‘ACTA defeat a huge victory for online freedom & democracy’
RussiaToday | July 4, 2012
The European Parliament has rejected ACTA, a controversial trade agreement, which was widely criticized over its likely assault on internet freedoms. Supporters of the treaty suggested postponing the crucial voting at the Parliament plenary on Wednesday, but members of the parliament decided not to delay the decision any further. MEPs voted overwhelmingly against ACTA, with 478 votes against and only 39 in favor of it. There were 146 abstentions.
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Columnist Clarence Page Spoke at Rally for Iranian Militant Group
By Justin Elliott | ProPublica | July 2, 2012
Late last month, syndicated columnist Clarence Page appeared at a rally in Paris in support of the Mujahadin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian group that has been lobbying Washington to be removed from the U.S. government’s list of designated foreign terrorist organizations.
Before a huge crowd waving portraits of MEK leaders Maryam and Massoud Rajavi as well as Iranian flags, Page called for the MEK to be removed from the official terrorist organization list.
Contacted about the appearance by ProPublica, Page said he has decided to give back his speaking fee for the event, as well as reimburse the cost of travel to and from France, which was paid for by a group called the Organizing Committee for Convention for Democracy in Iran.
“I thought they were simply a group of Iranian exiles who were opposed to the regime in Tehran,” Page said. “I later found out they can be construed as a MEK front group, and I don’t think it’s worth it to my reputation to be perceived as a paid spokesman for any political cause.”
Page said he was paid a fee of $20,000 and travel expenses and that he attended the June 23 event during vacation time. He said he just arrived back at work from vacation and has not yet given back the money. He did not have the text of the speech he delivered, but he told ProPublica he spoke in favor of the MEK being removed from the list of terrorist organizations, a move he expects to occur shortly.
The MEK, which fiercely opposes the current regime in Iran, has mounted a high-priced lobbying and legal battle to get off the terrorist list in recent years. The group was placed on the list in 1997 by the Clinton Administration, which cited its record of attacks against Iranian targets. The group also “assassinated several U.S. military personnel and U.S. civilians working on defense projects in Tehran” in the 1970s when the U.S. was allied with the Shah, according to the State Department. The MEK says it has renounced violence. A federal appeals court last month ordered the State Department to decide within four months whether the MEK should remain on the list.
Groups supporting the MEK have paid millions of dollars to attract former officials and retired military officers to appear at events supporting the group in recent years. But because the MEK is an officially designated terrorist organization, it is illegal for Americans to accept money from the MEK itself. NBC reported in March that former officials had received subpoenas as part of a federal probe “focused on whether the former officials may have received funding, directly or indirectly, from the [MEK].”
Besides Page’s role as a columnist whose work is distributed by Tribune Media Services, he is also a member of the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board. Page has not written about Iran in his column recently, but the Tribune editorial board regularly weighs in on foreign policy. Last month, the paper called on the Obama administration to “ratchet up the economic pressure” on Iran in the dispute over the country’s nuclear program. A spokeswoman for the Tribune did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Organizers assert that 100,000 people attended the Paris event last month, but that figure has not been independently verified. In a speech, Maryam Rajavi hailed the “unparalleled bipartisan coalition which has challenged the official policy” that labels the MEK a terrorist group.
Others attending the event last month include Newt Gingrich, former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, former Bush administration official John Bolton, and several former high-ranking military officers.
“When I got involved with it, I saw the stellar list of VIPs who were also on the program, and I saw this to be another conference with another speech,” Page said.
Page said the invitation to the event last month came through his agent Janet LeBrun Cosby and Bethesda-based Speakers Worldwide.
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Video of Newt Gingrich speech at the event:
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Death of a Proud, Self-Avowed Terrorist: Former Israeli PM Yitzhak Shamir Goes to the Great Hague in the Sky
By Nima Shirazi | Wide Asleep in America | June 30, 2012
Palestine Police Force Wanted Poster offering rewards for the capture of Stern Gang members, including (at center) Yitzhak Yezernitzky
Sometimes terrible people live long lives. Such is the case with Icchak Yezernitsky, a Russian-born racist, terrorist and eager ethnic cleanser who is better known to the world as former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. Shamir died today, June 30, 2012, at a Tel Aviv nursing home from Alzheimer’s Disease at the ripe old age of 96. One can only wonder if he had forgotten all the war crimes he had committed.
