After Haifa University canceled a lecture on the book “King’s Torah” (Torat HaMelech)–which discusses religious regulations on killing non-Jews–the event will be held Monday, December 12, 2011 at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.
The head of the Department of Jewish Philosophy, Avinoam Rosenak, will speak at the event as will Rabbi Israel Ariel of the Dorshei Yehudcha yeshiva, which was recently shut down on the advice of Israeli General Security Services (Shin Bet or Shabak). According to the Shin Bet, students of the yeshiva, which was located in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar, “are involved in illegal and violent activities against Palestinians and the security forces.”
In addition to his affiliation with the closed yeshiva, Rabbi Ariel was also a Knesset candidate from the Kach Party, which was founded by right-wing extremist Meir Kahane and promoted the deportation of all Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinian residents of the Occupied Territories. Israel outlawed the Kach party and both the United States and Israel categorize it as a terrorist organization.
“King’s Torah” was written by Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira and Rabbi Yosef Elizur who also live in Yitzhar and who, according to Israel’s Channel 10, have recently joined Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party. The book discusses religious regulations related to killing of gentiles in both peace and war. For example, in Chapter Four, “Jewish and Gentile Souls,” the authors say that wherever the presence of a gentile threatens the life of Israel it is permitted to kill the gentile even if he is a righteous person and should not be blamed for the situation.
In the chapter regarding the killing of non-Jews during war, the authors claim that in Judaism it is permissible to kill enemy combatants, as well as those who help and support them and those who encourage them, because all of them are enemies of Israel. The chapter adds that it is permitted to hit enemy targets even if innocent gentiles will be harmed in those attacks.
Hebrew University claims that the event is not organized by the university, but by Beit Hillel. However, the invitation to the event includes the logos of the Hebrew University, the Faculty of Humanities, and the Department of Jewish Philosophy.
After declaring that Palestinians are an “invented people,” US presidential hopeful and former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich, has said that he would instruct the CIA to hunt down Palestinian prisoners released last October in an exchange negotiated by Israel and Hamas, presumably to kill them.
Gingrich made the comments in a conference call organized by the National Council Young Israel posted on YouTube by the website The Yeshiva World News, in response to a question about whether he had been in favor of the prisoner exchange:
I refuse to second guess the people of Israel doing what they believe is necessary both on a humanitarian level and out of their love for one of their children. I would say flatly that we made no such deal. I’m told that at least thirty of the people released were involved in killing Americans, and I would instruct the CIA to hunt down those thirty.
Gingrich provided no evidence for his claim about the Palestinians being involved in killing Americans. Since the 1990s, the CIA has worked closely and openly with the Palestinian Authority both under the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. But the CIA’s role has been to assist the Palestinian Authority to collaborate more effectively with Israel, rather than to carry out extrajudicial executions of Palestinians.
It is unknown how Israel would view the United States carrying out assassinations within territory it controls.
Support for settlements
In the interview, Gingrich also stated that he had no problem with Israel building settlements on occupied Palestinian land.
In 2002, the AFL-CIO’s international arm known as the “Solidarity Center” was greatly embarrassed when it came to light that it had been supporting actors in Venezuela participated in the short-lived coup against President Hugo Chavez. As a number of authors and publications noted at the time, the Solidarity Center, with money donated from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), gave support to the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (“CTV”) which in turn was instrumental in the coup against Chavez which, as the reader may call, involved the kidnapping of Hugo Chavez.
For example, the New York Times explained in an article entitled, “U.S. Bankrolling Is Under Scrutiny for Ties to Chavez Ouster,” that”[o]f particular concern is $154,377 given by the endowment to the American Center for International Labor Solidarity, the international arm of the AFL-CIO, to assist the main Venezuelan labor union in advancing labor rights.” As the Times noted, “The Venezuelan union, the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers, led the work stoppages that galvanized the opposition to Mr. Chavez. The union’s leader, Carlos Ortega, worked closely with Pedro Carmona Estanga, the businessman who briefly took over from Mr. Chavez, in challenging the government.”
And what’s more, it turns out that the Solidarity Center played a critical role, just before the coup, in bringing the CTV together with FEDECAMARAS (the Venezuelan chamber of commerce). This is important because the CTV and FEDECAMARAS went on to plan and carry out the coup together. However, quite curiously, the Solidarity Center did not stick around long enough to see how the coup ended up. This is because it moved its office (which is in charge of the entire Andean Region) from Caracas, Venezuela to Bogota, Colombia just three weeks before the coup took place.
The Solidarity Center attempted to defend itself against charges that it was up to its old Cold War tricks of working with the U.S. government to overthrow progressive, nationalist governments in the Third World – e.g., in the overthrow of Allende in Chile and Arbenz in Guatemala – by denying that the CTV, which it supported up to and indeed through the time of the coup, had anything to do with the coup. As the Boston Globe later noted in an article entitled, “US Tax Dollars Helped Finance Some Chavez Foes, Review Finds,” this denial had a hollow ring to it in light of the fact that “the Venezuelan media broadcast a recorded telephone conversation between [exiled former president Carlos Andres] Perez and Carlos Ortega, president of the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers [CTV], in which the pair plotted against Chavez.” In the end, the AFL-CIO later privately conceded that the CTV leadership did actively participate in the coup against Chavez. The same Boston Globe story concluded that the Solidarity Center’s other defense – that it was merely helping the CTV with matters of internal democratization – were also proven to be false.
This brings us to today. If one concerned over such bad practices goes to the Solidarity Center website and clicks on the “Where We Work” link, one might feel relieved to see that Venezuela is notably absent from the list of countries in which the Solidarity Center does business. Similarly, the Solidarity Center mentions nothing about Venezuela in its most recent Annual Report. However, if one goes to the website of one of the Solidarity Center’s biggest patrons, the NED, one will find that this is misleading. Thus, the NED, in a section entitled, “Latin America Regional,” explains that it recently gave $400,000 to the Solidarity Center to carry out work both in Colombia and Venezuela. I note that this amount is in addition to another $2 million the NED — which on its website openly expresses contempt for “21st Century Socialism” — gave to the Solidarity Center for other Latin American work. And, as the NED explains, “in Venezuela, the SC will build on its ongoing work with partners . . . .” – quite ominous words given the nature of the work and partners the Solidarity Center has hitherto been involved with in Venezuela.
