Progressive Calendar 01.04.09 | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: David Shove (shove001tc.umn.edu) | |
Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2009 22:35:17 -0800 (PST) |
P R O G R E S S I V E C A L E N D A R 01.04.09 1. Atheists Talk 1.04 9am 2. Stillwater vigil 1.04 1pm 3. Police brutality 1.04 3pm 4. Single-payer rally 1.05 11:30am 5. Gaza peace rally 1.05 1pm 6. Peace walk 1.05 6pm RiverFalls WI 7. CAMpaign Gordon 1.05 7pm 8. Uhcan-mn 1.05 7pm 9. Adrian Croft Adrian - Thousands protest in Europe at Gaza offensive 10. Anna in Palestine - Gaza massacres; the time is now 11. Nir Rosen - Gaza: the logic of colonial power 12. James Petras - Politics of an Israeli extermination campaign 13. ed - Zionism (poem) --------1 of x-------- From: August Berkshire <augustberkshire [at] gmail.com> Subject: Atheists Talk 1.04 9am Minnesota Atheists - "Atheists Talk" radio show. Sunday, January 4, 2009, 9-10 a.m. Central Time Michael Newdow & Inauguration Lawsuit On Dec. 30, 2008, Michael Newdow filed suit in U.S. District Court to stop prayers and religious invocations at Barack Obama's Jan. 20, 2009 presidential inauguration. Newdow's lawsuit, titled "Newdow v. Roberts," included group plaintiffs such as the American Humanist Association, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Atheist Alliance International, and Minnesota Atheists. The lawsuit also featured individual plaintiffs, such as Michael Newdow, Dan Barker, Annie Laurie Gaylor, and Minnesota Atheists president August Berkshire. Michael Newdow will be our guest for the entire hour to discuss his latest attempt to uphold the wall of separation between state and church. We welcome questions during the program at (952) 946-6205 or radio [at] MinnesotaAtheists.org. "Atheists Talk" airs live on AM 950 KTNF in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. To stream live, go to http://www.am950ktnf.com/listen. Podcasts of past shows are available at http://MinnesotaAtheists.org or through iTunes. Program Notes are available at http://MinnesotaAtheists.org. D.C. Examiner: "Atheist will attempt to boot God from inauguration" http://www.dcexaminer.com/local/123008-Atheist_will_attempt_to_boot_God_from_inauguration.html Washington Post: "Atheists to Challenge Prayer at Inauguration" http://voices.washingtonpost.com/inauguration-watch/2008/12/atheists_to_challenge_prayer_a.html CNN: "Lawsuit seeks to take 'so help me God' out of inaugural" http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/31/inauguration.lawsuit/index.html The Minnesota Independent: "Minnesotans join suit to stop religious events at inauguration" http://minnesotaindependent.com/21571/minnesotans-join-suit-to-stop-religious-events-at-inauguration "Newdow v. Roberts" Lawsuit (pdf download) http://mnatheists.org/images/stories/Newdow_v_Roberts_Lawsuit.pdf "Newdow v. Roberts" Appendix A (pdf download) http://mnatheists.org/images/stories/Newdow_v_Roberts_Appendix_A.pdf "Newdow v. Roberts" Appendix B (pdf download) http://mnatheists.org/images/stories/Newdow_v_Roberts_Appendix_B.pdf "Newdow v. Roberts" Appendix C (pdf download) http://mnatheists.org/images/stories/Newdow_v_Roberts_Appendix_C.pdf "Newdow v. Roberts" Appendix D (pdf download) http://mnatheists.org/images/stories/Newdow_v_Roberts_Appendix_D.pdf --------2 of x-------- From: scot b <earthmannow [at] comcast.net> Subject: Stillwater vigil 1.04 1pm A weekly Vigil for Peace Every Sunday, at the Stillwater bridge from 1- 2 p.m. Come after Church or after brunch ! All are invited to join in song and witness to the human desire for peace in our world. Signs need to be positive. Sponsored by the St. Croix Valley Peacemakers. If you have a United Nations flag or a United States flag please bring it. Be sure to dress for the weather . For more information go to <http://www.stcroixvalleypeacemakers.com/>http://www.stcroixvalleypeacemakers.com/ For more information you could call 651 275 0247 or 651 999 - 9560 --------3 of x-------- From: James Mayer <jmayer [at] academymayer.com> Subject: Police brutality 1.04 3pm Police Brutality: We can end it! January 4, 2009 Join in THE CONVERSATION. TUNE YOUR RADIO TO: Of the People this Sunday, January 4th at 3 p.m. on AM950 KTNF (formerly Air America Minnesota) with Host James Mayer. Or stream us: http://www.am950ktnf.com/listen Call-in line: 952-946-6205 Police brutality is terrorism at the heart of our communities. It strikes at our democratic rights as well as our personal security. Join me, James Mayer, with guest Michelle Gross of Communities United Against Police Brutality as we talk about recent local examples, the broader threat to Democracy and how We the People can stand together to defeat Police Brutality by the Rule of Law on The Program of the People this Sunday afternoon at 3 on AM950KTNF. Threats to the health, strength and endurance of healthy democracy, society and environment don't go away for the weekend. Neither does the bad news the corporate media establishment uses to make us feel alienated from one another, shocked, depressed, or even helpless, and to distract us from real priorities, realistic solutions and positive actions we can take together. But for a few weekend moments you can refresh and regenerate your energy with James Mayer on Of the People, a place to go for good news that the "news" corporations monopolizing our airwaves seldom let through: people taking action together, on real solutions. We hope you will tune your radio to 950 AM and join us not only in your car, but at home as well, or stream us:http://www.am950ktnf.com/listen (You will be asked to put in a MN zip code). Again, when we're on-air we invite you to call us at 952-946-6205 or e-mail us at info [at] jamesmayer.org Off-air, you can reach us by calling James Mayer at 651-238-3740, by e-mail at info [at] jamesmayer.org, or by U.S. mail, address: James Mayer, 970 Raymond Ave, St. Paul, MN 55114. If you can find a moment, forward this message to "add voice and strength to our contribution to government of, by and for the PEOPLE ". This is a call to action to send this to your contacts and friends, asking them to do the same and join us on: Of the People this Sunday, January 4th at 3 P.M. on AM 950, KTNF. --------4 of x-------- From: Kip Sullivan <kiprs [at] usinternet.com> Subject: Single-payer rally 1.05 11:30am HEALTHCARE 2009 KICKOFF RALLY Healthcare advocates, trade organizations and legislators will come together on January 5, 2009 at the state capitol for a kickoff Rally to promote dramatic healthcare change in Minnesota. The Rally for the Minnesota Health Plan (MHP) will start at 11:30 a.m. and go until 12:30 p.m. in the state capitol rotunda in St. Paul. This unique mix of groups, individuals and legislators will be coming together in support of the MHP legislation which was introduced in 2008. With healthcare costs continuing their dramatic rise and economic situations worsening, now is the time to address one of the biggest problems facing individuals and businesses alike; the unmanageable burden of healthcare expense. Proven to be the leading cause of personal bankruptcies in this country, excessive healthcare expenses need to be reined in so as to protect the lives and livelihoods of Minnesota's citizens. The Minnesota Health Plan will help do this by decoupling healthcare from employment and by eliminating excessive administrative waste by removing the "middleman" (HMO's and insurance companies). This move will also allow for comprehensive coverage for all Minnesotans without imposing co-pays or deductibles and will expand the network of health providers in the state by stabilizing and, in most cases, improving the reimbursement rates for providers. Speakers who will be on hand for the Rally: Vicki Sanville - Greater MN Health Care Coalition (gmhcc.org) Prof. Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer (U.S. Senate Candidate) Sen. John Marty (MN Senate Author) Rep. David Bly (MN House co-author) Nancy Breymeier - MN Independent Business Alliance (metroiba.org) Doug Peterson - MN Farmers Union (mfu.org) Charlotte Fisher - MN Nurses Association (mnnurses.org) Dr. Ann Settgast - Physicians for a National Health Plan - MN (pnhpminnesota.org) Dan McGrath - TakeAction MN (takeactionminnesota.org) Barb Person - MN League of Women Voters (lwvmn.org) Dr. Lisa Nilles - MN Universal Health Care Coalition (muhcc.org) Dave Bicking or Rhoda Gilman - Green Party of MN (mngreens.org) Zev Alony - Universal Health Care Action Network - MN (uhcan-mn.org) Craig Brooks - Great Northern States Health Care Initiative ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: TIM BURKHARDT ~> 888-694-5055 (TOLL-FREE) 320-630-3514 (CELL) tsb [at] gmhcc.org BUDDY ROBINSON ~> 218-727-0207 buddy [at] citizensfed.org --------5 of x-------- From: wammdirector [at] mtn.org Subject: Gaza peace rally 1.05 1pm Pro-Peace Rally: addressing the Massacre of Gaza so that the killing stops Monday, January 5, 1:00 p.m. Minnesota State Capitol, 75 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., St. Paul. Support Muslim student initiated-rally. There will also be a candle light vigil outside the Capitol at night, as well. In the words of the student organizers, ?This is the chance to truly make your voice heard. Please try to be at the demonstration so that, as a community, we can: condemn the attacks on Gazans, mourn the innocent lives lost and urge the U.S. to promote diplomacy rather than violence. If we don't speak up now, then when??? There will be guest speakers present.***PLEASE WEAR ALL BLACK!!!*** Bring signs and posters with you if you have any!? We were asked to circulate the following actions, as well: ?Sign the Council on Islamic Relations (CAIR)'s Gaza Peace and Justice Petition http://petition.cair.com/ Forward the link to friends, family, anybody you know, Muslims and non-Muslims alike. This petition will be referenced when CAIR-MN meets with congressmen and senators to discuss the Gaza issue. If anyone is interested in the congressional meetings, please email CAIR-MN at info [at] mn.cair.com. Send an e-mail to President-elect Obama. Go to change.gov. Make "Gaza" the subject. Send an email to President Bush: comments [at] whitehouse.gov or call him at Comments: 202-456-1111. Ask both Obama and Bush what they would do if their daughters lived in Gaza. Hundreds of innocent children, men, and women in Gaza are being wounded and massacred by Israel's senseless and brutal air raids on neighborhoods, houses, universities, and mosques. Children walking in the wrong place at the wrong time had their lives taken away, and their parents are suffering with more pain and despair as an endless stream of Apache helicopters are rained down on Gaza with no end in sight. These people are depending on us to make a difference. It's time we do something about this. It's time we make our voices heard. ANYTHING you do to make your voice heard can make a small difference?. ? --------6 of x-------- From: Nancy Holden <d.n.holden [at] comcast.net> Subject: Peace walk 1.05 6pm RiverFalls WI River Falls Peace and Justice Walkers. We meet every Monday from 6-7 pm on the UWRF campus at Cascade Ave. and 2nd Street, immediately across from "Journey" House. We walk through the downtown of River Falls. Contact: d.n.holden [at] comcast.net. Douglas H Holden 1004 Morgan Road River Falls, Wisconsin 54022 --------7 of x-------- From: Cam Gordon <CamGordon333 [at] msn.com> Subject: CAMpaign Gordon 1.05 7pm Monday, January 5, 7-9pm, the Second Moon www.camgordon.org Green Party ward 2 Mpls --------8 of x-------- From: Joel Albers <joel [at] uhcan-mn.org> Subject: Uhcan-mn 1.05 7pm Note Location change this time only. The next UHCAN-MN mtg will be at Joel Albers home, 3500 35th Ave S, Mpls. Directions: Going south on Hiawatha ( say from downtown) take a left on 35th street (going east) until you reach 35th avenue. It's at that intersection. There is a single-payer sign in front and multi-colored lights will be on. The next UHCAN-MN organizing meeting is Monday, Jan 5, 7PM, --------9 of x-------- Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2009 15:45:38 -0500 From: moderator [at] PORTSIDE.ORG Subject: Massive Protest Sweep Europe at Gaza Offensive Thousands Protest in Europe at Gaza Offensive By Adrian Croft Adrian Reuters January 3, 2008 http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_palestinians_israel_protests LONDON Thousands of chanting, banner-waving demonstrators marched in cities across Europe on Saturday to demand a halt to Israeli bombing in the Gaza Strip. Protests were held in Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Turkey as the Israeli offensive entered its second week, and before Israel confirmed ground forces had entered Gaza. Israeli Arabs held a protest march and Kuwaitis also took to the streets, a day after bigger Middle East rallies. In Paris, police said more than 20,000 demonstrators, many wearing Palestinian keffiyeh headscarves, marched through the city center chanting slogans such as "Israel murderer!" and waving banners demanding an end to the air attacks. Similar protests were planned in some 30 other towns. London police said more than 10,000 people staged a noisy march and rally to urge an end to an Israeli offensive against Hamas militants that has killed at least 435 Palestinians. In many cities people waved shoes -- recalling the action of an Iraqi journalist who hurled footwear at U.S. President George W. Bush in Baghdad last month in a symbolic insult. British demonstrators threw dozens of shoes into the street as they passed the gated entrance to Downing Street, where Prime Minister Gordon Brown lives, and shouted angrily at a line of 40 police officers on guard there. "Come to get your shoes Gordon," one woman shouted as other marchers directed chants of "Shame on you" at Brown. A spokesman said Brown had spoken again to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Saturday and was pressing hard for an immediate ceasefire. Leading the march were singer Annie Lennox, politicians Tony Benn and George Galloway and comic Alexei Sayle. Demonstrators carried Palestinian flags and placards with slogans such as "End the siege on Gaza" and "Stop the massacre." Israel says rocket attacks from Gaza by Hamas Islamists must stop before it halts operations, but the attacks continued on Saturday. Four Israelis have been killed by Hamas rockets since the offensive began. ANGER AT WESTERN REACTION Paul Mukerji, 42, from Birmingham, acknowledged Israel had security reasons but called its action disproportionate. "The best way for peace for Palestinians and Israelis is to end the occupation," he said. Ali Saeed, 24, from Luton, said Western governments had failed to condemn Israel's actions. "What's going on in Gaza is not right ... It's not a coincidence that it's going on Iraq, in Chechnya, in Kashmir. It's just about going on everywhere. It's almost a direct insult to every single Muslim," he said. Greek police said they fired teargas at protesters outside the Israeli embassy in Athens. Protesters burned flags and effigies, hurled stones at the embassy and clashed with police during a march by about 5,000 people, they said. Tens of thousands of people marched in the town of Sakhnin, northern Israel, on Saturday in one of the biggest rallies held by Israeli Arabs in recent years, Israeli media reported. Calling Israeli leaders "war criminals," the demonstrators demanded an end to the onslaught on Gaza, they said. Around 3,500 people marched in Berlin and 4,000 in the western city of Duesseldorf, police said. Hundreds joined a protest in central Dublin. "I just thought the fact that 300-400 people would've been bombed, would've been killed, was extremely wrong," said Andy Defaoite, a 27-year-old teacher in