"Apartheid Plain and Simple" -- Al Ahram

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http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2010/07/22/apartheid-plain-and-simple/

via Aletho News

As if the preponderance of discriminatory laws already swelling the Israeli legal system were not enough, the Israeli parliament — the Knesset — is slated to debate a fresh instalment of anti-Arab draft laws aimed at “reasserting the Jewish nature of Israel”.

One of these draft laws, tabled by a pro- settler party called Habayt ha Yahudi, or the Jewish Home, would force all citizens and would-be citizens of Israel to declare their loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state. The draft law specifically targets Palestinians married or wishing to marry other Palestinians who are already Israeli citizens — ie Palestinians living in Israel proper.

A declaration of loyalty to “a Jewish state” is not just a procedural matter. It implies, for Arabs or others, recognition of one’s inferiority vis-à-vis Jewish citizens of the state. Indeed, the ramifications of such recognition are enormous and far-reaching.

Israel usually claims to be both a Jewish and democratic state. However, it is widely known that the “democratic” epithet is preserved for Jews, not Arabs, and that the state can’t be both “Talmudic”, as demanded by the growing Jewish religious sector, and democratic, as asserted by secular segments, given the intrinsic contradictions between the two concepts.

Democratic dismissed, the “Jewish” epithet leaves non-Jews living in Israel as a Jewish state, even if they happen to be indigenous inhabitants, estranged and unwanted, by virtue of being non-Jews. Their status as “citizens” is not owed to the laws of the land, but mainly to Jewish magnanimity and/or charity.

“This legislation [is] organised racism whereby citizenship is granted in exchange for recognition by a citizen of his inferior status as a second or third class citizen,” said Arab Knesset member Ahmad Tibi.

Tibi, who denounced the new draft laws as “products of a depraved mentality,” said the camp that holds power in Israel is trying to communicate a message to more than 1.5 million Arabs in Israel proper that “if you want to have your rights guaranteed and if you want to live freely and happily, then you will have to leave this country.”

Tibi responds: “But we won’t leave this country, because this country is our country. We were born here, our forefathers were born and are buried here.”

Another Arab Knesset member, Hanin Zubi, scoffed at Israel’s notion of democracy, calling it “a joke”. “How can democracy be practised or even survive in a fascist environment?” The Knesset, Zubi said, “is becoming a fascist Jewish club, which is why it is difficult for free voices to be heard.”

Two weeks ago, Israeli Jewish MPs ganged up on Zubi while speaking at the rostrum of the Knesset, with some extremist Jewish lawmakers calling her obscene names and even trying to drag her to the ground for defending her participation in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. The Israeli navy brutally attacked the flotilla on 31 May, killing at least nine aid activists and injuring many, drawing angry reactions around the world.

Zubi’s family has been living in the city of Nazareth since time immemorial. The Jewish MP who assaulted Zubi is a recent immigrant from the former Soviet Union who doesn’t even speak fluent Hebrew.

But if the Knesset is a reflection of the state of affairs permeating Israel, and if the Israeli parliament is succumbing to an extremist onslaught, Israel itself — government and society alike — is embracing what is widely now deemed “fascism” in a most cordial manner.

This week, an Israeli court in Jerusalem decided to keep Sheikh Mohamed Abu Tir in jail for refusing to leave the city of his birth. Sheikh Abu Tir, who spent more than 25 years in jail for his opposition to the Israeli occupation, was elected in 2006 as a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council representing East Jerusalem. However, an Israeli judge recently issued a decree banishing Abu Tir from East Jerusalem for affiliation with a “terrorist organisation” — in reference to the Change and Reform parliamentary bloc, an arm of Hamas.

Abu Tir denied that he was a member of Hamas, saying he was representing the people of Jerusalem who elected him and that he took part in an election that was okayed by Israel and closely monitored by the United States and the rest of the international community. His argument was rejected by the Israeli judge. Abu Tir was then asked to pay $95,000 in bail. He refused, prompting the Israeli authorities to return him to jail.

Abu Tir, like dozens of other Islamic lawmakers, had just spent 48 months in jail for taking part in the 2006 elections. Following his release, the Israeli domestic intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, demanded that he leave his hometown within one month. He refused to heed the order, arguing that Jerusalem was his hometown and the city of his birth, and that nothing would make him leave his hometown.

Abu Tir’s lawyer Osama Al-Saadi described the trial of his client as “political and ideological from A to Z.” “This is part of the battle over Jerusalem. They are trying to convince themselves that the Palestinians of Jerusalem are only temporary citizens who can be expelled at any time.” Al-Saadi underscored the stark discrimination against the Arab community in a state that doesn’t stop claiming to be democratic.

“Imagine a Jew who is affiliated with a terrorist organisation, or who belongs to an outlawed Jewish political party. Would he ever be banished from Israel, irrespective of the enormity of his crime?” “You see the mendacity of this slogan, that Israel is a ‘democracy’? Do democratic states expel citizens because they adhere to a different religion?”

