New moves to curb criticism of Israel in US and Canada

New legislation in the US threatens to conflate campus criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.

A number of new initiatives to curtail freedom of speech by conflating opposition to Israeli crimes with anti-Semitism are underway in the United States and Canada.

The Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism (CPCCA) issued a report in early July recommending the adoption of strict new standards defining anti-Semitism and the types of speech and campus activities that would violate them. Its report urged the Canadian government to adopt the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia’s definition of anti-Semitism (“Report on the Inquiry Panel,” 7 July 2011 [PDF]). That definition suggests that any questioning of whether Israel has the right to exist as a state that privileges Jews over people of other religions or ethnic backgrounds amounts to anti-Semitism.

Though the Canadian group is not linked to the Ottawa government, it has 22 parliamentarians as members. Activities it deems as anti-Semitic and, therefore, calls to be banned, include events such as the Israeli Apartheid Week that was founded in Toronto and now takes place on college campuses internationally every March.

The Canadian report is just the latest attempt at stifling public discourse about Israel. Free speech and the unimpeded exchange of ideas are also under attack on America’s college campuses. Pro-Israel supporters have targeted federal funding for academic institutions, including support for research and academic conferences, under the pretext that criticism of Israel is “hate speech.”

Federal authorities from the Office of Civil Rights with the US Department of Education are investigating charges of anti-Semitism against the University of California Santa Cruz, as well as at other institutions within the California university system, according to published reports. These are the first investigations taking place since Title VI of the Civil Rights Act was re-interpreted in October 2010, allowing Jewish students, as members of a religious group, to claim discrimination under a provision that previously applied only to racial and ethnic bigotry.

A “dear colleague” letter issued by the Office of Civil Rights in October 2010 said that discrimination against a student who is a member of a religious group violates Title VI when the discrimination is based on the group’s “actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics … or when it is based upon the student’s actual or perceived citizenship or residency in a country whose residents share a dominant religion or a distinct religious identity,” David Thomas, a US Department of Education spokesman, explained by email.

Bowing to the Zionist lobby

Major pro-Israel organizations such as the Zionist Organization of America and the Anti-Defamation League have lobbied for this re-interpretation for years. Title VI now can be applied to Jewish students who claim universities create hostile campus environments if they allow pro-Palestinian events or even class lectures critical of Israeli policies.

In other words, since Israel bills itself as a Jewish state, of which all Jews everywhere are automatic citizens, Jewish students can file complaints of anti-Semitism and discrimination based upon their perceived ethnicity and citizenship or residency in a country that has a “dominant religion.”

Dr. Hatem Bazian, a Palestinian-American professor of Near Eastern and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, who founded the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) there in 2001, takes issue with the amended understanding of Title VI. While he agrees that Jewish students, as well as Muslim students, should be protected from discrimination based on their religious identity under Title VI, he believes the reinterpretation is actually being used to silence debate about Israel.

“Attempts to silence opposition to the illegal Israeli occupation and policies is un-American and amounts to political and academic censorship,” Bazian said via email. (Bazian is also the chairman of American Muslims for Palestine, the organization with which this writer is employed).

The Title VI reinterpretation and the subsequent case against Santa Cruz is part of a growing trend of stifling of protected political speech on college campuses. Several lecturers and professors have been censured and even denied tenure because they openly criticized Israeli policies or advocated for Palestinian rights.

Perhaps the most widely publicized cases are those of former DePaul University professor Norman Finkelstein and North Carolina State University professor Terri Ginsberg, both of whom were not given tenure because of their open criticism of Israeli policies in 2007 and 2008, respectively. Ginsberg initiated legal action against North Carolina State and her case is currently on appeal.

Freedom of information denied

The new interpretation has rejuvenated a 29-page complaint brought against the University of California Santa Cruz in June 2009 by lecturer Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, the contents of which have been kept secret by the Department of Education and university officials.

On 13 April, American Muslims for Palestine filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the complaint with the San Francisco Office of Civil Rights. Federal authorities declined the request on 22 April, saying that supplying the complaint would “constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” and that it could “reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings,” both of which are listed as exemptions under the federal FOIA statute.

What is so troubling in the University of California Santa Cruz investigation is that the amended interpretation is being applied retroactively to Rossman-Benjamin’s complaint, which she filed more than one year before the October 2010 “dear colleague” letter. No one contacted from the university or the Department of Education would discuss how an institution can be held liable for something that was not considered to be a violation at the time it occurred.

“[The Office of Civil Rights] received the UC-Santa Cruz complaint … on 25 June 2009,” Thomas wrote in an email to American Muslims for Palestine. “On 7 March 2011, OCR formally notified the university and the complainant that OCR was opening for investigation the allegations that a hostile environment existed for Jewish students at the university in 2009 in violation of Title VI and that the university had notice of the hostile environment but did not have a process to adequately respond to hostile environment complaints.”

Thomas failed to respond to American Muslims for Palestine’s direct question about how the new interpretation could be applied retroactively, though it was posed three times in three separate emails on 13 and 15 April.

Jim Burns, a University of California Santa Cruz spokesman, also would not address that issue and instead referred it back to the Department of Education’s civil rights office. He did tell American Muslims for Palestine in an email, however, that the Office of Civil Rights is reviewing a complaint that “speech on campus that is critical of Israel creates a hostile environment for Jewish students.”

“We believe that [the Office of Civil Rights’] investigation will ultimately conclude that [the University of California Santa Cruz] diligently enforces laws, policies and practices that protect our students’ civil rights. But we also believe that our review of the matter with OCR will provide us with an opportunity to examine our relevant policies and practices to ensure that is the case,” he added.

If federal investigators find a university to be in violation of Title VI and the institution does not remedy the situation satisfactorily it could lose federal funding. This is a worst-case scenario to be sure, but it is one that seemingly threatens the open exchange of ideas on college campuses.

“While some of the recent allegations … might well raise a claim under Title VI, many others simply seek to silence anti-Israel discourse and speakers. This approach is not only unwarranted under Title VI, it is dangerous,” Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Presidents (AAUP), and Kenneth Stern of the American Jewish Committee, wrote recently in an open letter on AAUP’s website.

