Meet The New Honest Broker, Same As The Old Honest Broker--Lawrence of Cyberia & Bendip

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I often wonder what historians one hundred years from now will make of U.S. policy in the Middle East, a part of the world where vital U.S. national interests require good (or at least functional) relations with a variety of countries. In particular, how they will explain the strange phenomenon of potential leaders of the most powerful nation on earth having to genuflect before the advocates of one small, foreign nation in the Levant before they can hold high office.

It is a strange spectacle to see an Israeli, Jewish, Zionist member of the Knesset stand in front of that body on 3 June 2008 and say, as MK Avshalom Vilan did: "We're lying to ourselves for political reasons to make it impossible to reach a political solution in Jerusalem... Jerusalem will be the capital of the Palestinian state also." And then, just 24 hours later, to see a U.S. Presidential candidate having to stand up in front of AIPAC and mouth the rhetoric of the Israeli right about Jerusalem being Israel's "undivided" capital, just to prove himself worthy of elected office in the United States.

Good luck to them explaining that one in a way our great-grandchildren can understand.

Situation Reports: Iraq, UNICEF Humanitarian action update - Iraq, 11 Jun 2008

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Acute Watery Diarrhoea (AWD) is a serious public health risk during Iraq’s summer months. Outbreaks of diarrhoea diseases including cholera are likely due to debilitated water supply networks and failing sanitation infrastructure. This year there may be greater than normal outbreaks of diarrhoeal disease, possibly of epidemic proportions, including a second wave of cholera following on from summer 2007. Since the beginning of the year 203,570 AWD cases were reported, although none of the 98,609 stool samples tested positive for cholera.

Found on Gorilla Guides

Israel: Destroyer of Lives

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She is sitting atop what is left of her house--demolished by Israeli occupation forces in East Jerusalem. (AFP)

Found on Angry Arab Newservice

Nora Barrows-Friedman from Gaza

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For the three days I've been in Gaza I've heard nothing but horror stories. My friends, the journalists, the health workers, the students, the taxi drivers, the intellectuals, they all speak with a certain heaviness and a guttural frustration that gets trapped in the back of throats, in the smoke they exhale from chain-smoked cigarettes, over and over and over.

Last night I saw a friend, Mohammed, whom I haven't seen in three years and sadly lost touch with in between. Since I was here last, he got married, had a baby, and now has one more on the way. After a week-long trip to Europe last year as a part of his work with an international aid organization, he was held first for five days at the Cairo airport, in a small room with ten other Palestinians from Gaza, before they were transfered to a detention center and held for 60 days in al-Arish, in the seam zone between Egypt and Rafah crossing in southern Gaza. The Egyptians did this in an act of collaboration with the Israelis. With friends in the West Bank, the Jordanians use the same tactics of interrogation and humiliation at the border, but detention without reason doesn't happen. Yet.

But Mohammed said that he'd do it again, just to get out. He told me between cigarettes that he'd be happy to spend three days out in the world even if it meant another 60 days in an Egyptian detention center.

On a massive and wide-ranging scale, every single aspect of life in Gaza is punctuated by the Israeli occupation and the blockade. There are 1.5 million people here, trapped and hermetically sealed, in this 22-mile by 6-mile strip of devastated open-air prison compound. Fuel is scarce and the streets are thick with the soupy smoke of cooking gas, falafel oil and benzene as Israel's collective punishment policies force people to fill their cars with their families' gas rations.

This trickles down. Hospitals, grocery stores, butcheries, fishing boats, administrative centers, schools, factories, clinics, they all either run on generators or have been forced to quit operations altogether because of the fuel crisis. In the sewage treatment facilities, the fuel shortages mean that sewage plants can't operate at full capacity -- and remember, there are 1.5 million people here -- so millions of gallons of raw sewage are being dumped into the sea, untreated, making the ocean extremely toxic.

Giardia, dysentery, cholera -- diseases not known just five miles up the beach, in the cities of historic Palestine (some call it Israel), where toilets flush and water is safe to drink, where people lay in the mid-day sun getting tan and drinking pina coladas and speaking a language resurrected just in the last hundred years, unknown to the indigenous and dispossessed here in Gaza -- are now common. And once Palestinians get really sick, hospitals try to do all they can to alleviate the pain and eradicate the disease, but, as my friend told me, since the blockade began last summer, there are 95 medicines on the "blacklist" -- prohibited from entering Gaza.

The number one medicine that is becoming scarce? Try to guess.

I visited al-Awda hospital in the northern Gaza Strip. The pharmacist took me into his small supply warehouse and showed me around. He took me to the small shelf where they store all the anesthesia medications, and said that they have only a two-week supply left. Israel is banning anesthetics from reaching patients in Gaza, as well as chemotherapy and heart medications.

Banning anesthetics -- a sadistic, wretched, unbearable policy. It's clear that the Zionists want the Palestinians in Gaza to feel as much pain as possible, literally. "We can't even live month-to-month," the doctor told me. "We have to just live day by day, hour by hour."

We honor the doctors and medical workers at al-Awda. We praise their work. We pray that their ambulance, a donation from the Spanish government, has enough fuel to reach the injured in the next Israeli air strike or gunship attack or sniper assault.

It's hard not to lose sight. It's hard being here. It's painful to see friends and colleagues suffer like this, uncontrollably and unmitigated.

People can't hang on much longer. There is a collective buzzing in the bones. This is an untenable situation. Human beings should never have to live like this, oppressed and sickened and terrified and malnourished and imprisoned in the eastern Mediterranean, while up the beach a nuclear-saddled military occupier state congratulates itself for possessing the "most moral army in the world." Shame on Barack Obama for slithering up to Israel and its financial enablers.

So Palestinians in Gaza, 1.5 million people, the vast majority of them dependent on foreign aid, 60 percent unemployed and 100 percent depressed and traumatized in one way or another, keep struggling and looking up toward the endless sky. Even though the sea is toxic, they still swim and fish and fly kites above the waves. I am trying to figure out what it is that sustains them. Every time I ask someone how they cope, they smile and say, "Because I have to -- for my children, my spouse, myself."

A resilience, a steadfastness -- sumoud -- that we westerners can't even fathom.

Winning My Heart

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Palestinians

Winning Hearts and Minds (Again)

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Sgt. Kyle Hale of Yukon, Okla., 1-6 battalion, 2nd brigade, 1st Armored Division, hits a man as he contains an unruly crowd to protect another man who was nearly trampled, outside the Al Rasheed Bank in the Jamilah market in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City, Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday.

(June 10, 2008)

Associated Press

The Chimpanzee’s Farewell Yurpeen Tour

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What Obama Was Up to at AIPAC?

Tweet http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/991252.html

A year after U.S. President George W. Bush agreed to increase military aid to Israel by 25 percent, it now seems that all political obstacles that had prevented Democrats in Congress from coming on board and supporting the extra aid have been lifted.

Last June, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert convinced Bush of the need for additional military support in view of the growing strategic threats faced by Israel in the wake of the Second Lebanon War, in 2006.

Nonetheless, despite the president's commitment to an increase, an agreement was not finalized. Political and defense sources in Israel had said that the main reason for the delay stemmed from concerns among Democrats, who control both houses of Congress, that the additional defense aid would be credited to the Republicans during a major election year. Not only is the White House up for grabs in 2008, but also the House of Representatives and a third of all Senate seats.

In Israel, it had been hoped that the increased assistance would begin flowing as early as October 2008. The delay, however, is likely to defer certain plans in Israel by as much as two years, since the Bush administration is unable to find the time to deal with the issue during its final year in office.