“Stone in my hand” -- Kashmiri Youth Defend Their Land from Indian Army

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via Aletho News
http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/stone-in-my-hand/

Mustafa Barghouti Address in Canada (Spring 2010 I believe)

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Gaza Women Defy Hamas Shisha Ban

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The Hamas-run government in Gaza has banned women from smoking shisha, or hubbly bubbly water pipes, in public.

On Sunday, plain-clothes agents patrolled beachside cafés enforcing the edict.

However, some Gazan women are still smoking.

The BBC's Hamada Abu Qamar met Jihad, a veiled woman in her twenties, who was enjoying her shisha at sunset.

Go to this link to hear interview with Jihad:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2010/07/100720_hubbly_bubbly_nh_sl.shtml

BP Oil Poisons the Gulf of Mexico’s Food Chain -- Dahr Jamail & Erika Blumenfeld

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EXCERPT:

"Do you know how the pelicans die of oil?" asked Dean Wilson, executive director of Atchafalaya Basinkeeper. "They open their wings, thinking they are drying them in the sun, and they just cook in the sun. Thousands of birds are dying like that because of the greed of a foreign company."

The organisation Wilson heads is dedicated to preserving the ecosystems of the Atchafalaya Basin on the Louisiana Coast. He is incensed at the catastrophic impact the BP oil disaster, which has been ongoing for nearly three months.

Oil began to gush into the Gulf of Mexico following an explosion Apr. 20 on the Deepwater Horizon oilrig, which BP leased from the Swiss firm Transocean. Two days later, the platform sank. As of Jul. 20, the company had capped the well and stopped the flow of oil, though tests continue on the cap's structural integrity.

Wilson is angry about what he perceives as BP's lack of willingness to implement measures necessary to adequately protect wildlife.

For example, the company is not rescuing the chicks of oiled adult birds, nor is it allowing local environmentalists, like himself, to go out and participate in animal rescue efforts.

"You have to realise that it takes two parents to raise the chicks in these areas. If one of the parents gets into the oil, the other parent alone cannot raise the chicks, and the chicks are going to die," he said.

There are at least as many chicks that have died as there are rescued pelicans, and the number rescued is "only the tip of the iceberg," said Wilson.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as of Jul. 14, 553 miles of Gulf Coast shoreline was oiled, 2,930 birds had been recovered (1,828 of them dead and 1,102 of them oiled), along with more than 500 dead sea turtles and other mammals.

More than 45,000 workers are currently responding to the BP oil disaster, but higher-end estimates show that as much as 8.4 million barrels of BP oil has been released into the Gulf, and more than 6.8 million litres of chemical dispersants Corexit 9500 and Corexit 9527 used (the same chemicals are banned in Great Britain).

The dispersants are believed to cause headaches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, irritation of eyes, nose, throat and lungs, difficulty breathing, respiratory system damage, central nervous system depression, neurotoxic effects, genetic damage and mutations, cardiac arrhythmia and cardiovascular damage.

The Source of Our Despair -- Dahr Jamail and Erika Blumenfeld

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If you can stand to see more, go here for the whole photo essay:
http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=68045&s2=19

Olympia Food Co-op Removes Israeli Goods from Shelves; First US Store to Institute Boycott!

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WAY TO GO, OLYMPIA! PROUD TO CALL YOU NEIGHBOR!

Olympia, WA– The Olympia Food Co-op Board of Directors has decided to boycott Israeli goods at their two locations in Olympia, Washington. At a July 15th meeting packed with Co-op members, the Board reached this consensus. The Co-op becomes the first US grocery store to publicly join the international grassroots movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) on Israel for its human rights abuses.

Co-op board member Rob Richards explained, “My hope is that by being the first in the US to adopt the boycott we act as a catalyst for other co-ops to join in. Each additional organizational entity that joins may have a very small effect on the big picture, but drop by drop fills the tub."

Noah Sochet, a Co-op member and Olympia BDS organizer adds, “As a US citizen and as a Jew, I’m proud to say that my Co-op no longer underwrites the suffering in Palestine.”

In accordance with its mission statement, the Olympia Food Co-op has a longstanding boycott policy, which includes a boycott of China (for its occupation of Tibet) and a previous boycott of Colorado (for legalizing discrimination against gays, lesbians, and bisexuals in 1992). The Co-op also has policies for rejecting items whose packaging feature exploitive or oppressive imagery.

One Israeli product is exempt from the boycott: “Peace Oil,” a brand of olive oil fairly traded from Palestinian farmers in the West Bank and the Galilee, will continue to be carried by the Co-op.

The boycott follows on the heels of a similarly historic event at the nearby Evergreen State College. On June 2, students at the Olympia-based college voted overwhelmingly to approve two resolutions calling on the college’s foundation to divest from companies profiting from the Israeli occupation of Palestine, as well as calling on the college to ban the use of Caterpillar equipment due to Caterpillar’s complicity in Israeli war crimes. The college is the alma mater of Rachel Corrie, who was killed by a weaponized Caterpillar bulldozer in the Gaza Strip in 2003.