“The purpose of a university is to have students wrestle with ideas with which they may disagree, or even better, may make them uncomfortable. To censor ideas is to diminish education, and to treat students as fragile recipients of ‘knowledge,’ rather than young critical thinkers,” they added.

American Muslims for Palestine’s Hatem Bazian said the implications of the re-interpretation go far beyond free speech in the classroom and at extra-curricular events. Funding for scholarly research and academic conferences that bring up “legitimate criticism of Israel” may be at stake, he said.

“The new interpretation will directly, first and foremost, impact those who administer Title VI funding, and they for sure will be more hesitant and will engage in self-censorship in funding research or activities that are critical of Israel,” Bazian said.

Indeed, the Anti-Defamation League was one of 12 national organizations that urged the Department of Education to amend its Title VI interpretation. It may have just been a co-signer in that battle but the ADL has taken the lead in many high-profile cases to stifle free speech and public debate in its hundred-year history.

In March, the ADL, along with the American Jewish Committee and the Bay Area Jewish Community Relations Council, protested an academic conference at the UC Hastings College of the Law in March entitled “Litigating Palestine: Can Courts Secure Palestinian Rights?” Their protest was so effective the university board voted to remove its name and endorsement for the event and it prevented university Chancellor Frank Wu from making opening remarks.

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

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GORDON DUFF: AMERICA’S TARNISHED MILITARY PARTNERSHIP WITH ISRAEL

OUR UNREPORTED ”COLD WAR” WITH ISRAEL

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

9/11 was like Pearl Harbor to America, uniting many, awakening bitter skepticism in a few. Where Pearl Harbor began America’s official role in crushing the Fascist juggernaut that threatened to dominate the world, 9/11 had quite the opposite effect. America’s response to 9/11 was oppression at home and a tirade of frenzied phobic reactions around the world. No American institution suffered more than the military. The team of Cheney and Rumsfeld, together since the disastrous Nixon years, began a process of purging America’s military of talent and leadership, instead building a force to serve a sinister agenda of religious heresy and extremist politics.

Nearly a decade later, it isn’t the economic collapse or the discredited military adventures that have now embittered a military leadership infrastructure that now sees itself as duped, dishonored and discarded. A number of factors can be attributed, the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back” as it were but it is 9/11 where things begin to fall apart. The cover story, a group of Muslims with box cutters and a few remarkably unproductive hours of pilot training, simply hasn’t held up. America has had many airline hijackings, starting with the 1960s and was under strict terror alert on 9/11, despite the obfuscations of Donald Rumsfeld. Top military pilots, among themselves and their fellow officers, voiced doubts about the “twin towers” scenario, doubts that began reaching a quiet crescendo pointing to 9/11 as an “inside job.”

With the dozens of conspiracy theories and a weak and implausible cover story, one the 9/11 Commission itself eventually rejected, only one plausible answer was left, an answer very much “not for public consumption.” Few Americans know that a team of Israeli intelligence agents were arrested on 9/11 after being observed using “video” equipment to record the planes crashing into the towers. After the disaster, the Mossad agents, soon to be arrested and released by the FBI, began celebrating as though they had completed a successful operation. This enraged New Yorkers who mistook them for terrorists. In fact, New Yorkers weren’t wrong.

Only top members of America’s military knew the truth, the “dancing Israelis” had remotely guided the two planes into the World Trade Center, not simply videoing, itself proof of guilt. Military pilots, in particular, knew the planes were nearly impossible to maneuver at those speeds without Israeli designed auto-pilot systems, not unlike those used on Tomahawk/Cruise missiles. Behind a flurry of “conspiracy theories,” many totally implausible, some obvious to military leaders as part of an elaborate deception plan requiring widespread control of media assets, more subtext came to light.

Though warned of “career suicide” for speaking up, members of the military and, in particular, the intelligence community began putting the pieces together. 9/11 was an intelligence operation involving the United States, Great Britain, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Everything was there, finance, private “black ops” contractors, but mostly, a pre-staged media frenzy on the front end, counterfeit intelligence on Iraq in the middle and a rigged investigation, the “9/11 Commission coverup” on the backside. It didn’t take FBI and intelligence agency officials long to track 9/11 planning back to 1999, not in Afghanistan but much closer to home.

Not a word of this would ever hit the press and any “conspiracy” group that got close to the truth would be shut down or infiltrated quickly. By 2007, undeniable and overwhelming evidence of 9/11 wrongdoing, massive corruption in every aspect of defense and security and the attrition of America’s readiness response capabilities began turning the tide. What had been only “grumbling” about incompetence, political interference with the military and Washington’s “blind eye” to Israeli abuses became a quiet revolt.

The “Minot-Barksdale” nuclear weapon incident that year, one forgotten, unexplained but one haunting us still may tell us how close we came. Nuclear weapons were loaded onto a B-52 at Minot AFB, loaded illegally, bypassing layer after layer of security and control with dozens of military personnel involved in one of the most serious criminal conspiracies in our history. When the plane was recalled and returned to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana, carrying at least six nuclear weapons, possibly as many as twelve, America’s nuclear arsenal had been proven to have fallen into the hands of extremist elements.

70 of those involved, Air Force personnel with the highest security clearances in the country, the most heavily screen group in America’s entire military, were discharged for wrongdoing. Since that time, seven more of those involved have died in accidents or by “suicide” including one 4 star general. A cult within the American military, Christian Zionists, had hijacked a plane load of nuclear weapons and were heading to the Middle East on a “mission from G-d.” Was Israel directly involved and, if so, what were the targets?

The military and intelligence community had, for some time, stopped looking on Israel as an asset or even a benign liability. As early as the 1950s, Israel had organized terror campaigns against Americans in Egypt in order to establish the myth of a worldwide anti-American Islamic terrorist movement. The “Lavon Affair” is suppressed in America’s news, torn out of the history books as is the attack on the USS Liberty in 1967. Israeli warplanes, initially disguised to appear as Egyptian, tried to sink an American warship in the Eastern Mediterranean in an attempt to force the United States to invade Syria and Egypt. When the ship failed to sink, all hands aboard, as planned, more planes, these with Israeli markings, were called in followed by torpedo boats. After hours of attack, with 201 of 296 crew members dead or wounded, the ship was still afloat, tattered American flag flying proud. Except for the actions of President Johnson and Admiral Sidney McCain, America might well have gone to war against Israel in 1967.

