Time to Dump the Liar

The lies of the Zionists are becoming apparent.
The Liar-in-Chief: Benjamin Netanyahu

Gül, speaking at a British think-tank during an official visit to Britain, said Israel has become a burden on its allies because of its current policies, lamenting that it builds houses in East Jerusalem despite promises that it is committed to peace with Palestinians. “Maybe not everyone says openly what they think, but you can hear it when microphones are accidentally left on,” he said, apparently referring to a recent conversation between US President Barack Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy during which the French leader called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “liar.”

Sarkozy: “I can’t stand him anymore, he’s a liar.”

Obama: “You may be sick of him, but me, I have to deal with him every day.”

Time to dump the liar.

هادي اسود لزرعلك بستان ورود

Hadi Aswad.

The Rise of the Military's Secret Military

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not the only wars being waged by the United States. There is an ever expanding role to the Special Operations Command across the globe with clandestine missions and targeted assassinations. Special Forces currently operate within 75 countries (countries we are not at war with). That number is expected to increase to 120 (60% of the total nations on the planet). Those operations are not cheap. The details are not always available because of their clandestine nature, but that seems to be the way wars will be fought in the future. The following article examines that state. Marilyn

The US military's secret military
Special US commandos are deployed in about 75 countries around the world - and that number is expected to grow.

by: Nick Turse


Somewhere on this planet a US commando is carrying out a mission. Now, say that 70 times and you're done ... for the day. Without the knowledge of much of the general American public, a secret force within the US military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world's countries. This Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has generally been ignored by the mainstream media, and deserves further attention.

After a US Navy SEAL put a bullet in Osama bin Laden's chest and another in his head, one of the most secretive black-ops units in the US military suddenly found its mission in the public spotlight. It was atypical. While it's well known that US Special Operations forces are deployed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it's increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict zones like Yemen and Somalia, the full extent of their worldwide war has often remained out of the public scrutiny.

Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that US Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year, US Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120. "We do a lot of travelling - a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq," he said recently. This global presence - in about 60 per cent of the world's nations and far larger than previously acknowledged - is evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.

The rise of the military's secret military

Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which eight US service members died, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was established in 1987. Having spent the post-Vietnam years distrusted and starved for money by the regular military, special operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate.

Since then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions. Made up of units from all the service branches, including the Army's "Green Berets" and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialised helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, para- rescuemen, and even battlefield air-traffic controllers and special operations weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States' most specialised and secret missions. These include assassinations, counterterrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.

One of its key components is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, a clandestine sub-command whose primary mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. Reporting to the president and acting under his authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes US citizens. It has been operating an extra-legal "kill/capture" campaign that John Nagl, a past counterinsurgency adviser to four-star general and soon-to-be CIA Director David Petraeus, calls "an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine".

This assassination programme has been carried out by commando units like the Navy SEALs and the Army's Delta Force as well as via drone strikes as part of covert wars in which the CIA is also involved in countries like Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen. In addition, the command operates a network of secret prisons, perhaps as many as 20 black sites in Afghanistan alone, used for interrogating high-value targets.

Growth industry

From a force of about 37,000 in the early 1990s, Special Operations Command personnel have grown to almost 60,000, about a third of whom are career members of SOCOM; the rest have other military occupational specialties, but periodically cycle through the command. Growth has been exponential since September 11, 2001, as SOCOM's baseline budget almost tripled from $2.3bn to $6.3bn. If you add in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has actually more than quadrupled to $9.8bn in these years. Not surprisingly, the number of its personnel deployed abroad has also jumped four-fold. Further increases, and expanded operations, are on the horizon.

Lieutenant General Dennis Hejlik, the former head of the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command - the last of the service branches to be incorporated into SOCOM in 2006 - indicated, for instance, that he foresees a doubling of his former unit of 2,600. "I see them as a force someday of about 5,000, like equivalent to the number of SEALs that we have on the battlefield. Between [5,000] and 6,000," he said at a June breakfast with defence reporters in Washington. Long-term plans already call for the force to increase by 1,000.

During his recent Senate confirmation hearings, Navy Vice Admiral William McRaven, the incoming SOCOM chief and outgoing head of JSOC (which he commanded during the bin Laden raid) endorsed a steady manpower growth rate of 3 per cent to 5 per cent a year, while also making a pitch for even more resources, including additional drones and the construction of new special operations facilities.

A former SEAL who still sometimes accompanies troops into the field, McRaven expressed a belief that, as conventional forces are drawn down in Afghanistan, special ops troops will take on an ever greater role. Iraq, he added, would benefit if elite US forces continued to conduct missions there past the December 2011 deadline for a total American troop withdrawal. He also assured the Senate Armed Services Committee that "as a former JSOC commander, I can tell you we were looking very hard at Yemen and at Somalia".

During a speech at the National Defense Industrial Association's annual Special Operations and Low-intensity Conflict Symposium earlier this year, Navy Admiral Eric Olson, the outgoing chief of Special Operations Command, pointed to a composite satellite image of the world at night. Before September 11, 2001, the lit portions of the planet - mostly the industrialised nations of the global north - were considered the key areas. "But the world changed over the last decade," he said. "Our strategic focus has shifted largely to the south ... certainly within the special operations community, as we deal with the emerging threats from the places where the lights aren't."

To that end, Olson launched "Project Lawrence", an effort to increase cultural proficiencies - like advanced language training and better knowledge of local history and customs - for overseas operations. The programme is, of course, named after the British officer, Thomas Edward Lawrence (better known as "Lawrence of Arabia"), who teamed up with Arab fighters to wage a guerrilla war in the Middle East during World War I. Mentioning Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali, and Indonesia, Olson added that SOCOM now needed "Lawrences of Wherever".