News of the boycott has drawn praise from around the world, including in Israel. “I salute the great work of the people in Olympia,” said Yonatan Shapira, an Israeli Air Force captain and co-founder of Combatants for Peace. “The decision taken by the Olympia Food Co-op is an important step toward just peace for all people living in Israel/Palestine. It is also a step toward accountability for Israel’s murder of Rachel Corrie.”

The BDS movement began in 2005 when over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations in Israel and in Palestine issued a call for the nonviolent tactic of BDS on Israel until the country abides by international law and human rights standards. The BDS call has become an international movement, endorsed by renowned figures such as Desmond Tutu, Naomi Klein, and Alice Walker. The Co-op boycott comes two months after Italy’s largest supermarket chains, COOP and Nordiconad, declared a boycott of products exported by Israeli Carmel Agrexco.

Israel has responded to the BDS movement by arresting prominent Palestinian endorsers. The Knesset is currently considering legislation to outlaw endorsement of BDS by Israelis.

Early Release for Israeli Soldier Who Killed British Activist

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Source: http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=300848
via Aletho News

Bethlehem - Ma'an - An Israeli soldier convicted of shooting dead a British peace activist has been granted an early release from prison, the Israeli press reported Monday.

A military committee accepted Taysir Hayb’s appeal, and he will be free in one month, the Israeli news site Ynet reported Monday.

Hayb shot Tom Hurndall, who died aged 22, during an incident on Gaza’s southern border.

Witnesses reported that the British citizen was watching children play on a street in Rafah when Israeli soldiers opened fire. Most of the children fled, but three, aged between four and seven, were paralyzed by fear.

Hurndall took one of the children to safety and was returning for the two others when Hayb shot him in his forehead.

After a two hour delay at the border, Hurndall was taken to hospital, where he remained in a coma until his death nine months later.

Hayb, an award-winning marksman, faced court after intense pressure from the British government and Hurndall’s parents and in his initial testimony, claimed that he had aimed four inches from Hurndall’s head but missed.

He also claimed Hurndall was wearing military fatigues, although photographic evidence showed he was wearing a fluorescent orange jacket to show he was a foreigner.

The soldier later changed his testimony and "admitted to firing in proximity to an unarmed civilian as a deterrent,” an Israeli army statement at the time said.

An Israeli military court convicted Hayb in 2005 and sentenced him to eight years in prison. During the trial, Hayb said that a policy of shooting unarmed civilians existed at the time.

Hurndall’s killing came one month after US activist Rachel Corrie was killed by a military bulldozer as she tried to stop the demolition of a Palestinian home in Rafah, and one month later British journalist James Miller was shot dead by an Israeli sniper in the same area.

A British inquest in 2006 found Hurndall was intentionally killed. “Make no mistake about it, the Israeli defense force have today been found culpable by this jury of murder,” the family’s lawyer Michael Mansfield said after the hearing.

In his appeal for early release, Hayb told the committee he is engaged and wishes to start a family, Ynet reported.

In journals released by Hurndall’s family since his death, the young photographer wrote, “I want to be proud of myself. I want more. I want to look up to myself and when I die, I want to smile because of the things I have done, not cry for the things I haven't done.”

Qualitative Military Edge — Assuring Israeli Capacity for Brutality with Impunity -- Paul Woodward

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EXCERPT (picks up following description of speech by Andrew J Shapiro, Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs)

Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin challenged Shapiro during Q&A:

[I]t pains me to hear you sound more like an agent of the Israeli government than a U.S. representative because as you travel around the world you see that this “special relationship” really endangers us, makes us more hated around the world. So I wonder if you would be willing to step in other shoes and go to Gaza, see the results of the Israeli invasion there, see the destruction, talk to people in Gaza, talk to the elected government, which is Hamas. You don’t have to like them to talk to them. I also wonder if you’ve spent any time with people in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to see what it feels like for Palestinians, the daily humiliations they suffer.

And I also wonder, given the financial crisis here at home and the great needs of impoverished nations around the world, couldn’t you think of a better use of $3 billion than giving it to a wealthy country like Israel that is abusing the human rights of Palestinians on a daily basis?

Benjamin drew a round of applause — Shapiro declined to respond directly to her challenge.

As Shapiro noted, the concept of Israel’s QME has been in use for decades, but it was only when the Bush administration let Israel draft American law, that QME turned into a license to use force with impunity.

In January 2008, William Wunderle, a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, and Andre Briere, a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, wrote in a paper for The Washington Institute for Near East Policy:

The US commitment to maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge (QME) is a long-standing tradition that every president since Lyndon Johnson has maintained and reiterated. The basic principle behind this commitment is simple: Israel is a bastion of liberal representative government in the Middle East, and, as such, its continued survival is a vital national interest of the United States. To ensure this longtime ally’s continued existence in a sea of nations that reflexively call for its destruction, Israel must be able to defend itself militarily and deter potential aggression. In this effort, Israel will always be militarily outnumbered with regard to the artillery, tanks, and combat aircraft that can be deployed by a coalition of Arab states. Israel’s continued survival can be ensured only if it is able to maintain qualitative military superiority, relying on superior weaponry, tactics, training, leadership, and other factors of military effectiveness to deter or defeat its numerically superior adversaries in the Middle East.

