Articles

June 7, 2011

USA

NOVANEWS Why is the Federal Reserve forking over $220 million in bailout money to the wives of two Morgan Stanley ...Read more

Humala Wins Peru’s Presidential Runoff

June 7, 2011

Peru

NOVANEWS by Stephen Lendman On April 10, Ollanta Humala received most support among five presidential candidates, but not ...Read more

Lying On Trial as Politicians Deal with Reality Government

June 7, 2011

USA

NOVANEWS An Exposed Schmekel Signals Beginning of End to Political Lying Memo to Politicians: You Lie You Politically Die by Johnny Punish OK, yesterday we saw ...Read more

GOING ROGUE: NATO’s War Crimes in Libya

June 7, 2011

Libya

NOVANEWS by Susan Lindauer, former US Asset covering Libya at the United Nations It’s a story CNN won’t report. Late ...Read more

Chicago Red Dragon Six-Day Warning

June 7, 2011

USA

NOVANEWS by Captain Eric H. May, Ghost Troop CO Four years ago internet illustrator David Dees envisioned a dragon ...Read more

NOVANEWS**NOVANEWS**NOVANEWS

June 7, 2011

Politics

NOVANEWS On deaf ears: Obama`s message to Israel Robert Grenier - Aljazeera - Late May`s extraordinary sequence of ...Read more

Mondoweiss Online Newsletter

June 7, 2011

Middle East

NOVANEWS Bahrain Grand Prix staff are held and abused, still Grand Prix says race must go on Epic of ...Read more

A. Loewenstein Online Newsletter

June 7, 2011

Middle East

Don’t let the IMF get their dirty hands on the Arab revolutions New York’s Celebrate Israel parade 2011 shows Zionist ...Read more

Bassem Tamimi’s statement to IsraHell’s military court

June 7, 2011

Palestine Affairs

NOVANEWS Non-violence activist Bassem Tamimi's address to Israel's Ofer military court during his trial for organizing protests in the West Bank ...Read more

A Drunk And A Mosque.

June 7, 2011

Campaigns

NOVANEWS Another sign of open anti-Muslim bigotry, the Torygraph explains: "Jamie Knowlson, 30, also draped slices of meaton railings outside the ...Read more

Dorothy Online Newsleytter

June 7, 2011

Middle East

NOVANEWS Dear Friends, Once again I apologize for the large number. At least I can say that the final item—the 7th-- ...Read more

Flash: what is happening in Yarmuk Camp near Damascus?

June 6, 2011

Syria

NOVANEWS I have been receiving live updates from friends and comrades about the developments in Yarmuk Camp. The latest ...Read more

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The Real Housewives of Wall Street

NOVANEWS

Why is the Federal Reserve forking over $220 million in bailout money to the wives of two Morgan Stanley bigwigs?

The wolves are still at the door, and they are not going to go away. They will huff and puff until they blow the House down, bet on it. No woodcutters are gong to come along and take the axe to them. Here is a condensation and simplification of the Matt Taibbi article below by Richard Clark in the: OpedNews

by Matt Taibbi

America has two national budgets, one official, one unofficial. The official budget is public record and hotly debated: Money comes in as taxes and goes out as jet fighters, DEA agents, wheat subsidies and Medicare, plus pensions and pennies for that great untamed socialist menace called a unionized public-sector workforce that Republicans are always complaining about. According to popular legend, we’re broke and in so much debt that 40 years from now our granddaughters will still be hooking on weekends to pay the medical bills of this year’s retirees from the IRS, the SEC and the Department of Energy.

Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?

Most Americans know about that budget. What they don’t know is that there is another budget of roughly equal theft, traditionally maintained in complete secrecy. After the financial crash of 2008, it grew to monstrous dimensions, as the government attempted to unfreeze the credit markets by handing out trillions to banks and hedge funds. And thanks to a whole galaxy of obscure, acronym-laden bailout programs, it eventually rivaled the “official” budget in size — a huge roaring river of cash flowing out of the Federal Reserve to destinations neither chosen by the president nor reviewed by Congress, but instead handed out by fiat by unelected Fed officials using a seemingly nonsensical and apparently unknowable methodology.

This article appears in the April 28, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The issue will be available on newsstands and in the online archive April 15.

Now, following an act of Congress that has forced the Fed to open its books from the bailout era, this unofficial budget is for the first time becoming at least partially a matter of public record. Staffers in the Senate and the House, whose queries about Fed spending have been rebuffed for nearly a century, are now poring over 21,000 transactions and discovering a host of outrages and lunacies in the “other” budget. It is as though someone sat down and made a list of every individual on earth who actually did not need emergency financial assistance from the United States government, and then handed them the keys to the public treasure. The Fed sent billions in bailout aid to banks in places like Mexico, Bahrain and Bavaria, billions more to a spate of Japanese car companies, more than $2 trillion in loans each to Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, and billions more to a string of lesser millionaires and billionaires with Cayman Islands addresses. “Our jaws are literally dropping as we’re reading this,” says Warren Gunnels, an aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. “Every one of these transactions is outrageous.”

But if you want to get a true sense of what the “shadow budget” is all about, all you have to do is look closely at the taxpayer money handed over to a single company that goes by a seemingly innocuous name: Waterfall TALF Opportunity. At first glance, Waterfall’s haul doesn’t seem all that huge — just nine loans totaling some $220 million, made through a Fed bailout program. That doesn’t seem like a whole lot, considering that Goldman Sachs alone received roughly $800 billion in loans from the Fed. But upon closer inspection, Waterfall TALF Opportunity boasts a couple of interesting names among its chief investors: Christy Mack and Susan Karches.

Christy is the wife of John Mack, the chairman of Morgan Stanley. Susan is the widow of Peter Karches, a close friend of the Macks who served as president of Morgan Stanley’s investment-banking division. Neither woman appears to have any serious history in business, apart from a few philanthropic experiences. Yet the Federal Reserve handed them both low-interest loans of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars through a complicated bailout program that virtually guaranteed them millions in risk-free income.

RS Politics Daily: Political news and commentary from Rolling Stone writers and editors

The technical name of the program that Mack and Karches took advantage of is TALF, short for Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility. But the federal aid they received actually falls under a broader category of bailout initiatives, designed and perfected by Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, called “giving already stinking rich people gobs of money for no fucking reason at all.” If you want to learn how the shadow budget works, follow along. This is what welfare for the rich looks like.

In August 2009, John Mack, at the time still the CEO of Morgan Stanley, made an interesting life decision. Despite the fact that he was earning the comparatively low salary of just $800,000, and had refused to give himself a bonus in the midst of the financial crisis, Mack decided to buy himself a gorgeous piece of property — a 107-year-old limestone carriage house on the Upper East Side of New York, complete with an indoor 12-car garage, that had just been sold by the prestigious Mellon family for $13.5 million. Either Mack had plenty of cash on hand to close the deal, or he got some help from his wife, Christy, who apparently bought the house with him.

The Macks make for an interesting couple. John, a Lebanese-American nicknamed “Mack the Knife” for his legendary passion for firing people, has one of the most recognizable faces on Wall Street, physically resembling a crumpled, half-burned baked potato with a pair of overturned furry horseshoes for eyebrows. Christy is thin, blond and rich — a sort of still-awake Sunny von Bulow with hobbies. Her major philanthropic passion is endowments for alternative medicine, and she has attained the level of master at Reiki, the Japanese practice of “palm healing.” The only other notable fact on her public résumé is that her sister was married to Charlie Rose.

It’s hard to imagine a pair of people you would less want to hand a giant welfare check to — yet that’s exactly what the Fed did. Just two months before the Macks bought their fancy carriage house in Manhattan, Christy and her pal Susan launched their investment initiative called Waterfall TALF. Neither seems to have any experience whatsoever in finance, beyond Susan’s penchant for dabbling in thoroughbred racehorses. But with an upfront investment of $15 million, they quickly received $220 million in cash from the Fed, most of which they used to purchase student loans and commercial mortgages. The loans were set up so that Christy and Susan would keep 100 percent of any gains on the deals, while the Fed and the Treasury (read: the taxpayer) would eat 90 percent of the losses. Given out as part of a bailout program ostensibly designed to help ordinary people by kick-starting consumer lending, the deals were a classic heads-I-win, tails-you-lose investment.

So how did the government come to address a financial crisis caused by the collapse of a residential-mortgage bubble by giving the wives of a couple of Morgan Stanley bigwigs free money to make essentially risk-free investments in student loans and commercial real estate? The answer is: by degrees. The history of the bailout era reads like one of those awful stories about what happens when a long-dormant criminal compulsion goes unchecked. The Peeping Tom next door stares through a few bathroom windows, doesn’t get caught, and decides to break in and steal a pair of panties. Next thing you know, he’s upgraded to homemade dungeons, tri-state serial rampages and throwing cheerleaders into a panel truck.

It was the same with the bailouts. They started out small, with the government throwing a few hundred billion in public money to prop up genuinely insolvent firms like Bear Stearns and AIG. Then came TARP and a few other programs that were designed to stave off bank failures and dispose of the toxic mortgage-backed securities that were a root cause of the financial crisis. But before long, the Fed began buying up every distressed investment on Wall Street, even those that were in no danger of widespread defaults: commercial real estate loans, credit- card loans, auto loans, student loans, even loans backed by the Small Business Administration. What started off as a targeted effort to stop the bleeding in a few specific trouble spots became a gigantic feeding frenzy. It was “free money for shit,” says Barry Ritholtz, author of Bailout Nation. “It turned into ‘Give us your crap that you can’t get rid of otherwise.’ ”

The impetus for this sudden manic expansion of the bailouts was a masterful bluff by Wall Street executives. Once the money started flowing from the Federal Reserve, the executives began moaning to their buddies at the Fed, claiming that they were suddenly afraid of investing in anything — student loans, car notes, you name it — unless their profits were guaranteed by the state. “You ever watch soccer, where the guy rolls six times to get a yellow card?” says William Black, a former federal bank regulator who teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri. “That’s what this is. If you have power and connections, they will give you a freebie deal — if you’re good at whining.”

This is where TALF fits into the bailout picture. Created just after Barack Obama’s election in November 2008, the program’s ostensible justification was to spur more consumer lending, which had dried up in the midst of the financial crisis. But instead of lending directly to car buyers and credit-card holders and students — that would have been socialism! — the Fed handed out a trillion dollars to banks and hedge funds, almost interest-free. In other words, the government lent taxpayer money to the same assholes who caused the crisis, so that they could then lend that money back out on the market virtually risk-free, at an enormous profit.

Cue your Billy Mays voice, because wait, there’s more! A key aspect of TALF is that the Fed doles out the money through what are known as non-recourse loans. Essentially, this means that if you don’t pay the Fed back, it’s no big deal. The mechanism works like this: Hedge Fund Goon borrows, say, $100 million from the Fed to buy crappy loans, which are then transferred to the Fed as collateral. If Hedge Fund Goon decides not to repay that $100 million, the Fed simply keeps its pile of crappy securities and calls everything even.

This is the deal of a lifetime. Think about it: You borrow millions, buy a bunch of crap securities and stash them on the Fed’s books. If the securities lose money, you leave them on the Fed’s lap and the public eats the loss. But if they make money, you take them back, cash them in and repay the funds you borrowed from the Fed. “Remember that crazy guy in the commercials who ran around covered in dollar bills shouting, ‘The government is giving out free money!’ ” says Black. “As crazy as he was, this is making it real.”

This whole setup — in which millionaires and billionaires gambled on mountains of dangerous securities, with taxpayers providing the stake and assuming almost all of the risk — is the reason that it’s insanely premature for Wall Street to claim that the bailouts have actually made money for the government. We simply can’t make that determination until the final bill comes in on all the dicey securities we financed during the bailout feeding frenzy.

In the case of Waterfall TALF Opportunity, here’s what we know: The company was founded in June 2009 with $14.87 million of investment capital, money that likely came from Christy Mack and Susan Karches. The two Wall Street wives then used the $220 million they got from the Fed to buy up a bunch of securities, including a large pool of commercial mortgages managed by Credit Suisse, a company John Mack once headed. Those securities were valued at $253.6 million, though the Fed refuses to explain how it arrived at that estimate. And here’s the kicker: Of the $220 million the two wives got from the Fed, roughly $150 million had not been paid back as of last fall — meaning that you and I are still on the hook for most of whatever the Wall Street spouses bought on their government-funded shopping spree.

The public has no way of knowing how much Christy Mack and Susan Karches earned on these transactions, because the Fed has repeatedly declined to provide any information about how it priced the individual securities bought as part of programs like TALF. In the Waterfall deal, for instance, we know the Fed pledged some $14 million against a block of securities called “Credit Suisse Commercial Mortgage Trust Series 2007-C2″ — but that data is meaningless without knowing how many units were bought. It’s like saying the Fed gave Waterfall $14 million to buy cars. Did Waterfall pay $5,000 per car, or $500,000? We have no idea. “There’s no way of validating or invalidating the Fed’s process in TALF without this pricing information,” says Gary Aguirre, a former SEC official who was fired years ago after he tried to interview John Mack in an insider-trading case.

In early April, in an attempt to learn exactly how much Mack and Karches made on the TALF deals, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa wrote a letter to Waterfall asking 21 detailed questions about the transactions. In addition, Sen. Sanders has personally asked Fed chief Bernanke to provide more complete information on the TALF loans given not only to Christy Mack but to gazillionaires like former Miami Dolphins owner H. Wayne Huizenga and hedge-fund shark John Paulson. But Bernanke bluntly refused to provide the information — and the Fed has similarly stonewalled other oversight agencies, including the General Accounting Office and TARP’s special inspector general.

Christy Mack and Susan Karches did not respond to requests for comments for this story. But even without more information about the loans they got from the Fed, we know that TALF wasn’t the only risk-free money being handed over to Wall Street. During the financial crisis, the Fed routinely made billions of dollars in “emergency” loans to big banks at near-zero interest. Many of the banks then turned around and used the money to buy Treasury bonds at higher interest rates — essentially loaning the money back to the government at an inflated rate. “People talk about how these were loans that were paid back,” says a congressional aide who has studied the transactions. “But when the state is lending money at zero percent and the banks are turning around and lending that money back to the state at three percent, how is that different from just handing rich people money?”

Those kinds of deals were the essence of the bailout — and the vast mountains of near-zero government cash turned companies facing bankruptcy into monstrous profit machines. In 2008 and 2009, while Christy Mack was busy getting her little TALF loans for $220 million, her husband’s bank hauled in $2 trillion in emergency Fed loans. During the same period, Goldman borrowed nearly $800 billion. Shortly afterward, the two banks reported a combined annual profit of $14.5 billion.

As crazy as it is to lend to banks at near zero percent and borrow back from them at three percent, one could at least argue that the policy may have aided American companies by providing banks more cash to lend. But how do you explain the host of other bailout transactions now being examined by Congress? Like the Fed’s massive purchases of securities in foreign automakers, including BMW, Volkswagen, Honda, Mitsubishi and Nissan? Or the nearly $5 billion in cheap credit the Fed extended to Toyota and Mitsubishi? Sure, those companies have factories and dealerships in the U.S. — but does it really make sense to give them free cash at the same time taxpayers were being asked to bail out Chrysler and GM? Seems a little crazy to fund the competition of the very automakers you’re trying to rescue.

And then there are the bailout deals that make no sense at all. Republicans go mad over spending on health care and school for Mexican illegals. So why aren’t they flipping out over the $9.6 billion in loans the Fed made to the Central Bank of Mexico? How do we explain the $2.2 billion in loans that went to the Korea Development Bank, the biggest state bank of South Korea, whose sole purpose is to promote development in South Korea? And at a time when America is borrowing from the Middle East at interest rates of three percent, why did the Fed extend $35 billion in loans to the Arab Banking Corporation of Bahrain at interest rates as low as one quarter of one point?

Even more disturbing, the major stakeholder in the Bahrain bank is none other than the Central Bank of Libya, which owns 59 percent of the operation. In fact, the Bahrain bank just received a special exemption from the U.S. Treasury to prevent its assets from being frozen in accord with economic sanctions. That’s right: Muammar Qaddafi received more than 70 loans from the Federal Reserve, along with the Real Housewives of Wall Street.

Perhaps the most irritating facet of all of these transactions is the fact that hundreds of millions of Fed dollars were given out to hedge funds and other investors with addresses in the Cayman Islands. Many of those addresses belong to companies with American affiliations — including prominent Wall Street names like Pimco, Blackstone and . . . Christy Mack. Yes, even Waterfall TALF Opportunity is an offshore company. It’s one thing for the federal government to look the other way when Wall Street hotshots evade U.S. taxes by registering their investment companies in the Cayman Islands. But subsidizing tax evasion? Giving it a federal bailout? What the fuck?

As America girds itself for another round of lunatic political infighting over which barely-respirating social program or urgently necessary federal agency must have their budgets permanently sacrificed to the cause of billionaires being able to keep their third boats in the water, it’s important to point out just how scarce money isn’t in certain corners of the public-spending universe. In the coming months, when you watch Republican congressional stooges play out the desperate comedy of solving America’s deficit problems by making fewer photocopies of proposed bills, or by taking an ax to budgetary shrubberies like NPR or the SEC, remember Christy Mack and her fancy new carriage house. There is no belt-tightening on the other side of the tracks. Just a free lunch that never ends.

Humala Wins Peru’s Presidential Runoff

NOVANEWS

On April 10, Ollanta Humala received most support among five presidential candidates, but not a majority. Eliminated were former neoliberal President Alejandro Toledo, his former economic minister and Lima mayor Luis Castaneda Lossio, and former Prime Minister Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.

Discredited and now imprisoned former President Alberto Fujimori’s daughter Keiko proceeded to a runoff with him.

On June 6, New York Times writer Simon Romero headlined, “Ex-Officer Set to Win Narrow Victory in Peru,” saying:

Incomplete returns show him heading for victory, rebuking Peru’s “economic model that has driven (its) robust growth, (but left) millions of (its) citizens….mired in poverty….”

Washington Post writer Juan Forero called it an “unhappy choice,” saying winner Humala openly admires “Venezuela’s firebrand president, Hugo Chavez,” then quoted Inter-American Dialogue head Michael Shifter claiming neither candidate is “committed to democracy.”

Reuters said “(l)eftwing former army (Lt. Col.) Ollanta Humala claimed victory” in Sunday’s elections, “strik(ing) a conciliatory tone as investors and the opposition worry he will ruin a long economic boom.”

Wall Street Journal writer Matt Moffett said his win “rais(es) a cloud of uncertainty over what has been one of the world’s most dynamic economies” by depriving Peru’s poor for its rich as well as Western business interests.

Succeeding incumbent Alan Garcia, Xinhua’s English language site said independent election monitors declared Humala the winner, getting over a 51% majority with more than 90% of ballots counted. Exit polls, in fact, had him winning with over 52%.

On July 28, he’ll be inaugurated for a five-year term until 2016. How center-left he’ll govern is very much in doubt given the record of others in the region, including Brazil’s Lula da Silva, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, and others pursuing corporate friendly agendas.

In fact, in his book “Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire,” James Petras said former unionist leader Lula actually extended his predecessor’s privatizations and restrictive budget policies.

Instead of change, he delivered betrayal. Even before elected, he signed a letter of understanding with the IMF, promising business as usual by agreeing to full debt service, as well as pro-business neoliberal policies.

Then as president, he cut public employee pensions 30%. His agrarian policy subsidized agribusiness. He didn’t redistribute land to Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST) as promised and cut spending for health and education. He also appointed right-wing bankers and other corporate executives to key posts, including economic and financial ones. As a result, Petras said he fit “the profile of a right-wing neoliberal politician,” not a populist one.

Morales also painfully disappointed by maintaining neoliberal fiscal austerity, economic stability, and other pro-corporate policies. Other regional leaders followed similar agendas, including Ecuador’s Correa and Argentina’s Nestor Kirchner, failing to deliver real change.

So why expect Humala to govern more like Chavez, combining participatory social democracy with business friendly policies. After July, Peruvians will know for sure what his call for “change” and “order” means as president, especially after he models himself after Lula, suggesting business as usual in office, not a radical shift left.

Representing the Gana Peru nationalist party, he appealed to the country’s poor, harmed by years of neoliberal harshness. In contrast, his opponent, Keiko Fujimori, openly endorsed free market privatizations, deregulation, and eliminating labor rights to attract foreign investment, much like her father in the 1990s.

So far, Peruvians believe Humala represents more populist interests than continuity. They may be very disappointed despite promises to increase taxes and royalties on mining companies to fund social programs, as well as stronger labor rights in a nation having few.

Reuters, in fact, said he’s made a concerted effort to “calm foreign investors,” saying he’ll honor the “independence of the central bank and the legal securiy of contracts signed with private enterprises.”

His Gana Peru Party, in fact, advocates joint state, domestic/foreign investment partnerships, Peruvians having majority control. As a result, he promised changes in Peru’s 1993 Constitution and reviews of previously negotiated trade agreements, whether or not, he’ll defy Western interests by softening agreed on provisions. In fact, he said:

“From the moment these were signed, they cannot be unilaterally questioned or revised, except when specific clauses allowed for in (them) or when flagrant illegality preceded (their) adoption.”

Political rhetoric aside, expect a Humala administration to continue most past policies poor Peruvians want changed. Not likely short of massive grassroots pressure forcing him. Even that won’t likely work given entrenched interests enforcing status quo harshness backed by Wall Street and Washington, the force targeting all leaders out of step with their agenda.

