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May 8th, 2008
the National Committee to Commemorate the Nakba*
Nakba Commemoration - 9 May, 2008
- Educational events beginning today in Ramallah highlight the importance of informed resistance.
- "I see myself as a creative teacher because I had many bad teachers. I want to make successful students who will go back to build Palestine. I do not remember Gaza as I was too small, but it is not about memory, it is about heart.” - Saeed (17), a Palestinian refugee from Yaffa, whose mother was expelled to Gaza in 1948, and who lives with his family in Al-Wihdat refugee camp in Jordan – from the Spring 2008 Nakba-60 Special issue of al-Majdal, Badil's quarterly publication. More at: http://www.badil.org/al-majdal/al-majdal.h
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Events in Palestine
- Education campaign: Beginning of educational campaign at the al-‘Awda Camp in Ramallah. Contact: Wajih Atallah, Union of Youth Activities Centers in the Refugee Camps, tel.: 0599-255584, mail: uyac@uyac.org
“Ila Haifa”: an adaptation of Ghassan Kanafani's Returning to Haifa by PSC and the al-Zaytouna Dabka group continues today in London, UK. Contact: PCS UK, mail: info@palestinecampaign.org
Report on previous events
The Al-Awda Award: On May 3, Badil honoured art and research projects with the 2nd Al-Awda Annual Award. The ceremony included an exhibition of the best posters submitted for this year's contest. The award was established by Badil in 2007 to raise the profile of Palestinian refugee rights, particularly the Palestinian refugees' right to return to their homes and lands. For more see: http://www.badil.org/Publications/Press/2
The Palestinian Nakba on the ground
On this day, 1948
- A Zionist militia occupied the village of 'Akbara. 'Akbara, located in the Galilee region, was one of the many villages that fell in the ethnic cleansing operations that occurred during May.
- 'Akbara was used by Zionist forces as a dumping ground for Palestinian refugees who were displaced from their homes in other areas of the Galilee. These refugees became known as "internally displaced", meaning that while they remained inside 1948 Palestine (Israel), they were barred from returning to their homes. Today, there are 274,000 so-called internally displaced Palestinians.
Nakba Today
- Nu’man village: Located north east of Bethlehem, Nu’man is completely isolated by the Wall, the Har Homa settlement and a settler-only road. Occupation forces control the only entrance, allowing only those with "Nu’man-Mezmuria" marked on their identity papers inside. Everyone else, including health workers and first-degree relatives, is prohibited from entering.
- "We turned out to be the 21st century refugees with peoples' life at stake. The issue is not security but rather the creation of an atmosphere for silent transfer, to create a situation where we ourselves reach the conclusion that our lives are unliveable" – Jamal Der'awi, Nu'man village
- For more on Nu'man village, see: Jamal Darawi from Nu'man: "We Are the Refugees of the 21st Century" at http://stopthewall.org/communityvoices/1
Background Resources:
* For resources on the history of the Nakba, information about Palestinian refugees, and their right of return under international law, see the Nakba-60 Resources Info-Packet at: http://www.badil.org/Publications/badil-n
* For information about selected cases of ongoing diaplacement, please visit: http://www.stopthewall.org/activistresou
* For information, resources and links to organizations working on the growing campaign for Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions on Israel until it dismantles its military occupation's colonial apartheid system in the West Bank, Gaza and Golan Heights; ends systematic discrimination against its Palestinian citizens; and implements the Palestinian refugees' right to return to their homes and properties, please visit: http://www.bdsmovement.net
For more information, please contact:
Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign
Email: global@stopthewall.org , Tel.: +972-2-297-1505
Badil Centre for Palestinian Refugee & Residency Rights:
Email: mediaenglish@badil.org , Tel.: +972-2-277-7086
*The week’s events coordinated by the National Committee to Commemorate the Nakba. The National Committee represents national movements and networks, including the Council of National and Islamic forces, the Global Palestine Right-of-Return Coalition, the Popular Committees and youth centers of the refugee camps all over Palestine, the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, Badil Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO), the Civic Coalition for the Defense of Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem and the PLO Department for Refugee Affairs (DORA).
The Reason Bush is squirming is because some of the Prisoners Bush Tortured Died
Concerning the Entire World - An Excellent Case for the Next Nuremburg Trials have been Carefully Documented
Carter says U.S. tortures prisoners
- Story Highlights
- President Bush makes up his own definition of human rights, ex-president says
- U.S. has said "Geneva Conventions do not apply," former President Carter says
- GOP presidential candidates in rush to go to war with Iran, Carter says
- Sens. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama criticized for refusing to set Iraq pullout date
Former President Carter says the U.S. "has abandoned the basic principle of human rights."
