Obama Wins the Peace Prize -- Mr. Fish

Tweet http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/
(thanks Elliot)

On Obama's Peace Prize

Tweet UPDATE: Tom Lehrer said when Henry Kissinger got the Nobel: "Irony has died." The PULSE blog says it has died again. Here's the kind of diplomacy which Nobel seem to like:



*************

From on-point:

Khaled Al-Batsh, a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad in Gaza, condemned the award, saying it “shows these prizes are political, not governed by the principles of credibility, values and morals,” Reuters reported. “Why should Obama be given a peace prize while his country owns the largest nuclear arsenal on earth and his soldiers continue to shed innocent blood in Iraq and Afghanistan?”

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/world-reaction-to-a-nobel-surprise/?hp

Another on-point:

myron c.

nh

October 9th, 2009

6:27 am

John Prine was wrong. A flag decal will get you into heaven.

Do people not realize that President Obama is the Commander in Chief of a military action against two countries? Is war truly peace?

To (justifiable) ridicule:

moose6 wrote:

heathergreeneyes wrote:
Didn't Obama just bomb the moon too?////

Well to be fair the moon had it coming. Sitting up there in the heavens. Looking down on us smugly. Controlling the tides. He needed to get taken down a peg or two. No celestial body should have that much power. ;)

Comments to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/09/AR2009100902278.html

"Obama's Witchhunt" (Wrong Time to Be Muslim in America) -- Stephen Lendman

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Parts of article below; whole article here: http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=15469

The FBI's top six news stories for the week ending September 25 were about arrests and/or indictments of suspected Muslim terrorists. Combined, they became the latest national security targets in America's war on Islam.

Waged relentlessly since 9/11, it continues unabated under Obama for the same political advantage George Bush sought by stoking fear to be used as a pretext to wage imperial wars and crack down ruthlessly at home with police state efficiency - today against Muslims, Latino immigrants, environmental and animal rights activists, and street protestors, tomorrow against anyone voicing dissent.

******

According to The New York Times, he was born on August 10, 1985 in a small Eastern Afghanistan village. In 1991 or 1992, his family moved to the Peshawar area of Pakistan - "ground zero in the US jihadist war and home to many Al-Queda operatives," according to the DOJ.

In the early 1990s, Mohammed Zazi, his father, came to Flushing, New York, drove a cab, worked 12-hour shifts, lived in a two-bedroom apartment, and prayed at the nearby Hazrat Abu Bakr Mosque. The younger Zazi was much like others in his high school, but he did poorly in his studies and dropped out before graduating. According to his step-uncle, Mr. Rasooli, "He was a dumb kid, believe me," but tried to make enough money to help his father.

He worked as a coffee cart vendor on New York streets, and said he drove back to New York to clear up related issues. According to an old customer, Imran Khan, he was back at his regular spot on the morning of September 11, 2009. Khan and others saw him joking and laughing with some old regulars, not heading off to detonate bombs.

In addition, an acquaintance named Rahul recalled Zazi saying about the 9/11 attacks: "I don't know how people could do things like this. I'd never do anything like that." Other friends agreed that he abhorred violence and called terrorism at odds with the teachings of Islam. He was a devout Muslim, grew his beard long, and occasionally wore tunics instead of more Western-style clothes.

On a 2006 trip to Pakistan, he married and hoped later to be able to afford to bring his new wife to America. Each year, he flew back to see her, including on August 28, 2008, the FBI-announced trip in its press release. Two months after he returned the following January, he filed for bankruptcy and moved to Colorado to live more cheaply and be close to an aunt and uncle in Aurora.

He worked as a shuttle van driver at Denver International Airport, applied for a limousine license, underwent an airport background check, then drove a van for the Big Sky Company and later ABC Transportation. In July, 2009, his parents left New York and joined him.

On September 25, New York Times writer Michael Wilson headlined his story, "From Smiling Coffee Vendor to Terror Suspect, and said:

"according to federal investigators, (Zazi worked on bomb materials) in a hotel suite he rented in Aurora," but unexplained was how he could afford it on his small income along with his regular apartment. Yet, investigators "say chemical residue they found in the kitchen there indicates he tried to heat up the beauty supplies (he bought) to help convert them in a bomb." But unexplained was how someone called "dumb" would be smart enough to make bombs for potentially the "biggest terror case since 9/11," according to CBS News. In federal court on September 29, he pleaded not guilty to all charges, but was held without bail pending trial

After Goldstone, Hamas Faces Fateful Choice -- Ali Abunimah

Tweet http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10821.shtml

The uproar over the Palestinian Authority's (PA) collaboration with Israel to bury the Goldstone report, calling for trials of Israeli leaders for war crimes in Gaza, is a political earthquake. The whole political order in place since the 1993 Oslo accords were signed is crumbling. As the initial tremors begin to fade, the same old political structures may appear still to be in place, but they are hollowed out. This unprecedented crisis threatens to topple the US-backed PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, but it also leaves Hamas, the main Palestinian resistance faction, struggling with fateful choices.

