Crocodile tears for Darfur flood the civilized world

More celebrities are joining the crocodile tears for Darfur band wagon. See http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/celebrity-women-speak-with-one-voice-on-darfur/2007/09/16/1189881341251.html

Organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Save Darfur Coalition are silent on the role of the United States and other democracies in fueling the violence in Sudan.

See http://allthingspass.com/journalism.php?jid=165
And http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/Oil_in_Africa/oil_in_africa.html

For some strange reason these activists are not too concerned about the Congo were a larger number of killings and rapes have occurred. Can it be because the United States, Israel and Europe benefit from the diamonds, other natural resources, and sale of weapons, that the death of millions of black Africans in the Congo is not so tragic?
See http://worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/congo.htm

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9832

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/JulAug2007/snow.html

Alan Greenspan: the Iraq war is largely about oil

The US and Britain have always maintained that the war to oust Saddam Hussein was about weapons of mass destruction - not oil.

US President George Bush said Saddam was a threat to world security because he could sell the weapons on to terrorists.

But Mr Greenspan, a Republican who was boss of the US Federal Reserve for 18 years, said that was not the whole truth, according to a copy of the book seen by Associated Press.

"I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil," he is reported to have written.

from http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1284299,00.html

American confesses to Dutch axe murder over Iraq war

This story hasn't got the same attention as the killing of the Dutch filmmaker by a Muslim.

The media outlets that reported it did not ask the obvious question: If the American man wanted to punish someone for the Iraq war, why didn't he punish himself, since it is the United States that led the invasion of Iraq and is responsible for most of the deaths and destruction?

Hartmann, a US citizen, first sought-out a Dutch soldier in the southern Dutch city of Roosendaal, but could not find one and turned his axe on a student waiting for a train on a platform at the city's station, said a Dutch news agency.

Local newspaper BN/De Stem said Hartmann was looking for a victim in order to punish the Netherlands for its support of the war in Iraq. The paper identified the slain student as Thijs Geers.
complete story at http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/13/2031665.htm?section=world

Iraq Union Leaders Speak Out Against Occupation

By Ben Terrall
June 19th, 2007
Faleh Abood Umara, General Secretary of the Southern Oil Company Union (affiliated with the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions) worked for the Southern Oil Company in Basra for 28 years. Umara was detained by Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1998 for union activities. In the post-Saddam years he has worked on his union’s negotiating team with both the Oil Ministry and British occupation authorities, defending the rights of oil company workers.

His colleague Hashmeya Mushin Hussein, President of the Electrical Utility Workers Union, is the first woman to head a national union in Iraq. The Electrical Utility Workers are affiliated with the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW).

