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The Walls of Berlin and Bil'in
eileen fleming
[Bil'in, West Bank] Twenty years ago on Nov. 9, the Berlin Wall came crashing down due to the build up of pressures exerted by the Solidarity movement demanding freedom at the time of the demise of Communism. The fall of the Berlin Wall symbolically portrayed the end of the Cold War and proved that walls cannot keep people apart. The Berlin Wall was twenty-seven miles of rolls of barbed wire augmented with a high concrete barrier and watchtowers, floodlights, and a no man's land. A few scaled over, some tunneled below and 136 East Germans died trying to cross it.
A wall twice as high and five times as long as the one that fell in Berlin, is close to completion in the West Bank. One of the chants I learned during one of my four visits to the agricultural village of Bilin, was "The wall will fall in Bilin; the wall will fall like in Berlin".
Rendition prosecuted abroad while U.S. courts do nothing
Mary Shaw
The George W. Bush administration was the target of much criticism from human rights groups for, among other things, its policy of extraordinary rendition, in which detainees have been transferred for interrogation in other countries that are known for their use of torture. And human rights groups and individuals have long been calling for an end to rendition, and accountability for all those who have enabled or participated in the use of torture in the "war on terror".
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like any kind of accountability will be achieved here in the U.S. anytime soon. The latest evidence of this came on November 2, when the Second Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the case of Maher Arar against U.S. officials who had sent him to Syria, where he was interrogated under torture for a year.
36 HOUSE MEMBERS DEFEND GOLDSTONE REPORT / 344 CONDEMN IT
Allen L Roland
In what has to be the most blatant act of allegiance to AIPAC versus their constituencies ~ the House of Representatives denounced the balanced and responsible Goldstone Gaza war crimes Report 344 to 36 despite the fact that every Israeli human rights NGO denounced the Gaza war and supports the Goldstone Report:
Despite the fact that a Rasmussen poll during the Gaza war found 55% of Americans opposed it and only 33% supported it ~ 344 spineless members of Congress followed the money, sold their souls to AIPAC ( American Israel Public Affairs Committee ) and their generous pro-Israel campaign contributions and refuted a truly balanced and responsible UN Report by the highly respected Judge Goldstone.
Foreign Contributions and the Supreme's Overdue Decision on Campaign Funding
The Supreme Court of the United States will soon announce a major decision on our lightly controlled system of campaign funding. Will it retain some limitations on corporate influence or will the court blow the lid off and cause a perpetual flood of unrestricted corporate contributions?
An additional outcome may surprise and shock the public.
If the Supreme Court overturns the lower court's decision, foreign nationals, corporations, and governments with partial ownership of U.S. corporations will, in effect, end up contributing to and influencing U.S. candidates in federal elections.
DATELINE AFGHANISTAN, Southwest Asia A continuing foreign policy of violence
by Carolyn Bennett
Sanity demands and all sides have said in one way or another that they want foreign forces out of Afghanistan. Yet foreign forces remain - are resisted violently - and continue to kill with careless impunity.
The better course of action, of course, though rarely attempted action, would be to alter substantively and significantly the course and character of particularly U.S. and UK-led relations with southwest Asia. Enter into open, honest, talking diplomacy with all factions in the southwest Asian [Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan] conflict(s). For each sector set a deadline for withdrawal and stick to it. Draw down forces leaving in the place of force respectful civilian relationships among foreign, local and regional factions and countries for the long term. Is this just too much to ask?
Pornographic Past Vs Murderous Present
by Gilad Atzmon
“Why would any writer make up stories about the Holocaust?” asks Melissa Katsoulis on mainstream British media outlet The Independent (1).
Katsoulis has recently published a book about the history of literary hoaxes. She is interested in particular in a unique fictional genre; namely ‘the Holocaust hoaxers’.
On the one hand, she confesses that “special privilege must be given to those increasingly few witness-writers who survived the Second World War in Europe.” She is even willing to accept Elie Wiesel’s peculiar take on ‘truth and fiction’, that "some stories are true that never happened."
On the other hand she says, “those memoirists who think that they can pretend they were there when they weren't ought to remember that hijacking the experiences of others for selfish ends will only end in ignominy.”
Katsoulis suggests that perhaps what “readers seek in trauma stories is akin to what people look for in pornography: something edgy they have never seen before, followed by a spectacular resolution”. Very much like the case of pornography, the dedicated audience of Jewish pain “want to identify (safely) with what they are reading; to try on someone else's crisis for a while and see how it compares to their own.”
Why Democrats Must Change or Perish
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
The GOP is a disciplined, top-down monolith. Even when the GOP screws up and runs an idiot like George W. Bush or John McCain, there is the danger that he will win because, on election day, the GOP will close ranks, hold their noses and vote the party line. Liberal Democrats for whom Clinton or Obama are too conservative will pout and stay home. Worse --conservative Democrats will join the evil minions and vote for a Bush Jr or a John McCain.
The Democratic party, meanwhile, doesn't have the luxury of settling for a 'base hit' in a game in which there are no base hits --only home runs. For the Democrats, that is! The GOP has the luxury of just putting a man on base! Democrats don't have the luxury of nominating anything less than a JFK or an FDR.
The End of Obama's Good Will Toward Palestine?
What's Behind This Shift of Policy?
By Khalid Amayreh Journalist - Occupied Palestine
The unbreakable US-Israeli ties gradually curtail the image of America
Obama tries to build in the Middle East. US Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton and Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman Photo: AFP/GETTY
In his landmark speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, on June 4, President Obama vowed to adopt a fair approach toward the Arab-Israel conflict.
He criticized the Israeli policy of settlement expansion and repression against Palestinians, and promised to get Israel to freeze all settlement activities in the West Bank and Al-Quds (East Jerusalem) in order to facilitate the resumption of a more genuine peace process.
However, six months later, the Obama Administration's approach toward the enduring Palestinian crisis seems more or less a mere re-cloning of George Bush's policies.
How the GOP is Killing America
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
The US is much, much worse off these days than Mexico which often takes the blame for the drug trade and 'income disparities'. Fact is --income and wealth inequality is much, much worse in the US than in Mexico. At the end of the Bush Sr era, the upper quintile alone had benefited from the Reagan tax cuts. So --where do the GOP 'yankees' get off aiming its demagoguery at Mexico? The piddly amounts of drugs sold across the border are a strawman --peanuts compared to the heist of US wealth pulled off by just one percent of the US population!
THE INHUMANITY OF ZIONISM
Steve Amsel
We enjoyed summer weather in Jerusalem until about a week ago. The days were hot, the evenings were cool…. but not cold. There wasn’t a sign of rain. This literally changed overnight as cold winds and rain turned the clock into winter mode.
That’s when the Israeli authorities decided to destroy the tent that an evicted family was living in. The family in question is not alone, Israel has plans to continue with illegal evictions and home demolitions in Occupied East Jerusalem. The United Nations is calling on Israel to immediately stop demolishing Palestinian homes in occupied East Jerusalem.The UN says 60,000 Palestinians may be at risk of being forcibly evicted.Israel says the houses are built without construction permits, which Palestinians say are almost impossible to obtain.
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