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HR 867: “Whereas the mandate of the `fact-finding mission’ makes no mention of the relentless rocket and mortar attacks, which numbered in the thousands and spanned a period of eight years, by Hamas and other violent militant groups in Gaza against civilian targets in Israel, that necessitated Israel’s defensive measures;”

Justice Goldstone: “This whereas clause is factually incorrect. As noted above, the expanded mandate clearly included the rocket and mortar attacks. Moreover, Chapter XXIV of the Report considers in detail the relentless rocket attacks from Gaza on Israel and the terror they caused to the people living within their range. The resulting finding made in the report is that these attacks constituted serious war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.”

Read: Israel-Palestine: The Missing Headlines

And…

Also, be sure to check out Washington State Congressman Brian Baird’s remarks on Hr 867. He was one of 36 in the House of Representatives to not lie (via voting in favor of it) to voters about the true nature of the Gaza siege. If your congress creature was on that very short list, do send them a letter of thanks.

Snip:

“What will it say about this Congress and our country if we so readily seek to block “any further consideration” of a human rights investigation produced by one of the most respected jurists in the world today, a man who led the investigations of abuses in South Africa, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Kosovo and worked to identify and prosecute Nazi war criminals as a member of the Panel of the Commission of Enquiry into the Activities of Nazism in Argentina?” — Brian Baird

The enduring demonstrations in Iran are getting very little attention partly due to state censorship, but in great effect because of misguided attention to the non-issue of the nuclear impasse.  If you want to see change, get behind and support the people working on it there now.

Snip:

10.17am:
Riot police are seen violently attacking protesters in this video after about two minutes of chanting. Protesters were shouting slogans in praise of Karoubi and Mousavi and were calling for political prisoners to be released.

10.32am:
Twenty people have been arrested and several injured in the southern city of Shiraz following clashes between protesters and the security forces, according to the reformist website Rahesabz, writes our former Tehran correspondent Robert Tait.

10.39am:
New video purports to show protesters dressing bleeding head wounds after clashes with the security forces.

Brave people in the streets.

SEE: Iran’s student day protests.

Almost more interesting because it was found on Jezebel, a culture, fashion and celeb gossip blog. I love it when the cause goes mainstream.

[Jerusalem, November 3. Image via Getty]

A Palestinian schoolgirl stands near Israeli security forces guarding a Palestinian house in the mostly Arab east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah after Israeli settlers took control over the house accompanied with a private security company following an Israeli court order on November 03, 2009. Dozens of Israeli settlers took over the house armed with a court order secured after a protracted legal battle with a Palestinian family, witnesses and police said. embers of the Al-Kurd family demonstrated in front of the house along with other Arab residents and pro-Palestinian activists as the settlers hurled the family’s belongings out onto the street, a neighbour told AFP. AFP PHOTO/GALI TIBBON (Photo credit should read GALI TIBBON/AFP/Getty Images)

via House & Home – Sheikh jarrah – Jezebel.

Thanks to the 36 representatives who voted against it.  From Washington State, Brian Baird and Jim McDermott voted against it. Many of the people voting against the UN report also voted for the Iraq war.  I’m sure their reasons for rejecting this report had something to do with being confronted by the actual existance of accurate facts about the situation, which must have been very scary for them.

This all centers around Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, otherwise known as the Goldstone Report, or in some circles rightwing circles in Israel, “that self-hating, traitor basterd’s scribblings.” For short, please just refer to it as “the facts.” Word has it that the U.S. was most upset that it’s suggested edits, which blacked out every sentence not starting with the word “Hamas” was rejected. Will President OBama actually sign up and voluntarily blind himself remainst to be seen. It would be a forgone conclusion under Bush, but as the current president can read, his endorsement or rejection of this slop will offer some insight whether the White House wants to continue bombing Palestinians via the Israeli military or not.

via GovTrack.us

“The United States won Israel a reprieve on the Goldstone report, so now it must ensure that Israel genuinely investigates allegations of abuse. If this doesn’t happen by March, then the US should endorse the Goldstone report’s call for international mechanisms of accountability.” — Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch

Ctrl.Alt.Shift Unmasks Corruption, the comics anthology he co-edited with John Dunning and Emma Pettit, which is being released at Comica ‘09. Personally, I think comics are usually much better when not about the caped or mutated. This looks like good stuff.

Via Comica | News.

Drug policy should be based on science not hysteria. Scientists expressing their honestly held expert opinions should not find themselves in fear of losing their jobs.

via Petition to: Re-instate Professor David Nutt. @ Number10.gov.uk.

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If you live in San Jose, Calf., you can see it this Wednesday on channel 15 – CreaTV Community Channel. If you have Microsoft’s Silverlight installd on on your computer, you can watch it online., though why a community broadcasting station would hamper the ability for people to actually see their programs by using Silverlight is beyond me when there are all sorts of Web Standards, accessible alternatives that are not married to a single operating system. It just seems ,weird, foolish and a horrible waste of resources. Still the film looks good.

This Palestinian Life “is a film about people who perservere despite the odds stacked against them. The film documents specifically the aspects of perseverance or steadfastness of the Palestinian nonviolent struggle against Israeli occupation and the deliberate, ongoing, illegal annexation of Palestinian land.”