A Final Comment

A mid-day June 6 Reuters report headlined, “Left-winger Humala wins Peru election, markets plunge,” saying:

Humala’s vow to share Peru’s wealth with its poor sent “financial markets plummet(ing) on fears (he’ll) ruin the economy.”

Widening his slim lead, it’s expected to increase as poor rural returns come in, areas where he’s strongest. As a result, “Peru’s stock market sank about 11 percent, while the sol currency fell 1.5 percent,” prompting central bank efforts to curb it.

Addressing thousands of cheering supporters, Humala said he’ll “install a government of national unity,” adding that he wants “economic growth with social inclusion (to) build a more just Peru for everybody.”

Calming investors, Humala’s top economic advisor and possible new finance minister, Kurt Burneo, warned speculators betting against Peru would get burned, saying:

“Those speculating now are simply going to lose their money because everything is very solid,” suggesting little change from current policies.

In fact, Humala’s likely central bank head, Felix Jimenez, added:

“Our economic proposals are totally sensible: to maintain macroeconomic equilibrium, consolidate growth and create conditions for private domestic and foreign investment growth.”

If both men run Peru’s economy, expect today’s market plunge to be a buying opportunity for savvy investors seeing a chance for quick profits, not a red flag to shift funds elsewhere.

Lying On Trial as Politicians Deal with Reality Government

NOVANEWS

An Exposed Schmekel Signals Beginning of End to Political Lying

Memo to Politicians: You Lie You Politically Die

OK, yesterday we saw Rep. Weiner fall on his media sword admitting that it was his schmeckel that was posted on Twitter and that he was caught lying about sending it. And it got me thinking…….

Politicians have always lied. Lying is part of their arsenal for getting, keeping, and exerting their power. And the public, for the most part, have never been able to expose the lying so easily before. So when a Politician like Richard Nixon gets caught lying about a break-in at a Democratic Party office, the scandal goes nutzo.

What has changed is that liars are being caught daily now. The minute they lie the public posts it on the social networks and boom! – Everyone knows about it.

The public flashes the evidence before they get the friggin’ denials out and bam! – The politician is shamed.

Unfortunately, politicians like Rep. Weiner are still from the older generation that just does NOT “get it” and their contempt is just a crashing bore.

Now, on a personal note, who really cares who citizen Weiner shows his schmeckel to? That’s his personal thing. Heck, I bet half the friggin males reading this have shown their schmeckel off, right? Who cares! It’s a non-issue! A non-event! Now, for a leader and politician to use the people’s resources for the delivery of that icky pricky, well, that’s another story that will be, and forgive the pun, “looked at”.

Okay, but on a very serious note, what’s really happening here is the beginning of the end of an era. And that’s the good news.

The people are sick and tired of bad government. We are sick of the lies from politicians.

They need to take a lesson from the most popular woman on the planet who is getting the most “votes”. That would be Lady Gaga.

Lady Gaga is bizarre, strange, dresses up funny and when she’s interviewed she tells it like it is saying, and I paraphrase ”My fans know I am honest with them. They know I smoke a lot of pot when I write and I drink whiskey. They know I know it’s bad for my voice but I am human. I am like my fans. I am person with faults and they know that and that’s why they come out for me and I come out for them”.

Whether you like Lady Gaga or not is not the point. The point is that this woman is real and our politicians are fake. We all know it. Politicians ask for our votes then turn around and take money from special interests and completely ignore the wishes of their constituents. This goes for all of them.

We see this daily when the Congress gives a bigger standing ovation to Prime Minister of Israel than the President of the United States while they send him billions per year to build brand new nice homes on land that does not belong to them while, we, the American people, endure the humiliation of watching our own people suffer the indignity of losing our homes, jobs, and futures here at home. Yeah, we vote for them to ship out our tax dollars 8000 miles away while we get our asses handed to us in a “in your face screw you” pick pocketing of our national home.

Why? We know all why!

AIPAC, the largest lobby on capitol hill, is paying off the Congress and for those they don’t pay, they intimidate! They own the system! We all know it and now we’re exposing it and the Politicians now have a real paradox. Do they side with us, the people of the United States of America, or do they side with someone else? What about the rest of the lobbies that do NOT represent the wishes of the American people? Make no mistake about it people, we are at war. It is us versus the liars, thieves, greedsters, banksters, and criminals who wear blue and brown suits.

Frankly it’s the system that is now under indictment and lying, one of their gambits for perpetuating and gaming the system, is on its way out because now, when they lie, they politically die. And that’s the message of what’s going on here. This is a fundamental paradigm shift.

So politicians, not just in the USA but around the world, beware because we are on you like flies on shite.

Mubarek got his and many others will fall quickly now! Exposure is painfully quick now; in minutes!

You take money for fake wars! We expose you!
You don’t honor your constituents! Exposed!
You tell us you support an issue and turn and vote against it because money purchased you, you get exposed!
We are the global cyber paparazzi and you’re on 24/7.

So get with the program and become a real genuine servant of the people like Lady Gaga, wear your extroverted gowns and funky hats, smoke your pot and drink your whisky and start being real because fake is out!

GOING ROGUE: NATO’s War Crimes in Libya

NOVANEWS

former US Asset covering Libya at the United Nations

It’s a story CNN won’t report. Late at night there’s a pounding on the door in Misurata. Armed soldiers force young Libyan women out of their beds at gun-point. Hustling the women and teenagers into trucks, the soldiers rush the women to gang bang parties for NATO rebels—or else rape them in front of their husbands or fathers. When NATO rebels finish their rape sport, the soldiers cut the women’s throats.

Rapes are now ongoing acts of war in rebel-held cities, like an organized military strategy, according to refugees. Joanna Moriarty, who’s part of a global fact-finding delegation visiting Tripoli this week, also reports that NATO rebels have gone house to house through Misurata, asking families if they support NATO. If the families say no, they are killed on the spot. If families say they want to stay out of the fighting, NATO rebels take a different approach to scare other families. The doors of “neutral homes” are welded shut, Moriarty says, trapping families inside. In Libyan homes, windows are typically barred. So when the doors to a family compound get welded shut, Libyans are entombed in their own houses, where NATO forces can be sure large families will slowly starve to death.

These are daily occurrences, not isolated events. And Gadhaffi’s soldiers are not responsible. In fact, pro-Gadhaffi and “neutral” families are targeted as the victims of the attacks. Some of the NATO tactics may have occurred in hopes of laying blame on Gadhaffi’s door. However the attacks are back firing.

Flashback to Serbia

The events are eerily reminiscent of Serbia’s conflict in the Balkans with its notorious rape camps— Except today NATO itself is perpetrating these War Crimes—as if they have learned the worst terror tactics from their enemies.

Their actions would be categorized as War Crimes, just like Serb leader, Slobadon Milosevic—except that NATO won’t allow itself to face prosecution. According to NATO, International Law is for the other guy.

NATO is wrong. So long as NATO governments provide the funding, assault rifles, military training, ground advisers, support vehicles and air power, they are fully responsible for the actions of their soldiers in the war zone. Libya’s rebels are not a rag tag fighting force, either. Thanks to NATO’s largesse, financed by U.S. and British taxpayers, they’re fully decked out in military uniforms, parading through the streets with military vehicles for all the people to see.

And they do see. In Washington, Congress likes to pretend that America has not become involved in the day to day actualities of military planning. However refugees have observed U.S, British, French and Israeli soldiers standing by as rebel soldiers attack civilians.

“Rape parties” are the most graphic examples of NATO’s loss of moral control. One weeping father told the fact-finding delegation how a couple of weeks ago NATO rebels targeted seven separate households, kidnapping a virgin daughter from each pro-Gadhaffi family. The rebels were paid for each kidnapped girl, just as they are paid for each Libyan soldier they kill— like mercenary soldiers. They hustled the girls into trucks, and took them to a building where the girls were locked in separate rooms.

NATO soldiers proceeded to drink alcohol, until they got very drunk. Then the leader told them to rape the virgin daughters in gang bang style. When they’d finished raping the girls, the NATO leader told them to cut the breasts off the living girls and bring the breasts to him. They did this while the girls were alive and screaming. All the girls died hideous deaths. Then their severed breasts were taken to a local square and arranged to spell the word “whore.”

The grieving father spoke to a convention of workers, attended by the global fact-finding delegation. He was openly weeping, as all of us should. NATO’s offenses in Libya are as terrible and unforgivable as Syria’s castration and mutilation of the 13 year old boy that shocked the world. Yet so long as NATO’s the guilty party, the western media has looked the other way in distaste.

Some of us are paying attention— We can see that NATO has gone rogue in Libya. And the Libyan people themselves consider it unforgivable. Last week, 2000 Tribal Leaders gathered in Tripoli to draft a Constitution for the country, as demanded by the British government. Notoriously, British warships and U.S. drones pounded the streets of Tripoli with bunker bombs and missiles for days and nights close to where the Tribal Leaders were meeting. From Tripoli, it felt awfully like the British were trying to stop the Libyan people from bringing this Constitution to life.

Tribal Leaders Condemn British Aggression

Here’s what those 2,000 Tribal Leaders had to say about British aggression, in a statement approved unanimously on June 3. Sheikh Ali, head of the Tribal Leaders, delivered it to Joanna Moriarty and other members of the global fact finding mission:

“The Libyan people have the right to govern themselves. Constant attacks from the skies, at all hours of the day have completely disrupted the lives of the families of Libya. There has never been any fighting in Tripoli, yet we are bombed every day. We are civilians and we are being killed by the British and NATO. Civilians are people without guns, yet the British and NATO protect only the armed crusaders from the East by acting as their attack army. We have read the UN resolutions and there is no mention of bombing innocent civilians. There is no mention of assassinating the legitimate authorities in all of Libya.”

“The Libyan People have the right to select their own leaders. We have suffered occupation by foreign countries for thousands of years. Only in the last 41 years have we Libyans enjoyed property ownership. Only in the last 41 years have we seen our country develop. Only in the last 41 years have we seen all of the Libyans enjoy a better life, and know that our children will have a better life then we have had. But now with the British and NATO bombings of our country, we see the destruction of our new and developed infrastructure.”

“We leaders see the destruction of our culture. We leaders see tears in the eyes of our children because of the constant fear from the “rain of terror” in the skies of Libya from the British and NATO bombings. Our old people suffer from heart problems, increased diabetes and loss of vigor. Our young mothers are losing their babies every day because of the stress of the British and NATO bombings. These lost babies are the future of Libya. They can never be replaced. Our armies have been destroyed by the British and NATO bombings. We cannot defend ourselves from attacks from anyone.”

“As Tribal Leaders of Libya, we must ask why have the British and NATO decided to wage this war against the Libyan people? There are a small percentage of dissidents in the east of Libya that started an armed insurrection against our legitimate authority. Every country has the right to defend itself against armed insurrection. So why cannot Libya defend itself?”

“The Tribal Leaders of Libya demand that all acts of aggression, by the British and NATO, against the Libyan People stop immediately. June 3, 2011″

Does that sound like NATO’s got a winning strategy? If so, they should think again. Even if Gadhaffi falls, NATO has no hope of eliminating the entire tribal structure of the Libya, which embraces all families and clans. Instead NATO is losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the people with every missile that smashes into another building.

Tribal Backlash

The Libyan people are fighting back. This report arrived from Tripoli today. It is not edited, and describes a backlash in tribal warfare from the City of Darna in the East, where the rebellion is supposed to be strongest:

“People found the body of Martyr Hamdi Jumaa Al-Shalwi in Darna city eastern Libya. His head was cut off and then placed in front of the headquarters of the Internal Security Dernah. That was after being kidnapped from a checkpoint complex Herich. In response to this Al-Shalwi family erected a funeral tent to receive condolences in which the green flag [of Libya] was raised. After the funeral the whole city of Darna rose up with all its tribes which include:- the Abu Jazia family, Al-Shalwi family, The Quba families, Ain Marra families. After that, Al-Shalwi family and Bojazia tribe attacked the headquarters of the Transitional Council and shot all the rats (rebels) and green flags were raised. Furthermore, the son of Sofian Qamom was killed, also two members of Al- Qaeda got killed by residents of the city of Darna. The flag of the Libyan Jamahiriya was raised above Darna after the clashes.”

CNN has reported none of this. The corporate media continues to lull Americans into false confidence in the progress of the Libyan War. Americans are way out of the loop as to the failures of the War effort. As a result, Libyans are losing trust in the potential for friendships with the West. An unlikely champion might restore that faith. Right now a team of international attorneys is preparing an emergency grievance on behalf of the Tribal Leaders and the Libyan people. The International Peace Community could contribute substantially to restoring Libya’s faith in the West by supporting this human rights action. Indeed, the Libyan people and Tribal Leaders deserve our support. Together we must demand that NATO face prosecution for War Crimes, citing these examples and others.

NATO governments must be required to pay financial damages to Libyan families, on par with what the U.S. and Britain would demand for their own citizens under identical circumstances. The world cannot tolerate double standards, whereby powerful nations abuse helpless citizens. The International Geneva Conventions of War must be enforced, and equal force of the law must be applied.

The Fight for Misurata

Though attacks are widespread, some of the worst abuses are occurring in Misurata. The City has the only mega port in Libya, and handles transportation for the country, including the largest oil and gas depots. NATO will stop at nothing to take the City.

Refugees report that the Israeli Star of David flag was draped over the largest Mosque in Misurata on the second day of fighting, actions guaranteed to humiliate and antagonize the local population.

NATO forces have cut off food and medical supplies throughout Libya. But the seas are plentiful with fish in Mediterranean waters. Brave fishermen have taken their boats out of port, trying to harvest fish for the hungry population. To break their perseverance, American drones and British war planes steadily fire missiles on the fishing boats, deliberately targeting non-military vessels to chase them out of the waters.

Yet for all of its superior fire power and tactical advantages, NATO still appears to be losing. According to the fact-finding delegation, reporting today, many rebels have left Misurata and have taken boats back to Benghazi. The big central part of Misurata is now free and under central military control. The Libyan people shot down two helicopter gunships near the town of Zlitan. And although Al Jazeera played a grand story about a major uprising against Ghadafi in Tripoli, one of the Tribal leaders’ wives lives on the street that claims to be the center of the demonstration, and declared that she saw no crowds out of her window. Buses pictured in Al Jazeera video do not run in Tripoli.

One has to ask: What kind of society does NATO think it’s creating, if in fact Gadhaffi can be deposed—which looks very unlikely? Have Washington and London learned nothing from their failure in Iraq? The cruelty and debasement of NATO’s forces is already fueling profound hatreds that will continue for the next generation.

Who could be proud of such “allies?” Not the Libyan people, surely.

NATO soldiers are no better than thugs. Anyone else would be labeled terrorists. Most worrisome, NATO’s actions are guaranteed to have serious consequences for long term political stability in Libya. Vendettas are forming between tribes and family clans that will carry over for decades. It is extremely short-sighted and self destructive.

NATO should take this warning to heart: Its soldiers are not legal-proof. The International Peace Community is already taking action to uphold Libya’s natural rights at the United Nations. Many of us in the International Peace Community shall defend Libya’s women. And we shall demand War Crimes prosecution and major financial damages against NATO governments, on behalf of the people.

Nobody’s fooled by NATO’s story that Gadhaffi’s the guilty party. We know that Washington, Britain, France, Italy— and Israel are the real culprits.

The murdered women of Misurata shall have justice. NATO can count on it.

####

This article can be reprinted in whole or part with attribution to the author

Susan Lindauer covered Libya at the United Nations as a U.S. Asset from 1995 to 2003, and started talks for the Lockerbie Trial. She is the author of Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq.

Chicago Red Dragon Six-Day Warning

NOVANEWS

by Captain Eric H. May, Ghost Troop CO

Four years ago internet illustrator David Dees envisioned a dragon menacing Chicago.

CHICAGO, 6/6/11 — Mass casualties will be triaged and mass deaths buried in the Red Dragon disaster drills Wednesday through Friday. This report affirms my Friday article, Chicago Aon Center Alert, and requires a six-day warning, effective Monday, 6/6/11, through Saturday, 6/11/11.

New Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel has a reputation as a man-eater who is half Machiavelli and half Mephistopheles. His father was a member of the Israeli Irgun terror organization that blew up Jerusalem’s King David Hotel on July 22, 1946, killing 92, King David Day is still celebrated in Israel.

Rahm is an Israeli military veteran who volunteered for the First Gulf War. Ironically, at the same time I was volunteering to serve my own country, the USA, in the same war, Neither of us saw action. He worked in an Israeli army motor pool, while I was a stateside war game controller.

Wednesday, the first day of Red Dragon, will be the 44th anniversary of Israel’s 1967 sneak attack against theUSS Liberty. It was a textbook false flag operation, in which they tried to sink the ship, shoot the survivors, then blame it on Egypt, against whom they had just launched the Six-Day War. The Liberty fought bravely and survived at a cost of 34 dead and 171 wounded crewmen.

LBJ’s willingness to sacrifice the Liberty as a pawn on the geostrategic chessboard wasn’t unusual. Five years earlier the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff had proposed Operation Northwoods to JFK, a plan to hijack planes, blow up a U.S. ship, and stage terror attacks in U.S. cities, then blame it on Cuba.

Ecclesiastes is right that there’s nothing new under the sun:

On 9/11/01 Israel’s Odigo messaging service warned subscribers about the impending attacks two hours before they occurred, according to an article in Haaretz.

Three months after 9/11, Fox News aired an eye-opening Carl Cameron investigative series on Israeli connections to the Arabs blamed for the 9/11 attacks.

In 2002 Crawford talks with U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, U.S. President George W. Bush suggested provoking Iraq into shooting down a U.S. airplane as an excuse to start the war, according to the Downing Street Memorandum.

Former NATO commander Gen. Wesley Clark stated in a 2003 CNN interview that the Bush administration had decided on an Iraq war before if was even inaugurated, and 9/11 was a perfect casus belli.

In 2007 Vice President Dick Cheney considered starting a war against Iran with a false flag naval operation, according to a New Yorker article by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.

NOVANEWSNOVANEWSNOVANEWS

NOVANEWS
	On deaf ears: Obama`s message to Israel Robert Grenier – Aljazeera – Late May`s extraordinary sequence of speeches and meetings involving Obama and Netanyahu did not make for an edifying interlude. We saw brash, unapologetic chauvinism from Netanyahu, an outright refusal of moral leadership from Obama, and acts of political cowardice and opportunism from the US Congress. That is not to say that the week`s display was not useful. Now, more clearly than ever, we can see the future.

	Star Trek icon Leonard Nimoy speaks out about the need to give peace a push Leonard Nimoy – peacenow.org – I reach out to you as someone who is troubled to see the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians continue apparently without an end in sight. In fact, there is an end in sight.

	West Bank mosque targeted in suspected `price tag` attack by settlers Chaim Levinson – Haaretz – The Peace Now movement responded by calling for more decisive actions against violent settlers. “The Shin Bet security service and the police must uproot the `hill youth` phenomenon,” it said. bz

	Protest organizer to military court: We fight for freedom & dignity Joseph Dana – +972 magazine – At the start of his trial for having organized (unarmed) demonstrations at Nabi Saleh, Bassem Tamimi red out a statement to the court. The judge refused to have it entered on the official record, letting the stenographer put in instead a short summary in her own words. Tamimi`s full statement is published here. ak

	Revealed: the untold story of the deal that shocked the Middle East Robert Fisk – The Independent – Secret meetings between Palestinian intermediaries, Egyptian intelligence officials, the Turkish foreign minister, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal resulted in an agreement that is crucial to the Paslestinian demand for a state. The Independent has copies of a series of detailed letters, accepted by all sides.

	Turkish Foreign Minister: flotilla organizers should wait and see new Gaza conditions English-language site of Turkish daily “Today`s Zaman” – DavutoִŸlu reiterated the government cannot stop the activities of a civilian group, saying it is supported by a number of international organizations and that its work is legal. But he said the flotilla should this time wait to see how conditions in Gaza will change with Egypt lifting its embargo and the anticipated establishment of a Palestinian unity government. bz

	Cosmetics firm LUSH endorses `Freedom for Palestine` (including link to the song) Ali Abunimah – Electronic Intifada – In an appeal in the ג€œEthical Campaignsג€ section on its website, the company says: ג€œThe catastrophe facing the Palestinian people is one of the defining global justice issues of our timeג€ (…) ג€œIf OneWorld are successful at getting the song in the charts, the mainstream media will find it hard to ignore it or censor its message.ג€

	Coldplay removes `Freedom for Palestine` link Or Barnea – Ynet – Coldplay in retreat? The British band created an online commotion last week when it posted a link to the song “Freedom for Palestine” on its official Facebook page.

