Unraveling the Emperor’s Speech to Write Our Own Story
By Susan Abulhawa | Palestine Chronicle | June 8, 2011
Anger was my first reaction after listening to Obama’s two speeches, one to the world and another to AIPAC – the powerful Israeli lobby in the US. I went around to my friends with phrases like ‘who does he think he is, presuming to tell Palestinians how they may or may not achieve freedom?’, or ‘what makes him think his vision for Palestinian dignity actually trumps the vision of Palestinians themselves?’ or ‘how dare he talk to us like a parent chastising a small child?’ or ‘when will we have a president who can and will tell the truth?’ or ‘I think AIPAC wrote his speech for him.’
My friends are used to hearing impassioned political commentary from me. The ones close to me always advise me to let the anger dissipate before I write anything so that what I put into words is coming from a clear head. That’s where I am now – no anger, calm, and clear headed. And here is my reaction:
Who does Obama think he is, presuming to tell Palestinians how they may or may not achieve freedom? What makes Obama think his vision for the future of Palestine, indeed vision for the Arab world on the whole, trumps the vision of Palestinians or Arabs for themselves? How dare he talk to Palestinians like we’re his bad little children in need of (his) parental direction? And will we in the US ever have a president capable of speaking frankly and truthfully? Because he just put Israeli propaganda in his own voice for the world.
After paying lip service to the Arab Spring, he outlined how he plans to help – read: manipulate – new governments, then he launched into the “cornerstone” of his vision, which pertains to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, although he referred to it as “the conflict between Israelis and Arabs.” That wording is important. It’s obfuscation verbiage that Israel has employed for years in order to lump Palestinians into miscellaneous Arabs, instead of a distinct people native to the Holy Land, being wiped away, swept into other Arab lands. The president dutifully spewed Israeli hasbara. And that was just the first sentence on the subject!
In the second sentence, he managed to present Israelis as poor victims living in constant fear for the lives of their children and in pain because, according to Obama, Palestinians teach their children to hate them. Again, here the President is regurgitating the racist Israeli hasbara that contradict the most basic facts of this conflict. In fact, over 100 Palestinian children have been killed for every Israeli child. Thousands of Palestinian children have been maimed for a single injured Israeli. Prisons in that land have been filled with Palestinian children, not Israelis. The thousands of school children cut off from their schools and teachers are Palestinian children, not Israeli. The bombed, destroyed homes and schools belonged to Palestinians, not Israelis. The ones who have to watch their mothers, fathers, grandparents and siblings humiliated, beaten, and systematically terrorized are Palestinian children, not Israeli. In more than sixty years, it has been Palestinians who have not known a single day of security or peace. And yet, Obama’s sympathy is with Israelis because a few Palestinians have committed acts to make Israelis pay a price for their colonial project that steals the Palestinian people’s heritage, inheritance, and history.
That wretched sentence was followed by a condescending attempt to describe what it has meant to us Palestinians to have our hearts wrenched from our bodies. Obama said it has been “humiliating” for us. Really? Tell that to my grandmother (and thousands like her) who died in a bug-infested shack so more Jews from Brooklyn could come and take her home and destroy the graves of her ancestors. And even in that reluctant reference to our humanity, Obama manages to insert another bit of Israeli hasbara by adding that our humiliation also stems from “never living in a nation of [our] own”. Despite my initial reaction, I have to smile at this statement, because no one can say or do anything to alter the fact that Palestinian families, including my own, are rooted in that land for centuries and millennia. That’s a claim that no Jewish man or woman from Eastern Europe, like Netanyahu, Tzipi Levni and other Israeli leaders can ever make. Those Israelis came to Palestine, changed their names and said they had returned home, then proceeded to destroy and expel the indigenous population. They have not only stolen our land, but they have also stolen our story, for it is Palestinians who are the natural inhabitants of that land who have descended from its various tribes throughout time, including the Hebrew tribes. But maybe Obama’s sympathies stem from America’s own history, since early settlers did the same to Native Americans. But that’s as shameful a history as slavery. Or maybe Obama is just a politician who doesn’t have what it takes to be a leader and cannot speak beyond the limits of his own narrow self-interest, even if it means upholding the shameful logic of inherent entitlement that underpins the State of Israel.
