by Stephen Lendman

Founded in 1972, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) is its leading human and civil rights organization through activities involving litigation, legal advocacy, education, and public outreach. Each year it publishes an annual report covering flagrant violations, positive trends, if any, and "significant human rights-related processes" affecting Israelis and Palestinians.

Its latest December 2009 one is examined below, discussing "a disturbing (government-sponsored) trend that has (gained) currency in Israel over the past year - both in public discourse and sometimes in practice - to make human rights conditional: on fulfilling some obligation, having financial means, or belonging (or not belonging) to certain groups." For example, free expression is targeted, and Israeli Arabs threatened, denied equality, education, employment, and their citizenship without "declaring loyalty" to Israel - in other words, on condition they abandon their national identity, culture, language, and historic heritage that's the equivalent of asking Jews to renounce Judaism.

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By Keith Johnson

CIA... no reason to doubt that they are engaged in flooding drugs into Iran

Kill ‘em all, and let God sort ‘em out - Anonymous

As the drums beat against the backdrop of a U.S. military buildup in the Persian Gulf, war with Iran seems more inevitable than it does likely. But does Iran pose a real threat to our national security or are they being used as a convenient scapegoat to divert the American people’s attention away from an impending financial collapse here at home?

War has always been used as a good exit strategy from the economic turmoil our banking masters create for us. Both world wars were initiated to face down fiscal meltdowns and it appears likely that they are using that same strategy to justify a third. But don’t expect to hear any mention of that once the shelling begins. It will be all about Ahmadinejad and the fictitious nuclear weapons program he has stashed away in his basement. That’s right! Same lie…different guy.

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Gary Kohls

The Precautionary Principle says that a culture, a business or an individual should err on the side of caution when new chemicals, technologies, food additives, drugs, etc are introduced into the environment – and only then when there is absolute proof that the substances are not dangerous to the environment, which includes humans, animals, the water supply, the soil and the air.

Therefore, when a new product that has the potential to adversely affect the environment (even years or decades into the future) is proposed for marketing, the Precautionary Principle demands that adequate and aggressive study by agencies totally independent of Big Business) be undertaken until it is proven to be totally safe.

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By Emily Spence

Mr. President,

It is easy to understand that you are beholden to corporate interests in a number of diverse ways, which could limit your sense of options relative to unrestrained fossil fuel use. Yet, we, all together, cannot face run-away climate change, weak support for constructive energy programs, unbridled economic growth, barely regulated free trade, ever expanding resource wars, critical resource depletions (involving water, minerals, oil and so forth), high extinction rates for multitudinous species, overall environmental ruin, increasing overpopulation, grossly inequitable sharing of global wealth and other dire conditions, and all of which are interconnected, without your forcefully taking the lead to address them and doing so in a holistic tough fashion.

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