Nearly every mainstream media outlet has eulogized Shamir with encomiums, or at least profound respect. Here are some of Shamir’s greatest hits, most of which have been omitted from most of the media’s effusive obituaries:
Shamir was one of the leaders of Lehi (also known as The Stern Gang), a Zionist terrorist militia which rampaged through Palestine in the 1940s. Were anyone to dispute that Lehi was a terrorist group, Shamir proudly affirmed that particular description in a 1943 article he wrote entitled “Terror.” Shamir wrote,
Neither Jewish morality nor Jewish tradition can be used to disallow terror as a means of war… We are very far from any moral hesitations when concerned with the national struggle.
First and foremost, terror is for us a part of the political war appropriate for the circumstances of today, and its task is a major one: it demonstrates in the clearest language, heard throughout the world including by our unfortunate brethren outside the gates of this country, our war against the occupier.
The Zionist terror campaign of Plan Dalet, put into effect in early 1948 and described by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, consisted of “large-scale intimidation; laying siege to and bombarding population centres; setting fires to homes, properties, and goods; expulsion; demolition; and finally, planting mines among the rubble to prevent any of the expelled inhabitants from returning.”
Shamir seemed to relish the opportunity to terrorize, murder and ethnically cleanse Palestine of its indigenous population in order to make room for the nascent state of Israel. The massacre of Deir Yassin in April 1948, during which over 100 unarmed villagers were murdered, was carried out by Zionist commandos of Shamir’s Lehi and Menachem Begin’s Irgun (of which Shamir was a former member).
Following Israel’s unilateral declaration of independence in May 1948, the United Nations reassessed its approach to the partition of Palestine and appointed a mediator, Swedish diplomat Folke Bernadotte, to come up with new proposal while taking into account “the aspirations of the Jews, the political difficulties and differences of opinion of the Arab leaders, the strategic interests of Great Britain, the financial commitment of the United States and the Soviet Union, the outcome of the war, and finally the authority and prestige of the United Nations.” Notice that the rights of the indigenous Palestinians were not included in this mandate.
Nevertheless, while Bernadotte’s second proposal was produced in consultation with British and American emissaries, then-President Harry Truman undermined its progress in the UN due to pre-election Zionist influence in the United States. When Bernadotte finally presented his progress report, “Mediation, Truce Supervision, Refugees, Proposals for Peaceful Settlement,” on September 16, 1948, it included this unequivocal statement:
It is not yet known what the policy of the Provisional Government of Israel with regard to the return of Arab refugees will be when the final terms of settlement are reached. It is, however, undeniable that no settlement can be just and complete if recognition is not accorded to the right of the Arab refugee to return to the home from which he has been dislodged by the hazards and strategy of the armed conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. The majority of these refugees have come from territory which, under the Assembly resolution of 29 November, was to be included in the Jewish State. The exodus of Palestinian Arabs resulted from panic created by fighting in their communities, by rumours concerning real or alleged acts of terrorism, or expulsion. It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and, indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for centuries. (A/648 1.V.6)
The very next day, September 17, 1948, Bernadotte was assassinated in West Jerusalem by members of Lehi, acting on Shamir’s explicit orders.
In 1969, Shamir formally joined Begin’s “Freedom Party” (Herut), which Jewish luminaries such as Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt had decried years earlier as “a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties” which “preached an admixture of ultranationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority.”
In April 1988, during the first Intifada, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir warned that any Palestinian caught protesting would have his “head smashed against the boulders and walls.” He continued, “We say to them from the heights of this mountain and from the perspective of thousands of years of history that they are like grasshoppers compared to us.”
