[LAAMN] [Fwd: Love your enemy more than your friend]
Elana Golden serves on the Advisory Board of Cafe Intifada! -Emma Rosenthal Cafe Intifada THE BLANKET * Index: Current Articles Love your enemy more than your friend Elana Golden 1 December 2004 What are you doing tomorrow? my friend Edna asked. I am trying to go to Ramallah I said. Why? I don't understand. They are our enemies... she confronted me. This phone conversation took place in Tel Aviv, while I was there, in September of 2004. I did not get into a political argument with her. This had been established the first time I visited her and she asked me what I was planning to do on my visit. I will go to the checkpoints, go to the West Bank, meet Palestinians go to demonstrations I am not going there with you, she interrupted me, her there not referring to the places mentioned but to the political conversation she thought I was about to begin. A year earlier we had a huge fight when I said that the war in Iraq has to do with Zionist presence in Palestine. She exploded and accused me of being an anti-Semite, and did not speak to me for a long time. For me, Palestinians are not enemies. And this is despite the fact that I grew up in Israel and am Jewish, - though I live in the U.S. since 1978. Maybe it was a lucky strike that at age 12, a month after the 1967 war, I spent a month in a summer school in Switzerland, where I met and befriended kids from Kuwait, Libya, Soudi Arabia, and Lebanon. My best friend there was Maya from Beirut, Lebanon. We shared a room, and after the summer exchanged letters through a friend in Paris for a year. It was then that I knew that Arabs are not my enemies. That I have no enemies and indeed want to live a life without making one. I did not know at age 12 about Palestinians, and thinking in retrospect, it's possible that some of the kids in the Swiss summer school were of Palestinian origin. But soon after that summer, back in Tel Aviv, I was reading Uri Avnery's left-wing magazine - Haolam Haze -- this world, in Hebrew. It spoke of clandestine meetings between Israelis and Palestinians in London, - meetings that were outlawed by Israel at the time. I was fascinated by those meetings, intrigued by Palestinians, and wanted to know more about them and meet them. Life offered opportunities. In 1972, my senior year in high school, I would skip school and instead, drive to Jerusalem with one of the founders of Matzpen - a left-wing group, advocating a one state solution for Palestinians and Israelis. Sitting in cafes in both east and west Jerusalem I began to meet Palestinian activists and intellectuals and to understand what had happened to the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israelis. And at a time when Golda Meir was stating that there's no such thing as Palestinians, here I was, sitting with a few, who were telling me about how their parents and grandparents had been expelled from their villages and homes, from Jaffa and Haifa and Ramle, in 1948 and before. Around that time I had to go to the Israeli army. I really did not want to go, but met a boy I fell in love with, and together we formed a group that would serve on a Kibbutz, a Communist Kibbutz, and not serve in the occupied territories. This was accepted by the army back then. In basic training I spoke to all the other female soldiers about Palestinians, about the occupation since 1967, and that Israel has to get out of these territories. I was accused of incitement. I was not put in jail, but punished to spend most weekends on the base. This was combined with my refusal to learn how to shoot a gun. Finally, after a time, I got out of the army, released under the clause, Unfit for military service. Cut to many years later, it's now 1997 and I live in L.A. The Milky Way, a film by a Palestinian Israeli filmmaker, Ali Nassar, is part of the Israeli film festival. I had met Ali in Jerusalem a few months earlier, and now went to see the film again, at a screening in Beverly Hills. There's very few people in the theater, none Palestinian or Arab, though the film is in Arabic. No PR has been done for the film in the Arabic speaking communities, and I make it a point to reach out to these audiences. This is when I meet Pat and Samir Twair, she an American journalist writing for The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, he a Syrian peace activist, poet and journalist. It's also then that I meet Hanna Elias, a Palestinian filmmaker, and Nabil Azzam, a Palestinian violinist - both living in Los Angeles. Four new friendships begin to blossom I also begin to