Both Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni joined Olmert in trying to convince the Democrats to support increasing military assistance to Israel.

An agreement was finalized during Olmert's meeting last Thursday in Washington with the majority Democratic leadership and the minority Republicans in the Senate.

Among the systems Israel is keen to acquire with the extra assistance is the F-35 stealth attack fighter, the cost of which is estimated at $100 million each. Israel is also planning to spend at least $1 billion, partly with U.S. military assistance, in upgraded missile defense systems.

Drawing Your Last Breath Hungry -- Allen Nairn

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Portion below; whole thing here:
http://www.counterpunch.org/nairn06092008.html

No one really knows how many people died but the world press has made the point that it would have been far fewer if Burma had a better government.

The point could also be made, though, that far fewer still would have died if the world had a better system of producing and allocating its wealth.

It's hard to come up with solid figures but it seems safe to estimate that the entire disposable wealth of the Irrawaddy Delta before the storm, that of its' 3.5 million residents, could have been less than that of one table-full of diners at New York's Four Seasons Grill Room.

Actually, it's more dramatic than that.

Working with figures from Forbes magazine, the IMF, and the UNDP, it's possible to estimate that there are between three hundred and a thousand individuals whose accumulated wealth is so vast that any one of them alone could pay each person in the Irrawaddy Delta for a year, and in the case of the richest, like Warren Buffett, could do it for six decades running and still have billions left.

One could get a visualization of this notion and its implications when flying over the Netherlands. Looking down from the Royal Dutch Airline a few weeks after Irrawaddy sank, you could see another delta, a country with much land below sea level, but where long infusions of wealth -- much of it extracted from Southeast Asia by whip (see the histories of the Dutch East and West Indies Companies) -- have made possible the building, behind strong dikes, by the sea, of nice, glassy homes and offices.

A cyclone Nargis would have killed anywhere -- viz. the recent storms in the US midwest -- but whether you survive a storm depends in important part on whether you and your ancestors were rich or poor and were able to build good infrastructure (even in the US, see New Orleans).

So the rich world is right to flagellate the Burmese generals for holding back resources as people die (a BBC World TV interviewer yesterday called it "criminal neglect") but wrong to fail to note that they do the same thing daily, on a global, far more deadly, scale.

The rich do pass out some of their spare wealth during a cyclone or other covered crisis, but on a daily basis withhold enough of it such that 850 million people routinely go hungry.

The recent food price hike has upped that statistic by perhaps a hundred million, and so it is said that we are in a "food crisis" and that "the era of cheap food is over."

The world would indeed be in a food crisis if there were not enough food to feed the people. But that is not the case.

The problem is that many millions of people can't afford food. That, clearly, is not a food crisis, but rather a wealth crisis, more precisely a wealth distribution crisis that can be solved by shifts from rich to poor, and a crisis that can be kept from recurring if laws and economies are then modified to institutionalize a new, more realistic, system that doesn't happen to starve people -- an objective which, one would think, is a fairly modest, and perhaps popular, goal.

Today in Rome there is a world summit on food and there has been a political stir over an attempt to exclude Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's liberator and despot.

The point is made correctly that Mugabe runs a failed economic system that kills many people who could have been saved if he had made different choices.

But the same could also be said of a number of others at the summit -- those who run the world economy --, which is certainly failed from the point of view of those who draw their last breath hungry.

UN people from FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) and other agencies have also caused a flutter by talking about $50 billion, over many years, for various food projects, which is a tenfold increase but still less than the personal holdings of Buffett, Bill Gates, and Carlos Slim, who got quite rich essentially overnight when Mexico gave him its cell phone system. It's also what the US goes though in about five months of occupying Iraq, where child malnutrition has risen in rough correlation with precision bomb drops and Iraqui democracy.

If someone's dying and you have a dollar that could save them and you withhold it, you have killed them. It's so extreme it sounds ridiculous, but it happens to be true, and will continue to be true so long as surplus coexists with bodies living on the cliff of death, or, for the luckier young ones, the cliff of mere body stunting and underdevelopment of their brains.

The Truth by Mr. Fish

Tweet Found on Palestinian Pundit

Sardines With Your Bagel? [What's Happening to the World's Fish]

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Taras Grescoe is the author of “Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood.”

Portion below; whole thing here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/opinion/09grescoe.html?pagewanted=all

Heard this guy on KUOW a couple of weeks ago. Informative on the subject of failing fisheries.

What happened to the mighty chinook of the Pacific Northwest? Regional fisheries officials have blamed ocean conditions for a temporary decline in the plankton and small fish that juvenile salmon feed on. But most of the problem is man-made.

Spawning salmon need gravel streambeds and cold, fast-running water to lay their eggs. Giant pumps have been piping water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to towns and farms in California’s Central Valley, degrading river habitat and even sucking up young fish before they reach the sea. Farther north, dams on the Snake River have prevented egg-bearing fish from reaching streambeds inland.

Overfishing is also a factor; too many nets have been scooping up too many fish for too long. What’s more, higher water temperatures brought on by global warming prevent the eggs of spawning females from maturing. It’s not surprising that the only consistently healthy salmon runs left are those in the cold waters of Alaska.

The fact that salmon is still available in supermarkets, and is cheaper than it ever was, is no comfort. Ninety percent of the fresh salmon consumed in the United States is from farms, and I have come to believe that the farmed product is not a healthy alternative to wild.

Three Norwegian-owned companies dominate the salmon-farming industry in North America, and their offshore net-cages dot long stretches of the west coast of the Americas. In Chile, overcrowding in these oceanic feedlots led to this year’s epidemic of infectious salmon anemia, a disease that has killed millions of fish and left the flesh of survivors riddled with lesions.

The situation in Canada, which supplies the United States with 40 percent of its farmed salmon, is not much better. In British Columbia, offshore net-cages are breeding grounds for thumbtack-sized parasites called sea lice. In the Broughton Archipelago, a jigsaw of islands off the province’s central coast, wild pink salmon are infested with the crustaceans. Scientists think that the tens of millions of salmon in Broughton’s 27 Norwegian-owned farms are attracting sea lice and passing them on to wild fish, killing them. They say that this infestation could drive Broughton’s pink salmon to extinction by 2011.

To rid salmon of the lice, fish farmers spike their feed with a strong pesticide called emamectin benzoate, which when administered to rats and dogs causes tremors, spinal deterioration and muscle atrophy. The United States Food and Drug Administration, already hard-pressed to inspect imported Asian seafood for antibiotic and fungicide residues, does not test imported salmon for emamectin benzoate. In other words, the farmed salmon in nearly every American supermarket may contain this pesticide, which on land is used to rid diseased trees of pine beetles. It is not a substance I want in my body.

I avoid farmed salmon for other reasons. It takes four pounds of small fish like sardines and anchovies to make a single pound of farmed salmon, a process that deprives humans of precious protein. (Feedmakers have lately increased the proportion of soy in the pellets, which means the fish have even lower levels of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids.) Organic farmed salmon would be a good option, if the term meant something — outside Europe, there is still no credible, widely available eco-label for responsibly raised farmed salmon.

[You Are in] "The Big Squeeze"--Book Review

Tweet Portion below; whole thing here at Truthdig (found on Marxmail.org):
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/print/20080606_nicholas_von_hoffman_on_the_big_squeeze/

The portion below is about family life, but this article also has a lot about general demeaning of workers, including when Northwest Airlines suggested that laid-off workers should take up dumpster diving.

During the last 30 years of stagnation and decline for working Americans, the political party associated with business has been unrelenting in going after its Democratic rivals as the anti-family, pro-abortion, smut and homosexual party. This has netted that political party much mileage and many an election win, but all the queers and all the flits and all the gays in history lumped together cannot have had the deleterious effects on modern family life that low compensation and long hours have had.

