8 yrs in Afghanistan, still boot-counting

Posted on October 6, 2009 by Eric Verlo

How is Colorado Springs marking the 8th year of war in Afghanistan? Couple choices. Visiting priest-activist Louie Vitale will speak at Colorado College on the THE MORAL DIMENSION OF DRONE WARFARE.

CC students were dissuaded from hosting a peace rally on campus which might have interfered with the week’s homecoming activities. Instead, beginning at 1PM Wednesday, the CC students will chalk the sidewalks of Acacia Park with the names of the 869 US soldiers killed in the Afghan campaign. Coloradans For Peace will join the boot- counting but will commemorate Afghan deaths, whose number is “n/a.”

Barack Obama is your president

Posted on September 7, 2009 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO SPRINGS- The superintendent of District 12 schools announced Friday that Barack Obama’s address to schoolchildren on Tuesday will not be shown in his district’s schools. I’m no defender of this president, but I have to ask, what possible rationale could excuse such disrespect? It’s probably too easy to decry racism, so what’s left?

Personally, of course, I could imagine steering schoolchildren clear of George W. Bush. Old President Bush had a 13% or so approval rating. Foreign leaders dismissed him as a moron. It was whispered that he’d resumed drinking, and it was common knowledge that he’d been a cocaine user until his forties. George Bush was no example for impressionable youth. What parent could hold him up as a role model, other than the town drunk or village idiot who was not to be emulated? But I’m certain the same schools just a year ago would never have crossed that president.

Setting aside his surprising political turns, Barack Obama projects inspiring leadership qualities. He speaks intelligently with attentiveness and compassion. His message to children is to be one of encouragement in the hard times ahead, dealing with the increased imperative of higher education. Recent generations have been growing successively nihilistic. Perhaps the economy’s turn is an appropriate occasion for a president to address our nation’s kids. We like to call them our future.

Bush gave our schools the disastrous NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT which completely degraded public schools and ushered the calls for privatization of education under the guise of Charter Schools. In Colorado, Bush’s measure prompted the CSAPs, which hobble teachers by requiring classes to focus on passing standardized tests, instead of teaching broader lessons. Bush’s act also guarantees that military recruiters have access to the personal records of our children at their most vulnerable, to more easily prey upon them when they are rebellious teens. Bush was no friend of schoolchildren.

Obama on the other hand won a decisive victory in November, and no small number of his supporters were young children. Many teachers were pushing for Obama and his promise of hope, in the midst of a culture of pessimism sowed by George W. and his destructive agendas. Bush waged war against everything schoolchildren are fostered to care about. Obama’s campaign represented salvation for our planet. How now are school administrators prepared to extricate the students from their own personal rapport with the new president?

To quote a favorite Twit, Badbanana:

Obama is going to address the nation’s schoolchildren? One good fart joke and the Democrats control Congress for 60 years.

We know of course the high pitched extremists groups whom the superintendent thinks he is placating. They are the Teabaggers and Birthers who reject Obama as president. “He’s not my president” they say. They learned the phrase from their adversaries who protested the stolen elections of 2000 and 2004, but never understood its meaning. Obviously they have nothing to teach children about the workings of democracy.

At the recent health care town hall hosted by Congressman Doug Lamborn, I had a chance to witness these Birthers, so named because they reject Barack Obama’s birth certificate. They are so certain that Obama will be discovered to be foreign born and will thus be stripped of the presidency. “Three More Months, Three More Months” they countered, while progressive citizens were chanting for health care reform.

Local wing nut business owner Ed Bircham was dancing a jig singing “Ho Ho, Obama’s Got To Go, Ho Ho.” Egged on by KVOR djs and unabashed gay-bashers, Ed Bircham repeated his calls for Obama’s removal from office.

Incredible. Obama hasn’t done anything yet –which is my complaint– so what have the teabaggers against him? It’s patently absurd, if it wasn’t so obviously bigoted. “No Country For Old Bigots” I yelled.

Actually I joined local NAACP leader James Tucker in interjecting “Obama Is Your President” between Bircham’s call for his ouster. “Respect Your President” we found ourselves saying, even as I knew that I would not hold myself to such restraint. On the other hand, my opposition to President Obama has nothing to do with his skin color. On what principles do these white men disagree with Barack Obama, except that they’re not about to show deference to a nigger?

Treesit halts W. Va mountaintop removal

Posted on August 27, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Mountain Justice activists Laura Steepleton and Nick Stocks continue to occupy trees adjacent Massey Energy’s West Virginia coal mine, preventing further blasting of the Edwight mountaintop removal site. Assistants at the base of the trees were arrested for trespassing, but called back, expected to help the police communicate with the sitters.
Earth First! spokesman Mike Roselle has been visited by State troopers, demanding he command the Coal River Valley treesitters to climb down. Check Climate Ground Zero for updates, where you can leave messages of encouragement.

From Climate Ground Zero:

This is the thirteenth in a series of non-violent direct actions and protests that have brought together Coal River Valley residents, NASA climate scientist James Hansen, students, underground miners, military veterans, concerned citizens and environmentalists from across the nation with the goal of ending mountaintop removal. This is the third protest in two weeks to focus attention on the WV Department of Environmental Protection and their embattled Secretary, Randy Huffman. It also follows days after the leak of DEP biologist Doug Wood’s memo on the scale of environmental degradation caused by mountaintop removal, directly contradicting Huffman’s statements at a senate hearing last June.

UPDATE: DAY FIVE
A flyover of the treesit and adjacent decapitated mount. Audio is radio interview of Massey Energy director explaining that land ownership means you can do whatever you want to it.

Some screen grabs from the video.

Th-Th-Th-Th-That’s all folks, in lipstick

Posted on July 28, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Full text of Alaska Ex-Governor Sarah Palin‘s poetic address, wherein she explains that her contract with the voters of Alaska has a “lame duck” escape clause, stuff about a God-given right to despoil, some veiled threats to shoot gun-control revenuers, and the protections of both First Amendments.

Sarah Palin, July 26, 2009, Fairbanks AK:

“What an absolutely beautiful day it is,
and it is my honor to speak to all Alaskans,
to our Alaskan family
this last time as your governor.
And it is always great to be in Fairbanks.
The rugged rugged hardy people that live up here
and some of the most patriotic people
whom you will ever know live here,
and one thing that you are known for
is your steadfast support
of our military community up here
and I thank you for that
and thank you United States military
for protecting the greatest nation on Earth.
Together we stand.

And getting up here
I say it is the best road trip in America
soaring through nature’s finest show.
Denali, the great one, soaring
under the midnight sun.

And then the extremes.
In the winter time
it’s the frozen road that is competing
with the view of ice fogged frigid beauty,
the cold though, doesn’t it
split the Cheechakos
from the Sourdoughs?

And then in the summertime
such extreme summertime
about a hundred and fifty degrees hotter
than just some months ago,
than just some months from now,
with fireweed blooming
along the frost heaves
and merciless rivers that are rushing
and carving and reminding us
that here, Mother Nature wins.
It is as throughout all Alaska
that big wild good life
teeming along the road
that is north to the future.

That is what we get to see every day.
Now what the rest of America
gets to see along with us
is in this last frontier
there is hope and opportunity
and there is country pride.

And it is our men and women in uniform securing it,
and we are facing tough challenges in America
with some seeming to just be Hell bent
maybe on tearing down our nation,
perpetuating some pessimism, and suggesting
American apologetics, suggesting perhaps
that our best days were yesterdays.

But as other people have asked,
“How can that pessimism be,
when proof of our greatness, our pride today
is that we produce the great proud volunteers
who sacrifice everything for country?”
Now this week alone, Sean Parnell and I
were on the, um, on Ft. Rich
the base there, the army chapel,
and we heard the last roll call,
and the sounding of Taps
for three very brave, very young Alaskan soldiers
who just gave their all for all of us.
Together we do stand with gratitude
for our troops who protect all of our cherished freedoms,
including our freedom of speech
which, par for the course, I’m going to exercise.

And first, some straight talk
for some, just some in the media
because another right protected for all of us
is freedom of the press,
and you all have such important jobs
reporting facts and informing the electorate,
and exerting power to influence.
You represent what could and should be
a respected honest profession
that could and should be
the cornerstone of our democracy.

Democracy depends on you,
and that is why, that’s why
our troops are willing to die for you.
So, how ’bout in honor of the American soldier,
ya quite makin’ things up?
And don’t underestimate the wisdom of the people,
and one other thing for the media,
our new governor has a very nice family too,
so leave his kids alone.

OK, today is a beautiful day
and today as we swear in Sean Parnell,
no one will be happier than I
to witness by God’s grace
Alaskans with strength of character
advancing our beloved state.
Sean has that.
Craig Campbell has that.
I remember on that December day,
we took the oath to uphold our state constitution,
and it was written right here in Fairbanks
by very wise pioneers.

We shared the vision for government
that they ground in that document.
Our founders wrote “all political power is inherent in the people.
All government originates with the people.
It’s founded upon their will only
and it’s instituted for the good of the people as a whole.”
Their remarkably succinct words
guided us in all of our efforts
in serving you and putting you first,
and we have done our best to fulfill promises
that I made on Alaska Day, 2005,
when I first asked for the honor of serving you.

Remember then, our state so desired
and so deserved ethics reform.
We promised it, and now it is the law.
Ironically, it needs additional reform
to stop blatant abuse from partisan operatives,
and I hope the lawmakers will continue that reform.
We promised that you would finally see
a fair return on your Alaskan owned natural resources
so we build a new oil and gas appraisal system,
an is an equitable formula to usher in
a new era of competition and transparency
and protection for Alaskans and the producers.

ACES incentivizes new exploration
and it’s the exploration that is our future.
It opens up oil basins and it ensures
that the people will never be taken advantage of again.
Don’t forget Alaskans
you are the resource owners per our constitution
and that’s why for instance last year
when oil prices soared and state coffers swelled,
but you were smacked with high energy prices,
we sent you the energy rebate. See,
it’s your money and I’ve always believed
that you know how to better spend it
than government can spend it.

I promised that we would protect this beautiful environment
while safely and ethically developing resources, and we did.
We built the Petroleum Oversight Office
and a sub-cabinet to study climate conditions.
And I promised I’d govern with fiscal restraint,
so to not immorally burden futre generations.
And we did…we slowed the rate of government growth
and I vetoed hundreds of millions of dollars of excess
and wtih lawmakers we saved billions for the future.

I promsed that we’d lead the charge
to forward funding education,
and hold schools accountable,
and improve opportunities for special needs students
and elevate vo-tech training
and we paid down pension debt.

I promised that we would manage our fish and wildlife for abundance,
and that we would defend the constitution, and we have,
though outside special interest groups
they still just don’t get it on this one.
Let me tell you, Alaskans really need to stick together on this
with new leadership in this area especially,
encouraging new leadership…
got to stiffen your spine to do what’s right
for Alaska when the pressure mounts,
because you’re going to see anti-hunting,
anti-second amendment circuses from Hollywood
and here’s how they do it.

They use these delicate, tiny, very talented celebrity starlets,
they use Alaska as a fundraising tool
for their anti-second amendment causes.
Stand strong, and remind them
patriots will protect our guaranteed,
individual right to bear arms,
and by the way, Hollywood needs to know,
we eat, therefore we hunt.

I promised energy solutions and we have,
we have a plan calling for 50% of our electricity
generated by renewable resources
and we can now insist that those who hold the leases
to develop our resources
that they do so now on Alaska’s terms.
So now finally after decades of just talk,
finally we’re seeing oil and gas drilling
up there at Point Thompson.

And I promised that we would get
a natural gas pipeline underway and we did.
Since I was a little kid growing up here,
I remember the discussions,
especially the political discussions
just talking about and hoping for
and dreaming of commercializing
our clean, abundant, needed natural gas.

Our gas line inducement act, AGIA,
that was the game-changer
and this is thanks to our outstanding gas line team,
and the legislature adopting this law, 58-1.
They knew, they know AGIA is the vehicle
to drive this monumental energy project
and bring everyone to the table,
this bipartisan victory,
it came from Alaskans working together
with free market private sector principles,
and now we are on the road
to the largest private-sector energy project
in the history of America.
It is for Alaska’s future,
it is for America’s energy independence
and it will make us a more peaceful,
prosperous and secure nation.

What I promised, we accomplished.
“We” meaning state staff,
amazing commissioners,
great staff assisting them,
and conscientious Alaskans
outside the bureaucracy –
Tom Van Flein, and Meg Stapleton
and Kristan Cole, so many others,
many volunteers who just stepped up
to the challenge as good Alaskans,
but nothing, nothing could have succeeded
without my right-hand man Kris Perry.
She is the sharpest, boldest, hardest-working partner.
Kris is my right-hand man and much success is due to Kris.