[LAAMN] 12/12 Iraq Watch Specials: The Truth About the UN Oil-for-Food Scam
Iraq Watch Specials: The Truth About the UN Oil-for-Food Scam December 12, 2004 From Peace No War Network URL: _www.PeaceNoWar.net_ (http://www.peacenowar.net/) As I wrote on 1999 on Covert Action Quarterly magazine about the *real* reasons U.S. daily bombing Iraq is to boost their weapons sales in the U.S. and around the World (_http://www.actionla.org/Iraq/IraqReport/CAQ.htm_ (http://www.actionla.org/Iraq/IraqReport/CAQ.htm) ) Similarly, the *real* reason behind the U.N Oil-For-Food program was U.S. to steal Iraq's oil for lower-then market price. I wrote a detail investigative article about this on the Spring 2000 issue of Covert Action Quarterly Magazine (see under). Currently, the U.S. is intend to use this old U.S.-manufactured scandal to overthrown UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and to achieve the control of United Nations. It's true that without a huge U.N. bureaucracy to help U.S. to achieve his scheme, the U.S. oil companies will not able to quietly ripped-off 40% of Iraq oil under the program and block almost all vital medical supplies thought the 90's that result in 3/4 millions of Iraqi children death (a infamous quote by Albright on mid-90's said it was worth it. for so many Iraqi Children death because of sanctions). Furthermore, U.S. is using Iraqi oil to play it oil-geo-political covert action scheme of global dominance game, from Palestine, Cuba, Venezuela (_http://www.actionla.org/Iraq/IraqReport/CL.htm_ (http://www.actionla.org/Iraq/IraqReport/CL.htm) ). Lee Siu Hin Peace No war Network == The Iraq-Russia-US Oil Pipeline How the US Has Been Using the UN Oil-for-Food Program to Steal Iraqs Oil By: Lee Siu Hin March, 2000 On February 3rd at Persian Gulf near Oman, a team of US Navy SEAL laid a Russian oil tanker on commando-style, they accuse Volga-Neft 147 is smuggling Iraqi oil. US Secretary of Defense William Cohen says they dont believe the Russian government was involved in Iraq oil smuggle, and US official says the administration was merely enforcing the embargo against Iraq. However, what Cohen and the administrations didnt said: For the past three years US had became the biggest hidden Iraq oil buyerwith the help of Russia. The United States, together with Britain, France and Russia, has manufactured one of the biggest oil scheme in history: the theft of billions of dollars of below-market price petroleum from Iraq every year under the United Nations Oil-for-Food program. Because of the sanctions, Iraq has forced to sell its oil far cheaper then the international oil market price (so-called discount prices); up to $5 per barrel below any other Gulf country's oil. This is the main reason for 1998's 60% oil price collapse--the cheapest oil since the 70's 'oil crisis.' Although international crude oil price had been sky-rocked to $30 a barrel early this year, it still doesnt change the facts that American oil companies are still buying discounted price oil from Iraqup to 40 percent of its production, quietly end up in US refinery, not directly from the UN programs, but indirectly from Russia. Iraq since the beginning of the UN program had strictly refusing to sell its oil to US, UK and Japanese companies (with the exceptions of US Coastal and Phoenix oil companies). Would you help a person who commits a crime against your people [by selling oil to them]? Iraqi oil minister Amer Rashid asks. This is an ethnical, not political issue. (10) The Iraq-Russia-US oil connections are nothing new, since beginning of this Century, the equation of the games in the Middle East has been always the same oil. This is also one of the main reasons this time in Iraq: the US wants to maintain its UN sanctions against Iraq before and beyond, because it greatly benefits US oil companies (9). Oil-for-Scam Logically, if Albright hates Saddam so much and accusing him of building new weapons everyday, why doesn't she just simply prevent Iraq from selling oil, so Saddam wont have any money for developing new guns? Thats the Catch 22 Uncle Sam doesnt want you to know about: on the one hand the United States maintains its nearly 10-year old campaigns of continuous bombing and starvation against Iraq, while on the other hand it is covertly using the UN Oil-for-Food program to steal billions of dollars in below-market price oil from Iraq every year, according to the United Nations, and government records. For the past three years, every month dozen Iraqi oil shipments quiretly arrived to different oil refrinly in Texas, New Jersey and California, almost no information had been available to the public. It is highly puzzled that the United Nations, State Department, Pentagon and US Customs had completely silent (even spin controlling) the facts of Iraq-Russia-US oil pipeline, despite the facts that