VIDEO
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States tortures prisoners in violation of international law, former President Carter said Wednesday.
"I don't think it. I know it," Carter told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.
"Our country for the first time in my life time has abandoned the basic principle of human rights," Carter said. "We've said that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to those people in Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo, and we've said we can torture prisoners and deprive them of an accusation of a crime to which they are accused."
Carter also said President Bush creates his own definition of human rights.
To: Editors and Writers – Alternative Media
Here is my response to Axis of Logic's call for unity.
To: Editors and Writers – Alternative Media
http://www.williambowles.info/media/2005/n
Les Blough,
Google can’t really be hurt by any imaginable economic protest to their new censorship tactics, but they (the Zionists) really hate it when they are made to look bad. Whenever Zionists manipulate events and people around them, they seem to be as worried about appearances as they are about results. The inner businessman’s concern for image is always at war with the fascist bastard’s desire to kill the opposition.
We have the following statement on censorship from the director of Google
"At Google, we have a bias in favor of people's right to free expression," he said. "Google is not and should not become the central arbiter of what does and does and does not appear on the Web. That's for elected governments and courts to decide," Brand said.
He said Google removes results from its search index only when required to by law, for example, when copyright infringement is an issue.” 12/11/2007 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/9231
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U.S. promises cannot be trusted - Gorbachev
14:04 | 07/ 05/ 2008
MOSCOW, May 7 (RIA Novosti) - Promises made by U.S. leaders cannot be trusted, former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph published on Wednesday.
"The Americans promised that NATO wouldn't move beyond the boundaries of Germany after the Cold War, but now half of central and eastern Europe are members, so what happened to their promises? It shows they cannot be trusted," he said in Paris.
He also said that Washington's claims that a missile defense system it is planning to build in central Europe was aimed exclusively at countering the threat from so-called rogue states could not be believed either.
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Arabs say racism on rise as Israel turns 60
A celebration that ignores the plight of Palestine
Written by Pointer
Muhammed Saddiq has a family farm that dates back to an ancestor from the first millennium. He and his family live in the crowded corners of a Palestinian slum.
The Jewish state that is celebrating its 60th anniversary of nationhood and democracy has prevented the family from reoccupying its family farm despite the fact that it has remained vacant. Except for some state planted pine trees and a water reclamation plant, no one has lived on this family's land. Taken from the family for Israeli settlement, sixty years later this has never happened.
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Attention Editors and Writers of Alternative Media
May 8, 2008
By Israel e News Johann Hari - The Independent
In the US and Britain, there is a campaign to smear anybody who tries to describe the plight of the Palestinian people. It is an attempt to intimidate and silence – and to a large degree, it works. There is nobody these self-appointed spokesmen for Israel will not attack as anti-Jewish: liberal Jews, rabbis, even Holocaust survivors. My own case isn't especially important, but it illustrates how the wider process of intimidation works. I have worked undercover at both the Finsbury Park mosque and among neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers to expose the Jew-hatred there; when I went on the Islam Channel to challenge the anti-Semitism of Islamists, I received a rash of death threats calling me "a Jew-lover", "a Zionist-homo pig" and more. Ah, but wait. I have also reported from Gaza and the West Bank. Last week, I wrote an article that described how untreated sewage was being pumped from illegal Israeli settlements on to Palestinian land, contaminating their reservoirs. This isn't controversial. It has been documented by Friends of the Earth, and I have seen it with my own eyes. The response? There was little attempt to dispute the facts I offered. Instead, some of the most high profile "pro-Israel" writers and media monitoring groups – including Honest Reporting and Camera – said I an anti-Jewish bigot akin to Joseph Goebbels and Mahmoud Ahmadinejadh, while Melanie Phillips even linked the stabbing of two Jewish people in North London to articles like mine. Vast numbers of e-mails came flooding in calling for me to be sacked.
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Bush says starving India eats too much
The Ruthless Id
May 04th, 2008
I think your points about Iron Man are right, and it’s worth taking note, again, of the Orientalism implicit in these projects. Simply by virtue of having a colonial occupation in Afghanistan presented in a completely de-contextualized way, one creates the knee-jerk reactions about Islam and terrorism that the FOX news channel likes to peddle. The mysterious east has always been presented in the west as timeless and mysterious –and the motives of its people indecipherable and shrouded in veils of ancient tribal rights the progressive west can’t (and doesn’t want to) fathom.
