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Russia’s no arms in outer space initiative gains support

Dr Alexander Yakovenko | RT | November 26, 2014

Preventing the deployment of weapons in outer space remains one of the key objectives of Russian diplomacy. We believe that space should be used solely for peaceful scientific research purposes in the interest of development and progress of the world.

That is why Russia is eager to promote initiatives that prohibit the weaponization of space and help develop international cooperation.

Among them is the Russian draft resolution on No First Placement of Arms in Outer Space presented at the UN General Assembly. Co-sponsored by 33 countries, the resolution was for the first time given overwhelming support by the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) during the current session, with 126 votes in favor and 4 against (the United States, Israel, Georgia and Ukraine). The voting has confirmed that the Russian initiative to prevent the weaponization of space is winning growing support in the international community. The text will now be submitted to the plenary of the General Assembly for adoption.

The draft resolution provides the basis for further action to keep outer space free from any kind of weapons and to ensure that all countries have an equal opportunity for its peaceful use. One of the key provisions is the idea of early talks at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva with a view to drafting and adopting a binding international treaty to prevent the placement of arms in outer space and the threat or use of force against outer space objects. Such a treaty was first proposed by Russia and China in 2008. An updated Russian-Chinese draft was submitted to the Conference on Disarmament in June this year.

The draft resolution also includes an appeal to all states to adopt a political commitment on no first placement of arms in outer space. So far, 11 countries have made declarations, namely Argentina, Armenia, Belarus, Brazil, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Sri Lanka and Tajikistan.

Adopting a commitment not to be the first to place weapons in outer space by all nations with major space capabilities would greatly facilitate a legally binding ban on the placement of any kind of weapons in outer space and the threat or use of force against outer space objects. Further efforts to spread this pledge across the globe would be a major contribution to the efforts of all the UN member countries towards equal and indivisible security and stability.

Dr Alexander Yakovenko serves as Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and served as Deputy foreign minister (2005-2011).

November 27, 2014 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Politics of Thanksgiving Day

By William Loren Katz | November 5, 2014

Thanksgiving remains the most treasured holiday in the United States, honored by Presidents since Abraham Lincoln initiated the Holiday to rouse patriotism in a war that was not going well.

Anacoana_or_Golden_FlowerThanksgiving has often served political ends. In 2003, in the current age of US Middle East invasions, President George Bush flew to Bagdad, Iraq to celebrate Thanksgiving Day with U.S. troops. He sought to rally the public behind an invasion based on lies. A host of photographers came along to snap him carrying a glazed turkey to eager soldiers. In three hours he flew home, and TV brought his act of solidarity and generosity to millions of US living rooms. But the turkey the President carried to Baghdad was never eaten. It was cardboard, a stage prop.

Thanksgiving 2003 had a lot in common with the first Thanksgiving Day. In 1620 149 English Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower landed at Plymouth and survived their first New England winter when Wampanoug people brought them corn, meat and other gifts, and taught them survival skills. In 1621 Governor William Bradford of Plymouth proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving – not for his Wampanoug saviors but his brave Pilgrims. Through resourcefulness and devotion to God his Christians had defeated hunger.

We are still asked to see Thanksgiving through the eyes of Governor Bradford. But Bradford’s fable is an early example of “Euro think” — an concoction by Europeans that casts their conquest as heroic.

Bradford claims Native Americans were invited to the dinner. A seat at the table? Really? Since Pilgrims classified their nonwhite saviors as “infidels” and inferiors — if invited at all, they were asked to provide and serve and not share the food.

Pilgrim armies soon pushed westward. In 1637 Governor Bradford sent his troops to raid a Pequot village. As devout Christians locked in mortal combat with heathens, Pilgrims systematically destroyed a village of sleeping men, women and children.

Bradford was overjoyed:

“It was a fearful sight to see them frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same and horrible was the stink and stench thereof. But the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice and they [the Pilgrim militia] gave praise thereof to God.”

Years later Pilgrim Reverend Increase Mather asked his congregation to celebrate the “victory” and thank God “that on this day we have sent six hundred heathen souls to hell.”

School and scholarly texts still honor Bradford. The 1993 edition of the Columbia Encyclopedia [P. 351] states of Bradford, “He maintained friendly relations with the Native Americans.” The scholarly Dictionary of American History [P. 77] said, “He was a firm, determined man and an excellent leader; kept relations with the Indians on friendly terms; tolerant toward newcomers and new religions….”

