Wow, talk about a game-changer. Or should I say a meme-changer. Just last week the message that was being echoed throughout the media was that this election will be determined by the angry, white, Tea-Party voter who is overwhelmingly energized to get to the polls in November. there are now four weeks remaining and Newsweek has released a poll that crushes that meme like a roach.

by Stephen Lendman

Uprooted Palestinian

By Andy Worthington | 3.10.10

On Wednesday, in the District Court in Washington D.C., Judge Ellen Huvelle turned down PDF a second attempt by the families of Yasser al-Zahrani, a Saudi, and Salah al-Salami, a Yemeni two of the three men who died in mysterious circumstances in Guantánamo on June 9, 2006, along with Mani al-Utaybi, another Saudi to hold US officials accountable for the circumstances in which their family members were held and in which they died.

Judge Huvelle’s ruling came in spite of additional evidence submitted by the families PDF , drawing on the accounts of four US soldiers who were present in Guantánamo at the time of the deaths, and who have presented a number of compelling reasons why the official story of the men’s triple suicide as endorsed by a Naval Criminal Investigative Service report in 2008 is a cover-up. Those accounts, reported by Scott Horton, were published by Harper’s Magazine in January this year, and I covered it here, and also in an update in June, although it has largely been ignored in the mainstream US media.

The case, Al-Zahrani v. Rumsfeld, was initially filed in January 2009, and primarily involved the families of the dead men seeking to claim damages through the precedent of a case known as Bivens, decided by the Supreme Court in 1971, in which, for the first time, damages claims for constitutional violations committed by federal agents were allowed. The families claimed relief under the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause preventing individuals from being deprived of life, liberty, or property without “due process of law” and the Eighth Amendment which prohibits the infliction of “cruel and unusual punishments” , as well as submitting a claim, under the Alien Tort Claims Act, “alleging torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and violations of the Geneva Conventions.”

Despite the families’ claims, the case was dismissed by the District Court on February 16, 2010, for two particular reasons. One involved a handful of legal precedents — including Rasul v. Myers, a case brought in 2006 by four former Guantánamo detainees from the UK, which was finally turned down by the Supreme Court in December 2009. In the hope of making tortuous legal reasoning comprehensible to the lay reader, these rulings essentially provide precedents for preventing the courts from providing a Bivens remedy and entitle the defendants to “qualified immunity against plaintiffs’ constitutional claims.”

Rather more readily comprehensible, and deeply shocking, is a clause in the Military Commissions Act, passed by Congress in the fall of 2006 and unchanged in the legislation revived under President Obama in 2009, which, as well as creating — or bringing back to life — the much-criticized Military Commission trial system for Guantánamo prisoners that was ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in June 2006, also granted blanket immunity to anyone involved in any activities relating to the detention and treatment of prisoners held in the “War on Terror.”

As Judge Huvelle explained in her opinion:

Specifically, the Court found that the section of the MCA removing from the courts ‘jurisdiction to hear or consider any other action against the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of confinement’ of an alien detained and determined to be an enemy combatant by the United States is still valid law.

With these precedents, there was, to be blunt, little hope that Judge Huvelle would grant the complaint filed by the families of Yasser al-Zahrani and Salah al-Salami, even though the families had made an emotional appeal, pointing out:

The fact that Defendants fought to keep secret virtually all information concerning the cause and circumstances of Al-Zahrani and Al-Salami’s deaths from their families, the public and the courts until compelled by FOIA litigation in 2008, and that details of an elaborate, high-level cover-up of likely homicide at a “black site” at Guantánamo are only now emerging nearly four years after the fact, should disturb the Court and caution it against permitting unspecified national security concerns to trump all other factors in this case without question.

Perhaps more to the point, the families of al-Zahrani and al-Salami attempted to persuade Judge Huvelle that “Courts have allowed Bivens claims by detainees in the post-9/11 context to proceed … despite the presence of national security factors,” citing, amongst other cases, Ertel v. Rumsfeld, an ongoing case in Chicago “permitting US citizens detained by the United States in Iraq [former contractors Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel] to bring Bivens claims against Donald Rumsfeld for authorizing their detention and abuse,” and Padilla v. Yoo, another ongoing case in California , in which Jose Padilla, a US citizen detained as an “enemy combatant” in the United States as part of the “war on terror,” was permitted “to bring a Bivens suit against John Yoo [the lawyer who wrote the Bush administration’s notorious “torture memos”] for authorizing his detention and torture.”

The families also urged the court to “scrutinize bald assertions of national security and secrecy because the government’s account of the risks has in many cases been overblown,” adding, “As an apt case in point, after years of dire warnings to justify the indefinite detention of Guantánamo detainees and forestall court review, the government has by now released the majority of detainees without incident, including approving dozens of detainees for transfer on the eve of habeas review.” For reference, the families drew again on the case of Jose Padilla, citing Padilla v. Hanft, and “observing that the government had ‘steadfastly maintain[ed] that it was imperative in the interest of national security’ to hold Padilla in military custody for three and a half years, yet abruptly changing course on the doorstep of Supreme Court review, seeking to move him into criminal custody, at a ‘substantial cost to the government’s credibility before the courts.’” They also cited the case of Yasser Hamdi, a US citizen held briefly in Guantánamo, who was also held as an “enemy combatant” on the US mainland. In Hamdi’s case, the Bush administration argued that “military necessity required Hamdi’s indefinite detention, yet [the authorities] releas[ed] him to Saudi Arabia seven months later.”

Despite all these arguments, Judge Huvelle was clear in her ruling that, although the allegations were of a “highly disturbing nature,” that alone “cannot be a sufficient basis in law” for the case to be heard. She also explained that the legal precedents established that “matters relating to the conditions of detention in Guantánamo remain the purview of Congress alone — not the courts — due to national security concerns,” as AFP explained.

“The question before the court,” she said, “is not whether homicide ‘exceeds the bounds of permissible official conduct in the treatment of detainees in US custody and demands accountability’ or whether the families of Al-Zahrani and Al-Salami deserve a remedy. Rather, the question is ‘who should decide whether such a remedy should be provided.’”

Following the ruling, Yasser al-Zahrani’s father Talal, spoke for everyone disturbed by the revelations of Joe Hickman and his colleagues, when he stated, “The courts should be investigating my son’s death and holding those responsible accountable. President Obama should be defending human rights and the democratic values the US preaches to the world, rather than going to court to defend the lies and gruesome crimes of the Bush administration.”

Pardiss Kebriaei of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed the lawsuit with William Goodman of Goodman & Hurwitz, P.C. and the International Human Rights Law Clinic at the Washington College of Law, added, “The very secrecy of Guantánamo is what allowed the government to torture and illegally imprison innocent men there for years, as we now know from leaked government memos, whistleblowers, and repeated wins in court in detainees’ habeas cases. Yet the court’s decision today allows secrecy to continue to shroud the truth about these deaths, in the face of compelling evidence of a four-year cover-up of murder.”

With this ruling, it is uncertain how the families of Yasser al-Zahrani and Salah al-Salami can continue their quest for truth and justice, as it appears certain that Congress has no desire to investigate the circumstances of the men’s deaths. Sadly, only one major media outlet, AFP, covered the latest ruling, demonstrating how the story of the men’s deaths is viewed as such a toxic issue by most of the mainstream media that it is being ignored. If you care about what appears to be a particular vile cover-up by parts of the US administration, please do all you can to help to keep this story alive.

Below, I publish the sections of the families’ complaint, submitted as part of the “Motion for Reconsideration,” filed on May 3, 2010, that Judge Huvelle turned down last week, which spell out the deeply distressing story exposed by Harper’s Magazine in January this year.

Excerpts from the “Motion of Reconsideration in Light of Newly Discovered Evidence,” Al-Zahrani v. Rumsfeld, Submitted May 3, 2010

In early 2009, as Plaintiffs’ Amended Complaint was pending before this Court, a former soldier by the name of Joe Hickman approached the law school of Seton Hall University, which had produced several reports dealing with the deaths and whose work Hickman had followed. Hickman was a decorated Army officer who had served a distinguished tour of duty at Guantánamo from March 2006 to March 2007 and had been on duty as sergeant of the guard the night Al-Zahrani and Al-Salami died. Hickman said he had decided to come forward with his story because what he had seen “was “haunting me” and he thought that “with a new administration and new ideas I could actually come forward.” While he did not want to speak to the press, he felt that “silence was just wrong.”

On January 18, 2010, Hickman’s account and interviews from three other soldiers under his supervision — Specialist Tony Davila, Army Specialist Christopher Penvose, and Army Specialist David Caroll — were reported by Harper’s Magazine. The article, which serves as the source for this motion and Plaintiffs incorporate in full herein, was the first time Plaintiffs and their counsel became aware of the soldiers’ accounts.

Those accounts are dramatically at odds with the official version of events on June 9-10, 2006. The soldiers describe a cover-up initiated by the authorities within hours of the deaths and say they were affirmatively told not to speak out. Despite having first-hand observations of camp activity that night, they were never approached or interviewed for the NCIS investigation. While the official account of the deaths concluded that Al-Zahrani, Al-Salami and the third deceased, Mani Al-Utaybi, had hanged themselves in their cells, the soldiers’ accounts strongly suggest that the men were transported from their cells to an undisclosed, unofficial “black site” nicknamed “Camp No” that was outside the perimeter of the main prison camp, and died there or from events that transpired there.

Specifically, according to the soldiers’ reported accounts:

• Between approximately 6-8 p.m. on June 9, Hickman observed the van used to transport detainees drive up to the camp where the deceased were held three separate times in short succession. Each time, guards escorted a detainee from the camp to the van and drove away in the direction of Camp No. By the third time he saw the van approach the deceased’s camp, Hickman decided to drive ahead of the vehicle in the direction of Camp No to confirm where it was going. From his vantage point shortly thereafter, he saw the van approach and turn toward Camp No, eliminating any question in his mind about its destination.

• Camp No is an unnamed and officially unacknowledged facility located outside the perimeter of the area enclosing the prison complex at Guantánamo. Guards nicknamed the facility “Camp No” because anyone who asked if it existed would be told, “No, it doesn’t.” Hickman was never briefed about the site, despite frequently being put in charge of security for the entire prison. He reported once hearing a “series of screams” coming from the facility.

• At approximately 11:30 p.m., from his position in a watch tower, Hickman watched the van he had seen transporting the detainees to Camp No return to the camp. This time, the van backed up to the entrance of the medical clinic, as if to unload something.

• At approximately 11:45 p.m., nearly an hour before the NCIS claims the first dead body was discovered in the cells, Army Specialist Christopher Penvose was approached by a senior navy officer who appeared to be extremely agitated and instructed Penvose to go the prison chow hall, identify a specific officer who would be dining there, and relay a specific code word. Penvose did as he was instructed. The petty officer leapt up from her seat and immediately ran out of the chow hall.

• At approximately 12:15 a.m. on June 10, Hickman and Penvose reported that the camp was suddenly flooded with lights and the scene of a frenzy of activity. Hickman headed to the medical clinic, which appeared to be the center of activity, and was told by a medical corpsman there that three dead prisoners had been delivered to the clinic, that they had died because they had rags stuffed down their throats, and that one of them was severely bruised.

• According to Specialist Tony Davila, guards he talked to also said the men had died as the result of having rags stuffed down their throats.

• While the NCIS report’s narrative is that the deceased were found dead in their cells and transported from there to the medical clinic, Penvose, who was on guard duty in a watch tower at the time the deceased would have been transported to the clinic, had an unobstructed view of the walkway between the camp and the clinic, which was the path by which any detainee would be delivered to the clinic. Penvose reported that he saw no detainees being moved from the camp to the clinic.

• Army Specialist David Caroll, who was also on guard duty in another watch tower at the time the NCIS report says the deceased would have been transported to the clinic, also had an unobstructed view of the alleyway that connected the men’s specific cell block to the clinic. He similarly reported that he had seen no detainees transferred from the cell block to the clinic that night.

• By dawn, the news had circulated through the prison that three detainees had committed suicide by swallowing rags.

• On the morning of June 10, Defendant Mike Bumgarner, Commander of the Joint Detention Group at Guantánamo at the time, called a meeting of the guards during which he announced that three detainees had committed suicide during the night by swallowing rags, causing them to choke to death. Defendant Bumgarner said that the media would instead report that the detainees had committed suicide by hanging themselves in their cells. He said that it was important that the guards make no comments or suggestions that in any way undermined the official report, and reminded them that their phone and email communications were being monitored. This account of the meeting was corroborated by various guards in independent interviews conducted by Harper’s.

• On the evening of June 10, Defendant Harry Harris, Commander of the Joint Task Force at Guantánamo and Defendant Bumgarner’s superior at the time, read this statement to reporters: “An alert, professional guard noticed something out of the ordinary in the cell of one of the detainees. … When it was apparent that the detainee had hung himself, the guard force and medical teams reacted quickly to attempt to save the detainee’s life. The detainee was unresponsive and not breathing. [The] guard force began to check on the health and welfare of other detainees. Two detainees in their cells had also hung themselves.”

• In a press interview at the time, Defendant Bumgarner, contrary to his own admonition to the guards, let slip that each deceased detainee “had a ball of cloth in their mouth either for choking or muffling their voices.”

• As soon as Defendant Bumgarner’s interview was published, Defendant Harris called him for a meeting and told him that the article “could get me relieved.” The same day, an investigation was launched to determine whether classified information had been leaked from Guantánamo. Defendant Bumgarner was subsequently suspended.

• Hickman and Davila later learned that Defendant Bumgarner’s home was raided by the FBI over a concern that he had taken classified materials and was planning to send them to the media or use them for writing a book.

• The only apparent discrepancy between Defendant Bumgarner’s interview and the official Pentagon narrative was on one point: that the deaths had involved cloth being stuffed into the detainees’ mouths.

• For several months after Hickman first came forward, he and his attorneys attempted to pursue an investigation through the Department of Justice. Their first meeting was on February 2, 2009, where they related a detailed account of Hickman’s observations and later handed over a list of corroborating witnesses with contact information. The Justice Department ultimately closed its investigation on November 2, 2009, concluding without explanation that “the gist of Sergeant Hickman’s information could not be confirmed” and his conclusions “appeared” to be unsupported.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK

An earlier article discussed Iraq's dire conditions after seven years of occupation, and over a decade of sanctions, accessed through THIS link.

It presents a grim overall picture, besides Gideon Polya's September 13, 2010 estimated eight million "War on Terror" deaths, mostly in Iraq, what he calls "avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality" ones, accessed through THIS link.

Conditions now include:

● 4.5 million refugees;
● 2.8 million internal ones IDPs , one-third in squatter slums;
● mass impoverishment and depravation;
● rampant human rights abuses; and
● settlements without basic services, such as clean water, sanitation, electricity, health care, and education.

Nir Rosen's September 13, 2010 ZNet article adds more, accessed through THIS link.