So much success, and Alaska
there is much good in store further down the road,
but to reach it we must value
and live the optimistic pioneering spirit
that made this state proud and free,
and we can resist enslavement to big central government
that crushes hope and opportunity.
Be wary of accepting government largess.
It doesn’t come free and often, accepting it
takes away everything that is free,
melting into Washington’s powerful “care-taking” arms
will just suck incentive to work hard
and chart our own course
right out of us,
and that not only contributes to an unstable economy
and dizzying national debt,
but it does make us less free.

I resisted the stimulus package.
I resisted the stimulus package
and we have championed earmark reform,
slashing earmark requests by 85%
to break the cycle of dependency
on a stifling, unsustainable federal agenda,
and other states should follow this
for their and for America’s stability.
We don’t have to feel
that we must beg an allowance from Washington,
except to beg the allowance to be self-determined.
See, to be self-sufficient,
Alaska must be allowed to develop –
to drill and build and climb,
to fulfill statehood’s promise.
At statehood we knew this.

At statehood we knew this,
that we are responsible for ourselves
and our families and our future,
and fifty years later,
please let’s not start believing
that government is the answer.
It can’t make you happy
or healthy or wealthy or wise.
What can? It is the wisdom of the people
and our families and our small businesses,
and industrious individuals,
and it is God’s grace,
helping those who help themselves,
and then this allows that very generous
voluntary hand up that we’re known for,
enthusiastically providing those who need it.

Alaskans will remember that years ago,
remember we sported the old bumper sticker that said,
“Alaska. We Don’t Give a Darn How They Do It Outside?”
Do you remember that? I remember that,
and remember it was because we would be different.
We’d roll up our sleeves,
and we would diligently sow and reap,
and we can still do this
to carve wealth out of the wilderness
and make our living on the water,
with strong hands and innovative minds,
now with smarter technology.

It is what our first people and our parents did.
It worked, because they worked.
We must be prudent and persistent
and press for the people’s right
to responsibly develop God-given resources
for the maximum benefit of the people.

And we have come so far in just 50 years.
We’re no longer a frontier outpost
on the periphery of the world’s greatest nation.
Now, as a contributor and a securer of America,
we can attain our destiny
in the promise of our motto “North to the Future.”
See, the pressing issue of our time,
it’s energy independence,
because there is an inherent link
between energy and security,
and energy and prosperity.
Alaska will lead with energy,
we will prove you can be both
pro-development and pro-environment,
because no one loves their clean air
and their land and their wildlife
and their water more than an Alaskan.
We will protect it.

Yes, America must look north to the future
for security, for energy independence,
for our strategic location on the globe.
Alaska is the gate-keeper of the continent.

So, we are here today at a changing of the guard.
Now, people who know me,
and they know how much I love this state,
some still are choosing not to hear
why I made the decision
to chart a new course to advance the state.
And it should be so obvious to you. (indicating heckler)
It is because I love Alaska this much, sir (at heckler)
that I feel it is my duty to avoid
the unproductive, typical, politics as usual,
lame duck session in one’s last year in office.
How does that benefit you?
No, with this decision now,
I will be able to fight even harder for you,
for what is right, for truth.
And I have never felt
like you need a title to do that.

So, as we all move forward together,
let’s vow to keep championing Alaska,
to advocate responsible development,
and smaller government, and freedom,
and when I took the oath to serve you,
I promised… remember I promised
to steadfastly and doggedly guard
the interests of this great state
like that grizzly guards her cubs,
as a mother naturally guards her own.

And I will keep that vow
wherever the road may lead.
Todd and I, and Track, Bristol,
Tripp, Willow, Piper, Trig…I think I got ’em all.
We will forever be so grateful
for the honor of our lifetime to have served you.
Our whole big diverse full and fun family,
we all thank you and I am very very blessed
to have had their support all along,
for Todd’s support. I am thankful too.
I have been blessed
to have been raised in this last frontier.
Thank you for our home, Mom and Dad,
because in Alaska
it is not an easy living,
but it is a good living,
and here it is impossible to lose your way.
Wherever the road may lead you,
we have that steadying great north star to guide us home.

So let’s all enjoy the ride, and I thank you Alaska,
and God bless Alaska and God bless America.”

Judge Larry Naves mocks justice in Ward Churchill ruling

Posted on July 8, 2009 by Marie Walden

Judge Larry Naves Ward Churchill ruling Yesterday Judge Larry Naves vacated the jury verdict in the Ward Churchill trial and refused to compel CU to reinstate Churchill saying that to do so would send a message to students that the University of Colorado “tolerates academic misconduct.” This, despite the fact that the jury found that charges of academic misconduct were made in order to silence Churchill without appearing to violate his free speech rights and wrongly fired him based on the trumped up charges.

The judge also failed to award any damages to Churchill, nor did he rule that CU must pay his legal fees. Further, Judge Naves’ 42-page ruling indicated that CU was a quasi-governmental body and, as such, should have been shielded from litigation to begin with.

Of course, Churchill attorney David Lane will appeal the ruling to a higher court, hopefully one that has more respect for the judicial system and the Constitution. This isn’t over, but how unfortunate that the bastard Judge Naves has prolonged the charade.

Tulane kicks Kimberly-Clark off campus!

Posted on June 10, 2009 by NMT

From the Greenpeace Students’ Network: “Hi ya’ll! My name is Laney White, and I am spring 2009 graduate of Tulane University in New Orleans. I am writing to tell you the great news: Tulane just kicked Kimberly-Clark off campus!!!”

After working with the campus’s Facilities Services throughout the spring semester, my environmental group, Tulane Environmental Action League (TEAL), and I convinced the University to drop Kimberly-Clark, which uses wood clearcut from ancient forests to produce disposable products, in favor of a more sustainable company. Over the course of this summer, Tulane will be making the switch!

Despite obstacles like an apathetic student body, TEAL discovered that the concerted efforts of a small group of individuals could alter how a university chooses to do business. Over a series of meetings with Facilities Services, my student group presented viable alternatives to Kimberly-Clark and provided clear, well-researched arguments for making the switch. Persistence in communication with Facilities was crucial, as was coordinating with potential allies on campus. Tulane’s Office of Environmental Affairs, which is currently working to obtain LEED certification for some buildings on campus, was instrumental in helping make the final push for the switch because the new products will earn the buildings additional LEED points.

As a school located in New Orleans, the Tulane community has a greater stake in climate change and environmental stewardship than the average university. Placed on the frontlines of global warming, the impacts of the clearcutting practices supported by corporations like Kimberly-Clark have the potential to disproportionately affect the Crescent City. Kicking Kimberly-Clark off of Tulane’s campus is a small change that, when joined with the efforts of likeminded students across the country, has the potential to alter the market, change Kimberly-Clark’s practices, and have a huge impact!

I plan to continue my work as an environmental leader and look forward to working with many of you as we work to save the planet from climate catastrophe in the coming years. It is our actions, together, that will determine history and the fate of our planet.

For a green and peaceful future,
Laney White
Tulane University
Class of 2009

If others can kill, Israel wants permit too

Posted on June 4, 2009 by Eric Verlo

June 6th is the 42nd anniversary of Israel’s seizure of Gaza. At right is a UK newspaper ad placed by the Anti-Defamation League, one of Israel’s myriad damage control engines, when UK students were calling to boycott Israel over its attacks in Gaza. 400,000 killed in Sudan, so Israel should get a pass on its 1,300 victims in Gaza? It sounds like the IDF expects allowances to be made for its periodic ethnic cleansing, permits maybe, like polluters trade carbon credits. The US Humane Society euthanizes 5.4 million dogs every year, no doubt it’s just a double standard to demonize Israel for bagging their 1,300 in Gaza.

Where there are fingers pointing at Sudan, there are Zionists diverting attention from their final Palestinian solution. No one’s crying GENOCIDE in Darfur, calling for military intervention against the Muslim regime but Israel, the US and George Clooney.

I just read an eyewitness recollection of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, published on this 20th anniversary, by a reporter who went on to fault China less for its human rights transgressions than for Chinese investments in Sudan and Iran. Sudan? IRAN? What was an evocative historical account began to smell of Zionist agitation… Of course the WSJ columnist turned out to be a “conservative” who also labels those who stand up for Palestinian rights as anti-Semites.

Wrong color?

Posted on May 12, 2009 by Tony Logan

“Some three dozen public school students have been murdered since the school year began, most of them shot to death. These children and teenagers have been killed in a wide variety of settings and situations while riding a city bus, playing in parks, sitting in the back seats of cars, in gang disputes, in robberies, in the crossfire of sidewalk shootouts. Which is why we’ve heard so little about an awful story out of Chicago.” What Color Is That Baby? What color indeed?

Anti-Zionism 4D: Defining Demonization Double Standards and Delegitimization

Posted on May 5, 2009 by Eric Verlo

The word “nutritious” defines a food quality that provides sustenance. I’ve no doubt as skepticism grows about the likely poisonous aspects of refined sugar and High Fructose Corn Syrup, the corporate sugar-water purveyors will append “satiates your subliminal impulses” to the meaning of nutritious. Who safeguards our dictionaries from authoritarians who profit from reweaving the fabric of knowledge we consider inviolate?

We expect facts to change, but it is unsettling to be robbed of the words which we count on to measure the change.

Did you think “anti-Semitic” meant prejudice against the Jews? It does, except the Zionists behind sustaining Israel want it to indemnify their unpopular endeavor too. Anti-Semitism now means opposing Israel, although the stigma implied is of course still “Jew Hater.” But the appropriation is unseemly. Crusading Evangelicals could tell you, if you oppose their bloody incursions into the lands of Islam, then you must be anti-Christian. But are you?

It would seem only fair that the victims of anti-Semitism should be entitled to define what oppresses them, but that’s not who’s wrapping themselves in its protection. Zionists (both Jewish and Christian) claim that an overwhelming percentage of World Jewry supports sustaining the US-Israel occupation of Palestine. Is it true? I wager that the far greater proportion of both Jews and non-Jews repudiate military aggression, occupation, ethnic cleansing and religious oppression. But if it were true, claims of suffering historical persecution are not grounds to be given license to persecute others.

Anti-Semitism describes real, tradition-rooted anti-Jewish sentiment. To expand its meaning disrespects the very tangible prejudice which Jews still face. Opposition to sustaining Israel is actually Anti-Zionism, which is neither for nor against Judaism. Anti-Zionism denounces another long-held prejudice: White European Man’s assertion that the Holy Land belongs to him.

Anti-Zionism is the opposition to sustaining an illegally invaded, illegally occupied, racist administration of Palestine in the name of “Zionism.” Anti-Zionism calls for “the destruction of Israel,” meaning the dissolution of the Western colonial theocracy imposed on the indigenous population of the Middle East. To oppose the sustaining of Israel is a call to exterminate Israeli apartheid. Anti-Zionism is no resurrection of the Final Solution. It means leave people be. White settlers should not assume to usurp the lands and water rights of the native Palestinians.

Zionism defender Nathan Sharansky has constructed a definition of anti-Semitism with an expanded breadth, he calls them the three Ds: Demonization, Double Standards and Delegitimization. It’s this 3D definition with which Zionists are branding UCSB professor William Robinson, himself a Jew, as an anti-Semite. Professor Robinson circulated an email among his sociology students, comparing Israel’s actions in Gaza to methods used by the Nazis, now US-Israeli lobby groups are calling for UCSB to censure him.

Sharansky’s three Ds are easily refuted because he offers no more than circular argument. Ipso Facto my eye. I reprint Sharansky’s explanation below, but first an abridgment:

Demonization: “…having [the Jewish state’s] actions blown out of all sensible proportion … can only be considered anti-Semitic.”

Double Standards: “It is anti-Semitism … when Israel is singled out by the United Nations for human rights abuses while tried and true abusers … are ignored.”

Delegitimization: “…the denial of Israel’s right to exist is always anti-Semitic.”

Thus, if Israel considers the criticisms leveled against it to be insensible, then the criticisms are anti-Semitic; also, so long as abusive regimes persist, Israel reserves its prerogative to abuse; and, the legitimacy of Israel’s biblically ordained Manifest Destiny is never to be questioned. These are self-rationalizations which beg ridicule, but doing so would appear anti-Semitic.

Sharansky finishes: “If other peoples have a right to live securely in their homelands, then the Jewish people have a right to live securely in their homeland.” To suggest that the right of the Palestinians to live in their homeland, have been usurped by the Jewish people, most of whom knew other homelands, is apparently anti-Semitic.