No matter. He managed to write himself out of history in that speech, of which I’ve only touched on three sentences so far. The next sentence was pure hypocrisy. He said, “We support a set of universal rights. Those rights include free speech; the freedom of peaceful assembly; freedom of religion; equality for men and women under the rule of law.” For the record, every one of those rights is denied to Palestinians by Israel. Palestinian Muslims and Christians in Ramallah, for example, cannot travel the 15 minutes it would take to get to Jerusalem to pray. I also note that Obama said nothing of equality between Jews and non-Jews, the opposite of which is the very foundation of the State of Israel.
That’s barely a paragraph from Obama’s abominable speech. It’s hasbara and pandering quotients only got worse in the version he delivered to AIPAC.
Telling Our Own Story
But we need not despair, and we need not fear. It might not be so obvious right now, but Israel is a sinking ship, because as history has taught us over and over, regimes that seek to create a “pure race” – with whatever the twisted ideas of purity mean for each – do not last. Oppression has a short shelf life, as brave Arab men and women are demonstrating to the world, one Arab nation at a time.
When David Grun and Gold Mabovitch came from Poland and the Russian Empire, they changed their names (David Ben Gurion and Gold Meir), committed massacres, and drove out the native people. Ben Gurion predicted that Palestinians, now refugees, would disappear as “the old will die and the young will forget”. They told a story of “a land without a people for a people without a land.” Meir tried to convince the world that we weren’t real when she declared to the world that “Palestinians do not exist”. And when we finally fought back, they spoke for us, and told a story of a depraved, violent, and irrational people. They controlled the dominant narrative, presumed to not only speak for us, but also for God. Golda Meir once said that Israel “exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy.” In this narrative, God became a real estate agent and the Bible a property deed. It was an alluring, albeit absurd, narrative and the world bought it. But amongst themselves, Israelis understood its miscalculation, which came in a candid admission from Judah Magnes years later when he said “we seem to have thought of everything… except the Arabs”.
Today, in the halls of power in both the US and Israel, many people are ironically echoing those words, decades after they were uttered by Magnes because the Orientalist assessment (if any at all) of the native populations does not encompass aspirations for freedom or their willingness to fight for elemental human dignities. The mistake of the United States, of Israel, and their client Arab rulers was to believe that we are backward, unrefined, uncivilized, fearful and easily controlled by brute force.
In truth, the greatest and most successful weapon used against Palestinians has not been Israeli tanks, airplanes, guns and soldier; it has not been their checkpoints, walls, fences, or settlements; it has not even been their powerful propaganda machine that suffuses nearly all mainstream western media outlets; Nor has it been their near complete control of US Congress or successive administrations.
The greatest weapon Israel has used against us has been our own minds. They succeeded, for a while at least, in making us believe ourselves small and powerless; that they are bigger than we are. Their greatest weapon has been their ability to make us believe that we need their permission to live with dignity; that we need their blessing and the blessing of the US to achieve freedom; that our lives depend on currying favor with them; that we must negotiate for the right to live in our own homes, inherit our own heritage, and live with the human rights that are accorded to the rest of humanity. Their great weapon has been to make us believe that we must give everything we have, everything dear to us, so they will stop oppressing us and leave us a pittance and crumbs of what is already rightfully ours to begin with.
Perhaps, in their despair and shock, our parents and grandparents bought into this; but no more. Ben Gurion could not have been more wrong. The young have not forgotten, and they are tearing away at this nonsense that has kept us chained.
First Tunisians, ordinary citizens, together took down their ruthless leader, followed by Egyptians, who managed to dismantle a regime that seemed unmovable and all-powerful. And in doing so, they destroyed the façade of power. They broke the greatest weapons against us and helped restore our belief in ourselves. Our brothers and sisters in Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya and beyond are now waging their lives en mass to confront and dismantle long standing injustices, as Palestinians have been doing for decades.
The politics and issues might differ from one country to the next, but a common narrative runs through them all. It is simply that we are ancient societies with splendid histories and cultures. We are also a people who have been so maligned, so dehumanized and oppressed by various mechanisms. A people whose voice has been muted and whose story has mostly been told by others. A people who are finally demanding to speak in their own voices, to tell their own story, to define themselves for the world, and to hold the reigns of their own destiny.
And in that context, it doesn’t matter what Obama says to AIPAC or to the world. His vision does not matter. Nor does Netanyahu’s. Egyptians did not need America’s permission to do that. They didn’t need Israel’s either. They needed only their own resolve and fortitude; and they also needed the eyes and solidarity of ordinary people of the world. That’s all we as Palestinians need to demand and claim our place among humanity, as a people deserving of human rights that are afforded to the rest of the world. We do not need the US or Israel to give us these rights. We were born with them. We don’t need to negotiate for them, because they’re non-negotiable.
