These are recent articles more than 10 days old. Articles dating back from 7/13/07 to 4/28/07 are Here, and The Oldest Archive is Here.
8/2/07
Aid, Diplomacy and Facts on the Ground: The Case of Palestine
Book Review by Nadia Hijab, Senior Fellow, Institute for Palestine Studies; former UN development officer
In August 2005, I was in Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian Authority (PA), to evaluate a democracy-building project. Donors had already made a considerable investment and were trying to decide how much more to allocate. It was a surreal exercise. While I was there, the Israeli occupation forces were preparing for their unilateral disengagement from Gaza even as they were cementing the Wall around Ramallah. Access to the city was sealed off except through Israeli controlled checkpoints, one of which provided a fast track for the international community and the other a choke point for Palestinians...
How Truth Slips Down the Memory Hole: Israelis Murder News Cameraman, by John Pilger
One of the leaders of demonstrations in Gaza calling for the release of the BBC reporter Alan Johnston was a Palestinian news cameraman, Imad Ghanem. On 5 July, he was shot by Israeli soldiers as he filmed them invading Gaza. A Reuters video shows bullets hitting his body as he lay on the ground. An ambulance trying to reach him was also attacked. The Israelis described him as a "legitimate target". The International Federation of Journalists called the shooting "a vicious and brutal example of deliberate targeting of a journalist". At the age of 21, he has had both legs amputated. Dr David Halpin, a British trauma surgeon who works with Palestinian children, emailed the BBC's Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen. "The BBC should report the alleged details about the shooting," he wrote. "It should honour Alan [Johnston] as a journalist by reporting the facts, uncomfortable as they might be to Israel." He received no reply...
Why?, by Layla Anwar (Arab Woman Blues)
Who am I ? The eternal Question . Have not figured it out fully yet . All you need to know about me is that I am a Middle Easterner ,an Arab Woman - into my 40's and old enough to know better . I have no homeland per se . I live in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Egypt simultaneously ...
Yes why?
What for?
What does it say about you? What does it say about your countries? What does it say about your institutions? What does it say about your governments, your "culture", your "civilization", your history, your "progress", your "values", your concepts?..Have you ever stopped and pondered these questions? Have you ever stopped and asked yourselves ; how come?..How come we are so advanced, how come we are so democratic, how come we are so great, how come we are so free...And how come we allow so much murder, oppression, abuse, go unaccounted for?...
Noah Feldman: The Big Kvetch, by Joachim Martillo
...What Feldman's essay points up is that intermarriage is the irreconcilable issue for those who argue that American and Jewish values are compatible. "We've sold a lot of Jews a bill of goods when we've told them there are no contradictions between being a good Jew and an American," noted Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University. "In America you are taught you can marry anyone you fall in love with, but Judaism argues that we are a minority culture and will only survive if Jews marry other Jews."..Rosenblatt's analysis probably applies even more strongly to Zionism than to Orthodox Judaism. American and Zionist values are simply completely contradictory in many serious ways, and when someone claims that America and Israel share the same values, many Americans and non-Americans become very uncomfortable...
Will Bush cancel the 2008 election?, by Harvey Wasserman & Bob Fitrakis (Online Journal)
It is time to think about the "unthinkable."..The Bush administration has both the inclination and the power to cancel the 2008 election..The GOP strategy for another electoral theft in 2008 has taken clear shape, though we must assume there is much more we don't know..But we must also assume that if it appears to Team Bush/Cheney/Rove that the GOP will lose the 2008 election anyway (as it lost in Ohio 2006), we cannot ignore the possibility that they would simply cancel the election. Those who think this crew will quietly walk away from power are simply not paying attention..The real question is not how or when they might do it. It's how, realistically, we can stop them...
Oppose $30 Billion in Military Aid Package to Israel (Ziopedia)
Written by The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
[Editor's note: While there is no possibility that the Israeli Occupied Congress will not approve this appropriation, it is nevertheless important that members of Congress begin to hear from an outraged citizenry that those who continue to put Israel's interests above those of their American constituents will be considered as foreign agents who have broken their oath to defend the US Constitution. While it is important to attack this latest giveaway on its merits, it is time to raise the stakes. -- Jeff Blankfort, Ziopedia]
The United States plans to increase military aid to Israel by 25 percent—from $2.4 billion to $3 billion per year, guaranteed for the next 10 years. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told reporters in Jerusalem on July 29 that President George W. Bush agreed to this new $30 billion military aid package when they met at the White House on June 19...
Corporate Media Blames Victims in Palestine, by Kurt Nimmo
If we are to believe “experts” quoted by United Press International, the “radicalization of Palestinians” has little to do with Israeli brutality over the span of more than two generations. It is all about “violence as a model created by bin Ladenism,” never mind the Palestinians resisted Israeli occupation when Osama was a glint in Muhammad bin Laden’s eye, well before the elder Bin Laden migrated from Al-Rubat to Saudi Arabia..“Bush administration officials said more young people in Gaza as well as the Lebanese refugee camps are turning to jihad because they feel more secular or moderate paths have failed to improve their lives,” UPI adds. No doubt, as these “secular or moderate paths” were systematically undermined and destroyed, thanks to the Mossad, also known as the “Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks,” as killing Palestinian nationalists is indeed considered a “special task” for the Israeli government. Both MI6 and the CIA worked to undermine secular Arab nationalism—including its more moderate strain, as represented by Gamal Abd-al Nasser of Egypt. In response to Nasser’s nationalist impudence, former British prime minister Winston Churchill instructed then prime minister Anthony Eden, upon Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez: “Tell them if we have any more of their cheek we will set the Jews on them and drive them into the gutter, from which they should have never emerged.”...
'The Price We Pay' seeks to counterbalance influence of Jewish lobbies on US policy in Middle East, questions morality of American aid to Jewish state
BEIRUT: Israel was once reprimanded by the United States for its use of cluster bombs in civilian areas. In 1984, The New York Times credited Franklin P. Lamb's first book with gathering the evidence that spurred former President Ronald Reagan's administration into cutting off Israel's supplies of US cluster bombs. A quarter-century on, Lamb returned to update "Israel's War in Lebanon" in the wake of last summer's war. The result is the substantial report "The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel's Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon (1978-2006)."..Extensive documentation from a wide range of sources has been compiled, alongside photographic evidence and personal testimonies. "The Price We Pay" is a well-researched and comprehensive historical record of the damage inflicted on Lebanon by its southern neighbor in the summer of 2006...
The war in Iraq could ultimately cost well over a trillion dollars -- at least double what has already been spent -- including the long-term costs of replacing damaged equipment, caring for wounded troops, and aiding the Iraqi government, according to a new government analysis..The United States has already allocated more than $500 billion on the day-to-day combat operations of what are now 190,000 troops and a variety of reconstruction efforts...In a report to lawmakers yesterday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that even under the rosiest scenario -- an immediate and substantial reduction of troops -- American taxpayers will feel the financial consequences of the war for at least a decade...
Obama Follows the Neocon Mass Murder Script, by Kurt Nimmo
It is a race to see who can kill more people. “As President, Barack Obama would order attacks on terrorist camps in Pakistan even if its president, Gen. Pervais Musharraf, refused to give permission and would link American aid on Pakistan’s progress in rooting out its terrorist havens,” writes Marc Ambinder for Atlantic Online. “That stance, one part of the multifacted counterrorrism strategy Obama unveils this morning, is tougher than the more considered approach of the Bush Administration, which has generally avoided antagonizing its ally in public.” In other words, Obama’s selection strategy consists of outdoing the neocons and he really harbors no reservations when it comes to mass murder and adding to the horrific total exacted in human life (nearly a million Iraqis) since the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq...
Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians slams Canadian Jewish Congress exclusion
The Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians responded today, to the decision by the Canadian Jewish Congress to deny membership to the progressive Jewish group. The CJC issued a letter which gave no reason for its decision.
"The decision by the Canadian Jewish Congress to exclude the Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians illustrates the sectarian orientation ofthe forces controlling that organization," declared ACJC Administrative Secretary Abraham Weizfeld. "The rejection of our application to become a member of the Canadian Jewish Congress and the refusal to seat our delegates at the CJC Plenary on June 17th is a repudiation of the growing Jewish opposition to Israel's occupation and siege of the Palestinian territories."...
Ali Abunimah discusses Hamas and Fatah on Worldview Interview
On Friday, EI's Ali Abunimah appeared on WBEZ Chicago's Worldview, on which he discussed with host Jerome McDonnell the events that have transpired since Hamas routed Fatah in the Gaza Strip last month. Since then, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has created a new government of dubious legality with technocrat and US darling Salam Fayyad. The US and Israel have offered aid money and sent 1,000 M-16 weapons through Jordan to bolster Abbas's forces while Fatah security head Mohammad Dahlan has resigned..Abunimah commented on the embattled Palestinian Authority government: "'Government' implies that it has sovereignty and that it has control. In all our discussions of politics and the goings on we have to remember that Israel is the occupying power and the reason that neither the authority or the government in Gaza or in the West Bank has freedom and cannot control the territory or the airspace or the borders is that Israel retains overall control. In reality, there is only one government between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and that's the government of Israel. Nevertheless, the existence of these Palestinian entities has political importance as we'll discuss."...
Last Word on Anti-Semitism, by Joachim Martillo
Because Zionists and their supporters accuse anyone critical of Israel or Zionism as anti-Semitic, revisiting the meaning of the terms "anti-Semitism" and "Jew" is worthwhile..Who are the Jews?..Arabic uses Yahudi in the Quranic sense of a certain religious community that follows the Tawrat (Torat) Musa (Moshe). Ethnic Ashkenazim historically have used the words Jew, Yid (Yiddish) or Yehudi (Hebrew) to mean ethnic Ashkenazi. Zionists use Yehudi to refer to a mythic pan-Judaic ethno-national Volk that has a blood and soil right to Palestine..In point of fact, ethnic Ashkenazim constitute an indigenous Eastern European ethnic group most of whose recent ancestors at one time practiced modern Rabbinic Judaism. They have precisely the same mythological scriptural Biblical connection to Palestine that ethnic Poles have. Ethnic Ashkenazim have no ancestral connection whatsoever to the ancient Roman-period Judeans or Galileans of Palestine. Those ancient populations practiced a very different religion, spoke a very different language -- Modern Israeli Hebrew is very unlike Roman period Palestinian Aramaic -- and had a very different culture...
A racist Jewish state (Haaretz Editorial)
Every day the Knesset has the option of passing laws that will advance Israel as a democratic Jewish state or turn it into a racist Jewish state. There is a very thin line between the two. This week, the line was crossed. If the Knesset legal counselor did not consider the bill entitled "the Jewish National Fund Law" as sufficiently racist to keep it off the agenda, it is hard to imagine what legislation she will consider racist...
Mob wars hit new heights in Israel (AP)
JERUSALEM - When an explosion goes off on a busy Israeli street these days, it seems as likely to be a mob hit as a Palestinian attack..Rival underworld gangs are waging bloody battles for control of gambling and protection rackets, targeting each other with bullets, bombs and anti-tank missiles..Organized crime, long overshadowed by the Arab-Israeli conflict, has become such a part of everyday life that Israel has its own "Sopranos"-style TV series, "The Arbitrator," in which even synagogues are no refuge from hit men...
Truth and Tenure: Norman Finkelstein and the Perils of Impeccable Scholarship, by GREGORY AFGHANI (Counterpunch)
An
impressive record of scholarship was not enough to ensure
tenure for DePaul University Professor Norman Finkelstein.
An unprecedented yet predictable campaign of hate and
slander waged by Israel Inc., commandeered by Alan
Dershowitz, the noted Harvard plagiarist, strident enemy of
human rights, and America's leading apologist for Israeli
state terrorism..
FDR, Pearl Harbor and the U.N., by John V. Denson (ICH)
A new book entitled The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable by George Victor and published by Potomac Books Inc. of Washington, D.C. is well researched and gives a very clear picture of how and why the Pearl Harbor myth was created. This "patriotic political myth" states that the attack by the Japanese was unprovoked and was a surprise to the Roosevelt administration, as well as, the key military personnel in Washington; but the commanders of Pearl Harbor were at fault for not being ready. Based on a good summary of the up-to-date research the author, who is an approving admirer of Roosevelt, concludes that Roosevelt deliberately provoked the attack and that he and his key military and administrative advisers clearly knew, well in advance, that the Japanese were going to attack both Pearl Harbor and the Philippines...
The closing of the Jewish mind (Al Ahram)
How long will Jewish psychosis be tolerated, even vaunted, and its brutal consequences ignored, asks Issa Khalaf
..In March of last year I wrote, in other pages, that: "The events overtaking Palestine are eerily reminiscent of 1948. Unfolding today in the occupied territories is another disaster of historic proportions, evocative of Nietzsche's eternal recurrence. Israeli expansion, colonisation and consolidation of what is left of historic Palestine are reaching a culmination in the next several years. The Israeli goal, short of another 1948 or 1967- like event that would provide cover for further mass expulsions, is the complete political and social annihilation of Palestinian will and society... "
As most Americans know very well, the United States is not really a democracy. What is less obvious is how that explains why our government supports Israel..In America, money is power. A tiny plutocracy of billionaires,with a corporate and government elite, controls every importantinstitution; our government, the major political parties, the corporations and mass media, even the big labor unions. Their values of inequality and top-down control, and what they do to stay in power and control us, like pitting people against each other and waging wars based on lies, fly in the face of the values of equality and democracy and concern for one another that most ordinary Americans share..Virtually all of our politicians and mass media support Israel because Israel helps America's rulers control both Americans and people in the Middle East. Israel does this by fomenting religious war in the Middle East pitting Jews against non-Jews, and enlisting U.S. support in that war...
The Explanation We Never Heard, by Shiraz Dossa (Literary Review of Canada)
Six months after attending a controversial Tehran conference, a Canadian professor charges the media and his own university with ignorance and intolerance.
It would be a shocking event in any university. It was doubly so in a university that takes pride in its “Catholic character.” Last December, St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, authorized a small Spanish Inquisition of its own to denounce a St. FX Muslim professor. It was launched by two Jewish professors and the Christian chair of the political science department (Michael Steinitz, Samuel Kalman and Yvon Grenier). My sin: I attended a conference in a Muslim nation on the Holocaust entitled The Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision. It took place in Tehran, Iran, in December 2006, and it was widely—and erroneously—described in the western media as a “Holocaust-denial conference.”..I have never denied the Holocaust, only noted its propaganda power. Yet my university tolerated this assault on me. I was stunned by the university’s illiteracy and bias. I was appalled by President Sean Riley’s attack on my reputation and his spurious comments on the conference. In his December 13, 2006, statement he insinuated that the “conference” was bogus and that it revealed a “deplorable anti-Semitism” that the “St. FX community” found “deeply abhorrent” and contrary to its “traditions.” Riley left little doubt that I was guilty of sullying my school’s reputation. St. FX in effect sanctioned a crusade against a Muslim Holocaust scholar, who also happens to be an outspoken critic of Israel’s brutality in occupied Palestine...