The terrorists in this film are ALL dirty and bearded and ruthless — and somehow made to seem sadistic even while being blowtorched by Bob Downey. The western soldiers are smiling and clean and friendly — and the deaths of the US soldiers is awash in genuine suffering and pain, while the death of the *terrorists*(sic) is simply there to demonstrate how cool Downey’s newest weapons are.
The world of Marvel comics and DC comics is a world of compensatory gratification for a powerless populace; its obvious fantasies are those of pimple-faced lumpen teens who would love to grab a cape each night (or a suit of iron) and go beat the shit out of someone ….and who better these days than those lousy A-rabs. This brings me, in a roundabout fashion, to the London mayoral election. Boris Johnson wins convincingly, over Ken Livingstone. What to make of this? Johnson is an Eton educated toff, a rich Torrie prick, and one of those self consciously rumpled ruling class assholes that England is so good at turning out. What was his appeal? Well, first, and maybe most importantly, he was a regular on the satirical news show Have I Got News for You, which made him a comfortable iconic figure for most Londoners. Even those council [projects] welfare underclass poor he was attacking seemed somehow to prefer his blond bloated image to that of Red Ken. That he often used openly racist language (picaninnie etc) seems not to have mattered. But this is also about the demise of New Labour. Now, what are the implications in all this …..in terms of the psychology of London voters? I think that it speaks most directly to the emptiness at the heart of electoral politics in the west … or at least in the major western countries (the US, England, Germany, and France). The meaningless theatre of these popularity contests cannot be clearer at this point. Boris Johnson is an asshole — a rich conceited prig, and in a sense he is a bit like George Bush; an empty mouthpiece with a genial smile and happy go lucky attitude. In the US the Obama/Hillary show staggers forward with appearences on FOX news. What the fuck? Interviews with Bill *lufa* O’Reilly? Ok, in a sense, this is a satirical news show, too. But why do it? The answer is because it matters not, because none of these candidates has anything to say. Because the Spectacle neutralizes real opposition and replaces it with kitsch faux opposition. Do you like waffles or pancakes? I like pancakes damnit, and I’m voting for pancakes. From Reagan to Arnold to Boris to Bush — from Blair to Berlusconi to Merkel to Sarko. Assholes top to bottom.
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MSNBC.comEvangelicals urge pullback from politics
DALLAS - A group of U.S. evangelical leaders called on Wednesday for a pullback from party politics so that followers would not become "useful idiots" exploited for partisan gain.
One in four U.S. adults count themselves as evangelical Protestants, giving them serious clout in a country where religion and politics often mix. Conservative evangelicals have become a key support base for the Republican Party.
But the movement has had growing pains and the statement issued on Wednesday, called an "Evangelical Manifesto," is the latest sign of emerging fractures as some activists seek to broaden its agenda beyond hot-button social issues such as opposition to abortion and gay rights.
"Christians from both sides of the political spectrum, left as well as right, have made the mistake of politicizing faith," the manifesto declares.
Together with us are some of the most insightful and talented writers, activists and artists around. Contributors include Khalid Amayreh, Ramzy Baroud, Adib Kawar, Ernesto Paramo, Wael Al Saad, Nadia Hasan, Iqbal Tamimi, Richard Jones, Nahida Izzat, Razan Al Ghazzawi, Khaled Islaih, Steve Amsel, Ben Heine and many more. www.palestinethinktank.com contains both original material and material from other sources that we believe deserves to be considered.
We are people from different backgrounds who live in different countries. We speak different languages and believe in different religions, or even believe in no religion at all.
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By Cathy Garger
May 7, 2008, 13:33
The federal government is entering into what is quite literally dangerous territory with its plans to fully support yet another uranium enrichment plant certain to harm the good people of Idaho - and countless others throughout the nation. And if that’s not bad enough, plans for two other nuclear facilities that emit these toxic, radioactive gasses into the environment are in the works for Ohio and New Mexico as well.
