What Are We to Think of America Now?

Tweet "I feel upset because our neighbours like Lebanon, Iraq and Palestineare being attacked," said Hamad al-Khatib, 26-year-old owner of a mobilephone store in central Damascus. "Israel doesn't care about international law. We thought America was peaceful, but we see them support Israel, which is killing women and children. What are we to think of America now?

From Dahr Jamail's website

AWOL Soldier's Cause Gets a Hand

Tweet "We are asking the government to enforce their sexual-harassment policy, rather than protect the perpetrators -- currently all three (alleged) offenders are free, while she is in custody," Avila-Smith said.

For Swift's 22nd birthday Saturday, her family and supporters are urging a national day of action on her behalf. A rally and vigil are planned for noon outside Fort Lewis at Exit 119 off Interstate 5. Another in her hometown, Eugene, is planned for noon at the Federal Building.

ANNOUNCEMENT COMING ABOUT BANNERING FOR SUZANNE SWIFT ON SATURDAY AT FT. LEWIS.

Mike Whitney on the Invisibility of Palestinian Suffering

Tweet "The account of Palestinian suffering and victim-hood rarely finds its way into the mainstream press, but in the present case, it has been completely ignored. In fact, none of the media provide any context for the current invasion at all. Israel’s blockade of food and lethal provocations have been going on for months, and yet, the accounts from Gaza would have the reader believe that history began on the day that the Israeli soldier was captured. "


Mike Whitney will be speaking at or about 5 p.m. at the Lake Forest Park Snow Chataqua on Saturday. It's at: July 15 - at 17840 40th NE in beautiful Lake Forest Park -

Robt. Jamieson: Can Cantwell Buy Off the Antiwar Movement?

Tweet "[Mark] Wilson and [Dal] LaMagna now gain by humming along to an old tune: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. It is better, left-leaning thinking goes, to rally behind a Democrat with beauty marks than let a Republican with possible warts crash the party."

Who Started [This]?--Gideon Levy in Isaeli paper H'aaretz

Tweet "We started. We started with the occupation, and we are duty-bound to end it, a real and complete ending. We started with the violence. There is no violence worse than the violence of the occupier, using force on an entire nation, so the question about who fired first is therefore an evasion meant to distort the picture. After Oslo, too, there were those who claimed that "we left the territories," in a similar mixture of blindness and lies."

"Gaza is in serious trouble, ruled by death, horror and daily difficulties, far from the eyes and hearts of Israelis. We are only shown the Qassams. We only see theQassams. The West Bank is still under the boot of occupation, the settlements are flourishing, and every limply extended hand for an agreement, including that ofIsmail Haniyeh, is immediately rejected. And after all this, if someone still has second thoughts, the winning answer is promptly delivered: "They started." They started and justice is on our side, while the fact is that they did not start and justice is not with us."

Hamdan and Watada--By Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith

Tweet Last paragraph of an article in both the Nation and War Crimes Watch.com analyzing what Lt. Watada's courageous stand could mean to the U.S. Outlines important precedents for acts like Watada's to spark movements that can make real changes--the Civil Rights movement being one.

"When Lieutenant Watada refused to deploy to Iraq, he struck a blow against the Iraq war. Since the Supreme Court decision in the Hamdan case, he may also have become the point person in the effort to restore the rule of law in America. It took the civil rights movement to overcome massive resistance and realize the promise of equality made in the Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education decision. So today it will take a movement for checks and balances and against war crimes to overcome Bush administration resistance and realize the promise of constitutional restoration proffered in the Hamdan decision. Lieutenant Watada may represent the emergence of that movement."

Originally found on antiwar.com

CEOs Get Paid to Leave When They Do Badly

Tweet This is amazing when you consider other people starve when they lose their job, whether it was their fault or not.

"The $18.2 million Nike paid William Perez in 2005 made him the highest-paid chief executive in the Northwest last year, according to The Seattle Times' annual calculation of how the region's public companies compensated their leaders."

"In Perez's case, it would be hard to argue he earned it."

"During his one-year tenure, Nike's stock price fell by more than $7 per share and The Swoosh lost nearly $2 billion in market value."

"Nike's board did not demand a refund when it asked the underperforming Perez to leave in January. Just the opposite. On top of his 2005 compensation, Nike gave Perez $8.3 million in severance pay, including $150,000 to cover moving expenses."