[LAAMN] FW: News from Mexican American Political Association]
-Original Message- From: MAPA [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, December 11, 2004 5:59 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: News from Mexican American Political Association http://rs6.net/on.jsp?t=110036797.0.1098465471248.826o=http://ui.c http://rs6.net/on.jsp?t=110036797.0.1098465471248.826o=http://ui.c onstantcontact.com/roving/images/p1x1.gif Mexican American Political Association http://www.mapa.org/newsletter/mapanewsheader.jpg http://imgcc.com/spacer.gif Mexican American Political Association Newsletter ) http://imgcc.com/diag_corner_tr.gif DARK MONDAYS December 2004 http://imgcc.com/spacer.gif PRESS COMMENTARY * What is a DARK MONDAY? * JOIN MAPA TODAY * Lunes Oscuro Flyer Greetings! DARK MONDAYS FOR THE REMAINDER OF 2004 AND ALL OF 2005 A growing number of organizations have joined the call by the Mexican American Political Association to observe DARK MONDAYS beginning Monday, December 13, 2004 and all of 2005 until the state of California becomes a hospitable state to immigrants and permits driver's licenses to persons irrespective of their immigration status. http://imgcc.com/spacer.gif http://imgcc.com/spacer.gif http://imgcc.com/spacer.gif What is a DARK MONDAY? http://imgcc.com/spacer.gif What is a DARK MONDAY? MAPA's call to observe DARK MONDAYS and not purchase gasoline one day a week is an economic boycott, which targets the energy industry throughout California and in any state where our message is well received. The energy industry is the most watched industry in terms of the ups and downs of the market - prices, supply, consumption, etc. - and therefore, relatively simple to ascertain the effectiveness of a boycott. No purchase of gasoline is a simple act of conscience by the consumers - almost a symbolic act of support and unity. This is a call to observe DARK MONDAYS to all Latinos, immigrants, and the general community to demonstrate their support for immigrants and the right to obtain a driver's license with no regard for immigration status. Critics would say that people will only make their purchases on Sunday or Tuesday and therefore there is no effect. In fact, this is the simplicity of our call. It is very simple for the populace to be supportive. However, this is only the first step to build organization and consiousness amongst our own communities, and the general population, about the contributions made by immigrants, to then pursue other economic actions and targets. This is one step of many more to come. http://imgcc.com/spacer.gif http://imgcc.com/spacer.gif http://imgcc.com/spacer.gif http://imgcc.com/spacer.gif JOIN MAPA TODAY http://imgcc.com/spacer.gif http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=rjxvqzaab.0.8hl47a44.qy9j9a44.826p=http%3A%2F% http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=rjxvqzaab.0.8hl47a44.qy9j9a44.826p=http%3A%2F% 2Fwww.mapa.org http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=rjxvqzaab.0.8hl47a44.qy9j9a44.826p=http%3A%2F% http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=rjxvqzaab.0.8hl47a44.qy9j9a44.826p=http%3A%2F% 2Fwww.mapa.org http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=rjxvqzaab.0.8hl47a44.qy9j9a44.826p=http%3A%2F% http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=rjxvqzaab.0.8hl47a44.qy9j9a44.826p=http%3A%2F% 2Fwww.mapa.org Join us in this prolonged campaign for driver's licenses and visas for our families. The first step in making change is to join an organization that pursues the change we desire. We welcome you to our ranks. Other organizations leading this movement include: Centro Azteca de Informacion, California Coalition for Immigrant's Rights and Against Raids, Centro CSO, Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana, MAPA Youth Leadership, and the Council of Mexican Federations. CONTACT: Nativo V. Lopez, National President of MAPA (323) 269-1575 Miguel Araujo, General Cordinator, Centro Azteca (650) 921-0293 http://imgcc.com/spacer.gif http://imgcc.com/spacer.gif http://imgcc.com/spacer.gif http://imgcc.com/spacer.gif Lunes Oscuro Flyer http://imgcc.com/spacer.gif http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=rjxvqzaab.0.8hl47a44.qy9j9a44.826p=http%3A%2F% http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=rjxvqzaab.0.8hl47a44.qy9j9a44.826p=http%3A%2F% 2Fwww.mapa.org