All this, however, is nothing new. As the resources below sadly demonstrate, uranium facilities owned and operated by those in the federal laboratories’ arm of the nuclear energy “biz” have already done a good job of contaminating the states of Idaho, (1) Ohio, (2) and New Mexico (3). Now, with the private corporate ventures of new Uranium enrichment facilities on the drawing board in these same three states, it is quite clear that nuclear contamination of America is the federal stock holders’ most lucrative, tried ‘n’ true, “hot” commodity. (4)
If you have no idea why anyone might object to the construction of Uranium enrichment plants that promise to bring a few hundred jobs into each state, you are hereby encouraged to do a simple Internet search as follows, including the quotation marks just as you see them.
"Uranium enrichment plant" +contamination
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An Iraqi cleaner and two cooks claim that a culture of sexual harassment, abuse and bullying exists at the British Embassy in Baghdad.
The middle-aged cleaner told The Times that a British contractor with KBR, the company hired to maintain the embassy’s premises, offered to double her daily pay if she would stay the night with him. When she refused, she said, her pay was cut and she was later dismissed.
The Iraqis accuse the embassy of leaving the abuse unchallenged and failing adequately to respond to complaints against several British managers for KBR. The company was allowed to conduct its own inquiry, an arrangement criticised as a very serious conflict of interest.
Russia 'expels US embassy staff'
The US has given no reason yet for the expulsion from the Moscow embassy
Russia has ordered the expulsion of two military attaches from the American embassy in Moscow, US officials say.
The US state department said it would comply with the order although it objected to it.
Two Russians have been expelled from Washington in recent months, one in November and the second on 22 April.
The news comes as Russia conducts a transition of power with Vladimir Putin becoming prime minister and Dmitry Medvedev president.
'Separate incidents'
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Ron Paul Republican B.J. Lawson has won his House of Representitives primary in North Carolina’s 4th District with 70% of the vote! This represents a long overdue start in the shift in what it means to be a Fiscally Conservative Republican that believes in individual rights and Liberty. Here is a quote off his site: “We are ready to embrace a federal government that focuses on its Constitutional responsibilities, and stops being a suffocating burden that will haunt our children and grandchildren.” North Carolina’s 4th District got the message, now it’s time to get the rest of the country on board.
The campaign against Hizbullah tracks the campaign against the Mahdi Army
Robert Fisk: Lebanon descends into chaos as rival leaders order general strike
Nasrallah: D hands on a network of resistance declaration of war-Original arabic
Inside Story - Lebanon strike - 07 May 08 - Part 1, Part 2
Lebanon on the Brink: Blindsided Hezbollah Mulls its Response
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Thursday that the Lebanese government had declared war on his Shiite militant group by declaring its private telecommunications network an illegal threat to state security.
Nasrallah vowed to fight any attempts to disarm Hezbollah in a speech that hiked tensions already running high after a long-simmering political crisis between the Hezbollah-led opposition and the government erupted into sectarian violence.
"Those who try to arrest us, we will arrest them," he said. "Those who shoot at us, we will shoot at them. The hand raised against us, we will cut it off."
Celebratory gunfire rang out in Beirut as Nasrallah spoke live on television by videolink from a hiding place. The Hezbollah leader rarely appears in public for fear of assassination by Israel.
By Noah Shachtman EmailMay 06, 2008
Matrixcode The Pentagon's way-out researchers don't just want to build an Internet simulator, to test out cyberwar tactics. They want the range's operators to "realistically replicate human behavior and frailties," too.
Congress has ordered the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, to put together a National Cyber Range, as part of a massive (and massively secret) $30 billion, government-wide effort better prep for battle online. The project is now considered a top priority for the Agency. And to make sure the facility is as true-to-life as possible, Darpa wants the contractors running the Range to be able to "replicate realistic human behavior on nodes," a request for proposals, released today, reveals.
Specifically, the Agency wants to have its contractors:
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Fascists and Jews united for Rome mayor
10 Steps to Fascism
Monday, May 5, 2008
THE WINDS OF THE RIGHT OVER EUROPE
By Gaither Stewart
5/4/08
(Rome) I feel sick.
She says I’m sick in the head.
Actually I’m sick in the heart, sick in my viscera. My head reels, I feel chronic vertigo.
She says it’s only paranoia.
I tell her the old Polish joke popular during the military regime. He constantly felt spied on, tailed everywhere, his phone tapped, his mail read. His friends said he was nuts. His wife sent him to an analyst. As it turned out, his friends, his wife, his analyst were right: it was only the secret police.
