Part 3
Vodpod videos no longer available. from www.youtube.com posted with vodpod
.
see
Barack Obama: The Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing + His Puppetmasters (vids)
US Sends Warships to Eastern Mediterranean Sea
Agenda for the North American Summit by Andrew G. Marshall
The Most IMPORTANT Video You’ll Ever See (videos; Parts 1-4)
The Most IMPORTANT Video You’ll Ever See (videos; Parts 5-8)
Hamas continues its rocket attacks on Israel. An Israeli official warns of a “Holocaust” in Gaza. And the Palestinian President accuses Hamas of working with Al Qaeda. Just “rhetoric”? Or will Israel re-invade Gaza?
By Eric Umansky
Mother Jones
February 29, 2008
When Attorney General Alberto Gonzales held a press conference in the summer of 2006 announcing the arrests of seven young men for plotting to bomb Chicago’s Sears Tower, he sounded defensive, his voice lingering a beat on each thing the men allegedly did. “Individuals here in America made plans to hurt Americans,” he claimed. “They did request materials; they did request equipment; they did request funding.” Gonzales admitted that the American and Haitian-born men posed “no immediate threat.” But, he warned, “homegrown terrorists may prove to be as dangerous as groups like Al Qaeda. Our philosophy here is that we try to identify plots in the earliest stages possible, because we don’t know what we don’t know about a terrorism plot.” It’s dangerous, Gonzales added, to make a “case by case” evaluation that “well, ‘this is a really dangerous group’; ‘this is not a really dangerous group.'”
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By Aida Edemariam
ICH
29/02/08 “The Guardian”
In 2005, a Nobel prize-winning economist began the painstaking process of calculating the true cost of the Iraq war. In his new book, he reveals how short-sighted budget decisions, cover-ups and a war fought in bad faith will affect us all for decades to come. Aida Edemariam meets Joseph Stiglitz
Fitful spring sunshine is warming the neo-gothic limestone of the Houses of Parliament, and the knots of tourists wandering round them, but in a basement cafe on Millbank it is dark, and quiet, and Joseph Stiglitz is looking as though he hasn’t had quite enough sleep. For two days non-stop he has been talking – at the LSE, at Chatham House, to television crews – and then he is flying to Washington to testify before Congress on the subject of his new book. Whatever their reservations – and there will be a few – representatives will have to listen, because not many authors with the authority of Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winner in economics, an academic tempered by four years on Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers and another three as chief economist at the World Bank (during which time he developed an influential critique of globalisation), will have written a book that so urgently redefines the terms in which to view an ongoing conflict. The Three Trillion Dollar War reveals the extent to which its effects have been, and will be, felt by everyone, from Wall Street to the British high street, from Iraqi civilians to African small traders, for years to come.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
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New Study on the Cost of the Iraq War THREE TRILLION DOLLARS
After Downing Street
Quaker teacher fired for changing loyalty oath
Nanette Asimov, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, February 29, 2008
California State University East Bay has fired a math teacher after six weeks on the job because she inserted the word “nonviolently” in her state-required Oath of Allegiance form.
Marianne Kearney-Brown, a Quaker and graduate student who began teaching remedial math to undergrads Jan. 7, lost her $700-a-month part-time job after refusing to sign an 87-word Oath of Allegiance to the Constitution that the state requires of elected officials and public employees.
“I don’t think it was fair at all,” said Kearney-Brown. “All they care about is my name on an unaltered loyalty oath. They don’t care if I meant it, and it didn’t seem connected to the spirit of the oath. Nothing else mattered. My teaching didn’t matter. Nothing.”
A veteran public school math teacher who specializes in helping struggling students, Kearney-Brown, 50, had signed the oath before – but had modified it each time.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
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by Jonathan Cook
Global Research, February 29, 2008
In the strange world of Israeli academia, an Arab college lecturer is being dismissed from his job because he refused to declare his “respect for the uniform of the Israeli army”. The bizarre demand was made of Nizar Hassan, director of several award-winning films, after he criticised a Jewish student who arrived in his film studies class at Sapir College in the Negev for wearing his uniform and carrying a gun.
The incident raises disturbing questions about the freedom of Israeli academics, sheds light on the veneration of the military in Israeli public life, and exposes the close, verging on incestuous, ties between the army and Israeli academia.
Meanwhile, for many of Israel’s 1.2 million Palestinian citizens, who are nearly a fifth of the country’s population, Hassan’s treatment confirms their fears that decades of discrimination, especially in higher education, are far from over.