http://imgcc.com/spacer.gif Quick Links... http://imgcc.com/spacer.gif * http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=rjxvqzaab.0.8hl47a44.qy9j9a44.826p=http%3A%2F% http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=rjxvqzaab.0.8hl47a44.qy9j9a44.826p=http%3A%2F% 2Fwww.mapa.org Register Now * http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=rjxvqzaab.0.wkjnlzaab.qy9j9a44.826p=http%3A%2F http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=rjxvqzaab.0.wkjnlzaab.qy9j9a44.826p=http%3A%2F %2Fwww.mapa.org%2Fissue2.html Last Month's Newsletter * http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=rjxvqzaab.0.8hl47a44.qy9j9a44.826p=http%3A%2F% http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=rjxvqzaab.0.8hl47a44.qy9j9a44.826p=http%3A%2F% 2Fwww.mapa.org More About Us webmaster email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] phone: 323-269-1575 web: http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=rjxvqzaab.0.8hl47a44.qy9j9a44.826p=http%3A%2F% http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=rjxvqzaab.0.8hl47a44.qy9j9a44.826p=http%3A%2F% 2Fwww.mapa.org http://www.mapa.org
[LAAMN] Problems: The End of Teflon Guiliani, The New Pentagon Paper, Corrupting Ukraine, Corrupt Governor
HI Ed, My cousin Thom Irwin reminded me that the best deal all around is LA Times' Calendar Live which gets him access to the whole paper and its archives for $10/yr. Comics are separate so he subscribed to Comix.com, gets most of what the times carries for another $10/yr and no paper at all! That's the best deal of all! and nothing to recycle (which is all the paper is good for just about anyway - happy chanukah - Judy [and to all, Ed No afternoon mailing today - fam time] Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit NY Newsday - Dec 11, 2004 http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/newyork/politics/nyc-anal1212,0,3886499.story?coll=nyc-homepage-headlines Guiliani Political Stock in Doubt by Glenn Thrush Staff Writer The short, embarrassing nomination of Bernard Kerik ended with a whimper and so, too, has Rudolph Giuliani's Teflon period -- a three-year stretch when his status as America's Mayor largely obscured his own shortcomings and the foibles of close associates. Giuliani is still regarded as a serious presidential contender in 2008, but his political stock seems to have taken its first major tumble since he emerged as a national figure after the 2001 terrorist attacks. The Kerik debacle has also raised doubts about Giuliani's judgment in pushing his protege's nomination, considering Kerik's nanny troubles and an emerging string of unflattering business, personal and legal entanglements. It's an embarrassment for Giuliani if Giuliani wants to be president, said GOP consultant Nelson Warfield, who was Bob Dole's press secretary during the 1996 presidential campaign. He's Kerik's biggest promoter and either he was reckless or uninformed, and neither of those things qualifies you for president. You'll never find anyone to say it, but this is a big negative with the Bush White House. The Kerik firestorm, fueled by a New York media all too familiar with Giuliani and his aides, may portend even more intense scrutiny of Giuliani if he seeks national office. The contrite former mayor, who was practically welded to President George W. Bush during the final weeks of the campaign, seems to have gotten the message. At a Manhattan news conference yesterday, Giuliani said, It's an embarrassment to me and to Bernie and those of us who supported him. On Friday night, he apologized directly to White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card. I'll speak to the president a little later, Giuliani said yesterday. I told Andy that this is our responsibility. I'm sorry, we don't want to do anything to distract the administration. Giuliani and Bush won't have to wait long to hash things out face-to-face. Both are scheduled to attend a holiday function at the White House later today, according to a source close to Giuliani. Although local politicians publicly crowed about the former NYPD commissioner's nomination, many also expressed private doubts about Kerik's fitness to run a department that oversees 22 agencies with a total of 180,000 federal employees. Mayor Michael Bloomberg hailed Kerik's selection. But Kerik's feud with current city police Commissioner Ray Kelly, a former high-ranking member of the Clinton administration, was one of the city's worst-kept secrets. No single figure has been so closely associated with Giuliani during or after his City Hall tenure as Kerik. The 49-year-old former top cop, who served as Giuliani's majordomo, confidante, corrections commissioner and business partner, has enjoyed Giuliani's patronage and protection. One national Republican strategist who supports Giuliani said that was part of the problem. I'm sorry, but the people around him are the Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight, said the strategist, speaking on condition of anonymity. I've had this conversation with U.S. senators and other party leaders and they all say the same thing: Rudy's got to hire a team of people who are ready for prime time and have a plan. Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc. *** Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2004/12/02/pentagon/print.html The New Pentagon Paper A scathing top-level report, intended for internal consumption, says that Bush's war on terrorism is an unmitigated disaster. Of course, the administration is ignoring it. By Sidney Blumenthal Who wrote this -- a pop sociologist, obscure blogger or antiwar playwright? Finally, Muslims see Americans as strangely narcissistic-- namely, that the war is all about us. As the Muslims see it, everything about the war is - for Americans -- really no more than an extension of American domestic politics and its great game. This perception is of course necessarily heightened by election-year atmospherics, but nonetheless sustains their impression that when Americans talk to Muslims they are really just talking to themselves. This passage is not psychobabble, punditry or monologue. It is a conclusion of the Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force
[LAAMN] Fwd: Re: [freekpfk] Gary Webb, who broke CIA-crack cocaine story an apparent suicide
From: jhallaren [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [freekpfk] Gary Webb, who broke CIA-crack cocaine story an apparent suicide This is devastating news! I cannot imagine Gary dead, leave alone committing suicide. For one, he had great courage and he came from a military background where discipline was enmeshed in daily life ethic. Gary also had a breezy mixture of idealism and cynicism. He took things with a kind of cockeyed, humorous view. His style was more Forties-Hard Guy-Reporter rather than Sixties Gonzo, but he was an original! He was as at home roller-blading on the board walks of Venice Beach as talking to Ricky Ross' pals, engaging with drug-kingpin girlfriend, the amazing Ms. Baca or having psychological conversations on the fears of fatherhood. I first got to know Gary when I worked with Mike Novick, Didon Kamati, Sabina Virgo, Gary Phillips, Jim Lafferty, Don White and others on a project for IPS (to continue with Mike Ruppert's list, it's through this event that I met most of these folks as well as Mike, Tracy Larkins and Karen Pommer.)I was the fund Raiser/PR person for this new group and Gary's book had just come out. I called him immediately and he agreed to come down to be the headline speaker at our first event. We didn't have much money, and as it was, the folks in Washington were hesitant to embark, wholeheartedly, on this anti CIA journey. So, I put Gary up in my apartment and that started a long, sporadic friendship. Where I really got to know who Gary was and what was important to him and his life was when I tried to sell his book as a film. He had agents, really smart and good agents, but they were having difficulty and I saw it as a possible project for Tom Cruise. Gary's main agent let me run with this as I'm old friends with Cruise's partner. The Cruise people were interested, but unfortunatley, not enough to fight for it when his agent got a solid offer to do this as a T.V. project (I'm not aware of anything ever coming of this.) The point of telling this story is that Gary never expected anything to happen. He was enthusiastic and excited about the different ways to tell the story on film, but he was very pragmatic about business and life. He was not taken to flights of fancy, to conspiracy theories or romantic notions. He didn't set himself up to be victimized by dissapointments, but he sure did get his share of them. The world is a little more hopeless, a little more ingenuous, a lot less honest and courageous with this new and terrible loss. It is hard to see people of such uncompromising fabric leave us so soon. In deep sadness and distress, Jane Hallaren -Original Message- From: Michael Novick [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 10:17:09 -0800 Subject: [freekpfk] Gary Webb, who broke CIA-crack cocaine story an apparent suicide From: Mike Ruppert [EMAIL PROTECTED] In death they beat him