USLAW (U.S. Labor Against the War ) National Coordinator Michael Eisenscher introduced the speakers, pointing to the roots of Iraq labor unions in the country’s struggle against British imperialism, and the brave efforts of trade unionists under Saddam Hussein. Eisenscher noted that the June 2005 tour of Iraqi labor leaders USLAW coordinated (all three of the labor federations represented on that tour called for an end to the occupation in order to restore peace and end terrorism in Iraq) took place a month before a national meeting of the AFL-CIO, thereby helping achieve passage of a resolution by that U.S. labor body saying troops in Iraq “deserve a commitment from our country’s leaders to bring them home rapidly.” Eisenscher described this as the first time in its 50 year history that the federation took a position in opposition to a U.S. war while it was being waged, contrasting with unfortunate past history that earned it the label “AFL-CIA.” (The federation long served as an echo chamber for Washington’s cold war anti-communism, and helped facilitate brutal repression in Latin America and elsewhere.
.
.
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Since the U.S. high command has announced that it will arm “Sunni insurgents,” allegedly to fight al-Quaida, after years of equipping Shia militias, it doesn’t take much effort to see how Washington might be contributing to fragmentation in Iraq. And as Iraq specialists Antonia Juhasz and Raed Jarrar wrote about the oil law on CounterPunch: “Many Iraqi oil experts are already referring to the draft law as the “Split Iraq Fund,” arguing that it facilitates plans for splitting Iraq into three ethnic/religious regions. The experts believe the law undermines the central government and shifts important decision-making and responsibilities to the regional entities. This shift could serve as the foundation for establishing three new independent states, which is the goal of a number of separatists leaders.”
Meanwhile, the Iraq oil law’s granting dominance to multinational oil giants behind the Bush Administration continues to be largely overlooked by the U.S. media and politicians in Washington. Instead, the mostly unquestioned spin from Washington is that the U.S. is working to heal divisions: UPI energy correspondent Ben Lando, who has written extensively about the oil workers’s strike, this week described Lt. Gen Martin as “the latest U.S. government official to push a common but false claim that the controversial draft oil law will lead to a just division of the proceeds from oil sales and pave the way for reconciliation in the war-torn nation.”
In fact, under the Iraq oil law still being negotiated, foreign oil giants stand to be the primary beneficiaries of those proceeds.
As Antonia Juhasz wrote, “The foreign companies would not have to invest their earnings in the Iraqi economy, partner with Iraqi companies, hire Iraqi workers or share new technologies. They could even ride out Iraq’s current “instability” by signing contracts now, while the Iraqi government is at its weakest, and then wait at least two years before even setting foot in the country. The vast majority of Iraq’s oil would then be left underground for at least two years rather than being used for the country’s economic development.
Complete article is at http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/06/iraq-union-leaders-speak-out-against-occupation/
Additional information at http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/06/1359232

Website of U.S. Labor Against the War is at http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/

Jimmy Carter: a liar or a puppet president?

In this interview with former President Jimmy Carter, on amazon.com( Click here and scroll down to see interview ) about his book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, his answer to this question

Q: What has been the importance of your own faith in your continued interest in peace in the Middle East?

is

A: As a Christian, I worship the Prince of Peace. One of my preeminent commitments has been to bring peace to the people who live in the Holy Land. I made my best efforts as president and still have this as a high priority.

But here is an interview with (National Security Advisor to President Carter) Zbigniew Brzezinski at http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html (from Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998 )

Brzezinski says

According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

and

That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

In this article about the women of Afghanistan it says
from http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Women/RevolAfghanWomen.html

The USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and occupied the country throughout the 1980s. The CIA hired the Mujaheddin (soldiers of God) to expunge the Communists from Afghanistan. The Mujaheddin were trained by Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence Directorate, and funded and armed by the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Egypt, France, Britain, Israel, Iran, Japan, and China. The U.S. spent $5 billion to support the rebels during the 1980s, and used Osama bin Laden, then an ally of the U. S ., to help recruit non-Afghan Muslims to the Mujaheddin.

RAWA has pointed out that there were several democratic-minded groups the U.S. and other countries could have supported if they had wanted to drive out the Communists and help restore independence to Afghanistan. Why did these countries instead back the fundamentalist Mujaheddin? RAWA member Sajeda told Said lt magazine in August that pro-democracy groups would have refused to act as "puppets" for other countries, and would have made it difficult for those countries to "maintain their economic and political interests in Afghanistan."

When the Soviet Union withdrew its army in 1989, the Mujaheddin, under the command of the despotic Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and still funded by the U.S., began shelling Afghanistan's cities, killing thousands of civilians. After the Soviet's puppet regime collapsed in 1992, the country was seized by civil war. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed in rocket attacks. The Mujaheddin stopped women from working and attending health courses sponsored by non-government organizations (NGOs). Amnesty International reported that armed groups beat, raped, and murdered women in their homes. Young women were kidnapped as wives for commanders or sold into prostitution. Some committed suicide to avoid this fate, like one young woman who threw herself off a balcony in her house when soldiers came to kidnap her. In March 1994, a 15-year-old girl was repeatedly raped after soldiers killed her father for allowing her to go to school. Many people were victimized for belonging to a certain religious or ethnic group.