While Olson made reference to only 51 countries of top concern to SOCOM, Col. Nye told me that on any given day, Special Operations forces are deployed in approximately 70 nations around the world. All of them, he hastened to add, at the request of the host government. According to testimony by Olson before the House Armed Services Committee earlier this year, approximately 85 per cent of special operations troops deployed overseas are in 20 countries in the CENTCOM area of operations in the Greater Middle East: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. The others are scattered across the globe from South America to Southeast Asia, some in small numbers, others as larger contingents.
Special Operations Command won't disclose exactly which countries its forces operate in. "We're obviously going to have some places where it's not advantageous for us to list where we're at," says Nye. "Not all host nations want it known, for whatever reasons they have - it may be internal, it may be regional."

But it's no secret (or at least a poorly kept one) that so-called black special operations troops, like the SEALs and Delta Force, are conducting kill/capture missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen, while "white" forces like the Green Berets and Rangers are training indigenous partners as part of a worldwide secret war against al-Qaeda and other militant groups. In the Philippines, for instance, the US spends $50m a year on a 600-person contingent of Army Special Operations forces, Navy Seals, Air Force special operators, and others that carries out counterterrorist operations with Filipino allies against insurgent groups like Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf.

Last year, as an analysis of SOCOM documents, open-source Pentagon information, and a database of Special Operations missions compiled by investigative journalist Tara McKelvey (for the Medill School of Journalism's National Security Journalism Initiative) reveals, the US' most elite troops carried out joint-training exercises in Belize, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Germany, Indonesia, Mali, Norway, Panama, and Poland.

So far in 2011, similar training missions have been conducted in the Dominican Republic, Jordan, Romania, Senegal, South Korea, and Thailand, among other nations. In reality, Nye told me, training actually went on in almost every nation where Special Operations forces are deployed. "Of the 120 countries we visit by the end of the year, I would say the vast majority are training exercises in one fashion or another. They would be classified as training exercises."

The Pentagon's power elite

Once the neglected stepchildren of the military establishment, Special Operations forces have been growing exponentially not just in size and budget, but also in power and influence. Since 2002, SOCOM has been authorised to create its own Joint Task Forces - like Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines - a prerogative normally limited to larger combatant commands like CENTCOM. This year, without much fanfare, SOCOM also established its own Joint Acquisition Task Force, a cadre of equipment designers and acquisition specialists.

With control over budgeting, training, and equipping its force, powers usually reserved for departments (like the Department of the Army or the Department of the Navy), dedicated dollars in every Defense Department budget, and influential advocates in Congress, SOCOM is by now an exceptionally powerful player at the Pentagon. With real clout, it can win bureaucratic battles, purchase cutting-edge technology, and pursue fringe research like electronically beaming messages into people's heads or developing stealth-like cloaking technologies for ground troops. Since 2001, SOCOM's prime contracts awarded to small businesses - those that generally produce specialty equipment and weapons - have jumped six-fold.

Headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, but operating out of theatre commands spread out around the globe, including Hawaii, Germany, and South Korea, and active in the majority of countries on the planet, Special Operations Command is now a force unto itself. As outgoing SOCOM chief Olson put it earlier this year, SOCOM "is a microcosm of the Department of Defense, with ground, air, and maritime components, a global presence, and authorities and responsibilities that mirror the Military Departments, Military Services, and Defense Agencies".

Tasked to coordinate all Pentagon planning against global terrorism networks and, as a result, closely connected to other government agencies, foreign militaries, and intelligence services, and armed with a vast inventory of stealthy helicopters, manned fixed-wing aircraft, heavily-armed drones, high-tech guns-a-go-go speedboats, specialised Humvees and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, as well as other state-of-the-art gear (with more on the way), SOCOM represents something new in the military.

Whereas the late scholar of militarism Chalmers Johnson used to refer to the CIA as "the president's private army", today JSOC performs that role, acting as the chief executive's private assassination squad, and its parent, SOCOM, functions as a new Pentagon power-elite, a secret military within the military possessing domestic power and global reach.

In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans. Once "special" for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.

That aura now benefits from a well-honed public relations campaign which helps them project a superhuman image at home and abroad, even while many of their actual activities remain in the ever-widening shadows. Typical of the vision they are pushing was this statement from Admiral Olson: "I am convinced that the forces ... are the most culturally attuned partners, the most lethal hunter-killers, and most responsive, agile, innovative, and efficiently effective advisors, trainers, problem-solvers, and warriors that any nation has to offer."

Recently at the Aspen Institute's Security Forum, Olson offered up similarly gilded comments and some misleading information, too, claiming that US Special Operations forces were operating in just 65 countries and engaged in combat in only two of them. When asked about drone strikes in Pakistan, he reportedly replied, "Are you talking about unattributed explosions?"
What he did let slip, however, was telling. He noted, for instance, that black operations like the bin Laden mission, with commandos conducting heliborne night raids, were now exceptionally common. A dozen or so are conducted every night, he said. Perhaps most illuminating, however, was an offhand remark about the size of SOCOM. Right now, he emphasised, US Special Operations forces were approximately as large as Canada's entire active duty military. In fact, the force is larger than the active duty militaries of many of the nations where the US' elite troops now operate each year, and it's only set to grow larger.
Americans have yet to grapple with what it means to have a "special" force this large, this active, and this secret - and they are unlikely to begin to do so until more information is available. It just won't be coming from Olson or his troops. "Our access [to foreign countries] depends on our ability to not talk about it," he said in response to questions about SOCOM's secrecy. When missions are subject to scrutiny like the bin Laden raid, he said, the elite troops object. The military's secret military, said Olson, wants "to get back into the shadows and do what they came in to do".

