October 31, 2009 The Invention of the Jewish People , a book by Shlomo Sand Editorial Reviews The Invention of the Jewish People is an indispensable challenge and a very complex intellectual exercise…a more secure society [than Israel] would include the book in the core curriculum of its school system. (Avraham Burg, former Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, Yedioth Ahronoth) From Amazon...One of the most fascinating and challenging books published here in a long time. (Tom Segev - Haaretz) Shlomo Sand has written a remarkable book... Anyone interested in understanding the contemporary Middle East should read it. (Tony Judt, author of Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945) The reader will have understood the message: what this well-documented and fearless book explodes is the myth of a unique Jewish people, miraculously preserved, in contrast to all the other peoples, from external contamination … [Sand’s] conclusions, which are prudently formulated, nonetheless lead one towards a sole solution: the construction of a secular and democratic Israel. (Jacques Julliard - Le Nouvel Observateur)... Holocaustism vs. Islam, by Kevin Barrett Sometimes it seems like there are only two major religions left: Holocaustism and Islam. According to Gilad Atzmon, "The Israeli Philosophy professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz was probably the first to define the holocaust as the ‘new Jewish religion'." But as the persecution of Bishop Williamson makes clear, Holocaustism has replaced Christianity as well as Judaism. You can tell which story is sacred and which one isn't by the reaction you get when you commit sacrilege. Nowhere in the West is anyone being brought up on charges of denying the crucifixion-resurrection. People can blithely doubt the crucifixion and the resurrection and the virgin birth and the trinity other tenets of Christianity and still work in the great universities of the West. In fact, if they don't doubt these things, they might have a harder time getting hired. Admit at a faculty luncheon that you don't doubt the resurrection or the virgin birth, and you'll get some very strange looks... [I call it the Holycause, but otherwise I would have been proud to have written this piece myself just as it is. - the Editor] Read more... Iran and The International Bureau of Double Standards, by Anthony Lawson | YouTube Demonstrating that the continued attacks being made on Iran, by presidents, prime ministers and the mass media, are smokescreens for the real danger to world peace: Israel and more lies about weapons of mass destruction. Commentators from the mainstream media accept just about anything that is fed to them, by the White House or favoured politicians, and repeat it, like parrots, to their mass audiences, whether the information is accurate or not. "The International Bureau of Double Standards" is, of course, a euphemism for the way that the New World Order operates, and, unless we all learn to see through the lies, half truths and damaging innuendo, we will only have ourselves to blame for the way our futures and those of our children are affected... Excellent video... October 30, 2009 How The Israeli Lobby Controls Us: Dancing To Our Israeli Masters, by Jeff Gates | Veterans Today In the early 1960s, Sen. William J. Fulbright fought to force the American Zionist Council to register as agents of a foreign government. The council eluded registration by reorganizing as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC has since become what Fulbright most feared: A foreign agent dominating American foreign policy while disguised as a domestic lobby. Israelis and pro-Israelis object when they hear that charge. How, they ask, can we so few wield such influence over so many? Answer: It’s all in the math. And in the single-issue advocacy brought to bear on US policy-making by dozens of “domestic” organizations that now compose the Israel lobby, with AIPAC its most visible force. The political math was enabled by Sen. John McCain whose support for all things Israeli ensured him the GOP nomination to succeed George W. Bush. McCain’s style of campaign finance reform proved a perfect fit for the Diaspora-based fundraising on which the lobby relies. Co-sponsored by Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, this change in federal election law typifies how Israeli influence became systemic... Read more... Typical Israeli settler attacks pacifists | Video Palestine ..I went to a protest against Senator Mike Huckabee, who is here in Jerusalem to support the Israeli settler cause in occupied Palestine and particularly in Sheikh Jarrah. On the way down from the protest, we came across a young woman who asked us where the protest was in Hebrew. We told her we did not speak Hebrew, and she asked us again in English, after which we gave her the directions. She asked us where we were coming from, and we said that we were coming from the Peace Now protest, which is against settlements. Immediately her face changed. She asked us if we were Jewish. When we said no, she asked us why we were in her country. She said that we had no right to be here, and that this country was only for the Jews, who were given this land by God. My friend asked her if she thought God would distinguish amongst people of different religions. She said yes, because she was part of the "Chosen People". In this video, one of my other friends ask her if this justifies the murder of tens of thousands of Arabs.. You can hear her assert that yes, it does. Not only that, she says that she loves that Arabs are killed... Read more, watch video... Israeli blockade strangling Gaza agriculture, by Mya Guarnieri | The Electronic Intifada Recently, Israel announced that it would import palm fronds from the Gaza Strip for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. The move came at the behest of Minister of Religious Services, Yakov Margi, who feared that a shortage of palm fronds and a local monopoly on the item would send prices skyrocketing for the Jewish holiday, which came in early October this year. Before the holiday, palm fronds are in high demand as religiously observant Jews build thatched huts that commemorate the 40 years that, according to Biblical tradition, the ancient Hebrews wandered the desert. Once Sukkot begins, however, palm fronds are no longer needed. Initially, the decision to allow Gaza to export palm fronds seemed like an easing, however small, of the Israeli siege. But according to Gaza's farmers, exporters and the Israeli non-governmental organization Gisha, it wasn't... Read more... Israel denies illegal diamond trade | Press TV Israel has criticized a UN report which accuses Tel Aviv of involvement in illegal diamond trade from the Ivory Coast that could be helping re-arm rebels there. Israel's Diamond Controller Shmuel Morderchai dismissed the accusations in a Wednesday statement, insisting Israel has never dealt in diamond trade with the Ivory Coast. "We are shocked by these false accusations and completely refute them," he said. The experts report was presented to the UN Security Council on international compliance with sanctions imposed by the international body on the Ivory Coast... Read more... Israel accused of denying Palestinians access to water, by Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem | The Independent Up to 200,000 families have no running water, damning Amnesty report says Israel is accused today of denying the West Bank and Gaza access to adequate water through a "total" and "discriminatory" control that enables its own people to consume four times as much as the Palestinians. An Amnesty International report paints a picture of many Palestinian families struggling – and often failing – to secure enough water for drinking, cleaning, and agriculture while Israelis, including residents of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, have all they need for lush, irrigated farmland, swimming pools and gardens. Amnesty also suggests that taxpayers in countries who donate aid to the Palestinians are facing unnecessarily high costs to meet severe water shortages because their governments are unwilling to challenge "the most unreasonable" restrictions imposed by Israel on Palestinian access to the regionally scarce resource... Read more... Israel's Slow-Motion Genocide in Occupied Palestine, by Stephen Lendman | Global Research According to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, Israel has conducted state-sponsored genocide against the Palestinians for decades and intensively in Gaza. Imagine life under these conditions: Living in limbo under a foreign occupier. Having no self-determination, no right of return, and no power over your daily life. Being in constant fear, economically strangled, and collectively punished. Having your free movement denied by enclosed population centers, closed borders, regular curfews, roadblocks, checkpoints, electric fences, and separation walls. Having your homes regularly demolished and land systematically stolen to build settlements for encroachers in violation of international law prohibiting an occupier from settling its population on conquered land. Having your right to essential services denied - to emergency health care, education, employment, and enough food and clean water. Being forced into extreme poverty, having your crops destroyed, and being victimized by punitive taxes. Having no right for redress in the occupier's courts under laws only protecting the occupier. Being regularly targeted by incursions and attacks on the ground and from the air. Being willfully harassed, ethnically cleansed, arrested, incarcerated, tortured, and slaughtered on any pretext, including for your right of self-defense. Having no rights on your own land in your own country for over six decades and counting. Vilified for being Muslims and called terrorists, Jihadists, crazed Arabs, and fundamentalist extremists. Victimized by a slow-motion genocide to destroy you... Read more... Afghanistan a Success – Time to Come Home!, by Karen Kwiatkowski Karen Kwiatkowski, USAF Lt. Colonel (retired) Eight years ago, the public objective was to displace the Taliban and create a non-al-Qaeda supporting "democracy" in Afghanistan. For a moment, leave aside Washington’s more fundamental objectives in the military invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent base-building – security for the trans-Afghanistan pipeline project, restoring the opium exports that had finally subsided under Taliban enforcement by early 2001, and improved military positions vis-à-vis Iran, Pakistan and Russia. The fossil fuel manipulations, drug money and maintaining a justification for our outsized military-industrial complex are not the topics here. The Taliban, while initially displaced from Kabul, are regaining some political influence. We may claim "mission accomplished" because they are competing for influence in an Afghanistan that has other comparable politicized ethnicities – and the Taliban no longer receive significant support from al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden... Read more... My Problem with J Street, by Philip Giraldi | Antiwar As readers of Antiwar.com certainly are aware, J Street was created a year and a half ago to serve as an alternative to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). J Street supports creation of a viable Palestinian state that would exist side-by-side in peace with Israel. Unlike AIPAC, J Street advocates first negotiating issues rather than dropping bombs and it rejects the view that American Jews should close ranks and reflexively and unconditionally support every government in Israel. J Street targets liberal minded American Jews who are troubled by the Israel Lobby’s right wing-Likud orientation. It promotes itself as pro-Israel, pro-American, and pro-peace, maintaining that it is possible to support Israel without having to endorse all Israeli government actions. It has recently concluded its first Washington conference which attracted a smattering of politicians. General James Jones, President Barack Obama’s National Security Adviser, was a featured speaker... Read more... - As ye sow, so shall ye reap - Sow the wind and ye shall reap the whirlwind - The Liberty Affair and the Problem with the Truth of History, by Alan Hart[Please distribute widely] As it relates to the making and sustaining ofthe Arab-Israeli conflict, there is no better or more shocking example of howthe truth of history has been suppressed than the Liberty Affair. Israel’sattack, on 8 June 1967, on America’s most sophisticated spy ship; an all-outattack which was originally intended to kill all of the Liberty’s crew and sinkthe vessel but which, when the attack was called off, had killed “only” 34American sailors and wounded 172 others. On8 June this year I received from America’sCouncil for the National Interest Foundation (CNI) the text of an op-ed carriedby the San DiegoUnion Tribune of that day. It was headlined FortyYears Later, Searching for Truth. The writer of it was Ward Boston, Jr.(Who he is, and what he was, in a moment). Forthis posting I am going to reproduce the text of the op-ed; then brieflysummarize the results of my own search for the truth as set down in Volume Twoof my book Zionism, The Real Enemy of the Jews; and I will conclude byaddressing the question? Why the cover-up, by the media as well as theJohnson administration?...Read more... Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I shall repay Israel, Jewish History, and the War on Terror Ask any "terrorist" targeted in the "War on Terror" what he is opposing, and invariably the answer will be given: the Zionist occupation of the Middle East and Palestine in particular. This explanation was given by Osama bin Laden in a taped speech broadcast by Al-Jazeera, and has been given by other "terrorists" since 1948. It is a revealing fact that the first official act of the United Nations was the creation of the modern State of Israel, a move that achieved the Orwellian prediction of "perpetual war for perpetual peace." The Middle East has been in a state of war since that time. As Arab and Asian leaders have been co-opted or "bought out" by the West, the resistance toward the State of Israel -- that unnatural and recent innovation -- has moved into the grass roots of the Muslim world. It is sometimes said that Israel is a client of the United States, but in reality and practice, the U.S. is a client of Israel. The single most powerful influence in the U.S. government is Jewish. During his confirmation hearing Secretary of State Collin Powell vowed to "make sure Israel is absolutely secure." And because of its role as supporter and protector of Israel, and enforcer of the Zionist agenda, the U.S. was a natural target for the "terrorists" in the September 11 attacks... Read more... Latin America's economic rebels | The Guardian Ecuador and Bolivia are achieving remarkable growth because they reject conventional economic wisdom Among the conventional wisdom that we hear every day in the business press is that developing countries should bend over backwards to create a friendly climate for foreign corporations, follow orthodox (neoliberal) macroeconomic policy advice and strive to achieve an investment-grade sovereign credit rating so as to attract more foreign capital. Guess which country is expected to have the fastest economic growth in the Americas this year? Bolivia. The country's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, was elected in 2005 and took office in January 2006. Bolivia, the poorest country in South America, had been operating under IMF agreements for 20 consecutive years, and its per-capita income was lower than it had been 27 years earlier. Evo sent the IMF packing just three months after he took office, and then moved to re-nationalise the hydrocarbons industry (mostly natural gas). Needless to say this did not sit well with the international corporate community. Nor did Bolivia's decision in May 2007 to withdraw from the World Bank's international arbitration panel, which had a tendency to settle disputes in favour of international corporations and against governments... Read more... Imperialism By Any Other Name: God's Favorite Team (and Nation and Religion), by Rev. William E. Alberts | Counterpunch The National Football League’s Dallas Cowboys provide a commentary on the imperialism undermining the soul of America. The commentary is seen in The Dallas Morning News reports of the mammoth new, $1.15 billion, Cowboys Stadium: it drew 105, 121 fans on opening day, which was “the largest regular-season crowd in NFL history.” The “huge stadium crowd finally got their first look at the stadium’s...160-foot-long Mitsubishiis [,] the largest HDTV in the world...The $40 million display is 54 yards long, more than 71 feet tall and hangs only 90 feet above the playing field.”..Tragically, many Americans still don’t get it. How being “God’s favorite team” or nation or religion is a curse rather than a blessing. Thus President Obama may re-package and continue former President Bush’s imperialistic policy by escalating America’s crimes against humanity in Afghanistan - and, like his predecessor, still show his face and receive “a warm reception” on a fifty-yard line or a pitcher’s mound... Read more... Business as Usual in Hebron: Peace Cycle to Palestine, by Susan Galleymore | Counterpunch Fatigued mesh sags under the weight of garbage thrown from above. The Peace Cycle, an annual ride for peace from London, just ended in Jerusalem...Laura Abraham, co-founder of the Peace Cycle, came to Israel and the West Bank after she heard reports in Britain about the bombardment of Jenin in 2002. The Israelis sealed off that town and refused access to ambulances and journalists. “I listened to how people were killed when buildings were demolished on top of them. It was so horrific that I realized I needed to do more than just know about it, I had to do something about it.” This year's peace cyclists rode from Amman, Jordan to Jenin and other West Bank towns and villages, including Hebron. The ancient city referenced in the Old Testament is shuttered now and wire mesh covers its walkways. This, to prevent fundamentalist Jewish settlers who live above street level from tossing garbage onto pedestrians below...It hangs so low that pedestrians must walk around it. Pakistan's growing anti-US anger | BBC News Animosity towards the US seems to have increased since a new bill - widely known as the Kerry-Lugar bill - was passed by Congress. It promises a massive injection of aid to Pakistan, but with conditions attached which many Pakistanis feel give the US too much control over their country's affairs. "They say they are our friends," says Mr Mir. "But through the Kerry-Lugar bill they are trying to convert all of Pakistan into their slave. This is the feeling in Pakistan."