the Irish capital. Several thousand people demonstrated in Ankara in a second day of protests in Turkey. In smaller protests in Istanbul, demonstrators carried baby dolls smeared with fake blood, and images of Rottweiler dogs branded with the word "Israel" savaging human beings. More than 1,000 demonstrators marched through Kuwait City, with banners reading "Gaza will not die" and "We want a free Gaza." Other protests of at least 1,000 people took place in Madrid, Amsterdam, Milan and Turin. (Additional reporting by Laure Bretton, Noah Barkin, Raissa Kasolowsky, George Hatzidakis, Andras Gergely, Jonathan Gleave, Ulf Laessing, Silvia Aloisi, James Mackenzie, Aaron Gray-Block) --------10 of x-------- From: travelinganna <anna.baltzer [at] gmail.com> To: annas_peacework_palestine [at] yahoogroups.com Subject: [Anna in Palestine] Gaza Massacres; The Time is Now Please, everyone, stop what you're doing. This is not just any report from Palestine, but the worst in my lifetime, the worst in 40 years. At this moment, Israel is raining bombs down on Gaza, an enclosed tiny area that is home to 1.5 million men, women, and children, most of them innocent civilians. This space is tightly sealed by Israel, which constantly denies Gazans electricity, food, medicine, and the ability to leave. Gaza is one big prison being bombed from above. The death toll is up to 428 in the past 7 days. That's more than the number of Israelis killed in the last 7 years. This is what I would call a massacre. Yes, more Palestinians killed in 7 days than Israelis in 7 years, and yet no comments from President Bush or President-elect Obama. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice places blame solely on Hamas for holding Gazans "hostage," as if Israel's actions were beyond judgment. Would Rice ever respond to a Palestinian attack on Israelis by blaming the Israeli government for holding its citizens hostage with their army's violence? I am writing you from Jordan. I arrived the day after the attacks began. The day before they began, my friend and colleague Hannah had asked me to deliver a book of poetry to her friend Summer in Gaza, hoping I'd manage to make it on a Free Gaza boat. Since then, these boats bringing unarmed witnesses to Gaza (www.freegaza.org) have been attacked in international waters, and Summer's house has been blown to pieces, her brother almost died under the rubble, and her father desperately needs an operation but the hospitals are overflowing. In every home or shop I enter in Jordan, people are huddled watching the stories unfold: a family killed in their home, a university destroyed, a pharmacy blown to pieces, countless bloody babies screaming or worse, silent. I wonder if people in the US are also seeing the bodies and faces or, as I fear, only some rubble and angry Gazans. The day after attacks began, Israel's largest newspaper Yediot Aharonot covered almost the entire front page with the words, "500,000 Israelis Under Attack!" In smaller font, one could learn that in addition to 1 Israeli, 225 Palestinians had also been killed. It was surreal. Consider where you are getting your news, and what is not being told to you. For example, the stated purpose of the attack is to drive out Hamas, i.e. to kill anyone in Hamas and scare the rest into turning against Hamas. Not only does this tactic not work (brutality fosters violence), but it clearly fits the definition of terrorism: unlawful violence intended to frighten or coerce a people or government in order to achieve a political or ideological agenda. Israel is operating as a terrorist state in the true sense of the word. Hamas is also a terrorist organization by this definition, so it would be easy to simplify the conflict as "an endless cycle of violence" were there no historical context. But there is a context, and there are alternatives: Let us remember that Hamas was elected after an intentional shift away from violence towards a mainstream political agenda. Hamas stopped its attacks and began offering the Palestinian people an alternative to the corruption of Fatah. Hamas was democratically elected and immediately strangled by a US-led boycott, preventing the government from functioning. Hamas continued to hold to its one-sided ceasefire (totaling almost 2 years), meanwhile the US and Israel began to train and arm the opposition government, Fatah, which they preferred. In response to plans for a coup in Gaza (anti-democratic takeover by the US-supported opposition government), Hamas secured its control (again, democratically-elected whether or not we like them) over Gaza, and continues to offer Israel an indefinite ceasefire - no more violent attacks, period - if Israel simply complies with international law. The Arab League (comprised of 22 Arab nation members) has offered the same. These offers are dismissed by Israel and silenced in the US media. Israel says it has tried everything else, but it has not tried the most obvious: complying with international law and accepting repeated offers for a peaceful resolution. As events unfold in Gaza neither the media nor the people are silent here in Jordan, where people refuse to go on as if nothing were happening to their brothers and sisters (sometimes literally - more than 60% of Jordan's population is Palestinian refugees). Just one day after attacks began, the king of Jordan gave blood to send to Gaza and inspired hundreds of others to do the same (meanwhile President Bush was on vacation in Texas). Spontaneous demonstrations have erupted at least twice here in the capitol today, and thousands are protesting in various major cities around the Middle East and around the world. Please, wherever you are, do something. Write a letter to the editor. Get a large group to inundate your congressperson at once. Protest! There are demonstrations being organized around the US. If there isn't one happening near you, then do what I would do: buy a poster-board and large marker and write something on it ("Gazans Are People Too," "Massacre in Gaza: Silence is Complicity," "Our Weapons Are Killing Palestinian Children," or anything you can think of). Go outside and stand on a busy corner with it. Force others to confront the reality. Talk to people, invite them to join you. People around the world are empowered enough to take to the streets; we have no excuse not to. The time is now. --------11 of x-------- Gaza: The Logic of Colonial Power by Nir Rosen As so often, the term 'terrorism' has proved a rhetorical smokescreen under cover of which the strong crush the weak Published on Monday, December 29, 2008 by The Guardian/UK Common Dreams I have spent most of the Bush administration's tenure reporting from Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia and other conflicts. I have been published by most major publications. I have been interviewed by most major networks and I have even testified before the senate foreign relations committee. The Bush administration began its tenure with Palestinians being massacred and it ends with Israel committing one of its largest massacres yet in a 60-year history of occupying Palestinian land. Bush's final visit to the country he chose to occupy ended with an educated secular Shiite Iraqi throwing his shoes at him, expressing the feelings of the entire Arab world save its dictators who have imprudently attached themselves to a hated American regime. Once again, the Israelis bomb the starving and imprisoned population of Gaza. The world watches the plight of 1.5 million Gazans live on TV and online; the western media largely justify the Israeli action. Even some Arab outlets try to equate the Palestinian resistance with the might of the Israeli military machine. And none of this is a surprise. The Israelis just concluded a round-the-world public relations campaign to gather support for their assault, even gaining the collaboration of Arab states like