Abbas, accustomed to being surrounded by corrupt cronies, sycophants and yes-men, badly misjudged the impact of his decision -- under Israeli and American instructions -- to withdraw PA support for the resolution at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, forwarding the Goldstone report for further action. After all, the PA had actively sabotaged measures supporting Palestinian rights at the UN on at least two occasions in recent years without much reaction.

This time, torrents of protest and outrage flowed from almost every direction. It was as if all the suppressed anger and grief about PA collaboration with Israel during the massacres in Gaza last winter suddenly burst through a dam. "The crime at Geneva cannot pass without all those responsible being held accountable," the widely-read London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi stated in its lead editorial on 8 October. The newspaper called for the removal of Abbas and his associates who betrayed the victims of Israel's massacres and "saved Israel from the most serious moral, political and legal crisis it has faced since its establishment."

Naming collaboration -- even treason -- for what it is has always been a painful taboo among Palestinians, as for all occupied peoples. It took the French decades after World War II to begin to speak openly about the extent of collaboration that took place with the Nazi-backed Vichy government. Abbas and his militias -- who for a long time have been armed and trained by Israel, the United States and so-called "moderate" Arab states to wage war against the Palestinian resistance -- have relied on this taboo to carry out their activities with increasing brazenness and brutality. But the taboo no longer affords protection, as calls for Abbas' removal and even trial issued from Palestinian organizations all over the world.

Hamas too seems to have been taken by surprise at the strength of reaction. Hamas leaders were critical of Abbas' withdrawal of the Goldstone resolution, but initially this was notably muted. Early on, Khaled Meshal, the movement's overall leader, insisted that despite the Goldstone fiasco, Hamas would proceed with Egyptian-mediated reconciliation talks with Fatah and smaller factions scheduled for later in the month, stating that reaching a power-sharing deal remained a "national interest."

As the tremors continued, however, Hamas leaders escalated their rhetoric -- seemingly following, not leading, public opinion. Mahmoud Zahar, a prominent Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, labeled Abbas a "traitor" and urged that he be stripped of his Palestinian nationality. Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, speaking before a hastily convened session of the Palestinian Legislative Council, said Abbas was personally responsible for the "crime" committed in Geneva, and a senior officer from the Hamas-controlled Gaza police force held a press conference to announce that Abbas and his associates would be subject to arrest if they set foot in Gaza.

All of this puts Hamas in a bind. Before the Goldstone report crisis, Hamas had signaled that it accepted the most recent Egyptian proposals for reconciliation. The Egyptian position paper can be described as technocratic -- it deals with mechanisms for elections, release of prisoners, the formation of committees and other matters. It does not resolve core political and philosophical differences over the role of resistance and armed struggle, which Abbas rejects and Hamas defends. Nor does it deal with the problem of PA "security coordination" with Israel which has resulted in the killing and arrest by the PA of numerous Palestinian resistance fighters and the closure of hundreds of Palestinian organizations and charities.

Despite the remaining gulf, Hamas wanted to sign a unity deal. Being part of a Western-recognized PA would be Hamas' ticket to the "peace process" -- something Meshal has made no secret that Hamas seeks, although on its own terms. Abbas was less keen on a unity deal, as he and his cronies still resist dealing with Hamas as a political force that has popular legitimacy. But after Goldstone, Abbas needs Hamas.

Hamas now cannot have it both ways: it cannot talk about "unity" and "reconciliation" with people that it -- and many Palestinians -- view as "traitors." To seek unity with such people is in effect to say that Hamas wishes to join a government of traitors. For the moment, Hamas is buying time and has asked Egypt to postpone the scheduled Cairo meeting later this month.

Hamas' long-term strategy of trying to join the slowly crumbling edifice of the Palestinian Authority now makes no sense. It now seems more likely that the deal will not go ahead, although Hamas is maneuvering to avoid blame, and to maintain its lifeline to Egypt, which backs Fatah. Perhaps the more likely outcome, at least in the short term, is a continued stalemate, where Abbas, now entirely dependent on Israeli and American forces to remain in power, limps on even though he has no legitimacy or credibility, and is widely despised.

The more difficult question for Hamas will be, what comes next? Will it try to muddle through as it has, or will it rally the Palestinian public to oppose and resist Abbas until the collaborationist PA is dissolved? This would be an enormous strategic shift -- Hamas would likely have to drop the trappings of "government" it has taken up since it won the 2006 legislative elections and return to its roots as a social movement and a clandestine organization.

It will not have much time to decide where it is going. The hopes raised by the Obama Administration's initial foray into peacemaking have been dashed in the wake of Obama's surrender to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over settlements, even though US Middle East envoy George Mitchell continues with utterly sterile "diplomacy" aimed at bringing the rejectionist Israeli government face to face in "negotiations" with the political corpse of Abbas. As Israel accelerates its colonization of the West Bank and its ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, there is increasing talk of a new intifada.

The political collapse underway offers all Palestinians -- including Hamas -- a new opportunity: to build a broad-based, internationally legitimate popular resistance movement that mobilizes all of Palestinian society as the first intifada did, and to reconnect with Palestinians inside Israel who face an existential threat from escalating Israeli racism. This movement must work with and enhance the global solidarity campaign to put maximum pressure on Israel -- and its collaborators -- to end their repression, racism and violence, and hasten the emancipation of all the people of Palestine.

