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LIGHTS-OUT ON THE TUBE
From post by nimda/‘In the Public Interest’ on Nader dot org
Excerpted, edited by Carolyn Bennett
“Television today—over the air and cable—with the usual exceptions, could empty the dictionary of disparaging adjectives.…”
Television is “… second-rate movie reruns, insipid sitcoms dependent on canned laughter, dramas so spilt-second violent they eliminate any kind of memorable suspense.… Some time slots—such as daily afternoon talk-entertainment shows—are so bad, so sadomasochistic and exploitive, they escape media critics.…
“…On weekends, the shows swing from slick infomercials pushing cutlery and real estate wealth, to sports that become duller play by play—especially golf—to Sunday morning news programs where evasions of predictable questions run on and on.
A Sunday with Vanunu
eileen fleming
Occupied East Jerusalem, June 15, 2009- Mordechai Vanunu and I, first crossed paths on the first day of summer in 2005, which was five days before my return to the USA from my first 16 Days in Israel Palestine [1]
On my last evening of my seventh trip to occupied east Jerusalem, Vanunu and I had a drink at the American Colony. Vanunu had a Taybeh beer, which is produced in the last remaining self-sufficient and last remaining Christian village in the entire West Bank.
I ordered a Vodka tonic and Vanunu warned me, that I should never have more than one shot a day. I replied, it was only my first and I had my last in the taxi on my way to Ben Gurion Airport. I knew it would be hours before I cleared SECURITY and the game we played had gotten tiresome for me- and I imagine it a death unto them who make a paycheck for interrogating those who are Telling the Truth at Ben Gurion... [2]
Does Israel Really Have a Right to Exist?
Susan Abulhawa
Following Netanyahu’s much anticipated policy speech, politicians and journalists, like mindless automatons, have set about repeating Israel’s tired mantra that Palestinians should recognize Israel’s right to exist. Never mind the fact that the PLO and Palestine Authority have obliged this ludicrous call, not once, but four times. And never mind that Israel has always denied Palestine’s right to exist, not only as a nation, but as individuals seeking a dignified life in our own homeland.
Does anyone find it interesting that Israel is the only country on the planet going around with this incessant insistence that everyone recognize her right to exist? Given that we Palestinians are the ones who have been dispossessed, occupied, and oppressed, one might expect that we should be the ones making such a demand. But t hat isn’t the case. Why? Because our right to exist as a nation is self-evident. We are the natives of that land! We know we have that right. The world knows it. That’s why Palestine doesn’t need Israel or any other country to recognize her right to exist. We are the rightful heirs to that land and this can be verified legally, historically, culturally, and even genetically. And as such, the only true legitimacy Israel will ever have must come from us abdicating our inheritance, our history, and our culture to Israel. That’s why Israel insists we declare she had a right to take everything we ever had – from home and property, cemeteries, churches and mosques, to culture and history and hope.
Steadfastness and solidarity at the Rafah border
from International Movement to Open Rafah Border
Palestinians wait in line to buy bread at a bakery in Gaza
Under pressure from the Egyptian army and the police, the International Movement to Open the Rafah Border ( IMORB), is maintaining their camp at the Rafah Border. The group is growing; now 26 people from France, USA, Germany, Egypt, Belgium, and Sweden.
Yesterday, our Italian friend left us for his job in Italy, but a German woman, Alona, married to a Palestinian from Rafah, joined us with her six children, aged 2 to 12. She wants to return to live with her husband and other three children in Gaza. After Egyptian authorities denied her entrance, she said, “I am coming from Germany and I don’t wish to go back to sleep in El Arish. I come here and I only want one thing: to go to Gaza.” By phone, her husband asked his family to join the IMORB camp.
AMA Does Not Speak for Doctors
From Kevin Zeese
As the American Medical Association (AMA) begins its annual convention in Chicago, we want to take this opportunity to make it clear to the American public, to the media, and to the President and members of Congress, that the AMA does not represent us. It is a common misconception that this organization speaks on behalf of most American physicians but that is a misconception with very serious consequences at such a critical time in the healthcare reform debate. So long as the public, the media and our elected officials lump all physicians together as "the AMA", then we are guilty by association of a failure of our Hippocratic oath to "first, do no harm".