Egypt. The international community is directly guilty for this latest massacre. Will it remain immune from the wrath of a desperate people? So far, there have been large demonstrations in Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The people of the Arab world will not forget. The Palestinians will not forget. "All that you have done to our people is registered in our notebooks," as the poet Mahmoud Darwish said. I have often been asked by policy analysts, policy-makers and those stuck with implementing those policies for my advice on what I think America should do to promote peace or win hearts and minds in the Muslim world. It too often feels futile, because such a revolution in American policy would be required that only a true revolution in the American government could bring about the needed changes. An American journal once asked me to contribute an essay to a discussion on whether terrorism or attacks against civilians could ever be justified. My answer was that an American journal should not be asking whether attacks on civilians can ever be justified. This is a question for the weak, for the Native Americans in the past, for the Jews in Nazi Germany, for the Palestinians today, to ask themselves. Terrorism is a normative term and not a descriptive concept. An empty word that means everything and nothing, it is used to describe what the Other does, not what we do. The powerful - whether Israel, America, Russia or China - will always describe their victims' struggle as terrorism, but the destruction of Chechnya, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the slow slaughter of the remaining Palestinians, the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan - with the tens of thousands of civilians it has killed ... these will never earn the title of terrorism, though civilians were the target and terrorising them was the purpose. Counterinsurgency, now popular again among in the Pentagon, is another way of saying the suppression of national liberation struggles. Terror and intimidation are as essential to it as is winning hearts and minds. Normative rules are determined by power relations. Those with power determine what is legal and illegal. They besiege the weak in legal prohibitions to prevent the weak from resisting. For the weak to resist is illegal by definition. Concepts like terrorism are invented and used normatively as if a neutral court had produced them, instead of the oppressors. The danger in this excessive use of legality actually undermines legality, diminishing the credibility of international institutions such as the United Nations. It becomes apparent that the powerful, those who make the rules, insist on legality merely to preserve the power relations that serve them or to maintain their occupation and colonialism. Attacking civilians is the last, most desperate and basic method of resistance when confronting overwhelming odds and imminent eradication. The Palestinians do not attack Israeli civilians with the expectation that they will destroy Israel. The land of Palestine is being stolen day after day; the Palestinian people is being eradicated day after day. As a result, they respond in whatever way they can to apply pressure on Israel. Colonial powers use civilians strategically, settling them to claim land and dispossess the native population, be they Indians in North America or Palestinians in what is now Israel and the Occupied Territories. When the native population sees that there is an irreversible dynamic that is taking away their land and identity with the support of an overwhelming power, then they are forced to resort to whatever methods of resistance they can. Not long ago, 19-year-old Qassem al-Mughrabi, a Palestinian man from Jerusalem drove his car into a group of soldiers at an intersection. "The terrorist", as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz called him, was shot and killed. In two separate incidents last July, Palestinians from Jerusalem also used vehicles to attack Israelis. The attackers were not part of an organisation. Although those Palestinian men were also killed, senior Israeli officials called for their homes to be demolished. In a separate incident, Haaretz reported that a Palestinian woman blinded an Israeli soldier in one eye when she threw acid n his face. "The terrorist was arrested by security forces," the paper said. An occupied citizen attacks an occupying soldier, and she is the terrorist? In September, Bush spoke at the United Nations. No cause could justify the deliberate taking of human life, he said. Yet the US has killed thousands of civilians in airstrikes on populated areas. When you drop bombs on populated areas knowing there will be some "collateral" civilian damage, but accepting it as worth it, then it is deliberate. When you impose sanctions, as the US did on Saddam era Iraq, that kill hundreds of thousands, and then say their deaths were worth it, as secretary of state Albright did, then you are deliberately killing people for a political goal. When you seek to "shock and awe", as president Bush did, when he bombed Iraq, you are engaging in terrorism. Just as the traditional American cowboy film presented white Americans under siege, with Indians as the aggressors, which was the opposite of reality, so, too, have Palestinians become the aggressors and not the victims. Beginning in 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were deliberately cleansed and expelled from their homes, and hundreds of their villages were destroyed, and their land was settled by colonists, who went on to deny their very existence and wage a 60-year war against the remaining natives and the national liberation movements the Palestinians established around the world. Every day, more of Palestine is stolen, more Palestinians are killed. To call oneself an Israeli Zionist is to engage in the dispossession of entire people. It is not that, qua Palestinians, they have the right to use any means necessary, it is because they are weak. The weak have much less power than the strong, and can do much less damage. The Palestinians would not have ever bombed cafes or used home-made missiles if they had tanks and airplanes. It is only in the current context that their actions are justified, and there are obvious limits. It is impossible to make a universal ethical claim or establish a Kantian principle justifying any act to resist colonialism or domination by overwhelming power. And there are other questions I have trouble answering. Can an Iraqi be justified in attacking the United States? After all, his country was attacked without provocation, and destroyed, with millions of refugees created, hundreds of thousands of dead. And this, after 12 years of bombings and sanctions, which killed many and destroyed the lives of many others. I could argue that all Americans are benefiting from their country's exploits without having to pay the price, and that, in today's world, the imperial machine is not merely the military but a military-civilian network. And I could also say that Americans elected the Bush administration twice and elected representatives who did nothing to stop the war, and the American people themselves did nothing. From the perspective of an American, or an Israeli, or other powerful aggressors, if you are strong, everything you do is justifiable, and nothing the weak do is legitimate. It's merely a question of what side you choose: the side of the strong or the side of the weak. Israel and its allies in the west and in Arab regimes such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have managed to corrupt the PLO leadership, to suborn them with the promise of power at the expense of liberty for their people, creating a first - a liberation movement that collaborated with the occupier. Israeli elections are coming up and, as usual, these elections are accompanied by war to