Darfur, the new American-French Protectorate, by Abu Iskandar as-Sudani (Free Arab Voice)
Most everything that has appeared in English about the situation in Darfur, the Sudan - indeed particularly in “progressive” publications in English – for the last year or so has related one basic “story.”..According to this story the Sudanese government, using armed militiamen, has been massacring Black African Muslim peasants in Darfur, trying to drive them out of the country because of their race. This story has been presented as a humanitarian and political crisis that requires urgent intervention by the “great powers.”..Indeed, the position taken by many confused “leftwing” publications has been that the US government is “not doing enough” to impose “civilization” on the Sudan. These publications, dazzled by the talk about a 'humanitarian disaster' and horrified by the talk of “racist genocide” have thus turned themselves into cheerleaders for further imperialist expansion..As people familiar with the situation in the Sudan are aware, the reality is markedly different from the propaganda version of “racist genocide” presented by the western media...
Horror among humans, sanctuary with wolves: A Holocaust survivor speaks out after 50 years
[Editor: The Holocult Fairy Tales Just Keep on Coming]
DARTMOUTH -- Whenever silver-haired Misha Defonseca, a 64-year-old Holocaust survivor, sees a dead squirrel in the road, she does not avert her gaze and drive on. She stops her car..Respectfully, she moves the animal's body to the side of the road because animal corpses still remind her of the Holocaust...
The Last of England, by Ian Buckley
..Nearly two hundred years ago, the hills here were ablaze with beacons, as Jacobite rebels took on the forces of the English State. The name of a narrow, winding road - Gallows Lane - testifies to the subsequent (and usual) fate of defeated warriors against the Empire..Now various experts have recently suggested that Britain has been fighting terrorism for hundreds of years, and will have to continue to do so for the foreseeable future. But to me, history would seem to demonstrate the exact opposite of that curious hypothesis - instead of fighting terrorism, Britain's ruling classes have waged terrorism against their own people, chiefly but not exclusively on its Celtic fringes - as seen in Glencoe and during the Great Irish Famine..What is today termed 'terrorism' was in fact mostly first devised and operated in its modern form during the 1940s by Britain's wartime Special Operations Executive (SOE). Malaysian leader Chin Peng was first honoured by Britain, then became a nasty terrorist in double-quick time. It is an obvious cliché that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom-fighter...
Britain’s Gordon Brown becomes patron of Zionist agency, by Redress Information & Analysis
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has agreed to become patron of the UK arm of the Jewish National Fund, whose funds have contributed to Israeli ethnic cleansing, the destruction of Palestinian villages and the expropriation of Palestinian land, and whose constitution requires it to promote and implement policies that discriminate against Israel’s Arab population..Gordon Brown has crossed a new threshold on the path to becoming a fully-fledged Zionist..According to a report in the Jewish Chronicle, Gordon Brown has agreed to become a patron of the British arm of the Jewish National Fund (JNF UK)...
144 Settlements in the West Bank are housing 476,000 Israel settlers (IMEMC News)
Israeli Settlement Near Jerusalem
The Palestinian Census Bureau issued a report stating that there are 144 Israeli settlements, housing 476,000 Israeli settlers, spread all over the West Bank, including the occupied city of Jerusalem..The report, which is for the year 2006, states that 26 of those settlements are in the occupied city of Jerusalem, 16 of them already annexed to Jerusalem..259,000 settlers live in settlements in and around the occupied city of Jerusalem, while 77,000 settlers live in settlements around the central West Bank city of Ramallah. In addition, 46,000 live in settlements around the southern West Bank city of Bethlehem, 29,000 located near Salfit City in the northern part of the West Bank, and 1,300 settlers live in settlements near the northern West Bank city of Tubas..The report stated that those numbers do not include the random 165 settlements, home of 10,000 settlers, which the Israeli army considers to be illegal...
The burial of civil marriage, by Shulamit Aloni (Haaretz)
Israeli citizens are divided by law into 12 religious groups. Each person is born into his own group: The Jew whose mother is Jewish is subject to the tyranny of the rabbis, the Muslim to that of the kadis, and the Druze have their own religious leaders, as do the Christians, the Armenians and all the others. And they cannot marry one another, since Israel has no civil marriage. This entire arrangement of no civil marriage, in a country that pretends to be democratic, came into the world only in order to preserve the purity of the Jewish genius...On the other hand, here we have to satisfy the inclinations of the religious parties. Therefore, in 1970, then prime minister Golda Meir and justice minister Yaakov Shimshon Shapira anchored in law an amendment stipulating that although the right of return would also be granted to the son and grandson of a Jew and to his/her spouse (apparently for demographic reasons), a "Jew" according to their definition was "someone who was born to a Jewish mother, or who converted and is not a member of another religion."...Now the justice minister has come along and, together with the chief rabbi, has decided to establish a new, separate group of gentiles, who are allowed to marry one another as long as they don't marry a Jewish man or woman, God forbid. That is the salvation they are being offered...
Four Zionist and Four KKK quotes: Can You Tell Which Is Which?, by John Spritzler
The
quotations below are real statements made either by a Ku
Klux Klaner using the red colored text or by a prominent
Zionist using the blue colored text. See if you can tell
which is which. If you have a hard time deciding, it's not
your fault. Ku Klux Klan and Zionist racial separatism are
INDISTINGUISHABLE!..The answers and references are below,
but no fair peeking!...
New Bumper Stickers [just for fun]
1. Cheney/Satan '08
2. 01/20/09: End of an Error
3. That's OK; I Wasn't Using My Civil Liberties Anyway
4. Lets Fix Democracy in This Country First
5. If You Want a Nation Ruled By Religion, Move to Iran!
6. Bush. Like a Rock. Only Dumber.
7. If You Can Read This, You're Not Our President
8. Of Course It Hurts: You're Getting Screwed by an Elephant
9. Hey, Bush Supporters: Embarrassed Yet?
10. George Bush: Creating the Terrorists Our Kids Will Have to Fight.
11. America : One Nation, Under Surveillance
12. They Call Him "W" So He Can Spell It
13. Jail to the Chief
14. No, Seriously, Why Did We Invade Iraq?
15. Bush: God's way of proving Intelligent Design is bullshit
16. Bad President! No Banana.
17. We Need a President Who's Fluent In At Least One Language
18. We're Making Enemies Faster than We Can Kill Them
19. Is It Vietnam Yet?
20. Where Are We Going? And Why Are We In This Handbasket?
21. You Elected Him. You Deserve Him.
22. Impeach Cheney First
23. When Bush Took Office, Gas was $1.46
24. Pray For Impeachment
25. The Republican Party: Our Bridge to the 11th Century
26. What Part of "Bush Lied" Don't You Understand?
27 One Nation under Clod
28. 2004: Embarrassed 2005: Horrified 2006: Terrified 2007: Scared Stiff
29. Bush Never Exhaled
30.
At Least Nixon Resigned
Is The US Preparing To Attack Pakistan?, by Eric Margolis (Counter Currents)
The Bush Administration may be preparing to lash out at old ally Pakistan, which Washington now blames for its humiliating failures to crush al-Qaida, capture its elusive leaders, or defeat Taliban resistance forces in Afghanistan..One is immediately reminded of the Vietnam War when the Pentagon, unable to defeat North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong forces, urged invasion of Cambodia..Sources in Washington say the Pentagon is drawing up plans to attack Pakistan’s "autonomous" tribal region bordering Afghanistan. Limited "hot pursuit" ground incursions by US forces based in Afghanistan, intensive air attacks, and special forces raids into Pakistan’s autonomous tribal region are being evaluated...