	We must help Vanunu live in peace Duncan Campbell – guardian.co.uk – Indeed, no one ג€“ unless they are completely ignorant of the case ג€“ genuinely believes that he has any secrets up his sleeve. He is refused permission to leave the country not for security reasons but as a further penalty, a punishment for coming out of prison as committed to his non-violent, anti-nuclear-weaponry principles as when he went in. bz

	Do The American People Support the `Special Relationship?` Stephen M. Walt – Foreign Policy – If Americans were exposed to a more open discourse — such as the discourse that prevails in Europe or in Israel itself — Israel`s favorable image would almost certainly decrease (though by no means disappear). bz

	For previous articles since 2004 go to respective sections

Mondoweiss Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS

Bahrain Grand Prix staff are held and abused, still Grand Prix says race must go on

Jun 06, 2011

Seham

and other news from the Arab uprisings:

Bahrain
Bahraini doctors and nurses charged
Medical staff who treated protesters accused of plotting to overthrow kingdom’s monarchy amid reports of more violence.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/06/20116674812696776.html
Bahrain medics accused of treason
Dozens of doctors and nurses who treated injured anti-government protesters during the months of unrest in Bahrain have gone on trial accused of trying to overthrow the monarchy.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/bahrain-medics-accused-of-treason-2293728.html
Bahrain police clash with Shi’ite religious marchers (Reuters)
Reuters – Bahraini police clashed with Shi’ite marchers in a religious festival late on Sunday, less than a week after the Gulf kingdom repealed an emergency law that quashed weeks of protests.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mideast/http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110605/wl_nm/us_bahrain_clashes
Bahrain police open fire at protesters in capital (AP)
AP – Bahraini police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters marching toward the landmark Pearl Square in the country’s capital Friday, two days after authorities lifted emergency rule.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mideast/http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110603/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_bahrain
Bahrain police disperse Shiite-led march: activist (AFP)
AFP – Bahraini police dispersed a small group of Shiites who marched Friday towards Pearl Square, focal point of protests which the regime demolished during a crackdown on protesters in mid-March, activists said.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mideast/http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110603/wl_mideast_afp/bahrainpoliticsunrest
Bahrain crown prince to visit Washington
Bahrain’s crown prince will arrive in Washington next week for an official visit as his country seeks to return to normalcy following the lifting of the emergency law earlier this week. Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa will meet with President Barack Obama and other senior U.S. officials, according to three sources with knowledge of the visit. The crown prince is perceived to be one of the more liberal figures in the ruling regime, and he supports granting opposition groups a greater say in how the country is governed.
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/06/03/bahrain_crown_prince_to_visit_washington
Al Jalabi calls on Saudi Forces to withdraw from Bahrain
Head of Iraq’s National Congress Party Ahmad Al Jalabi called on Saudi Forces to withdraw from Bahrain. Al Jalabi urged the Bahraini government to resolve the crisis peacefully, stop the killing and release detainees.
http://www.alsumaria.tv/en/Iraq-News/1-64902-Al-Jalabi-calls-on-Saudi-Forces-to-withdraw-from-Bahrain.html
Bahrainis hold female activist funeral
Bahraini protesters have held the funeral of a female activist ahead of the nation’s planned massive anti-government rallies on Friday. The body of Zainab Al-Tajar was buried in the populous area of Sanabis, near the capital city of Manama on Friday morning, the Financial Times reported.
http://jnoubiyeh.com/2011/06/bahrainis-hold-female-activist-funeral.html
‘Bahrain fires staff on protest suspicion’
The Bahraini regime has dismissed hundreds of professionals over suspicions of their participation in anti-government protests in the Persian Gulf country. The government has accused many people working at state-run companies and organizations of leaving work to join protests and fired them from their jobs, local activists told Reuters.
http://jnoubiyeh.com/2011/06/bahrain-fires-staff-on-protest.html
‘At around 7pm he was told to strip naked and was again beaten severely’
This is the account of one Shia member of staff at the Bahrain International Circuit, which hosts the Grand Prix, who was arrested in April. Still suffering from injuries inflicted by his interrogators, he has now left the country. He wishes to remain anonymous and is referred to as AB throughout:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/at-around-7pm-he-was-told-to-strip-naked-and-was-again-beaten-severely-2292868.html
Webber at odds with Bahrain decision (AFP)
AFP – Australian Red Bull driver Mark Webber said Saturday he was deeply uncomfortable with the decision to reinstate the Bahrain Grand Prix into the 2011 world championship calendar and forecast the decision could yet founder.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mideast/http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110604/wl_mideast_afp/autoprixbrnwebber
Protests simmer as Bahrain wins back Formula One (Reuters)
Reuters – Bahrain scored a public relations coup on Friday by winning back its Formula One Grand Prix, canceled earlier this year after pro-democracy protests erupted in the Gulf Arab island kingdom.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mideast/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110603/wl_nm/us_bahrain_protests

Bahrain lobbies to retain Grand Prix as Formula One staff are held and abused
Formula One is expected to rule today on Bahrain’s attempt to stage a coveted Grand Prix this season despite police arresting and abusing one quarter of the local staff during a crackdown against pro-democracy protests
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/bahrain-lobbies-to-retain-grand-prix-as-formula-one-staff-are-held-and-abused-2292459.html
Patrick Cockburn: Only winners from brutal repression of Shia majority will be Saudi Arabia
How to explain the ferocity of the Bahraini al-Khalifa royal family’s assault on the majority of its own people? Despite an end to martial law, the security forces show no signs of ceasing to beat detainees to the point of death, threaten schoolgirls with rape and force women to drink bottles of urine. The systematic use of torture in Bahrain has all the demented savagery of the European witch trials in the 16th and 17th centuries. In both cases, interrogators wanted to give substance to imagined conspiracies by extracting forced confessions. In Europe, innocent women were forced to confess to witchcraft, while in Bahrain the aim of the torturers is to get their victims to admit to seeking to overthrow the government. Often they are accused of having treasonous links with Iran, something for which the New York-based Human Rights Watch says there is “zero evidence”.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/patrick-cockburn-only-winners-from-brutal-repression-of-shia-majority-will-be-saudi-arabia-2292460.html
Nazeeha Saeed’s Ordeal, PATRICK COCKBURN
Bahrain is seeking to stage the Formula One motor race, whose organizers meet today in Barcelona to decide where it will take place, despite police arresting and abusing a quarter of the local staff of the event. The race was postponed in February because of pro-democracy protests and the government is eager to have it rescheduled in Bahrain later this year to show that life in the island kingdom is returning to normal.
http://www.counterpunch.com/patrick06032011.html
Continuing Bahraini State Terror, Steve Lendman
For months, Bahraini and Saudi security forces targeted nonviolent protesters and activists wanting the repressive Al Khalifa monarchy replaced by constitutionally elected government, political freedom, and social justice, what Bahrainis never had and don’t now.
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/06/continuing-bahraini-state-terror.html
Egypt
Khaled Said : One Year searching for lost right leads to a revolution
Today is the anniversary of Khaled Said’s murder , on that day after noon he was stalked by these two detective and was beaten to death by them in the street. After couple of days we began to hear his story from Alexandria from Dr. Ayman Nour in his column in Dostor then after few days we saw the shocking pictures of Khaled. On 10/6/ I wrote the first chronicle aboutKhaled Said’s case chronicles after hesitation of publishing his photos. Today Khaled’s mom Mrs. Laila visited his tomb in the morning in Alexandria. I can’t hold my tears when I see this lady or any martyr’s mom now.
http://egyptianchronicles.blogspot.com/2011/06/khaled-said-one-year-searching-
Remembering Khaled Said’s murder
Next Monday 6th of June 2011 will mark the first anniversary of Khaled Said’s murder , it is the first anniversary after one year , a very special year that did not change the course of history in Egypt but rather the course of history in the Middle East. What began as a simple silent stand at the Alexandrian famous corniche attracting for the first time the silent middle class of Egypt ended by a remarkable revolution. Now next Monday 6th of June 2011 The “We are all Khaled Said” page is calling for asilent stand across the country to mark the anniversary of Khaled Said at 5 PM for one hour. Of course after the three alleged torture incidents ended with Yesterday Azbakia driver activists decided to have a stand in front of the ministry of interior itself at the same time. The stand has a list of demands like having a judicial supervision on police stations and the new national security agency and prosecuting all the officers responsible for torture cases in Egypt.
http://egyptianchronicles.blogspot.com/2011/06/remembering-khaled-saids-murder
Egypt sentences former finance minister
Youssef Boutros-Ghali, tried in absentia, is ordered to serve 30 years in jail and pay over $5m.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/06/201164115437667338.html
Egypt’s interior minister denies giving Mubarak special treatment
Interior Minister El-Eissawi denies that Egypt’s interim ‎government is dragging its feet to transfer ousted president Hosni Mubarak to Tora Prison.
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/13718/Egypt/Politics-/Egypts-interior-minister-denies-giving-Mubarak-spe.aspx
Three judges in Egypt investigated after publicly criticizing the military
The country’s justice ministry is investigating three judges who spoke out against the military trials of civilians in Egypt. The judges publicly criticized transferring civilians to criminal courts, al-Ahram newspaper reported.
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/06/03/151637.html
Fury over advert claiming Egypt revolution as Vodafone’s
Video scorned because phone company obeyed Mubarak’s order to shut down network during protests
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/03/vodafone-egypt-advert-claims-revolution
Egypt military quizzes reporters over Islamist deal story
CAIRO (AFP) – Military prosecutors questioned a newspaper editor and a journalist on Friday over a report alleging Egypt’s military would back an Islamist group in elections, a source said.
http://www.aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=1&id=25415
Independents contact Egypt to contain Rafah crisis
GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — A coalition of independent figures are holding talks with Egypt to overcome obstacles preventing Palestinians from crossing at the Rafah terminal between Egypt and Gaza. The group is asking people to be patient while the Egyptian side resumes operations via the crossing as planned, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. throughout the week excluding Fridays and holidays.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=393371
Egypt’s Tantawi, Barak discuss Shalit deal
Defense minister’s talk with Egypt’s military leader suggests progress in prisoner swap deal that aims to free captive soldier.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4078625,00.html
Trial to strip Gamal Mubarak and Elbaradei of Egyptian nationality delayed
The trial for the petition to drop Gamal Mubarak and presidential hopeful, ElBaradei’s Egyptian citizenship (therefore excluding them from running for president) has been postponed to 19 June
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/13681/Egypt/Politics-/Trial-to-strip-Gamal-Mubarak-and-Elbaradei-of-Egyp.aspx
Poll: Egypt optimistic but worried about jobs
Two new surveys find Egyptians optimistic about their political future but worried about the economy and crime.
http://english.aljazeera.net//news/middleeast/2011/06/201165172136316445.html
Future of Arab uprisings
The future of Arab uprisings hinges on what happens in Egypt. If Egyptian rebels push forward against the Military Council they will surely inspire half uprisings or quarter uprisings to progress. As things stand now, it does not look pretty as the Saudi-Qatari Counter-revolutionary council mange the Yemeni and Libyan uprising, and Saudi Arabia seems to have purchased Tantawi’s lousy junta.
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2011/06/future-of-arab-uprisings.html
Saudi Arabia and Egyptian laborers
Egyptian newspapers reported last week that Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Manpower Adel Fakieh told a gathering of businessmen at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce that his country would not renew work permits for foreign laborers who have been in Saudi Arabia for more than six years. The statement immediately raised concerns in official Egyptian circles over the potential negative impact of such a decision. According to the chairman of the union of companies employing Egyptian workers abroad, 2.5 million Egyptians work Saudi Arabia, 70 percent of whom have been working there for over six years. In other words, about 1.5 million workers could be threatened with expulsion, thus increasing the unemployment rate in Egypt.
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/465300
Iraq
Iraqi activist: PM paints protesters as terrorists (AP)
AP – A leading Iraqi human rights organizer who confronted the prime minister on national TV says he is trying to paint legitimate protesters as terrorists.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iraq/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110605/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq
Baghdad residents demonstrate in Tahrir Square
Tens of Baghdad residents demonstrated in Al Tahrir Square on Friday calling for comprehensive reforms in Iraq and to improve services in the country. Protesters urged to free 4 people who were arrested last Friday.
http://www.alsumaria.tv/en/Iraq-News/1-64895-Baghdad-residents-demonstrate-in-Tahrir-Square.html
Jordan
Jordan protesters step up calls for PM to resign
About 3,000 people take to the streets in seven cities across Jordan; pro-reform activists say PM has taken a lenient approach toward corruption and is not serious about political reform.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/mideast-in-turmoil/jordan-protesters-step-up-calls-for-pm-to-resign-1.365801?localLinksEnabled=false
Kuwait
Kuwait protesters demand PM’s removal
Thousands rally in Gulf state seeking dismissal of government, parliament’s dissolution and snap polls.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/06/20116493343254151.html
Libya
NATO helicopters join Libya mission
French and British helicopters attack targets around Port Brega, the first use of such aircraft in the NATO campaign. Rebel leaders hail the move, but it is unclear whether it will signal a new rebel offensive. French and British attack helicopters hit targets in Libya in the first use of such aircraft as part of the NATO-led campaign against the government of Moammar Kadafi, authorities said Saturday.
http://feeds.latimes.com/%7Er/latimes/middleeast/%7E3/jHWhgNsiTiM/la-fg-libya-helicopters-20110604,0,7892930.story
Muammar Gaddafi’s Troops Hit By British, French Airstrikes In Libya
BENGHAZI, Libya — British Apache and French attack helicopters struck targets for the first time in NATO’s campaign in Libya, hitting Moammar Gadhafi’s troops early Saturday near a key coastal oil town, the alliance said. Hours later, at least eight airstrikes were heard in Tripoli. The action was a significant step-up in NATO’s operations and a major boost to Libyan rebels, just a day after rebel fighters forced government troops from three western towns and broke the siege of a fourth in yet another erosion of Gadhafi’s power since the eruption in mid-February of the uprising to end his 42-year rule.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/04/muammar-gaddafis-libya-airstrikes_n_871352.html
Tunisia finds 150 bodies from refugee vessels
The bodies of 150 African refugees fleeing turmoil in Libya have been recovered off the Tunisian coast after the vessels carrying them illegally to Europe got into difficulty, a U.N. official said Friday.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/150-bodies-recovered-off-tunisia-coast-u-n-103307004.html
Qatar deportation of Eman al-Obeidi violates international law
Al-Obeidi, who publically accused Libyan soldiers of rape, has been deported to eastern Libya against her will.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/qatars-deportation-eman-al-obeidi-violates-international-law-2011-06-03
Libyan ‘rape victim’ heads to US
Libyan Eman al-Obeidi, who said she was raped by Col Gaddafi’s supporters, has left eastern Libya for the US, according to her sister.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/world-africa-13663266
Iman al-Obeidi, Libya Woman Claiming Rape, Deported BackTo Libya
BENGHAZI — A U.N. official says a Libyan woman who claims she was gang-raped by Moammar Gadhafi’s troops has been deported from Qatar, where she sought refuge. Sybella Wilkes, spokeswoman for the United Nations’ refugee organization, says Iman al-Obeidi is now in Benghazi. Wilkes said Thursday that al-Obeidi was a recognized refugee and that there wasn’t any “good reason” why she was deported from Doha, where she sought refuge last month. Al-Obeidi made headlines in March when she rushed distraught into Tripoli’s Rixos Hotel, seeking to speak to foreign reporters. She claimed she was detained by a number of Gadhafi troops at a Tripoli checkpoint and raped. As she told her story, al-Obeidi was tackled by government minders and dragged from the hotel.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/02/iman-al-obeidi-deported-libya-rape_n_870639.html
NATO jets target Libyan capital
Raids on army vehicles and ammunition depots in Tripoli follow announcement of extension of alliance’s Libyan mission.
http://english.aljazeera.net//news/africa/2011/06/20116341054115467.html
NATO renews airstrikes after extending Libya mission by three months
NATO’s extension of its intervention in Libya comes amid a slew of defections from Tripoli. Can Qaddafi hang on?
http://rss.csmonitor.com/%7Er/feeds/world/%7E3/LfU4olJqZrc/NATO-renews-airstrikes-after-extending-Libya-mission-by-three-months
Thousands missing in Libya
In Misrata, pro-Gaddafi soldiers have fought with opposition forces for over two months. Estimates suggest they also abducted more than twelve hundred people during their occupation. Al Jazeera’s Tony Birtley reports.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf4JGevF8wE&feature=youtube_gdata
Libyan revolutionaries deny Israeli relations talks
The National Transitional Council, the political body leading the Libyan revolution, denied claims that if in power, it would seek diplomatic ties with Israel.http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U
The Libyan Transitional Council and Israel
I detest the Libyan Transitional Council but I detest even more Bernard-Henri Lévy, and find him to be fabricator of the first order. Regarding claims he has made about a message from the lousy Libyan Transitional Council to Israel, I was skeptical. Sure enough the Libyan council said this: “The vice-chairman of the Libyan opposition National Transition Council (NTC), Mr Abdelhafid Roka, has denied in a statement to Echorouk the persisting rumours alleging that the NTC is envisaging to establish relations with Israel in the future. “I firmly deny as baseless the recent declaration made to this effect by French writer and philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy on behalf of the Libyan national transition council”, Roka asserted. He stressed that the NTC had never asked Henri Levy to convey any message of this sort to the Zionist entity leaders as alleged by the troublesome French writer and philosopher… Abdelhafid Roka further underlined that such groundless assertions were being propagated by the despotic Kadhafi regime and its henchmen with the glaring aim of tarnishing the image of the national transition council in the eyes of the fervent supporters of the legitimate Palestinian cause in the Arab world and elsewhere.”
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2011/06/libyan-transitional-council-and-israel.html
Libya Rebels Going Broke Despite Pile Of Gold
BENGHAZI, Libya — Abdalgader Albagrmi’s office sits above a vault piled high with gold. It’s the dwindling pile of cash next to the bullion, however, that keeps the Libyan rebels’ deputy Central Bank chief up at night. As that pile shrinks, so too does the chance of funding and sustaining a revolution to oust one of the world’s longest-serving dictators.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/03/libya-rebels-broke_n_870808.html
Morocco
Moroccans hold peaceful protest despite government ban
RABAT — Hundreds of young Moroccans on Sunday flouted a government ban and held a peaceful pro-democracy rally in Rabat as authorities promised not to crack down on protesters, officials and demonstrators said.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/06/05/moroccans-hold-peaceful-protest-despite-government-ban/
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia’s Women2Drive campaign is up against society
Manal al-Sharif’s protest over women’s right to drive leaves her open to smears and mud slinging. The issue must be politicised. Manal al-Sharif, the woman who attracted global attention to the Saudi Women2Drive campaign when she posted videos of herself driving on YouTube, was released earlier this week from Dammam prison.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/03/saudi-arabia-women2drive-women-driving
Madawi Al-Rasheed, ed., “Kingdom without Borders: Saudi Arabia’s Political, Religious, and Media Frontiers”
Saudi Arabia realised the importance of the media — first in print, and later in images — for its expansionist projects. From the early Arab and English monographs commissioned and written in the 1930s and 1940s to establish the historical and contemporary credentials of the state, to the recent media empires of the 1980s, vast sums of money were invested in promoting the country’s image and agenda. Investing oil wealth in appropriating the Arab media and intellectual public spheres to ensure publicity, silence criticism and co-opt dissenting voices led to what is often referred to as ‘petrodollar’ media’. From Cairo to Beirut and later London and Washington, Saudi-owned media sold to Arab audiences stories, interpretations and commentaries whose main objective was to denounce rivals, promote allies and generate consensus over Saudi expansion in distant locales. Saudi overseas media brought money, politics and religion in a unified chorus, whose drums echoed among Arab immigrants in the suburbs of London, Paris and Washington, as well as in the cities of the Middle East, Africa and Asia. . . .
http://bit.ly/mJevzG
How dumb is it to expect Hillary Clinton to take up the cause of Saudi women? How dumb?
“Saudi activists have written an open letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a champion of women’s rights around the world, urging her to publicly press Saudi Arabia to let women drive.”
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-dumb-is-it-to-expect-hillary.html
Syria
Syrian security forces ‘shoot 31 people dead’
Syrian security forces have shot dead 31 people since Friday during demonstrations in a town in the north-west, residents say.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syrian-security-forces-shoot-31-people-dead-2293604.html

