversy, on October 30th the US and Colombia signed an agreement to allow the United States military extensive access to seven Colombian bases, notwithstanding serious concerns about true intentions and eventual consequences of the deal. Despite pledges by Colombian and U.S. governments about the limitations of the agreement, the text of the deal and U.S. military documents contradict such assurances. One of the principal concerns raised by regional governments after news was leaked of the pending agreement had been the possibility of the bases' use for aggressions against neighboring countries... Read more... Myths of Our Time by Paul Craig Roberts | Antiwar It is conventional wisdom that it was the draft that ended the Vietnam war. According to this explanation, cowardly college students subject to the draft and their unpatriotic families, forced an end to the war. This is Karl Marx’s explanation. Material interests, not empty morality, are said to have brought the war to an end. The fact that in those days the US still had an independent media of sorts that sometimes framed the war in moral terms is ignored. Are we sure, for example, that the film of the naked little girl running in terror down the road burning with napalm was ineffectual in arousing moral opposition to the war? Are we certain that it wasn’t an aroused moral conscience that brought about the end of the war but was college students’ fears for their lives and limbs?... Read more... Alfred McCoy, Surveillance State, U.S.A: Welcome Home, War! by Tom Engelhardt | Tom Dispatch Wars come home in strange, unnerving ways - as Americans have just discovered at Fort Hood. Even before Major Nidal Malik Hasan went on his killing spree, that base, a major military embarkation point for our war zones, was already experiencing the after-effects of eight years of war and repeated tours of duty. The suicide rate at Fort Hood was soaring (with 10 on the base in 2009 alone). Divorce rates were on the rise, as were mental health problems, drug and alcohol use, domestic abuse (up 75% since 2001), and murders among war-zone returnees. Even violent crime in Killeen, the town that houses the base, was up 22% (though it was down, according to the New York Times, "in towns of similar size in other parts of the country"). In an era in which our last president urged Americans to support his Global War on Terror by shopping and visiting Disney World, it often seemed that, except for soldiers and their families, our wars abroad affected little in this country. And yet for an imperial power past its prime, foreign wars, even ones fought thousands of miles from home, have a way of coming back to haunt... Read more... November 12, 2009  The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect. It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism, or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others—even our enemies—is a denial of our common humanity. We acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion... Read more, affirm the charter... From the River to the Sea, by Gilad Atzmon  Let’s once and for all stop getting excited about America mounting pressure on Israel to freeze West Bank settlements. The entire fascination with the topic is a product of Zionist spin. It is there to divert attention from the root cause of the conflict: The robbery of Palestine and Palestinians in the name of a ‘Jewish home coming’. The call to stop Israeli construction in the West Bank is there to leave us with the false impression that the robbery of Palestine started in 1967. The facts are known to many of us, but not to all. The vast majority of Palestinians were expelled from their towns, villages, fields and orchards in 1948. What seems as an American peace initiative putting pressure on Israel to halt its expansion into the West Bank is in fact an agenda that is promoted by Zionists within the US Administration who realise like the late Sharon, that the only chance for the Jewish state to survive the next decade, is to shrink into a little Jewish shtetle (ghetto). The Two state solution is indeed the last effort to keep Zionism alive... Read more... Palestinian students at Israeli universities support academic boycott | Electronic Intifada The following open letter to the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim was issued on 9 November 2009 by Arab students at Israeli universities. The university's board is due to consider a measure supporting the academic boycott of Israel: We are Arab students at the Israeli universities writing to you in support of the proposed academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions. We believe that the boycott is timely and hopefully will help in upholding moral values of fairness, justice and equality which have been sorely missed in our region... Read more... 2 Views on Norman Finkelstein's putting Zionism off limits in the debate | Palestine Think Tank Exclude Censorship, not Zionism, from the Debate, by Saja Read more..."Conquer All the Violence": Three Questions for Norman Finkelstein, by Michelle J Kinnucan Remembering Veterans and the Dead: Blood on Their Hands, by Eamonn McCann | Counterpunch In the UK Remembrance Day is also called Poppy Day, inaugurated to mark the end of the World War 1 in 1918. "November is the month when people remember the millions of lives lost in the battle of right against wrong." So said the Belfast Newsletter in an editorial last week, concluding that we should all "wear our poppy with pride."...Should we concur in the implicit message of the poppy that it is sweet and fitting for young men or women from Ballymena or Ballymagroarty to bleed their last by the roadside in some dusty corner of a distant land? Is what's happening in Helmand "a battle of right against wrong"? Was the relentless pressure for displays of the poppy in the weeks leading up to Remembrance Sunday an expression of ethical idealism?...Read more... AshkeNazi threatens Gaza with another 'little holocaust', by Khalid Amayreh | Palestine Think Tank  There seems to be a perfect conformity between Gabi Ashkenazi and his last name. The Israeli chief of staff is considered one of the main Israeli war criminals responsible for the virtual genocide against the Gaza Strip during the past winter. On his murderous hands, he carries tons of innocent blood, including that of more than 340 children, killed in Israel’s pornographic bombing of civilian neighborhood. Last week, Ashkenazi was quoted as saying that Israel was likely to wage another quasi holocaust on Gaza, adding that the Israeli occupation army would enter the innermost corners and streets of the coastal territory... Read more... Iranian Irrationality? Maybe Not: Thinking Strategically About the Iran "Threat", by Jeff Nygaard | Counterpunch The current hysteria about Iranian nuclear weapons has meaning, but the meaning is almost completely obscured by official propaganda. The best first step in the effort to sort through the propaganda is to consider which countries already have nuclear weapons. And the second step is to look at a map of Southwest Asia... Read more... Breathtakingly tone deaf, by Mark Perry | Bitterlemons It's now official: it's impossible to talk about American foreign policy without first talking about Israel. It's astonishing when you think about it. The US can send its Saudi allies weapons, but only if they don't threaten Israel. State Department employees can visit with Palestinians, but first they have to check with Israel. US diplomats can work for Middle East peace, so long as they insist that they're doing it for Israel. And what of Iran? Never fear: we are engaging in talks with the Iranians not because they might bomb New York--but because they might bomb Israel... Read more... Good cop, bad cop strategy?: Clinton appoints former embassy hostage as point person on Iran, by Phil Wilayto | AfterDowningStreet When the Iranian Revolution exploded on the world scene three decades ago, John Limbert was a greenhorn diplomat assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. After that station was taken over by revolutionary students, he spent 14 months as a political hostage in the building that came to be known as the “Nest of Spies.” Today Limbert is the newly appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary for Iran in the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. That makes him Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's point person on Iran, just as pressure is building in Congress to impose more sanctions on the Islamic Republic... Read more... Guilt By Association: After Fort Hood, by Nadia Hijab | Counterpunch "Islam is a religion that lives by the sword and it should die by the sword." The person making this declaration was not some wild-eyed neocon or Christian fundamentalist, but an old friend of mine, a thoughtful, widely-read American who tapped not just the mainstream media but also progressive publications and blogs. I can't remember what provoked this outburst. It was at a dinner in 2004 or so, and we were discussing United States policy in the Middle East. But I do remember responding, "But that means people like me. There are so many different faces of Islam. Do you really want to put them all to the sword?"... Read more... http://counterpunch.org/hijab11122009.html What is Israel’s Role in the Destabilization of Pakistan?, by Jeff Gates | Palestine Chronicle  A 2003 EU poll found Israel to be the greatest threat to world peace. When waging war “by way of deception,” the motto of the Israeli Mossad, well-timed crises play a critical agenda-setting role by displacing facts with what a target population can be deceived to believe. Thus the force-multiplier effect when staged crises are reinforced with pre-staged intelligence. In combination, the two often prove persuasive. That duplicity was on display when U.S. lawmakers were induced to invade Iraq in response to the mass murder of 9-11. That crisis alone, however, was insufficient. Military mobilization required a “consensus” belief in Iraqi WMD, Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, Iraqi mobile biological weapons, Iraqi meetings in Prague, and so forth. Though all were false, those “facts” proved sufficient to induce an invasion of Iraq... Read more... America's Dismal Future, by Paul Craig Roberts | Counterpunch It did not take the Israel Lobby long to make mincemeat out of the Obama administration’s “no new settlements” position. Israeli prime minister Netanyahu is bragging about Israel’s latest victory over the US government as Israel continues to build illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land. In May President Obama read the Israelis the riot act, telling the Israeli government that he was serious about ending the Israeli conflict with the Palestinians and that a lasting peace agreement required the Israeli government to abandon all construction of new settlements in the occupied West Bank. On November 10 Obama’s White House chief of staff, Rahm Israel Emanuel, surrendered for his boss at the annual conference of the United Jewish Communities. The ongoing Israeli settlements, he said, should not be a “distraction” to a peace agreement. Allegedly, the US is a superpower and Israel is a client state whose very existence depends entirely on US military and economic aid and diplomatic protection. Yet, in the real world it works the other way. Israel is the superpower and the US is its client state... Read more... Obama’s Wacky War, by Jeff Huber | Antiwar Joint Chiefs chairman Adm. Mike Mullen finally told it like it is. "If we don’t get a level of legitimacy and governance [in Afghanistan]," he confessed, "then all the troops in the world aren’t going to make any difference." We’re not going to get legitimacy and governance in Afghanistan. We’re stuck with Hamid Karzai, and he’s a moral and ethical shipwreck. As columnist Bernd Debusmann says, "The United States and its NATO allies are fighting on the side of a corrupt and discredited government in a war, now in its ninth year, for which, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, there can be no purely military solution."