The Mayflower, renamed the Meijbloom (Dutch for Mayflower), continued to carve its place in history. It became one of the first ships to carry enslaved Africans to the Americas.

Thanksgiving Day celebrates not justice or equality but aggression and enslavement. It affirms the genocidal beliefs that destroyed millions of Native American people and their cultures from the Pilgrim landings to the 20th century.

Americans proudly count themselves among the earliest to fight for freedom and independence. On Thanksgiving Americans could honor the first freedom fighters of the Americas – those who resisted foreign invasion – but they were not Europeans, and they started long before 1776.Caribe_Indians_copy_2

Long before Pilgrims landed at Plymouth thousands of enslaved Africans and Native Americans united to fight the European invaders and slavers. In the age of Columbus and the Spanish invasion they were led by Taino leaders such as Anacoana a woman poet who was captured and executed at 29; and a man Hatuey who in 1511 led his 400 followers from Hispaniola to Cuba to warn of the foreigners, and was captured and executed the next year.

Before the Mayflower, thousands of runaway Africans and Indians in northeast Brazil had begun to unite in the Republic of Palmaris, a three walled maroon fortress that enabled Genga Zumba’s 10,000 people of color to defeat Dutch and Portuguese armies. Palmares lasted until 1694, almost a hundred years.

These early nonwhite freedom fighters kept no written records, but some of their ideas about freedom, justice and equality found their way into a sacred parchment Americans celebrate each July 4th.

November 27, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Israel’s Model of Political Despair in Jerusalem

By Jonathan Cook | Dissident Voice | November 26, 2014

Relations between Israelis and Palestinians have descended into a dangerous melee of tit-for-tat attacks and killings, with the violence of the past few weeks centred on Jerusalem. The city, claimed by Israel as its “undivided capital”, has been torn apart by clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian residents since the summer, when 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir was burnt alive by Jewish extremists.

Subsequent attacks by Palestinians culminated last week in a shooting and stabbing spree by two cousins at a synagogue that killed four Jews and an Israeli policeman. In this atmosphere, both sides have warned that the political conflict is mutating into a religious one.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, cautioned that Israel’s intensified efforts to extend its control over the Al Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City, including by imposing severe restrictions on Muslim worship, risked plunging the region into “a detrimental religious war”.

Yoram Cohen, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service, concurred. He warned last week that Israel was stoking religious discord by encouraging Jews to pray at the site over rabbinical objections.

But despite these warnings, the Israeli government announced today it was drafting a law that would ban Muslim guards on the esplanade, making it yet easier for Jews to visit.

Government ministers, meanwhile, accused Abbas of religious “incitement” and masterminding the violence in Jerusalem.

Ari Shavit, an influential Israeli analyst, also blamed what he termed an emerging “holy war” not on oppressive Israeli policies, but on the spread of an Islamist extremism.

Shavit and other Israelis have preferred to overlook the obvious parallels between last week’s killings and an even graver incident 20 years ago. Then, Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish settler, entered the Ibrahimi mosque in the West Bank city of Hebron in his Israeli army captain’s uniform and opened fire on Muslim worshippers, killing 29 and wounding 125.

One can only wonder why the timeline for Shavit’s holy war did not extend back to Goldstein’s massacre, or include the waves of attacks, including arson, by settlers on Muslim and Christian places of worship ever since.

Israel’s responses to these two massacres are more helpful in illuminating the fundamental causes of the recent surge in violence.

In Hebron, Palestinians rather than the settlers paid the price for Goldstein’s slaughter. Israel divided the Ibrahimi mosque to create a Jewish prayer space and effectively shut down Hebron’s commercial centre, displacing thousands of Palestinian residents.

Instead of pulling the settlers out from the occupied territories following the massacre, Israel allowed their numbers to grow at record pace.

Although the anti-Arab Kach group Goldstein belonged to was outlawed, it has continued to operate openly in the settlements, including in Jerusalem. Goldstein’s tomb, next to Hebron, is a site of pilgrimage for thousands of religious Jews.

Palestinians, not Israelis, are again the ones suffering, this time after last week’s synagogue attack.

Israel has begun demolishing the homes of those involved in recent attacks, and is drafting laws to jail stone-throwers for up to 20 years and harshly penalise the parents of those too young to be jailed themselves.