Syrian troops ‘kill 13 civilians’
Syrian forces killed at least 13 civilians in the central town of Rastan yesterday, activists said, in the latest attempt to quell a revolt against the 11-year rule of the President Bashar al-Assad.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syrian-troops-kill-13-civilians-2292464.html
SYRIA: Big cities remain ambivalent as regime brutality takes its toll
While the regime of President Bashar Assad has cracked down on smaller cities in Syria, residents of the nation’s large cities, including Aleppo and the capital Damascus, seem ambivalent about staging mass protests.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2011/06/syria-big-cities-remain-ambivalent-as-regime-brutality-takes-its-toll-on-suburbs.html
Syria Internet Cut Off In Some Regions As Central Town Pounded
BEIRUT — A Syrian rights group says security forces opened fire during one of the largest anti-government protests so far in the 10-week revolt, killing at least eight people. Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, says tens of thousands of people were protesting in Hama when security forces opened fire.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/03/syria-internet-cut-off-protests_n_870809.html
Syrian activists protest in Turkey
Syrian opposition activists raise the flag of independence in the Turkish city of Antalya in this video clip taken by Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Vall. The protest came as a group of opposition leaders held a conference in the city to forge a plan on supporting the uprising.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83HcI6X001Y&feature=youtube_gdata
breaking news on Syrian regime TV
Syrian regime TV has this breaking news flash: “Armed people block the roads in Nazihin quarter in Homs and set government buildings on fire, and attack the people.” On the one hand, “life is normal”–they keep reporting, and then they air such breaking news stories. The regime is undermining its own sources of ostensible legitimacy: that it alone can protect the people. But they are now admitted they can no more protect the people.
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2011/06/breaking-news-on-syrian-regime-tv.html
Lies of the Syrian regime
Now there is no question, that AlJazeera has now become nothing less than a full propaganda voice for NATO and the Arab counter-revolution. Its reports are more sermons and preachments and calls for mobilization than standard journalism which the network was known for. Having said that, Syrian regime TV is even worse. The Syrian regime has become more imaginative in weaving lies and fabrications and theatrics. It is like reading a fiction story. They shoot at demonstrators in Hamah and then they have a “breaking news” flash in which they talk about a mysterious armed group which suddenly shows up at a time of demonstration and then start shooting at both demonstrators and police force members (they are always “police” in Syrian regime TV broadcast as Syria does not have a brutal mukhabarat force, according to the regime). They talk to people in different parts of the country affirming that “life is normal” everywhere. But how do they square their claims of “life is normal” with their own reports of a roving “criminal gang” moving around the country and shooting at people? They need to synchronize their lies, for potato’s sake.
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2011/06/lies-of-syrian-regime.html
As’ad AbuKhalil, “Muslim Brotherhood and US Representatives at Syrian Opposition Conference in Antalya, Turkey”
The Muslim Brotherhood ran the conference in Antalya and the statement that spoke about the “civil state” is not going to fool me because US representatives in Antalya (yes they were there) pressed for an inclusive statement. This is exactly what the US tried to do in conferences by the Iraqi exile opposition before the Ayatullah Sistani republic was set up in Iraq.
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/abukhalil050611.html
The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony and the Burial of the Martyrs: Syrian Dances in the Arab Spring
[August 10th, 2009] Bosra is on fire. Red lights shine through the night in the ancient Roman amphitheatre. The smoke pours onto the stage, where the famous pop singer, Ali al-Deek, and his orchestra have set the audience and the stage on metaphorical fire. Everyone is dancing: old men in traditional attire, women with children in their hands, with or without hijab on their hair, young men and women in groups, people in the front rows, at the back, on the stairs, officials, guests and dignitaries along with ordinary, village people. The impressive Roman theatre of Bosra, one of the world’s best preserved, located in the municipality of Dar’a, is filled beyond its fifteen hundred capacity.
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/1759/the-marriage-of-cadmus-and-harmony-and-the-burial-
Yemen
Yemen: States Should Freeze Officials’ Assets
(Tunis) – The Yemeni government’s escalating violence against largely peaceful protesters and medical workers should prompt countries around the world to freeze foreign assets of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his top security officials, Human Rights Watch said today. Other countries should also ban all exports of arms and security equipment to Yemen, Human Rights Watch said.
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/06/04/yemen-states-should-freeze-officials-assets
Arab Spring claims its third despot
The uprisings sweeping the Arab world appeared to have won their third victory over authoritarian rule by overthrowing President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen after 33 years in power. He left for Saudi Arabia on Saturday to be treated for injuries received in an explosion in his presidential palace and is unlikely to return.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/arab-spring-claims-its-third-despot-2293476.html
Saleh is gone. What next for Yemen?
The president’s departure for medical treatment has created an opportunity to resolve Yemen’s political crisis. With the departure of President Ali Abdullah Saleh for medical treatment in Saudi Arabia, Yemenis now have a chance to resolve the political crisis that has bedevilled the country since February.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/05/yemen-saleh
Saleh undergoes surgery as Yemen rejoices
Protesters celebrate what they say is fall of president after he travels to Riyadh for medical treatment for injuries.
http://english.aljazeera.net//news/middleeast/2011/06/201165134642662545.html
Yemeni officials trying to flee the country following president’s departure
Yemeni media outlets have reported that a number of officials in the regime are trying to flee the country following the departure of President Ali Abdallah Saleh. The reports say that he has gone to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment, having been wounded in a raid against the presidential palace.
http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/news/middle-east/2435-yemeni-officials-trying-to-flee-the-country-following-presidents-departure
Battle rages in Yemeni capital
Heavy fighting continues across Sanaa, with witnesses saying security forces have fired live bullets at protesters.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/06/20116223360330637.html
Thousands flee fighting in Yemen’s capital
SANAA (AFP) – Thousands of residents were fleeing the Yemeni capital on Friday as deadly clashes between dissident tribesmen and loyalist troops raged for a fourth straight day leaving bodies littering the streets. The headquarters of national airline Yemenia were burnt down in fierce fighting through the night, an AFP correspondent reported.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/06/03/thousands-flee-fighting-in-yemens-capital/
Video: Yemen airport on fire
The headquarters of Yemeni Airways has been engulfed in flames amidst fierce fighting in the capital Sanaa.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/video-yemen-airport-on-fire-2292568.html

US envoy embarks on mission to halt Yemen sliding into civil war
Fighting between forces loyal to the Yemeni President and one of the country’s most influential tribes intensified yesterday as an American envoy flew to the region in an attempt to stop the country from plunging into a bloody civil war. At least 135 people have died in clashes in the capital, Sanaa, in the past 10 days, the bloodiest period since a popular uprising calling for political reform started in January.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/us-envoy-embarks-on-mission-to-halt-yemen-sliding-into-civil-war-2292466.html
Feud within key Yemen tribe could tear nation apart
If Yemen collapses, the fuse will have been lighted by a war pitting President Ali Abdullah Saleh against his senior clansman, analysts say, not pro-democracy protests or other challenges to his rule. The unrest shaking Yemen began months ago as part of the idealistic movement for democracy and political reform sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. It is now a battle of money, power and egos within a single powerful clan that threatens to tear the country apart.
http://feeds.latimes.com/%7Er/latimes/middleeast/%7E3/R_sqsgm3hEc/la-fg-yemen-tribe-20110603,0,6161531.story
Other Mideast/Analysis & Op-ed
Iran not a nuclear threat, says Pulitzer Prize winning journalist
In an interview with Scott Horton of Antiwar Radio, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh warned that the United States’ “aggressive” sanction policy against Iran was aimed at halting a nuclear weapons program that does not exist. “Clearly the sanction policy is aimed at trying to force Iran to change its foreign policy — not regime change, that’s not going to happen,” he said. “Bush might have been interested in regime change, Obama is not.”
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/06/02/iran-not-a-nuclear-threat-says-pulitzer-prize-winning-journalist/
Seymour Hersh on the Arab Spring, “Disaster” U.S. Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the Looming Crisis in Iraq
Veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh assesses the popular uprisings sweeping the Middle East and North Africa amidst ongoing U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. Despite touted gains and an upcoming U.S. military withdrawal deadline in Iraq, Hersh says, “Whatever you’re hearing, Iraq is going bad… It’s sectarian war. And the big question is going to be whether we pull out or not.” On the uprisings, Hersh says Saudi Arabia, fearing an overthrow of the regional order, is driving the embattled regimes’ attempts to crush the protests. [includes rush transcript]
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/6/3/seymour_hersh_on_the_arab_spring
Arms bonanza
Arab spring brings cheer to global weapons industry.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/business-13437491
The Determination of the Arab Revolutions, ESAM AL-AMIN
After the relatively swift triumphs of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions in deposing their dictators earlier this year, other Arab dictators drew a different set of lessons than their populations did. Fed up with decades of repression, corruption, and the break down of state institutions, as well as the complete loss of faith in any meaningful political or social reforms in their societies, people across the Arab world this spring have waged simultaneous mass movements to force sweeping changes.
http://www.counterpunch.com/amin06032011.html

Epic of a patient. A patient traveler. A Palestinian patient traveler.

Jun 06, 2011

Sameeha Elwan

pa • tient noun

1. a person who is receiving medical treatment, especially in a hospital

cancer patients

2. a person who receives treatment from a particular doctor, dentist, etc

He’s one of Dr Shaw’s patients.

© Oxford University Press, 2010

pa • tient adjective

~ (with sb/sth)

able to wait for a long time or accept annoying behaviour or difficulties without becoming angry

© Oxford University Press, 2010

“Allah ye’tahom el yahood” Damn Jews! My mother bitterly mumbled, her eyes welled with tears she could no longer hold back. My brother has just finished a call with an officer working in the Rafah Border. The officer assured us what we feared. He told us that my mother, who is holding a medical report to be transferred to Egypt for treatment, cannot take off to Rafah border unless she has previously registered her name in the Ministry of Interior. She has to wait. Again.

“Why should all doors get closed in my face? I had a glimpse of light. Why should it always fade away in a second?” She began whining, blaming her luck, and roaming her wet eyes around the closed ready bags scattered along the room. I stood helpless. With the amount of news I’d heard last week, I could not help a bit. Everyone was very enthusiastic about the news of opening the only official border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, I was no less enthusiastic. It was such a relief. Even with the restriction on the movement that took place only two days after the glorious news it sounded a relief. But, it never does when you are one of the 400 other travelers who’d get turned back or who are denied access or those who have to wait.

I understand how difficult it is to wait. How painful! How tortuous! But we Palestinians seem to be destined for waiting.

My mother has been waiting for the last two months. It all started three months ago after the Egyptian revolution and news about some tremendous changes in the Egyptian regime that in the process might finally lead to relieving the restrictions imposed on about a million and a half Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. My mother thought maybe this time she could travel to Egypt to check on her medical condition without having to go through a tunnel. Yes, she was actually smuggled through a tunnel two years ago for medical treatment. A much longer epic that I hoped would not happen again.

However, she discovered her condition was actually much more dangerous than she had originally thought. She urgently needs medical treatment that might involve surgery.

Performing her operation here is not an option. Yes, like all other Palestinians living in Gaza, I have doubts and fears when it comes to treating grave diseases in our hospitals. Not only because of the lack of well-qualified doctors, which is part of the problem, but because for ages Gaza has been denied access to medical technical equipment.

It sounded like an act of treason. It still does. An Israeli hospital felt like the best option. For days, I couldn’t get the paradox. It didn’t make sense to me. I couldn’t figure out if I should be grateful to Israel for potentially providing my mother with the medical treatment, or for potentially saving my mother’s life while claiming the lives of hundreds of others.

Getting her a place in a hospital in Jerusalem would be a blessing. But when it comes to Jerusalem, things are not that simple or even that human. Getting an appointment in a hospital in Jerusalem was the hard part. Seemingly, my mother was not about to die. God Forbid. Therefore, she has to wait. Again.

While waiting, I romanticized about the time I’d be spending in Jerusalem. I’ve never seen Jerusalem before. This was my chance. I should be escorting my mother during her stay there. What bliss! The Israelis left me no room for fancy though. I was later informed that I was not allowed to accompany my mother for her treatment in Jerusalem for I was underage. I am 23. I am legally mature, but for Israel I was apparently a potential threat. My hopes for going to Jerusalem were crushed down. My mother’s documents were rejected. She would not go to Jerusalem either.

Last year, I was asked by a journalist whether I remember a time when there were no restriction over movement or when we were able to travel freely. It didn’t take me much time to answer with a “No”. I still remember how we used to celebrate my uncles by making big banquets every time one of them would make it to Gaza for a day or two. While celebrating their victorious effortless 3-day journey of return, we would chat about of the ways Egyptians, Israelis and Palestinians would each treat Palestinian travelers.

If I were asked the same question today, looking at the packed bags leaning against the wall, I would still answer: No.

Sameeha Elwan blogs @ Here, I was born

Bassem Tamimi to judge: ‘Land theft and tree burning are not just. Your military laws are not legitimate. Our peaceful protest is just’

Jun 06, 2011

Seham

From the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee [and all readers are urged to read Tamimi’s statement below, as eloquent a statement of resistance as you will ever read]:

After more than two months in custody, the trial of Bassem Tamimi, a 44 year-old protest organizer from the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, finally commenced yesterday. Tamimi, who is the coordinator for the Nabi Saleh popular committee, pleaded not guilty to the charges laid against him.

In a defiant speech handed before a crowded courtroom, Tamimi proudly owned up to organizing the protest in the village saying, “I organized these peaceful demonstrations to defend our land and our people.” Tamimi also challenged the legitimacy of the very system which trys him, saying that “Despite claiming to be the only democracy in the Middle East you are trying me under military laws […] that are enacted by authorities which I haven’t elected and do not represent me.” (See Tamimi’s full statement at court bellow).

Tamimi was interrupted by the judge who warned him that it was not a political trial, and that such statements were out of place in a courtroom. Tamimi was cut short and not allowed to deliver his full statement.

After Tamimi finished reading his shortened statement, the judge announced that the hearing’s protocol has been erroneously deleted. However he refused to submit the full written statement to the stenographer. She went on to dictate a short summary in her own words for official record.

The indictment against Tamimi is based on questionable and coerced confessions of youth from the village. He is charged with’ incitement’, ‘organizing and participating in unauthorized processions’,’ solicitation to stone-throwing’, ‘failure to attend legal summons’, and a scandalous charge of ‘disruption of legal proceedings’, for allegedly giving youth advice on how to act during police interrogation in the event that they are arrested.

The transcript of Tamimi’s police interrogation further demonstrates the police and Military Prosecution’s political motivation and disregard for the suspect’s rights. During his questioning, Tamimi was accused by his interrogator of “consulting lawyers and foreigners to prepare for his interrogation”, an act that is in no way in breach of the law.

Tamimi’s full statement:
Your Honor,

I hold this speech out of belief in peace, justice, freedom, the right to live in dignity, and out of respect for free thought in the absence of Just Laws.

Every time I am called to appear before your courts, I become nervous and afraid. Eighteen years ago, my sister was killed by in a courtroom such as this, by a staff member. In my lifetime, I have been nine times imprisoned for an overall of almost 3 years, though I was never charged or convicted. During my imprisonment, I was paralyzed as a result of torture by your investigators. My wife was detained, my children were wounded, my land was stolen by settlers, and now my house is slated for demolition.

I was born at the same time as the Occupation and have been living under its inherent inhumanity, inequality, racism and lack of freedom ever since. Yet, despite all this, my belief in human values and the need for peace in this land have never been shaken. Suffering and oppression did not fill my heart with hatred for anyone, nor did they kindle feelings of revenge. To the contrary, they reinforced my belief in peace and national standing as an adequate response to the inhumanity of Occupation.

International law guarantees the right of occupied people to resist Occupation. In practicing my right, I have called for and organized peaceful popular demonstrations against the Occupation, settler attacks and the theft of more than half of the land of my village, Nabi Saleh, where the graves of my ancestors have lain since time immemorial.

I organized these peaceful demonstrations in order to defend our land and our people. I do not know if my actions violate your Occupation laws. As far as I am concerned, these laws do not apply to me and are devoid of meaning. Having been enacted by Occupation authorities, I reject them and cannot recognize their validity.

Despite claiming to be the only democracy in the Middle East you are trying me under military laws which lack any legitimacy; laws that are enacted by authorities that I have not elected and do not represent me. I am accused of organizing peaceful civil demonstrations that have no military aspects and are legal under international law.

We have the right to express our rejection of Occupation in all of its forms; to defend our freedom and dignity as a people and to seek justice and peace in our land in order to protect our children and secure their future.

The civil nature of our actions is the light that will overcome the darkness of the Occupation, bringing a dawn of freedom that will warm the cold wrists in chains, sweep despair from the soul and end decades of oppression.

These actions are what will expose the true face of the Occupation, where soldiers point their guns at a woman walking to her fields or at checkpoints; at a child who wants to drink from the sweet water of his ancestors’ fabled spring; against an old man who wants to sit in the shade of an olive tree, once mother to him, now burnt by settlers.

We have exhausted all possible actions to stop attacks by settlers, who refuse to adhere to your courts’ decisions, which time and again have confirmed that we are the owners of the land, ordering the removal of the fence erected by them.

Each time we tried to approach our land, implementing these decisions, we were attacked by settlers, who prevented us from reaching it as if it were their own.

Our demonstrations are in protest of injustice. We work hand in hand with Israeli and international activists who believe, like us, that had it not been for the Occupation, we could all live in peace on this land. I do not know which laws are upheld by generals who are inhibited by fear and insecurity, nor do I know their thoughts on the civil resistance of women, children and old men who carry hope and olive branches. But I know what justice and reason are. Land theft and tree-burning is unjust. Violent repression of our demonstrations and protests and your detention camps are not evidence of the illegality of our actions. It is unfair to be tryed under a law forced upon us. I know that I have rights and my actions are just.

The military prosecutor accuses me of inciting the protesters to throw stones at the soldiers. This is not true. What incites protesters to throw stones is the sound of bullets, the Occupation’s bulldozers as they destroy the land, the smell of teargas and the smoke coming from burnt houses. I did not incite anyone to throw stones, but I am not responsible for the security of your soldiers who invade my village and attack my people with all the weapons of death and the equipment of terror.

These demonstrations that I organize have had a positive influence over my beliefs; they allowed me to see people from the other side who believe in peace and share my struggle for freedom. Those freedom fighters have rid their conscious from the Occupation and put their hands in ours in peaceful demonstrations against our common enemy, the Occupation. They have become friends, sisters and brothers. We fight together for a better future for our children and theirs.

If released by the judge will I be convinced thereby that justice still prevails in your courts? Regardless of how just or unjust this ruling will be, and despite all your racist and inhumane practices and Occupation, we will continue to believe in peace, justice and human values. We will still raise our children to love; love the land and the people without discrimination of race, religion or ethnicity; embodying thus the message of the Messenger of Peace, Jesus Christ, who urged us to “love our enemy.” With love and justice, we make peace and build the future.

Background
Bassem Tamimi is a veteran Palestinian grassroots activist from the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, north of Ramallah. He is married to Nariman Tamimi, with whom he fathers four children – Wa’ed (14), Ahed (10), Mohammed (8) and Salam (5).

As a veteran activist, Tamimi has been arrested by the Israeli army 11 times to date and has spent roughly three years in Israeli jails, though he was never convicted of any offence. He spent roughly three years in administrative detention, with no charges brought against him. Furthermore, his attorney and he were denied access to “secret evidence” brought against him.

In 1993, Tamimi was falsely arrested on suspicion of having murdered an Israeli settler in Beit El – an allegation of which he was cleared entirely. During his weeks-long interrogation, he was severely tortured by the Israeli Shin Bet in order to draw a coerced confession from him. During his interrogation, and as a result of the torture he underwent, Tamimi collapsed and had to be evacuated to a hospital, where he laid unconscious for seven days.

As one of the organizers of the Nabi Saleh protests and coordinator of the village’s popular committee, Tamimi has been the target of harsh treatment by the Israeli army. Since demonstrations began in the village, his house has been raided and ransacked numerous times, his wife was twice arrested and two of his sons were injured; Wa’ed, 14, was hospitalized for five days when a rubber-coated bullet penetrated his leg and Mohammed, 8, was injured by a tear-gas projectile that was shot directly at him and hit him in the shoulder. Shortly after demonstrations in the village began, the Israeli Civil Administration served ten demolition orders to structures located in Area C, Tamimi’s house was one of them, despite the fact that it was built in 1965.

Legal background
On the March 24th, 2011, a massive contingent of Israeli Soldiers raided the Tamimi home at around noon, only minutes after he entered the house to prepare for a meeting with a European diplomat. He was arrested and subsequently charged.

The main evidence in Tamimi’s case is the testimony of 14 year-old Islam Dar Ayyoub, also from Nabi Saleh, who was taken from his bed at gunpoint on the night of January 23rd. In his interrogation the morning after his arrest, Islam alleged that Bassem and Naji Tamimi organized groups of youth into “brigades”, charged with different responsibilities during the demonstrations: some were allegedly in charge of stone-throwing, others of blocking roads, etc.

During a trial-within-a-trial procedure in Islam’s trial, motioning for his testimony to be ruled inadmissible, it was proven that his interrogation was fundamentally flawed and violated the rights set forth in the Israeli Youth Law in the following ways:

Despite being a minor, he was questioned in the morning following his arrest, having been denied sleep.
He was denied legal counsel, although his lawyer appeared at the police station requesting to see him.
He was denied his right to have a parent present during his questioning.
He was not informed of his right to remain silent, and was even told by his interrogators that he is “expected to tell the truth”.
Only one of four interrogators present was a qualified youth interrogator.

While the trial-within-a-trial procedure has not yet reached conclusion, the evidence already revealed has brought a Military Court of Appeals to revise its remand decision and order Islam’s release to house arrest.

Over the past two months, the army has arrested 24 of Nabi Saleh’s residents on protest related suspicions. Half of those arrested are minors, the youngest of whom is merely eleven.

Ever since the beginning of the village’s struggle against settler takeover of their lands in December of 2009, the army has conducted 71 protest related arrests. As the entire village numbers just over 500 residents, the number constitutes approximately 10% of its population.

Tamimi’s arrest corresponds to the systematic arrest of civil protest leaders all around the West Bank, as in the case of the villages Bil’in and Ni’ilin.

Only recently the Military Court of Appeals has aggravated the sentence of Abdallah Abu Rahmah from the village of Bilin, sending him to 16 months imprisonment on charges of incitement and organizing illegal demonstrations. Abu Rahmah was released on March 2011.

The arrest and trial of Abu Rahmah has been widely condemned by the international community, most notably by Britain andEU foreign minister, Catherin Ashton. Harsh criticism of the arrest has also been offered by leading human rights organizations in Israel and around the world, among them B’tselem, ACRI, as well as Human Rights Watch, which declared Abu Rahmah’s trial unfair, and Amnesty International, which declared Abu Rahmah a prisoner of conscience.

