Caroling to Support Palestinian Global Boycott of Apartheid Israel

Tweet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67fAjNFVMgU

Thanksgiving -- A Native American View"

Tweet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka2MFbemrCs

via Uruknet.info site

"The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder - Trailer "

Tweet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaKQR4_XoWw

While I do not agree with Mr. Bugliosi that Bush's attack on Iraq was a total anomaly in American belligerent behavior, I do believe in the idea of deterring future presidents from committing such brazen war crimes by prosecuting the blatant example perpetrated by the Bush regime.

Greetings from Leonard Peltier on the Day of Mourning

Tweet http://tinyurl.com/2c7mx6z

Greetings, my relatives.

It seems another year has gone by since the last time we gathered like this. I say we, although I am not there with you in body, my spirit certainly is. We have coined this day, a day of mourning, as opposed to a day of thanksgiving. It’s a shame that for the most part thanksgiving is relegated to only one day. And mourning is something that relates to unhappy circumstances that have taken place. We certainly can’t change what has happened. This very day is ours and tomorrow hasn’t happened yet and, is uncertain. I really don’t like to dwell on the mourning aspects of life but instead, on what we can do to prevent those unhappy and sometimes terrible times in our history. I may have mentioned it once before but I once read about a union organizer named Joe Hill that was framed by the copper mine owners to be executed. And I believe he said what really needs to be said upon his death. His words were “don’t mourn, organize”. And those are also my sentiments.

There are a lot of things that happened in the past that can be prevented in the future. There are losses that can be regained. But we must organize to do it. We must find it within ourselves to be in touch with the Creator for I can tell you from a heartfelt fact that when they’ve pushed you away, into a dark corner, not just your body, but your mind, your soul, your spirit, there is no one that can sustain you but the Creator himself. Dark moments come and go in all our lifetimes. And there are those in political office, who will try to turn your head away from the obvious truths. They will lie to you about what they believe. They will try to get you to follow what they consider politically correct while ignoring the truth, such as protests against the Mosque being built within blocks of the fallen Trade towers, which incidentally was a monument to wealth and wealth seekers. I am not trying to demean the innocent people whose only cause of their death was seeking a place of employment to feed their families. While they protest the Mosque, no one mentions the Native American sacred places that by treaty are seriously violated daily. Our Sacred Black Hills of South Dakota, sacred to many tribes, have the faces of many of our oppressors carved on them. The place of vision seeking, Bear Butte in South Dakota, sacred to us for millennia, has a bar built at the foot of it and there is talk of having helicopter flights around it to attract tourism. And, there is even talk of drilling for oil and gas.

Every time I have to write or I should say dictate, one of these statements, I try to think of what I would say if this was the last time I got to speak. The thing that comes to mind in some of our sacred ceremonies and that is thoughts of our relationships with the ones we love and the Creator of all life. Not to take away from the theme of this day, but if you can hold the person you love, be thankful. If you can walk on green grass, touch a tree, be thankful. If you can breathe air that didn’t come through a ventilation system, or a window with bars, be thankful. If you can stand in an open field or some other place at night and look up at the heavens, be thankful. No one appreciates the simple things as much as a man or woman locked away. I know sometimes some of my friends may have thought I had become institutionalized and there may be some element of my thinking behavior that has become calloused from this continued imprisonment. But I have not for a moment forgotten the needs of my people and the atrocities committed against them or the circumstances that all the poor and impoverished face in this world at the hands of those who take more than they need and exploit for gain, the futures of our children. I paint pictures of them sometimes, people I’ve known, people I’ve met, places I’ve seen, and places I’ve only seen in my minds eye. And if my paintbrush was magical, rest assured I would paint for myself one open door.

I wrestle with what to say to you and words are sometimes so inadequate. So if you are free today, un-imprisoned, be thankful. Give the person next to you a hug for me. May the Great Spirit bless you always in all ways with the things you need. May you find joy in doing what is right and righting what is wrong and seek to be the best example of what a human should be in our lifetime.

In the Spirit of those we mourn, those who gave their lives and those whose lives were taken from them.

I really don’t know what else to say because in writing this, my heart has become heavy with the emotions of this time.

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, who gave his life for what was right and tried to right what was wrong.

Your Brother,


Leonard Peltier

Jonathan Cook on How Zionism Muzzles the Media

Tweet http://www.jkcook.net/Articles3/0535.htm#Top

EXCERPT:

The final battleground in Israel’s “spin war” is outside Israel—on internet sites and in overseas newsrooms, especially those in the U.S. and those with a global reach.

Increasingly important among the new media platforms are blogs—especially ones by dissident American Jews such as Philip Weiss at Mondoweiss and Richard Silverstein at Tikun Olam. Weiss has helped to establish and nurture an online community of mainly Jewish writers that speaks with a refreshing clarity about Israel’s occupation and the power of the Israel lobby in the U.S. Silverstein, meanwhile, has broken several important stories about Israel leaked to him by Israeli journalists who could not report the issues themselves because of the increasing use of gag orders and censorship.

The readership for these overseas blogs, including among Israelis, is steadily rising. The sites are also freeing Israeli bloggers to become more outspoken: they can relay back to Israeli audiences information from foreign websites without the risk of being first to break censorship rules.

Also making an impact is the slow rise of non-Western media in English. The most significant is Al-Jazeera, a Qatar-based media company that has now both a website and a TV channel in English. Al-Jazeera, both its English and Arabic channels, is deeply disliked by the Israeli authorities (as it is by the Palestinian Authority). Not surprisingly, the English channel has struggled to find cable distribution deals in the U.S. Still it is demonstrating that a new model of critical but professional reporting about Israel in the mainstream is possible. Other TV channels that are attracting growing audiences are PressTV from Iran and Russia Today.

Perhaps of greatest concern to Israel is that these new media platforms are feeding an interest in a potentially formidable and unifying new campaign against Israel: BDS—shorthand for boycott, divestment and sanctions.

