Freedom of speech? When it comes to Israel, no!

During the heyday of the cartoons featuring a terrorist prophet of Islam, with a turban in the form of a bomb, we were told free speech was necessary even if it upset the sensitivities of people; in order to live in a more perfect union it was necessary to uphold the principles on which this country were founded than it was to address people’s feelings. Yes, I know that the cartoons of the Prophet of Islam were featured in a Danish newspaper, but even they the Danish were seen as a bulwark against giving in to terrorism and they had the right as we do here in America to freedom of speech and should not be intimidated from or waive that right. Yeah…that’s what we were told when it came to dealing with Muslims’ reactions to news they might not deem pleasant.

However, such openness to free speech is not seen in much the same positive or necessary light when it comes to speech or criticism about the state of Israel, as the editors and owners of The Berkeley Daily Planet have found out. A quick look at the website for the paper, http://www.berkeleydaily.org/issue/2009-11-28, reveals a paper that seems interested in its local affairs, from the closing of a post office location to citizen displeasure at the response of the local university to the financial crisis, but some people, notably Jim Sinkinson of Infocom Group, a media relations company and John Gertz of dpwatchdog.com seem to think the paper should please the Jewish citizens of the Bay area by printing stories they consider non-offensive towards the state of Israel. Not exactly the definition of freedom of speech, nor the role of a publication. In fact almost every group in the world would make that demand, that any publication should print only those items that meet the emotional needs of that particular group and at the same time not offend group sensitivities. Usually the answer to such a request is simply “nuts”, a free press means it reports what it wants to report and it the media outlet determines what is responsible and reasonable as it pertains to its readership/viewers/listeners and their values. Fortunately, the editor of the Daily Planet, Becky O’Malley, has said essentially the same thing when defending her paper against the charges leveled by the two who want to limit her papers’ right to publish articles or columns critical of Israel. In fact, the classiest response I’ve seen to date to her critics is quintessentially free speech in nature, ‘they (her detractors) could start their own paper.’ That alone should be enough to silence her critics, for in throwing down that challenge O’Malley has defended her right to free speech and a free press and encouraged them to do the same even in opposition to her.

Patriotism No Longer

Many of us who opposed George Bush’s policies and the lies he used to enact, and enforce them, were called traitors for not supporting our president during a time of war. Now, those same voices which assaulted our patriotism and trumpeted their own are behind the likes of these billboards and many others gracing American highways. We’re still in a time of war, if you accept the first declaration of war against terror, misplaced and erroneously called by George Bush, but now it appears its ok to oppose this president, and as some seem to imply, even overthrow him! Where were these voices when we called for an end to wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to these same people who talk of revolution in America today, why aren’t you supporting a President who is on the verge of possibly sending more troops to fight this pseudo war on terror, or end it? Why don’t you see your calls for actions against a sitting president as giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and why aren’t your talking radio head icons not making that point on their daily shows? America…….I’ve got three words for you, Race, Party Politics.

The first billboard above was taken down and replaced with the one below.

Hat tip to the Brad Blog and Think Progress.

Trawling for Assassins…….No Comment!

The Republican Party today

I have tried to ignore the likes of talk radios worst personalities who have been trolling for the Republican Party because I believe they do and say what they do in order to make money, and I secretly hope they don’t believe one bit of the garbage they spew everyday. We all know who “they” are and they have been really dominant on the American landscape since 911. They are the worse America has to offer humanity but they are ours and we have to deal with them. When the Republican party chose an African-American as its titular head, I held out hope the party had turned a corner and would distance itself from the clowns on the air whose ranting and raving about race and Obama and ethnicity have polluted political thought and discourse, but unfortunately, Michael Steele has turned out to be just as ignorant about race and incendiary in his comments as the more crude and boorish air talent the GOP has engaged to take their message to the public. However, the picture below takes the cake and is the ultimate insult in what one can only hope will be the demise of the Party. The picture appeared on the Facebook page of the Republican National Committee and is blatant in its disregard for American history and as in your face about what Republicans think of race……especially mixed race relationships and a Supreme Court case which made it illegal to deny couples of different races the right to marry…..as can be ever spoken. I hope the picture is the dagger in the heart of a Party which has become irrelevant in the nation’s discourse about ANYTHING and EVERYTHING, and maybe suggestions can be made to the appropriate law enforcement agencies to investigate Rethuglicans for treason against the homeland and threats, real or imagined, against a sitting president.

Give it up for Harry Connick, Jr!

Appearing on an Australian television show which featured performers in black face, Harry Connick handled himself with dignity and honor as he spoke out against the inherent racism behind such a skit he was asked to judge. You can see the skit and watch Connick’s response to it below. He spoke with measured tones and with a seriousness deserving of the abuse, handling himself with dignity. His remarks were well received by the Australian audience which applauded what he had to say. His remarks transcended race and are an indication of where we are as a country today. Anyone watching how he handled himself and what he said should feel proud of the way he was representin’ America. Connick, from a grateful citizen of the United States….thank you!

America’s incessant internal battle with racism

Part of the problem we face in America is we don’t really want to deal with problems that are unpleasant and involve malfeasance on our part. Instead we hope either the people we have aggrieved will forget our indiscretions, read oppression, disappear completely as a result of it, or be bought off . African-Americans occupy the first group of those, America wishes/hopes will forget all the years of her misplaced anger and rage ; native Americans are the second group that has almost vanished from the face of the earth and Asian Americans are the third group of people, bought off with the largesse of a bloated federal government which hoped could avenge the sins of World War II and the holocaust inflicted on Asians the world over. In every case excuses were made to justify the oppression reigned down on unsuspecting and innocent peoples.

The current group of people to be targetted, Muslims and Arabs, can look back at their predecessors of America’s racist gauntlet and be assured the driving force of America’s oppression against them today is indeed racism. No where was that more apparent to me than while reading and coming across the picture below of a black American in the ’30s tied up in what would today be called a “stress position”; it so reminds me of the the position people in Guantanamo Bay say they were tied up in and artist rendering of their accounts underscore that point. Why is it America is reaching back into its past to use techniques it once used to oppress its racial minorities on today’s victim of her scourge? Check out the similarities in torture applied to black American citizens in the early 20th century to those applied to Arab/Muslim Americans today.