It is not publicly known what the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center – which receives nearly all of its funding from federal grants ($28 million out of its total annual budget of $30 million), including from such sources as the NED, the U.S. State Department and the USAID – is currently doing in Venezuela. Sources in the Venezuelan Embassy in D.C. are aware that the AFL-CIO is in Venezuela and suspect that it is actively helping opposition groups in their attempt to unseat President Chavez in the upcoming elections for President. Again, the truth is uncertain, but given the AFL-CIO’s horrendous track record in Latin America, and in Venezuela in the very recent past; given that it is intentionally concealing the fact that it is even working in Venezuela in the first place; and given that it continues to be heavily dependent upon funding from the U.S. government and NED — two sources openly hostile to the current government in Venezuela – it is fair to have suspicions that the AFL-CIO is up to questionable deeds in Venezuela.
In the end, the only way to quell such suspicions is for the AFL-CIO to come clean to its membership and to the public by giving an accounting for its current activities in Venezuela and all 60 countries in which it is involved. The problem all along has been that the AFL-CIO has refused calls to be accountable for its Third World activities, and instead has preferred to operate in the shadows internationally – many times on behalf of U.S. foreign policy interests.
The time for such secrecy must end. Yet, I am not optimistic that it will, mostly because there is much for the AFL-CIO to hide about its international dealings. Indeed, the best explanation of this fact came from a former staff member of AIFLD (the predecessor of the Solidarity Center) who addressed calls for the AFL-CIO to “clear the air” about its international affairs. This individual, who gave this statement on the promise of anonymity, explained the following about the AFL-CIO’s policies of labor imperialism:
In reality the AFL-CIO has a lot to hide about the late 70’s and 80’s in relation to their international institutes. . . . The AFL always fared better in getting grants from republican presidents during this period because of communist insurgencies around the world or, at least, perceived communist insurgencies. As you are aware, I was part of the most active period for three years in Central America and the Caribbean. Some things I can relate and some things I can’t because of the potential for prosecution. I can say that there is a lot of dirty laundry. Some of the funding was related to what I would call covert operations though this was a very small part of the total operation globally. Most of the activity was related to telling embassies and the State Department what they wanted to hear and that was the labor unions in all developing economies were under threat of communist and extreme left subversion even though in most instances it was nothing more that [sic.] extreme nationalism and not communist inspired. In any event, that was how you got operating program grants and that is how the institutes built their power, with money and staff. Each country program director did the same thing, money, prestige, power, influence mover and shaker.
There is [sic] obvious reasons for not dealing with the past, classified information, loss of grants and, some people are still on staff though most were cleaned out. . . .
And, while the AFL-CIO’s international trajectory was supposed to have changed upon the succession of John Sweeney to the presidency in 1995, this same source made it clear that this was not altogether the case because of the very nature of the AFL-CIO’s international work and those who sponsor it. As he explained:
Some people at the AFL were co-opted by the process. John Sweeney was one of the favorites for being on these high-level delegations that participated in fact finding and solidarity missions all over the world. And, I might add, stayed in the best hotels and it was sort of like a high class tour group. . . . The positions themselves though can corrupt and are high profile internationally.
I write this article with the hope that the AFL-CIO might take a good hard look at itself and its role in the world; that it might re-evaluate the corrupting influence of taking millions of dollars from the NED and U.S. State Department – money which inevitably makes them captive to U.S. foreign policy interests even while the AFL-CIO, in the height of irony and hypocrisy, purports to fight what it perceives to be “government-dominated” unions in such countries as China and Cuba. And, in the short term, I hope that by calling into question its current, covert activities in Venezuela, the AFL-CIO will simply decide to leave that country for good, or at least until it decides to help countries like Venezuela in their struggle against U.S. dominance.
Alberto C. Ruiz is a long-time unionist and peace activist.
The diminutive Gulf totalitarian monarchy of Qatar has been making quite a name for itself of late. It was one of the only Arab countries to provide air support in Libya, its customs officials — seemingly unprovoked — recently attacked a Russian ambassador, it cajoled the Arab League into voting for sanctions against Syria, and it plays host to Al Jazeera which has increasingly looked more and more like a mouthpiece for the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) and the West. Although, Qatar would appear to be a Lilliputian micro-petrostate, it would seem to be one with Napoleonic delusions of grandeur.
The Emir of Qatar — a real peach — who deposed his own father, took power at the early age of 44. Unlike his father, who preferred to use the kingdom’s resources to remain at the same level as the other sheikdoms in the region, the young Emir sought that Qatar should be known and acknowledged. In doing so the young Emir surrounded himself with a phalanx of Western technocratic advisers. Additionally, the Emir sought to become one of the world’s most impish international and geopolitical actors.
In an article in May, the noted Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar, included Qatar — in its rightful place — among the “counterrevolution club” of Middle Eastern countries. Along with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Oman it comprises the Gulf Cooperation Council; a deeply backward and anachronistic bloc of sheikdoms, profoundly tied (and some would say indentured) to the Western countries. In fact, the Obama White House played host to the Emir of Qatar just this past April — ostensibly for its role in the promotion of democratization. The White House may value its role in the NATO misadventurism in Libya, but on the home front this democratizing impulse would appear to be glaringly lost.
The Emir exercises virtual total power, with few restraints on his grip. In Qatari courts the opinion of two women is equal to that of one man, and, moreover, nearly half of all Qatari judges are at-will employees, which limits their independence, considering that they can be dismissed promptly; in other words, at the drop of a hat.
Qatar remains one of the only three Arab countries that has not signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and Qatar has also signed on to precious few international human rights conventions and accords. Additionally, Qatar is a destination country for women who are trafficked and forced into conditions of coercive labor. And similarly, foreign domestic workers, often struggle under conditions approaching involuntary servitude, and some are even sexually abused.
Though Qatar has in the past even hosted a Hamas delegation, as well as tried to remain amicable with the government of Iran, it has increasingly looked — as if —it is coming under the thumb of the Anglo-Americans. Qatar had also been seen as an intermediary with Syria, and had invested heavily in the Syrian economy, but now it seems to have signed on — to a different policy — a policy of Libya 2.0. And Qatar, ostensibly so concerned about democracy, gave its full backing to neighboring Saudi Arabia’s intervention into the majority Shia Sunni-led Kingdom of Bahrain.