A sophisticated movement arrives on Israel’s doorstep– Arab spring– and Israel has only one plan

Jun 06, 2011

Philip Weiss

Fabulous post by Max Blumenthal today on the strategy behind the refugees’ protests at the border of the occupation, and Israel’s violent response. Go to Blumenthal’s post to read Rami Zurayk (whose book has just been published by JWB). But here is the Israeli stuff:

Yesterday, on June 5, the commemoration of Naksa Day, Palestinian refugees and their supporters returned to the Israeli controlled frontiers to protest the 44th anniversary of the occupation. Protests swelled at the Qalandia checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem, where according to Joseph Dana Israeli forces tested out new and unusual weapons on demonstrators, and spread to Nablus, where Israeli forces fired teargas shells at a group of people protesting the occupation by planting trees. The most intense protests took place at the Quneitra crossing near the occupied Golan Heights, where Israeli forces gunned down at least 20 unarmed demonstrators as they approached the frontier fence (be sure to watch the video at the link). “We could have taken the easier route of uncontrolled fire, but we decided to operate in a very limited manner,” an army spokesman said afterward, reassuring the world that Israel could have killed hundreds more, but chose to pick off about 20 unarmed civilians in the name of restraint.

In the hours following the bloodshed, the Israeli response grew increasingly contorted. Army spokespeople claimed the demonstrators “were responsible for their own deaths,” claiming they stepped on landmines. No evidence of landmine deaths was provided by the unnamed military sources, only conjecture. Next, Israel turned to its favorite Syrian cut-out in Washington, Farid Ghadry, an AIPAC member and discredited “serial entrepreneur” who is widely regarded as the Syrian version of Ahmed Chalabi — Ghadry actually met Chalabi in Richard Perle’s living room. In a statement published on the website of his astro-turfed Reform Party of Syria, Ghadry claimed that the protesters at Quneitra were not actual Palestinian refugees, but impoverished “Syrian farmers” who had been paid $1000 each by the Assad regime just to show up, and $10,000 to die. Ghadry claimed he gleaned the information from “intelligence sources close to the Assad regime in Lebanon.”

Israeli military spokespeople appear to be pushing Ghadry’s press release, because the canard immediately showed up in a report by Yediot Aharnoth’s Hanan Greenberg, one of the many military correspondents in the Israeli media who dutifully report any claim by any flack in an olive uniform as though it were a substantiated fact. “Syrian Opposition: Anti-Israel Rioters paid $1000,” read the Yediot headline. But the story has not graduated beyond the pro-Israel blogosphere, probably because Ghadry and his shell of an opposition group — it is quite clearly a neocon front organization — have no credibility in Syria or anywhere else.

But since the Arab Spring arrived on Israel’s doorstep, Israel’s strategy has depended on lethal violence and little else. And it may be that it has no other strategy, that there is no Plan B.

Israel spins the Naksa killings

Jun 06, 2011

Alex Kane

The Israeli government is in spin mode over yesterday’s events in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, where hundreds of protesters calling for the right of return marched and were met with Israeli gunfire. If the repression inflicted on unarmed protesters three weeks ago during the Nakba protests are any guide, a heavy dose of skepticism and questioning of official Israeli claims is needed.

A number of people were reportedly killed yesterday in the Golan Heights, and scores were injured in unarmed demonstrations across the West Bank quashed by Israel. The demonstrators were marking the anniversary of the Naksa, or setback, in the 1967 war.

Israeli officials are busy pushing this story: the protesters in the Golan Heights yesterday were pawns used by the Syrian regime to deflect attention from Syria’s own internal uprising, and besides, Israeli troops didn’t kill the demonstrators. Instead, according to the Israeli Defense Forces, “Soldiers fired ‘with precision’ at the bottom half of the bodies of the protesters…an initial IDF inquiry into Sunday’s events found that up to ten Syrian protesters had been killed when Molotov cocktails which the protesters had been throwing set off an anti-tank minefield.”

Of course, one should take the Syrian regime’s claims lightly as well, but the Israeli claims shouldn’t be taken at face value, either. Max Blumenthal documents the Israeli spin here.

We also have the documented record of what Israel did on May 15, killing unarmed protesters demanding their right of return.A Human Rights Watch report I highlighted here shows that Israeli snipers–the very same ones we are supposed to believe fired “with precision” yesterday–killed unarmed protesters along the Lebanon-Israel border.

The wild stories Israel is pushing that Blumenthal reports on, and the history of the Israeli response to unarmed Palestinian resistance, should make this clear at the very least: the official Israeli story is one not to be trusted. Videos posted by Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada here and here also show the violence Israel meted out yesterday. In addition, as Abunimah put it, the Israeli Army’s chief of staff recently outlined a “new, more brutal doctrine against nonviolent protests.” But tell that to the U.S. media.

Alex Kane, a freelance journalist based in New York City, blogs on Israel/Palestine and Islamophobia at alexbkane.wordpress.com, where this post originally appeared. Follow him on Twitter @alexbkane.

Rabbi Jacobs declares his ‘Zionist commitments’ so as to get nod as reform Jewish president

Jun 06, 2011

Lizzy Ratner

This coming week, the big fish of the Union for Reform Judaism, the congregational wing of Judaism’s reform movement, will gather somewhere in Tri-State Metropolitan Area for their semi-annual board of trustees meeting. During this time they will almost certainly vote to elect Rabbi Richard Jacobs the new president of the reform movement, a position he’ll officially take over from long-time leader Eric Yoffie in June 2012. It’s a big deal because the reform movement is the numerical, if not the spiritual, heavy of modern American Judaism. With some 900 member congregations, and 1.5 million individual members, it represents more Jews than any other branch of Judaism in the United States, and the man (because you can bet it’s always a man) who gets chosen to lead these members has no small influence. Which is among the many reasons Rabbi Jacobs’srecent speech, “My Heart is in the East: My Zionist Commitments,” is so deeply depressing.

Rabbi Jacobs apparently felt compelled to give this speech after a band of reform movement dissidents began agitating against his selection because they felt he wasn’t sufficiently “pro-Israel.” First came the whispers, then the op-eds and finally the ads, scattered throughout select Jewish newspapers, asking the Union for Reformed Judaism to “reconsider this divisive appointment.” Jacobs’s particular offense? Membership on the board of the New Israel Fund, membership in J Street’s Rabbinic Cabinet (a position Jacobs later denied holding), and participation in one of the Sheikh Jarrah demonstrations in Jerusalem – o as the Zionist Organization of America’s Morton Klein phrased it, associating with “extremist groups.”

Now all this hysteria and hyperbole would be funny, truly funny, if it weren’t so pervasive these days – the trip-wire response to anyone who offers even the gentlest criticism of Israel – and if declared leaders like Jacobs didn’t drop so readily to their knees in the face of it. But drop he did in the form of a 25-minute loyalty oath in which he seemed less like a man of spirit than a magician contorting the balloon of his conscience into one ridiculous shape after another – poodle, flower, fish – as he tried to make his impressive social justice commitments (to Haiti, Darfur, affordable housing, the Park 51 Islamic center) square with his commitment to Israel. It wasn’t pretty. For every micro-nod he made toward justice – toward acknowledging, for instance, that Israel might not treat its Arab population so wonderfully – he offered an equal – no, more than equal – and opposite nod toward the brutal status quo. So the claim that Israel is an apartheid state? Ridiculous, he said. The Goldstone Report? “Biased” and beset by “fatal flaws.” The IDF? You guessed it, “no other fighting force has more ethical rigor.” And not just that: in the wake of Operation Cast Lead, the 22-day military campaign during which Israel killed some 1400 Palestinians and leveled much of Gaza, he argued that “these remarkable young soldiers” must be supported more than ever. As for “Jewish life,” it “cannot be imagined without Israel at its core,” he said, displaying an unforgivable lack of imagination while also, no doubt, alienating at least a few members of his flock.

None of this is exactly surprising. Despite its relatively liberal domestic politics, the URJ is not a force for progressive change when it comes to Israel-Palestine. And the number of rabbis of any denomination who are truly righteous – or at least publicly righteous – when it comes to Israel hovers in the small dozens. Nonetheless, Rabbi Jacobs doesn’t seem completely blind to the injustices perpetrated in and by Israel, and his politics might in fact be an improvement over those of previous leaders, meaning he should know better. Moreover, he was chosen to helm the URJ at least in part to offer a new kind of leadership, one that will reel the young folks back into the reform movement and give it a needed jolt.

Doesn’t he know? A dawning critical consciousness about Israel is at least part of the reason – and a good part – for the Youth Drift afflicting non-Orthodox branches of Judaism. So how can he hope to lure the young people in? And what kind of spiritual leader can he really hope to be?

B’hatzlacha, Rabbi Jacobs.

American Jews you must face down your terror and come out to your families

Jun 06, 2011

Tom Pessah

My Israeli Zionist education is hard to shake off, even after years of pro-Palestine activism. One aspect that was easy for me to miss, until recently, is the underlying feeling of being a new, proud Jew in relation to diasporic American Jews and their tiresome complexes. Get over it already! Speak out loudly against the occupation, instead of whining on about your fears. Be proud of who you are, and tough – just like me!

Over the weekend Haaretz carried an interview with feminist psychologist Carol Gilligan. According to her research, “in childhood [girls] have an autonomous voice and are far more aware of that voice than boys are, whereas in adolescence they are more aware of their body and their voice starts to stammer. The older they get, the more I hear ‘I don’t know.’ They forgo their voice and choose relationships in order to be accepted and loved.”

Gilligan doesn’t talk about Palestine, but the interview is entitled “raise your voice” – which is probably pro-Palestine activists’ central message to American Jewry. In doing this work I’m coming to realize that our primary challenge may not be the vocal right-wingers, but reaching those who “don’t know,” those who have lost their voice. This has happened to many women, many less educated Jews, many younger people who are told they are too naïve, and to all those who’ve heard that by virtue of being American Jews, not having experienced life in Israel/Palestine, they can never know what it’s like – what I call the Israeli Experience Mystique.

I used to think these messages came from the establishment, big organizations like AIPAC. But the trenches run deep within families. The vicious criticisms people receive for speaking out can come from their parents or their closest neighbors. Behind all the talk of a-political dialogue there is genuine terror of taking a stand, which will lead to being attacked and isolated. We have so many dedicated queer activists in our ranks because they have often survived this nastiness when they came out, and they are no longer afraid.

The cure for ‘not knowing’ is more than exposing people to the facts. It requires building very powerful networks that can help people withstand personal attacks from those closest to them. And to build them we must reach out to Palestinians. Being a student, and having close friends in academia who are women, I don’t feel discrimination against them is something that is going to benefit me as a man – I don’t think of myself as sharing interests with sexist professors who want to keep the other gender in its place. Similarly, the more Palestinian friends and colleagues I have, the less I feel ending the occupation orimplementing the right of return is an issue of “our” interests vs. “theirs. “We” now includes my closest friends, the people I hope to live with in the mixed neighborhoods we will have all over Israel/Palestine – after apartheid ends.

Hersh says Obama is in a political ‘cult’ and isolated from folks with independent ideas

Jun 06, 2011

Philip Weiss

Seymour Hersh on Amy Goodman Friday. Thomas Pickering is old school, a Bush I guy, worked for Clinton too, a realist. The Obama isolation that Hersh describes is about Iran and Afghanistan but surely applies to Israel and Palestine too.

And I’ll tell you the biggest problem he has, as awful as those things are, as
counterproductive, and as much as he’s following, oh, yes, Bush and Cheney in those policies–and I think the President– I’ll be writing about this–I think he was really sandbagged by the Pentagon after he got into office, when he was new and innocent. And I still think–I think right now–I would almost use the word “cult” to describe what’s going on in the White House. Everything is political. He’s isolated. Very good people say they’ve never seen a president this isolated, in terms of being unable to get to him with different opinions, etc. So here’s really captive of a few people there. I know this may sound strange, but I know what I’m talking about. You can’t get to the guy–and even, for example, Pickering, as competent as he is. And Pickering has done some wonderful stuff for the United States intelligence community undercover, and so he’s known as a trusted guy. Those guys who have been involved in talking to Iran off the record, Track II policy talks, for years can’t get to the President. He may not even know they’re looking for him. I just don’t know.

Bob Casey and other Dems support unending occupation in latest submarining of Obama

Jun 06, 2011

Alex Kane

The first shot of what promises to be many that target President Barack Obama’s stance on Israel was fired yesterday when the Emergency Committee for Israel released an ad blasting Obama for siding “with the Palestinians.”

It’s unclear whether the noise about Obama’s call at the State Department for the 1967 borders to be the starting point for negotiations will amount to anything. But the neoconservative group’s ad does contain an important kernel of truth: that support for Israel and its occupation runs across the aisle.

The transcript of the ad reads:

Voiceover: When President Obama sided with the Palestinians, members of both parties stood with Israel.

Harry Reid: Nobody should set premature perimeters about borders.

Steny Hoyer: Israel’s borders must be defensible.

Bob Casey: Jerusalem is the undivided and eternal capitol of Israel.

Benjamin Netanyahu: And I see a lot of new friends of Israel here…. Democrats and Republicans alike.

Voiceover: The Emergency Committee for Israel thanks Israel’s true friends, Democrats and Republicans alike.

Obama’s remarks on the borders of Israel were mild, and reflected long-standing U.S. policy.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu picked a fight, though, and the Israel lobby went into high-gear. And so you have Bob Casey, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, proclaiming his support for unending occupation when he vows that “Jerusalem is the undivided and eternal capital of Israel.” And you have Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, publicly rebuking Obama–the leader of Reid’s party–for daring to say that the pre-1967 borders should be the starting point for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

This political dynamic of unquestioning support for Israel and its occupation will produce, and already has begun to produce, a rush from Obama and his allies to assure donors and the Jewish establishment that Obama is truly pro-Israel (meaning pro-occupation).

Ben Smith at Politico reports:

Amid a certain amount of…tsouris…in the Jewish community over Benjamin Netanyahu’s confrontational visit, Danielle Borrin, the Biden aide who serves as Jewish Liaison, emails Jewish leaders the link to “a powerful new resource on the White House website designed to answer any questions about President Obama’s commitment to advancing Israel’s security and supporting peace.”

The extensive talking points, and an op-ed by Rahm Emanuel, represent a new round of pushback against a drumbeat of claims that Obama has, as Romney said, thrown Israel under the bus.

So the fight over Israel in the 2012 elections will not be about which politician is most capable of producing peace. Instead, you will have both Democrats and Republicans fighting over who can support Israel more. And in the meantime, land theft, settlement expansion and the crackdown on Palestinian protest continues without a peep from Israel’s number one ally.

Alex Kane, a freelance journalist and blogger, writes on Israel/Palestine and Islamophobia in the U.S. at alexbkane.wordpress.com, where this post originally appeared. Follow him on Twitter @alexbkane.

‘Haaretz’ busts Netanyahu lies with Ali Haider column; why can’t the ‘NYT’ do as much?

Jun 06, 2011

Ilene Cohen

Ilene Cohen regularly sends out emails to friends. This one got widely passed around, and in that spirit, she allowed us to publish it. –Editor.

I have been in Jerusalem for the past two weeks visiting with Tamar, Uri, Nina, and Magali and seeing friends. Days have been long and full and, as I am traveling with an iPad, I’ve been keeping up with news (most especially the triumphal Netanyahu visit to the United States capital) but, alas (or perhaps just as well), I have been completely disabled in my output until now. My typing on the iPad produces a ratio of typos to correct letters that does not yield an English product. This is the first moment I’ve had to sit down at a proper keyboard.

Netanyahu’s lies and boorishness were in character and exactly as expected, though his mindless reception by the US Congress came as a shock to friends here. In fact, anyone familiar with the Congress (Republicans as regards everything, Democrats as regards most especially Israel) should not have been surprised–except, perhaps, that there were only twenty-nine standing ovations.

Opinion in Israel about Netanyahu’s arrogant performance has been divided between those who were thrilled that the PM stuck it to Obama and who believe that Israel’s continued occupation of Palestine is now assured and those who believe that he has now revealed his obstructionist agenda to the world in one of the most official of settings possible–the US Congress. The miserable truth, long known, is now undeniable. Just a few weeks back, even poor Thomas Friedman had to admit that no one believes Netanyahu (other than the usual suspects, of course).

Following is some commentary worth noting, an op-ed in Haaretz by my friend Ali Haider. As a Palestinian citizen of Israel, he expresses particular outrage at Netanyahu’s patronizing comments about how lucky the Arab one-fifth of Israeli citizens are to be second-class citizens in the Israeli version democracy. Would be nice to see the New York Times publish such a piece and help burst the bubble about the “only democracy in the Middle East.”

[P]ublic education in the Arab community lags far behind that in the Jewish sector – and all this as a result of systematic and consistent discrimination by all the governments of Israel.

And though the Arab citizens of Israel may constitute less than one-half of 1 percent of all the Arabs in the Middle East, they comprise about one-fifth of the population of Israel, yet their representation in the civil service here is only 7 percent. There isn’t a single Arab cabinet minister or ministry director general or government company CEO, university president or public company chairman. No university or government hospital has ever been built in an Arab municipality, and since 1948, the state has not established even one new Arab town or city. Some 60 percent of all Arab families live below the poverty line.

But let’s face it, there was not a single sentence in Netanyahu’s blatherings to the Congress that could not be similarly shredded, as not a word of truth passed his arrogant lips.

For succinct overview of what this all means, see the excellent piece by Philip Stephens, in the Financial Times.

Israel’s prime minister will never negotiate seriously with the Palestinians. As a former Israeli diplomat said of Mr Netanyahu’s speech: “Everything is changing, but he is determined that everything remains the same.”This time the world is unlikely to wait. Events are leaving Israel behind.

And last, an occupation update from East Jerusalem: zoning for Jews only.

Nonetheless, despite the triumphalism in certain sectors of Israel (the racist Jerusalem Day festivities on Wednesday were an awful sight to behold), I think the colonial enterprise doesn’t have a future–and they don’t have a clue.

PS On my flight over the person making announcements on Continental said as we we landing, “Welcome to the Promised Land.” Oy. It is oppressive. Should I write to them?

A. Loewenstein Online Newsletter

Don’t let the IMF get their dirty hands on the Arab revolutions

Posted: 06 Jun 2011

Independent Australian journalist Austin Mackell, who has been living in Egypt for a while documenting the post revolutionary mood, is interviewed by RT:

New York’s Celebrate Israel parade 2011 shows Zionist myopia

Posted: 06 Jun 2011

How can American Jews show their love for the Jewish state? March in the centre of New York, of course. Back in 2009, I reported on the Salute to Israel event, with tens of thousands of young and old Jews singing, saluting, parading and waving Israeli and American flags in an orgy of Zionist love. It looked and felt desperate.
Yesterday I again attended the march here in New York (only around 30,000 people took part) and the overwhelming feeling was one of increased anger and defensiveness. Countless Jews shouted out against Hamas, 9/11, terrorism, suicide bombing and Islam, as if they’re all connected. In the small mind of pro-settler Jews, they are, and this shows the level of paranoia shown by so many Zionist Jews. It’s a “the whole world hates us and always will” mentality. Occupation and military and racial discrimination don’t exist in yesterday’s rally.
It reminded me of whites marching for apartheid South Africa in the 1980s and believing history was on the side of hating blacks. These days, it’s hard to find many South Africans who proudly say they backed the apartheid regime.
Yesterday I spent time in the roped-off protest area, where Jews and Palestinians stood bravely against the masses and peacefully demonstrated against the Israeli state. We were clearly out-numbered and even then the marchers hurled abuse at us. Are Zionists so insecure that any dissent is seen as an existential threat? I guess shooting largely unarmed demonstrators is something to be proud of.
If the mainstream people at the march yesterday are the future of Israeli support in the US, then anti-Zionists have been given a gift. Extremism and virulent Zionism is not embraced by growing numbers of global citizens and yet Orthodox Zionism and Christian fundamentalism are becoming the key drivers of pro-Israel sentiment here.
A day to both despair and celebrate.
UPDATE: Need more evidence that the mainstream political elite sees Israel not as a country, but a fundamentalist religion that can’t be challenged? A leading New York politician is damned for not appearing at yesterday’s Israel parade.

What “right to exist” as a Jewish state?

Posted: 05 Jun 2011

Leading Australian academic Scott Burchill (we like his thoughts here) on specious Zionist claims:

Since the 1970s, Israel’s leaders have insisted that their Palestinian interlocutors acknowledge Israel’s “right to exist” as a pre-condition for negotiations on a settlement of the conflict.
Amongst other concessions, the governments of Israel and the United States insist that Hamas makes precisely this declaration before being allowed to join Fatah in direct talks with their Israeli counterparts.
The problem with such a demand is that no such abstract “right to exist” can be found in international law or in any serious theory of international relations.
To put it succinctly, a “right to exist” does not exist for states. Nor does such a right exist in practice. Australia, for example, does not recognise Israel’s “right to exist”. Nor do any other states.
…
The question of what it would actually be recognising by acknowledging Israel’s “right to exist” has only one answer. Hamas would be acknowledging the legitimacy of the dispossession of the Palestinian people from their homeland.
Why would they ever want to concede this, let alone as a precondition for peace negotiations? It would amount to a pre-emptive surrender.

Egyptians don’t care about democracy, only the economy, says US Republicans

Posted: 05 Jun 2011

A poll that unsurprisingly didn’t focus so much on the major reasons the Egyptian economy is in such bad shape, namely that billions of dollars of US aid over decades went to building a police state:

A majority of Egyptians who supported this year’s revolution did so mainly because of their poor economic situation, not because they yearned for democracy, according to a U.S. government-funded poll released Sunday.
The survey also underlines Egyptians’ sky-high expectations for their next government. Eight in 10 respondents said they anticipated their economic situation would be better in the coming year. That presents a daunting challenge for whomever takes office, with a recent drop in tourism and foreign investment exacerbating the country’s already severe economic problems.
The survey was carried out for the International Republican Institute (IRI), a pro-democracy group that is close to prominent U.S. Republicans.
Only 15 percent said they support the Muslim Brotherhood, which favors a government guided by Islamic sharia law. Less than 1 percent of respondents favor an Iran-style Islamic theocracy.
And only 15 percent said their political opinions were strongly influenced by religious figures, with many more citing family members and military leaders.

