Day: December 15, 2010

“Hate the Gentile!” – Israel’s Racist Rabbis By Jonathan Cook

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15 December, 2010 — Counterpunch

Jews must not rent homes to “gentiles”. That was the religious decree issued this week by at least 50 of Israel’s leading rabbis, many of them employed by the state as municipal religious leaders. Jews should first warn, then “ostracise” fellow Jews who fail to heed the directive, the rabbis declared.

The decree is the latest in a wave of racist pronouncements from some of Israel’s most influential rabbis.

In October, Shmuel Eliyahu, the chief rabbi of Safed, delivered a ruling, signed by 17 other rabbis in the city, telling Jewish residents not to sell or rent property to members of the country’s Palestinian Arab minority, who make up a fifth of the population.

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Wikileaks News roundup 14-15 December, 2010

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15 December, 2010 — creative-i.info

15 December, 2010 19:34

14 December, 2010

The media goes to war By John Pilger

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14 December, 2010 — John Pilger

John Pilger’s new documentary examines media complicity with the war machine.

John Pilger John Pilger is a renowned investigative reporter and documentary filmmaker who was called “the most outstanding journalist in the world today” by the Guardian. He is the author of numerous books, including most recently Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire, a collection of investigations into the effects of war crimes and globalization. His books and films are featured at JohnPilger.com.

IN THE U.S. Army manual on counterinsurgency, the American commander Gen. David Petraeus describes Afghanistan as a “war of perception…conducted continuously using the news media.” What really matters is not so much the day-to-day battles against the Taliban as the way the adventure is sold in America where “the media directly influence the attitude of key audiences.”


Reading this, I was reminded of the Venezuelan general who led a coup against the democratic government in 2002. “We had a secret weapon,” he boasted. “We had the media, especially TV. You got to have the media.”

Never has so much official energy been expended in ensuring journalists collude with the makers of rapacious wars, which, say the media-friendly generals, are now “perpetual.” In echoing the West’s more verbose warlords, such as the waterboarding former Vice President Dick Cheney, who predicted “50 years of war,” they plan a state of permanent conflict wholly dependent on keeping at bay an enemy whose name they dare not speak: the public.

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Hacktivism for Cyber Democracy Joel S. Hirschhorn

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15 December, 2010 — delusionaldemocracy.com

Because of the attacks on WikiLeaks and its founder there has been considerable media attention to the hacktivism practiced by supporters of WikiLeaks. That has been manifested as cyber attacks on mainstream commercial websites that acted against WikiLeaks. Hacktivism as retribution and strategy to gain political objectives is bound to become much more common. And considering how voting, especially from the perspective of younger people, has been enormously disappointing as a means of reforming government and political systems worldwide, that seems appropriate.

Naturally, there is a fine discussion of hacktivism at Wikipedia. There we learn that it has been around far longer than the current attention to the WikiLeaks situation.

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Ten Thoughts About Julian Assange and WikiLeaks By Andy Worthington

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14 December, 2010 — Andy Worthington

1.

Since its founding in December 2006, WikiLeaks, which was established as, essentially, a secure information clearing house for whistleblowers around the world to provide sensitive information, some of which would then be released to the public, and which was reportedly set up by “Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and start-up company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa,” has declared that its “primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behaviour in their governments and corporations.” From the release of a single document in December 2006 — a “secret decision,” signed by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a Somali rebel leader for the Islamic Courts Union, which “had been culled from traffic passing through the Tor network to China,” and which “called for the execution of government officials by hiring ‘criminals’ as hit men” — WikiLeaks has received millions of documents, and has, amongst other achievements, exposed corruption in Kenya, made available the Standard Operating Procedure for Guantánamo from 2003 and 2004 (and compared the changes), attacked Scientology, exposed Sarah Palin’s emails, and published a membership list of Britain’s far-right BNP.

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Wikileaks and ‘cablegate’ – a threat to national security or a step forward for transparency?

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7 December, 2010 — Editors Weblog

[How the media sees itself. WB]

With its latest release, Wikileaks has attracted an unprecedented amount of attention, sparking international debate and sharply dividing commentators, both political and media. The 250,000 confidential diplomatic cables were shared with the Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El Pais, and the Guardian passed them on to the New York Times. Some of the stories that have come out of them are fascinating and well within what would usually be seen as the public interest, others are more gossipy and merely embarrassing. Wikileaks’ three major leaks earlier this year placed it in international consciousness, but cables have taken its fame, or notoriety, sky high.

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Western Civilization and Classical Economics: The Immorality of Austerity By Prof. John Kozy

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12 December, 2010 — Global Research

When a civilization abandons its morality, no rationalization can be devised to justify its continued existence. It is likely that many reasons can be given for this abandonment in the Western world, although I am convinced that one predominates—the expansion of law. Law once governed various kinds of behavior. It has now encroached upon various kinds of speech and is even being applied to the realm of belief. When someone is accused of having done something wrong, the reply offered usually is something like, “What was done complied with all legal requirements.” But “right” has never been defined as “conforms to law,” because thoughtful people have long noticed that the law itself can be a great crime, and the worst criminals in a culture can be its lawgivers, as the people of Ireland, Portugal, France, Spain, Greece, and Great Britain are now finding out. Americans will soon find it out too.

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Published for the first time, the papers which could finally force full inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly By Miles Goslett

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13 December, 2010 — Daily Mail

kelly21.jpegToday, the Daily Mail publishes for the first time the legal document which could trigger a full coroner’s inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly.