Qatar not only funneled hundreds of millions to the Libyan opposition, but dispatched Western-trained advisers, who helped finance, arm and train the so-called revolutionary militias. The nature of Qatar’s future machinations in Syria, is, of course, yet to be determined. But if its coarse, robust and inauspicious role at the Arab League is any portent — as to its tactility, we can expect more of the same financing of an armed “revolution”, not knowing what will be wrought for the citizens of a (formerly) sovereign country.
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Sean Fenley is an independent progressive who would like to see the end of the dictatorial duopoly of the so-called two party adversarial system. He would also like to see some sanity brought to the creation and implementation of current and future U.S. military, economic, foreign and domestic policies.
“Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top al-Qaeda leaders who’ve been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement,” the president fired back at an impromptu news conference at the White House.
“Or whoever’s left out there,” he added. “Ask them about that.”
Watch the video at the link provided above. It’s instructive, particularly Obama’s expression when he adds, “Or whoever’s left out there.” He speaks of murder, yet the words are breezy and casual: this is a murderer so used to killing that he talks of his past and future victims interchangeably, and in terms of approximation. Just “whoever’s left out there.” He wants to be sure you know he’ll order all of them killed in time. His face is expressionless, the eyes dead. This is a man without a soul in any healthy, positive sense. He murders — and he’s proud of it.
The continuing murders in Pakistan and Afghanistan are so numerous and so regular that they barely merit notice for more than a few days, at least as far as the United States government and most Americans are concerned. Over the recent Thanksgiving weekend, the United States government murdered at least 25 Pakistanis. (NATO and the U.S. government are indistinguishable in any matter of importance, in any matter of murders of this kind.) Pakistan is deeply angry and unhappy. The United States government and Obama are concerned only to the extent that Pakistan’s unhappiness might interfere with the U.S.’s intention to dominate and control that part of the world. The U.S. government and Obama aren’t particularly upset about the murders, but about the strategic problem that might result from the murders.
On the same weekend: “Six children were among seven civilians killed in a NATO airstrike in southern Afghanistan, Afghan officials said Thursday.” The story has already fallen into the well of forgetfulness. It must be the case that incidents like this occur at least once a day given the number of military operations ordered by the Murderer-in-Chief and carried out by those who follow his orders. Perhaps only one innocent person is killed. “Only” one. Perhaps we should ask “whoever’s left out there” what that one loss signifies.
Last Friday, I met a boy, just before he was assassinated by the CIA. Tariq Aziz was 16, a quiet young man from North Waziristan, who, like most teenagers, enjoyed soccer. Seventy-two hours later, a Hellfire missile is believed to have killed him as he was travelling in a car to meet his aunt in Miran Shah, to take her home after her wedding. Killed with him was his 12-year-old cousin, Waheed Khan.
Over 2,300 people in Pakistan have been killed by such missiles carried by drone aircraft such as the Predator and the Reaper, and launched by remote control from Langley, Virginia. Tariq and Waheed brought the known total of children killed in this way to 175, according to statistics maintained by the organisation I work for, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
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Unless the CIA can prove that Tariq Aziz posed an imminent threat (as the White House’s legal advice stipulates a targeted killing must in order for an attack to be carried out), or that he was a key planner in a war against the US or Pakistan, the killing of this 16 year old was murder, and any jury should convict the CIA accordingly.
These are only a few of the stories we know about, and only from a very brief period of time. Countless other murders take place all over the world, and we can only gather the dim outlines of what is occurring. This is not to mention numerous lesser acts of cruelty and violence, many of which will alter lives in searing ways, for all the desolate years to follow.
Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission. Now, say that 70 times and you’re done… for the day. Without the knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the U.S. military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world’s countries.
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Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that U.S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year, U.S. Special Operations Command [SOCOM] spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120. “We do a lot of traveling — a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq,” he said recently. This global presence — in about 60% of the world’s nations and far larger than previously acknowledged — provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.
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In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans. Once “special” for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.
No minimally decent human being would choose to have anything whatsoever to do with a government which systematically engages in acts of this kind. This is true of anyone who is part of the national governing apparatus, or wishes to be. It is most especially true of anyone who wishes to become president. Even if a person declares his or her absolute commitment to ending all of this, it is impossible for one person to do it. The massive bureaucracy of death which carries out these acts was erected over decades; all such bureaucratic monstrosities take on lives of their own. It will not be dismantled by a single individual overnight, or even in a matter of months or probably years. That means the murders will go on.
It may be that at some point this machinery of death will be brought down comparatively quickly. If that happens, it will not be the result of one person’s actions, but of calamitous events on a momentous scale: widening war, catastrophic natural disasters, widespread financial collapse, and/or massive social unrest and violence. In the meantime, a reverence for life demands that we see the Death State exactly for what it is — and walk away to the fullest extent we can.
That is not the course Barack Obama chose. He wanted to be, he now is the Murderer-in-Chief. He is proud of his achievement.
Thus, the words I wrote over five years ago continue to hold a relevance and meaning that fill me with the deepest despair. I desperately wish that I had never had cause to compose this passage, and that I did not feel compelled to repeat it now:
If you have ever wondered how a serial murderer — a murderer who is sane and fully aware of the acts he has committed — can remain steadfastly convinced of his own moral superiority and show not even the slightest glimmer of remorse, you should not wonder any longer.
The United States government is such a murderer. It conducts its murders in full view of the entire world. It even boasts of them. Our government, and all our leading commentators, still maintain that the end justifies the means — and that even the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocents is of no moral consequence, provided a sufficient number of people can delude themselves into believing the final result is a “success.”
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We can appeal all we want to “American exceptionalism,” but any “exceptionalism” that remains ours is that of a mass murderer without a soul, and without a conscience. … It is useless to appeal to any “American” sense of morality: we have none. It does not matter how immense the pile of corpses grows: we will not surrender or even question our delusion that we are right, and that nothing we do can be profoundly, unforgivably wrong.