Nick Turse is a historian, essayist, and investigative journalist. The associate editor of TomDispatch.com and a new senior editor at Alternet.org, his latest book is The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso Books).
A version of this article originally appeared on TomDispatch.com
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily represent Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Source: TomDispatch, Alternet

The Clash of Civilizations: Myths and Realities

"Multiculturalism" is the new manufactured evil that is lying in wait to eradicate the purity of the Western world. In the absence of a real threat, Tarak Barkawi of the University of Cambridge, argues that one has to be manufactured. He believes that Neo-Liberalism and its social, political, ideological, and military policies are the biggest threats to Western values, not multiculturalism. The murdering rampage of Anders Breivik is based in manufactured threats to the values of his nation -- the Muslim population of Norway is less than 3% of that of the total nation.Marilyn

The biggest threat to Western values
Multiculturalism does not pose a significant danger to Western values - but neoliberalism does.

by Tarak Barkawi (excerpted from Al-Jazeera)

The paranoid style in politics often imagines unlikely alliances that coalesce into an overwhelming threat that must be countered by all necessary means.

In Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington conjured an amalgamated East - an alliance between "Confucian" and "Islamic" powers - that would challenge the West for world dominance. Many jihadis fear the Crusader alliance between Jews and Christians. They forget that until recently, historically speaking, populations professing the latter were the chief persecutors of the former.

Now Anders Breivik has invoked the improbable axis of Marxism, multiculturalism and Islamism, together colonising Europe. As he sees multiculturalism as essentially a Jewish plot, Breivik has managed to wrap up the new and old fascist bogies in one conspiracy: communists, Jews and Muslims.

Like his terrorist counterparts who kill in the name of various Islamic sects, Breivik is willing to slaughter people for an invented purity. Modern Norway is a latecomer to the world of nations, becoming sovereign only in 1905. Vikings, Arctic explorers and international humanitarians all went into imagining the place.

Given how readily jihadi texts are dismissed as ravings, it is notable how much attention has already been paid to Breivik's wacky ideological brew. This is a worrying portent of the line of analysis that says that the "root causes" of Breivik's madness - immigration and cultural difference - must be addressed. Otherwise, European societies will lose their social cohesion, to choose one current euphemism for the Volk.

To the extent such a view takes hold, the far right may be forgiven for concluding that terrorism works. As for the rest of us, now facing terrorist re-imaginings from both sides of obscure battles in a mythic past, we may long for the leftist and anti-colonial insurgents of bygone days. They at least could offer plausible accounts of what they were up to.

To be sure, tactically speaking, Breivik thought through his operation. Unlike many jihadis, however, he lacked the courage to face men armed like him, and to offer his own life for his beliefs as well as the lives of others. Nonetheless he wanted at his court appearance to strut about in some kind of military uniform.

Smartly tailored uniforms, an abhorrence of cultural difference, and a desire for racial purity are all of a piece with fascist mysticism. As with jihadi ideology, it is precisely the non-rational elements of fascism that give it emotive, and hence political, power. For what Breivik and others see as under threat in the West is the vital source of meaning, of ultimate values, which they associate with the communion of a purified people.

Since the West faces no obvious threat of such existential scale and significance, one must be fabricated. It is here that the unlikely alliance of left wing parties and Islam plays its role, purportedly importing on a mass scale Muslims to colonise Europe. In Norway, Muslims account for less than three per cent of the population; in the UK, less than five per cent. Even so, the fantastical fear of the "loss" of Europe to Islam animates many on the right. It is part of mainstream electoral politics in Europe, and has long been an element of right wing discourse in the US.

In this vision of danger, multiculturalism plays a key role. Many will have noted Breivik's odd invocation of "cultural Marxists", folks I have only spotted in small numbers in university departments and cafes frequented by graduate students. Breivik's reference is in part to the Frankfurt School, a group of German Jewish scholars who fled Hitler for the Western cosmopolis of New York.

The idea is that "Jews" have encouraged cultural mixing in the West, fatally compromising its purity and thus its values, while Muslims and Jews retain their cultural strength and identity. Europe must therefore declare "independence" and fight the Muslim-Jewish-Marxist hordes, apparently starting by killing their children.

We can only assume that Breivik has confused the computer fantasy games he played - using a busty blonde avatar named "conservatism" - with political analysis. What is truly frightening, however, is that the core of this vision of multiculturalism as a threat to the West is shared by leading political parties in the France, the UK, Germany and Italy, among others. This is why there is every chance that Breivik's murderous and cowardly rampage will achieve some of its aims. Immigration, it will be argued, has unbalanced "our" people. It is already being curtailed in all the leading Western powers.

Shut up, obey, and collaborate

The irony is that the West brought us empire on a global scale and drew its cultural, economic, and political strength from interconnections with all parts of the world. The cosmopolis of New York, London and Paris - a "brown" not a "white" West - are more appropriate beacons of a West flush with power and confidence in its values than the imaginary purification achieved through concentration camps and closed borders.

But just what might be corroding values in the West?

This was one of the questions that animated the Frankfurt School and those who influenced it. They focused on the interaction between capitalism and culture. They noted the ways in which capitalism progressively turned everything into something that could be bought or sold, measuring value only by the bottom line. Slowly but surely such measures came to apply to the cultural values at the core of society. Even time, as Benjamin Franklin told us, is money, a doctrine which horrified Max Weber in his searing indictment of the capitalist mentality as an "iron cage" without "spirit".

Note for example the ways in which the great professional vocations of the West - lawyers, journalists, academics, doctors - have been co-opted and corrupted by bottom line thinking. Money and "efficiency" are the values by which we stand, not law, truth or health. Students are imagined as "customers", citizens as "stakeholders". Professional associations worry about the risk to their bottom line rather than furthering the values they exist to represent. Graduates of elite Western universities, imbued with the learning of our great thinkers, are sent off to corporations like News International. There they learn to shut up, obey, and collaborate in the dark work of exploitation for profit, for which they will be well rewarded, at least financially speaking.

