excellent 10-min. machsom watch video

return of the nutty professor

start of “Return of the Gunboat“,
John Ross, CounterPunch, Jul 29, 2008

The resurrection and imminent dispatch of the United States Fourth Fleet to patrol the coasts of Latin America invokes the bad old days of Monroe Doctrine impositions and gunboat diplomacy for many citizens of those southern latitudes. This April, the U.S. Navy announced the reactivation of the fleet that historically operated in the south Atlantic during World War II, dueling with Nazi U-boats. Activating the Fourth Fleet “demonstrates U.S. commitment to our global partners,” Admiral Gary Roughead explained, adding a threatening fillip: “The Fourth Fleet will send a strong signal to all Navies operating in the region.” Roughead maintains that the fleet’s focus will be on drug interdiction and “conducting training exercises” and its activation is “non-hostile.” Frank Mora, a professor at the U.S. War College in Leavenworth Kansas, told the Miami Herald he thought the Fleet could be used in “environmental emergencies” and to control “youth gangs.”

the demonstration the 10/11 yr old was shot at

Na’alin, 29th July.

Ahmad Husam Yousef Mousa, 10 years old, was murdered today as he demonstrated together with his friends against the separation wall which is being constructed on the lands of his village Nilin. When Ahmad and his friends reached the construction site the soldiers shot rubber bullets at them and they began to retreat. At that point one of the soldiers shot a live round at Ahmad’s head from a distance of about 10 meters. During the demo earlier in the day, 18 demonstrators were injured. During 6 years of popular struggle against the wall, the occupation forces have killed 11 demonstrators, 7 of them children, and thousands were injured. Time and time again, soldiers violently suppress demonstrations and attack those who take part in them with lethal weapons. To date, none of the soldiers who killed demonstrators has been prosecuted.

(these Na’alin videos are by Yisrael Puterman, who seems to have worked with Eran Vered of Mishtara, a similar but older citizens’ video surveillance program – RB)

a newer, shorter hagee-bashing video

jane meyer talks to letterman

also dubious about al cia-duh

al Qa’Idah Figure Interview on Pakistan
TV “Publicity Trick” – Afghan Daily
iStockAnalyst, July 27, 2008

(Excerpt from an editorial entitled: “ISI and new publicity tricks”, published by Afghan independent secular daily newspaper Hasht-e Sobh, Kabul, in Dari 24 Jul 08, p 2. Story Source: BBC Monitoring South Asia)

Mustafa Abul Yazid, the alleged commander of the Al-Qa’idah forces in Afghanistan, has said in an exclusive interview with Pakistan’s Geo TV that Al-Qa’idah will very soon control Afghanistan. He said the fighting morale among Al-Qa’idah fighters was high and that Karzai’s government would have a bad future.

[Passage omitted: known details of the interview]

What is interesting about this interview is that the presenter of Geo TV claimed that the interview was conducted at an unknown location in Afghanistan’s Khost Province. At a time when it is reported that western public opinion is mostly focusing on Pakistan’s tribal region and when the west has finally reached the conclusion that Al-Qa’idah and terrorism should be fought at their birthplace, the release of the interview with the commander of Al- Qa’idah fighters in Afghanistan should be analysed from various angles.

It comes at a time when helicopters of the coalition forces have reportedly been flying over Pakistan’s tribal regions. It was also reported that NATO and coalition forces have been deployed near Pakistan’s borders.

It seems that the pressure of western public opinion on Pakistan, Pistan’s tribal regions falling into the spotlight and the suspension of bilateral talks between Afghanistan and Pakistan are the most important reasons that have forced Pakistan to resort to new tricks.

No Al-Qa’idah member has given an interview to any media outlets since 2002, and the fact that Geo TV is the only media outlet able to conduct the interview creates suspicions. One can suspect that Pakistan’s intelligence agency and the Al-Qa’idah terrorist network have contacts at a very high level.

Actually, as the main terrorist network, Al-Qa’idah either leads the main terrorist attacks across the world or supports the orchestration and implementation of the attacks. As Pakistan tries to describe the Taleban problem as a local problem inside Pakistan and is even ready to sign a peace agreement with them as a legitimate political group, the airing of the exclusive interview with the Al-Qa’idah commander in Afghanistan is in fact an attempt to deceive public opinion. In this way Pakistan wants to say that the main base of terrorism is in Afghanistan and it is so serious that even a senior Al-Qa’idah commander can freely give an interview from an Afghan province to the so-called private media

Pakistan knows that the ISI’s long-term strategic projects will be seriously endangered if the international coalition forces attack its tribal regions. Meanwhile, attacks will also reduce foreign aid to the Pakistani government. This is because the coalition forces will have no choice but to spend on their own forces bulk of their government’s aid to Pakistan if tribal regions are attacked. Meanwhile, any attack on Pakistan’s tribal regions will not only damage the ISI’s long-term projects, but will also seriously damage the image of the Pakistani government in world public opinion, and Pakistan will in that case be seen as a country supporting terrorism.

Therefore, since accusations are on the rise against Pakistan for its support for terrorism and lack of action by that country, the Pakistani intelligence and army will try to somehow fend off the accusations by making baseless and fabricated dramas. They are doing so not to lose international aid and to keep itself immune and protect the terrorist groups it supports so that it is able to pursue Pakistan’s strategic goals using Al-Qa’idah and the Taleban in the future.

israel academic boycott group statement

Boycott group: Israeli-British
academic project politically motivated
PACBI, 22 July 2008, via Electronic Intifada

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel deplores the unabashed pro-Israel bias of UK officialdom displayed during Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s visit to occupied Jerusalem. Brown’s pro-forma criticism of Israeli colonizing activities notwithstanding, the visit became an occasion to underline the UK government’s prejudice in favor of Israeli policies of apartheid, dispossession and colonial expansionism. Instead of pressuring Israel to fulfill its obligations under international law, Brown bent over backwards to reward Israel in an arena in which it prides itself, that of academic and scientific research, despite ample evidence indicating the Israeli academy’s complicity in the state’s occupation and apartheid policies.

