I wondered what journalism was.

Finally I know the answer. Too bad american journalists are nothing but propagandists.

Some thoughts on the slaughter.

Statement by Prof. Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
By: RIchard Falk
The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war.

The IAF, bullies of the clear blue skies
By: Gideon Levy
Our finest young men are attacking Gaza now. Good boys from good homes are doing bad things. Most of them are eloquent, impressive, self-confident, often even highly principled in their own eyes, and on Black Saturday dozens of them set out to bomb some of the targets in our "target bank" for the Gaza Strip.

Party to Murder
By: Chris Hedges
Can anyone who is following the Israeli air attacks on Gaza—the buildings blown to rubble, the children killed on their way to school, the long rows of mutilated corpses, the wailing mothers and wives, the crowds of terrified Palestinians not knowing where to flee, the hospitals so overburdened and out of supplies they cannot treat the wounded, and our studied, callous indifference to this widespread human suffering—wonder why we are hated?

From the ashes of Gaza
By Tariq Ali
The assault on Gaza, planned over six months and executed with perfect timing, was designed largely, as Neve Gordon has rightly observed, to help the incumbent parties triumph in the forthcoming Israeli elections. The dead Palestinians are little more than election fodder in a cynical contest between the right and the far right in Israel

If Gaza falls . . .
By: Sara Roy
Israel’s siege of Gaza began on 5 November, the day after an Israeli attack inside the strip, no doubt designed finally to undermine the truce between Israel and Hamas established last June. Although both sides had violated the agreement before, this incursion was on a different scale. Hamas responded by firing rockets into Israel and the violence has not abated since then.
How can keeping food and medicine from the people of Gaza protect the people of Israel? How can the impoverishment and suffering of Gaza’s children – more than 50 per cent of the population – benefit anyone? International law as well as human decency demands their protection. If Gaza falls, the West Bank will be next.

Chomsky on the eve of his 80th birthday.

stuff

Mormon Homophobia
By SHELDON RAMPTON
The question remains, of course, whether Hamlin is right that supporters of gay rights should refrain from "directly targeting people in their private life" by protesting and arguing with individual Mormons who have participated in the church's anti-gay campaigns. Certainly protesters should refrain from belligerence, threats and intimidation. However, the only way Mormon attitudes are going to change on this issue is through confrontation.

Unilever to sell stake in plant based in West Bank settlement
By Toni O'Loughlin in Jerusalem
"International law prohibits the confiscation of occupied land not for military purposes,"

Change.

One thing has changed as a result of the election of Obama. That change is that people who used to enjoy my attacking the President are no longer interested. The criticism was welcomed when the other team had the ball but now that it has changed hands criticism is not accepted.
Pretty fucking sad.

stuff

The Worst Is Not Behind Us

By Nouriel Roubini
Beware, therefore, of those who tell you that we have reached a bottom for risky financial assets. The same optimists told you that we reached a bottom and the worst was behind us after the rescue of the creditors of Bear Stearns in March; after the announcement of the possible bailout of Fannie and Freddie in July; after the actual bailout of Fannie and Freddie in September; after the bailout of AIG in mid-September; after the TARP legislation was presented; and after the latest G-7 and E.U. action.

America’s Wars of Self-Destruction
By Chris Hedges
The corporate forces that control the state will never permit real reform. This is the Faustian bargain made between these corporate forces and the Republican and Democratic parties. We will never, under the current system, achieve energy independence. Energy independence would devastate the profits of the oil and gas industry. It would wipe out tens of billions of dollars in weapons contracts, spoil the financial health of a host of private contractors from Halliburton to Blackwater and render obsolete the existence of U.S. Central Command.

Fucking Israeli Government

Israel is slowly starving the people of the Gaza strip because they hate the Arabs and want to take their land. Here are some excerpts from what others are saying,

The UN
The trickle of humanitarian aid previously allowed into Gaza, on which 80 percent of the population depended, has now been stopped for nine days by the Israeli army. The delivery of medical supplies and industrial fuel donated by the EU has also been blocked. The fuel was needed to power Gaza's sole power plant, which has now shut down, leading to rolling blackouts throughout Gaza.

UN Secretary Ban Ki Moon
The office of UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon released a statement on Saturday saying he is "concerned that food and other lifesaving assistance is being denied to hundreds of thousands of people, and emphasizes that measures which increase the hardship and suffering of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip as a whole are unacceptable and should cease immediately."

OxFam
"World leaders must step up and exercise all their political might to break the blockade of Gaza. As a matter of humanitarian imperative, Israeli leaders must resume supplies into Gaza without further delay. If Israelis and Palestinians alike don't exert every effort now to maintain the truce which has held since last June, the result could be catastrophic for civilians both in Gaza and in nearby Israeli towns."