On December 2, the Geneva-based UN Watch welcomed that day’s “strong condemnation” of Syria by a UN Human Rights Council emergency session, and its establishment of a special rapporteur to monitor the situation there following what it called “a global campaign to create the post by a coalition of prominent democracy dissidents and human rights groups” led by UN Watch itself. The non-governmental organization, whose self-appointed mandate is “to monitor the performance of the United Nations by the yardstick of its own Charter,” expressed regret, however, that the UNHRC resolution “paid special deference” to Syria’s “territorial integrity” and “political independence,” decrying the provision as “a clear jab at NATO’s intervention in Libya, and a pre-emptive strike against the principle of the international community’s responsibility to protect civilians under assault.”
On the same day, UN Watch delivered a speech to the Human Rights Council plenary session in which it denounced the UN Security Council’s “shocking silence on Syria’s atrocities,” calling on it to take “urgent action to protect the civilian population before thousands more are beaten, tortured and killed.” It also urged UNESCO to reverse its recent decision to elect Syria to two human rights committees. Submitting that day’s UNHRC resolution to UNESCO’s Executive Board, the NGO demanded that they “expel the Assad government from those panels immediately.” The statement went on to berate the UNHRC for its “longtime policy, and that of the old Commission, of turning a blind eye to Syria’s gross and systematic violations.” Also “wrong and harmful,” in UN Watch’s view, was the UN body’s “policy of supporting Syria’s cynical and transparent ploy each year to condemn Israel for alleged violations of human rights, which should not be repeated this March.”
For those familiar with the NGO’s unmistakable governmental ties, it will come as no surprise that UN Watch could downplay Israel’s extensively documented human rights abuses as “alleged” while at the same time confidently asserting that “the facts are clear” regarding Syria’s “gross and systematic violations of human rights.” As Ian Williams, a former president of the United Nations Correspondents Association, wrote in a 2007 Guardianopinion piece, “UN Watch is an organization whose main purpose is to attack the United Nations in general, and its human rights council in particular, for alleged bias against Israel.”
Founded in 1993 under the chairmanship of Ambassador Morris B. Abram, the former US permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva, UN Watch is affiliated with the American Jewish Committee. Described by one expert on US-Israeli relations as “the foreign policy arm of the Israel lobby,” the AJC also takes a keen interest in the UN’s alleged bias against Israel. According to a 2003 article in the Jewish Daily Forward, a “sustained effort” by the lobby’s foreign policy arm resulted in the United States “embarking on the most comprehensive campaign in years to reduce the number of anti-Israel resolutions routinely passed by the United Nations General Assembly.”
In February, UN Watch organized 70 “rights groups” to send a letter to President Obama, EU High Representative Catherine Ashton, and UN Secretary-General Ban-ki Moon demanding international action against Libya by invoking the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine. Speaking to the Jerusalem Post at the time, the NGO’s executive director, Hillel Neuer, said that “the muted response of the US and the EU to the Libyan atrocities is not only a let-down to the many Libyans risking their lives for freedom, but a shirking of their obligations, as members of the Security Council and the Human Rights Council, to protect peace and human rights and to prevent war crimes.” Despite the unsubstantiated nature of its allegations,” UN Watch’s “Urgent Appeal to Stop Atrocities in Libya” proved sufficient to get Libya suspended from the Human Rights Council before being referred to the Security Council, and ultimately provided the spurious justification for NATO’s eight-month “humanitarian” bombing of the country.
Undoubtedly the most significant signatory of the UN Watch-sponsored letter was Carl Gershman, president of the “misnamed” National Endowment for Democracy. Funded by American taxpayers but outside Congressional oversight, the Endowment has been meddling in other countries’ internal politics since its inception in 1983. As Allen Weinstein, NED’s architect and first acting president, famously told the Washington Post in 1991, “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” A lot of what NED does today can also be understood by observing its longtime president’s career path. A former head of the neo-Trotskyite Social Democrats-USA who steadily evolved into neoconservatives, Gershman is no stranger to pro-Israel lobbying, having worked in the research department of the Anti-Defamation League in 1968 and served on the governing council of the American Jewish Committee in the early 1970s.
Although UN Watch purports to believe in the United Nations’ mission to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” the pro-Israel NGO bears significant responsibility for inducing a devastating war on the current generation in one Arab country already this year and is clearly determined to repeat the carnage in another. As long as UN Watch’s motto of “Monitoring the United Nations, Promoting Human Rights” continues to obscure its real mission of “Manipulating the United Nations, Promoting Israel’s Interests,” the warning of a Roman poet becomes increasingly pertinent: “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”
A brand new investigative and analytical documentary from the maker of 7/7: Seeds of Deconstruction – which looked at outstanding questions and conspiracy theories. 7/7: Crime and Prejudice explores the 7/7 cold case via new evidence from the recent inquests and discusses the war on terror in the context of numerous miscarriages of justice and acts of violence committed by the state.
The first section of the film examines the history of the British state’s use of double agents, from the Victorian Anarchists through WW2 to the war in Northern Ireland. It concludes by examining contemporary cases of injustice and violence carried out as part of the war of terror against Muslims.
The second section of the film is a multi-dimensional study of the new evidence made available at the recent inquests. It looks at the evidence of a wider conspiracy and the fundamental flaws in the official narrative and the police investigation. It also discusses why the dialogue about ‘intelligence failures’ itself fails to address the very real possibility of state involvement in the attacks.
The final section of the film returns to the Anarchists and the case of Martial Bourdin, Britain’s first suicide bomber, in 1894. The mythology surrounding Bourdin is used as a foundation for examining the numerous films, tv shows training exercises and real life events that either predicted 7/7 or were influenced by the attacks. The question of conspiracy theories is addressed through an original analysis unique to this film.
7/7 Crime and Prejudice combines a presentation of the cutting edge of July 7th research with a deeply contextual analysis that casts light on largely unexamined aspects of the war on terror.
My name is Patrick Meighan, and I’m a husband, a father, a writer on the Fox animated sitcom “Family Guy”, and a member of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica.
I was arrested at about 1 a.m. Wednesday morning with 291 other people at Occupy LA. I was sitting in City Hall Park with a pillow, a blanket, and a copy of Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Being Peace” when 1,400 heavily-armed LAPD officers in paramilitary SWAT gear streamed in. I was in a group of about 50 peaceful protestors who sat Indian-style, arms interlocked, around a tent (the symbolic image of the Occupy movement). The LAPD officers encircled us, weapons drawn, while we chanted “We Are Peaceful” and “We Are Nonviolent” and “Join Us.”