Ranged against these new upstart forces are Israel’s powerful and entrenched lobby groups. As well as political groups such as AIPAC targeting the U.S. Congress and the White House, there are sophisticated media lobbies like Camera and Honest Reporting. Their job is to intimidate reporters in Israel by targeting their less-knowledgeable editors overseas with mass letter-writing campaigns and official complaints. A visit to Camera’s website, for example, shows a long list of the most important foreign correspondents in Israel over the past two decades. Each has been on the receiving end of one or two major complaints—enough usually to bring them into line. Reporters worry that too many such complaints to their bosses will start to undermine the paper’s confidence in them.

But while Camera and Honest Reporting have long been targeting any signs of critical reporting in the mainstream media, new pro-Israel lobbies have emerged to counter threats from the electronic media and the BDS movement. One influential Israeli think-tank, the Reut Institute, has termed these new global forces a “delegitimization challenge” to Israel. The problem was addressed, in particular, at Israel’s annual security convention at Herzliya early in 2010 at sessions entitled, for example, “Winning the Battle of the Narrative” and “Soft Warfare against Israel.” The key message at these meetings was that the traditional Israeli practice of “hasbara”—a Hebrew term usually translated as “explanation” but really meaning “propaganda”—had to be reinvented for the new age.

The Israeli government first identified the threats posed by the new media to its mainstream narratives back in 2005, arguing that the country must “improve the country's image abroad—by downplaying religion and avoiding any discussion of the conflict with the Palestinians.” This led to a new campaign, “Brand Israel,” that has targeted major cities around the world for film festivals and food and wine galas featuring Israeli products. Israel has also encouraged the media to focus on Israel’s innovations in hi-tech industries and stem-cell research.

One venture is Israel21c, whose mission is “to focus media and public attention on the 21st century Israel that exists beyond the conflict.” It is reported to be working closely with AIPAC. Israel21c’s success in manipulating coverage by the mainstream media was signaled by the recent news that CNN had broadcast 15 of the group’s pre-packaged videos over the previous year – “reaching millions of viewers worldwide,” as Israel21c boasted on its website.

In a press release, Israel21c added: “Other encouraging stories chosen by CNN this year describe a mixed Jewish-Arab choir that practices its message of coexistence out loud, and a group of Palestinian and Israeli midwives working together to ensure that pregnant mothers in Israel and the Palestinian territories have safe and natural births. Rather than portraying Israel as a place of conflict and strife, these stories have highlighted Israeli accomplishments in science and technology, arts and culture, and philanthropy.”

The chief target of the new hasbara has been the BBC, the influential British-based public broadcaster that has a large international audience for its TV, radio and internet sites. The popular mood in Britain has turned rapidly against Israel over the past decade, and Israel appears to have been fearful that the BBC might reflect such sentiments. But after much behind-the-scenes pressure from the Israeli foreign ministry and its lobbyists, the BBC has moved in precisely the opposite direction—sometimes to a degree that has shocked the British public and even the British government.

Most notable was its refusal in 2009 to broadcast an appeal for that year’s selected charitable cause— helping the homeless and sick in Gaza after Israel’s 2008 winter attack. The BBC claimed for the first time in more than 20 years of running such appeals—part of its public service remit—that doing so would compromise the organization’s “neutrality.”

Other signs of the BBC’s loss of nerve are its abandonment of truly independent documentaries on Israel. Instead in recent years it has accepted “soft” documentaries from Israeli production crews. Israeli film-makers have had great success offering as their chief selling-point to the BBC various dubious “exclusives”—typically “rare” interviews with senior military people and views inside Israel’s war rooms “for the first time ever.” Israeli film-maker Noam Shalev, who has specialized in these kinds of productions, has made faux-documentaries like the 2006 “Will Israel bomb Iran?” that have offered little more than Israeli foreign ministry propaganda.

“Death in the Med,” the BBC’s investigation in August 2010 into the killing of nine passengers aboard the Mavi Marmara followed the same compromised format, even though it was fronted by a veteran BBC presenter, Jane Corbin. With a largely Israeli crew, Corbin again offered several “exclusives,” including being present during a training exercise by the “secretive” commando unit that stormed the Marmara, and interviews with the commandos themselves. The illegality of invading a ship in international waters was not discussed, nor was Israel’s theft of the passengers’ media equipment. There was no warning that video footage shown in the documentary was selectively edited by the Israeli government. Audio tape of passengers telling the Israeli commandos to “Go back to Auschwitz” that Israel is known to have doctored was presented as authentic, with Corbin even stating that the insults were “a warning sign.”

This approach looks as if it will be a key element in Israel’s future media strategy. As its grip on the narrative coming directly from the region weakens, it will fight harder to ensure that reporters of all kinds covering the conflict come under intensified pressure. But Israel is also likely to try to bypass local journalists as much as possible, selling its image and discredited myths to those least in a position to question or doubt them. Editors from the overseas news organizations should be among those who can be more easily swayed.

Israel may be struggling to keep its critics at bay, but its Watergate moment is still far off.

Friday, 11/26, 1 P.M., Caroling to Support Palestinian Global Boycott of Apartheid Israel -- 1 p.m. Gather at Westlake, 4th & Pine

Tweet Start the winter holidays off right!

Join a group of Boycott, Divestment & Sanction supporters at Westlake Park at 1 p.m. on Friday to serenade shoppers with information about local merchants who insist on selling products that profit Israeli apartheid, in contravention to the Palestinian global boycott call. http://bdsmovement.net/

We will have songsheets with "repurposed" carols and a leaflet explaining why it is important to support Palestine by avoiding these products.

Come and bask in the warmth of solidarity with Palestine! Wear your keffiyah.

"Myths & Realities in the Afghan Debate" -- AFghan Study Group

Tweet http://www.afghanistanstudygroup.org/2010/08/13/myths-and-realities-in-the-afghan-debate/

Myth #1
United States can afford to stay in Afghanistan for as long it takes to win.
Reality: U.S. national security depends most fundamentally on our economic strength. An open-ended commitment in Afghanistan demands vast resources better used at home and for purposes that contribute effectively to our security. It depletes our military and distracts our political leadership from more pressing challenges. And it adds massively to federal deficits and to the national debt, without building anything of enduring value for future generations.