Israel May Ban Islamic Movement -- Jonathan Cook

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http://www.jkcook.net/Articles3/0431.htm#Top

NAZARETH, ISRAEL // The Israeli government announced yesterday it would consider banning Israel’s Islamic Movement at the next cabinet meeting, in a significant escalation of tensions that have fuelled a fortnight of bloody clashes in Jerusalem over access to the Haram al Sharif compound of mosques.

The move followed the arrest of the movement’s leader, Sheikh Raed Salah, on Tuesday on suspicion of incitement and sedition. Police accused Sheikh Salah of calling for a “religious war” in recent statements in which he warned that Israel was seeking a takeover of the Haram, which includes the al Aqsa mosque.

Sheikh Salah was released a few hours later on condition that he stay away from Jerusalem for 30 days. The decision was widely interpreted as a move to damp down a possible backlash from Israel’s 1.3 million Palestinian citizens, many of whom regard the sheikh as a spiritual leader. Police were deployed in large numbers throughout Jerusalem yesterday.

An Islamic Movement spokesman, Zadi Nujeidat, told the Haaretz newspaper: “We will continue our activities and call for a continued presence in and around the mosque. We are used to arrests.”

The move against the Islamic Movement follows a series of pronouncements from Sheikh Salah, echoing statements from Palestinian officials in the occupied territories, that have infuriated the Israeli government.

This week he called on Muslims who could reach the compound – access to which has been heavily restricted by the Israeli police – to “shield the [al Aqsa] mosque with their bodies”. Sheikh Salah himself has been barred by the courts from entering the Haram compound for several months.

At his annual “Al Aqsa is in danger” rally in his hometown of Umm al Fahm in northern Israel last week, he warned tens of thousands of supporters that Israel was trying to prise away control of the compound from the Islamic religious authorities. He added that, should Israel force a choice between martyrdom and renouncing al Aqsa, “we will clearly choose to be martyrs”.

Like many other Palestinian leaders, Sheikh Salah fears that, as well as “Judaising” East Jerusalem, Israel is engineering a takeover of the Haram – known to Jews as the Temple Mount because the remains of the destroyed first and second Jewish temples are believed to lie under the mosques.

He has raised repeated concerns that Israel is secretly digging under the mosques, as it did before opening the Western Wall tunnels in 1996. Then, clashes led to the deaths of 75 Palestinians and 15 Israeli soldiers.

A delegation of Palestinian leaders from inside Israel who visited the compound yesterday warned that there was strong evidence of such excavations.

In an interview with Haaretz on Monday, Sheikh Salah also warned against “infiltration of extremist Jewish elements” into the compound – a reference to Messianic cults that want the mosques destroyed so a third temple can be built.

Muslim leaders throughout the region have expressed growing concern that the Israeli police are secretly escorting such groups into the compound following a decision by Israel in 2003 to allow non-Muslims to visit the Haram without oversight from the Islamic authorities.

Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, meanwhile, are unable to reach Jerusalem, and Israel has increasingly limited access to the mosques for Palestinians with Israeli IDs.

During clashes at the compound on Sunday, the Islamic Movement’s deputy, Kamal Khatib, and the Palestinian Authority’s minister in charge of Jerusalem, Hatem Abdel Khader, were arrested. Both were released on bail and banned from Jerusalem for 15 days.

Calls from Israeli officials for Sheikh Salah’s arrest and restrictions on the Islamic Movement have been growing all week.

The deputy prime minister, Silvan Shalom, of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, told Israel Radio on Tuesday: “Sheikh Raed Salah should be behind bars.”

The cabinet meeting on Sunday will discuss a law to ban the Islamic Movement being drafted by the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party of Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister. The bill is expected to be presented to ministers a week later.

The interior minister, Eli Yishai, of the Shas party, announced on Tuesday he would withdraw funding for imams who “incited” against Israel and was investigating whether he could fire them.

The Islamic Movement has rapidly grown in popularity by focusing on charitable and welfare work and has won control of several councils since the 1980s.

Despite eschewing terrorism, the movement is regarded with great suspicion by Israeli officials, who have shut down its charities and newspaper on several occasions. Sheikh Salah and four other leaders of the Islamic Movement were arrested in 2003 accused of supporting terrorism but released two years later in a plea bargain that significantly reduced the charges.

It is unclear how Israel would ban the Islamic Movement.

Analysts say the government could use the 1945 emergency regulations from British rule but the move would be unlikely to withstand judicial scrutiny. Traditionally, the security establishment has argued that it is better not to push the Islamic Movement underground.

The US state department was reported this week to have expressed concern to Israel that it and the Palestinian Authority not “inflame tensions” over the Haram al Sharif.