As we sat there, encircled, a separate team of LAPD officers used knives to slice open every personal tent in the park. They forcibly removed anyone sleeping inside, and then yanked out and destroyed any personal property inside those tents, scattering the contents across the park. They then did the same with the communal property of the Occupy LA movement. For example, I watched as the LAPD destroyed a pop-up canopy tent that, until that moment, had been serving as Occupy LA’s First Aid and Wellness tent, in which volunteer health professionals gave free medical care to absolutely anyone who requested it. As it happens, my family had personally contributed that exact canopy tent to Occupy LA, at a cost of several hundred of my family’s dollars. As I watched, the LAPD sliced that canopy tent to shreds, broke the telescoping poles into pieces and scattered the detritus across the park. Note that these were the objects described in subsequent mainstream press reports as “30 tons of garbage” that was “abandoned” by Occupy LA: personal property forcibly stolen from us, destroyed in front of our eyes and then left for maintenance workers to dispose of while we were sent to prison.
When the LAPD finally began arresting those of us interlocked around the symbolic tent, we were all ordered by the LAPD to unlink from each other (in order to facilitate the arrests). Each seated, nonviolent protester beside me who refused to cooperate by unlinking his arms had the following done to him: an LAPD officer would forcibly extend the protestor’s legs, grab his left foot, twist it all the way around and then stomp his boot on the insole, pinning the protestor’s left foot to the pavement, twisted backwards. Then the LAPD officer would grab the protestor’s right foot and twist it all the way the other direction until the non-violent protestor, in incredible agony, would shriek in pain and unlink from his neighbor.
It was horrible to watch, and apparently designed to terrorize the rest of us. At least I was sufficiently terrorized. I unlinked my arms voluntarily and informed the LAPD officers that I would go peacefully and cooperatively. I stood as instructed, and then I had my arms wrenched behind my back, and an officer hyperextended my wrists into my inner arms. It was super violent, it hurt really really bad, and he was doing it on purpose. When I involuntarily recoiled from the pain, the LAPD officer threw me face-first to the pavement. He had my hands behind my back, so I landed right on my face. The officer dropped with his knee on my back and ground my face into the pavement. It really, really hurt and my face started bleeding and I was very scared. I begged for mercy and I promised that I was honestly not resisting and would not resist.
My hands were then zipcuffed very tightly behind my back, where they turned blue. I am now suffering nerve damage in my right thumb and palm.
I was put on a paddywagon with other nonviolent protestors and taken to a parking garage in Parker Center. They forced us to kneel (and sit–SEE UPDATE) on the hard pavement of that parking garage for seven straight hours with our hands still tightly zipcuffed behind our backs. Some began to pass out. One man rolled to the ground and vomited for a long, long time before falling unconscious. The LAPD officers watched and did nothing.
At 9 a.m. we were finally taken from the pavement into the station to be processed. The charge was sitting in the park after the police said not to. It’s a misdemeanor. Almost always, for a misdemeanor, the police just give you a ticket and let you go. It costs you a couple hundred dollars. Apparently, that’s what happened with most every other misdemeanor arrest in LA that day.
With us Occupy LA protestors, however, they set bail at $5,000 and booked us into jail. Almost none of the protesters could afford to bail themselves out. I’m lucky and I could afford it, except the LAPD spent all day refusing to actually *accept* the bail they set. If you were an accused murderer or a rapist in LAPD custody that day, you could bail yourself right out and be back on the street, no problem. But if you were a nonviolent Occupy LA protestor with bail money in hand, you were held long into the following morning, with absolutely no access to a lawyer.
I spent most of my day and night crammed into an eight-man jail cell, along with sixteen other Occupy LA protesters. My sleeping spot was on the floor next to the toilet.
Finally, at 2:30 the next morning, after twenty-five hours in custody, I was released on bail. But there were at least 200 Occupy LA protestors who couldn’t afford the bail. The LAPD chose to keep those peaceful, non-violent protesters in prison for two full days… the absolute legal maximum that the LAPD is allowed to detain someone on misdemeanor charges.
As a reminder, Antonio Villaraigosa has referred to all of this as “the LAPD’s finest hour.”
So that’s what happened to the 292 women and men were arrested last Wednesday. Now let’s talk about a man who was not arrested last Wednesday. He is former Citigroup CEO Charles Prince. Under Charles Prince, Citigroup was guilty of massive, coordinated securities fraud.
Citigroup spent years intentionally buying up every bad mortgage loan it could find, creating bad securities out of those bad loans and then selling shares in those bad securities to duped investors. And then they sometimes secretly bet *against* their *own* bad securities to make even more money. For one such bad Citigroup security, Citigroup executives were internally calling it, quote, “a collection of dogshit”. To investors, however, they called it, quote, “an attractive investment rigorously selected by an independent investment adviser”.
This is fraud, and it’s a felony, and the Charles Princes of the world spent several years doing it again and again: knowingly writing bad mortgages, and then packaging them into fraudulent securities which they then sold to suckers and then repeating the process. This is a big part of why your property values went up so fast. But then the bubble burst, and that’s why our economy is now shattered for a generation, and it’s also why your home is now underwater. Or at least mine is.
Anyway, if your retirement fund lost a decade’s-worth of gains overnight, this is why.
If your son’s middle school has added furlough days because the school district can’t afford to keep its doors open for a full school year, this is why.
If your daughter has come out of college with a degree only to discover that there are no jobs for her, this is why.
But back to Charles Prince. For his four years of in charge of massive, repeated fraud at Citigroup, he received fifty-three million dollars in salary and also received another ninety-four million dollars in stock holdings. What Charles Prince has *not* received is a pair of zipcuffs. The nerves in his thumb are fine. No cop has thrown Charles Prince into the pavement, face-first. Each and every peaceful, nonviolent Occupy LA protester arrested last week has has spent more time sleeping on a jail floor than every single Charles Prince on Wall Street, combined.
The more I think about that, the madder I get. What does it say about our country that nonviolent protesters are given the bottom of a police boot while those who steal hundreds of billions, do trillions worth of damage to our economy and shatter our social fabric for a generation are not only spared the zipcuffs but showered with rewards?