America’s response to the events of the early part of this century is to react in much the same way it has always reacted when confronted with people who are different than itself; that is to say strike out blindly and irrationally while inciting its citizens to accept some of the most ruthless and brutal acts against fellow human kind known to man. It doesn’t matter that American citizens are the targets of such rage; they have always been in some form or another. What does matter however is that once past victims are now known to engage in this brutality; the ancestors of slaves are as quick to follow torture’s road to perdition as former slave owners’ ancestors with much the same fury and hatred. America has a fresh history of this disease and should have found the cure for it by now; it certainly should not have struck off on a path that takes this country right back down the same errant road it travelled. Our eager to forget that path is what has put us back on it. As the saying goes, if we don’t learn from history we are doomed to repeat it and in so doing become simply doomed.

Paraplegia, taser guns and police brutality

Reading news items like this really gets my dander up. What this amounts to really is someone challenged the police’s authority, in a non lethal and non illegal way, to the dismay of the police officers who decided to punish the individual, administer street justice for the citizen’s contempt or lack of obvious subservience to police authority.

The Merced Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division is investigating whether an officer twice used a Taser on an unarmed, wheelchair-bound man with no legs.The man who was Tasered, Gregory Williams, 40, a double-leg amputee, spent six days in jail on suspicion of domestic violence and resisting arrest, but the Merced County District Attorney’s office hasn’t filed any charges.

Williams is black, and the two main arresting officers are white, but it’s unknown whether race played any role in the incident.

Williams, who was released from jail on Friday, said he was manhandled and Tasered by police, even though he said he was never physically aggressive toward the officers and didn’t resist arrest.

If a healthy and supposedly trained police officer cannot subdue or even deal with in a non physically threatening manner an unarmed and wheel chair bound citizen, then that officer should not be in law enforcement. Any officer involved in this incident should be relieved of his/her duties. You can find a video account here.

Meet Uncle Ruckus

If you haven’t heard of him, uncle Ruckus is the character from the cartoon television series, now defunct by the way, called Boondocks. If ever there was a self-hating man for any ethnicity, it’s Ruckus who hates and denigrates everything that has to do with African-Americans while extolling and exaggerating everything about whites. This is what is written about him.

Ruckus claims God says the path to forgiveness for being black is to rebuke your own race. Ruckus champions the small traces of Native American, French, or Irish ancestry he claims to have although a DNA test he took to hopefully discover white blood showed he was “102%” African descent, and wishes that all black people were still enslaved. He prattles white supremacist rhetoric and calls Michael Jackson (who suffered from the pigmentational skin changing disorder vitiligo) a “lucky bastard”, as he no longer looks black. Ruckus claims that he himself has “re”-vitiligo, to explain his own skin tone. During the Civil Rights Movement, he protested against Martin Luther King‘s marches, and would occasionally throw bricks at him, but usually missed. Ruckus served on a jury in 1957 (making him a minimum of 70 circa 2009) in Tennessee that helped convict a blind black man of killing three white girls. In spite of being blind, the African American man supposedly shot the three with a Winchester rifle from about 50 yards away. (Ruckus is the only black person on the otherwise all white jury, in what is a Jim Crow courtroom.)

I must say Ruckus is extremely profane and his often use of the “N” word means I will not quote some of the profound, self-hating revelations he has uttered on the show. One might think therefore it would be difficult to find someone in real life like this character, but I think I have. Meet Rev.James David Manning, a self anointed doctor who preaches in the heart of the black community of New York city, Harlem, his own special brand of Uncle Rukusism and who has been discovered by racists who oppose Obama. He is featured prominently on a Louisiana Gun website that is a place for gun enthusiasts and others of like mind who might like the comic relief of dr. Manning’s rantings. What’s sad about the pairing of a Manning and a 2nd amendment website is the latter somehow thinks it has a connection to the former; Manning is a stereotypical portrayal of what many even in today’s 21st century America think black people should look, sound and think and the fact there are many who are comfortable with this real life caricature is more disconcerting to this observer than the buffoonish Manning who wants to join in the white revolution against Obama . No one, least of all me, ever heard of this character until Obama’s act came to Washington, but if you want to see how life is sometimes stranger than fiction or how Manning is really more outlandish than an Uncle Ruckus, take a look.

The South Has Risen Again!

I’m not talking about that “South” which steadfastly refuses to acknowledge that America can and is being led by an African-American, I’m talking about the South that acknowledges that racism is the source of Obama’s critic’s discontent, and it’s Southern white men who are making the case. They should be the ones who call out the racist critics of Obama, because as we all know, ‘it takes one to know one’, but this pot calling the kettle black (or in this case racist) is not coming from racist whites but rather from white people who have lived with them down in the deep south all their lives and know how they think and behave.

We white people have controlled political life in the disunited colonies and United States for some 400 years on this continent. Conservative whites have been in power 28 of the last 40 years. Even during the eight Clinton years, conservatives in Congress blocked most of his agenda and pulled him to the right. Yet never in that period did I read any headlines suggesting that anyone was calling for the assassinations of presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, or either of the Bushes. Criticize them, yes.. Call for their impeachment, perhaps. But there were no bounties on their heads. And even when someone did try to kill Ronald Reagan, the perpetrator was non-political mental case who wanted merely to impress Jody Foster.

But elect a liberal who happens to be Black and we’re back in the sixties again. At this point in our history, we should be proud that we’ve proven what conservatives are always saying that in America anything is possible, EVEN electing a black man as president. But instead we now hear that school children from Maine to California are talking about wanting to “assassinate Obama.”

I believe in free speech, but how long until we white people start making racist loudmouths as socially uncomfortable as we do flag burners? How long until we white people will stop insisting that blacks exercise personal responsibility, build strong families, educate themselves enough to edit the Harvard Law Review, and work hard enough to become President of the United States, only to threaten to assassinate them when they do? How long before we start(ing) “living out the true meaning” of our creeds, both civil and religious, that all men and women are created equal and that “red and yellow, black and white” all are precious in God’s sight?

If you have policy differences with the POTUS, and God knows I surely do, that’s one thing but to resort to the behavior of Obama’s critics to the point of intimidation and threats on his life is another thing altogether illegal, despicable, and based on a belief he’s not worthy of being where he is. Look at the imagery used by his opponents to portray him as unfit for office, pictures that are steeped in the very images passed down through racist ranks about black Americans since their beginnings on this continent.