In other words, the US policy advocated that Israel should be able to counter a quantitative disadvantage with a qualitative advantage. It said nothing about supporting Israel’s use of that advantage at minimal cost. The expression after all was qualitative military edge — not supremacy.

These analysts noted however that:

Israel defines QME as “the ability to sustain credible military advantage that provides deterrence and, if need be, the ability to rapidly achieve superiority on the battlefield against any foreseeable combination of forces with minimal damage and casualties.”

The Israeli phrasing went straight into US law which says that Israel must maintain the ability to use military force “while sustaining minimal damages and casualties.”

Let’s put that in context. The law was signed just two years after Israel had visibly lost its qualitative military edge in Lebanon in 2006 when it faced Hezbollah, and less than three months before it used the assault on Gaza to once again demonstrate its ability to wreak massive destruction while sustaining minimal damages and casualties.

The war on Gaza, which President-elect Obama watched in silence, showed not merely the brutality that Israel is willing to use under America’s political protection, but the extent to which Israel’s military agenda is empowered through its ability to control the United States Government.

The war on Gaza was QME in action.

Gaza Family Still Lives in Tent -- 18 Months After Israel's Invasion

Tweet http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/world/gaza-family-still-lives-in-tent-in-among-more-than-200-still-homeless-18-months-after-war-98735084.html

BEIT LAHIYA, GAZA STRIP — The few dozen yards (meters) of fraying blue tarpaulin and dirt-stained canvas that define the Awaja family's living space can't keep out the cold in winter, or the dust and heat in summer.

And when a strong wind blows at night, the shelter caves in on the six children sleeping inside.

The Awajas are among thousands whose houses were destroyed during Israel's three-week military offensive against Hamas-ruled Gaza, launched in December 2008 with the aim of halting Palestinian rocket attacks.

More than 18 months later, most displaced families have found apartments or moved in with relatives. But about 225 families remain homeless, according to U.N. figures, caught in a mix of poverty, bureaucracy, and a border blockade that has left them in limbo.

A bulldozer flattened the Awajas' house on the first full day of Israel's ground offensive, when tanks and troops swept into Gaza neighborhoods near the Israeli border.

As the family fled, bullets hit Kamal, 49, his wife Wafa, 34, and their 8-year-old son Ibrahim — who bled to death in the street.

After a brief stay with Kamal's first wife — he has two, but is separated from the first — and her seven children in their tiny apartment in Gaza City, the Awajas pitched a tent on government land near Beit Lahiya. Municipal officials told them to vacate.

"I told them I'm not leaving... I'm afraid to go back there, close to the border," Kamal said.

They now occupy three tents and have had a sixth child, a baby girl named Leyali.

They tether the tent to the ground with cinderblocks and rugs. They siphon electricity from nearby lines to power a refrigerator, microwave, oven, TV and computer, all salvaged from their old home or smuggled through underground tunnels that connect Gaza to Egypt.

Wafa is constantly busy cleaning wind-blown dust off dishes and clothes, chasing away rats and stray dogs, and protecting belongings from thieves.

Israel's blockade, imposed three years ago after Hamas overran Gaza, is meant to keep weapons out of the territory. But it has hampered repair of the destruction caused by Israel's offensive by barring most construction materials.

Following an international outcry over its deadly naval raid on a blockade-busting flotilla, Israel has agreed to loosen the embargo — the first step, potentially, toward rebuilding the Awaja's home.

"There is no place to go," Kamal said. "So I'm staying here, until they help us build our house."

World Citizen Ken O'Keefe

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http://alohapalestine.com/

Ken's Mission
http://www.worldcitizen.uk.net/

I have come to understand that the reality of peace is in its simplest explanation the end result of a three step process. The first step on the path to peace is a collectively developed understanding of the truth, the single most compelling truth being that we are as human beings all members of one human family, we are all connected. Only upon embracing such truths will we affect justice, and justice is synonymous with peace. True peace is impossible without justice, we who consider ourselves vested in peace would therefore be wise to abandon the notion of peace without justice. Those who know the reality of occupation, denial of human rights and mass murder will understand us much better when make this shift in understanding.

This web site is focused on the truth & justice because lack of truth is the single greatest weapon for the enemies of peace, it is the primary impediment of justice. Lack of truth translates to lack of consciousness, disconnect and division. Understanding of the truth leads to a developed conscience, a connection to our source and the wisdom of oneness; only in this state will we catalyze the unity of purpose that marks the end of humanities prolonged state of collective insanity.

Contrary to the cynical view, the truth is that human beings are good at heart. We have been conditioned to be selfish, ignorant and destructive. But our true nature is quite the opposite. Raised with love, protected from danger, allowed to be free, we are a most magnificent of species. In a sane and natural state we shall exemplify the "Golden Rule" and we will have peace.

