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“every person who doesn’t have to be hurt in gaza helps us and helps you.”

January 6, 2009 – 3:18 pm


Jon leads us to the Electronic Intifada, where even prank calls are tools of resistance:

EI: I saw one of the flyers you dropped on Gaza.

Israeli officer: Oh yes that’s right …

EI: I have some information for you on members of terrorist groups that are in Gaza.

Israeli officer: Oh I hope so…

EI: We’re on the same side against terrorism … I have names for you too, if that will help you at all.

Israeli officer: Of course that will be helpful.

EI: You don’t know what the terrorists are doing here in Gaza and we want to be saved from them …
…
EI: But you know the terrorist groups are all over the Strip. I mean there’s no place in the Strip where there aren’t terrorists. They’re all over the place.

Israeli officer: You just wait. We’ll get to them, you’ll see.

EI: But as you know, it’s not easy for one to talk from Gaza, to give you information, it’s not an easy thing.

Israeli officer: Look … your assistance to us will end up helping you too. Every person who doesn’t have to be hurt in Gaza helps us and helps you. We benefit and you benefit. We want to destroy this Hamas leadership who are hiding, afraid for their lives. They are hiding and others are being killed because of them. What are we fighting each other for? Over nothing!

EI: Ok, let’s talk … let me give you some of the information and then we’ll talk some more. Do you have a pen?

Israeli officer: Yes. I have a pen and I’m writing.

EI: I want to give you names of the biggest terrorist organizations, not just in Gaza, but in all Palestine.

Israeli officer: Ok, let’s see
…
EI: All of them are people … you’ll see. The first one, his name is Ehud Barak [Israeli minister of defense].

Israeli officer: Ehud Barak? By God there’s no one like you …

EI: Second, Gabi Ashkenazi [Israeli army chief of staff]

Israeli officer: Do you know him?

EI: Of course. The third one is…

Israeli officer: Wait a minute, one at a time …

EI: No write it down, I don’t have time. The third one is called Ehud Olmert [Israeli prime minister].

Israeli officer: Look, just a minute …
…
Israeli officer: You know what I think? I think you’re not from the Strip.
…
EI: Didn’t I just tell you that there were a number of terrorists in the strip? Record it. There’s a group of terrorists. They’re the biggest terrorists in the world. They call themselves the “Israeli Defense Force” but they’re not defending anyone. They’re a terrorist gang.

Israeli officer: You know …

EI: A terrorist, sectarian, racist gang.

Israeli officer: I just want to say a few words to you …

EI: OK, talk, but I can’t hear you very clearly because of the noise of the terrorists bombs and rockets …

Israeli officer: Ah, terrorist bombs and rockets? I understand what you’re getting at …

Israeli officer:… let me say a few words to you. Look, I’m a Jew and I’m from the Israeli Defense Forces. But unlike you, my great, great, great grandfathers were all born here, going back thousands of years. We never left the country. You Palestinians have never been a nation. The Palestinians settled here recently, only a short time ago. What’s that got to do with me?

EI: Ok, the person who wants to help the people of Gaza talks like that about the Palestinians? You deny their existence?

Israeli officer: Look, I’ll tell you …

EI: You really want to help the Palestinians and this is what you say?
…

Any Israeli who can ask “What’s this got to do with me?” - about Gaza, especially - is a sociopath. (See, e.g., Bush, George W.)

missy | Bush crime family, Human rights, Israel, Palestine | Print This Post Print This Post | Discuss here |

49th District Town Hall Meeting

January 6, 2009 – 12:04 pm
January 10, 2009
10:00 amto12:00 pm



49TH DISTRICT TOWN HALL MEETING!

Date: Saturday morning, January 10th

Time: 10 a.m. to noon

Location: Clark County Service Center

1300 Franklin Street

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admin | 49th Leg District, Events | Print This Post Print This Post | Discuss here |

how many more will die before obama takes office?

January 6, 2009 – 11:27 am


Bush’s Alfred E. Neuman impersonation is costing dozens of lives daily. Yes, we have only one president at a time, but I would feel a bit better if Obama stood up and said, “The carnage in Gaza is appalling, and I have asked President Bush to do all he can to stop it in his remaining weeks in office.”