On Sunday the interior minister revoked the Jerusalem residency of a Palestinian convicted of driving a suicide bomber into Tel Aviv 13 years ago – a prelude, according to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to many more such revocations.

Israel is also preparing to relax gun controls to allow thousands more Israeli Jews to carry weapons at a time when Palestinian taxi and bus drivers in Jerusalem say they are being regularly assaulted. Last week a bus driver died in mysterious circumstances, which Palestinians suspect was a lynching.

It should be no surprise that Jerusalem is the eye of the storm. For more than a decade it has served as a laboratory for the Israeli right to experiment with a model of political despair designed to make Palestinians either submit or leave.

House demolitions for Palestinians and settlement building for Jews, brutal policing and the encouragement of crime as a way to recruit collaborators are happening faster and more aggressively in Jerusalem than anywhere else in the occupied territories.

Since the second intifada erupted in 2000, East Jerusalem has been a political orphan. Israel expelled the Palestinian Authority, and jailed or deported Hamas leaders as they tried to fill the vacuum. Since then, Palestinians in Jerusalem have been defenceless against Israel’s intrigues.

Netanyahu and the right have made little secret of their wish to export a similar model to the West Bank, gradually eroding what control the PA still enjoys. But the spiralling violence in Jerusalem has exposed the paradox at the heart of their strategy.

Palestinian anger in the West Bank is every bit as intense as in Jerusalem but Abbas’ security forces still have the will and, just barely, the upper hand to keep a lid on it.

In Jerusalem, on the other hand, protesters face off directly with Israeli police. Because the city lacks organised Palestinian groups, the security services have been unable to penetrate them with collaborators. Instead Israel has been caught off guard by unpredictable attacks as individual Palestinians reach their breaking point.

By refusing to recognise any Palestinian national claims in Jerusalem, Netanyahu has forced the population to recast the conflict in religious terms. Unable to identify politically with either Fatah or Hamas, Jerusalem’s Palestinians have found powerful consolation in a religious struggle to counter the mounting threats to Al-Aqsa.

From this perspective, Netanyahu’s continuing efforts to weaken and undermine Abbas and the PA appear strategically self-destructive. Without them, the West Bank will go the way of Jerusalem – an ever more unmanageable colonial conflict that risks heading towards religious conflagration.

November 26, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sophisticated ‘state-sponsored’ spying tool targeted govts, infrastructure for years

RT | November 24, 2014

A sophisticated malware dubbed Regin has been used to spy on governments, infrastructure operators and other high-profile targets, security company Symantec has revealed. It also targeted private individuals and businesses, particularly in Russia.

A back door-type Trojan displays a “degree of technical competence rarely seen,” Symantec said in a press release. The complexity of the virus enabled the intruder to create a framework for mass surveillance. Targets include private companies, government entities and research think tanks. Attacks on telecoms companies were allegedly carried out to gain access to calls being routed through their infrastructure.

Confirmed Regin infections by sector (image from symantec.com)

Confirmed Regin infections by sector (image from symantec.com)

The company believes that the Trojan was likely developed by a nation state as it took months, if not years to develop such a piece of software and cover up its tracks. Analyzing its further capabilities the company has drawn a conclusion that Regin could be one of the main cyber espionage tools used by the implicated nation state.

Almost a third of the confirmed infections were discovered in Russia with a further 24 percent in Saudi Arabia. Mexico, Ireland, India, Afghanistan, Iran, Belgium, Austria and Pakistan are also on the list.

“Regin is a highly complex threat which has been used in systematic data collection or intelligence gathering campaigns. The development and operation of this malware would have required a significant investment of time and resources,” Symantec said.

Symantec found that the virus has been used between 2008 and 2011, before being suddenly withdrawn until a new version of the malware resurfaced from 2013 onwards.

Confirmed Regin infections by country (image from symantec.com)

Confirmed Regin infections by country (image from symantec.com)

Regin uses a modular approach allowing it to load features that exactly fit the target, enabling a customized spying.“Its design makes it highly suited for persistent, long-term surveillance operations against targets,” the security company says.