And one can easily think the genteel looking men sitting next to congressman Joe Wilson below, with smirks on their faces because they have gotten one of their own to so disrespectfully call the president out were probably thinking of him in those terms as they posed during Wilson’s outburst for their constituents on national television. They will no doubt say theirs is a measured response to Obama’s administration in much the same way as others, like myself, demonstrated our disagreement to the Bush administration, but it surely was not, because I cannot find images which denigrate Bush’s whiteness or call into question his ancestry in much the same way as the pictures above do for Obama; similarly I can’t find a news clip where a member of Congress acted so disparagingly towards the commander-in-chief as Wilson did on the floor of the Congress before a nationally televised crowd. Yet, in many ways, I wish someone had called Bush out as a liar when he regaled us with stories of how big government was necessary to protect us. The compatriots of Joe Wilson most likely hate to read New York Times’ columnists refer to Obama as elegant and erudite, because that’s not the notion they have of African-Americans and not the one they want the public to have either.

Everyone knows the look and the attitude, that is those who have had it flung at them during their life time. Even the good natured Bill Cosby who has had some stinging rebukes to direct towards other African Americans admitted “During President Obama’s speech on the status of health care reform, some members of Congress engaged in a public display of disrespect….While one representative hurled the now infamous ‘you lie’ insult at the president, others made their lack of interest known by exhibiting rude behavior such as deliberately yawning and sending text messages.”

And so it goes, the dehumanization of another group of people at the hands of the Republicans who manage to foist this attitude on the people they claim to represent which further damages the social fabric of this once great Republic and turns it increasingly into a banana republic. It was not enough that we turned on one another out of fear and handed over our liberties to protect the state, as we fought the global war on horror and demonized members of the Islamic faith, now we are asked to distrust the very official(s) we elected less than a year ago and accept the notion that his death might be the only solution to the problems for which he at the moment is not responsible. In the interim we are abandoning all sense of civility and decorum in our opposition towards one another, and steering a course towards disorder and anarchy. Are we our own worse enemy or what?

Again, Olbermann nails it!

We’ve been had!!

I don’t know why folks don’t see it, but we’ve been had and the people responsible for pulling the wool over our eyes are laughing all the way to the bank…….well make that laughing all the way as they exit the bank! Trillions of dollars cannot be accounted for by oversight agencies responsible for keeping an eye on the US treasury. Trillions!!

I think one of the places this money has gone is to nonsense travel junketts the federal government is paying to racialize its police forces and military!!

This fall, U.S. law enforcement personnel will have their final chance to take advantage of a rare opportunity. Participants will travel to Israel to receive “homeland security training,” but the counterterrorism briefings and martial arts practice sessions are only one part of the package. The program also includes visits to Christian religious sites in the Holy Land — an aspect likely to be especially attractive to Christian Zionists — along with other sites such as the Knesset and the Israeli “security fence”.

The Israel program is run by Security Solutions International (SSI), a group that has attracted controversy due to its ties to Islamophobic propaganda groups — as well as its apparent view that indoctrinating first responders with alarmist information about Islam is an essential part of counterterrorism training……….

Unsurprisingly, SSI has been criticized for the alarmist tenor of its “counterterrorism” training. It is not immediately obvious why the Appalachian State University campus security force, or the Yakima, WA police department — to take two representative names from SSI’s clients list — require a crash course in the fine points of jihadist ideology to do their jobs properly.

Critics have pointed out that the most likely effect of such training — particularly for law enforcement personnel who have never had significant contact with Muslims before — is to drum up hysteria, and increase the likelihood of a potentially tragic overreaction when they actually do encounter someone they presume to be Muslim.

……like Henry L. Gates for example? The shucksters of the war on terror have used every trick in the book to gain the support and or attention of the public while they rob state coffers blind. Why is the federal government paying the expenses of any police agency’s trip to Israel to train in tactics they can receive the same and better training for here?…..and as it is pointed out in the article not all of the tactics are applicable to circumstances law enforcement faces here, unless you want to talk about home evictions which the Israelis are really good at that perhaps Sgt. Crowley picked up on when he dealt with Henry Gates; the only problem is Crowley didn’t call in the bulldozers to tear down Gates’ home. (When was the last time your local constabulary had to deal with a suicide bomber, by the way?) You really should read the comments of the latter of the two links; it highlights the dual loyalties of SSI’s president who has cashed in on the steady diet of hate and fear towards Muslims that he has fed the government and the people of America. Perhaps someone should ask him about some of the missing trillions of dollars?

If You Think the Gates’ arrest was bad, there’s more!

UPDATED STORY BELOW

BLACK PHILADEPHIA POLICE SUE OVER MESSAGE BOARD

A group of black Philadelphia police officers filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against their department, alleging an online forum geared toward city police is “infested with racist, white supremacist and anti-African-American content.”

The suit alleges white officers post on and moderate the privately operated site, Domelights.com, both on and off the job.

Domelights’ users “often joke about the racially offensive commentary on the site … or will mention them in front of black police officers,” thus creating “a racially hostile work environment,” according to lawyers for the all-black Guardian Civic League, the lead plaintiff in the suit.

A look at the site’s forums Friday for racist comments found several possibilities.

Reads one: “In urban areas, it seems [African-Americans] living on welfare in paid for housing is ingrained in their culture as well as fighting. … Kids, along with adults can’t speak proper English or spell at a 3rd grade level, but they can sing among “theyselves” the lyrics to a rap song.”

Said another Domelights user of an African-American woman: “She is a classic example of that exact non tax paying, no car insurance driving, bad weave wearing, all the whitey’s are racist black women.”

The site’s tagline is “the voice of the good guys.”

“Every time African-Americans do or say something in our city, we get this backlash of cops who think they’re anonymous on this Web site — just racist, nasty, hurtful things about what we do,” said Rochelle Bilal, the president of the Guardian Civic League and a 23-year veteran of the force.

The league’s attorney said other black officers echo Bilal’s statement.