The document, formally known as a memorial was written by group of campaigning doctors who have been trying to secure an inquest since 2004.

It lists the sequence of events which led up to Dr Kelly’s death and the legal reasons they believe an inquest ought to be held.

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Information Clearing House Newsletter 14 December, 2010: Michael Moore: Why I'm Posting Bail for Julian Assange

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14 December, 2010 — Information Clearing House

Julian Assange Granted Bail
By Mark Tran
Founder of WikiLeaks granted £240,000 bail at Westminster magistrates court after celebrities stand sureties.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27061.htm

Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange Release Delayed
By BBC
“The Swedes won’t abide by the umpire’s decision. They want to put Mr Assange through yet more trouble, more expense, more hurdles.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27063.htm

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VTJP Palestine/Israel Newslinks 14 December, 2010: Rabbi Drukman Suggests Discriminating Between “A Loyal Arab”, and “An Arab Who Hates Israel”

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14 December, 2010 — VTJP

News

International Middle East Media Center

Bedouin Community Wells Destroyed Near Hebron
IMEMC – 14 Dec 2010 – Tuesday December 14, 2010 – 18:06, The Israeli Civil Administration officials destroyed five wells and several sheds, on Tuesday, in a small Bedouin community in the south Hebron hills, locals reported.

Israeli Forces Arrest 31 in West Bank and Demolish 2 Houses in Jerusalem
IMEMC – 14 Dec 2010 – Tuesday December 14, 2010 – 17:24, Israeli troops arrested 31 people in overnight raids across the West Bank. Meanwhile, troops demolished two Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, on Tuesday morning, local sources announced.

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Epitaph For Richard Holbrooke By Francis A. Boyle

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14 December, 2010 — Countercurrents

I am very sorry to learn that Richard Holbrooke has died . Because I fully intended to bring him to Justice and get him criminally indicted for the genocidal massacre at Srebrenica on behalf of my clients, the Mothers of Srebrenica and Podrinja.

It was Holbrooke who deliberately sacrificed Zepa and Srebrenica in order to produce Dayton’s genocidal carve-up map. Holbrooke was the Father of the genocidal statelet known as Republika Sprska. Holbrooke was the Destroyer of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Holbrooke was an Accessory Before, During and After the Fact to the Extermination of 8000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, which the International Court of Justice ruled was genocide in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention. Holbrooke shall live in Infamy as a Genocidaire.

In his classic work The Phaedo, Plato has his hero Socrates comment upon the transmigration/reincarnation of souls. With respect to Holbrooke, Socrates said as follows

‘And those who have chosen the portion of injustice, and tyranny, and violence, will pass into wolves, or into hawks and kites;–whither else can we suppose them to go?’

Let Socrates’ words of wisdom serve as Holbrooke’s Epitaph and Fate.

Professor Francis A. Boyle General Agent for the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina before the International Court of Justice. Attorney for the Mothers of Srebrenica and Podrinja

BDS update: ‘Besiege your siege!’ By Eric Walberg

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15 December, 2010 — Eric Walberg

The movement to isolate Israel through boycott, divestment and sanctions resonates from Canada to the Indo-Pakistani border, notes Eric Walberg

Last month Canada’s controversial Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper continued his campaign to support Israel through thick and thin at an international conference hosted by the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism (CPCCA), where he solemnly warned participants, “History shows us, and the ideology of the anti-Israel mob tells us all too well, that those who threaten the existence of the Jewish people are in the longer term a threat to all of us.”

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Media Lens: What Happened To Academia? – Part 1

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14 December, 2010 — Media Lens

Exchanges With Piers Robinson of The University Of Manchester

What happened to academia? In 2008, Terry Eagleton, formerly Professor of English Literature at Manchester University, wrote:

“By and large, academic institutions have shifted from being the accusers of corporate capitalism to being its accomplices. They are intellectual Tescos, churning out a commodity known as graduates rather than greengroceries.” (Eagleton, ‘Death of the intellectual,’ Red Pepper, October 2008)

He added:

“The logic of the commodity has now penetrated into the sphere of human needs and nurture, breeding pathological symptoms there. In universities, as in transnational corporations, a largely disaffected labour force confronts a finance-obsessed managerial elite.”

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Our youth are leading the way By Jeremy Corbyn

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14 December, 2010 — Morning Star

Helmeted riot police, shields and batons drawn, welcomed the education protesters in Whitehall last week and ushered them into an immediate kettle.

The same picture was mirrored in Parliament Square and Embankment where the National Union of Students (NUS) and University and College Union (UCU) had hoped to rally to express their disdain.

Six hours later the students and their unaffiliated supporters emerged shocked, distressed, exhausted and entirely unempowered in the decision-making process which will determine their future and those of their children – if they can afford to have them.

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On Adeeb Abu Rahmah’s release By Rebecca Vilkomerson

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14 December, 2010 – The Only Democracy?

On a personal note, I remember very clearly the weekend that Adeeb was arrested. I was still living in Israel, and a friend from Anarchists Against the Wall was arrested with him. This friend was detained for over 24 hours, blindfolded, etc. This was fairly harsh treatment for a Jewish Israeli, and he told me all about it on our way to visit Tristan Anderson.

Video of Adeeb Abu Rahmah being released

It’s still amazing to me to think that Adeeb spent a year and a half in jail for doing EXACTLY what an Israeli spent 24 hours in jail for. It’s so thrilling to see him at home, but so infuriating that he was there at all….

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