ruthlessly. I always knew it was a fight to the death. I don t think he ever fully understood that. Cele Castillo and I both told him what he was up against and what it would cost him. There would be no FTW, or Crossing the Rubicon without Gary Webb. Catherine Fitts and I would never have met had it not been for Gary Webb. Dick Gregory would not have made me his white son on the radio had it not been for Gary Webb. I would never have confronted John Deutch at Locke High had it not been for Gary Webb. I might have committed suicide in 1996 -- broke and having given up all hope of making people listen -- had it not been for Gary Webb. For some years now it has been the farthest thing from my mind. I found (rediscovered) my purpose and I guess he lost his. Assuming that it really was a suicide and I have absolutely no reason to suspect otherwise it is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. Maybe only Cele Castillo and I know it fully, but I don t think either one of us wants to discuss it in public or in private. I called the Coroner shortly after the first flash came in here. His time of death was listed at 8:20 AM. Since it was Saturday, the homicide detectives would have been off and had to be paged. I estimate two hours (minimum) for them to get to the crime scene (unless a uniformed supervisor handled it). Add three hours minimum for crime scene, photos etc; that means he went to the Coroner s most likely around 1 PM. It could have been much later depending on response times on a Saturday before Christmas. When I called the Sacramento Coroner s Office at 8:20 PM tonight and spoke with an unidentified female who stated that he had just been there since late this afternoon. I Id d myself as a friend, ex-cop and journalist and she confirmed a single shot to the head. I wasn t sure it was our Gary Webb so I got his date of birth, hair and eye color. They matched. Gary was a good
[LAAMN] [Fwd: [ArabForum] Fw: [eFreePalestine] The Pianist of Palestine]
Omar Barghouti serves on the Advisory Board of Cafe Intifada. While I did feel that the movie was more impressive artistically than this reviewer, I had the same impression about the statement the film maker made in regard to the brutality of occupation in general. I believe that it is impossible to watch this movie and not see the parallel to Palestine unless one lives in a compartmentalized or racist mind. This film is the argument to the statement that one cannot compare the crimes of the IOF to the Nazis, or that there are degrees to atrocities. If we cannot look to the past for the sake of understanding the present then the past has no use to us except as a religious icon. I am tired of the iconification of the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis. If our pain and suffering is to have any value, if my murdered cousins and the countless other victims of Nazi genocide are not to have died in vain it must be to increase our understanding of the nature of war, hegemony, nationalism, racism and genocide so that these atrocities don't happen again. To look at the atrocities in isolation as incomparable to anything that may ever follow serves only those who are interested in using those atrocities to justify their own hegemony. -Emma Rosenthal Cafe Intifada November 29, 2004 Counterpunch Roadblock Concerto at Gunpoint The Pianist of Palestine By OMAR BARGHOUTI When I watched Oscar-winning film The Pianist I had three distinct, uneasy reactions. I was not particularly impressed by the film, from a purely artistic angle; I was horrified by the film's depiction of the dehumanization of Polish Jews and the impunity of the German occupiers; and I could not help but compare the Warsaw ghetto wall with Israel's much more ominous wall caging 3.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in fragmented, sprawling prisons. In the film, when German soldiers forced Jewish musicians to play for them at a checkpoint, I thought to myself: that's one thing Israeli soldiers have not yet done to Palestinians. I spoke too soon, it seems. Israel's leading newspaper Ha'aretz reported last week that an Israeli human rights organization monitoring a daunting military roadblock near Nablus was able to videotape Israeli soldiers forcing a Palestinian violinist to play for them. The same organization confirmed that similar abuse had taken place months ago at another checkpoint near Jerusalem. In typical Israeli whitewashing, the incident was dismissed by an army spokesperson as little more that insensitivity, with no malicious intent to humiliate the Palestinians involved. And of course the usual