And it’s five-stage loading architecture with special and hidden encryption at each stage makes it similar to Duqu/Stuxnet threats, Symantec said. “Executing the first stage starts a domino chain of decryption and loading of each subsequent stage for a total of five stages. Each individual stage provides little information on the complete package. Only by acquiring all five stages is it possible to analyze and understand the threat,” the press release reads. Furthermore Regin is equipped with a number of stealth features so that even after Trojan’s presence is detected, it is “very difficult to ascertain what it is doing.”

Researchers say many components of the virus remain undiscovered while the threat of additional functionality and versions may still exist.

Image from symantec.com

November 24, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Egyptian president says his regime is ready to protect Israel

MEMO | November 24, 2014

Egyptian President Abdul-Fattah Al-Sisi told an Italian newspaper that his country is ready to send troops to Palestine in order to guarantee Israel’s security and work jointly against terrorism.

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Al-Sisi said: “We are prepared to send military forces inside a Palestinian state. They would help the local police and reassure Israelis in their role as guarantors.”

The former military general stressed that any such troop deployment would only be for the time needed to restore trust between the two sides.

According to Reuters, Al-Sisi added that he has spoken about this idea ‘at length’ with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

“I told [Netanyahu] a courageous step was needed otherwise nothing would be resolved,” he said.

Al-Sisi led the July 2013 military coup that ousted Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi. Since then, the Egyptian government has criminalised the Muslim Brotherhood organisation, which Morsi was a member of, and deepened the Israeli siege of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by closing the Rafah Border crossing in order to raise pressure against the Islamic resistance movement Hamas, which is an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood.

November 24, 2014 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Ben & Jerry’s Israeli Factory and Israel’s Stolen Land and Stolen Water

BJfactory_299x169

Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel

The Ben & Jerry’s factory is in Be’er Tuvia, adjacent to the town of Kiryat Malachi, one of four Israeli localities located on the lands of the former village of Qastina, in territory allotted to the Arab state under the 1947 UN Partition Plan. However on July 9, 1948, after Israel’s declaration of independence and the ensuing war, Qastina and its more than 147 houses were completely destroyed by Israeli forces of the Givati Brigade, and the land incorporated into Israel. (Based on information documented at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qastina, accessed December 2012).

nakba345x230Ghatheyya Mifleh al-Khawalda was a 15-year old teenager when she fled to Gaza from her home in the village of al-Qastina, now the town of Kiriyat Malachi and site of the Ben & Jerry’s factory, during the Nakba of 1948. So this woman, a refugee living only a day’s walk from the village that she was driven from, represents a personal and tragic link to the site where now the Ben & Jerry’s factory churns out ‘Peace and Love’ ice cream. Yes, they do profit from this stolen land, and yes, the Nakba was a crime, and yes, the occupation is an affront. Ghatheyya is one of generations of Palestinians in Gaza who are locked away from their land, their families and the world. Some seethe with anger and resort to violence – three people in Kiriyat Malachi died in November 2012 in a rocket attack from Gaza. Ghatheyya said, “We had a very nice house, a big house with marble floors in the hallway. My father was a farmer, and we had farmland with orange trees, apple trees, grapefruit trees and others. We were very happy.” Her life changed dramatically in 1948, when Jewish militias arrived. “Some Jewish militia members were wearing uniform and others had civilian clothes,” Ghatheyya said, “and when they arrived in the village they began firing at people, killing three villagers. We ran away, afraid for our safety, and went to Tal al-Safi, a nearby village. It was within walking distance, and we were in a hurry to leave, so we didn’t take anything with us. It was like Doomsday. It was utter terror. We couldn’t think of anything except leaving, not even simple things like bringing food with us.” After a few days in Tal es-Safi, militias came again and forced them to leave. Ghatheyya and her family fled to Beit Jibrin to spend the night, but were followed and forced to leave again. “If you wanted to die, you stayed. If you wanted to live, you left,” she recalls. “Their main aim was not to kill us, but to get rid of us. If they had wanted us all dead, not one of us would have survived. They used fear to force us to leave our land.” The family walked along the coast until they reached Gaza. “There were thousands of people who fled other villages, sleeping in mosques or on the street,” Ghatheyya says, and UNRWA began to build tents for the families. (From a story “Nakba survivor: If you wanted to live, you left” at Ma’an News )

Water Used by the Factory

When investigating Ben & Jerry’s business dealings in Israel and the occupied territory, we also set out to determine if the company’s franchise was benefiting from Israel’s criminal diversion of Palestinian water. Our inquiry, which included discussions with an international water consultant, led us to the tentative conclusion that Ben & Jerry’s factory in Kiryat Malachi may be drawing water from the Jordan River system and the Mountain Aquifer in the occupied West Bank, the two highest-quality water sources in the region, thus diverting it from Palestinian use.