...The American public’s opposition the Afghanistan war is at an all time high. We don’t have a good reason to fight this war, nobody wants to fight it any more, the Afghans don’t like us, and the bad guys are killing us with fertilizer. So heck, why not send more troops over there?... Read more... Colombia-Venezuela: The Threat of Imperialist War Looms in the Americas | venezuelanalysis The possibility of an imperialist war in the Americas came a step closer on October 30, when Colombia and the United States finalized a ten year accord allowing the U.S. to massively expand its military presence in the Latin American nation. The move comes as the U.S. seeks to regain its hegemony over Latin America – which has declined over the past decade in the context of a continent-wide rebellion against neoliberalism spearheaded by the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, led by President Hugo Chavez. In order to regain control of its “backyard,” the U.S. is increasingly resorting to more interventionist measures. This is reflected by the recent military coup in Honduras, destabilisation of progressive governments in Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Paraguay and a massive military build up in the region, including new military bases in Panama and the reactivation of its Fourth Fleet... Read more... Israeli Jews and the one-state solution, by Ali Abunimah | Electronic Intifada  At the height of the global anti-apartheid movement, in 1989, a bus in London displays a message calling for boycott of South Africa. Anyone who rejects the two-state solution, won't bring a one-state solution. They will instead bring one war, not one state. A bloody war with no end. - Israeli President Shimon Peres, 7 November 2009. One of the most commonly voiced objections to a one-state solution for Palestine/Israel stems from the accurate observation that the vast majority of Israeli Jews reject it, and fear being "swamped" by a Palestinian majority. Across the political spectrum, Israeli Jews insist on maintaining a separate Jewish-majority state. But with the total collapse of the Obama Administration's peace efforts, and relentless Israeli colonization of the occupied West Bank, the reality is dawning rapidly that the two-state solution is no more than a slogan that has no chance of being implemented or altering the reality of a de facto binational state in Palestine/Israel... Read more... What is Israel’s Role in the Destabilization of Pakistan?, by Jeff Gates | Criminal State When waging war “by way of deception,” the motto of the Israeli Mossad, well-timed crises play a critical agenda-setting role by displacing facts with what a target population can be deceived to believe. Thus the force-multiplier effect when staged crises are reinforced with pre-staged intelligence. In combination, the two often prove persuasive. That duplicity was on display when U.S. lawmakers were induced to invade Iraq in response to the mass murder of 9-11. That crisis alone, however, was insufficient. Military mobilization required a “consensus” belief in Iraqi WMD, Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, Iraqi mobile biological weapons, Iraqi meetings in Prague, and so forth. Though all were false, those “facts” proved sufficient to induce an invasion of Iraq... Read more... Two very interesting 9/11 Truth interviews | The Vineyard of the Saker Rosie O'Donnell interviews William Rodriguez (the "last man out") Get links...Radio Truth in Australia interviews Richard Gage (Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth) The False Hope of J Street and the Gentile Problem, by Stephen Sniegoski | America Hijacked ...what is J Street’s likely impact? As suggested earlier, it provides a liberal façade for Israeli “peace” terms, thus garnering greater support from progressives in the United States and around the world. The fact that the Zionist Right would likely be yelling appeasement and condemning J Street as a bunch of “self-haters” would do even more to bolster any Israeli peace proposal endorsed by J Street. Conversely, any Palestinian rejection of such “liberal” peace terms supported by J Street would provide greater justification for their demonization and harsh treatment by the Israeli government. J Street also creates a shield to protect Israel and all of its supporters, including hard-line rightists, from truthful criticism. Because of its public image as fair-minded, J Street can implicitly set strict limits for allowable criticism of Israel and its American supporters. Any criticism going beyond this, no matter how accurate–which would include the charge that the Israel Lobby dominates American Middle East policy–would be considered unacceptable, and undoubtedly J Streeters would play a key role as gatekeepers... Read more... Department of meaningless gestures, by Stephen Walt | Foreign Policy  Two eminent mainstream journalists -- Tom Friedman and Joe Klein -- recently called for United States to disengage from the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, on the grounds that Palestinians were too divided to make a deal and the Israelis were not interested in one. Friedman couldn't bring himself to draw the logical conclusion -- if the United States truly going to "disengage," that also means cutting off its economic and military assistance -- but Klein did...the issue will gradually shift from the creation of a viable Palestinian state - which was the central idea behind the Oslo process and the subsequent "Road Map" - to a struggle for civil and political rights within an Israel that controls all of mandate Palestine. And on what basis could the United States oppose such a campaign, without explicitly betraying its own core values?... Read more... Why Most Counterinsurgency Wars Fail, by Ivan Eland | Antiwar ...In short, history shows that the presence or influence of foreigners only feeds the flames of any insurgency, which can then be portrayed as a defense of the nation against outside aggression. But isn’t there hope for Iraq and Afghanistan because opposition forces are divided and often unpopular? Not really. In Iraq, the United States was able to take advantage of al-Qaeda-in-Iraq’s brutal killing of civilians to divide the Sunni guerrilla movement and bribe the Awakening Councils to battle the group. The problem in Iraq is that as U.S. forces draw down, the now reduced guerrilla war could turn into a civil war among the Sunni, Shi’ite, and Kurdish ethno-sectarian groups. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is unquestionably brutal, but Afghans do regard the United States as a foreign occupier, are suspicious of the U.S. long-term military presence, do not support a surge in U.S. forces, do not think it will defeat the Taliban, and thus support negotiating with the insurgents... Read more... West Bank rabbi: Jews can kill Gentiles who threaten Israel | Haaretz Just weeks after the arrest of alleged Jewish terrorist, Yaakov Teitel, a West Bank rabbi on Monday released a book giving Jews permission to kill Gentiles who threaten Israel. Rabbi Yitzhak Shapiro, who heads the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement, wrote in his book "The King's Torah" that even babies and children can be killed if they pose a threat to the nation. Shapiro based the majority of his teachings on passages quoted from the Bible, to which he adds his opinions and beliefs... Read more... US threatens Iran again with 'all options' scenario | Press TV  US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has once again threatened Iran, warning that Washington has kept every option on the table when it comes to halting Tehran's nuclear program. "We've always said that every option is on the table. Our goal is to prevent or dissuade Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons," Clinton who is in Germany said in a late Monday interview with PBS's Charlie Rose. The former first lady added that the US could not accept an arms race in the Middle East which could be triggered by what she claimed was Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons... Read more... A Year With Obama – and US Foreign Relations Have Only Worsened, by William Pfaff | Antiwar Who would have thought a year ago that most of the issues of conflict in America’s foreign relations would be made worse during the first year following Barack Obama’s election as U.S. president? Even those disputes or differences that were appeased or quiet a year ago are now worse. On Iraq, the new president has faithfully followed the policy of George W. Bush, and now Iraq threatens breakdown... Read more... November 10, 2009 It's only an 'errand boy'!: At What Cost the Israel Lobby?, by Zahir Ebrahim | Palestine Think Tank In Response to Jeff Gates' At What Cost the Israel Lobby?  This response to Mr. Gates' outstanding article contrarily examines two of its key highlights: 1) Israel's Nuclear Weapons program; and 2) Israel Lobby. My view on the Israeli Nuclear Weapons program has always been principally based on Theodor Herzl's view of the Jewish mission in Palestine, that "We can be the vanguard of culture against barbarianism," as he endeavored to justify Der Judenstaat to imperial powers du jour, predicting: "The antisemites WILL BECOME our most loyal friends, the antisemites nations will become our allies." Every generation of Zionist statesmen and stateswomen since then, has emphasized that indispensable role of Zionistan as a frontier outpost of the West: "There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, they are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to different galaxy." That was Moshe Katsav, Israel's President, in June 2001. And this is George W. Bush, as the erstwhile President of the United States, while representing the sole-superpower at Israel's 60th B-day bash in May 2008:.. Read more... The Murder of Muhammad "Niinu" Al-Assi, by Anne Gwynne | Axis of Logic Anne Gwynne Named Axis of Logic's Featured Activist ...We revere her for her commitment to truth and justice as she continues her work under tremendous duress and at great personal risk in the land of Palestine. We thank her for exposing the atrocities committed by the State of Israel on a daily basis in Palestine while the corporate media distorts and falsifies stories like the one Anne reports below. This time, we share her grief over the murder of her friend, Muhammad "Niinu" Al-Assi, a hero who lost his life while defending his country and his people against the Israeli invader/occupier.We share her anger at the ugly and cowardly killer-state that has occupied and oppressed the people of Palestine for more than 50 years. We admire Anne's faithfulness and courage in writing this - another - eyewitness account of Israeli atrocities after having her own life threatened in the same attack that took her friend...Read more... What Christians Don't Know About Israel, by Grace Halsell | Media Monitors Network American Jews sympathetic to Israel dominate key positions in all areas of our government where decisions are made regarding the Middle East. This being the case, is there any hope of ever changing U.S. policy? American Presidents as well as most members of Congress support Israel—and they know why. U.S. Jews sympathetic to Israel donate lavishly to their campaign coffers...increasingly, American Jews have fallen victim to Zionism, a nationalistic movement that passes for many as a religion. While the ethical instructions of all great religions—including the teachings of Moses, Muhammad and Christ—stress that all human beings are equal, militant Zionists take the position that the killing of a non-Jew does not count... Read more... Afghanistan’s Sham Army, by Chris Hedges | Truthdig  Success in Afghanistan is measured in Washington by the ability to create an indigenous army that will battle the Taliban, provide security and stability for Afghan civilians and remain loyal to the puppet government of Hamid Karzai. A similar task eluded the Red Army, although the Soviets spent a decade attempting to pacify the country. It eluded the British a century earlier. And the United States, too, will fail... Read more... Inch By Inch, House By House: How Israel Won the Settlement Battle...Again, by Ramzy Baroud | Counterpunch When British Foreign Secretary David Miliband uttered a few words regarding the illegality of the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, many wanted to believe that London was taking a sharp stance against Israel’s continued violations of international law. Alas, they were wrong. The fact is Miliband’s statement, made during a press conference that followed talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, in Amman, was merely tactical, aimed at lessening the negative impact of the feeble position adopted by Washington regarding the same issue... Read more... Christians Discriminated Against by Israel, by Donald Neff | If Americans Knew ...The next year Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, considered a political moderate, issued a religious ruling that copies of the New Testament should be torn out of any edition of a Bible owned by a Jew. Israeli scholar Yehoshafat Harkabi wrote that he was disturbed by “these manifestations of hostility-the designation of Christians as idolaters, the demand to invoke the ‘resident alien’ ordinances, and the burning of the New Testament.” Observed Harkabi: “Outside of the Land of Israel Jews never dared behave in this fashion. Has independence made the Jews take leave of their senses?”