Southern Sudan: Looking for a new identity (The Economist)
And finding a paradise not yet lost
IN MANY respects, south Sudan is already its own country. It issues its own visas, decides most its own policies and mishandles its own budget. Of course, tricky deals over the ownership of oil and the Nile waters must be negotiated before full independence. And there is always a small chance that the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), which runs the south, may do well enough in elections for all of Sudan (due to be held in 2009) to alter the shape of Sudanese politics overall, the north included. But as things stand, almost all southerners believe that, after a referendum promised by the central government in Khartoum, south Sudan will become a sovereign country by 2011...Many leading lights in the south Sudanese government, including the president, Salva Kiir, want the new country, whatever it is called, to become part of east Africa rather than a southern spin-off from the rest of Sudan, which is mainly Arab and Muslim and looks more to the Arab world. South Sudan's economy would tilt to the south and east.
Steven Emerson's Disturbing Track Record, by Ahmed Rehab (Media Monitors)
"It is an unfortunate consequence of post 9/11 life in America, where fear-mongering is a reality, that notorious career Islamophobes, such as this individual, are subjected to little scrutiny and virtually no credibility tests - even as mainstream Muslim leaders with established track records are readily second-guessed."
In his latest anti-CAIR attack, Steven Emerson once again unleashes one of his trademark tirades designed to stifle free and open debate (The New Republic Online, 03/28/2008). This time, his wrath is focused against The New York Times. Its crime? Offering two sides of the story in its recent coverage of the “mounting criticism” against the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights organization, CAIR...
Israel says U.S. aid to Saudi military is understandable (AP)
JERUSALEM: In a break from historic Israeli opposition to U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday his country understands Washington's plan to supply state-of-the-art weapons to Riyadh as a counterweight to Iranian influence..He said that alongside the arms deal, the U.S. is offering a sharp increase in defense aid to Israel, assuring the Jewish state it will retain a fighting edge over its neighbors...
US state department 'funding Blair' (Al Jazeera)
There are questions emerging over Tony Blair's appointment as the Quartet's [the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia] Middle East envoy..The uncertainties start with funding, who is paying the bills for the former British prime minister's new job as special representative for the diplomatic grouping?..This is a hugely sensitive position. It is also a position that Blair had his eyes on for some time..In this, he had the whole-hearted backing of George Bush, the US president, and the US state department...Now, senior UN and British officials have told Al Jazeera that the US state department has been paying Mr Blair's bills, either directly or indirectly, via a trust fund. The amount remains undisclosed...
Hunger, disease spread in Iraq - Oxfam report (Reuters)
BAGHDAD, July 30 (Reuters) - Hunger and disease are spreading in Iraq as violence masks a deepening humanitarian crisis, British charity Oxfam said in a report on Monday..The charity said 28 percent of Iraqi children are malnourished, 15 percent of Iraqis regularly cannot afford enough to eat and 70 percent lack clean drinking water, all sharp increases since 2003...
Converging Interests in Iraq Allow Bush an 'Iranian Option' - Arabs Threatened, by Nicola Nasser
Converging
U.S.-Iran interests in Iraq are creating a common ground for
an "Iranian option" for President George W. Bush that could
be developed into an historical foreign policy breakthrough
of the kind he has been yearning for in the Arab - Israeli
conflict or India; however several factors are ruling out
this window of opportunity, including his militarization of
the U.S. foreign policy, obsession with the "regime changes"
overseas, his insistence on exploiting to the maximum his
country's emergence as the only world power in the aftermath
of the collapse of the former Soviet Union (USSR), an
Iranian independent regional agenda that so far cold not be
reconciled with his own, and a detrimental Arab feeling of
insecurity of such a
potentiality...
Decider Guy Demands Further Erosion of the Fourth Amendment, by Kurt Nimmo
If Bush and the neocons have their way, your cell phone will be an official government surveillance device. Of course, your cell phone and computer connected to the internet are already surveillance devices, it is just that Bush and the neocons want to enshrine this fact in law...
Fatah-led delegation to block UN initiative over Gaza crisis, by Shlomo Shamir, Haaretz
The Palestinian delegation to the United Nations is blocking a Security Council initiative aimed at expressing the organization's concern over the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip...Hamas routed rival faction Fatah in the takeover, and thus the resolution of the humanitarian crisis stands in conflict with the interests of the Fatah-affiliated Palestinian delegation to the UN...
Israel may oppose U.S. President George W. Bush's planned arms sales to Saudi Arabia, but it lacks the ability to mount much effective resistance to the deal..According to the unwritten rule in such cases, Israel must not lose the battle altogether, and it must try to reach some sort of compromise, usually in the form of compensation. However, it is even more important that Israel does not win by completely thwarting Washington's weapons deal...
Israeli Company Is New Pentagon Computer Security Supplier!, by Jeff Blankfort (Ziopedia)
The Israeli company for computer security Check Points has been appointed as the official supplier to the American Ministry of Defense. In particular, the company will supply American Federal agencies with a protection system for data stored on laptop computers. (Guysen.International.News) July 17, 2007..Whatever one may think of the old Protocols of the the Learned Elders of Zion, the protocols of the current elders seem to be working very efficiently. Let's see. They control Congress and the White House, security at all our major airports, through the Israeli company Amdocs they manage the billing of 90% of US private telephone companies, and now they have a direct line into the computers of every federal agency because one may be assured that if they have a system, they know how to bypass it. Of course, by calling it "Check Points," that is equivalent to the Nazis of an earlier generation calling their school yards, "Concentration Camps." Different era, same mentality...
Something happened on 9-11, by Sheila Samples, Ziopedia (With YouTube video)
Strange how something happens and you're unaware that it "registers" with you. Later, perhaps, something will trigger that buried memory and things begin to fall into place..The day began with CNN's Wolf Blitzer frantically reporting that planes had smashed into Buildings 1 and 2 of the World Trade Center. They stood there, so tall that the smoke billowing from their upper floors could be seen for 20 miles. The scene was shocking, grisly, and the horror was broken only by the further news that a plane had rammed into the Pentagon. Death and destruction everywhere. Happening now -- right before our eyes..In an amazing "Breaking News" alert, CNN Pentagon reporter Jamie McEntyre shot down Blitzer's "plane hit the Pentagon" report. McEntyre said flatly, "Although it may appear that way, from my close-up inspection, there is NO evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon. The only pieces left are small enough you can pick them up in your hand. There are no pieces lying around that would indicate a plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon." ..Whoop! Happening now...Quick! Back to Ground Zero...Just in time to see WTC 2, then WTC 1, sink eerily into their own footprints -- tons and tons of cement blasting instantly into a fine powder, rolling majestically through the streets like an Iraqi sandstorm. Anyone who had ever seen one -- even one -- controlled demolition <http://www.acebaker.com/> knew without a doubt what he had just witnessed...
Now the New York Times Sells "Bloodbath" as a Rationale for Staying in Iraq, by ALEXANDER COCKBURN (Counterpunch)
There’s been no stage in the grim progress of the US onslaught on Iraq at which the New York Times hasn’t been shoving the whole ghastly enterprise along. First there were Judy Miller and Michael Gordon promoting the WMD rationale for attack. More recently there was Michael Gordon selling the surge..Now it’s John Burns, pushing the notion that if the US withdraws there’ll a bloodbath of unimaginable proportions as the Iraqis slaughter each other. The administration is seizing eagerly on this, which is a bit like Dracula saying his castle is the best security guarantee against local peasant girls being attacked by vampires...
