Day: January 2, 2009
Obama, Warren, and the Mythical ‘Middle Ground’ by Steven Jonas, MD
by Steven Jonas, MD
featured writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted on Buzzflash.com
January 2, 2009
Right-wing commentators such as the sometimes hard-to-categorize Pat Buchanan, comedian Bill Kristol, still-trying-to-shake-her “Reagan Hagiographer” label Peggy Noonan, and so-called “even-handed” cable news personalities such as “Morning Joe and Mika” are all het-up about why the “left” (these folks wouldn’t know a real Left if they saw one) is so het up about Obama’s choice of Rick Warren for the Inauguration Invocation. “It’s a free country,” they say. “There’s a wide range of views on gay marriage” (which happens to be Rick Warren’s least odious on-the-gay-question position), they say. “Obama is showing himself to be tolerant,” they say. Obama is looking for “common ground,” they say.
Rafah – report from the ground
Warning
This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.
Howard Zinn on “War and Social Justice”
with Howard Zinn
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Jan 2, 2009
Note: replaced videos May 14, 2013
Democracy Now!
Jan 2, 2009
Image by AndyRobertsPhotos via Flickr
Emergency Conference Call & More Action to Take on Gaza
US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
Jan. 2, 2009
Through six days of attacks on the occupied Gaza Strip, Israel has killed at least 430 Palestinians and injured at least 2,250 with U.S. weapons in violation of U.S. law. Israel now stands ready to invade the Gaza Strip with troops at any moment.
Israel ‘s attacks come on top of a brutal siege of the Gaza Strip, which has created a humanitarian catastrophe of dire proportions for Gaza ‘s 1.5 million Palestinian residents by restricting the provision of food, fuel, medicine, electricity, and other necessities of life.
Make no mistake about it-Israel’s war and siege on the Gaza Strip would not be possible without the jets, helicopters, ships, missiles, and fuel provided by the United States . Additional troubling details continue to emerge about the misuse of U.S. weapons by Israel :
Do we live on the same planet? by William Bowles
By William Bowles
featured writer
Dandelion Salad
Creative-i
2 January 2009
Apparently not, well not if you listen/watch the BBC or read the corporate press, not that creating a world that doesn’t actually exist is anything new, it’s just that the actions of Fascist Israel has stretched our credulity to its limits, thus the media have been forced to stretch their lies to the limit.
You have to ask yourselves how the hell do they get away with it?
The answer is simple: it’s racism, pure and simple. Palestinians are less than human, thus eliminating them is as easy as eliminating vermin, and the actions of Fascist Israel are backed up with their words; Palestinians are “vermin”, “cockroaches”, “Palestine is finished” and so it goes.
If anybody harboured any illusions about the settler state of Israel, surely now those illusions must shattered as surely as the shattered bodies of Palestinian children are.
The question is, what can we do about it when we have a complicit government and a complicit media ganging up on our consciousness?
New Year’s Concert 2002: Seiji Ozawa – Radetzky march + New Year’s Concert 2002: Daniel Barenboim – The Blue Danube, Radetzky March
Happy New Year from DS. Enjoy!
Radetzky March with Happy New Year on Neujahrskonzert 2002
stillkent
June 26, 2007
New year’s greetings in many languages and Radetzky March conductor Seiji Ozawa / Wiener Philharmoniker on Vienna New Year’s Concert 2002 Continue reading
Israeli warplanes attacked the Hamas run television station in Gaza city
http://www.euronews.net Latest pictures from Israeli attack on Gaza City filmed by a cameraman who was standing just a few meters away from the site hit in the attack.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
more about “Israeli warplanes attacked the Hamas …“, posted with vodpod
see
Keep Your Eye on the Ball; This Is Not about Rockets by Stuart Littlewood
We Lived to Tell the Story: Lebanon Rescued Us by Cynthia McKinney
Israel defies peacemakers and prepares for invasion – Middle East, World – The Independent
Conflict in Gaza: Hisham Melhem Bureau Chief, An-Nahar Daily (Lebanon)
Keep Your Eye on the Ball; This Is Not about Rockets by Stuart Littlewood
by Stuart Littlewood
Dissident Voice
January 1st, 2009
What if Hamas dumped all their rockets in the sea tomorrow? Would Gazans enjoy the same freedoms as other nations? Would they be able to open their sea port to foreign ships and rebuild and operate their airport? Would they be able to import and export and carry on trade and develop their economy and prosper like other countries?
Would they be allowed to exploit and develop their offshore gas field? Would their fishermen be allowed to fish in unpolluted waters? Would their young people be able to come and go and take up places at foreign universities?
Alternative Theory of 9/11? By Elizabeth Woodworth
By Elizabeth Woodworth
December 31, 2008 “Information Clearinghouse”
Joel Brinkley: Does His Article on Richard Falk Demonstrate the Right “Frame of Mind” to Teach Journalism at Stanford?