... Read more... Almost $114 Billion: A Conservative Estimate of Total Direct U.S. Aid to Israel, by Shirl McArthur | WRMEA Read more... Iran: Israel fudging Gaza report with ship claim | Press TV  Tehran says Israeli claims about seizing a ship with Iranian ammunitionis designed to sway attention away from the Goldstone report on Israeliwar crimes in Gaza...In remarks that were later proven to be false,Israeli military sources said Tuesday they found a large cache ofIranian-made arms when they stormed a vessel near Cyprus in theMediterranean Sea... Read more... Paid Lying: What Passes for Major Media Journalism, by Stephen Lendman Today's major media journalism is biased, irresponsible, sensationalist reporting that distorts, exaggerates or misstates the truth. It's misinformation or agitprop disinformation masquerading as fact to boost circulation, readership, viewers, or listeners, and on vital issues lie about or suppress uncomfortable truths to provide unqualified support for state and/or corporate interests - to the detriment of the greater good that's always sacrificed for profits and imperial aims. As a result, major media sources produce a daily propaganda diet and what Project Censored calls "junk food news," and get most people to believe it. In their landmark book, Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky explained the "propaganda model" that controls the public message by "filter(ing)" disturbing truths, "leaving (behind) only the cleansed residue fit to print" or air... Read more... Facts vs. Beliefs – Today’s Ancient Warfare | Criminal State In unconventional warfare, beliefs are deployed as weapons by those waging war by way of deception. Does anyone recall Iraqi weapons of mass destruction? Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda? Iraq’s biological weapons laboratories? The Iraqi meetings in Prague with Al Qaeda? Iraq’s purchases of yellowcake uranium from Niger? All were alleged true but later proven false or, worse, fabricated. Yet all were widely believed. In combination, those beliefs induced a consensus to wage war in Iraq in response to a mass murder on U.S. soil. The battlefield has shifted. Ground warfare is secondary. Likewise for airstrikes, naval support and covert operations. Physical operations are all downstream of information operations. False beliefs come first. Psyops precede missiles, and bombs. Hardware ranks a distant third. Foremost are the consensus shapers who manipulate perceptions until a critical mass of phony intelligence is reached. Then comes war... Read more... 1948 Again, in Sheikh Jarrah: Heroism in a Vanishing Landscape, by Ellen Cantarow | Counterpunch "Disputed” is a word often used about East Jerusalem and homes in Sheikh Jarrah. Would the international community have considered the homes of American blacks attacked by the Ku Klux Kla as “disputed”? Or those of Jews ejected by Brown Shirts in the early 1930s? The rule of law exists to protect the victims of war and occupation by imposing sanctions and responsibilities on invaders. It is not to be stretched for the convenience of the US at Guantanamo, Russia in Chechnya, Israel in Gaza, or in East Jerusalem. Under the law East Jerusalem and all the Arab homes it contains are part of the occupied West Bank. Despite endless palm-greasing, casuist apologetics, semantic distortions and brute force, Israel’s responsibilities towards the territories it occupies remain articulated in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and Chapter 5 of the 1907 Hague Convention IV. Occupying states are forbidden to seize the land and property of those they occupy, and forbidden to settle their citizens on occupied soil. But Israel and its US patron have small regard for legal niceties, instead preferring Thucydides’ maxim: “The strong do what they can, and the weak do what they must.”... Read more... Can attacks on a military base constitute "terrorism"?, by Glenn Greenwald | Salon If attacks on soldiers now qualify, how is it possible to exclude many American actions? The incomparably pernicious Joe Lieberman said yesterday on Fox News that he intends to launch an investigation into "the motives of [Nidal] Hasan in carrying out this brutal mass murder, if a terrorist attack, the worst terrorist attack since 9/11." Hasan's attack was carried out on a military base, with his clear target being American soldiers, not civilians. No matter one's views on how unjustified and evil this attack was, can an attack on soldiers -- particularly ones in the process of deploying for a war -- fall within any legitimate definition of "terrorism," which generally refers to deliberate attacks on civilians?... Read more... November 9, 2009 Breaking The Great Australian Silence, by John Pilger [We should all honor John Pilger; he's the real deal. For "Australian" you can substitute American, Canadian etc, etc...]  In a speech at the Sydney Opera House to mark his award of Australia's human rights prize, the Sydney Peace Prize, John Pilger describes the "unique features" of a political silence in Australia: how it affects the national life of his homeland and the way Australians see the world and are manipulated by great power "which speaks through an invisible government of propaganda that subdues and limits our political imagination and ensures we are always at war - against our own first people and those seeking refuge, or in someone else's country"... Read the speech... [It's magnificent; maybe it's the Irish in him.]... The Itch in Joe Lieberman’s Gitmo Finger, by Jeremy Sapienza | Antiwar  ...Comfortable advocating mass murder with that creepy smile under both Bush and Obama, in light of the Fort Hood massacre Lieberman seems to be primarily concerned [with] whether or not Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s crazed actions could be technically classified as (Islamic) terrorism. Muslims in the military are rightly on edge... Read more.. US State Department: Israel is Not a Tolerant Society, by Akiva Eldar | Haaretz  Israel dismally fails the requirements of a tolerant pluralistic society, according to a new report from the U.S. State Department. Despite boasting religious freedom and protection of all holy sites, Israel falls short in tolerance toward minorities, equal treatment of ethnic groups, openness toward various streams within society, and respect for holy and other sites. The comprehensive report, written by the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, says Israel discriminates against groups including Muslims, Jehova's Witnesses, Reform Jews, Christians, women and Bedouin... Read more... Collapse Feared for Palestinian Authority if Abbas Resigns, by Ethan Bronner | NYT  Supporters of the Fatah party held a poster of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president , during a rally in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday "If the Palestinian Authority passes into irrelevance or collapses (as now seems likely) calls for a one-state solution to the conflict "will come out of the shadows and enter the mainstream." - Alvaro de Soto, the just-retired UN coordinator for the Middle East, 6/13/07 The possible collapse of the Palestinian Authority, Israel’s negotiating partner, loomed Monday, as several aides to its president, Mahmoud Abbas, said that he intended to resign and forecast that others would follow...“I think he is realizing that he came all this way with the peace process in order to create a Palestinian state, but he sees no state coming,” Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, said in an interview. “So he really doesn’t think there is a need to be president or to have an Authority. This is not about who is going to replace him. This is about our leaving our posts. You think anybody will stay after he leaves?”... Read more... PFLP: U.S. is not a mediator but an enemy of the Palestinian people | Palestine Think Tank  Read more... The White Man's Mess, by Aijaz Zaka Syed | Palestine Chronicle White man's 'burden' to 'civilize the natives' could wreak unspeakable havoc My apologies for returning to Rudyard Kipling in every discussion about Afghanistan! But the man, who gave us such enduring classics as Jungle Book and an endless repertoire of tales, ballads, ditties and just about everything on the Raj, remains eminently relevant on this untamed frontier of civilization. Kipling may have been Poet to the Empire and its best apologist (or worst?). But having spent most of his life in Her Majesty’s Service in the Indian Sub-continent as a soldier and journalist, Kipling knew the redlines that were not to be crossed -- ever... Read more... Good men have to speak up, by Marc Guttman | The Day I recently saw a bumper sticker I liked, "If Congress represents me, then I must be really evil." If evil is defined as policies that unjustly burden, restrict, or harm innocent people and unfairly benefit other persons then, despite all good intentions, many of our governments' laws are evil...Like the owner of that bumper sticker, many dislike being fleeced to fund what they consider evil. I prefer not to be a detractor, but it's been rightly proclaimed that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing... Read more... Who Leads?: Clinton Dances With Netanyahu, by Bouthaina Shaaban | Counterpunch  Most Arab and world media expressed astonishment when the US secretary of state Hilary Clinton described the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu’s willingness to “restrain the policy of settlements” as “unprecedented”. Perhaps, many of the reporters did not have sufficient time to read the script of the press conference she held with Netanyahu in occupied Jerusalem, which deserves to be called “unprecedented”...Thus Mrs. Clinton volunteered to explain, praise and promote Netanyahu’s statement, forgetting that dismantling and freezing settlements were two main conditions in the Madrid frame of reference. The United Nations and the whole world, including her country, the United States, affirm that Israeli settlement in occupied Palestinian and Syrian land is illegal... Read more... In defence of Larry David, by Gilad Atzmon Don’t Blame the Messenger  Critics of Larry David say he has gone further than any other Jewish comic or intellectual in insulting Christianity and Christian values. In an episode of the highly popular HBO series “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” which caricatures David’s true personal life, David accidentally splashes a drop of urine on a framed picture of Jesus that is hanging in his devout secretary’s bathroom... Read more... A Line in the Sand, by Uri Avnery | Gush Shalom Mahmoud Abbas is fed up. The day before yesterday he withdrew his candidacy for the coming presidential election in the Palestinian Authority. I understand him. He feels betrayed. And the traitor is Barack Obama... [Make that Barack Uncle Tom Obama] Read more... Ilan Pappe: I’m not a traitor  