We are a people who stand firmly on moral ground, demanding basic human rights and freedom. Let them say or do what they will. Ours is a demand for inclusion, while theirs is for exclusion. Ours is for the diverse, multi-religious society that Palestine had always been. Theirs is for a Jewish-only country. Ours involves equality under the law regardless of religion, while theirs is a demand for privilege and entitlement only for those belonging to the Jewish religion. Ours is a claim based on history, heritage, law, and personal lineage; theirs is a claim based on an omnipotent landlord. Ours is for justice. Theirs is for power.
But Israel’s power exists only at the narrow corrupted top where the Obamas and Mubaraks of the world dwell. It’s the power of weapons and brute force. Our power is on the wide expansive ground, where the call for justice swells all over the world. It’s the space of human solidarity and moral conscience that fight the good fight for freedom and dignity, regardless of religion or race. That’s where we are, and here, the Emperor’s speeches are irrelevant.
Palestinians have not forgotten, nor will we. We carry our homes, our stories and our wounds in our skin and give birth to them all over again with every new generation. Just as Jews cannot forget the Shoah, so Palestinians cannot forget the Naqba, the Naksa, and the ongoing ethnic cleansing taking place. More importantly, we know who we are and where we come from. That is where we’re headed and we will make it home, thanks to our resolve and thanks to the solidarity of individuals and organizations all over the world. And when we are finally home, we will, as Dr. Edward Said urged us, remember the solidarity shown to Palestine here and everywhere.
Israel should not see this as a threat and they should not fear true democracy. Israel has a chance to heed the calls of their brave young people who refuse to be the brutalizers it wants them to be. The ones who refuse to serve and the ones breaking the silence or the ones boycotting their own illegal settlements. They are the conscience of Israel. And the conscience of the Jewish people is reflected in the woman who courageously interrupted Netanyahu’s speech before Congress. These young people are Israel’s redemption. Because the day will come when their racist system that measures human worth by religion will crumble. The day will come when military force is not enough to stop people from pouring into the streets to march for justice; and a critical mass all over the world will say enough.
Israel exists amidst a great body of Arabs. Amidst very old civilizations where historically Jews thrived. Whether in the Middle East, North Africa, or Spain, Jews found strength, protection, home and opportunity under Muslim rule before Israel was established. Israel’s best hope is to work to restore that solidarity. To find their way to the understanding that we are not children of a lesser God whom they can destroy and oppress at will.
– Susan Abulhawa is the author of Mornings in Jenin (Bloomsbury 2010) and the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine (www.playgroundsforpalestine.org).
Jewish extremists storm Aqsa plaza
Spree coincides with the 44th anniversary of the Israeli occupation
Palestine Information Center – 08/06/2011
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, — Jewish settlers stormed the holy Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem on Wednesday in large numbers after organizing provocative marches in its vicinity and in the Old City.
Aqsa guards said that the settlers broke into the holy site through the Maghareba gate under police protection and started feasting, which included opening and breaking liquor bottles.
Worshipers inside the mosque rushed to the plaza while chanting Allahu Akbar (God is great), but the policemen kept them away and threatened to arrest them. Tension ran high after the incident.
Leaders of Jewish fanatic groups had called for storming the Aqsa on the occasion of “Alhvuaot Albwakir” feast, which coincides with the forty-fourth anniversary of occupying eastern Jerusalem.
BBC hides royal wedding coverage costs
Press TV – June 7, 2011
The BBC has used a “controversial exemption” in Britain’s regulations to avoid revealing the astronomical costs of the royal wedding coverage and the number of complaints it received on the day.
British anti-monarchy campaign group Republic hit out at the broadcaster for resorting to the exception in the Freedom of Information Act saying it is going to appeal to the Information Commissioner’s Office to lift the exemption.
“The BBC has been widely criticised for misjudging the level of interest in the royal wedding and was predicted to receive an unprecedented number of complaints about its non-stop, wall-to-wall coverage,” Republic said on its website.
The group said the BBC allocated “vast sums of resources” to the royal wedding while “other areas of the corporation’s output had fallen victim to funding cuts”.
“Over a thousand staff were reportedly sent to cover the wedding, more than five times the number of commercial rival Sky,” Republic said.