The Net Delusion is alive and well

Posted: 05 Jun 2011

My following book review appeared in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald:

THE NET DELUSION
Evgeny Morozov
Allen Lane,
408pp, $29.95
As people in the Middle East have been protesting in the streets against Western-backed dictators and using social media to connect and circumvent state repression, it would be easy to dismiss The Net Delusion as almost irrelevant.
Born in Belarus, Evgeny Morozov collects mountains of evidence to claim the internet isn’t able to bring freedom, democracy and liberalism.
Sceptics would tell him to watch Al-Jazeera and see the power of the Facebook generation in action.
In fact, it is a dangerous fantasy to believe, he argues, because countless regimes are using the same tools as activists – Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and email – to monitor and catch dissidents.
He writes that “the only space where the West (especially the United States) is still unabashedly eager to promote democracy is in cyberspace. The Freedom Agenda is out; the Twitter Agenda is in.”
Morozov condemns “cyber-utopians” for wanting to build a world where borders are no more. Instead, he says these well-meaning people “did not predict how useful it would prove for propaganda purposes, how masterfully dictators would learn to use it for surveillance” and the increasingly sophisticated methods of web censorship.
Furthermore, Google, Yahoo, Cisco, Nokia and web security firms have all willingly colluded with a range of brutal states to turn a profit.
The Western media are largely to blame for creating the illusion of web-inspired democracy. During the Iranian uprisings in June 2009, many journalists dubbed it the Twitter Revolution, closely following countless tweets from the streets of Tehran. However, it was soon discovered that many of the tweets originated in California and not the Islamic republic. The myth had already been born.
None of these facts is designed to lessen the bravery of demonstrators against autocracies – and Morozov praises countless dissidents in China, the Arab world and beyond – but lazy journalists seemingly crave easy and often inaccurate narratives of nimble young keyboard warriors against sluggish old men in golden palaces.
The New York Times’s Roger Cohen was right when he wrote in January that “the internet’s impact has been to expose the great delusion that has led Western governments to buttress Arab autocrats; that the only alternative to them was Islamic jihadists”.
But most protesters in the streets of Egypt had no access to the internet or any use for it and the main gripes were economic rather than ideological. However, it is undeniable that many of the young organised through online networks and clearly surprised the former Mubarak regime with their ability to harness a mainstream call for change.
Morozov, hailing from a country that knows about disappearances and suppression, urges the West to “stop glorifying those living in authoritarian governments”.
One of the Western fallacies of web usage in non-democratic nations is the belief that people are all looking for political content as a way to cope with repression. In fact, as Morozov proves with research, an experiment in 2007 with strangers in autocratic regimes found that instead of looking for dissenting material they “searched for nude pictures of Gwen Stefani and photos of a panty-less Britney Spears”.
I noted similar trends in China when researching my book The Blogging Revolution and found most Chinese youth were interested in downloading movies and music and meeting boys and girls. Politics was the furthest thing from their minds.
This would change only if economic conditions worsened. A wise government would pre-empt these problems by allowing citizens to let off steam; Beijing has undoubtedly opened up online debate in the past decade, though there are certainly set boundaries and red lines not to cross.
Morozov sometimes underestimates the importance of people in repressive states feeling less alone and mixing with like-minded individuals. Witness the persecuted gay community in Iran, the websites connecting this beleaguered population and the space to discuss an identity denied by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Ultimately, The Net Delusion is necessary because it challenges comfortable Western thinking about the modern nature of authoritarianism.
This year we have already been left to ponder the irony of the US State Department deploying its resources to pressure Arab regimes not to block communications and social media while the stated agenda of Washington is a matrix of control across the region.
These policies are clearly contradictory and a person in US-backed Saudi Arabia and Bahrain won’t be fooled into believing Western benevolence if they can merely use Twitter every day.

Bassem Tamimi’s statement to IsraHell’s military court

NOVANEWS

Non-violence activist Bassem Tamimi’s address to Israel’s Ofer military court during his trial for organizing protests in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh. A military judge refused to allow Tamimi to read his full statement in court.

Your Honor, I hold this speech out of belief in peace, justice, freedom, the right to live in dignity, and out of respect for free thought in the absence of Just Laws. Every time I am called to appear before your courts, I become nervous and afraid. Eighteen years ago, my sister was killed by in a courtroom such as this, by a staff member. In my lifetime, I have been nine times imprisoned for an overall of almost 3 years, though I was never charged or convicted. During my imprisonment, I was paralyzed as a result of torture by your investigators. My wife was detained, my children were wounded, my land was stolen by settlers, and now my house is slated for demolition.

I was born at the same time as the Occupation and have been living under its inherent inhumanity, inequality, racism and lack of freedom ever since. Yet, despite all this, my belief in human values and the need for peace in this land have never been shaken. Suffering and oppression did not fill my heart with hatred for anyone, nor did they kindle feelings of revenge. To the contrary, they reinforced my belief in peace and national standing as an adequate response to the inhumanity of Occupation. International law guarantees the right of occupied people to resist Occupation. In practicing my right, I have called for and organized peaceful popular demonstrations against the Occupation, settler attacks and the theft of more than half of the land of my village, Nabi Saleh, where the graves of my ancestors have lain since time immemorial.

I organized these peaceful demonstrations in order to defend our land and our people. I do not know if my actions violate your Occupation laws. As far as I am concerned, these laws do not apply to me and are devoid of meaning. Having been enacted by Occupation authorities, I reject them and cannot recognize their validity. Despite claiming to be the only democracy in the Middle East you are trying me under military laws which lack any legitimacy; laws that are enacted by authorities that I have not elected and do not represent me. I am accused of organizing peaceful civil demonstrations that have no military aspects and are legal under international law. We have the right to express our rejection of Occupation in all of its forms; to defend our freedom and dignity as a people and to seek justice and peace in our land in order to protect our children and secure their future.

The civil nature of our actions is the light that will overcome the darkness of the Occupation, bringing a dawn of freedom that will warm the cold wrists in chains, sweep despair from the soul and end decades of oppression. These actions are what will expose the true face of the Occupation, where soldiers point their guns at a woman walking to her fields or at checkpoints; at a child who wants to drink from the sweet water of his ancestors’ fabled spring; against an old man who wants to sit in the shade of an olive tree, once mother to him, now burnt by settlers. We have exhausted all possible actions to stop attacks by settlers, who refuse to adhere to your courts’ decisions, which time and again have confirmed that we are the owners of the land, ordering the removal of the fence erected by them.

Each time we tried to approach our land, implementing these decisions, we were attacked by settlers, who prevented us from reaching it as if it were their own. Our demonstrations are in protest of injustice. We work hand in hand with Israeli and international activists who believe, like us, that had it not been for the Occupation, we could all live in peace on this land. I do not know which laws are upheld by generals who are inhibited by fear and insecurity, nor do I know their thoughts on the civil resistance of women, children and old men who carry hope and olive branches. But I know what justice and reason are. Land theft and tree-burning is unjust. Violent repression of our demonstrations and protests and your detention camps are not evidence of the illegality of our actions. It is unfair to be tried under a law forced upon us. I know that I have rights and my actions are just. The military prosecutor accuses me of inciting the protesters to throw stones at the soldiers.

This is not true. What incites protesters to throw stones is the sound of bullets, the Occupation’s bulldozers as they destroy the land, the smell of teargas and the smoke coming from burnt houses. I did not incite anyone to throw stones, but I am not responsible for the security of your soldiers who invade my village and attack my people with all the weapons of death and the equipment of terror. These demonstrations that I organize have had a positive influence over my beliefs; they allowed me to see people from the other side who believe in peace and share my struggle for freedom. Those freedom fighters have rid their conscious from the Occupation and put their hands in ours in peaceful demonstrations against our common enemy, the Occupation.

They have become friends, sisters and brothers. We fight together for a better future for our children and theirs. If released by the judge will I be convinced thereby that justice still prevails in your courts? Regardless of how just or unjust this ruling will be, and despite all your racist and inhumane practices and Occupation, we will continue to believe in peace, justice and human values. We will still raise our children to love; love the land and the people without discrimination of race, religion or ethnicity; embodying thus the message of the Messenger of Peace, Jesus Christ, who urged us to “love our enemy.” With love and justice, we make peace and build the future. [Thanks Felice]

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A Drunk And A Mosque.

NOVANEWS

Another sign of open anti-Muslim bigotry, the Torygraph explains:

“Jamie Knowlson, 30, also draped slices of meaton railings outside the mosque as his victims prayed inside.

He was then caught on CCTV hurling abuse at worshippers after they confronted him over his act.

Islam teaches its followers to avoid pig meat as it makes them impure and unclean.

Knowlson initially told police the stunt was a drunken joke but later admitted that he was fully aware of the offence his actions would cause.

He pleaded guilty to causing racially or religiously aggravated harassment and could have been jailed for up to two years.

But he walked free from Bristol Crown Court with a suspended six-month prison sentence because he had returned to the mosque to apologise for his actions.

Sentencing, Her Honour Judge Carol Hagen said: ”It is difficult to imagine a more offensive incident.

”Not only the fixing of meat to railings but aggravated, in my view, that members of the mosque were inside praying at the time.”

The court heard that Knowlson, from Kingswood, Bristol, targeted the Al-Baseera mosque in the St Judes area of the city which is used by more than 2,000 Somali Muslims every week.

He crept to the mosque from nearby Redwood House homeless shelter on January 9 this year – putting ham in footwear and on railings outside the building as worshippers prayed.

CCTV footage showed him returning to the shelter, where he was confronted by the mosque’s caretaker Abdi Djmaa.

As Mr Djmaa returned to the mosque he heard shouts of ”the next visit will be harder”, ”bad meat” and ”girls” coming from the direction of the building.

David Hunter, prosecuting at Bristol Crown Court, said it had been a premeditated attack specifically targeted at the Muslim community.

Ian Halliday, defending, said: ”This was a brutal, misconceived, drunken prank. He returned to the mosque and offered his apologies in person.”

Knowlson sat in tears as he was handed a six-month suspended sentence and 150 hours of unpaid work.

A second man is due to stand trial in connection with the incident later this month.

After sentencing, Mubarak Mohamud, one of the three imams at the Al-Baseera mosque, claimed the inflammatory act had upset the Muslim community.

He said: ”There wasn’t anger, people were more upset and shocked.
”We don’t eat pork and we are banned by our faith from eating it, as it makes us impure when we are going to our prayers.

”We don’t hate the man – we just suppose he doesn’t know us.”
Knowlson refused to comment after leaving court.

A drunken reveller had urinated through the letter box of the same mosque a few years ago. “

Dorothy Online Newsleytter

NOVANEWS

Dear Friends,

Once again I apologize for the large number. At least I can say that the final item—the 7^th— is pure pleasure.

So this evening’s message begins with 3 information reports, first about Gideon Spiro who was arrested on the charges of ‘suspected incitement.’ Well, I guess that I could also be accused of the same, as many other activists.

The 2^nd item is in support of Mordechai Vanunu’s desire to leave Israel and to be free. Am glad to see the piece in the Guardian. Perhaps there it will get more attention than had it been in one of Israel’s 3 major dailies.

Item 3 relates that a West Bank Mosque had been torched and that as usual the police have not found suspects. Interesting that when some crime happens to Jewish colonists the police find the Palestinian doers post haste. But when it comes to Jews doing things to Palestinians, all evidence seems to disappear. Who knows. Maybe this time the perpetrators will be found.

Item 4 is from Le Monde Diplomatique—an interesting analysis of the ‘Palestinian’s own spring.’ It is not an overly optimistic analysis of what will happen. Alain Gresh also sees no chance that Obama will step in to bring Israel and the Palestinians to the table to work out a Palestinian state.

Item 5 “False Messiah’s in Israel’s Capital” is one of the most critical articles of Netanyahu and policies that I have read. Apparently the author, Sefi Rachlevsky, shares my worry about Netanyahu’s intentions vis a vis Iran. I believe that Netanyahu would do anything to prevent a Palestinian state coming into existence either by negotiations or by a vote in the UN General Assembly, even if it would mean attacking Iran, and even if that meant 1000s of Israeli dead. Let’s hope that Rachlevsky and I are wrong.

Item 6 is an op-ed by Dore Gold justifying Netanyahu’s rejection of the 1967 line, and my response to it, which I sent to the LA Times as an op-ed and which was rejected. Well, the LA Times was right. I dashed it off, and it needs work to make it publishable. I am nevertheless including it in the message as is, because although I’m too tired now to clean it up, some of you might find elements in my response useful to responding to arguments by others but as Gold’s.

Item 7 might induce some of you to contact the Siraj Center for a summer holiday biking and walking in the West Bank. Not only will you learn much from seeing with your own eyes, and from contact with Palestinians, but you will also undoubtedly enjoy your experience.

All the best,

Dorothy

=============================

1. Independent commentary from Israel & the Palestinian territories

Tuesday, June 7 2011|

Journalist and activist Gideon Spiro arrested for “incitement”

Gideon Spiro, 76, was arrested and released on Monday for what the police considered, apparently groundlessly, to be incitement.

http://972mag.com/a-leftist-activist-is-arrested-for-%E2%80%9Cincitement%E2%80%9D/

Yossi Gurvitz

A Jerusalem Police investigator arrested Monday Gideon Spiro, a veteran leftist activist aged 76, for suspected incitement relating to an article he had written. Spiro was discharged two hours later, after his attorneys – from the office of Michael Sfard – intervened on his behalf.

Spiro, a dedicated writer of letters to judges whose judgment he considers lacking, is no stranger to controversy. One particularly strongly-worded letter led a magistrate judge in the late 1980s to order him to stop sending letters to judges. Spiro, represented by ACRI, appealed to the District Court against this peculiar prohibition, and won. In the meantime, he published his unsent letters in the Jerusalem weekly Kol Hair.

A peculiar arrest. Gideon Spiro and daughter, Jerusalem, April 2010 (Photo: Yossi Gurvitz)

Despite a long career on the radical left, Spiro said in a phone interview that this is his first arrest. The cause is peculiar, to say the least: an article he wrote ten months ago. In the article, Spiro wrote that when settlers carry weapons, they ought to be considered as militiamen and therefore legitimate targets. He claimed that Israelis ought not to dictate to Palestinians their methods of struggle against the occupation, but strongly emphasized that he supports a non-violent struggle.

Israeli law (144d2b) prohibits “publishing incitement to an act of violence or terrorism, or praise of, support of, or encouragement of an act of violence or terrorism,” but it limits this to cases in which the publication creates a “viable possibility of causing violence or an act of terrorism.” The law is rarely applied; Spiro says this is likely the first arrest made due to an article since the 1950s. Since Spiro wrote in Hebrew, and since Palestinian gunmen do not, as a rule, peruse Hebrew publications, there seems to be little if any “viable possibility of causing violence” as a result of Spiro’s article.

One wonders how, precisely, the police would defend the arrest, when they would have to haul Spiro before a judge. One also wonders just how dangerous the police considered a 76-year-old man. ACRI has criticized the arrest, calling it a violation of Spiro’s rights. Spiro said he is considering suing the police and bringing a personal civil suit against the interrogator who ordered the arrest.

The arrest is particularly glaring, since the police do little, if anything, when actual calls for violence and racism (prohibited by the same law) are published. The rabbis who supported the notorious “Torat Ha’Melech,” which called for the murder of gentile children “if one has reason to suppose they will grow to be as evil as their parents,” were not arrested, and the rabbis who wrote the books were not indicted.

Shmuel Eliahu of Safed, who recently bragged that he managed to make his town a Palestinian-free zone by prohibiting renting apartments to them, was not arrested, much less indicted. This, despite the fact that the attorney general decided not to prosecute him five years ago, for the same charges, on condition of good behavior.

Perhaps those most guilty of incitement are the editors of Ha’Kol Hayehudi (“The Jewish Voice”), a website which praises and promotes pogroms (AKA “price tag” activities) against Palestinians. They are the students of the same rabbis who wrote “Torat Hamelech.” Needless to say, they were neither arrested nor indicted. And these are just samples from the last few months.

Cynically, Spiro said that if he were a rabbi, he could just ignore the summons from the police. One cannot escape the feeling that Spiro was arrested because the police consider possible incitement against Jews to be essentially more criminal than actual incitement against non-Jews.

================

2. The Guardian,

6 June 2011

We must help Vanunu live in peace

Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu wants to obey Israeli law and lose his citizenship. The UK has an obligation to him

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/06/help-vanunu-nuclear-hero-israel

Duncan Campbell

Mordechai Vanunu arrives at a Jerusalem court in December 2009. Photograph: Gali Tibbon/AFP/Getty Images

Twenty-five years ago Mordechai Vanunu, a young Israeli nuclear technician, came to London to pass on information to a British newspaper about a secret nuclear weapons facility at which he had been working and about which he believed the world should know. In the course of the next few weeks he was lured abroad to Rome, grabbed by the Israeli security service, drugged and smuggled illegally out of the country to stand trial for aggravated espionage, high treason and assisting the enemy. He was jailed for 18 years, most of which he spent in solitary confinement.

Since his release from prison in 2004, Vanunu has been trying to leave Israel. Now he has written to the Israeli minister of the interior, Eli Yishai, asking if he can revoke his Israeli citizenship. In his letter, he points out that the Knesset has just passed a law that revokes the citizenship of anyone convicted of espionage or treason. Applying this logic, Vanunu has duly asked for the cancellation of his own.

“This law applies to me and I am ready for my citizenship to be cancelled,” he explains in the letter. “After all the ‘treatment’ that I have received from the state of Israel and its citizens, I do not feel, here, as a citizen or how a citizen should feel, I feel as an unwelcome citizen and treated as such by the state of Israel and its citizens. I am called and shouted at as a spy, ‘the Atom Spy’, and a traitor by the Israeli media and in the streets of Israel. I am harassed and persecuted as the enemy of the state for 25 years. I feel I am still imprisoned, still held as a hostage, by the state and its government. After 25 years of ongoing, many and very hard punishments by the state of Israel, I wish the end to all punishments and my suffering, and wish the realisation of the basic human right to freedom.”

The argument that has been used by the Israeli government against him being allowed to leave is that he could still pass on damaging secrets to a foreign power. In his letter, Vanunu moves into capital letters to dispute this: “I HAVE NO SECRETS ! EVERYTHING I KNEW THEN I HAVE PASSED ON TO THE ENGLISH PAPER IN 1986 !!”

Indeed, no one – unless they are completely ignorant of the case – genuinely believes that he has any secrets up his sleeve. He is refused permission to leave the country not for security reasons but as a further penalty, a punishment for coming out of prison as committed to his non-violent, anti-nuclear-weaponry principles as when he went in. This is how the old Soviet Union treated its dissidents, obstructing and humiliating them in the hope that they eventually crack or die.

Daniel Ellsberg, who risked an equivalent amount of time in prison for his own leaking of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 in the United States, has called Vanunu “the pre-eminent hero of the nuclear era … He paid the full price, a burden in some ways worse than death, for his heroic act for doing exactly what he should have done and what others should be doing.” He is among the many voices now calling for Vanunu to be allowed to live a normal life in a country of his choice.

Last week, Julian Assange was awarded the Martha Gellhorn prize for journalism for his work with WikiLeaks. The award recognised that the leaking of information about secret governmental activity – wherever that government may be – makes for a better world.

Britain has a responsibility towards Vanunu, a man who gave his story to a British newspaper – the Sunday Times – and whose kidnap and removal from Italy started on the streets of London; Israel had not wanted to embarrass Margaret Thatcher’s government by carrying out the deed in the UK. It is time that the British government recognised the British link and spoke up for a man who risked his freedom and his sanity because of his hatred of nuclear weapons. And high time that a peaceful man in a violent world was allowed to live his own life in peace.

===================

3. Washington Post,

June 7, 2011

Mosque torched in West Bank

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mosque-torched-in-west-bank/2011/06/07/AGrNxBLH_story.html

By Joel Greenberg, JERUSALEM —

Arsonists believed to be Jewish settlers set fire to a mosque in the West Bank on Tuesday, the latest of a series of such attacks in recent years.

An Israeli police spokesman said a tire was set ablaze inside a mosque in the village of Mughayir, near Ramallah, in an attempt to burn the building. Worshipers who arrived for morning prayers discovered scorched prayer carpets and Hebrew graffiti scrawled on a wall.

The graffiti said, “price tag,” a reference to a practice by militant settlers who attack Palestinians and their property in response to moves by the Israeli authorities to take down unauthorized settlement outposts in the West Bank.

The scrawled message was signed, “Alei Ayin,” the name of a rogue outpost in the area where Israeli security forces demolished illegally built structures last week, setting off stone-throwing clashes with settlers, who firebombed a police car.

The police spokesman said an investigation into the mosque blaze was underway but that no arrests had been made. There have been four arson attacks on mosques in the West Bank in recent years, and while suspects have been held, none are known to have been prosecuted.

The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank accused Israel of failing to seriously investigate the mosque fires and prosecute those responsible, thus granting settlers “impunity to continue their attacks.”

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called Tuesday’s arson attempt “a criminal act,” and the office of Defense Minister Ehud Barak said he had ordered security forces to act “with all means at their disposal to catch the perpetrators.”