... Read more... An American Diplomat and a British Soldier Tell Their Leaders They Have No Clothes: No to the Afghanistan War Strategy, by Ann Wright | Common Dreams ...On the day that the United States suffered the greatest number of deaths in its 8 year war in Afghanistan and in the month with the most casualties, an American diplomat assigned in Afghanistan resigned. As one of three U.S. diplomats who resigned in March, 2009 in opposition to the Iraq war, I had been wondering how long the next resignation from the U.S. government over war policies would take. Six weeks ago, on September 10, 2009, U.S. diplomat Matthew Hoh sent a letter of resignation to the Director General of the State Department over his concern about the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. Hoh had served six years in the U.S. Marine Corps and had one combat tour in Iraq as a Marine Corps Captain and a second tour in Iraq as a Department of Defense civilian... Read more... October 29, 2009 Palestinian equal rights joins the progressive agenda on ‘The Daily Show', by Adam Horowitz | Mondoweiss Anna Baltzer As I entered the empty television studio Aerosmith was blaring over speakers and the familiar set of The Daily Show stood empty. As can be expected, it looked much smaller in person, but everyone was excited regardless. A mixture of tourists, students and others filed in around an hour before shooting was to start. I noticed there were a few keffiyeh’s wrapped around some shoulders, a couple "Shalom" pins, and one cowboy hat covered in a huge Code Pink anti-war sticker. This was because of tonight’s guests – Dr. Mustafa Barghouti and Anna Baltzer. We were there to watch the stuggle for Palestinian equal rights go prime time...Read more, watch the segment... Arresting Blair, by George Monbiot | The Guardian Read more...Making this ruthless liar EU president is a crazy plan. But I'll be backing Blair. If the man who waged an unprovoked war in Iraq gets this job, it could be the chance to hold him to account for his crimes. Tony Blair's bid to become president of the European Union has united the left in revulsion. His enemies argue that he divided Europe by launching an illegal war; he kept the UK out of the eurozone and the Schengen agreement; he is contemptuous of democracy (surely a qualification?); greases up to wealth and power and lets the poor go to hell; he is ruthless, mendacious, slippery and shameless. But never mind all that. I'm backing Blair... An Interview with Derrick Jensen on Science and Technology: Against Prometheus | Counterpunch ...In all of my books I’ve emphasized that the fundamental difference between civilized and indigenous ways of being is that for even the most open-minded of the civilized, listening to the natural world is a metaphor. For traditional indigenous peoples it is not a metaphor. It is how you relate with the real world. This culture’s way of life is based on exploitation, domination, theft, and murder. And why? Because it is based on the perceived right of the powerful to take whatever resources they want. If you see yourself as entitled to a resource, and if you’re not willing or incapable of seeing this other as a being with whom you can and should be in relation with, then you’re going to take the resource... Read more... The universality of war propaganda, by Glenn Greenwald | Salon A soldier with the Russian army in Afghanistan recounts what they believed about their mission ...I wanted to note an amazing Op-Ed that was referenced in a book I'm reading: the Op-Ed is by Nikolai Lanine, published in The Toronto Globe and Mail in November, 2006. Lanine was drafted into the Russian Army at the age of 18 and spent several years as part of the Russian occupying force in Afghanistan. Thereafter, he moved to Canada, and in 2006, his wife's first cousin, a medic in the Canadian Army, was killed in Afghanistan. Lanine wrote this column after attending his funeral, and recounted what he and his comrades in the Russian Army believed they were doing in Afghanistan:.. Read more... Gary Webb on C.I.A. Trafficking of Cocaine | YouTube Gary Webb is the San Jose Mercury News journalist that was run out of his job and blacklisted from the industry for daring to report what he found out. Watch video... NATO vs CSTO: The Fogh of war, by Eric Walberg ‘Regional’ defence organisations are very much in transition. NATO’s reputation as the guardian of peace on Earth is in tatters these days. Once avowedly an alliance of North America and Western Europe to fight the communist hordes of Eurasia, it morphed into something quite difference with the collapse of the socialist bloc two decades ago. It now pretends to unite all of Europe to fight the Muslim hordes wherever they be found and, of course the Russians, just for good measure. To do this, it expanded rapidly in the past decade, and now has a Partnership for Peace with ex-Soviet hopefuls. It also has a Mediterranean Dialogue with Western-oriented Muslim states and Israel (of them, Morocco and Israel are further blessed as “major non-NATO allies”) and the GCC+2 -- the Gulf Cooperation Council plus Egypt and Jordan. GCC+2 has been optimistically dubbed the “NATO of the Middle East” in Western media, but then once-upon-a-time so was the ill-fated Baghdad Pact, originally called the Middle East Treaty Organisation (METO). The real “NATO of the Middle East ” is of course US+1... Read more... Soros: China Will Lead New World Order | Prison Planet Billionaire globalist warns Americans against resisting new global financial system Billionaire globalist George Soros told the Financial Times during an interview that China will supplant the United States as the leader of the new world order and that America should not resist the country’s decline as the dollar weakens, living standards drop, and a new global currency is introduced... Read more... Israel’s European Lobby. by Maidhc Ó Cathail | Dissident Voice In their 2006 article “The Israel Lobby,” John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt famously assert, “Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical.” Having for decades successfully steered policymaking in Washington in a pro-Israel direction, Israel’s American Lobby has more recently turned its attention to Europe. Despite its brief presence in Brussels, it appears to have already had marked success in influencing the nascent foreign policy of the European Union... Read more... Israelis Targeting Grassroots Activists, by Mel Frykberg | IPS Israeli authorities are increasingly targeting and intimidating non-violent Palestinian grassroots activists involved in anti-occupation activities who are drawing increased support from the international community. Several weeks ago masked Israeli soldiers stormed the home of Ehab Jallad from The Jerusalem Popular Committee for the Celebration of Jerusalem as the Capital of Arab Culture for 2009. "Around 3am the soldiers started kicking and banging on the door and threatened to break it down if I didn't open immediately. My young daughters were terrified as they didn't know what was happening," recalls Jallad, a young Palestinian architect from Jerusalem... Read more... A Tale of Two UAVs, by Jay Barr | Antiwar The recent frenzy over "balloon boy" Falcon Heene that dominated cable news was odd, considering the scant coverage of the carnage wreaked by another kind of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)...Unlike the ultimately harmless unmanned aerial vehicle in the balloon story, American drones continue to cause the deaths of children in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq. However, these killings receive little attention from the mainstream press, with any mention of the Predator UAV attacks usually highlighting the death of the alleged al-Qaeda target (and as in the cases of Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri and Abu Mustafa al-Yazid, reports of these deaths may be greatly exaggerated)... Read more... Obama Still Doesn’t Grasp Blowback, by Ivan Eland | Antiwar Although President Barack Obama has more empathy for the opinions of the Islamic world than his predecessor and seems to vaguely understand that they do affect U.S. security, he doesn’t seem to understand specifically that U.S. meddling in and occupation of Muslim countries inflames Islamic radicals and is the main cause of blowback anti-U.S. Islamist terrorism... Read more... October 28, 2009 Nuke Gaza, by Jeff Gates | PTT This Nazi thug, in case you don't recognize him, is Avigdor Lieberman, a Israeli officials are right to worry. Gazans too. Yet Americans should worry even more. 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 behavior over the past six decades. The emerging issues are these: 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 Tayyip Erdogan that Israel may use nuclear weapons against Gaza...recently arrived Moldavian terrorist who is now the Deputy Prime Minister of Israel Read more... War Is a Hate Crime, by Chris Hedges | Truthdig Violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people is wrong. So is violence against people in Afghanistan and Iraq. But in the bizarre culture of identity politics, there are no alliances among the oppressed. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the first major federal civil rights law protecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, passed last week, was attached to a $680-billion measure outlining the Pentagon’s budget, which includes $130 billion for ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Democratic majority in Congress, under the cover of protecting some innocents, authorized massive acts of violence against other innocents... Read more... Bishop fined €12,000 for denying Holocaust, by PressTV [Christians can take heart that their tradition still produces martyrs willing to be crucified for telling the truth as they see it.] Read more... List of Israeli war criminals compiled for legal action, by PressTV European human rights lawyers have compiled a list of Israeli military officials that have played leading roles in the war crimes committed during the Gaza war. Human rights lawyers and pro-Palestinian activists in Britain, Spain, Belgium and a number of other European countries said on Tuesday that the list enables authorities to issue arrest warrants for Israeli officials if they enter those countries. The lawyers say they have based their claims on testimonies of Palestinian witnesses and other evidence gathered from Gaza since January, when Israel launched an all-out military offensive against the coastal territory. The list includes military officers holding ranks of battalion commander and higher who were in command during various stages of Operation 'Cast Lead,' the right-wing Israeli daily, the Haaretz reported, adding that the number of officers and their identities were not released... Read more... Meshaal: Israel plans to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque | Press TV Hamas political chief Khaled Meshaal A senior Hamas leader has warned that Israel plans to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Al-Quds to build a new temple in its place. On Sunday, the mosque compound was the scene of violent clashes for the second time in recent weeks after Israeli police invaded the compound and arrested 12 Arab worshippers. "It is the first step towards dividing the mosque, a prelude to demolishing it and building a temple in its place," said Hamas political leader Khalid Meshaal in a speech in Damascus. "Jerusalem belongs to its Arab inhabitants, Muslims and Christians. The future (of the city) will not be settled at the negotiating table, but on the ground of confrontation and resistance," AFP quoted Meshaal as saying. The Organization for Human Rights on the Temple Mount (OHRTM), a rightist Israeli group, in a meeting on Sunday had called for a new temple to be built in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. The conference was attended by a number of Knesset members and leading rabbis, Ynet news reported...[The lunatic Christian Zionists must be wetting their pants in anticipation. But the joke is that when they get raptured they'll be dismayed to notice that the elevator isn't going up, it'll be going down, all the way down.] Read more... The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism: Israeli Exceptionalism, by M. Shahid Alam | Counterpunch ...Writing about Zionism has not been easy. The history of Zionism is history gone wrong, and not only for the Palestinians. The tragedy for the Palestinians is obvious, although, blinded by racism and the Zionist bias of their media, Westerners only recently have begun to see this tragedy for what it is. It has been a tragedy for the Jewish people too, who were co-opted by the Zionists to place their energy, their talent and their hopes on a project they should never have undertaken, and whose only chance of success lay in obliterating the hopes of another people. The more trapped this project becomes in its own logic, the greater the destruction it becomes willing to wreak. It chooses destruction in order to delay coming to terms with, and making amends for, the tragedy it has spawned... Read more... West Bank land belongs to Jews, says Israeli army judge | The Guardian Palestinian labourers work at a construction site in a West Bank Jewish settlement Major Adrian Agassi did not make the connection between the Bible, the land and the Jews when, fresh out of university, he left England for Israel in search of his roots. He was not even a practising Jew. But over the past quarter of a century, the Israeli army lawyer and then military judge at the forefront of arguably the most significant battle in the occupied West Bank – the confiscation of Palestinian land for the construction of Jewish settlements – has come to see himself as in service of a higher duty. In an unusually frank interview, which offers insights into the melding of religion, politics and law that underpins land seizures in the occupied territories, Agassi has laid out his belief that Israel has a biblical claim to territory beyond its borders and that he, even as an immigrant, has a right to live on it when those born there do not...[Words cannot express just how infantile and dangerous these people are. But Hitler would have understood - he had similar notions.] Read more... Arrogant US Misses the Message From Pakistan’s People, by William Pfaff | Truthdig There has always been in American foreign policy circles a virus called arrogance, caused by the hereditary assumption that Americans know better than others. Surprisingly, this does not always prove the case, but the condition seems highly resistant to treatment, even by experience. There seems a high probability that the disease has struck Obama administration policy circles dealing with Pakistan. (We will leave aside the case of American relations with Afghanistan.) This administration came to office with a conviction that the Afghanistan problem is a problem because it actually is a Pakistan problem, Pakistan being a large country possessing nuclear weapons and a great many Pashtuns, who are the people from whom Taliban are recruited... Read more... Is Abbas Poised to Resign? | Antiwar With reconciliation hopes with Hamas looking grim and peace prospects with Israel looking even worse, it is being reported that Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas has told President Barack Obama that he intends to resign... [Resign? Resign from what? His term of office expired last January. Ah, now I get it, resign from his position as Head Puppet.] Read more... Hamas is not the real problem, by Henry Siegman | Haaretz Haaretz has courageously and repeatedly exposed the deceitfulness of this and previous Israeli governments' pretense that their goal is to find a viable Palestinian peace partner. It is therefore important to guard against the implication of the question - whether Israel should engage Hamas in peace talks - posed by the paper, namely that Israeli governments have had an interest in holding peace talks if only they could find a willing partner. Time and again, when presented with a choice between peace and continuing Israel's expropriation of Palestinian land, Israeli governments have chosen land over peace. Indeed, an American president who shows the slightest signs of taking peacemaking seriously is immediately suspected - not only by Israeli governments but by Israel's public - of anti-Israel, if not anti-Semitic, motivations... Read more... October 27, 2009 Neocons and Pentagon Rage Against the Dying of the Fight, by Jeff Huber | Antiwar Despite the public relations campaign that has so many folks convinced the surge was a success, Iraq is still a zoo. It has been almost three years since the surge strategy was announced and David Petraeus was installed as commander in Iraq. As professor and retired Army officer Andrew Bacevich puts it, Iraq is "now bizarrely trumpeted in some quarters as a ’success’ and even more bizarrely seen as offering a template for how to turn Afghanistan around."