The numbers cited by Greenhouse explain why: “ ... 59 percent of mothers with children under six do paid work and so do 55 percent with children under one, about half of them full time. One reason for today’s increased time bind ... is that in the modern middle-class American household, both parents taken together work 540 more hours per year—13.5 more weeks per year—than parents did a generation ago. In two out of three American families with small children in which both parents work, the couples work more than 80 total hours per week.”

Beyond compensating staff too little to enable parents to have the time to care for their children properly, employers are rigidly indifferent to the unforeseen crises and nasty surprises which inevitably attend the economically forced separation of children from their parents. To drive the point home, Greenhouse says: “Many employers do surprisingly little to help workers juggle work and family. Some retailers post their worker’s weekly schedules only a few days in advance, making it hard to plan child care. Many businesses require employees to work overtime at a moment’s notice, leaving many workers in a bind when their baby sitter is scheduled to leave. Nearly half of American workers are not entitled to paid sick days ... many workers risk getting fired when they stay home to care for the sick children.”

How the forced absence of parents plays into the continuing downward slide of academic accomplishments by millions of schoolchildren is beyond the scope of this book but not beyond our thinking. Two-, three- and four-job families are not in good shape to supervise homework, meet with teachers or uphold their end of the PTA. Children left to their own devices in this country fall prey to the advertising which whisks them off to game, movie, music, sneaker, celebrity, cell phone etc. land, where fun and entertainment obliterate three-quarters of their lives and instill in them sets of preferences and beliefs which keep many of them in ox-brained thralldom the rest of their existences.

One would have assumed such questions would have been a burning political issue these past 30 years, but far from it. Discussions of them have been boxed out and labeled as a woman’s issue or, worse, a feminist issue. At the same time, business executives and trade associations complain with increasing vehemence about the untaught, ignorant and under-motivated young people coming out of our high schools and colleges, yet their part in the numbing of youth goes undiscussed for fear anyone who might bring it up will be accused of waging class warfare.

Cartoon of Day from Palestine Think Tank

Tweet http://palestinethinktank.com/2008/06/08/cartoon-of-the-day-18/

Statement by Women of Zimbabwe Arise--June 8, 2008

Tweet 13 WOZA women and one man remain in custody ten days after being arrested on May 28th. They were participating in a demonstration calling on the government of Zimbabwe to stop the orchestrated violence in the run-up to the presidential run-off election. The women are being held at Chikurubi Prison, in the women’s remand section, while the man is held at Harare Remand Prison.

On May 30 they were admitted to bail in the magistrate’s court, but the State immediately indicated that they would appeal, and were given seven court days to file. The appeal will now be heard on Tuesday, June 10. However, the State has still not filed their papers, saying they will be filed on Monday, with the result that the lawyer from Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights acting on their behalf has not been able to view the State’s arguments opposing bail. Meanwhile all the accused appeared in the magistrate’s court on Friday June 6 and were routinely remanded until June 20. It is our hope however, that the State’s case against bail will fail when it is heard on the 10th, and all will be released.

The demonstration for which they were arrested took place in the context of escalating state-sponsored violence against the opposition MDC, a campaign designed to destroy party structures and intimidate voters not to support the opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai when the run-off election is held June 27th. More than 50 opposition activists have been killed, thousands have been tortured and injured and tens of thousands have been displaced from their homes, making it impossible for them to vote. WOZA was protesting against this violence when they were arrested. Since their arrest the violence has increased and many more victims have poured into clinics, hospitals, and morgues, homes have been burned and families displaced.

All of the arrested face charges of participating in a public gathering with the intent to provoke public violence. Jennifer Williams faces two additional counts of causing disaffection among the police and publishing false statements prejudicial to the state. The charges are based on legislation clearly in breach of the Zimbabwean constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. If they are brought to trial, the constitutionality of these sections of the law will be challenged.

In spite of the stringent conditions which exist in Zimbabwean prisons, all the WOZA members are in good spirits and strong in their commitment to resist oppression and work for social justice. They continue to be visited and taken food. When at the prison they are permitted to eat, but on the day they were taken to court they were refused food while other prisoners were eating, because they are “political”.

WOZA believes that in the current conditions no election can fairly reflect the will of the Zimbabwean people. ZANU PF was the clear loser in the March 29th elections but they continue to hold the people hostage. WOZA calls on the international community to recognize the need to find ways to stop the violence, and introduce a healing period under the auspices of an internationally-authorised transitional government. Only then will it be possible to return to a viable electoral process to determine the genuine wishes of the Zimbabwean people.

We also call on the international community to lend support to those WOZA and MOZA members brave enough to stand up publicly in their own terrorized nation to protest the violent actions of a ZANU PF government which has lost the mandate to rule.

Ohio Police Terrorized Longest Walk Women and Children

Tweet It looks like they need funds also.

CAMBRIDGE, Ohio -- Seated at the Longest Walk Northern Route camp in the woods, Marie Littlemoon, Mescalero Apache cook and walker, remembers how Columbus, Ohio police grabbed her, bruising her right arm, and terrified the preschoolers in the car, as the walkers walked the prayer near downtown Columbus.

Marie Littlemoon, 60-year-old grandmother, said she was shocked by the brutality of the officers and the way they terrified the children.

"I saw what I thought was a gun pointed at Michael Lane, which was a taser. The taser was only two to three feet from his face, pointed directly between his eyes.

"Immediately to the right, I saw four officers wrestle and throw Luv the Mezenger to the ground. The officers stepped on Luv's neck.

"I immediately got out of the car and began filming. When I tried to ask the officer to let my car with the children go, I was grabbed and spun around. So I kept videotaping the police officer verbally attacking Michael Lane.

"Michael remained very calm and explained we were a peaceful prayer walk. The children's mother tried to reach her children in the car. The police officers would not let her. So I stepped forward while she ran around the other side to get in. I was grabbed again and spun around again.

"At that point, the police were taking Luv to the paddy wagon. I started following and taking pictures, to make sure Luv did not get abused again.

"When I stepped off the sidewalk, they grabbed me again and yanked me back, which bruised my arm. I have a photo of that. The police finally agreed to meet us at the park. We encountered between 15 and 20 officers, waiting to form a blockade of the walk. Finally, the phone calls came in from the lieutenant and the walkers continued walking through Columbus."
As police attacked the walkers, police claimed the prayer walk was a protest and not permitted.
Michael Lane explained that the walkers had come more than 2,500 miles from California and had never been abused by anyone.

Israel: World's Biggest Terrorist State

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Bears Repeating: US World's Leading Jailer

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http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,23825933-401,00.html

THE US has 2.3 million people behind bars, more than any other country in the world and more than ever before in its history, Human Rights Watch says.

The number represented an incarceration rate of 762 per 100,000 residents, compared to 152 per 100,000 in Britain, 108 in Canada, and 91 in France, HRW said in a statement commenting on Justice Department figures released overnight.

"The new incarceration figures confirm the United States as the world's leading jailer,'' said David Fahti, HRW's US program director.

"Americans should ask why the US locks up so many more people than do Canada, Britain, and other democracies,'' he said.

The new figures show a sharp racial imbalance in the US prison population, with blacks outnumbering whites by six to one.

Nearly 11 per cent of black men aged 30-34 were in prison, according to Justice Department figures.

HRW said blacks in the US were12 times more likely to be sent to jail for drug-related crimes than whites, even though drug use among the two races was about the same.