Thanks in part to the grip of corporate power on the media and on political parties, few today in the West can imagine any other politics than those of big money. In the US, and increasingly even in Europe, the income differential between the poor and the wealthy already resembles that of banana republics. The downtrodden are asked to bear the burden of a financial crisis created by bankers. America's wealthy fly their children to summer camp in tax-free private jets amid a real rate of unemployment of over fifteen per cent.

Neoliberalism has only accelerated these processes at the heart of capitalist society. Here is a far more convincing threat to Western values and "social cohesion" than the lunatic fears of fascists. Notably, this is a threat that emanates from within, not without. It is precisely social democratic parties like Norway's Labour Party - Breivik's target - which have sought to contain the corrosive effects of capitalism and ensure the survival of the West's most humane values.

Tarak Barkawi is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge.

There is No Dignity Without Freedom

The stirrings of working people across the world are causing panic among those in power. All means are used to silence free speech. In Syria, one of the latest victims (martyrs) is Ibrahim Qashoush who led freedom protests across Syria in his most famous song "Yalla Irhal Ya Bashar" (Come on Bashar, Leave). The song was in response to Bashar Assad's speech to the Syrian people June 20th, 2011. Assad basically marginalized the freedom quest by his people and blamed the call to freedom on saboteurs. Qashoush was murdered by agents of the Syrian regime and his throat was slit and voice box removed in a symbolic gesture to terrorize the civilian population. Humans can tolerate only so much indignity. There is a certain nobility to the courage and sacrifice of many Arab citizens as they face horrendous odds under brutal tyrannies that are propped and maintained by imperialist powers and multi-national corporations.
Marilyn



Silencing the Voice of Freedom in Syria

Will the President Protect American Lives from Israeli Attacks

American lives are worth protecting --- except from Israeli aggression. Marilyn

by: Sami Jadallah
Veterans Today

It is hard to believe the total silence of Obama’s White House, Clinton’s State Department, Justice Department, the FBI and Home Land Security and lack of taking legal actions against those who openly call on Israel to kill and murder unarmed American civilians aboard the Freedom Flotilla heading toward Gaza.


Dead sailors on board the USS Liberty

I can only wonder what the reaction of the White House, the Justice Department, the Homeland Security if any one citizen or resident of the United States, specially if this citizen happens to be of Arab decent or a practicing Muslim, openly call on a foreign country to kill and murder a White or Black, or an American Jew or a Democrat or a Republican of for that matter, just your average American Joe? I am sure all government departments and agencies will move against those who openly called on and advocate the murder of Americans, but this is not the case with Joshua Trevino. Calling on Israel to kill Americans is not a crime in the US.

Never expected the day will come when an American, albeit a Republican and a Tea Party member to call on a foreign country, Israel, to take out and kill Americans while the entire government agencies remain in total silence. I always thought or at least we all have been told that advocacy and calls for murder are illegal and in violation of American penal codes.
But it seems this is not the case when Israeli is a party, then all American laws goes out of the window and no one within this great country dare to speak out, not even the President of the United States who promised to protect the American people. Question will President Obama dares to take on Israel when it kills Americans? I doubt it.

President Obama will not be the first nor the last president who will succumb to the local political pressure and dare not take any actions when the lives of Americans are put in harm way, even killed by Israel. President Lyndon Johnson did just that when he failed to muster the courage as Commander in Chief and failed to order a commission of inquiry into the cold blooded murder of American sailors on board the USS Liberty in June of 67, when some 40 sailors were killed and more than 100 injured by repeated Israeli attacks on the US navy ship.


Wounded sailors aboard the USS Liberty, 1967

The former Bush administration speechwriter Joshua Trevino did just that when he twitters his calls to the IDF to shoot and kill Americans on board the Freedom Flotilla. Joshua Trevino is quoted as saying” Dear IDF, if you end shooting any Americans on the new Gaza flotilla, well, most Americans are with that including me”. I wonder who in the hell is Joshua Trevino to claim to speak for “most Americans” who are cool with Israel killing and murdering Americans?

To those who do not know Joshua Trevino, he is a Red State American, who could not get himself to vote for someone like John McCain, who is also the co-founder of RedState.com and is Vice President of Communication at Texas Public Policy Foundation and key activists in the American Tea Party. Mr. Joshua is extending his expertise and concern beyond Texas and reaching out to the Israeli state and its army to kill Americans.

It seems the White House and State Department are also “cool” with that and in fact, the State Department spokesperson gave Israeli Army, a wink perhaps a green light that it is absolutely Ok if Israel used deadly force to stop the Freedom Flotilla even if this entail the killings of American on board, just like it was OK to kill the American Furkan Dogan (19) who was killed by Israeli navy on board Freedom Flotilla One.


USS Liberty after the Israeli attack

Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokesperson went further labeling the entire 1.5 million people of Gaza “terrorists” and warning those American on board with tough legal action stating “We underscore that delivering or attempting or conspiring to deliver material support or other resources to or for the benefit of a designated foreign terrorist organization, such as Hamas, could violate U.S. civil and criminal statutes and could lead to fines and incarceration,” Nuland said. Perhaps Victoria Nuland can enlighten us Americans and tell us when the US classified the entire population of Gaza as “terrorists”?

It would be interesting to know these American laws that forbid American civilians from carrying on humanitarian mission even when these mission are designed to break an illegal siege and blockade of a territory by a country that claims it ended its occupation.

Perhaps Israel can order Eric Cantor, the majority leader of the House of Representative to rush through Congress a law that deems Israeli siege and blockade of Gaza legal and consistent with US laws and allowing US government to prosecute those who break the siege and the blockade. You never know, any thing Israel asks for Israel always get, even if this means the justification and cold blooded murder of Americans. Israel is the only country that always gets away with killing and murdering Americans.