bolster the candidates. You cannot be prime minister of Israel without enough Arab blood on your hands. An Israeli general has threatened to set Gaza back decades, just as they threatened to set Lebanon back decades in 2006. As if strangling Gaza and denying its people fuel, power or food had not set it back decades already. The democratically elected Hamas government was targeted for destruction from the day it won the elections in 2006. The world told the Palestinians that they cannot have democracy, as if the goal was to radicalise them further and as if that would not have a consequence. Israel claims it is targeting Hamas's military forces. This is not true. It is targeting Palestinian police forces and killing them, including some such as the chief of police, Tawfiq Jaber, who was actually a former Fatah official who stayed on in his post after Hamas took control of Gaza. What will happen to a society with no security forces? What do the Israelis expect to happen when forces more radical than Hamas gain power? A Zionist Israel is not a viable long-term project and Israeli settlements, land expropriation and separation barriers have long since made a two state solution impossible. There can be only one state in historic Palestine. In coming decades, Israelis will be confronted with two options. Will they peacefully transition towards an equal society, where Palestinians are given the same rights, a la post-apartheid South Africa? Or will they continue to view democracy as a threat? If so, one of the peoples will be forced to leave. Colonialism has only worked when most of the natives have been exterminated. But often, as in occupied Algeria, it is the settlers who flee. Eventually, the Palestinians will not be willing to compromise and seek one state for both people. Does the world want to further radicalise them? Do not be deceived: the persistence of the Palestine problem is the main motive for every anti-American militant in the Arab world and beyond. But now the Bush administration has added Iraq and Afghanistan as additional grievances. America has lost its influence on the Arab masses, even if it can still apply pressure on Arab regimes. But reformists and elites in the Arab world want nothing to do with America. A failed American administration departs, the promise of a Palestinian state a lie, as more Palestinians are murdered. A new president comes to power, but the people of the Middle East have too much bitter experience of US administrations to have any hope for change. President-elect Obama, Vice President-elect Biden and incoming secretary of state Hillary Clinton have not demonstrated that their view of the Middle East is at all different from previous administrations. As the world prepares to celebrate a new year, how long before it is once again made to feel the pain of those whose oppression it either ignores or supports? 2008 Guardian News and Media Limited Nir Rosen is a journalist specialising in US foreign policy in the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan. A fellow at the New York university center on law and security, his work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, Rolling Stone magazine, Harper's Magazine, the New Republic and Mother Jones. His book on postwar Iraq, The Triumph of the Martyrs: A Reporter's Journey into Occupied Iraq , was published in 2006. His articles are available at nirrosen.com --------12 of x-------- The Politics of An Israeli Extermination Campaign: Backers, Apologists and Arms Suppliers by James Petras / January 2nd, 2009 Because of the unconditional support of the entire political class in the US, from the White House to Congress, including both Parties, incoming and outgoing elected officials and all the principle print and electronic mass media, the Israeli Government feels no compunction in publicly proclaiming a detailed and graphic account of its policy of mass extermination of the population of Gaza. Israel's sustained and comprehensive bombing campaign of every aspect of governance, civic institutions and society is directed toward destroying civilized life in Gaza. Israel's totalitarian vision is driven by the practice of a permanent purge of Arab Palestine informed by Zionism, an ethno-racist ideology, promulgated by the Jewish state and justified, enforced and pursued by its organized backers in the United States. The facts of Israeli extermination have become known: In the first six days of round the clock terror bombing of major and minor populations centers, the Jewish State has murdered and seriously maimed over 2,500 people, mostly dismembered and burned in the open ovens of missile fire. Scores of children and women have been slaughtered as well as defenseless civilians and officials. They have sealed off all access to Gaza and declared it a military, free fire zone, while expanding their target to include the entire population of 1.5 millions semi-starved prisoners. According to the Boston Globe (December 30, 2008): Israeli military officials said their target lists have expanded to include the vast support network on which the Islamist movement relies to stay in power "..we are trying to hit the whole spectrum, because everything is connected and everything supports terrorism against Israel". A top Israeli in its secret police apparatus is quoted saying, "Hamas' civilian infrastructure is a very sensitive target" (ibid). What the Israeli Jewish politicians and military planners designate as "Hamas" is the entire social service network, the entire government and the vast majority of economic activity, embracing almost the entire 1.5 million imprisoned residents of Gaza. Israel's "target" list thus involves the "total population," using the totality of its non-nuclear weaponry and for an unlimited time period (until the "bitter end" according to the Israeli Prime Minister). Israel's defense ministry spokesman has emphatically reiterated the Jewish state's totalitarian war concept emphasizing the targeting of civilians: "Hamas has used ostensibly civilian operations as a cover for military activities. Anything affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target." Like all totalitarians in the past, the Jewish state boasts of having systematically pre-planned the extermination campaign - months in advance . up to and including the precise hour and day of the bombing to coincide with inflicting the maximum murder of civilians: The rockets and bombs fell as children were leaving school, as graduating police cadets were receiving their diplomas and as frantic mothers ran out from their homes to find their sons and daughters. The mass military extermination campaign was a follow up of its non-stop total economic embargo and unremitting selective assassination campaign of the previous two years: Both were designed to purge Palestine of its Arab population, first via mass hunger, disease, humiliation and violent intimidation and the proxy power grab by the PLO Quislings under Zionist puppet Abbas. When they discovered that mass hunger and selective Israeli murder only strengthened the population's links to its democratically elected government and the resolve of the Hamas government to resist Israel, the Israeli regimes unleashed its entire arsenal of weapons, including its new "American gifts" - up-to-date 1000 pound "bunker buster" bombs and high tech missiles to incinerate large numbers of human beings within their deadly radius and to obliterate Palestinian civilization. [Well that's Yahweh for you -ed] Moving directly from its totalitarian vision to its military blueprint to the savaging of Palestinian population centers, the Jewish state destroyed the principle university with over 18,000 students (mostly women), mosques, pharmacies, electrical and water lines, power stations, fishing villages, fishing boats and the little fishing port that provided a meager supply of fish for