Myth #2
The Obama administration and the U.S. military have a feasible strategy and a clear timetable to end the war.
Reality: The current strategy is not working, and the administration has not identified the end-state it is seeking to achieve or the circumstances that would make withdrawal possible. The U.S. government emphasizes that withdrawal in summer 2011 will depend on conditions prevailing at the time. The current strategy and the stated timetable are out of synch; objectives need to be updated to realities on the ground to ensure that a drawdown in the summer of 2011 proceeds in a timely and effective manner.

Myth #3
The “surge” in Iraq proves that counterinsurgency strategies can work; all we have to do is stay the course.
Reality: The “surge” in Iraq was only a partial success, predicated as much on a program to pay wages to almost 100,000 Sunni that had been fighting against us as it was on an increase in troops. Conditions in Afghanistan are far more challenging. There was a reduction in violence in Iraq, but the “surge” failed to produce meaningful political reconciliation. Escalation in Afghanistan has achieved few results so far, and there is no reason to think this will change.

The effectiveness of the “surge” in Iraq depended heavily on the simultaneous political turn of the Sunnis against the counterinsurgency. Ethnic and sectarian faultlines in Afghanistan are far more complicated and tribal structures are far more fragmented than in Iraq, making a similar political turn among insurgents very remote. Political reconciliation in Afghanistan will have to proceed community by community.

Myth #4
The Taliban is a group of religious fanatics who can never be appeased through negotiations.
Reality: All societies contain some extremists who cannot be appeased, but they usually represent tiny minorities. Many factions within the Taliban have already shown a willingness to negotiate. They may be won over by proposals that will give them a share of political power, greater local autonomy, and the prospect of economic gain. The Taliban is not a unified movement but instead a label that is applied to many armed groups and individuals that are only loosely aligned and do not necessarily have a fondness for the fundamentalist ideology of the most prominent Taliban leaders. Participants also include a long list of tribal chiefs, militia leaders, and warlords, many of whom (including the Haqqani and Hekmatyar organizations) are a living legacy of the insurgency against the Soviets.

Myth #5
There is no meaningful difference between the Taliban and Al Qaeda. They are part of a growing alliance of religious extremists that hate America and must be defeated at all costs.
Reality: Al Qaeda and the Taliban are not the same – and in fact have many differences and disagreements. The Taliban is a coalition of political-military and tribal organizations that seeks power in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda is a global terrorist organization seeking to end Western influence in the Middle East and overthrow existing Arab governments. Only Al Qaeda threatens the United States directly.

Myth #6
If we leave Afghanistan, the Taliban will take over, Al Qaeda will re-establish itself there, and new and deadly attacks on America will be more likely.
Reality: The Taliban are unpopular in much of Afghanistan and unlikely to take over the country. They might regain power in some areas, but Al Qaeda cannot recreate its former haven because—unlike before 9/11—the United States can easily detect and destroy bases and training sites with air power or special forces. Further, our large-scale military presence there may actually be increasing the overall danger that we face back home. Anger at U.S. military action in Central Asia inspired Faisal Shahzad, a U.S. citizen, to attempt an unsuccessful car bomb attack in Times Square. Other home-grown terrorists appear to have been inspired by similar motivations.

Myth #7
Our large-scale presence in Afghanistan is the only thing that will ensure women’s rights.
Reality: The worst thing for women is for Afghanistan to remain paralyzed in a civil war in which there evolves no organically rooted support for their social advancement. Women’s rights are central to the progress of Afghanistan, and the international community should continue to support this progress. While our proposal calls for a greatly reduced military presence, we nevertheless propose an international peacekeeping force that will be sufficient for the continuance of a number of key initiatives, including women’s progress.

Myth #8
Withdrawal from Afghanistan will be seen as a great victory for Al Qaeda and enhance its popularity and prestige. If we scale back our engagement in Afghanistan, they will simply follow us home.
Reality: It is our military presence that is actively aiding Taliban recruitment and encouraging disparate extremist groups to back one another. The Afghan mujaheddin did not “follow the Soviets home” after they withdrew. The same will be true once the United States reduces its military footprint and eventually disengages. In fact, military disengagement will undermine Al Qaeda’s claims that the United States is trying to “dominate” the Muslim world. A smaller U.S. footprint in the Muslim world will make Americans safer, not encourage terrorist attacks against American targets at home and abroad.

Myth #9
The U.S. scaling back its military mission in Afghanistan will threaten Pakistan’s stability and jeopardize control of its nuclear arsenal.
Reality: A prolonged and unwinnable war is more likely to undermine stability in Pakistan than would the prompt scaling down of the U.S. military mission. There are many other steps that the United States could take to help secure Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal that would be far less expensive and more effective than keeping a large military force in Afghanistan.

Fortunately, the danger of a radical takeover of the Pakistani government is small. Islamist extremism in Pakistan is concentrated within the tribal areas in its northwest frontier, and largely confined to its Pashtun minority (which comprises about 15 percent of the population). The Pakistani army is primarily Punjabi (roughly 44 percent of the population) and remains loyal. At present, therefore, this second strategic interest is not seriously threatened.

Myth #10
Reducing the military effort in Afghanistan will cause allies to doubt our credibility and staying power. Some might even be tempted to cut deals with our adversaries.
Reality: Public support for the allied mission in Afghanistan is lagging in almost all partner countries. The United States will strengthen its credibility among allies by coming forward with a realistic and pragmatic strategy for scaling back and eventually ending the mission. With some NATO countries already heading for the exit, a U.S. aimed at eventual departure is more likely to keep the coalition intact than one that aims at unrealizable objectives. The U.S. will gain the most credibility with our allies from making decisions that are recognized as wise, even if they represent a change in direction.

Myth #11
If the Obama administration scales back the mission in Afghanistan, Republicans will portray it as “soft” and the Democratic Party will pay a big political price in the 2010 and 2012 elections.
Reality: Our strategy in Afghanistan should be based on U.S. national interests, not partisan politics. Moreover, the war is increasingly unpopular with the American people. Voters will support a strategy that reduces costs, emphasizes counter-terrorism, and begins to bring U.S. troops home.