The European Union
The EU statement further stated that "International law requires the provision of access to essential services such as electricity and clean water to the civilian population," and demanded that restraint be exercised by all parties to avoid an escalation of humanitarian suffering.

Amnesty International
The most through and to the point condemnation so far has come from a report released by Amnesty International, which called the current situation in Gaza "nothing short of collective punishment."

"Gaza is cut off from the outside world. Israel is seemingly not keen on the world seeing the suffering that its blockade is causing to the one and a half million Palestinians who are virtually trapped there," Philip Luther from Amnesty said.

What the hell is wrong with America? Why are we starving these people? I guess we must just come to grips with the fact that we, America, have absolutely no morals. Founded on Christianity? Bullshit.
The entire world looks at the AMerican oppression of the Palestinians and shakes their heads in shame. We as a nation have no right claiming any moral high ground.
Fuck Israel!

Observation.

Say what you want about the Republicans but at least they are better losers than the Democrats. The day after the election I perused the right wing press and found something interesting. They were actually blaming themselves for their electoral defeat. They were talking about not picking the right candidate, how they need to better articulate their policies and that they needed to go back to the drawing board. Sure they are now having a mini-civil war but that is to be expected.
Now contrast this to the last few Democratic losses. In 2000 it wasn't the Democrats, their candidate and their message that made them lose it was Ralph Nader. In 2004, same thing, though this time it was the voting machines in Ohio that stole election. It wasn't that the Democratic Party chose another rich robot who wanted to escalate the War in Iraq when the party was, now, firmly against the war.

Stuff

A Bone in America's Throat
By JEFF HALPER
Go where you may in the world and you will encounter the same phenomenon: a sense that the suffering of the Palestinians represents all that is wrong in an American-dominated world.

Obama's post-racial promise
By Shelby Steele
Obama is what I have called a "bargainer" -- a black who says to whites, "I will never presume that you are racist if you will not hold my race against me." Whites become enthralled with bargainers out of gratitude for the presumption of innocence they offer.

The US can quit Iraq, or it can stay. But it can't do both
By: Patrick Cockburn
The intelligence service is "not working for the Iraqi government – it's working for the CIA," Hadi al-Ameri, a powerful Shia lawmaker, was quoted as saying three years ago. "I prefer to call it the American Intelligence of Iraq, not the Iraqi Intelligence Service."

Hamas willing to accept Palestinian state with 1967 borders
By Amira Hass
Haniyeh said: "We don't have a state, neither in Gaza nor in the West Bank. Gaza is under siege and the West Bank is occupied. What we have in the Gaza Strip is not a state, but rather a regime of an elected government. A Palestinian state will not be created at this time except in the territories of 1967."

I think Hedges is one of the best commentators out there.

America the Illiterate
by Chris Hedges
Political leaders in our post-literate society no longer need to be competent, sincere or honest. They only need to appear to have these qualities. Most of all they need a story, a narrative. The reality of the narrative is irrelevant. It can be completely at odds with the facts. The consistency and emotional appeal of the story are paramount.

A Few Thoughts on Obama's Victory.

Please stop saying this is a historical moment. Stop saying that this shows black people can be anything because that is bullshit. I will believe that the day that a black man becomes President with the credentials of Bush. Obama is about as perfect as a person can get, in this field. His credentials are impeccable. There is no way he would have ever been elected if he was as stupid as Bush is. Check this out if you disagree.

Obama's first choice for his White House is none other than Rahm Emanuel. Now Rahm Emanuels' father was a terrorist in the Israeli terrorist organization Irgun. Rahm himself is a former Israeli citizen and volunteered to serve in Israel's defense in 1991. So in other words there will be continued American oppression of the Palestinians and as a result the Arabs worldwide will hate us, rightly. So much for Change.

I am certain that we, America, will be going from the worst President in modern time to the most disappointing President of all time. So many people have such high expectations and they will be disappointed. To be fair it is their own fault. It is like there is this delusion people have about Obama. As if, for the first time in history a presidential candidate is making promises he intends to keep. I feel no sympathy for the morons who can't learn from history.

At best he will be Clinton's third term. Just look at the people he is surrounding himself with. Robert Rubin who championed the deregulation of the financial sector, as CLinton's treasury secy. and then left to be CEO of the newly created, though the deregulation, CItigroup. THen there is Larry "women can't do math" SUmmers. THese are just two of the assholes I could think of off the top of my head. So this is what he meant by change? A return to the great Clinton years, which gave us the Gingrich congress and the election of G. W. Bush.

