Moe, Gawker.com, 18 September 2008

Bristol Palin smoked weed on camera, the Enquirer reports today in the latest installment of the tabloid’s investigation into the Republican running mate’s family values. And Bristol’s boyfriend Levi could desensitize Cindy McCain under the table! (Also, cocaine.) See the full sordid story after the jump, along with our attempt to explain Whether Christians Will Care.

[Read the report]

John Rosenthal, World Politics Review, 10 September 2008

Upon arriving in Gori, Lévy reports seeing a city on fire. Gori is “a Georgian town,” Lévy writes, “And [the Russians] have burned it down, pillaged it, reduced it to a ghost town.” The full passage (in the translation of the Huffington Post) reads as follows:

After crossing through six new check points, one of which consists of a tree trunk hoisted up and down by a winch commanded by a group of paramilitaries, we arrive in Gori. We are not in the center of the city. But from where Lomaia has dropped us, before taking off in the Audi to collect his wounded, from this intersection dominated by an enormous tank as big as a rolling bunker, we can see fires burning everywhere. Rockets lighting up the sky at regular intervals, followed by short detonations. The emptiness. The slight odor of putrefaction and death. Most of all, the incessant rumbling of armored vehicles. Almost every other car is an unmarked car jammed with militia, recognizable because of their white armbands and their headbands. Gori does not belong to the Ossetia which the Russians claim they have come to “liberate.” It is a Georgian town. And they have burned it down, pillaged it, reduced it to a ghost town.

The problem with this account, however, is that Lévy appears not to have seen what he reported seeing. In fact, as has since been confirmed by other members of the group and even conceded by members of Lévy’s own entourage, Lévy never made it to Gori.

[Read the article]

Billy Briggs: Scottish activist films Israeli navy shooting at Gaza fishermen

Italian Opera Tenor Joe Fallisi to Join Next Free Gaza Voyage

Anis Hamadeh, The Other News, 13 September 2008

The Free Gaza story continues. On or about September 22 a boat with twenty-six internationals will start from Cyprus to reach Gaza. Among them are veterans from the historic first Free Gaza voyage of August 22-23 and some new passengers. One of them is Italian opera singer Joe Fallisi.

Joe Fallisi attended the Civica Scuola d’Arte Drammatica of Milan Piccolo Teatro and the local conservatory, obtaining a degree in vocal chamber music and studying artistic singing. He also has a degree in philosophy from Genoa University. His repertoire reaches from opera, chamber and sacred music, to musical and songs and he has been singing in many theatres, concert halls and festivals in Italy and abroad, winning several national and international music competitions.

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Roger Burbach, Global Alternatives, 14 September 2008

As Bolivia teeters on the brink of civil war, President Evo Morales staunchly maintains his commitment to constructing a popular democracy by working within the state institutions that brought him to power. The show down with the right wing is taking place against the backdrop of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the overthrow of Salvador Allende, the heroic if tragic president of Chile who believed that the formal democratic state he inherited could be peacefully transformed to usher in a socialist society.

Like Allende, Morales faces a powerful economic and political elite aligned with the United States that is bent on reversing the limited reforms he has been able to implement during his nearly three years in power. Early on, Morales–Bolivia’s first indigenous president–moved assertively to exert greater control over the natural gas and oil resources of the country, sharply increasing the hydro-carbon tax, and then using a large portion of this revenue to provide a universal pension to all those over sixty years old, most of whom live in poverty and are indigenous.

The self-proclaimed Civic Committees in Media Luna (Half Moon)–Bolivia’s four eastern departments–have orchestrated a rebellion against these changes, demanding departmental autonomy and control of the hydro-carbon revenues, as well as an end to agrarian reform and even control of the police forces. The Santa Cruz Civic Committee, dominated by agro-industrial interests, is supporting the Cruceño Youth Union (UJC), an affiliated group that acts as a para-military organization, seizing and fire bombing government offices, and attacking Indian and peasant organizations that dare to support the national government.

[Read the article]

Scott Campbell has translated an article written in January 2007 by Bolivian journalist Wilson Garcia Merida about the US ambassador to Bolivia, Philip Goldberg, who left the country Sunday under an expulsion order by President Morales. Campbell recommends reading it to gain a better understanding of the current situation in Bolivia.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(GAZA COASTAL WATERS) 10th September 2008 – An Israeli military gunboat rammed an unarmed Palestinian fishing vessel today at high speeds. The gunboat smashed through the upper hull of the fishing boat, careened over the top, and landed on the other side.

Extensive damage was caused by the impact to the fishing boat. The hull was badly damaged, and virtually the entire deck area, all the equipment on it, and the canopy above the deck were severely damaged. Unusually, all of the crew happened to be in the cabin or at the fore at the time. Had they been on deck they would have had little chance of survival.

Via a megaphone, the Israeli military aboard the gunboat then made the threat that: “When the internationals leave Gaza, you will all be made to pay.”

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