Read more... Israel, Hamas and Rockets: Time to Pummel Gaza Again?, by Steve Breyman | Palestine Chronicle  Are we six months out from Gaza Massacre II? ...The UN’s Goldstone Report rejected Israel’s claim that it acted in self-defense against the rockets. Instead, the Report found the offensive “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population.” Hamas too was accused of war crimes for failing to discriminate between military and civilian targets. The fallout from the Gaza assault and the Goldstone and other reports put Israel on the public relations defensive. Ongoing efforts in the United States to smear Goldstone and his Report, and to insulate Israel from further UN or International Criminal Court action proceed with gusto... Read more... One State or Two?: Moment of Truth, by John Whitbeck: | Counterpunch In the wake of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s public praise for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s “unprecedented” attitude toward continued Israeli settlement expansion, Saeb Erakat, chief negotiator for the Palestinian Authority, calmly rolled out a verbal bombshell at a November 4 press conference in Ramallah. Erakat noted that now may be “the moment of truth” for the Palestinian leadership and raised the possibility that “the two-state solution is no longer an option and maybe the Palestinian people should refocus their attention on the one-state solution, where Muslims, Christians and Jews live as equals.” This statement just might signal a turning point in the long, frustrating search for peace with some measure of justice in Israel/Palestine... Read more... How Eurocentric Is Your Day?, by Shahid Alam | Palestine Chronicle  The college was inspired and, most likely, modeled after the 'madrasa' or Islamic college [see note below] At the outset of the classes I teach, I always address the question of bias in the social sciences. In one course – on the history of the global economy – this is the central theme. It critiques Eurocentric biases in several leading Western accounts of the rise of the global economy. This fall, I began my first lecture on Eurocentrism by asking my students, How Eurocentric is your day? I explained what I wanted to hear from them. Can they get through a typical day without running into ideas, institutions, values, technologies and products that originated outside the West – in China, India, the Islamicate or Africa?... [Actually, the college/universty appears to have originated in Buddhist India around the 4th or 5th centuries. - the Editor] Read more... Iran: Israel out to sidetrack UN with ship claim | PressTV Tehran says Tel Aviv spread 'false' claims about seizing a ship with Iranian ammunition to sway attention away from the Goldstone report on Israeli war crimes. "We strongly reject such claims. Israel has made this accusation to distract the international community's attention away from the investigating committee's report on atrocities it committed in Gaza," Iran's UN mission said in a statement. On Wednesday, Israel alleged that it had seized a huge cache of weapons when raiding an Antigua-flagged vessel around 100 nautical miles from its shores... Read more... Hamas: Only resistance can free Palestine | PressTV  Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal has declared 'unity and resistance' as the only ways to reach the goal of a free Palestine. During an address at a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, Meshaal said on Friday that years of negotiations with the Zionist enemy has proved that the decades-long conflict cannot be settled through talks and that "it is time to fight for our rights"... Read more... From the Downing Street Memo to Katrina: How the Media Enables Government Lies, by James Bovard | Counterpunch Deceit has become ritualized in U.S. foreign policy. From 2002 onwards, the White House Iraq Group spewed out false information that the New York Times and other prominent media outlets routinely accepted without criticism or verification. After many of the assertions were later discovered to be false, the White House and much of the media treated the falsehoods as irrelevant to the legitimacy of the U.S. invasion. The lack of attention paid to political lies is itself symptomatic of the bias in favor of submitting to rulers regardless of how much people are defrauded... [If you're interested in why there's no room for the truth in the mainstream media, read Intellectual Cleansing, by Jonathan Cook.] Read more... How Zionist lobby stooges in Congress brought shame to their institution, by Alan Hart | PTT  As expected, the U.S. House of Representatives voted, on Tuesday 3 November, by 344 votes to 36, to urge the Obama administration to oppose endorsement of the Goldstone Report. But for those who are interested in truth and justice, not to mention democracy, the highlight of what passed for debate was the two-minute contribution of Dennis Kucinich...His statement was a damning indictment of 344 of his colleagues... Read more... Adam Shapiro speaks about Gaza's suffering from Israel (video) : PTT Adam Shapiro is an American co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). Watch... November 7, 2009 The flagging peace process: Is Israel too strong for Barack Obama? | The Economist As America drops its demand for a total freeze on the building of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, angry Palestinians say there is no scope for resuming talks  Five months after Barack Obama went to Cairo and persuaded most of the Arab world, in a ringing declaration of even-handedness, that he would face down Israel in his quest for a Palestinian state, American policy seems to have run into the sand. The American president’s mediating hand is weaker, his charisma damagingly faded. From the Palestinian and Arab point of view, his administration—after grandly setting out to force the Jewish state to stop the building of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land as an early token of good faith, intended to bring Israelis and Palestinians back to negotiation—has meekly capitulated to Israel... Read more... The truth about the Middle East is buried beneath the headlines, by Robert Fisk | The Independent Amira Hass was spot on when she said last week that her lifetime women's award was an award for failure. The West Bank correspondent of the Israeli paper Haaretz eloquently explained herself on al-Jazeera's English channel. She received an award for failure, she said, because despite all the facts that she and her journalistic colleagues had explained about Israeli occupation in Palestine, the world still did not understand what occupation meant and still used words like "terror" and "war on terror". Amira was absolutely correct. Most of our Western press and television are as gutless as ever when they have to participate in what Noam Chomsky described as "the manufacture of consent"... Read more... The Hobson's Choice of Hamas: Palestine and the demise of conscience, by Terrell Arnold | Palestine Chronicle  The Palestinian people's choice: Stick to their guns or watch their homeland evaporate. In late 2005, the Bush administration, along with the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon, promoted parliamentary elections in Palestine. The goal, obvious if unstated, was to provide a popular credential for the government that would be run by the expected to be victorious candidates, members of the Fatah party of Mahmoud Abbas. Since Abbas had won with a decisive 62% of the votes in a January 2005 election to succeed the late Yasser Arafat, the parliamentary election of January 2006 looked like a slam dunk. Hamas, participating for the first time in a national election, along with five or six small parties stood against Fatah. The results, however, surprised most observers by giving the parliamentary majority to Hamas. Fatah won only 45 seats in the new parliament, while Hamas won an absolute majority of 74 in the 132 seat assembly. Various pundits agonized over why this occurred. The conventional wisdom was that, after all, Hamas was nothing but a terrorist group. It had no political experience and ran no candidates of known political caliber on the Palestinian scene. As often happens with conventional wisdom, however, this batch was false... Read more... Iran's would be American interlocutors, by Franklin Lamb | Atlantic Free Press ...Some American analysts have argued that Iran is quite right to be suspicious of US intensions and have identified a pattern of recent events that undermine the credibility of the Obama administration since the Presidents June “open hand-clinched fist” speech in Cairo. A pattern that Iran’s leadership no doubt analyzes as it recalls, and resolves not to continue the half century of Arab-Muslim gullibility when it comes to American and Western promises and inducements... Read more... House Resolution Designates Venezuela a State Sponsor of Terrorism, by Stephen J. Lendman  At a time of growing US poverty, hunger, homelessness, and despair, imperial wars without end, and the Obama administration even worse than its predecessor, Venezuela: -- is a model participatory democracy; In contrast, America:...-- holds free, fair and open elections; -- respects the rule of law, civil liberties, and human rights; -- doesn't intimidate its neighbors; -- uses its resources responsibly for the people; -- provides essential social services for the needy; -- champions judicial fairness and the rule of law; -- has a model free and open media; -- wages no foreign wars; -- doesn't torture or imprison its adversaries; -- conducts effective operations to halt illicit drugs trafficking; -- promotes global peace, solidarity, equality and social justice; and -- its only threat is its good example that shames its northern neighbor. Read more... FBI Kills Islamic Cleric, Arrests Followers, for Being Muslims at the Wrong Time in America, by Stephen Lendman | Baltimore Chronicle ...Post-9/11, America declared war on Islam with the FBI in the lead at home. It notoriously targets the vulnerable, entraps them with paid informants, inflates bogus charges, spreads them maliciously through the media, then intimidates juries to convict and sentence innocent men and some women to long prison terms. Justice is nearly always denied. At times willful killings are committed. The Detroit Muslims are their latest victims... Read more... The Challenge of "Multiculturalism" In How Americans View the Past and the Future, by Samuel Taylor | IHR Of all the ways in which a nation defines itself, few are more important than what it teaches its children about itself. In the history classes of its public schools, a nation retells its own story and instills a national identity in the minds of young citizens. In today's America, where competing racial, cultural and linguistic claims now make it nearly impossible even to speak of national identity, questions about history have become a struggle for the possession of America's past. The multicultural, multiperspective history that has arisen from this struggle is not merely a departure from the history America has always taught its children. It may be the first time that a nation has abandoned the single identity of its origins and set out deliberately to adopt multiple national identities. Significantly, the understanding by many non-whites of multicultural history is entirely different from that of whites. For whites, the central concepts are "inclusion" and "pluralism." American history is to be rewritten so that racial and cultural perspectives that were once "ignored" or "neglected" will get equal treatment. For many non-whites, however, multicultural history is merely a step on the way to an explicitly racial, Afrocentric or Hispanic history. Their goal is separation rather than inclusion... Read more... How Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal Endangers Us All, by Jeff Gates | Foreign Policy Journal  Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor ...President John F. Kennedy tried to stop Israel from starting a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. In a June 1963 letter to Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, he