The Freedom of Information Act allows the BBC to withhold information that is related to “journalism, art or literature” but the state broadcaster’s insistence on keeping the royal wedding costs secret has raised concerns that it has gone out of its way to accredit a monarchy many people do not bother about.
“The only conclusion we can draw is that the BBC has something very embarrassing to hide. There is a very significant public interest in knowing how licence fee-payers’ money is spent, particularly when it comes to highly controversial issues such as the monarchy,” Republic’s campaign manager Graham Smith said.
Smith also said the broadcaster’s royal wedding coverage is under question as its attitude toward the event has reportedly angered many of the people who pay license fees to keep the corporation running.
“An exemption introduced to protect the independence of the BBC was not intended to shield the corporation from legitimate scrutiny. The BBC must be seen to be impartial and must be seen to be making appropriate decisions based on viewer feedback. If tens of millions of pounds of licence fee payers’ money was spent on the wedding, if thousands of viewers lodged complaints about the BBC’s coverage, clearly the licence fee payer has the right to know,” he said.
Smith went on to attack the BBC for turning into the public relations apparatus for the monarchy.
“Throughout its royal wedding coverage the BBC let itself be co-opted into the Palace PR machine. It’s time for the BBC to come clean, admit its mistake and move toward more objective and proportionate coverage of royal events,” he added.
This comes as Republic had earlier warned in another article on its website that the BBC did not present an impartial picture of the event to the public.
“While we accept that the royal wedding is a news story that the BBC, and other broadcasters, need to report, we believe the degree, style and substance of the BBC’s coverage is biased in favour of the monarchy,” the campaign group said.
Former professors refute Israel’s indictment of kidnapped Gaza engineer
By Maureen Clare Murphy – 06/06/2011
Former professors of Dirar Abu Sisi, the engineer from Gaza who went missing during a train trip in Ukraine last February, refute allegations in Israel’s indictment that the man was taught weapons systems at university. The indictment also claims that one of Abu Sisi’s professors studied at a military engineering school in east Ukraine, though no such school exists, the Associated Press has found.
The Israeli daily Haaretz reported today:
Dirar Abu Sisi, 42, vanished from a train in Ukraine in February and resurfaced days later in an Israeli prison. Abu Sisi, who claims innocence, is to stand trial in coming weeks on hundreds of counts of attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
Konstantin Petrovich Vlasov told The Associated Press that Abu Sisi was his doctoral student in civilian electricity systems at the Kharkiv National Academy of Municipal Services in the mid-1990s, but denies he was taught about weapons.
The indictment against him says Konstantin Petrovich, Abu Sisi’s professor at a civilian institute, also taught at an academy for military engineering in the eastern city of Kharkiv, although no such school exists.
The Israeli document claims the professor is an expert in Soviet-made Scud missile control systems. It alleges that Konstantin Petrovich arranged for Abu Sisi to attend classes at the military academy, where he gained knowledge that enabled him to modernize missiles launched by Palestinian militants into Israel.
Israel would not immediately comment on the incongruities concerning the professor’s name or the purported military academy.
Regarding Israel’s motivations for abducting Abu Sisi in Ukraine, The Electronic Intifada reported in March:
A few days after his disappearance, Abu Sisi’s wife, Veronika, a Ukrainian national, accused the Israeli spy agency Mossad of kidnapping him to extract information that could be used to disable Gaza’s power station in a future confrontation with the enclave’s Hamas rulers.
Israel bombed the plant during its three-week military assault, Operation Cast Lead, in winter 2008, causing blackouts across much of Gaza. Israel also targeted the power station in June 2006, cutting power to 700,000 Palestinians in Gaza for several months while it was fixed at a cost of more than $5 million.
Abu Sisi’s family suggested another reason why Israeli might consider him a high-value target. They say he had recently developed a method to reduce the plant’s dependency on high-grade diesel fuel, the flow of which Israel controls into Gaza.
In January Hamas officials announced that the station’s turbines had been modified to work on regular diesel, which is cheaper and can be smuggled in through tunnels from Egypt.
The Israeli media, on the other hand, have speculated that Abu Sisi must be a senior Hamas activist to have secured an important post at the plant. The family have denied the claim, saying he was not involved in any political faction and was appointed because of his skills as an engineer.
One of his Israeli lawyers, Smadar Ben Nathan, who met him for the first time at the court hearing on Sunday to lift the gag order, said she believed Israel had carried out the operation based on false information.