Judith Miller and the Bloodbath in Iraq (Repeat)

Here is a reminder of Judith Miller's contribution to journalism by Jospeh A. Palermo

On April 21, 2003, Judith Miller, now working as an embedded reporter with the U.S. military's MET Alpha, wrote the story, "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert." In this piece of propaganda, Miller claims without evidence or proof that the Iraqis destroyed or shipped to Syria their vast stockpiles of WMDs. Miller's anonymous source was a guy claiming to be an "Iraqi scientist," and she tells her readers that she "was permitted to see him from a distance at the sites where he said that material from the arms program was buried. Clad in nondescript clothes and a baseball cap, he pointed to several spots in the sand where he said chemical precursors and other weapons material were buried."

This "Iraqi scientist," who turned out to be bogus, allowed Miller to appear on PBS's Newshour with Jim Lehrer and have the following exchange:...

complete article at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/judith-miller-and-the-blo_b_57023.html

US aid to Africa does more harm than good

I first heard about this in a radio interview with Michael Maren, author of The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity published in 1977. To see a review of the book click here.
Here is more current information about this, where one charity organization is begining to see the light.

“...Care, one of the world's biggest charities, has announced that it will boycott the controversial policy of selling tons of heavily subsidised US produced food in African countries. Care wants the US government to send money to buy food locally, rather than unwanted US produced food.
The US arm of the charity says America is causing rather than reducing hunger with a decree that US food aid must be sold rather than directly distributed to those facing starvation. In America, the subsidies for corn in particular, help underpin the junk food industry, which uses corn extracts as a sweetener, creating a home-grown a health crisis.
The farm lobby meanwhile has a stranglehold on Congress, which has balked at making any changes that would interfere with a system that promotes overproduction of commodities.
Critics of the policy say it also undermines African farmers' ability to produce food, making the most vulnerable countries of the world even more dependent on aid to avert famine. ”

from http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article2871490.ece

The US has Returned Fundamentalism to Afghanistan

Here http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/12/468/ is a transcript of the speech given by Malalai Joya, member of the Afghan Parliament, at the University of Los Angeles on Tuesday April, 10th.

Here are two quotes from her speech.

Respected friends, over five years passed since the US-led attack on Afghanistan. Probably many of you are not well aware of the current conditions of my country and expect me to
list the positive outcomes of the past years since the US invasion. But I am sorry to tell you that Afghanistan is still chained in the fetters of the fundamentalist warlords and
is like an unconscious body taking its last breath.

The US government removed the ultra-reactionary and brutal regime of Taliban, but instead of relying on Afghan people, pushed us from the frying pan into the fire and selected its
friends from among the most dirty and infamous criminals of the “Northern Alliance”, which is made up of the sworn enemies of democracy and human rights, and are as dark-minded, evil, and cruel as the Taliban.

The Western media talks about democracy and the liberation
of Afghanistan, but the US and its allies are engaged in the warlordization, criminalization and drug-lordization of our
wounded land.

————————————————————————————–

The gang-rape of young girls and women by warlords belonging to the “Northern Alliance” still continues especially in the northern provinces of Afghanistan. People have staged mass protests a number of times but no one cares about their sorrow and tears. Only a few of the rape cases find their way into the media. One shocking case was that of 11 year old Sanobar, the only daughter of an unfortunate widow who was abducted, raped and then exchanged for a dog by a warlord. In a land where human dignity has no price, the vicious rapist of a poor girl still acts as district chief.

The only protests in Afghanistan the mainstream media reports on are the ones involving the abuse of the Quran or those Muhammed cartoons. Much of the mainstream media does not care to portray Muslims as human beings, who have the same concerns as everyone else. How much attention has Malalai Joya gotten in the mainstream media or from Western feminists? It is because she criticizes both U.S. military actions and the Taliban that she is not well known.

