Both Obama and Brown look like appeasers of Israel from their recent trips to Jerusalem. Brown went on a at length of his childhood memories of the Holy Land as a member of the church and said nothing about Gaza, confiscation of Palestinian land or the rising toll of Palestinian casualties. However his rhetoric led Obama's with references to the creation of a viable Palestinian state. Obama's statement about the indivisibility of Jerusalem concerns Palestinians although Israelis still appear to favour McCain as the greater potential ally.
]]>1- Bilin continues its battle in the courts
2- Bil'in Canada call to action
3- One injured and dozens affected by tear gas at Bilin weekly non-violent protest against the apartheid wall.
1- Bilin continues its battle in the courts
FFJ- July 18, 2008 - Yesterday afternoon the village counsel and popular committee of Bilin met with their lawyers to discuss recent developments in two legal actions: the first, the lawsuit Bilin filed last Tuesday against two Canadian corporations, Green Park and Green Mount; the second, a follow up to a case they won last year, in which the High Court of Israel ruled that the fence in Bilin is illegal, and must be re-routed.
In the claim filed against Green Park and Green Mount International, Bilin's legal representation argues that by building Jewish settlements in Occupied West Bank, ones like the nearby Modi'in Illit and Mattityahu East, Israel is committing war crimes. Further, they argue that anyone assisting in this crime--by planning, building, and marketing residential units in these settlements, for instance--is by virtue of abetting these crimes violating international law (see the Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 49). "This is legal history," said one lawyer, "the first case ever to raise this argument. To some degree, we have already won just by filing it, since it will make other corporations think twice before supporting settlements. And if we succeed, we will set a huge, huge precedent."
The claim was filed in the Superior Court of Quebec, and both Green Park and Green Mount International have given notice that they will appear in court to defend themselves. Since receiving this notice, Bilin's legal team has been preparing for a big trial, anticipating that the defense will object to the trial itself, on the grounds that Canadian courts do not have proper jurisdiction to try this case. But Bilin intends to counter this argument, stressing that war crimes and violations of human rights concern all humanity, and hence all courts, where each and every court has a duty to try cases of this kind. If Bilin can overcome this initial objection, assert their lawyers, they will be on solid ground. The villagers of Bilin are putting out a call to their supporters to raise awareness about this groundbreaking trial. They are also putting out a call to each and every Palestinian, regardless of political party, to come together around this significant act of resistance. It's a national issue, after all.
The second update is less uplifting. In September 2007, after an arduous trial, Israel's High Court of Justice concluded that the section of the separation barrier that slices through Bilin's land, cutting villagers off from over sixty percent of it, is illegal. The court ordered the Ministry of Defense and the IDF to design a new route that satisfies a few essential criteria: (1) that the new route must be planned in a way that minimizes the suffering of the village, (2) that the new route should return as much cultivated land as possible to Bilin's side of the barrier, (3) that the planners must try to return the cultivated land of Wadi Dilib to Bilin, (4) that the new route should be placed, as much as possible, on state instead of private Palestinian land, and (5) that the new route should return a certain set of key enclaves designated by the court.
As of May 2008, Israel had yet to suggest a new route, and absolutely nothing had changed. So Bilin filed a claim against the State of Israel, contending that Israel is in contempt of its own court. One week later Israel replied that it would issue a new plan in three weeks time, and on July 6th the plan for a new route was submitted.
But this plan met none of the criteria. The new route ceded part of Wadi Dilib, but only a fraction, and nothing else. Further, the construction of the projected route will destroy 37 more acres, whereas the people of Bilin will only be allowed to recover 30.25 acres; not to mention that 17.5 of these acres have already been destroyed by the route of the previous fence. Not a hair of the proposed route will be built on state rather than Palestinian private land, not one of the key enclaves will be returned, and perhaps most strikingly: 545 of Bilin's 1,000 acres--some 54.5 percent--will still be lost to the fence. It is clear, of course, that the Ministry of Defense and the Israeli Defense Forces have done their very best to avoid implementing any of the criteria into the new route, not by negligence, but sheer calculation.