The European Union remains incapable of persuading Israel to halt its war on Hamas and fill a gaping diplomatic vacuum as the world awaits a new U.S. president, experts said Tuesday.

As the conflict rages in the impoverished Gaza Strip, the EU has continued to do what it has always done best — offer humanitarian aid — but has been unable to fill the void as it holds no political leverage over U.S. ally Israel.

With a troika of envoys just leaving, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy still in the Middle East, the EU is showing “energy and creativity,” according to a Norwegian diplomat who helped negotiate the 1993 Oslo peace accords.

“But I think we also have to be aware of some facts of reality,” said the diplomat, Jan Egeland, who now heads the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.

He said the United States “is duty-bound to push, and broker, and facilitate with all their might and influence over Israel” to push any peace efforts forward.

“The EU is in all my evening prayers,” he said. “We hope that they can broker something but … I don’t see the EU being able to make either Israel or Hamas change their behaviour.”

He insisted that only coordinated international pressure led by Washington, but including Russia and China, on the main regional players — Israel, Egypt and Iran — could really be efficient.

Janes Defense Weekly is estimating that Israel will stop its offensive within 10 days. Nice that they’re keeping the slaughter to a tight political schedule.

This murderous rampage will end up just like Lebanon in 2006: hundreds and perhaps thousands dead among those on the receiving end of Israel’s wrath, a few Israeli casualties, and only greater support for militants in Gaza.

Either the Israelis are incredibly stupid, or politics has once again trumped human life.

And, once again, Bush is handmaiden to an illegal war on illegally occupied ground.

missy | Bush crime family, Foreign policy, Human rights, Israel, Lebanon, Palestine | Print This Post Print This Post | Discuss here |

Democrats Eat Their Own

January 6, 2009 – 9:42 am

Harry Reid

Harry Reid

As expected, the US Senate stopped Roland Burris from lawfully taking his Senate seat this morning.  The Democrats cannot stand up to Bush or Cheney.  They cannot stand up to the Republican MINORITY. They cannot stand up to Joe “Kneepads” Lieberman. But they sure as heck can stand up to one of their own.  I would not even believe this was happening except for the fact that Congress is a completely broken and useless body of government at this point in time. They need this to be an endless distraction from the dire problems that are of their own creation.

Do you know what the crux of the matter is?  Obama’s seat has to be pre-approved behind the scenes by certain individuals in power in Washington before it will be formally accepted by the Senate.  It is quite apparent that the Governor of Illinois really has no say in the matter.  There is a pecking order and a deference to power that one must strictly adhere to in Washington or those above you in that pecking order will cut you loose.  Or perhaps worse, get you arrested.  And Burris (and Blogoyevich) are just such examples.  I am not condoning anything illegal that the wannabe Elvis might have done.  But surely many, if not most, members of Congress play the game in similar ways as Blogo but have not been caught yet.  Hypocrisy reigns here.

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John | Congress, Democrats, Senate | Print This Post Print This Post | Discuss here |

perhaps someone should show this to president-elect obama

January 6, 2009 – 9:17 am

before he goes tête-a-tête with Chinless Mitch:


More from Pew:

By the end of 2000, concerns had mounted that the good times of the late 1990s were at an end. Still Americans were far less pessimistic about the state of the economy than they are currently. At the start of Bush’s tenure, the number judging the economy as good or better stood at 46%. Now a meager 7% voice that opinion. About three-in-four Americans now see jobs as hard to find in their communities compared with 44% in 2000. And standard measures of consumer outlook have also plummeted: the just-released Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index weighed in at 38.0, its lowest level since the index was first tabulated in 1967.

Seems like the new Administration has the will of the people behind them.

Time to play hardball, folks. This isn’t about partisanship; it’s about truly healing the country (and not just salving some WATB chapped ass).

missy | Economic justice, Fiscal policy, Obama, President Barack H | Print This Post Print This Post | Discuss here |

have democrats never played poker?

January 5, 2009 – 9:52 am


You don’t show your hand before everyone antes up:

President-elect Barack Obama will meet with congressional leaders in Washington on Monday to discuss his economic stimulus package, a plan that reports say will include $300 billion in tax cuts.