Shamir was a committed colonialist. Even when, in September 1991, U.S. President George H.W. Bush threatened to withhold “loan guarantees sought by Israel unless the Israeli Government, which has ignored all of his previous appeals to halt settlement-building in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, freezes building activity,” Shamir never halted further colonization of Palestine.
In June 1993, after being voted out of office, Shamir stated his desire to deliberately subvert any efforts to establish a Palestinian state by carrying out peace talks under false pretenses. “I would have conducted the autonomy negotiations for 10 years, and in the meantime we would have reached half a million [Jewish] souls in Judea and Samaria.” Lamenting the end of his administration, Shamir said it was “painful that in the coming four years I won’t be able to increase settlements in Judea and Samaria and Gaza.”
In 2005, Israelis voted Shamir the 29th Greatest Israeli in a poll conducted by Ynet.
Despite Shamir’s history of despicable violence and willful abrogation of international law, Barack Obama’s press secretary Jay Carney released a statement on behalf of the White House at the news of Shamir’s death.
“Yitzhak Shamir dedicated his life to the State of Israel,” the statement read. “From his days working for Israel’s independence to his service as Prime Minister, he strengthened Israel’s security and advanced the partnership between the United States and Israel.”
It is unsurprising that Benjamin Netanyahu praised his Likud predecessor, saying, “He was a paragon of loyalty to the Land of Israel and the eternal values of the Jewish people,” adding that “Yitzhak Shamir belongs to a generation of giants, who founded the State of Israel and fought for the freedom of the Jewish people in its land.”
One should remind Netanyahu of Shamir’s proud justification of terrorism or perhaps simply note the words of the mayor of Tel Aviv under British Mandate, Israel Rokach, who in 1944 accused Shamir’s Zionist militia of “lacking even a spark of humanity and Jewish conscience” after Lehi gunmen murdered three British police officers in a public shooting.
Shamir’s daughter, Gilada Diamant, claimed her father “belonged to a different generation of leaders, people with values and beliefs. I hope that we have more people like him in the future.” Certainly anyone who values human rights, justice, sovereignty, and self-determination for the Palestinian people, the rule of law, the Geneva Conventions, and the Nuremberg Principles does not share Diamant’s hope.
Thomas Friedman once wrote that Shamir “exemplifies those Israeli leaders whose vision of tomorrow is yesterday.” For all those whose innocent lives were obliterated or whose families suffered at the hands of Yitzhak Shamir due to his commitment to ethnosupremacism, colonialism and mass murder, any more visions of violence and bigotry that he may have had thankfully died today.
*****
There’s also this:
Daniel Yergin: Excess oil capacity seen as adequate to weather sanctions impacts
RussiaToday | Jun 27, 2012
On the 1st of July Europe will cease importing oil from Iran and new US sanctions will also come into place. To talk about how this will affect the energy market RT is joined by prize-winning author and energy specialist Daniel Yergin.
Al-Nu’man – A Case of Indirect Forcible Transfer
June 26, 2012 by Alhaqhr
In 1967, Israel illegally annexed East Jerusalem and surrounding areas, including the land of Al-Nu’man village. However, the inhabitants of the village were not recorded in the 1967 census of Jerusalem and many were given West Bank IDs. Villagers are considered by Israel to be illegally residing in Jerusalem simply by being in their homes.
In 2002 al-Nu’man’s residents were informed that the village lay adjacent to the planned route of the Wall and, with the settler bypass road passing through the village, they would have no access to Jerusalem or the West Bank. In 2006 a military checkpoint was established at the entrance to the village allowing only al-Nu’man residents to pass through.
The stunting of Al-Nu’man’s natural growth, the gradual enforced transfer of residents and the obstruction of any incoming residents can all be attributed to Israel’s systematic campaign to ultimately rid the area of its Palestinian inhabitants. This is a clear example of a policy of indirect forcible transfer, which is a war crime under international humanitarian law.
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Anti-science
The infinite list
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | October 12, 2022
Almost three years ago science entered a new dark age.
Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, seems to agree. He has been compiling a list of the examples of anti-science we have unfortunately become used to.
I have listed his thoughts so far but the list is continually expanding... continue
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