My problem is over-sensitivity, hyper-susceptibly, recurrent political allergies and chicken-hearted alienation. For decades now my general anxiety has been hatching. Sometimes I feel it swelling my nostrils, as when I breathe the pollen-laden Rome spring air. From my viscera it creeps into my spleen and leapfrogs across to my liver. It crawls up through tubes to my lungs, ever higher through my esophagus, lingers in the back of my throat and finally settles into my brain, first destroying my amygdala before obliterating the whole campus of my hippocampus.
It’s them!
"Crying and shooting" is the term used in Israeli political discourse to describe those Israelis who agonize over what they are doing to the Palestinians, but carry on doing it anyway. It's a way for Israelis to feel better about themselves, by reasserting their liberal, progressive and humanitarian values, even as they carry out illiberal, regressive and murderous actions.
There was a wonderful example of the phenomenon last week in a column written for Ha'aretz by Bradley Burston. He wrote an agonized column - Our Defense Forces, our war crimes, our terrorism - about the disproportionate number of civilians among the Palestinians killed by the IDF, and specifically about Israeli's collective refusal to acknowledge their responsibility for the killings.
But his column is like one of those non-apologies you make when you know you should apologize for something, but you're not really sorry. When instead of saying "I'm sorry for what I did", you say "I'm sorry if you were offended", as if it's the offended feelings that are the problem, not the fact that you said something offensive in the first place.
The incident that set off Burston's "soul-searching" was the killing of Myassar Abu Mu'attaq, and her four children - Rudayna (6) Hana (3), Saleh (4) and Mousad (15 months), photo left by Mohammed Abed for AFP - whose home was destroyed by an Israeli shell as the family sat down to breakfast. (The IDF initially acknowledged the family had been killed by one of their tank shells which had gone off course, but subsequently claimed that they weren't really responsible because although they had fired the shell, it had not really hit the house, but had struck instead two nearby Palestinian gunmen who were carrying large amounts of explosives that were detonated by the Israeli shell and indirectly blew up the Abu Mu'attaq house. This is a variant of the "Ghalia Defence" that the IDF came up with when it shelled a Gaza beach in June 2006, but denied any responsibility for the deaths of the Ghalia family who had been having a picnic there, claiming that although they fired six shells at the beach - one of which they could not account for - the errant shell could not have killed the Ghalia family who must have been killed instead by Palestinian munitions hidden under the sand that might have been inadvertantly detonated by the Israeli bombardment. That's a close echo of what the IDF claims about the Abu Mu'attaq killings: the IDF knows it fired the shells, knows the civilians at the receiving end are dead, but subsequently introduces some intermediate mechanism - mines under the beach, exploding backpacks - that deflects responsibility to an intermediate agent, and allows the army that fires the shells to maintain the pretense that even when it kills civilians its intentions are pure. There's probably a technical name in medical literature for this phenomenon of shifting blame for guilty actions to an intermediate party).
-- This land was theirs by Hannah Mermelstein; The Jewish Advocate, 24 Apr 2008.
The new signs were vandalized within two weeks of being set up. The sign in the photo used to read:
The Military Commander - Judea and Samaria: The Ayalon-Canada Park is replete with historical sites… including the remains of a church from the Byzantine period and the remains of a crusader fortress. During the monarchic period, in 1268, the tomb of Sheikh Ibn-Janal was built. The village Dayr Ayub, which overlooked the road leading up to Jerusalem, existed in the area of the park until the War of Independence. The villages Imwas and Yalu existed in the area of the park until the year 1967. In the village of Imwas there lived 2,000 residents, who now reside in Jordan and Ramallah. Near the remains of the village is a cemetery. In the village of Yalu there lived 1,700 residents, who now reside in Jordan and Ramallah. There remain a spring and a number of wells in the village.The text in bold type is the text that has been painted out on the sign.
Weekly report of Israeli war crimes, 5/8/08
European campaign: Death of Gaza patients "cold-blooded execution"
BRUSSELS, (PIC)-- The European campaign to lift the siege on Gaza has charged that the rising number of patients who die in Gaza as a result of the Israeli occupation authority's siege was "cold-blooded execution".
The campaign in a statement on Wednesday said medical reports in Gaza revealed that 146 Palestinian patients had died over the past ten months including 20 who died in the past month alone some of them were children not more than one month old.
The campaign held the world community directly responsible for the tragedy and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza due to absence of any serious or effective act to lift the siege on one and a half million Palestinians in Gaza.