"Palestinians seek new Leadership, Independence"

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http://www.paltelegraph.com/palestine/palestinian-refugees/2545-palestinians-in-london-call-for-accountability-over-goldstone-report-dilemma

Gaza, October 8, 2009 (Pal Telegraph) - Palestinian Return Center (PRC) held an urgent meeting in London, yesterday evening, to discuss the consequences of the withdrawal of the Goldstone report before submitting it to UN Human Rights Council of the United Nations. The meeting also discussed the needed and required Palestinian united position in response. A number of Palestinian Organizations, politicians and academics participated in the meeting where a constructive discussion took place for nearly 2 hours.

The participants came out with a number of recommendations in an attempt to face the recent challenges facing the Palestinians.

They have strongly condemned the Palestinian Authority for its "harassing" decision and requested an immediate accountability against those responsible.

"We call for immediate general elections that include all Palestinians in the occupied Palestine and outside. The elections would lead to form a new Palestinian National council that will elect a new leadership and executive committee to lead the Palestinian nation towards getting its rights and demands." Participants said

The Palestinian Unity was on the agenda as they have considered it is key and strategic objective towards achieving Palestinian goals and gaining back all rights. According to them, "Palestinian entire unity is a priority on basis of holding all responsible people accountable for their gross and flagrant mistakes against their people and their rights."

We call on all Palestinians to keep defending Jerusalem particularly after the last Israeli attacks and attempts to crack down the Palestinian existence in the city through the Judaizing policy.

Palestinians, from all factions including members of Fatah party, have strongly criticized the Goldstone vote postponement, holding Abbas responsible for the decision which was in their view a flagrant mistake.

It's remarkable that the Goldstone report issued late in September identifies war crimes committed during Israel's war on Gaza between last December and January. Israel was about to be criminalized but the postponement of the report would emphasize its abilities to sneak out from accountability.

Israeli launched a full-scale offensive in Gaza that left at least 1,400 Palestinians killed and over 5000 injured. The entire infrastructure in Gaza was destroyed as Israeli attacks targeted schools, hospitals, streets, water wills, sewage system, farms and police stations.

Qalqilya: Prison City -- Palestine Monitor

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No town in the West Bank suffers more restrictions than Qalqilya. The population is surrounded on all four sides by the wall, which separates them from their farmland and source of income. Nearby a large Israeli settlement plunders more essential resources. Worse still is the security which accompanies these structures, with dozens of checkpoints policing the town and nearby villages. Many of these serve no purpose at all, closing months after they appear, often in bizarre locations between Arabic villages.

Fortunately there is Machsom watch, a group of Israeli women dedicated to challenging checkpoints and land seizures. We spent a day travelling the area with them to see how these restrictions affect the population.

*********

It’s now 2pm and schools have closed for the day. A young boy waits while Israeli soldiers finish a lunch of hummus and olives. Eventually one of the men gets up long enough to wave him through, before returning to his lounge chair in the shade. Four Palestinian men sit on the street beside them, one is handcuffed and the others, his friends, are waiting for him to be released. It’s not the same man arrested before, who was released after Dalya called the soldier’s superiors to complain. This prisoner has been detained for attempting to reach his family in a neighbouring village.

To read whole report on QalQilya, go here: http://palestinemonitor.org/spip/spip.php?article1103

"Marx and Lenin Revisited" -- Paul Craig Roberts

Tweet Sometimes Mr. Roberts' hyperbole is off-putting. But his explanation of current dire economic events below -- including real unemployment over 21% -- rings too true to be shrugged off. Sometimes you just have to believe your eyes. Linda J. Read the whole article here: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23643.htm

October 06, 2009 "Information Clearing House" --- If Karl Marx and V. I. Lenin were alive today, they would be leading contenders for the Nobel Prize in economics.

Marx predicted the growing misery of working people, and Lenin foresaw the subordination of the production of goods to financial capital’s accumulation of profits based on the purchase and sale of paper instruments. Their predictions are far superior to the “risk models” for which the Nobel Prize has been given and are closer to the money than the predictions of Federal Reserve chairmen, US Treasury secretaries, and Nobel economists, such as Paul Krugman, who believe that more credit and more debt are the solution to the economic crisis.

In this first decade of the 21st century there has been no increase in the real incomes of working Americans. There has been a sharp decline in their wealth. In the 21st century Americans have suffered two major stock market crashes and the destruction of their real estate wealth.

Some studies have concluded that the real incomes of Americans, except for the financial oligarchy of the super rich, are less today than in the 1980s and even the 1970s. I have not examined these studies of family income to determine whether they are biased by the rise in divorce and percentage of single parent households. However, for the last decade it is clear that real take-home pay has declined.

The main cause of this decline is the offshoring of US high value-added jobs. Both manufacturing jobs and professional services, such as software engineering and information technology work, have been relocated in countries with large and cheap labor forces.

The wipeout of middle class jobs was disguised by the growth in consumer debt. As Americans’ incomes ceased to grow, consumer debt expanded to take the place of income growth and to keep consumer demand rising. Unlike rises in consumer incomes due to productivity growth, there is a limit to debt expansion. When that limit is reached, the economy ceases to grow.