"Encircling Russia, Targeting China, NATO'S True Role in US Grand Strategy" -- Diana Johnstone

Tweet

A crucial question is whether “Western democracy” still has the strength to dismantle this war machine before it is too late.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21999

EXCERPT:

On November 19 and 20, NATO leaders meet in Lisbon for what is billed as a summit on “NATO’s Strategic Concept”. Among topics of discussion will be an array of scary “threats”, from cyberwar to climate change, as well as nice protective things like nuclear weapons and a high tech Maginot Line boondoggle supposed to stop enemy missiles in mid-air. The NATO leaders will be unable to avoid talking about the war in Afghanistan, that endless crusade that unites the civilized world against the elusive Old Man of the Mountain, Hassan i Sabah, eleventh century chief of the Assassins in his latest reincarnation as Osama bin Laden. There will no doubt be much talk of “our shared values”.

Most of what they will discuss is fiction with a price tag.

The one thing missing from the Strategic Concept summit agenda is a serious discussion of strategy.

This is partly because NATO as such has no strategy, and cannot have its own strategy. NATO is in reality an instrument of United States strategy. Its only operative Strategic Concept is the one put into practice by the United States. But even that is an elusive phantom. American leaders seem to prefer striking postures, “showing resolve”, to defining strategies.

One who does presume to define strategy is Zbigniew Brzezinski, godfather of the Afghan Mujahidin back when they could be used to destroy the Soviet Union. Brzezinski was not shy about bluntly stating the strategic objective of U.S. policy in his 1993 book The Grand Chessboard: “American primacy”. As for NATO, he described it as one of the institutions serving to perpetuate American hegemony, “making the United States a key participant even in intra-European affairs.” In its “global web of specialized institutions”, which of course includes NATO, the United States exercises power through “continuous bargaining, dialogue, diffusion, and quest for formal consensus, even though that power originates ultimately from a single source, namely, Washington, D.C.”

The description perfectly fits the Lisbon “Strategic Concept” conference. Last week, NATO’s Danish secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, announced that “we are pretty close to a consensus”. And this consensus, according to the New York Times, “will probably follow President Barack Obama’s own formulation: to work toward a non-nuclear world while maintaining a nuclear deterrent”.

Wait a minute, does that make sense? No, but it is the stuff of NATO consensus. Peace through war, nuclear disarmament through nuclear armament, and above all, defense of member states by sending expeditionary forces to infuriate the natives of distant lands.

A strategy is not a consensus written by committees.

The American method of “continuous bargaining, dialogue, diffusion, and quest for formal consensus” wears down whatever resistance may occasionally appear. Thus Germany and France initially resisted Georgian membership in NATO, as well as the notorious “missile shield”, both seen as blatant provocations apt to set off a new arms race with Russia and damage fruitful German and French relations with Moscow, for no useful purpose. But the United States does not take no for an answer, and keeps repeating its imperatives until resistance fades. The one recent exception was the French refusal to join the invasion of Iraq, but the angry U.S. reaction scared the conservative French political class into supporting the pro-American Nicolas Sarkozy.

In search of “threats” and “challenges”

The very heart of what passes for a “strategic concept” was first declared and put into operation in the spring of 1999, when NATO defied international law, the United Nations and its own original charter by waging an aggressive war outside its defensive perimeter against Yugoslavia. That transformed NATO from a defensive to an offensive alliance. Ten years later, the godmother of that war, Madeleine Albright, was picked to chair the “group of experts” that spent several months holding seminars, consultations and meetings preparing the Lisbon agenda. Prominent in these gatherings were Lord Peter Levene, chairman of Lloyd’s of London, the insurance giant, and the former chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, Jeroen van der Veer. These ruling class figures are not exactly military strategists, but their participation should reassure the international business community that their worldwide interests are being taken into consideration.

Indeed, a catalogue of threats enumerated by Rasmussen in a speech last year seemed to suggest that NATO was working for the insurance industry. NATO, he said, was needed to deal with piracy, cyber security, climate change, extreme weather events such as catastrophic storms and flooding, rising sea levels, large-scale population movement into inhabited areas, sometimes across borders, water shortages, droughts, decreasing food production, global warming, CO2 emissions, the retreat of Arctic ice uncovering hitherto inaccessible resources, fuel efficiency and dependence on foreign sources, etc.

Most of the enumerated threats cannot even remotely be construed as calling for military solutions. Surely no "rogue states" or "outposts of tyranny" or "international terrorists" are responsible for climate change, yet Rasmussen presents them as challenges to NATO.

On the other hand, some of the results of these scenarios, such as population movements caused by rising sea levels or drought, can indeed be seen as potentially causing crises. The ominous aspect of the enumeration is precisely that all such problems are eagerly snatched up by NATO as requiring military solutions.

The main threat to NATO is its own obsolescence. And the search for a “strategic concept” is the search for pretexts to keep it going.

"Israel Army Showed 'Intent to Kill' in Gaza Shelling" -- Jared Maslin

Tweet Walid Abu Oda holds flachettes, metal darts, from a shell that killed his son Ismail,

16. In addition, his son`s friend Hussam Abu Sayed, 17, and Ibrahim Abu Sayed,
91, died in the attack in the northern Gaza Strip on 12 September 2010.
[MaanImages/Jared Malsin]

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=334144

EXCERPT:

BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip (Ma’an) -- On 13 September, a day after Israeli tank shells decapitated his 16-year-old son, Walid Abu Oda went back to his family's northern Gaza farm in a vain search for the head.

Asked how he was coping with the loss, he said, "How do you think it feels to lose a son, to see your son without his head?"

The killing of Walid's son, Ismail Abu Oda, along with his friend Hussam Abu Sayed, 17, and his grandfather Ibrahim Abu Sayed, 91, is raising questions about whether Israel has taken sufficient strides to bring it's army into compliance with international humanitarian law.