--MORE--Weekly report of israeli war crimes, 5/8/08
As we approach the climax of the global systemic crisis (which should be reached in the second half of 2008 according to LEAP/E2020), it becomes easier to grasp the big trends about to affect foreign exchange rates, global trade and regional dynamics over the next five years. Indeed some of the characteristics of the so-called “decanting” phase of the crisis [1] are beginning to emerge. In this 24th issue of the GEAB, LEAP/E2020 therefore decided to introduce its first anticipations on big trends between now and 2011/2013. These anticipations are of course meant for the use of private investors willing to enhance their mid-term visibility. They are also relevant for exporting companies and for the economic and financial authorities in need of a similar visibility to make their strategic decisions, at a time when all the landmarks and beliefs which used to found the global economy and finance in the past decades are collapsing altogether.
In the past weeks, the world’s economic and financial operators appeared utterly disoriented, while the institutions in charge of dealing with market regulation and of supervising global economic trends display sheer powerlessness.
In this 24th issue of the GEAB, we describe four trends particularly illustrative of the global systemic crisis’ impact phase as it is about to unveil between mid-2008 and 2011/2013. It is the first time that our team is able to provide some accurate indications (completed in the “Strategic recommendations” section, P. 17) about the next 3/5 year-period.
Global financial crisis – Savers and investors trapped into USD 10,000-billion worth of « ghost-assets »
USD-denominated asset crisis – End of 2008: The US Federal Reserve and its network of « Primary Dealers » fight for their institutional and financial survival
Foreign exchange crisis - Horizon 2011/2013: Sustainable changes in the hierarchy of foreign currencies
Global social crisis – From hunger riots worldwide to the 25 million unemployed of the Very Great US Depression
The “Plunge Protection Team” or the diversion of an instrument of protection to the profit of a policy of manipulation
- Excerpt GEAB N°8 (October 16, 2006)
In this context, a vast communication offensive has started. It uses the same logic as was used for the Iraqi situation before the 2004 presidential election: preventing voters from becoming aware of the extent of the disaster in progress by flooding them with fictitious news, by drowning “bad” objective news in a multitude of “good subjective news” (this is what an American economist called “the transformation of indicators into vindicators” (1)), by working out each week new explanations proving that the “positive” situation was sustainable,….
In fact, what we have seen for two months, and will see for another month, is a remarkable exercise of psychological war probably coordinated by the very secret “Working Group on Financial Markets” created by the Executive Order 12631 (2) established under Reagan (3) in March 1988, also called by the Washington Post (4), the “Plunge Protection Team”. This working group was created following the October 1987 stock exchange crisis with the objective “to promote the integrity, the effectiveness, the regularity and the competitiveness of the markets of the country, and to maintain the confidence of investors”.
This group does not produce any reports; has no public visibility and details neither the agenda, nor the composition of its meetings; is directed by the Finance Minister (Henry Paulson) and includes the president of the federal Reserve Ben S. Bernanke (former adviser of G.W. Bush, named to this position at the end of 2005) and the two presidents of the authorities monitoring the markets: the Securities and Exchange Commission, Christopher Cox (named to this position by G.W. Bush in 2005) and Reuben Jeffery III (also named by G.W. Bush to this position after having been its adviser), one of the directors of the CPA, American authority of transition in Iraq and also former member of Goldman Sachs, like H. Paulson.
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Sixty Years On, Palestinians Mourn Loss of Homeland
Press Releases
Ref: 43/2008
Date: 08 May 2008
Time: 11:00 GMT
IOF Kill Mother in front of her Children inside their House in Khan Yunis
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemns the killing of a mother in front of her children yesterday, during an IOF incursion into New Abasan town, east of Khan Yunis.
PCHR investigations indicate that at approximately 16:30 on Wednesday, 7 May, IOF troops raided the house of Majdi Abd El-Raziq El-Daghma during an incursion into New Abasan.
The troops opened the outside metal door, then blew up the wooden interior door. The force of the blast killed 33 year old Wafa Shaker El-Daghma instantly. The IOF troops then stormed into the house and covered her body with a rug, having ascertained that she was dead. The troops then detained her 3 children, who had all witnessed the killing of their mother, in one of the rooms of the house. A soldier remained on guard at the entrance to the room. The children, who included a two year old, were confined inside the room for the next six and a half hours.
At approximately 23:00 the children were finally able to leave the room after the IOF withdrew from the house. Twelve year old Samira ran to a neighboring house, and the neighours called an ambulance. Wafa Shaker El-Daghma's body was immediately transferred to Naser hospital in Khan Yunis.