The immiseration of working people has not resulted from worsening crises of over-production of goods and services, but from financial capital’s power to force the relocation of production for domestic markets to foreign shores. Wall Street’s pressures, including pressures from takeovers, forced American manufacturing firms to “increase shareholders’ earnings.” This was done by substituting cheap foreign labor for American labor.

Corporations offshored or outsourced abroad their manufacturing output, thus divorcing American incomes from the production of the goods that they consume. The next step in the process took advantage of the high speed Internet to move professional service jobs, such as engineering, abroad. The third step was to replace the remains of the domestic work force with foreigners brought in at one-third the salary on H-1B, L-1, and other work visas.

This process by which financial capital destroyed the job prospects of Americans was covered up by “free market” economists, who received grants from offshoring firms in exchange for propaganda that Americans would benefit from a “New Economy” based on financial services, and by shills in the education business, who justified work visas for foreigners on the basis of the lie that America produces a shortage of engineers and scientists.

In Marx’s day, religion was the opiate of the masses. Today the media is. Let’s look at media reporting that facilitates the financial oligarchy’s ability to delude the people.

The financial oligarchy is hyping a recovery while American unemployment and home foreclosures are rising. The hype owes its credibility to the high positions from which it comes, to the problems in payroll jobs reporting that overstate employment, and to disposal into the memory hole of any American unemployed for more than one year.

This Is Clear -- Angry Arab Newservice

Tweet http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2009/10/this-is-clear.html

For all the supporters of Palestine around the world, no effort on behalf of the Palestinian people is serious or effective if it does not target the Israeli occupation and their Palestinian collaborators. Activists for Palestine can't avoid to target and condemn the collaborationist regime in Ramallah. This is like opposing the Nazis but not opposing the Nazi collaborators. The PA collaborators have successfully convinced a few in the solidarity movement to avoid condemnation of the PA in the name of Palestinian unity. There is no unity, and there should not be unity, if it means an alliance with or recognition of the PA collaborationist regime. And what does Hamas do? Hamas never acts intelligently, in this matter or in any matter. I saw a Hamas official criticizing the PA stance in Geneva and then in the same statement express determination to continue the dialogue with Fath in Cairo. The struggle for Palestine has to take a new shape, and new language should be devised. People who have been long time supporters for Palestine should be aware that the Fath Movement today is different from the one that existed in the 1960s and 1970s. Fath is no more than armed collaborationist gangs that kill the Palestinian people on behalf of the Israeli state to minimize deaths to the occupiers. And notice that the new language of the Ramallah regime: the new buzz word is "khata'" (mistake or error). This is not mistake or error. A mistake is when you press the wrong button in the elevator. This is betrayal and treason.

PSC at Indigenous People's Day at Canadian Border

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Michelle K. and Linda J. took PSC solidarity greetings and the Leonard Peltier banner to IPD at the Border. It was a building year -- we were told that last year only about 5 folks attended. This year there was 20.

Michelle gave greetings from PSC and explained some of the connections between the plight of the Palestinians and Indigenous people here in the U.S. There were some Canadians folks at the gathering also. The MC congratulated Michelle on her remarks.

Hopefully next year, the event will grow again.

Linda J.

Bereaved Gaza Strip Families Demand Answers -- Ma'an News

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Samouni siblings [MaanImages]

http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=58545
October 3, 2009

Gaza – Ma’an – Families of Gaza war victims voiced their disappointment with the Palestinian request to postpone discussion of the Goldstone report at the UN Human Rights Council.

"This is not a political issue," they said, countering US demands leading to the quashing of the resolution that the report "be discussed in a constructive and non-divisive manner."

In Jabaliya, the Samounis, Baloushas, Subbehs, As-Silawis, Rayyans and Abed Rabbos demanded respect for the Goldstone report, and that Israel be taken to the International Criminal Court for its actions.

"This is a purely humanitarian issue," they insisted at a news conference in the Al-Salam neighborhood, "If Israeli leaders are not held accountable this could happen again."

"No one has the right to give up on our rights," one member of the Samouni family said. He had been with the over 50 Samouni men, women and children trapped in one home, who lost 26 members including 10 children and seven women over the course of just over a day on 3 January.

A member of the Rayyan family, whose patriarch Nizar Rayyan was a Hamas leader, lost Nizar’s four wives and ten children, Hayam Timraz, Nawal Kahlout, Eyman Kassab, Sherin Udwan, and ten of his children, Ghassan, Abdul-Qadir, Ayah, Maryam, Zaynab, Abdul-Rahman, Aysha, Halima, Osama and Reem who were between four and 17 years old. All 14 were killed, along with Nizar in the first days of January.

One of Nizar’s surviving children said she had been looking forward to seeing the Israeli leaders who ordered the strike on her family home put on trial for their crime.

Mr Balousha, father of the five Balousha sisters killed in the Imad Aqil Mosque where they were taking shelter on 29 December 2008, called the decision by the Palestine Liberation Organization’s delegate to the UN one that was "not in the interest of the Palestinian people."

The Abed Rabbo family, who lost two daughters when Israeli soldiers opened fire at close range while Khalid Abed Rabbo, his wife, mother and three children left their home holding white flags. They had run out of food. A third daughter and his mother were injured in the attack. Khalid spoke at the demonstration and denounced the role of the Palestinian Authority in postponing discussion of the Goldstone report.