In 2008, President Bush signed the Naval Vessel Transfer Act, insuring that Israel have a more advanced navy than any country in the region, guaranteed by US law. Israel has only had two naval engagements in its history, one against an American ship and the other against the unarmed Mavi Marmara. Both attacks, causing the deaths of American citizens, were performed using American weapons.

In 1987, Israeli spy, Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life in prison for the single most devastating assault on America’s security in her history. 110 CIA agents behind the Iron Curtain were captured, tortured and executed, destroying America’s intelligence network at the height of the Cold War. Military experts from the former Soviet Union claim that information they received from Israel, information stolen by Pollard, nearly pushed Russia to starting a nuclear war against the United States, a war Russia knew they could easily win using information supplied by Israel.

Despite the fact that Israel has made Pollard’s birthday a national holiday, history books in the United States still claim Pollard was working for South Africa and Pakistan. Did the undercurrent of suspicion and hatred of Israel by the military and intelligence services because of Pollard create the need to stage 9/11?

In 1991, three nuclear weapons, nearly identical in size to the Hiroshima bomb, “went missing” in the Middle East. These weapons had been built, between 1975 and 1988, by Armscor , a South African/Israeli company, part of ten that were to make up the nuclear portion of apartheid South Africa’s illegal inventory of weapons of mass destruction. South Africa and Israel, aided by the Soviets, built, not only these nuclear weapons but an extensive array of biological and chemical weapons as well, some of which were used in Africa by the South African military. Israel and South Africa tested one of these nukes on September 22, 1979. The VELA satellite system detected the blast, confirmed by acoustic sensors, and established a detailed analysis of the materials and design.

These missing nukes were hijacked while being shipped to British forces in Oman, part of a convoluted deal arranged by Margaret Thatcher and involving current Prime Minister David Cameron, then 28, and Dr. David Kelly, British weapons scientist now believed murdered after threatening to go public about these missing weapons. These three missing nuclear weapons, now believed to have been stolen by Israel, were the secret rationale for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. When they weren’t located, Israel claimed they had been shipped via ambulance to, first Syria and then Lebanon to be hidden in an X-ray facility to avoid detection. America wasn’t fooled by these ploys and those privy to the “lost nukes,” those at the highest levels, had caught Israel again.

Then, in 2009, something utterly unforgivable happened. On May 25, 2009, North Korea tested its first successful nuclear weapon. It was confirmed to be one of the three missing nukes believed held by Israel, built in South Africa. Did Israel, third largest arms exporter in the world, sell a nuclear weapon to North Korea? Israel, known for peddling military technology to rogue nations, technology begged, borrowed or stolen from the United States, had crossed a line.

The military had long been resentful of Israel’s habit of selling off munitions the United States ”stored” in Israel for “safe keeping.” Several billion dollars worth of munitions stores had been shipped to Israel under a loose agreement allowing Israel to replenish her stocks from US supplies. This “off the books” military aid to Israel, was supposed to make Israel more secure. In fact, however, Israel has been selling these American owned munitions around the world, some to America’s potential adversaries including Venezuela.

Military contracts themselves have been a bone of contention. With US unemployment levels at their highest since the Great Depression, billions in defense and ”Homeland Security” contracts are going to Israel, a country importing labor from Africa and Asia to keep its arms factories manned. American companies that complain about being “run over” by Israeli lobbyists are quickly silenced. Not only is the American economy being negatively impacted but America’s defense industries as well. American companies, some involved in our most secret projects, are being forced by the Israeli lobby in Congress to take on partners in Israel, sharing technologies that soon end up in China, Singapore or India.

Currently, Israel has received a $1.8 billion stockpile of munitions for a war on Iran they will never fight or, perhaps a new assault on Gaza, weapons from the depleted stockpiles of the American military. Even more American munitions have been offloaded in Georgia and, perhaps shipped to forward bases in Azerbaijan to support an Israeli sneak attack on Iran. At risk, of course, are American troops in Iraq and American ships in the Persian Gulf. There are no Israeli forces within striking distance of Iran.

Our military is more than aware of this fact.

Today the Washington Post reported the following:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings – about 17 million square feet of space.

* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year – a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

What isn’t being mentioned is the fact that hundreds of the government organizations are run by dual citizens, Americans holding Israeli passports or that a significant number of the private companies are Israeli owned or managed by individuals with strong ties to Israel, ties that, if examined, would represent a clear conflict of interest and security threat. If America was allowed to openly acknowledge the areas of adversariality with Israel that have long existed, a significant number of the 854,000 people holding top-secret security clearances would immediately be deemed a risk.

Thus, terrorist plots that show the obvious signature of the Mossad, such as the Christmas 2009 ”crotch bomber” in Detroit, can never be properly investigated. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent with one purpose, support Israel’s political and economic aims even if it endangers the security of the United States.

Israeli involvement in weapons deals, Venezuela, North Korea, Turkey, India, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and dozens of other nations, creating a complex web of conflicting alliances makes the run up to World War I child’s play in comparison. With allegations of Israel managing, not only the money laundering but transshipment of $65 billion in heroin from Afghanistan into Russia and the west, the penetration of Americas intelligence and defense infrastructure has become obvious, particularly to the military, long resentful and suspicious of the CIA-Mossad alliance.

With years of dominance of both Defense and Homeland Security by Israeli-Americans and, not only the top levels of the Pentagon staffed by Christian Zionists but service academy admissions stacked from the rolls of this same extremist minority, abuses were meant to continue for years unchallenged. This, however, has not been the case. Continual rumblings, always quickly denied, flow out of the Pentagon, challenging our perception of Israel as an ally or strategic partner. In fact, numerous reports citing Israel as a threat have been quashed.