The consciousness of humanity is rising at a pace unlike anything experienced within the entire period of so-called "civilization", the "100th Monkey" principle is in affect and those who perceive a loss in power are resisting the inevitable. Truth Justice Peace.

Palestinian Woman Prisoners -- Alternative Information Center (via WRH)

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8TKMIVhIVA&feature=player_embedded

Oh, Let It Be So! Mike Flugennock Strikes Again!

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AN OPEN LETTER TO THE ABOLITIONIST COMMUNITY IN DEFENSE OF MUMIA ABU JAMAL FROM THE CAMPAIGN TO END THE DEATH PENALTY

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The Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP) is appalled by the news that several individuals of leading anti-death penalty organizations have signed a confidential memorandum stating that the “involvement of Mumia Abu-Jamal endangers the U.S. coalition for abolition of the death penalty.” The memo further argues that the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty should not highlight Mumia’s case because doing so “unnecessarily attracts our strongest opponents and alienates coalition partners at a time when we need to build alliances, not foster hatred and enmity.” (http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/117)

This memo was drafted on December 21, 2009, yet it only recently came to light following the 4th World Congress Against the Death Penalty, held on March 4 in Geneva, Switzerland. At this meeting, a telephone call came in from Mumia Abu-Jamal, and he addressed the audience. At this point, several members of U.S. abolitionist groups got up and walked out in protest.

The Campaign to End the Death Penalty strongly condemns this action and completely disagrees with the approach to the anti-death penalty struggle that this memo puts forth.

First of all, we unequivocally support and endorse Mumia Abu-Jamal in his struggle for justice. We believe in his innocence and see Mumia’s case as fraught with many of the same injustices as other death penalty cases–racial bias, police misconduct and brutality, and prosecutorial and judicial prejudice.

Mumia Abu-Jamal has been on Pennsylvania’s death row for the past 28 years and remains there because the courts, under pressure from the Fraternal Order of Police, have thwarted his efforts to win his freedom. From his prison cell, Mumia has galvanized an international movement of support towards his efforts to win justice. He has written numerous books and articles shedding light on our prison-industrial complex as well as other historical and current political issues. He is widely read, known and respected. His commentaries on prison radio are nothing short of brilliant. He has helped to educate millions of people about the true workings of the criminal justice system. But most importantly, he has been an inspiration to all those fighting to win abolition, lending his voice of hope, his encouragement and his unfaltering determination to our movement.

So why would a delegation of U.S. abolitionists would get up and walk out of a meeting when Mumia addresses the audience? Shouldn’t they have stood and applauded?

The explanation for this reprehensible action is explained in the secret memo, which basically puts forth the argument that to have anything to do with Mumia’s case ruins the chances of winning abolition of the death penalty.

Why? Here is what the memo states, in part: “The support of law enforcement officials is essential to achieving abolition in the United States. It is essential to the national abolition strategy of U.S. abolition activists and attorneys that we cultivate the voices of police, prosecutors and law enforcement experts to support our call for an end to the death penalty.”

This statement points to a very disturbing direction that we have observed in recent years among some organizations in the abolition movement–of compromising our message in order to win the support of conservatives. This has lead leading death penalty organizations to downplay the impact of race in the criminal justice system and to advocate reaching out to law enforcement as a means of winning abolition of the death penalty.

Those who espouse this strategy ignore or downplay the role that police play in railroading many poor people and African Americans onto death row. They ignore the role that police, prosecutors and judges play as guardians of an unjust legal system that disproportionately targets the poor and people of color. The outcome of this strategy has led to the marginalization of prisoners like Mumia, whose voices from behind prison walls are so important in this fight.

The individuals who drafted the memo go on to identify the voices that they seek to include: “The voices of the Innocent, the voices of Victims and the voices of Law Enforcement are the most persuasive factors in changing public opinion and the views of decision-makers (politicians) and opinion leaders (the media). Continuing to shine a spotlight on Abu-Jamal, who has had so much public exposure for so many years, threatens to alienate these three most important partnership groups.”

We in the CEDP couldn’t disagree more with this strategy. We believe the most “persuasive factor” in changing public opinion is to build a vocal, visible movement that forthrightly puts forward its demands– instead of working to make our message palatable to the opposition.

Consider the analogies to past struggles. What if Martin Luther King compromised the goals of integration in order to reach out and try to win over segregationists? No, he reached out to organize and uplift progressive forces into fighting for change. That is the kind of strategy we need.

The men and women on death row across the country–including the guilty–are not our enemy. The enemy is the system of punitive thought that portrays them as monsters so that the public can feel okay about killing them. It is part of the punitive philosophy upon which the legal system is based–the same system that breeds crime in the first place, that gives so little support to victims of abuse, that says it believes in rehabilitation but then won’t fund it, that says it believes in education but then takes money away to build prisons instead.

We reject the logic of having the Fraternal Order of Police as a partner or ally. The FOP has organized against our efforts to win justice for Mumia, for Troy Davis, for the Burge Torture victims in Chicago and countless others.