"Although whites, being more numerous, constitute the large majority of drug users, blacks constitute 54 per cent of all persons entering state prisons with a new drug offence conviction,'' the rights group said.

Grand Ayatollah Mudaressi: Popular Revolution [if] U.S. Security Agreement Signed

Tweet Portion below; whole thing here (at Gorilla Guides): http://tiny.cc/6eXlN

Karbala, Jun8, (VOI)-A renowned Iraqi Shiite cleric on Sunday warned that a popular uprising may erupt if Iraq signs the long-term agreement with the U.S .

The proposed security agreement would cover the status of U.S troops in Iraq, control of Iraqi airspace and immunity for security contractors after United Nations resolution governing U.S forces in Iraq expires in December.

Speaking to reporters and clerics in Karbala, grand ayatollah Mohammed Taqqi al-Mudaressi said “the proposed security agreement between Iraq and the U.S lacks the overall and in-depth vision of Iraq’s general affairs”.

The cleric expected “the agreement would fail if the details of the deal remained as they are in the current draft”, adding “ signing the agreement came while Iraq is deprived of sovereignty under chapter seven of (the Security Council charter).

He branded the agreement as “ a sort of US blackmailimg and a sword strangling Iraqis”.
“Infringing Iraq’s sovereignty would not be in the U.S interests as a superpower because the agreement humiliates people’s dignity, pushing them to uprise and to start a new cycle of violence”, he pointed out.

Iraq’s independence is still limited by the legacy of UN sanctions and restrictions imposed on Iraq since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in the 1990s. Iraq has been considered a threat to international security and stability under Chapter Seven of the UN charter.

Influential Shiite clerics in Iraq and neighbouring Iran oppose the deal and have called it a move against their religion.

They have vowed to stage protests to force the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to roll back the deal which is expected to be concluded by the end of July.

Banned in the U.S.A. (Almost)

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Saree Makdisi in Washington Post ( via Angry Arab Newservice)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/06/AR2008060603066_pf.html

I didn't think America was a place where bookstores barred people for their viewpoints, until it happened to me, right here in Washington, D.C., the city of my birth.

I was scheduled to speak at Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse last month about my latest book, "Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation." My appearance was canceled when the bookstore owners realized that my book concludes by questioning the viability of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead it proposes a single democratic, secular and multicultural state in which Israelis and Palestinians live peacefully as citizens with equal rights.

"I do not believe that your book will further constructive debate in the United States," one of the owners wrote to me in an e-mail. "A single state is not a solution." I was dismayed that my invitation was rescinded because I express a different point of view from the one sanctioned by a supposedly independent bookstore. Yet the cancellation seems to fit into a larger pattern of nationwide censorship about this issue.

Stanford professor Joel Beinin had been invited to speak about Israel and Palestine at a Silicon Valley school last year; his appearance was canceled when the school was criticized for booking the event. Tony Judt of New York University was invited to speak about Israel and Palestine at the Polish Consulate in New York last fall; his talk was canceled after the consulate came under pressure from the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee.

The fact that senior scholars are prevented from speaking in well-known forums because they do not toe an official line suggests that the civic culture on which our country was founded has broken down, at least when it comes to Palestine and Israel.

Yet citizens can object to the muzzling of ideas. After receiving letters of protest and eloquent entreaties by bloggers, Politics and Prose decided last week to reissue my invitation. This reversal is an important step forward but questions still linger. Can we afford not to hear each other out as we evaluate our Middle East policies? Should Palestinians not be allowed to speak unless their erstwhile audience gets to tell them what to say? What, then, is the point of a conversation? What is the alternative to conversation?

What is so unspeakably wrong with saying that justice, secularism, tolerance and equality of citizens -- rather than privileges granted on the basis of religion -- should be among the values of a state?

-- Saree Makdisi

Los Angeles

The writer is a professor of English literature at

UCLA.

Palestinian Rivals Step Towards Reducing Rift

Tweet http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42692
by Norah Barrows--Friedman (via Uruknet)

GAZA CITY, Jun 6 (IPS) - In the early hours of Friday morning, Israeli warplanes targeted a Hamas-run security post in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, injuring 29 Palestinian civilians, according to Gaza medical sources. In the Eastern Gaza City neighbourhood of al-Shuja'iya, a 27-year-old man was shot dead by Israeli special forces during another invasion.

As the Israeli military invasions and attacks continue unabated in the occupied Gaza strip, movement towards a so-called Palestinian national unity government seem possible, according to local politicians.

On Thursday, Palestinian National Authority (PNA) Prime Minister Ismayil Haniyeh of the Hamas party extended an open invitation to PNA President Mahmoud Abbas, saying that Hamas's hand "reached out" to the Fatah party to hold talks on national dialogue, reconciliation and political unity.

Abbas had said on Wednesday that he hoped to "restart" unity talks with the elected government of Hamas, a political body that has been isolated and branded a terrorist organisation by the United States and Israel since its democratic election in January 2006.

"With the speech that Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) delivered on June 4th, it was a breakthrough," Ahmad Yousuf, top political advisor to Haniyeh in the Hamas foreign ministry, told IPS. "On Thursday, the Prime Minister delivered a speech responding to Abu Mazen. I hope that with Abu Mazen's step forward, Haniyeh will give two more steps forward, and we can meet in the middle. This could be the beginning of the reconciliation of the rift between Fatah and Hamas."

But some Palestinians on the streets of Gaza City seem wary of this move, particularly because of U.S.-Israeli support of Fatah and that party's history of offering political concessions to Israel in negotiations.

"Until now, neither Hamas nor Fatah have made any kinds of compromises, nor talked about what conditions they have (for political unity) -- it's like no one has had the good of the people in mind as a priority," said Basima Ghalayini, a Gaza City-based unemployed information technology graduate.

"If the Palestinian people were the priority, instead of Western interests, (Hamas and Fateh) would have reached a solution by now. Fateh should work together with Hamas. And they should work towards the immediate issues, such as the civil divisions within the West Bank and Gaza. We have little land as it is; we can't divide it even more."

Clashes began between the rival parties in Gaza after the 2006 elections. Since June 2007 when Hamas took over Gaza, faced with a severe economic blockade, regular Israeli attacks all over the strip, and internal fighting, over 400 Palestinians have been killed and thousands injured. With little fuel and scarce supplies being allowed through the industrial crossings into Gaza, many Palestinians view the ongoing Israeli military and economic siege as collective punishment and a broad-based move to isolate Hamas and weaken popular support for it.

Yet with a political corruption scandal surrounding Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, along with the Western marginalisation of Hamas, politicians in Gaza say that party unification can only help their cause in future so-called peace negotiations.

"I hope that after Abu Mazen stood with (U.S. President George) Bush last month at the Israeli Knesset, he had a chance to review his policy and not to count on the Israelis and the Americans -- that's the only way he could continue the negotiations with the Israelis. He could bridge the gap between Fatah and Hamas and build unity. This will help him in future negotiations. This is the ultimate goal," Yousef told IPS.

"But we're all living in a crisis, and we have to move towards each other, to help Palestinians restore their dignity and continue their struggle so as not to be stuck between a rock and a hard place."

IPS asked Yousef about Hamas's plans if a unity government moves forward. "The position we have taken," Yousef said, "is that we are not going to compromise our rights or any Palestinian national rights. We will try to mobilise our people and defend our rights, and not to give Israel any concessions." (END/2008)

Uri Avnery on Obama: No I Can't

Tweet BARACK STAR OF DAVID: Barack Obama sports a US/Israel flag pin (he never wears an American flag pin) in DC after addressing AIPAC and saying, "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."