Palestinians under occupation have been denied access to the Jordan River since 1967, leaving the Mountain Aquifer as their only source of water. A study by The World Bank determined that “Palestinian per capita access to water resources in the West Bank is a quarter of Israeli access and is declining.” This is a result of Israeli government planning and regulation.

To make matters worse, Israeli settlers in the West Bank often obstruct or disconnect the flow of water to Arab communities, while 500,000 settlers consume in total approximately six times more water than three million Palestinians. This difference is even higher when agricultural use is factored in. Regular access to water explains why one commonly sees green lawns and swimming pools in Israeli settlements. In stark contrast, throughout the year, but especially in the summer, Palestinian cities and villages are denied continuous access to water, sometimes for weeks on end. This gross injustice is aggravated by Israel’s policy of denying permits to Palestinians to drill new wells or rehabilitate old ones.

By manufacturing in Israel and marketing in the occupied territory, Ben & Jerry’s is a willing partner to a water system that is grossly inequitable, transgresses international law, and denies Palestinians their fair share of the Mountain Aquifer and the Jordan River. Please see Our Report for more information on Israel’s water crimes in the occupied territory.

November 23, 2014 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Recovering Whales, Ocean Acidification, and Climate Horror Stories

Part 3 Jim Steele’s Presentation to the Life Members of the International Electrical and Electronic Engineers. Jim is the author of “Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism”

November 23, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Environmentalism, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

Iran’s Ever-Ticking Nuclear Clock: Countdown to Nothing

By Nima Shirazi | Wide Asleep in America | November 22, 2014

Recycled rhetoric that sounds ominous, yet signifies nothing – least of all reality – is standard practice when fear-mongering about, well, anything. But especially about Iran’s nuclear program, constant threats to bomb it, and the dire predictions of how soon Iran will have an atomic weapon.

Time is always running out on diplomacy, a military operation is always around the corner, and Iran is always just months away from decimating Israel and holding the world hostage with a single nuclear bomb that it isn’t even making. The clock, we hear ad nauseum, is ticking.

With nuclear negotiations nearing their latest deadline in Vienna this weekend, we are hearing – once again – that it’s “crunch time” for diplomacy and anything less than a comprehensive deal sets the stage for war.

While a fair and just nuclear deal would certainly be in the best interest of all parties involved, we’ve heard all this before. The “clock” has long been “ticking” when it comes to Iran, or so we’ve been told for over a decade now.

Here’s a little trip down memory-hole lane and here’s hoping that, come Monday and the inking of an multilateral agreement, this talking point’s time will finally be up.

Associated Press / The Columbus Dispatch, November 9, 2014:

New Europe – October 16, 2014:

Council on Foreign Relations, September 17, 2014:

Newser, July 15, 2014:

AFP, July 1, 2014:

The Globe and Mail, June 10, 2014:

SBS, February 19, 2014:

CNN, January 13, 2014:

The New York Times, November 25, 2013:

The Jerusalem Post, November 4, 2013:

Roll Call, August 2, 2013:

American Enterprise Institute, July 10, 2013:

BBC News, April 7, 2013:

The Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2013:

The Hill, March 5, 2013:

The Telegraph, December 26, 2012:

James G. Zumwalt, December 26, 2012:

CBS DC, October 22, 2012:

The Sydney Morning Herald, October 2, 2012:

Foreign Policy, August 30, 2012:

The American Spectator, August 27, 2012:

Ha’aretz, August 14, 2012:

Albuquerque Journal, June 28, 2012:

Reuters, June 21, 2012:

NewsMax, February 8, 2012:

CBS Sunday Morning, January 15, 2012:

The New York Times, December 29, 2011:

The Weekly Standard, December 19, 2011:

AEI Center for Defense Studies, December 12, 2011:

UPI, November 9, 2011:

The Hill, November 8, 2011:

Associated Press, November 4, 2011:

New York Post, January 18, 2011:

The Atlantic, August 20, 2010:

The New York Times, March 19, 2010:


Voice of America, December 6, 2009:


The Spectator (UK), December 1, 2009:

New York Post, November 16, 2009:

