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Opinion Editorials, September 7, 2011

 

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Articles Usually Not Allowed in Zionist-Controlled Corporate Media

September 7, 2011

 
“Implications of Palestinian statehood” http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=416887
 
How US "charities" break tax laws to fund Israeli settlements
http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=8&p=81094&s2=04
 
Rally and March to the UN, Thursday, September 15th! End All US Aid to Israel! End the Occupation! Support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions! http://al-awdany.org/2011/07/sept-15-palestine-rally-at-the-united-nations/
 
Egypt’s military ruler Tantawi and the American siege of Gaza: revelations from Wikileaks
http://electronicintifada.net/blog/ali-abunimah/egypts-military-ruler-tantawi-and-american-siege-gaza-revelations-wikileaks

Internally displaced people: A photographic project by activestills
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrlw-uQJG_s
 
How Israel terrorized Iraqi Jews into leaving Iraq
http://uprootedpalestinians.blogspot.com/2008/10/how-israel-terrorized-iraqi-jews-into.html
 
How the US diplomats act as subcontractors for Israeli apartheid
US raised academic boycott vote with Norwegian government, Wikileaks shows
http://electronicintifada.net/blog/maureen/us-raised-academic-boycott-vote-norwegian-government-wikileaks-shows
 
The Palestinian Civil Society has issued a call for boycotts, divestments and sanctions in July 2005.  The call is unambiguous and refers to similar activities held during the apartheid era in South Africa http://www.bdsmovement.net/
 
There are also published criteria for academic and cultural boycotts.
http://pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1047
                                  
Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
 

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U.S. Is Appealing to Palestinians to Stall U.N. Vote
 
The administration has circulated a proposal for renewed peace talks with the Israelis in the hopes of persuading the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to abandon the bid for recognition at the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly beginning Sept. 20. The administration has made it clear to Mr. Abbas that it will veto any request presented to the United Nations Security Council to make a Palestinian state a new member outright. But the United States does not have enough support to block a vote by the General Assembly to elevate the status of the Palestinians’ nonvoting observer “entity” to that of a nonvoting observer state. The change would pave the way for the Palestinians to join dozens of United Nations bodies and conventions, and it could strengthen their ability to pursue cases against Israel at the International Criminal Court. Senior officials said the administration wanted to avoid not only a veto but also the more symbolic and potent General Assembly vote that would leave the United States and only a handful of other nations in the opposition. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic maneuverings, said they feared that in either case a wave of anger could sweep the Palestinian territories and the wider Arab world at a time when the region is already in tumult. President Obama would be put in the position of threatening to veto recognition of the aspirations of most Palestinians or risk alienating Israel and its political supporters in the United States. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/world/middleeast/04mideast.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss 
 
 
Libyan commander demands apology over MI6 and CIA plot

Episode led to capture and torture of Abdul Hakim Belhaj and raises damaging questions about UK's knowledge of rendition
 
One of Libya's senior rebel commanders has demanded an apology from the British and American governments following the discovery of secret documents which show MI6 and the CIA were involved in a plot that led to his capture and torture. Abdul Hakim Belhaj, the security commander in Tripoli, told the Guardian he was considering suing over the episode, which raises further damaging questions over Britain's knowledge of the rendition and ill-treatment of prisoners. One document found in a treasure trove of abandoned papers shows a senior MI6 officer boasting to the Libyans about how British intelligence led to Belhaj being captured on 6 March 2004. Then a leading dissident member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), Belhaj was seized in Bangkok and handed over to the CIA, who
he alleges tortured him and injected him with truth serum before flying him back to Tripoli for interrogation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/04/libyan-commander-demands-apology 
 
Leaked cable: Ex-Blackwater guards kept working in Iraq
 
BAGHDAD — A leaked US diplomatic cable says that "hundreds" of former employees of Blackwater, which was barred from Iraq over a deadly 2007 shooting, later worked with other firms guarding US diplomats here. Iraq announced in January 2009 that it would not renew Blackwater's operating licence due to a September 16, 2007 incident in which guards protecting a US diplomatic convoy opened fire in Baghdad's busy Nisur Square, killing at least 14 civilians. After that announcement, the US State Department did not renew its contract with Blackwater, which has renamed itself Xe, for security services in Iraq. But US diplomatic cables released by whistleblower website WikiLeaks confirm that ex-Blackwater employees kept working in Iraq with other security firms.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/09/04/leaked-cable-ex-blackwater-guards-kept-working-in-iraq/ 
http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/09/chomsky-u-s-has-extreme-contempt-for-democracy/ 
 