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By Agence France Presse (AFP)
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Arab-Israeli recalls ethnic cleansing in 1948
Mehdi Lebouachera
Agence France Presse
BIRAM, Israel: Standing on the roof of the old schoolhouse, Toomeh Maghzal looks over the green valley below at the ruins of the village of Biram, which Arabs were forced by the Israeli Army to abandon 60 years ago. "There used to be houses everywhere. We had orchards of olive trees, apple trees, vineyards," says Maghzal, an 81-year-old Maronite Christian from the village. "Today, it is all in ruins."
Back on October 29, 1948, during the war that followed the creation of Israel, which marks its 60th anniversary on Thursday, the Israeli Army entered the village of Biram, which lies near the border with Lebanon.
The 1,050 people residents, mostly Maronite farmers, were forced to flee to the neighboring village of Jish, but with the promise, never fulfilled, that they could eventually return to their homes. Israeli forces later bombed Biram.
"They destroyed everything to wipe out our hopes of returning," says Maghzal, still spry and with vivid memories of the village and its Christian Arab population.
Today weeds grow over the ruins of the village and fig trees sprout in the empty shells of houses. In spring, a blanket of bright yellow wildflowers covers the winding lanes. Only the church is still in use, as well as the cemetery where even those who left to live as far away as the US choose to be buried.
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May 8, 2008: The CIA is having a growing problem with their analysts and spies being recruited away by corporations. One unpleasant, for government intelligence agencies, development of the last few decades has been the growing popularity of "competitive intelligence" (corporate espionage.) It's a really big business, with most large (over a billion dollars of annual sales) corporations having separate intelligence operations. Spending on corporate intel work is over $5 billion a year, and is expected to more than double in the next four years.
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[]careandwashingofthebrain.blogspot.com wrote:
May. 8th, 2008 05:33 pm (UTC)
Just give up and parrot the party line about how Israel is such a great place to live… if you’re Jewish.
And how Israel has a thriving economy…. thanks to the U.S. giving Israel billions and billions of dollars per year.
And how Israel is such a “peace” loving nation… Just be sure to shout that loudly, so you’ll be heard over the Apache helicopter gunships strafing Gaza.. and to be heard over the IDF’s 155 mm artillery shelling Gaza.
And to be heard over the IDF armored bulldozers, crushing the life out of the West Bank by knocking down Palestinian homes and smashing down their olive groves and running over the occasional peace activist.
And to be heard over the deady barking sounds of the numerous IDF sub-machine guns, ripping and tearing into the flesh of Palestinian kids.
Yep, Israel is one peaceful nation, alright.
The only peace Israel wants is: a “piece” of Jordan; a “piece” of Syria; a “piece” of Lebanon; a “piece” of Egypt; a “piece” of Iraq; a “piece” of Saudi Arabia and whatever “pieces” are left after Israel finishes it’s genocidal extermination of the Palestinians.
Link
Editor: Emily Schwartz Greco
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org
After weeks of backroom negotiations, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) finally unveiled the latest plan for funding the Iraq War late Tuesday night. As the plan was unveiled, anti-war groups ranging from United for Peace and Justice to Win Without War to the Iraq Campaign 2008 joined voices for the first time in their call to urge members to vote no on the funding. But while their messages are clear on the funding, the actual content and implications of the other provisions in the bill need careful examination.
Using a series of congressional slight-of-hand maneuvers, Pelosi’s plan consists of scrapping the contents of a bill that has already passed, and in its place, voting on three separate new amendments: one on funding the war, a second on a set of provisions including a non-binding “goal” of redeploying combat troops from Iraq within 18 months, and a third for funding a set of domestic economic priorities. While the anti-war movement urges a strong “no” vote on the funding amendment, and a “yes” vote on the economic priorities amendment, which includes an enhanced GI bill, the picture is less clear for the other amendment.
The amendments each have different political impacts both here at home and inside Iraq. The first amendment provides $96.6 billion for the war for the rest of fiscal year 2008 and also includes $70 billion for 2009. Proponents of Bush’s war strategy will widely support this but there will be mixed reaction among those members against the war. Some have fallen into the false argument of needing to protect the troops while they are on the battlefield. But members of the Progressive Caucus are organizing members to vote no on funding for the last six months and are posed to have the largest number of members vote no on funding the Iraq War ever.
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