With two missing nuclear weapons in play and heavy handed interference in Washington politics and the American media, the current push for war with Iran has many military leaders increasingly watchful of staged incidents. With no serious intelligence backing Iran’s nuclear capabilities and the recent revelations from a kidnapped Iranian student purported to be one of their leading nuclear scientists, the scenario intended to duplicate the US invasion of Iraq is not progressing well. Evidence of the Saudi-Israeli connection, made public by this incident, has been suppressed in the media but is carefully noted by military intelligence analysts.

A “timely” attack on the US, by necessity devastating in nature and tied to Iran, perhaps using more kidnapped Iranian citizens, is expected. With congress and the press in lockstep with Israel, will the military be enough to stand up for American security and independence?

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The USA slaves are now truly screwed and can no longer speak or help anyone

Do not waste your efforts on seeking to change the course of the usa-or expect help from synmpathetic North Amerucans-

Prepare for the worst -because it is coming- This court decision means that any usa president can stop or reverse any election or protest and disappear anyone without giving any explanation-- he can do anyting he wants and the law now agrees with him- he can draft 10 million soldiers to invade Venezuela or anywhere--
and if any one disagrees he will disappear dead or alive-- there will be no more debate or discussion in
usa about attacking Venez or anyone else. Miami mafia now run the usa.

No one in the usa can help you any longer--all opposition now will not only be jailed and tortured-
They will be disappeared-- Prepare now for the worst.

"
While we were all out doing our Christmas shopping, the highest court in the land quietly put the kibosh on a few more of the remaining shards of human liberty.

It happened earlier this week, in a discreet ruling that attracted almost no notice and took little time. In fact, our most august defenders of the Constitution did not have to exert themselves in the slightest to eviscerate not merely 220 years of Constitutional jurisprudence but also centuries of agonizing effort to lift civilization a few inches out of the blood-soaked mire that is our common human legacy. They just had to write a single sentence.

Here's how the bad deal went down. After hearing passionate arguments from the Obama Administration, the Supreme Court acquiesced to the president's fervent request and, in a one-line ruling, let stand a lower court decision that declared torture an ordinary, expected consequence of military detention, while introducing a shocking new precedent for all future courts to follow: anyone who is arbitrarily declared a "suspected enemy combatant" by the president or his designated minions is no longer a "person." They will simply cease to exist as a legal entity. They will have no inherent rights, no human rights, no legal standing whatsoever -- save whatever modicum of process the government arbitrarily deigns to grant them from time to time, with its ever-shifting tribunals and show trials.

This extraordinary ruling occasioned none of those deep-delving "process stories" that glut the pages of the New York Times, where the minutiae of policy-making or political gaming is examined in highly-spun, microscopic detail doled out by self-interested insiders. Obviously, giving government the power to render whole classes of people "unpersons" was not an interesting subject for our media arbiters. It was news that wasn't fit to print. Likewise, the ruling provoked no thundering editorials in the Washington Post, no savvy analysis from the high commentariat -- and needless to say, no outrage whatsoever from all our fierce defenders of individual liberty on the Right.

But William Fisher noticed, and gave this report at Antiwar.com:



In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal Monday to review a lower court’s dismissal of a case brought by four British former Guantanamo prisoners against former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the detainees’ lawyers charged Tuesday that the country’s highest court evidently believes that "torture and religious humiliation are permissible tools for a government to use."

...Channeling their predecessors in the George W. Bush administration, Obama Justice Department lawyers argued in this case that there is no constitutional right not to be tortured or otherwise abused in a U.S. prison abroad.

The Obama administration had asked the court not to hear the case. By agreeing, the court let stand an earlier opinion by the D.C. Circuit Court, which found that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act – a statute that applies by its terms to all "persons" – did not apply to detainees at Guantanamo, effectively ruling that the detainees are not persons at all for purposes of U.S. law.

The lower court also dismissed the detainees’ claims under the Alien Tort Statute and the Geneva Conventions, finding defendants immune on the basis that "torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants."


The Constitution is clear: no person can be held without due process; no person can be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. And the U.S. law on torture of any kind is crystal clear: it is forbidden, categorically, even in time of "national emergency." And the instigation of torture is, under U.S. law, a capital crime. No person can be tortured, at any time, for any reason, and there are no immunities whatsoever for torture offered anywhere in the law.

And yet this is what Barack Obama -- who, we are told incessantly, is a super-brilliant Constitutional lawyer -- has been arguing in case after case since becoming president: Torturers are immune from prosecution; those who ordered torture are immune from prosecution. They can't even been sued for, in the specific case under review, subjecting uncharged, indefinitely detained captives to "beatings, sleep deprivation, forced nakedness, extreme hot and cold temperatures, death threats, interrogations at gunpoint, and threatened with unmuzzled dogs."

Again, let's be absolutely clear: Barack Obama has taken the freely chosen, public, formal stand -- in court -- that there is nothing wrong with any of these activities. Nothing to answer for, nothing meriting punishment or even civil penalties. What's more, in championing the lower court ruling, Barack Obama is now on record as believing -- insisting -- that torture is an ordinary, "foreseeable consequence" of military detention of all those who are arbitrarily declared "suspected enemy combatants."

And still further: Barack Obama has now declared, openly, of his own free will, that he does not consider these captives to be "persons." They are, literally, sub-humans. And what makes them sub-humans? The fact that someone in the U.S. government has declared them to be "suspected enemy combatants." (And note: even the mere suspicion of being an "enemy combatant" can strip you of your personhood.)

This is what President Barack Obama believes -- believes so strongly that he has put the full weight of the government behind a relentless series of court actions to preserve, protect and defend these arbitrary powers. (For a glimpse at just a sliver of such cases, see here and here.)

One co-counsel on the case, Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights, zeroed in on the noxious quintessence of the position taken by the Court, and by our first African-American president: its chilling resemblance to the notorious Dred Scott ruling of 1857, which upheld the principle of slavery. As Fisher notes:



"Another set of claims are dismissed because Guantanamo detainees are not 'persons’ within the scope of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act – an argument that was too close to Dred Scott v. Sanford for one of the judges on the court of appeals to swallow," he added.

The Dred Scott case was a decision by the United States Supreme Court in 1857. It ruled that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves, or their descendants — whether or not they were slaves — were not protected by the Constitution and could never be citizens of the United States.