insisted on proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Israel was not developing nuclear weapons at its Dimona reactor facility. Though his letter was cabled to the U.S. embassy, Ben-Gurion resigned (citing undisclosed personal reasons) before the message could be physically delivered. With Israel’s nuclear ambitions under attack by its key ally, that strategically well-timed resignation duped an inexperienced young president and denied him a diplomatic victory that might well have precluded the wars now being waged in the Middle East...Read more... Republic of Fools: The Evil Empire, by Paul Craig Roberts | Counterpunch The US government is now so totally under the thumbs of organized interest groups that “our” government can no longer respond to the concerns of the American people who elect the president and the members of the House and Senate. Voters will vent their frustrations over their impotence on the president, which implies a future of one-term presidents. Soon our presidents will be as ineffective as Roman emperors in the final days of that empire... Read more... Israeli Professor : ’We Could Destroy All European Capitals’ , by Nadim Ladki | Rense An Israeli professor and military historian hinted that Israel could avenge the holocaust by annihilating millions of Germans and other Europeans. Speaking during an interview which was published in Jerusalem Friday, Professor Martin Van Crevel said Israel had the capability of hitting most European capitals with nuclear weapons. "We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets of our air force." Creveld, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, pointed out that "collective deportation" was Israel's only meaningful strategy towards the Palestinian people... Read more... November 6, 2009 UN endorses Goldstone report | Al Jazeera  The United Nations General Assembly has adopted a UN-sponsored report which says Israel committed war crimes during last winter's military assault on the Gaza Strip. The Goldstone report, which accuses both Israel and Hamas of war crimes, has already been endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council, which sponsored the fact-finding commission. The General Assembly on Thursday voted by a margin of 114 to 18 to adopt the report after debating it for two days. Forty-four member-nations abstained from voting. The report calls on both Israel and the Palestinians to investigate accusations of human-rights violations during the 22-day conflict in December and January. The debate at the General Assembly, which began on Wednesday, was called for by the Arab UN group, with the backing of the 118-member Non-Aligned Movement... Read more... Palestinian state may have to be abandoned - Erekat | Reuters Palestinians may have to abandon the goal of an independent state if Israel continues to expand Jewish settlements and the United States does not stop it, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Wednesday. It may be time for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to "tell his people the truth, that with the continuation of settlement activities, the two-state solution is no longer an option", Erekat told a news conference. Citing a 2003 peace "road map" that also calls on Palestinians to rein in militants, Abbas has made a cessation of Israeli settlement activity in the occupied West Bank a precondition for resuming statehood talks with Israel. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who met Israeli and Palestinian leaders on Saturday, unsuccessfully urged Abbas to negotiate with Israel and resolve the settlement issue within the framework of the talks. Erekat said Clinton -- who praised as unprecedented Netanyahu's offer to limit temporarily construction in West Bank settlements to 3,000 additional housing units -- was only opening the door to more settlements in the next two years. The alternative left for Palestinians is to "refocus their attention on the one-state solution where Muslims, Christians and Jews can live as equals", Erekat said. "It is very serious. This is the moment of truth for us."... Read more... Abbas 'not to seek re-election' | Al Jazeera  Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has said he will not seek re-election when elections are held in January, Palestinian officials have said. "The president insists on not running in the upcoming election," an official from the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) executive committee said on Thursday. Another PLO official said Abbas, who heads the Fatah faction in the West Bank, will give a speech later on Thursday explaining his decision not to run. Saeb Erakat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said: "At the end of the day it's not the presidency. "It's the question of the Israeli government continuing settlement activity, fait accompli policies, dictation; and nineteen years after trying to achive a two-state solution, maybe the president has come to his moment of truth, and I think he'll specify this personally."... Read more... Rep Dennis Kucinich blasts ‘Operation Cast Doubt’ | Pulse “Today we journey from Operation Cast Lead to Operation Cast Doubt. Almost as serious as committing war crimes is covering up war crimes, pretending that war crimes were never committed and did not exist.” — Dennis Kucinich The US House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a nonbinding resolution (344-36) that urged the President and Secretary of State to oppose the endorsement of the Goldstone Report condemning Israel’s war crimes during its war on Gaza. Of the 36 representatives in the US Congress who voted against the obscene resolution (H. Res 867 a. k. a. the Ros-Lehtinen/Berman resolution) condemning the Goldstone Report as ‘biased’, the responses of Dennis Kucinich and Brian Baird are worth highlighting. Kucinich’s blazing two minute statement on the floor can be watched in the clip below and the transcript appears over the fold, as does a list of Congressional representatives who voted against the resolution. Americans living in those districts might consider writing to their representatives to thank them for their integrity and voting for justice...Read transcript, watch video of Rep. Kusinich's speech to Congress... Time for Britain to make amends for crimes against Palestine, by Stuart Littlewood  As Palestinians mark the 92nd anniversary of the infamous Balfour Declaration, Stuart Littlewood argues that it is time for Britain to make amends for its central role in creating one of the world’s worse injustices, the implanting of the State of Israel on to Palestine and the dispossession of the Palestinian people. Hamas marked the 92nd anniversary of the infamous Balfour Declaration by recalling the misery of the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) and insisting that European states in general and Britain in particular make amends for the crimes committed against Palestine. It is worth reminding ourselves from time to time what started the trouble all those years ago. Arabs know the details only too well, but you would be surprised how the British people are kept in ignorance. The history of the Arab-Israeli struggle is seldom taught in schools and our politicians are afraid to talk freely about it. To all intents and purposes the fuse to the present powder-keg was lit by the British foreign secretary, Lord Balfour, on 2 November 1917 in a letter to the most senior Jew in England, Lord Rothschild, pledging assistance for the Zionist cause. It was a moment of madness that showed utter disregard for the likely impact on Islamic sensibilities and the day-to-day lives of those (Muslim and Christian) already living in the Holy Land, and for peace in the region... Read more... President Obama: You've Sold Your Soul for Re-Election Money, by Mohamed Khodr | Sabbah Sir, congratulations on your Nobel Peace Prize. It is a manifestation of the world's relief and strong belief in your idealism, passion to change the status quo both domestically and internationally, and your desire to restore America's credibility around the world by tackling difficult challenges such as Climate Change, Nuclear Proliferation, and the longest thorn and Achilles Heel of our nation---the Israeli Palestinian conflict; a conflict between an illegally occupying superpower and the hapless millions of Palestinians who've endured the longest military occupation, theft of their nation, land, homes, farms, even their drinking water, diverted by Settlers to water their lawns and replenish their swimming pools. Sadly for the world, Mr. President, your idealism met the reality of a Capitol long besieged by powerful interest groups that oppose your policies on all fronts, none more damaging to your credibility than your appeasement of Israel's powerful lobbies (AIPAC, ADL, ZOA etc.) and to its powerful support in Congress as once again demonstrated by a House Resolution demanding your rejection of the Goldstone Report, something that you shamelessly already did thereby telling the world that we stand with perpetrators of war crimes...Washington D.C. is just as occupied by Israel as the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza... Read more... Planet Earth: Israeli Occupied Territory, by Mohamed Khodr | Sabbah  Read more... Israeli settlements could cause one-state solution, by Juan Cole | Salon PLO leader warns that settlers in the West Bank are making a free-standing Palestinian state impossible  The West Bank Jewish settlement of Beitar Ilit is seen through a barbed wire fence Saeb Erekat, chief of the Palestine Liberation Organization Steering Committee, said Wednesday that Palestine Authority president Mahmoud Abbas should be frank with the Palestinian people and admit to them that there is no possibility of a two-state solution given continued Israeli colonization of the West Bank. It is morally and ethically unconscionable to leave millions of Palestinians in a condition of statelessness, in which they have no rights..Therefore, if there isn't going to be a two-state solution, there will have to be a one-state solution, in which Israel gives citizenship to the Palestinians. (As it is, 20 percent of Israelis are Palestinian Arabs and that proportion will grow to 33 percent by 2030, if they are not expelled by sometime-Moldavian-night-club-bouncer and now foreign minister of Israel, Avigdor Lieberman.)...Read more, watch video of interview with Saree Makdisi on Saeb Erekat's statement ... The Rich Have Stolen the Economy, by Paul Craig Roberts | Counterpunch Bloomberg reports that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s closest aides earned millions of dollars a year working for Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and other Wall Street firms. Bloomberg adds that none of these aides faced Senate confirmation. Yet, they are overseeing the handout of hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer funds to their former employers. The gifts of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money provided the banks with an abundance of low cost capital that has boosted the banks’ profits, while the taxpayers who provided the capital are increasingly unemployed and homeless... Read more... Why Keep Geithner?, by Dylan Ratigan | Huffington Post A year ago it was revealed to the American people that our banking system is a legalized Ponzi scheme in which bank and insurance CEOs pay themselves billions of dollars in personal compensation to lend and insure assets with money they don't have to customers who can't pay back the loans. In those dark days between the fall of Lehman Brothers and before the presidential election, we were often carried through that time by the small glimmer of hope that at least we would soon have a new leader who would hopefully fix this mess and punish those responsible... Read more... Autumn in Shanghai, by Gilad Atzmon  Read more... Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to be ‘raped with broken bottles’, by Daniel Tencer | Raw Story The CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country. Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK's ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program... Read more... A Tribute To Those Who Spoke Out | Jewish Crime Network This section of the site is dedicated to all those honest, honorable, and courageous Jews who have spoken out against the crimes committed by Israel, and the Jewish criminal network. To them we owe our respect and gratitude... [Actually, there are many Jews who have spoken out against Zionism, often at considerable risk to themselves and for no other purpose than to tell the truth. You will find many of them as authors of articles on the pages of this site. There is also a sample list of "Righteous Jews" on the website of that name. Zionism is not "Jewish" in any meaningful sense; it is the organizing principle behind a massive criminal network covering the globe and controlling Middle East related foreign policy in almost all of the Western democracies and most of the dictatorships in the Islamic world as well.] Read more... Palestinians Harvest Joy and Sorrow Along With Olives | AAPER  Ahmad Ghanem, a Palestinian farmer from the West Bank village Imatin, was awoken just before dawn on October 11, 2009 by the sounds of Israeli settlers destroying his farmland and olive trees. The settlers had just been evicted by the Israeli military from the illegal settlement outpost Shvut Ami, and were taking their revenge on the Palestinians unfortunate enough to live adjacent to the outpost. By the time that the soldiers finished the evacuation and responded to the violence against the Palestinians, the damage had been done... Read more... November 5, 2009 Courage in Journalism Award Acceptance Speech by Amira Hass | PTT  ...I am generally defined as a reporter on Palestinian issues. But, in fact, my reports are about the Israeli society and policies, about Domination and its intoxications. My sources are not secret documents and leaked out minutes which were taken at meetings of people with Power and in Power. My sources are the open ways by which the subjugated are being dispossessed of their equal rights as human beings... Read more... A Plea to the University of Trondheim, Norway, to boycott Israel | Media Monitors “Right and wrong are the same in Palestine as anywhere else. What is peculiar about the Palestine conflict Norway has always been known for its worldwide humanitarian efforts and generous foreign aid. It is no coincidence that Norway is always ranked first in the world by the United Nations. The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) has just such a historic opportunity tomorrow when it considers voting for an academic boycott of Israel, a nation that for too long has lived by violence, ethnic cleansing, military expansionism, illegal occupations, subjugation of millions of innocent Palestinians, defied all divine and international laws that respect and value human life, and that since its establishment has committed countless terrorist acts and war crimes, lately documented by the Goldstone Report, all with impunity, never accountable for its actions in courts of justice, the U.N., or to all of humanity. The West, especially the U.S., has constantly protected Israel’s interests at the expense of its own interests... is that the world has listened to the party that has committed the offense and has turned a deaf ear to the victims." - British Historian Arnold Toynbee - Read more... Pornographic Past vs. Murderous Present by Gilad Atzmon, by Gilad Atzmon | Uruknet  "Why would any writer make up stories about the Holocaust?" asks Melissa Katsoulis on mainstream British media outlet The Independent. Katsoulis has recently published a book about the history of literary hoaxes. She is interested in particular in a unique fictional genre; namely 'the Holocaust hoaxers’... Read more... Why Does AIPAC Spy on Americans?, by Grant Smith | Antiwar Rosen’s many filings in court reveal that his fundamental case is that AIPAC commonly circulates and distributes classified US government information when it suits the organization’s purpose in lobbying for Israel. AIPAC defamed him, he alleges, by claiming he was somehow unique. An FBI file declassified and released on July 31, 2009 (PDF) backs up Rosen’s assertions...Rosen’s lawsuit will not likely make good on his and former lobbyist Douglas Bloomfield’s implicit threats to reveal AIPAC as a stealth, unregistered foreign agent of the Israeli government. Fortunately for Americans, that uncomfortable fact is now emerging in myriad ways, even in the midst of AIPAC’s new attempts to engineer policies that could accelerate the downfall of the US economy... Read more... A Nation of Golems, by William A. Cook | Palestine Chronicle  that which is strong, just as we bow kindly and patiently to that which is weak. Everything has its time and place.' (Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, 1512-1609) Read more... Whither After the Goldstone Report?, by Karin Friedemann | Intifada-Palestine  The debate over the Goldstone Report is a huge distraction from the real problem: the Report’s inadequacy and the futility of bringing the case to the International Criminal Court. The Report itself, written by a Zionist Jew, is extremely flawed and biased in favor of Israel. Richard Goldstone’s daughter Nicole told Israeli Army Radio (in Hebrew) that her father, as head of the UN Fact Finding Commission on the Gaza Conflict, had actually softened accusations against Israel. Goldstone’s Report creates a fictional equality of power and obligation between Hamas and the State of Israel. In addition, it incorrectly tries to fit both within the same legal framework, as Goldstone misapplies the Geneva Conventions to Hamas. The Geneva Conventions apply to Israel because Israel is a state and a signatory while post-WW2 Nuremberg Law provides the appropriate legal framework for resistance movements like Hamas... Why I Am Not a Zionist, by Kevin Coval | Huffington Post Last week I was disinvited from my second Jewish conference in two months for poems I'd written in solidarity with Palestinians, poems that make an unapologetic call for justice. Subsequently I, and the poet I was to read with at the conference, wrote a response to being censored. People from all over the country wrote to us supporting free speech, supporting art as a tool for change, supporting real talk about the degradation of Palestinians, and people wrote to let us know they disagreed. Some more thoughtfully than others... Read more... The Battle for Palestinian Representation, by Nadia Hijab "From now on, Palestinian leaders will be judged by the stand they took on the Goldstone Report -- anyone who tried to bury it, or who remained silent, will have lost their claim to leadership," a Palestinian historian friend remarked after popular outrage forced the Palestinian Authority's Mahmoud Abbas to rescind his decision to postpone the Report at the Human Rights Council... Read more... Give up on Obama, Disband the Palestinian Authority | PTT  Insider diplomacy The issue of continuing and expanding Jewish settlements came back to haunt the Palestinian leadership that negotiated Oslo and continued to negotiate with Israel for the last 16 years while Israeli continued to build and expand its settlements, not to mention building the Apartheid Wall. Now 16 years later finally the Palestinian leadership discovered there is a problem with the Jewish settlements. One has to wonder why did Arafat continue to negotiate with Israel while Israeli continued with its settlement program? And why did Abbas continue to negotiate with Netanyahu predecessor Olmert while Olmert continued with his settlement program not to mention his on War on Gaza? There is something fundamentally wrong with this Palestinian leadership that accepted, and for so long, Israel’s settlements policy that saw settlements expand 150% since Oslo, while we hear nothing but lip service and denunciation from Ramallah, while it continues to deal with Israel business as usual...Read more... November 4, 2009 Israel's Right To Exist?, by Alan Hart | ICH On Monday 12 October, Prime Minister Netanyahu opened the Knesset’s winter session by blasting the Goldstone Report that accuses Israel of committing war crimes and vowing that he would never allow Israelis be tried for them. But that was not his main message. It was an appeal, delivered I thought with a measure of desperation, to the “Palestinian leadership”, presumably the leadership of “President” Abbas and his Fatah cronies, leaders who are regarded by very many if not most Palestinians as American-and-Israeli stooges at best and traitors at worst. Netanyahu again called on this leadership to agree to recognise Israel as a Jewish state, saying this was, and remains, the key to peace. And he went on and on and on about it... Read more... US House rejects Goldstone report | aljazeera The US House of Representatives has rejected as "irredeemably biased" the findings of a UN-sponsored report which says Israel committed war crimes during its military assault on the Gaza Strip. The house on Tuesday voted 344 to 36 in favour of a non-binding resolution calling on Barack Obama, the US president, to maintain his opposition to the report, which was written by a panel led by Richard Goldstone, a South African judge... Read more... Congressman Brian Baird: Israel and Gaza Deserve Better than a Misguided Resolution | AFP  Before House Members vote on H.Res. 867, regarding the U.N. Goldstone report on the Gaza conflict, there are a few questions worth asking. First, why are we bringing this resolution to the floor without ever giving former South African Constitutional Court Justice Richard Goldstone a hearing to explain his findings? Have those who will vote on H.Res. 867 actually read the resolution? Have they read the Goldstone report? Are they aware that Justice Goldstone has issued a paragraph by paragraph response, available on my Web site at www.baird.house.gov, to H.Res. 867 pointing out that many of its assertions are factually inaccurate or deeply misleading? Since scarcely a dozen House Members have actually been to Gaza, what actual first-hand knowledge do the rest of the Members of Congress possess on which to base their judgment of the merits of H.Res. 867 or the Goldstone report? What will it say about this Congress and our country if we so readily seek to block “any further consideration” of a human rights investigation produced by one of the most respected jurists in the world today, a man who led the investigations of abuses in South Africa, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Kosovo and worked to identify and prosecute Nazi war criminals as a member of the Panel of the Commission of Enquiry into the Activities of Nazism in Argentina?... [They were just following orders] Read more... Knocking Our Heads Against a Wall in Palestine, by Ivan Eland | Antiwar In the face of an outraged Arab world, Secretary of State Hillary backed off on her congratulation of Israel for merely pledging to limit settlement construction in the occupied West Bank. Previously, President Barack Obama, originally appearing to be much m..ore friendly to the Palestinian and Arab causes than George W. Bush, told Israel, "It is time for the settlements to stop." The president’s earlier position reinforced that of the United Nations and other international bodies: such settlement by the occupier of any territory conquered in war is against international law. The U.S. waffling demonstrates that despite Obama’s youth spent in a Muslim country and greater sensitivity to Islamic concerns than his predecessor, he will likely always be forced by domestic political considerations to come home to the mother ship of the Israeli lobby... Read more... Tossing the COIN in Afghanistan: Our new counterinsurgency doctrine is obsolete before it has even been tried, by Justin Raimondo If you have a high tolerance for asininity, go directly to the Web site of "President" Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and feast your eyes on the litany of congratulations emanating from world leaders upon his election "victory."