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Activism 101
Mickey Z.
Okay, short attention span crowd: Grab your remote (or mouse) and get ready to click, click, click…
“How much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight? I don't wanna die without any scars.”
- Tyler Durden (Fight Club)
Click…
William Burroughs once wrote about how we humans—like the bull in a bullfight—tend to focus on the elusive red cape instead of the matador. Indeed, we are all-too-easily distracted from real targets by an attractive image or illusion.
SHIP OF STATE OR SHIP OF FOOLS
The Money Party at Work
We keep doing the same things over and over again and expect different results.
Who are the officers guiding our ship of state, steering us through the troubled waters of a failed economy and two tragic and costly wars?
Do we have bold leaders ready to move us away from the failed policies that generated a free market kleptocracy for insiders and their masters, the ultra wealthy?
Are they brilliant tacticians who can think far enough outside of the box to get us out of calamitous foreign adventures that generate nothing but death, destruction, and ill will on the part of those we seek to "help"?
At the start of President Obama's administration, it was clear that this would be a cabinet that spanned those few degrees of that mythical political spectrum called "the middle." The political middle, like the Hobbits' "middle earth," is a contrivance, although much less artful. It's where you're supposed to be if you're the president. You stand for those who count; those with the vested interests in the economy. You are that special gatekeeper at the intersection between avarice and the nation's wealth.
Holocaust and Holodomor 'Origins of Anti Semitism'
Nicholas Lyssson
1. ROLE OF JEWS IN UKRAINIAN FAMINE
One might think the worst holocaust deniers—at least the only ones who command serious attention—are those who insist the Nazi holocaust, as it involved the Jews only, was without parallel.
Guenter Lewy argues for example in The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies (Oxford University Press, 2000) that while the Gypsies were gassed, shot and otherwise exterminated in great numbers, right alongside the Jews, they were not true victims of “the” Holocaust (capital “H”) but only of something collateral. Lewy even suggests the Gypsies invited their own destruction with certain cultural traits—in particular, sharply divergent moral standards for dealing among their own and with outsiders.
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Update on CodePink delegations: 40 person student, canadian, New York
Miriam Zouzounis
At around 2 am last night the Secret Police surrounded our hotel and came up asking to meet with the arabic speaker members of our delegations. Several members from the canadian delegation and new york delegation met in a fairly confrontational meeting where they said that none of the delegations were cleared to enter the border and that going today would be pointless. they also said they heard we were going to demonstrate and warned us against taking any actions of protest including holding banners, singing, etc.
The secret police also in the 'meeting' made personal threats to the memebers of the delegations of arab descent and that have family in the territories, saying that if they went to the border today they would not be allowed in Palestinian territories again.
TORTURE ‘TIL …, INNOCENCE IRRELEVANT - Wilkerson
Excerpted, re-reported, edited by Carolyn Bennett
Torture until Detainee Parrots Torturer Dictates¯
To make Torture Stop
Former Bush Administration staffer Lawrence Wilkerson in May 2009: “What I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002¯well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion—its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the United States but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa’ida.
39 internationals from Gaza 'Hope Convoy' and 10 Canadians from CodePink group stranded as Egypt limits access
From: International Movement to Open Rafah Border
The 39 members of the delegation are still stranded inside the Egyptian border compound and they are still trying to enter into Gaza.
After allowing them to enter and stamping theirs passports, Egyptian authorities took them back their passports and denied them to cross the border, telling them to go back to Al Arish.
The whole delegation is always inside the compound and they refuse to leave.
MEMORIAL DAY 2009 / WAR IS A WASTE, NOT A CELEBRATION
Allen L Roland
Three dead Americans in Iraq ~ why ?
War is a waste so why do we celebrate it with parades, flags and glorious war stories when, in reality, they are fought by our youth who are but pawns in the hands of old men ~ seduced by power and greed ~ who are more than willing to waste our most precious resource:
On this Memorial Day 2009, America is still enmeshed in a costly and illegal war and occupation of Iraq, rapidly increasing its military presence in Afghanistan and preparing for the possibility of war with Iran. American defense secretary Gates told NBC television today that president has instructed him to refresh plans for military action against Tehran ~ prepared during the Bush era. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/1,7340,L-3720065,00.html
Time for transparency at Der Spiegel?
Franklin Lamb Beirut
“We don’t know where the Der Spiegel magazine did get their information from and we don’t know where they brought this story from. No one in the prosecutor’s office has spoken to the German magazine about anything. We have a clear policy of not leaking any information about the tribunal through media outlets, and we have been stressing this since the beginning. When Der Spiegel spoke about Bellemar’s spokesperson, they meant me. They emailed me and asked a few questions. My answer was that the tribunal does not deal with investigation files through the media and adopts the policy of direct announcement by the part of Mr. Bellemar.If we had something to say, we would have said it directly, not through media outlets.”
Radiya Ashouri, Spokeswoman for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) (5/24/09)
When you die in America, it will be because you are NOT RICH!
Len Hart
Of the many ways in which a ruling elite of just one percent of the US population wages war upon the American people, the denial of health to everyone but the rich is the most evil. This is a direct result of the GOP/right wing domination of America since the rise of Ronald Reagan. Today, just one percent of the population is in a position to deny everyone but very, very rich a right to even basic health care. Denied this right, millions will die that might have lived productive and meaningful lives. This is not merely a matter of personal loss; it is that of the nation.
Since the GOP ascension to power began with the rise of Ronald Reagan in the early 80s, American wealth has been re-distributed upward. Gini indices evinced a dramatic shift upward even as Ronald Reagan still ruled. Those indices, published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, prove that only the uppper quintile had benefited from Reagan's widely touted tax cuts'.
Although this trend reversed under Clinton, the GOP wasted no time in undoing the good that had been done. Under Bush Jr, the GOP transfer of wealth to the ruling aristocracy, the ruling elite was resumed. Today --just one percent or less of the US populations earns more and owns more than 90 percent of the rest of us combined. As a result, 90 percent of us are priced out of the markets for better homes, cars and other consumables, but most importantly crucial essentials like health care. The effects of these policies are transparent. These effects are achived so predictably, so methodically and so consistently that I am entirely justified in charging that it is all done deliberately.
Human Rights Situation in Occupied Palestine
Stephen Lendman
On March 15, 2006, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly 170 to 4 (with only the US, Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau against) "to establish the Human Rights Council (HRC), based in Geneva, in replacement of the Commission on Human Rights, as a subsidiary organ of the General Assembly....responsible for promoting universal respect for the protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction of any kind and in a fair and equal manner."
HRC "is an inter-governmental body within the UN system made up of 47 states responsible for strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe."
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