The family of journalist Omar As-Silawi, who was killed when his home was targeted by Israeli airstrikes, now live in a tent because there are no reconstruction supplies allowed into Gaza. A relative of Omar said "the crime committed in Gaza is the largest and the ugliest and cannot be ignored."

The Subehs, whose home was also destroyed in the war, joined the demonstration and the bereaved families stood together and demanded rights organizations intervene to "put a stop to the Palestinian leadership’s decision" and demand Israeli leaders be put on trial.

Answering Critics of the Boycott Movement -- Electronic Intifada

Tweet The first part of the article answers the question of why we are not boycotting other bad acting countries besides Israel. Then this about why boycott can work as a way to an honest dialogue.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10805.shtml

Boycott is dialogue

Since the signing of the Oslo accords in 1994, many have walked down the path of dialogue -- I tried it for several years -- and found this to be a strategy to stall for time while the Israeli government was building facts on the ground. We saw dialogue become the slogan for former criminals to clean their bloody hands and appear as peaceful while they continued their strategies of oppression; Israeli President Shimon Peres has been the master of such tactics. I found on college campuses in the US where I studied that dialogue was a way to neutralize confrontation and sanitize a dirty conflict. But avoiding confrontation favors the status quo, and the status quo has been, until BDS, in favor of occupation.

The boycott movement is, to be sure, against this dialogue, but not dialogue in an absolute sense. In fact, at its very core, BDS is a movement that is premised on dialogue and of re-appropriating the meaning of dialogue to its rightful place -- one that sees a communication between two equal partners and not one where the occupier can force demands and dictate terms to the occupied. BDS is supposed to foster dialogue by locating those who are committed to real and consistent struggle against Zionism -- and this is most appropriately seen not in economic forms of boycott but in cultural and academic boycott where artists, musicians, filmmakers, academics and other cultural figures are able to come together, converse and build networks in the face of oppressive institutions that are the real target of these boycotts. Where economic boycott creates economic pressure, cultural boycott fosters dialogue and communication precisely because it shames and shuns those that directly collaborate with the Israeli government and its institutions.

The power of all these forms of BDS is in their recognition that true justice can only be achieved when Israelis and Palestinians work together for a common cause, when they realize that their struggle is shared, and when Israelis understand that they must sacrifice alongside Palestinians if they want true peace. The power of BDS is that it offers an alternative to the national struggles of Hamas and Fatah, and calls on Israelis to join Palestinians in their struggle, and to move beyond the comfort zone of preaching peace, and into the realm of action that requires a "no business as usual" attitude. Indeed, BDS provides the means to generate a new movement that can respond to the main Palestinian political parties that have made a mockery of a people's right to resist, despite their achievements of the past. A significant part of this is that BDS enables a discourse that moves beyond "ending the occupation" to place demands for the right of return and equal rights for Palestinians in Israel as top priorities.

If Israelis and Palestinians can build a movement together, can struggle together, then this movement will embody the world they wish to create, one that is shared. Thus, BDS is not a tactic for a national movement; as it gains strength it will prove to have foes on both sides of the nationalist divide. Its power as a tactic lies in its ability to foster a movement that challenges nationalist discourse. It can create the conditions to make possible a movement that recognizes that while national self-determination remains a central element in a world ruled by antagonistic nationalisms, it should not be constrained by traditional notions of nationalism based on superiority and ethnic exclusion, or by the force of current political parties. In this way, BDS is not anti-dialogue, on the contrary, it is a call out to Israelis to be partners in struggle. It is a call out to Israelis to take a step forward towards envisioning collectively an alternative relationship in the land of Israel-Palestine.

It is time to step out of our comfort zones, to confront, to not be satisfied in talking about tolerance and dialogue for the sake of dialogue. It is time to realize that people already recognize the humanity of the other, but that politics intervene to ensure "we" do not grant "them" this humanity. It is time to realize that it is not the Israeli who is targeted by BDS, but the Israeli government and Israeli institutions that collaborate in the occupation of the Palestinians, and degrade and demonize them. Finally, it is time to realize that BDS is a winnable, nonviolent strategy precisely because it works on slowly changing attitudes and building bridges towards a common vision of justice and equality, and because it creates a real feeling of loss, therefore real pressure, on Israeli governments and institutions, that go beyond the lip service of the "peace process."

"Abbas Helps Israel Bury Its Crimes in Gaza" -- Ali Abunimah

Tweet Part of article below; whole article here: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10807.shtml

Just when it seemed that the Ramallah Palestinian Authority (PA) and its leader Mahmoud Abbas could not sink any lower in their complicity with Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the murderous blockade of Gaza, Ramallah has dealt a further stunning blow to the Palestinian people.

The Abbas delegation to the United Nations in Geneva (officially representing the moribund Palestine Liberation Organization) abandoned a resolution requesting the Human Rights Council to forward Judge Richard Goldstone's report on war crimes in Gaza to the UN Security Council for further action. Although the PA acted under US pressure, there are strong indications that the commercial interests of Palestinian and Gulf businessmen closely linked to Abbas also played a part.