Iraqis Are Living (and Dying) in Hell on Earth

Tweet "Here is another email I received the day before the aforementioned,
from another friend in Baghdad:

/Dear friend,/

/ Maybe this is the last message I am going to send ... really I don't
have anyone here. I am like a foreigner in my own country. I am really
feeling very afraid. I am living next to Al Sadr City and the Al Sadr
militia is killing anyone who is Sunni, especially when any explosion
attacks the Shia. They come to our zone and take Sunni people from their
houses and kill them. They killed one of my relatives. They killed my
neighbor, who was only 26 years old. My friend, the situation now in
Baghdad is very bad. Do you know that there is no work and no safety,
even in my own house? I'm very sad to tell you that I am very tired from
changing my house. My family and I leave the house every month for three
weeks and we run away like some one who did a crime. What is our crime?/

/ We are in a very bad situation. It is so bad now. Please help, is all
that I ask as we need help now. We are living, just waiting for our turn
to die ... Please help us if you can ... I don't have any one to ask but
you./

"So while Iraqis are being killed or fearing death as they suffer through
the daily hell that is the US occupation, Cheney, the real force behind
this "administration," tells CNN, "No matter how you carve it - you can
call it anything you want - but basically, it is packing it in, going
home, persuading and convincing and validating the theory that the
Americans don't have the stomach for this fight."

"Guess what, Dick - moral and sane Americans "don't have the stomach for
this fight" because this fight should have never taken place. And anyone
with a soul, let alone a conscience, should be more than happy to see US
troops in Iraq "packing it in."

From a email dispatch from Dahr Jamail. He is asking for support there to return to Iraq.

Wonder Why U.S. Education Sucks?

Tweet

"In his 1905 dissertation for Columbia Teachers College, Elwood Cubberly—the future Dean of Education at Stanford—wrote that schools should be factories "in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products...manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry."

Found on Marxmail.org

Clintonistas Call for Pre-Emptivive Strike on N. Korea

Tweet "That's why, in an opinion piece published in the Washington Post on June 22, we urged the Bush Administration to strike the Taepo Dong 2 on its launchpad before the test could be conducted. "Surgical strike" is a much abused term, but destroying a test missile as it is being readied for launch qualifies for this category because only one U.S. cruise missile or precision bomb with an ordinary high-explosive warhead could easily puncture and ignite the multistory test booster. As with space-shuttle launches from Cape Canaveral, all personnel would normally be a safe distance away from the rocket at the time, so there should be no collateral damage."

Found on Marxmail.org

Patrick Cockburn: US Siding with Sunnis Against Shia

Tweet "The US army is masking the fact that it is increasingly at war with the Iraqi Shia militias by referring to both Sunni and Shia as insurgents. Thus, after the raid into al-Sadr City, the US military said in a statement: "The captured individual heads multiple insurgent cells in Baghdad whose main focus is to conduct attacks against Iraqi and coalition forces." This conceals the fact that the US is fighting the Mehdi Army, which is controlled by Muqtada al-Sadr, whose party is an important part of the Iraqi government."

Air Force Times: Pentagon Says 40,000 Deserted Since 2000

Tweet

"Since 2000, about 40,000 troops from all branches of the military have deserted, the Pentagon says. More than half served in the Army. But the Army says numbers have decreased each year since the United States began its war on terror in Afghanistan."

"Those who help war resisters say desertion is more prevalent than the military has admitted."

Found on News from Iraq

Telling U.S. How to Be Good Neighbor

Tweet "For the last decade and a half, Washington and its allies in Mexican politics, including Mr. Calderón, have promoted a free-trade economic model that has failed to deliver the prosperity its advocates promised. Although the Mexican economy grew by 3 percent last year, the country's poverty and inequality indicators remain typical to bad by Latin American standards, with the richest 10 percent of citizens controlling 43 percent of the country's wealth, while some 40 percent of Mexicans live below the poverty line."

The advice part (probably a waste of breath, but worth a try):

"The best thing the United States can do now is to support the push for a recount and to refrain from calling on Mr. López Obrador to concede. Then, no matter who finally wins the election, the White House should renegotiate Nafta, allowing Mexico to set its own policy in support of its rural economy. If the Bush administration does otherwise, it might help begin yet another season of Mexican upheaval — just as the Aztecs might have predicted."

They Are Killing Us and We Need to Defend Ourselves

Tweet

"He thought for a moment, then said: "It's not that we want to fight. It's because they are killing us and we need to defend ourselves and we are helpless."

"He said he did not believe Israeli leaders when they promised that Israel would "provide quiet for quiet," saying that the Israelis had broader aims to control the Palestinians and take their land. "They need to understand that there are people here," he said. "Peace doesn't come through violence, but understanding."

"But Israel withdrew from Gaza last summer. How did he feel then? Mr. Eid smiled broadly. "A year ago we were very happy, it was like a festival," he said. "We went to the sea, where we couldn't go, we felt like free people." There was another burst of gunfire. "And now they're back," he said, "and our children are clutching at us."