“We’ve heard the same story over and over again, which is that [African-American officers] witness in the workplace Domelights being used and discussed [in a racial manner],” said Brian Mildenberg, whose firm is also representing several campers from a mostly black Philadelphia day camp that recently gained national attention when its members were turned away from a swim club.

He said it was “a gift from the heavens in a way that the two things happened at once.”

While Mildenberg and Bilal said they had been monitoring the 10-year-old Web site for years, the pool incident did seem to play into the timing of the lawsuit.

“When they said something about our pretty, brown, young, innocent children and called them monkeys because they wanted to go swimming, that was enough,” Bilal said.

She may have been referring to this comment posted on Domelights: “Maybe the people who work for a living didn’t want to swim with a bunch of ghetto monkey faces.”

The lawsuit also highlights comments made on Domelights by the site’s founder and administrator, a sergeant in the Philadelphia police force who goes by the online handle “McQ.”

A statement from McQ that Mildenberg described as “racially abusive commentary” reads, “Blacks and other minorities frequently don’t have the resources that white people have. Consequently, blacks may not be able to keep their vehicles inspected, registered, and roadworthy.”

McQ is also listed as a defendant in the lawsuit. Asked why McQ bears responsibility for the racist remarks of his site’s anonymous commenters, Mildenberg said it was because “he started it.”

The person known as McQ did not respond to a request for comment, but posted a message on the site citing the lawsuit. McQ wrote that the suit may cause the Web site to be suspended, but added his statement was not an admission of wrongdoing.

“I categorically deny any wrongdoing on my part,” the message reads. “I did not make racist posts. I did not maintain the Web site on city time.”

Ideally, Mildenberg said, his clients would like to see the site shut down. Failing that, they want Philadelphia police officers to be prohibited from posting comments on the site, particularly during working hours.

The plaintiffs in the class-action suit also are seeking unspecified financial damages available under the Civil Rights Act for Philadelphia’s 2,300 African-American police officers, according to Mildenberg.

Shelley Smith, Philadelphia’s city solicitor, said. “The lawsuit is about a private Web site. It’s not a police department Web site. It’s not operated or overseen by the police department. The allegations against the city and police department are misplaced.”

Hat tip to Cincinnati, Ohio!

With each step we take forward, we take three steps back. Our denial that there is a problem on our shores, insures we will continue to wage wars on distant ones in order to satisfy our blood lust to denigrate, destroy or kill people who are “different” from us. We’ve taken more than 200 years to fix this problem of racialism in America and we still haven’t gotten it right! Wake up America and FIX THIS!

UPDATE

I’m so sorry, I meant to say for every step forward we take five or six steps backwards. In what could only be called momentously stupid, it appears Philadelphia police have taken the story above to another level. I now know why Obama was asked about the Gates story, because his remarks, while headed in the right direction, will not be sought after to comment on what follows.

After the Guardian Civic League sued Domelights last week in federal court, several postings on the site attacked league president Rochelle Bilal.

One said she “deserves to be gang-raped.”

Bilal, a sworn officer who works in narcotics intelligence, has been assigned officers from the dignitary protection unit to guard her during the investigation.

Two uniformed officers accompanied Bilal Wednesday night at a meeting at Guardian Civic League headquarters.

The investigation is to “determine if the threat requires any further police action,” said Lt. Frank Vanore, a police spokesman.

Domelights, which is administered by a police sergeant, had been a public forum until this week, when access was restricted to registered users.

Last night, the site was disabled. A message posted by the site operator read: “Until further notice, all Domelights.com services (i.e. forums, galleries, blogs) have been suspended. Thank you. McQ”

While the site is commonly seen as a forum for police to discuss crime news and gossip, not all of its members are active-duty officers.

“If the person making the threat is identified, they will face the same action criminally” whether it’s an officer or a civilian, Vanore said.

Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey initiated the investigation, Vanore said. Bilal did not file a complaint.

Hats off to the Police Commissioner, for now, for taking the step to investigate this “threat” and let’s hope something comes of it. We have the best cyber law enforcement money can buy, so we can know to a 100% certainty, or at least that’s what Homeland Security tells us, who wrote the offending posts and from where. But this speaks to something I’ve said here all along, and which I picked up from a former police officer’s article that unless people in authority speak out against, AND punish officers who commit acts of violence or threaten acts of violence against citizens, nothing will change and the brutality will continue. There has to be zero tolerance towards police brutality, given the judicial system’s determination it did indeed occur. Police officers are not above the law, merely the enforcers of the law; their standard is no different from mine. Either obey it or face the consequences; it’s just that simple. It is NOT rocket science. I like how the city of Philadelphia blocked the offending message board from its computers in order to keep some people from posting on the forum while at work. The City should not be the editor of offensive comments by its employees against other employees. You can say whatever you want, but if it interferes with job place cohesion, not on my dime, seems to be the reasonable attitude of the city. I hope to post some of the more offensive comments here at some point if they can be found. Frankly I don’t care about racist remarks as long as they are not incediary, threatening violence as in the case of the ‘gang rape’ remark. Some sensitivities are a bit too hyper, in my opinion, but it appears the city of brotherly love is keeping a level head while dealing with a very un brotherly situation, and quite simply any inappropriate behaviour on the part of Philadelphia’s police should be dealt with severely and swiftly. I hope the police are listening.

Henry Louis Gates Must Have Thought He was still in China

Having recently returned from a trip to China, Gates must have thought he was still there when he was arrested in his own home for disorderly conduct after police arrived to investigate a break in. How does one get arrested for disorderly conduct in his own home when he is the only person there?!? Inside his own home? Who lodged the complaint? Why, it was the police officer who happened to make his way into Mr./Dr. Gates’ home that’s who, and how did he get inside Gates’ home? There is so much wrong with this story, so let’s back up just a bit.

It seems a “neighbor” called police to report two black men breaking into Gates’ home. If this neighbor saw two men, obviously one of them Gates, why didn’t he/she recognize him…I mean after all they are neighbors. That’s problem number one. Our lives are so transient, we don’t take time to know who the people are who live near or around us, and in many cases view people in such close proximity with us suspiciously. But the next problem is worse than that and involves the hot button topic of police brutality/fascism. If you don’t think it exists you haven’t talked to Henry Louis Gates. His questioning of police authority and insistence they treat him as a citizen and not as a criminal is what got him arrested. When anyone comes into your home…..so goes the social customs of America, they either treat you with respect in your own home, or they leave. It appears the police officer did neither; instead he arrested Gates.