the starving population. They destroyed roads, transport facilities, food warehouses, science buildings, small factories, shops and apartments. They destroyed a women's dormitory at the university. In the words of the Israel leader: "..because everything is connected to everything" it is necessary to destroy each and every facet of life, which allows humans to exist with some dignity and independence. [More Yahweh] The Israeli totalitarian leaders knew with confidence that they could act and they could kill with impunity, locally and before the entire world, because of the influence of the US Zionist Power Configuration in and over the US White House and Congress. They knew they had the full backing of all the major Israeli political parties (Right, Left and Center), trade unions, mass media and especially public opinion. Israeli state terror is backed by 81% of Jewish Israelis according to a poll taken by Israel's Channel 10 (Financial Times, December 30, 2008). Israeli totalitarian violence and extermination of Palestinians is extremely popular among the Jewish electorate, especially in raising support for the Labor Party candidate Minister Ehud Barak. They knew they would "succeed" with virtually no casualties because they bombed, burned and dismembered a defenseless population totally lacking the minimum means to defend themselves from F16 bombers, helicopter gun ships and missile assaults. The vile depravity of the assault on the defenseless population is matched by the utter cowardice of the Israeli military command and its cheering bloodthirsty public ensconced behind their aerial monopoly. They suffered no threats of aerial retaliation, no wounded or dead pilots, helicopter gunners, as wave after wave swept in and over a defenseless imprisoned population in a crowded and besieged ghetto. [Watching fish in a barrel, Yahweh chuckles] Hundreds of tanks and armored carriers are prepared to invade once the cities and towns have been leveled, once the population is too weakened by starvation to resist, once the leaders and fighters have been murdered and the normal Palestinian institutions of law and order have been pulverized, making way for the corrupt thuggish collaborators of the so-called Palestinian Authority - then and only then, will the Israeli General staff risk the skin of a precious Jewish "soldier" and risk the anxiety and worry of their kin in Israel and the US. [Yahweh's favorites] Overseas Allies: The Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO) >From the moment that the Israeli Government decided it would destroy the newly elected Hamas government and punish the democratic electorate of Gaza with starvation and murder, the entire Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) in the US, including the PMAJO, pulled all stops in implementing the Israeli policy. The PMAJO encompasses the fifty-two Jewish organizations with the largest membership, with the greatest financial clout and the most influential backers. The most prominent lobbyist within the PMAJO is AIPAC, which has over 100,000 members and 150 full-time operatives in Washington actively pressuring the US Congress, the White House and all administrative agencies whose policies may relate to the interests of the State of Israel. However Israeli political extends far beyond its non-governmental agencies. Over two score legislators in the Congress and over a dozen senators are committed Zionists who automatically back Israel's policies and push for US funding and armaments for its military machine. Top officials in key administrative positions, in Treasury, Commerce and the National Security Council, senior functionaries in the Pentagon and top advisers on Middle East affairs are also life-long, fanatically committed Zionists, who consistently and unreservedly back the policies of the State of Israel. [Yahweh's chosen people] Equally important, the majority of the largest film, print and electronic media are owned or deeply influenced by Jewish-Zionist media moguls who are committed to slanting the "news" in favor of Israel. The composition and influence of the ZPC is central to understanding three main characteristics of Israel's power: (1) Israel can commit what leading United Nations and international human rights experts have defined as "crimes against humanity" with total impunity; (2) Israel can secure an unlimited supply of the most technologically advanced and destructive weapons and use them without limit on a civilian population in violation of even US Congressional restrictions and (3) scores of almost unanimous United Nations condemnations of the construction of genocidal apartheid barriers against a native population, starvation embargoes and the current extermination campaign in Gaza are always vetoed by the US representative. Many critics of Israel's genocide in Gaza also condemn what they call "the complicity" of Washington or "the United States" without clearly identifying the actual socio-political forces influencing policy-makers or the "dual" political loyalties and identities of the "American" politicians who have long-standing and deep allegiances to Israel. As a consequence, most critics fail to counter, protest or even identify the ideology and politics of the organized power configurations which define US complicity with Israel, who intimidate potential critics, who write and mouth the pro-Israel editorials in the mass media and who filter out any criticism, any truth - even when Israel engages in sustained bloody extermination campaigns. The ZPC and the Israeli War of Extermination in Gaza The ZPC played a major role in all stages of Israel's extermination campaign against Gaza including a sustained propaganda effort. The ZPC orchestrated a massive successful campaign through the extensive network of American mass media, which it controls and influences. It fabricated an image of the Hamas administration in Gaza as a terrorist organization, which allegedly seized power through violence - totally denying its rise to power through internationally supervised, democratic elections and its defense of its electoral mandate against a US-Israeli backed PLO military takeover. The entire Zionist Jewish leadership backed Israel's land grabs, its ghetto wall around Palestinians, the hundreds of road blocks, the Jewish settlers violently taking over Palestinian homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the criminal, genocidal Israeli economic embargo on Gaza designed to systematically starve the Palestinians into submission. Throughout the two years of this Israeli extermination campaign, American Zionists played a major role in leading the servile US government at home and abroad in backing each totalitarian measure: The vast majority of local synagogues became bully-pulpits defending the starvation and degradation of 1.5 million Palestinian refugees in Gaza caged on all sides by deadly force and the "walling off" into economically and socially devastating cantons of the 4.5 million West Bank Palestinian population under foreign occupation. The US Congress shamelessly followed the Zionist lead, backing every single criminal measure taken by the State of Israel and approving dozens of resolutions, which in most cases were entirely written by AIPAC lobbyists acting as unregistered agents of the Israeli government (contrary to US federal statute, which requires foreign agents and lobbyists to be registered as such). Israel's demands for the most up-to-date US warplanes, including F-16s, Apache helicopter gun ships, and 1,000 pound bombs were secured by dint of effort of the AIPAC lobbyists and their clients in the US Congress. In other words, the American ZPC created the ideological cover and military instruments for Israel's "total war" against the defenseless Palestinian population. Equally important, prominent Zionist leaders in the US Congress and members of the foreign