“An Arabic term used for everyday acts of nonviolent resistance is sumoud – steadfastness, perseverance. In the film, Egyptian activist and filmmaker, Philip Rizk, tells the stories of Palestinian villagers who attempt to remain steadfast, to persevere, in the face of settler violence, the injustice and duplicity of the Israeli government, and the ambivalence of the international community.”

See: This Palestinian Life – a film by Philip Rizk.

The Tumblr blogger of love all this has charted the lyrics to “Hey Jude,” which is based on this other chart which outlines “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler.

IMEU has the portion of yesterday’s episode of The Daily Show in which Jon Steward interviews U.S.  Jewish activst Anna Baltzer and democracy activist Mustafa Barghouti on The Daily Show. The actual show had a shortened version to fit in the final third of the half-hour time slot, but this is the whole thing.  DRM has kept the clip from being available outside North America “zone 1,” so the rest of the “zone 2″ world may not have seen all this yet.

“Palestinian equal rights was placed directly next to health care and the economy on The Daily Show’s progressive agenda and the audience was totally along for the ride. I could hardly believe my eyes, and yet it made perfect sense at the same time. Who can argue that it is necessary to deny people water? Who can argue against equal rights? The answer is increasingly no one, and if The Daily Show’s audience is any indication, the next generation will be leading this fight in a much different direction.” – Adam Horowitz

via Palestinian equal rights joins the progressive agenda on ‘The Daily Show’.

This wedding cake designed to look like a dead Tauntaun with its guts light-sabered open was the work of Cake Nouveau. And it doesn’t look like there’s a confection Luke Skywaker inside awaiting rescue.

From AnnArbor.com via the Official Star Wars Blog

GrrlScientist has posted this Flowchart to Determine What Religion You Should Follow (via the somewhat not worksafe blog holytaco.com) at the blog Living the Scientific Life Scientist, Interrupted. It could use a little more cross indexing, though, as I started down the “none” route, but saw next door the option to “f*cking love bacon” but there was no route from there back to athiesm. Also, I like black cats, curry hummus and chinese takeout. There are no special foods for athiests. To that end, I’d like to suggest multi-grain cheerios as the official food. In the meantime, I guess I have to change the diet or convert.

Another film I’m likely not going to see until it hits the £3 rack at Fopp, but am looking forward to none the less. Anything that gets Prof. Finkelstein some widely needed attention in the U.S. is a good thing.

From Don’t Panic magazine.

Retro fun via Computopia: Old visions of a high-tech future @ Pink Tentacle.

Alice is also a founding member of the Open Rights Group. While it would be interesting to hear what Channel 4 executives thought about all this, it’s at least good to see it has staff that are up on the use of content in a way that one would hope the BBC would be.

Good snips:

““Piracy” – as done by teenagers, all my friends, pretty much everyone I know, is simply demand where appropriate supply does not exist. Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies – in other words, anti-copying, anti-fair use – are also anti-accessibility. They attempt to block and restrict, and they fail every time. Every single time. To be accessible, work needs to be available, always and to everyone. No delineations, no restrictions: it’s too messy. Too expensive. Too dull.”

And…

“Attention is our scarcest resource. Time ticks on, but there are still and will forever be 24 hours in a day. Attention is everything. We pick out signals from the noise by listening to trusted sources: friends, and favourite authors, bloggers, tweeters, journalists, broadcasters, remixers. Curators, all of them. They spread the word, we investigate, to revel in the shared experience.”

Add to that Virgin’s open hostility to Net Neutrality. So, where to turn? Which service is the least bad in UK?

via STOP Virgin: Keep Virgin from destroying the Internet.

We ask you to sign this open letter to President Obama as an individual or as a group / organization. Please help us get more signatures before we publish this letter on Friday, Oct. 16 by asking your friends. Open Letter to President Obama

October 9, 2009

Dear President Obama:

Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us that “change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom.” President Obama, you promised us change and we believed in that promise. Now is your opportunity to show us you meant it.

We have frequently heard the question over the years, “Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? Where are those working for justice through non-violence?” We must look no further than the jails and cemeteries to find Palestinian peace activists leading the fight against injustice. This is where we will find Mohammad Othman: locked in solitary confinement in a military prison, and held for nearly a month after his arrest without charge or trial. His initial detention has been extended twice thus far, and there remains the possibility of it being renewed indefinitely.

On September 22nd, 33-year-old Mohammad was arrested by Israeli soldiers while trying to reenter the West Bank after spending several days at a conference in Norway. For more than 10 years Mohammad has been an activist for Palestinian human rights. During that time, he has been a leader in the Palestinian grassroots movement against the Wall that has swallowed up his community’s lands and livelihoods.

Mohammad, in the spirit of great human rights defenders like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., has worked tirelessly over the years to bring his people’s voice to the world. He has embraced and advocated non violent means to effect change – a tactic that was instrumental in bringing about the end of apartheid in South Africa. Freedom from occupation, oppression and discrimination are human rights to which all people are entitled. Mohammad, and many others like him, have done nothing more than work to secure these most basic guarantees – to give his people a chance to live.