The 575-page Goldstone report documents evidence of shocking Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity during last winter's assault on the Gaza Strip which killed 1,400 Palestinians, the vast majority noncombatants and hundreds of them children. The report also accuses the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas of war crimes for firing rockets into Israel that killed three civilians.

Goldstone's report was hailed by Palestinians and supporters of the rule of law worldwide as a watershed; it called for suspects to be held accountable before international courts if Israel failed to prosecute them. Israel has no history, ever, of holding its political and military leaders judicially accountable for war crimes against the Palestinians.

Israel was rightly terrified of the report, mobilizing all its diplomatic and political resources to discredit it. In recent days, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that if the report were acted on, it would "strike a severe blow to the war against terrorism," and "strike a fatal blow to the peace process, because Israel will no longer be able to take additional steps and take risks for peace if its right to self-defense is denied."

Unsurprisingly, an early ally in the Israeli campaign for impunity was the Obama Administration, whose UN ambassador, Susan Rice, expressed "very serious concerns" about the report and trashed Goldstone's mandate as "unbalanced, one-sided and basically unacceptable." (Rice was acting true to her word; in April she told the newspaper Politico that one of the main reasons the Obama Administration decided to join the UN Human Rights Council was to fight what she called "the anti-Israel crap.")

Goldstone, whose daughter has publicly described her father as a Zionist who loves Israel, is a former judge of the South African Supreme Court, and a highly respected international jurist. He was the chief prosecutor at UN war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

That the Goldstone report was a severe blow to Israel's ability to commit future war crimes with impunity is not in doubt; this week bolstered by the report, lawyers in the UK asked a court to issue an arrest warrant for visiting Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. That action did not succeed, but Israel's government has taken extraordinary measures in recent months to try to shield its officials from prosecution, fearing that successful arrests are just a matter of time. Along with the growing international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions, the fear of ending up in The Hague seems to be the only thing that causes the Israeli government and society to reconsider their destructive path.

One would think, then, that the self-described representatives of the Palestinian people would not casually throw away this weapon. And yet, according to Abbas ambassador Ibrahim Khraishi, the Ramallah PA shelved its effort at the request of the Americans because "We don't want to create an obstacle for them."

Khraishi's excuse that the resolution is merely being deferred until the spring does not pass muster. Unless action is taken now, the Goldstone report will be buried by then and evidence of Israel's crimes -- necessary for prosecutions -- may be harder to collect.

"Top Things you Think You Know about Iran that are not True" - Prof. Juan Cole

Tweet [IGNORING THE FIRST PARAGRAPH WHERE JUAN COLE REFERS TO HENRY KISSINGER AS KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT DIPLOMACY]
http://www.juancole.com/
Here's part of the rest of a very useful article:

But on this occasion, I thought I'd take the opportunity to list some things that people tend to think they know about Iran, but for which the evidence is shaky.

Belief: Iran is aggressive and has threatened to attack Israel, its neighbors or the US

Reality: Iran has not launched an aggressive war modern history (unlike the US or Israel), and its leaders have a doctrine of "no first strike." This is true of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as of Revolutionary Guards commanders.

Belief: Iran is a militarized society bristling with dangerous weapons and a growing threat to world peace.

Reality: Iran's military budget is a little over $6 billion annually. Sweden, Singapore and Greece all have larger military budgets. Moreover, Iran is a country of 70 million, so that its per capita spending on defense is tiny compared to these others, since they are much smaller countries with regard to population. Iran spends less per capita on its military than any other country in the Persian Gulf region with the exception of the United Arab Emirates.


Belief: Iran has threatened to attack Israel militarily and to "wipe it off the map."

Reality: No Iranian leader in the executive has threatened an aggressive act of war on Israel, since this would contradict the doctrine of 'no first strike' to which the country has adhered. The Iranian president has explicitly said that Iran is not a threat to any country, including Israel.

Belief: But didn't President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threaten to 'wipe Israel off the map?'

Reality: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did quote Ayatollah Khomeini to the effect that "this Occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" (in rezhim-e eshghalgar-i Qods bayad as safheh-e ruzgar mahv shavad). This was not a pledge to roll tanks and invade or to launch missiles, however. It is the expression of a hope that the regime will collapse, just as the Soviet Union did. It is not a threat to kill anyone at all.

Belief: But aren't Iranians Holocaust deniers?

Actuality: Some are, some aren't. Former president Mohammad Khatami has castigated Ahmadinejad for questioning the full extent of the Holocaust, which he called "the crime of Nazism." Many educated Iranians in the regime are perfectly aware of the horrors of the Holocaust. In any case, despite what propagandists imply, neither Holocaust denial (as wicked as that is) nor calling Israel names is the same thing as pledging to attack it militarily.

"Is This What 'Shielding Afghans From Violence' Looks Like?"