And now, once again, 144 years after the Civil War, we have established as the law of the land and the policy of the United States government that whole classes of people can be declared "non-persons" and have their liberty stripped away -- and their torturers and tormentors protected and coddled by authority -- at a moment's notice, with no charges, no defense, no redress, on nothing more than the suspicion that they might be an "enemy combatant," according to the arbitrary definition of the state.

Barack Obama has had the audacity to declare himself the heir and embodiment of the lifework of Martin Luther King. Can this declaration of a whole new principle of universal slavery really be what King was dreaming of? Is this the vision he saw on the other side of the mountain? Or is not the nightmarish inversion of the ideal of a better, more just, more humane world that so many have died for, in so many places, down through the centuries?-http://chiapas.indymedia.org/

Dred Scott Redux: Obama and the Supremes Stand Up for Slavery

Chris Floyd

December 18, 2009

While we were all out doing our Christmas shopping, the highest court in the land quietly put the kibosh on a few more of the remaining shards of human liberty.

It happened earlier this week, in a discreet ruling that attracted almost no notice and took little time. In fact, our most august defenders of the Constitution did not have to exert themselves in the slightest to eviscerate not merely 220 years of Constitutional jurisprudence but also centuries of agonizing effort to lift civilization a few inches out of the blood-soaked mire that is our common human legacy. They just had to write a single sentence.

Here's how the bad deal went down. After hearing passionate arguments from the Obama Administration, the Supreme Court acquiesced to the president's fervent request and, in a one-line ruling, let stand a lower court decision that declared torture an ordinary, expected consequence of military detention, while introducing a shocking new precedent for all future courts to follow: anyone who is arbitrarily declared a "suspected enemy combatant" by the president or his designated minions is no longer a "person." They will simply cease to exist as a legal entity. They will have no inherent rights, no human rights, no legal standing whatsoever -- save whatever modicum of process the government arbitrarily deigns to grant them from time to time, with its ever-shifting tribunals and show trials.

This extraordinary ruling occasioned none of those deep-delving "process stories" that glut the pages of the New York Times, where the minutiae of policy-making or political gaming is examined in highly-spun, microscopic detail doled out by self-interested insiders. Obviously, giving government the power to render whole classes of people "unpersons" was not an interesting subject for our media arbiters. It was news that wasn't fit to print. Likewise, the ruling provoked no thundering editorials in the Washington Post, no savvy analysis from the high commentariat -- and needless to say, no outrage whatsoever from all our fierce defenders of individual liberty on the Right.

But William Fisher noticed, and gave this report at Antiwar.com:

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal Monday to review a lower court’s dismissal of a case brought by four British former Guantanamo prisoners against former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the detainees’ lawyers charged Tuesday that the country’s highest court evidently believes that "torture and religious humiliation are permissible tools for a government to use."

...Channeling their predecessors in the George W. Bush administration, Obama Justice Department lawyers argued in this case that there is no constitutional right not to be tortured or otherwise abused in a U.S. prison abroad.

The Obama administration had asked the court not to hear the case. By agreeing, the court let stand an earlier opinion by the D.C. Circuit Court, which found that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act – a statute that applies by its terms to all "persons" – did not apply to detainees at Guantanamo, effectively ruling that the detainees are not persons at all for purposes of U.S. law.

The lower court also dismissed the detainees’ claims under the Alien Tort Statute and the Geneva Conventions, finding defendants immune on the basis that "torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants."

The Constitution is clear: no person can be held without due process; no person can be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. And the U.S. law on torture of any kind is crystal clear: it is forbidden, categorically, even in time of "national emergency." And the instigation of torture is, under U.S. law, a capital crime. No person can be tortured, at any time, for any reason, and there are no immunities whatsoever for torture offered anywhere in the law.

And yet this is what Barack Obama -- who, we are told incessantly, is a super-brilliant Constitutional lawyer -- has been arguing in case after case since becoming president: Torturers are immune from prosecution; those who ordered torture are immune from prosecution. They can't even been sued for, in the specific case under review, subjecting uncharged, indefinitely detained captives to "beatings, sleep deprivation, forced nakedness, extreme hot and cold temperatures, death threats, interrogations at gunpoint, and threatened with unmuzzled dogs."

Again, let's be absolutely clear: Barack Obama has taken the freely chosen, public, formal stand -- in court -- that there is nothing wrong with any of these activities. Nothing to answer for, nothing meriting punishment or even civil penalties. What's more, in championing the lower court ruling, Barack Obama is now on record as believing -- insisting -- that torture is an ordinary, "foreseeable consequence" of military detention of all those who are arbitrarily declared "suspected enemy combatants."

And still further: Barack Obama has now declared, openly, of his own free will, that he does not consider these captives to be "persons." They are, literally, sub-humans. And what makes them sub-humans? The fact that someone in the U.S. government has declared them to be "suspected enemy combatants." (And note: even the mere suspicion of being an "enemy combatant" can strip you of your personhood.)

This is what President Barack Obama believes -- believes so strongly that he has put the full weight of the government behind a relentless series of court actions to preserve, protect and defend these arbitrary powers. (For a glimpse at just a sliver of such cases, see here and here.)

One co-counsel on the case, Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights, zeroed in on the noxious quintessence of the position taken by the Court, and by our first African-American president: its chilling resemblance to the notorious Dred Scott ruling of 1857, which upheld the principle of slavery. As Fisher notes:

"Another set of claims are dismissed because Guantanamo detainees are not 'persons’ within the scope of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act – an argument that was too close to Dred Scott v. Sanford for one of the judges on the court of appeals to swallow," he added.

The Dred Scott case was a decision by the United States Supreme Court in 1857. It ruled that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves, or their descendants — whether or not they were slaves — were not protected by the Constitution and could never be citizens of the United States.

And now, once again, 144 years after the Civil War, we have established as the law of the land and the policy of the United States government that whole classes of people can be declared "non-persons" and have their liberty stripped away -- and their torturers and tormentors protected and coddled by authority -- at a moment's notice, with no charges, no defense, no redress, on nothing more than the suspicion that they might be an "enemy combatant," according to the arbitrary definition of the state.