Our approach is based on an anti-racist perspective. We know that the history of aggressive policing, sentencing and the death penalty has its roots in slavery–that the tough on crime rhetoric of lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key is racially coded language.

The Campaign stands completely and unequivocally with Mumia Abu-Jamal. We also stand by a different strategy to win abolition.

Instead of marginalizing voices like Mumia, we should be developing more innovative and creative ways to put them forward–and not just Mumia’s, but others, including Troy Davis, Rodney Reed and Kevin Cooper, to name a few. We need to put the human face on this issue. We need to build a movement that challenges the racism and class bias nature of the death penalty–and to point out that these injustices exist in the broader criminal justice system as well.

In order to build a fight that can win real justice, we cannot marginalize “divisive” issues like racism. Instead, we have to take them on frontally. And instead of reaching out to the conservative elements in society, we should be reaching out to progressive elements and building bridges there. Let’s not forget that the lowest level of support for the death penalty (42 percent) was in 1966, at the height of the civil rights movement. Let’s work to place the fight for abolition squarely in the progressive camp, where it most surely belongs.

FREE MUMIA! ONWARDS TO ABOLITION!

Obama Gives in to BiBi

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Agony. Israel Rips Down Palestinian Homes.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kutAK1TE70

(via Palestine Note & Alternative Information Center)

Israel Destroys Palestinian Homes

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bCWqALWnu8

(via Aletho News)

De-classified Vietnam-era Transcripts Show Senators Knew Gulf Of Tonkin Was A Staged False Flag Event

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http://www.infowars.com/de-classified-vietnam-era-transcripts-show-senators-knew-gulf-of-tonkin-was-a-staged-false-flag-event/

via Aletho news

Elected Reps. chose to hide details from American public for fear of reprisals from “the big forces” that run the media and the presidency

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
Thursday, Jul 15th, 2010

Over 1,100 pages of previously classified Vietnam-era transcripts released this week by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee highlight the fact that several Senators knew that the White House and the Pentagon had deceived the American people over the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident.

The latest releases, which document skepticism over the pretext for entry into the Vietnam war, date from 1968.

Four years into the war, senators were at loggerheads with Lyndon B. Johnson. At the time Foreign Relations Committee meetings were held behind closed doors.

It would take over thirty years for the truth to emerge that the Aug. 4, 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, where US warships were apparently attacked by North Vietnamese PT Boats – an incident that kicked off US involvement in the Vietnam war – was a staged event that never actually took place.

However, the records now show that at the time senators knew this was the case.

In a March 1968 closed session of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee, the father of former vice president Al Gore, noted:

“If this country has been misled, if this committee, this Congress, has been misled by pretext into a war in which thousands of young men have died, and many more thousands have been crippled for life, and out of which their country has lost prestige, moral position in the world, the consequences are very great,”

Senator Frank Church, Democrat of Idaho, said in an executive session in February 1968:

“In a democracy you cannot expect the people, whose sons are being killed and who will be killed, to exercise their judgment if the truth is concealed from them,”

Other senators were keen to withhold the truth about Tonkin in order not to inflame public opinion on the war:

Senator Mike Mansfield, Democrat of Montana, stated, “You will give people who are not interested in facts a chance to exploit them and to magnify them out of all proportion.”

Mansfield was referring to the proposed release of a committee staff investigation that raised doubts over whether the Tonkin incident ever took place.

The committee decided in the end to effectively conceal the truth, with Senator Church noting that if the committee came up with proof that an attack never occurred, “we have a case that will discredit the military in the United States, and discredit and quite possibly destroy the president.”

He also noted that if the senators were to follow up on their skepticism over Tonkin, “The big forces in this country that have most of the influence and run most of the newspapers and are oriented toward the presidency will lose no opportunity to thoroughly discredit this committee.”

The LBJ Presidential tapes, declassified and released in 2001, prove that LBJ knew the Tonkin incident never happened. After dressing down his Defence Secretary Robert McNamara for misleading him, Johnson then discussed how to politically spin the non-event and escalate it as justification for air strikes.

“You just came in a few weeks ago and said they’re launching an attack on us – they’re firing at us,” Johnson tells McNamara in one conversation, “and we got through with the firing and concluded maybe they hadn’t fired at all.”

The NSA also deliberately faked intelligence data to make it appear as if two US ships had been lost in the “attack”.

Johnson used the 1964 false flag event to expand dramatically the scale of the Vietnam War by ushering in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, as well as to rope in much needed domestic support with the Congress and public.

Perhaps if the Foreign Relations Committee hadn’t been so afraid of “the big forces” controlling America, a large percentage of the almost 60,000 American soldiers and 2 million Vietnamese people wouldn’t have lost their lives.

Sadly, modern day elected representatives have failed the American people in exactly the same way over the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

New Black Panthers Organize Newberry, S.C. March Against Dragging Death of Black Resident

Tweet To read New Black Panther Press Release: http://www.newblackpanther.com/intro.html

For more info on the crime:
http://www.midlandsconnect.com/news/story.aspx?id=480444

COLUMBIA (WACH) -- At a community meeting Thursday, law enforcement officials still could not answer why 30-year-old Anthony Hill was shot and killed, his body then tied to truck and dragged for several miles."