Hassan has faced a storm of criticism, including claims that he is anti-Semitic, since the Israeli media mistakenly reported back in November that he had thrown out of class one of his students, Eyal Cohen, over the way he was dressed. Hassan and most of the students present say Cohen was simply warned not to attend class in future wearing his uniform.
The story soon gained a life of its own, becoming the subject of incensed talk shows and newspaper columns. A group of rightwing college staff and students lobbied for Hassan, the only Arab lecturer in the film school, to be dismissed, and the Knesset’s Education Committee denounced him.
Critics claim, apparently without irony, that Hassan humiliated the student, abused the concept of academic freedom and impugned the reputation of the Israeli army.
Condemnation has come from surprising quarters, including the journalist Gideon Levy, better known for his articles attacking the army’s treatment of the Palestinians under occupation.
But more predictable has been outrage from the right. Last month two leaders of extremist Jewish settlers in Hebron, Baruch Marzel and Itimar Ben Gvir, announced that they had enrolled on Hassan’s course. “I would love for him to ask me about my army service,” said Marzel. “I can only assure you that he will be the one walking out of the classroom.”
The army added its voice too, with senior officers, including the Chief of Staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, putting pressure on Sapir College to publicly rebuke the film-maker and punish him.
A letter from the head of army personnel, General Elazar Stern, accused the college of failing to act with “proper determination” and urged that Hassan face “sharp, public, official condemnation”. Stern added that Hassan must be made to apologise or be sacked, otherwise the army would end its funding of places for hundreds of soldiers who attend courses at Sapir.
Most academic institutions in Israel not only depend on such funding but receive special grants and endowments for research in security-related subjects. The Israeli revisionist historian Ilan Pappe, who was forced out of Haifa University last year, estimates that half of lecturers in Israeli universities have ties to the security services.
In Sapir College’s case, links to the army have been reinforced by its location in Sderot, a poor development town close to Gaza that is the target of most of the Qassam rockets fired into Israel.
Under growing pressure, the college’s Academic Council suspended Hassan without offering him a hearing. It also appointed for the first time in the college’s history an academic committee to investigate the incident and report on what disciplinary action should be taken.
The committee published its report late last month, conceding that he is an “outstanding teacher” but offering only a cursory examination the events at the centre of the controversy. Instead the members harshly criticised Hassan’s behaviour and personality and recommended that he apologise to Cohen or face dismissal.
The college’s president, Zeev Tzahor, intervened by contributing his own condition. He wrote to Hassan telling him that in his apology “you must refer to your obligation to be respectful to the IDF uniform and the full right of every student to enter your classroom in uniform.”
Hassan refused and, according to reports last week, the college has begun proceedings to dismiss him.
“The whole reaction has been hysterical,” Hassan, who lives in Nazareth, said. “It really surprised me, as did the lies that were told about what had happened.”
His students say the issue has been blown out proportion and that Hassan has never hidden his opposition to militarism, wherever it exists.
Enass Masri, one of two Arab students in Hassan’s film class, said: “When he saw Cohen wearing his uniform, he explained that all military uniforms — of the Israeli army, of Fatah or of Hamas — are symbols of violence and that he does not allow them into his classroom.
“His concerns about the blurring in Israeli society of the boundaries between the civil and military are well known.”
She added that the mistaken reports about Cohen being thrown out of class may have been part of a long-standing campaign to oust Hassan from his job. He had made himself unpopular with some staff and students by speaking his mind, she said. “Some people at the college are not prepared to accept the kind of things he says from an Arab.”
Sapir College calls itself “a lighthouse in the Negev”, and its film school once had a reputaton for encouraging dissenting social and political opinions.
In other Israeli colleges, discussion of “politics” — a euphemism for views not officially sanctioned — is rarely allowed.
For example, at Haifa University, which has the largest Arab student body in the country, all protests on campus are banned unless licensed by the vice-chancellor. Unofficial demonstrations, however peaceful, are broken up and usually filmed by security staff. Video evidence is used as grounds for suspending or expelling students.
Sapir’s president, Tzahor, recently told the Haaretz newspaper that his motto is: “Politics — only as far as the classroom door.”
However, the college’s definition of “politics” appears selective. In another recent incident at Sapir, lecturer Shlomit Tamari told a Bedouin student to remove her head-covering, telling her it was a sign of her oppression. No disciplinary action was taken against Tamari, who is unrepentant: “I told the college that I have academic freedom, and I can talk about that subject and I am continuing to do so.”