Unfortunately, what is happening to Mohammad is all too common. Palestinians working for justice are constantly threatened with arbitrary detention, bodily injury and torture, and even death. Imagine having to fear speaking the truth, knowing that by doing so you put your very freedom at stake, simply because you stand up for what is right and what is just. History has shown us that peaceful activists are often the target of such policies, if only because they pose the most severe threat to the status quo. It happened in South Africa, it happened in India, and it happened in the United States as well.

Mohammad is another casualty of this tactic. It is up to us, the international community, to defend him and all those who struggle for peace and justice. President Obama, if you are serious about forging peace, then we call on you to defend the right of Mohammad and all Palestinians to resist their oppression through non-violent activism. We implore you to pressure Israel for the immediate release of human rights advocate Mohammad Othman and all prisoners of conscience who are being held solely for their work towards justice and freedom.

Signed,

Click here to sign

Some time ago during the heat of the race between McCain and Obama, Benjamin wrote for the Huffington Post “It’s time for the peace movement to come up with a position on Afghanistan. We know that war is not the answer, but what is? It’s not enough to simply say ‘Troops out now.’” Fair enough. In that piece, she asked several questions (you can read it at the link above), which all came down to one equation:

“How can we stop Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan from being a training ground for militant fundamentalists? How can we bring those involved in terrorist attacks to justice, and prevent future attacks, without waging an open-ended war? Should we advocate a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops and if so, based on what criteria? How can we work with the peace movements in NATO countries to have a more unified and effective position?

What should we call for in terms of development aid to Afghanistan? How can the Afghan economy be weaned from opium? How can we truly support Afghan women? What will happen to them if the Taliban take over again.”

All great questions. Apparently the conversation never happened, because the following excerpt is from an interview Benjamin had with Scott Horton of antiwar.com:

Benjamin: Well, I don’t think that war is the answer, that drones is the answer. Every time we drop a bomb we create more people who join the insurgency and want to attack us and it’s an endless vicious cycle and it’s got to end.

Horton: So we need occupation, but without soldiers.

Benjamin: Where are you getting that from?

Horton: Well, I mean I’m just trying to understand. Because you’re saying we need to build up their court system and we need to do all these things to have a proper exit… a responsible exit strategy rather than just leaving and letting them call their own shots, work out their own problems. And I just wonder how these things all go together. We’re supposed to occupy the country, but without killing anybody. And we’re supposed to have soldiers to protect women’s rights, but not to, whatever it is that they’re actually doing there, which of course has nothing to do with women’s rights in the first place. You follow me?

— Is Medea Benjamin Naive or Just Confused?

What people often don’t want to face up to in their vision of what should happen is what isn’t going to happen as a result. When calculating what happens, you have to take into account what isn’t going to happen. Afghanistan has never conformed to the image that the United States had in mind for it. Or the Soviet Union for that matter. If that’s the idea of success, we can look at what the Soviets were able to accomplish and what the U.S. has been able to accomplish.

Genghis Khan wasn’t able to coerce Afghanistan into being something other than what it was. No one since then really has either. What’s your vision now?

The prize always makes strange bedfellows. Thus far an a brief Google news search, those decrying President Obama’s award include nearly all the Republican party, a number of UK Tory pundits, right-wing pro-settlement Israelis, the conservative religious party of Pakistan, Hamas and the Taliban. Or maybe that makes some sense. At any rate, blowing holes in the moon with a couple rockets was a great way to celebrate.

From the w5pressagency, September 17, 2009,via YouTube – Printoxafin Advert.

Thanks Seth!

Posted on flickr by my pal Berd Whitlock.

As much as I’d like to see her return to fiction for at least one more round, I usually look forward to about anything she publishes, which always seems to work as a sharp, double-bladd instrument, cutting through entrenched mainstream analysis while also giving the well-meaning “left” a few well deserved slices.  Again using her homeland of India as a backdrop for showing the larger picture, this round looks at something contrary to most sensibilities, including my own, the “dark side of democracy.”

Why do people in places in mass revolt against something we know so many others are fighting to obtain?

The well-endowed peace industry, speaking on the peoples’ behalf, informed us that “Kashmiris are tired of violence and want peace.” What kind of peace they were willing to settle for was never clarified. Meanwhile Bollywood’s cache of Kashmir/Muslim-terrorist films has brainwashed most Indians into believing that all of Kashmir’s sorrows could be laid at the door of evil, people-hating terrorists.

To anybody who cared to ask, or, more importantly, to listen, it was always clear that even in their darkest moments, people in Kashmir had kept the fires burning and that it was not peace alone they yearned for, but freedom too. Over the last two months the carefully confected picture of an innocent people trapped between “two guns,” both equally hated, has, pardon the pun, been shot to hell.

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Due to a few problems experienced in our service network,you are
expected to undergo an account holders re-validation process in order
to sort out some problems that may be encountered in our email service
to you.

This process is not going to take long and will be characterized by
certain lapses in our email services to you. The IT Admin Service will
require you to complete the account details below and select a test
question and answer (to serve as security code that will be needed in
logging in to
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