More sympathetic media coverage given to animals than the suffering people in the Congo

http://www.startribune.com/722/story/1329443.html
How come the same amount of attention is not given to the people of the Congo as the gorillas of the Congo? Is it because Western countries benefit from the diamonds and natural resources; as well as the sale of weapons to the Central Africa region?
Here are some articles about it, in case you are not aware of it.
http://worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/congo.htm

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9832

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/JulAug2007/snow.html

Iranian Holocaust Cartoon Contest

I still see websites/blogs ( http://samsonblinded.org/blog/a-cartoon-for-a-cartoon.htm ) that claim the Iranian Holocaust Cartoon Contest was about making fun of the victims of the Holocaust. But as you can see here, it was about making fun of how the Holocaust is used to justify war crimes.

This is the cartoon of the first place winner, Morracon Derkaoui Abdellah. To see the other winners go to http://www.irancartoon.com/120/holocaust/index.htm


The Holocaust is not the only time a large number of people have died, 3 to 5 million died when the U.S. bombed Vietnam and Cambodia. Millions have died in the Congo and the surrounding countries. The Western media likes to portray it just as tribal and ethnic war fare and they leave out the role of the United States and Israel in fueling the war through political interventions and selling weapons to both sides of the conflicts. In the meanwhile, they exploit the diamonds, minerals and natural resources of the region. Will we ever find out the true number of Iraqis killed as a result of the two invasions and sanctions? The Iraqis are scapegoats for U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. helped Saddam Hussein into power and supported him, financially and strategically, when he was committing his worst atrocities.

Regarding the cartoon controversy, one of the commentators and the web administrator at http://samsonblinded.org/blog/a-cartoon-for-a-cartoon.htm discuss that to get back at Muslims they should make cartoons that show the prophet of Islam as a pedophile. I tried to post a comment that shows the cartoons of the winner of the Iranian contest and I also mentioned a book that discusses Jewish scriptures that makes it acceptable to perform sexual acts on three year olds and younger. But the administrator did not allow my comment to be posted. The name of the book is called Judaism’s Strange Gods by Michael Hoffman. I will quote part of it here. On page 51 it says

Sexual Intercourse with Little Girls is Permissible
Ketubot lIb: "If a grown-up man has intercourse with a little girl, it is nothing, for having intercourse with a girl less than three years old is like putting a finger in the eye."
Though the Talmud's permission for the heinous crime of child molestation is virtually unknown among the public and is never mentioned in the establishment media, among Talmud researchers it is notorious.
This portion of tractate Ketubot concerns Halakhic definitions of sexual intercourse. In this particular ruling it is stated that copulation with girls below the age of three cannot be considered sexual activity because, although penetration ruptures her hymen, such intercourse is merely "like putting a finger in the eye," since the hymen at this age will eventually regenerate (just as a finger stuck in an eye will cause the eye to water, yet the eye will heal and return to its former state, so the hymen of a girl under three will rupture during intercourse but will heal later).
Once her hymen grows back, the little girl is regarded as lawfully still a virgin. Hence the Talmud recognizes no sexual intercourse as having occurred and therefore exacts no penalty for coitus with a female child of less than three years of age.

Ellison, Bush, Hitler, the FBI, ben Laden and 9/11

There was an uproar caused by some when the first Muslim congressman elected, Keith Ellison, compared Bush to Hitler.

"Addressing a gathering of atheists in his home state of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, a Democrat, compared the 9/11 atrocities to the destruction of the Reichstag, the German parliament, in 1933. This was probably burned down by the Nazis in order to justify Hitler's later seizure of emergency powers. "

"After his speech was reported, Mr Ellison said he accepted that Osama bin Laden was responsible for 9/11. But his demagogic comments threaten to plunge him in controversy. "
from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/14/wbush114.xml

Why should Mr. Ellison accept that Osama bin Laden was responsible for 9/11 when the FBI hasn't?

