We arrived safely last night. The trip home was much less eventful than the trip to Gaza and much less emotional. On board my boat, the FREE GAZA, was a family of Palestinians who had not been let out of the concentration camp called “Gaza” for five years. The mother had given birth to her youngest son four years ago, and the family, living in Cyprus, had not seen him. The joy on the faces of Hana’s family was worth waiting the extra half day to leave. We had to make sure that the Cypriot authorities would allow them in.
On board the LIBERTY was a 10-year-old boy whose leg had been shot off by the Israeli military. He was from Khan Younis. The story (and I haven’t been able to verify it it yet) is that he was standing with his friend as an Israeli tank invaded his town. A sniper shot him through one leg, then when he stood to run, the sniper shot him through the other one, causing huge damage to the leg. It was amputated at the hip. Again, we had to wait for Cypriot authorities to give permission for him to transit to another country.
Before making his speech on policy towards Russia in Kiev, Ukraine, later this week David Miliband would do well to ponder some wise advice from a great predecessor. Lord Salisbury, Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister in the days of the British Empire, dispensed immense global power; but that did not mean that he liked playing about with that power.
Faced with proposals for British policy that he understood to be deeply damaging to the interests of other great powers, Salisbury would look his colleagues in the eye and ask simply: “Are you really prepared to fight? If not, do not embark on this policy.”
Peggy Noonan was not impressed with Barack Obama’s acceptance speech saying at least it wasn’t the usual democratic fare about two-headed children going without healthcare. Scarborough and Mika found it so hilarious they could barely stop laughing. Must be nice to be so comfortable with one’s own health plan that the misfortune of others is a source of amusement.
The bobbleheads are now attempting to create drama around McCain’s VP pick. He’s ruled out Pawlenty and Romney and they just don’t know who it could be.
I figure it must be someone the jokers have not discussed (in order to make the announcement more dramatic) – Huckabee or Giuliani – and Noonan must have written McCain’s acceptance speech.
Update:
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin gets the nod and McCain’s bluster regarding Obama’s inexperience goes out the window.
Reporter Lisa Demer talked today to the Palin administration about the use of private e-mail accounts in the governor’s office. Palin’s new communciations director, Bill McAllister, gave a surprising answer when pressed about how the public could get access to those e-mails, when they concern state business and aren’t otherwise exempt from public disclosure.
Leonard Peltier really needs help right now. One way to do something right now is to join Peltier’s’ branches of support. You can sign up at Leonard Peltier And then network with your friends, campus organization, peace/social justice groups and so on.
Leonard’s 64th birthday will be on Sept. 12th, and September 6 will mark 32 and half years he will have been held captive for something the government can no longer prove. His case has generated support from the entertainment industry, religious/world leaders, 55 members of congress, numerous human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, and other respected national organizations. There has been over 25 million letters written on his behalf. U.S. Presidents have patronized his supporters and then ignored his appeal for justice.
This article was originally published by The Clarion-Ledger and is republished with the author’s permission.
I left my home in the United States to spend the summer in the West Bank, where I was attacked by Israeli settlers late last month. As a member of the Christian Peacemaker Team, I went to the South Hebron Hills to help keep young Palestinian children safe from Israeli settlers intent on hurting Palestinians. Armed only with a video camera, it was my job to escort the children back and forth from school and summer camp.
On July 27, the children and I were walking home when a group of Israeli settlers assaulted us from a hilltop with fist-sized stones. Some narrowly missed my head. Focusing my video camera, I recorded an Israeli settler flinging stones at the children from his long-range slingshot. When he saw that I was filming him, he struck me in the leg with a rock. He chased me, kicked me and screamed that he was going to kill me. Wrestling the video camera from my hand, he then repeatedly struck me in the face and upper body with a stone.
After the assault, I was helped by Palestinians to reach a hospital where I was treated for my injuries.
The occupied West Bank today is like walking through a page from a different era – part Wild West, part Jim Crow – with one set of laws for Palestinians and another set for Israeli settlers.
Cynicism and hypocrisy are always part of international politics, but in the case of Poland and the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) missiles everybody is over-fulfilling their norm. Nobody involved in the controversy, Polish, Russian or American, believes a single word they are saying about this misbegotten missile defence system, whose principal characteristic is that it doesn’t work — never has, and probably never will. And yet we’re all expected to report what they say as if it mattered.
Washington insists that the ABM missiles are being put into Poland to protect the United States and its allies from Iran’s long-range ballistic missiles (which do not exist) tipped with nuclear warheads (which Iran doesn’t have either). Yet after months when US-Polish talks on the subject were stalled, suddenly last Wednesday Warsaw agreed to provide a base for the “missile defence system” — because it would infuriate the Russians.
Drats! I was so looking forward to the camera zooming in on him as he mouthed the words, “I love you, I love you, I love you.” He might have finally succeeded in squeezing out a big fat tear or two.
What really scares us about Barack Obama
By Bradley Burston, Ha’aretz, 27 August 2008
One August survey showed likely Louisiana voters favoring John McCain by a margin of 57 percent to 39 percent. The significance of the poll may go well beyond the fate of the Bayou State’s nine electoral votes. Simply put, Louisiana has voted for the winning presidential candidate in every election for the past 36 years.
In the end, one suspects, John McCain may take this election in a quiet walk.
I was reminded of a conversation that took place during a prior visit to California, where this foreign visitor was born and raised. A woman who I believe supports Obama but who, as a member of the Jewish community, has been bombarded with e-mails distorting the Democratic candidate’s positions on Israel, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Jews, terrorism, and taxes, asked me an honest question:
Excerpt: Pro-settler groups say they are entitled to the tax breaks because their work is “humanitarian”, not political, and reject any comparison to Palestinian charities, some of which face U.S. sanctions over suspected links to Islamist groups like Hamas.
The full extent of tax-exempt U.S. funding for settlements is unclear because so many groups are involved and their spending practices are not always transparent.
But a review by Reuters of U.S. tax records found 13 tax-exempt organisations openly linked to settlements that have raised more than $35 million in the last five years alone.
Digital TV means four to ten times as many channels for each and every broadcaster with no obligations to the public. The FCC quietly awarded broadcasters this colossal gift of public property worth $70-$80 billion during the Clinton administration back in 1996. In the 12 years since, under Democratic and Republican presidents alike, corporate broadcasters and their stooges at the FCC have diligently peddled the cover stories that digital TV is all about the advent of high definition television, and that the only nagging questions are how and whether enough converter boxes will be available for consumers who can’t or won’t buy brand new TVs.
In a final act of brazen misdirection to conceal this grand theft digital, FCC Commissioners are scheduled to tour dozens of cities between now and February 18, 2009, doing a lot of talking, but not much listening.
Recent Comments