8 attack ads in two weeks, each spot steeped in tomfoolery, boldfaced lies and approved by him, yet John McCain stoically denies he can be tied to the network behind the ads; his campaign’s life support since February when Mitt Romney announced the end of his presidential bid at the Conservative Political Action Conference where the crowd booed McCain’s lackluster ascendancy.

Barack Obama has been mugged by the press and stunned by a GOP nerve center hard wired into the motherboard of American politicking. He is waking up to find he’s been tied to the tracks and John McCain’s double speak express is lumbering towards him with whistle blowing.

McCain supports a ban on affirmative action in Arizona only after his party decides to use it as a wedge in November and before he knows the details:

In the past, McCain refused to endorse measures that would have ended affirmative action in Arizona. In 1998, he described such an effort as “divisive.”

On Sunday, when asked on ABC’s “This Week” about a current Arizona referendum to end the practice, McCain said: “I support it. I do not believe in quotas. But I have not seen the details of some of the proposals.”

Ana Marie Cox on why the press coddles McCain in the July/August issue of Radar Magazine:

Covering McCain is a blast. He genuinely likes reporters: He’ll joke with us about our drinking habits, playfully request our cell phones in the middle of a call and tell some unsuspecting editor or parent that the phone’s owner has just been hauled off to rehab, and engage in gleefully sarcastic banter about both our colleagues and his.

The venerable press can be bought with a beer and a joke? Not everyone’s so easily seduced.

Rachel Maddow questions the motives of those who paint Obama “presumptuous” for acting presidential yet ignore McCain actions that more readily fit the descriptive.

It is the uppity negro syndrome writ large yet those who dare to notice are playing the race card.

Update:
McCain Literally Puts Obama on $100 Bill – LITERALLY

Limbaugh marks 20 years on the air with call from the Bush family.

By Mohammed Omer, The Nation, 31 July 2008

I am a Palestinian journalist from Gaza. At the age of 17, I armed myself with a camera and a pen, committed to report accurately on events in Gaza. I have filed reports as Israeli fighter jets bombed Gaza City. I have interviewed mothers as they watched their children die in hospitals unequipped to serve them because of Israel’s embargo. I have been recognized for my reporting, even in the United States and United Kingdom, where I have won two international awards. I have also been beaten and tortured by Israeli soldiers.

This summer, at age 24, I was honored to learn that I had become the youngest journalist to receive the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, named for the famed American war reporter and awarded to journalists who counter propaganda with the truth. Although Israel has sealed Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians in what many now call the world’s largest open-air prison, Dutch MP Hans Van Baalen lobbied the Israeli government to let me leave Gaza to receive my award in person. Upon my return from London, I was surrounded by Israeli security officers. I was stripped naked at gunpoint, interrogated, kicked and beaten for more than four hours. At one point I fainted and then awakened to fingernails gouging at the flesh beneath my eyes. An officer crushed my neck beneath his boot and pressed my chest into the floor. Others took turns kicking and pinching me, laughing all the while. They dragged me by my feet, sweeping my head through my own vomit. I lost consciousness. I was told later that they transferred me to a hospital only when they thought I might die.

Today, I have difficulty breathing. I have abrasions and scratches on my chest and neck. My hands don’t function well; typing is difficult. My doctor informed me that due to nerve damage from one kick, I may be unable to father children and will need to have an operation.

[Read the article]

· 18-year-old boy brain dead after being shot in head
· Incident occurred just hours after funeral of 10-year-old

Toni O’Loughlin, guardian.co.uk, 31 July 2008

Israel’s army shot an 18-year-old Palestinian in the head in the West Bank town of Ni’ilin, just hours after the village buried a 10-year-old who had also been shot in the head by a soldier.

Eyewitnesses said the 18-year-old, Ahmed Yousef Amirah, was shot at close range when a military jeep drove past and an officer fired three rubber bullets at him from within the vehicle.

It is the third incident this month in which Israel’s military appears to have deliberately targeted a resident of Ni’ilin, where protests against Israel’s West Bank barrier and violent clashes occur almost daily.

Amirah was shot around 7.30pm, around four hours after 10-year-old Ahmed Moussa was buried in the village cemetery next to his parent’s house.

[Read the report]

Peter Beaumont in Ni’ilin: Palestinians capture violence of Israeli occupation on video

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) — The AIDS epidemic among African-Americans in some parts of the United States is as severe as in parts of Africa, according to a report out Tuesday.

“Left Behind – Black America: A Neglected Priority in the Global AIDS” (.pdf) is intended to raise awareness and remind the public that the “AIDS epidemic is not over in America, especially not in Black America,” says the report, published by the Black AIDS Institute, an HIV/AIDS think tank focused exclusively on African-Americans.

“AIDS in America today is a black disease,” says Phill Wilson, founder and CEO of the institute and himself HIV-positive for 20 years. “2006 CDC data tell us that about half of the just over 1 million Americans living with HIV or AIDS are black.”

Although black people represent only about one in eight Americans, one in every two people living with HIV in the United States is black, the report notes.

[Read the CNN report]

After reading, please consider making a donation to Dalia Association

By Dalia Association

Self-determination is a fundamental principle of international lawi that enshrines the rights of individuals and peoples to freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development, and the obligation of all states to respect and promote the realisation of these rights in conformity with the provisions of the UN Charter. For the Palestinian people, the lack of statehood, continued military occupation, and dispossession are key obstacles to self- determination. A less obvious obstacle to Palestinian self-determination is the international aid system itself.

Palestinians in the occupied territory are the largest per capita (not absolute) recipients of international aid, but despite the billions of dollars spent, “development” has not resulted. Whereas the 60-year-long conflict with Israel is the obvious source of the problem, the international aid system is exacerbating hopelessness and helplessness by objectifying beneficiaries and making them feel like beggars. Palestinians’ lack of control over nearly all aspects of their lives – including how resources are used on their behalf – contradicts all enabling factors for health, democracy, sustainable development, and non-violent social change.

Dalia Association, the first Palestinian “community foundation” was established in 2007 after founders conducted more than 150 interviews with Palestinian civil society activists, development professionals, and philanthropy experts. We found that governmental donors’ well-funded agendas are suffocating indigenous leadership, local initiative, and self-reliance. Palestinian civil society has lost credibility and impact through its dependence on international aid. Many Palestinian NGOs have become accountable to donors and alienated from the grassroots. Volunteerism, once vibrant, has given way to passivity as millions of people have come to rely on food aid, free shelter, and handouts. In other words, our research found that the international aid system disempowers Palestinians and denies their right to self- determination in the development process.ii

[Read the report]