“We know what happened, we just don’t know why,” says Newberry County Sheriff Lee Foster, “that is the part we are really doing some in-depth investigation into.”

According to Foster, the victim and 19-year-old Gregory Collins who is charged with murder were co-workers and friends.

“On the day before the incident and the day of the incident, they spent quite amount of time together in recreation,” said Foster.

News of the June 2 shooting quickly spread throughout the community.

“I just wish that the community would focus on the fact that a life was taken,” said Newberry resident Antony Caldwell

Despite the large turnout at the event, authorities had no new information.

The death has also gained the attention of the New Black Panther Party, who wants authorities to classify the murder as a hate crime.

“A hate crime murder is when someone is killed because of their race, because of their ethnicity because of their sexual orientation or because of their disability,” said U.S. District Attorney William Nettles.

Nettles made it very clear to concerned citizens that he will be the one to decide whether or not the incident will be prosecuted as a hate crime murder. Nettles promised that when he makes his decision, he will let the community know.

Sheikh Jarrah, July 9, 2010 -- David Shulman (on Resistance)

Tweet http://theonlydemocracy.org/2010/07/david-shulman-sheikh-jarrah-july-9-2010/

I’ve been thinking about truth. About what the word means, and how we know what it means. This comes in the wake of yesterday’s demonstration, with its by now habitual rituals unfolding in their remorseless, bitter order—the hopeful beginning, the drumming and slogans, the dispossessed Palestinians standing beside us as we chant, the rapid, volatile crescendo, the eventual police attack, and the arrests. Sarah, a young woman of astonishing courage and clarity, was among the first to be arrested.

On the one hand, Sheikh Jarrah is a touchstone. As Misha said to me on the way back: Some things are amazingly simple. In Sheikh Jarrah you can see pure theft in all its starkness. The Bible says “Thou shalt not steal,” and it—God, that is– was referring to Sheikh Jarrah. Any one can see it. The shocking thing, of course, is that the whole apparatus of the modern state—the municipality, its committees and master plans and grey bureaucrats, the mayor, the government, the Prime Minister, the cabinet, the courts, the police, the secret services—all these have colluded in actively perpetrating the theft. There’s really not much room for argument. Either you stand by and let them throw innocent people out of their homes, or you come each week to demonstrate and resist. It’s particularly terrible because the wave of expulsions is continuing, in fact intensifying. Two weeks ago we shifted the demonstration to the new set of houses that have been targeted. As so many times before, we heard an aged, wrinkled Palestinian grandmother say: “Why are they doing this to us? I prefer to die than to leave my home.”
It’s clear that the government wants to destroy the whole of Palestinian Sheikh Jarrah, to rid the neighborhood of its many dozens of extended families, and to replace them with Jewish settlers. It’s quite possible that in a few years’ time, if the process continues to accelerate, there will be nothing left of Sheikh Jarrah. The mosque will be replaced by a yeshiva—plans for its location already exist– the homes of the Palestinian refugees from 1948 will be occupied by fanatical settlers, new (ugly) apartment buildings will go up, the Arabic street signs will disappear; in short, a whole piece of reality, with its language, its memories, its dreams, its human dramas, large and small, will be liquidated. That’s the plan. That’s what they want. Why should they want it? Hate exists. Truth can be simple.
On the other hand, I think this simple truth is itself enveloped by another, deeper one, more inchoate and lonely, perhaps resistant to formulation. I’ll try to say something about it and about the way it becomes manifest.

The early part of the demonstration is somehow satisfying. No sooner do we arrive than Ezra Nawi spots me and recruits me to his infiltration squads: “Come with me.” I should describe the situation. The stolen houses, now inhabited by Israeli settlers, are about 100 meters down one of the main streets leading into the neighborhood. In recent months, the protestors have been strictly barred from approaching the houses, or even from setting foot in the upper part of the road. Settlers and right-wing activists have free run of the entire neighborhood, as do ultra-orthodox Jews who come to pray at the nearby tomb of Simeon the Just. Our quarrel is not with the latter. The houses themselves are now draped in Israeli flags, and on the roof of the al-Ghawi house there is also a large, crude candelabra, probably there since Chanukah.