Bilin has once again claimed that Israel is in contempt of its own court, and that Israel has "treated the ruling as dust." Bilin has demanded that the court fine or arrest the Minister of Defense and the regional Israeli military commander. On the day this claim was filed, the court responded that it would hold a hearing on July 27th. Bilin is preparing for the hearing.
Related article: "Seeking Justice Abroad" posted July 10, 2008.
]]> 2- Bil'in Canada call to action
3- One injured and dozens affected by tear gas at Bilin weekly non-violent protest against the apartheid wall.
Bilin - Friday 18th of July, 2008: As soon as Friday prayer finished, people of Bilin marched in their weekly protest against the apartheid wall and settlements, joined by the international and Israeli activists. The demonstrators carried banners against occupation, arrests, killings, closures and incursions against the Palestinians. They also carried posters of the martyr Dalal al Moghrabi and banners calling for the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.
The demonstration started at Bilin Mosque through Bilin Street and the demonstrators were chanting against the apartheid wall and for the release of prisoners. The walked towards the gate of the wall and soldiers started firing tear gas and rubber bullets resulting in the injury of Adeeb Abo Rahmah and dozens affected by the tear gas.
Today there were two delegations, one of European journalists and members from the left parties of the Greek parliament who visited the village observed the demonstration and were also affected by the tear gas and heard an account of the struggle of the people of the area from the Bilin Popular Committee.
Yesterday, the lawyer of the village, Michael Sfard, visited Bilin and had a meeting with local residents and explained to them the legal status of their legal action in Canada against Canadian companies who are building settlement of Mitatyaho East (the eastern side of Modi'in Elite) on their land and explained the status of cases pending in the Israeli Supreme Court about the new path of the wall which residents are objecting to.
Thank you for you continued support,
Iyad Burnat- Head of Popular Commitee in Bilin
Head of Friends of Freedom and Justice in Bilin
Email- ffj.bilin@yahoo.com
Mobile- (00972) (0) 547847942
Office- (00972) (2) 2489129
Fax- (00972) (2) 2489129
While the speech and actions of the Israeli state and the Zionist movement encouraging settlers with extremist views - mirrored by the extreme right Christian Zionists, who while sharing the name have a rather different agenda and include anti-semitic individuals - there is a considerable body of Jewish opinion which dissents. Numerically it is probably vastly greater than the few who have taken power, and backed by the U.S. uses it to intimidate, bully, terrorise in pursuit of "peace2 we are told.
"It probably seems clear to many of us that of the Obama and McCain pair, one is way more reckless and dangerous. Yet, they share a view of how to resolve conflict which is based on waging war. Howard Zinn points out how bankrupt this line of thinking is - at least in terms of achieving the stated aims: ridding ourselves of "terrorism" and such.
Of course, waging wars have other aims(which this short article doesn't address): The further consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of the few, and the opportunity to use drummed up fear to dissolve chunks of what liberties we still possess."
Racheli Gai.
Jul 18, 2008 By Howard Zinn
"BARACK OBAMA and John McCain continue to argue about war. McCain says to keep the troops in Iraq until we "win" and supports sending more troops to Afghanistan. Obama says to withdraw some (not all) troops from Iraq and send them to fight and "win" in Afghanistan.
For someone like myself, who fought in World War II, and since then has protested against war, I must ask: Have our political leaders gone mad? Have they learned nothing from recent history? Have they not learned that no one "wins" in a war, but that hundreds of thousands of humans die, most of them civilians, many of them children?
Did we "win" by going to war in Korea? The result was a stalemate, leaving things as they were before with a dictatorship in South Korea and a dictatorship in North Korea. Still, more than 2 million people - mostly civilians - died, the United States dropped napalm on children, and 50,000 American soldiers lost their lives.
Did we "win" in Vietnam? We were forced to withdraw, but only after 2 million Vietnamese died, again mostly civilians, again leaving children burned or armless or legless, and 58,000 American soldiers dead.
Did we win in the first Gulf War? Not really. Yes, we pushed Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, with only a few hundred US casualties, but perhaps 100,000 Iraqis died. And the consequences were deadly for the United States: Saddam was still in power, which led the United States to enforce economic sanctions. That move led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, according to UN officials, and set the stage for another war.
In Afghanistan, the United States declared "victory" over the Taliban. Now the Taliban is back, and attacks are increasing. The recent US military death count in Afghanistan exceeds that in Iraq. What makes Obama think that sending more troops to Afghanistan will produce "victory"? And if it did, in an immediate military sense, how long would that last, and at what cost to human life on both sides?
The resurgence of fighting in Afghanistan is a good moment to reflect on the beginning of US involvement there. There should be sobering thoughts to those who say that attacking Iraq was wrong, but attacking Afghanistan was right.
Go back to Sept. 11, 2001. Hijackers direct jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing close to 3,000 A terrorist act, inexcusable by any moral code. The nation is aroused. President Bush orders the invasion and bombing of Afghanistan, and the American public is swept into approval by a wave of fear and anger. Bush announces a "war on terror."
Except for terrorists, we are all against terror. So a war on terror sounded right. But there was a problem, which most Americans did not consider in the heat of the moment: President Bush, despite his confident bravado, had no idea how to make war against terror.
Yes, Al Qaeda - a relatively small but ruthless group of fanatics - was apparently responsible for the attacks. And, yes, there was evidence that Osama bin Laden and others were based in Afghanistan. But the United States did not know exactly where they were, so it invaded and bombed the whole country. That made many people feel righteous. "We had to do something," you heard people say.
Yes, we had to do something. But not thoughtlessly, not recklessly. Would we approve of a police chief, knowing there was a vicious criminal somewhere in a neighborhood, ordering that the entire neighborhood be bombed? There was soon a civilian death toll in Afghanistan of more than 3,000 - exceeding the number of deaths in the Sept. 11 attacks. Hundreds of Afghans were driven from their homes and turned into wandering refugees.
Two months after the invasion of Afghanistan, a Boston Globe story described a 10-year-old in a hospital bed: "He lost his eyes and hands to the bomb that hit his house after Sunday dinner." The doctor attending him said: "The United States must be thinking he is Osama. If he is not Osama, then why would they do this?"
We should be asking the presidential candidates: Is our war in Afghanistan ending terrorism, or provoking it? And is not war itself terrorism?"
Howard Zinn is author of "A Power Governments Cannot Suppress" published by City Lights Books.
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It happens in former British, and no doubt other, colonies where not immigrants, but local people will sell their labour very cheaply. To them the payment is a matter of life and death.
What is happening on Long Island brings into sharp relief the hypocrisy of western governments tied to capitalist economies. Illegal migrant labour in fact provides a necessary function for the economy. The exploitation and misery which exists in this underworld surfaces from time to time and includes slavery, child labour and a huge sex industry. Whether the deportation of servants working for the super rich touches these pressing problems remains in doubt.
]]>"Mr Bush's decision to send the number three in the State Department, William Burns, to attend talks with Iran in Geneva at the weekend caused howls of outrage that were heard all the way from the State Department's sanctuary of Foggy Bottom to the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue. A parallel initiative to reopen the interest's section of the American embassy in Tehran, which would be the first return of a diplomatic presence on Iranian territory since 1979, has also received a cool response from neo-conservatives." Source Independent 18/7/2008
]]> John Bolton and the like are now complaining about yet another u-turn which will give a signal to Iran that they can do what they like. Rice has pointed out that internationally there is complete unity in the opposition to Iran's programme so diplomacy has replaced belligerence.]]>There is something about hospital cleaning being brought back in house. Public services should never be surrendered to the private sector anyway. Look at the catalogue of catastrophe that has resulted. Hospital cleanliness is one, the latest is the failure of an American firm to mark SATs papers on time. Remember a number of railway accident fatalities after Jarvis was let loose?
The New Labour Government hates professionals with some passion having ignored teachers on the raft of poisonous proposals they have introduced, with predictable disastrous consequences for pupils, for staff, for parents. Doctors didn't jump, and while they as private concerns themselves, weren't beyond reproach, plans to replace family practices with clinics are not what people want. Run by large unaccountable corporations they require maximum profit. The unions are concerned about the NHS, but the basic Thatcherite philosophies underpinning health, education, prisons - every facet of life, including the conduct of our wars is outsourced. Shareholders are happy, but who else?
]]>Gideon Levy accompanies a group of prominent South African human rights activists, as they visit Israel and the West Bank. Many of the visitors' comments, who are shocked by what they're seeing, deal with comparing life in Apartheid South Africa to the conditions prevailing in this part of the OPT.
To me, the major interest of the article is in that it gives us a glimpse into the thoughts and feelings of people who had been through that other struggle.
Racheli Gai.
Gideon Levy: 'Worse than apartheid'
July 10, 2008
"I thought they would feel right at home in the alleys of Balata refugee camp, the Casbah and the Hawara checkpoint. But they said there is no comparison: for them the Israeli occupation regime is worse than anything they knew under apartheid. This week, 21 human rights activists from South Africa visited Israel. Among them were members of Nelson Mandela's African National Congress; at least one of them took part in the armed struggle and at least two were jailed. There were two South African Supreme Court judges, a former deputy minister, members of Parliament, attorneys, writers and journalists. Blacks and whites, about half of them Jews who today are in conflict with attitudes of the conservative Jewish community in their country. Some of them have been here before; for others it was their first visit.
For five days they paid an unconventional visit to Israel - without Sderot, the IDF and the Foreign Ministry (but with Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial and a meeting with Supreme Court President Justice Dorit Beinisch. They spent most of their time in the occupied areas, where hardly any official guests go - places that are also shunned by most Israelis.
On Monday they visited Nablus, the most imprisoned city in the West Bank. From Hawara to the Casbah, from the Casbah to Balata, from Joseph's Tomb to the monastery of Jacob's Well. They traveled from Jerusalem to Nablus via Highway 60, observing the imprisoned villages that have no access to the main road, and seeing the "roads for the natives," which pass under the main road. They saw and said nothing. There were no separate roads under apartheid. They went through the Hawara checkpoint mutely: they never had such barriers.
Jody Kollapen, who was head of Lawyers for Human Rights in the apartheid regime, watches silently. He sees the "carousel" into which masses of people are jammed on their way to work, visit family or go to the hospital. Israeli peace activist Neta Golan, who lived for several years in the besieged city, explains that only 1 percent of the inhabitants are allowed to leave the city by car, and they are suspected of being collaborators with Israel. Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, a former deputy minister of defense and of health and a current member of Parliament, a revered figure in her country, notices a sick person being taken through on a stretcher and is shocked. "To deprive people of humane medical care? You know, people die because of that," she says in a muted voice.
The tour guides - Palestinian activists - explain that Nablus is closed off by six checkpoints. Until 2005, one of them was open. "The checkpoints are supposedly for security purposes, but anyone who wants to perpetrate an attack can pay NIS 10 for a taxi and travel by bypass roads, or walk through the hills.
The real purpose is to make life hard for the inhabitants. The civilian population suffers," says Said Abu Hijla, a lecturer at Al-Najah University in the city.
In the bus I get acquainted with my two neighbors: Andrew Feinstein, a son of Holocaust survivors who is married to a Muslim woman from Bangladesh and served six years as an MP for the ANC; and Nathan Gefen, who has a male Muslim partner and was a member of the right-wing Betar movement in his youth. Gefen is active on the Committee against AIDS in his AIDS-ravaged country.
"Look left and right," the guide says through a loudspeaker, "on the top of every hill, on Gerizim and Ebal, is an Israeli army outpost that is watching us." Here are bullet holes in the wall of a school, there is Joseph's Tomb, guarded by a group of armed Palestinian policemen. Here there was a checkpoint, and this is where a woman passerby was shot to death two years ago. The government building that used to be here was bombed and destroyed by F-16 warplanes. A thousand residents of Nablus were killed in the second intifada, 90 of them in Operation Defensive Shield - more than in Jenin. Two weeks ago, on the day the Gaza Strip truce came into effect, Israel carried out its last two assassinations here for the time being. Last night the soldiers entered again and arrested people.
It has been a long time since tourists visited here. There is something new: the numberless memorial posters that were pasted to the walls to commemorate the fallen have been replaced by marble monuments and metal plaques in every corner of the Casbah.
"Don't throw paper into the toilet bowl, because we have a water shortage," the guests are told in the offices of the Casbah Popular Committee, located high in a spectacular old stone building. The former deputy minister takes a seat at the head of the table. Behind her are portraits of Yasser Arafat, Abu Jihad and Marwan Barghouti - the jailed Tanzim leader. Representatives of the Casbah residents describe the ordeals they face. Ninety percent of the children in the ancient neighborhood suffer from anemia and malnutrition, the economic situation is dire, the nightly incursions are continuing, and some of the inhabitants are not allowed to leave the city at all. We go out for a tour on the trail of devastation wrought by the IDF over the years.
Edwin Cameron, a judge on the Supreme Court of Appeal, tells his hosts: "We came here lacking in knowledge and are thirsty to know. We are shocked by what we have seen until now. It is very clear to us that the situation here is intolerable." A poster pasted on an outside wall has a photograph of a man who spent 34 years in an Israeli prison. Mandela was incarcerated seven years less than that. One of the Jewish members of the delegation is prepared to say, though not for attribution, that the comparison with apartheid is very relevant and that the Israelis are even more efficient in implementing the separation-of-races regime than the South Africans were. If he were to say this publicly, he would be attacked by the members of the Jewish community, he says.
Under a fig tree in the center of the Casbah one of the Palestinian activists explains: "The Israeli soldiers are cowards. That is why they created routes of movement with bulldozers. In doing so they killed three generations of one family, the Shubi family, with the bulldozers." Here is the stone monument to the family - grandfather, two aunts, mother and two children. The words "We will never forget, we will never forgive" are engraved on the stone.
No less beautiful than the famed Paris cemetery of Pere-Lachaise, the central cemetery of Nablus rests in the shadow of a large grove of pine trees. Among the hundreds of headstones, those of the intifada victims stand out. Here is the fresh grave of a boy who was killed a few weeks ago at the Hawara checkpoint. The South Africans walk quietly between the graves, pausing at the grave of the mother of our guide, Abu Hijla. She was shot 15 times. "We promise you we will not surrender," her children wrote on the headstone of the woman who was known as "mother of the poor."
Lunch is in a hotel in the city, and Madlala-Routledge speaks. "It is hard for me to describe what I am feeling. What I see here is worse than what we experienced. But I am encouraged to find that there are courageous people here. We want to support you in your struggle, by every possible means. There are quite a few Jews in our delegation, and we are very proud that they are the ones who brought us here. They are demonstrating their commitment to support you. In our country we were able to unite all the forces behind one struggle, and there were courageous whites, including Jews, who joined the struggle. I hope we will see more Israeli Jews joining your struggle."
She was deputy defense minister from 1999 to 2004; in 1987 she served time in prison. Later, I asked her in what ways the situation here is worse than apartheid. "The absolute control of people's lives, the lack of freedom of movement, the army presence everywhere, the total separation and the extensive destruction we saw."
Madlala-Routledge thinks that the struggle against the occupation is not succeeding here because of U.S. support for Israel - not the case with apartheid, which international sanctions helped destroy. Here, the racist ideology is also reinforced by religion, which was not the case in South Africa. "Talk about the 'promised land' and the 'chosen people' adds a religious dimension to racism which we did not have."
Equally harsh are the remarks of the editor-in-chief of the Sunday Times of South Africa, Mondli Makhanya, 38. "When you observe from afar you know that things are bad, but you do not know how bad. Nothing can prepare you for the evil we have seen here. In a certain sense, it is worse, worse, worse than everything we endured. The level of the apartheid, the racism and the brutality are worse than the worst period of apartheid.
"The apartheid regime viewed the blacks as inferior; I do not think the Israelis see the Palestinians as human beings at all. How can a human brain engineer this total separation, the separate roads, the checkpoints? What we went through was terrible, terrible, terrible - and yet there is no comparison. Here it is more terrible. We also knew that it would end one day; here there is no end in sight. The end of the tunnel is blacker than black.
"Under apartheid, whites and blacks met in certain places. The Israelis and the Palestinians do not meet any longer at all. The separation is total. It seems to me that the Israelis would like the Palestinians to disappear. There was never anything like that in our case. The whites did not want the blacks to disappear. I saw the settlers in Silwan [in East Jerusalem] - people who want to expel other people from their place."
Afterward we walk silently through the alleys of Balata, the largest refugee camp in the West Bank, a place that was designated 60 years ago to be a temporary haven for 5,000 refugees and is now inhabited by 26,000. In the dark alleys, which are about the width of a thin person, an oppressive silence prevailed. Everyone was immersed in his thoughts, and only the voice of the muezzin broke the stillness."
................................................................
Condoleeza Rice has already being saying that the U.S. will "not hesitate" to defend Israel from Iranian aggression. As I have said before America it seems to me America is at its most dangerous in the last gasp of an administration hell bent on taking control of resources in the Middle East. Israel is the base and can do some of the dirty work when th U.S. is short of manpower and has already stretched its budgets to deal with conflicts. It is probably Dick Cheney who is most influential here. As we have seen death and destruction means little to him. What I suppose is the hope is that the next administration will be bounced into clearing up the mess.
Apart from the human cost in Iraq the damage to the country's heritage is immense. The history of a nation, which gives a sense of identity and purpose to its people, has been savagely destroyed from "shock and awe" onwards.
Dear Friends, I regret I shan't be with you tomorrow but wish you every success in achieving your goal in the struggle over brutal oppressors. I am ashamed that our western governments are not only silent but complicit with the powerful forces sustaining the oppression. How else could they have built this barbarous symbol of inhumanity stealing land and throwing your livelihood away?
Fraternally
John Tyrrell
Invitation
The Popular Committees of West Ramallah invite you to participate in a demonstration to break the siege of Nilin to take place this Wednesday July 9, 2008. This demonstration is also being held to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the decision of the International Court of Justice on the Israeli Apartheid Wall.
We will gather at the same time - 11:00 am - at two different locations: Budrus Village and Deir Qadis Village.
Together we will break the siege of Nilin.
For more information please call: Ayad Murrar: 0598-918-112 or Iyad Burnat: 054-784-7942
Thank you for you continued support,
Iyad Burnat- Head of Popular Commitee in Bilin
Head of Friends of Freedom and Justice in Bilin
Email- ffj.bilin@yahoo.com
Mobile- (00972) (0) 547847942
Office- (00972) (2) 2489129
Fax- (00972) (2) 2489129
Follow up. A report of the protest
The European settlers and their dependents may be having a hard time with inflation rising exponentially, but many, if not most continue to have funds stashed away outside the country. A pound will buy billions of worthless Zimbabwean currency. This is not the case for those without links outside, although as we know many now have relatives who have fled. In UK thousands are still being forced to return. In South Africa resentment of Zimbabweans competing with local residents for jobs has spilled over into violence. It was said that the Zimbabweans were rather better educated than those they attempted to settle alongside.
]]> As we see at every turn outside attempts to interfere with another nation turn into catastrophe for the people. The outsiders become an occupying power and have their own agenda to follow. Zimbabwe may not have oil, but it is rich in mineral resources. A UN delegation to Zimbabwe reminds us that the sanctions being proposed, on the basis of Mugabe's behaviour towards the outcome of elections, has something else in mind.Another report today (12/7/2008: Independent) talks about Gordon Brown offering military aid to Nigeria, which is an act to justify the Mugabe fear that the U.S. and Britain want to overturn the gains of independence. Outsiders still own, or have considerable stakes in, land and mining rights across the continent. Clearly if Mugabe is seen to be successful in returning this to Africans then others will continue to support him. While many have condemned him in words the African Union are not about to take any action against him: certainly not the sort that western governments are trying to get the UN to agree to.
]]>In this article he remembers Trujillo who gave support to Batista after he left Cuba after the 1959 Revolution which celebrates its 50th anniversary during the coming year. The article is also reveals the humanitarian (this was a term I heard on several occasions when I was in Cuba used when referring to Fidel) aspects of what could have become an authoritarian and oppressive regime. Cuban exiles returned later in 1959 to stage a counter revolution. The main protagonists might well have been imprisoned, tortured, executed. They were instead free and allowed to go to the U.S. where to this day they continue to work with the government to undermine the Cuban revolution.
]]>While MPs have voted themselves a pay and perks deal, they can also benefit business and other interests. Clearly their inside knowledge is valuable to companies on the make. When did we last hear of Philip Gould an early New Labourite. Wasn't he snapped up by someone like Tesco for his knowledge of planning and where Tesco could buy up land for new stores as well as shutting out competition. Patricia Hewitt recently departed from the Department of Health works for Boots, not to mention Blair now businessman cum philanthropist cum opportunist cum you name it. Made us sick when in office and now we know why.
]]> But what about those in office? What other benefits do they get a la Cheney in the US. As we know registers of interest don't always show the full picture. I want to know what individuals know about BAE Systems and their adventures in Saudi Arabia and Tanzania. Here we see Jack Straw serenading Condie Rice (health warning. View this at the risk of nausea)."President Bush has linked higher food prices to higher demand from India and China, but the leaked World Bank study disputes that: 'Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases.' " Source Guardian 4/6/2008
]]> Biofuels have become a political tool creating a new myth about renewable energy sources. Any such dream needs to be tempered with the reality that there is an unknown and massive cost to the idea. Once in the politicians' hands the reverse gear has gone. As Tony Blair once famously said, echoing Margaret Thatcher. "I have no reverse gear". Problem is the vehicle is perched facing the edge of a cliff.Not telling the President is back to the story of the Emperor's clothes. But what of the presidential hopefuls, have they a view on this? As with global warming we seem to be on a treadmill to self-destruction. It is the poor who are already expendable, while those who hold the power to decide continue the self-delusion on a grand scale.
]]>National Committee To Free The Cuban Five Bulletin
An alert from the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
Pastors for Peace Caravan stopped at U.S.-Mexico border
Computers destined for Cuba seized by Border Patrol
Take Action Now!
Pastors for Peace Caravans have been taking supplies and solidarity to Cuba since 1992. This year's Caravan is dedicated to the freedom of the Cuban Five. We urge supporters to read the alert below and take action immediately!
We have just received word that the Pastors for Peace Caravan, which challenges the U.S. blockade of Cuba on an annual basis, has been stopped at the U.S.-Mexico border. As always, the Pastors for Peace buses are carrying medicines and other materials to show their solidarity with the people of Cuba.
Rev. Thomas Smith, President of the Board of Directors for the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization/Pastors for Peace, told ANSWER, "We've had 31 computers seized by the Customs and Border Patrol at the U.S.-Mexico border. These computers were destined for classrooms, clinic and hospitals in Cuba. These are 31 classrooms, clinics and hospitals that now will not have the opportunity to have computers." Smith vowed to "maintain a demonstration until we get the computers back" and called upon all opponents of the U.S. blockade to take a moment to protest this outrageous and cruel confiscation of humanitarian materials by contacting the following:
1. The Border Patrol, which under the Department of Homeland Security, which can be reached at 877-227-5511
2. The Office of Foreign Assets Control, which regulates the U.S. blockade of Cuba, which can be reached at 1-800-540-6322 or ofac_feedback@do.treas.gov
3. Your House representative, who can be reached at the Congressional switchboard at 202-225-3121.
In your phone calls and emails demand the immediate release of all items belonging to the Pastors for Peace Caravan, which have been seized at the U.S.-Mexico border. Let them know that you stand with the Caravan members who are currently protesting at the border, that you oppose the blockade of Cuba. Take action right now!
Tail piece. The Pastors for Peace convoy prevailed surmounting all the obstacles placed in their path.
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