A step too far?, by John Hooper (The Guardian)
Should Holocaust deniers be prevented from airing their views? And, if so, how far is it right to go in stopping them? The questions arise because of what happened over here on Thursday night in the central Italian university city of Teramo..Robert Faurisson, a retired academic who has been convicted five times in his native France for denying crimes against humanity, had been invited by a member of the staff to give a lecture. His host is one Claudio Moffa, a professor who runs the university's master's programme in Middle Eastern studies..Moffa was asked by the university authorities to think again. He refused. So the rector, Mauro Mattioli, decided the only thing left was to temporarily shut down the university, which he did...
Her dream, my catastrophe, by Dr. Aref Assaf (The Arabist)
This is an open letter to an American Jew who is embarking on her 'homingcoming' jounrey to Israel. The letter below is a quick response to an article headlined, "Our dream will bring us to another land" by an American citizen named Abigail Leichman. In her article, Abby, who is a staff writer for the Bergen Record and often writes about food, etiquettes, and home decorating interests, is offering her goodbyes as she prepares to return to her "biblical homeland", Israel. She also writes for Jewish papers about Israel and other Jewish matters. In fact, she wrote a rather two-part non descript articles about the recent "real estate fair" held in Teaneck to sell American Jews lands to build more settlements in Israel. Could it be that Abby was influenced by this event? The organizer's flyer proclaimed: "Come learn how you, a group of friends, or even a community can own a home and strengthen the Zionist dream."..I was very much involved in exposing that supposedly secretive gathering and followed that by having a letter published on the subject...
Mazin Qumsiyeh's Latest Report from Palestine, July 29
It is difficult
to put into words our experiences since I wrote last and
sent any emails in over 8 days. Our visits to Hebron,
Ramallah, Jenin, Aida Refugee camp and much more. Over 10
meetings with international delegations (inc luding talks I
gave to a number of these delegations). So many inspiring
stories and so many sad
stories...
The Saker interviews Jonathan Cook from Nazareth
Today I am publishing the second interview in my new series "Saker interviews" (which began with the Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery) with a Q&A email exchange with Jonathan Cook, ... a freelance journalist whose articles have been published in The Guardian, Le Monde Diplomatique, Counterpunch and many other media, is the only western reporter who chose to live amongst Palestinians and who covers the Palestinian struggle without being tied to the agenda and allegiances of the Western corporate media...Jonathan has just returned from the "Israel-Palestine: One Country, One State" conference organized by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid on the future of Palestine...
[see also Statement: One country, one state]
Some Holes in the Holy Holocult
My Favorite Elie Wiesel Stories
Elie Wiesel vs Encyclopaedia Britannica
It's Official - No Actual Shortage Of Holocaust Survivors
Ground-Imaging Forensic Radar Exam Of WWII Treblinka Camp
Abraham Bomba, Barber of Treblinka
In this article, we argue that the 2003 US/UK invasion and occupation of Iraq was a form of state crime and offer a criminological analysis of the event. First, we describe how the war on Iraq violated the UN Charter and international humanitarian law. Then, we provide a narrative analysis of the historical and contemporary origins of this crime through the lens of an integrated model for the study of organizational deviance that has proved useful in the analysis of a number of other upper-world crimes. A key part of our explanation of this war resides in the dynamics of America’s long-standing will to empire coupled with the imperial designs of neoconservative policy makers within the Bush administration...
Gaza: a gas for Blair?, by Arthur Neslen (The Guardian)
It's always nice to start a new job with a trick up your sleeve, and the Middle East's new envoy Tony Blair could be forgiven for thinking he has just that. In the near future, a $4bn deal to exploit Gaza's offshore gas reserves will be signed by the Israeli government, Britain's BG Group (BG), the Palestinian Authority (PA)'s investment arm, the Palestine Investment Fund (PIF) and Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC). Environmental considerations notwithstanding, an injection of this kind of capital into the occupied territories could transform the political landscape...
Brown to appoint his own Middle East envoy
Ian Black, middle East editor (The Guardian)
Gordon Brown is to appoint his own Middle East envoy, opening up the possibility of a clash with the work of Tony Blair, who is now representing the international "Quartet" - the US, EU, UN and Russia...Mr Brown told Mr Ban in London earlier this month that he wanted Mr Williams to fill the post formerly occupied by Lord Levy. The Palestinians and other Arabs will be pleased with the news and hoping that the prime minister will develop a distinct approach that is less influenced by both Washington and Jerusalem. Lord Levy, a leading figure in the UK Jewish community and a Labour party donor, was widely seen as being too close to Israel's view of the conflict...
One week in July: Israel's human rights violations, by Sonja Karkar
One could be
excused for thinking that Israel's human rights violations
against the Palestinians stopped since the Palestinian
factions began fighting each other. Just about every report
and article written in the Western media these past weeks
have focused on the rift between Fatah and Hamas and US
overtures to broker a peace deal that may finally allow the
Palestinians a state of sorts. Any mention of Israel is in
the light of urbane diplomatic discussions between it and
the other main players minus, of course, Hamas with Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert showing a most remarkable
willingness to agree to a peace settlement that would see
the Palestinians getting back around 90 per cent of the West
Bank. If only there was reason to believe that the leopard
has changed its spots...
State of exception: Bush's war on the rule of law, by Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine)
At its finest moments the Republican Party has been a vocal and unsparing advocate for human rights. “Though force can protect in emergency,” insisted Dwight D. Eisenhower, the party’s great warrior-president, “only justice, fairness, consideration, and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.” But under the current administration, those designated as enemies have no rights, neither under the laws of war nor under any notion of criminal justice. A radical rupture has occurred; American legal tradition has been swept aside and, with it, long-established precedents for dealing with adversaries in wartime—even those accused of heinous crimes. Nowhere is that more clear than in the treatment of the so-called habeas lawyers (so named because of their repeated attempts to enforce the rights of their clients through the writ of habeas corpus—the legal procedure that allows an imprisoned person to test the legality of his detention) who counsel the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba..The habeas lawyers have been tarred with ethnic slurs and accusations of homosexuality, accused of undermining national security, subjected to continual petty harassment. They have also had their livelihoods threatened through appeals to their paying clients. These events have been reported as separate incidents in the press, but this conduct results from a carefully orchestrated Bush Administration policy that goes under the rubric of “lawfare.”...
The Open Society and its Enemies - The Story of Auschwitz, by Gilad Atzmon
Living in a scientific technological environment, it is natural for most commentators to judge any given narrative reflecting on its positive contents, i.e. the story it tells, the facts it picks up on and the message it conveys. When it comes to Auschwitz, it is always the terrifying numbers, Mengele and the selection, the clinical mass murder, the Gas Chambers, the trains, the famous Arbeit Macht Frei above the front gate, the death march just before liberation, etc. And yet, I would argue that it is at least as enlightening to expose that which the Auschwitz narrative is there to conceal. Every historical tale can operate as a smoke screen; narratives are very effective in encouraging collective blindness. Auschwitz and the Holocaust narrative, in this sense, are no different...
Foreign aid for Palestinians funds Israel's occupation (AFP)
Palestinian dependency on humanitarian aid and relief efforts has been forced on the people by Israel's punitive occupation. This dependence has escalated since economic sanctions were imposed last year leaving the Palestinians internationally isolated and facing an economic and humanitarian crisis. Distressingly for the Palestinians, emergency humanitarian assistance - undertaken to keep them from starving - has exacerbated their economic problems. They are in the invidious position of having to buy Israeli imports instead of cheaper goods from Jordan or Egypt. Not only is this aid contributing to Israel's economy, it has obscured Israel's responsibility for destroying the Palestinian economy and is actually funding Israel's occupation. Palestinian reliance on aid only ever became necessary because Israel stopped Palestinian economic development in its tracks. International aid, which had contributed to the development of a self-sustaining Palestinian economy hardly managed to get off the ground as Israel's suffocating restrictions disallowed any and every initiative to achieve that. Also, Israel's frequent incursions and aerial attacks destroyed much of the equipment supplied by international donors. When sanctions were imposed by the international community to punish the Hamas Party for winning government, Israel increased its restrictions and made the delivery of aid as difficult as possible. Only the imminent starvation of a whole population has seen Israel relax the restrictions to allow some aid to go through, but the interference in the delivery of aid continues. So great is this interference that UN agents have complained "we don't know of another conflict area in the world where we've had these problems". This emergency aid no longer contributes to developmental projects and is merely a means to stave off the hunger of an entire population...