The incident was similar to previous incidents, such as those described in judge Richard Goldstone's UN-mandated report on Israel's winter war on Gaza. Human rights groups say the September killings and others only underscore the importance of implementing the report's call for investigations and accountability.

A lack of credible investigations, by Israel or international bodies, into these and other allegations makes it likely that Israeli soldiers will continue to violate the laws of war in Gaza. The dearth of probes "makes it very easy for the soldiers and the commanders first to shoot and second to get away with it," said Mahmoud Abu Rahmah, a spokesman for the Gaza-based Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights.

Immediately following the shelling, the Israeli military announced it was merely “returning fire” at “suspects” who, they claimed, fired rocket-propelled grenades at Israeli forces.

Initial reports in the Israeli media repeated the military’s claims verbatim. "Shells kill three as IDF targets militant on Gaza Strip border,” declared the headline that ran in the next day’s edition of Haaretz.

“1 terrorist dead, 4 wounded in IDF response to Gaza attack,” reported The Jerusalem Post. Ynet: “IDF on Gaza incident: Suspects tried to fire anti-tank rockets." Not to be outdone, the settler-run Arutz Sheva announced: “IDF Kills Two in Firefight with Gaza Terror Infiltrators.”

While Haaretz identified the three victims as a grandfather and two teenagers, the other news portals simply reported, as fact, that the three were “suspects,” “militants,” “terrorists.”

Two days later the military backtracked, admitting what Palestinian witnesses had said all along: the three were civilians.

Brig. Gen. Eyal Eisenberg would later clarify in a statement sent to journalists that "we understand from a re-creation that we undertook that the three casualties were not involved in act of terror." The statement insisted, however, that one of the Palestinians had picked up an RPG launcher and aimed it at Israeli forces stationed along the border.

The case yielded a number of questions: Why did the army initially declare the three to be militants? Why did the Israeli soldiers decide to shoot in the first place?

The Israeli military did not respond to repeated requests for answers to these and other questions.

In Gaza, witnesses, relatives of the victims, and human rights experts told Ma’an that there was no basis for Israel’s claims that the three appeared to pose a threat to military forces.

All these sources stressed that the three victims visited the border area nearly every day, and were known to the soldiers stationed there. They also point out that the area where the shelling took place is in plain view of army installations on the northern border, a fact that Ma’an verified in a visit to the site. Ma'an found no evidence that anyone in the area was holding an RPG-launcher.

London's Conservative Mayor Warns Bush He Could Be Arrested for Torture There!

Tweet

http://pulsemedia.org/2010/11/21/olbermann-and-turley-on-the-prospects-of-bush-being-prosecuted/

"Chalmers Johnson, RIP"

Tweet http://pulsemedia.org/2010/11/21/chalmers-johnson-rip/#comment-14904

Now I know we're in trouble. We don't have Chalmers Johnson to help us sort out the predations of fading empire. Boy, will we miss him -- I do already. Linda

EXCERPT:

The great Chalmers Johnson is no more. An examplary scholar, Johnson metamorphosed from a hardline Cold Warrior into one of the most formidable critics of the American Empire, mapping its ever expanding imperium of bases. His 2000 book Blowback was prophetic, and his subsequent books The Sorrows of Empire and Nemesis have been equally prescient. Each one is a must read.

Here is (to the best of my knowledge) the last recorded interview with Johnson in which he discusses his latest book, Dismantling the Empire, which I haven’t had the pleasure of reading yet: [go to the link at beginning of post to get aural and video of Chalmers]

"Welcome to NATOstan" -- Pepe Escobar

Tweet http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LK20Ak02.html

EXCERPT:

Even though its [NATO's] raison d'etre was to defend Western Europe from the Soviet Union, it's useless to expect NATO at the Lisbon summit to clarify what the hell it is actually accomplishing in Central Asia/ Afghanistan (see Have (infinite) war, will travel, Asia Times Online, November 18, 2010). It's safer to attribute to the realm of a Tom & Jerry cartoon the fact that NATO is more terrified of some ragtag Taliban than it was of the Red Army.

Anyway, what matters is the infinity of it all. Not only US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and General David Petraeus, the coalition military commander in Afghanistan, are lobbying for Infinite War. British Defense Chief General Sir David Richards has just told the Daily Mail, "NATO now needs to plan for a 30- or 40-year role to help the Afghan armed forces hold their country against the militants." Talk about Enduring Freedom.

Yet Afghanistan, that infinite quagmire, is just an appetizer. NATO is being cannily sold to world public opinion as being entitled to raise hell anywhere it pleases - leaving the UN Security Council, expanded or not, in the dust. Precedents exist - as in the illegal, failed narco-mafia state Kosovo, not by accident extensively dubbed NATOstan.

A convincing argument can be made that everywhere the Pentagon/NATO "intervened" - from the Balkans to Afghanistan to Iraq - the mess has reached Gotterdammerung proportions. Who cares? The Pentagon has planted Camp Bondsteel - its largest base in Europe - in Kosovo; and it has also planted precious mega-nuggets in the Empire of Bases in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

The "spoilers" in the Pentagon/NATO's Brave New World blockbuster are undoubtedly Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and Myanmar. None of them will be easily intimidated. Russian leadership is too wily to be easily co-opted - although Pentagon/NATO encroachment in the form of missile defense bases along the entire length of Russia's borders is relentless.

NATO claims that it welcomes its "partnership" with Russia. But now there's a new element in the game to force - or not - Russia to play the missile defense ball (after all the decision to go all out has already been made.) Let's call it the Turkey shoot.

The Pentagon/NATO ploy of building a multi-layered missile defense system to "protect Europe" from those non-existent Iranian nuclear-armed missiles would be a dim-witted prank if it had not already attracted the attention of the usual Eastern Europe suspects - Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Romania. Turkey is a much more complicated case.

According to Turkish press reports, Ankara will only accept a missile defense system if the system is NATO's, not American; if the system is deployed in all 27 NATO countries; and if NATO does not place Turkey in the unenviable position of frontline state just as it was during the Cold War against the Soviet Union.