Here is Nathan Sharansky’s statement to support the 3-D formula for decrying “ANTI-SEMITISM!”

I propose the following test for differentiating legitimate criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism. The 3D test, as I call it, is not a new one. It merely applies to the new anti-Semitism the same criteria that for centuries identified the different dimensions of classical anti-Semitism.

DEMONIZATION
The first D is the test of demonization.

Whether it came in the theological form of a collective accusation of deicide or in the literary depiction of Shakespeare’s Shylock, Jews were demonized for centuries as the embodiment of evil. Therefore, today we must be wary of whether the Jewish state is being demonized by having its actions blown out of all sensible proportion.

For example, the comparisons of Israelis to Nazis and of the Palestinian refugee camps to Auschwitz — comparisons heard practically every day within the “enlightened” quarters of Europe — can only be considered anti-Semitic.

Those who draw such analogies either do not know anything about Nazi Germany or, more plausibly, are deliberately trying to paint modern-day Israel as the embodiment of evil.

DOUBLE STANDARDS
The second D is the test of double standards. For thousands of years a clear sign of anti-Semitism was treating Jews differently than other peoples, from the discriminatory laws many nations enacted against them to the tendency to judge their behavior by a different yardstick.

Similarly, today we must ask whether criticism of Israel is being applied selectively. In other words, do similar policies by other governments engender the same criticism, or is there a double standard at work?

It is anti-Semitism, for instance, when Israel is singled out by the United Nations for human rights abuses while tried and true abusers like China, Iran, Cuba, and Syria are ignored.

Likewise, it is anti-Semitism when Israel’s Magen David Adom, alone among the world’s ambulance services, is denied admission to the International Red Cross.

DELIGITIMIZATION
The third D is the test of deligitimization. In the past, anti-Semites tried to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish religion, the Jewish people, or both. Today, they are trying to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish state, presenting it, among other things, as the last vestige of colonialism.

While criticism of an Israeli policy may not be anti-Semitic, the denial of Israel’s right to exist is always anti-Semitic. If other peoples have a right to live securely in their homelands, then the Jewish people have a right to live securely in their homeland.

UCSB Hillel students Rebecca Joseph, Tova Hausman highlight poor education

Posted on May 1, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Today’s university campuses have to deal with College Republicans, ACTA and NeoMcCarthyists. The latest uneducable creeps shopped their leftist-professor- horror-story to the Anti-Defamation League, to brand their teacher’s criticism of Israel as “anti-Semitic.” UCSB senior Rebecca Joseph and junior Tova Hausman both took exception to Professor William Robinson’s Sociology Listserv email comparing Israel’s mop up operation in Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto. Below are the words they cut and pasted together to accuse Robinson.

The literacy level of these two students is probably on par for Twilight fans, but definitely unbecoming for the University of California system. The first letter is reputedly from a college senior. Rebecca Joseph‘s opening argument was plagiarized from the internet, but she continues to scold Professor Robinson for straying from her idea of what makes a university professor. The second complaint from UCSB junior Tova Hausman copies the first letter’s form, but adds the accusation of sexual misconduct for leaving her feeling raped.

Is it unfair to put simple college students under national scrutiny like this? From their own words they show themselves to be rather helpless. But what to do when students, or some unscrupulous backers, are taking aim at a respected tenured professor? It’s serious business. Organizations like ACTA and Hillel are out to enforce a veritable Right Wing PC rectitude. As if it’s politically incorrect to make fun of uneducated on campus!

Keeping educators silenced was easier during the Bush administration, but the dampers are still on Academic Freedom. Ward Churchill may have won his case in court against the University of Colorado, but opinionated faculty are still few and far between. The latest attack against William Robinson attempts to reinforce more of the same.

Probably by now Hillel is wishing they’d coaxed a better educated pair of students to face off against Robinson. The administrators who received the complaint letters should have earmarked the girls for a remedial English refresher in anticipation of their graduation. But let’s look beyond the cheap shots.

The accusations inarticulated here are scurrilous where they are not outright illogical. You be the judge.

First Student Complaint
Here’s the first complaint received by UCSB, from Rebecca Joseph, Vice-president of the Santa Barbara campus Orthodox Jewish Chabad. Interestingly, UCSB has a number of pro-Israel action groups: Hillel, Jewish Awareness Movement on Campus, American Students for Israel, Stand With Us, AIPAC and the Israeli Palestinian Film Festival (which judging by the lineup runs films only by un-self-critical Israelis and sympathetic Palestinians).

Here is Rebecca Joseph’s complaint, uncorrected.

To Whom It May Concern:

On Monday, january 19, at 1:02 pm, I received an email from Professor Robinson for the course Sociology of Globalization (Soc 130SG). The subject of the email was “Parallel images of Nazis and Israelis.” This email compared the aggression of the Nazis to the Jews in Germany, to that which is going on between Palestine and Israel today. Professor Robinson wrote the first three paragraphs including the following: “Gaza is Israel’s Warsaw…” In addition to his few words, he attached an email describing the comparison which goes on to another attachment showing pictures to prove his point.

This email shocked me; before I did anything I gave him the benefit of the doubt and emailed him back asking, “I just wanted to know what this information was for? Is it for some assignment or just information that you put out there for us?” His response was “Rebecca, just for your interest….. I should have clarified.”

At this point I felt nauseous that a professor could use his power to send this email with his views attached, to each student in his class. To me this overstepped the boundaries of a professor and his conduct in a system of higher education. Due to this horrific email I had to drop the course. being a senior and needing any classes I could get, this left me in need of more classes which added more stress.

Two weeks later I saw a friend that was in the course with me and I asked him if it was ever brought up in class or discussed even for a brief minute or two, he responded by telling me that he never even mentioned it in class and that he too would have dropped the course, but he needed it to graduate on time.

Anti Semitism is considered to be hatred toward Jews –individually and as a group– that can be attributed to the Jewish religion and/or ethnicity. An important issue is the distinction between legitimate criticism of policies and practices of the State of Israel, and commentary that assumes an anti-Semitic character. The demonization of Israel, or vilification of Israeli leaders, sometimes through comparisons with Nazi leaders, and through the use of Nazi symbols to caricature them, indicates an anti-Semitic bias rather than a valid criticism of policy.

I found these parallel images intimidating, disgusting, and beyond a teacher role as an educator in the university system. I feel that something must be done so other students don’t have to go through the same intimidating, disgust I went through. I was asked to speak to him and get him to apologize but I feel that it will not make a difference for future students of his.

Whatever the outcome may be, I am hoping for some apology from Robinson, for not only my self and but for my peers in the class as well. In addition I would like to see more happen then just an apology because he has breached the University’s Code of Conduct for Professors and that this issue must be dealt with immediately.

In the Faculty Code of Conduct in Part II, Professional Responsibilities, Ethical Principles, and Unacceptable Faculty conduct, in Section A, Teaching and Students, it states that “The integrity of the faculty-student relationship is the foundation of the University’s educational mission. This relationship vests considerable trust in the faculty member, who, in turn, bears authority and accountability as mentor, educator, and evaluator.”

However Professor Robinson has turned away from his professional responsibilities through his “significant intrusion of material unrelated to the course.” (Part II, Section A, Number 1, b). He has also violated the universities policy by “participating in or deliberately abetting disruption, interference, or intimidation in the classroom,” (Part II, Section A, Number 5). Robinson has done so through this intimidating email which had pushed me to withdraw from this course and take another one.

In the University System professors above all, are to be “effective teachers and scholars,” Robinson has gone against his rights as a professor at the university through his, “unauthorized use of University resources or facilities on a significant scale for personal, commercial, political, or religious purposes,” (Section II, Section C, Number 3). Robinson used his university resources, to email each student in this course to get his view across, in doing so; he became a representation of the faculty members of the University of California Santa Barbara. The code of conduct state that, “faculty members have the same rights and obligations as all citizens. They are as free as other citizens to express their views and to participate in the political process of the community. When they act or speak in their personal and private capacities, they should avoid deliberately creating the impression that they represent the University.” By Robinson using his university email account he attaches his thoughts with that of the university and they become a single entity sharing the same ideas.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration of this matter and I am hoping to here [sic] back in the near future.

Thank you,

Rebecca Joseph

Second student complaint
The second letter, which cribs from the first obviously, was sent by UCSB junior Tova Hausman. At least she credits the US State Dept as the source of her definition of “anti-Semitism.” But Hausman adds the accusation of sexual impropriety, taking a page it seems from David Mamet’s Oleanna.

February 19, 2009

To whom it may concern,

My name is Tova Hausman, and I was enrolled in Professor William Robinson’s Sociology 130 SG course this Winter 2009. The course was called Social Globalization. Our class received an email in the second week of class, from the professor, called “Parallel images of Nazis and Israelis.” It discussed the parallel acts and images between Nazi Germany during World War II and the present day Israelis. He claims that what the Nazis did to the Jews during the war is parallel to what Israel is doing to Palestine right now. Professor Robinson clearly stated his anti Semitic political views in this email that were unjust and unsolicited. The department of states 2004 definition of anti-Semitism: Anti Semitism is considered to be hatred toward Jews –individually and as a group– that can be attributed to the Jewish religion and/or ethnicity. An important issue is the distinction between legitimate criticism of policies and practices of the State of Israel, and commentary that assumes an anti-Semitic character. The demonization of Israel, or vilification of Israeli leaders, sometimes through comparisons with Nazi leaders, and through the use of Nazi symbols to caricature them, indicates an anti-Semitic bias rather than a valid criticism of policy……

In all the years of schooling and higher education I have never experienced an abuse of an educator position. Taking the opportunity to disseminate personal political views through obtaining email addresses of the class roster that are only for academic use, show betrayal and complete abuse of powers by the professor. To hide behind a computer and send this provocative email shows poor judgment and perhaps a warped personality. The classroom and the forum of which higher education is presented needs to be safe and guarded so the rights of individuals are respected. handle

To express one’s political views is not necessarily wrong but here it was not relevant to the subject matter. How could one continue to participate in this professor’s class? The fact that the professor attached his views to the depiction of what my great grandparents and family experienced shows lack of sensitivity and awareness. What he did was criminal because he took my trust and invaded something that is very personal. I felt as if I have been violated by this professor. Yes I am aware of Anti-Semites, but to abuse this position in an environment of higher education where I always thought it to be safe, until now, is intimidating.

This professor should be stopped immediately from continuing to disseminate this information and be punished because his damage is irreversible. He abused his privilege to teach, to lead, and to mentor.

Bellow is a list of the faculty code of conduct in which I believe Professor Robinson violated:

Part I — Professional Rights of Faculty
2. the right to present controversial material relevant to a course of instruction.

Part II — Professional Responsibilities, Ethical Principles, and Unacceptable Faculty Conduct
A. Teaching and Student

The integrity of the faculty-student relationship is the foundation of the University’s educational mission. This relationship vests considerable trust in the faculty member, who, in turn, bears authority and accountability as mentor, educator, and evaluator. The unequal institutional power inherent in this relationship heighten the vulnerability of the student and the potential for coercion. The pedagogical relationship between faculty member and student must be protected from influences or activities that can interfere with learning consistent with the goals and ideals of the University. Whenever a faculty member is responsible for academic supervision of a student, a personal relationship between them of a romantic or sexual nature, even if consensual, is inappropriate. Any such relationship jeopardizes the integrity of the educational process.

1. Failure to meet the responsibilities of instruction, including:
(b) significant intrusion of material unrelated to the course;

2. Discrimination, including harassment, against a student on political grounds, or for reasons of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, national origin, ancestry, marital status, medical condition, status as a covered veteran, or, within the limits imposed by law or University regulation, because of age or citizenship or for other arbitrary or personal reasons.

5. Participating in or deliberately abetting disruption, interference, or intimidation in the classroom.

Types of unacceptable conduct:

B. Scholarship
Violation of canons of intellectual honesty, such as research misconduct and/or intentional misappropriation of the writings, research, and findings of others.

C. University
3. Unauthorized use of University resources or facilities on a significant scale for personal, commercial, political, or religious purposes.

E. The Community Ethical Principles.
“Faculty members have the same rights and obligations as all citizens. They are as free as other citizens to express their views and to participate in the political processes of the community. When they act or speak in their personal and private capacities, they should avoid deliberately creating the impression that they represent the University.” (U.C. Academic Council Statement, 1971)

I expect this matter to be looked into and wish to be contacted soon.

Thank you,

Tova Hausman

Well let’s make a point to contact this McCarthy wannabe. These are crummy students fancying themselves campus sanitizers for Israel. What contemptible innuendo and vacuous indignation! The two students reportedly approached the Simon Wiesenthal Center, where they were advised to work through the Jewish Anti-Defamation League.