"Welcome to the new Iraq," he says, "same as the old Iraq," including:

● "automatic weapons pointed at your head out of military vehicles;"
● mountains of garbage everywhere;
● the stench of sewage; and
● daily violence, chaos, terror, and toxic environment, the same conditions everywhere under direct or proxy US occupations. The definition below explains how Iraqis see their "liberation."

Merriam-Webster defines dystopia as "an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives." Other definitions include extreme deprivation, oppression, and terror. These conditions apply to Iraq, a living hell under occupation, not the sanitized Western image when anything at all is reported.

October 3, 2010 posted by Gordon Duff ·

A day later, they would become unpaid bloggers and have their name on the “no fly” list. Do things like this happen? How long did CNN’s Rick Sanchez last after pointing out that Jon Stewart’s fanatic pro-Israel bias is a form of “bigotry?”

Let’s take a second to look at Ahmadinejad. Nearly daily stories hit newspapers around the world, “Iran is 15 minutes from being a nuclear power.”

Let’s look at some issues the press doesn’t like very much, starting with our favorite, the villain of all time, Mr. Adolf Hitler.

The Rothschilds got the Balfour Declaration, giving them a base to control Middle East oil, the Suez Canal and India, the things that the wars nearly a century later are being manipulated to bring about.

“Who was Mary Magdalene?“

Mt 27:56 Among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s children.
Mt 27:61 And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre.
Mt 28:1 In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.
Mr 15:40 There were also women looking on afar off: among whom was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome;
Mr 15:47 And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses beheld where he was laid.
Mr 16:1 And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.
Mr 16:9 Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils.
Lu 8:2 And certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils,
Lu 24:10 It was Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles.
Joh 19:25 Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.
Joh 20:1 The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre.
Joh 20:18 Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken these things unto her.

This year, top Israeli Rabbi Moti Elon was indicted by police for sex crimes against minors. “Far from being the rabbi of an obscure Hasidic sect, the charismatic Elon is a high-profile leader, educator and media personality, representing the more mainstream religious Zionists and former head of the renowned HaKotel Western Wall Yeshiva. He comes from a family of high achievers in law, politics and academia that has drawn comparisons with the Kennedy clan.”

In 2006, Elon was restricted by an organization of rabbis in his contact with students, after confessing to sexual relationships with male students.

Yet he continued to act as the president of a Talmudic academy in Jerusalem and did not fully honor the agreement. One Ha’aretz commentary says Elon “managed to turn himself into almost a kind of saint” –a fate certainly to be envied by American religious figures turned pedophiles.

Dr. Aviad Hacohen, dean of the Sha’arei Mishpat College, in 2007 reported that “95% of sexual offenses in Jerusalem were performed by the religious and haredi.” “Several years ago, I began looking into the issue on a data-based level,” said Hacohen. “It turned out that the law enforcement authorities, both the police and the prosecutor’s office, were aware of the data but refused to expose it based on sectorial affiliation in order to avoid branding a certain group in the population…”

Since the following article was written in 2006, cases of Jewish leadership figures in Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Judaism being involved in homosexuality or pedophilia scandals continue to mount not only in Israel, but in New York, where Ultra-Orthodox are strongest. The reason is simple: some of the very greatest rabbis who wrote the Talmud were pedophiles.

R. Joseph said: Come and hear! A maiden aged three years and a day may be acquired in marriage by coition and if her deceased husband’s brother cohabits with her, she becomes his. Sanh. 55b
A girl who is three years of age and one day may be betrothed by cohabitation. . . . Yeb. 57b
A maiden aged three years and a day may be acquired in marriage by coition, and if her deceased husband’s brother cohabited with her she becomes his. Sanh. 69a, 69b, also discussed in Yeb. 60b
It was taught: R. Simeon b. Yohai stated: A proselyte who is under the age of three years and one day is permitted to marry a priest, for it is said, But all the women children that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves, and Phineas who was priest, the footnote says surely was with them. Yeb. 60b
[The Talmud says such three year and a day old girls are] . . . fit for cohabitation. . . But all women children, that have not known man by lying with him, it must be concluded that Scripture speaks of one who is fit for cohabitation. Footnote to Yeb. 60b

Remember a week ago, Benjamin Netanyahu, former furniture salesman now running Israel, the “American hating” extremist, demanded that we release spy Jonathan Pollard?

Remember that Congressman Barney Frank immediately ran to his side?

• The identities of all CIA agents and the full NOC list, agents of “non official cover” A movie was made about this, Tom Cruise, Mission Impossible
• Full NATO defense plans in case of Soviet Attack
• Full information including strategic vulnerability assessments on what would be needed to defeat the United States in a nuclear war
• Design specifics on all American nuclear weapons and delivery systems
• America’s military and diplomatic codes

• The Soviet Union came close to a nuclear “first strike” on the United States
• Over 100 CIA agents were executed after extensive torture
• Over 1500 “intelligence assets” were rounded up, tortured and interrogated, then killed behind the Iron Curtain
• America lost all ability to use intelligence to defend itself from the Soviet Union
• America’s strategic capabilities were diminished by over 50%, with many ‘capabilities’ totally unviable
• 15 years of weapons research was lost
• Several weapons systems were totally compromised including our stealth aircraft and nuclear submarines

Uprooted Palestinian

I’m going to lay to the side the propriety of Bob Woodward who earns $100 a month for his regular non-appearance at the Post funding an eponymous charitable foundation with his speaking fees: a foundation whose primary purpose seems to be to make contributions to the Sidwell Friends School, which the Woodward and Obama offspring attend.

But David Broder — associated with the Post since 1966, nominally the Dean of The Washington Press Corps, and the journalist most often mentioned by both seasoned pundits and young up-and-comers as their ‘most-admired-and-alive’ mentor Russert being dead — has a sweet deal too.

First, let OmbudsAndy frame the issue:

The Post has stringent newsroom policies governing paid speeches by its journalists. Honoraria or expense reimbursement may be accepted only if there is no reasonable suggestion that the money would influence Post coverage. Supervisors must approve speaking invitations.

But policies are less clear, and enforcement less rigorous, for those who work for The Post on contract. Their numbers have grown in recent years as The Post has cut costs by nudging some of its best people to take buyouts and continue working on contract. The result is a growing class of Post journalists who operate with less oversight, and sometimes under different rules.

Of course, there’s different rules for Fred Hiatt’s Opinion hothouse flowers: he trusts them to come to him if there are disclosure issues he needs to know about. This from an editorial page editor whose ethics allowed him to overlook mentioning Liz Cheney’s parentage when she penned a piece defending her father’s policies.

And Fred’s disclose-if-you-must policy appears to apply to Broder, no longer a Post employee but now a contracted bee:

Opinion columnists who work on contract and appear on The Post’s editorial page are not bound by the newsroom’s policies, said Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt. But he said that he expects them to “come to me if they think there is any conflict of interest that readers should know about.”

This would affect well-known names such as veteran political columnist David S. Broder, who has been working on contract and writing only an opinion column for more than two years. Broder said that he averages about one paid speech a month, mostly to college audiences, at fees of as much as $10,000.

That’s where Andy leaves things with Broder: what he told Andy appears to be the end of the story. OmbudsAndy let Broder get away with this fast-talking about his outside gigs, their locales and fees. Despite evidence, laid out carefully by Ken Silverstein, that something else entirely is taking place. Silverstein portrays one of Broder’s recent gigs, decidedly not college audience in orientation:

Last May, Broder was the keynote speaker at a May 19 to 21 conference sponsored by GenSpring Family Offices, “a leading wealth management firm for ultra-high net worth families. With over $20 billion in assets under advisement, GenSpring…is trusted by more than 700 of the world’s wealthiest families to oversee or manage important aspects of their financial lives.” GenSpring is an affiliate of SunTrust Banks, which lobbies congress. The conference, called the “Men’s Retreat,” was held at The Breakers in Palm Beach, Florida. The conference offered “an opportunity for men to learn and network together, attend and participate in provocative and timely meetings covering the gamut of wealth related topics presented and facilitated by key GenSpring experts as well as select guest speakers who are renowned experts in the fields of finance, communication, health, and wealth preservation.”

Despite the conclusions reached by Deborah Howell, OmbudsAndy’s predecessor who dealt with Silverstein’s previous coverage of this topic with considerably more rigor that:

Fees should be accepted only from educational, professional or other nonprofit groups for which lobbying and politics are not a major focus — with no exceptions.

… it’s pretty clear that GenSpring’s enterprise has a lobbying focus:

Among the panelists was Patricia Soldano, a lobbyist who heads up GenSpring’s office in southern California and who is president of the Policy and Taxation Group, “an organization that educates on the destructive effects of the estate tax to families and their businesses.” In other words, the conference Broder spoke at was not only hosted by a business with significant interests in Washington, but the group’s lobbying agenda was a notable component of the event.

More than two years ago, Howell summarized Silverstein’s discussion of Broder’s outside speaking this way:

Silverstein said an Internet search showed that Broder made a number of speeches to business groups, including the Western Conference of Prepaid Medical Service Plans, a group of nonprofit health plans; the National Association of Manufacturers, which met at a Florida resort; a Northern Virginia Association of Realtors fundraiser; and the American Council for Capital Formation, a nonprofit group promoting smaller government and lower taxes. Broder said he attended an ACCF dinner but did not give a speech and that he spoke free to the NAM and the health-care group. Silverstein said Broder also spoke to the Gartner Healthcare Summit in 2007. He was advertised as a speaker on an Internet site, but Broder said he canceled the engagement.

Broder said the groups paid his expenses. He received two speech fees — about $7,000 from the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors, and, in 2006, he accepted $12,000 from the Minnesota League of Cities. Mary Beth Coya, the Realtors’ senior vice president for public and governmental affairs, said the event was not a fundraiser but was attended by elected officials “to promote our government affairs programs.”

“Government affairs programs” = lobbying, in DC-speak.

But Broder hasn’t changed one iota.

The Dean still speaks before groups for pay, and then writes about the subject they are lobbying about:

Broder writes about financial reform and tax policy with some regularity. Last July, two months after the GenSpring affair, he wrote a column in which he cited a poll by a group called Third Way which asked whether voters would prefer job creation programs that relied on new government investments or cutting taxes on business. “Cutting taxes on business won 54 percent to 32 percent,” Broder wrote. “This sounds to me like Ronald Reagan returning to whomp Barack Obama. Maybe all the Republicans have to do is to reject the Bush label and bring Reagan back for an encore.”

In September he wrote a column saying that President Obama “is now prepared to adopt business’ own favorite remedy, and subsidize private firms in hopes they will invest and hire more rapidly…This is the kind of tax reform Republicans can love, and it has now been placed on offer by a Democratic president, even before the election results are weighed.”

Dean Broder has long outlived his usefulness as a commentator, and it’s clear from OmbudsAndy’s column that the Post doesn’t care to question his statements on the subject of outside speaking engagements and fees.

And Broder won’t answer questions about it now:

I emailed Broder and Woodward for comment. Neither replied, just as they ignored requests for comment two years ago. Howell told me at the time that Broder didn’t reply because my questions about his speaking gigs “annoyed” him. That’s a strange posture for a journalist, to put it mildly.

I guess Broder was also ‘annoyed’ by OmbudsAndy’s questions. Since there don’t seem to be any followups at all. Just taking The Dean’s word for it, despite recent evidence.

The Post won’t monitor Broder’s appearances and fees and thoughtfully append a disclosure statement: something like “This contract employee of the Washington Post recently accepted a speaking fee from an organization, XYZ Trade Group, that proposes and lobbies for identical views expressed here” would work, right? So, the paper’s dwindling readership — and young journalists who look up to Broder — would do well to keep in mind that Broder’s views may not be his own. They may be purchased by a lobby shop, as a recent speaking fee.

Elizabeth Warren

A lot of hope was placed on the back of Elizabeth Warren and the financial reform act passed by Congress at the behest of the Administration formally known as the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Concurrent with belittling the liberal Democratic activist base as ungrateful whiners, the Administration and Democratic leadership has touted Liz Warren and Dodd-Frank as prime examples of accomplishments that should thrill and satisfy the base. But are those “accomplishments” really all that and should they mollify Democrats, at least on financial reform issues? The initial returns indicate no.

First, the ability of Dodd-Frank to do the job intended as to rapacious financial institutions is highly debatable at best, and that is being generous. It is already established the bill did not clamp down sufficiently on the reckless casino style trading in derivatives and synthetic financial products, and may even have opened a new portal for abuse by the Wall Street Masters of the Universe high frequency traders.

Gretchen Morgenson in today’s New York Times lays out beautifully the bigger picture on the lack of reform in the “reform”:

THE government is pulling a sheet over TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program created during the panic of 2008 to bail out the nation’s financial institutions. With the program’s expiration on Sunday, we can expect to hear lots of claims from the folks at the Treasury that it was a great success.

Such assertions would be no surprise from a political class justifiably concerned about possible taxpayer unhappiness, the continuing economic turmoil and the midterm elections. But if we have learned anything during this crisis, it is that the proclamations emanating from the Washington spin machine must be taken with an extra-hefty grain of salt.

Consider the claims made last summer that the Dodd-Frank financial reform act reduces the threats that large, interconnected banks pose to taxpayers and the economy when the banks are deemed too big to fail. Indeed, as regulators hammer out the rules governing derivatives transactions, it’s evident that the law has created a new set of institutions that will almost certainly be deemed too important to fail if they ever get into trouble. And that means there won’t really be an effective way to keep those firms from taking big, profitable, short-term risks that are dumped on the taxpayers when the bets fail.

[cont'd]

Our roster of bailout candidates includes the clearinghouses, created under Dodd-Frank, that are meant to increase the oversight of derivatives trading. Because most derivatives transactions are expected to go through these clearinghouses, they will be “systemically important” under the law. As such, Dodd-Frank specifically provides that “in unusual or exigent circumstances,” the Federal Reserve may provide such entities with a financial backstop, including borrowing privileges.

Remember this: Financial backstop is just another term for a taxpayer bailout. And the major banks and brokerage firms are the members of the clearinghouses, so a backstop would essentially be for them.

According to the Bank for International Settlements, the entire derivatives market had a gross credit exposure of $3.5 trillion at the end of 2009. Obviously, even a small fraction of that amount could represent a sizable call on the taxpayers if a clearinghouse hit the skids.

So much for eradicating too-big-to-fail.

So much for ending “Too Big To Fail” indeed. Like upwardly spiraling health care costs from “healthcare reform”, it appears all that has been done is to institutionalize the very problems in need of eradication.

Well, how about Elizabeth Warren, surely her placement in the Obama Administration is a giant positive the Democratic activist base can hang their hat on and take to the bank, right? In a word, no. Now, before we go further, I want to make perfectly clear that I admire and respect Warren greatly and probably as much or more than anybody in the public sector today. For that reason, writing the following pains me greatly, but I believe the facts and circumstances warrant honesty about the situation surrounding Liz Warren.