But part three of this equation is exactly what the Pentagon has in mind - especially now that the axis Ankara-Tehran-Damascus is a reality, not to mention the developing entente cordiale between Ankara and Moscow. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu anyway has made it clear, "We do not want a Cold War zone or psychology around us."

But Cold War remix it is, and Turkey runs the risk of being just a paw in their game. Profiting from NATO's new Strategic Concept, the ultimate goal of the US global missile dome - complete with cyber warfare and Prompt Global Strike - is to encircle the heart of Eurasia and isolate, who else, Russia, Iran and China. War is peace. Welcome to the pleasure dome. Welcome to NATOstan.

Short Video (en France) Regarding Wiedenhoefer Prize Winning Gaza Photos

Tweet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCYxIO4eYHA

"Defend Julian Assange" -- Wikileaks Editorial Staff

Tweet http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26870.htm

EXCERPTS:

n October 2010 Julian Assange won the Sam Adams Award for Integrity. He has also been awarded the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award and the Economist Index on Censorship Award in 2008. It is important to remember that accolades such as these do not come without tremendous hard work.

The expose of the Afghan War Diaries was a moment of media history, orchestrated by Julian Assange. He brought together The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel, three of the world's most reputable newspapers to collaborate with WikiLeaks on exposing more than 90 000 secret significant action reports by the United States relating to the war in Afghanistan. This involved a huge amount of administration in order to co-ordinate all four media partners' publishing schedules and a lot of time to carefully construct the levels of trust needed to bring together three major newspapers who were also competitors.

Since 2007 Julian, WikiLeaks and the Sunshine Press have been behind international front page stories that have changed the world. However, every story exposing abuses by powerful organizations, whether they be from New York or Nairobi results in a counter attack. Such the importance and veracity of revelations must be defended. Immediately after the Afghan War Diaries he conducted seventy-six interviews in three days maximizing the impact of the disclosures. It is very important for WikiLeaks to create a global platform with which to reach all corners of the earth. This demonstrates to those who wish to expose wrongdoing and misconduct that there is a way to do so without putting themselves at risk. He remains a messenger who big governments and their agencies can, and constantly do, attack while all the time keeping the source of the information published safe.

Because of the nature of the work performed by WikiLeaks both the organization and Julian Assange are constantly under attack. Their servers are under attack. Their security is under attack and their work resources and finances are under attack. This results is a lot of time-consuming administration and means working through a lot of bureaucratic steps to re-establish the efficient running of an organisation. When finances are frozen, as was the case with Money Brokers Limited in August this year (the WikiLeaks account was closed because of "watchlisting" by the US after publication of the Afghanistan documents) it resulted in many letters back and forth, instructing a legal team to administer the situation and still to date there has been no resolution. In just the last 14 days he has met with more than 9 lawyers (excluding Swedish lawyers) in in defense of WikiLeaks' publishing activities, agreements and sources. Similarly, Julian Assange is subject to these sorts of attacks on a personal level.

He and WikiLeaks both have been attacked in the media by Leon Panetta, Director of the CIA, Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and highest ranking officer in the US and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates not to mention the well recognized media personalities such as Marc A. Thiessen, a former bush administration chief speech writer and currently a Washington Post columnist who wrote "Assange is a non-U.S. citizen operating outside the territory of the United States. This means the government has a wide range of options for dealing with him." Christian Whiton, a Fox News contributor, said "WikiLeaks should be declared 'enemy combatants'," indicating they should be dealt with outside the law and Jonah Goldberg, a conservative syndicated columnist asked "why wasn't Julian Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?"

Attacks such as these create an extreme need for security and he must always be conscious and personally vigilant - a task that is both time consuming and mentally exhausting. The major government players such as the CIA and the Pentagon do not stop at just Julian but also target many WikiLeaks volunteers or associates. Two volunteers and an American WikiLeaks spokesperson have been detained and questioned in the United States along with other individuals alleged to be participant to his publishing activities such as Bradley Manning, an alleged source who is being held as a political prisoner in the United States. Mr Manning's mother's house in Wales was raided by the FBI together with local police earlier this year.

The result is a constant need for legal and political support and managing this from afar and throughout many continents is no small task. Furthermore Julian Assange does not take these matters lightly having been privy to bad experiences in the past - while working on the extra judicial assassinations taking place in Kenya, two WikiLeaks' affiliates being assassinated.

Since the false allegations made about him in Sweden this August Julian has also needed to work extremely hard at ensuring the smear campaign launched against him has not affected the WikiLeaks brand. Making many public appearances and conducting interviews is absolutely necessary not to mention maintaining relationships with media partners who are so easily affected by such events.

In spite of the attacks against him, Wikileaks successfully released the Iraq War Logs in late October - a cache of over 400 000 US military intelligence reports relating to the war in Iraq. Due to the false allegations mentioned above the management of this leak was extremely difficult. However, he successfully made new lasting relationships and expanded the media partners to include Al Jazeera, Le Monde, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, SVT and also brought in Public Interest Lawyers and NGOs such as Iraq Body Count. The documents' release was increased to television as well as print media with two full-length documentaries being commissioned.

Reminder: Vigil for Gaza, End the Israeli Occupation of Palestine

Tweet Please forward to your list....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKQqItZu4Is&feature=related

Saturday, Nov 20

Noon-2:00 pm
Westlake Plaza, 4th & Pine

=================================================================

Amin Odeh
VoicesofPalestine.org

"Stand up for what is right, even if you are standing alone"

"Canada's G20 Show Trials and the War on Activists" -- Naomi Klein

Tweet http://tinyurl.com/24s5p3q

Thanks, Rik

EXCERPT:

We gathered on the streets of Toronto during the G20 because we know there are other ways to make up a budget shortfall. Like getting the hell out of Afghanistan and not building new prisons at a time when Canada's crime rate has been down for a decade.

But our politicians have chosen a very different route, and that route necessarily means more social unrest.

And that has everything to do with why the security costs were so high during the G20.

