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LAUREN BOOTH: AN AL QUDS DAY LETTER TO TONY BLAIR. FROM LAUREN BOOTH, IN IRAN
from Gilad Atzmon
I guess that Tony Blair’s sister in law, Lauren Booth, could easily use the phone and tell Tony what she thinks of him, his politics and his new memoir. However, being a peace activist she decided also to share it with the rest of us.
An Al Quds day letter to Tony Blair. From Lauren Booth, in Iran.
By Lauren Booth
3 September 2010
Dear Tony,
Congratulations on your political memoir becoming an instant bestseller. I’m in Iran and have the only copy in the country. I can tell you, its so fiercely fought over, it’s worth its weight in WMD’s. Note to Random House; have ‘A Journey’ translated into Farsi and Arabic asap, it’ll fly off the shelves in this part of the world.
Why You are Free and the Right Wing is Not!
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
The essence of Sartre is found in a slim volume of just under 100 pages: Existentialism and Human Emotions. In a single sentence, Sartre turned several centuries of conventional thinking on its head: "Existence precedes essence". Sartre himself, however, credits Rene Descartes whose cogito ergo sum or, en francais, Je pense donc je suis; in English: "I think, therefore I am".
Sartre writes:
"For we mean that man first exists, that is, that man first of all is the being who hurls himself toward a future and who is conscious of imagining himself as being in the future. Man is at the start a plan which is aware of itself, rather than a patch of moss, a piece of garbage, or a cauliflower; nothing exists prior to this plan; there is nothing in heaven; man will be what he will have planned to be. Not what he will want to be. Because by the word "will" we generally mean a conscious decision, which is subsequent to what we have already made of ourselves.
The Lamentation of Hadja Hassan Mohammed
from Franklin P. Lamb
"How I envy those of you who were there when my loved ones died. Did they
die thirsty? Or were you merciful enough to give them a drink?"
Dearest Franklin,
Thank you very much for forwarding this to me. It is very difficult but I recall every single event the night of 17 Sept 1982 when Mounir was brought into the Gaza Hospital emergency room by his friends. All he could say was Israelis, Haddads, Kataebs and then passed out. He was the last patent I operated on before we were ordered out of our basement operating theater by militiamen. He was shot 3 times and bled alot- his hemoglobin dropped to 4 gms
(normal 12-13 gms).
Mounir like others, lived months in the same house in Shatilla where his family was murdered, reliving the nightmares until finally they managed to get his brother and him to the USA to start a new life. I met up with Mounir many times, and even now, he would ask me to look at his scars.
'Is There a Predator Drone Near Gainesville?'
Military historian and author, Brian Downing, is more than a little perturbed at the foolishness of Koran burning in Gainesville, Florida (site of the most egregious election fraud in 2000). (Image)
As best as I can tell, that plow-hand in Gainesville has never even had the benefit of half-idiot pedagogues and broken down preachers. He acquired his theological learning by watching Jimmy Swaggart on the TV and taking copious notes. There’s a plow-hand preacher born every time a pledge number lights up on the screen. But what about congregations? They must be coming even faster than the rubes at a carnival midway. “Step right this way and see the burning books!” B. Downing
It gets better ...
America's Grand Strategy: Militarizing Space
by Stephen Lendman
On January 3, 2001, the UN General Assembly's Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space Resolution A/55/32 said:
"The exploration and use of outer space....shall be for peaceful purposes and be carried out for the benefit and in the interest of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development. (The) prevention of an arms race in outer space would avert a grave danger for international peace and security."
Over 140 nations agreed. Only two declined support, both abstaining - America and Israel.
On August 9, 1996, in Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine, then Commander-in-Chief US Space Command, Joseph W. Ashy asserted:
Alien Forest, Alien Ocean, Alien Sky
By Rady Ananda
Imagine our declining pollinators – bees, moths, butterflies and bats – coming upon thousands of acres of toxic trees, genetically engineered so that every cell in the tree exudes pesticide, from crown to root. Imagine a world without pollinators. Without seed dispersers. Without soil microbes.
It would be a silent forest, a killing forest, an alien forest. No wonder Vandana Shiva scoffs at the moniker, biotechnology. “This is not a life technology. It’s a death science.”
'V' is for Vendetta or How the Banksters Heisted America
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
The movie of 2006, based upon the original 'graphic novel' stars Hugo Weaving as 'V', Natalie Portman, and John Hurt as Adam Sutler -- the Big Brother-like dictator/tyrant seen on giant telescreens. It is a future Britain following a nuclear holocaust but, in fact, it is any nation seized by fear, embracing upon the pre-text of terrorism an all-powerful government in response.
The 'fascist' party called "Norsefire" resembles the Nazi party by its extermination of opponents in concentration camps and the American GOP for its embrace of torture, violations of human rights, blatant demagoguery and lies.
Munir’s Story 28 years after the Massacre at Sabra-Shatila
Franklin Lamb Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp, Beirut
The untreated psychic wounds are still open. Accountability, justice and basic civil rights for the survivors are still denied.
Scores of horror testimonies have been shared over the past nearly three decades by survivors of the September 1982 Sabra- Shatila massacre. More come to light only through circumstantial evidence because would be affiants perished during the slaughter. Other eyewitness are just beginning to emerge from deep trauma or self imposed silence.
Some testimonies will be shared this month by massacre survivors at Shatila camp. They will sit with the every growing numbers of international visitors who annually come to commemorate one of the most horrific crimes of the 20th century.
There are no average massacre testimonies.
Moment of reckoning
Khaled Amayreh in the West Bank
Palestinian women from Ramallah stopped at a checkpoint by an Israeli
soldier on their way to Ramadan prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque
As direct Palestinian-Israeli talks begin, few are optimistic, but all know the outcome will be decisive.
As US-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) get underway in Washington, most observers are reluctant to give them the benefit of the doubt given a long legacy of failure after many years of direct and indirect talks between the two sides, especially since the conclusion of the Oslo Accords nearly two decades ago. And while both sides are saying that they are going to the talks "with an open mind", it is clear that there is a little change -- if any -- in the declared positions of Israel and the PA on the basic contentious issues. On the eve of the talks, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu continued to make largely propagandistic statements, saying he wished Israel would have a peace partner like former Egyptian president Anwar El-Sadat. This statement ignores the clear fact that the intensive building of Jewish settlements all over the West Bank, not the absence of Sadat on the Arab side, has been the main obstacle impeding resolution of the Palestinian cause.
Global BDS Against Israel Is Working
by Stephen Lendman
In July 2005, a coalition of 171 Palestinian Civil Society organizations created the Global BDS movement for "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel Until it Complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights" for Occupied Palestinians, Israeli Arabs, and Palestinian diaspora refugees.
The Tel Aviv-based Reut Institute (RI) provides "real-time strategic decision-making" support in areas of national security and socioeconomic policy. Its new report titled "The Gaza Flotilla: The Collapse of Israel's Political Firewall" suggests it's working. It followed an earlier one on "creating a political firewall" against Israel's "delegitimization challenge," recommending sabotage and subterfuge against growing global forces it fears, not an equitable solution it rejects.
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