...American people are beginning to wonder what’s up with eight years of futile fighting – and what the future holds. Add to this spiraling economic uncertainty and the metastasizing costs of the war, and you have what Andrew Exum decries as a growing "neo-isolationism" on your hands. Horror of horrors, we can’t have that! Why, the American people might begin to ask all sorts of uncomfortable and potentially embarrassing questions of their ruling elites, such as: what are we getting out of this foreign policy of endless war, anyway?... Read more... Serial Tragedies and Boomerangs: Hoh's Afghanistan Warning, by Ralph Nader | Counterpunch Matthew P. Hoh, a former U.S. combat marine captain and Department of Defense civilian in Iraq starting in 2004 and until September a political officer in the Foreign Service stationed in Afghanistan is giving some consternation to President Obama’s advisors as the Commander in Chief considers sending more soldiers to that war-torn country next to Pakistan. Mr. Hoh wrote a letter of resignation to the State Department in September. His four page letter frames his doubts about what he said is the “why and to what end” behind “the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan. He notes that like the Soviets’ nine year occupation, “we continue to secure and bolster a failing state, while encouraging an ideology and system of government unknown and unwanted by its people.”... Read more... November 3, 2009 How the “Most Moral Army in the World” Wages War on Students, by Stuart Littlewood |Dissident Voice  Palestinian girl daydreaming in school If there's one thing the Israelis are good at it's making war on women and children. They killed 952 Palestinian children in their homeland between 2000 and the start of the Gaza blitzkrieg in December 2008 (according to B'Tselem statistics). They murdered at least 350 more during their Cast Lead onslaught and have kept Gaza under daily attack ever since. So the brave Israelis must have eliminated nearly 1400 youngsters by now. Would anyone care to guess how many they left bleeding, maimed and crippled? The "most moral army in the world" also loves waging war against Palestinian university students. Not long ago I wrote about Merna, an honors student in her final year majoring in English. Israeli soldiers frequently rampaged through her Bethlehem refugee camp in the middle of the night, ransacking homes and arbitrarily arresting residents. They took away her family one by one. First her 14-year-old cousin and best friend was shot dead by an Israeli sniper while she sat outside her family home during a curfew...Read more... Letter from Mazin 10/3/09 Yesterday and while politicians fret over terms like "slow-down" or "restraint" on illegal settlement activities, the Israeli authorities demolished more homes and evicted some 30 people in Jerusalem. One room that is part of a demolished building housed a handicapped women whom neighbors and friends had helped get modifications done to facilitate her life. Tonight we heard a rather depressing report from an organizer in AlBustan Neighborhood in Silwan (Occupied Jerusalem) where 88 homes (housing 1500 people, 60% of them children) are slated for demolition to create a "King David park". In a normal city, parks are created to serve the residents of the area not to ethnically cleanse them. While just nearby there are spaces for parks to build but Israel's plan for Jerusalem call for cleansing it of its Arab inhabitants so that there is nothing left to negotiate about and it becomes a Jewish city (capital of Israel forever)... Read more... WANTED: Names and Photos of Israeli War Criminals in Gaza | Kawther Salam  Adolpha Livni I have decided to publish some names and photos of the Israeli military personnel who participated in the so-called "Operation Cast Lead”, the offensive launched by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) on the Gaza Strip between 27 December and 18 January 2009. The names of these criminals called my attention since the first day of their criminal attack against the Palestinian civilians in Gaza. I consider each person who took part in this IOF and each one whose name appears in this report as a war criminal who should be requested by an international court of justice, just like all other war criminals who were persecuted before…Read more, view photos... Noam Chomsky: No Change in US 'Mafia Principle' | Palestine Chronicle  Chomsky: 'It is wise to attend to deeds, not rhetoric' As people across the world breathed a sigh of relief to see the back of former US president George W. Bush, top American intellectual Noam Chomsky warned against assuming or expecting significant changes in the basis of Washington's foreign policy under President Barack Obama. During two lectures organized by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, Chomsky cited numerous examples of the driving doctrines behind US foreign policy since the end of World War II. "As Obama came into office, Condoleezza Rice predicted that he would follow the policies of Bush's second term, and that is pretty much what happened, apart from a different rhetorical style," said Chomsky. "But it is wise to attend to deeds, not rhetoric. Deeds commonly tell a different story," he added. "There is basically no significant change in the fundamental traditional conception that we if can control Middle East energy resources, then we can control the world," explained Chomsky... Read more... Opium, Rape and the American Way, by Chris Hedges | truthdig  Brothers-in-arms: Hamid Karzai shares a whisper with U.S. Sen. John Kerry The warlords we champion in Afghanistan are as venal, as opposed to the rights of women and basic democratic freedoms, and as heavily involved in opium trafficking as the Taliban. The moral lines we draw between us and our adversaries are fictional. The uplifting narratives used to justify the war in Afghanistan are pathetic attempts to redeem acts of senseless brutality. War cannot be waged to instill any virtue, including democracy or the liberation of women. War always empowers those who have a penchant for violence and access to weapons. War turns the moral order upside down and abolishes all discussions of human rights. War banishes the just and the decent to the margins of society. And the weapons of war do not separate the innocent and the damned. An aerial drone is our version of an improvised explosive device. An iron fragmentation bomb is our answer to a suicide bomb. A burst from a belt-fed machine gun causes the same terror and bloodshed among civilians no matter who pulls the trigger...Read more.. From Washington and Jerusalem: more bad news, by Stephen Walt | Foreign Policy  Partners in State Terrorism Back in 2007, we wrote that AIPAC has an "almost unchallenged hold on Congress." Little has happened since then to alter that conclusion, and we will probably get another demonstration of Congressional spinelessness this week. On Tuesday, the House is scheduled to vote on H.R. 867, an AIPAC-sponsored resolution denouncing the recent Goldstone Report on possible war crimes by Hamas and Israel during the Gaza War last year. You can read the resolution here. You should then read Judge Goldstone's response, which points out the errors in the House resolution...If you're convinced that the resolution makes a mockery of America's professed commitment to justice and human rights, then you might express that sentiment [link]. Or just call your Congressman's office and tell him/her to grow a backbone and vote against it...Read more... Justice Goldstone and the Jews, by Tony Judt | Huffington Post  No, no, no - WE are the victims We Jews should be very proud of Richard Goldstone. In an ancient tradition of Jewish self-questioning and uncomfortable truth-telling, the author of the recent report from the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict has braved personal vilification and institutional mendacity to describe the crimes committed by Israeli forces in the course of their invasion of Gaza in December 2008...The major perpetrator of human rights abuses in this conflict is without question the State of Israel, and Justice Goldstone records as much. That the Israel of Benjamin Netanyahu has chosen to conduct an international campaign against Justice Goldstone and his report need not surprise us. Israel refused to cooperate with the UN investigation; long before its conclusions were published, Netanyahu had set in motion a campaign to deny and denigrate them. More dispiriting, and of greater political consequence, is the pitiful and humiliating response of the Obama Administration. The "fierce urgency of now" apparently required that Washington join Tel Aviv in discrediting the Goldstone Report, and with it the UN inquiry... Read more... November 2, 2009 America, stop sucking up to Israel, by Gideon Levy | Haaretz  ...Obama heaps sticky-sweet praise on Israel, even though he has spent nearly a year fruitlessly lobbying for Israel to be so kind as to do something, anything - even just a temporary freeze on settlement building - to advance the peace process...Before no other country on the planet does the United States kneel and plead like this. In other trouble spots, America takes a different tone. It bombs in Afghanistan, invades Iraq and threatens sanctions against Iran and North Korea. Did anyone in Washington consider begging Saddam Hussein to withdraw from occupied territory in Kuwait? But Israel the occupier, the stubborn contrarian that continues to mock America and the world by building settlements and abusing the Palestinians, receives different treatment... Read more... Song for Palestine | AFP A song by Richard Siegel and Dave Lippman dedicated to the memory of Abir Aramin, shot to death by Israeli Border Police as she was walking home from school. She was 10. Nurit Peled-Elhanan* wrote just after it happened “an Israeli soldier shot . . . Abir, in the head. The soldier will not spend an hour in jail. In Israel, soldiers are not imprisoned for killing Arabs. Never. It does not matter whether the Arabs are young or old, real or potential terrorists, peaceful demonstrators or stone throwers. The army has not conducted an inquiry in Abir Aramin’s death. Neither the police nor the courts have questioned anyone. There will be no investigation. As far as the Israeli Defense Forces are concerned, the shooting did not happen. The army’s official account of her death is that she was hit by a stone that one of her classmates was throwing “at our forces. . . The so-called enlightened, western world does not get what is happening here. The whole enlightened world stands aside and does nothing to save little girls from murderous soldiers. . . If the world does not come to its senses, there will be nothing more to say or write or listen to in this land except for the silent cry of mourning and the muted voices of dead children.”