Because much of that money went to arming the police with a new arsenal of weaponry: water cannons, sound cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets, surveillance cameras. I fear that we G20 protestors were just the guinea pigs. That those are the weapons of the future, designed to be turned on anyone else in the country who dares to resist the G20's policies.

And let's be clear that the resistance won't only be about cutbacks. Something else that happened at the G20 is that leaders decided not to make serious commitments to cut fossil fuel emissions. This was striking because after the failure of Copenhagen, there was much talk that smaller groupings of powerful nations would step into the vacuum left by the UN on climate policy.

But it didn't happen. Harper shut down all climate discussion because the Canadian government has every intention of massively expanding tar sands production. As we speak, Enbridge is trying to build the Western Gateway pipeline to bring tar sands oil to the West Coast of Canada, and TransCanada is trying to buy off U.S. farmers and threatening them with eminent domain to build the Keystone XL pipeline to bring that oil to refiners in Texas.

Harpers' is a bleak vision of a country. One that claws away at its own skin in search of fossil fuels that are catastrophically warming our planet -- only to send war ships to the Arctic to lay our claim to the oil and gas underneath that melting ice.

A country that then fortifies its borders to keep out refugees who lose their land and their homes in other parts of the world because of droughts and rising sea levels -- caused in part by our emissions.

We see this bleak vision materializing with the proposed Immigration Act, Bill C-49. If passed it would allow the Minister of Public Safety to declare any group of migrants coming in to Canada, a "smuggling incident."

If they are designated in this way, the state would have the power to jail them for a minimum of one year; deny access to health services; deny monthly detention reviews, and so on.

Which certainly puts what happened here during the G20 into some perspective.

But none of this will happen without a fight. No One Is Illegal, despite the legal attacks, is organizing a multi-front campaign to stop Bill C-49.

And the plans to expand the tar sands are hitting snags on multiple fronts. It turns out that after the BP disaster, when an oil company promises you that everything is going to be fine, it's not much of a comfort.

Everywhere the new pipelines are supposed to go into the ground, communities are organizing to keep them out.

In British Columbia, lead by First Nations communities, there is enormous determination to block the Gateway pipeline, just as the so-called Prosperity Mine was just defeated.

My point is simply this: our government knows that there are heavy battles ahead. Battles over what kind of country we want. Battles with tens of billions of dollars on the line.

These are fights we can win if we build coalitions like the ones we saw on the streets of Toronto during the G20: immigrant rights advocates with anti-poverty activists with First Nations defenders of the land with labour leaders and people who were just fed up with having their city taken over.

Our government fears those coalitions, fears the prospect of a truly mass social movement, and we can see that fear in the arrest and prosecution patterns.

It is no coincidence that the people facing the most serious charges with the most restrictive bail conditions are among the most effective organizers in this country. They are precisely the people who build bridges across traditionally separate communities and constituencies, finding common ground where there was often antipathy before.

That's what Alex Hundert does at AW@L and Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance, with his tireless support for the blockade at Grassy Narrows among other indigenous struggles.

That's what Syed Hussan does as an organizer with No One Is Illegal-Toronto -- he fights for the rights of immigrants and refugees. But now, in part because of his G20 political activities, he has been unable to get his work visa renewed and faces deportation himself.

Some of the most effective organizers in the country are being taken out of the game when they are needed most, precisely when the stakes are highest. But here is what the Tories and the cops can't seem to get: their attacks only make us more determined. Our movements are more resilient than they know.

And when we refuse to forget what happened here during the G20, when we demand accountability for the real criminals and the freedom of our friends, we are fighting not just for the past but for the future.

We are saying -- with clarity and conviction -- that we will not accept this treatment again.

We have the right to defend our hard won social services and meager refugee protections from morally bankrupt politicians.

We have the duty to protect our boreal forests and our pristine waters from dirty oil development.

And as we perform these duties, we know that there will be costs, there always are. But we refuse to be vilified as criminals and we refuse to relinquish our rights as Canadians.

That is what is at stake in the struggle for G20 justice and we cannot afford to lose.

"The Obscure Ruination of a Single Human Life" -- Chris Floyd

Tweet via Uruknet.info

Empire Burlesque, November 16, 2010

Decades before you were born, an invading army occupied your native land. The army of occupation has blighted and repressed your people for generations. You have heard your parents and your grandparents talk of all that they have lost, all that was taken from them, the friends and relatives they have seen killed, how the brutal, stifling occupation has bred extremism (often funded and promoted by the occupiers) that has riven your society, and how all hope of an ordinary peaceful life has been taken from your family, and from you.

You are 13 years old. One day, you see some soldiers of the occupation army. They are bristling with weapons and body armor, they are protected by watchtowers, helicopters, they are equipped with radios that can call down a missile or an airplane to destroy your home in a matter of minutes. Their very presence is a harsh, mocking, inescapable emblem of your family's pain and degredation. And so, on this day, you pick up a stone -- a stone -- and throw it, in a weak and futile gesture, at these impregnable figures.

And for throwing this stone -- a stone, a small, hand-sized fragment of stone -- this is what happens to you. From Israel's ynetnews:

Karem, a 13-year-old boy from Hebron, was arrested in late September on suspicion of hurling stones at Israel Defense Forces soldiers. After spending six days in the Ofer Prison, he was placed under house arrest for five months in his uncle's home and can't even go to school.

The boy's relatives say he is in a serious emotional state and is finding it difficult to recover from his days in prison. All he told his family members was that he was handcuffed and chained, and was sometimes left alone in a room or in solitary ....

The boy himself refuses to talk. Asked what he went through during the interrogation and in jail, he responds, "I don't know, I don't know."

Karem's grandmother says his mental state has influenced his health. "You can tell that he is afraid and frightened from his days in jail. He has fungus on his body and his skin has peeled from all the pressure, fear, and nerves. He barely talks. Today we looked for him and found him hiding in the chicken coop because he didn't want to talk to anyone."