What’s ironic is America for the last several weeks has shown images of the police’s crackdown of Iranian dissidents after their elections and condemned the actions of the Iranian government; what US officials have issued statements regarding police brutality against US citizens in America at ANYTIME, and especially after the Gates arrest? The double standard is stark and one more stain on the American fabric of “just-us” justice. Returning from a trip to a totalitarian government, Gates must have thought as he was led away from his home he was in a parallel universe.

We have come a long way, in time, from these two extremes yet socially very little has changed. Check out Jesse Washington’s take on the Gates arrest. It is pointed and disappointing to realize that more than 200 years after this country’s appearance on the international stage we have only barely advanced.

European Selective Media Reporting

Hat tip to Niqnaq

Zionist Fanatics Practice Serial Vandalism in Paris

Thousands of books drenched in cooking oil – that is the latest exploit of the Zionist fanatics who regularly attack property and people in Paris and get away with it.

In the early afternoon of Friday, July 3, five men, mostly masked, stormed into the “Resistances” bookstore located in a quiet residential neighborhood of the 17th arrondissement in northwest Paris. To the startled women working in the shop, as well as two customers, they announcing that they were from the Jewish Defense League and began ripping books off shelves and tables, dousing them heavily with cooking oil, and then smashing four computers before leaving rapidly in a waiting vehicle.

The bookstore is owned and operated by Olivia Zemor and Nicolas Shashahani, who are also the leaders of the very active militant group CAPJPO-EuroPalestine (CAPJPO stands for Coordination des Appels pour une Paix Juste au Proche Orient). In addition to a wide collection of books on the Middle East and other subjects, including fiction, the bookstore has a reading room and a lending library, gives courses in English and Arabic, and possesses a modest but well-attended auditorium where authors are invited to speak.

Two and a half years ago, on December 7, 2006, a similar attack squad threw teargas grenades into the bookstore as a crowd was gathering to listen to the late Israeli author Tanya Reinhart and her companion, the Israeli poet Aharon Shabtai. On that occasion, Shashahani had to be treated for effects from the teargas but material damage was slight. This time, the entire shop is a shambles, with countless ruined books, and damage runs to tens of thousands of euros, according to Shashahani.

But, he stresses, this is only one in “hundreds of violent actions” carried out by the French version of the banned US Jewish Defense League in recent years. There is no reason to expect them to stop so long as they can count on indulgence on the part of French authorities and the silence of the mainstream media. The vandalism on the Resistances bookstore was reported by the French news agency AFP, but the dispatch was apparently carried only by the small tabloid Le Parisien and not by the major newspapers, much less by television. Usually, almost the only people who are informed about such events are in the politically active circles targeted for intimidation.

The general public remains ignorant of these aggressions, while it is regularly informed by television of even relatively minor acts of anti-Semitism – some of them imaginary (as the famous case a few years ago of the young woman who totally invented a story of being the victim of an

“anti-Semitic assault” by blacks in the suburban commuter train in order to get attention from her family, and got the attention of everyone in France all the way up to the President of the Republic). Real “anti-Semitic acts” occur, but most are no more organized than school-yard insults. However, the publicity they receive serves to keep alive the notion that the very existence of Jews is under perpetual threat – the basic alibi used by the Jewish Defense League. The false claim that “the French government does nothing to protect Jews” is used as a pretext for aggressive “self-defense”.

As disciples of Meir Kahane, the JDL not only favors purifying an enlarged Eretz Israel of Arabs, but wants to bring the fight against Arabs and “Islamofascism” to France itself. Debate is not their style. After training in Israeli martial arts, they carry on their fight by physical means, attacking Arabs, Muslims and defenders of the Palestinian cause. The JDL is an informal group of a few hundred members, rather than a registered organization with a headquarters. The French police, adept at infiltrating every sort of political group, certainly must know who and where they are, but they seem never to be disturbed after one of their raids. Moreover, unless the aggressors identify themselves, victims cannot be sure whether they are being attacked by the LDJ or by Betar, an older Zionist youth organization founded back in 1929 by Vladimir Jabotinsky and close to Likud. Both use similar methods, and probably overlap, although the LDJ, as the more radical of the two, is said to be draining members from Betar.

In the rare cases when Zionist fanatics are actually arrested and put on trial, they are usually treated with uncommon indulgence. In December 2003, a group of pro-Palestinian students were violently attacked by the usual suspects. A Palestinian student suffered grave eye injuries. Faced with lackadaisical police, the students carried out their own investigation, leading to the conviction on September 16, 2004 of one Anthony Attal. He was given a suspended sentence of ten months.

LDJ or Betar members also have the advantage of a “sanctuary” – Israel. On October 25, 2006, a 68-year-old pro-Palestinian radical militant, Ginette Hess Skandrani, was attacked in her own home by three unknown men who beat her savagely, explaining only “you know why”. Hospitalized, her head wounds required several stitches. Last February 4, her aggressors were finally convicted and sentenced, but:

— one of them, Ruben Colleu, was sentenced to two years in prison, of which 18 months were suspended – but he had already fled to Israel.

— the second, Stevel Elie, was sentenced to three years in prison – but the French court had already given him permission to go to Israel “to do his military service” in Tsahal.

— Only the third, Mike Sfez, was still around. Like Colleu, 18 months of his two year sentence were suspended, and the remaining six months could be transformed into social work.

Only recently, large squads of presumed LDJ thugs have attacked theater-goers outside a benefit for children of Gaza and attacked persons of Arab appearance on their way to a meeting of diverse groups scheduled to discuss the “Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions” movement.

The LDJ has its apologists in the police. On June 5, 2006, the head of the small right-wing Christian union “Action Police CFTC”, Michel Thooris, praised the LDJ and Betar for “performing a public service mission by defending people and property”. He was not publicly reprimanded by his big boss, the minister of the Interior at that time, Nicolas Sarkozy.