In any event, believe it or not, I’m really not angry that I got arrested. I chose to get arrested. And I’m not even angry that the mayor and the LAPD decided to give non-violent protestors like me a little extra shiv in jail (although I’m not especially grateful for it either).
I’m just really angry that every single Charles Prince wasn’t in jail with me.
Thank you for letting me share that anger with you today.
Patrick Meighan
——-
UPDATE (12/9/11): Hey all, thank you for the nice thoughts from many folks who have read this account. One necessary clarification about the 7 hours spent by the roughly 100-of-us in the Parker Center parking garage immediately following our arrest:
though we were indeed forced to kneel on that parking garage pavement for an extended period and though we did in fact have our hands tightly zipcuffed behind our backs for that entire seven-hour stretch on the pavement, and though we were barred from standing and moving for that time period, the LAPD officers, in point of fact, did allow us to shift ourselves out of the kneeling position onto our butt-cheeks, our side-legs, etc., as necessary. At the very least, when we began to do so, they did not stop us. I apologize for implying otherwise.
I also want to say that I don’t consider my above-described treatment at the hands of the LAPD to be, in any way, uniquely-brutal, or that I was especially victimized. Yes, getting arrested and going to jail was scary and sometimes painful and it generally sucked, but jail is supposed to suck. Again, the point of this blogpost is not that I was treated especially poorly by the LAPD officers who arrested, processed and held us. The LAPD officers were just doing their jobs, as they understood them. The point of the blogpost is simply to contrast the legal response to nonviolent protestors against the the legal response (or, rather, non-response) to the perpetrators of the largest act of coordinated larceny in economic history, for whom the next arrest will be the first one.
December 9, 1987 – exactly 24 years ago – is the day Palestinians remember as the start of the first Intifada, or uprising, against Israel’s brutal and unending occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip that had begun 20 year earlier.
For young people in the Palestine solidarity movement today, the start of the first Intifada is ancient history – before many were born. For me it was absolutely formative.
I was not in Palestine. In fact I was growing up comfortably in Belgium. But it was the daily TV images of what was happening in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that opened my eyes and changed me.
One piece of footage in particular had a profound impact all over the world: a group of Israeli soldiers on a hillside in the West Bank systematically breaking the bones of two captive Palestinians, using rocks and sticks.
They committed these war crimes at the behest of Israeli leaders, especially then Israeli defense minister Yitzhak Rabin who ordered troops to use “force, might and beatings” (as well as the live ammunition that claimed lives almost daily) to crush the uprising.
Today, as video of graphic and brutal violence from all over the world is so easily and quickly available, it might be difficult to understand just how deeply shocking this particular footage was. But it is a piece of film that profoundly and permanently changed the way millions of people saw Israel.
Breaking Gandhi’s bones
We often hear Palestinians lectured – by the likes of New York Times columnist Nick Kristof among others – that if they only acted like Gandhi, the Israelis would be impressed and suddenly grant Palestinians their usurped rights.
It’s important to remember – and teach – about the first Intifada for so many reasons, but also because it gives the lie to that silly, condescending and constantly recycled refrain.
The Israeli violence against the completely unarmed first Intifada was intended specifically – as Rabin made clear – to crush any form of Gandhi-like protest, and Israel’s brutality perhaps more than anything else, convinced the next generation of Palestinians that armed resistance was unavoidable.
From bone-breaking to mass violence by remote control
This video – I do not know who put it together – shows other graphic scenes of beatings and torture of Palestinian teens during the first Intifada. It then includes a much longer clip of the hillside bone-breaking that is even more chilling to watch in silence as the soldiers work at their gruesome task methodically.
What is striking about videos of the first Intifada in general is the presence of Israeli soldiers in the middle of Palestinian cities. That now is relatively rare – except when they go in on brutal night raids coordinated with the Palestinian Authority.
The 1993 Oslo Accords, and the subsequent creation of the Palestinian Authority, replaced Israeli soldiers with Palestinian Authority forces. While Palestinians remained under occupation, now the enforcers of the occupation became Palestinians in uniforms. But Israel was relieved of the burden – and some of the bad publicity – of doing the dirty work itself.
Much of Israel’s violence – and the threat of violence – is now done by remote control: PA proxy forces, walls, checkpoints, heavily reinforced watchtowers, cattle runs with unseen voices barking orders, electronic ID cards, drones and F-16s, and even Israeli teenagers shooting people in Gaza dead via video screens as if they are playing a game.
It’s an ever more totalitarian system of violent control of a whole population that had yet to be perfected in the days of Bone-Breaker Rabin.
Hats off to Iran and its electronic warfare specialists.
To bring down the most sophisticated U.S. stealth drone known, nearly completely intact, is something very few other countries would be able to achieve. A real technical feat.
From the way Iran disguised the lower part of the drone it exhibits in that gymnasium we can assume that there is some damage at the bottom of the drone. Maybe they had a little accident while landing the drone after they took control of it. They also seem to have cut off the wings to allow for an easier transport.
Earlier I speculated that the drone was taken over by the line-of-sight control channel after its satellite control channel was severed by some electronic means. I have yet to see any other report mentioning that second control channel at all as the way to take over the drone. But seeing the bird with so little damage in that video I am even more sure now than before that this was the way it was done.
Iran has announced that it intends to carry out reverse engineering on the captured RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft, which is also known as the Beast of Kandahar, and is similar in design to a US Air Force B-2 stealth bomber.
The most interesting part to reverse engineer is probably not the drone itself but the sensor package and communication equipment it carries. Any decent engineer would love to get her hands on that. Reverse engineering it will save a ton of money one would otherwise have to spend in research and development costs to achieve that knowledge.
Press TV is by the way wrong when it asserts that this is a similar design to the B-2. The B-2 had its first flight in 1989, the RQ-170 likely in 2006/7. It is a generation younger and its stealth features are more sophisticated than the B-2’s.
The U.S. has only ten or so of this sophisticated and likely very expensive type of drone. They are – for now – reportedly grounded to find ways to avert another such loss of a system and prestige.
But let us not forget the real important point here that has come to light with this Iranian drone acquisition. Despite flying such drones over Iran for years the U.S. has found no sign of an Iranian weapons program.
There is none to be found and that is the main point in this whole story.
The controversial tribunal investigating the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri continues to refuse looking into claims Israeli had role in the crime despite mounting evidence.