The Electronic Intifada correspondent Rami Almeghari interviewed Abu Sisi’s family in Gaza, meeting his children. Suzan Abu Sisi, the sister of Dirar, told The Electronic Intifada:
“I hold the Ukrainian authorities, topped by the president of Ukraine, responsible for the kidnapping of my brother by Israeli intelligence agents,” Suzan said. “How could such a kidnapping take place in a sovereign country?”
Healing the Trees in At Tuwani
By Carol Tyx – CPT – June 7, 2011
We start slowly, our delegation members, several men, a handful of women, a sprinkling of children. As we walk out of the Palestinian village of At-Tuwani the procession grows, women cutting across fields, children scrambling down hillsides. Some of the boys carry hoes; the women swing buckets; a young child waves a Palestinian flag. We are on our way to a small olive orchard in the valley to take part in a healing ritual, but the conversation, in Arabic, sounds chatty, neighbors exchanging the tidbits that make up daily life. A few of the children try to bring us into the loop with their schoolroom English; we try a few Arabic phrases. Broken branches are cleared and soil is re-cultivated and watered.
When we reach the orchard, we pause. I know in my head that Israeli settlers who live across the valley from At-Tuwani sometimes sneak down at night and chop down the villagers’ olive trees. But seeing the wounded trees myself cuts more deeply. The breaks are jagged, branches twisting off the trunk, the silver-green leaves curling in the dust. Ten trees have been hacked off, an attempt to chop down Palestinian life in the South Hebron Hills.
The settlements in the West Bank, built on Palestinian land, are largely populated by Israelis who believe all of this land should be part of Israel. They are squatters, protected by the Israeli military. We witness this as we approach the orchard; two, then three, then four military jeeps appear; soldiers carrying automatic weapons hop out. One person on the CPT team on alert for potential violence, positions himself between the villagers and the soldiers; a youthful Palestinian shoots video, part of a recent campaign to document the occupation.
We work together to stack the severed limbs. With the hoes, people etch trenches around the wounded stumps. A woman opens a nearby cistern and pulls up a bucket of water. The water flows into the trenches, nourishing the trees. Even though it will be at least five years before the trees can bear fruit again, I feel the healing beginning, in the trees and in the villagers. I am honored to be walking with this community on a hot May morning, a community with deep roots in this land, roots that sustain them in the daily struggle to maintain their homes and livelihoods.
Lebanese President: Israel committing genocide
Persia Herald Tribune | 07 June 2011
Lebanon has denounced as genocide Israel’s murder of over 20 people who were holding a protest march to mark the anniversary of Tel Aviv’s occupation of Arab lands.
On Monday, the office of Lebanese President Michel Sleiman issued a statement condemning “the genocide conducted by the Israel occupation forces in the Golan (Heights) that led to the killing of 23 unarmed martyrs,” Xinhua reported.
The fatalities, which included a woman and a child, occurred on Sunday when Israeli forces opened fire on protesters inside Syria as they were approaching the Syrian highlands.
The demonstrators were marching on the anniversary of the June 5, 1967 Naksa Day or Day of the Setback, when Tel Aviv occupied Syria’s Golan Heights region as well as the Palestinian territories of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and East al-Quds (Jerusalem).
The Israeli aggression also wounded 350 people.
Sleiman’s office also asserted that Israeli aggression will never coerce the Palestinian people and Arab states to stop calling for the observation of the full rights of the Palestinians, including the right to return to territories in their homeland that were occupied during the Six-Day War of 1967.
2008 estimates put the number of Palestinian refugees at over 4.6 million.
Israeli occupation forces arrest 72-year-old Hamas MP & lecturer
Palestine Information Center – 07/06/2011
NABLUS — Israeli occupation forces (IOF) raided the home of an elderly Hamas MP in the eastern suburb of Nablus city and detained him after blasting their way into his home.
The daughter of MP Ahmed Al-Haj, 72, told the PIC reporter, that the soldiers broke their apartment’s door in a pre dawn raid on Tuesday after encircling the building and took away her father.
She held the IOF responsible for the life of her father, who was previously held by the Israeli occupation authority on ten past occasions the latest in 2008 when he was held in administrative custody, without charge, for 15 months.
The occupation troops also arrested Hamas leader and university lecturer Dr. Mustafa Al-Shinar from his home west of Nablus city at the same time.
Shinar was frequently arrested by the IOF and was released from administrative detention in late 2009.