Here is what I said back on September 17th:

I spent a good chunk of the night a couple past reading the bill and the enabling provisions for formation of the CFPB. Done properly, the contemplation is for sucking in huge swaths of power, almost like a smaller version of the reorganization that formed the DHS, but is a good way. I think Warren will be interested in consolidating this power in an agency that might actually help people; I do not think any of the others involved, whether Geithner, Summers, Obama, Banksters, MOTUs and the agencies the power would be carved out from, will be interested in this at to any real degree at all. As is, Geithner and his Treasury team will have the last word on this, not Warren.

But the thing is, the power Geithner has is vested in the head of CFPB once confirmed or installed by recess appointment, which could have been Warren. That is a HUGE difference that Obama has intentionally and actively worked his ass off to prevent occurring. Today is the first big date, the date Geithner specifies the operative date for transfer of powers from other areas and agencies, which is the date the whole formation will then be calendared off of. It is a huge date. That is one of the main reasons why they strung Warren out till today, so she had no input on that. So Obama Could have named Warren immediately and pushed hard for fast confirmation or recess appointed her so that she had the power to do this right. Instead, he intentionally strung her out and insured that Geithner had all the real authority to not make the CFPB what it ought to be and has, further, insured that Warren never is confirmable in the future the logistics after the mid-terms will make it impossible . Heckuva job.

For any so inclined, go read the actual CFPB enabling provisions in the the Dodd-Frank Bill. I think you will begin to understand what I am describing as to the awesome power that could be in CFPB if it was taken and done right. That power, and the ability to NOT exercise it, however, because of the Obama White House path, stays vested solely in Geithner/Treasury hands, and subject to the incredibly relentless influence of MOTU Banksters until a CFPB head is confirmed or recess appointed. And that, folks, is exactly why the Obama Administration refused to nominate or appoint Elizabeth Warren to be the actual head of CFPB. There was never a chance.

But there is a lot of good Warren can accomplish in her weird hybrid post Obama crafted for her, right? Not really, especially in relation to the awesome power she could have wielded, and should be wielding as head of CFPB. Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism sums it up very well:

It is now official that Warren is at best a placeholder; she cannot have much impact. She can’t make much in the way of policy or personnel choices; that would encroach on the authority of an incoming director. And even her ability to influence the choice of a nominee is questionable. Her taking the advisory role now assures that the nomination of the permanent director will come after the midterm Congressional elections. Given the virtual certainty of Democratic losses, the odds are high that Team Obama will settle on a “conservative” meaning “won’t ruffle the banking industry” choice, and argue its hands were tied.

So the Obama camp has played this extremely well. They get to avail themselves of the Warren brand, give her a Potemkin role, and use it to push the timetable for nomination of the permanent director out, which give them cover for installing a more compliant choice.

That is exactly right. And, as I stated above, what the Warren co-option by Obama and Geithner has done is not just to score political points from gullible Democrats desperate for a hint of intelligent financial policy from a moribund Administration, but more importantly to provide cover for the hollowing out of what could have been, and should have been, awesome power of a CFPB in competent and motivated hands of somebody actually interested in real consumer and citizen protection. Someone like Elizabeth Warren. It is a craven bait and switch and you, the consumer and citizen, are on the losing end.

Want more evidence? From Sewell Chan Thursday’s New York Times:

The Obama administration is starting to set up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but relief for consumers befuddled by the complex disclosures that accompany credit cards, auto loans and mortgages will not come about right away.

Under questioning from senators on Thursday, the deputy Treasury secretary, Neal S. Wolin, acknowledged that regulators would not have substantive power to write rules governing a vast array of consumer loans until a permanent director of the bureau is in place and until July 21, 2011, when responsibilities from seven other federal agencies are transferred to the new bureau.
…..
At the hearing, Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Banking Committee, said that the Treasury Department had emphasized the need to move quickly on writing new rules governing consumer loans, and questioned whether the department could do that “without a confirmed director.”

Mr. Wolin replied that “there is limited rule-writing authority, but it is constrained until such time as there is a confirmed director.
….
Finally, Mr. Wolin acknowledged to the senators that “the authority to actually issue a rule that would bind private parties, for example, in the mortgage area is a tough one until such time as there is a confirmed director.”

Therein lies the truth the Obama Administration has carefully obscured. They not only denied Elizabeth Warren the post she deserved and the power the country needed in her hands, they co-opted her as cover for frustrating the very purpose of the CFPA. There is no real power for the CFPA, and the true “rule writing” cannot occur, until there is a formal head and because of the bait and switch, Obama and Geithner have indefinitely strung out the time when there will be such a formal head of CFPB.

Elizabeth Warren is completely marginalized and, whatever little authority she does currently have disappears the second a real head of CFPA is confirmed. And do not kid yourself, while confirmation of Warren to head the CFPA would have been possible, even granted it would have been a very tough fight, in the current Congress, it will be impossible with the reduced Senate majority in the coming Congress. Thanks to the conduct of the Administration, there is now no chance whatsoever of Warren ever being confirmed. Mission accomplished.

The ever more arrogant and belligerent to the progressive base Obama White House can call it whiny all they want, the truth is they are selling the base, and the rest of the country and mostly gullible press, a bill of goods.

KIM JONG IL

THE WORKERS’ PARTY OF KOREA IS THE PARTY OF

THE GREAT LEADER COMRADE KIM IL SUNG

October 2, 1995

Fifty years have elapsed since our Party was founded.

Greeting the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the Workers’ Party of Korea, and looking back with deep emotions upon the glorious road of struggle our Party has traversed, scoring a historic victory and effecting the greatest change by acclaiming respected Comrade Kim Il Sung as its head and under his leadership, our Party members and our people express the warmest gratitude and pay the highest respect to the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung, who founded and led the Party.

Under Comrade Kim Il Sung’s wise leadership, the Workers’ Party of Korea was established as a working-class party of a new type and has developed in the flames of struggle for half a century into a trained and seasoned veteran revolutionary party, an unconquerable party enjoying the unqualified support and trust of the people. Under his leadership, our Party created a brilliant new history in the people’s cause of independence, the cause of socialism, and made great, imperishable achievements in this cause.

The history of the Workers’ Party of Korea is precisely the history of respected Comrade Kim Il Sung’s great revolutionary activities. Both the thorny path of our Party’s struggle and its road of glorious victory bear his sacred footprints. Both our Party’s great achievements and its unbreakable strength and high prestige are associated with his respectful name.

The Workers’ Party of Korea belongs to the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung. It is his great name and exploits that have made our Party’s 50 years brilliant. His name and exploits will be immortal together with our Party’s history.

The Workers’ Party of Korea is a glorious party, which under the leadership of the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung has paved a new road of building a revolutionary party in the age of independence, setting a shining example in this work.

Regarding party building as a fundamental question in the revolution, Comrade Kim Il Sung made strenuous efforts from the early years of his revolutionary activity to found the party that would lead our revolution. With an unshakeable belief that the popular masses are the motive force of the revolution, he waged the revolutionary struggle by organizing these masses. He also did the work of founding the Party, beginning with the laying of its basis in the grassroots, by going to the popular masses to train true communists from among them and forming grassroots Party organizations.

The organizational and ideological bases for founding our Party were laid and consolidated in the crucible of the 20-year-long arduous anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle under the leadership of Comrade Kim Il Sung. The ranks of communist hard core were trained and toughened, true unity and cohesion were achieved in the revolutionary ranks centring around the leader, and the mass basis for the communist movement was solidly laid, through all manner of hardships in the do-or-die struggle.

In the course of organizing and leading the anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle to victory, Comrade Kim Il Sung created glorious revolutionary traditions, the lasting cornerstone of our Party and revolution.

Thanks to the solid organizational and ideological bases for founding the Party and the glorious revolutionary traditions, which were prepared during the anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle, our Party was founded opportunely even in the complex circumstances after liberation. It has been able to fulfil its mission successfully as the political General Staff that guides the building of a new country ever since its founding.

The establishment of the Workers’ Party of Korea enabled our people to shape their destiny successfully under the guidance of their reliable vanguard, their fighting General Staff. Its establishment unfolded a new history of the revolutionary party in the era of independence.

After founding the Party in an original manner, the respected leader Comrade Kim Il Sung gave wise leadership to the work of Party building and developed it into a great revolutionary party.

The history of our Party building is the history of brilliantly implementing the Juche idea and translating into reality the idea and theory of building the Party on the basis of the Juche idea under Comrade Kim Il Sung’s leadership.

Our Party is a Juche-type revolutionary party, built and strengthened, guided by the Juche idea.

The guiding ideology of a party defines its character, its aim of struggle and the basic direction of its development and activities, and decides its fighting efficiency and strength. Only a party guided by a great ideology can be a great party.

It is the most brilliant achievement of the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung that he created the immortal Juche idea and thus showed the popular masses a correct way to shape their destiny independently and that he built a new, revolutionary party, guided by the Juche idea, for the first time in the history of the communist movement.

The Juche idea is a new scientific world outlook that correctly reflects the popular masses’ desire for independence and the requirements of the times. It is a great idea that has brought about a historic change in the development of the revolutionary idea of the working class. The Juche idea is the ideological and theoretical basis of our Party building as well as the only guide to revolution and construction. Our Party has been guided consistently by the Juche idea in its building and activities. Therefore, it has become a powerful revolutionary party with a most durable foundation, a great, authoritative party capable of leading the revolution and construction triumphantly. The building of our Party is characterized basically by the fact that it has built itself and conducted its activities, guided by the Juche idea.

Based on the great Juche idea and the rich experiences in his leadership of the revolutionary struggle at different stages, Comrade Kim Il Sung newly elucidated the fundamentals and basic principles of building a working-class party and the ways to implement them, and fully systematized the Juche-orientated idea and theory of Party building.

This idea and theory are, in a nutshell, the people-centred idea and theory of Party building on the basis of the fundamental principles of the Juche idea. Solving all problems in Party building and activity by centring on people and through work with people is the essence of this idea and theory. The solidity and strength of the party and all the success in party building depends on how the cadres and other members of the party are educated and bound together organizationally and ideologically and how the masses, the socio-class basis of the party, rally behind the party. Work with people is the basis of party building, the essence of party work and the mode of activity proper to the working-class party which regards ideology as a weapon. Only when it lays the primary emphasis on work with people, can the working-class party build up its ranks firmly, strengthen its mass foundation and lead the revolution and construction successfully.

The Juche-oriented idea and theory of party building shed fresh light on the fundamental principles of building the working-class party, based on the principles of the driving force of revolution. This force is an integral whole of the leader, the party and the masses. Only under the guidance of the party and the leader can the people hold their position as the driving force of revolution and play their role satisfactorily. In the driving force of revolution, the leader is the top brain and the centre of unity, and the party is a political organization that materializes the leader’s idea and guidance. The party as a political leadership body is inconceivable apart from the leader’s idea and guidance. Separated from the masses, the party cannot lead the revolution and construction to victory. The unbreakable unity of the leader, the party and the masses centring around the leader constitutes the solidest and most powerful revolutionary force, as well as a great motive force of the revolution and construction. Therefore, the working-class party must be built up into the leader’s party, the political organization which realizes the leader’s idea and guidance, and must achieve inseparable unity with the masses. This is a basic requirement for the existence and development of the working-class party and a fundamental principle that must be constantly maintained and carried forward in party building.

Comrade Kim Il Sung’s idea and theory on Party building expound the absolutely scientific and revolutionary principles, basic rules and ways which the working-class party must implement thoroughly in its building and activity; therefore, they have become a powerful ideological and theoretical weapon with which to consolidate our Party organizationally and ideologically, strengthen the unbreakable ties between the Party and the masses and steadily enhance the leadership role of the Party.

The great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung built our Party into a revolutionary party with a firmly established monolithic ideological system.

The monolithic ideological system of the party is the leader’s ideological system and his leadership system. Establishing the monolithic ideological system is the basic way to build the party as the leader’s party. Only when the monolith of ideology and leadership is ensured through the establishment of the leader’s ideological system and his leadership system is it possible to achieve the ideological unity and organizational cohesion of the party ranks and make the party play its role satisfactorily as a political leadership body. The working-class party must be an ideological purity and organizational integrity, the entire party being dyed in its leader’s idea and moving as one under his unified leadership.

Our Party’s struggle to establish the monolithic ideological system has been a struggle to equip Party members thoroughly with the leader’s ideas and unite them firmly behind the leader in ideology and purpose; at the same time, it has been a struggle to overcome the heterogeneous ideas and factional elements which conflict with the leader’s idea and guidance and disturb unity and cohesion.

Under the leadership of Comrade Kim Il Sung, our Party has steadily intensified ideological education to equip all the Party members with the Juche idea, the revolutionary idea of the Party, and has conducted a powerful ideological struggle against flunkeyism, dogmatism, revisionism, factionalism and other unsound ideas, as well as factional elements. As a result, it eradicated factionalism, which had greatly harmed our revolution through history, and prevented modern revisionism and all other opportunist trends from infiltrating into our ranks. That our Party overcame factionalism and flunkeyism in the Korean communist movement and prevented the infiltration of any opportunism, including modern revisionism, was the historic victory achieved in the struggle to ensure the unity and cohesion of the Party ranks and its purity and establish the monolithic ideological system of the Party.

Through the struggle to establish the monolithic ideological system, the unity and cohesion of our Party developed into the unity of the entire Party in ideology and purpose, reinforced by morality and loyalty, based on the leader’s idea and centring on the leader. Today all our Party members are armed solidly with the monolithic ideology of our Party, the revolutionary idea of Comrade Kim Il Sung; they know no other ideas but his revolutionary idea. They resolutely defend and carry out the lines and policies of the Party, cherishing loyalty to the Party and the leader as their revolutionary faith and obligation. That all Party members are united rock-solid behind the leader with one idea and faith and with comradely love and revolutionary loyalty underlies the solidity and unbreakability of the unity and cohesion of our Party.

The great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung built our Party into a militant Party with a strong sense of organization and discipline.

This sense of organization and discipline is the intrinsic requirement of the socialist, communist movement based on collectivism, as well as the basic guarantee for the fighting efficiency of the revolutionary and militant party. The monolith of ideology and leadership is ensured by organization and discipline, and apart from them there can be no unity or cohesion. A working-class party with no organization or discipline will not only be unable to lead the revolution, but will itself be reduced to a lethargic, nominal existence.

By correctly embodying the principle of democratic centralism in Party building and its activity, Comrade Kim Il Sung firmly established the monolithic system of leadership and a revolutionary and voluntary discipline within the Party. For our Party the principle of democratic centralism is its organizational principle, whereby democracy is brought into full play on the basis of firmly establishing centralized discipline. Centralism is revolutionary discipline and order according to which the entire party acts as one under the monolithic leadership of the leader. Without this, neither the unity of the party nor concerted action can be ensured. Democracy means formulating the party's line and policy by incorporating the will of the party members and giving full play to their voluntary enthusiasm and creativity in the struggle to implement them. When centralized discipline is weakened and unprincipled "democracy" is tolerated, disorder is created in the party, and the party will be torn asunder. As a result of the correct application of the principle of democratic centralism in our Party, the guidance of the leader is effected smoothly from the Party centre down to the lowest echelon and a revolutionary tone has been firmly established: all Party organizations and Party members accept the Party's line and policy as their own and implement them to the letter by displaying a high degree of enthusiasm and creativity.