Letter sent from the ADL
Pressure then came from Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman who visited the campus in a covert meeting to recommend the immediate reprimand of Professor Robinson. (Foxman even had these words for the Gaza analysis offered by Bill Moyers.)

February 9, 2009

William I. Robinson
Professor of Sociology
Global and international Studies
Latin American and Iberian Studies
University of California – Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106

Dear Professor Robinson:

We have received complaints that on January 19, 2009, you sent an email to a number of your student entitled “parallel images of Nazis and Israelis.” If this allegation is true, ADL strongly condemns the views expressed in your email and urges you to unequivocally repudiate them.

While your writings are protected by the First Amendment and academic freedom, we rely upon our own rights to say that your comparisons of Nazis and Israelis were offensive, a historical and have crossed the line well beyond legitimate criticism of Israel.

In our view, no accurate comparison can be made between the complex Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the atrocities committed by the Nazis against the Jews. Nor can Israeli actions or policies be fairly characterized as acts of ethnic cleansing or genocide. Unlike the Holocaust (and to more recent examples of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Darfur, Rwanda and Kosovo), there is no Israeli ideology, policy or plan to persecute, exterminate or expel the Palestinian population — nor has there ever been. In direct contrast, the Nazis’ “final solution” to the “Jewish problem” was the deliberate, systematic and mechanized extermination of European Jewry. Hitler’s “final Solution” led to the calculated, premeditated murder of six million Jews and the destruction of thriving Jewish communities across Europe.

We also think it is important to note that the tone and extreme views presented in your email were intimidating to students and likely chilled thoughtful discussion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Clearly, that is antithetical to the very purpose of the academy. Finally, using your university email address to send out material that appears unrelated to your Globalization of Sociology course likely violates numerous parts of the University of Santa Barbara Faculty Code of Conduct (see, for example, Part I, 2; Part II, A, 1, b; Part II, C, 3; Part II, E, 1).

Again, ADL strongly condemns the views expressed in the January 19, 2009 email and we urge you to unequivocally repudiate them.

Sincerely,

Cynthia Silverman
Santa Barbara Regional Director
Anti-Defamation League

Cc:
Department Chair, Verta Dean
Chancellor, Henry T. Yang
President, Mark G. Yudof

$Martin Scharlemann, University of California at Santa Barbara$ Email from UCSB Charges Officer:
Instead of dismissing the dubious accusations, the school is convening an investigation. But not without impropriety on the part of the Charges Officer Martin Scharlemann. Prof. Scharlemann insisted that Robinson produce a written refutation BEFORE he would reveal the formal accusations leveled by the two students. Read the formidable exchanges at the website mounted by the UCSB students and faculty rallying to Robinson’s defense.

Charges Officer E-mail Re: Charges

Professor Robinson,

Responding to your memo of 3 April, here is a summary of the allegations:

* You, as professor of an academic course, sent to each student enrolled in that course a highly partisan email accompanied by lurid
photographs.

* The email was unexpected and without educational context.

* You offered no explanation of how the material related to the content of the course.

* You offered no avenue to discuss, nor encouraged any response, to the opinions and photographs included in the email.

* You directly told a student who inquired that the email was not connected to the course.

* As a result, two enrolled students were too distraught to continue with the course.

* The constellation of allegations listed above, if substantially true, may violate the Faculty Code of Conduct.

In the (”not exhaustive”) list of examples included with that Faculty Code of Conduct, the most proximate are part II, A. 1. b and A. 4.

On the other matters you raise, while my conversation with the students was confidential, I can tell you that I did not advise them to seek an “apology” from you. And yes, I did offer you an opportunity “if you wish” to provide a written response to the complaint before I met with the Charges Advisory Committee, which is solely vested with the authority to dismiss a complaint as frivolous and unfounded.

-Martin Scharlemann

And from the internets…
And let’s not overlook the attempts to initiate an email campaign to bring public pressure on UCSB to reprimand Professor Robinson. A commenter to this blog linked to a website advocating a form email to convey (our) universal indignation over the anti-Semitism at UCSB. The form letter is suggested by “anonymous” (possibly Alvin Black aka Dr. Mike) and he recommended signing it “Name withheld to protect privacy.” We reprint the opening and closing here:

Dear Chancellor Yang,

As I am sure you know, several months ago, Professor William I. Robinson, a self described “scholar -activist” and professor of Sociology and Global Studies at your university, forwarded an email to his students condemning Israel. The email contained images of Nazi atrocities along with images from Israel’s defensive campaign against Hamas’s terror. This comparison is considered by both the US State Dept and the European Union, in their working paper on anti-Semitism, to cross the line into anti-Semitism. This email was so disturbing to at least two students that they felt compelled to drop his class. Because of the nature of the emails, the Anti-Defamation League, as well as the UCSB Academic Senate’s Charges Committee have become involved.

[…etc…]

And thus the Arab world’s war against Israel becomes a nation-wide campus war against Jews.

Professor Robinson seems to have chosen to join the ranks of these “erstwhile defenders.”

I most sincerely urge you, therefore, to draw a line in the sand. The university should not be a promoter of Jew-hatred, nor an inciter of violence.

Sincerely yours,

Name withheld to protect privacy

Anonymity
Isn’t that what this post is about actually? We’ve aggregated the criticisms flying against Professor Robinson, but most notably this article seeks to expose the UCSB students who led the faceless attack against Professor Robinson.

Until the Los Angeles Times revealed their names today, the identities of both Joseph and Hausman had been concealed. Even the specific complaints they brought against Robinson were kept secret from the accused himself. Now, what kind of people insist on slandering others from the shadows?

At NMT, we make ourselves known, while many of our detractors do not. We could not care less, but if apologists for Israel’s crimes consider themselves in the right, why do they hide behind aliases?

If you support Israel’s “right to defend itself” by breaking international conventions and committing war crimes, stand up and say it. If you think Israel has every right to take the land of the Palestinians and keep it, Goddamn it come out from behind your creepy disguises and say it. If you’re going to impugn others for whatever false transgression, without the courage to reveal yourself, do you expect anyone to accord you credibility?

If you are going to condemn the Palestinians of Gaza for exercising their basic human right to resist an illegal foreign invasion and occupation of their land, you better have the nerve to say it publicly. Cowards.

UCSB Prof William Robinson pro-Semite

Posted on April 30, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Wouldn’t you think it bad form for Israeli militants to behave like Nazis, while immunizing themselves with the self-righteous indignation that any criticism of their actions can simply be dismissed as “anti-Semitic?” Photographs and confessions emerging from the IDF’s atrocities in Gaza just beg comparison the German Einsatzgruppen in Poland. Earlier this year UC Santa Barbara professor William Robinson forwarded an email photo essay to a UCSB listserv, the already much-circulated side by side comparison to the WWII atrocities. Two students complained, plagiarizing stock IDF lingo. Now the Anti-Defamation League wants Robinson to recant. With IDF propagandists pouring on the bullshit, let’s revisit the documents.

As has already been noted, Professor Robinson is a harsh critic of US foreign policy, and already a likely target for the goon squad enforcers of Western Capitalism. Not many of America’s actions are defensible, so Robinson has to be attacked by desperate means. Lucky for the lackey-jackals, Robinson chose to criticize Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians of Gaza. Bingo!

The Israeli propaganda machine has armed aspiring Israel-defenders with a blanket rebuttal: just yell “ANTI-SEMITISM!” And what a load of crap that is. Much turns on the definition of “anti-Semitism.” It packs the punch of meaning someone who hates Jews, but the advocates of Zionism have expanded the definition into 3-D! Zionist apologist Nathan Sharansky has coined the 3D definition of ant-Semitism: demonization of Israel, double standards, and delegitimization. You don’t have to look closely to note that those points outline all the rebuttals of criticisms of Israel and any question of the legitimacy of the Zionist usurpation of Palestine.

The criticisms posed by those concerned for the fate of Gaza are the same expressed by a large portion of the Israeli Jewish population as well. But the US Israeli lobby, militantly Zionist, has the complicity of the US war-mongering corporate media, thus the IDF Megaphone protestations get traction. These are the same cheap shots leveled against Ward Churchill. By flooding the internet to create the sensation that the indignation was shared, the IDF spammers have been successful in slandering these dissenting academics.

Since we’re seeing this technique being slopped unto our comment forums, let’s examine the statement for which Robinson is being attacked. First we’ll present Robinson’s email. The next post will feature the ensuing letters of complaint, two from UCSB students, and third from the ADL.

Original Email
Here is Professor Robinson’s original email, including his attachment of the Judith Stone article. This accompanied the aforementioned photo essay he forwarded.

Subject: [socforum] parallel images of Nazis and Israelis
From: “William I. Robinson” …
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:00:05
…

If Martin Luther King were alive on this day of January 19, 2009, there is no doubt that he would be condemning the Israeli aggression against Gaza along with U.S. military and political support for Israeli war crimes, or that he would be standing shoulder to shoulder with the Palestinians. I am forwarding some horrific, parallel images of Nazi atrocities against the Jews and Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians. Perhaps the most frightening are not those providing a graphic depiction of the carnage but that which shows Israeli children writing “with love” on a bomb that will tear apart Palestinian children.

Gaza is Israel’s Warsaw – a vast concentration camp that confined and blockaded Palestinians, subjecting them to the slow death of malnutrition, disease and despair, nearly two years before their subjection to the quick death of Israeli bombs. We are witness to a slow-motion process of genocide (Websters: “the systematic killing of, or a program of action intended to destroy, a whole national or ethnic group”), a process whose objective is not so much to physically eliminate each and every Palestinian than to eliminate the Palestinians as a people in any meaningful sense of the notion of people-hood.

The Israeli army is the fifth most potent military machine in the world and one that is backed by a propaganda machine that rivals and may well surpass that of the U.S., a machine that dares to make the ludicrous and obnoxious claim that opposition to the policies and practices of the Israeli state is anti-Semitism. It should be no surprise that a state founded on the negation of a people was one of the principal backers of the apartheid South African state not to mention of the Latin American military dictatorships until those regimes collapsed under mass protest, and today arms, trains, and advises military and paramilitary forces in Colombia, one of the world’s worst human rights violators.

Below is an article written by a U.S. Jew and sent to a Jewish newspaper. The editor of the paper was fired for publishing it.

Quest for Justice

By Judith Stone

I am a Jew. I was a participant in the Rally for the Right of Return to Palestine. It was the right thing to do.

I’ve heard about the European holocaust against the Jews since I was a small child. I’ve visited the memorials in Washington, DC and Jerusalem dedicated to Jewish lives lost and I’ve cried at the recognition to what level of atrocity mankind is capable of sinking.

Where are the Jews of conscience? No righteous malice can be held against the survivors of Hitler’s holocaust. These fragments of humanity were in no position to make choices beyond that of personal survival. We must not forget that being a survivor or a co-religionist of the victims of the European Holocaust does not grant dispensation from abiding by the rules of humanity.

“Never again” as a motto, rings hollow when it means “never again to us alone.” My generation was raised being led to believe that the biblical land was a vast desert inhabited by a handful of impoverished Palestinians living with their camels and eking out a living in the sand. The arrival of the Jews was touted as a tremendous benefit to these desert dwellers. Golda Mier even assured us that there “is no Palestinian problem.”

We know now this picture wasn’t as it was painted. Palestine was a land filled with people who called it home. There were thriving towns and villages, schools and hospitals. There were Jews, Christians and Muslims. In fact, prior to the occupation, Jews represented a mere 7 percent of the population and owned 3 percent of the land.

Taking the blinders off for a moment, I see a second atrocity perpetuated by the very people who should be exquisitely sensitive to the suffering of others. These people knew what it felt like to be ordered out of your home at gun point and forced to march into the night to unknown destinations or face execution on the spot. The people who displaced the Palestinians knew first hand what it means to watch your home in flames, to surrender everything dear to your heart at a moment’s notice. Bulldozers leveled hundreds of villages, along with the remains of the village inhabitants, the old and the young. This was nothing new to the world.

Poland is a vast graveyard of the Jews of Europe. Israel is the final resting place of the massacred Palestinian people. A short distance from the memorial to the Jewish children lost to the holocaust in Europe there is a leveled parking lot. Under this parking lot is what’s left of a once flourishing village and the bodies of men, women and children whose only crime was taking up needed space and not leaving graciously. This particular burial marker reads: “Public Parking”.