He wrote on his facebook page last night that reconciliation would not progress as long as political arrests continued in the West Bank. Shinar was kidnapped three times by the PA security, which negatively affected his health condition. He underwent cardiac catheterization.
In the same context, the website of Hebrew daily Yediot Ahronot said that IOF soldiers rounded up 13 Palestinians in the West Bank on Tuesday.
Jewish Settlers Torch Mosque Near Ramallah
By David Steele & Saed Bannoura | IMEMC News | June 07, 2011
Photo Credit – Ma’an Images
Local residents of Al Mughayyir village, near the central West Bank city of Ramallah, reported Tuesday at dawn that fundamentalist settlers set the local mosque ablaze, and wrote racist graffiti on it walls, the Palestine Today reported.
Witnesses stated that the Israeli settlers set fire to the mosque at approximately 3 A.M. on Wednesday, before daubing the remains with racist slogans.
The attack on the al-Mughayyir village’s mosque has drawn condemnation from a wide variety of groups in Palestinian civil society. This is the third mosque that has been torched in as many years.
The arson attack is thought to be a ‘price-tag’ attack, carried out by nearby settlers in response to the demolition of ‘Alei Ayin’ illegal outpost by Israeli police recently. One piece of graffiti explicitly stated ‘price tag’ followed by ‘Alei Ayin’ in Hebrew.
The settlers are believed to have come from the Adi Gilad illegal settlement built on private Palestinian lands only three kilometres away from the mosque.
Resident Jihad Al Na’san told France Press that the residents went to the mosque to perform dawn prayers to find it burning down while the flames were streaming out of its windows.
Al Na’san added that the settlers dumped tires in the mosque and torched them, and that the Israeli army and the police arrived at the scene later on as the area is under Israeli military and security control.
Al Na’san further stated that the residents found racist graffiti written in Hebrew stating “We will raze this village” among other racist slurs against the Arabs and the Palestinians.
Mahmoud al-Habbash, the Minister of Religious Affairs in the Palestinian Authority, stated that the arson “indicates the magnitude of the aggression settlers unleash on holy places”. Rebuilding of the mosque is expected to begin immediately.
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Mohammad Hussein, visited the site of the destroyed mosque and said that, “[T]he attack on this mosque is part of a systematic policy aiming to flame the conflict and show disrespect to the religious and human values of others.”
The National Christian Coalition in the Holy Land has also strongly condemned the arson attack. Its president, Dimitri Diliani blamed the ongoing occupation and lack of law enforcement against settlers, noting, “[O]ccupation commits limitless crimes using different means including extremist settlers who are protected by Israeli forces. They do not show any respect to morals, religions, or laws when it comes to attacks against the Palestinian people.”
A month ago, the settlers torched a mosque near the northern West Bank city of Ramallah.
Last year, a group of fundamentalist Israeli settlers broke into a mosque in Beit Fajjar, near Bethlehem, and set it ablaze. Settlers also torched the main mosque of the al-Lubban al-Sharqiyya village, south of the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
In 2009, settlers torched a mosque in Yasuf Palestinian village, near the central West Bank city of Salfit.
French people back nuclear exodus
Press TV – June 6, 2011
Protesters in France demand the shutdown of the country’s nuclear plants (file photo)
Over three quarters of the French population support a gradual shutdown of all of France’s nuclear power plants, a recent survey has shown.
The IFOP poll of 1,005 adults commissioned by the Journal du Dimanche found that 77 percent of the French people believe the country should follow Germany and abandon nuclear energy over a 30-year period. About 25 percent of the participants believed the transition should take place sooner.
Last month, the German government announced plans to phase out all nuclear power plants in the country. On Monday, the German cabinet formally approved a bill to abolish nuclear power by 2022.
It made Germany the single largest industrialized nation to plan to give up nuclear energy altogether.
The seven oldest of Germany’s 17 reactors as well as the reactor in Kruemmel, which were taken off the grid after the nuclear disaster in Japan, were shut down immediately. … Full article
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“Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism!” The Science is Settled. Right?
ICAN urges the IACC to actually study infant vaccines and autism
By Aaron Siri | Injecting Freedom | March 16, 2026
On behalf of ICAN, we just sent a copy of chapter 11 of Vaccines, Amen to the newly appointed members of the federal Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC).
If you haven’t already read this chapter, you can read the whole thing in the attached letter. I trust that after you read it, you’ll see why the statement “vaccines do not cause autism” is a belief, not science!
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