Enhancing the function and role of party organizations and intensifying the party life of the members is a major factor in improving organization and discipline in the party. By strengthening all its organizations and enhancing their function and role in every possible way, our Party has ensured that they carry out their activity strictly in accordance with the Party's organizational principle and the system of Party work, and always work vigorously full of vitality. At the same time, it has channelled great effort into intensifying the Party life of its members. Party members are linked with the leader through the party organization and accept the leader's ideas and guidance and draw the breath of the Party through Party organizational and ideological life. Party life is a revolutionary school that arms Party members with the leader's ideas, tempers their Party spirit and fosters the sense of organization and discipline. The unity of the ideology and action of millions of Party members is inconceivable apart from Party life. A well-organized system of Party life and a revolutionary tone of Party life have now been firmly established in our Party; all members belonging to a particular Party organization, regularly leading their life in accordance with the unitary norms of Party life and taking part in it of their own accord as the masters. As a result, the Party life of the members has been put on a regular basis and has become a part of their life, and the organization and discipline of the Party have been strengthened markedly. Thus our Party has become a most highly organized and disciplined party; all the Party members breathe and act as one, based on a high degree of awareness and consciousness; the Party thus fully displays its might as a militant organization.

The great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung built our Party into a mass party firmly rooted in broad sections of the population.

A working-class party can be invincible only when it welds itself to the masses and enjoys the active support of the wide sections of the population. As a matter of principle, the demand of the working class represents the fundamental interest of the working masses, and the historic mission of the working class is to achieve social emancipation, not only for itself, but for all toiling people. Ours is an era of independence, in which the popular masses have emerged as the masters of history; the cause of the masses for independence can advance victoriously only through the energetic struggle of the working class and other broad strata of the people.

By correctly reflecting the fundamental interests of the working class and other toiling masses, as well as the demand of the era of independence, and proceeding from the specific situation in our country, respected Comrade Kim Il Sung set the line of building a mass party of the working people comprising workers, peasants and working intellectuals, and put this line into effect with success. The flag of our Party, inscribed with a hammer, sickle and brush, is a graphic symbol of a revolutionary party in the era of independence, the first of its kind in history. It is the banner of unity and victory of the popular masses, who are independently shaping their destiny.

In accordance with the line of building a mass party, our Party enlisted into itself many progressive elements from among workers, peasants and working intellectuals, and properly combined the quantitative growth and qualitative consolidation of the Party ranks. Thus it continually expanded and strengthened itself, while firmly maintaining its working-class and revolutionary character. Our Party was built as a mass party and the mass line was fully implemented in its activity. As a result, it has grown in strength and developed into a party that defends and represents the interests of the working masses and their demand for independence. It has become a revolutionary party of the working class rooted among the broad popular masses and inseparably united with them.

The validity and vitality of our Party line on building itself into a mass party were verified more clearly as the building of socialism developed in depth. The process of building socialism is the process of transforming all members of society on the pattern of the working class, the process of assimilating all society to the working class. The line of building a mass party fully conforms to the law that governs the building of socialism. By implementing the line of building a mass party, our Party was able to maintain its working-class character and at the same time continually increase its ranks, strengthen its mass foundation and accelerate the process of assimilating the whole of society to the working class.

The great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung built our Party in a far-sighted way to carry on its cause down through the generations.

The cause of the popular masses for the independence is the cause of the leader, the cause of the Party. It is a historic cause that is carried on through many generations. It is only when the working-class party firmly carries forward the ideas and guidance of the leader down through generations that it can invariably maintain its revolutionary character and appearance as a leading political organization and carry out its honorable mission. If a party is to correctly carry forward the ideas and guidance of the leader, it must fully ensure the continuity of its own development. Otherwise, the line of the revolution discontinues, and renegades from the revolution appear to ruin the cause of the leader, the cause of the party. This is a serious lesson of history.

Respected Comrade Kim Il Sung not only founded our Party and developed it to be an invincible one, but, with his extraordinary far-sightedness of many years’ standing, laid solid foundation for a brilliant continuation and accomplishment of the cause of the Party. Looking into the distant future, Comrade Kim Il Sung clarified the way to be followed by our Party and our revolution, laid firm organizational and ideological bases for the Party and established the leadership system for the continuation and accomplishment of the revolutionary cause of Juche.

The ideas and leadership of respected Comrade Kim Il Sung are an unshakeable inheritance of our Party. Today, as a revolutionary party with high prestige and indestructible might, our Party enjoys full support and trust from the people and is confidently leading revolution and construction.

The working-class party is the weapon for the revolution. The foundation of the party and its organizational and ideological strength are aimed at realizing the popular masses’ cause of independence.

In the past 50 years since its foundation, our Party has led the popular masses, winning a great victory in revolution and construction, and gaining rich and valuable experience.

Since national liberation through a bloody revolutionary war against the Japanese, our revolution has advanced through an unprecedentedly complex situation and an arduous struggle. The division of the country by foreign forces, the Fatherland Liberation War against the invasion of the allied forces of imperialism, the ceaseless maneuvers for aggression and sabotage by imperialism, the turbulent international situation and the collapse of socialism in several countries, and the subsequent intensification of anti-socialist, anti-DPRK machinations by imperialists and reactionaries – in the face of all these events, we carried out the two stages of social revolution successfully, reconstructed the country twice, built a form of socialism centred on the masses, and added lustre to our socialism while defending staunchly the sovereignty of the country and the achievements of the revolution. The revolution and construction have been promoted with vigour in spite of innumerable difficulties and hardships, bringing about great changes in the life of the country and its people.

Our socialism defends and ensures the independence for the popular masses and satisfies their demand for independence to the full. All the members of society exercise equal rights to independence in political, economic and cultural lives, and enjoy valuable and worthwhile lives free from all manner of social unrest and worry. Our society is a most stable and durable one, in which all the people are united single-heartedly around the Party and leader, forming one great, harmonious family. Our entire society is overflowing with health and vitality and is full of revolutionary mettle. The communist morality, now being displayed to a high degree among our people, of devoting oneself to society and the collective, and of helping and leading one another in a comradely way demonstrates the advantages and might of the socialist system in our country and graphically shows the ennobling ideological and spiritual traits of our people.

Under the leadership of the Party, our people have traversed the road of victory, braving the difficulties and obstacles in their way, and are working energetically for fresh victory, full of confidence in and optimism for the future. Even in the present complicated situation, our socialism continues to win one victory after another without vacillation, and our socialist motherland is demonstrating its dignity and honour far and wide.

The imperialists and reactionaries have often resorted to various machinations to check the advance of our Party and people, and to stifle our socialism, but they have failed in every attempt.

The practical experience of our revolution patently proves that the people, who are united as one under the leadership of their great leader and the great party and fighting for their just cause, are unconquerable, and that the present age is a new, historic age, the age of independence, when the popular masses have emerged as masters of their own destiny. Guided by our Party, our people have paved a new path to accomplishing the masses’ cause of independence, the path to genuine socialism, and built and developed a socialism centred on the popular masses, thus dealing decisive blows at reactionary propaganda that vilifies socialism, and confirming in practice the scientific and genuine nature of socialism, its advantages and its invincibility.

For our Party, which is entrusted with the responsibility for the destiny of the country and nation, national reunification has been the supreme task since the first day of its founding. Our Party has consistently followed the policy of national reunification, a policy based on the three principles of independence, peaceful reunification and great national unity. Reflecting the aspiration for reunification of the whole nation in the north, south and abroad, it put forward the most reasonable, fair and realistic proposal of reunifying the country through federation, and is now striving for its implementation. It is also making every effort to realize the great unity of the nation under the banner of national reunification. Our Party’s policy of national reunification is truly patriotic and it enjoys the unanimous support and approval of the whole nation. Thanks to the impeccable policy and consistent effort of our Party for national reunification, the national aspiration for reunification has mounted higher as never before and the national unity of all compatriots in the north, south and abroad has grown stronger. The ever-growing reunification force of our nation will defeat the divisive forces at home and abroad and realize the cause of national reunification without fail.

Our Party has led the popular masses’ cause of independence to brilliant victory, making great achievements along the way, because it has applied Juche principles and methods of leadership in the revolution and construction in a thoroughgoing way.

In leading the revolution and construction, our Party has always safeguarded the demands and interests of the popular masses, relied on them and carried out its fight by forming an integral whole with them.

That the popular masses are the masters of the revolution and construction and that they have the power to promote them—this is the fundamental principle of the revolution, as elucidated by the Juche idea. The policy that defends and realizes the masses’ demands for independence and their interests is the most revolutionary and scientific, and relying on the popular masses and giving full play to their strength and wisdom is the basic demand of revolutionary leadership. If one believes in the people and relies on them, one will always emerge victorious; and if one is divorced from them and is forsaken by them, one will always fail—this is the concept of “The people are my God,” the motto of respected Comrade Kim Il Sung, and this has become the basic starting-point and supreme principle in all the activities of our Party.

Respected Comrade Kim Il Sung was the great leader of the people and their father. His ideology, leadership and virtue were based on love for, and trust in, the people. All his life he was among the people, shared joy and sorrow with them and devoted his all to them. He placed deep trust in the strength, wisdom and excellent qualities of our people and solved all problems by relying on them and by giving rein to their revolutionary zeal and creative force.

Our Party has fully applied in all its activities the noble idea of Comrade Kim Il Sung, "The people are my God,” and his revolutionary method of leadership. It has always formulated its lines and policies by reflecting truthfully and incorporating the opinions and requirements of the popular masses, and implemented them by enlisting their efforts and resourcefulness. It has given definite priority to ideological work, namely, the political work of awakening the popular masses ideologically and rallying them organizationally, over all other undertakings; it has also worked tirelessly to oppose abuse of authority and bureaucratism and establish a revolutionary method and popular style of work among officials. The iron rule in the activities of our Party and in the work of our officials is to go among the people, breathe the same air with them, work devotedly for them and execute revolutionary tasks by relying on them under the Party’s slogan, “We serve the people.” Our Party is a motherly party, which takes care of the destiny of the popular masses under its charge, and its politics is a benevolent one in that it is the politics of love for the people and trust in them.

Because of their genuine comradeship and their inseparable relationship, in which the Party and leader trust and love the people and the people place unqualified trust in them and support them with loyalty, the single-hearted unity of the leader, Party and masses has been strengthened and developed and the revolutionary enthusiasm and creative force of the popular masses have been fully displayed on a high plane. Relying on the popular masses and welding itself to them in the struggle—this is the secret of how our Party has been able to promote the revolution and construction with vigour in such complicated circumstances and trying ordeals, and has won victory after victory by turning misfortune into a blessing and unfavourable conditions into favourable ones.

In leading the revolution and construction, our Party has established Juche with all consistency and firmly adhered to the line of independence.

Independence is man’s intrinsic desire and the lifeblood of a country and nation. The revolution and construction are conducted with a country and nation as a unit, and they are the very struggle against all manner of domination and subjugation. They are for the independence of the country and nation, the independence of the popular masses. The party and people of each country must become masters of the revolution and construction in their country and wage them independently and creatively. It is only when the working-class party establishes Juche firmly and strictly adheres to the line of indepednece that it can defend the dignity of the country and nation, ensure their independent development and lead the masses’ cause of independence to victory. Owing to the circumstances in which our country found itself and the historical characteristics of our revolution, establishing Juche was presented as an all the more pressing and important task to our Party.

From the first days of his revolutionary activity, the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung blazed the trail of independent development of the Korean revolution, holding aloft the banner of independence. He made it a fundamental principle to establish Juche and maintain independence in the revolution and construction, then led the effort to implement it. The line of Juche in ideology, independence in politics, self-sufficiency in the economy and self-reliance in defence, as advanced by Comrade Kim Il Sung, is a revolutionary line of independence run through with the principle of Juche and spirit of independence. Our Party has staunchly safeguarded this line and implemented it to the letter.

Our Party has solved all problems arising in the revolution and construction, as dictated by its ideology and faith, on its own responsibility and on the principle of self-reliance, doing things in our own way to suit our situation and the interests of our revolition. It has been opposed totally to the worship of big powers, dogmatism and all other ideas of relying on foreign forces, and rejected categorically any pressure and interference from outside. Free from established theories and formulas, it has analysed and judged everything solely from the point of view of the interests of the revolution and hewed out the road of the complicated and arduous Korean revolution by its own efforts, as dictated by its faith and determination. By conducting energetically among its members and the working people the education in Party policies, revolutionary traditions and socialist patriotism, with an emphasis on the education in the Juche idea, it has imbued them with the revolutionary ideology, lines and policies of their Party, instilled in them high national dignity and pride and given full play to their revolutionary spirit of self-reliance and the revolutionary tone of living our own way.

Since they strictly adhered to the Juche stand and line of independence, our Party and people have not vacillated in the raging wind of modern revisionism and all other opportunist trends, and in the trying situation in which socialism collapsed in several countries, they have been able to defend and add lustre to our style of socialism. Our political and ideological strength, the powerful socialist independent economy and the unconquerable self-reliant military power, which our Party and people have consolidated rock-solid through the implementation of the revolutionary line of independence, self-sufficiency and self-reliant defence, are the sure guarantee for defending the sovereignty of the country and the achievements of the revolution, advancing the revolution and construction victoriously and thwarting the aggression and interference of imperialism and dominationism. The fact shows that the political and diplomatic pressure of imperialism, its attempts to disintegrate us ideologically and culturally, its economic blockade and military threat—none of these are able to infringe upon the sovereignty of our country, nor can they demolish or suffocate our socialism.

The independence of a country and nation is the basis for fair international relations, and an independent foreign policy is the justest and most principled foreign policy. All countries and nations, whether they are large or small, developed or less-developed, have the rights to independence and equality as equal members of the international society. When they all maintain independence and respect each other’s independence, they can develop fair international relations and build a truly peaceful and friendly new world where independence prevails. By following a foreign policy based on the ideals of independence, peace and friendship, our Party and Government have developed the relations of friendship and cooperation with many countries in the world, consolidated the country’s international position, strengthened international solidarity with our revolution and rendered an active contribution to the cause of independence throughout the world.

The Juche stand and independent line, consistently maintained by our Party in revolution and construction, have clearly demonstrated their correctness and great vitality in practice.

Our Party has resolutely adhered to its revolutionary principle and invariably implemented the revolutionary line and policy in leading the revolution and construction.