Christian Science Monitor, November 3, 2009:

Los Angeles Times, September 20, 2009:

Meet the Press, June 21, 2009:

Politico, June 19, 2009:


The Washington Post, March 8, 2009:

EurasiaNet, June 13, 2008:

Toronto Star, May 17, 2008:

Los Angeles Times, August 2, 2006:


Institute for Science and International Security, March 27, 2006:

Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), May 26, 2005:

Dawn, March 19, 2005:

Voice of America, September 19, 2004:

*****

November 23, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

UK Security Enforced Media Blackout of Government Child Abuse

teleSUR | November 22, 2014

Two British newspaper bosses claim that national security services prevented them from publishing allegations of a government pedophile ring in the 1980s on the grounds that it was intelligence that might damage national security.

The executives were issued with the D-notices in 1984, when they were due to print damning details enclosed in a dossier on the child sex abuse scandal handed to them by former Labour minister, Barbara Castle.

Officials say that no records of the media blackout notices can be found however, leading investigators into the case to believe that they were destroyed, further heightening suspicions of a government cover-up.

Security officials said that files “going back beyond 20 years are not complete because files are reviewed and correspondence of a routine nature with no historical significance destroyed.”

However, the security services deny a whitewash.

“I cannot believe that past D-notice secretaries would have countenanced the destruction of any key documents. I can only repeat that while any attempted cover-up of this incident might have been attributed to a D-notice the truth would be that it was not,” a spokesperson for the unit that handles D-notices said.

The case, which was finally exposed in June of this year, relates to a number of prominent politicians and security chiefs under Margaret Thatcher’s government who repeatedly sexually and physically abused young boys, holding ‘sex parties’ in a central London residence.

This month, a man who claims to have been a victim of the ring, revealed that he saw a Conservative Member of Parliament murder a young boy during one of these depraved sex parties, and that two other boys were killed by the gang.

London’s Metropolitan Police say they are taking the man’s account seriously and are now investigating a “possible homicide.”

November 23, 2014 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Synagogue killings on the site of an Israeli massacre of Palestinians

On the Contrary | November 21, 2014

The moral lesson of the “Nazi Holocaust” is supposed to be that humanity must not forget what happened. Yet many of the beneficiaries of “Holocaust” sympathy and reparations have worked to make certain that  the world does not remember the mass murder of Arabs by Israelis. The 2100 Palestinians killed by the Israelis last summer are now all but forgotten in the US media; and the cruel irony of having this week’s synagogue attack in west Jerusalem occur on the site of the village of Deir Yassin, where the massacre of Palestinians by Israeli terrorists occurred, and where the village once stood, is completely lost on the oblivious US media. For this writer, as a student of the religion of Orthodox Judaism, the media’s indifference would appear to be the result of having drank too often at the trough of Talmudic mentality, in which the lives of Judaic persons are more valued and highly prized than those of their enemies and victims. Prof. McGowan elaborates in a note to Mr. Avnery:

In the wake of the recent events in the synagogue at Har Nof, Uri Avnery has written an article which you can read here. Like all his work, Avnery’s article is informative, original and beautifully written. But it has a glaring omission.

11/21/14

Dear Uri:

I know that you realize that the Har Nof neighborhood in West Jerusalem, where four rabbis and a police officer were recently murdered, is built on the lands of Deir Yassin, the Arab village which no longer exists, that was the site of the 1948 massacre, which according to Menachem Begin, was pivotal to the founding of the Jewish state. This was an early massacre in the Nakba (“catastrophe” i.e. the Israeli conquest of Palestine); there were many more to follow, but it struck fear among Palestinians, causing many to flee, also giving the Jews an angle for campaigns of terror, which they visited on other Palestinian villages, basically “Get out or we’ll do to you what we did in Deir Yassin.”


It is interesting to ask why the media, which has been all over this synagogue massacre, mentions nothing about what happened on this site on April 9, 1948?

Why does Wikipedia fail to even cite Deir Yassin in its history of Har Nof?

The picture (above) of Har Nof is taken from Yad Vashem, the most prestigous Holocaust memorial.  The water tower at the top right is next to the main buildings of Deir Yassin, which today serves as a mental hospital, mostly for those suffering with too much religion, an affliction also known as “The Jerusalem Syndrome.”