“The submission made by Attorney Marwan Dalal in October does not obligate us in any way,” an official of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) told al-Akhbar Monday by telephone from The Hague.
He was referring to the memorandum which Dalal, introducing himself as “an attorney and citizen of the State of Israel,” presented to the tribunal, in which he made the case that the Israelis may have been involved in Hariri’s murder.
“Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare has employed investigative procedures that are consistent with international standards,” the official continued, “and the investigations led to the collection of sufficient evidence to charge the four individuals (Mustafa Badreddine, Salim Ayyash, Hussein Oneissi, and Assad Sabra) with the crime of assassinating Hariri.”
Asked whether the criminal investigations carried out by the International Independent Investigation Commission since 2005, and by the STL prosecutor’s office since 2009, had considered the mere possibility that the Israelis may have been involved in the crime, the official answered “No.”
After a pause, he added: “There was no need. The results of the investigations pointed to the four individuals and did not indicate any Israeli involvement in the crime.”
But why hasn’t the possibility of Israeli involvement been taken seriously since the start of the probe, or since the STL prosecutor’s office was established?
And professionally speaking, isn’t one supposed to avoid reaching conclusions before investigations have been completed?
The official avoided answering these two questions by reiterating that Bellemare adheres to international standards.
However, the STL did confirm that it has made no attempt to gather information from occupied Palestine about possible Israeli involvement in the 14 February 2005 car-bombing that killed Hariri.
This came in the form of a written answer provided on Monday by the STL’s official spokesman, Marten Youssef, to a question submitted by al-Akhbar.
He was asked: Given that any exchange of information between the STL and the Israelis would require an agreement between the two sides, did the STL ask Israel to sign a cooperation agreement with it, and if so, when, and with what outcome?
The reply was: “No. Israel was never approached by the STL to sign a cooperation agreement. The STL only has cooperation agreements with Lebanon and the Netherlands. ”
Youssef noted that any information about the investigators’ work – including whether or not they had visited Israel or met Israeli officials to seek information related to the Hariri assassination – would have to be provided by the prosecutor’s office.
He said he had passed on al-Akhbar’s questions in this regard. There had been no reply by press-time.
But the topic about which Bellemare is reluctant to respond was discussed at length last year by Israeli security and intelligence analyst Yossi Melman.
He wrote in the daily Haaretz on 23 November 2010: “The UN commission’s resources have been relatively limited…The potential countries that have spy agencies with the necessary technology is also limited, and includes the National Security Agency in the United States, British, and French intelligence, and undoubtedly, Israeli intelligence.”
If that is the case, and seeing as the STL has officially said it has no cooperation agreement with Israel, then Melman’s report would appear to reveal that Bellemare and his team have been violating STL rules, and that Israeli officials have been violating Israeli law.
Two observations need to be made in this context:
First, Israeli intelligence would not cooperate with any foreign party, or provide it with information about monitored or intercepted communications in Lebanon, except under clear orders from the highest Israeli political authorities.
Secondly, it is – at the very least – unlikely that the motives for this ‘irregular’ cooperation can be separated from the conclusion reached by Bellemare’s investigation, namely that Hezbollah officials were involved in Hariri’s assassination.
And at most, it is not unlikely that Israeli intelligence could have collaborated with Western agencies in the hi-tech fabrication of electronic evidence for Bellemare to base his indictment on.
In August, here on Mondoweiss, I wrote an article on the failure to recognize Palestinians in public discourse.
In order to listen to a Palestinian, one must be able to hear their voice, and to give that voice consideration and legitimation. The refusal to recognize a land known as Palestine coincides with the refusal to consider the Arab people who live there – to refuse to recognize their existence, their humanity, their mortality, and their voices.
So in September, when a friend with Prometheus Radio pitched the idea for members of Philly BDS to take to the airwaves with West Philadelphia’s community radio station WPEB 88.1, the opportunity was too good to pass up. Evan “DJ Ev Daddy” Hoffman and I, Matt Graber, have been producing a radio program called ‘Radio Against Apartheid‘ on WPEB 88.1 every Wednesday at 9 PM for the past 6 weeks. We are hoping to bring voices for justice and equality throughout the Middle East to the Philadelphia community by radio and to the world via podcast. We have both been active with the Philadelphia Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Coalition for over a year, and through this work we have been fortunate to collaborate with a tremendous group of insightful and moral individuals.
Evan was born in Madison, Wisconsin, and raised in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in a family which strongly valued criticism, protest, and social justice. Even in his youth, his family has been involved in a peace group in the area called the Lehigh-Pocono Committee of Concern (LEPOCO). Evan remembers being 8 years old and marching against the first Gulf war in Washington DC with his parents and their good Palestinian friends, Lena and her daughter, Jinan. He carried all these experiences with him through college at Temple University, where he majored in dance and continued to be an independent disc jockey. Evan has always utilized the power of creative expression, choreographing dances protesting the Iraq war (as a member of Not In Our Name), DJing at peace/justice rallies at City Hall in Philly and other locations, and learning how to connect lines of expression to create a new dialogue and use his voice! Radio Against Apartheid is another project of his which seeks to incorporate the power of creative expression into political activism.
I have only been marginally employed for the past year, after leaving the University of Pennsylvania with an incomplete masters degree in Social Work. In the summer of 2010, I spent a month living in al Azzeh refugee camp in Bethlehem. There, I experienced first hand the violence of Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank. We didn’t have running water for 23 days. I was tear gassed in Bil’in, and harassed at a check point. I helped to rebuild a demolished home in al Walaja. Reflecting on these experiences, I realized that in the world which I want to build, political institutions must come to consider both my own well-being and livelihood along with that of the anonymous other, regardless of their geographic location, ethnicity, spoken language, gender, or any other identifier.
Radio Against Apartheid is our way of bringing progressive, alternative views of the Middle East to the West Philadelphia community. Though there were no shows about the Middle East on West Philadelphia’s WPEB 88.1 until we started our program, the issues facing Palestinians are not foreign to the local community. West Philadelphia is a community historically and currently facing gentrification at the hands of the University of Pennsylvania and patrolled by a militant Philadelphia police force. Just as Palestinian communities are being destroyed and Palestinians are being unjustly imprisoned, so too have communities of Philadelphia been decimated and destroyed by gentrification and urban renewal, and so too have homes been bombed and people been imprisoned for political reasons.