Consistently adhering to the revolutionary principle in accomplishing the cause of the popular masses for independence, the socialist cause, is an important question affecting the destiny of the revolution. Maintaining the revolutionary principle means defending the fundamental interest of the revolution and leading it to victory without any deviation, whereas falling back from the revolutionary principle means betraying the fundamental interest of the revolution and leading it to failure. The history of the revolutionary movement shows that if one retreats even a single step from the revolutionary principle, one will retreat two steps, and once this happens, one will go back ten steps, and thus will eventually make a mess of the revolution. Opportunism of all hues is characterized by a lack of revolutionary principle and by inconsistency in line and policy. The revolutionary principle in carrying out the socialist cause is guaranteed by the working-class party’s loyalty to and faith in the socialist cause as well as by its will to carry this cause to completion.

Respected Comrade Kim Il Sung was a great communist revolutionary and a genius of revolution and construction. With unshakeable revolutionary faith and steel-like revolutionary will, he led our arduous and tortuous revolution along the straight road to victory, with unfailing loyalty to the cause of the popular masses for independence, the socialist cause of Juche. Comrade Kim Il Sung led our Party and people by setting a brilliant example of the art of leadership. He defended the revolutionary principle under all circumstances and conditions, and skillfully combined principle and adroitness in revolution and construction.

Proceeding from the fundamental interests of the revolution, our Party has always adhered to the principle of independence, and to the principle of the working class and socialism in revolution and construction, and thoroughly carried out the revolutionary line with consistency. Our Party accelerated the revolution and construction with continuous creative efforts and innovation to meet the demands of the developing reality. While dealing with the rapidly changing situation actively and shrewdly, it has never taken single step back from the fundamental interests and principles of the revolution and firmly maintained the revolutionary principle and line. Highly creative attitude and adroitness based on the revolutionary principle and consistency in its line and policy—these are the important principles and art of leadership our Party adheres to in the revolution and construction, as well as being the characteristics of our Party’s revolutionary line and policy.

Throughout its leadership of the revolution and construction, our Party has never deviated from the revolutionary principle, never allowed itself to be swayed to right or left without principle, and never made a mistake in this line. Thanks to our Party’s revolutionary principle and the consistency of its line and policy, our revolution has been able to advance victoriously along the road to socialism with no twists and deviations, even in the most arduous conditions. And also our own style of socialism, centred on the popular masses, has become a firm conviction of our people and taken root deeper in the people’s life. Our people place unqualified trust in our Party, the Party that has confidently led the revolution and construction. They entrust their destiny entirely to it and are fighting indomitably to complete the revolutionary cause of Juche under the leadership of the Party.

Our Party’s great exploits and precious experience in Party building and Party activity, as well as in revolution and construction, are the brilliant fruition of the revolutionary idea and revolutionary leadership of the respected leader Comrade Kim Il Sung. They are the eternal treasures of our revolution, which we must defend, inherit and develop through generations to come.

Our revolution has emerged victorious under the leadership of our Party, and in future, too, it will advance in triumph and will be carried forward to brilliant completion under its leadership.

We still have a long way to go, and our revolution is beset with as many hardships and trials as ever. No matter how long and thorny the road ahead for our revolution, pioneered and led by the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung, we must steadily follow this way in accordance with the behest of Comrade Kim Il Sung. This is the unshakeable faith and will of our Party.

We must safeguard the people-centred socialism of our own style, established by respected Comrade Kim Il Sung, bring honour to it and complete the socialist cause of Juche. We must unfailingly achieve national reunification, the vital demand of the entire nation, on the principles of independence, peaceful reunification and great national unity set forth by Comrade Kim Il Sung. Upholding the lofty will of Comrade Kim Il Sung, our Party must strengthen solidarity with the progressive people of the world and work hard to realize the cause of independence for mankind.

In order to carry forward the sacred cause of Comrade Kim Il Sung, the revolutionary cause of Juche, from generation to generation, we must further consolidate our Party, which organizes and guides all the victories of our people.

We must hold in high esteem beloved Comrade Kim Il Sung as the eternal leader of our Party and revolution, and develop our Party as the glorious Party of Comrade Kim Il Sung for ever.http://rockthetruth2.blogspot.com/2010/10/front-page-putt.html Pfffft.

"NATURE'S ANTI-DEPRESSANT"

“I am suicidal and depressed again, the damned VA is sending me to the Alps for a hiking vacation, fourteen days of mountain air and bratwurst. I am not sure how many times I can do this and still survive.”

Uprooted Palestinian

Bali

Some Indonesian Moslems can be proud of the fact that they have educated themselves about how the CIA, in league with Saudi intelligence and Mossad, uses Moslems in its acts of false flag terrorism, acts which are designed to keep the rich and corrupt elite in power. USA SEEKS CONTROL OF INDONESIA? We must not get back in bed with Kopassus - theage.com.au

Indonesian Moslems should be ashamed of the way that, in 1965, certain Moslems helped the CIA topple President Sukarno and helped the CIA and its friends in the Indonesian military murder up to one million Indonesians.

Former President Wahid apologized for the 1965 killings on behalf of his Muslim association, Nahdlatul Ulama.

Indonesian Moslems should be ashamed of the fact that so many of Indonesia's rich Moslems do little or nothing to help the vast number of poor and undernourished Moslems.

Indonesia spends little on health education and public housing.

Indonesian Christians have much to be ashamed of.

The Christian Coker gang, in league with the military, has reportedly carried out acts of terrorism. The 'terrorism' is often linked to Christian gangsters.

And CIA pilots, pretending to be Moslems, have bombed Christians. USA SEEKS CONTROL OF INDONESIA?

Most indonesians just want to have fun.

There are some fascist Moslems in Indonesia.

They usually live in posh houses, wear posh clothes, drive posh cars and attend posh mosques which have been financed by the Saudis.

During the daylight hours in the month of Ramadan these fat fascist Moslems appear to be fasting.

In the evening they gorge themselves on expensive foods.

When Ramadan ends, they dress up in their new and expensive clothes and party!

The fascist Moslems are mainly concentrated in Aceh, in Sumatra, and around the poshest housing estates in Jabotabek.

The fascist Moslems do not seem to care about Indonesia's poor.

The fascist Moslems have their own police in Aceh.

"The women of the District of West Aceh can no longer wear jeans or tight skirts, considered indecent and against Islam.

"Moderate Muslims and human rights activists ... see the application of Islamic law as a form of terrorism." INDONESIA West Aceh police checkpoints and raids against jeans and ...

In Indonesia it is quite common for people to eat drink and smoke during the daylight hours of Ramadan.

Such people try to be discreet about it.

Most Indonesians just like to have fun.

But some of the inhabitants of the relatively remote and primitive province of Aceh in Sumatra are mad fundamentalists.

They seem to get a thrill from treating women in a sadistic way.

On 2 October 2010, we read that two women were publicly caned in Aceh, in Indonesia for selling rice during Ramadan

Murni Amris, 27, received three lashes and Rukiah Abdullah, 22, two.

This act of apparent sadism took place in front of a crowd of hundreds at a mosque in the city of Jantho, southeast of the provincial capital, Banda Aceh.

Murni and Rukiah were found guilty of violating sharia law by selling rice at a stall during daylight during Ramadan.

Sharia law was introduced in Aceh in 2005.

Marzuki Abdullah is the 'Nazi' head of Aceh’s sharia police.

Aceh.

The video showed Zaini and the dangdut singer naked in a hotel room. Indonesian Politician Sex Video Scandal, Yahya Zaini & Maria Eva ...


Parody

In September 2009, the old Aceh parliament expanded Islamic Law so that people can be stoned to death.

The draft law came from the office of Governor Irwandi Yusuf, a US-educated vet.

The laws include punishments for drinking alcohol and homosexuality.

Bustanul Arifin, of the Islamist Prosperous Justice Party, sat on the committee that oversaw the bill.

''We based the law on the Koran and the hadith,'' said Arifin.

Aceh has had a form of sharia since 2002.

Jakartass refers to legislators trying to "foist their largely unwanted agenda on the electorate. The most notorious example has to be that of the Aceh regional government which believes that stoning adulterers will eradicate sexual 'deviants' and caning will cure homosexuals even though sado-masochism is, for some, a form of sexual deviancy. "

Hidayat Nur Wahid, founder of Indonesian radical Islamic party PKS, Prosperous Justice Party Indonesian Democracy’s Enemy Within

When the CIA was trying to frustrate democracy in Central America, they used Moslem money, from the Saudis. Cached

In Indonesia, money from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf has been financing mosques and preachers demanding a 'purer' form of Islam. Indonesian Democracy’s Enemy Within

Beginning in the 1970s, "activists linked to the Saudi-sponsored Islamic World League began indoctrinating small groups at the prestigious Bandung Institute of Technology with Brotherhood materials". Indonesian Democracy’s Enemy Within

In 1998, there was the possibility that Indonesia would change its government and become a democracy like Malaysia, where there is no miserable poverty.

Unfortunately, Indonesia's American-trained military hijacked the 1998 protest movement.

The May 1998 riots which toppled Suharto were organised by the military; certain Chinese people were made the scapegoats for all of Indonesia's problems; most of the old elite, consisting of generals, Chinese-Indonesian businessmen, religious leaders and politicians, remained in power; certain factions within the elite lost out.

Now sections of the elite are using Islam to frustrate democracy.

Indonesia's Prosperous Justice Party PKS 'is Indonesia's version of the Muslim Brotherhood'. Playing with Fire in Indonesia . It supports 'Moslem values'.

"According to CIA agent Miles Copeland... the CIA began to cooperate with the Muslim Brotherhood... This signalled the beginning of an alliance between the traditional regimes and mass Islamic movements against Nasser and other secular forces." aangirfan: The use of the Muslim Brotherhood by MI6 and the CIA in ...

In the 2004 national elections, the PKS won 45 out of 550 seats in the Indonesian lower house DPR . They also got 3 seats in the cabinet. Playing with Fire in Indonesia

In April 2008, PKS candidates won the Governorships of West Java and North Sumatra.

Why do some poor Indonesians vote for the PKS? They are fed up with "corruption, poor public services, poverty, and the perceived lack of real political choice." Playing with Fire in Indonesia
Reportedly, the "founding manifesto" of the Justice Party that went on to become the PKS, called for the creation of an Islamic caliphate. Indonesian Democracy’s Enemy Within

According to Walter Lohman, "The Indonesian political elite... believe they can turn the PKS's success to their own advantage..." Playing with Fire in Indonesia

Why might the CIA be helping the PKS?

Walter Lohman Playing with Fire in Indonesia reminds us of "the threat of a burgeoning Chinese presence in Asia."

A Saudi-style Indonesia will have no love for China, and may side with the USA in countering it.