Look at the FBI’s webpage on Osama Ben Laden http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm

Why wouldn’t an attack which killed 3,000 people be specifically mentioned?
Journalist Ed Haas’ investigates this,

On June 5, 2006, the Muckraker Report contacted the FBI Headquarters, (202) 324-3000, to learn why Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster did not indicate that Usama was also wanted in connection with 9/11. The Muckraker Report spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI. When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden’s Most Wanted web page, Tomb said, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”

See complete article at http://www.teamliberty.net/id267.html

Barack Obama is clueless

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama : Don’t stay in Iraq over genocide http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OBAMA_AP_INTERVIEW?SITE=MIDTN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

He said, “the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.”

I don’t know if the military can solve the problems in Iraq, but the least Obama could do is acknowledge that the United States and its allies created the the chaos in Iraq. The U.S., Britain, and its allies
#1) bombed the country and destroyed its infrastructure
#2) rounds up thousands of Iraqis and jails them without justification
#3) makes decisions when elections are to take place and whether the results are valid
#4) benefit more from reconstruction projects than the Iraqis
#5)can break into jails to release prisoners against the Iraqi’s governments wishes. (Remember when two British men where caught disguised as Arabs carrying explosives and weapons in their car? Their fellow British soldiers broke into the jail they were in and helped them to escape) see http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20051015&articleId=1089

Lets look at the second ridiculous thing Obama said, “Well, look, if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now - where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife - which we haven’t done.”
The guy doesn’t know what he is talking about. I suggest he read “Deadly Legacy:U.S. Arms to Africa and the Congo War” at http://worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/congo.htm
The findings of the report were

• Due to the continuing legacies of its Cold War policies toward Africa, the U.S. bears some responsibility for the cycles of violence and economic problems plaguing the continent.
• The ongoing civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) is a prime example of the devastating legacy of U.S. arms sales policy on Africa.
• Although the Clinton administration has been quick to criticize the governments involved in the Congo War, decades of U.S. weapons transfers and continued military training to both sides of the conflict have helped fuel the fighting.
• Despite the failure of U.S. polices in the region, the current administration continues to respond to Africa’s woes by helping to strengthen African militaries.
• Even as it fuels military build-up, the U.S. continues cutting development assistance to Africa and remains unable (or unwilling) to promote alternative non-violent forms of engagement.

Here are articles that discuss how the United States and other countries exploit the natural resources of the Congo http://zmagsite.zmag.org/JulAug2006/snow0706.html

and http://zmagsite.zmag.org/JulAug2007/snow.html

Ancient mega-lake discovered in Darfur

Pool of water estimated to have sprawled over nearly 12,000 square miles




Scientists using radar techniques have peeled away the sandy cloak blanketing Darfur’s parched landscape to reveal an ancient basin that once housed a mega-lake larger than Lake Erie.

“When you go into these deserts and you look at the land, it’s so dry and lifeless you think there has never been anything alive there. Then you look in the past, and you see there were rivers and lakes,” said study team member Farouk El-Baz, director of Boston University Center for Remote Sensing.

Dubbed the Northern Darfur Mega-lake, the large pool of water is estimated to have sprawled over nearly 12,000 square miles during its heyday, with 600 cubic miles of water when filled to the brim.

Hidden pool
El-Baz and his colleague Eman Ghoneim, also of the Center for Remote Sensing, discovered the lake by analyzing images from the satellite Radarsat, which used radar waves to penetrate the fine-grained sand in western Sudan, revealing the hidden contours of the lake basin and surrounding rivers.

complete article at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18059416/

Israel provoked Six-Day War, says former Dutch UN observer

Jun 5, 2007, 8:51 GMT Amsterdam - A former Dutch UN observer has said Israel was not under siege by Arab countries preceding the Six-Day War, the 40th anniversary of which falls Tuesday, and that the Jewish state provoked most border incidents as part of its strategy to annex more land.
Speaking on a Dutch current affairs programme late Monday, Jan Muhren, who was stationed interchangeably at the Golan Heights and the West Bank in 1966-67, says neither Jordan nor Syria had any intention to start a war with Israel. from http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/news/article_1313492.php/Israel_provoked_Six-Day_War_says_former_Dutch_UN_observer


Actually as you will see in the video, that Jan Muhren is not that only one that says this “Moshe Dayan, the famous Israeli war hero has admitted long after the Six-Day war that the majority of incidents (80%) were provoked by Israel.”