...The more we give in to the agenda of a very bad group of people who should have been discredited years ago, the more difficult it will become to turn back from the path they have set us on... Read more... New Issue - Spring 2009: Journal of Palestine Studies | Institute for Palestine Studies The latest issue of the Journal of Palestine Studies focuses on Operation Cast Lead, the devastating December 2008-January 2009 Israeli assault on Gaza. In addition to reports and essays on the war by Hisham Naffa`, Robert Blecher, and Peter Laqerquist, the issue includes the history of Israeli operations against Gaza since 2001, detailed descriptions of the military dimension of OCL, and a collection of press commentary on the assault. Also: Frida Berrigan provides a detailed overview of U.S. military aid to Israel, including restrictions on and uses of this aid; Azmi Bishara is interviewed on OCL's significance; Oren Yiftachel examines Israeli voter attitudes with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the 2009 elections; and Ilana Feldman explores the dangers of identifying the current situation in Gaza as a humanitarian problem... Read more... AIC Releases Report on Complicity of Israeli Academic Institutions The idea of an academic boycott of Israel first emerged in 2002 as part of the growing boycott and divestment campaign against Israel, itself a part of the struggle against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and the violation of Palestinian human and national rights. Compared to other types of boycott, the academic boycott has gathered a relative amount of widespread support amongst academic unions and organizations, primarily in Great Britain. Not surprisingly, this relative success has stirred a public debate and opposition to the boycott, mostly by pro-Israeli organizations and academics...Through this report, however, the Alternative Information Center aims to inform and empower the debate on an academic boycott by giving information not on Israeli violence and violations of international law and human rights, but on the part played in the Israeli occupation by the very academic institutions in question. The report demonstrates that Israeli academic institutions have not opted to take a neutral, apolitical position toward the Israeli occupation but to fully support the Israeli security forces and policies toward the Palestinians, despite the serious suspicions of crimes and atrocities hovering over them. Any who argue either for or against an academic boycott against Israeli institutions, we believe, should know and consider not only facts regarding the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), but also the ways in which the Israeli academic institutions make political choices and actively take sides in the ongoing conflict... Read more... YES to BDS!: An answer to Uri Avnery, by Michel Warschawski | ODSG The call for BDS – Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions – has finally reached Israeli public opinion. The decision of Norway to divest capitals from Israeli corporations involved in settlement buildings made the difference, and provided the first big success to that important campaign. Moreover, the group of Israelis supporting BDS, under the label “Boycott from Within” is gaining some momentum, thanks, among other, to a public appeal by Naomi Klein to Israeli activists when she came to Tel Aviv to present the Hebrew version of her “Shock Doctrine”. The fact that there is an (even small) Israeli voice to support the international BDS campaign makes a lot of difference, and, among other, helps to disarm the infamous accusation of Anti-Semitism raised by the Israeli propaganda machine against everyone who dare to criticize the colonial policies of the Jewish State. Moreover, as I will argue towards the end of this article, the Israeli supporters of BDS are in fact expressing the true and long-term interests of the Israeli people. Reading recently two texts of Uri Avnery criticizing BDS convinced me that it was important to clarify how positive is that campaign and why should it be supported by as many Israelis as possible... Read more... French FM Warns Israel May Soon Attack Iran | Antiwar Iran Downplays Threat, Says Israel in No Position to Attack Bernhard Kouchner During a visit to Lebanon, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said that time was of the essence to finalize a deal with Iran, cautioning that Israel might launch an attack against Iran soon in the absence of such a deal. Kouchner also said that he didn’t believe sanctions were an effective way to deal with Iran, noting that they wind up disproportionately harming the poor and do little to those in power...Read more... After all I am a Proper Zionist Jew, by Gilad Atzmon Yes, I am a survivor, for I have managed to survive all the scary accounts of the Holocaust: the one about the soap, the one about the lamp shades, the one about the camps, the mass shootings, the one about the gas and the one about the death march. I just managed to survive them all. In spite of all these fear inflicting stories that were purposely installed in my soul since I opened my eyes for the first time, I have become a functional and even a successful human being. I somehow survived the horror against all odds. I even manage to love my neighbour... Read more... Zionism is Not Just a Threat to Arabs Any More: The Danger of Towing the Line Behind Israel, by Bouthaina Shaaban | Counterpunch At a time that most countries of the world felt a sense of relief for the positive steps taken by Iran and the West, which promise a let up in tensions on the regional and international level, Israeli analysts, writers and rulers single themselves out by expressing exasperation at this agreement and concern regarding the call for international monitoring of Israel’s nuclear facilities. It is useful to recall that Israel does not respect its signature on international agreements as in the case of the Oslo accord or with any other Arab party. That is why Israelis are saying today that signing the Vienna agreement with Iran is not worth its ink and paper. It is a racist position, an expression of racial superiority of one of the signatories and an undermining of the status, dignity and credibility of the others signatories... Read more... Where Have All the Friendships Gone?: A Tsunami Called Goldstone, by Uri Avnery | Gush Shalom According to a Chinese saying, if someone in the street tells you that you are drunk, you can laugh. If a second person tells you that you are drunk, start to think about it. If a third one tells you the same, go home and sleep it off. Our political and military leadership has already encountered the third, fourth and fifth person. All of them say that they must investigate what happened in the “Molten Lead” operation. They have three options: - to conduct a real investigation. - to ignore the demand and proceed as if nothing has happened. - to conduct a sham inquiry... Read more... U.S. official resigns over Afghan war | Washington Post Foreign Service officer and former Marine captain says he no longer knows why his nation is fighting When Matthew Hoh joined the Foreign Service early this year, he was exactly the kind of smart civil-military hybrid the administration was looking for to help expand its development efforts in Afghanistan. A former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in Iraq, Hoh had also served in uniform at the Pentagon, and as a civilian in Iraq and at the State Department. By July, he was the senior U.S. civilian in Zabul province, a Taliban hotbed. But last month, in a move that has sent ripples all the way to the White House, Hoh, 36, became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency..."I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department's head of personnel. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."... [Perhaps he should direct his question to the Israel Firsters who determine American foreign policy.] Read more... The Great Superpower Meltdown, by Michael Klare | Tomgram Think of us as just having passed through the failed era of "must" in Washington. For almost eight years, George W. Bush made speeches and appearances in which he hectored this or that country, or enemy, or people about what they "must" do. Never, I suspect, has an American president lectured more people out there on their responsibilities to us. Looking back, what's surprising is how few paid much attention. The Iraqis didn't listen, nor did the Afghans, nor the Iranians, nor, it seems, the Pakistanis, nor the Russians, nor the Chinese... and so on. It's been a remarkably ignominious lesson in bluster and bust -- and a reasonable measure of the actual power of a country that, not so many years ago, Washington pundits were happily (and favorably) comparing to the Roman and British empires in its reach and ambition... Read more... October 26, 2009 Israel planned to kill Erdogan | Press TV Erdogan talks during a debate on the Israeli war on Gaza in the presenceof Israeli President Shimon Peres in Davos on January 29. "I know very well how you hit and killed children on beaches," he said. Turkish media sources detail information implicating the Israeli Mossad in a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. An e-mail found on a personal computer belonging to one of the members of the underground Ergenekon organization exposed Mossad's role in the failed assassination efforts against Erdogan, Turkish media outlets reported on Friday. The organization has been accused of orchestrating a coup plot against the current Turkish administration. The indictment list tabled by the Turkish prosecution against the organization says that an Israeli journalist had sent the e-mail to a number of Ergenekon figures to inform them of Israeli readiness to assassinate the Turkish premier... Read more... Letter from Mazin 10/26/09 "Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom." - Martin Luther King Jr. The past weekend, we had a conference over two days attended by over 200 people from around the world. The Conference addressed issues of Israeli colonialism, occupation, and racism. It was held in the Paradise Hotel in Bethlehem, a scene of previous Israeli attack that severely damaged this beautiful hotel. In workshops and panels we heard from distinguished activists like Omar Barghouti (PACBI), Shawan Jabarin (AlHaq), Ameer Makhoul (Ittijah), Jamal Juma' (Stopthewall.org), Shir Hever (AIC), Dalit Baum (WhoProfits), Ingrid Jaradat Gassner (Badil), Michael Warschawski (AIC), and many more. It was a very productive meeting with significant networking accomplished and plans for coalition building, for enhancing the growing BDS movement, for support of the people of Gaza and Jerusalem, and more... Read letter... The Empty Establishment: No One's Home in an Intellectual Wasteland, by Arthur Silber | Power of Narrative blog Amy Chua's survey of current trends in foreign policy analysis and prescriptions for future action unintentionally reveals the terminal fatigue and intellectual inertia that have all but extinguished any faint, remaining signs of vitality and originality. Her major message is that all the writers she mentions, chosen because they represent the allegedly "competing" schools of thought, recommend returning to policies that were followed at various times in the past, when they supposedly succeeded...It is the policy of the last century and longer, which is also the policy of today, that must be questioned, and finally rejected. That is, it must be rejected if you genuinely hope for a world of peace. If that truly is your goal, resolutely throw away the hideously destructive idea of worldwide hegemony and all its manifestations once and for all... Read more... Erdogan:Focus on Israeli nukes not Iran N energy program | Press TV Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan The Turkish president has condemned Western countries' focus on Iran's nuclear program, stressing that the world should deal with Israel's nuclear weapons instead. Turkey's "Radikal" newspaper on Sunday reported that Recep Tayyip Erdogan's strong comments against Israel's nuclear program was similar to his "one minute" stance in Davos in January when he walked out of a televised debate with his Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres. Erdogan told reporters in New York that Iran's nuclear program is not aimed at "military ends". The Turkish president noted that Israel has "nuclear weapons" and has used "phosphorous bombs" against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip... Read more... Hell and Dr. James: When Gitmo and Abu Ghraib Come Home | Counterpunch Col. Larry James The Louisiana Board that licenses psychologists is facing a growing legal fight over torture and medical care at the infamous Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prisons. In 2003, Louisiana psychologist and retired colonel Larry James watched behind a one-way mirror in a U.S. prison camp while an interrogator and three prison guards wrestled a screaming near-naked man on the floor. The prisoner had been forced into pink women’s panties, lipstick and a wig; the men then pinned the prisoner to the floor in an effort “to outfit him with the matching pink nightgown.” As he recounts in his memoir, Fixing Hell, Dr. James initially chose not to respond. He “opened [his] thermos, poured a cup of coffee, and watched the episode play out, hoping it would take a better turn and not wanting to interfere without good reason…” Although he claims to eventually find “good reason” to intervene, the Army colonel never reported the incident or even so much as reprimanded men who had engaged in activities that constituted war crimes...Read more... Americans pull strings in Afghan election, by Eric Margolis | Toronto Sun Henry Kissinger once observed that being America's ally can be more dangerous than being its enemy. Take poor Hamid Karzai, the amiable former business consultant and CIA "asset" installed by Washington as Afghanistan's president. As the U.S. increasingly gets its backside kicked in Afghanistan, it has blamed the powerless Karzai for its woes and bumbling. You can almost hear Washington rebuking, "Bad puppet! Bad puppet!"... Read more... Who's afraid of Richard Goldstone?: Goldstone Report & The Struggle of the Palestinian People | AFP Address by Ronnie Kasrils to NADEL (National Association of Democratic Lawyers of South Africa) Justice Richard Goldstone is an internationally respected judge of integrity and credibility. Sober, reserved, most prim and proper, his reputation has been built on impeccable credentials. This has included his investigations into the apartheid-era hit-squads and violence; violations of international law in former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and in connection with the UN Iraq Oil for Food Programme; and of course his outstanding service with South Africa’s Constitutional Court. Whilst it was expected that the apartheid era security services and generals would be afraid of the man, ironically in the aftermath of the release of the UN Report on Gaza, this life-long friend of Israel, a professed Zionist himself, has been vilified by Netenyahu and the Israeli Government; by the Chief Rabbi of South Africa; and in equally hysterical terms by many fellow Jews. It seems that this unlikely candidate for “self-hating Jew” has become top of their list. Without doubt the Israeli Government and Defence Force, and Zionist apologists world-wide, have come to fear and loathe this quiet, genteel, undemonstrative man who strives to serve truth, justice and the rule of law in the best way he can... Read more... Dr. Mustafa Barghouti & Anna Baltzer on the Daily Show, and more! [from Anna] I'm excited to tell you about three things below... 1. Mustafa Barghouti & I will be on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart this Wednesday! 2. 2009 National Campus Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions Conference at Hampshire College 3. November Tour in the Northeast... Read more... Free Gaza News: Eye Witness Reports From Gaza [Video] | PTT Ewa Jasiewicz, Free Gaza Coordinator in Gaza, talks in Berlin, Germany about what she witnessed during the 22-day massacre of civilians in Gaza. Her on-the-ground reporting of what she and seven others saw during that time is heart-wrenching. Israel deliberately murdered 16 medics trying to do their job of rescuing other injured Palestinians, targeting them directly. Ewa and the other volunteers from Free Gaza and the International Solidarity Movement accompanied these ambulances, horrified at what they saw... Read more, watch video... Obama Administration Takes from American Farmers, Gives to Israel, by Alison Weir At a time of financial crisis in the United States in which thousands of Americans have lost their jobs and homes, an Israeli news service reports that President Obama has just signed a presidential memo eliminating a tariff on Israel that protected American dairy farmers and that raised money for the American economy. In addition, according to the Israeli report, US trade authorities have ordered the return of $17,000 to an Israeli export agent for a levy paid for butter produced by an Israeli company. The move comes at a time when American dairy farmers have been facing what industry representatives call a “crisis.” According to the National Milk Producers Federation website, “U.S. dairy producers have been facing unprecedented losses over the past year due to low milk prices and high input costs. The dire economic straits have forced many dairy farmers to exit the industry, oftentimes having to sell their herds or farms.”... [Just another day in the USraeli Empire] Read more... What Really Prompted Iran to Build the Qom Enrichment Facility?, by Gareth Porter | Counterpunch The Obama administration claims that construction of a second Iranian uranium enrichment facility at Qom began before Tehran's decision to withdraw from a previous agreement to inform the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in advance of such construction. But the November 2007 U.S. intelligence estimate on Iran's nuclear programme tells a different story. The Iranian decision to withdraw from the earlier agreement with the IAEA was prompted, moreover, by the campaign of threats to Iran's nuclear facilities mounted by the George W. Bush administration in early 2007, as a reconstruction of the sequence of events shows... Read more... How Israel wages war in plain sight, by Jeff Gates | Aljazeera It’s now well known that Israelis and pro-Israelis “fixed” the intelligence that induced the U.S. invasion of Iraq. What’s not yet widely known is how. If peace-seeking nations hope never again to see deceit operate on such a scale, those deceived must learn this lesson before these same operatives induce a war with Iran. To “wage war by way of deception” (the motto of the Israeli intelligence service) requires the capacity to operate in plain sight yet without detection. To detect this duplicity in real time requires a grasp of how Israeli strategists rely on three key categories of operatives: agents, assets and sayanim (Hebrew for helpers or volunteers)... Read more... The “Holocaust” is a Typical Zionist Myth, by Dr. Abdullah Mohammad Sindi All Arabs and all Muslims (along with many other people around the world) know very well that the Jewish/Zionist state of Israel is an illegitimate and illegal state established by the power of the gun in 1948 and has been maintained by it ever since. Committed to a brutal and undemocratic program that could be implemented only by force, Israel has been founded on many well-known myths and lies. Topping the list of these typical myths and lies are the following ten... Read more... The Goldstone Report and Delegitimization, by Joanna Graham | Berkeley Daily Planet On Friday night, in response to the U.N. Human Rights Council’s vote to send the Goldstone report to the Security Council, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu convened an emergency meeting. In it, he reportedly said this remarkable thing: “We are now setting out to delegitimize those who try to delegitimize us. We will not tolerate it and we will respond on a case by case basis.” Despite the adverb “now,” implying that something new is here being announced, this statement strikes me as a profound formulation of the relationship between Israel’s existential problem and the methods it has long employed. In fact, when I read Netanyahu’s words, I experienced one of those “aha” moments, in which I suddenly got the other guy’s point of view. I understood at last why, for instance, Jim Sinkinson, John Gertz, and Dan Spitzer—delegitimizers all—think and act as they do... Read more... Israel pulls textbook over 'ethnic cleansing' reference | AFP Israel's Education Ministry has recalled all copies of a history textbook because of a passage alleging "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians during the 1948 war Israel's Haaretz newspaper said the secondary school textbook was removed from shelves because it sought to present both Israeli and Arab perspectives on the departure of some 750,000 Palestinians during the fighting that erupted after the creation of the Jewish state... Read more... Richard Perle's Outrageous Lies, by Edmund Connelly | Occidental Observer I’ve just finished listening to an enlightening 2-hour radio interview with hosts Mark Glenn and James Morris and guest Kevin MacDonald, and including an interesting call-in appearance from Stephen Sniegoski. The general topic was Jewish power, but one point in particular stood out: Recently, a premier architect and promoter of the neocon war against Iraq, “Prince of Darkness” Richard Perle, has been escalating his campaign to deny the neocon role in American politics. Back in 1996, a group of Americans writing for an Israeli think tank published a paper for Israeli Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” In addition to calling for Saddam Hussein’s replacement, it also advised an overthrow or destabilization of the governments of Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iran, thus leading to something akin to a “Greater US-Israel Co-Prosperity Sphere.” One year later came the formation of