The Real Reason for the Gaza Invasion

Tweet

"The destruction of Gaza's power plant and loss of electricity to some 700,000 people; the consequent scarcity of water, build-up of sewage that cannot be disposed of, and inevitable spread of disease; the shortages of fuel and threats to the running of vital services such as hospitals; the sonic booms of Israeli aircraft that terrify Gaza's children and unpredictable air strikes that terrify everyone; the inability of Palestinian officials to run bombed ministries and provide services; the constant threat of invasion by massed Israeli troops on the "border"; and the breakdown of law and order as Fatah and Hamas gunmen are encouraged to turn on each other. All these factors are designed to one end: the slow demand by Palestinians, civilians and militants alike, to clear out of the hell-hole of Gaza."

"The traffic through the tunnels that once served Gaza's smugglers will change directions: where once cigarettes and arms came into Gaza, the likelihood is that soon it will be people passing through those underground passages to leave Gaza and seek a life outside."

"If this experiment in human despair works in the small Gaza Strip, its lessons can be applied to much bigger effect in the West Bank ghettoes left behind after convergence. This is how ethnic cleansing looks when it is designed not by butchers in uniforms but by technocrats in suits."

The Real Terror in Liberty City--About the 7 Florida "Terrorists"

Tweet "On Saturday, not far away from where these so-called terrorists were arrested, 9-year-old Shay Jenkins was shot in her front yard. She wasn't the intended victim. Police believe she was hit by a stray bullet. But it doesn't really matter. Shot in the neck on the stoop of her home, she died in her mother's arms.

"She is the 18th person shot and killed in Northwest Miami-Dade this year."

"Nearly all of the victims have been children."

Found on Cursor.org

Imperial Racism--Black Commentator [MUST READ]

Tweet "But it [imperial racism] is deadly. It swarms countries, and consumes cities. Fallujah was flattened, with its main hospital the first target. Three hundred thousand people are now refugees in their own country, because of US actions, and an unknown number are dead. That is a war crime – but is not seen as such by most of the US public, who are under the sway of the ideology of imperial racism. The death of an entire city does not matter to them, because there were no real people there. Racism does more than color the situation – it defines it. How do you kill a city and call it victory? Why is this celebrated as a benchmark of “progress”? Is the assumption that the white man’s triumph is, inherently, progress?"

The Israeli Military Army Rolling into North of Gaza--From Gaza, With Love

Tweet "15 Palestinians were killed today in Gaza strip during the early hours of the morning."

"my [Dr. Mona El-Farra] main concern now is to find away to get medications and medical supplies through the borders ,into Gaza , the hospital medical resources is exhausted, the borders are completely sealed,some very crucial medications are lacking.,"

"the Rafah borders in the south ,was opened today for 3 hours , there are at least 2000 Palestinians on the Egyptian side ,waiting to enter Gaza , they have been waiting since last Sunday , when the summer rain operation started,internationals were asked to leave Gaza,via Eretz checkpoint , that was opened for 2 hours only(for us here in Gaza this is alarming sign),karni checkpoint (the commercial checkpoint) was opened to let in some stuff for 4 hours,may be to let in more candles , transistors and torches,"

Israeli Soldier's Father Suggests Considering Prisoner Swap

Tweet Israeli father suggests considering swap

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

JERUSALEM -- The father of a captured Israeli soldier called on the government Thursday to consider releasing Palestinian prisoners in exchange for his son, despite the government's refusal to negotiate with the captors.

Cpl. Gilad Shalit was captured in a cross-border raid last week, prompting Israel to launch a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.

"Everything has a price. I don't think there will be some sort of move to free Gilad without a price. That's not the way it works in the Middle East," said Shalit's father, Noam.

He said the government already had been considering a prisoner swap before his 19-year-old son was captured.

"There is no reason not to consider this after this incident in order to free someone who was sent by the state to the front lines," he said.

The Hamas-linked militants holding the soldier have demanded a large-scale release of Palestinian prisoners. Israel has rejected the demand and called for the soldier's unconditional release.

McKinney, Jackson Lee: Separated at Birth

Tweet "The moral of this story is clear. It doesn’t matter what McKinney, Jackson Lee or any other black person does or achieves. One is a former college professor and the other an attorney who graduated from an Ivy League school. Both are United States congressional representatives. Tony Snow doesn’t think either one of them is worthy of respect or consideration of any kind. One is indistinguishable from the other and they will be treated the same, with disdain, regardless of their opinions, actions, or CBC monitor grades. Apparently it is true. We all do look alike."

From Black Commentator (via Cursor.org)