It's just a small story; what does it matter? It's just a tiny incident, far from the worst, in a vast, world-roiling conflict; what does it matter? It's just the scarcely noticed ruination of one obscure child's life; what does it matter? Only losers and lamesters, only those on the margins, only those who aren't serious, who aren't savvy -- only those who are struggling to keep hold of their humanity in the face of implacable systems of power, systems which seek at every turn to degrade and destroy what Arthur Silber calls "the sacred value of a single human life" -- would care about such discarded wretches. But it doesn't matter at all to anyone who "matters" in the small, gilded circles of domination and sycophancy that oversway our lives and our discourse. And so these little stories will keep on playing out, everywhere, all the time, in the monstrous waste we make of our common humanity -- and its brief, beautiful, absolutely unique individual expressions.

Max Keiser: Irish Govt Slaves to IMF Terror Machine!

Tweet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQFHgcFlrlw

"Have (Infinite) War, Will Travel" -- Pepe Escobar

Tweet http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LK18Df02.html
via Palestinian Pundit

EXCERPT:

Anyone aware enough to think that Washington's goal is not to "win" the unwinnable AfPak quagmire but to keep playing its bloody infinite war game forever is now eligible for a personal stimulus package (in gold).

Let's review the recent evidence. All of a sudden, the White House, the Pentagon and the United States House of Representatives have all embarked on a new narrative: forget major US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2011; let's move the goalpost to 2014.

Then wily Afghan President Hamid Karzai tells the Washington Post he does not want all these US troops roaming around "his" country no more, adding please, stop killing my people with special-forces night ops - a euphemism for Pentagon terrorism.

General David “I'm always positioning myself for 2012” Petraeus is "astonished". How could he not be? After all, Karzai wanted to give the boot to private contractors - undisputed AfPak champions of false-flag black ops - then he gave up, as he might give up again on the night raids. As for Petraeus, he only wants the best of both worlds; kick up the hell-raising, as in drone hits and night ops (who cares about collateral damage?) and sit back and talk with the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence-created Taliban.

Incidentally, Petraeus' counter-insurgency myth has been buried in the plains south of the Hindu Kush (not that many in the US noted). The counter-insurgency (COIN) myth implies that Washington, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and what passes for "Afghan security forces" could "take, clear, hold and build" areas previously controlled by the Taliban. They could not accomplish any of this even in Marjah, insistently sold by the Pentagon and compliant corporate media as a success, not to mention much bigger Kandahar.

Former US secretary of state Colin Powell has just weighed in on CNN, admitting the US won't be "pulling out 100,000 troops. I don't know how many troops we'll pull out." Powell also said that "inside the national security team", the whole thing is "conditions-based". Thus "conditions" may be bent to suit any narrative. Sharp noses may immediately detect a whiff of Vietnam, and Powell had to insist that Afghanistan is not that country. Well, whether Karzai is increasingly becoming the new Ngo Dinh Diem is beside the point; his assassination would not solve anything anyway.

And all this while a 71-page Council on Foreign Relations report written by 25 "experts" gets a lot of traction in Washington. The report finds that the war costs a fortune, may not serve US interests and it's not "clear that the effort will succeed". Do people get paid to conclude this? The report also meekly suggests that depending on President Barack Obama's December strategic AfPak review, the US "should move quickly to recalculate its military presence in Afghanistan". It won't.

Let's try following the money. The AfPak war costs roughly US $7 billion a month - money that Washington needs to borrow from Beijing. Afghanistan in itself costs $65 billion a year - not counting NATO and humanitarian aid. Afghanistan's gross domestic product is only $22 billion. So Washington is spending three times the wealth of a whole country just to occupy it. Money for nothing. Properly invested, by this time Afghanistan would be the new Singapore.

AfPak costs nearly $100 billion a year. Surrealist as it may seem, polls indicate that for most Americans the US federal budget deficit is not a priority. No wonder no election candidates on November 2 emitted a peep about the ridiculously expensive quagmire.

Let's face it. Whoever is writing this screenplay deserves an Oscar.

“PUT THE PALESTINIANS ON A DIET” MEDIA BURY DOCUMENTS REVEALING ISRAEL’S DELIBERATE POLICY OF NEAR-STARVATION FOR GAZA

Tweet http://www.medialens.org/alerts/index.php

EXCERPT:

Israel has been forced to reveal what Palestinians and other observers on the ground have known for a long time: that the blockade of Gaza is state policy intended to inflict collective punishment, not to bolster Israeli “security”.

An Israeli human rights group has won a legal battle to compel the Israeli government to release three important documents. These outline state policy for permitting the transfer of goods into Gaza prior to the May 31 attack on the peace flotilla in which nine people were killed by Israeli forces. The group, Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, is demanding Israeli transparency. Meanwhile, Israel refuses to release documents on the current version of blockade policy which was “eased” after international condemnation following the flotilla attack.

The released documents, whose existence Israel had denied for eighteen months, reveal that the state approved “a policy of deliberate reduction” of basic goods, including food and fuel, in the Gaza Strip. Gisha Director Sari Bashi explains:

“Instead of considering security concerns, on the one hand, and the rights and needs of civilians living in Gaza, on the other, Israel banned glucose for biscuits and the fuel needed for regular supply of electricity – paralyzing normal life in Gaza and impairing the moral character of the State of Israel. I am sorry to say that major elements of this policy are still in place.” (Gisha: Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, ‘Due to Gisha's Petition: Israel Reveals Documents related to the Gaza Closure Policy’, October 21, 2010; http://www.gisha.org/index.php?intLanguage=2&intItemId=1904&intSiteSN=113)

As Saeed Bannoura of the International Middle East Media Center reports, the Israeli government imposed a deliberate policy:

“in which the dietary needs for the population of Gaza are chillingly calculated, and the amounts of food let in by the Israeli government measured to remain just enough to keep the population alive at a near-starvation level. This documents the statement made by a number of Israeli officials that they are ‘putting the people of Gaza on a diet’.” (Saeed Bannoura, ‘Israeli government documents show deliberate policy to keep Gazans at near-starvation levels’, International Middle East Media Center, November 6, 2010 21:32; http://www.imemc.org/article/59843)