policy establishment blocked or vetoed any international criticism of Israel - securing its impunity and immunity from any of the Congressional sanctions usually enacted against criminal states. In other words, Israeli policy makers operated with the knowledge that there would be no negative economic, diplomatic and military repercussions to their launching the planned Gaza extermination campaign because they knew, in advance, that "their people" were in total control of US Middle East policy to the extent of actually repeating verbatim each and every propaganda lie in defense of Israel's total war against the entire population of Gaza. In Defense of Israel's War of Extermination The Zionist-controlled US print media, in particular the New York Times and the Washington Post, systematically fabricated an account that fit perfectly with Israel's official line defending its massive assault on Gaza: Omitting any historical account of the hundreds of Israeli armed incursions and "targeted" assassinations of Palestinian leaders and officials (even in their own homes) which repeatedly violated the "cease fire" agreed by Hamas and provoked its retaliation in self-defense of its people; omitting the years of an Israeli enforced starvation embargo of food and essentials that threatened the lives of 1.5 million Palestinians and led to the desperate efforts of the elected Hamas leadership to secure supplies for the people's survival via tunnels across the Egyptian border and through missile attacks against Israel to pressure the Jewish state to negotiate an end of the criminal blockade. The Conference of President of the Major American Jewish Organizations, and the vast majority of Jewish communal groups and congregations, gave enthusiastic and unanimous support to Israel's total war, its extermination campaign against the captive Palestinian population of Gaza. Even as images and reports of the massive destruction, killing and wounding of over 2,500 defenseless Palestinians filtered in the mass media, not a single major Jewish organization broke ranks; only individuals and small groups protested. All the "Majors" persisted in the politics of the Big Lie: the destruction of hospitals, mosques, universities, roads, apartments, pharmacies and fishing ports were all labeled "Hamas targets". The systematic all-out assault by uncontested helicopter gunships against 1.5 millions civilians was erased by tendentious accounts of Hamas' homemade missiles falling ineffectively near Israeli towns. A close reading of the most important propaganda organ of the PMAJO, the Daily Alert (TDA), during the first 5 days of Israel's assault, reveals the propaganda tack taken by the leadership of the pro-Israel power configuration. TDA systematically worked to achieve the following: 1. Exaggerate the threats to Israel by the Palestinian missiles from Gaza, citing 4 Israeli deaths, while omitting any mention of the 2,500 Palestinian dead and wounded and the total destruction of their economy and living conditions (without safe water, electricity, food, cooking fuel, medicine and heat in the winter). 2. Promote Israel's military assault as "defensive", directed at eliminating Hamas rocket attacks while omitting mention of Israel's clearly stated purpose of destroying all civil organizations, social welfare agencies, educational facilities, medical clinics and public security institutions connected in any way with the elected Hamas government and any auxiliary agencies. 3. Cite select statement from Israel's allies and clients (Washington, the US media, Germany and the UK) blaming Hamas for the conflict without mentioning the vast majority of countries in the United Nations General Assembly condemning Israel's brutality. 4. Reproduce Israeli slanders against any and all international human rights leaders and organizations that condemn the Jewish state's policy of genocide against the native Palestinians. In this regard, TDA is the foremost "genocide denier" in the United States and, perhaps outside of Israel, in the world. 5. Repeatedly cite Israeli political and military leaders' claims of acting "with restraint", "safeguarding civilians", and "targeting military objectives", even in the face of reports and images of mass civilian destruction and loss of life documented in the vast majority of (non-US) Western media. 6. Defend every Israeli bombing mission, every day, every hour, of every building, every home, and every economic, religious and educational institution in Gaza as "defensive" or a "reprisal", all the while quoting some of the most notorious, unconditional, perennial apologists of Israeli violence as if they were unbiased intellectuals, including Benny "Nuke Tehran" Morris, Marty Peretz and Amos Oz. 7. The Daily Alert quotes US writers, journalists and editors who praise and defend Israel's "total war" without identifying their long-standing affiliation and identification with Zionist organizations, giving the false image of a wide spectrum of opinion behind the assault. Never has even the most moderate Jewish or Gentile critic of Israel's massive extermination campaign appeared in any issues of the Daily Alert. The principle American Jewish organizations have bombarded the US Congress, influencing, intimidating and purchasing the craven so-called "representatives" of the American people, the media and public notables with lies in defense of Israel's total war to exterminate a people. Their public, brazen, open complicity in genocide can be considered crime against humanity: The willful promotion of acts of a state designed to destroy an entire people. And yet these willing accomplices, these "willing executioners" of state mass murder go uncontested within the US political class. One of their leading mouthpieces in the incoming Obama Administration, Chief Presidential Adviser David Axelrod, even cites an Obama campaign speech defending Israeli assaults on the people of Gaza. Israel arrogantly repudiates all calls to end this mass murder, because Israel knows that "its people" are still in control of US policy toward the Middle East and will use their power in the new president's administration to block any condemnation of this crime. To date the entire human rights and anti-war movements have failed to even mention, let along challenge, the most powerful propaganda and political organizations, which influence US policy and manipulate the mass media in favor of Israel's extermination campaign. They will play no restraining role on Israel's totalitarian policies as long as its principal US backers are free to lie, manipulate and defend each and every crime. There is little hope for an independent US Congressional policy as long as Israel's war of extermination in Gaza can be defended by the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (and Zionist zealot) Congressman Howard Berman in the following terms: "Israel has a right, indeed a duty, to defend itself in response to the hundreds of rockets and mortars fired from Gaza over the past week. No government in world would sit by and allow its citizens to be subjected to this kind of indiscriminate bombardment. The loss of innocent life is a terribly tragedy and the blame for that tragedy lies with Hamas". Thus Congressman Berman cynically omits the 2 years of Israel's embargo, the daily "targeted" assassinations of Palestinians, the "targeted" missile attacks against civilians, the land, sea and air blockades and the blatant "targeted" destruction of the infrastructure of Gaza. No government, indeed a democratically elected Islamist government, can stand by while its people are starved and murdered into submission. But according to the respected Congressmen Bermans of the world, only the lives of Jews matter, not the growing thousands of murdered, dismembered and mutilated citizens of Gaza - they do not count as people! [Yahweh doesn't recognize them. -ed]] What is to be Done Israel's crimes against humanity demand a public response: social action, which will force it to cease and desist from its campaign to exterminate the people of Gaza. Because the Jewish state has assaulted a vast array of Palestinian social institutions, which resonate with those in our own society, we can and should mobilize them to condemn and boycott their counterparts in Israel: 1. We should urge the entire academic community to denounce Israel's bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza and the total destruction of all of its science facilities. An organized boycott of Israeli universities and all academic exchanges, especially scientific, should become university policy throughout the country. Special attention should be paid to the 450 US university presidents, who in the recent past, denounced a call by British academics for a boycott and who remain silent and complicit in the face of Israel's total physical annihilation of all ten faculties for 20,000 Palestinian university students. 