I’ve talked with Palestinians. I have yet to meet a Palestinian who hasn’t lost a member of their family to the Israeli Shoah, nor a Palestinian who cannot name a relative or friend languishing under inhumane conditions in an Israeli prison. Time and time again, Israel is cited for human rights violations to no avail. On a recent trip to Israel, I visited the refugee camps inhabited by a people who have waited 52 years in these ‘temporary’ camps to go home. Every Palestinian grandparent can tell you the name of their village, their street, and where the olive trees were planted. Their grandchildren may never have been home, but they can tell you where their great-grandfather lies buried and where the village well stood. The press has fostered the portrait of the Palestinian terrorist. But, the victims who rose up against human indignity in the Warsaw Ghetto are called heroes. Those who lost their lives are called martyrs. The Palestinian who tosses a rock in desperation is a terrorist.

Two years ago I drove through Palestine and watched intricate sprinkler systems watering lush green lawns of Zionist settlers in their new condominium complexes, surrounded by armed guards and barbed wire in the midst of a Palestinian community where there was not adequate water to drink and the surrounding fields were sandy and dry. University professor Moshe Zimmerman reported in the Jerusalem Post (April 30, 1995), “The Jewish children of Hebron are just like Hitler’s youth.”

We Jews are suing for restitution, lost wages, compensation for homes, land, slave labor and back wages in Europe. Am I a traitor of a Jew for supporting the right of return of the Palestinian refugees to their birthplace and compensation for what was taken that cannot be returned?

The Jewish dead cannot be brought back to life and neither can the Palestinian massacred be resurrected. David Ben Gurion said, “Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves…politically, we are the aggressors and they defend themselves…The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country…”

Palestine is a land that has been occupied and emptied of its people. It’s cultural and physical landmarks have been obliterated and replaced by tidy Hebrew signs. The history of a people was the first thing eradicated by the occupiers. The history of the indigenous people has been all but eradicated as though they never existed. And all this has been hailed by the world as a miraculous act of G-d. We must recognize that Israel’s existence is not even a question of legality so much as it is an illegal fait accompli realized through the use of force while supported by the Western powers. The UN missions directed at Israel in attempting to correct its violations of have thus far been futile.

In Hertzl’s “The Jewish State,” the father of Zionism said, “…We must investigate and take possession of the new Jewish country by means of every modern expedient.” I guess I agree with Ehud Barak (3 June 1998) when he said, “If I were a Palestinian, I’d also join a terror group.” I’d go a step further perhaps. Rather than throwing little stones in desperation, I’d hurtle a boulder.

Hopefully, somewhere deep inside, every Jew of conscience knows that this was no war; that this was not G-d’s restitution of the holy land to it’s rightful owners. We know that a human atrocity was and continues to be perpetuated against an innocent people who couldn’t come up with the arms and money to defend themselves against the western powers bent upon their demise as a people.

We cannot continue to say, “But what were we to do?” Zionism is not synonymous with Judaism. I wholly support the rally of the right of return of the Palestinian people.

American Corners: centers for organizing American government subversion

Posted on April 8, 2009 by Tony Logan

American Corners is a US government subversion program that operates multiple centers abroad to disrupt opposition to American foreign policy. See Conspiracy and Propaganda Centers: Illegal US Consulates in Venezuela.

OK, one might think that this commentary about them exaggerates or is paranoid, or is misleading in some way, so let’s examine one of these US government ‘Corners’ of subversion located in Israel. See American Corner Jericho.

Here the effort to subvert is not directed against the Israeli government, but against the Palestinian opposition to that Jewish State dictatorship. The basic political program is- Accept our money and become corrupted by us. This is the policy everywhere they are in operation. It is the policy of dangling carrots in front of donkeys.

Just how does American government subversion via the American Corner centers work? This American Corner Serbia is very illustrativ. Notice that the multi-national country of Yugoslavia has been completely ideologically deconstructed by the US government here. It is not called ‘American Corner Yugoslavia’, though this ‘Corner’ is located in Belgrade, but merely given the deconstructed name ‘American Corner Serbia’. Notice too the cartoonish character of the site as it leads you finally to the nutty gritty of ‘discussion’ with…

U.S. & SERBIAN MILITARY COOPERATION
Colonel von Tersch
U.S. Military Attache
U.S. Embassy Belgrade

There is talk of 7 American Corners located in ‘Serbia’. The subversion level attacks at the level of the knees, to cripple and deconstruct the entire idea of a valid Yugoslavian nationhood.

At the African Regional Services of the American Corner Paris program, we are told quite directly, among the Laura Bush ‘Favorite Books’ style literary display there, that …

‘Please note that no direct order from persons in charge of American Corners will be considered:
To be valid, the order must be approved and sent by the U.S. Embassy Public Affairs Section.’

So cute, and so direct to the point, too.

The American Corners in Okinawa operates to keep the US military base ongoing at that site in Japan national territory. Not that the idea is very popular with the people of Okinawa itself.

How about some of this American Happy Face at an America Corner in the Arab World?

Surfin’ U.S.A.! at MCBS
On February 18, Embassy Muscat’s Defense Attach Col. Mark Avery enthralled a full house of approximately 50 students at the American Corner at Modern College of Business and Science (MCBS) with tales of surfing in his home state of Hawaii. Explaining how surfing was originally permitted only for Hawaiian kings on huge boards cut from old-growth forests, the Colonel described the sport’s modern manifestations. He discussed the surfing craze of the 1960s that spurred even American Midwesterners who lived hundreds of miles from ocean waves to buy surf boards, and he introduced surfing music like the “Beach Boys.” The students especially enjoyed the Colonel’s photographs of his favorite surfing spots in Oman, and appreciated his use of Arabic during his presentation.

More of the same at the Salalah American Corner site of the US State Department.

President Obama can’t even buy a dog

Posted on April 4, 2009 by Eric Verlo

NATO CONFERENCE, STRASBOURG- The subject came up again –how cute– when President Obama took questions from European students in Strasbourg, about whether the White House has gotten its dog. Obama’s answer was still “not yet,” sidestepping more substantive topics. Let’s play into Obama’s sleight of hand for a moment because there is something telling about this dog-less pony show. Everyone thought it was our sky-high expectations which made Obama appear stuck at the gate. We count the days for his administration to do this, and undo that, meanwhile Barack Obama can’t even buy a dog.

It takes only bipartisanship of the domestic variety to establish whether a household can handle a pet, and once the decision is made, who can’t go buy a dog before lunch?

Obama wants a year to close Guantanamo, more to get out of Iraq. He’s on a negative schedule with Afghanistan. Ditto with righting his predecessor’s unconstitutional acts. Despite a landslide election and his party’s majority in both House and Senate, Obama’s insistence on consensus with his Republican adversaries stands in the way of passing anything, as long as the American public accepts that excuse.

What is Obama’s excuse for not having found a dog, except that keeping the issue up in the air means it remains a convenient doe-eyed diversion? Since his announcement in Grant Park, that his daughters could get a dog, Obama has been able to soften his media appearances with the kitschy sideshow.

America the Beautiful is NOT a Hymn.

Posted on March 26, 2009 by Brother Jonah

Bite me.

What got me onto this, of course the very Anglo-American persecution of their fellow Americans, including and especially American Indians, like the Ward Churchill (metaphoric) Lynching…

But after I published the bit about Malaysian students being forced to learn English by their Corporate Masters, a show came on and just ended about a half hour ago, comparing America to the Bible.

Claiming, and rightly in some cases, although as you can well imagine they didn’t use quite the same phrases or even the same concept, that some of the worst criminals in History and especially American History, men like Captain John Smith and Cotten Mather, Kings Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth 1st, King James etc etc… were inspired by the ENGLISH versions of the Bible, and that the Bible is the Sole Inspiration for Imperialism, American Style, that we’re (again with Cotten Mather, gotta love that jerk, he makes it EASY to hold my fellow Christian’s feet to the fire) “the Shining City on the Hill” with our Manifest Destiny to bring the Poor, Benighted Dark Skinned world to Americanism. oh, that’s right, they said “Christianity”.

America is NOT God and is not even a lower case “g” god.

It’s two continents.

Just because certain highly placed United States government officials believe that the term “America” applies exclusively to us, they also by coincidental occurrence believe that Christianity belongs Exclusively to the English as a RACE.

I’ve been in MAINSTREAM churches where this is often preached.

They preach that America is actually the “New Jerusalem” and the English RACE has taken over the position (through the silliest use of Transmogrification Magic that I personally have ever heard of) The New Chosen People of God.

Sarah Palin’s church, for instance, preaches that. Not the entire Assemblies Of God denomination but her church in particular.

Evangelic churches have one doctrine, the Priesthood of the Believer.

Like there’s no Baptist Pope.

In their mindset, criticizing American Foreign Policy or American Corporate Imperialism or American Racism, interchangeable concepts actually,

Is tantamount to Blaspheming against God Himself.

Feh.

I can turn that on it’s very illogical head and say that people who think that resistance to Imperialistic Racist Corporate Tyranny is Anti-American and Anti-Christian are defiling the Name of Christ with their dogmatic insistence on equating their Murderous Evil with His Name.

Taking God’s Name in Vain, in other words, the first instrument of any act of Blasphemy.

It figures prominently in what’s referred to as “God’s Top Ten No-No List”.

But the T.V. show, it was playing “America the Beautiful” in the background.

And preaching that the English language is the Savior of the World.

Funny thing about that is, Jesus didn’t speak any English and the English Language wouldn’t evolve into anything recognizable to anybody who doesn’t have at least a High School grasp of English for well over a thousand years.

The English people of His time had this really nasty practice of capturing Roman soldiers, putting them in wicker cages and lighting them on fire.

Legion X spent time in Anglia and Judea…

A LOT.

Tenth Legion. A Punishment Brigade.

Pontius Pilate himself was made governor of Judea because he pissed off the Emperor.

He was on Punishment Detail, too.

For those readers who’ve never been in the service, those would be the guys who you see picking up cigarette butts and raking the rocks on base.

Worse than that even, Legion X was usually your last chance as a soldier before being sold as a slave or simply crucified.

They’re THE only legitimate connection that can be claimed between Jesus and England in His time.

DC March on the Pentagon was fueled by a promising alternative energy: youth

Posted on March 21, 2009 by Eric Verlo

WASHINGTON DC- Speakers were still entertaining an impatient crowd, and coffin carriers were mobilizing for the March to the Pentagon, when from the west came the Black Bloc. Bicycle cops in royal blue lycra scrambled to shepherd the group’s healthy gallop as they appeared from over the hill to kick the parade to a sudden start. They virtually led the parade over the bridge, until organizers prevailed upon the interlopers to allow the veterans groups to resume the lead, as planned. But it would not be the last initiative from the Anarchists.

(Click on image for better quality, wider crop)

1. THE MARCH

Black Bloc gallops into lead position, abruptly starting parade.

International Socialist Organization pass Lincoln Memorial

Peace groups from Vermont to Georgia

Youth and Student A.N.S.W.E.R.

West from the Washington Monument

Hezbollah crosses Arlington Memorial Bridge

Campus Antiwar Network

Across the Potomac

To the Pentagon

Code Pink paraded the parade

To military industrial complex in Crystal City

2. INTERRUPTION

At a narrowing of the route at the Boeing building, several students blocked the march with a plastic barrier.

Raising questions about the gentrified nature and self-policing demeanor of the event organizers and participants.

The Black Bloc honored the picket line, thus the Campus Antiwar Network and following groups were brought to a halt.

When the Black Bloc decided to move on to next actions, the march resumed.

2b. INTERRUPTION

At the first hint of misbehavior, stocky 40-something “videographers” in undercover protest garb were pointing their cameras into the noses of the black-clad participants.

3. MESSAGE VARIETY

Why explain? You won’t listen.

4. COUNTER PROTEST

On the Pentagon lawn, near signs pointing to the “Pentagon Memorial,” white folk waited with the usual anti-antiwar slogans.

Megaphone versus megaphone.

That simple.

5. CONFRONTATION

Police in riot gear await march destination at KBR.

6. COLORADANS FOR PEACE

(Still more photos to follow…)

Boulder Daily Camera editorial and CU campus Colorado Daily are unanimous

Posted on March 8, 2009 by Eric Verlo

BOULDER- All the Denver TV news vans were standing by as Ward Churchill retook the CU campus podium. Local coverage of the Glenn Miller Ballroom event was front page and immediate, in both the students’ Colorado Daily and the Boulder Daily Camera. The surprise wasn’t just that the articles were unflattering, but that they were the exact same.