==========================

4.Le Monde Diplomatique

June, 1011

Palestine’s own spring

Palestinian refugees demonstrated along Israel’s border in May, inspired by the Arab protests, in response to the Fatah-Hamas impasse

http://mondediplo.com/2011/06/05palestine

by Alain Gresh

The images of Palestinians massed at Israel’s borders on 15 May represented a dream for some, and a nightmare for others. On the 63rd anniversary of the declaration of the Jewish state and of the nakba (catastrophe) for the many thousands of Palestinians expelled from their homes, demonstrators from Syria (1), Lebanon, Jordan and Gaza converged on the promised land. They were only a few thousand but the world wondered what would happen if millions marched peacefully to the borders and walls next time. These refugees – neglected by the PLO since the 1973 Oslo accords despite having inspired the Palestinian awakening of the 1960s – may have decided to take their future into their own hands.

The banners in Ramallah demanded the right of all Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, Beirut or Amman to elect a national representative council, and a radical reform of the PLO. This could represent a new stage in the liberation struggle, and Israel’s brutal response on 15 May, killing 14 unarmed Palestinians, shows how worried its leaders are. It is this new aspiration of ordinary Palestinians after the Arab uprisings, overlooked by both Hamas and Fatah, which has pushed the rivals to end their long quarrel and agree an accord, ratified in Cairo on 4 May by representatives of 13 Palestinian factions. It anticipates the formation of a government of technocrats or independents; the liberation of prisoners from both sides held in Gaza and the West Bank; presidential and legislative elections within one year; reform of the PLO; and the merging of the security forces on a strictly professional basis. Priority is given to reconstructing Gaza, which remains under Israeli blockade.

Unsurprisingly, the agreement was quickly rejected by Israel, with its prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, telling Fatah to choose between peace and Hamas. He did not mention that for months Israeli officials had justified their reluctance to agree an accord with Mahmoud Abbas (head of the Palestinian Authority and leader of Fatah) on the grounds that he only represented half the Palestinians. Netanyahu even claimed that Hamas was only the local version of al-Qaida. This intransigence was ratified by President Barack Obama in his speech on 19 May, when he said he understood that these were “profound and legitimate questions for Israel: how can one negotiate with a party that has shown itself unwilling to recognise your right to exist?” But Obama and Netanyahu are familiar with the wording of the Oslo accords, which they claim to adhere to, that mandate the PLO, not the Palestinian government, to negotiate a final status agreement with Israel. Hamas does not belong to the PLO. The leaders gave no credit to the statements by Khaled Meshaal, the political leader of Hamas, who has repeated his support for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with Jerusalem as its capital, and confirmed that, if it came about, Hamas would renounce violence (2).

The agreement between Fatah and Hamas surprised all observers of the negotiations between them over the years. It is hard to see to what extent it will be put into effect, as many points remain vague and there is still deep mistrust. But it has come about as the result of powerful factors, relating to the Palestinian scene and developments in the region. The refugees, who had been the most noticeable absentees from the last 20 years of negotiations, have now been invited in.

’Down with division’

Fatah and Hamas have been confronted by the rise of the protest movement in the West Bank and even Gaza. Unlike other Arab countries, the main slogan was not “Down with the government”, but “Down with division”, shouted by many young people. As Jamil Hilal, a social scientist in Ramallah, said: “We have no government and no state, just an authority, and on top of that, the occupation.” Although Fatah and Hamas responded with repression and pressure, they were forced to take notice of popular demands, since they are in a strategic deadlock.

The peace process, on which Fatah has staked everything since 1993, has been dead for years, but it was only with the fall of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, the chief promoter of the supposed negotiations, that Abbas agreed to sign its death warrant: the rise in settlement-building removes any significance from dialogue with Israel. (On the day of Obama’s speech, the Israeli government announced the construction of another 1,550 homes in East Jerusalem).

Hamas, which claims to be the Palestinian “resistance”, has maintained a ceasefire with Israel, which it imposes on other Palestinian factions, if necessary by force. In Gaza, it has to deal with Salafist groups (whom some believe are linked to al-Qaida) that blame Hamas for not fighting the “Zionist enemy”, and for not making society more Islamic. The murder in April of Vittorio Arrigoni, a pro-Palestinian Italian activist based in Gaza, by an extremist group, was a warning. The Israeli blockade and daily problems of ordinary Gazans have eroded Hamas’s influence. Neither Fatah nor Hamas have alternative strategies and they are going through a crisis of legitimacy. Their behaviour in Ramallah and Gaza – authoritarian, corrupt, clientelist – is not so different from the behaviour of other Arab leaders, and is provoking the same revolt.

The Arab awakening

The upheaval in the region has also led to compromise. Fatah has lost its chief ally, Mubarak. Demonstrations in Syria, and their violent repression, have weakened a regime that is an essential support of Hamas, and has sheltered its external leaders since their expulsion from Jordan. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of Sunni Islam’s most popular preachers, linked to the Muslim Brotherhood (from which Hamas emerged), strongly condemned Bashar al-Assad’s government on 25 March and said the Ba’ath Party could no longer run Syria. Meanwhile, despite pressure from Damascus, Hamas has been careful not to rush to defend the Syrian regime.

Another regional shift troubles Hamas’s leaders. The repression of the democratic uprising in Bahrain and the violence of the anti-Shia campaign by the Gulf states – led by Saudi Arabia – have increased tensions between the Arab world and Iran. Hamas is partly funded by businessmen in the Gulf who are not keen on its association with Iran. Hence its interest in making up with Egypt, a Sunni power; this has been made easier by the political orientation of the Cairo regime after the overthrow of Mubarak.

Without going so far as to break with the US, or question the peace treaty with Israel, Egypt is ending its subservience to Israeli and US interests. Mubarak opposed unity between Fatah and Hamas because he feared the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. He considered Gaza a security problem and took part in its blockade, and he led Arab defiance against Iran. While the Muslim Brotherhood prepare to take part in September’s elections, and perhaps even in the next government, these fears are now out of place, since the democratic climate in Egypt allows people to express their solidarity with the Palestinians, as the government is well aware.

Egypt’s foreign minister has said the Rafah border crossing will be opened, and has described the Israeli blockade of Gaza as shameful (3). The chief of staff, Sami Anan, has given Israel a warning on his Facebook page: “The Israeli government must show restraint when it discusses peace talks. It must refrain from intervening in the internal matters of Palestine” (4). As the former Egyptian ambassador to Syria, Mahmoud Shukri, said: “Mubarak was always taking sides with the US, but the new way of thinking is entirely different. We would like to make a model of democracy for the region, and we are ensuring that Egypt has its own influence” (5). The effect of this has been a thaw in relations with Iran, and both Tehran and Damascus have welcomed the Fatah-Hamas accord.

What hope for US intervention?

Obama’s latest speech, two years after he addressed the Muslim world in Cairo, was in response to the new situation in the region, and the failure of his mediation in the Palestinian conflict, confirmed by the resignation of US Special Envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell. Obama wanted to show that the US was on “the right side of history” at a time of regional turmoil. He announced that the US wanted to combine its interests and values; for example he denounced the repression by the government in Bahrain, where the US Fifth Fleet is based, but stayed silent about Saudi Arabia, which has assisted it.

Introducing him, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that “America’s leadership is more essential than ever”. Robert Dreyfuss of the US weekly The Nation asked whether anyone in the region was still listening to the US (6). After describing Pakistan and Afghanistan’s defiance of the US, he wrote: “Iran, despite onerous sanctions and repeated threats of US military action, has not only refused to compromise over its nuclear programme, but Tehran is supporting anti-American movements in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and the Gulf states. Iraq, whose very government is the creation of the US invasion in 2003, has all but shut the door on a continued US military presence there, and its leadership touts its new alliance with Iran. Saudi Arabia, where anti-American sentiment has been growing for a decade, is seething over US policy in the region, and Riyadh is reaching out to Beijing, Moscow and other powers, despite its overwhelming dependence on weapons and security assistance from Washington.” Saudi Arabia has also expressed its displeasure at the way Obama dropped Mubarak and criticised the repression in Bahrain.

Netanyahu resisted calls to halt settlement building and rejected any return to the June 1967 borders, or even using those borders as a basis for negotiations, as suggested by Obama. When they met at the White House on 20 May, Netanyahu lectured Obama on history and geopolitics with the arrogance of someone who knows he can’t lose. Despite the media coverage about their differences the Israeli prime minister told his aides: “I went in with certain concerns. I came out encouraged” (7). Obama hailed their excellent relations, the only inviolable principle in the region, but also the major obstacle to the creation of a Palestinian state. Obama announced in September 2010 that it would be created by 2011 (his predecessor, George W Bush, had promised it by 2005, then 2008).

With 17 months to go before the US presidential election, the chances of Obama realising his aim are slim. What is certain is that this September, when the UN Assembly meets to decide whether to recognise a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, the US will oppose it, as they have opposed any pressure on Israel, which has for years violated every UN resolution, including those voted by the US.

But the US runs the risk of being isolated, for the agreement between Hamas and Fatah, the creation of a single Palestinian government and Israel’s intransigence have created a more favourable context for Abbas’s demands. And it seems several European countries have decided to support the resolution. Washington could, once again, impose its veto. But a massive vote in favour by the General Assembly would at least allow the Palestinian state (not just the PLO) to be granted observer status at the UN and join UN organisations such as Unesco and the FAO, and put the issue of the occupation of a state (and not just “territories”) before international opinion and justice. A small step forward, but a step all the same.

=========================

5. Haaretz ,

June 07, 2011

False messiahs in Israel’s capital

Netanyahu’s propaganda machine swung into full gear again and transformed a right-wing general into a ‘traitor,’ ‘saboteur,’ and ‘gang leader.’

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/false-messiahs-in-israel-s-capital-1.366420

By Sefi Rachlevsky

This summer, 1,000 rockets a day are expected to land on the inhabitants of central Israel for an undetermined period of time, with thousands of casualties on the cards. This is the reality that emerges from the assessments of the minister for the homefront, the real front, Matan Vilnai and from the recent warnings voiced by newly retired Mossad chief Meir Dagan.

The future of the citizens of the center of the country is being determined in a more secure center. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose to devote so-called “Jerusalem Reunification Day,” marking the 44th anniversary of the capital, under its current status, in which Jews are citizens and non-Jews are not, to the country’s real center – Mercaz Harav Kook, a yeshiva and the center of religious settler messianic ideology.

On his perceived-as-victorious return from Washington, the Rome of today, Netanyahu was welcomed at the messianic core like an anointed king. Taking their seats with all the proper respect and giving their blessings were the police investigation refuseniks, the anointers – Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, the ethnic cleansing rabbi from Safed, and Rabbi Dov Lior, the senior messianic rabbi, the rabbi of the first Jewish underground, mass murderer Baruch Goldstein’s rabbi, the rabbi of the rulings declaring Yitzhak Rabin a “pursuer” and a “betrayer,” and the rabbi behind the book of incitement to murder of non-Jews, “Torat Hemlekh.”

In turn, Netanyahu addressed his anointers and their followers, declaring them to be his source of strength in his dealings with U.S. President Barack Obama. “You are the elite special ops unit that leads the nation.”

The travel advisory vis-a-vis the east voiced by Dagan is being heard at a critical moment. A historical drama is underway in the target country. A real battle for power is raging between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his sect on the one side, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the traditional regime on the other. The Revolutionary Guard is accusing the president and his followers of blatant messianism; Ahmadinejad is accused of having crowned himself the Mahdi – the Islamic Messiah.

He and his circle believe in apocalyptic messianism. Their connection to nuclear weaponry is dangerous. Despite their extremism, Khamenei and the Iranian establishment are a different story. In Pakistan, too, there are dozens of atomic bombs and Islamic extremists, but the pragmatism in the established system creates stability.

The fact that Ahmadinejad’s messianism looks to be on the losing side is crucial. Even those, like myself, who believe in considering dramatic measures to strike at the messiahs of the bomb must know that an Israeli attack would thwart the moves to remove the messianic faction from power. Moreover, as is the case with every messianic movement, Rabbi Akiva, a spiritual leader, is a problem; but the real apocalypse comes only when a Ben Koziva, an apocalyptic messiah, takes over as an anointed Bar Kochba, who led the doomsday rebellion (in his personal case, against the Romans one that brought tragedy upon his people.)

The change in Iran is not fortuitous. In 2003, the Iranian leadership suspended its nuclear program for two years, after assessing that the United States constituted a threat following its invasion of Iraq. Today, the sanctions and, even more so, the regional ferment against oppressive regimes are causing the establishments in the region, as in Iran, to distance apocalyptic messianic elements from power.

Only in Jerusalem is messianism growing stronger. The “crime and punishment” principle has a mythical role in all cultures. In messianic cultures, the upheaval of principles is the essence. When a crime and its punishment are reversed, a messianic sign is born. Netanyahu’s rise to power came under such a sign.

After the incitement demonstrations he orchestrated to chants of, “With blood and fire, we will expel Rabin,” led to the assassination of a hero and prime minister, the religious right expected punishment – of Netanyahu and of the settlement world. Instead, seven months after the incitement and the murder, the anointed of the right was elected.

And the drama is repeating itself: The modern-day Ben Koziva, Netanyahu, travels to Washington, enters the lion’s den and slaps the “black Muslim,” aka “president,” in the face, and walks away unscathed. Instead of being punished, he wins applause from the elected of the empire. Like Mordechai the Jew in the Purim story whose audacity led to his crowning, our Bar Kochba mounted the horse of public support.

The head-spinning from the messianic victory over the “crime and punishment” gave rise to Dagan’s warning. In his opinion, the repeated transition in messianism from the manic to the depressive will end in disaster. From Netanyahu’s current sense that he has the ability to ignore U.S. opposition to a strike against Iran, as well as its demand for peace talks based on the 1967 border lines, the leadership, when faced with the price of September, will get spooked and, in the service of messianism and the settlements, the strike on Iran will come to stop the peace on the basis of 1967.

When it was exposed, the Netanyahu propaganda machine swung into full gear again and transformed a right-wing general into a “traitor,” “saboteur,” “nutcase” and “gang leader” who is “trying to topple an elected prime minister.” However, the real gang leader can be seen sitting in the Prime Minister’s Residence. Every citizen and every friend of Israel must act to remove his hands from the steering wheel. Never have the words “a matter of life and death” been more accurate.

===================

6.LA Times,

June 5, 2011

The long view in Israel against the 1967 line

For decades, Israel’s greatest strategic minds have concluded that the Jewish state can safeguard its future only by retaining defensible borders beyond the 1967 line.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/05/opinion/la-oe-gold-israel-borders-20110605

|By Dore Gold

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent statement that Israel can’t defend itself with borders drawn along pre-1967 lines has been questioned in certain foreign policy circles. These critics have noted that Israel successfully fought two wars, in 1956 and in 1967, while based within those borders. And they have claimed that borders don’t matter as much in modern warfare. But Netanyahu is right.

The idea that the 1967 line isn’t defensible has actually been around for decades. Indeed, the architects of Israel’s national security doctrine reached that conclusion soon after the Six-Day War. The main strategic problem that Israel faced at that time was the enormous asymmetry between its small standing army, which needed to be reinforced with a timely reserve mobilization, and the large standing armies of its neighbors, which could form coalitions in times of tension and exploit Israel’s narrow geography with overwhelming numbers. True, Israel won in 1967, but the war also pointed out the country’s many vulnerabilities.

In the years following the war, the main advocate for creating new boundaries to replace the fragile lines from before 1967 was Yigal Allon, then Israel’s deputy prime minister. Allon had considerable military experience, having commanded the Palmach, the elite strike units of the Jewish forces, in the 1948 war that created Israel.

In 1976, while serving as foreign minister, Allon wrote an article for Foreign Affairs outlining the strategic logic for his position. He pointed out that the 1967 line was an armistice line from Israel’s war of independence and never intended as a final political boundary. Allon quoted the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 1967, Arthur Goldberg, who said that the 1967 line was neither secure nor recognized. Given this background, U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, backed by both the United States and Britain, only called for “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict” — but not from “all the territories.” The resolution also didn’t specify strict adherence to the pre-1967 line, advocating only that “secure and recognized” boundaries be established.

Under the Allon plan, Israel would include much of the Jordan Valley within its border. This area is not within the pre-1967 line, but it is essential to Israel’s defense. Because it rises from an area that was roughly 1,200 feet below sea level up a steep incline to mountaintops that are 2,000 to 3,000 feet above sea level, it serves as a formidable line of defense that would enable a small Israeli force to hold off much large conventional armies, giving Israel time to mobilize its reserves. Control of the Jordan Valley also allowed Israel to prevent the smuggling of the same kind of weaponry to the West Bank that has been entering the Gaza Strip: rockets, antiaircraft missiles and tons of explosives for terrorist attacks.

Today, it might be argued that after the demise of Saddam Hussein, Israel no longer has to worry about Iraqi expeditionary forces racing across Jordanian territory. Yet Israeli planning for the future cannot be based on a snapshot of reality in 2011. No one can guarantee what the orientation of Iraq will be five years from now: a budding pro-Western democracy or a heavily armed Iranian satellite subverting the security of its neighbors. The Saudis, it should be noted, are not taking any chances and are constructing a security fence along the border with Iraq.

Israeli vulnerability has regional implications. Should it become clear that the great Jordan Valley barrier that protected Israel for more than 40 years is no longer in Israeli hands, then the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan will become an increasingly attractive forward position for jihadi groups seeking to link up with Hamas to wage war against Israel. In 2007, when Al Qaeda activity in Iraq was at its height, the organization sought to build up a forward position in Irbid, Jordan, to recruit West Bank Palestinians. This effort was scuttled. But if Israel is back on the 1967 line, then the whole dynamic of regional security will change and the internal pressures on Jordan will undoubtedly increase.

Yitzhak Rabin, who promoted the Oslo agreements in 1993, understood better than anyone Israel’s strategic dilemmas in the years that followed. In October 1995, one month before he was assassinated, he addressed the Knesset and asked it to ratify the Oslo II interim agreement, which he had just signed at the White House in the presence of President Clinton. In his speech, he laid out how he saw the future borders of Israel. He made clear that Israel would not withdraw to the 1967 line. He insisted on keeping Jerusalem united. And finally, like his mentor Yigal Allon, Rabin stressed that Israel would hold on to the Jordan Valley “in the widest sense of that term.”

It is always possible to find Israelis who will say the 1967 line is just fine. But Israel’s greatest strategic minds since the Six-Day War have disagreed. They overwhelmingly have concluded that Israel can safeguard its future only if it retains defensible borders, which means redrawing the 1967 line to include parts of the West Bank crucial to the country’s survival.

Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, is president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

===================================

The fallacies in Dore Gold’s argument in “The long view in Israel against the 1967 line”

Dorothy Naor

Dore Gold’s main arguments in his op-ed of June 5^th, “The long view in Israel against the 1967 line” are 4, are tired and worn, and moreover are all based on the assumption that Israel’s future wars will be primarily ground warfare. This ignores the fact that today’s warfare and future wars between Israel and its neighbors are likely to be air warfare, either by bombers and drones (Israel’s principle tactic in the 2^nd Lebanese war) or missiles. Thus the argument that the 1967 line is indefensible is itself indefensible. Bombers and missiles fly over borders, tunnels go under them.

Let us consider each of the 4 main arguments individually —

1. “The main strategic problem that Israel faced at that time was the enormous asymmetry between its small standing army . . . and the large standing armies of its neighbors.”

The strategic problem in 1967 was far from the one existing today. Israel’s military might is now by far the largest and strongest in the area, constantly being beefed up by the United States $3 billion in military aid annually. This has not brought Israel security much less peace. See, for instance, http://mefn.org/2011/05/israel%E2%80%99s-changing-role-in-the-middle-east/ and Stephen M. Walt’s “The myth of Israel’s strategic genius,” which though published 2 years ago, is as accurate today as then and is an excellent analysis of the fallacy of placing emphasis and hope on Israel’s military might and the expertise of military strategists. http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/01/17/the_myth_of_israels_strategic_genius.

—————

2. “U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, backed by both the United States and Britain, only called for “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict” — but not from “all the territories.” . . . The resolution also didn’t specify strict adherence to the pre-1967 line, advocating only that “secure and recognized” boundaries be established.”

*True. But Gold fails to mention that the same resolution prior to the section on “withdrawal” makes clear its intention when it states “Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war”—in other words, Israel must leave whatever territories that it conquered. The definite article is totally unnecessary given the statement of inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/240/94/IMG/NR024094.pdf?OpenElement

.

3. “Control of the Jordan Valley also allowed Israel to prevent the smuggling of the same kind of weaponry to the West Bank that has been entering the Gaza Strip: rockets, antiaircraft missiles and tons of explosives for terrorist attacks.”

*Nonsense! If Israel should have learned one thing from its experience in Gaza it is that tunnels go under borders. Moreover, the same weapons could be transferred from other areas–Lebanon, for instance.

4. “It is always possible to find Israelis who will say the 1967 line is just fine. But Israel’s greatest strategic minds since the Six-Day War have disagreed. They overwhelmingly have concluded that Israel can safeguard its future only if it retains defensible borders, which means redrawing the 1967 line to include parts of the West Bank crucial to the country’s survival.”

See Stephen M. Walt as above, who makes short shrift of Israel’s ‘greatest strategic minds.’

The only way in which Israel can safeguard its future and that of Israelis is not by force but by recognizing Palestinian rights to justice (including the right of return) and Israeli rights to live in peace and security with Palestinians. The Palestinians will neither disappear nor give up their desire for justice and peace, to which they have at least as much right as do Jews.