Barack Obama has had the audacity to declare himself the heir and embodiment of the lifework of Martin Luther King. Can this declaration of a whole new principle of universal slavery really be what King was dreaming of? Is this the vision he saw on the other side of the mountain? Or is not the nightmarish inversion of the ideal of a better, more just, more humane world that so many have died for, in so many places, down through the centuries?

What is Acknowledged and What Remains Unknown
Sexual Torture

DAVID ROSEN

Sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners by United States military. May 15, 2009 "Removal of clothing was authorized by the Secretary of Defense [Rumsfeld] for use at GTMO [Guantánamo] on December 2, 2002," acknowledges the recently released U.S. Senate Armed Service Committee report on the use of harsh interrogation techniques. It also reports that the use of prolonged nudity proved so effective that, in January 2003, it was approved for use in Afghanistan and, in the fall of 2003, was adopted for use in Iraq. "Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody" The Senate report came out shortly after a secret International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report on CIA torture techniques used as part of its detention program was leaked by Mark Danner of the "New York Review of Books." These reports provoked a storm of media attention, much of it focused on the use of waterboarding (or what the ICRC more aptly calls "suffocation by water") and, in particular, its use on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times and Abu Zubaydah 83 times. The media paid less attention to the host of what the ICRC calls the other "methods of ill-treatment." The Senate report identifies these techniques as: use of military dogs, stress positions and physical training, sleep adjustment/sleep management, sensory deprivation and removal of clothing. The ICRC identifies them as: prolonged stress standing, beating by use of a collar, beating and kicking, confinement in a box, sleep deprivation and use of load music, exposure to cold temperature/cold water, prolonged use of handcuffs and shackles, threats, forced shaving, deprivation/restricted provision of solid food and prolonged nudity. These reports, together with the recent release of Bush-administration "torture memos," helped focus national attention on a shameful, if not illegal, aspect of mad king George’s War on Terror. However, these reports are "official" documents based on revelations of a very limited number of sources. The information gathered, while invaluable, is limited by these sources. The limited sources limit the public’s knowledge of the full scope of the torture committed by American intelligence agents, military officers and private contractors. Focusing on the issue of sexual torture, which includes prolonged nudity, reveals what has been made public but also what has yet to become publicly acknowledged. Failure to publicly acknowledge the full scope of sexual torture, along with all the other "harsh" interrogation techniques, creates a sanitized, "official," history. Americans will never know what torture was committed in their name, nor be able to hold accountable those who ordered and executed these actions unless they go beyond "official" sources. * * * The ICRC conducted interviews with fourteen "enemy combatants" from eight countries. The detainees were arrested over a nearly three-year period, from March 2002 through May 2005. Eleven of the detainees were subject to prolonged nudity "during detention and interrogation, ranging from several weeks continuously up to several months intermittently." The ICRC recounts what it calls the "alleged" experiences of seven detaineesm subject to prolonged nudity: • Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – kept naked for one month in Afghanistan. • Abu Zubaydah– kept naked for two-and-a-half weeks in Afghanistan after recovering at a Pakistan hospital; he reports subsequently being repeatedly provided with clothing and then stripped naked for weeks at a time. • Walid Bin Attash – kept naked two weeks in Afghanistan and again for a month in a second but unknown detention facility. • Encep Nuraman (aka Hambali) – kept naked for four or five days in Thailand and a week in Afghanistan, followed by intermittent periods of being clothed and naked. • Majid Khan – kept naked for three days in Afghanistan and seven days in his third place of detention. • Mohammed Nazir Bin Lep – kept naked three to four days in Thailand and nine days in Afghanistan. • Unnamed detainee – kept naked for two to three months in Afghanistan and then faced intermittent periods of being clothed and naked. The sources of these reports were interviews with the detainees. The Senate report provides a far different assessment on what it calls "removal of clothing." It makes clear that the use of prolonged nudity found strong support within the CIA and military as an interrogation technique. It reports that nudity was imported into Iraq, especially Abu Ghraib prison, from Afghanistan and GTMO. It states that this technique served a number of critical interrogation purposes, including to "humiliate detainees," to "renew 'capture shock’ of detainees" and as an incentive for good behavior. It use was extensive, as indicated by two of the many officers interviewed. COL Jerry Philabaum, the Commander of the 320th MP, reports seeing "between 12-15 detainees naked in their own individual cells." CPT Donald Reese, the Commander of the 372nd MP Company, acknowledged that prolonged nudity was "known to everyone" and it was "common practice to walk the tier and see detainees with clothing and bedding." Other officers made similar statements. Like the ICRC report, the Senate report draws extensively on interviews, but these interviews are with Army officers from the Military Police and intelligence. In addition, the Senate report draws on a number of publicly released military report, most notably by Major General George Fay, known as the Fay Report. One of its quotes is remarkably candid, perhaps more revealing than originally intended: detention created an "environment that would appear to condone depravity and degradation rather than humane treatment of detainees." The report also makes a single passing reference to Major General Antonio Taguba’s report on Abu Ghraib. * * * The first "enemy combatants" arrive at Guantánamo on January 11, 2002, nearly a year before Rumsfeld officially authorized the use of sexual torture. According to a CBS timeline, a "U.S. Air Force plane from Afghanistan touches down at Guantanamo carrying 20 prisoners, marking the start of the detention operation." [CBS News Gitmo Timeline, August 24, 2004] In the Senate report, SMU [Special Mission Unit] TF [Task Force] Commander [name blacked out] states that when he "took command [of Guantánemo] he 'discovered that some of the detainees were not allowed clothes’ as an interrogation technique [blacked out] said he terminated the practice in December 2003 or January 2004." The disclosures about prolonged nudity received little public discussion. Compared to the many far worse techniques employed, most notably "suffocation by water," head beating, kicking, stress positions, uses of dogs and sleep deprivation, sexual torture seems rather modest. But its purpose was, along with the other techniques, clear. As the ICRC notes, it "was clearly designed to undermine human dignity and create a sense of futility … resulting in exhaustion, depersonalization and dehumanization." However, drawing upon other sources paints a different picture, one far less sanitized and much more sadistic. What is not known is whether these additional techniques were approved by U.S. military and civilian leaders or were the improvised actions of frontline officers and contractors? A few examples illustrate these techniques. The best single source on the use of sexual torture at Abu Ghraib remains the Taguba report. In the report’s executive summary, the following "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" are identified as having been used at the prison: * forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time; * forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time; * videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees; * forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing; * forcing naked male detainees to wear women's underwear; * forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped; * arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them; * positioning a naked detainee on a MRE [meals ready to eat] Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture; * placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee's neck and having a female soldier pose for a picture; * sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick. Why did this part of the Taguba report not appear in the Senate report? Its absence speaks to the way official reports are sanitized and an "inside the Beltway" history is written. [see "Sexual Terrorism: The Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror," CounterPunch, May 13, 2008] The U.S. and international press revealed disturbing episodes of sexual terror used by American forces. For example, The Associated Press reported that a former inmate, Dhia al-Shweiri, was ordered by American soldiers to strip naked, bend over and place his hands on a wall; while not sodomized, he says he was humiliated: "We are men. It’s OK if they beat me," al Shweiri said. "Beatings don’t hurt us; it’s just a blow. But no one would want their manhood to be shattered." Scotland’s "Sunday Herald" reported that a former Iraqi prisoner claimed that there is a photo of a civilian translator raping a male juvenile prisoner; he stated, "They covered all the doors with sheets. I heard the screaming, … and the female soldier was taking pictures." London’s "Independent" reported on the experience of Hayder Sabbar Abd, immortalized as the man in the hood in infamous Abu Ghraib photo of Lynndie England. Abd alleges that he was ordered to masturbate as Ms. England "put her hands on her breasts," which he couldn’t; and to simulate fellatio with another prisoner, which he appears to have done. The "Sydney Morning Herald" noted: "Female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at Guantanamo Bay by sexual touching, wearing a miniskirt and thong underwear and in one case smearing a Saudi man's face with fake menstrual blood, according to an insider's written account." * * * Sexual torture served two purposes on those subjected to such abuse: to physically harm and to emotionally scar. It was intended to break male inmates. It sought to inflict both pain and shame, to make the recipient suffer and loathe himself. Sexual torture attempted to break the victim both physically and spiritually, to leave scars on (and inside) the body and in the psyche. With Obama’s election, the U.S. military has probably ceased employing "harsh interrogation techniques." Unfortunately, given Obama’s pragmatism, the Congress’ complicity, the military’s bureaucratic zealotry and the CIA’s (and private contractors’) immorality, one can only wonder what would happen if another September 11th occurred. The full scope of "harsh interrogation techniques" used during the War on Terror is unknown. Nor is it fully known who within the Bush administration approved the use of such technique, not who within the U.S. military and intelligence community (along with private contractors) used such techniques. Answers to these questions should be the first task of any "official" investigation of the War on Terror. And those undertaking the investigation should use a far wider assortment of sources than those deemed "official." Only then will the American people understand what was done in their name and, hopefully, how to stop it from happening again.