Found on Palestinian Pundit
Portion below; whole thing here: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1212871846

Along comes Obama and retrieves from the junkyard the outworn slogan "Undivided Jerusalem, the Capital of Israel for all Eternity". Since Camp David, all Israeli governments have understood that this mantra constitutes an insurmountable obstacle to any peace process. It has disappeared - quietly, almost secretly - from the arsenal of official slogans. Only the Israeli (and American-Jewish) Right sticks to it, and for the same reason: to smother at birth any chance for a peace that would necessitate the dismantling of the settlements.

In prior US presidential races, the pandering candidates thought that it was enough to promise that the US embassy would be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. After being elected, not one of the candidates ever did anything about this promise. All were persuaded by the State Department that it would harm basic American interests.

Obama went much further. Quite possibly, this was only lip service and he was telling himself: OK, I must say this in order to get elected. After that, God is great.

But even so the fact cannot be ignored: the fear of AIPAC is so terrible, that even this candidate, who promises change in all matters, does not dare. In this matter he accepts the worst old-style Washington routine. He is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future - if and when he is elected president.

SIXTY FIVE years ago, American Jewry stood by helplessly while Nazi Germany exterminated their brothers and sisters in Europe. They were unable to prevail on President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to do anything significant to stop the Holocaust. (And at that same time, many Afro-Americans did not dare to go near the polling stations for fear of dogs being set on them.)

What has caused the dizzying ascent to power of the American Jewish establishment? Organizational talent? Money? Climbing the social ladder? Shame for their lack of zeal during the Holocaust?

The more I think about this wondrous phenomenon, the stronger becomes my conviction (about which I have already written in the past) that what really matters is the similarity between the American enterprise and the Zionist one, both in the spiritual and the practical sphere. Israel is a small America, the USA is a huge Israel.

The Mayflower passengers, much as the Zionists of the first and second aliya (immigration wave), fled from Europe, carrying in their hearts a messianic vision, either religious or utopian. (True, the early Zionists were mostly atheists, but religious traditions had a powerful influence on their vision.) The founders of American society were "pilgrims", the Zionists immigrants called themselves "olim" - short for olim beregel, pilgrims. Both sailed to a "promised land", believing themselves to be God's chosen people.

Both suffered a great deal in their new country. Both saw themselves as "pioneers", who make the wilderness bloom, a "people without land in a land without people". Both completely ignored the rights of the indigenous people, whom they considered sub-human savages and murderers. Both saw the natural resistance of the local peoples as evidence of their innate murderous character, which justified even the worst atrocities. Both expelled the natives and took possession of their land as the most natural thing to do, settling on every hill and under every tree, with one hand on the plow and the Bible in the other.

True, Israel did not commit anything approaching the genocide performed against the Native Americans, nor anything like the slavery that persisted for many generations in the US. But since the Americans have repressed these atrocities in their consciousness, there is nothing to prevent them from comparing themselves to the Israelis. It seems that in the unconscious mind of both nations there is a ferment of suppressed guilt feelings that express themselves in the denial of their past misdeeds, in aggressiveness and the worship of power.

HOW IS it that a man like Obama, the son of an African father, identifies so completely with the actions of former generations of American whites? It shows again the power of a myth to become rooted in the consciousness of a person, so that he identifies 100% with the imagined national narrative. To this may be added the unconscious urge to belong to the victors, if possible.

Therefore, I do not accept without reservation the speculation: "Well, he must talk like this in order to get elected. Once in the White House, he will return to himself."

I am not so sure about that. It may well turn out that these things have a surprisingly strong hold on his mental world.

Of one thing I am certain: Obama's declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people.

If he sticks to them, once elected, he will be obliged to say, as far as peace between the two peoples of this country is concerned: "No, I can't!"

Of War Criminals and War Criminals--Bill Blum's Anti Empire Report

Tweet Scott McClellan has been criticized for not expressing his reservations about Bush administration policies while still at the White House. This would have indeed taken a measure of courage few people have, and likely meant his job and career committing suicide. I'm reminded of Carla Del Ponte, the Swiss diplomat who in 1999 became Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, located in The Hague, Netherlands. In accordance with her official duties, she looked into possible war crimes of all the participants in the conflicts of the 1990s surrounding the breakup of Yugoslavia and the NATO (read the United States) 78-day bombing of Serbia and its province of Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians were trying to secede. In late December 1999, in an interview with The Observer of London, Del Ponte was asked if she was prepared to press criminal charges against NATO personnel (and not just against the former Yugoslav republics). She replied: "If I am not willing to do that, I am not in the right place. I must give up my mission."

The Tribunal then announced that it had completed a study of possible NATO crimes, declaring: "It is very important for this tribunal to assert its authority over any and all authorities to the armed conflict within the former Yugoslavia."

Was this a sign from heaven that the new millennium (2000 was but a week away) was going to be one of more equal international justice? Could this really be?

No, it couldn't. From official quarters, military and civilian, of the United States and Canada, came disbelief, shock, anger, denials ... "appalling" ... "unjustified". Del Ponte got the message. Her office quickly issued a statement: "NATO is not under investigation by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. There is no formal inquiry into the actions of NATO during the conflict in Kosovo."[3]

Del Ponte remained in her position until the end of 2007, leaving to become the Swiss ambassador to Argentina; at the same time writing a book about her time with the Tribunal -- "The Hunt: Me and War Criminals", published two months ago but available at the moment only in Italian. It hasn't been much reported yet what del Ponte has said about NATO, but the book has already created a scandal in Europe, for in it she reveals how the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) abducted hundreds of Serbs in 1999, and took them to Kosovo's fellow Muslims in Albania where they were killed, their kidneys and other body parts then removed and sold for transplant in other countries.

The KLA for years has been engaging in other equally charming activities, such as heavy trafficking in drugs, trafficking in women, various acts of terrorism, and carrying out ethnic cleansing of Serbs who have had the bad fortune to be in Kosovo because it's long been their home. Between 1998 and 2002, the KLA appeared at times on the State Department terrorism list; at first because of its tactic of targeting innocent Serb civilians in order to provoke retaliation from Serbian troops; later because Mujahadeen mercenaries from various Islamic countries, including some tied to al Qaeda, were fighting alongside the KLA, as they were in Bosnia with the Bosnian Muslims during the 1990s Yugoslav civil wars.[4] The KLA remained on the terrorist list until the US decided to make them an ally, in some measure due to the existence of a major American military base in Kosovo, Camp Bondsteel. (It's remarkable, is it not, how these bases pop up all around the world?) In November 2005, following a visit there, Alvaro Gil-Robles, the human rights envoy of the Council of Europe, described the camp as a "smaller version of Guantanamo", referring to the detainees there at the time from Washington's various wars, including the so-called War on Terror.[5]

On February 17 of this year, in a move of highly questionable international legality, the KLA declared the independence of Kosovo from Serbia. The next day the United States recognized this new "nation", thus affirming the unilateral declaration of independence of a part of another country's territory. The new country has as its prime minister a gentleman named Hashim Thaci, described in Del Ponte's book as the brain behind the abductions of Serbs and the sale of their organs. The new gangster state of Kosovo is supported by Washington and other Western powers who can't forgive Serbia-Yugoslavia-Milosevic -- "the last communists of Europe" -- for not wanting to wholeheartedly embrace the NATO/US/European Union triumvirate, which recognizes no higher power, United Nations or other. The independent state of Kosovo is regarded as reliably pro-west, a state that will serve as a militarized outpost for the triumvirate, which is intent on further encircling Russia and pushing it out of Europe.