Something changed slightly in the course of this last week. Some of our people prepared an appeal to the Legal Adviser to the government, Yehuda Weinstein; the letter sets out, in precise, understated language, the tortuous story of police violence and illegal actions in Sheikh Jarrah over the last few months, and also offers the fairly obvious explanation that senior officers in the Jerusalem police are driven by a blatant right-wing bias. The letter was signed by many well-known public figures in Israel and received much media attention. So today, riding on the crest of a wave, however small, we are no longer playing by their rules. The police barricades are up, and both the blue-grey Jerusalem police and the sinister, black-clothed riot police are there, but a good 200 to 300 activists, maybe more, are already milling around in the upper part of the street. I follow Ezra and a few others by a roundabout route, over walls and fences and through an olive grove, to end up in front of the stolen houses themselves. The drummers are drumming, and there are shouts: “Free Sheikh Jarrah!” “One Two Three Four, Fascism Will March No More!” And so on. I hug Nasir, one of the evictees. About fifty of us have gotten through, and there is a steady stream of new faces, including, to my delight, my son Misha and his bride-to-be Erika (they announced their engagement to us just half an hour before).
It is good to be here, close to the families (a really good place to celebrate an engagement). On the outer wall of the al-Kurd house, someone has etched a Palestinian flag with the caption: “History is With Us.” A small contingent of police is there to hold us back, and at first they are relaxed, almost nonchalant. Occasionally, we hear shouts and cries from the upper street; later we discover that the police had already moved to suppress the protest there with violence, and the first arrests were under way. Eventually they get to us, too. Reinforcements arrive, and soon they attack, pushing and poking us, lashing out, bending arms, kicking a little, roughing us up, and occasionally picking someone out and carrying him or her off to the detention vans. I’ve seen much worse, but it isn’t pleasant, and it is, needless to say, both illegal and gratuitous. A non-violent demonstration of this sort has repeatedly been pronounced legal by the judges who, week after week, released the arrested activists (after a weekend in jail) and reprimanded the police for making the arrests in the first place.

Herded uphill, amidst the yelling and the scuffles, we are singing the famous Hasidic song of Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav: “The whole world is but a very narrow bridge, and the main thing is not to afraid.” Speaking of truth, it rings true on this sorrowful street, like a memory of what it once meant to be Jewish. I wonder what Rabbi Nachman, one of the deepest minds in Jewish history, would have said about what is happening in Sheikh Jarrah. Actually, I think I know. A policeman strikes Erika, and Misha instinctively moves to protect her, pushes him back. A friend asks me why we are refusing to obey the police commands, why we are moving so slowly, holding our ground, so that they have to push and drag us physically up the hill, and some people get hurt and get arrested. I explain. It is important to resist. It is basic to who we are and what we stand for. Even if no one is watching, even if no one knows, if we are to remain human, we must continue to bear witness and to resist.
Even as I say the words, I realize they’re not much of an argument. So what if we resist? Look at the forces arrayed against us, look at our failure to make change happen. Where are the hundreds of thousands who should be standing here with us? What good is truth, anyway, when the liars and the thieves and the demented politicians have the guns, and when the ordinary Israeli person, whoever he is, just living his life, won’t break through the shell of his lethal indifference? But I’m not groping toward a philosopher’s truth, and the moral equation is not, after all, in question. We’ve already defined the situation. “Thou shalt not steal.” What does this have to do with being poked and prodded up the hill?

I think the point is that there is no ordinary person. For every one there’s the same precarious balance, and the same struggle. The easy way is always to go along with the cruelty; most do. Some don’t. You can see it here on the street. Something has galvanized the people around me to do the decent thing. I don’t think they had to think about it. It is something one knows the way we know that someday we will die, though we mostly deny this in our hearts; or the way we know how to fall in love, and how to stay in love, and how to hold a baby and how to rest when we are tired and other things like that. Such knowledge isn’t simple in the way the other kind of truth might be. It is something we carry in our bodies, and it’s often a rather delicate and complicated business, where it’s easy to make the wrong choice out of fear or laziness or confusion. Hence the struggle. When you make the right choice, there’s truly no mistaking it. No syllogisms or proof-texts are needed. Your skin tells you, or your muscles and bones, even before your mind looks for words. You feel whole—a whole human being, capable of action. I look around me at the stalwarts of the Sheikh Jarrah protests. The moral calculus of action, easily put into words, is not the only reason they are here. Actually, nothing instrumental can fully explain it, any more than the instrumental or the reasonable can explain why we are alive. Let them poke me and push me and arrest me and curse me, I don’t care. I care that they have driven Nasir and his family from their home. In that sense, I’m here for truth, a Greek truth, perhaps, the peeling away of a veil. I will stand my ground.

There was another good example of it last week. Yonatan Shapira, a captain in the Air Force who has refused to serve, who helped organize the letter of the pilots refusing to perform missions in the Palestinian territories, sprayed two graffiti on the last remnant of the wall surrounding the Warsaw ghetto: “Liberate all ghettos” (in Hebrew) and “Free Gaza and Palestine” (in English). He did it openly, in the full light of day, and he also explained it:

“The Holocaust has been appropriated for years now by the Israeli government and the Israeli education system. The Israeli establishment would rather have Jews and Israelis in a state of frightened victims who worship militarism…..In our act we tried to separate between the actions of the Israeli Government and Jews. The lesson that should be learned from the Holocaust is resistance to any form of racism. Resistance to ethnic cleansing and forced expulsion of people. Resistance to the starvation of human beings and their confinement into ghettos. These are issues that the Israeli policy makers would like us to ignore and forget.”

At the top of the hill I find my colleague Tamar. “How’s the revolution going up here?” I ask her, a little sadly. “Just look at these people,” she says. “They’ve planted some strong seeds. Some day they will bear fruit.”