Paying Lip Service to Human Rights

Human Rights laws are vehemently protected by civilized nations (supposedly), except when it comes to the Palestinian people and their right to live in safety and dignity. Political pressure of unprecedented scale continues against people of conscience who are concerned about the well-being of those living under a brutal occupation. This is the latest attempt to silence those people.
Marilyn.

Criminalising Palestinian solidarity - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

The Audacity of Hope

The inhuman Israeli siege (blockade) of the people of Gaza continues. People of conscience are diligent with their efforts to raise awareness about the humanitarian crisis that is in progress. The American boat, the Audacity of Hope, will join a fleet of flotillas from 22 countries and around 1000 activists towards the end of June in an attempt to break the blockade. At this critical moment, the powers of tyranny are preparing as well.

The Israeli government has begun to ramp up its propaganda efforts, claiming the flotilla has ties to terrorism. The United States government has warned activists working against the blockade, with a State Department spokesman telling reporters earlier this month that “groups and individuals who seek to break Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza are taking irresponsible and provocative actions” (State Department press briefing, 1 June 2011).

The injustice against the people of Palestine IS the provocation.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." Bishop Desmond Tutu.

US TO GAZA

The Moral Character of America is Worth Fighting For

The attack on the working people of this nation is coming from all directions. The media is misrepresenting what working Americans want. The money that is taken away from the poor and the disadvantaged is given to the rich in tax exemptions. Following are remarks by AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka, National Press Club, Washington, DC
May 20, 2011
Marilyn.


Good morning. Thank you all for joining me here, and thank you to the National Press Club for inviting me to speak.

Friends, how can we make sense of the spectacle that's been unfolding across the American political landscape?

Politicians in Wisconsin, Ohio and a dozen other states are trying to take away workers' right to organize and bargain for a better life.

But that's not all. In state after state, politicians are attacking voting rights by imposing ID requirements, shortening early voting periods, blocking young people from voting because they're too "liberal" and even levying criminal penalties and fines for breaking arbitrary rules in the voter registration process. So it will be harder for people to vote—especially the least privileged among us. Just in Wisconsin, listen to the list of who doesn't have state-issued photo IDs that will be needed to cast a ballot under legislation that Gov. Scott Walker will sign next week: 23 percent of elderly Wisconsinites; 59 percent of Latina women; 55 percent of African American men overall; and 78 percent of African American men who are 18 to 24 years old.

Budget proposals unveiled in Washington and state capitals across our country this year revealed a despicable canvas of cruelty. In Michigan, a state senator thinks foster children should be required by law to purchase second-hand clothes. In Maine, the governor thinks more children should go to work. In North Carolina, the legislature thinks we should balance the state budget on the backs of autistic children. In Arizona, the state Senate president floats the idea of locking up protesting public employees in desert tent city jails. In New York, a billionaire mayor proposes to fire 5,000 teachers rather than tax the bonuses of the Wall Street executives who brought down the American economy.

And not just meanness. Destructiveness. A willful desire to block the road to the future. How else can you explain governors of states with mass unemployment refusing to allow high-speed rail lines to be built in their states? How else can you explain these same governors' plans to defund higher education, close schools and fire teachers, when we know that without an educated America, we have no future?

Here in Washington, the Republicans in Congress have defunded housing counselors and fuel aid for the poor, and they are blocking worker training and transportation infrastructure.



But the final outrage of these budgets is hidden in the fine print. In state after state and here in Washington, these so called fiscal hawks are actually doing almost nothing to cut the deficit. The federal budget embraced by House Republicans, for example, cuts $4.3 trillion in spending, but gives out $4.2 trillion in tax cuts that disproportionately benefit wealthy individuals and corporations. Florida is gutting aid for jobless workers and using the money saved to cut already-low business taxes. At the end of the day, our governments will be in no better fiscal shape than when we started—they are just being used as a pass-through to enrich the already rich—at a time when inequality stands at historic levels.

Think about the message these budgets send: Sacrifice is for the weak. The powerful and well-connected get tax cuts.

All these incredible events should be understood as part of a single challenge. It is not just a political challenge—it's a moral challenge. Because these events signal a new and dangerous phase of a concerted effort to change the very nature of America—to turn this into an "I've got mine" nation and replace the land of liberty and justice for all with the land of the rich, by the rich, for the rich.

You see, I believe the United States is not a place as much as it is an idea. For working people, the United States of America has offered, from its foundation, a promise that everyone can be full participants in national life. A promise that we the people make the rules so that hard work is rewarded with economic security and a fair share in the wealth we all help create. That promise has always been a work in progress. This year we commemorate the 150th anniversary of our bloodiest war – a war that resulted in the extension of the American promise to the African Americans who did so much of the work of creating the United States.

We were the first country in the history of the world to embrace the idea that you don't have to own land to vote—that citizenship comes from where you live, not what you own or who your parents were. We were the first country to make land available to those who would work the land—in the Homestead Act. And in the modern era, when giant corporations dominated our economy, we pioneered the idea that we had a right to a voice on the job—a right made real when we came together to form unions and bargain collectively. And while Boeing and the Chamber of Commerce may not like it, the law of the land protects working people who exercise that right against any retaliation by their employers.

In the 1960s, public employees won those same rights. Working people remember that these rights were not easily won. The pivotal 1968 Memphis sanitation workers' strike began with two men crushed to death in a garbage truck, and ended with Martin Luther King giving his life for the cause of public workers' right to organize together.



From the beginning of this country, through our efforts and our ideas, working people have made the American Dream real. And what is that dream? It is the idea that if you work hard and play by the rules you will enjoy economic security and build a better future for your children. It is not that a few of us will be rich, but that all of us will be treated fairly, that we will look after each other, and that we will all have a share in the wealth we create together.