In her book, Del Ponte asserts that there was sufficient evidence for prosecution of Kosovo Albanians involved in war crimes, but the investigation "was nipped in the bud", focusing instead on "the crimes committed by Serbia." She claims that she could do nothing because it was next to impossible to collect evidence in Kosovo, which was swarming with criminals, in and out of the government. Witnesses were intimidated, and even judges in The Hague were afraid of the Kosovo Albanians.

In April, the Swiss Foreign Department issued a statement that Del Ponte's book "contains statements which are impermissible for a representative of the government of Switzerland", ordered her to return to her ambassadorial post in Argentina, and prohibited any further appearances promoting her book. The Swiss have officially recognized the independence of Kosovo and established an embassy in the country. Kosovo appears likely to remain a highly controversial issue in Europe and Washington for some time to come.[6]

Israel Response to Fatal Attack Kills 1 [CHILD!]

Tweet NYTimes lies by only telling part of the story in its headline. Portion below; whole thing here: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

JERUSALEM (AP) -- An Israeli missile aimed at a group of militants struck a house and killed a 6-year-old Palestinian girl Thursday, Palestinian officials said, hours after an Israeli was killed by a Hamas mortar barrage fired from the area.

The sudden spike in violence dealt a new setback to Egyptian efforts to mediate a truce between Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers, and raised the likelihood of a tough Israeli military reprisal.

The Israeli army confirmed the aerial attack and said it had hit a ''gunman.''

But Hamas security officials said the missile missed a group of militants and struck a nearby house. The Palestinian girl, who was playing outside, was killed and her mother was wounded, said Dr. Moaiya Hassanain of the Palestinian Health Ministry.

The airstrike came shortly after Gaza's Hamas rulers claimed responsibility for the deadly mortar attack in southern Israel. The mortar shells were fired from the same area targeted in the airstrike, the army said.

Canadian Parliament Votes to Let U.S. War Resisters Stay

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Canadian Parliament votes to let US war resisters stay
The Canadian Parliament passed an historic motion today, June 3, 2008, that calls on the Canadian government to make a program to allow US war resisters to apply for permanent resident status in Canada and to cease all deportation and removal proceedings against US war resisters.
The next step is to write to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Diane Finley, and prime minister Stephen Harper to ensure that they that the will of Parliament is implemented.

Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Diane Finley
phone 613.996.4974
fax 613.996.9749
email finley.d@parl.gc.ca and finled1@parl.gc.ca

Prime Minister Stephen Harper
phone 613.992.4211
fax 613.941.6900
email pm@pm.gc.ca

Iraq Says Likely to Miss Deadline For U.S. Pact

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http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-iraq-forces.html
By REUTERS

Filed at 12:54 p.m. ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A July target for negotiating an agreement on future relations between Iraq and the United States is likely to be missed, an Iraqi government spokesman said on Tuesday.

U.S. and Iraqi officials began talks in March on twin agreements on the status of U.S. military forces in Iraq after 2008 and a strategic framework agreement that defines long-term bilateral ties.

Washington has said it aims to wrap up the talks by July, but Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said that was unlikely to happen.

"I don't think that we can meet this date. There is a difference in viewpoints between Iraq and the U.S. I don't think that time is enough to end this gap and to reach a joint understanding ... Therefore, we are not committed to July as a deadline," he told al-Arabiya television.

He also said Iraq was looking into possible alternatives if it could not reach agreement with the United States on their long-term relations, but he gave no details.

The talks have angered many Iraqis who suspect the United States, which led the 2003 invasion of Iraq and has around 155,000 troops in the country, of wanting to keep a permanent presence there.

(Reporting by Waleed Ibraham and Khaled al-Ansari; Writing by Adrian Croft; Editing by Charles Dick)

Soldiers Discuss "Drop Weapons" to Cover Up Murders of Iraqi Civilians--ANP News Project (Palestinian Pundit)

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And the Winner Is... The Israel Lobby -- Pepe Escobar

Tweet Portion below; whole thing here:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20026.htm

02/06/08 "Asia Times" -- - WASHINGTON - They're all here - and they're all ready to party. The three United States presidential candidates - John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Madam House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Most US senators and virtually half of the US Congress. Vice President Dick Cheney's wife, Lynne. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. And a host of Jewish and non-Jewish political and academic heavy-hitters among the 7,000 participants.

Such star power wattage, a Washington version of the Oscars, is the stock in trade of AIPAC - the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the crucial player in what is generally known as the Israel lobby and which holds its annual Policy Conference this week in Washington at which most of the heavyweights will deliver lectures.

Few books in recent years have been as explosive or controversial as The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, written by Stephen Walt from Harvard University and John Mearsheimer from the University of Chicago, published in 2007. In it, professors Walt and Mearsheimer argued the case of the Israeli lobby not as "a cabal or conspiracy that 'controls' US foreign policy", but as an extremely powerful interest group made up of Jews and non-Jews, a "loose coalition of individuals and organizations tirelessly working to move US foreign policy in Israel's direction".

Walt and Mearsheimer also made the key point that "anyone who criticizes Israeli actions or says that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle East policy stands a good chance of being labeled an anti-Semite". Anyone for that matter who "says that there is an Israeli lobby" also runs the risk of being charged with anti-Semitism.

All the candidates in the House say yeah
Republican presidential candidate McCain is opening this year's AIPAC jamboree; Clinton and Obama are closing it on Wednesday. Walt and Mearsheimer's verdict on the dangerous liaisons between presidential candidates and AIPAC remains unimpeachable: "None of the candidates is likely to criticize Israel in any significant way or suggest that the US ought to pursue a more evenhanded policy in the region. And those who do will probably fall by the wayside."

Take what Clinton said in February at an AIPAC meeting in New York: "Israel is a beacon of what's right in a neighborhood overshadowed by the wrongs of radicalism, extremism, despotism and terrorism." A year before, Clinton was in favor of sitting and talking to Iran's leadership.

And take what Obama said in March at an AIPAC meeting in Chicago; no reference at all to Palestinian "suffering", as he had done on the campaign trail in March 2007. Obama also made it clear he would do nothing to alter the US-Israeli relationship.

No wonder AIPAC is considered by most members of the US Congress as more powerful than the National Rifle Association or the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.

AIPAC has explicit Zionist roots. The founder, "Si" Kenen, was head of the American Zionist Council in 1951. The body was reorganized as a US lobby - the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs - in 1953-4, and then renamed AIPAC in 1959. Under Tom Dine, in the 1970s, it was turned into a mass organization with more than 150 employees and a budget of up to US$60 million today. Dine was later ousted because he was considered not hawkish enough.

The top leadership - mostly former AIPAC presidents - is always more hawkish on the Middle East than most Jewish Americans. AIPAC only dropped its opposition to a Palestinian state - without endorsing it - when Ehud Barak became Israeli prime minister in 1999.

AIPAC keeps a very close relationship with an array of influential think-tanks, like the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Security Policy, the Hudson Institute, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the Middle East Forum, the The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Sprinkled neo-cons in these think-tanks can be regarded as a microcosm of the larger Israel lobby - Jews and non-Jews (It's important to remember that Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser and five other neo-cons drafted the infamous "A Clean Break" document to Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996 - the ultimate road map for hardcore regime change all over the Middle East.)

The house that AIPAC built
AIPAC in the US Congress is a rough beast indeed. Former president Bill Clinton defined it as "stunningly effective". Former speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich called it "the most effective general-interest group across the entire planet". The New York Times as "the most important organization affecting America's relationship with Israel". Embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, before his involvement in a corruption scandal, said. "Thank God we have AIPAC, the greatest supporter and friend we have in the whole world."