I’m sure it’s not news to the CU students that their free campus paper is none other than the reformatted local daily. You might wonder which is the more student-inclined. The news section of the student paper is titled CU AND THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC, as if to differentiate the student body from their “Leftist” township. The same article in the local daily Bill Ayers backs Ward Churchill, was retitled NOTORIOUS DISSENTER BACKS UP EMBATTLED PROF for the kids.

Keep in mind, this is not the work of the students.

While it might look perfectly transparent to publish a student-focused edition, full of campus-life related ads, what would be the purpose of two distinct internet facades for the same content? If not to reinforce the notion that the editorial content was distinct.

Maybe the TWIN DAILIES reporters had time enough only to write their articles before hearing the speeches, because their stories reflected none of the convivial humanism presented by all the guests. The other article published the next morning was: Crowd faces tight security for Ayers, Churchill talk at CU. A follow-up article the next day was more in depth, but not about the subject of Thursday’s event, neo-McCarthyism. The Saturday article redraws the battle lines of the Churchill-CU dispute. If you’d like to judge for yourself, both do have a video of the Thursday Forbidden Education rally.

Pretense of separate publications is dropped when you click Full local coverage of Ward Churchill and his trial against CU, where you get all the accruing coverage courtesy of the BOULDER DAILY CAMERA.

The only real alternative news in Boulder comes through the Boulder Weekly. But neither is it student run.

By its actions against Ward Churchill, and certainly by its grip on student communication, the CU administration appears bent on rotting Boulder’s promise of higher education from its academic core.

College Republicans not brightest bulbs

Posted on March 7, 2009 by Eric Verlo

BOULDER- A favorite photo from Thursday night’s event. This is the president of the CU College Republicans, who got up to object to student funds being spent on terrorists and frauds. Even after Ayers and Churchill spoke about how neither education nor students should be treated like commodities, sweaty dope Andrew Crown asked why a university could not do like any well-run corporation, and fire whomever it wished.

The crowd booed, but the panel of guests calmly encouraged us to let everyone have their say. It’s a reserve and graciousness of which I am in short supply. These guys shout down activists, attack progressives, remember the RNC Kicker, and the Protest Warriors? They have the ear of the mainstream corporate press. Why would we need to tolerate a single of their blimp-necked peeps at a discussion for intelligent people?

If you think I am assessing someone’s intelligence level based on whether he agrees with me, I am. On academic matters, it most certainly is appropriate. In classes, assessments of the retention and comprehension of man’s accumulated understanding of the subjects are called tests.

Does the University of Colorado have no admissions standards?

Mr. Crown’s questions was answered well beyond his ability to understand, and he returned to his seat shaking his head like the whole lot of us were incorrigible. I hope so.

Protests in Israel against country’s military for targeting Gaza civilians

Posted on March 6, 2009 by Tony Logan

From Haaretz… Protests as IDF colonel who ruled for attacks on Gaza civilians starts as TAU lecturer …And how many times have we at Not My Tribe had to listen to posters from the Israeli military propaganda Spam Gun here deny that their beloved Israeli military has ever deliberately targeted civilians in Gaza? I can’t even begin to count the number myself since it has happened so often now.

‘Sharvit-Baruch was appointed by the Law Faculty to teach a class this semester. Both professors and students protested the move, after Haaretz reported that under Sharvit-Baruch’s command, IDF legal experts legitimized strikes involving Gaza civilians, including the bombardment of the Gaza police course closing ceremony. Right-wing students waving Israeli flags were joined outside of the classroom by Likud MKs Danny Danon and Tzipi Hotovely, where they were met by left-wing protestors.’

Isn’t this new law professor a terrorist, in fact? A terrorist financed partially by the United States government since our government gives tens of billions of dollars in aid to Israel to buy military equipment used to attack civilians?

Why Americans must defend Ward Churchill

Posted on March 5, 2009 by NMT

Here’s the letter Bill Ayers published to Defend Ward Churchill.

Defend Ward Churchill

Dear Colleagues,

In Brecht’s play Galileo the great astronomer sets forth into a world dominated by a mighty church and an authoritarian power: “The cities are narrow and so are the brains,” he declares recklessly.

“Superstition and plague. But now the word is: since it is so, it does not remain so. For everything moves my friend.”

Intoxicated with his own radical discoveries, Galileo feels the earth shifting and finds himself propelled surprisingly toward revolution.

”It was always said that the stars were fastened to a crystal vault so they could not fall. . . Now we have taken heart and let them float in the air, without support… they are embarked on a great voyage—like us who are also without support and embarked on a great voyage.”

Here Galileo raises the stakes and risks taking on the establishment in the realm of its own authority, and it strikes back fiercely. Forced to renounce his life’s work under the exquisite pressure of the Inquisition he denounces what he knows to be true, and is welcomed back into the church and the ranks of the faithful, but exiled from humanity—by his own word. A former student confronts him in the street:

“Many on all sides followed you with their ears and their eyes believing that you stood, not only for a particular view of the movement of the stars, but even more for the liberty of teaching— in all fields. Not then for any particular thoughts, but for the right to think at all. Which is in dispute.”

The right to think at all, which is in dispute—-this is what the Ward Churchill affair finally comes to: The right to a mind of one’s own, the right to pursue an argument into uncharted spaces, the right to challenge the church and its orthodoxy in the public square. The right to think at all.

It’s no surprise that this outrage against Professor Churchill occurs at this particular moment— a time of empire resurrected and unapologetic, militarism proudly expanding and triumphant, war without justice and without end, white supremacy retrenched, basic rights and protections shredded, growing disparities between the haves and the have-nots, fear and superstition and the mobilization of scapegoating social formations based on bigotry and violence or the threats of violence, and on and on. There’s more of course, and this isn’t the only story, but this is a recognizable part of where we’re living, and a familiar place to anyone with even a casual understanding of history. Here the competing impulses and ideals that have always animated our country’s story are on full display: rights and liberty and the pursuit of human freedom on one side, domination and war and repression on the other. The trauma of contradictions that is America.

Ward Churchill is under a sustained, orchestrated, and determined attack because of his political beliefs and statements and activities, and nothing more. No one doubts his productivity or his accomplishments. But the attack on Churchill is neither isolated nor innocent— the high school history teacher on the west side of Chicago gets the message, and so does the English literature teacher in Detroit and the math teacher in an Oakland middle school: be careful what you say; stay close to the official story; stick to the authorized text. If someone of Ward Churchill’s stature and standing for so many years at the University of Colorado can suffer this kind of campaign, what chance do I have?

Every committee, every investigation, every report plays out under a shadow of the star chamber; everyone must choose who to be and how to act in response. For this reason I support Ward Churchill unequivocally, unapologetically, whole-heartedly. I urge my colleagues and my students and everyone who values education as a grand enterprise geared toward enlightenment and liberation to speak out forcefully and fearlessly now on behalf of the liberty of teaching and learning, on behalf of the right to think at all.

Sincerely,
William Ayers
Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar
University of Illinois at Chicago
billayers.org

Israel is pot calling the kettle non-white

Posted on March 4, 2009 by Eric Verlo

World Jewish leaders urge boycott of Durban conference -because the International Conference on Racism is planning to condemn Israeli racism. So the headlines scream: World Jewish Congress president lauds US’ decision to withdraw from anti-racism conference which he says ignores “plight of victims of true racism.” Head of European Jewish Congress calls on EU to boycott event as well. Then a curious headline invites conference attendees instead to join a pilgrimage to Auschwitz.

First of all, we’re accustomed to hearing that only Jews have been the victims of genocide. Did you know they are racism’s only true victims too?!

The March of the Living is a Zionist organization dedicated to shepherding young “birthright” Jews to Nazi concentration camp memorial sites to indoctrinate them afresh with the horrors of the Holocaust. The visitors drape themselves with Israeli flags as they tour the iconographic gates and museums. Photographs are taken and reprinted in sepia tone, as if to depict the “Living” visitors in the same circumstances as less fortunate predecessors.

After which, the young charges travel to Israel, to participate in the anniversary of Israel’s creation.

Here is yesterday’s article on the MARCH OF THE LIVING 2009 invitation. I reprint it in its entirety because it is comically oblivious to irony. Here the “living” want to memorialize the dead, at the expense of the living. It’s a repudiation of hatred, by pretending it is vanquished.

Each classic Zionist fallacy is there: 1) to accuse Jews of racism is racism, 2) mankind has suffered no greater evil than the Holocaust, and 3) Auschwitz ergo Israel.

Auschwitz march to protest Durban II

This year’s March of the Living to be held while anti-racism conference convenes in Geneva. Organizers call on all government’s to follow US’ example, withdraw from gathering and attend march instead
Ynetnews

The International March of the Living has announced that precisely while many countries will be convening in Geneva for the Durban II gatherings, 10,000 youths—Jewish and non-Jewish—will be at the gates of Auschwitz on Tuesday, April 21, to give the next generation a strong platform to “Say No to Hatred Today.”

The event will commemorate several important milestone dates: International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the 70th anniversary of the beginning of World War II and the 60th anniversary of the ratification of the International Human Rights Declaration.

Organizers of the March of the Living saluted the decision of the United States Government to abstain from the planned proceedings in Geneva. “This is a compelling moral position by the US leadership, displaying that hatred and intolerance have no place in international discourse.” said Dr. Shmuel Rosenman, Chairman of the International March of the Living.

“We call upon all governments with conscience to follow suit and demonstrate the ultimate repudiation of genocide through participation in the March of the Living 2009 at Auschwitz.”

Global call for action
As a further means to counter the messages that are expected to emerge from the Geneva event, tens of contemporary victims of genocide, offering a united voice against hatred and persecution, have been invited to lead the march, which this year is under the sponsorship of Guma and Jamie Aguiar.

Canadian MP and former Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, internationally recognized human rights advocate, today announced his decision to come to Auschwitz from the conferences he will be attending then in Geneva—together with other well-known human rights activists—to join the youthful participants at March of the Living.

“Auschwitz is the most powerful symbol with which to memorialize evil found in Jewish history – in fact in the history of mankind,” said Cotler who also serves as the honorary co-chair of the International March of the Living Advisory Board. “It is a compelling reminder of the dangers of state-sanctioned incitement to hatred and genocide, and the indifference and inaction left in its wake. This global effort is a call to remembrance and action so that never again will we be indifferent in the face of mass atrocity and injustice.”

In addition to Cotler honorary co-chairs include: Dan Kurtzer, Lord Greville Janner, Jennifer Laszlo-Mizrahi, Tal Brody and Daniel Ayalon .

Since 1988, the March of the Living has brought over 140,000 students to Poland to participate in educational missions aimed at better understanding the horrors of the Holocaust.

The March of the Living, with an expected attendance of over 10,000 young people from around the world, will include a three kilometer march from Auschwitz to the death camp at Birkenau where over 1.5 million Jews perished. Most of the participants will then visit Israel during the week of that nation’s Memorial Day and Independence Day.

Coloradans For Peace join ANSWER in DC

Posted on March 4, 2009 by Eric Verlo

UPDATE MARCH 21 MARCH ON PENTAGON: Students & Communities Mobilize to March on the Pentagon and the Corporate War Profiteers

Students and community organizations from across the country are mobilizing to be in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, March 21 to make their voices heard in the March on the Pentagon and the Corporate War Profiteers.

The PentagonMarch.org website now lists 64 departure locations in 20 states, many of them leaving from college campuses, including: University of Iowa, Georgia State University, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Central Connecticut State University-New Britain, University of Connecticut-Storrs, Berkshire Community College, and more!

Visit the PentagonMarch Transportation Page to find the departure location nearest you, or to sign-up to list your campus’s or city’s travel plans!

Read more about the exciting plans for March 21st:

The March on the Pentagon on Saturday, March 21 is shaping up to be a dramatic and highly significant demonstration. Many thousands of people are coming to Washington, D.C. to make their voices heard.

March 21 will culminate in a dramatic direct action where hundreds of coffins—representing the multinational victims of militarism, Empire and corporate greed—will be carried and delivered to the headquarters of the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death.

From the Pentagon, we will march to the nearby giant corporate offices of Boeing Company, Lockheed Martin Corporation, General Dynamics and KBR (the former subsidiary of Halliburton).

The march will start close to the State Department in Washington, D.C. (assemble at 12 noon at 23rd St. and Constitution Ave. NW).

Please make an urgently needed donation today by clicking this link to donate online through our secure server, where you can also find information on how to donate by check.

All out for March 21! Jobs Not War! Schools Not War! Occupation is a Crime!

Mark 6TH YEAR of Iraq Occupation with profiteers Boeing, Lockheed, GD and KBR

Posted on February 27, 2009 by NMT

A.N.S.W.E.R.’s March 21 MARCH ON THE PENTAGON to mark the sixth year of the War in Iraq will be directed not only at the US Department of Defense, but at the war profiteers for whom 2007 was a record year, among them Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and KBR. In Colorado Springs the merchants of death can be visited on one corner.