Extremism and Suffering Children
William John Cox
What does a shootout at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., the confessions of a Khmer Rouge jailer and the murder of a Kansas medical doctor have in common? The answer is "children," and how they suffer from being targeted and used by extremists to advance their own hateful agendas.
In 1981, acting as a public interest lawyer, I represented a Holocaust survivor who had been a 17-year-old boy when his entire family was murdered in Nazi concentration camps. We sued a group of radical right-wing organizations that denied the Holocaust and, as a publicity ploy, had offered a reward for proof it had occurred.
Canadians are betrayed: The Conservatives and the Liberals have now turned Canada into a prison State just like the USA
by chycho
On 27 February 2009, the Conservative government revived a bill to impose automatic jail terms for drug-related crimes, “which would send people to jail for growing as little as one marijuana plant for the purpose of trafficking.” On June 8, the House of Commons passed this bill, Bill C-15, which “has been widely criticized by criminal justice experts, who point to the total failure of mandatory minimum sentencing in the United States to deter or reduce the amount of drug crimes occurring.” This bill now only needs Senate support to become law.
New UN Report Denounces America's Human Rights Record
by Stephen Lendman
On May 26, the UN Human Rights Council issued a report titled "Promotion and Protection of All Human Rights, Civil, Political, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Including the Right to Development - Report of the Special Rapporteur (Philip Alston) on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions."
Alston was damning in his criticism regarding "three areas in which significant improvement is necessary if the US Government is to match its actions to its stated commitment to human rights and the rule of law:"
(1) Its imposition of the death penalty under which innocent people are executed. Alston was shocked about "glaring criminal justice system flaws," citing Texas and Alabama as examples, but many other states are as derelict. He criticized politicized judges and recommended that Congress "should enact legislation permitting federal court habeas review of state and federal death penalty cases on their merits."
THE ANACHRONISTIC ACTS OF THE WACK A DACKS
William C. Carlotti
"There is no doubt that there are wack a dacks in this world that
emerge as anachronistic expressions of anti-semitism. An occasional
zwastika on a synagogue, vandalism in a Jewish cemetary, etc., etc."
Systemic anti-semitism no longer exists in United States society---not politically, not economically, not philosophically, not academically. Its anachronistic expressions in various venues are akin to a regurgitation of the earth as the center of the universe that haunted Copernicus and nearly got Galileo at the stake; or the flat earth postulations as they were promoted by the Christian monk Cosmos Indicopleutes.
As a matter of fact, if we examine all of those matters that would be the practical effects of anti-semitism we find that they simply do not exist. Some few examples of the many that can be cited about government, about academia, about think tanks ---The median income of the Jewish community is higher than the median income of the rest of our population. The median income in the United States is about $25,000 a year. That means that one half of all Americans earn more than that, and one half earn less. The median Jewish American income is double that, i.e., $50,000 a year. About 40% of American High School graduates go to college. However, 85% of Jewish American high school graduates go to college. There are 13 Jewish members in the United States Senate and 30 Jewish members of the United States House of Representatives.
Netanyahu’s Kafkaesque vision of Palestinian statehood
By Khalid Amayreh, Occupied East Jerusalem
There is no doubt that Benyamin Netanyahu’s odious screed at Bar Ilan University Sunday night was a slap in the face to all those who gave the so-called “peace process” between the Palestinian people and Israel the benefit of the doubt.
First, it was a brazenly direct affront to President Obama who thought rather naively that nice words about peace would make the Israeli leadership change its fascistic mindset and reconsider it colonialist approach toward the Palestinian people. Just last week, Obama reasserted America’s commitment to the safety and security of Israel as if the Zionist entity, which possesses hundreds of nuclear warheads, was facing any real threats from its neighbors.
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