Enass Masri said she was also shocked that the college committee did not question the students in Hassan’s class about what took place. “We thought we would be able to put the record straight, but we were never invited to testify.
“Almost all of the students are on Hassan’s side, and we wrote a letter to the college authorities in protest at his treatment.”
Instead, she says, the committee interpreted the “meaning” of what happened, accordng to their own view of Hassan. “They looked at him not as a human being but as an Arab, and Arabs are not allowed to have an opinion on Israeli militarism.”
Hassan takes a slightly different view. Describing his questioning by the committee, he said: ”They wanted me to be the Palestinian in the room, and I refused to oblige. They wanted to believe that I object to the army uniform because I am Palestinian. But I reject the uniform because it is opposed to my universal and human values. I acted as I did because I am a teacher and a human being.
“What shocked me was that the committee refused to believe that could be my motivation.”
Certainly the committee’s report dismisses Hassan’s arguments, claiming: “Nizar abused his status and his authority as a teacher to flaunt his opinions, feelings and frustrations as a member of the Arab national minority in Israel, cloaking himself in a ‘humane’ and ‘universal’ garb, whereas in fact he demonstrated a stance of brute force bearing a distinctly nationalist character.”
Haim Bresheeth, an Israeli film-maker who was dean of Sapir’s film school between 1996 and 2002, until he was hounded out over his anti-Zionist views, wrote to Tzahor, the college president, arguing that he was making an “irrational and immoral demand” in expecting Hassan to respect the army’s uniform.
Bresheeth, referring to the reserve duty that most Israeli Jewish men perform well into their forties, added: “You are a soldier first, and only then an academic … I call on the historian Zeev Tzahor to refuse the orders of Major Zeev Tzahor.”
As in most other areas of Israeli life, the country’s Palestinian minority faces systematic discrimination in higher education. No public university is located in an Arab community or teaches in Arabic, and, though the minority is a fifth of the population, fewer than 1 per cent of lecturers are Arab.
In addition, the number of Arab students is third of their proportion in the population — an under-representation that is apparently intentional. In 2003, psychometric tests biased towards Western culture were scrapped in an effort to help “weaker sections” of society gain acceptance to university. However, when the Committee of University Heads learnt that the number of Arabs entering university had risen sharply as a result, the tests were immediately reinstated.
Several leading Israeli academics are outspoken racists, including David Bukay and Arnon Sofer at Haifa University and Raphael Israeli at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The latter was called as an “expert” witness by the state at a trial in 2004 in which he stated that the Arab mentality was composed of “a sense of victimization”, “pathological anti-Semitism” and “a tendency to live in a world of illusions”.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His new book, “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” is published by Pluto Press. His website is http://www.jkcook.net
The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author’s copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of “fair use” in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than “fair use” you must request permission from the copyright owner.
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© Copyright Jonathan Cook, Global Research, 2008
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8229
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By Aaron Glantz
ICH
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 28 (IPS)
U.S. veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are planning to descend on Washington from Mar. 13-16 to testify about war crimes they committed or personally witnessed in those countries.
“The war in Iraq is not covered to its potential because of how dangerous it is for reporters to cover it,” said Liam Madden, a former Marine and member of the group Iraq Veterans Against the War. “That’s left a lot of misconceptions in the minds of the American public about what the true nature of military occupation looks like.” Continue reading
Ben Griffin – Former SAS Trooper Banned speech to World Against War Rally
Warning
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This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war and should only be viewed by a mature audience.
For more: http://linktv.org/originalseries
“Children Killed in Gaza,” Dubai TV, UAE
“Olmert Warns of Long War,” IBA TV, Israel
“US Drone Plane Kills 12 in Pakistan,” Al Jazeera TV, Qatar
“Bush Names American Muslim to Organization of Islamic Conference,” Al Arabiya TV, UAE
“Kurds Split Over PKK,” Al Jazeera English, Qatar
“US Wants Darfur’s Oil,” Syria TV, Syria
“Afghanistan Re-Opens National Museum,” Al-Alam TV, Iran
Produced for Link TV by Jamal Dajani.
Vodpod videos no longer available. from www.youtube.com posted with vodpod
.
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Six-month-old baby killed by Israel attacks + Israeli Missiles Silence Baby’s Laughter in Gaza
Israel’s prime minister is vowing to make Hamas pay what he calls a “heavy price” for Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza.
More than 20 Palestinians have been killed in attacks since Wednesday, including Hamas fighters, civilians and children.