On March 21, 2009,
March on the Pentagon and the Corporate War Profiteers

The March on the Pentagon on Saturday, March 21 is shaping up to be a dramatic and highly significant demonstration. Many thousands of people are coming to Washington, D.C. to make their voices heard.

March 21 will culminate in a dramatic direct action where hundreds of coffins—representing the multinational victims of militarism, Empire and corporate greed—will be carried and delivered to the headquarters of the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death.

From the Pentagon, we will march to the nearby giant corporate offices of Boeing Company, Lockheed Martin Corporation, General Dynamics and KBR (the former subsidiary of Halliburton).

The march will start close to the State Department in Washington, D.C. (assemble at 12 noon at 23rd St. and Constitution Ave. NW).

Please make an urgently needed donation today by clicking this link to donate online through our secure server, where you can also find information on how to donate by check.

These are the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death. They are the vultures who profit off the death and suffering of the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, and off of the thousands of U.S. soldiers and marines who have died or been wounded in these wars of aggression. They are anti-worker and anti-union.

The march will be led by a large contingent of veterans and family members of veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and from earlier conflicts.

Militarism and Corporate Capitalism
We will march on their slick-and-shiny corporate offices that are located less than a mile from the Pentagon. Their location in the very shadow of the Pentagon speaks volumes about the intimate connection between militarism and corporate capitalism.

When the Pentagon brass retire, they rotate out of their Pentagon offices and directly into the Corporate boardrooms and office suites of the Death Merchants. It is a very cozy and very profitable relationship for the elites—in and out of uniform. They make the profits, others do the bleeding.

Last year was a great year for the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death. Profits soared even as the rest of the economy neared collapse. The CEOs of the four corporations that we will be visiting on March 21 received more than $319 million in compensation in 2007 alone (and remember, that’s just for four individuals). “We the People” paid the bill for the high tech weapons that were used against occupied people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. The Corporate Executives laughed all the way to the bank while grieving parents and children buried their loved ones from Baghdad to Kabul to Gaza to Detroit.

A quick examination shows that the CEOs of the Military-Industrial Complex contributed to both the Democratic and Republican Party candidates in almost equal amounts. They favor a system that ensures that politicians will come and go every four years but the military machine—that fusion of industry, banks and the Pentagon brass—will remain as is.

We Need Jobs & Schools – Not War!
The same banks that are being bailed out to the tune of trillions of dollars even while they foreclose families who can’t pay their mortgage debts are double-dipping from the national treasury by making huge profits in their investments in Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and KBR.

War is just good business for these corporate executives. Every F-16 bomber, attack helicopter, cruise missile and Drone bomber is a source of profit. If the wars stopped they would be out of business.

The people of this country are fed up with the status quo. They want decent-paying jobs, and affordable health care and housing for all. Students want to study rather than be driven out by soaring tuition rates. People want a complete—not partial—withdrawal of ALL troops from Iraq. They want the war in Afghanistan to end rather than escalate. They are increasingly opposed to sending $2.6 billion each year to Israel.

People are coming to Washington, D.C. on March 21 from college campuses, high schools, and cities and towns throughout the United States.

It is time for real change. Unless the movement for change stays in the streets, the powerful corporate and banking interests will certainly dominate the politics of this country. That is unacceptable. That is a path toward endless war and occupation abroad, and a massive transfer of wealth to the already rich at home.

All out for March 21! Jobs Not War! Schools Not War! Occupation is a Crime!

From pentagonmarch.org:

Meet the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death

W. James McNerney Jr.
CEO of Boeing.

2007 Total Compensation: $19 million. Value of Boeing Stock Owned: $25.7 million

Facts about Boeing:
Boeing currently produces numerous jets and bombers, including the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber and the F/A-22 Raptor, as well as multiple surface-to-air missiles and various bombs. Boeing also produces the bolt-on JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) that turns gravity bombs into “smart” munitions.

Boeing supplies Israel with various weapon systems, including the F-15 Eagle fighter jet and A-64 Apache attack helicopter, as well as numerous types of bombs and missiles. It was these weapons that helped to kill 1,017 Palestinians killed in the Israeli invasion of Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009.

In 2008, Boeing made $2,225,947 in campaign contributions. 58 percent of these contributions were to Democrats, and 42 percent were to Republicans. In 2008, they spent $16,610,000 on lobbying.

Despite massive profits, Boeing opposed raises for plant employees, and attempted to outsource union jobs so that the company could be “more flexible.”

Robert J. Stevens
CEO of Lockheed Martin

2007 Total Compensation: $37 million. Value of Lockheed Martin Stock Owned: $33.8 million

Facts about Lockheed Martin:
Lockheed Martin currently produces the F-117 Stealth Fighter that was used in the brutal “Shock and Awe” bombings of Iraq, as well as the F/A-22 Raptor fighter jet. They also produces various missile systems, including the Hellfire and Javelin, and various nuclear weapon designs. Lockheed supplies fighter jets and other weapon systems to Israel.

Lockheed’s 2008 first-quarter revenue was $9.98 billion–an increase of $700 million from the year prior. By 2015, the F-35 program alone could represent more than $16 billion in annual revenue for the company.

Lockheed’s former vice-president, Bruce Jackson, headed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.

In 2005, Lockheed received $65 million every single day of the year from the U.S. government. That year, Lockheed garnered $228 in federal tax money from every household in the United States.

In 2008, Lockheed made $2.6 million in political contributions—49 percent to the Democrats and 51 percent to the Republicans.

In 2004, Lockheed spent nearly $10 million on more than 100 lobbyists. From 2001-2005, only Philip Morris and GE spent more money lobbying Congress. By 2008, that number was $15.8 million.

Nicholas D. Chabraja
CEO of General Dynamics

2007 Total Compensation: $60 million. Value of GD Stock Owned: $154.2 million

Facts about General Dynamics:
General Dynamics currently produces dozens of weapon systems, which include the Stryker Armored Combat Vehicle and the M-1 Abrams Main Battle Tank series, as well as other highly devastating artillery systems and the Trident Nuclear Submarine.

General Dynamics has supplied Israel with various weapon systems, including the F-16 Falcon fighter jet.

In 2008, General Dynamics made $1,682,595 in campaign contributions—58 percent to the Democrats and 42 percent to the Republicans.

Also in 2008, General Dynamics spent $8,562,439 lobbying for government contracts.

Fueled by sales of business jets and military-combat equipment, General Dynamics reported a 32 percent jump in first-quarter profits for 2008, to $573 million. The backlog of work not completed far outpaced revenues, growing by 14 percent to nearly $50 billion.

Analysts think General Dynamics and Mr. Chabraja will do even better next year, noting the “upside potential” of the combat-systems group, which is benefiting from the U.S. Army’s restocking of equipment lost, damaged or worn by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, in addition to a $12 billion backlog of orders for corporate jets.

William P. Utt
CEO of Kellogg Brown & Root.

2007 Total Compensation: $3.29 million. Value of KBR Stock Owned: $6.5 million

Facts about KBR:
There are roughly 14,000 KBR employees inside of Iraq that provide logistical support to the U.S. military. KBR has made billions off of “reconstruction” contracts within Iraq.

KBR is the largest non-union construction company in the United States. It has won many contracts with the U.S. government, including $100 million to build a U.S. embassy in Afghanistan, as well as $216 million for the construction of several base camps and training foreign troops from the Republic of Georgia.

Despite at least a dozen former employees alleging they had been raped by co-workers in Iraq and other employees saying co-workers regularly stole gold, artwork, and weapons, KBR remains in the Pentagon’s good graces. In mid-April, it received a 10-year, $150 billion contract to support the military overseas.

CEO William Utt called 2008 an “outstanding year,” saying KBR posted record profitability.

Despite many scandals and controversies, KBR reported that its first quarter net profits for 2008 more than tripled, from $28 million the previous year to $98 million.

ANSWER Coalition Responds to President Obama’s Iraq Speech of Friday, February 27

With his speech today, President Obama has essentially agreed to continue the criminal occupation of Iraq indefinitely. He announced that there will be an occupation force of 50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq for at least three more years. President Obama used carefully chosen words to avoid a firm commitment to remove the 50,000 occupation troops, even after 2011.

The war in Iraq was illegal. It was aggression. It was based on lies and false rationales. President Obama’s speech today made Bush’s invasion sound like a liberating act and congratulated the troops for “getting the job done.” More than a million Iraqis died and a cruel civil war was set into motion because of the foreign invasion. President Obama did not once criticize the invasion itself.

He has also requested an increase in war spending for Iraq and Afghanistan, and plans to double the number of U.S. troops sent to fight in Afghanistan.

President Obama has asked Congress to provide more than $200 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars over the next two years, in addition to increasing the Pentagon budget by four percent.

Based on President Obama’s new budget, the Pentagon would rank as the world’s 17th largest economy—if it were a country. This new budget increases war spending. Total spending in 2010 would roughly equate to an average of $21,000 a second.

This is not the end of the occupation of Iraq, but rather the continuation of the occupation.

There is only one reason that tens of thousands of troops will remain in Iraq: It is because this is a colonial-type occupation of a strategically important and oil-rich country located in the Middle East where two-thirds of the world’s oil reserve can be found.

Obama’s speech was a major disappointment for anyone who was hoping that Obama would renounce the illegal occupation of Iraq. Today, the U.S. government spends $480 million per day to fund the occupation of Iraq. Even if 100,000 troops are drawn out by August 2010, that means the indefinite occupation of Iraq will cost more than $100 million each day. The continued occupation of Iraq for two years or three years or more makes a complete mockery out of the idea that the Iraqi people control their own destiny. It is a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty and independence.

It is no wonder that John McCain came out to support President Obama’s announced plan on Iraq. McCain was an supporter of former President Bush’s and Vice President Cheney’s war and occupation in Iraq.

Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld—the architects of regime change in Iraq—never had the goal of indefinitely keeping 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. They wanted to subdue the Iraqi people and exercise control with a smaller force. The Iraqi armed resistance prolonged the stationing of 150,000 U.S. troops.

Bush’s goal was domination over Iraq and its oil supplies, and domination over the region. This continues to be the goal of the U.S. political and economic establishment, including that of the new administration.

President Obama decided not to challenge the fundamental strategic orientation. That explains why he kept the Bush team—Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and Generals Petraeus and Odierno—on the job to oversee and manage the Iraq occupation. They will also manage the widening U.S. war in Afghanistan and the aerial assaults on Pakistan. There have been over 30 U.S. bombing attacks in Pakistan in the last two months.

We are marching on Saturday, March 21 because the people of this country are fed up with the status quo. They want decent-paying jobs, and affordable health care and housing for all. Students want to study rather than be driven out by soaring tuition rates. The majority of people want a complete—not partial—withdrawal of ALL troops from Iraq. They want the war in Afghanistan to end rather than escalate. They are increasingly opposed to sending $2.6 billion each year to Israel and want an end to the colonial occupation of Palestine.

From Iraq to Afghanistan to Palestine, Occupation is a Crime!

Posted on February 23, 2009 by Eric Verlo

A.N.S.W.E.R. has 7 Reasons to March on DC. We can borrow them!
– The war in Afghanistan is expanding and widening.
– 350,000 U.S. troops and US-paid contractors still occupy Iraq.
– Israel’s Siege of Gaza remains in place, with backing of Washington.
– Obama’s Justice Department is continuing the policy of renditions.
– Air strikes on Pakistan are killing an increasingly number of civilians.
– The real Pentagon war budget is over $1.3 trillion annually.
– More than 20 million people are now unemployed and under-employed.

7 Reasons You Should March on the Pentagon on March 21, 2009

1
The war in Afghanistan is expanding and widening. President Obama announced last week that another 17,000 troops are on their way to Afghanistan. Only 18 percent of Afghanis support this escalation and only 34 percent of the people of the United States approve of the added troops despite the president’s popularity, according to the Washington Post/ABC poll announced on February 17, 2009. This is a colonial war. The president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, was not involved in the decision to add more occupying troops into his country. Rather, he was “informed of the deployments in a telephone call with Obama” on February 17, according to the Washington Post (February 18, 2009).

2
About 350,000 U.S. troops and U.S.-paid private contractors (mercenaries) still occupy Iraq. The Iraqi people want the occupation to end. Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is insisting that only two of the 14 combat brigades in Iraq exit in 2009. The war and occupation of Iraq costs $430 million each day. If the U.S. government were to end the military occupation, any and all future Iraqi governments would return to a position of political independence from the economic and political dictates of the United States. Iraq’s anti-colonial legacy has created a political reality that prohibits the country from becoming like Kuwait or Saudi Arabia–an out-and-out dependency on U.S. imperialism. That is the real reason that the U.S. government fears a complete disengagement from Iraq and an end to its military occupation.