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Muslim Charity leaders in USA on trial again!!!

The Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) — once the largest American Muslim charity — never funded violence. It simply provided food, clothes, shelter, medical supplies and education to the suffering people in Palestine and other countries.HLF: A victim of 9/11 hysteria
On December 4, 2001, the United States government shut down the HLF, accusing it of financially supporting the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Embarrassing for them, the U.S. government never found a single piece of evidence showing that the HLF financed Hamas. So they changed their accusations. Nearly 3 years later, the U.S. government's new claim was that the HLF supported organizations — zakat committees — that were somehow linked to Hamas. The closure of the HLF was obviously motivated by politics and fear.

About the trial
The HLF trial began Tuesday, July 16, 2007. The five defendants are Ghassan Elashi, Shukri Abu-Baker, Mufid Abdulqader, Abdulrahman Odeh and Mohammad El-Mezain. These noble Palestinian-American gentlemen are innocent and their only crimes were helping ease the plight of the Palestinians. On Monday, October 22, 2007, U.S. District Judge A. Joe Fish declared a mistrial because jurors deadlocked on all of the counts against four defendants. One defendant, Mohammad El-Mezain, was aquitted on all but the first charge. The government plans to retry the case, starting September 22, 2008.

Are we repeating history?
Something is very familiar about the HLF case, but that doesn't make it right. Did Japanese-Americans deserve to be thrown in internment camps? Nope. Did African-Americans deserve to eat at segregated restaurants, sleep in segregated hotels or drink from segregated water fountains? Nope. Does the HLF deserve to be persecuted for feeding Palestinian orphans and widows? Again, nope.

Who should really be on trial?
For nearly half a century, Israel has occupied Palestine and denied Palestinians their basic human rights. The occupation has caused numerous horrifying outcomes such as the destruction of homes, the killing of innocent children and even the establishment of checkpoints around the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem. So we ask: If occupation obviously shatters lives, while charity builds them and charity feeds children, while occupation kills them, why is a charity organization — not occupation — paying the price?

Noor Elashi speaks to your heart
Please forward this message around:

This is Noor Elashi, the daughter of a defendant in the Holy Land Foundation Retrial.
During the past three weeks, I have felt my heart shatter a few times as I witnessed prosecutors use vindictive approaches such as character assassination, fear-mongering and guilt by association as an attempt to convict my dad. Sitting in the courtroom, I've felt my blood boil and freeze and boil again in a few seconds time. And as I looked behind me, my eyes scanning the room in search for faces of encouragement and moral support, I found that it was mostly empty with the majority of the benches unoccupied.
My dad and these men ran the largest American Muslim charity, saving hundreds of thousands of lives worldwide. We should be tremendously proud of them. They were honorable leaders in their communities. And now, they are paying a price for sponsoring orphans, assisting widows, equipping clinics, planting trees and wiping away tears.
I know you have your jobs and schoolwork and other priorities. But what if this was your dad, your uncle, your cousin, your husband or your best friend?
Gratitude from the bottom of my heart goes out to everyone who has attended so far. I sincerely hope to see the rest of you soon.
Next week, the retrial will run from Tuesday, Oct. 14 to Friday, Oct. 17. For the following four weeks or so, the retrial will take place Mondays through Thursdays. You can come ANYTIME between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. (There's a lunch break between 12:30 and 1:30 p.m.)
To read about the case so far, visit www.freedomtogive.com


Thanks,
Noor Elashi
A Proud Daughter of Ghassan Elashi

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the choices of the USA voters

a flag representing the Truth of the matter .