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DERRICK CROWE
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23607.htm

Aetna Sit-In for Single Payer, Medicare for All, September 29, 2009

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Watch out, Aetna Seattle! We're comin' for ya.

http://www.mobilizeforhealthcare.org/

Is Democracy Melting? -- Arundhati Roy

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Ending paragraphs below; whole article (What Have We Done to Democracy) here: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23585.htm

Perhaps the story of the Siachen Glacier, the highest battlefield in the world, is the most appropriate metaphor for the insanity of our times. Thousands of Indian and Pakistani soldiers have been deployed there, enduring chill winds and temperatures that dip to minus 40 degrees Celsius. Of the hundreds who have died there, many have died just from the elements.

The glacier has become a garbage dump now, littered with the detritus of war -- thousands of empty artillery shells, empty fuel drums, ice axes, old boots, tents, and every other kind of waste that thousands of warring human beings generate. The garbage remains intact, perfectly preserved at those icy temperatures, a pristine monument to human folly.

While the Indian and Pakistani governments spend billions of dollars on weapons and the logistics of high-altitude warfare, the battlefield has begun to melt. Right now, it has shrunk to about half its size. The melting has less to do with the military standoff than with people far away, on the other side of the world, living the good life. They're good people who believe in peace, free speech, and in human rights. They live in thriving democracies whose governments sit on the U.N. Security Council and whose economies depend heavily on the export of war and the sale of weapons to countries like India and Pakistan. (And Rwanda, Sudan, Somalia, the Republic of Congo, Iraq, Afghanistan… it's a long list.)

The glacial melt will cause severe floods on the subcontinent, and eventually severe drought that will affect the lives of millions of people. That will give us even more reasons to fight. We'll need more weapons. Who knows? That sort of consumer confidence may be just what the world needs to get over the current recession. Then everyone in the thriving democracies will have an even better life -- and the glaciers will melt even faster.

Mobilization for Health Care for All

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America's Teacher -- Naomi Klein Interviews Michael Moore

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BLOGGER ACTING UP!!! CAN'T FIX SPACING!!!
Part of interview below; whole article here: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091012/klein/single

NK: All right. Let's talk about the film some more. I saw you on Leno, and I was struck that one of his first questions to you was this objection--that it's greed that's evil, not capitalism. And this is something that I hear a lot--this idea that greed or corruption is somehow an aberration from the logic of capitalism rather than the engine and the centerpiece of capitalism. And I think that that's probably something you're already hearing about the terrific sequence in the film about those corrupt Pennsylvania judges who were sending kids to private prison and getting kickbacks. I think people would say, That's not capitalism, that's corruption.

Why is it so hard to see the connection, and how are you responding to this?

MM: Well, people want to believe that it's not the economic system that's at the core of all this. You know, it's just a few bad eggs. But the fact of the matter is that, as I said to Jay [Leno], capitalism is the legalization of this greed.

Greed has been with human beings forever. We have a number of things in our species that you would call the dark side, and greed is one of them. If you don't put certain structures in place or restrictions on those parts of our being that come from that dark place, then it gets out of control. Capitalism does the opposite of that. It not only doesn't really put any structure or restriction on it. It encourages it, it rewards it.

I'm asked this question every day, because people are pretty stunned at the end of the movie to hear me say that it should just be eliminated altogether. And they're like, "Well, what's wrong with making money? Why can't I open a shoe store?"

And I realized that [because] we no longer teach economics in high school, they don't really understand what any of it means.

The point is that when you have capitalism, capitalism encourages you to think of ways to make money or to make more money. And the judges never could have gotten the kickbacks had the county not privatized the juvenile hall. But because there's been this big push in the past twenty or thirty years to privatize government services, take it out of our hands, put it in the hands of people whose only concern is their fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders or to their own pockets, it has messed everything up.

NK: The thing that I found most exciting in the film is that you make a very convincing pitch for democratically run workplaces as the alternative to this kind of loot-and-leave capitalism.

So I'm just wondering, as you're traveling around, are you seeing any momentum out there for this idea?

MM: People love this part of the film. I've been kind of surprised because I thought people aren't maybe going to understand this or it seems too hippie-dippy--but it really has resonated in the audiences that I've seen it with.

But, of course, I've pitched it as a patriotic thing to do. So if you believe in democracy, democracy can't be being able to vote every two or four years. It has to be every part of every day of your life.

We've changed relationships and institutions around quite considerably because we've decided democracy is a better way to do it. Two hundred years ago you had to ask a woman's father for permission to marry her, and then once the marriage happened, the man was calling all the shots. And legally, women couldn't own property and things like that.

Thanks to the women's movement of the '60s and '70s, this idea was introduced to that relationship--that both people are equal and both people should have a say. And I think we're better off as a result of introducing democracy into an institution like marriage.

But we spend eight to ten to twelve hours of our daily lives at work, where we have no say. I think when anthropologists dig us up 400 years from now--if we make it that far--they're going to say, "Look at these people back then. They thought they were free. They called themselves a democracy, but they spent ten hours of every day in a totalitarian situation and they allowed the richest 1 percent to have more financial wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined."

Truly they're going to laugh at us the way we laugh at people 150 years ago who put leeches on people's bodies to cure them.

"In Palestine" - Part II

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