3
Israel’s Siege of Gaza remains in place, with the full backing of Washington. The U.S. government has continued to fund Israel’s war and blockade against the people of Gaza. The Pentagon provided the funding, and technical and logistical support for the establishment of the Israeli war machine, including its massive cluster and white phosphorous bomb arsenal, and the country’s large cache of nuclear bombs.

4
The new Justice Department has announced that it will continue the policy of renditions, meaning the CIA and Pentagon will capture and kidnap individuals anywhere in the world and transfer them to other countries. “The Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.” (LA Times, Feb. 1, 2009)

5
The new administration has stepped up the air strikes that are killing an increasingly large number of Pakistani civilians. Unmanned drone bombing attacks violate Pakistani sovereignty and are creating an ocean of resentment and anger inside of Pakistan. The U.S. government has no right to carry out these drone bombing strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. The people of the United States would not accept the legitimacy of other governments ordering air attacks in the United States. We must openly and loudly reject such tactics by the government that speaks in our name and spends our tax dollars for such aggression.

6
The real Pentagon war budget is over $1.3 trillion annually. This is greater than the combined total of most of the other countries in the world, including all the NATO countries, and Russia and China. Some label this “waste spending” because it spends precious resources to build exotic and high cost weapons, a new generation of nuclear weapons, and space-based war fighting capabilities, while filling the coffers of the big investors (i.e., the biggest banks) in the war corporations. Pentagon contracting is often based on guaranteed “cost-plus” contracts that reward price gouging since corporate profit is based on a fixed percentage above their expenses. Another label for this process is “extreme corruption” and theft from the public treasury.

7
More than 20 million people are now unemployed and under-employed. Nine million families are either in foreclosure or are at risk of foreclosure this year, according to the statistics just released by the government. Forty-seven million people are without health care. College tuition hikes are soaring and millions of students are at risk of being forced out of school. The people want change. They don’t want a simple tweaking of Bush’s criminal foreign policies. They want to put people’s needs before corporate greed. They want an end to wars of aggression that are wreaking havoc, death and destruction abroad, and diverting urgently needed resources in the service of semi-colonialism and Empire.

I am the soldier who slept in your home.

Posted on February 17, 2009 by Eric Verlo

When Voices For Creative Nonviolence activist Kathy Kelly visited Colorado Springs, she spoke of survivors of a family in Gaza who returned to their home to find a message left etched on their wall by an IDF soldier, it read “Sorry.” Kelly saw in it the glimmer of hope that Israeli soldiers were beginning to show some humanity. Hasbara efforts have taken this gesture a reservist’s letter step further. You can read it below uncut. Does it look to you like these propagandists need some counseling advice? Probably the rapist is the last person who should be asking his victim to be calm, especially by recounting the details of the violation, and especially if the rapist is unrepentant and laying out the justification for his act. Parental Advisory: Graphic Insensitivity.

Holy Fucking Shit you will not believe it! It’s one thing for us to tolerate pedantic lectures online, quite another if the bastard had quartered in our home in the meantime.

From AISH, via Israel Activism and the Hasbara fellowships. Seriously, this is a letter the Israeli press is touting to try to reach Gazans with the message that they must blame Hamas.

DEAR CITIZEN OF GAZA: I am the soldier who slept in your home.

Hello,

While the world watches the ruins in Gaza, you return to your home which remains standing. However, I am sure that it is clear to you that someone was in your home while you were away.

I am that someone.

I spent long hours imagining how you would react when you walked into your home. How you would feel when you understood that IDF soldiers had slept on your mattresses and used your blankets to keep warm.

I knew that it would make you angry and sad and that you would feel this violation of the most intimate areas of your life by those defined as your enemies, with stinging humiliation. I am convinced that you hate me with unbridled hatred, and you do not have even the tiniest desire to hear what I have to say. At the same time, it is important for me to say the following in the hope that there is even the minutest chance that you will hear me.

I spent many days in your home. You and your family’s presence was felt in every corner. I saw your family portraits on the wall, and I thought of my family. I saw your wife’s perfume bottles on the bureau, and I thought of my wife. I saw your children’s toys and their English language schoolbooks. I saw your personal computer and how you set up the modem and wireless phone next to the screen, just as I do.

I wanted you to know that despite the immense disorder you found in your house that was created during a search for explosives and tunnels (which were indeed found in other homes), we did our best to treat your possessions with respect. When I moved the computer table, I disconnected the cables and lay them down neatly on the floor, as I would do with my own computer. I even covered the computer from dust with a piece of cloth. I tried to put back the clothes that fell when we moved the closet although not the same as you would have done, but at least in such a way that nothing would get lost.

I know that the devastation, the bullet holes in your walls and the destruction of those homes near you place my descriptions in a ridiculous light. Still, I need you to understand me, us, and hope that you will channel your anger and criticism to the right places.

I decided to write you this letter specifically because I stayed in your home.

I can surmise that you are intelligent and educated and there are those in your household that are university students. Your children learn English, and you are connected to the Internet. You are not ignorant; you know what is going on around you.

Therefore, I am sure you know that Qassam rockets were launched from your neighborhood into Israeli towns and cities.

How could you see these weekly launches and not think that one day we would say “enough”?! Did you ever consider that it is perhaps wrong to launch rockets at innocent civilians trying to lead a normal life, much like you? How long did you think we would sit back without reacting?

I can hear you saying “it’s not me, it’s Hamas”. My intuition tells me you are not their most avid supporter. If you look closely at the sad reality in which your people live, and you do not try to deceive yourself or make excuses about “occupation”, you must certainly reach the conclusion that the Hamas is your real enemy.

The reality is so simple, even a seven year old can understand: Israel withdrew from the Gaza strip, removing military bases and its citizens from Gush Katif. Nonetheless, we continued to provide you with electricity, water, and goods (and this I know very well as during my reserve duty I guarded the border crossings more than once, and witnessed hundreds of trucks full of goods entering a blockade-free Gaza every day).

Despite all this, for reasons that cannot be understood and with a lack of any rational logic, Hamas launched missiles on Israeli towns. For three years we clenched our teeth and restrained ourselves. In the end, we could not take it anymore and entered the Gaza strip, into your neighborhood, in order to remove those who want to kill us. A reality that is painful but very easy to explain.

You must lead a civil uprising against Hamas.

As soon as you agree with me that Hamas is your enemy and because of them, your people are miserable, you will also understand that the change must come from within. I am acutely aware of the fact that what I say is easier to write than to do, but I do not see any other way. You, who are connected to the world and concerned about your children’s education, must lead, together with your friends, a civil uprising against Hamas.

I swear to you, that if the citizens of Gaza were busy paving roads, building schools, opening factories and cultural institutions instead of dwelling in self pity, arms smuggling and nurturing a hatred to your Israeli neighbors, your homes would not be in ruins right now. If your leaders were not corrupt and motivated by hatred, your home would not have been harmed. If someone would have stood up and shouted that there is no point in launching missiles on innocent civilians, I would not have to stand in your kitchen as a soldier.

You don’t have money, you tell me? You have more than you can imagine.

Even before Hamas took control of Gaza, during the time of Yasser Arafat, millions if not billions of dollars donated by the world community to the Palestinians was used for purchasing arms or taken directly to your leaders bank accounts. Gulf States, the emirates – your brothers, your flesh and blood, are some of the richest nations in the world. If there was even a small feeling of solidarity between Arab nations, if these nations had but the smallest interest in reconstructing the Palestinian people – your situation would be very different.

You must be familiar with Singapore. The land mass there is not much larger than the Gaza strip and it is considered to be the second most populated country in the world. Yet, Singapore is a successful, prospering, and well managed country. Why not the same for you?

My friend, I would like to call you by name, but I will not do so publicly. I want you to know that I am 100% at peace with what my country did, what my army did, and what I did. However, I feel your pain. I am sorry for the destruction you are finding in your neighborhood at this moment. On a personal level, I did what I could to minimize the damage to your home as much as possible.

In my opinion, we have a lot more in common than you might imagine. I am a civilian, not a soldier, and in my private life I have nothing to do with the military. However, I have an obligation to leave my home, put on a uniform, and protect my family every time we are attacked. I have no desire to be in your home wearing a uniform again and I would be more than happy to sit with you as a guest on your beautiful balcony, drinking sweet tea seasoned with the sage growing in your garden.

The only person who could make that dream a reality is you. Take responsibility for yourself, your family, your people, and start to take control of your destiny. How? I do not know. Maybe there is something to be learned from the Jewish people who rose up from the most destructive human tragedy of the 20th century, and instead of sinking into self-pity, built a flourishing and prospering country. It is possible, and it is in your hands.

I am ready to be there to provide a shoulder of support and help to you.

But only you can move the wheels of history.

Regards,
Yishai, (Reserve Soldier)

I’m actually unconvinced this was a real soldier. Too many of the GIYUS Megaphone talking points are woven into the letter. Singapore even!

It would surely be anti-Semitic to conclude easily that the Israeli propagandists are this dumb. The true motive of this letter cannot be to win Palestinian hearts, but to spread the effect of the state terror. The IDF couldn’t defile every Gaza home before being forced to cut their incursion short. With such letters the Israeli soldiers can make felt that violation by all Gazans.

Was the IDF incursion/invasion about stopping the rockets or about terrorizing the Gazans until they are driven from the land?

Activism heroics and roadkill

Posted on February 16, 2009 by Eric Verlo

This is by no means a complete list of contemporary populist heros, but I’d like to start with comedian Stephen Colbert, who roasted President Bush at a Washington Correspondents Association Dinner, like a court jester gone rabid. With celebrated White House correspondent Helen Thomas’s help, Colbert belittled the decider-in-chief to his face right in front of his friends.

Don’t Taser Me Bro
There was University of Florida student Andrew Meyer, who held his ground asking critical questions of Senator John Kerry. Meyer was tackled and tasered for his impertinence, while Kerry kept mumbling, to divert attention from “Don’t taser me Bro.”

Bidder 70
Then Utah environmentalist Tim DeChristopher disrupted a government land auction, driving up prices and buying several leases raising paddle number 70, until federal agents took him away. Extraction industry spokesperson Kathleen Sgamma may have miscalculated the degree of DeChristopher’s popular support. She earned no one’s sympathy when she complained: “There’s a democratic process in place if you don’t like what’s happening. If we all just decided we wanted to change the laws unilaterally, that would run counter to our democracy.”

The Shoes
And Iraqi Journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi is in jail for throwing his shoes at that dog Bush, when our president was making a farewell visit to Baghdad. (His trial date is fast approaching actually.) The shoes missed, but Bush was made to duck, which is the closest anyone’s come to getting reality to register with the cretinous bitch.

Barack’s first press conference
Let’s also mention Helen Thomas again, at Barack Obama’s first press conference a week ago. When Obama ceremoniously called on Thomas to lob the last question, Thomas asked the president to name who in the Middle East had nuclear weapons. It was something of a leading question, because the answer is known, but bears reminding when the argument is repeated that Iran acquiring nukes would lead to proliferation. Thomas put Obama in the position of having to utter recognition of Israel’s never-mentioned nuclear program, or very conspicuously avoid the subject. Which is what he did.

Israel Divestment Movement
Now the Hampshire Students for Justice in Palestine have succeeded in getting their school to divest in Israel, just as Hampshire College led the way in the nationwide divestitures which contributed to the fall of Apartheid in South Africa. Board of trustees chairman Sigmund Roos tried to explain that the school’s actions were in no way a repudiation of Israel, and accused the students of falsely claiming otherwise. Of the 800-signature petition, Roos explained: “We never took it up. Students know that.”

Really? A petition signed by 800 of your students and faculty, and the Hampshire College board of trustees wouldn’t even read it? Roos doesn’t know what hit him.

	LL on Owl City writes lyrics most fo…
	lizzie on The ‘success maker…
	gary cummings on Common Dreams? Or is it censor…
	kennetha on The Stiles Unit of Beaumont
	Cristian on Shlomo Sand and shattering a n…
	Vic Currier on Why should you attend the Denv…
	Vic Currier on Sovereign constitutional oath…
	Robyn KenyaStar Prui… on White Native Americans
	Debra Gill on The Stiles Unit of Beaumont
	Xaldyn on The ‘success maker…

Not My Tribe

The Myth of Middle Ground

Tag Archives: students