An independent-minded democratic Indonesia might not side with the USA.

~~~

USA SEEKS CONTROL OF INDONESIA?

Charter schools are often marketed as incubators of educational innovation, and they form a key feature of the Obama administration’s school reform agenda. But in some urban communities, they may be fueling de facto school segregation and undermining public education.

Student Researchers:

• Kelsey Harris and Gina R. Sarpy Sonoma State University

Faculty Evaluators:

• Laura Watt and Sheila Katz Sonoma State University

A University of California–Los Angeles UCLA Civil Rights Project study, “Choice without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards,” reported that charter schools, particularly those in the western United States, are havens for white re-segregation from public schools. “The charter movement has flourished in a period of retreat on civil rights,” stated UCLA professor Gary Orfield, co-director of the project.

In many charter schools, 90 to 100 percent of the population is minority students, close to twice the rate of traditional public schools. But even a charter school with a social mission of promoting economic and racial equity still runs up against the limits posed by selectivity and exclusion.

Obama’s national education policy supports the expansion of charter schools to undermine public education and schoolteacher labor unions. Obama wants to tie teachers’ pay to student performance, which would be measured through test scores. Merit pay based on performance is strongly opposed by teachers’ unions nationwide. Teachers want equal pay for equal work and assurances that funding for low-income schools will be fair. Charters are known for resisting teacher unions, which means they drive segregation not only in the student population but in the school workforce as well.

As a junior senator from Illinois, Obama doubled the number of charter schools in his state, despite reservations from teachers, community leaders, and unions. Obama seems to have latched onto the ideological rhetoric that charter schools are somehow engines of innovation that promise to raise all public schools performance, even though, in actuality, the expansion of charter schools is a process of privatizing public schools. Some argue that this is not improving schools but rather replacing public schools with non-union for-profit and nonprofit private institutions. Charter schools are often accused of “cherry picking students” to build higher test scores, leaving low-income and difficult-to-teach students in inadequately funded public systems. Obama’s secretary of education, Arne Duncan, closed seventy neighborhood schools while he was Superintendent of Schools in Chicago, resulting in a loss of six thousand Chicago teachers’ union members.

On July 30, 2009, the US Senate Appropriations Committee voted for a $40 million increase in federal charter school program CSP funding, bringing the total to $256 million for fiscal year 2010. Also included in the bill were significant educational reform investments strongly aligned with the Obama administration’s priorities. The unprecedented payout takes a bead on the teachers unions: money will flow to districts that alter pay and seniority provisions in union contracts and states that roll out the carpet for mostly non-union charter schools.

Public schools will now be forced to choose stimulus money over policy, a form of economic extortion and increased federal and corporate control over decision making, especially at a time when many of these states are financial insolvent. Nonprofit and private charter school operators stand to make big gains from the federal incentive package. Several states have already amended their laws to expand charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately managed.

The Obama administration’s actions, in tandem with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, is part and parcel of typical neoliberal policy making: wielding federal stimulus funds as a financial weapon to force all states to increase the number of charter schools they host, as well as to force states that do not have them to pass legislation authorizing their creation. Through financial arm-twisting at a time of disastrous economic crisis, the Obama administration plans to use the power of the federal government to create a much larger national market for charter school providers, be they for profit or nonprofit, virtual charters, educational management organizations EMOs , or single operators.

Using government to create market opportunities for business interests is at the heart of neoliberal economic policies; as a result, market adherents both need and relish government for its role in legislating and unleashing favorable public policies that benefit businesses’ ability to maximize private capital while charging private costs to the public.

The real story and prospects for the nation’s future education policy can be best revealed by Arne Duncan’s historical involvement in support of neoliberal policies created in Chicago under the Renaissance 2010 project. Renaissance 2010 is a corporate project to reform both the city and its public schools, with the intent of creating schools and geographical spaces that serve to attract the professionals believed to be needed in a twenty-first-century global city. Renaissance 2010 places public schooling under the control of corporate leaders who aim to convert public schools to charter and contract schools, breaking the power of unions and handing over the administration of the newly created charter schools to “providers” beholden to corporations, philanthropists, and business interests. Duncan, as the former CEO of the Chicago public schools CPS , was an efficient manager for the neoliberal policies and legislative necessities dictated by the corporate elite corporations and their political representatives.

Duncan personally oversaw the attempted closure of twenty Chicago public schools in low-income neighborhoods of color in 2004. He did so with little or no community input—managing, at least for a time, to snub the meddlesome outsiders, like parents and their children, who might have raised objections to the CEO’s plans for the schools, or at the very least offer suggestions in the spirit of community decision making.

In fact, rapid increases in military programs in Chicago public schools actually did occur largely under Duncan’s tenure as CEO of CPS. The Chicago public school system has five military high schools, more than any city in the nation, and twenty-one “middle school cadet corps” programs. The military high schools teach military history and have military-style discipline. Students wear military uniforms, perform military drills, and participate in summer boot camps. The hierarchical authority structure mirrors the army, navy, and marines, with new students “cadets” under the command of senior students who had worked their way up and require obedience from those in “lower ranks.” All but one of the military high schools are in African-American communities, and all the middle school cadet programs are in overwhelmingly black or Latino schools. See the honorable mentions in chapter 1, Censored 2010.

The charter school takeover has been achieved quietly in Detroit and Washington DC, where around half the school kids in each city are now enrolled in charters. Under the emergency control of a state-appointed manager, Detroit opened twenty-nine fewer schools in fall 2009 and put many high schools under the control of private management groups. The next target is the teachers’ contract. In late August 2009, thousands of Detroit teachers protested proposed 10 percent wage cuts, elimination of step increases, and increased fines for work stoppages from $250 to $7,500 per day.

The Obama education policy hardly differs from the Bush administration’s policy of hitching student and teacher performance to what many in the educational community and beyond call inauthentic assessments, which force teachers to teach to the test and do little to encourage critical thinking or collaborative problem solving. The Obama policy is also quite similar to Bush’s in its goals for the rapid expansion of charter school networks and nonprofit with for-profit providers to run them.

Update by Danny Weil

When I wrote “Obama and Duncan’s Education Policy: Like Bush’s, Only Worse” for CounterPunch back in August of 2009, it was obvious that a corporate takeover of education was ginned up, triggered, and in process. The insidious experiment was initially fully launched in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, under the tutelage of Paul T. Hill’s “Diverse Strategies” model. Since the publication of the CounterPunch article, the corporatization of education has continued at rapid speeds, with public school closures occurring daily and student and teacher dislocation becoming the norm.

“Race to the Top,” the new brand name for No Child Left Behind conjured up by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, is now cannibalizing urban areas in the same way venture capitalists descended on New Orleans and privatized the educational system after the hurricane. Arne Duncan—along with his philanthropic friends who make up the Department of Education DOE and the business entrepreneurs who are anxious to get their greedy hands on the 5.6 percent of the national economy that education represents—is simply mouthing the same themes enunciated more than twenty-five years ago in the Reagan administration’s 1983 report, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, and for many of the same reasons.

They say the US cannot compete globally without an educated workforce; they tell us that America is falling behind in the economic global race to the top; they say US competition is failing and thus the entire enterprise of America stands held hostage to the unforgiving failures of American public education that can be pinned on the teacher’s unions.

The American public is now witnessing the wholesale privatization of education as cities, municipalities, and states are suffering from budget woes caused by the pillage and social failures of financial monopoly capitalism and its devastating policies that are intent on privatizing everything public, from schools, to the military, to health care, to public housing. With the public sector virtually bankrupt, Race to the Top is now forcing states to bend their knees and adopt the “four assurances” that underlie the radical new program Duncan is proposing, or close to their public schools and face massive losses of revenues and the denial of public services to children and decent, livable wages to teachers.

For states to be eligible for the $4.3 billion that Duncan has pocketed in federal funds to dole out to states that meet his criteria, they must show they are progressing toward meeting the four assurances. If they do not, then the states will not qualify for the funds and their political representatives will be forced to tell their constituencies that there are no monies for education and face the wrath of voters. As a result, many states are clamoring to meet Duncan’s “standards” and are doing all they can to become victims of Duncan’s extortion demands.

To begin with, teachers and schools must accept and “assure” what are called “high quality standards and assessments,” as explained by the International Center for Leadership and Education.

These standards and assessments are not the product of teachers’ collaborative thinking, but are instead the progeny of the well-heeled Wall Street bankers and their “turnaround” artists who have decided what our children should learn and how teachers must teach. The standards are inauthentic and laced to the vicious No Child Left Behind law inherited from the bipartisan Congress, signed into law by the Bush administration, and now chest held by the Obama administration. Although Obama blasted the tests as no way to measure student performance, as I indicated in the piece for CounterPunch, this was mere rhetoric designed to fool the public, as the standards and assessments are now the providence of private companies who work with the DOE.

Certainly charter chains would prefer national standards; that is why they look to the government to assure they have a highly profitable landscape to scrape up the contracts. This would allow them to use prepackaged curricula across their charter outlets no matter the location—it’s highly conducive to expanding their “market share,” for dummied down, standardized curricula keep costs down, and the dispensation is formulaic and repetitive. This is the Wal-Mart model of education.

The second assurance that states must meet to qualify for the federal monies is to tie teaching to material incentives for the purposes of what Duncan calls “teaching effectiveness.” Nowhere can this be seen more clearly and directly than in the merit pay schemes being flown as trial balloons in many cities in an effort to destroy teacher unions and collective bargaining.

The third assurance is “turning around low performing schools,” which means opening up the floodgate for charter schools, state by state, by forcing states to either initiate charter legislation and/or to raise the caps on the number of charter schools that can be opened in their states without being in violation of state law. In other words, using government legislation as a fulcrum to assure that the financial monopoly class has the ability to start “charter retail chains” without any blockage by meddlesome state laws or unions limiting their opening and expansion.

It also means closing public schools, city by city. According to a survey conducted last fall by the school administrators’ association, nationally 6 percent of districts closed or consolidated schools for the 2009–10 school year, double the number from the 2008–09 school year. The ranks of public school closures are expected to grow to 11 percent for the 2010–11 school year.

Closing schools is good news for privatizers looking to make a buck, for it actually increases the school system’s ability to qualify for state construction dollars that can be turned over to private corporations. As a result, the contracts to build new schools are given to Wall Street corporate financial interests and developers who profit off the devastation left by the Wall Street crash and theft of public funds. This sordid “assurance” is all bundled up as “school choice,” the favored language of the educational prevaricators.

It is important to understand that Arne Duncan and the Obama administration have bought the notion of public school choice and corporate education as a panacea for what ails public education. Like his predecessor under George W. Bush, former secretary of education Margaret Spellings, Arne Duncan and President Obama espouse the common rationale given for neoliberal educational reforms: competition provides the best or most efficient motor for change and reform. The contention is similar to the private voucher argument that traditional public schools TPS can be best improved by competitive market mechanisms.

Like private choice, the public choice rationale maintains that all public schools, and student learning in general, improve when schools have to compete for students, when students and their parents have the right to choose. Such an environment sends the message to teachers that they too need to compete, and then values such as solidarity, diversity appreciation, equity and equal opportunity, and participatory democracy all go out the window. They are not valued in the new “scheme of things.”

Race to the Top embraces a new but old business language, the language of competition rather than the language of collaboration, until what is posited is a scarcity environment: of winners and losers, no one in between.

Finally, the fourth assurance is to adopt “data systems to inform instruction.” These data systems come in the form of longitudinal testing and tracking systems for students, from kindergarten to workforce. This assurance is now moving rapidly, galloping across the educational terrain as testing companies see a virtual bonanza in preparing and selling tests, training teachers and students for the state tests with privatized for-profit test prep kits, as well as using the tests as Wall Street rating devices pointing to exciting new privatized educational opportunities and “best practices.”

Sadly, the results of the new national and state testing regime will be fed into an expanded data system used to evaluate teachers, to see if they are meeting the “measured outcomes,” the free-market “targets” they have been hired to accomplish. Reduced to “clerks in the classroom,” teachers could expect to devote themselves to “professional development” days, to be told by corporate spokespeople how to use the data kits, computer-generated graphs, tables, and more to figure out if their students are meeting the mandatory measured outcomes under No Child Left Behind.

It is now time to resist this regimented individualism through as combination of understanding, solidarity among working people, critical dialogue, and direct collective action. Otherwise, we will look to a society inhabited by more war, militarism, regimentation, authoritarianism, competition, penalty, and social decline. We will hollow out the moral body of our citizenry by forcing them to feed at the trough of illegitimate learning—a body blow to the body politic. It is time to stand up for public education, no matter the level of the educator, for as solidarity tells us, we are all in this together, and if the bridge goes down we all go down. The good news is that the responses to my article and many more like it are having a compelling effect.

Public schools in Detroit, Washington, DC, throughout New Jersey, and many other diverse cities and states across the nation are struggling back with high school and middle school student walkouts—16,000 in New Jersey alone. Student leaders are emerging, and their presence will no doubt increase as shown in the occupation of Governor Jennifer Granholm’s office in Detroit.

Also in Detroit, students defeated a plan by Wal-Mart; the retailer attempted to worm its way into four high schools by offering “internships” for course credit. Students will be at the forefront of the battles that will take place as the unfavorable policies go forward and the economy continues to affect the population, especially Latinos and Blacks in urban centers throughout the nation.

Corporate news coverage of the events is virtually nonexistent. Surreptitiously each day, Arne Duncan and his close allies on Wall Street continue to collect tax dollars under the radar of most citizens who are too busy trying to cope with a deracinated economic and social landscape that has left them bereft of any public safety net during a time of economic meltdown and job loss. Reportage of the carnage caused by Race to the Top and the new corporate model for education has been left to progressive reporting online or through organizational organizing and efforts by such groups as By Any Means Necessary, and any others who are fighting privatization and the destruction of educational opportunities for our nation’s youth.

We can only hope further education regarding the new corporate educational model will lead to stiff resistance and block the plans of the “turnaround” artists, venture capitalists, and Wall Street money makers. If not, then education will be reduced to training and teachers reorganized as “at-will” associates in the long march toward corporatocracy and the Walmartization of Education.

Update by Paul Abowd

President Obama has made good on another one of those campaign promises that many progressives had wishfully chalked up to an electoral strategy of “playing to the center.” It turns out that Obama’s vision for public education goes way beyond electioneering, and has turned into an aggressive federal schools initiative revealing the administration’s abiding faith in market principles to resolve issues of public concern.

Obama’s Race to the Top contest has awarded only two states thus far, but has compelled nearly every state to alter its education code in anticipation of winning a piece of the several billion dollar federal aid package.