In a companion essay, I discussed the response of some articles in the mainstream press to the claim, made by some defenders of Israel, that Professor Richard Falk should be removed from his current position of UN rapporteur on human rights abuses in the Palestinian Territories — a claim that was reflected in the refusal of Israel on December 14, 2008, to allow him to enter the country. I included in this essay a discussion of an article by reporter Joel Brinkley because, although it was published before Israel’s action against Falk, it could be read as a defense of that action. Brinkley, who had previously worked for the New York Times, argued that Falk did not have the right “frame of mind” for his UN position. In the present essay, I will focus on Brinkley’s argument for this charge, suggesting that it shows that he does not have the right frame of mind for his own current position as visiting professor of journalism at Stanford University.
Brinkley’s Discussion of 9/11 Brinkley’s charge that Falk is unfit for his UN role is quite remarkable, given Falk’s stature. He is Professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at Princeton University and currently Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He has had published (as author or editor) over 60 books by academic and other mainstream presses. He is also widely respected and sought after as a speaker and conference participant.
US missile strike kills three in Pakistan
Press TV
Fri, 02 Jan 2009 07:48:16 GMT
At least three people have been killed in a suspected US missile attack in Pakistan’s troubled tribal belt near the Afghan border.
Friday’s attack targeted an abandoned school in the village of Medan in South Waziristan.
The regional intelligence officials confirmed the deadly strike.
[…]
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Hamas vows retaliation for top leader + Israel kills senior Hamas figure in air attack
Press TV
Fri, 02 Jan 2009 09:42:53 GMT
Hamas calls on Palestinian resistance fighters to hit any Israeli targets in response to a strike that killed the top leader Nizar Rayan.
A Hamas spokesman, Ismail Radwan, called on resistance fighters including Hamas’s military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, to hit all Israeli targets in response to the Thursday strike that killed the senior leader.
Radwan and 18 memebrs of his family were killed after an Israeli F-16 fired two missiles onto his house in Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza strip on Thursday.
***
Top Hamas leader killed in Gaza blitz
Wall Street’s Collapse and the Ownership Society – The Worker-Capitalist Con
By Pam Martens
ICH
January 01, 2009 “Counterpunch”
On February 24, 2005, I clicked on the evening news to see President Bush finishing his European tour in Slovakia, surrounded by children waving little American flags. It had the feel of a Macy’s holiday window designed by Karl Rove. I recalled a recent news item about Slovakia. Just two months prior to the President’s visit, Slovakia initiated a plan to divert nine per cent of worker’s wages into private investment accounts laden with corporate stocks and bonds as an alternative to a government run social security program.
This was similar to a plan that President Bush had peddled under the banner of the “ownership society.” Fortunately, this was one of the rare occasions when the President was rebuked by Congress.
Today in the U.S., with both corporate bonds and stocks suffering massive losses and over $2 trillion of taxpayers’ dollars doled out by the Federal Reserve to shore up Wall Street firms in various stages of insolvency, we finally grasp the true meaning of “the ownership society:” the Wall Street execs absconded with the so-called profits; the little people own the losses; the next generation owns the bailout debt. This scheme makes Ponzi artist Bernie Madofflook like a piker.
Asculum
Crossposted at Thomas Paine’s Corner thanks, Jason.
By Vi Ransel
1/1/09
Part One: The Plot Thickens
(or, Why Am I Not Surprised?)
(A Chicago story… A citizen walks into his alderman’s office looking for a job. “Who sent you?” a staffer asks. “Nobody” he replies. Says the staffer, “We don’t want nobody nobody sent.” Who sent Obama? In exactly four years he’s risen from an unknown state senator to president. That only happens when somebody sends for you. – Sam Smith)
The nature of his administration was evident
as he introduced his transition team and potential members of his cabinet.
The individuals selected are fixtures of the economic aristocracy
and the Washington Consensus establishment.
His Transitional Economic Advisory Board consists entirely
of members and representatives of the economic stratosphere –
CEOs, investment bankers, former SEC and Federal Reserve Chairs,
Clinton re-treads, DLC members, lobbyists, slumlords and billionaires.
The Crisis of Common Sense: Is It So Difficult To Understand The Financial Crisis? by Matthias Chang
by Matthias Chang
Global Research, January 1, 2009
FutureFastForward.org
Thinking & Common Sense
God gave us a brain to think, to think naturally and in simple terms, and not in a complicated way.
When we think naturally and use common sense to address problems we will be able to arrive at simple solutions.
But our education system tortures us mentally and forces us to think in complicated ways. Our teachers, economists, politicians and so-called experts in God and religion make mountains out of mole-hills, turning simple truths to complex arguments and “scientific theories and equations”.
These experts need to make things look difficult to survive and to make sure that we have to rely upon them for solutions. It is often said that, “in the land of the blind, the man with one eye is the King”.
Thinking used to be a pleasure and so very invigorating. But now experts have ensured that thinking is difficult and tiring, so burdensome, that we don’t think at all.