The double standards of Sarkozy’s tough “law and order” policy are all too obvious. His ostentatious policy switch from a certain traditional French balance in the Middle East to strong support for Israel is only likely to encourage the LDJ in its feeling of impunity. This spring, a commercially successful author, Paul-Eric Blanrue, was unable to publish his book on “Sarkozy, Israel and the Jews” in France, and was obliged to find a publisher in Belgium. Still worse, the usual French distributor of his Belgian publisher refused to distribute the book in France. His press conference in Paris was unattended by any journalist and his book, which carefully documents Sarkozy’s policy of wooing Jewish support in France by aligning with Israel and attacking the “riffraff” in the suburbs, has been ignored by French reviewers.

Even though the market is saturated, there is always room in the media, however, for laments that France’s secular tradition is threatened by the “communitarianism” of… Muslims. The ideological and violent provocations of fanatic Zionists are rarely singled out as the main cause of this disturbing trend. Of course, France’s many militant intellectual Zionists do not resort to the methods of the LDJ and Betar. But the theme of Jewish victimhood, which is constantly present in schools, in cinema, in political discourse and in the media, provides a congenial atmosphere for the pathological violence of the Jewish militias in France, and for the indulgence with which they are treated.

The situation is scarcely improved by the extreme fragmentation of the Palestine solidarity movement in France – which can be seen as just one aspect of the endemic sectarianism of the French left. The various victims of LDJ or Betar violence – such as CAPJPO, Ginette Skandrani, the comedian Dieudonné, etc., etc. – are often not on speaking terms with each other, so that even if they all profess solidarity with Palestine, there is very little or no solidarity between them.

However, one may hope that the July 3 attack on the Resistances bookstore may arouse a broader protest than other recent attacks, quite simply because of the strong connotations of destroying books. A protest demonstration has been called for the evening of Wednesday, July 8, to demand that the government finally ban the JDL, just as it has already been banned in the United States and Israel. This will be an opportunity to show solidarity in resistance to the most active form of fascism in France today.

Cynthia McKinney’s letter from an Israeli prison

This is not the last word on McKinney’s attempts at trying to help the people of Gaza, she has already said she will join George Galloway’s attempt to enter Gaza from the Rafah crossing on the Egyptian border, but her letter is worth a mention and her sacrifice at great peril to her own personal safety should be noted.

This is Cynthia McKinney and I’m speaking from an Israeli prison cellblock in Ramle. [I am one of] the Free Gaza 21, human rights activists currently imprisoned for trying to take medical supplies to Gaza, building supplies – and even crayons for children, I had a suitcase full of crayons for children. While we were on our way to Gaza the Israelis threatened to fire on our boat, but we did not turn around. The Israelis high-jacked and arrested us because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza. We have been detained, and we want the people of the world to see how we have been treated just because we wanted to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza.

At the outbreak of Israel’s Operation ‘Cast Lead’ [in December 2008], I boarded a Free Gaza boat with one day’s notice and tried, as the US representative in a multi-national delegation, to deliver 3 tons of medical supplies to an already besieged and ravaged Gaza.

During Operation Cast Lead, U.S.-supplied F-16’s rained hellfire on a trapped people. Ethnic cleansing became full scale outright genocide. U.S.-supplied white phosphorus, depleted uranium, robotic technology, DIME weapons, and cluster bombs – new weapons creating injuries never treated before by Jordanian and Norwegian doctors. I was later told by doctors who were there in Gaza during Israel’s onslaught that Gaza had become Israel’s veritable weapons testing laboratory, people used to test and improve the kill ratio of their weapons.

The world saw Israel’s despicable violence thanks to al-Jazeera Arabic and Press TV that broadcast in English. I saw those broadcasts live and around the clock, not from the USA but from Lebanon, where my first attempt to get into Gaza had ended because the Israeli military rammed the boat I was on in international water … It’s a miracle that I’m even here to write about my second encounter with the Israeli military, again a humanitarian mission aborted by the Israeli military.

The Israeli authorities have tried to get us to confess that we committed a crime … I am now known as Israeli prisoner number 88794. How can I be in prison for collecting crayons to kids?

Zionism has surely run out of its last legitimacy if this is what it does to people who believe so deeply in human rights for all that they put their own lives on the line for someone else’s children. Israel is the fullest expression of Zionism, but if Israel fears for its security because Gaza’s children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state.

I am facing deportation from the state that brought me here at gunpoint after commandeering our boat. I was brought to Israel against my will. I am being held in this prison because I had a dream that Gaza’s children could color & paint, that Gaza’s wounded could be healed, and that Gaza’s bombed-out houses could be rebuilt.

But I’ve learned an interesting thing by being inside this prison. First of all, it’s incredibly black: populated mostly by Ethiopians who also had a dream … like my cellmates, one who is pregnant. They are all are in their twenties. They thought they were coming to the Holy Land. They had a dream that their lives would be better … The once proud, never colonized Ethiopia [has been thrown into] the back pocket of the United States, and become a place of torture, rendition, and occupation. Ethiopians must free their country because superpower politics [have] become more important than human rights and self-determination.

My cellmates came to the Holy Land so they could be free from the exigencies of superpower politics. They committed no crime except to have a dream. They came to Israel because they thought that Israel held promise for them. Their journey to Israel through Sudan and Egypt was arduous. I can only imagine what it must have been like for them. And it wasn’t cheap. Many of them represent their family’s best collective efforts for self-fulfilment. They made their way to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. They got their yellow paper of identification. They got their certificate for police protection. They are refugees from tragedy, and they made it to Israel only after they arrived Israel told them “there is no UN in Israel.”

The police here have license to pick them up & suck them into the black hole of a farce for a justice system. These beautiful, industrious and proud women represent the hopes of entire families. The idea of Israel tricked them and the rest of us. In a widely propagandized slick marketing campaign, Israel represented itself as a place of refuge and safety for the world’s first Jews and Christian. I too believed that marketing and failed to look deeper.

The truth is that Israel lied to the world. Israel lied to the families of these young women. Israel lied to the women themselves who are now trapped in Ramle’s detention facility. And what are we to do? One of my cellmates cried today. She has been here for 6 months. As an American, crying with them is not enough. The policy of the United States must be better, and while we watch President Obama give 12.8 trillion dollars to the financial elite of the United States it ought now be clear that hope, change, and ‘yes we can’ were powerfully presented images of dignity and self-fulfilment, individually and nationally, that besieged people everywhere truly believed in.