The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neocon think tank based in Washington. William Kristol and Robert Kagan co-founded it as a non-profit educational organization, but many have accused it of playing a primary role in the Bush Administration’s decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003. Later, the Pentagon hosted a unit called the Office of Special Plans (OSP), where Paul Wolfowitz joined Douglas Feith in propagating what many have claimed were false allegations about Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction... Read more... Industrial wastelands, by Amira Hass | Haaretz The Abu E'ida company for concrete and construction materials could stand a very good chance of winning any public tender issued during the Gaza reconstruction process - if it ever gets under way. This family business manufactured the concrete and carried out the concrete works in the construction of Gaza's power station (under joint American-Palestinian ownership). It also supplied the concrete used to build the sewage treatment facility in northern Gaza, known as the "Blair project" because of the former British prime minister's role in securing the funding. After June 2007, this was the only infrastructure project in the Gaza Strip whose construction Israel allowed to continue... Read more... Israel asks Germany for two warships Israel has asked for Germany to supply it with two warships free of charge, a German newspaper reported Friday. The Israeli state hopes Germany would help strengthen its defence forces by financing the costs for the two state-of-the-art corvettes... [the extortion racket never stops; Meyer Lansky would have been proud - the comments on this piece are quite juicy] Read more... Israel has lost Turkey as a strategic ally | World Tribune Israel has lost Turkey as a strategic ally. A leading Israeli defense analyst said the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has decided to end defense and military cooperation with Israel. Analyst Ron Ben-Yishai said the Turkish Defense Ministry has shelved a range of proposed Israeli projects... Read more... Why I disrupted Olmert, by Ali Abunimah | Electronic Intifada Protesters demonstrated in the rain outside of the University of Chicago lecture hall where activists inside disrupted Olmert's speech, 15 October 2009 If former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had merely been a diplomat or an academic offering a controversial viewpoint, then interrupting his 15 October speech at University of Chicago's Mandel Hall would certainly have been an attempt to stifle debate...Indeed, I experienced exactly such attempts when my own appearance at Mandel Hall last January, with Professor John Mearsheimer and Norman Finkelstein, was constantly interrupted by hecklers. But confronting a political leader suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity cannot be viewed the same way... Read more... Israel increasing military build-up near Lebanon | Press TV Israel is sharply increasing its military build-up at its bases near the border with Lebanon while putting Israeli troops on alert. Israel has increased its military patrols near the border with Lebanon, including the Golan Heights, IRNA reported on Saturday. The Israeli forces held military exercises on Saturday in the region and in most of the southern parts of Lebanon explosions due to the exercises could be heard. Over the past week, Israeli forces have repeatedly violated Lebanon's air space, land and sea territories. This is while the Lebanese army has taken necessary precautions to confront any Israeli aggression. In 2006, Israel launched a disproportionate offensive on Lebanon, but the attack was strongly repelled by Lebanon's Hezbollah movement... Link... Netanyahu insists Israel is only for Jews, by PressTV Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has openly voiced the Israeli government's plans to expel indigenous Palestinian Arabs from their occupied lands. Netanyahu stressed that Palestinians should recognize Israel as a Jewish state in order to end their conflict. "That's right," Netanyahu told The Washington Post when asked if such recognition was needed. "Israel is not a bi-national state," AFP quoted Netanyahu as saying on Saturday. "It has non-Jews who live here with full, equal rights, but it has two things that assure its special character." "It's the homeland of any Jew. And there is a very broad consensus in Israel that the Palestinian refugee problem should be resolved outside Israel's borders," he added. Netanyahu said Palestinians will have to make a final peace deal with "the Jewish state of Israel." "Jews come here and Palestinians will go there. So choose. That's the basis of a solution," Netanyahu concluded. [Heil Hitler! He would have added, "and if we have to kill every single one of those cockroaches, then that's what we'll do," but, after all, he went to Harvard, didn't he. They must be very proud.] Link...Whose Side are Richard Goldstone and Bill Moyers on?, by John Spritzler | Turn the World Upside Down Bill Moyers recently interviewed Judge Richard Goldstone, now famous as the author of the UN Report that says Israel and Hamas both committed war crimes against civilians. Both of these men are perceived by many as being "on the side of the angels." A closer look at what they actually say indicates that both of them are on the opposite side. Bill Moyers, for example, came out 100% for the War on Terror with his infamous "Winning the War on Terror" article. But what about Goldstone? Let's see what Goldstone told Moyers about Israel... Read more... October 24, 2009 Citzens arrest and mass disruption of former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert in San Francisco | Electronic Intifada October 23, 2009 Bay Area residents attempted a citizen's arrest of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, while he gave a speech to the World Affairs Council in San Francisco on 22 October 2009. Twenty-two people were arrested for challenging Olmert directly and demanding he be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. Olmert has faced protests at Tulane University, University of Kentucky and the University of Chicago. The recent International Independent Fact-Finding Mission, headed by Judge Richard Goldstone, found evidence that Israel had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during a three-week long attack on the Gaza Strip last winter, killing more than 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and destroying much of the area's infrastructure. In 2006, similar Israeli attacks on Lebanon killed 1,200 people. Olmert has refused to be held accountable... [This is inspirational but there was something missing in all of the protests. There was no mention of One State. To accuse Olmert of being a war criminal makes a good sound bite. But the point isn't to vilify Olmert. The point is to educate the world about the fundamental problem of Zionism. If the protesters want to make a meaningful impact they should change their slogans. For example, "We are all the chosen people!" "Equal rights for all people of greater Palestine." "It is time for One State - end Apartheid" "One State! One State! One State!" - Member of Onedemocraticstate Yahoo Group] Watch video, read article ... Robert Bernstein: Human Shield for Criticism of Israel, by Max Kantar | Palestine Chronicle  Palestinians are routinely subjected to violence--often lethal--at the hands of the IDF Earlier this week the New York Times published an op-ed article, Rights Watchdog, ‘Lost in the Mideast’ written by Robert L. Bernstein, the founding chairman emeritus of Human Rights Watch. The editorial amounts to one regurgitation of Israeli propaganda after another in an effort to delegitimize mainstream criticism of Israeli policies in the international human rights community. The timing of Bernstein's article is instructive; its publication in the New York Times comes on the heels of the release of the Goldstone Report as the intellectual apologists for Israeli crimes in the U.S. go into ultra-hysteria mode to save the already eroding image of their favorite client state. Bernstein decries HRW for its supposed anti-Israel bias and unleashes a tirade of familiar accusations routinely invoked by ‘supporters of Israel’ to deflect criticism of the Jewish state. To make the case that HRW--and presumably the international human rights community in general—has ‘lost critical perspective’ on Israel-Palestine, Bernstein cites six major points:...These claims are all demonstrably false. What is interesting is that someone in Bernstein's position surely must be aware of this... Read more... Make the World Go Away, by Jeff Huber | Antiwar It’s high time we adopted the isolationist policy recommended by our founding fathers. I’m not talking about withdrawing from the world as an economic and diplomatic superpower. I’m suggesting that we just say no to strewing our military strength far and wide every time we have a temper tantrum. The past eight years have shown that our military might doesn’t accomplish our national objectives...The neocons would have us believe that we can be a force for good in the world by blowing it up bits at a time. Can a belief get any sillier? (If she floats, she’s a witch.)... Read more... Shlomo Sand's The Invention of the Jewish People | book review by Gilad Atzmon Following the recent publication of Sand’s book in English, I re-post my initial review of his work I do believe that Sand’s book is a ‘must read’. It is probably one of the most important exposures of the Jewish nationalist lethal fantasy... Read review... Obama Every Bit as Bad as Bush/Cheney on Patriot Act, by Nat Hentoff | Opposing Views ...As I have reported, the FBI is already writing our laws -- without going to any judge. How much have you seen about the FBI's locking up of the Fourth Amendment on cable and broadcast television (from the right- or the left-leaning stations) in newspapers, on the Internet or, of course, from the Democratic Congressional leadership, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, characteristically indifferent to the Bush-Cheney-Obama assaults on the Bill of Rights? As James Madison warned, "A people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives."... Read more... NoEscalation.org: Can the Peace Movement Reach President Obama?, by Robert Naiman | Common Dreams If there were ever a time when the peace movement should be able to have an impact on U.S. foreign policy, that time should be now. If there were ever a time for extraordinary effort to achieve such an impact, that time is now. The war in Afghanistan is in its ninth year. McChrystal's proposal could continue it for another ten years, at a likely cost of a trillion dollars, and many more lives of U.S. soldiers and Afghan civilians. The contradiction between domestic needs and endless war was never more apparent. Congress fights over whether we can "afford" to provide every American with quality health care, but every health care reform proposal on the table will likely cost less than McChrystal's endless war. A recent CNN poll says 6 in 10 Americans oppose sending more troops... Read more... Will Israel Fall in Five Years?, by Jeff Gates | Foreign Policy Journal “The undersigned therefore take this means of publicly presenting a few salient facts concerning Begin Online reports of a study by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency cast doubt over the survival of Israel beyond the next two decades. Regardless of the validity of the report, with what is now known about the costs in blood and treasure that the U.S.-Israeli relationship has imposed on the U.S., its key ally, Israel could fall within five years. For more than six decades, American support for Israel has relied on the ability of pro-Israelis to dominate U.S. media, enabling Tel Aviv to put a positive spin on even its most extreme behavior, including its recent massacre in Gaza. With access to online news coverage, that Zionist bias is becoming apparent and the real facts transparent...and his party; and of urging all concerned not to support this latest manifestation of fascism.” - Albert Einstein, signatory, New York Times, December 4, 1948 Read more... An Interview with Bill and Kathleen Christison: Palestine in Pieces | Counterpunch In 1979, Kathleen and Bill Christison retired from the CIA, where they worked as analysts. Ever since then, they've had an unorthodox retirement, to say the least. With only a couple relatively brief interludes, they've dedicated what could have been years of relaxation to fighting perhaps the most uphill battle imaginable: trying to bring the plight of the Palestinians to the public eye. The newest addition to the Christison canon is Palestine in Pieces: Graphic Perspectives on the Israeli Occupation, published in August by Pluto Press. During this decade the Christisons have made a habit of visiting Palestine at least once per year; they returned from their most recent trip earlier this month... Read more... Goldstone Challenges Obama to Point Out Flaws in Report | Antiwar The Obama Administration has lashed out at the Goldstone Report early and often since its release, condemning it as “one-sided,” “deeply flawed,” and “unfair.” South African Judge Richard Goldstone, the author of the report, would like to know why, publicly challenging President Obama today to come up with some specific problems with the report... Read more... Judge Refuses to Dismiss War Crimes Case Against Blackwater, by Jeremy Scahill | The Nation On Wednesday, a federal judge rejected a series of arguments by lawyers for the mercenary firm formerly known as Blackwater seeking to dismiss five high-stakes war crimes cases brought by Iraqi victims against both the company and its owner, Erik Prince. At the same time, Judge T.S. Ellis III sent the Iraqis' lawyers back to the legal drawing board to amend and refile their cases, saying that the Iraqi plaintiffs need to provide more specific details on the alleged crimes before a final decision can be made on whether or not the lawsuits will proceed... Read more... Ex-FBI Translator Claims Spying at DoD | Military.com After seven years of forced silence, a government whistleblower is opening up on what she learned while working as a Turkish translator for the FBI in the wake of 9/11. In sworn testimony to attorneys on Aug. 8, Sibel Edmonds described a Pentagon where key personnel helped pass defense secrets to foreign agents or provided them names of knowledgeable officials who were vulnerable to blackmail or co-option. And firmly rooted in this espionage program in the 1990s, according to Edmonds’ deposition, were two men who, with the election of George W. Bush as president in 2000, found themselves in the Pentagon: Douglas Feith, who would head the Office of Special Plans, and Richard Perle, who would become chairman of the Defense Advisory Board. "They were 100 percent directly involved," Edmonds told Military.com. "They were not in the Pentagon [in the late 1990s] but they had their people inside the Pentagon." One of those people, she said, was Larry Franklin, an Air Force officer assigned to the Office of Special Plans who, in 2003, passed classified information to representatives of the American Israel Public Affairs Office, or AIPAC. By then Feith was leading the OSP... Read more... The Real Genocide is Playing Out in Ethiopia--And the West is Funding It: Busting the Darfur Myth, by Tom Mountain | Counterpunch As one of the first to write about the problems in West Sudan/Darfur, in mid 2003, and living side by side here in Asmara for three years with representatives of the Darfur, and other Sudanese resistance, my investigation has found no evidence of genocide. Of course, genocide has and is being committed by Ethiopia against the Somalis in Ethiopia, but there has been no genocide in Darfur... Read more... Uncle Sam in Afghanistan: Good Help Is Hard to Find, by Norman Soloman | Truthout Afghan President Hamid Karzai will face a runoff election Almost eight years after choosing Hamid Karzai to head the Afghan government, Uncle Sam would like to give him a pink slip. But it's not easy. And the grim fiasco of Afghanistan's last election is shadowing the next. Another display of electioneering and voting has been ordered up from Washington. But after a chemical mix has blown a hole through the roof - with all the elements for massive fraud still in place - what's the point of throwing together the same ingredients? This time, the spinners in Washington hope to be better prepared...Read more... The War on J Street, by Daniel Luban | Lobeblog As the dovish pro-Israel lobby J Street prepares for its first conference next week, a familiar array of Likudniks and neocons has mobilized to destroy it. The anti-J Street campaign has marked something of a watershed for the organization. Previously, AIPAC and its Washington allies professed to be unconcerned with J Street’s rise and publicly sneered at its significance. But now the group’s growing profile (including, notably, a long cover story in the New York Times Magazine) seems to have convinced the Israel hawks that stronger measures were needed... Read more... October 22, 2009 Another breach in Israel's wall of impunity, by Hasan Abu Nimah | The Electronic Intifada Israel's efforts to malign the reputation of Judge Richard Goldstone The Goldstone report into war crimes during Israel's massacres in Gaza last winter finally managed to cross its first major procedural hurdle as the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva (HRC) passed a resolution endorsing it on 16 October. The resolution called on "all concerned parties including United Nations bodies" to implement the report's recommendations -- which include trying Israeli leaders in international courts if Israel fails to do so -- and forwarding the report to the General Assembly for further action. The US dismissed the resolution as being biased because it only criticized Israel -- and not Palestinian armed groups which are also accused in the Goldstone report of committing war crimes by firing rockets at Israel that killed three Israeli civilians. The US also did not like the fact that the HRC resolution included issues unrelated to Gaza, namely, Israel's aggressive expansion of settlements in occupied Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, the construction of the West Bank wall, interference with holy sites, and attempts to change the demographic character of Jerusalem...have failed to bury the UN inquiry he led. Read more... The Super Rich are Laughing: The US as Failed State, by Paul Craig Roberts | Counterpunch The US has every characteristic of a failed state. The US government’s current operating budget is dependent on foreign financing and money creation. Too politically weak to be able to advance its interests through diplomacy, the US relies on terrorism and military aggression... Read more... Israel Plans to Devour the World: Hungarian MP | Press TV israeli soldiers A Hungarian lawmaker has voiced worry over Israel's expansionist policies, saying Israel is trying to take over the world. "I'm a Hungarian nationalist. I love my homeland, love the Hungarians and give primacy to Hungarian interests over those of global capital - Jewish capital, if you like - which wants to devour the entire world, especially Hungary," Oszkar Molnar said in a