mantra about soldiers having to contend with a complex and dangerous reality was again served as a ready, one-size-fits-all excuse. I wonder whether the same would be said or accepted in describing the original Nazi practice at the Warsaw ghetto gates in the 1940's. Regrettably, the analogy between the two illegal occupations does not stop here. Many of the methods of collective and individual punishment meted out to Palestinian civilians at the hands of young, racist, often sadistic and ever impervious Israeli soldiers at the hundreds of checkpoints littering the occupied Palestinian territories are reminiscent of common Nazi practices against the Jews. Following a visit to the occupied Palestinian territories in 2003, Oona King, a Jewish member of the British parliament attested to this, writing: The original founders of the Jewish state could surely not imagine the irony facing Israel today: in escaping the ashes of the Holocaust, they have incarcerated another people in a hell similar in its nature - though not its extent - to the Warsaw ghetto. Even Tommy Lapid, Israel's justice minister and a Holocaust survivor himself, stirred a political storm last year when he told Israel radio that a picture of an elderly Palestinian woman searching in the debris for her medication had reminded him of his grandmother who died at Auschwitz. Furthermore, he commented on his army's wanton and indiscriminate destruction of Palestinian homes, businesses and farms in Gaza at the time, saying: [I]f we carry on like this, we will be expelled from the United Nations and those responsible will stand trial at The Hague. Some of the war crimes that concern people like Lapid have been lately revealed in eyewitness accounts given by former soldiers, who could no longer reconcile whatever moral values they held with their complicity in the daily humiliation, abuse and physical harm of innocent civilians. Such crimes have become normalized in their minds as acceptable, even necessary, acts of disciplining the untamed natives, as a measure to maintain security. According to a recent report in the Israeli media, an army commander was accused of gratuitously beating up Palestinians at the notorious Hawwara checkpoint. Ironically, the most damning evidence presented
[LAAMN] Fwd: CSO *bLuEs* Party: a Holiday Celebration Fundraiser (12/18)
Subject: CSO *bLuEs* Party: a Holiday Celebration Fundraiser (12/18) From: Felicia Montes [EMAIL PROTECTED] THE FOLLOWING IS AN INVITATION, from my father Carlos Montes. This is a not-to-be missed blues event in the heart of East LA! ---give a little this holiday season to a cause that we can all benefit fromEducation and PEACE!!! CSO is doing its part for the community WOULD YOU PLEASE HELP US DO MORE? -Hope to see you there! Paz, Felicia Montes * Hello everyone, we had a very active year fighting against the war the military recruiters, and winning a new high school for the community of Boyle Heights and we recently helped organize a large immigrants rights demonstration. Now we need your support with this holiday celebration fundraiser for Centro CSO. This event will help us pay the rent and continue to pay our parent organizer and student organizer. The celebration will take place at the new BLVD. Blues Club in Boyle Heights, finally a blues club in ELA! Check out the info below and please buy and help promote and sell tickets. ¡Noche de Paz! Holiday Celebration Fundraiser ¡BLVD. BLUES CLUB! JOIN US Saturday, Dec. 18, 2004 6:30 PM Reception 7:30 PM Dinner 8:30 PM Program 9:00 PM Live Music with Tony Ibarra Blues Experiment ..at The Blvd. Café Bar 2631 E. Whittier Blvd. Boyle Heights, CA 90033 Order tickets includes dinner: $45.00 per person $10.00 Students or Unemployed. To BENEFIT Centro CSO (323) 221-4000 511 Echandia Street Los Angeles, CA 90033 EN ESPANOL: ¡Noche de Paz! Celebración y ¡ CLUB BLVD. de BLUES! Apóyenos Sábado, 18 de diciembre, 2004 6:30 PM Recepción 7:30 PM Cena 8:30 PM Programa 9:00 PM Música en vivo con Tony Ibarra Blues Experiment Blvd. Café y Bar 2631 E. Whittier Blvd. Boyle Heights, CA 90033 Ordene Boletos: $45.00 con cena por persona $10.00 por Estudiantes y Desempleados Centro CSO (323) 221-4000 511 Echandia Street Los Angeles, CA 90033 Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ~-- $4.98 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/Q7_YsB/neXJAA/yQLSAA/7gSolB/TM ~- --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Digest: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Help: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Post: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
