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Muzzling press freedom in Palestine
By Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank
The recent decision by the Ramallah-based regime to close down the al-Jazeera offices in the West Bank illustrates the vulnerability and utter stupidity of the American-backed and Israeli-tolerated junta.
The decision came a day after Fatah Secretary-General Farouk Kaddoumi appeared on al-Jazeera, accusing Palestinian Authority Leader Mahmoud Abbas and his aide, former Gaza strong man Muhammed Dahlan, of complicity in poisoning the late Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat.
Justifying the decision, PA officials accused al Jazeera of bias, incitement and fostering division within the Palestinian community.
Senate Hate Crimes Bill Threatens First Amendment
EmptyWheel
There are inherent First Amendment and equal protection issues with any "hate crime" legislation as I pointed out when Eric Holder started aggressively pushing Congress for passage of a new bill. That said, if you are going to enact such laws, they must be targeted, rational and designed to effect the result desired and not any other. Such laws should not be vague and expansive, should not be able to be wielded by prosecutors as selective bludgeons and should not infringe on First Amendment rights to free speech and association.
Late Thursday night, the Senate passed a Hate Crimes Bill that arguably violates all of the above.
People attacked because of their sexual orientation or gender would receive federal protections under a Senate-approved measure that significantly expands the reach of hate crimes law.
The Senate bill also would make it easier for federal prosecutors to step in when state or local authorities are unable or unwilling to pursue hate crimes.
Undercover among America's secret theocrats: Jesus plus nothing
Jeff Sharlet
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And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. ~Matthew 10:36
This is how they pray: a dozen clear-eyed, smooth-skinned “brothers” gathered together in a huddle, arms crossing arms over shoulders like the weave of a cable, leaning in on one another and swaying like the long grass up the hill from the house they share. The house is a handsome, gray, two-story colonial that smells of new carpet and Pine-Sol and aftershave; the men who live there call it Ivanwald. At the end of a tree-lined cul-de-sac, quiet but for the buzz of lawn mowers and kids playing foxes-and-hounds in the park across the road, Ivanwald sits as one house among many, clustered together like mushrooms, all devoted, like these men, to the service of Jesus Christ. The men tend every tulip in the cul-de-sac, trim every magnolia, seal every driveway smooth and black as boot leather. And they pray, assembled at the dining table or on their lawn or in the hallway or in the bunk room or on the basketball court, each man's head bowed in humility and swollen with pride (secretly, he thinks) at being counted among such a fine corps for Christ, among men to whom he will open his heart and whom he will remember when he returns to the world not born-again but remade, no longer an individual but part of the Lord's revolution, his will transformed into a weapon for what the young men call “spiritual war.”
The Murder of Faith
Mantiq al-Tayr
1. Iman is a great Arabic word to ponder. It means “Faith” and faith is what so much of life if all about.
Faith is also a girl’s name in Arabic, just like it is in English.
I remember well back in 1994 when Iman (Faith) al-Hams was brutally murdered by the Israeli military. It was a horrible event and the Israeli response was just so awful that it deserves to be resurrected.
Below is a comment posted to the Mantiq al-Tayr site today in response to Obama’s meeting with the Jewish Lobby. The comment references in considerable detail the murder of Iman al-Hams and we here at Mantiq al-Tayr believe that the comment, posted by “Freeman”, is a fitting tribute to her memory and to the memory of all the Palestinian children murdered by Israel. It is not milk for babes, so please make sure you have a tissue handy. Here is a photograph of Faith, the 15 year old girl murdered by an Israeli soldier. The Israeli soldier who murdered her was promoted. May God have mercy on her soul.
LIVING RICH AND CRYING POOR
by Mary Pitt
As a member of the "Depression Generation". I have loved my country as one loves a husband; for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, until death do us part. Now there are those who tell us that our nation is as severely ill as it was at that time.
I recall, one summer evening, following my father outside as he searched the scorching sky for signs of a rain cloud. "What happened to all the rain, Daddy?". I asked this man who presisted in stirring the dusty soil, planting seeds, and praying for a crop. I shall never forget his reply:
Michael Jackson is dead, it is too late to develop a conscience
Roland Michel Tremblay
We Are the World, but do we have a conscience? I’m sure you believe we do. Sometimes though it could be opened to debate as we can easily point out many human beings, Black or White, who do not appear to have any conscience at all. Mostly politicians, religious leaders, management and all sorts of Smooth Criminals. They send us Off the Wall. Maybe none of them require a conscience to reach ultimate power and wealth. As Michael Jackson stated, They Don’t Care About Us. Is it too late to develop a conscience?
THE SEVEN STAGES OF LOVE / FEW GET BEYOND STAGE SIX
Allen L Roland
Relationship is a means to an end versus an end in itself. The true purpose of relationship is the full flowering of each partner but only those who conquer fear reach the seventh stage of love:
Most people are afraid of love because they are afraid of their deepest joy, delight and inner freedom.
In relationship, we must reach a place where being honest and being true to yourself is more important than the survival of the relationship ! Let me illustrate this using Stendhal's and Roland's seven stages of a love relationship :
Israel, Let Me Count The Ways
Mark Glenn
Today, while driving through town, I wound up behind a minivan that had a big sticker on the back. The sticker had an Israeli flag in the middle of it, and under it the quotation from the book of Genesis that reads "I will bless those who bless thee."
I would like to take this time to list my own reasons for thanking and blessing Israel, our lone ally in the Middle East, for everything she has done for us, since I am quite sure most Americans are unaware of just what kind of friend she has been to us.
Obama’s war
Bill Van Auken
With Obama approaching the end of his sixth month in the White House, there is growing evidence that his administration is in only the first stages of what is shaping up to be a major and sustained escalation of the US war in Afghanistan.
Elected in large part because of the hostility of American working people to the militarist policies of the Bush administration, Obama and the Pentagon are waging an intensified and brutal counter-insurgency campaign that has the potential of dwarfing the carnage in Iraq and dragging on for another decade.
July, little more than half over, has already become the deadliest month for US-led forces since the war began nearly eight years ago. A total of 46 occupation troops have been killed, 24 of them Americans. This death toll—approximately three a day—is equivalent to what took place during the heaviest fighting in Iraq. For Afghan government forces, the toll is far higher, with the regime in Kabul reporting that between six and ten members of the country’s national police are being killed daily.
War and Natural Gas: The Israeli Invasion and Gaza's Offshore Gas Fields
Michel Chossudovsky
The military invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israeli Forces bears a direct relation to the control and ownership of strategic offshore gas reserves.
This is a war of conquest. Discovered in 2000, there are extensive gas reserves off the Gaza coastline.
British Gas (BG Group) and its partner, the Athens based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC) owned by Lebanon's Sabbagh and Koury families, were granted oil and gas exploration rights in a 25 year agreement signed in November 1999 with the Palestinian Authority.
The rights to the offshore gas field are respectively British Gas (60 percent); Consolidated Contractors (CCC) (30 percent); and the Investment Fund of the Palestinian Authority (10 percent). (Haaretz, October 21, 2007).
The PA-BG-CCC agreement includes field development and the construction of a gas pipeline.(Middle East Economic Digest, Jan 5, 2001).
The BG licence covers the entire Gazan offshore marine area, which is contiguous to several Israeli offshore gas facilities. (See Map below). It should be noted that 60 percent of the gas reserves along the Gaza-Israel coastline belong to Palestine.
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