At Yad Vashem all visitors, and especially American politicians, are repeatedly told to “Never forget.”  At Deir Yassin the message is “Never mind.”  

There is not even a signpost among the old Arab buildings to indicate that it was once a prosperous Arab village of about 750 people.

In building the Har Nof settlement much of the Deir Yassin cemetery was destroyed.  The rest is now littered with trash and condoms.  Har Nof children have been seen digging up Arab graves.  (Imagine the outcry had they been desecrating Jewish graves.)  Apartment buildings of Har Nof are built on the old quarry where villagers were executed and their bodies dumped and burned on April 10, 1948.

The ironies are breathtaking.  But some of us still remember.

http://www.deiryassin.org

Daniel McGowan
Professor Emeritus, Hobart and William Smith Colleges

November 22, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

TAJ MAHAL & RY COODER – By & By (Poor Me)

Harsh times

November 21, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

What Really Happened to the Wobblies

By STAUGHTON LYND | CounterPunch | November 21, 2014

wobbliesThe Wobblies are back. Many young radicals find the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) the most congenial available platform on which to stand in trying to change the world.

This effort has been handicapped by the lack of a hard-headed history of the IWW in its initial incarnation, from 1905 to just after World War I. The existing literature, for example Franklin Rosemont’s splendid book on Joe Hill, is strong on movement culture and atmosphere. It is weak on why the organization went to pieces in the early 1920s.

Eric Chester’s new book, The Wobblies in their Heyday:  The Rise and Destruction of the Industrial Workers of the World during the World War I Era, fills this gap. It is indispensable reading for Wobblies and labor historians. One way to summarize what is between these covers is to say that Chester spells out three tragic mistakes made by the old IWW that the reinvented organization must do its best to avoid.

Macho Posturing

Labor organizing flourished during World War I because of the government’s need for a variety of raw materials. Among these were food, timber, and copper. Wobbly organizers made dramatic headway in all three industries. At its peak in August 1917 the IWW had a membership of more than 150,000.

Nine months later, Chester writes, “the union was in total disarray, forced to devote most of its time and resources to raising funds for attorneys and bail bonds.”

This sad state of affairs was, of course, partly the result of a calculated decision by the federal government to destroy the IWW. But only partly.

According to Chester another cause of the government’s successful suppression of the Wobblies was that during and after the Wheatlands strike in California hop fields in 1913 some Wobblies threatened to “burn California’s agricultural fields if two leaders of the strike were not released from jail.”

For years, Wobbly leaders had insisted that sabotage could force employers to make concessions, Chester writes. But what Chester terms “nebulous calls for arson” and “macho bravado” only stiffened the determination of California authorities not to modify jail sentences for Wobbly leaders Ford and Suhr.

Chester finds that there is no credible evidence that any fields were, in fact, burned. But after the United States entered World War I in April 1917, this extravagant rhetoric calling for the destruction of crops apparently helped to convince President Wilson to initiate a systematic and coordinated campaign to suppress the Wobblies.

Efforts to Avoid Repression by Discontinuing Discussion of the War and the Draft

International solidarity and militant opposition to war and the draft were central tenets of the IWW.  Wobblies who had enrolled in the British Army were expelled from the union. At the union’s tenth general convention in November 2015, the delegates adopted a resolution calling for a “General Strike in all industries” should the United States enter the war.

What actually happened was that general secretary-treasurer Bill Haywood and a majority of IWW leaders agreed that the union should desist from any discussion of the war or the draft, in the vain hope that this policy would persuade the federal government to refrain from targeting the union for repression. At the same time, the great majority of rank-and-file members, with support of a few leaders such as Frank Little, insisted that the IWW should be at the forefront of the opposition to the war.

Self-evidently, what Chester terms the IWW’s “diffidence” was the very opposite of Eugene Debs’ defiant opposition to the war. When Wobbly activists “flooded IWW offices with requests for help and pleas for a collective response to the draft,” the usual response was that what to do was up to each individual member. Haywood, Chester writes, “consistently sought to steer the union away from any involvement in the draft resistance movement.” Debs notwithstanding, however, the national leadership of the Socialist Party like the national leadership of the IWW “scrambled to avoid any confrontation with federal authorities.” Radical activists from both organizations formed ad hoc alliances cutting across organizational boundaries.