Rethinking Islam from Pakistan to Texas (FAS)
Scholars emphasize viewing Islam in historical, political contextTwo Harvard professors are spearheading a new initiative aimed at defeating "a clash of ignorances," a clash, they affirm, that perpetuates misunderstanding, prejudice, and fear between Muslim and Western societies. Fueled by widespread global illiteracy about the nature of Islam and Muslim civilizations, this clash has dangerous implications for nations that are increasingly becoming multireligious and multicultural in character. Traversing the world from Texas to Pakistan and Boston to Kenya, Ali Asani and his colleague Diane L. Moore are helping secondary school teachers recontextualize Islam and provide new interpretations and understandings of the religion to teens throughout the world...
MEPs STAND UP FOR THE IMMEDIATE RELEASE (Canadian Dimension)
PRESS RELEASE BY LUISA MORGANTINI, Vice President of the European Parliament
45 Members of the European Parliament, from different political groups, have decided to express their solidarity towards the 45 Palestinian colleagues imprisoned by Israel, and called for their immediate and unconditional release...All the 45 MEPs stood up symbolically in the plenary, right before the beginning of the debate with Mr. Solana on the situation on the Middle East, representing the 45 Members of the Palestinian Legislative Council detained in the Israeli jails in a clear violation of the international legality...
There is a large natural gas field off the coast of Gaza, and its 1.3 million population is systematically starved, subjugated to non-stop military assault marginalized, and many liquidated for a reason.
His name is
Ibrahim. He is a Muslim and the 34-year-old Palestinian
husband of an American, a Christian minister, Reverend Dr.
Mary Ethridge, DTh, who is several years his senior. Their
marriage took place by “power of attorney” because
he was never able to come to her, or she to him. Mary calls
him her heart, and Ibrahim calls her his soul. They shared a
dream. Until recently, Dr. Ibrahim Al-Majayda was the
director of the American Cultural Center in Gaza City.
“But now Ibrahim's life is at stake because of the
Center and his relationship to me,” Mary wrote me. She
asked if I could petition government officials and write an
article to help get Ibrahim out of Gaza to safety...It was
widely known that the CIA was involved in the unrest. The
US, their Western allies, and Israel had successfully
boycotted, sealed off, and starved Gaza since the
Palestinian election in January 2006. And along with
non-stop military assaults by Israeli Occupation Forces, the
US and Israel have been funding, arming, and training Fatah
to take on and destroy the popularly elected Hamas
government...
The Christian Zionist Lie Must Die, by Charles E. Carlson, Straight Gate Ministries
At first blush, one could hardly characterize the show of power exhibited by John Hagee’s Christian Zionists at his brash Washington Israel Summit in D.C. last week as a dike about to break: 4500 Christian Zionists filled the Washington Convention Center. Senators and Congressmen kowtowed to the crowd for four days. Senator Lieberman likened Hagee to Moses, a "leader of a multitude." John Hagee was the dealmaker of the hour for Israel, their political rock star, a political money machine. The mere 15 resistors standing outside would not seemed to have made much difference..But a closer look by religion writer Abe Levy reporting in the San Antonio Express-News, Hagee's hometown newspaper, shows that the Christian Zionist dike is holding back a surging sea of truth and truth-telling. There are cracks. Cracks Hagee will not be able to contain since they are coming from the very people Hagee claims to be saving from holocausts and persecutions...
Darkness from the West, by Israel Shamir
The Catholic Church, the biggest apostolic church in the US, is under heavy attack. The plotters had united media effort and legal machinery, utilized American obsession with money, and given the Church the treatment they gave tobacco industry, that is, suing it to oblivion. For their chance to get thirty pieces of silver (over a million dollars, in present prices), hundreds of American Catholics denounced their church...
No place to call home (Cincinnati Enquirer)
An immigration agent called Maha Dakar to his office a few weeks ago and told her the time had come to make a choice..Dakar began to weep..The choice was simple, yet impossible: leave behind her Green Township home, her four young daughters and her husband and move to Jordan alone, or take the girls with her and subject them to a new and frightening life in a country they’d never seen..Her husband was not permitted to go with her. She was not permitted to stay..How could she decide, Dakar asked, when neither choice would keep her family together?.How could any mother do such a thing?...
A Lost Opportunity?: The Palestinian Left, by RAMZY BAROUD
When Hamas members were elected as the majority bloc of the Palestinian Legislative Council, and as it became apparent that a US-led international embargo would be an adjoining price to that victory, I contacted many intellectuals and writers in Palestine, mostly those who often positioned themselves as part of the Palestinian Left. I asked them to solidify behind the collective choice of the Palestinian people and to shield Palestinian democracy at any cost...
Iraq, Afghanistan veteran handed over to military officials by police under charges of "deserting the Army"
Loose Change producer and Iraq and Afghanistan veteran Korey Rowe has been arrested and handed over to military officials without bail for allegedly "deserting the Army"..Arrests and court martials for deserters are incredibly rare and this appears to be an obvious case of political persecution as the Loose Change crew prepare the cinematic release of the final version of their popular documentary...Alex Jones interviewed Rowe at a conference in Chicago last year, during which he exposed how CNN and the military would stage photo-ops to make it appear as if Al-Qaeda members were being killed in Afghanistan, along with a host of other cover-ups and atrocities...
MAS Boston held a press conference yesterday at the Moakley Federal Courthouse in Boston to express shock and dismay at the government’s actions against Imam Masood and other leaders from the Muslim community. Speaking at this press conference were the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Rabbi Barry Starr from Temple Israel in Sharon, Imam Abdullah Faaruuq from the Mosque for the Praising of Allah in Roxbury. The court room was packed beyond capacity and a crowd of over 45 supporters from the Muslim and other communities had gathered to support the Imam at the hearing on just a few hours notice. All of the Imams from the Greater Boston area also came in support. The Press conference was covered by the NPR and the Boston Globe, both of which gave good coverage to the story today..Our concern revolves around the fact that last Thursday, the US Attorney's Office, interrogated Imam Masood for six hours during which he was threatened with jail, "humiliation" and abandonment from the community, unless he "cooperated." Cooperation included answering questions about various respected mainstream leaders and organizations in the Boston Muslim community, many of whom are involved in a monthly dialogue project with law enforcement agencies called BRIDGES (Building Respect in Diverse Groups to Enhance Sensitivity). The goal of the questioning was apparently to seek incriminating information against community leaders even though it does not exist. The Imam did not have information which the US Attorney's office was apparently hoping for. He was then informed that he would be criminally charged in two days...
Zionism as Jewish National Socialism, by Lasse Wilhelmson
Zionism - more than traditional colonialism and apartheid
The Jewish colonisation of Palestine under the Zionist slogan "the land without people to the people without a land" started almost a hundred years ago and reached its first climax with the proclamation of The Jewish State of Israel in 1948. A second climax is now in the offing through the ongoing colonisation of the West Bank and Gaza..A Jewish state needs a substantial majority of Jews in the population. This has been insured by means of immigration, terror and expulsion of the native Palestine population. Jewish hegemony in Israel today is secured through a system of apartheid inherent in all aspects of Society, be it law, administration or religion. Israel lacks a constitution and fixed boarders, which is fully consistent with Zionism's call for continual expansion...