The tax cuts for individuals and businesses would account for about 40 per cent of the stimulus package, which is expected to be between $675 billion and $775 billion, according to a number of published reports.

The reported tax cuts, bigger than expected, could be a way to garner support from Republicans who have been critical of the amount of spending in the package.
…
Obama had wanted to have a package ready for him to sign when he takes office Jan. 20. But congressional leaders said it won’t be ready until mid-February at the earliest.

Aides to Obama said he will also give a speech in Washington later this week to explain to the public the urgent need for the package… He will stress that if nothing is done, unemployment could rise to over 10 per cent.

On the weekend, Obama said the No. 1 goal of the plan is to create three million new jobs, with more than 80 per cent in the private sector.

Obviously, the Dems should have held any tax cuts in their back pocket to sweeten the deal and bring in enough Republican support to make 60 in the Senate and get cloture on the bill. That’s amateur stuff.

But more importantly, tax cuts do not create jobs. Just look at the number of job losses over the last eight years, with Bush’s ridiculously regressive tax cuts that impoverished both the federal treasury and the national economy.


And about those 80% of new jobs to be created in the private sector: unless Obama is talking about jobs that will be created as a result of dollars turning over in communities as a result of infrastructure spending, that 80% could take years to materialize, while employment and the economy continue to founder.

When will we finally outgrow and extirpate the Republican lie that has held this country hostage for the last 30 years, that all taxes need cutting, and that the free market is the only way to economic success for the nation?

As long as the wealthy few are pulling the strings: Never.

Yes, Obama is trying not to make Clinton’s mistakes coming out the chute (can you say “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”?). But this is a very different time. Clinton won with only a plurality of the vote, and Obama has the majority of the country behind him, desperate for change.

Re-read FDR’s first Inaugural, Mr. Obama. Please. The time is ripe, and another triangulator is exactly what we do not need.

UPDATE - Krugman says it better (no surprise there):

Look, Republicans are not going to come on board. Make 40% of the package tax cuts, they’ll demand 100%. Then they’ll start the thing about how you can’t cut taxes on people who don’t pay taxes (with only income taxes counting, of course) and demand that the plan focus on the affluent. Then they’ll demand cuts in corporate taxes. And Mitch McConnell is already saying that state and local governments should get loans, not aid — which would undermine that part of the plan, too.

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missy | Congress, Corporate control, Democrats, Economic justice, Fiscal policy, Obama, President Barack H, Republicans | Print This Post Print This Post | Discuss here |

pass

January 5, 2009 – 8:46 am

george & jebby
Having a 10 y.o. son who could be eligible for the draft if and when this country could be so criminally stupid as to elect another Preznit Bush, I say thanks, but no thanks to 41 - your spawn have done enough damage already:

The elder Bush says his oldest son, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, has all the qualities necessary to occupy the Oval Office.

“I’d like to see him run, I’d like to see him be president some day,” the nation’s 41st chief executive declared on “Fox News Sunday.” He is “as qualified and as able as anyone I know in the political scene.”

However, the senior Bush acknowledged, “Right now is probably a bad time, because we’ve got enough Bushes in there.”

In the meantime, the former president suggested his son would make an “outstanding senator”…

The current President Bush agrees, openly saying he would like to see his brother run for the Florida Senate seat, replacing outgoing Republican incumbent Mel Martinez in 2010.

My home state of FL may be wingnut enough to give Jebby a launchpad, but perhaps, just this once, the Floridiots will see the wisdom in opposing anything that Dummy favors.

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hearts and minds

January 2, 2009 – 12:17 pm

cash, pig, soldier

Nir Rosen in The Guardian:

An American journal once asked me to contribute an essay to a discussion on whether terrorism or attacks against civilians could ever be justified. My answer was that an American journal should not be asking whether attacks on civilians can ever be justified. This is a question for the weak, for the Native Americans in the past, for the Jews in Nazi Germany, for the Palestinians today, to ask themselves.

Terrorism is a normative term and not a descriptive concept. An empty word that means everything and nothing, it is used to describe what the Other does, not what we do. The powerful – whether Israel, America, Russia or China – will always describe their victims’ struggle as terrorism, but the destruction of Chechnya, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the slow slaughter of the remaining Palestinians, the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan – with the tens of thousands of civilians it has killed … these will never earn the title of terrorism, though civilians were the target and terrorising them was the purpose.