Media reports have made it abundantly clear that the 20 July Israeli-British announcement of the establishment of the Britain-Israel Research and Academic Exchange Partnership (BIRAX) is politically motivated. The project, described by The Independent (UK) as “a major new academic exchange program, which will help to undermine attempts to boycott Israeli universities,” is meant specifically to undercut UK, Palestinian and international academics’ calls for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. It lends political and material support to the Israeli effort to maintain a veneer of respectability in the world academic community, a community increasingly unwilling to do business as usual with the Israeli academy. Not only have Israeli universities built organic partnerships with the state’s military-security establishment responsible for maintaining the occupation and other forms of Israeli oppression, they have also failed for decades, as have all Israeli academic unions and professional associations, to take a public stand against the most profound Israeli military violations of the Palestinian right to education.

Far from being at the forefront of the struggle for human rights and against occupation and racism, as often deceptively depicted, Israeli academic institutions have never condemned the occupation, the denial of Palestinian refugee rights, or the system of racial discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel. They have all failed to condemn even the policy of prolonged military closure of Palestinian universities back in the 1980s, in one case extending for four consecutive years; the ongoing refusal to grant permits for Palestinian students and academics to travel abroad, or between Gaza and the West Bank, to pursue their studies or academic development programs; and the severe curtailment of access to education by hundreds of thousands of Palestinian school and college students through an elaborate network of military checkpoints and roadblocks. Furthermore, the Israeli academy is complicit in encouraging its academics to serve in the Israeli reserve army, making most of them part-time occupation soldiers in every academic year.

Revealing another explicitly political — not to mention cynical — objective of this new Israeli-British initiative, an anti-boycott Israeli source is quoted in a recent media report as saying that “By [BIRAX] choosing starting academics, when the unions start discussing a boycott there will be more people who have had some contact with Israel and will have some knowledge. We’ve discovered that 80 percent of those who attend the union meetings don’t know anything about Israel or the issue. So it’s sort of a value added element to the program.”

What is particularly offensive about the Israeli-UK declaration is the active sponsorship of BIRAX by the British Council, a UK agency with a long history of work in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). Now, the British Council has declared its blatant bias in assuming a leadership role in this politically motivated project. Its purpose to “build mutually beneficial relationships between people in the UK and other countries” will ring hollow to Palestinians. So will its claim that it operates “at arm’s length from the UK government.”

While this will not be the first British experience in “constructive engagement” with an apartheid state, as British support for apartheid South Africa stands out in the history of that country, its timing attests to British betrayal of any semblance of commitment to human rights and the rule of law. This generous British award comes at a time when Israel is continuing apace the construction of its colonial wall and settlements in defiance of the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion of July 2004; committing unprecedented war crimes in its brutal siege on 1.5 million Palestinians in occupied Gaza, severely curtailing their access to health and educational services and condemning them to abject poverty and, in thousands of cases, slow death; intensifying its extra-judicial killings and indiscriminate attacks on civilians; uprooting hundreds of thousands of fruitful trees and destroying the environment; demolishing homes; and cutting up the OPT into isolated Bantustans, slowly destroying the economy as well as social institutions, all in a systematic fashion aimed at forcing more Palestinians to leave their lands.

Nevertheless, what is heartening about this recent development is the fact that the academic boycott of Israel is becoming a reality, a force to be recognized and reckoned with. It is becoming increasingly clear that the sustained efforts of conscientious academics in the UK and the world at large to hold the Israeli academy accountable for its complicity in Israeli colonial and racist policies are bearing fruit. This should encourage us to press with our call for an institutional boycott of the Israeli academy.

amazing recent anti-wall demonstrations

Clip One

Clip Two

Clip Three

all from:
http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=yisraelpnm

grateful dead at bohemian grove

Bohemian Grove 2008 Guest List REVEALED
Activists Take 9/11 Truth to Elite’s Summer Retreat
truthaction.org , July 20, 2008

Bohemian Grove 2008 Guest List pdf (4.7 MB)

Activists from truthaction.org have obtained the official guest list for Bohemian Grove’s 2008 midsummer encampment along with a map of the Grove’s facilities. According to the guest list, this year’s attendees include George H. W. Bush, David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and several former CIA directors. Also attending are two members of the Grateful Dead, one of whom is camping with the elder Bush. During an action at the entrance of the elite retreat, several 9/11 truth information packs were accepted by Bohemian Grove campers and taken into the grove, including one by former CIA Director James Woolsey’s bunkmate.

The Bohemian Grove, located in the small town of Monte Rio in Sonoma County, California is notorious for its annual summer retreats for the rich and powerful during which participants kick back, relax and enjoy a simulated child sacrifice called “Cremation of Care”. The Grove is strictly off-limits to the uninvited and much effort is made to maintain secrecy. Workers at the retreat must sign a comprehensive confidentiality agreement and the entrance to the 2,700 acre getaway is guarded not only by private security but also the local Sheriff’s department, at taxpayers’ expense. This year, 9/11 truth activists have been a regular presence at the entrance to the Grove during the two week event, talking to many of the workers coming in and out and also to several of the campers. A number of workers have expressed profound gratitude for the presence and message of the activists and at least one elite camper displayed a seemingly genuine interest in the 9/11 truth materials he was given, stopping to talk for awhile and revealing that he was camping with a former CIA director before heading back into the Grove with his info pack.

escobar on hagee & lieberman