It was a slick marketing campaign as slickly put to the world and to the voters of America as was Israel’s marketing to the world. It tricked all of us but, more tragically, these young women.

We must cast an informed vote about better candidates seeking to represent us. I have read and re-read Dr. Martin Luther King Junior’s letter from a Birmingham jail. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined that I too would one day have to do so. It is clear that taxpayers in Europe and the U.S. have a lot to atone for, for what they’ve done to others around the world.

What an irony! My son begins his law school program without me because I am in prison, in my own way trying to do my best, again, for other people’s children. Forgive me, my son. I guess I’m experiencing the harsh reality which is why people need dreams. [But] I’m lucky. I will leave this place. Has Israel become the place where dreams die?

Ask the people of Palestine. Ask the stream of black and Asian men whom I see being processed at Ramle. Ask the women on my cellblock. [Ask yourself:] what are you willing to do?

Let’s change the world together & reclaim what we all need as human beings: Dignity. I appeal to the United Nations to get these women of Ramle, who have done nothing wrong other than to believe in Israel as the guardian of the Holy Land, resettled in safe homes. I appeal to the United State’s Department of State to include the plight of detained UNHCR-certified refugees in the Israel country report in its annual human rights report. I appeal once again to President Obama to go to Gaza: send your special envoy, George Mitchell there, and to engage Hamas as the elected choice of the Palestinian people.

I dedicate this message to those who struggle to achieve a free Palestine, and to the women I’ve met at Ramle. This is Cynthia McKinney, July 2nd 2009, also known as Ramle prisoner number 88794.

Killed Because of Her Religion

Europe is leading the way in racist, homo/Islamophobia, almost like a throwback to the days of a young Adolph Hitler who then targeted Jews. The tragedy which occurred in a German court room in front of judges and lawyers reflects the depth of Europe’s fanaticism. A young Egyptian wife, mother and academic, yes she was all three, who also practiced her religion as she interpreted it and wore a scarf on her hair, was stabbed 18 times in a crime that hasn’t graced the pages of main stream media in America. She was killed because she was exercising her citizenship by taking her attacker to court for a previous assault he had committed against her. What’s even more heinous is her husband who was in the court room at the time and who came to her aid was shot by German police as he tried to subdue the killer…….quite naturally because an Arab Muslim is more likely to be a criminal, than an unemployed Russian German, was probably the rationale for the officer who shot him. People who look different, who are not quite WASPy in appearance in Europe have a tendency to be shot sight unseen by the local police force.

Marwa al-Sherbini’s problem wasn’t with the police however, but with some German guy motivated by his hatred for Muslims who was able to assault his victim twice, once in a park where he first saw and interacted with her and again in front of the police and judicial authority. This happened because the atmosphere in Europe is fueled by hatred of Muslims and Islam, and part of that fuel is supplied by xenophobic politicans seeking a political advantage over their rivals in government by plying on the fears and hatred of their constituents. This is accompanied by selective reporting by the media, which is obsequious to the power of government, which reports acts of racism and bigotry that target one group of people in which it is assumed real power is vested while ignoring acts of terror perpetuated against or by other groups.

Marwa was a victim and her perpetrator was a terrorist, but Marwa was also victimzed by a wave of anti-Islam euphoria which is promoted, tolerated and excused by large segments of European society. The reaction of Muslims to the murder of al-Sherbini has been muted and dignified. Had there been the hysteria most westerners associate with Muslim reaction to anything, it would have garnered front page coverage, featured prominently in every journal and newscast, while the reason for such outburst simply ignored. The head of one of the leading Islamic universities in the world has gone on record saying that the Germans should exact the strictest punishment applicable under German law to the offender while family members echoed that refrain. Indeed every citizen of Europe should feel and say the same. For too long, western countries have talked a good fight when it comes to equality and liberty. It’s now time to walk the walk and apply it against those who use terror as a weapon, whether they be the angriest of Muslims or the fairest skin Europeans.

The Iran Yo-Yo

With the Republican party all used up, battered and bruised, with dwindling Tea Party numbers, the titular head of the party’s constant insertion of his foot in his own mouth, the Sanford scandal, the neocons have abandoned ship and returned to their home the Democratic party where they first found a footing during the days of Henry Scoop Jackson and they’re agitating for war with Iran. The Republicans served their purpose at the beginning of this millenium but after being turned down by voters in 2006 and 2008, the GOP is not the power base the neocons need for their wars of aggression and racism. Obama’s administration will suit their purposes just fine and they’re firmly ensconced with the party of asses and plotting their war with Iran.

It has been fun to watch the sudden and quick implosion of the GOP, first with the McCain campaign which resembled the Bob Dole campaign of ’96, and the soap operaesque Sarah Palin and her drama, both personally and politically, but not even right wing nut job radio can revive the party with Obama acting on all four cylinders and practically mimicking the GOP as it expands wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan while allocating tons of money for defense that not even a Republican secretary of defense requests.

What this means is neocons feel emboldened to continue their psy-ops assault on Iran with nothing less than regime change in mind. Acting on behalf of the Israelis who are the ones calling for a military attack on Iran, neocons have used every excuse in the book to whip up attack Iran fervor both inside the Obama administration and with the general public which will have to supply the manpower, much like it did for the Iraq invasion, to administer the coup de grace on any attack initiated by Israel. This past weekend, vice president Joe Biden gave the nod, as far as he and his boss Obama are concerned, for the Israelis to go ahead with the attack. Of course the tacit meaning is that the US will do any and everything to help Israel when the Iranians respond by attacking Israel.

The Iranians elections were the 911 moment for the neocons whose crescendo-ing rhetoric began even before the elections. There’s a very good piece, False Sorrow for the People of Iran, which talks about the different devices used by the neocons to demonize, denigrate and de-emphasize the importance of the elections when they thought the winner would try to make peaceful overtures to the US. It states in part

So the possibility of Iran’s president being a rational, moderate man determined to make détente with the United States frightened the War Party and the Israel lobby. Thus, a week before the elections, Iran’s president was demoted to a powerless man again! The neoconservatives, the War Party, and the Israel lobby all began emphasizing how it does not matter who Iran’s president is, since all the important decisions regarding foreign policy are made by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

However, Iranian leaders have been making peace overtures to the US since almost the inception of their revolution, and certainly since the American hostages debacle when they colluded with the Reagan administration to release the hostages in exchange for weapons to fight the Iran-Iraq war. Their last attempt was met with scorn and rejection by the Bush administration’s cabal of neocons who want only Israel as an ally among the nation states in the middle east. Maintaining this “special relationship” means Israel can help itself to American largess, building up and defending the country at the expense of US tax dollars, personnel and materiel.