============================

7. Haaretz ,

June 07, 2011

Between warm and fuzzy, and dangerous in the West Bank

Refugee camps, desert moonscapes, checkpoints and monasteries – all were part of an eye-opening bike trip around the West Bank, organized by a nonprofit Palestinian rights organization.

http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/between-warm-and-fuzzy-and-dangerous-in-the-west-bank-1.366516

By Olivia Snaije

We left Jenin early on our first day of cycling through Palestine. After an inaugural hill, we crossed a main thoroughfare where the terrain flattened, and whizzed along under a brilliant sun, the road lined with olive trees as well as multicolored fields of thistles, poppies, marigolds and daisies. Our guide, Nidal, drove ahead slowly, as if he were a Tour de France team car. At one point he stopped as a tortoise ambled across the road. Several other times during the week he would stop to pick some of us up when the rolling hills started to seem like mountains.

Around midday, hot and thirsty, we arrived at the village of Sebastia, whose archaeological ruins date back some 10,000 years, and where tradition says John the Baptist was beheaded.

The idea for the trip began when I met George Rishmawi in London three years ago. Rishmawi, a Palestinian from Beit Sahour, co-founded the International Solidarity Movement, and now runs the nonprofit Siraj Center with Michel Awad. Siraj promotes educational tourism, including walking tours around the West Bank, and is partnered with the Peace Cycle project, inaugurated in 2004 to raise awareness about the Palestinians’ plight. Now, the center is hoping to organize bicycle trips; ours was a trial run.

This spring had seemed to be the perfect time for the trip. I dragged along my son Lucas, admittedly to remove him from his teenage existence for a week. We came from our Paris home to Jerusalem in mid-April, where we met two other participants at the Jaffa Gate: George Snow, a self-described MAMIL (Middle-Aged Man in Lycra ) from Great Britain, who had recently taken up biking and had coordinated the tour with the Siraj Center, and Louise Rafkin, a writer, journalist and martial arts expert from San Francisco.

We took a taxi to Beit Sahour in the West Bank, just over the hill from Bethlehem, where we met Nidal, George Rishmawi’s brother. We then drove to Jenin to meet the fifth member of our party.

Davey Davis, 23, of Salt Lake City, was waiting for us with a broad smile. He had spent the day biking to Jenin from Nablus, where he has been working for the Palestinian NGO Project Hope for the past three months. A filmmaker, Arabic student and former bike messenger, Davey proved to be an invaluable companion as a bicycle technician, translator and inspiration to any teenager. He was also a serious rival to Palestinians in terms of friendliness.

Our first night in Jenin was spent, bizarrely, in a 90-room, luxury hotel called the Haddad Tourism Village, which had a fully functioning amusement park out front, packed with children and adults screaming with glee. Director and actor Juliano Mer-Khamis had been assassinated less than two weeks earlier in the Jenin refugee camp nearby, so it felt all the more incongruous to be having dinner outside under the full moon, the Ferris wheel spinning out front and stone lion statues guarding the hotel entrance.

Louise, who had heard about the bike trip from Jewish Voice for Peace in Oakland, had been learning about the Israeli occupation in the West Bank. She had arrived several days earlier and had spent most of her time with left-wing Israeli peace activists, most of whom had never been to the West Bank. She was still fuming about an Israeli man she had sat next to on a plane to Tel Aviv. When she told him about her bike trip, he asserted that Palestinians would kill her. That first night in Jenin, however, Louise was feeling nervous and vulnerable, as an American and a Jew.

Lucas and I were feeling well-fed and comfortable, having spent many holidays in Arab countries, including Lebanon, where my husband was born. Our family is a motley crew: My mother is a New York Jew who used to read I.F. Stone’s Weekly and has always preferred integration to segregation. Once, when asked what it means to be Jewish, she replied, “a vague nostalgia for poppy-seed cake.” My father is a Chinese-American art historian who lived in Alexandria, Egypt (where I was born ) in the 1960s, when he was studying Greek art from the Hellenistic period. My husband is a reluctant Christian from Beirut who has been sympathetic to the Palestinian cause since he was a teenager during Lebanon’s civil war. His mother was born in Jerusalem and lived in an apartment in the German Colony. She fled with her family during 1948 war and ended up in Beirut. She still had the key to her home, and often reminisced about her Jewish neighbor Miriam, with whom she played every afternoon after school. Her younger brother George played with Miriam’s brother, Yoram.

In Sebastia we cooled off and had an excellent lunch. Later, walking around the amphitheater and the ruins, the fields carpeted with yellow wildflowers, Siraj Center hiking guide Nedal Salwameh joined us and recounted with great relish the story of how King Herod had told Salome she could have anything she desired. John the Baptist’s head, she replied.

Leaving Sebastia, we cycled down a stunning, smaller road lined with Roman columns, and a little later passed the imposing Shavei Shomron checkpoint, now open. We arrived in Nablus late in the afternoon. The city is surprisingly vibrant given the destruction and occupation it has undergone. Louise and I were rushed to the Turkish baths in the heart of the old city in time to catch the women’s hour.

The Ottoman-era Hammam al-Shifa was heavily damaged during the Israeli invasion in 2002, but has since been repaired, complete with the original domes and hot tiles. We were given the pure olive oil soap that Nablus is so famous for, which makes one’s hair wonderfully soft. While waiting to be massaged, we ran into a group of towel-clad British and American writers and publishers. They were part of the PalFest literary festival, an annual cultural road show whose heavyweight patrons included Chinua Achebe, Seamus Heaney and the late Harold Pinter.

Book readings and discussions were held that evening in the leafy courtyard of the timeworn Sheikh Qasem cafe. We later met the bubbly and eloquent trade unionist-cum-guide Majdi Shella, who outlined the importance of establishing a democratic and free civil society, “so that when we have a country, things will be good … we do not want a Taliban nation.” He stated: “Our main battle is staying human. Even with all the struggling and violence.”

Walking around the old city, Louise, who had relaxed by then, began to feel nervous again. She was convinced Palestinians could tell she was Jewish just by looking at her. That’s silly, I told her. What about Majdi? His name could be Bernie Cohen. You’re right, she said, he looks just like my uncle.

Setting out early the next day, we sailed through the often-tense Hawara checkpoint south of Nablus and rode up into the hills, in an area particularly dense with settlers.

Terraced hills

There are approximately 124 settlements and about 100 outposts in the West Bank. We were near the settlement of Itamar, where the Fogel family was recently murdered, and the village of Awarta, where two Palestinian teenagers had allegedly confessed to the deed. It was the only region where we felt any tension at all – we were asked several times by Palestinians we passed whether we were settlers.

As we biked up into beautiful terraced hills of olive groves, we passed a herdsman with a flock of handsome goats in soft grays, blacks and beiges. In this peaceful landscape there were signs of of the occupation in the ever-present Israel Defense Forces watchtower and some settler provocation – graffiti or huge metal Stars of David. Biking up the last and particularly difficult hill of the day, George, who had revealed a distressing inclination for off-color remarks and jokes, muttered, “Bloody hills – let’s get the Israelis to level them.”

That night we stayed in the Christian village of Taibeh, famous for its beer factory, where we were received by the tiny, French-born Mother Marie-Martine in the Sainte Croix de Jerusalem convent. She delighted Lucas by recounting how she and a few other nuns, out looking for a place to picnic, had inadvertently stumbled into the huge IDF outpost on top of the hill overlooking the village, and were told to leave immediately.

By then Louise and Nidal were friends and were behaving like kindergarten classmates, with Nidal teasing Louise, and Louise punching him on the arm. Davey, Lucas and I gravitated happily around them, while George wandered off doing his own thing. It was in this light and happy spirit that we coasted blissfully through a desert moonscape down below sea level to the historic city of Jericho.

An uber-modern, red, suspended cable car took us up to the Mount of Temptation, where wizened Greek monks patrolled the monastery of the same name. The next day we cycled down the empty road through the Judean wilderness, past a lone camel and Nabi Musa, which one Muslim tradition recognizes as the tomb of the prophet Moses.

At a turnoff point, a Siraj Center member piled the bikes into the car and left for Beit Sahour. Happy to take a break from our bikes, we followed Nidal into the desert for a three-hour hike to the glorious Mar Saba, a Greek Orthodox monastery founded in 483 C.E. and home to 20 monks. Louise and I sat outside with a group of Cypriot women tourists clad in black under the olive trees, barred from entering due to our gender. We took a taxi back to Beit Sahour, where we were to stay for our last two nights at the spotless Arab Women’s Union guesthouse, run by Milada Khair, a gentle, pint-sized, hyper-energetic woman who did her laundry around midnight. The next day we abandoned our bicycles and piled into the car with Nidal, headed for Hebron. After the empty northern West Bank, the area between Bethlehem and Hebron was teeming with IDF watchtowers and futuristic-looking settlements.

We toured the beautiful old city of Hebron with Walid Abu-Halawa of the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee. Hebron really brought it all home – we saw and felt up close how the Palestinians were muzzled and oppressed.

At the entrance to the old city were IDF soldiers, whose jeeps were parked in the center of the square. They monitored the comings and goings of inhabitants, stopping nearly all the boys and men. Everywhere we looked there were soldiers posted on roofs of buildings; they were visible all over the place, their weapons trained at passersby. At ever corner there were two or three propped against the wall, near food stalls, clothing stores or next to old men sitting on plastic chairs and smoking.

According to B’Tselem human rights organization, more than 75 percent of all local Palestinian businesses have closed since settlements have taken root in the old city.

We walked around there in a daze, acting as if it were normal to see IDF soldiers, weighed down with military paraphernalia and assault rifles at chest level, every 10 meters. “Boys with toys,” scoffed Abu-Halawa.

‘Friends with a Jew’

Wire mesh over our heads had been put up by Palestinians to protect them from rubbish and excrement that settlers throw down on them from the buildings above. Even Nidal, who had brought along his 9-year-old son, was shocked to tears. The checkpoint leading to the partitioned Ibrahimi mosque, known as the Tomb of the Patriarchs, was closed. Streets were sealed off and made into dead ends by barbed-wire fences.

In the market, products were attractively piled up; brightly colored embroidered dresses and bedcovers hung in front of the clothing shops. All dressed up and nowhere to go, I thought. Ever-optimistic schoolchildren danced past the soldiers, while 126 CCTV cameras, according to Abu-Halawa, installed in the one-square kilometer stared down at us from rooftops and street corners.

In the car on the way back from Hebron Louise timidly and only half jokingly asked Nidal, “So, what’s it like to be friends with a Jew?”

“Lovely friend,” he said softly.

We said good-bye to Nidal that afternoon; it was time for him to get back to his family. Afterward Louise sobbed in her room, devastated by the thought that so many people retain an image of Palestinians as hostile and violent.

That night Davey and Lucas played table soccer in a crowded hall with other boys from Beit Sahour, while a man made falafel in a corner. Our last morning we packed our bags into a new car driven by a Palestinian with an Israeli ID who could bring us through the checkpoint in Bethlehem and then take the bicycles back to Beit Sahour.

“I wish I could come with you,” said Milada’s assistant wistfully.

As we cycled past the wall and through the checkpoint in Bethlehem, we had the distinct impression of leaving somewhere warm and fuzzy, and going into what seemed to us to be an aggressive, dangerous world.

In response to my e-mail of thanks to a family in Taibeh who had us over for dinner, the wife wrote: “Thank you for coming. Such visits are important for us, it is showing us that we’re not alone. Hope many people from all over the world do the same. It gives us the opportunity to speak about our lives and the real situation we live in. Since you visit our home, you must feel that you have friends in this country … Best regards Maaddi Family.”

Olivia Snaije is a freelance journalist based in Paris, who frequently writes about the Middle East.

Flash: what is happening in Yarmuk Camp near Damascus?

NOVANEWS

I have been receiving live updates from friends and comrades about the developments in Yarmuk Camp. The latest is that the Syrian Army is surrounding the camp. Some say that it all started when people protested outside the office of the PFLP-GC in the camp: some parents of murdered children and men (murdered by the fire of the terrorist Zionist regime in occupied Palestine) were protesting against the role of the PFLP-GC in the protests in Majdal Shams.

But an eyewitness at the protests told me that the Palestinian organizations were not present in the protests: that the Syrian regime did not want the Palestinian organizations to mobilize for fear of a big massive protests, although Syrian TV was present. But some were not happy about the role of the PFLP-GC, and some indicated that some fighters at the office in Yarmuk fired at the protesters. Apparently, that resulted in an armed clash and that gun fire can still be heard at this hour.

The Syrian Army is surrounding the camp but others are saying that the Army was called in for help by the PFLP-GC but that Army is not intervening to support the organization for some suspicious reasons. All seems murky at this hour. The Syrian Army is busing killing Syrian people but may have time to kill some Palestinians too.
PS No matter what, the responsibility for yesterday’s terrorist crimes against civilian protesters should be squarely blamed on the terrorist Israeli army. No question about that.
PSS Eyewitnesses in Syria complained to me about the role of the Syrian army and security forces. How they stood idly by while the Israeli terrorist soldiers were committing their crimes. The Syrian Army is very much like the cowardly Lebanese Army in that regard. These are armies that are only heroic against civilians (in fairness to the Lebanese Army, it is also afraid of civilians).

NOVANEWS

Why is the Federal Reserve forking over $220 million in bailout money to the wives of two Morgan Stanley bigwigs?

by Matt Taibbi

Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?

This article appears in the April 28, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The issue will be available on newsstands and in the online archive April 15.

Wall Street’s Big Win

RS Politics Daily: Political news and commentary from Rolling Stone writers and editors

Source: Rolling Stone

NOVANEWS

by Stephen Lendman

On April 10, Ollanta Humala received most support among five presidential candidates, but not a majority. Eliminated were former neoliberal President Alejandro Toledo, his former economic minister and Lima mayor Luis Castaneda Lossio, and former Prime Minister Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.

Discredited and now imprisoned former President Alberto Fujimori’s daughter Keiko proceeded to a runoff with him.

On June 6, New York Times writer Simon Romero headlined, “Ex-Officer Set to Win Narrow Victory in Peru,” saying:

Incomplete returns show him heading for victory, rebuking Peru’s “economic model that has driven (its) robust growth, (but left) millions of (its) citizens….mired in poverty….”

Washington Post writer Juan Forero called it an “unhappy choice,” saying winner Humala openly admires “Venezuela’s firebrand president, Hugo Chavez,” then quoted Inter-American Dialogue head Michael Shifter claiming neither candidate is “committed to democracy.”

Reuters said “(l)eftwing former army (Lt. Col.) Ollanta Humala claimed victory” in Sunday’s elections, “strik(ing) a conciliatory tone as investors and the opposition worry he will ruin a long economic boom.”

Wall Street Journal writer Matt Moffett said his win “rais(es) a cloud of uncertainty over what has been one of the world’s most dynamic economies” by depriving Peru’s poor for its rich as well as Western business interests.

Succeeding incumbent Alan Garcia, Xinhua’s English language site said independent election monitors declared Humala the winner, getting over a 51% majority with more than 90% of ballots counted. Exit polls, in fact, had him winning with over 52%.

On July 28, he’ll be inaugurated for a five-year term until 2016. How center-left he’ll govern is very much in doubt given the record of others in the region, including Brazil’s Lula da Silva, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, and others pursuing corporate friendly agendas.

In fact, in his book “Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire,” James Petras said former unionist leader Lula actually extended his predecessor’s privatizations and restrictive budget policies.

Instead of change, he delivered betrayal. Even before elected, he signed a letter of understanding with the IMF, promising business as usual by agreeing to full debt service, as well as pro-business neoliberal policies.

Morales also painfully disappointed by maintaining neoliberal fiscal austerity, economic stability, and other pro-corporate policies. Other regional leaders followed similar agendas, including Ecuador’s Correa and Argentina’s Nestor Kirchner, failing to deliver real change.

So far, Peruvians believe Humala represents more populist interests than continuity. They may be very disappointed despite promises to increase taxes and royalties on mining companies to fund social programs, as well as stronger labor rights in a nation having few.

Reuters, in fact, said he’s made a concerted effort to “calm foreign investors,” saying he’ll honor the “independence of the central bank and the legal securiy of contracts signed with private enterprises.”

“From the moment these were signed, they cannot be unilaterally questioned or revised, except when specific clauses allowed for in (them) or when flagrant illegality preceded (their) adoption.”

A Final Comment

A mid-day June 6 Reuters report headlined, “Left-winger Humala wins Peru election, markets plunge,” saying:

Humala’s vow to share Peru’s wealth with its poor sent “financial markets plummet(ing) on fears (he’ll) ruin the economy.”

Widening his slim lead, it’s expected to increase as poor rural returns come in, areas where he’s strongest. As a result, “Peru’s stock market sank about 11 percent, while the sol currency fell 1.5 percent,” prompting central bank efforts to curb it.

Addressing thousands of cheering supporters, Humala said he’ll “install a government of national unity,” adding that he wants “economic growth with social inclusion (to) build a more just Peru for everybody.”

Calming investors, Humala’s top economic advisor and possible new finance minister, Kurt Burneo, warned speculators betting against Peru would get burned, saying:

“Those speculating now are simply going to lose their money because everything is very solid,” suggesting little change from current policies.

In fact, Humala’s likely central bank head, Felix Jimenez, added:

“Our economic proposals are totally sensible: to maintain macroeconomic equilibrium, consolidate growth and create conditions for private domestic and foreign investment growth.”

If both men run Peru’s economy, expect today’s market plunge to be a buying opportunity for savvy investors seeing a chance for quick profits, not a red flag to shift funds elsewhere.

NOVANEWS

An Exposed Schmekel Signals Beginning of End to Political Lying

Memo to Politicians: You Lie You Politically Die

by Johnny Punish

OK, yesterday we saw Rep. Weiner fall on his media sword admitting that it was his schmeckel that was posted on Twitter and that he was caught lying about sending it. And it got me thinking…….

What has changed is that liars are being caught daily now. The minute they lie the public posts it on the social networks and boom! – Everyone knows about it.

The public flashes the evidence before they get the friggin’ denials out and bam! – The politician is shamed.

Unfortunately, politicians like Rep. Weiner are still from the older generation that just does NOT “get it” and their contempt is just a crashing bore.

Okay, but on a very serious note, what’s really happening here is the beginning of the end of an era. And that’s the good news.

The people are sick and tired of bad government. We are sick of the lies from politicians.

They need to take a lesson from the most popular woman on the planet who is getting the most “votes”. That would be Lady Gaga.

Why? We know all why!

Frankly it’s the system that is now under indictment and lying, one of their gambits for perpetuating and gaming the system, is on its way out because now, when they lie, they politically die. And that’s the message of what’s going on here. This is a fundamental paradigm shift.

So politicians, not just in the USA but around the world, beware because we are on you like flies on shite.

Mubarek got his and many others will fall quickly now! Exposure is painfully quick now; in minutes!

You take money for fake wars! We expose you! You don’t honor your constituents! Exposed! You tell us you support an issue and turn and vote against it because money purchased you, you get exposed! We are the global cyber paparazzi and you’re on 24/7.

So get with the program and become a real genuine servant of the people like Lady Gaga, wear your extroverted gowns and funky hats, smoke your pot and drink your whisky and start being real because fake is out!

NOVANEWS

by Susan Lindauer,

former US Asset covering Libya at the United Nations

Flashback to Serbia

The events are eerily reminiscent of Serbia’s conflict in the Balkans with its notorious rape camps— Except today NATO itself is perpetrating these War Crimes—as if they have learned the worst terror tactics from their enemies.

Their actions would be categorized as War Crimes, just like Serb leader, Slobadon Milosevic—except that NATO won’t allow itself to face prosecution. According to NATO, International Law is for the other guy.

And they do see. In Washington, Congress likes to pretend that America has not become involved in the day to day actualities of military planning. However refugees have observed U.S, British, French and Israeli soldiers standing by as rebel soldiers attack civilians.

Tribal Leaders Condemn British Aggression

Here’s what those 2,000 Tribal Leaders had to say about British aggression, in a statement approved unanimously on June 3. Sheikh Ali, head of the Tribal Leaders, delivered it to Joanna Moriarty and other members of the global fact finding mission:

“The Tribal Leaders of Libya demand that all acts of aggression, by the British and NATO, against the Libyan People stop immediately. June 3, 2011″

Tribal Backlash

The Libyan people are fighting back. This report arrived from Tripoli today. It is not edited, and describes a backlash in tribal warfare from the City of Darna in the East, where the rebellion is supposed to be strongest:

The Fight for Misurata

Though attacks are widespread, some of the worst abuses are occurring in Misurata. The City has the only mega port in Libya, and handles transportation for the country, including the largest oil and gas depots. NATO will stop at nothing to take the City.

Refugees report that the Israeli Star of David flag was draped over the largest Mosque in Misurata on the second day of fighting, actions guaranteed to humiliate and antagonize the local population.

Who could be proud of such “allies?” Not the Libyan people, surely.

Nobody’s fooled by NATO’s story that Gadhaffi’s the guilty party. We know that Washington, Britain, France, Italy— and Israel are the real culprits.

The murdered women of Misurata shall have justice. NATO can count on it.

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This article can be reprinted in whole or part with attribution to the author

Susan Lindauer covered Libya at the United Nations as a U.S. Asset from 1995 to 2003, and started talks for the Lockerbie Trial. She is the author of Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq.

You take money for fake wars! We expose you!
You don’t honor your constituents! Exposed!
You tell us you support an issue and turn and vote against it because money purchased you, you get exposed!
We are the global cyber paparazzi and you’re on 24/7.