The Deceptions of the Six-Day War - DutchTV with English Subtitles


While this information is becoming better know there is still much that needs to be investigated. This article
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51a/022.html says

• Israel never was in military danger, the Israeli Army was always aware they could overpowered all the Arab armies.
• The US CIA was greatly involved in providing Israel intelligence information that greatly helped them win the war in such a short time.
• US military personnel, disguised as civilians and on secret missions to which they were sworn to secrecy, helped the Israelis with specific technical and intelligence-gathering operations.

"Freedom Next Time" Speech by John Pilger

He gives a history of U.S. foreign policy and the role of the media.

John Pilger - Freedom Next Time Part 1
Most memorable line: “John Wayne their hero had lied so he wouldn’t have to fight in World War II. Yet the phony role model of Wayne [in the movie The Green Berets] sent thousands of young Americans to their deaths in Vietnam with the notable exception of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.”



John Pilger – Freedom Next Time Part 2
Most memorable lines : “In the last half century, United States administrations have overthrown 50 governments; many of them democracies. In the process 30 countries have been attacked and bombed with a loss of countless lives.”

Here is Pilger's website http://www.johnpilger.com

Cindy Sheehan will run against Congresswomen Nancy Pelosi in 2008 if she does not file articles of impeachment against Bush by July 23.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/09/AR2007070900221.html
Cindy Sheehan stepped down as an anti-war leader in May 2007 and wrote

I have come to some heartbreaking conclusions this Memorial Day Morning. These are not spur of the moment reflections, but things I have been meditating on for about a year now. The conclusions that I have slowly and very reluctantly come to are very heartbreaking to me.

The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a “tool” of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our “two-party” system?

However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the “left” started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of “right or left”, but “right and wrong.”

Complete article at http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/29/1495/

Here is cartoon that nicely sums up the relationship between the democrats and republicans and their attitude toward the anti-war movement

Click here for larger image
The cartoon is by Khalil Bendib who has recently released a book (Mission Accomplished Click Here to See it) which contains a collection of his cartoons

Women in Iran: Repression and resistance

While Westerners often pretend to be concerned for human rights in Muslim countries, they hardly if ever give recognition to the struggles of the women who are fighting for their rights. Here is an article about Iranian women’s struggles.

"Iranians are the first to know how easy it is for a whole nation to be reduced to the rants of a senseless politician, or for images of a handful of shroud-wearing crazies burning the American flag in Tehran to reach the western media's front-pages. But how easy is it for thousands of Iranian teachers protesting outside the Iranian majlis (parliament) - as they did on Saturday 3 March 2007 - to merit any attention?"

See http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?itemid=12278

Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation

For all the money Bill Gates (of Microsoft) gives to help the people of Africa, he makes much more money by investing in companies that do a lot of harm to the people and environment of Africa.

"The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that the foundation is funding inoculations to protect health, The Times found, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Total of France — the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe."