2. All American health workers, doctors, nurses, technicians, should organize and denounce Israel's medical embargo against the 1.5 million Palestinians crowded into the Gaza Strip. They must condemn Israel's bombardment of Gaza's Children's Hospital, the neighborhood pharmacies and the attacks on any transport of those critically wounded Palestinian victims of its aerial and missile attacks. Medical personnel should raise the fundamental ethical issues regarding the collaboration of US medical personnel and programs with the Jewish State's "total war" policies of extermination. 3. All citizens should demand the end of all US military aid to Israel, especially F-16 fighter planes, Apache attack helicopters, missiles, 1000 pound "bunker buster" bombs used by the Israeli armed forces on the civilian infrastructure of Gaza and the murder and maiming of over 2,500 Palestinians, civilians, civil servants, police and national militia. In pursuit of a cutoff of US military aid to Israel, every effort should be made to target and denounce the most forceful, aggressive and successful Zionist advocates and lobbyists who influence the elected members of the US Congress and White House on foreign military aid budgets. No progress in ending US military aid for Israel's ethnic cleansing will succeed unless the peace movement and others appalled by Israel's mass murder tackles the Zionist lobby head on. This includes boycotts, rebuttals and demonstrations against the AIPAC, the Jewish Anti-Defamation League and the other 50 leading American Jewish organizations, which initiate and secure US governmental endorsement of Israel's extermination policies. 4. US religious institutions should forcefully denounce Israel's crimes against humanity, including its demolition of 5 mosques, uniting all faiths (Christian, Moslem, Buddhist) and especially reaching out to the tiny minority of rabbis and observant Jews willing to forthrightly denounce the totalitarian practices of the Israeli state. 5. Port and long shore workers, sailors and other maritime workers and officials should boycott the handling of all trade with Israel and denounce its Navy's violent illegal assault, in international waters, of civilian fishing boats and vessels carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza. No ships carrying Israeli products should be loaded or unloaded as long as Israel maintains its criminal military blockade of the port facilities of Gaza. 6. Tens of millions of US citizens subject to the one-sided pro-Israel bias of the electronic and print media, the lop-sided presentations of Zionist "op-ed" writers, "news" reports and the self-styled Middle East experts, should demand equal time, coverage and reportage for non-Zionist specialists, analysts and commentators. We should demand the end of euphemisms and fabrications, which convert victims into aggressors and exterminators into victims. 7. We should wage a battle of ideas everywhere (in every public forum) against the efforts by the Zionist Power Configuration to monopolize discussion over the Israeli policy of genocide, to censor, intimidate and slander critics of Israeli apartheid - as UN General Assembly President Manuel d'Escoto so aptly calls Israel's Ghetto Wall surrounding Palestinian villages. The outpouring of public protest over Israel's war of extermination is an enormous step forward in countering the Zionist monopoly of the mass media and encouraging the tens of millions of Americans who clearly recognize and privately despise Israel's crimes against humanity and resent the local Zionist elited'.s thuggery against those who speak out. Mass pressure on elected representative may sway some to reconsider their abject servility to their Zionist "contributors" and their "Israel First" Congressional colleagues. 8. A patriotic nationwide campaign should demand that the Israel lobby, especially AIPAC, come clean and register as a foreign agent of the State of Israel. This might undermine the Lobby's appeal to American Jews, reduce its influence over Congress and open up judicial processes and investigations over its abuse of tax-exemptions, money-laundering and lead to revelations over its treasonous procurement of confidential US state documents for a foreign power. There is a powerful political and legal basis for such a denial of the "Lobby's" tax-exempt status and legality, apart from the transparent and overwhelming evidence that all Zionist organizations act as transmission belts for Israeli state policies: In the early 1950's up to 1963, the forerunner of AIPAC was obligated to register as a foreign agent of the State of Israel. More recently, an Israeli prosecutor presented evidence that the Israeli-Jewish Agency and its US counterparts were laundering billions of dollars especially for the funding of Israeli colonial settlements on occupied Palestinian land, condemned as illegal under international law. Congressional hearings, law suits and further published research would reveal the role of the Lobby as a Fifth Column for the State of Israel against the interest of the people of the United States. Until we neutralize the pervasive power of the Zionist Power Configuration in all of its manifestations - in American public and civic life - and its deep penetration of American legislative and executive offices, we will fall short of preventing Israel from receiving the arms, funding and political backing to sustain its wars of ethnic extermination. When told that the great majority of the world's people are sickened and incensed by Israel's mass murder of the citizens of Gaza, we can easily imagine the contemptuous dismissal by Israel's top leaders, paraphrasing Joseph Stalin: How many bombers, missiles, fighter planes and powerful lobbies do they (the outraged people of the world) have? James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50-year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina, and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed Books). Petras' most recent book is Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power (Clarity Press, 2008). He can be reached at: jpetras [at] binghamton.edu. Read other articles by James, or visit James's website. This article was posted on Friday, January 2nd, 2009 at 8:02am and is filed under Crimes against Humanity, Israel/Palestine, Zionism. --------13 of x-------- Zionism - don't ask whyonism - just make them dieonism. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- - David Shove shove001 [at] tc.umn.edu rhymes with clove Progressive Calendar over 2225 subscribers as of 12.19.02 please send all messages in plain text no attachments vote third party for president for congress now and forever Socialism YES Capitalism NO To GO DIRECTLY to an item, eg --------8 of x-------- do a find on --8
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