With programs such as Labor Justice Radio and On the Block, West Philadelphia’s WPEB 88.1 has already been dealing with critical issues facing the local community. Radio Against Apartheid continues this tradition. As the charter of the radio station states:
WPEB 88.1 FM is an independent, noncommercial community radio station dedicated to reflecting, representing, incorporating, empowering, and serving West Philadelphia communities by:
providing a channel for groups, issues, and music that have been overlooked, suppressed or misrepresented by other media.
promoting communication, education, and entertainment through programming that invites interaction between the station and the community.
providing training that facilitates creative expression and exploration of public issues with the goal of incorporating and empowering members of the community.
Our hope with Radio Against Apartheid is to be a venue in Philadelphia fostering critical analysis of America’s and Israel’s continuing militarism in the Middle East and North Africa by featuring and listening to those most directly affected by these policies. So we’ve featured artists such as Omar Offendum, Suheir Hammad, and Susan Abulhawa, and we’ve gotten firsthand accounts, insight, and analysis from reporters Joseph Dana and Jesse Rosenfeld.
In an interview broadcast heard by hundreds, if not thousands, over the radio and through podcast, Joseph Dana and Jesse Rosenfeld reflected on their experiences as journalists living in Ramallah. Rosenfeld has reported for Alternet, The Nation, and various other outlets, and was on board the second Freedom Flotilla. Dana has reported for The Nation on board the US Boat to Gaza, the Audacity of Hope, and he writes regularly for +972 Magazine. His views challenged the notion of Israel as a democratic state:
Last Summer, Israel, a Western-style democracy, decides to basically cancel freedom of speech over [the issue of boycott, divestment, and sanctions] by passing an anti-boycott law, in which myself, as an Israeli citizen, am unable to publicly state any support for the boycott, and I’m unable to publicly advocate for the boycott. So if I was to say on this program, ‘Palestinian unarmed resistance is the best form of resistance. I understand their desire to resist the occupation and I think the boycott move is the most effective form of unarmed resistance and therefore people should support it.’ If I say that, then I can be sued in Israel. The people that would bring a lawsuit against me, any Israeli, they don’t have to prove that I actually damaged them. They just have to prove that I intended to. And so this law is so corrosive and so toxic that it, first off, demonstrates how effective the boycott campaign is. Because governments don’t pass these types of laws unless they’re effective. And secondly, its taking off this mask of Israeli democracy that we’ve had for so long. I mean, we can talk about it in terms of the rights of non-Jews, but now its filtering even into the rights of Jews.
One of my favorite shows featured a conversation with Susan Abulhawa, the author of ‘Mornings in Jenin’, Karina Goulordava of the Great Book Robbery, and me. We discussed the Great Book Robbery – a project examining the systematic theft of thousands of Palestinian books during al Nakba – and the consequences of the project from the perspective of Edward Said’s Orientalism.
In a conversation filled with grim topics, Susan offered hope to the program and to our listeners:
Of course they would want to hide evidence of culture. But you can’t. Israel has succeeded to a large extent at sort of re-writing history and covering it up. But I think that the truth has a way of emerging, of finding its way to the light. And I think we’re living in a time where we’re seeing that starting to happen. This documentary, The Great Book Robbery, is one element of that. The explosion of Palestinian literature throughout the West is another manifestation of that. There are a lot of documentaries in addition to the Great Book Robbery that are emerging by very talented film-makers. And of course the growing international solidarity and the slow but sure persistent awakening of civil society across the world. This is the truth starting to come to light.
This was Susan’s second appearance on the program, after her appearance on our second show when she told the history of Palestine since 1948.
Everybody involved in the show has been gracious. Its been very humbling to connect with such amazing guests, who have been surprisingly accessible. As we just began our program, I wasn’t certain about how we could create content for the radio show. At first, we thought “Every week? That sounds like a whole lot of content to put together in a short amount of time.” But we went about e-mailing people involved in the movement for justice in Palestine, and they replied. Everybody whom we have contacted has done an amazing job of working through their extremely busy schedules to try to make time for our program.
The people with WPEB and Scribe Video, the parent organization of WPEB, have also been supportive throughout the process. After our first proposal, they were helpful in training us in the studio and then getting us on the air. With a very tight schedule of programming at WPEB, Rashaw Alston cut an hour of his programming to fit with our schedules and allow us to go on the air. And though WPEB and Scribe have received complaints, they’ve been steadfast in their support of our program. We would never have been able to do this without the support from the WPEB community.
WPEB has been running a fundraiser from the beginning of October until the end of the year in the hopes of raising $5,000. This money would go towards keeping all of our programs on the air. The media landscape in the United States is dominated by corporate media, and it is essential to maintain community and independent radio as a place for alternative viewpoints to be expressed. If you’d like to make a donation to keep all of our programming going, you can go to the Scribe website.
As exciting as the experience has been so far, what is most exciting is the potential for what the program could be. This week’s show features a new segment produced by the Palestine News Network, “News from the Occupied Territories”, which reports on this week’s arrests, home demolitions, and land seizures in the occupied West Bank. This segment is the result of a new partnership between Radio Against Apartheid and the Palestine News Network.
This effort really shows how radio can be used to bring people together. And we would love to have your comments, ideas, and contributions. As a space for people to talk about building a world based on values of justice and equality, we hope that you’ll tune in and join the conversation.
Links to our latest program, relevant news topics, and previous shows are all posted to our blog. You can also subscribe to the weekly podcast via itunes. You can reach us by e-mail at RadioAgainstApartheid@Gmail.com and on Twitter at PEB881RAA.
This is what happens when you demand speedy production in an era of politicized regulation
By Meryl Nass, MD | February 12, 2022
All these tragedies have been due to failures of testing or failures in manufacturing processes. Most occurred before vaccine manufacturers were given virtually complete protection from liability in 1987.
With the duration of patent exclusivity determining how much new products earn, products are rushed to market as quickly as possible, most using a shortened path for FDA review. Recalls and market removals of approved products are much more common than they used to be. We can only expect more of these disasters in the future, especially if the products are mandated for everyone. … continue
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By Matthew Graber | Mondoweiss | December 7, 2011
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