If you want Iran to get bombed,

vote for Mac Cain !!

If you want Pakistan to get bombed ,

vote for Obama !!

If you want New York to be bombed,

vote for the CIA and/or Oussama !!

If you want Gaza to starve to death,

it makes no difference !!

(anyone of them shall do it)

If you want Baghdad really liberated

take away those foreign-liberators !!

If you want Jerusalem liberated

take away those foreign-impostors !!

Give us back Palestine and Iraq

and we shall give you Peace

and then

you shall even not need

to bomb anybody !!

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Israel told to prepare for war with Iran

A Pentagon official says the US president has given the 'amber light' to an Israeli plan to attack Iran with long-range bombing sorties.

The senior Pentagon official told The Sunday Times that despite widespread opposition in the US administration President George W. Bush had informed Israel he may be prepared to approve a military strike on Iran's nuclear sites.

"Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack and tell us when you're ready," said the official.However, the Pentagon official said 'amber will never turn to green' if Israel does not present Bush with a 'solid' military proposal. Referring to the upcoming US presidential elections he suggested that Israel should not wait to act against Iran.

The official also confirmed that the Bush administration would not attack Iran but added that President Bush is concerned about the nuclear threat against Israel and that he does not believe in 'anything but force to deter Iran'.

"It's really all down to the Israelis. This administration will not attack Iran. This has already been decided," he stated.

The source said the men in uniform are opposed to a military strike against Iran and are concerned about endangering US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tehran warned earlier that Iranian Armed Forces would target the heart of Israel and 32 US bases before the dust settles from an attack on the country.

The remarks by the Pentagon official comes amid escalating speculation that Israel is preparing to launch a military strike on Iran with the help of US President George W. Bush before the end of his term in office.

According to a New York Times report, Israel staged a military maneuver in early June to prepare for an airborne strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Earlier in the week, in response to rising threats from Israel and the US, the IRGC test-fired nine state-of-the-art long and medium-range missiles to demonstrate the country's defensive military capabilities.

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Do not keep silent in the face of US and Israeli crimes

By Paul J. Balles

Paul J. Balles reminds those who keep silent in the
face of crimes, whether by Israel, the USA or some
other, that eventually their silence may rebound
on them with a vengeance.

In a poem by Maurice Ogden, a hangman comes to town
and builds a scaffold in front of the courthouse.
The poem's narrator says:

And we wondered whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal? What the crime?

Till one cried, "Hangman, who is he,
for whom you raised the gallows-tree?"

Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye
and he gave a riddle instead of reply.
"He who serves me best," said he
Shall earn the rope on the gallows-tree."

And he stepped down and laid his hand
on a man who came from another land.

So we gave him way and no one spoke
out of respect for his hangman�s cloak.

After hanging the "alien",
the hangman stayed in the village and told the people
that he was there for more than the alien.

"Do you think I've gone to all this fuss,
to hang one man? That's the thing I do."

One voice said "Shame" and the hangman hung him.
After that no one spoke out of fear. Next he hung a "usurer",
a Jew, and then a black, and then another and another until
everyone in the village was gone except the hangman
and the narrator.

Just before hanging the narrator, the hangman says:

"First the alien ... then the Jew.
I did no more than you let me do."

At one time or another, the hangman's prey in America
have been native Indians, Mexicans, Jews, blacks,
southerners, British, Germans, Italians, Irish, Japanese,
Communists, North Vietnamese, North Koreans,
anti-war protesters, Serbians, Russians, civil rights
protesters, and now, Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims.

As one commentator has said, "The poem can be seen as
an indictment of those who stand idly by while others
commit grave evil or injustice, such as
The Holocaust or McCarthyism."

That being the case, many should be indicted
for standing idly by while:

Palestinians in Gaza are the victims of devastating
treatment by the Israeli hangman

Hamas is labelled a terrorist organization but not Israel

The theft of Palestinian governance from a
duly elected Hamas

Fingering Hezbollah as a terrorist organization when it
has committed no terrorist acts

The support of Israel by the US, UK and now
France no matter what crimes against
humanity they commit

The destruction of Iraq by America while failing
to capture the bearded old man hiding securely
in caves in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Israel continues as an apartheid state

Lobbyists control the US government and media

Israel's possession of over 200 nuclear warheads while
objecting to Iran's development of nuclear power

The terrorism and crime of Guantanamo

America's violations of human rights while pretending to
be the icon of freedom

The erosion of the US constitution and
its intended protection
of personal freedom and liberty

America's support of dictators like Musharraf �
the latest in a series of exemplars

America and Israel threatens to bomb Iran

Designating Iran's Revolutionary
Guard a terrorist organization

Zionists label any criticism of Israel anti-Semitic

US protects American corporate
interests destroying the environment

America gives free rein to mercenary cowboys in Iraq to
murder and maim without control or punishment
for their crimes�

DO NOT KEEP SILENT when your own ideas and values
are being attacked. .If a dictatorship ever comes to this
country, it will be by the default of those who keep silent.
We are still free enough to speak. Do we have time?
No one can tell." �

Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It.

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US chief of staff to discuss invading Gaza with Israeli counterpart

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM-- Michael Mullen, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, is to start a 24-hour visit to the Hebrew state on Sunday during which he is expected to discuss with Israeli chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi a large scale invasion of the Gaza Strip. The Hebrew radio said that Mullen is to hold a working meeting on Monday with Ashkenazi on a number of intelligence and strategic questions in addition to the Palestinian locally made resistance missiles and the possibility of storming the Strip. This is the first visit for a US top military official to the Hebrew state in ten years and follows the Annapolis conference and the ensuing "ferocious campaign" against the Palestinian resistance especially the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas Movement. US president George Bush is scheduled to visit the Hebrew state in January 2008 in a bid to bolster his administration's efforts to find a final settlement to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

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