Misunderstanding Islam, by John Alden Williams
...I must be brief, and I want to talk about the most serious religious crisis of our time. It is the rift that certain fundamentalists--Christians, Jews and Muslims--are trying to open between Christianity and Islam, the two largest religions on the planet. Sadly, some people are seeking to foster hatred and religious war on both sides. The sort of misinformation that is being disseminated among Christians and Jews is quite alarming and distressing. Some of it is outright falsehood..For example, one thing you may hear today is that Muslims do not worship God, they worship something else called Allah. But Allah is simply the Arabic word for "God." It is closely related to the word for God, Alaha, in Aramaic, the language that Jesus and his disciples spoke, a language still spoken in a few areas in the Middle East. If you are an Arab Christian, or Arabic speaking Jew or Muslim, you pray to Allah. To question that is like arguing that French speakers don't worship God, they worship something else called "dieu". Muslims worship the God of Abraham, Moses and Jesus, and anyone who opens an English translation of the Qur'an will see that...
What is Antisemitism?, by Michael Neumann
Every
once in a while, some left-wing Jewish writer will take a
deep breath, open up his (or her) great big heart, and tell
us that criticism of Israel or Zionism is not antisemitism.
Silently they congratulate themselves on their courage. With
a little sigh, they suppress any twinge of concern that
maybe the goyim--let alone the Arabs--can't be trusted with
this dangerous knowledge..Sometimes it is gentile
hangers-on, whose ethos if not their identity aspires to
Jewishness, who take on this task. Not to be utterly
risqué, they then hasten to remind us that
antisemitism is nevertheless to be taken very seriously.
That Israel, backed by a pronounced majority of Jews,
happens to be waging a race war against the Palestinians is
all the more reason we should be on our guard. Who knows? it
might possibly stir up some resentment!..I take a different
view. I think we should almost never take antisemitism
seriously, and maybe we should have some fun with it. I
think it is particularly unimportant to the Israel-Palestine
conflict, except perhaps as a diversion from the real
issues. I will argue for the truth of these claims; I also
defend their propriety. I don't think making them is on a
par with pulling the wings off flies...
Should we consider a boycott of Israeli academic institutions? (British Medical Journal survey)
[anyone from anywhere can vote]
The "One State Solution" is the best solution, by Joel Bainerman
While the One State Solution(OSS) to solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is typically rejected outright as being a demographic threat to Israel- this approach could very well be the only viable path to solving the conflict...
The modern Muslim, by Steve Paulson (Salon)
Controversial scholar Tariq Ramadan explains why Mohammed had progressive views of women, why the Quran is a prescription for peace -- and why he is banned from Saudi Arabia and the U.S.
Why are there so few moderate Muslims speaking out against Islamic terrorism? That's a common complaint heard in the West, but in truth, plenty of Muslims are critical of suicide bombers. What's harder to find are Muslim leaders who condemn terrorism while also maintaining credibility among disaffected Muslims, and intellectuals who can appeal to both secular Europeans and Middle Eastern imams. That's why the Swiss-born Tariq Ramadan is such a compelling figure..Ramadan has been called the Muslim Martin Luther King, and he's often described as Europe's most important Muslim intellectual. He has no shortage of charisma -- a quality that serves him well as he reaches out to various constituencies. There's no doubt that Ramadan commands a large following. Hundreds of young Muslims turn up at his public talks, and tapes of his lectures are widely circulated. He travels frequently throughout the Islamic world, trying to build bridges between European Muslims and conservative clerics...
A day in the desert with Prince Alwaleed [the world's richest Arab]
The desert does different things to different people. Some fear the emptiness, some dread the loneliness, while others find happiness and serenity. None more so than HRH Prince Alwaleed, for whom the dunes are just another location from which to play the role of international dealmaker, global peacebroker and world philanthropist..."Islam is very sophisticated. It has been hijacked by a small minority who choose extremism but Islam is a very gentle religion. Islam loves Christianity. Islam loves Jewish people also, and you can quote me on that. But a small number of people hijacked our religion."...
'GOODNESS WILL PREVAIL': EMINENCES MEET IN JOHANNESBURG TO ADVANCE GLOBAL JUSTICE
Current of joy powers The Elders' peace gathering, by STEPHANIE NOLEN (Globe and Mail)
JOHANNESBURG -- The official order of business yesterday was the introduction of The Elders: convened at the request of Nelson Mandela, a collection of former leaders that has begun to work together to advance the causes of peace and global justice..Five Nobel Laureates and a handful of other eminences gathered on the stage in Johannesburg as Mr. Mandela announced that they would seek to fulfill the traditional role of elders in a village, providing wisdom and leadership and attempting to resolve conflicts, taking on everything from climate change to the fighting in Darfur...
Time for a New Palestinian Liberation Movement, by Tony Sayegh (Palestinian Pundit)
Let’s face it, the Palestinians are at a major decision point and the reality today is not what it was just a month ago. The forces amassed against them are preparing a major push to liquidate Palestinian rights, once and for all. There is nothing new in seeing the U.S., the E.U., the U.N. and the puppet Arab regimes conspiring for a final solution. What is new is the formation of a Vichy, collaborationist “government” that is working openly with the occupier to formalize this liquidation of Palestinian rights. It is true that the main quislings in this open collaboration are old faces who have been preparing for this day for sometime. What is new is their emergence in the open as a tool of the occupation, with no apologies or shame. Some of the collaboration used to take place quietly, behind closed doors, and if found out, used to be denied; no more. When the “old man” Arafat was around, this vermin did not dare to go this far in their collaboration and treason, and that is why they conspired with the Mossad to poison him...
China's delicate role on Darfur, by Jason Qian and Anne Wu (Boston Globe)
SOME IN the West have recently begun referring to the 2008 Beijing Olympics as the "Genocide Olympics" because of China's continued business ties with Sudan and its reluctance to intervene decisively in the Darfur conflict. Is China really turning a cold shoulder to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, or has the explosive charge of complicity in genocide blinded observers to China's aid and quiet diplomacy in Sudan?..
Poll Shows Low Global Opinion Of U.S. (CBS)
Not only has global disapproval of the United States and its policies worsened, but confidence in the international system and many of the world’s leaders has significantly dissipated as well..These conclusions, and many others on international affairs, are presented in the findings of an extensive survey by the Pew Research Center. Over 45,000 interviews were conducted in 47 countries for the “Global Attitudes Survey,” released Wednesday..Support for the U.S. and its policies has fallen, both in the Middle East as well as in countries that traditionally ally themselves with the U.S. Spain’s confidence in President Bush’s leadership, for instance, fell to 7 percent, the poll reveals. That abysmal approval rating wasn’t even what shocked former Senator and Ambassador John Danforth, who spoke at a press conference where the Pew report was presented..“When the plurality of people in Israel say the U.S. is too supportive [of their country], it’s as though the message is ‘we can’t do anything right to anybody ever,’” Danforth said...
Israel’s Primal Myth: A Barrier to Peace, by Barry Lando (truthdig)
Forget about Hamas, the wall, Gaza and the occupied territories. There can be no peace in the Middle East until Israel and the Palestinians deal with one key issue: the Palestinian demand that Israel recognize their right of return. That demand is based on the Arab charge that the Zionist state created the refugee problem in the war of 1948-49 by a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing. It’s an accusation that Israel’s leaders have consistently rejected. Jewish soldiers could never commit such crimes. It was the Arabs themselves, they say, who created the refugees..It has become increasingly evident, however, that the Israeli position is, in fact, a self-serving myth created when the Jewish state was born, perpetuated ever since by the country’s leaders and still blandly accepted by Washington...