Meet An Islamophobia Network Funder: The Varet And Rosenwald Family

 
The Varet and Rosenwald family’s philanthropy — led by Elizabeth Varet, a director at American Securities Management and a granddaughter of Sears Roebuck founder Julius Rosenwald, David Steinmann and Nina Rosenwald — are identified in the Center for American Progress’ new report Fear Inc., as one of the top donors to the U.S. Islamophobia network. Their family foundations, the Anchorage Charitable Fund and William Rosenwald Family Fund, contributed $2.818 million dollars to organizations which fan the flames of Islamophobia. The Varet family helps fund: Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism ($10,000); Counterterrorism & Security Education and Research Foundation ($15,000); Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum ($2,320,229.33); Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy ($437,000); the Clarion Fund ($25,000); David Horowitz’s Freedom Center ($11,000) and Brigitte Gabriel’s American Congress for Truth ($125,000).
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/09/02/310779/meet-an-islamophobia-network-funder-the-varet-and-rosenwald-family/ 
http://thinkprogress.org/tag/islamophobia 
 
Dick Morris Uses Fox To Push His Anti-Muslim Petition

 
In recent days, Fox News contributor Dick Morris has repeatedly used his Fox appearances to promote a petition on his website opposing the Park51 Islamic community center. Morris has a history of inflammatory attacks on Park51, including the outrageous claim that the community center is "designed to celebrate the attacks that killed 3,000 Americans."
http://mediamatters.org/research/201109010007 
 
Fox's Bolling Corrects False Smear Of CAP Islamophobia Report

 
Earlier this week, Media Matters detailed how Eric Bolling, on his Fox Business show Follow the Money, falsely asserted he was "reading directly from" a Center for American Progress report when he claimed that it "blames Islamophobia in America on a small group of Jews and Israel supporters in America, whose views are being backed by millions of dollars." In fact, he was reading from a piece attacking the report at the right-wing website American Thinker. Now, as Think Progress notes, Bolling has issued a correction on the Follow the Money show page at the Fox Business website:
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201109020025 
http://thinkprogress.org/media/2011/09/02/310807/fox%e2%80%99s-eric-bolling-finally-comments-on-his-defamatory-remark-%e2%80%98sorry-for-the-confusion%e2%80%99/ 
 
After 9/11: 'You no longer have rights'

What was it like for immigrant Muslims and Arab-Americans in the wake of 9/11? Ten years on, three people tell their stories
 
Then they told me Tashnuba and I were going to leave. They handcuffed us both. The cuffs left marks. We got back in the Escalade. I'm very traumatised when I see Escalades now. When we arrived at our destination, they put us into our own cell. Tashnuba and I looked at each other. She said to me, "You put me on a list?" I said, "No! They said you put me on a list." We both realised they had been trying to set us up.  They didn't detain her parents, they just detained her. Later I found out why they'd taken my dad. After I'd been reported as a suicide bomber, the FBI started investigating my whole family. That's how they found out about my dad being here without papers.  The FBI drove us to Pennsylvania, across state lines, without my parents' permission. We got to the juvenile detention centre late at night. The female guard told me and Tashnuba we had to get strip-searched.  I was in tears. My own mother doesn't look at me naked. I said, "It must be against some law for you to do this to me."
 
The female guard said, "It's not. You no longer have rights."
 
She said, "Lift your breasts."
 
I lifted my breasts.
 
She said, "Open your legs."
 
I opened my legs.
 
She said, "Put your hands in there, to see there's nothing."
 
I said, "There's nothing there!"
 
She said, "Just do it."
 
I did it.
 
She gave me a blue uniform and told me to take a shower in five minutes, and then she left. I sat at the corner of the shower and held myself and cried. I was thinking, I cannot believe what I just went through. When I got to the cell, I could see Tashnuba in the corner, praying. There was one blanket, and it was freezing cold. We stayed up the whole night talking about everything. I don't know how we fell asleep, but I remember at one point we were both crying. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/02/after-9-11-muslim-arab-american-stories

Tension, confusion behind EU facade on Palestine
 
A big problem was lack of knowledge of what the Palestinians will ask for.
 
Variables include Palestine asking the UN Security Council to become a fully-fledged UN member - an option that would see a US veto and a clash between the US and pro-Palestinian EU countries; Palestine asking the UN to become a "non-member state" like the Vatican - an option that could see Israel abandon previous peace deals; Palestine attaching supplementary clauses on recogntion of Israel or security issues which are unacceptable even for its EU friends.
http://euobserver.com/24/113516
 
Case Study: How One New Yorker Got Texas And Other States To Push Anti-Sharia Legislation
 
In the last few years, we’ve seen a rash of “anti-Sharia” bills pop up in state legislatures across the country. Lawmakers from Alaska toTexas to South Carolina have introduced legislation to combat the fictitious threat of Sharia law taking over the American judicial system.  This trend has been propagated by a small handful of anti-Muslim misinformation experts discussed in the Center for American Progress’ new report, “Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America”. In chapter 2, we took a closer look at these various state bills and found remarkable similarity between them — with good reason.  Instead of state legislators around the country determining independently that Sharia law was somehow a threat to their state, they have largely been acting at the behest of a single anti-Islam activist: David Yerushalmi. The Brooklyn lawyer produced model “anti-Sharia” legislation — you can read it here — which has been slightly tailored and introduced in more than a dozen states.
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/660965/case_study%3A_how_one_new_yorker_got_texas_and_other_states_to_push_anti-sharia_legislation/#paragraph5
 
U.S. Right Wing and GOP Presidential Candidates Spreading Paranoid Anti-Muslim Hysteria as Part of Take-Over Strategy

The Islamophobic crusade raging across the country is in line with longstanding goals of conservative organizing, and is being used to further the agenda of big business.
 
Scaife’s name turned up again this month in connection with a familiar cabal of right-wing corporate moneymen financing a small and relatively new political network determined to promote Islamophobia throughout America. According to an authoritative 130-page report by the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank based in Washington, Scaife and other conservative sugardaddies have pumped $42.6 million between 2001 and 2009 into the Islamophobic network. Most of the money has gone to five figures known for bigoted, extremist views on Muslims, Arabs, and people of color. They are: Daniel Pipes, a neoconservative academic who urged Israel to employ methods of terrorism against Palestinian civilians and “raze Palestinian villages;” Frank Gaffney, a rightist national security wonk who has called the practice of Shariah a form of “sedition;” Robert Spencer, a writer and activist who has said that “everyone knows” most or all terrorists are Muslims; Stephen Emerson, a self-styled terror “expert” who blamed Muslims for the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building, which turned out to have been conducted by a right-wing white nationalist terrorist; and David Yerushalmi, a far-right legal activist who has argued that whites are genetically superior to people of color. Behind these figures lies a cadre of equally vitriolic activists like Pamela Geller and Brigitte Gabriel who hype their work. (Read more about the Islamophobic network in my piece, “The Great Fear.”
http://www.alternet.org/story/152274/u.s._right_wing_and_gop_presidential_candidates_spreading_paranoid_anti-muslim_hysteria_as_part_of_take-over_strategy/?page=entire
 
Libyan papers 'show CIA and MI6 links'

Documents in abandoned Tripoli office show Gaddafi's intelligence chief had ties with US and British spy agencies.
 
Documents found in the abandoned Tripoli office of Muammar Gaddafi's intelligence chief indicate the US and British spy agencies helped his regime persecute Libyan dissidents, Human Rights Watch said.  The documents were uncovered by the human rights activist group in the abandoned offices of Moussa Koussa, Libya's former spy chief and foreign minister.  The group said on Saturday that it uncovered hundreds of letters between the CIA, MI6 and Koussa, who is now believed to be in Qatar ater defecting to Britain in February.  Letters from the CIA began, "Dear Moussa", and were signed informally with first names only by CIA officials, Human Rights Watch said on Saturday.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/09/20119320053377843.html
 
66 Years Ago: Wilfred Burchett Arrives in Hiroshima—as a New Era of Nuclear Censorship Begins
 
Articles written by the American reporters who had landed in Hiroshima gave no evidence that they had visited the hospitals. Yet Lawrence, years later in his memoirs, revealed, “We talked with dying Japanese in the hospitals.” Were those stories censored by MacArthur’s people? Lawrence also disclosed that MacArthur was “hopping mad” about the press junket and cut off supplies of gasoline to planes that might make another journo trip possible. Then he ordered all American reporters out of Tokyo to a closely watched enclave in Yokohama.  Meanwhile, as I wrote earlier this week, the first American reporter to reach Nagasaki, George Weller, had found a similar “plague” in that city, but made the mistake of filing his stories directly through MacArthur’s office. All of the pieces would be spiked, only appearing for the first time in 2005. http://www.thenation.com/blog/163115/66-years-ago-wilfred-burchett-arrives-hiroshima%E2%80%94-new-era-nuclear-censorship-begins


Tim Stinson

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