By Allan Nairn
22 January 2009
On the eve of his Senate confirmation hearing (due for 10am, Thurs. Jan. 22), new information has emerged showing that Adm. Dennis Blair — President Obama’s nominee for US Director of National Intelligence — lied about his knowledge of a terrorist massacre that occured before a pivotal meeting in which Blair offered support and US aid to the commander of the massacre forces.
Read the report: A child full of light will never see again
Stephen Sniegoski
20 January 2009
As one of his first actions, Obama plans to name former senator George J. Mitchell (D-Maine) as his Middle East envoy, sending a message he intends to engage the Israelis and Palestinians in efforts to bring about a lasting peace. Mitchell is of a Lebanese Christian background and holds traditional establishment foreign policy positions. He headed a committee on Palestinian-Israeli issues commissioned by Bill Clinton in 2000, which was intended to save the faltering “peace process.” The committee released a report in 2001, which among other things called upon the Palestinians to crackdown on terrorism and the Israelis to freeze their settlements in the occupied territories (freeze, not remove) and to stop shooting unarmed demonstrators. This was portrayed in the major media as a very balanced report because it offered criticism of Israel as well as of the Palestinians. However, the Mitchell Report ignored the fact that Israel is an illegal occupying power according to international law. As Stephen Zunes writes “However, the report refuses to call for Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories in return for security guarantees, which Israel is required to do under UN Security Council resolution 242 and 338, long considered by the United States and the international community as the basis for peace.”
‘I felt it was my duty to protest’
The Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, tells Chris Arnot that speaking out for the Palestinians turned him into a pariah
Chris Arnot, The Guardian, 20 January 2009
For an academic to describe himself as “feeling for a while like public enemy No 1” suggests either an inflated ego or an incurable case of paranoia. Professor Ilan Pappe gives every appearance of suffering from neither. He is an amiable character with an engaging grin. By his own admission, he “likes to be liked”. Not a natural rebel then? “Certainly not,” he says.
Yet in 2005 and 2006, this Israeli son of German-Jewish emigrants found himself in the eye of a storm that would lead him to leave the country of his birth and seek sanctuary in the English west country. He has been chair in the history department at Exeter University for the last 18 months. By the time he left the University of Haifa, he had been condemned in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset; the minister of education had publicly called for him to be sacked; and his pictures had appeared in the country’s biggest-selling newspaper at the centre of a target. Next to it, a popular columnist addressed his readers thus: “I’m not telling you to kill this person, but I shouldn’t be surprised if someone did.”
The Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee reports that Peltier, recently transferred to Canaan Federal Penitentiary against his wishes, was beaten severely by inmates unknown to him after he was released into the general population. He was then placed in solitary confinement and given one meal per day despite his diabetic needs and fragile medical condition.
Friends of Leonard Peltier has posted the relevant e-mail addresses.
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