Another attack point against Iran has been its nuclear energy program which some have said is a secret nuclear weapons program, without offering any proof of that assertion. Of course the neocons are able to muddy the waters, confusing the public by putting the onus of Iran to prove a negative, i.e. prove they do not have a nuclear weapons program going on. This so resembles the WMD nonsense of Iraq that it would be funny if it weren’t a matter of life and death for everyone. All this talk of an Iranian nuclear weapons program continues despite the National Intelligence Estimate of last year that said in effect the Iranians had halted their weapons program at about the same time they were making peaceful overtures to the US in 2003. The rejection of those overtures was the neocons way of trying to back the Iranians into a corner to resume their program since they assumed, correctly, that any sovereign country would develop a means of defending itself decisively in the face of an hostile neighbor, something which Iranians have certainly been accused of despite the absence of any evidence. The kicker is however, that the Israelis don’t really consider the presence of Iranian nukes an existential threat as some in the neocon stable would have us believe.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said a few months ago in a series of closed discussions that in her opinion that Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel, Haaretz magazine reveals in an article on Livni to be published Friday.

Livni also criticized the exaggerated use that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears. Last week, former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy said similar things about Iran.

Such sentiment is not acceptable to neocons because it would make Israel an equal partner, vis-a-vis the nuclear weapons front with its Iranian neighbors and superiority not equality is the only state of affairs the Israelis are willing to accept in its relations with other countries in the region. Despite the fact Iran has not developed its nuclear weapons program, the fact that it is enriching uranium is considered a threat, by neocons in the American government, to the existence of Israel even though the Israelis themselves don’t think so. This is the danger of neoconservatism, which inflates dangers to the point of conflagrations that envelope the world community when they are absolutely needless and pointless. It also underscores the danger such philosophy has to the well being of nation states and indeed the US itself, which has already been devastated by one needless war and appears to be on the edge of entering another because of the lies of its policy makers, the neocons.

The shape of things to come

Israel is NOT a democratic state, and the people who live there are not interested in democracy. In the “old days” saying that made one an enemy of America, or at the least, a place to be colonized and brought democracy, but our special relationship with Israel simply doesn’t allow such solutions be applied to the Israeli problem. What is surely a sign of things to come is this news coming from that troubled country

A community in northern Israel has changed its bylaws to demand that new residents pledge support for “Zionism, Jewish heritage and settlement of the land” in a thinly veiled attempt to block Arab applicants from gaining admission. Critics are calling the bylaw, adopted by Manof, home to 170 Jewish families in Galilee, a local “loyalty oath” similar to a national scheme recently proposed by the far-Right party of the government minister Avigdor Lieberman. Other Jewish communities in the central Galilee — falling under the umbrella of a regional council known as Misgav — are preparing similar bylaws in response to a court petition filed by an Arab couple hoping to build a home in Misgav.

Reading the article at the link above is like being taken back into the early 1900s in American history. The language used to justify such racist actions is steeped in fear and bigotry from a group of people who promised, at least indirectly, never to be apart of such action and or speech again. How quickly they’ve forgotten and how pathetic their reality has become. America should not enable such “hate speech” any longer.

Response to the No Comment video below

Going against my No Comment column rules, I have decided to address the raw and racist nature of the remarks in the video below. Not because of what is said, I believe in the right of people to say whatever they want to say, and if I don’t like their speech, I simply don’t listen, but I’m addressing who is saying it. Basically it boils down to not biting the hand that feeds you.

Israeli Jews are free to vent and display their true thoughts about the President of the United States, but they should remember we, American citizens are footing their bill and as such don’t take too kindly to outward signs of disrespect for the institutions which are making it possible for them to live in peace and security while sowing the seeds of destruction and murder they do on a daily basis with their neighbors. If you don’t like the President, tell him to stop giving you, yes that’s right giving you, because we all know you aren’t paying any of it back, the more than 30 billion dollars in US aid you hope to get over the next decade. While I know that’s not as much as Uncle Bernie probably gave you in his heist of US wealth, it’s still more than a pay check of mine or two which I could use to educate my own children instead of some ungrateful spoiled brat who’s double dipping. Yes I heard the reference in the video to “our country” and wondered which one you were talking about!

And if you insist on pissing people off like you have us, with your disrespect of the President….then don’t expect us to look the other way when you break the law. Expect that we’ll be as hard with you on enforcing the law as we are with your enemies. All those blockades we supported when you cried terrorist this and that will be used against you when you engage in illegal activity in much the same way as your opponents. It’s only fair because when you don’t give any quarter you shouldn’t expect any, right!! So, give back all the free military hardware you received with a wink and nod….it’s not yours in the first place, it’s ours and by ours I mean America’s!

To show you how democratic we are, when you try to take away the right of people living in your borders to express themselves without violence, we’re going to call you on it and start boycotting those institutions of yours that support such racist laws as those your foreign minister wants to pass against Palestinians, because that’s not democratic, and we won’t call you our only democratic ally in the Middle East any longer. Please don’t cry about this being interference in your internal affairs. The world is a smaller place and made smaller by the billions of dollars of loans that go back and forth across borders, and you for the moment are not a truly independent state. We’ve invaded countries where people living there have said far less than the petulant lads and lasses in this video, so don’t get snippy with US. You are here today, but can easily be gone tomorrow! Remember Saddam Hussein?

Finally, I refer you all to Glen Greenwald’s excellent blog on this subject. It’s another smack down for those who want their cake and eat it too when it comes to Israel and her indiscretions.

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Not a very smart politician

Truth CAN be stranger than fiction. Dean Grose, mayor of Los Alamitos, California sent the questionable image below to an African American constituent and then claimed mea culpa when it blew up in his face. His claim should have been, i’m_an_idiot. Where do they find these people?

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