television interview. Molnar's comments come as there are reports of a mass Jewish exodus from Israel to Hungary, Haaretz reported... Read more... News from the Deathstar: Lt. Gen. Lynch Growing Tired of Waiting for His Droid Army | Antiwar “There’s a resistance saying that armed ground robots are not ready for the battlefield. I’m not of that camp,” Perhaps underscoring the old adage that “to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” Lieutenant General Rick Lynch, who holds a masters degree in robotics, is pretty sure all his problems in Iraq could be solved with a massive army of battle droids... – Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch Read more... Israel apologists shoot messenger, by Michael Shaik | The Australian Once again, Israel's supporters are calling upon the United States to shield it from censure by exercising its veto in the UN Security Council...Should Obama exercise the US veto to bury the Goldstone report so soon after having accepted the Noble Peace Prize for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples", he would not only undermine his efforts to restore America's stature as the leader of the free world but also seriously compromise the standing of the UN, which would have to concede its Universal Declaration of Human Rights does not apply to Palestinians... Read more... A nuclear armed Iran? No. For the sake of discussion, let's assume that some in Iran's current leadership do want their country to possess nuclear weapons and that they do succeed in developing them. What then? Is it conceivable that Iran would launch a first strike on Israel? The answer has to be no. Absolutely not! An Iranian first strike would bring retaliation that would not end until Iran had been annihilated, wiped from the face of the earth. One needs only a sound mind to understand that no Iranian leadership will ever be stupid enough to provoke such an outcome... Read more... Notorious Army Method to be Used Inside Israel: Israeli Police Don Arab Disguises, by Jonathan Cook | Counterpunch Civil rights groups in Israel have expressed outrage at the announcement last week that a special undercover unit of the police has been infiltrating and collecting intelligence on Israel’s Arab minority by disguising its officers as Arabs. It is the first public admission that the Israeli police are using methods against the country’s 1.3 million Arab citizens that were adopted long ago in the occupied territories, where soldiers are regularly sent on missions disguised as Palestinians... Read more... The First Step: Israel Into The Dock, by Alan Sabrosky | PTT The UN Human Rights Council (HRC) Resolution based on the Goldstone Report is a damning condemnation of Israel. The original meaning of being "caught red-handed" was literally being "caught bloody-handed," with the victim's blood on one's own hands. In Gaza, Israel has been caught red-handed in that literal sense, and for the first time in its history, is approaching the dock in the international court of opinion and, hopefully, of justice as well. This case could be a watershed event. For Israel and its US Government puppet-patron, the moment of truth in the UN is rapidly approaching. So let us look at the key elements of the HRC special session that sent this resolution to the UN General Assembly... Read more... October 21, 2009 Goldstone to U.S. rabbis: Lieberman doesn't want Mideast peace talks | Haaretz South African jurist Richard Goldstone The author of a damning report on Israel's winter offensive against Hamas in Gaza, Richard Goldstone, has said that Foreign Minster Avigdor Lieberman does not want there to be an Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Goldstone, a South African Jurist, made the claim in a conference call on Sunday with 150 U.S. rabbis from left-leaning organizations. He was speaking in reference to an Israeli assertion that the report would harm peace talks...Read more... Russia's Daring Vote, by Israel Shamir | WVNS Russia's vote to endorse the Goldstone Gaza report in the United Nations Human Rights Council last Friday was an important, milestone event both for Palestine and for Russia. For Palestine, this vote opened a way to try and sentence Israeli mass-murderers, and thus ushered Israel into a new era of responsibility after a long period of Wild West-style, Colt-45 justice. For Russia, this vote has proved to its own country and to the world that it is free from American and Zionist diktat and able to navigate its own policy... Read more... David Rohde's insights into what motivates the Taliban, by Glenn Greenwald | Salon The New York Times' David Rohde writes about the seven months he was held hostage by a group of extremist Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan and conveys this observation about what motivates them: My captors harbored many delusions about Westerners. But I also saw how some of the consequences of Washington’s antiterrorism policies had galvanized the Taliban. Commanders fixated on the deaths of Afghan, Iraqi and Palestinian civilians in military airstrikes, as well as the American detention of Muslim prisoners who had been held for years without being charged. Apparently, when we drop bombs on Muslim countries -- or when Israel attacks Palestinians -- that fuels anti-American hatred and militarism among Muslims. The same outcomes occur when we imprison Muslims without charges in places like Guantanamo and Bagram. Imagine that... Read more... Tide Is Turning Against Israel, by Linda Heard | Arab News Now even the United Nations Human Rights Council is “anti-Semitic.” Well, that’s the view of Israel’s Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, who is outraged that the body rubber-stamped the Goldstone Report on war crimes committed in Gaza. Some years ago, that accusation would have had enormous shock-value, whereas, nowadays, the label has been so propagandized the only thing it elicits is a yawn... Read more... Israelis may stay home to avoid arrest in Europe, by Eli Lake | Washington Times Adolph Netanyahu Nabil Fahmy, a former Egyptian ambassador to the United States, said, "Middle Easterners are fed up with Israel's excessive use of force, most recently in Lebanon and Gaza. This anger has now extended beyond the region to the international community because the Israeli practices are recurrent in flagrant violation of the rules of war and basic human rights."...Read more... Guns and Butter- The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7 | KPFA (Audio) "The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7" with Dr. David Ray Griffin. Dr. Griffin's keynote address at the 5th Annual 9/11 Film Festival in Oakland, California, on his new book that examines the official NIST report on the collapse of WTC 7; NIST a political agency overseen by the executive branch; omission and falsification of evidence; scientific fraud; media disinformation; no investigation of explosive evidence; melted steel; the mysterious death of 53-year-old Barry Jennings, eyewitness to explosions in Building 7... Listen to program... Israel Cabinet split over calls for war inquiry, by Donald MacIntyre | The Independent Ministers at loggerheads over UN's Goldstone report as pressure mounts for them to hold investigation A meeting of Israel's inner security cabinet yesterday left ministers split over whether to yield to growing diplomatic pressure to hold a major public investigation to deflect the findings of the UN's Goldstone report on last winter's war in Gaza. The meeting postponed any decision on an independent investigation as it emerged that the Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, has so far led opposition to the setting up of an inquiry... Read more... The Dark Side of the ‘Special Relationship’, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar A silent battle has been raging right under our noses, a fierce underground struggle pitting the U.S. against one of its closest allies. For all its newsworthiness, the media has barely noticed the story – except when it surfaces, briefly, like a giant fin jutting above the waves. The aggressor in this war is the state of Israel, with the U.S., its sponsor and protector, playing defense. This is the dark side of the "special relationship" – a battle of spy vs. spy. Convicted spy Jonathan Pollard – now serving a life sentence – stole secrets so vital that an attempt by the Israelis to get him pardoned was blocked by a massive protest from the intelligence and defense communities. Bill Clinton wanted to trade Pollard for Israeli concessions in the ongoing "peace process," and he was only prevented from doing so by a threat of mass resignations by the top leadership of the intelligence community... Read more... October 20, 2009 Bill Moyers: How Can the U.S. Be an Empire and a Democracy at the Same Time? | Bill Moyers Journal An interview with Mark Danner, whose new book, Stripping Bare the Body, explores the strange notion of a democratic empire and the wars it wages. Read transcript ... Watch video ... Rights Watchdog, Lost in the Mideast, by Robert Bernstein | NYT [Human Rights Watch, set up as a Zionist front, is now being run by people actually intested in human rights] As the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chairman for 20 years and now founding chairman emeritus, I must do something that I never anticipated: I must publicly join the group’s critics. Human Rights Watch had as its original mission to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state... Read more... October 19, 2009 Editorial: Challenging the Dahiya Doctrine | Friends of Lebanon [It is hard to believe that after reading this editorial anyone could still believe that Israel has a "right to exist," unless they themselves are a life-form from some distant, dark and repulsive corner of the universe.] Read more... Israel's very own Guantanamos, by Khaled Amayreh | Al Ahram Weekly Israeli maltreatment of Palestinian captives and political prisoners has reached unprecedented levels of brutality, according to lawyers, human rights groups and newly-released prisoners. There are currently as many as 12,000 Palestinian detainees languishing in Israeli detention camps, many of them without charge or trial. They include hundreds of university professors, engineers, school teachers as well as religious and civic leaders, students, resistance fighters and women activists. Two years ago, the Israeli occupation authorities abducted hundreds of democratically- elected officials, including mayors, members of local city councils, law-makers, and cabinet ministers, many associate with Hamas's political wing. Israel employs a set of draconian laws, some dating back to the British mandate era, to torment Palestinian prisoners. The same laws are also used to lend a façade of legality to other harsh treatment of Palestinians, such as house demolitions, land confiscation and deportation... Read more... Promised lands | Al-Ahram Weekly Protests and counter-protests at the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition in Toronto; On the occasion of filmmakers withdrawing last month from the Toronto Film Festival in protest of Israeli involvement in the event, Eric Walberg takes a radical look at Israel's cultural and political connections in Canada... a carob tree planted on the ruins of a Palestinian village in Canada Park; Israeli Apartheid Week marked in universities across Canada Read more... Fidel Castro: A Nobel Prize for Evo Morales | ICH If Obama was awarded the Nobel for winning the elections in a racist society despite his being African American, Evo deserves it for winning them in his country despite his being a native and his having delivered on his promises. For the first time, in both countries a member of their respective ethnic groups has won the presidency... Read more.... Kilcullen's Long War, by Tom Hayden | The Nation Read more... Zionism and the Colonization of Language, by the Editor Part II - The Emperor Has No Clothes: Of Genes and Memes Frankenstein's Monster This is the second in a three part series that deals with the phenomenon we call "the State of Israel." This can only be a rudimentary sketch, of course, as the subject is vast and this essay must be very brief. Israel is not a nation-state like other nation-states, which accounts for the hysterical attempts of the Zionists to sell the idea that it is. Israel is what used to be called a Rube Goldberg machine , in this case a jury-rigged attempt to create a modern state out of nothing but an ideology consisting of tribal fantasies and deep-seated paranoia, and to do so through the violent colonization of an already well-established society. An excellent piece on this topic is Interpreting the Zionist Dream, by Gilad Atzmon. To put it another way, an ideology had to be constructed, a people had to be invented; a colony had to be planted in an arbitrarily chosen place, populated by this newly invented people who in turn had to be swindled into thinking they were doing something that made some sort of sense. That the con artists who pulled off this real estate scam were successful is a marvel that never ceases to astonish me. Everything that happens is the result of previous causes and conditions, so how do we account for the establishment and continued existence of this house of cards known as Israel? I am going to take an unusual approach to this question, which involves understanding genes and memes. Charles Darwin, in his seminal works, On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man, described the evolution of all living beings, including human beings. What he called the process of natural selection is now understood to be mediated through the mutations of genes, biochemical strands of coded information that make possible the replication of life forms. However, human genetic revolution effectively stopped occurring some five thousand years ago. Jared Diamond, in his masterful work, Guns, Germs and Steel, takes up where Darwin left off, describing the process of cultural evolution. He enumerates a broad set of conditions that are conducive to technological and economic development, but he postulates no mechanism similar to genes. A number of people are of the opinion that cultural evolution is mediated by a set of different transmitters of information, analogous to genes, that have been termed memes. Rather than consisting of biochemical units that together constitute a code, memes are mental in nature, consisting of patterned connections in the brain, which when strung together emerge as thoughts. As memes are culturally transmitted thoughts, they must be spread through the agency of language. The emerging science of memetics is new and not yet part of the canon - there is still a great deal of work to be done in that area - but the notion of memes has become popular and comes in handy when one tries to understand why people do what they do, particularly when it appears to be clearly against their own self-interest. Memes are cultural replicators, just as genes replicate the information that organize the development of life forms. As memes are unconscious, we aren't aware of how they form our thoughts and ideas, which can lead to bizarre results. Memes that reinforce one another become "complex memes." To quote Roger Cohen, in an article in the NYT writes, "here’s Netanyahu’s summary of the struggle of our age: 'It pits civilization against barbarism, the 21st century against the 9th century, those who sanctify life against those who glorify death.'." The insanity of the Zionist project is encapsulated in those words, the projection onto the "other" of one's own psychopathology. It is Mr. Hyde pontificating about the primitive and dangerous Dr. Jeckyl. Cohen merely calls it "facile and unhelpful." The Nobel Prize winning South African novelist J.M. Coetzee, in his 'Waiting for the Barbarians,' illuminates this myopic, Eurocentric supremacist view and where it leads to. Until Cohen and myriads of other Gatekeepers like him wake up and see Israel and Zionism for what they are, the sufferings of tens of millions of people will just continue. The most complex memes become organized into belief systems, in which all the various elements are solidified into one seamless whole. They manifest as ideologies and religions. Israel is the embodiment of the ideological belief system called Zionism, supported by its symbiotic religion, the Holycause. They are like the two sides of a sacred scroll, placed in a Sanctum Sanctorum dedicated to their new God, the Golem (a creature, like all gods, of their own making). If one can break the seal and take a peek inside, what do we find? - a little boy pissing his pants. Like all schoolyard bullies, imitating their abusers, the Israelis are craven cowards underneath all the macho bravado. When the media announced that primitive weapons like Scuds were being fired by the Iraqis, or Qassams by the Palestinians, all of Israeli society would go bananas in a paroxysm of fear, hiding in basements, taping up windows, donning gas masks and the like. In south Lebanon they ran like rabbits when they met any organized resistance. But they become ecstatic when their "boys" are murdering civilians by the hundreds - 85% of Israelis approved of the Gaza Massacre. It is a very sick society. Review: Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, by Alan Hart | Intifada Palestine Alan Hart writes about Zionism with a rare combination of first-person experience and in-depth historical perspective. A journalist with extensive experience in the region, this first release in a series is a must-read for anyone hoping to grasp the complex forces at work that resulted in an enclave of Jewish extremists and terrorists gaining recognition as a legitimate nation state. As that legitimacy comes under growing attack, Hart provides the perspective required for those seeking to parse the critical distinctions between the Zionist state and the broader Jewish community. In the aptly titled: “Zionism – The Real Enemy of the Jews,” this well-researched exposition provides what the broader Jewish community has long needed: the arguments required to retract nation-state recognition—in the interests of that broader community. That recognition was extracted from Harry Truman under unique circumstances and on the basis of assurances that have since been proven false. Founded in deceit and sustained with duplicity, the future of Zionism is destined to be relegated to the ashcan of history. When that happens, Hart’s book will be seen as adding a helpful nail to the Zionist coffin... Read more... October 18, 2009 Letter from Mazin: Apartheid government panicking Approximately 150 protesters demonstrated outside the University of Chicago On 16 October 1935, a barrel marked “cement” fell as it was being unloaded from ships at the port in Jaffa. The broken barrel contained guns, grenades, and ammunition and was one of many secret shipments to the underground Zionist terrorist militias in Palestine. That incident among others (including the British government collusion in marginalizing natives in Palestine while encouraging Zionist Jewish migration and takeover) led in the year after to the great Palestinian uprising of 1936. Before the state of Israel was founded, these terrorist underground militias that were to become the Israel “Defense” Forces committed over 100 massacres of civilians. The atrocities intensified in