See article at http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,4205044,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines
article in Jan. 7, 2007 Los Angeles Times, written by Charles Piller, Edmund Sanders and Robyn Dixon

Iroquois influenced the United States Constitution

On June 11, 1776 while the question of independence was being debated, the visiting Iroquois chiefs were formally invited into the meeting hall of the Continental Congress. There a speech was delivered, in which they were addressed as "Brothers" and told of the delegates' wish that the "friendship" between them would "continue as long as the sun shall shine" and the "waters run." The speech also expressed the hope that the new Americans and the Iroquois act "as one people, and have but one heart." After this speech, an Onondaga chief requested permission to give Hancock an Indian name. The Congress graciously consented, and so the president was renamed "Karanduawn, or the Great Tree." With the Iroquois chiefs inside the halls of Congress on the eve of American Independence, the impact of Iroquois ideas on the founders is unmistakable. History is indebted to Charles Thomson, an adopted Delaware, whose knowledge of and respect for American Indians is reflected in the attention that he gave to this ceremony in the records of the Continental Congress. Artwork by John Kahionhes Fadden. Source http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/index.html
____________________________________________

According to the Iroquois constitution, states were first to solve disputes between them on their own. If resolution efforts failed then the national government would take authority, Hill said.

The Iroquois place the creation of their constitution, which was recorded on belts, at between 1000 and 1400 A.D., according to the Smithsonian magazine. The Great Law said the national government should have a commander-in-chief and that person should present a "state of the union" address to the nation, Hill said.

The Iroquois' also said that when a legislator was presenting an issue to the governing chamber, others should be quiet, a practice adopted by Congress that contrasts with protocol in the British parliament, Hill said.

[Benjamen] Franklin, then Pennsylvania's official printer, became familiar with the Iroquois political system by printing minutes of their meetings, according to the magazine.

"He recognized that the Iroquois constitution contained many features absent in other governments at the time," including the concept that "elected officials were never masters but remained servants of their constituencies," the magazine states.

However, the Iroquois constitution differed from the later U.S. document in one important way -- it specifically mentioned women, said Knapp. Many Indian nations were matriarchal with women nominating legislators, she added.
From http://usinfo.state.gov/scv/Archive/2005/May/17-246412.html

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The early natives set some lasting examples for the America we all live in today. Benjamin Franklin ... became so impressed with the Pennsylvania Iroquois' tribal constitution, which he saw when he was hired as the tribe's printer, that the Pennsylvania colony named him to his first diplomatic job, its "Indian Commissioner."

In 1754 Franklin asked a gathering of American colonial delegates—white men—to use the constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy, adopted in a peaceful merger of six combative tribes, as a model for what would eventually, in 1781, be ratified as the U.S. Articles of Confederation. The Iroquois constitution banned the forced entry of private homes by a tribal government, protected freedom of political and religious expression, and imposed the impeachment of corrupt leaders.

Among the long list of other fascinating Indian unknowns, the fact that Articles I, VI and VII of our Constitution are modeled after the Iroquois charter, is a story not widely perceived. Not until 1987 did the U.S. Senate finally pass a resolution stating that the U.S. Constitution had been modeled on American Indian democracy.

From http://www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20041015indian_2.cfm

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Here is information about the Constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/iroquois.html

Here is another article about Ben Franklin and the Constitution http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0107/gaz09.html

My prediction came true

In my 6/10/2007 posting I had criticized the attempt by Britain's largest union of university and college teachers to boycott Israeli academics. See http://gettingtruth.blogspot.com/2007/06/this-is-not-going-to-help-palestinians.html where I wrote :

If the boycott is done and it spreads to other countries what will happen? Conveniently, a terrorist act wil take place (committed by agent provocateurs) and Israel will say "We told you so." These terrorist acts (whether it was the killing of the Isrealis at the 1972 Munich Olympics, or the hijacking of Air France Flight 139, where hostages were held at Entebbe Airport in Uganda, or the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro), benefit Israel more than it does the Palestinians

If these British teachers want things to improve for the Palestinians, why don't they set the example by having their government stop its participation in the occupation of Iraq?

This also goes to the Americans on the radical left who want to talk about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, but do not want to discuss the United States' war crimes around the world.

Here are two good articles about the events in London and Glasgow. One is by Pham Binh http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/07/glasglow-murderous-masterminds-or-hopeless-idiots/
the other is by Kurt Nimmo http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=915