This spring working people are engaged in a great struggle to defend their dream. In Green Bay and Indianapolis, in Benton Harbor, Michigan, and in Columbus, Ohio. And not just in the Midwest. In New York and Los Angeles, in Florida and Texas—in every corner of our nation.

This struggle began after last November's elections brought to power politicians in state capitals across the heartland who had a hidden agenda. An agenda worked out at posh resorts with the Koch Brothers, the American Legislative Exchange Council and other shadowy groups. Politicians like John Kasich and Scott Walker campaigned promising to do something about jobs, only to reveal when they took office that their jobs agenda was to make them disappear. But their real passion was for eliminating the rights of working people and destroying their unions—who are standing in the way of their agenda.

In response, working people took to the streets. On April 4th, under the banner, "We are One," we came together all across America, and then we did so again on May 1st when we stood together with our immigrant brothers and sisters saying again that we truly are one.

In signs all across the rotunda in the Wisconsin state house, we proclaimed we were there to defend the principle that in America, we look after each other. One of the people who was there is here with us today, and I'd like to introduce him. Alex Hanna is a Graduate Assistant at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and a co-president of the Teaching Assistants Associates of the American Federation of Teachers. Alex stood up for teachers and other public workers in Madison over the last couple of months, even as he built solidarity with workers in the Middle East. His family comes from Egypt and he strengthened links between movements for change around the world.

Thank you, Alex, for your inspiration.

Alex embodies the fact that we are not a nation of isolated individuals, we are a land of communities, of families. Our republic, our democracy, is an expression of our solidarity, our common values and our common life as a nation.

In America, firefighters rush into burning buildings every day, risking their lives to save people they have never met. Social workers care for other people's abused children, and home health workers provide care and companionship to those who need it. Every day you and I pay our Social Security taxes and Medicare, and that same money is sent out again to provide comfort and security to other people's parents and grandparents.

This is not just a matter of morality – but it also makes economic sense. And never more so than today. It will simply not be enough to beat back the Scott Walkers, the John Kasichs, and the Koch Brothers. America's economic fate depends on us coming together to educate our children, to invest in our infrastructure, to face the threat of climate change and to reverse the yawning economic inequality that threatens our future.

Let me be specific. Unemployment stands at 9%. Underemployment is at 16%. Housing prices are falling, and foreclosures remain at historic highs. Economic growth is hovering at around 2% annually—not enough to put a dent in unemployment, especially as tax cuts expire, as the Recovery Act winds down -- and state and local governments gear up for more deep cuts.

Yet instead of having a national conversation about putting America back to work to build our future, the debate here in Washington is about how fast we can destroy the fabric of our country, about breaking the promises we made to our parents and grandparents. Understand, the Ryan budget destroys jobs—it destroys almost all the jobs created during this recovery. It guts Medicare. It attacks Social Security, the one piece of our retirement security system that actually works. And now we see Speaker Boehner and his colleagues engaged in a new round of blackmail—with a ransom note that reads: "Cut Medicare, dismantle the government, destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs to fund more tax cuts for the rich, or we will cause the United States to default on its debts.

" Why is our national conversation in such a destructive place? Not because we are impoverished. We have never been richer. The American economy has never produced as much wealth as it does today. But we feel poor because the wealth in our society has flowed to a handful among us, and they and the politicians who pander to the worst instincts of the wealthy would rather break promises to our parents and grandparents and deny our children a future than pay their fair share of taxes.

America's real deficit is a moral deficit—where political choices come down to forcing foster children to wear hand-me-downs while cutting taxes for profitable corporations.

Powerful political forces are seeking to silence working people—to drive us out of the national conversation. I can think of no greater proof of the moral decay in our public life than that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker would dare give a Martin Luther King Day speech hailing Dr. King at the same time that he drafted a bill to take away collective bargaining rights from sanitation workers in Wisconsin.

The ultimate goal of those who blame workers for Wall Street's economic crisis is to unravel the fabric of our common life in pursuit of greed and power.

In this environment, working people and our unions must do more than just protect our own right to a voice in the life of our nation. We must raise our voice to win a better future for all working families here in America and around the globe.

Here's what we are going to do. First, we are going to use that voice to end the Scott Walker agenda as a viable political strategy by winning recall elections in Wisconsin and citizen vetoes of destructive legislation in other states and retaking state houses.

Then we will spend the summer holding elected leaders in Congress as well as the states accountable on one measure: Are they improving or degrading life for working families?

And moving forward, we are looking hard at how we work in the nation's political arena. We have listened hard, and what workers want is an independent labor movement that builds the power of working people—in the workplace and in political life.

Working people want a labor movement strong enough to help return balance to our economy, fairness to our tax system, security to our families and moral and economic standing to our nation. Our role is not to build the power of a political party or a candidate. It is to improve the lives of working families and strengthen our country.

It doesn't matter if candidates and parties are controlling the wrecking ball or simply standing aside—the outcome is the same either way. If leaders aren't blocking the wrecking ball and advancing working families' interests, working people will not support them. This is where our focus will be—now, in 2012 and beyond.

We will uphold the dignity of work and restore respect for working people. In this season's political battles, teachers, nurses and firefighters have been vilified. Decent jobs with economic security have been cast as more than America's workers deserve. Low-wage, part-time, temporary, no-benefit work is being sold as the "new normal" for our economy.

We know that only a dynamic, effective movement of working people working together can reclaim the value of work. Our unions must reach out to every working person in America—to those whose jobs have been outsourced and down-sized, to carwash workers in Los Angeles, to domestic workers who have few legal rights, to freelancers and young people who have "gigs" rather than jobs. And together with the AFL-CIO's construction and manufacturing workers, pilots and painters, plumbers and public employees, bakers and others, we will be heard.