AIPAC maintains a virtual stranglehold over the US Congress. Critics of the Israel lobby other than Walt and Mearsheimer also contend that AIPAC essentially prevents any possibility of open debate on US policy towards Israel. Compare it with a 2004 report by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board, according to which "Muslims do not hate our freedom, but rather they hate our policies".

Lieberman's Liebschen--Yikes! Hagee Strikes Again

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Portion below; whole thing here:
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters/325628

On March 16, 2003, on the eve of the United States' invasion of Iraq, Pastor John Hagee took to the pulpit to warn of the coming Antichrist. In his sermon, "The Final Dictator," Hagee described the Antichrist as a seductive figure with "fierce features." He will be "a blasphemer and a homosexual," the pastor announced. Then, Hagee boomed, "There's a phrase in Scripture used solely to identify the Jewish people. It suggests that this man [the Antichrist] is at least going to be partially Jewish, as was Adolph Hitler, as was Karl Marx."

This "fierce" gay Jew, according to Hagee, would "slaughter one-third of the Earth's population" and "make Adolph Hitler look like a choirboy."

From the Nakba to Absurdistan -- Sharif Hamadeh

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A man pleads with an Israeli soldier detaining a child during an Israeli military operation into the West Bank city of Qalqiliya, May 2008. (Khaleel Reash/MaanImages)

Portion below; whole thing here:
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9575.shtml

Commemorating the Nakba means recognizing that 60 years of Israeli independence also marks 60 years of Palestinian dispossession; that 60 years of Israeli statehood also marks 60 years of Palestinian statelessness; and that 60 years of Jewish freedom in Israel also marks 60 years of unfreedom for Palestinians.

It was not always clear that Palestinians would remember themselves. One of the most widely repeated quotes attributed to David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, captures his dismissal of Palestinian pre-existence in what became Israel. "The old will die and the young will forget," he reputedly said. This was only half right: four generations of refugees later, we have not forgotten.

From Beit Lahiya to Beirut, from Nablus to New York, and from Lydd to London, we still remember. We remember how our homeland was partitioned against the will of the majority. We remember how our families fled in fear of massacre and rape, with thousands forced out by Zionist militias. And we remember that while the 1948 War for Palestine wiped our country off the map, it failed to erase our peoplehood.

The act of remembering is in this sense also an act of resistance. We refuse to submit; we decline to disappear; we reject the whiting out of our indigeneity. Through small acts of cultural resistance at home and in exile, we are reclaiming our history.

The establishment of the Nakba Archive, by Palestinians in Lebanon, is a case in point. The Archive, a fraction of which was screened in London's Palestine Film Festival, collates video testimonies from survivors of the 750,000 Palestinians who became refugees in the 1948 War. Currently, it boasts approximately 1,000 hours of interviews conducted with some 500 refugees from over 130 villages. It also maintains an excellent website at www.nakba-archive.org.

A similar project has been initiated in Israel itself, where filmmaker Raneen Geries has recorded testimonies of Palestinian women who were internally displaced in the 1948 War. Just as the fact that Israeli forces destroyed and depopulated over 500 Palestinian villages in the war is little known outside the Arab world, so the history of the internal displacement of approximately 40,000 Palestinians within Israel has been largely silenced. Projects like these are of vital importance because they genuinely give a voice to the voiceless.

But these projects also remind us of a disquieting truth: the Nakba is not over. There are echoes of 1948 among the recent waves of forced migration from conflicts in Iraq and Lebanon, where Palestinian families became refugees for a second, third or even fourth time.

From Empire Burlesque--An Agony Foretold

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http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php

Long before the Nabka, long before the Holocaust, the present-day agony in Israel and Palestine had already taken root. The ineradicable core of the conflict is brutally simple: the attempt by one people to take another people's land. In this respect, the turmoil in the Middle East is just another chapter in one of the world's oldest stories, for human beings have always been about the bloody business of conquest, dispossession and domination. The United States, for example, was built on this ancient principle. Its settling was cast largely in the same terms as those used later by the Zionists in Palestine: the claiming and cultivation of a land that was essentially empty -- save for a few savages who could only benefit from the imposition of a superior civilization. (And if they couldn't, so much the worse for them.)

The nascent Americans were fortunate, of course; they land they took was far less populated than it had been not long before. Large swathes of the native populations had been decimated by waves of epidemics, most sparked by contact with the earliest European explorers in the 16th century. By the time that large-scale settlement began in the 17th and 18th centuries, vast regions of North America had been emptied of its population, whole tribes had had been wiped out, and most others left enfeebled, their social, cultural and demographic shattered. Even so, there were still millions of Indians left in the "New World," and it took centuries of war and deceit before they were finally driven off all of the lands that the Europeans wanted.

The Zionist movement was less fortunate in this respect. In relative terms, the Arab population of Palestine was much more numerous and more intact than the Indian tribes of North America. And the specifically Jewish character of the settlement project meant the number of settlers would always be small; it could not draw upon all the peoples of the world, as in North America, and thus would never overwhelm the natives by sheer weight of numbers. Indeed, the opposite is true: the demographic environment in Palestine is entirely in the natives' favor -- a stark fact, and a stark fear that underlies much of the brutality and harshness of present-day Israeli policy.

But as we said, this is an old story: people want someone's land; those in current possession of that land -- which their ancestors might well have taken from someone else at some point -- try to hold on to their land. Conflict is inevitable -- and entirely predictable, although the land-grabbers often delude themselves about the ease -- and nobility -- of their quest.

As Rabbi David Goldberg pointed out in an important article in the Guardian recently, the dangers and difficulties of imposing one's people on another people's land were painfully obvious to many Jewish thinkers in the early years of the Zionist movement. Goldberg unearths a forgotten history, and forgotten warnings from one of the leading opponents of Zionism, Achad Ha'am, the Hebrew pen name of Ahser Ginsberg, "the intellectual doyen of Russian Jewry and mentor to a galaxy of talented younger admirers. He was also the bitter rival and implacable critic of Theodor Herzl, who announced after his starring role at the first Zionist Congress in 1897: 'At Basel I founded the Jewish state.' Ha'am noted, 'At Basel I sat solitary among my friends, like a mourner at a wedding feast.'" Goldberg takes up the story:

In 1891, Ha'am had made his first visit to the Jewish settlements in Palestine. It resulted in an important essay, The Truth from the Land of Israel. What distinguished his report from the gushing accounts of other Jewish visitors was the sober realism with which he noted the many problems. High among them was the existence of an indigenous population. "We tend to believe abroad that Palestine is nowadays almost completely deserted, an uncultivated wilderness, and anyone can come there and buy as much land as his heart desires. But in reality this is not the case. It is difficult to find anywhere in the country Arab land which lies fallow."

Ha'am makes short work of the argument that lesser breeds can be duped about Zionist intentions and bought off with the benefits of colonialism. "The Arab, like all Semites, has a sharp mind and is full of cunning ... [They] understand very well what we want and what we do in the country, but ... at present they do not see any danger for themselves or their future in what we are doing and therefore are trying to turn to their advantage these new guests ... But when the day will come in which the life of our people in the Land of Israel will develop to such a degree that they will push aside the local population by little or by much, then it will not easily give up its place."

In contrast, Herzl has the Arab spokesman in his utopian novel Altneuland (Old-new land) proclaim that Jewish settlement had been a blessing. Landowners have gained from higher prices, peasants from regular employment and welfare benefits. "The Jews have made us prosperous, why should we be angry with them? They live with us as brothers, why should we not love them?"