While the federal plan proceeds apace, resistance to it has grown—most notably in Chicago. A progressive slate of teachers is poised to take over the third largest teachers’ union in the country this summer. In an effort to connect the union with a broader community movement to revitalize public education, the Chicago teachers are putting up perhaps the most promising opposition to the privatization of public education—in the city where Obama’s education plan was hatched.

In Detroit, a foundation-funded schools manager appointed by the governor is finding community resistance and a legal challenge to his school closure plan, while DC teacher reformers are knocking on the door in union elections. In Los Angeles, teachers won their first battle against the city’s attempt to put public schools up for bid. Parents’ and teachers’ proposals for union-run schools beat out charter operators for control of dozens of contested campuses.

The summer 2009 national meeting of teacher reformers in Los Angeles was important in coalescing a national strategy for opposing Obama’s schools plan—and it has produced significant victories along the way. However, unions are still scrambling to find a unified response to attacks from a president they wholeheartedly supported. Because now, the work of saving public schools is not only about resisting and reacting, but proactively putting forth an alternative—lest teachers’ unions face charges of obstructing progress that the mainstream media is all too ready to level against them.

Luckily, the blogosphere is becoming a valuable resource as battles over public education continue. Current and former teachers themselves are broadcasting their experiences, their insider knowledge, and the dirty tricks of administrators and corrupt union officials alike. Some recommended blogs and independent news outlets on education include the Web sites for NYC Educator, Education Notes, Substance News, the Washington Teacher, and the Caucus of Rank and File Educators.

Sources:

E. Frankenberg, G. Siegel-Hawley, and J. Wang, “Choice without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards,” Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, University of California–Los Angeles, http://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/news/pressreleases/pressrelease20100204-report.html.

Danny Weil, “Obama and Duncan’s Education Policy: Like Bush’s, Only Worse,” CounterPunch, August 24, 2009, http://counterpunch.org/weil08242009.html.

Michelle Chen, “Equity and Access in Charter School Systems,” Race Wire, August 19, 2009, http://www.racewire.org/archives/2009/08/special_education_equity_and_a_1.html.

Paul Abowd, “Teacher Reformers Prepare for Battle Over Public Education,” Labor Notes, October 13, 2009, http://www.labornotes.org/node/2472

References:

• By Any Means Necessary Web site, www.bamn.com.
• A. Duncan, “Elevating the Teaching Profession,” American Educator 33, no. 4 Winter 2009–10 .
• A. Greenblatt, “Schools Across US Grapple With Closures,” National Public Radio, March 11, 2010, http://www.kpbs.org/news/2010/mar/11/schools-across-us-grapple-closures.
• Barbara Martinez, “D.C. Deal Puts Merit Pay for Teachers on the Syllabus,” Wall Street Journal, April 8, 2010, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303591204575170280501458008.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_us.
• D. Simmons, “DC Teacher Contract Includes Merit Pay,” Washington Times, April 8, 2010, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/08/merit-pay-deal-included-in-dc-teacher-contract.
• K. Spak, “D.C. Teacher’s Union Agrees to Merit Pay,” April 9, 2010, http://www.newser.com/story/85502/dc-teachers-union-agrees-to-merit-pay.html.
• International Center for Leadership in Education, “The Impact of the Four Assurances on Classrooms and Schools, Getting to the finish line in Race to the Top,” April 2, 2010, www.leadered.com/pdf/Race to theTop4.2.10.pdf.
• D. Weil, “On the Future of Education if Bill Gates and Arne Duncan Get Their Way,” CounterPunch, January 1, 2009.
• D. Weil, “Tenure, Merit Pay and Teachers: Washington D.C. and Florida Set to Lose Tenure, Adopt Merit Pay and Create At-will Employees Just Like Wal-Mart’s Greeters,” April 10, 2010, http://dailycensored.com/2010/04/10/tneure-merit-pay-washington-d-c-and-forida.
• D. Weil, “New Jersey Students Walk Out of Public Schools,” April 29, 2010, http://dailycensored.com/2010/04/29/new-jersey-students-walk-out-of-public-schools.
• D. Weil, “Pass It On! Students and Activists Arrested at Governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm’s Office Over the Decimation of Public Education in Detroit,” May 12, 2010, http://dailycensored.com/2010/05/12/students-and-activists-arrested-at-governor-of-michigan-jennifer-granholms-office-over-the-decimation-of-public-education.
• D. Weil, “Yvette Felarca Must Replace the Current American Federation of Teachers AFT President Randi Weingarten,” June 5, 2010, http://dailycensored.com/2010/ 06/05/yvette-felarca-must-replace-the-current-american-federation-of-teachers-aft-president-randi-weingarten.

Sources:

Carole Bass, “Tiny Troubles: Nanoparticles are Changing Everything From our Sunscreen to our Supplements,” E Magazine, July/August 2009, http://www.emagazine .com/view/?4723.

Janet Raloff, “Nanoparticles’ Indirect Threat to DNA,” Science News, November 5, 2009,http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/49191/title/Science_%2B_the
_Public__Nanoparticles_indirect_threat_to_DNA.

L. Geranio, M. Heuberger, and B. Nowack, “The Behavior of Silver Nanotextiles During Washing,” Environmental Science & Technology, September 24, 2009, http://pubs.acs .org/doi/abs/10.1021/es9018332.

Paul Eugib, DVM, and Wendy Hessler, “Silver Migrates From Treated Fabrics,” Environmental Health News, January 7, 2010, http://www.environmentalhealthnews .org/ehs/newscience/silver-migrates-from-nanoparticle-treated-fabrics.

David Rejeski, “Nanotech-enabled Consumer Products Top the 1,000 Mark,” Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, August 25, 2009, http://www.nanotechproject.org/ news/archive/8277.

Y. Song, X. Li, and X. Du, “Exposure to Nanoparticles Is Related to Pleural Effusion, Pulmonary Fibrosis and Granuloma,” European Respiratory Journal, August, 20, 2009, http://www.erj.ersjournals.com/cgi/content/abstract/34/3/559.

Science Daily Staff, “Health Risks of Nanotechnology: How Nanoparticles Can Cause Lung Damage, and How the Damage Can Be Blocked,” Science Daily, June 11, 2009, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090610192431.htm.

Science and Technology Committee, “Nanotechnologies and Food, House of Lords Media Notice,” January 8, 2010, http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/ lords_press_notices/pn080110st.cfm.

Ian Sample, “Attack of the Tiny Nano Particles—Be Slightly Afraid,” Organic Consumers Association, November 15, 2008, http://www.organicconsumers.org/ articles/article_15621.cfm.

George John, “Silver Nanoparticles Deadly to Bacteria,” Physorg.com, March 10, 2008, http://physorg.com/print124376552.html.

Nanowerk Spotlight, “Problematic New Findings Regarding Toxicity of Silver Nanoparticles,” Nanowerk.com, June 6, 2008, http://www.nanowerk.com/ spotlight/spotid=5966.php.

R. J. Aitken et al., “Nanoparticles: An Occupational Hygiene Review,” Institute of Occupational Medicine, Health and Safety Executive Edinburgh , 2004, http://www.hse.gov.uk/research/rrhtm/rr274.htm accessed November 2006 .

Student Researchers:

Jody Lempa, Tina Shaerban, Katherine Tellez, and Jillian Wolande DePaul University

Faculty Evaluator:

Marla Donato DePaul University

Personal products you may use daily and think are harmless—cosmetics, suntan lotion, socks, and sports clothes—may all contain atom-sized nanotech particles, some of which have been shown to sicken and kill workers in plants using nanotechnology. Known human health risks include severe and permanent lung damage. Cell studies indicate genetic DNA damage. Extremely toxic to aquatic wildlife, nanoparticles pose clear risks to many species and threaten the global food chain.

Nanotech particles have been embraced by industry as the wonder ingredient in personal hygiene products, food packaging, paints, medical procedures and pharmaceuticals, even tires and auto parts, among burgeoning numbers of other consumer products. Cosmetic companies add titanium dioxide nanoparticles to sun creams to make them transparent on the skin. Sports clothing firms have introduced odor-free garments containing nanosilver particles that are twice as toxic to bacteria than bleach. Auto industry companies have added carbon nanofibers to tires and body panels to strengthen them.

According to the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies PEN , health and fitness items continue to dominate available nanotech products, representing 60 percent of products listed. More products are based on nanoscale silver—used for its antimicrobial properties—than any other nanomaterial; 259 products 26 percent use silver nanoparticles. PEN’s updated inventory represents products from over twenty-four countries, including the US, China, Canada, and Germany.

Yet, nanomaterials are so poorly understood that scientists are unable to predict how they will behave and are unsure of how to check their safety. Over one thousand consumer products made with nanoparticles, which can be one hundred times smaller than a virus, are already on the market, despite an almost complete lack of knowledge of the dangers they pose to human health and the environment. And while these atomic-sized particles may be beneficial in certain medical applications, scientists and environmentalists are calling for more studies. Until now, few adverse effects have been found for this virtually unregulated technology. Yet, that may simply be due to the relatively few studies that have been done in the rush to find ever more and profitable nanotech applications.

Nanotechnology, the science of the extremely tiny, is an important emerging industry with a projected annual market of around one trillion dollars by 2015. It involves manipulating or building new materials from atoms and molecules; silver and carbon are now the most important building blocks.

The nanomaterials are far smaller than a human hair and can only be seen with powerful microscopes. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter, while a human hair is about eighty thousand nanometers wide. An atom is roughly one-third of a nanometer across, and nanoparticles are groups of atoms that are typically smaller than one hundred nanometers. The tiny-sized materials often have unique properties that differ from the properties of their larger scaled versions. Nanoparticles lend their success to the extraordinary, and sometimes highly unusual, properties they have. For example, tennis rackets made with carbon nanotubes are incredibly strong, while the larger pieces of graphite easily shear apart. The medical industry is investing heavily in nanoparticles to create precision drugs that can target specific tissues, such as cancer cells. While some of these new materials may have beneficial applications in medical procedures, wound dressings, and pharmaceuticals, concerns are growing that they may have toxic effects. In particular, nanoparticles have been linked to lung and genetic damage.

In a new British study, researchers discovered an unforeseen process, dubbed “toxic gossip,” by which metal nanoparticles inflict genetic damage to DNA, even through walls of tissue that were not physically breached. Researchers called the finding “a huge surprise,” particularly since the billionth-of-a-meter-scale particles appear to have wreaked their havoc indirectly.

Now, for the first time, a scientific study has established a clear and causal relationship between human contact with nanoparticles and serious health damage. According to an article published in the European Respiratory Journal by a group of Chinese researchers headed by Yuguo Song, from the Department of Occupational Medicine and Clinical Toxicology at the Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, seven young female workers fell seriously ill after working in a paint factory that used nanotechnology. The workers suffered severe and permanent lung damage, and face and arm eruptions. Two of them died, while the other five have not improved after several years.

Around five hundred studies have shown nanotechnology toxicity in animal studies, in human cells, and in the environment. Although Song’s article finds evidence of clinical toxicity in human beings for the first time, according to researcher Silvia Ribeiro, this finding could be only the tip of the iceberg of an extremely risky industry.

Nanoparticles behave unlike lumps of the same materials—stronger, more toxic, and with radically different properties. What makes them so useful also makes their safety so uncertain. Immediate, further research into nanoparticle toxicities and its dissemination is needed. Effects on human health and the environment result from nanoparticles reaching waterways through wastewater treatment and disposal sites, affecting the organisms that live in the water and the people who drink and cook with water.

Three types of nanoparticles are of particular concern: nanosilver particles; carbon nanofibers; and “buckyballs,” or microscopic, football-shaped cages of carbon.

Nanosilver is known to be highly toxic to aquatic life. While silver is safer for people than other toxics such as lead and chromium, for aquatic organisms, the story is quite different. Silver is more toxic to many fresh- and salt-water organisms, ranging from phytoplankton at the bottom of the food chain to marine invertebrates—such as oysters and snails—to different types of fish, especially in their immature stages. Many species of fish and shellfish, as well as their food, are susceptible; widespread exposure to silver impacts and disrupts ecosystem health. Nanosilver is significantly more toxic than lumps of silver because the tiny particles’ huge surface area increases their ability to interact with the environment. Nanosilver has been shown to break down and leach into water systems when, for example, sports garments incorporating silver nanoparticles for odor control are agitated in washing machines. In one study of silver nanoparticles used as antimicrobials in fabrics, of seven nanoparticle fabrics tested, four of them lost 20 percent to 35 percent of their silver in the first wash, and one brand lost half of its silver content in just two washings—all of which drained directly into the environment. Many waterways are just recovering from high levels of silver introduced by the photography industry during the twentieth century. New silver nanoparticle products may result in highly toxic levels of silver being reintroduced into rivers and lakes through water treatment facilities.

Carbon nanofibers, which are added to tires and woven into clothing to produce different colors without using dyes, are also likely to be shed where they can be inhaled and cause lung damage. In a study published in the Journal of Molecular Cell Biology, Chinese researchers discovered that a class of nanoparticles being widely developed in medicine—ployamidoamine dendrimers PAMAMs —cause lung damage by triggering a type of programmed cell death known as autophagic cell death. And finally, carbon-based “buckyballs” have shown to be absorbed by simple organisms, raising concerns that toxicities contaminate the food chain at the most damaging lower levels.

Today, according to PEN, over one thousand nanotechnology-enabled products have been made available to consumers around the world. The most recent update to the group’s three-and-a-half-year-old inventory reflects the increasing use of the tiny particles in everything from conventional products like non-stick cookware and lighter, stronger tennis racquets, to more unique items such as wearable sensors that monitor posture.

“The use of nanotechnology in consumer products continues to grow rapidly,” says PEN director David Rejeski. “When we launched the inventory in March 2006 we only had 212 products. If the introduction of new products continues at the present rate, the number of products listed in the inventory will reach close to 1,600 within the next two years. This will provide significant oversight challenges for agencies like the Food and Drug Administration and Consumer Product Safety Commission, which often lack any mechanisms to identify nanotech products before they enter the marketplace.”

More information on nanotechnology:

www.fda.gov/ScienceResearch/SpecialTopics/Nanotechnology/FrequentlyAskedQuestions/ default.htm.

Nanotech products listing:

www.nanotechproject.org/inventories/consumer/browse/products.

Update by Paul Eubig and Wendy Hessler, Environmental Health News

We found this story interesting because the research is an initial step toward defining how much consumer products contribute to silver nanoparticles in the environment. Knowing the amount of a chemical entering the environment is a necessary step in estimating the risk the contaminant poses to the environment and to human health. On a larger scale, this story also intrigued us because the questions it raises reflect unanswered concerns about nanotechnology in general.

This story was not widely reported. Short write-ups appeared in the New York Times and Chemical & Engineering News. Environmental Health News reported on an interesting follow-up in Particle and Fibre Toxicology, which found that silver nanoparticles are released from nanoparticle-treated fabrics when exposed to artificial human sweat. So a picture is emerging of silver nanoparticles exiting consumer products, exposing humans and entering wastewater to a greater extent than may have been intended. Meanwhile, in articles in Environmental Health Perspectives and Small, other researchers have demonstrated the adverse effects of silver nanoparticles on developing nerve cells and fish embryos, respectively.

The intent is not to target silver nanoparticles but rather bring attention to a broader topic: the safety of nanotechnology. The great potential of nanotechnology to revolutionize a broad array of fields—including energy production and management, health care, and manufacturing—is gradually being realized.

Yet, nanotechnology also provides great challenges in safety assessment. The composition, size and structure of nanoparticles are some of the numerous factors that influence how they act in the body or in the environment. Additionally, nanoparticles of a particular type, such as silver, do not necessarily act as individual molecules or atoms of the same substance, such as free, ionic silver.

Unfortunately, regulatory agencies have been slow to contend with the rapid emergence of nanotechnology in the workplace and in the home, as well as in the environment in a broader sense, resulting in a dizzying catch-up game in which the applications of nanotechnology continue to multiply while the regulatory playing field has still not been established. Current debate centers on whether existing safety data is sufficient for nanoparticle-containing products, or whether further assessment of the impacts on human and environmental health needs to be performed.

The past century provides numerous examples of chemicals—lead, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane DDT , and polychlorinated biphenyls PCBs to name a few—that were considered a great boon initially, but were later shown to have adverse effects on human or environmental health that outweighed their benefits. Our reporting aspires to help society remember the lessons of the past and to exercise caution as it embraces the promise of the future.

Additional Resources:

O. Bar-Ilan et al., “Toxicity Assessments of Multisized Gold and Silver Nanoparticles in Zebrafish Embryos,” Small 5, no.16 2009 : 1897–1910 [doi:10.1002/smll.200801716], www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/nanosilver.

K. Kulthong et al., “Determination of Silver Nanoparticle Release From Antibacterial Fabrics into Artificial Sweat,” Particle and Fibre Toxicology 7, no. 1 2010 : 8 [doi:10.1186/1743-8977-7-8], http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/ newscience/fabrics-release-silver-nanoparticles-into-artificial-sweat.