These are just a few thoughts I had initially. I am really looking forward into showing the liberals that they are delusional and have no one to blame but themselves. Sure he will be better than Bush but so would an intelligent twelve year old.

November 5th

November 5. 2008 from Tarek Milleron on Vimeo.

http://november5.org/

Support the Troops!

THis happened outside of the last Presidential debate. Funny thing is that I hadn't heard of it until today. The only reason i even heard about it was because I was watching the third party Presidential debate which I also haven't seen reported in the press.
I really can not wait for Obama and the Democrats to control government so all the liberals, who have been complaining about the actions of the government, will have to shut the fuck up or defend their police state.

Hope

Some things I HOPE for.
The reinstatement of the right to a trial.
The closing of Guantanamo Bay, completely with us giving the land back to Cuba.
The immediate removal of troops from both Iraq and Afghanistan.
The arrest and trail of corporate criminals who have tanked the economy.
The institution of a 1/2 of one percent tax on currency speculation and financial transactions.
The ending of the illegal embargo of Cuba.
The payment of reparations to Iraq and Afghanistan.
The total removal of taxes, including payroll taxes, to anyone earning less than a living wage.
The regulation of the financial system.
Public financing of all elections.
Equal pay for equal work.
National Healthcare.
Equal care for people who suffer from mental illness.
Full employment.
A major cut to the Pentagon.
Real investment in renewable resources.
An end to the oppression of the Palestinians by the Israelis made possible with US weapons and protection in the UN.
Just a quick list of things I HOPE for but am not naive enough to believe will CHANGE.
I could go on but Democracy Now! is on in two minutes so I must go.
Maybe in four years I can cross some of these HOPES off my list, though I highly doubt it.

Ha ha

Tuesday

The ABCs of Paulson's Bailout
By MICHAEL HUDSON
The most self-destructive example of financial short-termism is the decline and fall of the Roman Empire into debt bondage and ultimately into a Dark Age. The political turning point was the violent takeover of the Senate by oligarchic creditors who murdered the debtor-oriented reformers led by the Gracchi brothers in 133 BC, picking up benches and using them as rams to push the reformers over the cliff on which the political assembly was located.

Will Your Recession Be Tall, Grande, or Venti?
By Daniel Gross
My tentative theory: Having a significant Starbucks presence is a pretty significant indicator of the degree of connectedness to the form of highly caffeinated, free-spending capitalism that got us into this mess.

Good Articles

Sunday's C-Span Opportunity: 3rd-Party Candidates Debate
by Maria Recio
Third-party presidential candidates finally will have their own debate: at 8 p.m. Sunday at Columbia University in New York.

Shattering a 'national mythology'
By Ofri Ilani
I started looking in research studies about the exile from the land - a constitutive event in Jewish history, almost like the Holocaust. But to my astonishment I discovered that it has no literature. The reason is that no one exiled the people of the country. The Romans did not exile peoples and they could not have done so even if they had wanted to.

Can Obama See the Grand Canyon?
by Mike Davis
Let me confess that, as an aging socialist, I suddenly find myself like the Jehovah's Witness who opens his window to see the stars actually falling out of the sky. Although I've been studying Marxist crisis theory for decades, I never believed I'd actually live to see financial capitalism commit suicide. Or hear the International Monetary Fund warn of imminent "systemic meltdown.

Scary Stuff

Some thoughts

Noam Chomsky 'The United States Has Essentially a One-Party System'
Noam Chomsky Interviewed by Gabor Steingart of Spiegel
"The European reaction to Obama is a European delusion."

America’s Political Cannibalism
by Chris Hedges
The Patriot Act, the FISA Reform Act, the suspension of habeas corpus, the open use of torture in our offshore penal colonies, the stationing of a combat brigade on American soil, the seas of surveillance cameras, the brutal assaults against activists in Denver and St. Paul are converging to determine our future.

What the Right is saying.

Obama in the Corner
By David Frum
Like a lot of Republicans, I’ll be swallowing a great deal in order to cast my vote....above all, I’ll be swallowing some fairly intense suspicions that a McCain administration would veer quite sharply to the left – as McCain reverts to a career-long practice of pandering to conservatives during elections and then apologizing to liberals afterward.

Throw the bums out
Washington Times Editorial
59 percent of all voters, according to Rasmussen, would like to replace all of Congress, right now. Seventy-four percent of Republicans would like to throw out the entire Congress, while 62 percent of independents and 43 percent of Democrats agree.

It may be politically prudent for McCain to throw caution, and billions, to the wind
By George Will
In the closing days of his 10-year quest for the presidency, McCain finds it galling that Barack Obama is winning the first serious campaign he has ever run against a Republican.