The stakes are so high, for working families, for America. Will we be a country ruled by greed, by people who would cut or take pensions away from first responders, people who would take away the fundamental human rights of our workers, who would choose tax breaks for the richest among us over a future for all of us? Or will we be a country where we choose the future, where we look out for each other, where all of us have a voice?

We'll only win investments in our future if we again embrace the idea that we are one national community. That our very identity is bound up with the promise that all of us have a voice—in the workplace, at the ballot box—and that we are responsible in a deep sense for each other. The fabric of our government, our democratic republic, is about making that responsibility for each other real.

This is the message working people have always brought to our national conversation. It is the message Alex Hanna and hundreds of thousands of others took to the streets of the Midwest this spring and that we will take to the polling places of the heartland in recall elections and in citizen veto campaigns in the coming months. And it is the message we will continue to shout this year, and next, and the next, until we are heard.

The moral character of America is worth fighting for, and that is exactly what working people are going to do in the days and months to come. Thank you.

Move Over AIPAC

CODEPINK: Women for Peace, Global Exchange, Interfaith Peace-builders, and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, together with over 100 peace and justice groups, are organizing a gathering in Washington DC from May 21-24, 2011, called “Move Over AIPAC: Building a New US Middle East Policy,” and we would like to invite you to be a part of this important national happening! Timed to coincide with the annual policy meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), we will bring activists and concerned citizens from around the country to learn about the extraordinary influence AIPAC has on U.S. policy and how to strengthen an alternative that respects the rights of all people in the region.

More generally, Move Over AIPAC is a campaign that aims to wean U.S. policy away from AIPAC’s grip towards an even-handed position that respects international law and the human rights of all people in the region.

We are concerned that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has a dangerous stranglehold over U.S. foreign policy towards the Middle East. AIPAC’s unrelenting support for the illegal policies of the Israeli government—separation walls, settlements, the siege of Gaza—in addition to its bellicose policies across the region, especially Iran, has been devastating for Palestinians and the Middle East, including Israel. It also harms our reputation around the world and squanders $3 billion a year subsidizing the powerful Israeli military when we need that money to rebuild the United States.

There are many ways you can take action to help transition our foreign policy and bring our war $$ home. Through this website you can contact your Congressperson, sign up to join us in DC, donate to support this campaign, and take action locally.

We invite ally organizations to endorse our DC actions and campaign. Email us if your group would like to endorse.

We welcome your input and comments. Contact us here.

Fast Facts:

#1: Between the years 1949 and 2010, the United States granted $61.3 billion in military aid to Israel.

#2: A whopping $30 billion in U.S. military aid has been promised to Israel for the years 2009 to 2018.

#3: Approximately 500,000 Israeli settlers live within the occupied Palestinian territory in violation of international law.

#4: There are approximately four million Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza, according to 2007 census figures compiled by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics and reported in Ha’aretz.

#5: Between September 29, 2000 and August 31, 2010, 1,084 Israelis were killed by Palestinians, including 124 minors. During the same period, 6,408 Palestinians were killed by Israelis, including 1,315 minors. These statistics, reported by B’Tselem Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, reflect the extreme disparity in the capacity of the two parties to inflict trauma, loss, and death through acts of violence. Israel’s military dominance is largely a result of U.S. largesse through military aid, as well as access to sophisticated U.S.-designed military technology.

#6: Weapons purchased by Israel using U.S. military aid are used against civilians in violation of U.S. laws.

Source: http://www.twopeoplesonefuture.org/background/fastfacts/

Kenneth O'Keefe, An American Real Hero of Conscience

Israel/Palestine: Reframe the Conflict – Change the Discourse!

Jeff Halper, co-founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) http://www.icahd.org/eng/ , will be speaking at the Steynberg Gallery on Wednesday March 3rd 2010, 1531 Monterey Street, San Luis Obispo, 805-547-0278, 7 p.m.
The title of the talk is "Israel/Palestine: Reframe the Conflict – Change the Discourse!"
Admission is open to the public and free.


BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Jeff Halper has been a peace and human rights activist for more than three decades. Born in Minnesota in the United States, he participated in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements of the 1960s. Halper immigrated to Israel in 1973 after attending rabbinical school and resisting military service in the Vietnam War.

In Israel, Halper taught anthropology at Haifa and Ben-Gurion Universities. His academic research has focused on the history of Jerusalem in the modern era, contemporary Israeli culture, and the Middle East conflict. He is the author of Between Redemption and Revival: The Jewish Yishuv in Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century. During his mandatory Israeli military service, he refused to bear arms or serve in the occupied Palestinian territories. In 1997, Halper co-founded the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD) to challenge and resist the Israeli policy of demolishing Palestinian homes.

Israel has pursued a policy of expanding its civilian population into the Occupied Palestinian Territories (which includes the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and East Jerusalem) through settlement construction and land confiscation. At the same time, Palestinian population growth has been severely limited, confined to shrinking enclaves.

Under the guise of urban planning and civil law, the natural development of Palestinian towns and villages has been frozen by land expropriation, discrimination in planning and zoning policies, restrictions of building permits, and the demolition of Palestinian homes. According to ICAHD research, the Israeli military or civil authority has destroyed more than 18,000 Palestinian homes since 1967. This constitutes a massive violation of international law both by inflicting collective punishment on a civilian population, and by pursuing a goal of territorial acquisition through force.
“We think, as Israelis, that Jews and Arabs should live together,” Halper says. “Palestinians have rights of self-determination just like we have. We have to fight also for their rights. One of our slogans is ‘we refuse to be their enemies.’”

As the Coordinating Director of ICAHD, Dr. Halper has organized and led nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience against Israel’s occupation policies and authorities. He has put his own personal safety on the line, facing bulldozers in front of Palestinian homes and confronting Israeli soldiers. He also organizes Israelis, Palestinians, and internationals to help rebuild demolished Palestinian homes.

