Sunday Afternoon

ah, well, i've spent the afternoon reading about gaza and hebron. hebron, too, who knew how bad things are there? 77% of businesses closed down, 40% of people have fled their homes, israeli settlers commit acts of violence against hebronites daily. the situation is so dangerous there for palestinians that most never leave their homes (except when they're literally running for their lives). it is impossible for them to live. education, economy, and all other aspects of infrastructure have collapsed under the self-described israeli policy of "dispossession".

this is my political reality, far removed from the politics of obama vs. hillary. people like my quasi-fascist friend, abdul* (who maintained howard dean's website when he ran for prez in 2004), believe that my political reality should be determined by domestic issues alone. "i don't give a frak about palestinians," aziz once commented. but i'm more concerned with preventing death and destruction in faraway lands than i am with which politician's economic plan will improve my net worth by more fractional percentage points. i can't help it.

and so it will continue this way for some time, probably forever, and i'll feel marginalised from american politics, despondent on afternoons like this one. what is my despondency, though, compared to those living in gaza or hebron? self-pity and helplessness are useless emotions, but when you read about life in the occupied territories, it's almost impossible to feel otherwise.

Stephen Lendman's incredible report on Hebron:
http://counterpunch.org/lendman01252008.html

What would happend if just once Newsweek or Time printed a report like this? Oh, a man can fantasise....


*not his real name. quasi-fascist in jest, but perhaps in reality. he is decidedly against freedom of speech in iraq, and he believes the u.s. operation of wholesale massacre in fallujah was justified in order to promote "our interests". again, he is a nice guy, but views such as these i label "quasi-fascist", "quasi-" only because it is of late unfashionable to call someone other than george bush a fascist.

Prelude to Genocide

The word genocide is tossed around in careless ways these days. Is Princeton Professor Richard Falk's designation of Israeli policy toward the Gaza Strip as a "prelude to genocide" valid? Omar Barghouti, a political analyst, examines this question in the light of Israel's round-the-clock siege on Gaza, and with reference to the UN definition of genocide, on CounterPunch.org.

Link:

http://counterpunch.org/barghouti01212008.html

Illegal to Help Starving Iraqis

Kathy Kelly, the courageous American peace activist, was charged with illegal conduct for taking food and medicines to Iraq during the years the U.S. imposed starvation-inducing sanctions. During those grim years (is today any less grim in Iraq?) rates of kwashiorkor and marasmus - types of severe malnutrition among children - increased 60-fold in Iraq due to the sanctions, according to the World Health Organisation.

Kelly and a handful of American Christian peace activists were fined, arrested, harrassed, and even imprisoned for giving food to these people because it was illegal under U.S. law to provide any succour to Iraqis. (Interesting that a few years later we kind Americans went to "liberate" these same Iraqis whom we'd bombed and starved for the previous twelve years.)

Today, an American charity called Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA) has been charged with, but not proven to be, supporting terrorist organisations. No convictions have been made proving any terrorist link, but the Justice Department is proudly touting the indictment of the charity and four of its officers for transferring $1.4 million to Iraq during the years of U.S. sanctions against that country, roughly 1991 to 2003.*

In other words, all that the IARA has been shown to have done is provide charity to Iraqis. There was no Iraqi insurgency in the years of the sanctions, there was no "al-Qaida in Iraq" (the U.S. media's favourite buzzphrase of 2007), there were no attacks on American soldiers or interests during that time. There were only starving children, over one million of whom died because of the sanctions, and an additional several hundred thousand starving Iraqi adults.

The IARA dared to feed those people. Like Kathy Kelly and her fellow Christian activists, they have been punished. Our fair, kind, and freedom-loving government has frozen their assets (millions of dollars donated by American citizens) and disallowed them from raising any more money for charity.

*See Lara Jordan's AP article dated today: "In an indictment handed down in March, the charity and four of its officers were charged with illegally transferring $1.4 million to Iraq from March 1991 to May 2003 — when Iraq was under various U.S. and U.N. sanctions."

COMING SOON: The Holy Land Foundation case in review. This is a U.S. charity that was found innocent on all of the 200-odd charges of terrorism brought against it by our government. How widely was this covered in our press? Have you heard of it?

Lady Di's Mom Hates Mozzlims

In a startling revelation, it was learned at Lady Diana's inquest in England today that her mother scolded her for being romantically involved with Muslim men.

As Robert Barr of the Associated Press reports today, Frances Shand-Kydd "upbraided her daughter in June 1997 for romances with Muslims. That remark came in 1997, before Diana's romance with Fayed [an Egyptian Briton], but toward the end of her affair with heart surgeon Hasnat Khan [a Pakistani Briton].

"Burrell said he heard the mother say that Diana was 'a whore and that she was (expletive deleted) around with Muslim men.'"

Wow, so a famous British person hates the darkies and the Mozzlims. No surprise there, eh, mate? As Salman Rushdie wrote in the 1980s, British people are afraid of "big, brown cocks". Except for Lady Di, who apparently loved them.

U.S. Admits Taped Voice May Not Be From Iranian Navy, After All

After all the hullabaloo over Iranian Navy ships supposedly threatening American military vessels in Boratesque voice and grammar, now a spokesman for the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet is conceding that the voice may not have come from the Iranians at all:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011008R.shtml [ABC News link]

Where did it come from, then? From Sascha Baron Cohen doing a voiceover?

Come on, the Iranians threaten to "explode" a U.S. Navy ship and the Americans simply keep their cool and turn away without firing a shot? This is the same U.S. Navy that downed an Iranian passenger airliner full of hajj pilgrims in 1988*. Of course, our American media with their selective amnesia conveniently neglected to make the link. And of course, our credulous American public swallowed the official U.S. military version hook, line, and sinker.


*Later, after the U.S. blamed the murder on "faulty radar equipment" - which happened to be the most sophisticated radar equipment known to man, and which happened never to malfunction that way before or since - the Navy rewarded each member of the ship with medals for bravery. What kind of sick culture gives medals to men for murdering women and children pilgrims flying home?

Vote Rigging in the USA

According to the testimony under oath of this computer expert, vote rigging by computer is easy, and he was asked by a U.S. Congressman to prepare such a vote-rigging program in the fall of 2000.

Believe it when you see it:

http://pkpolitics.com/2008/01/03/high-tech-rigging/