the months leading up to the “declaration of indeperndence”. In March and April 1948 alone over 25 massacres were committed including infamous ones such as Tantura and Deir Yassin. Israeli leaders themselves credited these actions as of great use in getting the Palestinians to evacuate Palestine so that a Jewish state could be established without a demographic “burden” of “non-Jews” (Christains and Muslims). The massacres continued after the war with government ordered slaughters at Kufr Kassem in 1956, and more until the latest slaughter of 1400 in three weeks in Gaza (most of them civilians). This showed that the state of Israel is still addicted to these policies of terror. Israeli leaders as before try to intimidate the world into silence and some do comply (the US and some Western Countries also feed this addiction with money and weapons and use of veto power to protect Israel from International law)...hall where former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was speaking Read more... American Jews Rethink Israel, by Adam Horowitz & Philip Weiss | The Nation This year has seen a dramatic shift in American Jews' attitudes toward Israel. In January many liberal Jews were shocked by the Gaza war, in which Israel used overwhelming force against a mostly defenseless civilian population unable to flee. Then came the rise to power of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, whose explicitly anti-Arab platform was at odds with an American Jewish electorate that had just voted 4 to 1 for a minority president. Throw in angry Israelis writing about the "rot in the Diaspora," and it's little wonder young American Jews feel increasingly indifferent about a country that has been at the center of Jewish identity for four decades... Read more... Goldman Can Spare You a Dime, by Frank Rich | NYT ...Goldman [Sachs] is this century’s octopus — almost literally so. The most-quoted sentence in financial journalism this year, by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, describes the company as a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” That’s why Goldman’s chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, recycled Rockefeller’s stunt last week: The announcement of Goldman’s spectacular third-quarter earnings ($3.19 billion) was paired with the news that the company was donating $200 million to its own foundation, which promotes education. In Goldman dollars, that largess is roughly comparable to the nickels John D. handed out to children a century ago. At least those kids could spend the spare change on candy... Read more... Protesters shout down Ehud Olmert in Chicago, by Maureen Clare Murphy, The Electronic Intifada Approximately 30 activists -- mainly students from area universities -- disrupted a lecture given in Chicago by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday which was hosted by the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy. While Olmert's speech was disrupted inside the lecture hall, approximately 150 activists protested outside the hall in the freezing rain. Protesters inside the hall read off the names of Palestinian children killed during Israel's assault on Gaza last winter. They shouted that it was unacceptable that the war crimes suspect be invited to speak at a Chicago university when his army destroyed a university in Gaza in January. They reminded the audience of the more than 1,400 Palestinians killed during the Gaza attacks and the more than 1,200 killed during Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 2006. Both invasions happened during Olmert's premiership... Read more, watch video... A historian's account of Democrats and Bush-era war crimes, by Glenn Greenwald | Salon The American Prospect's Adam Serwer notes that, yesterday, Sen. Joe Lieberman successfully inserted into the Homeland Security appropriations bill an amendment -- supported by the Obama White House -- to provide an exemption from the Freedom of Information Act's mandates by authorizing the Defense Secretary to suppress long-concealed photographs of detainee abuse. Two courts had ruled -- unanimously -- that the American people have the right to see these photographs under FOIA, a 40-year-old law championed by the Democrats in the LBJ era and long considered a crowning jewel in their legislative achievements. But this Lieberman amendment, which is now likely to pass, undermines all of that and -- as EBay founder Pierre Omidyar put it today -- its central purpose is to "legalize suppression" of evidence of American war crimes... Read more... Alan Hart – Israel's right or not to exist – The facts and truth | PTT Read more... October 17, 2009 An Ordinary Israel, by Roger Cohen | NYT Is Israel just a nation among nations? On one level, it is indeed an ordinary place. People curse the traffic, follow their stocks, Blackberry, go to the beach and pay their mortgages. Stroll around in the prosperous North Tel Aviv suburbs and you find yourself California dreaming. On another, it’s not. More than 60 years after the creation of the modern state, Israel has no established borders, no constitution, no peace. Born from exceptional horror, the Holocaust, it has found normality elusive. The anxiety of the diaspora Jews has ceded not to tranquility but to another anxiety. The escape from walls has birthed new walls. The annihilation psychosis has not disappeared but taken new form...[I link to this article because it represents the conventional (NYT) progressive Zionist view. Cohen is an excellent writer, who administers his wrist-slapping of Israeli "exceptionalism" with sophisticated ease. He thinks that Israel could actually pretend to be a "normal state" and that would make the problem go away. Needless to say, he forgets to mention that it is an illegal, genocidal rogue state that has no basis in international law, nor does he question the orthodox version of the Holycause (he casually dismisses Ahmadinejad as a "holocaust denier.") But of particular note is this bit:] Here’s Netanyahu’s summary of the struggle of our age: “It pits civilization against barbarism, the 21st century against the 9th century, those who sanctify life against those who glorify death.”[The in your face insanity is right there, the projection onto the "other" of one's own psychopathology. Cohen merely calls it "facile and unhelpful." Until Cohen and myriads of others like him, the "Gatekeepers," wake up and see Israel and Zionism for what they are, the sufferings of tens of millions of people will just continue.] Read article...War is peace, ignorance is strength, by John Pilger | New Statesman Read more... From Offshoring Jobs to Bailing Out Bankers: 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... Read more... Progressive Zionist skews issue to favor two-state solution | Register Guard Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, a man with extensive service in the Middle East, has described Arabs as “a people obsessed with justice.” This trait especially characterizes the Palestinians, and many others as well — ourselves included. But apparently not Gila Svirsky. The Israeli peace activist appeared recently in Eugene and wrote a Sept. 28 Register-Guard guest viewpoint, and she never mentioned justice in the three programs we attended. Svirsky represents “progressive Zionism,” a position that decries the Israeli occupation and speaks earnestly of peace — but a peace that bypasses justice... Read article... October 16, 2009 Israel and the Goldstone Report: War Criminals Are Becoming Arbiters of the Law, by Paul Craig Roberts The double standard under which the Israeli government operates is too much for everyone except the brainwashed Americans. Even the very Israeli Jerusalem Post can see the double standard displayed by “all of Israel now speaking in one voice against the Goldstone report”: “This is the Israeli notion of a fair deal: We’re entitled to do whatever the hell we want to the Palestinians because, by definition, whatever we do to them is self-defense. They, however, are not entitled to lift a finger against us because, by definition, whatever they do to us is terrorism..." October 15, 2009 Crossroads of Islam, Past and Present | NYT Sufism is the wisdom tradition at the heart of Islam This remote desert valley, with its towering bluffs and ancient mud-brick houses, is probably best known to outsiders as the birthplace of Osama bin Laden’s father. Most accounts about Yemen in the Western news media refer ominously to it as “the ancestral homeland” of the leader of Al Qaeda, as though his murderous ideology had somehow been shaped here. But in fact, Tarim and its environs are a historic center of Sufism, a mystical strand within Islam. The local religious school, Dar al-Mustafa, is a multicultural place full of students from Indonesia and California who stroll around its tiny campus wearing white skullcaps and colorful shawls... Read more... Our Shame is Complete: Abbas and the Goldstone Report, by Ramzy Baroud | Counterpunch As Israeli bombs fell on the Gaza Strip during its one-sided war between December 27, 2008 and January 18, 2009, millions around the world took to the streets in complete and uncompromising outrage. The level of barbarity in that war, especially as it was conducted against a poor, defenseless and physically trapped nation, united people of every color, race and religion. But among those who seemed utterly unmoved, unreservedly cold were some Palestinian officials in the West Bank. Mahmoud Habbash, the PA Minister of Social Affairs is but one of those individuals. His appearances on Aljazeera, during those fateful days were many. On one half of the screen would be screaming, disfigured children, mutilated women, and search parties digging in the dark for dead bodies, at times entire families. On the other, was Habbash, spewing political insults at his Hamas rivals in Gaza, repeating the same message so tirelessly parroted by his Israeli colleagues. Every time his face appeared on the screen, I cringed. Every unruly shriek of his, reinforced my sense of shame. Shame, perhaps, but never confusion. Those who understand how the Oslo agreement of September 1993 morphed into a culture that destroyed the very fabric of Palestinian society can fully appreciate the behavior of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank during the Gaza war, before it and today..But especially today... Read more... A note in an email from our friend the Saker: - did you know that in Hebrew Rahm (רעם) means "thunder" and Barack (ברק) means "lightning." Some "weather forecast" for our poor planet - October 14, 2009 Israel’s Religious Right and the Peace Process, Nicolas Pelham | Middle East Report It would be easy to describe the residents of the outpost of Amona as radicals. In February 2006 they led protests of 4,000 settler activists, some of them armed, against 3,000 Israeli police who were amassed to make sure that nine unauthorized structures in the West Bank were bulldozed as ordered. In the ensuing clashes, 80 security personnel and 120 settlers were wounded, more than the entirety of the casualties during the 2005 “disengagement” from settlements in Gaza, in a showdown that became the symbol of the West Bank settlers’ resolve to resist the state’s efforts to tear down encampments, like their own, that were erected without the state’s permission. “How do I explain to my children that the army that came to protect us behaves like our enemy?” laments Amona resident Irit Levinger. But what is disturbing about the settlers in Amona is not how distant they are from other Israelis, whether geographically or politically, but how connected... Read more... A Suppressed Talk on the Israel/Palestine Conflict: Fearsome Words?, by Michael Neumann | Counterpunch In April of this year I was invited by the Canada-Palestine Parliamentary Association to speak at one of their meetings. The meeting was to have taken place in the Parliament building in Ottawa, where I have spoken previously without incident. John Ivison, in the National Post newspaper, published a not particularly vicious or unbalanced attack on me, deploring the invitation. After this, without any contact with me and without seeing the content of my talk, the meeting was 'postponed'. It is now clear that the postponement was permanent... Read more...[This piece gets very interesting - don't skip it - he nails Zionism.] Cloning of Holocaust Martyrs Seen As Only Way to Preserve Extermination Legend , by Michael K. Smith | Legalienate - Mass Production of Elie Wiesels to Start This Week With the WWII generation rapidly passing into history, custodians of the official Holocaust narrative have concluded that the only way to preserve the extermination legend is to clone the remaining Holocaust martyrs while time still permits. Proponents of the extermination thesis have long worried that the death of eyewitnesses to the Holocaust will cast undue attention on the lack of forensic evidence for mega-gas-chambers, calling into question how an assembly line of extermination could have existed without leaving behind material and documentary evidence. The temporary solution of intimidating the public with an avalanche of tear-jerking stories has the defect of depending on mortal eyewitnesses whose testimony necessarily loses dramatic impact upon their deaths... Read more... The Weasel - destined to go down in history as the world's most outrageous and successful con artist and fraud. (Alan Dershowitz, also a plagiarist and apologist for mass murderers, might give him a run for his money, but he's a lawyer, so it's just business as usual.) Elie Wiesel and the issue of indifference | Bradley Smith's blog ...for decades Elie Wiesel has shown himself to be indifferent to the fate of writers and publishers who question the orthodox Holocaust story and are arrested, tried, and imprisoned for such thought crimes in Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland and other European nations...With regard to confronting “fanaticism,” have your students been prepared to understand that Elie Wiesel is the best known Holocaust fanatic in America? That he has spent his entire adult life forwarding with an unequaled fanaticism the charge of “unique monstrosity” against the Germans, including the charge that they used weapons of mass destruction (“gas chambers”) for mass murder at Auschwitz, and that even though he was interned there, after more than half a century he is unable to name, with proof, one person who was killed in a gas chamber at that camp?... Read more... Gandhi Wuz Robbed, by Maureen Dowd | NYT When he heard the Nobel Peace Prize shocker on Friday, Bill Clinton went into one of his purple rages. He picked up the phone and dialed the one person on earth who would be as steamed as he was. CLINTON: Hey, man, it’s me. This thing is plumb crazy. Can you believe it? W: No way, Jose! CLINTON: First that prig Carter. Then that prig Gore. And now President Paris Hilton. The guy’s in office three days and he gets the peace prize? He should have gotten the Nobel in chemistry, because chemistry’s all he’s got. Talk about a fairy tale. This ... is ... just ... wrong! It’s killing me, man. I feel like my head’s explodin’. First I had the vast right-wing conspiracy, and now I have the vast left-wing conspiracy. W.: I hear ya, 42. As if his head wasn’t big enough. This cat is all cage, no bird. He doesn’t have a clue... [Sometimes the fair colleen just outdoes herself, particularly given that she operates within the straightjacket of the NYT. Go Maureen!] Read article... Speech by President Obama delivered to Congress in 2010 "My fellow Americans. Millions of you and not special interest groups elected us to office on a platform of change and it is time for us all to deliver. I am laying out a program to do so but first we have to face some painful truths that have increasingly become obvious…" Mazin Qumsiyeh's Human Rights Newsletter 9/11/09 October 10, 2009 Genocide forgotten: Armenians horrified by treaty with Turkey, by Robert Fisk | The Independent A new trade deal is set to gloss over the murder of 1.5 million people Armenians hold a candle light protest in Lebanon In the autumn of 1915, an Austrian engineer called Litzmayer, who was helping build the Constantinople-Baghdad railway, saw what he thought was a large Turkish army heading for Mesopotamia. But as the crowd came closer, he realised it was a huge caravan of women, moving forward under the supervision of soldiers. The 40,000 or so women were all Armenians, separated from their men – most of whom had already had their throats cut by Turkish gendarmerie – and deported on a genocidal death march during which up to 1.5 million Armenians died... [The connection to the Zionists makes this all the more poignant. A friend of mine informs me that "in 1904 Theodor Herzl - the 'Father of Zionism' - offered the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire to 'solve the Armenian Problem' for him, on the condition that Palestina would be given to the Zionists." Apparently, in 1915 Kemal Ataturk followed up on this offer. Since the massacre Israel, and its compliant enablers, the Americans, have refused to recognize the Armenian Genocide. There can be only one Genocide (aka the Holycause), because it happened to the Jews, the only people who count. After all, as it says in many places in the Talmud, all others, the goyim, are less than human.] Read article... Gore Vidal's United States of fury | The Independent At 84, the writer and activist may be confined to a wheelchair, but his rage – at his country, its leaders and citizens – burns as fiercely as ever. He describes the United States as a 'madhouse' Gore Vidal is not only grieving for his own dead circle and his fading life, but for his country. At 83, he has lived through one third of the lifespan of the United States. If anyone incarnates the American century that has ended, it is him. He was America's greatest essayist, one of its best-selling novelists and the wit at every party. He holidayed with the Kennedys, cruised for men with Tennessee Williams, was urged to run for Congress by Eleanor Roosevelt, co-wrote some of the most iconic Hollywood films, damned US foreign policy from within, sued Truman Capote, got fellated by Jack Kerouac, watched his cousin Al Gore get elected President and still lose the White House, and – finally, bizarrely – befriended and championed the Oklahoma bomber, Timothy McVeigh...and its President as 'overwhelmed' and 'incompetent' Read article... It's time to rethink Zionism | The Guardian The desire for ethnic purity that drove out Palestinians and bars the way to democracy in Israel is the rotten fruit of an old debate The results of last week's parliamentary elections in Israel brought to the surface some of the most rotten fruits of a debate that has been going on throughout the state's existence: the idea that a mono-ethnic Jewish state is feasible, legitimate and desirable. In other words, it enhanced the predicament of the moral and practical consequences of the Zionist state ideology. In 1948, during its war of coming-to-be, Israel had driven out of its territory 750,000 Palestinians; another 250,000 were pushed out during the 1967 war. Ever since then, the Israeli left-right division has been marked by the desire for territorial expansion, promoted by the right, and the aspiration for ethnic purity, propagated, curiously, by the Zionist "left". It