Agency of Rogues, by Chalmers Johnson and Tom Engelhardt (TomDispatch)
The secret prison was set up on a secure U.S. naval base outside the U.S. and so beyond the slightest recourse to legal oversight. It was there that the CIA clandestinely brought its "suspects" to be interrogated, abused, and tortured..That description might indeed sound like Guantanamo 2002, but think again. According to New York Times reporter Tim Weiner's new history of the Central Intelligence Agency, Legacy of Ashes – a remarkable treasure trove of grim and startling information you hadn't known before – this actually happened first in the Panama Canal Zone in the early 1950s...This was but a small part of "Project Artichoke," a 15-year, multi-billion dollar "search by the CIA for ways to control the human mind."..No book in recent memory has done such a superb job of illuminating the roiling, disastrous, thoroughly destructive path through history of America's top covert-operations agency over the last six decades, what Chalmers Johnson has often called "the president's private army."...
For USA Today, Freedom of the Press Means the Right to Report It Wrong (CounterPunch)
...It is a historic occasion. An independent, blue-ribbon commission is to release its findings from an investigation into an internationally significant 36-year-old attack on a US Navy ship that left more than 200 American sailors killed or wounded..The commission consists of:
A former ambassador to one of the US’s most important alliesA US Navy rear admiral and former head of the Navy’s legal division
A Marine general, America’s highest ranking recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor and the former Assistant Commandant of Marines
A US Navy four-star admiral, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (the highest military position in the country), former Chief of Naval Operations, a World War II hero, and the only Naval admiral to have commanded both the Pacific and the Atlantic fleets
The panel is moderated by a former ambassador who served as Chief of Mission in Iraq and Deputy Director of Ronald Reagan's White House Task Force on Terrorism.
The commission announces explosive findings:
» That the attack, by a US ally, was a “deliberate attempt to destroy an American ship and kill her entire crew”» That the ally committed “acts of murder against American servicemen and an act of war against the United States”
» That the attack involved the machine-gunning of stretcher-bearers and life rafts
» That “the White House deliberately prevented the U.S. Navy from coming to the defense of the [ship]... never before in American naval history has a rescue mission been cancelled when an American ship was under attack”
» That surviving crewmembers were later threatened with “court-martial, imprisonment or worse” if they talked to anyone about what had happened to them; and were “abandoned by their own government”
» That due to the influence of the ally’s “powerful supporters in the United States, the White House deliberately covered up the facts of this attack from the American people”
» That due to continuing pressure by this lobby, this attack remains “the only serious naval incident that has never been thoroughly investigated by Congress”
» That “there has been an official cover-up without precedent in American naval history”
» That “the truth about Israel's attack and subsequent White House cover-up continues to be officially concealed from the American people to the present day and is a national disgrace”
» That “a danger to the national security exists whenever our elected officials are willing to subordinate American interests to those of any foreign nation...” and that this policy “endangers the safety of Americans and the security of the United States”
Newsworthy?
Not when Israel is the attacking nation. Not when Israel is the “ally” to whose interests American needs are said to be subverted...
“We shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.” - John Winthrop
America is being destroyed. Many Americans are unaware, others are indifferent, and some intend it. The destruction is across the board: the political and constitutional system, the economy, social institutions including the family itself, citizenship, and the character and morality of the American people..Those who rely on the Internet for information are aware that the Bush regime has successfully assaulted the separation of powers and civil liberty. Both Bush and Cheney claim that they are not bound by laws that impinge on their freedom of action or that interfere with their ideas of the power of their offices. Bush has issued presidential directives that permit him to make himself a dictator by declaring a national emergency. Cheney asserts that his handling of secret documents is not subject to oversight or investigation or bound by a presidential order governing the protection of classified information...
“We know things are bad. Worse than bad. They’re crazy”, by Mike Whitney (uruknet)
Americans don’t believe in revolution anymore. It has become a meaningless event in the distant past. But we need a revolution and we need it now. We need to remove the present administration and restore the people’s confidence in government..The Bush administration is not a government at all. We all know that. It is a crime family—an oligarchy of racketeers. They have no moral authority, no legitimacy, no right to govern. They’re criminals...
Dialogue is the only way forward, by Amira Hass, Haaretz
Even in this region, where diplomatic platitudes don't begin to disguise the preferential treatment afforded Israel (although it is the occupier), the mandate of the new Quartet envoy Tony Blair rings particularly hollow. His role is reported as being "to help create viable and lasting government institutions representing all Palestinians ... and a climate of law and order for the Palestinian people."..Internal Palestinian negotiations between Hamas and Fatah may yet stop the disintegration of the Palestinians' civil institutions and the complete severance between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, at the last moment. These institutions functioned during the most difficult times under Israeli military attacks, but started to crumble after January last year when the West, Israel and some Fatah elements tried in vain to topple a Hamas government founded on democratic elections...
[Editor's note (from Ziopedia): By now readers are well aware that the museum at Auschwitz has reduced by three million the estimate of the number of people who died at Auschwitz from all causes, including the Typhus epidemics that raged across Germany at the end of the war. Readers are also aware that when Rudolph Hoess confessed (under coercion) to war crimes at Nuremberg, he not only supposedly wrote and signed the confession in English (a language he did not speak) but claimed that Jews were murdered at Camp Wolzek, which never existed. Readers are aware that many claims made about the holocaust, such as the soap and lampshades stories, have been totally discredited and nobody takes them seriously any more. Readers are aware that so-called holocaust memoirs, such as "Fragments", have been exposed as hoaxes. Now attention has turned to Treblinka. And again serious doubts have surfaced.--Michael Rivero]
A tsunami has swept across the search engines, purging all but Zionist sites, universally claiming that 6 million Jews were butchered in "nazi death camps" between 1940 and 1945 and that all questioners are anti-semites. Why did Zionism feel it necessary to launder the search engines? Is the Holocaust vulnerable? What is the true history?...
Executive über alles as member of Homeland Security Committee barred from viewing post-terror attack provisions
President Bush's post-terror attack martial law plan is so shocking that even sitting members of Congress and Homeland Security officials are barred from viewing it, another example of executive über alles and a chilling portent of what is to come as constant reminders of the inevitability of terror attacks reverberate...
Bush’s Policy of Escalation May Extend Beyond Iraq, by Rachelle Marshall (WRMEA)
No one loves armed missionaries.—Robespierre, to the French National Assembly, 1791.
A RECENT COVER of the Economist magazine pictured George Bush as a demented cavalry officer waving a sword and shouting “Charge!” to the troops behind him as he rides his horse over a cliff. It is an apt illustration of current U.S. policy in the Middle East, where the Bush administration is escalating military action in two wars and threatening to launch a third..Harvard historian Stanley Hoffman warned in a November 2001 article for The New York Review of Books that a war directed against the Taliban would be the wrong response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Such an action, he wrote, “risks sending us into an Afghan quagmire of disastrous proportions, causing a huge new exodus of miserably poor people, and creating revulsion and perhaps revolt among the Pakistanis, or at least some faction of them.”...
Islamophobia: A Call to Confront a Creeping Disease (Middle East Online)
The last time a world religion was considered a problem and a question was in late-nineteenth-century Europe. Then, the ‘Jewish Question’ was widely debated by both the enlightened and bigots among European thinkers, says Louay Safi..President Bush reacting to the unearthing of the alleged bombing plot over the Atlant