If you think this is just rhetoric, remember what Tom Friedman had to say about the war on Iraq: that someone had to pay for 9/11, an example had to be made, and Iraq was the easiest and most “target rich” enemy of choice to get the American people lathered up against.

I have often wondered why Israel didn’t take the Hamas route with the Palestinians: schools, healthcare and jobs can go a long way toward co-opting “insurgents” (read: the civilian occupied, unhappy with their occupiers), and they’re a helluva lot cheaper than planes and bombs.

But then I wake up and remember that Israel is the #1 recipient of U.S. aid, and most of that aid is in the form of quid pro quo to defense contractors.

Hooray, American Capitalism! Killing innocents under the Stars and Stripes since - forever!

missy | Bush crime family, Congress, Corporate control, Culture, Fascism, Foreign policy, Military, War on terror | Print This Post Print This Post | Discuss here, 1 Comment | Show Discussion

scrape them off

January 2, 2009 – 10:06 am

karen allen - scrooged

Jake T. Snake’s post should be required reading this Inauguration Day, along with FDR’s first Inaugural Address:

I have had a ringside seat to the economic downturn this year. It is not an abstraction to me. The folks at the bottom are always the first to feel the pinch, when it comes. Clients of the agency I work at come through our doors every day requesting assistance with basic necessities like food, clothing, shelter and medications. As the year has progressed and New York State has chosen to repeatedly victimize its most vulnerable citizens, it has become more difficult to help people meet these needs. I have visited food banks with empty shelves, been told clients were ineligible for help when I knew they were and had to challenge these decisions. I have sat with clients while their applications for public assistance were reviewed by fraud investigators at social services. Our local social services department actually hired fraud investigators at the same time that it was laying off child protective workers demonstrating conclusively where our values lie and how genuinely mean spirited we are as a people. At the federal level Social Security routinely denies people eligible for benefits in the hopes that they will not reapply. Many people who receive benefits must hire a lawyer before social security will concede that they are indeed eligible. As the resources have become more limited, the level of scrutiny and inhumanity has risen accordingly.

I have, of course read about the rising unemployment numbers and the ensuing uptick in applicants for public assistance and food stamps nationwide like everyone else. It seems the chickens of Bill Clinton’s (Best moderate Republican president ever)welfare reform are finally coming home to roost. We always knew that the flaw of his plan was an economy without jobs and here we are. The reform has no provision for an unemployment rate like we are experiencing now. Once again, our policy in practice serves to punish most harshly children and the elderly. Perhaps, it is time to repeal the child labor laws and begin allowing them to work 12 hour days again.

…I dream about social service programs and rules that would treat people like human beings, rather than as an undesirable applicant to be culled out. I want so badly for us as a nation to stop punishing people for being poor, or elderly or a child of poor people.

Please go read it all.

While recently trying to help a mentally ill family member apply for Social Security benefits, I found out that one must wait 24 months from the onset of the disability to just become eligible for Social Security Disability benefits, and then serve out an arbitrary additional five month waiting period before receiving the first check.

What the hell are you supposed to live on for 29 months while you are fully disabled?

Meanwhile, it took only days to pass the bank bailout bill, with no strings attached.

The moral: steal big. Everyone else gets bupkis.

missy | Bush crime family, Congress, Corporate control, Culture, Economic justice, Fiscal policy, Human rights | Print This Post Print This Post | Discuss here |

in which the atheist quotes the bible

January 2, 2009 – 9:36 am

to ask why it’s necessary for the Inauguration Committee to flash Obama’s & Biden’s participation in a prayer service the day after the inauguration:

Matthew 6:5-6 says

When thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men…

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

And yet we find at the tail end of the official Obama Inaugural Schedule:

inaugural schedule 2009

Frankly, I’d much rather Biden be up at the Senate his first full day in office, ramming the stimulus package into whichever of Mitch McConnell’s orifices seems most suitable.

And what ever happened to that separation of Church and State thing?

missy | Constitution, Obama, President Barack H, Religion, Senate | Print This Post Print This Post | Discuss here |

Maron v Seder