has always been the "left" that pushed for "division" of the land and "separation" between Jews and Arabs in order to secure a big Jewish majority inside Israel. The right, historically, seemed unconcerned by and large with the consequences of having a large number of Palestinians living under Israel's occupation, as long as they do not get to enjoy citizens' (or other, civil) rights... Read article... From delusion to vindictiveness In order to understand how these murderous Israeli practices emerged all we have to do is trace back and re-read the early Zionist ideologists. ...Early Zionism was indeed a cheerful dream. It was all about the transformation of the “Jew” into a “civilized, respectful and authentic human being”. The founders of Zionism were inspired by the notions of “people like any other people” and “nation amongst nations”. Reading early Zionists such as Nordau, Borochov and Gordon provides us with some very contemptuous references to the Jewish character and identity that would make Nazi ideology look mildly liberal...After more than one hundred years of moral phantasmic delusion, the Israelis are deeply stuck in an ethical coma... The history of Palestine, the Palestinians and the Nakba, was totally hidden from us. Read article... Upside Down World: Warmonger Wins Peace Prize, by Paul Craig Roberts | Counterpunch It took 25 years longer than George Orwell thought for the slogans of 1984 to become reality. “War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery,” “Ignorance is Strength.” I would add, “Lie is Truth.” The Nobel Committee has awarded the 2009 Peace Prize to President Obama, the person who started a new war in Pakistan, upped the war in Afghanistan, and continues to threaten Iran with attack unless Iran does what the US government demands and relinquishes its rights as a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty... Read article... Also in this weekend's Counterpunch, editor Alexander Cockburn's piece on the same subject, War and Peace. [They seem to be competing with one another in trying to capture the sardonic absurdity of this announcement - only mordant humor can even approach expressing the utter lunacy of it. Did the Academy in Oslo recuse themselves in favor of the inmates of the local madhouse? - The Editor] October 9, 2009 After Goldstone, Hamas faces fateful choice, by Ali Abunimah | Australians for Palestine Ismail Haniyeh The uproar over the Palestinian Authority’s collaboration with Israel to bury the Goldstone report, calling for trials of Israeli leaders for war crimes in Gaza, is a political earthquake. The whole political order in place since the 1993 Oslo accords were signed is crumbling. As the initial tremors begin to fade, the same old political structures may appear still to be in place, but they are hollowed out. This unprecedented crisis threatens to topple the US-backed PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, but it also leaves Hamas, the main Palestinian resistance faction, struggling with fateful choices. Abbas, accustomed to being surrounded by corrupt cronies, sycophants and yes-men, badly misjudged the impact of his decision — under Israeli and American instructions — to withdraw PA support for the resolution at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, forwarding the Goldstone report for further action. After all, the PA had actively sabotaged measures supporting Palestinian rights at the UN on at least two occasions in recent years without much reaction...Read article... Abbas's Loss is Palestinians' Gain, by Sherri Muzher | Media Monitors There is a famous Arabic expression, ‘La Yokarrem Nafsaho la Yokarram', which means "he who doesn't respect himself shall not be respected.” Apparently, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas doesn't believe in this. At least, he didn't until now. The decision to defer the Goldstone Report, the UN report alleging that both Israel and Hamas had committed war crimes during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip last winter, was nothing short of betrayal. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Richard Falk even described the decision as "perverse."...A final upside is. that the Goldstone Report will have generated even far greater publicity than what might have been. Countless UN resolutions have been introduced and swept under the rug; this is one UN report that will never be swept under the rug not only because of its unprecedented importance but also because of the significance for internal Palestinian politics -- politics that affect Israel and all nations involved in the "peace process.".. Read more... Barack "no we can't" Obama gets the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize | The Saker The American people put the Democrats back in power in Congress specifically to stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What did they get in return? The "Surge". Then they put Obama in power to stop the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. What did they get since? a) not a single anti-war Democrat in Obama's cabinet b) the foam-at-his-mouth Zionist extremist Rahm Emanuel as Obama's Chief of Staff (see note at the bottom) c) a huge escalation of the war in Afghanistan d) an extension of the war into the Swat areas of Pakistan e) an acceleration of the preparations to attack Iran f) Gitmo trials are still going on, PATRIOT act still active, etc. g) Dubya era war criminals are free from prosecution h) Van Jones, the only person in Obama's Administration who supported a new 9/11 investigation is fired i) the plans to finally give the USA a civilized health care system are abandoned One would imagine that with such a tally Barack Obama would be clearly seen for what he is: just another puppet for exactly the same elites who ran the Dubya puppet. But no, it turns out that the friggin Nobel Committee has given Barack "no we can't" Obama the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize!... Read blog... Art as Resistance A Celebration to Benefit the Freedom Theatre of Jenin [Yes, art flourishes even in the concentration camps of Palestine]The Jenin Refugee Camp suffers deeply and constantly from the Israeli occupation. Isolated from the world and victim to frequent incursions by the Israeli military, the children of the camp grow up traumatized. Violence and humiliation are part of their daily lives, robbing them of their right to a normal childhood. The Freedom Theatre was founded in 2006 by Juliano Mer Khamis in the Jenin Refugee Camp, Occupied Palestinian Territories. Following up on the success of the original Stone Theatre founded by Juliano’s mother, Arna Mer (portrayed in the award-winning documentary Arna’s Children), The Freedom Theatre has flourished and touched the lives of hundreds of children. Join us in New York on Monday, October 19, 2009 Julia Miles Theater, 424 West 55th Street; To obtain tickets please call 917-991-5653 or send an email. Read more... October 8, 2009 Deconstructing the Israeli Narrative, by Dan Lieberman | Palestine Chronicle Distracting the world community permits Israel to continue its illegal activities As Israel's democratic posture becomes more questioned, its mystique becomes more exaggerated. To prove the validity of its actions, Israel's supporters focus on three components of Israel's drive to an accomplished nation. The significance of the Zionist mission, Israel as a Jewish state, and Israel not being responsible for the Palestinian displaced persons. All of these issues, which had roles in establishing the Israel state, are expressed with sweeping generalities, devoid of specifics and facts. Obfuscation, lack of clarity and an assumption that what is being related is correct often characterize discussions of these issues. No questions asked and nothing to explain. Evidence contradicts the narratives that Israel's supporters work diligently to create. Before constructing a base for Middle East peace, it is essential to deconstruct the spurious Israeli narratives...Read article... The Gaza War's Effect on Women, by Stephen Lendman 83% of all fatalities were civilian, and so were most of the injured. The September 25 Goldstone Commission's findings confirmed that Israel committed grievous war crimes. Israel and the White House...are working to discredit the report. Besides the vast destruction from Operation Cast Lead claiming over 1,400 lives and thousands more wounded, 118 women were killed and 825 injured, in many cases severely enough to make it hard for them to get by. The majority of victims were in Northern Gaza and Gaza City where the heaviest fighting and bombardment occurred. PCHR listed the names of the dead by age, their address, date and place of attack, and date of death. Israel said the death toll was an unavoidable part of its military operations during which efforts were made to minimize civilian casualties. PCHR debunked this as baseless by documenting numerous indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks against civilians and their property...Read article... The Sobibor “Death Camp” in the Context of the Demjanjuk Case, by Paul Grubach | CODOH On April 14, John Demjanjuk was almost deported to Germany to stand trial for alleged war crimes. A last minute ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati blocked this German extradition request, and the 89 year-old Ukrainian émigré was returned to his home. German authorities claim Demjanjuk walked Jews from train cars to the “gas chambers” at the WWII Sobibor concentration camp. In view of this allegation, I would like to briefly examine the so-called evidence for the existence of “homicidal gas chambers” at Sobibor... Read article... Obama's Witchhunt, by Stephen Lendman | Palestine Chronicle It's the wrong time to be Muslim in America The FBI's top six news stories for the week ending September 25 were about arrests and/or indictments of suspected Muslim terrorists. Combined, they became the latest national security targets in America's war on Islam. Waged relentlessly since 9/11, it continues unabated under Obama for the same political advantage George Bush sought by stoking fear to be used as a pretext to wage imperial wars and crack down ruthlessly at home with police state efficiency - today against Muslims, Latino immigrants, environmental and animal rights activists, and street protestors, tomorrow against anyone voicing dissent... Read article... Israel may ban Islamic Movement, by Jonathan Cook | The National The Israeli government announced yesterday it would consider banning Israel’s Islamic Movement at the next cabinet meeting, in a significant escalation of tensions that have fuelled a fortnight of bloody clashes in Jerusalem over access to the Haram al Sharif compound of mosques. The move followed the arrest of the movement’s leader, Sheikh Raed Salah, on Tuesday on suspicion of incitement and sedition. Police accused Sheikh Salah of calling for a “religious war” in recent statements in which he warned that Israel was seeking a takeover of the Haram, which includes the al Aqsa mosque... Read article... Goldstone commission sees evidence of ‘persecution’, by Philip Weiss | Mondoweiss When I visited Gaza last May-June, the destruction was so overwhelming and the sense of arbitrary punishment so high that I found myself using the word "persecution." It was clear to me that these people had been targeted as a people; the assault was an effort to diminish their life spirit in every way possible, including destruction of the family unit. What I saw reminded me of what I had heard about the Jews in Warsaw and in Germany and Austria in the runup to the Second World War. Those Jews were persecuted; and these Palestinians were too. One of the surprises of the Goldstone report for the UN Human Rights Council is that it too talks of "persecution" as a recognized crime against humanity and says that Israel is likely guilty of this charge... Read page... October 7, 2009 The demise of the dollar, by Robert Fisk | The Independent In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar... Who Is a Jew? By Gilad Atzmon | Uprooted Palestinians The question of "who is a Jew?" has been debated in Israel since it attained statehood. In the Jewish state the authorities, Rabbis and the media would dig into one’s bloodline with no shame whatsoever. For the Israelis and orthodox Jews, Jewishness is obviously a blood related concept. However, Jewishness and blood concerns are becoming a subject of a growing debate in the UK. In the last few days The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian are trying to decide whether Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a ‘self hating Jew’ or just an ordinary antisemite. Like the Israeli Rabbis they both dig into his bloodline... Read article... The Golden Rule Across the World's Religions The entry for Judaism is: What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour. This is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary. Go and learn it. [Perhaps a Jewish missionary should go to Israel and attempt to convert the ignorant savages who recently colonized that land]Go to website... Banned from Al Aqsa, by Jonathan Cook | The National Tensions over control of the Haram al Sharif compound of mosques in Jerusalem’s Old City has reached a pitch unseen since clashes at the site sparked the second intifada nine years ago.Ten days of intermittently bloody clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces in Jerusalem culminated yesterday in warnings by Palestinian officials that Israel was “sparking a fire” in the city. Israel’s Jerusalem Post newspaper similarly wondered whether a third intifada was imminent... Read more... The Zionist Terror Network, by Mark Weber | IHR Background and Operation of the Jewish Defense League and other Criminal Zionist Groups This booklet documents the background and criminal activities of Jewish Zionist terrorist groups, and especially the Jewish Defense League. Particular emphasis is given here to terror -- including murder -- against "thought criminals" who question the Holocaust story that six million Jews were systematically killed during the Second World War... Read more... Threats led to deferral of UN Gaza investigation, by Jonathan Cook | The National Israel celebrated last weekend its success at the United Nations in forcing the Palestinians to defer demands that the International Criminal Court investigate allegations of war crimes committed by Israel during its winter assault on the Gaza Strip. The about-turn, following vigorous lobbying from Israel and the United States, appears to have buried the damning report of Richard Goldstone into the fighting, which killed almost 1,400 Palestinians, most of them civilians... Read more... October 6, 2009 ElBaradei says nuclear Israel number one threat to Mideast | Xinhua Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei said Sunday that "Israel is number one threat to Middle East" with its nuclear arms, the official IRNA news agency reported. At a joint press conference with Iran's Atomic Energy Organization chief Ali Akbar Salehi in Tehran, ElBaradei brought Israel under spotlight and said that the Tel Aviv regime has refused to allow inspections into its nuclear installations for 30years, the report said. "Israel is the number one threat to the Middle East given the nuclear arms it possesses," ElBaradei was quoted as saying... The tropes of 'Jewish antisemitism', by Antony Lerman | The Guardian The concept of the 'self-hating Jew' has been dignified with a pseudo-psychopathology by those keen to suppress dissent From the moment he took the job heading the UN Human Rights Council's mission to investigate human rights and international humanitarian law violations during the Gaza conflict, it was inevitable that Judge Richard Goldstone, born into a South African Jewish family, would be labelled a "self-hating Jew" and a Jewish antisemite. Immediately on the release in September of his findings, which concluded that both Israel and Hamas had committed war crimes, Israel's finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, couldn't wait to make this accusation. He certainly wasn't alone. The charge is so popular these days that people who use it must have felt as though they had won the lottery when they were presented with such a high-profile target like Goldstone. They were probably still savouring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's outburst in August when he railed against the two senior and Jewish aides of President Obama, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, calling them "self-hating Jews"... Read article... Americans Manufacture Another Nuclear Crisis - By Eric Margolis | Toronto Sun The U.S., Britain and France staged a bravura performance of political theatre last week by claiming to have just "discovered" a secret Iran uranium enrichment plant near Qum. On cue, a carefully orchestrated media blitz trumpeted warnings of the alleged Iranian nuclear threat and "long-ranged missiles." In reality, the Qum plant was detected by U.S. spy satellites over two years ago, and was known to the intelligence community. Iran claimed the plant will not begin enriching uranium for peaceful power for another 540 days. UN nuclear rules, to which Iran adheres, calls for 180 days notice. UN nuclear watchdogs say Iran should have revealed the plant earlier. Iran alerted the UN last week and said it would invite inspectors. The reluctance of Iran to reveal its nuclear sites is magnified by constant threats of attack against them by Israel and the U.S. Iran also recalls Iraq, where many of the UN "nuclear inspectors" were likely spies for CIA or Israel's Mossad. This may explain some of Iran's secretive behaviour. The U.S., Britain, France and Israel have been even less forthcoming about their nuclear secrets... Read article... October 5, 2009 Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions | Grit TV Laura Flanders interviews Phyllis Bennis after the publication of the 3rd Revised edition of Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer International pressure is mounting on Israel to end the occupation. More than 1,000 filmmakers, actors, and writers recently called for a protest of the Toronto Film Festival’s spotlight on Tel-Aviv. Meanwhile an international boycott is growing. Neve Gordon, in a recent editorial, explains why it is time to boycott Israel. Since then he has received harsh criticism from within Israel but also a great deal of support. He says that The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign is the only way to save Israel from itself. Launched by Palestinian activists in 2005 the BDS movement has now become a global effort... "Palestine, yes we can", by Sonja Karkar | Australians for Palestine The sounds of “yes we can” still ring in our ears, Mr President, but we have yet to see the changes we can believe in. That was evident when you backed down to Israel on a settlement freeze in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. You made us believe that we can, but it seems that you no longer believe that you can. On the matter of Palestine, many people in the world would have been happy if you had just stuck to your word. The tragic, relentlessly abused Palestinians were ready to say, “yes we can”; we can negotiate peace again, despite sixteen years of repeated failures, if you would ensure that Israel freezes and dismantles its illegal settlement building. We would all say “yes we can” if we could see the US finally become an honest broker in such an obviously unequal conflict. However, the summit meeting you had with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders is worse than that sense of déjà vu everyone is talking about. We know that we have all been here before, but more Palestinians are dying Mr President, more of their land is being stolen and being built on, more of their children are suffering from hunger, anaemia and unrelieved psychological trauma, more of their painful hope is being tortured out of them by our miserable efforts to gloss over an ethnic cleansing we said would never happen again... Read more... Obama gave the dirty work to Abbas and now both are soiled | Mondoweiss The Palestinian reaction to the Palestinian Authority selling out Gaza on the Goldstone report has been vehement. Now, Arab News reports, Abbas is shocked, shocked over the cashiering of the report:..Jerry Haber has the best post on the debacle, saying that the nullification of the report has given a huge boost to the BDS movement because Palestinians have no other power in a world where international courts and systems routinely overlook the destruction of their rights... Read blog... Will Israel Ensure that History Repeats Itself?, by Jeff Gates | Payvand Iran News The lead-up to the first U.S.