... Read more, watch videos... Settler Colonialism: Return to the Middle Ages, by Bouthaina Shaaban | Counterpunch  ...The evasive and shameful language of the UN’s call comes in the context of the submission of the Security Council to the Zionist will, and consequently commits a historic disgrace in the form of ignoring the legitimate political, civil and human rights of the Palestinian people including their right to life and freedom. For the UN not to take any initiative or measure which leads to giving the Palestinian people the right to self determination will remain a disgrace in the history of the organization which will never be removed. The Palestinians have been under a racist settler form of colonialism for over sixty years; and they are targeted with a campaign of ethnic cleansing launched by armed gangs of settlers supported by Israel’s police and army... Read more... U.S. about-faces on Israeli-Palestinian peace approach | China News The Israeli and Palestinian publics are now well aware that there is a new reality on the ground: the Americans believe it is time for the Palestinians to show good faith and come to the negotiating table. This became unmistakably clear during the latest visit by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the region over the weekend...Analysts are now trying to understand what brought about the Obama administration's U-turn, and also being examined is the role the media is playing in the labyrinthine peace process...These remarks flew in the face of earlier statements by Washington, which demanded that Israel cease all settlement activity, including construction in Eastern Jerusalem, to pave the way for renewed negotiations...One possible explanation, which Wolfsfeld stressed was pure speculation, is that Washington may be under intense pressure from the Israeli public and domestic pro-Israel groups... [Pure speculation? You've gotta be kidding.] Read more... A most undiplomatic diplomat: Hillary’s Ill Will Tour, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar  ...In what the Los Angeles Times described as "a fence-mending trip" to Pakistan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton managed to tear down more fence posts than she repaired. Abrasive, arrogant, and condescending, she fired a series of verbal RPG volleys that nearly demolished what remained of good relations between the U.S. and its principal ally in the region... Read more... Support Human Rights in Gaza! Oppose HR 867! | AAPER On October 23, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) introduced HR 867, which calls on the President and the Secretary of State to "unequivocally oppose any endorsement or further consideration of the Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict [commonly known as the Goldstone Report] in international fora." The report, authored by South African Justice Richard Goldstone, found evidence that Israel and Hamas committed war crimes during Israel's December 2008-January 2009 attack on the Gaza Strip. The report urges independent investigations by Israel and Hamas into such evidence. Should the parties fail to conduct such investigations, the report calls upon the U.N. General Assembly, the U.N. Security Council and the International Criminal Court to investigate and hold the guilty parties accountable for crimes committed. HR 867: (a) contains numerous factual errors, as Justice Goldstone himself has identified in a letter to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs; (b) undermines the United States' commitment to human rights in the Middle East and around the world; and (c) further damages the image of the United States (particularly Congress) among citizens of majority-Arab and Muslim countries, harming President Obama's efforts to improve relations between such citizens and the United States... Read more, sign petition... Bonaparte Blair & Co, by Gilad Atzmon  Gordon brown urged European Socialist leaders last week to appoint Tony Blair as the European President. “Get real”, he told them, “This is a unique opportunity to get a strong progressive politician to be the president.” Brown is obviously correct, nothing could be more refreshing, innovative ‘real’ and ‘progressive’ than assigning the job to a man who has more blood on his hands than any other person in Europe. It may also be right to argue that there is just one living person on this planet with more blood on his hands than Blair. That man dwells in Texas, his name is George and actually unlike our Bonaparte figure, he keeps relatively quiet. Unlike George, our Boney is craving for recognition, he cannot live without a crown or an official title. Someone should remind Boney that he already made it into history, he can really take a break. With more than one million fatalities in Iraq, he is not far behind Hitler and Stalin... Read more... Too Big to Fail?: Why All the President's Afghan Options Are Bad Ones, by Tom Engelhardt In the worst of times, my father always used to say, "A good gambler cuts his losses." It's a formulation imprinted on my brain forever. That no-nonsense piece of advice still seems reasonable to me, but it doesn't apply to American war policy. Our leaders evidently never saw a war to which the word "more" didn't apply. Hence the Afghan War, where impending disaster is just an invitation to fuel the flames of an already roaring fire... Read more... November 1, 2009 America’s Media? A Colonial Force for Israel’s Infallibility, by Mohamed Khodr | PTT  ...“Their/our” media is the true Apartheid Wall between Israel and our nation. It strangles our capitol like an elastic beltway that it tightens and loosens according to Israel’s directions. It is the whip that keeps our cowardly politicians in tow and our populace ignorant of the truth about Israel “our ally and only democratic government in the Middle East”. Israel is the huge sucking sound that drains our money, military, and mind set while we like indoctrinated puppets cheer it on. We are helping Israel in its strategy to create our own national suicide... Read more... Obama and Palestine: Predictable disappointment, by Christopher Vasillopulos | PTT ...For any positive change to take place in Palestine, if America is to be taken seriously as an “honest broker” in the region, still the official policy, despite being thoroughly discredited, I believe it is imperative for Obama to discuss the danger of Israeli nuclear weapons. My principal reason for pessimism is that every time Obama or Hillary Clinton refer to the unacceptability of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, they refer to non-existent Iranian weapons and ignore hundreds of Israeli nuclear warheads. The American mantra reconfirmed by Obama-Clinton is “no nuclear weapons in the Middle East.” Who can disagree with this? Who wants nuclear weapons in the Middle East or anywhere else for that matter? The difficulty with the American mantra could not be more simple or compelling. It is false in its premises and false in the facts. Americans have accepted nuclear weapons in the Middle East, so long as they are Israeli. And Israel has had nuclear weapons for over 30 years, hundreds of war loads and missiles capable of reaching every capital in the region. Every time an American official intones the mantra that “nuclear weapons are unacceptable in the region,” the hypocrisy bell clangs. Therefore, my critical indicator of change in American policy regarding Palestine is this: Would Obama say that all nuclear weapons in the Middle East are unacceptable, including those of Israel? So far there has been a resounding silence, except for the hypocrisy bell. Clang! Clang!... Read more... Norman Finkelstein, British MPs to discuss future of Palestinian Refugees | Pal Tel  As the preparations of The Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) for the International Conference, UNRWA and Palestinian Refugees; continue, more interest from people is being showed. PRC has received tens of requests from people to join the conference. More importantly, the participation of Norman Finkelstein is evoking more people to attend the event. The conference which is scheduled on the 16th of December 2009 would commemorate the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency UNRWA. It will include 4 sessions of discussions that focus on the recent conditions of refugees, the UNRWA work and the legal status of Palestinian Refugees under the International Law..Professor Norman Finkelstein is one of the keynote speakers at the event. He is expected to chair one of the sessions plus inaugurating his "NEW BOOK"... Read more... The "WMD" Lie Machine Pushing Us To Another War, by Jeff Gates | Veterans Today ...As with Iraq, the threat of weapons of mass destruction is again marketed as a causa belli. As with Iraq, the claim is disputed by weapons inspectors and intelligence analysts. The Iraqi programme had been shut down a dozen years before the invasion. In Iran, there is no evidence that uranium is being enriched beyond the low levels required for energy and medical purposes. Reports of a “secret” processing plant failed to note that Iran suspended uranium enrichment from 2003 until 2005. Seeing no change in the political climate except more sanctions and more Israeli threats to bomb its nuclear sites, Iran began building and equipping a new facility. As with Iraq, there is no direct threat to the US As with Iraq, mainstream US. media focused not on Israel - the only nation in the region known to have nuclear weapons - but on Iran. Enrichment is relatively easy compared to the steps required to design, build and reliably deliver a nuclear warhead. Activity around each of those steps can be readily detected... Read more... Treason, Betrayal and Deceit: 9/11 and Beyond, by Alan Sabrosky | ICH  The attacks on September 11, 2001 have been a defining moment forAmerica. The political and psychological impact on Americans of aconcerted and visible attack in America was enormous -- indeed, it isan interesting "coincidence" that the attacks occurred on the one dayof the year whose mention reinforces a public sense here of danger andemergency: 9-1-1. A significant development in the 1990s was theformation of the neo-conservative think tank known as PNAC (Project fora New American Century), whose members prepared position papers for theIsraeli government and for a future US Administration sharing theirviews. That happened in 2000 with the election of George W. Bush, and acontemporary writer summarized the tip of the neo-conservative icebergin his first Administration this way: The "outsiders" from PNAC werenow powerful "insiders," placed in important positions from which theycould exert maximum pressure on US policy…PNAC had a lock on militarypolicy-creation in the Bush Administration. Especially significant interms of subsequent events was the acknowledgement in one of PNAC's owndocuments that their program for America (and Israel) would not readilybe accepted by the American people. What this meant, PNAC opined in2000, was that "the process of transformation, even if it bringsrevolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent somecatastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."... Read more... Nothing Succeeds Like Failure: The Cuban Embargo, by Saul Landau | Counterpunch The UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to end the US Economic, Financial and Commercial Embargo of Cuba. The Cubans claim the embargo cost them over $242 million in 2008 alone. The embargo, Cuba claims, makes foreign capital unavailable because investors face possible sanctions for doing business with Cuba. Public opinion polls – elite business opinion agrees – show a majority favor dropping the embargo and travel ban. Instead of scrapping it, however, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton cling to their inheritance, in policy terms equivalent to scientists insisting the world is flat... Read more... Attacks by Israeli settlers spark more by the army as Palestinians defend themselves in West Bank | Palestine Telegraph  The media office in the Palestinian Authority police reported on two separate incidents involving Israeli settlers and soldiers in the West Bank yesterday evening. In southern Nablus, Israeli forces fired rubber-coated steel bullets and noxious gas at Palestinian youth. The trouble began when settlers attacked Burin Village. When the Israeli army arrived, soldiers went after the Palestinians. Among the injuries is 22 year old Hossam Faqih who was shot in the foot. In the second incident, Israeli soldiers severely beat a child in Hebron after an incident occurred with settlers from Kiryat Arab. Thirteen year old Mohammed Fadl was rushed to the hospital from the center of town... [Just another typical day in Palestine] Read more... Withdrawal won't affect Afghan vote legitimacy -US | Reuters U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Saturday that a decision by Abdullah Abdullah not to contest a second round of the Afghan presidential election would not affect the vote's legitimacy. Asked at a news conference in Jerusalem about reports that aides to the first-round runner-up said he would not run, Clinton did not make clear whether she was confirming that Abdullah would not run but she said: "I think that it is his decision to make. She continued: "I do not think it affects the legitimacy. There have been other situations in our own country as well as around the world where in a run-off election one of the parties decides for whatever reason that they are not going to go on.".. [Is she stupid or crazy or just lying through her teeth?] Read more... |
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