The IWW General Executive Board, meeting from June 29 to July 6, 1917, was unable to arrive at a decision about the war and conscription, and a committee including both Haywood and Little, tasked to draft a statement, likewise failed to do so. In the end, Chester says, “the IWW sought to position itself as a purely economic organization concerned solely with short-run gains in wages and working conditions.”

Disunity Among IWW Prisoners Fostered by the Government

The reluctance of the Wobbly leadership to advocate resistance to the war and conscription carried over to a legalistic response when the government indicted IWW leaders. Haywood urged all those named in the indictment to surrender voluntarily and to waive any objection to being extradited to Chicago. In the mass trial that followed, the defendants were represented by a very good trial lawyer who was also an enthusiastic supporter of the war and passed up the opportunity to make a closing statement to the jury.  Judge Landis’ superficial fairness deluded Wobs into hoping for a good outcome.

The jury took less than an hour to find all one hundred defendants guilty of all counts in the indictment.  Ninety-three received lengthy prison terms.  Judge Landis ordered that they be imprisoned in Leavenworth, described by Chester as “a maximum-security penitentiary designed for hardened, violent criminals.”  Forty-six more defendants were found guilty after another mass conspiracy trial in Sacramento.

Thereafter, Chester writes, the “process of granting a commutation of sentence was manipulated during the administration of Warren Harding to divide and demoralize IWW prisoners.”  The ultimate result was “the disastrous split of 1924, leaving the union a shell of what it had been only seven years earlier.” Executive clemency, like that granted to Debs, was the only hope of the Wobblies in prison for release before the end of their long sentences.  President Harding rejected any thought of a general amnesty, obliging each prisoner to fill out the form requesting amnesty as an individual. The application form for amnesty contained an implicit admission of guilt. The newly-created ACLU supported this process.

Twenty-four IWW prisoners opted to submit a form requesting amnesty. A substantial majority refused to plead for individual release. More than seventy issued a statement in which they insisted that “all are innocent and all must receive the same consideration.”  The government insisted on a case-by-case approach.  Fifty-two prisoners responded that they refused to accept the president’s division of the Sacramento prisoners, still alleged to have burned fields, from the Chicago prisoners. Moreover they considered it a “base act” to “sign individual applications and leave the Attorney General’s office to select which of our number should remain in prison and which should go free.”

Initially, the IWW supported those prisoners who refused to seek their freedom individually. Those who had submitted personal requests for presidential clemency were expelled from the union. In June 1923, the government once again dangled before desperate men the prospect of release, now available for those individual prisoners promising to remain “law-abiding and loyal to the Government.” This time a substantial majority of the remaining prisoners accepted Harding’s offer, and IWW headquarters, in what Chester calls “a sweeping reversal,” gave its approval.

Eleven men at Leavenworth declined this latest government inducement. In addition, those who were tried in California did not receive the same offer.

In December 1923 the remaining IWW prisoners at Leavenworth including twenty-two who had been convicted in Sacramento were released unconditionally. The damage had been done. Those who had held out the longest launched a campaign within the IWW to expel those who had supported a form of conditional release. There were accusations against anyone who had allegedly proved himself “a scab and a rat.” When a convention convened in 1924 both sides claimed the headquarters office and went to court. An organization consisting of the few hundred members who had supported the consistent rejection of all government offers “faded into oblivion by 1931.”

Conclusion

It is not the intent of brother Chester’s book, or of this review, to trash the IWW. This review has dealt with only about half of the material in the book, for example passing by the story of Wobbly organizing in copper, both at Butte, Montana and Bisbee, Arizona. Moreover, any one who lived through the disintegration of SDS, SNCC and the Black Panthers is familiar with tragedies like those described here.  The heroism of members of all three groups who were martyrs, such as Frank Little, Fred Hampton, and the Mississippi Three (Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner), remains. The vision of a qualitatively different society, as the Zapatistas say “un otro mundo,” remains also.

What it seems to me we must soberly consider is what practices we can adopt to forestall disintegration when different members of a group make different choices. Hardened secular radicals though we may be, we can learn something from King Lear’s words to his daughter Cordelia: “When you ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down and ask of you forgiveness.”

Staughton  Lynd  is an American conscientious objector, Quaker, peace activist and civil rights activist, tax resister, historian, professor, author and lawyer. Staughton Lynd’s most recent book is From Here to There: the Staughton Lynd Reader.

November 21, 2014 Posted by | Book Review, Economics, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment