Israel shrugs: 'My land is mine, your land is mine'

From The Guardian:

 

The Israeli army has ordered the seizure of Palestinian land surrounding four West Bank villages apparently in order to hugely expand settlements around Jerusalem, it emerged yesterday.

The confiscation happened as Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met to prepare the ground for a meeting hosted by President George Bush in the United States aimed at reviving a diplomatic solution to the conflict.

However, critics said the confiscation of land suggested that Israel was imposing its own solution on the Palestinians through building roads, barriers and settlements that would render a Palestinian state unviable.

The land seized forms a corridor from East Jerusalem to Jericho and is intended to be used for a road that would be for Palestinians only. Analysts said the road would run on one side of the Israeli security barrier, while the existing Jerusalem-Jericho road would be reserved for Israelis.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli army said it was necessary to build a road to link Bethlehem and the Judea region with Jericho and the Jordan valley area in order to "improve the quality of life" for Palestinians.

She said the road would be nearly 10 miles long and would be built on 145 hectares (357 acres) of state land and 23 hectares of private land that had been confiscated. She added that the army had designed the route to minimise losses to private landowners.

Adam Keller of the Israeli peace group, Gush Shalom, said the confiscation of land belonging to the villages of Abu Dis, Arab al-Sawahra, Nebi Musa and Talhin Alhamar would "rob many villagers of their sole livelihood" but would also "facilitate the big annexation plan known as E-1, which is aimed at linking the settlement of Ma'aleh Adummim with Jerusalem and cutting the West Bank in two."

He said the confiscations were aimed at constructing a "Palestinian bypass road" that would "push the Palestinian traffic between Bethlehem and Ramallah deep into the desert and effectively bar them from the central part of the West Bank". ... Read on >>

'The Seven Storey Mountain' was first published 59 years ago this month

The Path to the Mountain

"...In books that become classics the opening words often seem to be inevitable, as if they could not possibly have been otherwise--"Call me Ishmael," "Happy families are all alike," "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." After several tries, the opening of Mountain became: "On the last day of January 1915, under the sign of the Water Bearer, in a year of a great war, and down in the shadows of some French mountains on the borders of Spain, I came into the world." There remained the job of editorial polishing--eliminating repetitions and longueurs. Merton was very cooperative about all these minor changes. "Really, the Mountain did need to be cut," he wrote a friend. "The length was impossible....When you hear your words read aloud in a refectory, it makes you wish you had never written at all."
 

Then a crisis arose in the midst of the editing. Merton told Naomi that a final censor was refusing permission to publish! Unaware that the author had a contract, an elderly censor from another abbey objected to Merton's "colloquial prose style," which he considered inappropriate for a monk. He urged that the book be put aside until Merton "learned to write decent English." We felt that these anonymous censors would have suppressed St. Augustine's "Confessions" if given the chance. I advised Merton to appeal (in French) to the Abbot General in France, and to our relief the Abbot General concluded that an author's style was a personal matter. This cleared the air and the censor wisely reversed his opinion. At last the Mountain could be published..."

 

"Washington climate conference ... a triumph of US media management"

"...The opening public statements were made by President Bush, Dr Rice and Jim Connaughton, the head of White House climate strategy.

 

The only foreigner to speak publicly was Yvo de Boer who, as a representative of the UN, remained neutrally uncritical of his hosts. The two-day meeting then went into closed session.

Other delegates were furious at what they said were false leadership claims on climate by Mr Bush, but they were not given a platform to address the media.

When they emerged at the end of the conference on the Friday, they found that the co-ordinator, Mr Connaughton, had slipped out to brief the media half-an-hour before the end of the meeting, and the US TV networks had gone home.

The conference did not receive widespread publicity in the US despite growing public concern about climate change.

But those papers that did report it ran headlines like "Bush promises leadership on climate" although the Washington Post and New York Times did carry more critical messages down in the body of their articles.

"The White House slaughtered us," said one European delegate in search of the vanished American TV crews, "they absolutely slaughtered us". ..." Full article >>

Spooks to hold journalism seminars

Spies Prep Reporters on Protecting Secrets

 

Frustrated by press leaks about its most sensitive electronic surveillance work, the secretive National Security Agency convened an unprecedented series of off-the-record "seminars" in recent years to teach reporters about the damage caused by such leaks and to discourage reporting that could interfere with the agency's mission to spy on America's enemies.

The half-day classes featured high-ranking NSA officials highlighting objectionable passages in published stories and offering "an innocuous rewrite" that officials said maintained the "overall thrust" of the articles but omitted details that could disclose the agency's techniques, according to course outlines obtained by The New York Sun.

Dubbed "SIGINT 101," using the NSA's shorthand for signals intelligence, the seminar was presented "a handful of times" between approximately 2002 and 2004, an agency spokeswoman, Marci Green, confirmed yesterday. Officials were pleased with the program, she said.

"They believe they were very successful in being able to talk to journalists regarding our mission and the sensitivities of our mission in an unclassified way," Ms. Green said.

The syllabi make clear that the sessions, which took place at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Md., were conceived of not merely as familiarization tours, but as part of a campaign to limit the damage caused by leaks of sensitive intelligence.

"Course Objective: to convey the fragility of SIGINT and to increase editors' and reporters' understanding that there are other ways to express similar thoughts in an article without compromising the story and without compromising SIGINT," the syllabi said.

The NSA's seminars, delivered over tea and pastries, and accompanied by a clip from "Top Gun," seemed designed to elicit a chummy atmosphere and to highlight commonalities between reporters and the agency's electronic sleuths. "Reporters go to great lengths to protect their sources, as do we," one talking point for the classes said. "We need your help."...

Read on>>

'Imagine Peace' ...by Cindy Sheehan

From Michael Moore: Must Read:

Imagine all the people, living life in peace.
John Winston Ono Lennon
October 9, 1940-December 8, 1980

A dream you dream alone is only a dream.
A dream you dream together is reality.
Yoko Ono Lennon

On October 9th, on what would have been John Lennon's 67th birthday, his widow, Yoko Ono is dedicating a peace tower in Reykjavik, Iceland in the memory of her husband. There will also be almost a half a million peace wishes buried in capsules around the tower which is a blue tower of light extending up to the sky above us.

I received the link to the Imagine Peace website while I was on a layover in the airport in Las Vegas, Nv. Still reeling from the reports of hundreds, if not thousands of Burmese monks and other humans being slaughtered for protesting against their oppressive government, it was hard for me to watch all the people sitting hypnotized at the slot machines, pulling the handles or pushing the buttons as if the world is not going to hell in George's hand basket. The dichotomy of business as usual in America compared with genocides in Darfur and Iraq while I am still and always will be mourning my son makes me dizzy sometimes.

So, I made myself close my eyes for a few minutes between planes and tried to shut out the bells and whistles of the slots and "imagined" peace. What would a world at peace look like? What would a world at peace be like to live in? I have a great imagination but I knew this exercise would be challenging.

John Lennon called his song Imagine an "anti-religious, anti-nationalism, anti-conventional, anti-capitalist" sort of a "Communist manifesto." It is for sure a utopian vision of a perfect society that unfortunately can not be achieved by imagining, and probably not at all -- but how close can we get to this world and how much sacrifice will a world at peace take from each and everyone of us?

First of all, imagine a world with no religion. A world where sick and evil people could not manipulate the masses into believing that the set of myths and beliefs that they profess are more important or powerful than the others' set of myths or beliefs. Israelis could not (with the help of Christian extremists) tell Palestinians that it is okay to occupy them or kill them so that the Jews could claim their "Promised Land." Land promised to whom by whom? Muslims could not proclaim "jihad" against infidels. There would have been no Nazi holocaust against Jews; no Crusades; no holocaust against our own native population; no black slavery justified by the Christian scriptures; no George Bush saying that his Christian God is like a mob-boss ordering him to "hit" the world. Imagine that!

Secondly, imagine no countries. No jingoistic worship of banners made of mere cloth (not spun gold) or arrogant nationalism that gives leaders the right to kill other human beings just because they do not happen to live within the same false borders that were artificially drawn many years ago by empires that have long ago fallen. In this homeland-istic fervor it is especially correct to kill those other people if they are not the same religion as the religion of your state (and don't kid yourself that the US does not have a state sanctioned religion). Imagine no armies that in reality kill and get killed for the imperialistic neo-liberalism that has crept around our globe like a flesh eating bacteria since the Reagan years. Imagine that.

Imagine no possessions: This is the crux of our problem. Going back to my brothers and sisters at the slot machines in Vegas, pulling almost catatonically on the lever of the One Armed Bandit, for what? To win the "jackpot" of course! How nice is it of the State of Nevada to allow gambling machines in their airports, so we can perchance live the American dream of buying higher stacks of stuff! On a day that George vetoed the health of over six-million children here in America, 16,000 children around the world died of starvation. In a week that we saw murder on a horrendous scale in Burma, more Iraqis were killed or forced from their homes by violence: to wander in the desert, or probably off to Syria where their daughters may be forced into prostitution to help support the family which should be able to live in peace and relative prosperity in their own country. Imagine that.

It was hard for me to imagine or envision peace when I am terrified because BushCo is contemplating even more slaughter in the Middle East in Iran and when Congress, Inc is busy supporting a murderous status quo that hurts humans within all borders, even our own.

Peace will only happen when every member of humanity is guaranteed prosperity, health and security which will not happen when we here in the US can't even get off our asses to protest a war that is four and a half years and hundreds of thousands of bodies old, now.

We can imagine peace all we want but until each and everyone of us is willing to sacrifice some of our prosperity (because we have already had our security robbed from us by the rotten Republicans and complicit corporate Democrats) true peace -- not just the absence of war -- will be as elusive as a morsel of truth or modicum of courage coming out of Washington, DC.

Voluntary sacrifice is truly a revolutionary concept here in the United States of America.

So you say you want a revolution? Imagine that.

Link

Put your life on the line for ... nothing

One Day Short Costs Longest Serving Ground Combat Unit in Iraq Full Education Benefit

"...In what appears to be yet another callous attempt to save money, nearly half of the Minnesota National Guard - at twenty-two months the longest serving ground combat unit in Iraq - have been denied full education benefits because their posting was one day short of the necessary 730 days. This is a significant blow to many soldiers whose military service is the only opportunity they might ever have to attend college. Full education benefits pay $800 per month; that single day’s service has cost 1,162 Minnesota National Guard $518 a month in benefits; or a loss of $1554 per semester, making a college education still out of reach for those who put their life on hold and in jeopardy to serve their country.

Minnesota National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Kevin Olson said the soldiers are ‘victims of a significant injustice’. Representative John Kline, (R - MN) has introduced a bill to get those soldiers’ their benefits. A joint statement by Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Norm Coleman (R-MD) affirmed that the Army secretary, Pete Geren, is looking into this matter personally, and has asked a review board to resolve the situation by next semester. But this is just one more in a insidious pattern of pinching pennies from soldiers already paid so little tens of thousands of soldiers and their families are on food stamps..."

Link 

Thousands Protest Factory Beating Deaths in China

When workers from the Fuxin Steel Ltd. in Tongling, China demanded the owner fulfill his promise for housing that they had already contributed to, they were met with a hired gang that fiercely beat the workers with blunt weapons. The incident killed two and left 14 others severely injured. The assault ignited the rage of thousands of factory workers and they marched in downtown Tongling in protest. A large number of police were deployed to keep the situation under control.

Local authorities are actively censoring information on this matter; postings on online forums have been quickly deleted. When The Epoch Times contacted a local newspaper by phone, they explained that they had received complaints from workers on the day of the beating, but authorities had prevented the publication of this information. An online forum moderator said that he received an order to delete any posting related to the incident.

Workers Beaten to Death, Thousands Take to the Streets

Unidentified eyewitnesses have provided The Epoch Times with details:

"The factory owner hired about 200 thugs from out of town," explained one man who refused to give his name. "They were all wearing helmets and sunglasses. Rumor has it that these thugs all have gangster backgrounds. They were carrying shovels, rakes, steel pipes, and hammers. They were beating workers like mad. Two workers died and 14 were taken to hospital for emergency treatment."  Read on >>

Umbrella rally for democracy in Hong Kong

HONG KONG—Thousands of people in Hong Kong took part in a democracy march and a world-record breaking attempt using umbrellas, calling for a faster pace of democratic reforms and direct elections in 2012.

Gathered in a large park, around 5,000 people hoisted yellow umbrellas to form a massive yellow "2012" which is the date the pro-democracy camp wants direct elections to be realised.

"Fighting for democracy means you have to fight for democracy. Democracy is not going to fall from the sky," said legislator Ronny Tong, a chief organiser of Sunday's "Umbrella" rally, which he hopes will gain an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Hong Kong's mini-constitution promises direct elections as the "ultimate aim" but is vague on a timetable, giving Beijing's leaders scope to dictate the pace of progress. In 2004, Beijing ruled out direct elections in the city until at least 2012.  Read on >>