-Iran talks in three decades saw a replay of the same modus operandi that induced the U.S. and its allies to invade Iraq in March 2003. Then as now, the invasion of Iran is consistent with a regime change agenda for Greater Israel described in a 1996 strategy document prepared by Jewish-Americans for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 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 program 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... Read article... Two takes on Tarantino's 'Inglorious Basterds,' both from Counterpunch Revenge Fantasies: Vengeance, Barbarism and Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, by Gilad Atzmon Once again Quentin Tarantino has managed to produce the impossible: ‘an anti Holocaust film’. The Holocaust film genre can be grasped as a realistic cinematic representation of the ‘Jewish victim’ (innocent and harmless individual) confronted with the ultimate brutal bureaucratic murderous ideology known as Nazism. The genre can be realised as an intense emotional blackmail that aims to depict the history of the 20th century through an empathetic identification with a phantasmic faultless Jewish protagonist. Needless to say, this genre has been rather successful. Whether it is Schindler’s List, The Pianist, Everything is Illuminated, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas or any other Shoah (Hebrew for Holocaust) film, it is always Jewish innocence that faces institutional state terror... Read review... Revenge Fantasy: Tarantino Scalps His Audience, by Harry Brown What does Quentin Tarantino have to do to be taken seriously? Okay, granted, maybe for a start he should stop peppering his chat with references to trash cinema of the Seventies, a passion even most of his sympathetic critics tend to indulge rather than share. But can Tarantino’s motormouth alone be the explanation for the reaction to Inglourious Basterds? With honorable exceptions, this has divided between: (1) “he’s trying to have stupid fun with the Holocaust and World War 2, and it’s a mess”; and (2) “what great, stupid fun!”... Read review... Zionist-controlled Media Jacking-up America , by Phillip Marlowe | Rebel News ...We all need to be Joe Wilson right now. We need to stand up and scream, “LIAR!” at every politician and every talking media moron that is pushing this war in Iran. And we need to keep doing it until they get the message that we will not be deceived any more... Read article... Guidelines for Applying the International Academic Boycott of Israel | PACBI Since its founding in 2004, PACBI has advocated a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions, based on the premise that these institutions are complicit in the system of oppression that has denied Palestinians their basic rights guaranteed by international law. This position is in line with the authoritative call by the Palestinian Council for Higher Education for "non-cooperation in the scientific and technical fields between Palestinian and Israeli universities". Academic institutions in particular are part of the ideological and institutional scaffolding of the Zionist colonial project in Palestine, and as such are deeply implicated in maintaining the structures of domination over the Palestinian people...These guidelines are mainly intended to assist academics around the world in adhering to the Palestinian call for boycott, as a contribution towards establishing a just peace in our region. Similar guidelines for the cultural boycott have been issued by PACBI... Read statement... October 4, 2009 Obama agrees to keep Israel's nukes secret | Wash Times President Obama has reaffirmed a 4-decade-old secret understanding that has allowed Israel to keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to international inspections, three officials familiar with the understanding said. The officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they were discussing private conversations, said Mr. Obama pledged to maintain the agreement when he first hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in May. Under the understanding, the U.S. has not pressured Israel to disclose its nuclear weapons or to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which could require Israel to give up its estimated several hundred nuclear bombs. Israel had been nervous that Mr. Obama would not continue the 1969 understanding because of his strong support for nonproliferation and priority on preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons... A third intifada coming, says Boyle | The Canadian Charger The prospect for peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians is “dead as a doornail,” said Francis Boyle in an interview with the Canadian Charger That is “because Obama sided with Binyamin Netanyahu,” at the UN meeting of the General Assembly. Boyle is a professor of international law at the University of Illinois and was legal advisor to the Palestinian delegation at the peace negotiations that culminated in the Oslo agreement. According to Boyle, former senator George Mitchell “is running a dog and pony show” in his scampering around the Middle East... Read article... Obama and the Graveyard of Empires, by Frank Creel | Antiwar.com You read it here first: There is a 50-50 chance that President Obama will not get his party’s nomination in 2012, much less be re-elected, so grave have been his policy errors. Presidents rarely escape the consequences of serious misjudgments...Obama’s mistakes already make these precedential misjudgments look like peccadilloes. By his own estimate, budget deficits in his first term will exceed those of all of his predecessors combined. His stimulus bill, which increasingly resembles a regurgitated cud of political pork, is failing to stimulate. Unemployment continues to rise. The value of the dollar is propped up only by China’s desire not to give itself the shaft. His health care plan scares a majority of the voters, and his progressive abandonment of the public option enrages a majority of his left-leaning base. Yep, a 50-50 chance Obama will be a lame duck after the 2010 mid-terms sounds about right. But make that a 90-10 chance if Obama, on top of all that, gets Afghanistan wrong and, like Lyndon Johnson, steps into a quagmire... [Short, pithy, right on the money - now if only there were some way to get such a message to the Oval Office through the thick, seemingly impenetrable black fog of ignorance blanketing Washington, DC. Ah, but I forgot. Even if somehow someone miraculously got as far as the White House, they would have no chance of getting past the ZioNazi traitors who actually run the place. - the Editor] Read more... How similar are the cases against Iran and Iraq?, by Glenn Greenwald | Salon Scott Shane has an article in today's New York Times examining whether the government and media's behavior now with regard to Iran is similar to what happened in 2002 and 2003 concerning Iraq. I'm quoted in the article in several places, including saying that the "similarities are substantial and disturbing." I want to focus on one point raised by this topic. Although I think there are ample similarities, I don't think the situations are identical. To begin with, I don't believe (though it's obviously just speculation) that Obama's motive -- at least at this point -- is a military attack on Iran, if for no other reason than such an attack would severely complicate everything else he has to do... Falk: Goldstone too soft on Israel | The Canadian Charger That is the view of Richard Falk, emeritus Professor of International Law and Practice at Princeton and currently UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories. Speaking at Ottawa’s Carleton University on September 24, Falk argued that the Goldstone report took for granted that Israel’s attack was a defensive measure against rocket attacks from Gaza, a view that Falk denied. The rocket attacks, he said, had virtually ceased at the time of the Israeli invasion. As Falk pointed out, the hostilities were preceded by another attack by Israel on Gaza during what was supposed to be a cease-fire... Read article... Why Propaganda Trumps Truth, by Paul Craig Roberts | Foreign Policy Journal An article in the journal, Sociological Inquiry, casts light on the effectiveness of propaganda. Researchers examined why big lies succeed where little lies fail. Governments can get away with mass deceptions, but politicians cannot get away with sexual affairs. The researchers explain why so many Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, years after it has become obvious that Iraq had nothing to do with the event. Americans developed elaborate rationalizations based on Bush administration propaganda that alleged Iraqi involvement and became deeply attached to their beliefs. Their emotional involvement became wrapped up in their personal identity and sense of morality. They looked for information that supported their beliefs and avoided information that challenged them, regardless of the facts of the matter... Read more... IAEA Conceals Evidence Iran Documents Were Forged, by Gareth Porter | IPS The International Atomic Energy Agency says its present objective regarding Iran is to try to determine whether the intelligence documents purportedly showing a covert Iranian nuclear weapons programme from 2001 to 2003 are authentic or not. The problem, according to its reports, is that Iran refuses to help clarify the issue. But the IAEA has refused to acknowledge publicly significant evidence brought to its attention by Iran that the documents were fabricated, and has made little, if any, effort to test the authenticity of the intelligence documents or to question officials of the governments holding them, IPS has learned... Ahmadinejad: Western media 'weapon of subterfuge' | Press TV Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says corporate media has turned into a weapon of subterfuge, with the sole aim of advancing the West's political agenda. In a Saturday address to the Islamic Radio and TV Union Assembly, Ahmadinejad cited random examples of political bias in US and European media outlets... Read article... Top Things you Think You Know about Iran that are not True, by Juan Cole ...on this occasion, I thought I'd take the opportunity to list some things that people tend to think they know about Iran, but for which the evidence is shaky... The Host and the Parasite: How Israel's Fifth Column Consumed America | YouTube The classic video of Greg Felton giving a talk that summarizes his book of the same name. He lays it all out there, in excruciating, well sourced detail - how America (aka "The Greatest Country On Earth") became an Israeli colony.- the Editor On Palestinian Civil Disobedience, by Neve Gordon | Counterpunch Sometime in 1846, Henry David Thoreau spent a night in jail because he refused to pay his taxes. This was his way of opposing the Mexican-American War as well as the institution of slavery. A few years later he published the essay Civil Disobedience, which has since been read by millions of people, including many Israelis and Palestinians. Kobi Snitz read the book. He is an Israeli anarchist who is currently serving a 20 day sentence for refusing to pay a 2,000 shekel fine... October 2, 2009 Iran's Nuclear Theater Meant to Divert Attention, by Ramzy Baroud | PTT ...The Iran nuclear threat – although theater is a more suitable term – was highlighted repeatedly, first by US President Barack Obama during a UN speech on September 23, then again by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the next day. The latter came armed with maps and relentlessly provoked Holocaust memories, following the ever so predictable, albeit insensitive and deceptive pattern. This charade was meant to distract from the nearly 600 page UN report, prepared by South Africa judge Richard Goldstone and others, dedicated mostly to Israeli war crimes in Gaza... Read article... Fabricating a Case Against Iran: Another War in the Works, by Paul Craig Roberts | Counterpunch Does anyone remember all the lies that they were told by President Bush and the “mainstream media” about the grave threat to America from weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? These lies were repeated endlessly in the print and TV media despite the reports from the weapons inspectors, who had been sent to Iraq, that no such weapons existed. The weapons inspectors did an honest job in Iraq and told the truth, but the mainstream media did not emphasize their findings. Instead, the media served as a Ministry of Propaganda, beating the war drums for the US government. Now the whole process is repeating itself. This time the target is Iran. As there is no real case against Iran, Obama took a script from Bush’s playbook and fabricated one... It's bomb, bomb, bomb Iran time, by Pepe Escobar | Asia Times The United States and Western "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" crowd - hysteria running at fever pitch ahead of Thursday's multilateral nuclear talks in Geneva - could do worse than have a word with Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva. Lula actually talked to Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad face-to-face for over an hour on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly last week. He invited Ahmadinejad to visit Brazil in November. About the meeting, he went straight to the point, "What I wish for Iran is what I always wanted for Brazil - a peaceful, civilian nuclear program."... Read article... Statement of Solidarity with the Palestinian General Strike | IJSN In the long tradition of Jewish working class involvement in and support for liberation struggles, IJAN-Labor stands in solidarity with the Follow-up Committee for the Arab Citizens of Israel, the National Committee of Local Authorities, and all parties, movements and institutions of Palestinian civil society in Israel, who have called a general strike for today, October 1, 2009... Read more... Muslims Repulse Jewish Attempt to Storm Al-Aqsa, by Khalid Amayreh | Tlaxcala OCCUPIED JERUSALEM -- Dozens of Palestinians were hurt, two seriously, on Sunday, September 27, when crack Israeli policemen attacked worshipers who had just repulsed an attempt by Jewish extremists to hold Talmudic rituals at al-Haram al-Sharif. “When the zealots were repulsed rather peacefully, the police became very outraged,” Mahmoud Abu Atta, an eyewitness... Read article...See also: Al-Aqsa, the ultimate red line October 1, 2009 Israeli Army Terrorizes Teenagers inside a School, by Kawther Salam | PTT [Just everyday life in the 'pacified' West Bank, nominally under the control of the Israeli and U.S. led Palestinian puppet government of Mahmoud Abbas, but commanded by Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton of the U.S. Army] Read article... Israel’s propagandists shoot themselves in the foot as they shoot off their mouths, by Greg Felton | Media Monitors “Our people will not say: ‘Hello, I am from the hasbara department of the Israeli foreign ministry … They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the foreign ministry developed.” - Ilan Shturman, Israel’s deputy director of strategic lying If you have ever visited a blog or on-line discussion group on the Middle East you have doubtless had the misfortune to run into them. They are known by the language they use: depraved sexual insults, bile, bigotry, threats, disinformation and character assassination. That’s right: I’m talking about “hasbarats,” zionist trolls who infect the Internet with hasbara, pro-Israel propaganda... Read article... Malformed Babies Resulting From Israeli Banned Weapons | PTT Since the end of criminal Israeli operation "Cast Lead" in Gaza Strip last January, more than five cases of birth have been registered which show babies who have a deformed and not fully formed heart. These births came as an effect of the use of internationally banned weapons of phosphor and uranium by the Israeli occupation in the middle of populated areas. According to Palestinian medical sources, the health effects on Palestinians who were targeted in Gaza Strip in the winter of 2008 – 2009 still manifest day by day, especially those caused by the internationally banned phosphorous shells and dozens of types of weapons used by Israel and which laboratory tests showed were carrying toxins with delayed lethal effects, which may appear in the future in the form of malignant and dangerous diseases. Read article... Israeli State of Extortion, by Peter Chamberlin We are faced with the ever-present and ever-growing problems presented by the state of Israel. The entire world has been given the most sinister ultimatum of all time (and Barack Obama is fully supporting it) - we either make Israeli interests the paramount issue concerning the world today, or else Israel will single-handedly start World War III. If we do not take military actions to preserve Israel’s outlaw nuclear edge in the Middle East, then, according to Israel’s supreme leader, Israel will use those nuclear weapons upon Iran (Israel can only do the job with nukes). If the leadership of the world does not alleviate Israeli leaders’ greatest fears through limited, though intense military actions, then Israel will unleash WWIII in the Middle East, effectively destroying the oil-based international order. The new American leadership is the most craven, sniveling, and condescending to Israeli demands, of all previous administrations... Read more... Also by Peter Chamberlin: The War Against Free Thought The war against our minds has many dark levels, all of which attempt to hide truth which is not sanctioned by the police state, replacing it with a new fabricated “official version” of events. The state/corporate controlled media informs us of what we are to think, while multiple forms of coercion, bribery and intimidation are used to reinforce the government’s ideas and convince people to accept them as their own... Read more... |
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