A tireless writer and speaker, Halper travels extensively to build international support for ICAHD and its international sister organizations, ICAHD-USA and ICAHD UK. He realized early on that the Israeli government did not intend for the Oslo peace process of the 1990’s to lead to the recognition of Palestinian rights. He developed the “Matrix of Control” framework that accurately predicted the course the Israeli Occupation would take as the Oslo process collapsed and Israel continued to build settlements, settler-only highways, and the Separation Wall. Dr. Halper was an early voice warning about the development of Israeli apartheid policies in the Occupied Territories, a subject on which he frequently speaks.

His book, Obstacles to Peace, is a resource manual of articles and maps on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and is published by ICAHD. Dr. Halper will be publishing An Israeli in Palestine in 2008, which follows his work against the Israeli Occupation.

For this work, the American Friends Service Committee nominated him, along with Palestinian activist Ghassan Andoni, for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Dr. Halper has also served on the steering committee of the United Nations Conference on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.

ISRAELI COMMITTEE AGAINST HOUSE DEMOLITIONS

ICAHD is a non-profit organiation in Israel.
Registration # 58-032-757-5

ICAHD is a non-violent, direct-action group originally established to oppose and resist Israeli demolition of Palestinian houses in the Occupied Territories. As our activists gained direct knowledge of the brutalities of the Occupation, we expanded our resistance activities to other areas - land expropriation, settlement expansion, by-pass road construction, policies of "closure" and "separation," the wholesale uprooting of fruit and olive trees and more. The fierce repression of Palestinian efforts to "shake off" the Occupation following the latest Intifada has only added urgency to our efforts.

As a direct-action group, ICAHD is comprised of members of many Israeli peace and human rights organizations. All of our work in the Occupied Territories is closely coordinated with local Palestinian organizations.

Since its founding, ICAHD's activities have extended to three interrelated spheres: resistance and protest actions in the Occupied Territories; efforts to bring the reality of the Occupation to Israeli society; and mobilizing the international community for a just peace. Our activities include:

* Resisting the demolition of Palestinian homes. ICAHD members physically block bulldozers sent to demolish homes. We also mobilize hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians to rebuild them as acts of resistance. In addition to its effectiveness as a means of raising awareness of the workings of the Occupation, house rebuilding has proven an effective vehicle of grassroots peace-making.


* Disseminating information and networking. Our familiarity with realities "on the ground" gives us special authority and insight in our frequent contacts with diplomats, fact-finding missions, the public and the media. We work closely with other peace and human rights organizations in Israel, in Palestine and internationally on campaigns to end the Occupation and secure a just peace for all. ICAHD also conducts informational tours of the Occupied Territories from a critical peace perspective, sends speakers on informational tours and participates in international conferences and gatherings.


* Providing strategic practical support to Palestinian families and communities. ICAHD aids Palestinians in filing police claims, in dealing with the Israeli authorities, in arranging and subsidizing legal assistance, and in general coping with the traumas and tribulations of life under Occupation. In this way we learn about the internal workings of the Occupation, which we then convey to the broader public. ICAHD also cooperates with other human rights organizations to present legal challenges to Israeli actions and policies in the Occupied Territories.


The Goal: A Just and Sustainable Peace

As Israelis, we believe that the only chance for a genuine peace is one that enables the Palestinians to establish what we have, a viable and truly sovereign state of their own. A just peace will also provide all the peoples of our region with the security, dignity, freedom and economic opportunities they deserve The future may witness the emergence of a regional confederation enhancing the viability of each of our societies to cope with a global reality.

Gaza Freedom March

About 1400 nationals representing individuals and groups from 43 countries will join a projected number of 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza in a peaceful march to try and bring an end to the siege that has reduced the population to a virtual state of destitution and fear. The march is set for December 31st, 2009. Egypt has informed the organizers that it will not allow the marchers to enter Gaza from the Rafah border and has taken steps to stop the march, one of which is to build a series of walls and barbed wires. The organizers are vowing to continue with their plans and have issued a letter to Husni Mubarak, President of Egypt, and an open letter to his wife, reiterating their point of view and reasons. The march is scheduled to depart by 31 December from Izbet Abed Rabbo, an area devastated during last winter's Israeli assault, and head towards Erez, the crossing point to Israel at the northern end of the Gaza Strip.

The organizers are asking for signatures to their petition for the march in Gaza and for comments. They are also asking for similar activities in cities and towns around the world. The aim of the march is to point attention to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and to push world leaders to act on pressuring Israel to end the siege and apartheid practices.

We Must Not Leave Them Alone

The Shministim are Israeli high school students who are refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories and who are being sentenced to prison for their conscientious objections. These 12th graders courageously chose prison to serving in an occupying army. Jewish Voice for Peace is republishing a letter these high school students wrote last year on Chanukah, JVFP states: "This is the message they carefully wrote together. One year later, as Shministit Or Ben-David sits in prison in Israel, and as Jews around the world prepare to celebrate the last night of Chanukah, it seems appropriate to share it with you again. We can't imagine a more important message during this festival of lights."

Dear friends and supporters,

During Chanukah the festive of lights, we, the Shministim, would like to take a moment to thank you for all you've done for us and for our struggle.

While we sit down with our families and light the first candle of the holiday, symbolizing the rebellion against an occupying army, some of us are still behind bars, denied the freedom to celebrate the holiday with their loved ones, denied the right to freedom of thought and political consciousness.

During this dark period of consecutive jail terms, military trials and attempts to break our beliefs, you were our light.

Each and every one of you who helped with the campaign, who sent a supporting letter, who sent the link of the website to a friend. You've let our struggle be heard around the world, the letters, the postcards and posters, the demonstrations, all of those actions fulfilled our wildest dreams.

We would like to thank you once again and wish you all a happy and free holiday.

in solidarity,
The Shministim


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