Ha'am has no truck with such wishful thinking. The behaviour of settlers disturbed him. They had not learned from experience as a minority, but, like a slave who has become king, "behave towards the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, infringe upon their boundaries, hit them shamefully without reason, and even brag about it". The Arab did indeed respect strength, but only when the other side used it justly. When his opponent's actions were unjust and oppressive, then "he may keep his anger to himself for a time ... but in the long run he will prove to be vengeful and full of retribution". Prophetic words.

In 1913, after a correspondent had complained of the contemptuous attitude of settlers and the Zionist Organisation's Palestine Office, Ha'am wrote back, "When I realise that our brethren may be morally capable of treating another people in this fashion and of crudely abusing what is sacred to them, then I cannot but reflect: if such is the situation now, how shall we treat others if one day we actually become the rulers of Palestine?"

Now we know. But as Goldberg shows, those who want to know -- those who want to deal with reality and not with dreams and prejudice -- can see from the very beginning the bitter fruits that conquest and domination will bear.

Cowardice of Silence by John Pilger

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Writing about Aung San Suu Kyi and other things.
Portion below; whole thing here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/31/burma.humanrights

Where are the voices of those in governments and their related institutions who know how to help Burma? Where are the honest brokers who once eased the oppressed away from their shadows, the true and talented peacemakers who see societies not in terms of their usefulness to "interests" but as victims of it? Where are the Dennis Hallidays and Hans von Sponecks who rose to assistant secretary-general of the UN by the sheer moral force of their international public service?

The answer is simple. They are all but extinguished by a virus called the "war on terror". Where once men and women of good heart and good intellect and good faith stood in parliaments and world bodies in defence of the human rights of others, there is now cowardice. Think of the parliament at Westminster, which cannot even cajole itself into holding an inquiry into the criminal invasion of Iraq, let alone to condemn it and speak up for its victims. Last year, 100 eminent British doctors pleaded with the minister for international development, then Hilary Benn, for emergency medical aid to be sent to Iraqi children's hospitals: "Babies are dying for want of a 95 pence oxygen mask," they wrote. The minister turned them down flat.

I mention that because medical aid for children is exactly the kind of assistance the British government now insists the Burmese junta should accept without delay. "There are people suffering in Burma," said an indignant Gordon Brown. "There are children going without food ... it is utterly unacceptable that when international aid is offered, the regime will try to prevent that getting in." David Miliband chimed in with "malign neglect". Say that to the children of Iraq and Afghanistan and Gaza, where Britain's role is as neglectful and malign as any. As scores of children in Shia areas of Baghdad are blown to bits by America and what the BBC calls Iraq's "democratic government", the British are silent, as ever. "We" say nothing while Israel torments and starves the children of Gaza, ignoring every attempt to bring a ceasefire with Hamas, all in the name of a crusade that dares not say its name. What might have been a new day for humanity in the post-cold war years, even a renewal of the spirit of the Declaration of Human Rights, of "never again" from Palestine to Burma, was cancelled by the ambitions of a sole rapacious power that has cowed all. The "war on terror" allows Australia and Israel to train Burma's internal security thugs. It consumes both most humanitarian aid indirectly and the very internationalism capable of bringing the "clever" pressure on Burma, about which Aung San Suu Kyi once spoke.

Dismissing the idiocy of a military intervention in her country, she asked: "What about all those who trade with the generals, who give them many millions of dollars that keep them going?" She was referring to the huge oil and gas companies, Total and Chevron, which effectively hand the regime $2.7bn a year, and the Halliburton company (former chief executive Vice-President Dick Cheney) that backed the construction of the Yadana pipeline, and the British travel companies that send tourists across bridges and roads built with forced labour. Audley Travel promotes its Burma holidays in the Guardian. The BBC, in contravention of its charter, has just bought 75% of Lonely Planet travel guides, a truculent defender of "our" right to be tourists in Burma regardless of slave labour, or cyclones, or the woman beyond the trip-wire. Shame.

Letter to PI Editor--Educated Girls Drop Population

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Educated girls drop population

Johann Hari fails to mention the No. 1 predictor of declining birth rates in the majority of cultures: economic growth. In fact, it is the combination of economic improvement and education for girls that correlates best with a drop in population. Columbia historian Matthew Connelly has recently warned in a new book ("Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population") about neo-imperialist policies that call for imposed control mechanisms. Want to cut human stress on the global environment? Give people jobs and create norms to live more frugally.

We could start by modeling that goal better in the United States.

Kathleen Braden
Professor of Geography

Seattle Pacific University

Democrats Found to be Soaked in Blood--Again

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From Stop Me Before I Vote Again:

One of the most remarkable things about the modern liberal Democrat who knows a little -- but not much -- history, is his capacity to like cracker-barrel Harry Truman, to date the only head of state ever to use nuclear weaponry.

Of course, compared to the real mass murderers, Truman's paltry hundred thousand or so in Hiroshima and Nagasaki pale beside, say, Clinton's half a million children dead from the Iraq sanctions(*). Even so, Mr Plain Speaking's bloody hands form a somewhat uncomfortable contrast to his lovable, avuncular conventional representation.

But Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not Truman's only credentials in the mass murder derby. It now appears that Truman had his own version of the Phoenix Program:

Portion below; whole disgusting thing here: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h2rT2wzhviymfyfyRdmdKw6tciagD90O9DJ80

DAEJEON, South Korea (AP) — Grave by mass grave, South Korea is unearthing the skeletons and buried truths of a cold-blooded slaughter from early in the Korean War, when this nation's U.S.-backed regime killed untold thousands of leftists and hapless peasants in a summer of terror in 1950.

With U.S. military officers sometimes present, and as North Korean invaders pushed down the peninsula, the southern army and police emptied South Korean prisons, lined up detainees and shot them in the head, dumping the bodies into hastily dug trenches. Others were thrown into abandoned mines or into the sea. Women and children were among those killed. Many victims never faced charges or trial.

The mass executions — intended to keep possible southern leftists from reinforcing the northerners — were carried out over mere weeks and were largely hidden from history for a half-century. They were "the most tragic and brutal chapter of the Korean War," said historian Kim Dong-choon, a member of a 2-year-old government commission investigating the killings.

Hundreds of sets of remains have been uncovered so far, but researchers say they are only a tiny fraction of the deaths. The commission estimates at least 100,000 people were executed, in a South Korean population of 20 million.

That estimate is based on projections from local surveys and is "very conservative," said Kim. The true toll may be twice that or more, he told The Associated Press.

In addition, thousands of South Koreans who allegedly collaborated with the communist occupation were slain by southern forces later in 1950, and the invaders staged their own executions of rightists.

Through the postwar decades of South Korean right-wing dictatorships, victims' fearful families kept silent about that blood-soaked summer. American military reports of the South Korean slaughter were stamped "secret" and filed away in Washington. Communist accounts were dismissed as lies.

Only since the 1990s, and South Korea's democratization, has the truth begun to seep out.

In 2002, a typhoon's fury uncovered one mass grave. Another was found by a television news team that broke into a sealed mine. Further corroboration comes from a trickle of declassified U.S. military documents, including U.S. Army photographs of a mass killing outside this central South Korean city.

Now Kim's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has added government authority to the work of scattered researchers, family members and journalists trying to peel away the long-running cover-up. The commissioners have the help of a handful of remorseful old men.

"Even now, I feel guilty that I pulled the trigger," said Lee Joon-young, 83, one of the executioners in a secluded valley near Daejeon in early July 1950.

The retired prison guard told the AP he knew that many of those shot and buried en masse were ordinary convicts or illiterate peasants wrongly ensnared in roundups of supposed communist sympathizers. They didn't deserve to die, he said. They "knew nothing about communism."