In Gaza City, one of those killed was a six month old baby. Ashraf Amritti reports on a family grieving for the youngest casualty of Israeli airstrikes.
by Andrew Gavin Marshall
featured writer
Dandelion Salad
Feb. 29, 2008
The next North American Summit is set to be held on April 21-22, 2008, in New Orleans, as a fitting memorial – returning to the location where the state turned its back on the people, literally leaving them to die; and where they now meet to turn their backs once again on the people, leaving them in the dark and their countries near death.
By Liam Bailey
featured writer
Dandelion Salad
The Bailey Mail
February 29, 2008
I have read some pretty shocking statements from members of political parties on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the one I read today was easily the most shocking. When I read Yahoo news this morning, the short news article quoted Deputy Israeli Defense Minister as saying the Palestinians would bring a holocaust on themselves if they continued firing rockets:
“The more Qassam (rocket) fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger ‘shoah’ because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.”
Throughout the course of the day, heavy back-tracking by Vilnai’s pr team, and other members of the Israeli government has resulted in Yahoo changing the article, which now begins:
“A senior Israeli defence official said on Friday that Palestinians firing rockets from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip would bring upon themselves what he termed a “shoah”, the Hebrew word for holocaust or disaster.”
The article then goes on to explain that the Hebrew word Vilnai used “Shoa” means disaster, and that the word is rarely used by Israelis unless they are talking about the Nazi holocaust, and they loathe the words use to describe contemporary events. The fact that the word’s literal meaning is disaster gave Vilnai’s spokesman room to manoeuvre him out of the s**t:
“Mr. Vilnai was meaning ‘disaster’. He did not mean to make any allusion to the genocide.”
Foreign Minister Arye Mekel, went further: “Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai used the Hebrew phrase that included the term ‘shoah’ in Hebrew in the sense of a disaster or a catastrophe, and not in the sense of a holocaust.”
As explained in the Yahoo article, the most common meaning of Shoa to Israelis is holocaust, Vilnai using that Hebrew word in an otherwise English speech, to me says he did so because the Israelis would take him to mean holocaust, but he would get away with it overall because of the word’s literal meaning.
It is people like Vilnai in the Israeli government and other positions of power that results in prisoner abuse and the collective punishment of the Palestinian people as a whole day in day out. And I know I will be accused of anti-Semitism for saying this but: How can a member of the Jewish faith, the faith that suffered one of the worst atrocities in the history of mankind, even contemplate hinting that the country of that faith would unleash a holocaust of its own on another faith group? It is ludicrous.
The Minister was no doubt giving the tough talk because of pressure on the Israeli government to take definitive action against the rocket squads in Gaza. According to senior Israeli military officials a major ground offensive is being prepared but is not yet imminent.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak today began testing the waters of international opinion on such an operation; sending confidential letters to the world’s major leaders, including U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is due to visit the region next week. Barak’s letter was reported by one of Israel’s leading daily newspapers Yedioth Ahronoth, and apparently read:
“Israel is not keen on and rushing for an offensive, but Hamas is leaving us no choice.”
When Israel’s government, particularly the Defence Minister starts sending out letters like that to world leaders, especially when they get leaked accidentally on purpose by the Israeli press, it means one thing, a major Israeli military action is in fact imminent.
see
A Palestinian State by Default By Liam Bailey
Israeli minister warns of Palestinian ‘holocaust’.
Six-month-old baby killed by Israel attacks + Israeli Missiles Silence Baby’s Laughter in Gaza
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
February 29, 2008
The precedent of Kosovo is a terrible precedent, which will de facto blow apart the whole system of international relations, developed not over decades, but over centuries. [The Americans] have not thought through the results of what they are doing. At the end of the day it is a two-ended stick and the second end will come back and hit them in the face.
– Russian President Vladimir PutinIn myriad aspects, Kosovo is the new Kurdistan (and the other way around), as much as Iraq is the new Yugoslavia.
The unilateral independence of Kosovo has nothing to do with “democracy”. But then what’s the point of this North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) provocation towards Vladimir Putin’s Russia – a historic ally of Serbia?
h/t: Mary
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
see
The UN Contributed to the Establishment of a Mafia-State in Kosovo by Michel Chossudovsky (2000)
Floors and Walls – What To Do, new video taken from the acoustic set at the Joogleberry. Added: October 18, 2007
Immigration Detention Watch Network
The Lost Children pdf file
New Yorker magazine article (Mar. 2, 2008 issue) on family immigration detention at Hutto, by Margaret Talbot.
Dandelion Salad 