C. M. Powers et al., “Silver Impairs Neurodevelopment: Studies in PC12 Cells,” Environmental Health Perspectives 118, no. 1 2009 : 73–79 [doi:10.1289/ehp.0901149], http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/newscience/silver-is-potent-neurotoxicant.

A. Halperin, “Nanosilver: Do We Know the Risks?” New Haven Independent, March 17, 2010, http://newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/regulating_nanosilver_a_very
_small_puzzle/id_24412.

National Nanotechnology Initiative FAQs: http://www.nano.gov/html/facts/home_facts.html

US Environmental Protection Agency’s Fact Sheet for Nanotechnology Under the Toxic Substances Control Act: http://www.epa.gov/oppt/nano/nano-facts.htm

US Environmental Protection Agency’s Nanotechnology White Paper, EPA 100/B-07/001 February 15, 2007 : http://www.epa.gov/OSA/nanotech.htm

US Food and Drug Administration’s Nanotechnology Web site: http://www.fda.gov/ScienceResearch/SpecialTopics/Nanotechnology/default.htm

Researcher who studies the environmental, health, and safety impacts of nanotechnology: Stacey L. Harper, Oregon State University, 1007 ALS, Corvallis Oregon 97331, 541 737-2791, stacey.harper@oregonstate.edu

]]> http://mondoweiss.net/2010/10/israeli-forces-toss-gas-bomb-on-protester-near-hebron-causing-severe-burns-to-the-entire-body-of-mohammed-jamal-abu-hashim-14.html Sun, 03 Oct 2010 00:32:02 +0200 Mondoweiss http://mondoweiss.net http://mondoweiss.net/2010/10/israeli-forces-toss-gas-bomb-on-protester-near-hebron-causing-severe-burns-to-the-entire-body-of-mohammed-jamal-abu-hashim-14.html --> Land and property theft and destruction / Ethnic cleansing Settlers burn 10 dunums of farmlands south of Nablus NABLUS, PIC -- Israeli settlers from the Itamar settlement in south Nablus burned on Friday at least ten dunums of land cultivated ...]]>

And other news from Today in Palestine:

[if gte mso 9]>--> Land and property theft and destruction / Ethnic cleansing

Settlers burn 10 dunums of farmlands south of Nablus
NABLUS, PIC -- Israeli settlers from the Itamar settlement in south Nablus burned on Friday at least ten dunums of land cultivated with olive trees in the Bayada region northeast of the Awarta village ... Israeli occupation soldiers stopped Palestinians and emergency officials from controlling the fire.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7cg6sEFBw%2fWIgcBoqZc7A0KH%2f5Ljyo%2bIfDAU2NKyvLyGPiiHdwQoOxXnfZLQLZTX9qF3RsyaqBAfDD%2fLV5DxxyLg%2bGb9gGCHaqWumVIjFQYQ%3d

Israelis built into a West Bank life / Jason Koutsoukis
THE West Bank is no place for principles. ''Of course I don't like building houses for the settlers,'' says Palestinian construction worker Haitham Asfour. ''But what choice do I have?'' As the rumble of bulldozers in Jewish settlements across the West Bank this week signalled an end to Israel's 10-month construction freeze - bringing the nascent Middle East peace talks to the brink of collapse - not all Palestinians could afford to be outraged. Mr Asfour, one of 25,000 Palestinians who depend on the settlers for a living, is one of them.
http://www.theage.com.au/world/israelis-built-into-a-west-bank-life-20101001-160yw.html

interesting 'happy slaves' take on situation
Palestinians building Jewish settlements
The end of the settlement construction freeze on Monday was felt not only by the settlers, but also their Palestinian neighbors. Hundreds of laborers flooded West Bank settlements as of the early morning hours and could be seen operating bulldozers ... "They are being threatened with five years in prison if they work for us after January 1," Shaul Goldstein, head of the Gush Etzion Regional Council said. The real coexistence, after all, happens here, and the Palestinian Authority is trying to sabotage this. I am the one who wants peace and they just want war. This is the difference between us."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3961637,00.html

Peace talks come and go, but a settlement grows AP
REVAVA, West Bank – The American president was pushing hard for a Mideast peace agreement when six Jewish families arrived on this West Bank hilltop early one morning with cribs, refrigerators, Israeli flags and flatbed trucks carrying mobile homes. White House condemnation came quickly: "Settlements are an obstacle to peace and their continuation does not contribute to the development of a peace process which we have all been working toward." It was April 16, 1991.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101002/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_settlement_revisited

Security disparities in East Jerusalem make conflict inevitable
Israel’s Ministry of Construction and Housing controls the security provided to settlers in Palestinian neighbourhoods. The Ministry contracts private security firms that train and supply armed guards throughout East Jerusalem areas. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel ACRI , an Israeli non-profit organization, reported that the Ministry paid a total of NIS 54,540,000 roughly 15 million US dollars to private security firms in 2010. In contrast, Palestinians must use the Jerusalem police who have a documented history of discriminatory practices towards Palestinians
http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spip/spip.php?article1553

The making of a virtual Palestinian state / Jamal Dajani
Jewish settlers account for just one percent of the population of the West Bank, according to Dutch cartographer Jan de Jong, but are claiming 60 percent of the land. "They are just one percent of the whole West Bank population, but they are claiming 60 percent of the land. The settlements are actually just built-up pockets, but the settlers include huge tracts of land around them by laying down barbed wire. So in effect it's more like estates, containing just a few houses."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jamal-dajani/the-making-of-a-virtual-p_b_746889.html

Activism / Solidarity / Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions

IOF soldiers leave injuries on marchers in Beit Ummar
AL-KHALIL, PIC -- Israeli occupation forces IOF cracked down on a weekly march against settlement activity in Beit Ummar, Al-Khalil [Hebron], on Saturday leaving a minor severely burned while other marchers suffered breathing difficulties. Eyewitnesses said IOF soldiers caused severe burns to the entire body of Mohammed Jamal Abu Hashim, 14, after an Israeli soldier tossed a gas bomb directly at him and it exploded over his limbs. He was transported to the hospital.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7YQYZZpbLR5pr%2bPgnQFN9SbWLaZtY8MI%2bEA3tWwPELhQYjiTGDtyp3Oz9%2fOr7zifM5Wj749hoB2MRA%2fC8hgsp3zx5ayJXAuKi12tGeIsLWuU%3d

Video: Bil'in weekly demonstration 1-10-2010 Haitham Katib
http://www.youtube.com/user/haithmkatib#p/a/u/0/zlAdF79ZcOY

Rallies in Gaza commemorate 2nd Intifada
Islamist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad organized rallies on Friday in Gaza to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the start of the Second Intifada, using the anniversary as a symbol of the power of resistance ... Demonstrations took to the streets after prayers in the An-Nusierat and Al-Bureij Mosques in the central Strip, and listened to Hamas orators.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=319861

In defense of South African academics' boycott call / Ronnie Kasrils
...The principled position of academics in South Africa to distance themselves from institutions that support the occupation is a reflection of the advances already made in exposing that the Israeli regime is guilty of an illegal and immoral colonial project.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11549.shtml

Israeli mayors' visit runs aground in Spain, Netherlands / Adri Nieuwhof
The Association of Netherlands Municipalities VNG canceled a 19 September visit by Israeli mayors because the delegation included leaders of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, igniting a firestorm in the Dutch parliament centered at foreign affairs minister Maxime Verhagen ... According to Ynet, the head of the Council of Efrat, Oded Revivi, said that the mayors' visit was originally planned for Spain. However, the tour was called off following the deadly raid on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla at end of May.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11550.shtml

Court: Irish Nobel laureate to be deported from Israel
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, who was deported from Israel after joining a Gaza-bound aid ship, is currently in a detention facility at the airport pending an appeal to the Supreme Court
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/court-irish-nobel-laureate-to-be-deported-from-israel-1.316671

Boston Palestine Film Festival starts today
The fourth annual Boston Palestine Film Festival opens tonight [last night, Friday] at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston at 7 pm and runs through October 10 at venues across the city. The festival features films from around the world by and about Palestinians. This year's program includes a range of compelling and thought-provoking documentaries, dramatic features, rare early works, and new films by emerging artists and youth. These films from international directors bring an honest, self-described, and independent view of Palestine and its diasporic society, culture, and political travails. A full schedule of programs, as well as tickets, can be found here.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/10/boston-palestine-film-festival-starts-today.html

Jewish boat to Gaza: the skipper speaks -- Glyn Secker's testimony
...There then developed a sight which will remain with me for the rest of my life – with the frigate in the background, two gunboats, two landing craft and four high powered ribs spread out in a semi-circle speeding towards us at perhaps 35 knots, with their bow waves and wakes flashing in the sunshine. It was surreal, it was like an action movie, and entranced by the sight I had to remind myself this was actually happening – this overwhelming force for a 9.7 metre 40 yr. old boat, the majority of its Jewish occupants over 60 years old, with no weapons and a publicized policy of passive resistance.
http://jewishboattogaza.org/

Gaza Europe convoy visits grave of youngest Turkish victim
International activists of "Gaza Europe Convoy" declares youngest Turkish-US victim as spiritual leader during a visit to his grave.
http://www.worldbulletin.net/news_detail.php?id=64654

European Lifeline 5 convoy to land in Egypt within days
LONDON, PIC --  Spokesman for the Lifeline 5 land-sea aid convoy Zahir Beirawi said efforts are being made to convince Egyptian authorities to ease the task of the humanitarian mission en route to Gaza Strip. Beirawi denied rumors that the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation IHH would not participate on the convoy for fear of criticism from Israel and the international community over links to Palestinian resistance groups.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s72FDP9DlmEUtYzHAWT%2fi1UhEvF%2fkYjfS5q3Fr0JuC1N%2fdPav2KZMtnY4AhlnuQ9kY6iAsO2T2rdnYVre7DT8gjbJWf2xVl9SsSjx9YFyZqzI%3d

Violence / Provocations / Detention

Israeli soldiers ambush Palestinian workers in northern Gaza
GAZA, PIC -- Israeli occupation forces IOF surrounded early Saturday morning a group of Palestinian workers in the northern Gaza Strip after opening fire at them. Local sources in Beit Hanoun said IOF special forces carried out an incursion operation at dawn near the Erez crossing in Beit Hanoun in pursuit of a number of Palestinian workers collecting special kind of sand which is used in construction.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7ZASpH17msdMp0y%2fQZr4h1fjKyWAZW3fin0vDpddynmansiNNz6wVDIp9p8pHrOumx8zROs9y%2f7Ef%2fvy%2b8viNKi8aCfIb93zp2O5ahUSuUqM%3d

IOF troops round up 300 Palestinians in one week
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, PIC -- The Israeli occupation forces IOF rounded up more than 300 Palestinians in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem over the past week, the Palestinian prisoner's society said. It added in a press release on Saturday that most of those detained were minors, noting that the IOF was pressuring wanted Palestinians and prisoners by arresting their mothers and relatives.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s765rbGLA3ZlUxziHAjcfKjds7pwHP93Bgvi4DhBL0V66E6KgzcPbrRbPvMV19u9d1XCjox8NBpfBcDhqEi6dbYyUuer7dSv0uaL1xQfYmO8w%3d

Guilty Families - a report from a military court
...And then the judge suddenly said something that we could not hear, and the policeman got up, all of a sudden. “That’s it, it’s over,” he told the stunned parents. “Get out.” ... And just then Nibal remembered that she had not shown Ayoub the photograph of his [new] daughter, that she had brought with her, deep in her clothes, and she tearfully pleaded with the attorney that he gives Ayoub the picture, and the attorney said that there was nothing he could do. “But what about the name?” Nibal said, still in tears. “What about the name?” ... All court proceedings which occur at the same time are carried out in Hebrew. No one explains a thing to the defendant or his parents. The words are not translated.
http://www.mahsanmilim.com/ayub02E.htm

The Mengele Squad
What is the connection between the occupation and references to the Holocaust in IDF slang? ... No one in Israel really thinks the IDF and the SS are one and the same, or that Palestinian life under the occupation is identical to that of the Jews in the concentration camps, not to mention the extermination camps. But it turns out that IDF soldiers have been drawing such comparisons for years. Quietly, for themselves.
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/the-mengele-squad-1.316622

Former torturer appointed [to] a high-ranking police post in Jerusalem
The appointment of an infamous Israeli interrogator to a high-ranking police post has sent shockwaves among human rights groups. Known among inmates as Captain George, he is accused of numerous cases of torture and abuse of Arabs. Now that he is in charge of Arab affairs, many Palestinians fear for their lives ... Just months into his new position, Zahavi has already been accused of badly injuring a Palestinian in Jerusalem.
http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-10-02/former-torturer-israel-police.html

Hamas members jailed with criminals in Ramallah
WEST BANK, PIC -- Different Palestinian sources reported that the Palestinian Authority's security militias lock up Hamas members with drug dealers and criminals in its jails in Ramallah city.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7lm62R6avv6e2NabC5MobWNxhvzN%2b0hx3EzXuV7Gd%2bShx0vlqPUZflLc%2fEelHneP5wBGLbTfYY6%2bAVdV4Ao1ESdGXVoK3gDAmGWzLRFomrS8%3d

Islamist party demands PA adhere to court ruling
The Palestinian High Court verdict mandating the release of a Hizb Ut-Tahrir member remains unobserved by PA police, party leaders announced ... According to supporters, [Mohammad] Khateeb remains held under the authority of the PA Security Enforcement Agency, an arm of the intelligence forces. Inquiries with the body allegedly resulted in Hizb Ut-Tahrir officials being told that the forces were not under the jurisdiction of the courts.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=319763

Siege / Restriction of movement / Humanitarian/ Human rights

Israel bans 12 Palestinians from Al-Aqsa Mosque
An Israeli court on Friday issued a one month restraining order banning 12 [Israel-resident] Palestinians from the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem's Old City, the Al-Aqsa Foundation said. The foundation said Israeli forces arrested the 12 men from a bus on Thursday as they headed to the mosque to pray. The men began chanting national slogans after they saw Israeli settlers entering the courtyard of the mosque, the group said
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=319852

Palestinians to travel via Rafah without registration
Individuals traveling through the Rafah crossing between southern Gaza and Egypt will no longer have to register ahead of time, the Gaza government's Crossings Administration said Saturday ... Gaza residents, visa holders, individuals with medical referrals, foreign passport holders and coordinated travelers will be allowed transit through the crossing, the statement added. Meanwhile, 1,695 Palestinians stranded in Egypt were allowed entry into Gaza over the week, the majority of whom were patients completing treatment in Egypt. Additionally, 2,489 left Gaza during the same period while 270 were barred from travel at the crossing, the statement detailed.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=320149

UAE doctor restores hearing in Gaza
The Gaza Strip has the highest rate of deafness in the world due to explosions from Israeli military attacks and inter-familial marriage, a leading otologist said Saturday. Mazin Al-Hajiri is on his second visit to Gaza from the United Arab Emirates to perform cochlear implants, restoring the hearing of dozens of the Strip's residents. Each surgery costs $22,500, and Al-Hajiri personally raised funds from various charities in the gulf to pay for the operations. In developed countries, A-Hajiri told Ma'an that usually one in 1000 people are deaf, but in Gaza studies suggest the figure is one in 100.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=320113

Morocco to fund new hospital in Rafah
Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh reportedly allocated 50 dunums 50,000 square meters of Gaza Strip lands west of Rafah to build the facility. Sources in the government said the location was chosen following studies, which indicated the district was in most urgent need of a medical care facilities for the 200,000 residents of the city. [and they are going to get the construction materials into Gaza how?]
http://www.maannews.net/engV/iewDetails.aspx?ID=320066

Israel's Arab helpers

Egypt destroys four Gaza smuggling tunnels
Egypt has said it destroyed over 20 tunnels in September alone along its 11-kilometer-long border with the enclosed enclave -- Egyptian security forces have destroyed four tunnels leading across the border to the Gaza Strip, one of them large enough to smuggle cars, officials said Saturday.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/egypt-destroys-four-gaza-smuggling-tunnels-1.316747

'Peace talks' / Political developments

Abbas spokesman: No peace negotiations while Israel builds settlements
After meeting of PLO executive committee in Ramallah, spokesman for PA President Mahmoud Abbas says there will be no peace talks 'in the shadow of continued settlement'.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/abbas-spokesman-no-peace-negotiations-while-israel-builds-settlements-1.316755

Mitchell tours region in bid to save talks
As Palestinian leaders meet in Ramallah, US Envoy to the Middle East peace process George Mitchell began a tour of the region in an attempt to secure the backing of the Arab world for continued peace talks.  With an Arab League meeting planned for 6 October, White House officials said Mitchell left Jerusalem for Doha on Friday where he will meet with officials early on Saturday then travel to Cairo and Amman on Sunday.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=320024

Palestinians: Ball in Netanyahu's court
PA's chief negotiator Erekat says keys for saving peace negotiations in Israeli prime minister's hands. 'Peace and settlements are parallels,' he says. Palestinian officials estimate, however, that PLO will approve return to talks if Israel builds in settlement blocs only – under supervision
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3962583,00.html

Assad: Peace talks boost Obama's image
Syrian President Bashar Assad said Saturday that peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians are aimed at bolstering Obama's political image. "There is no goal but to gain support for Obama within America," he told Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, adding that "there has been no change in the peace process in Palestine."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3962697,00.html

White House denies Mideast Obama letters UPI
U.S. President Obama wrote to Mahmoud Abbas promising support for a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders if he remains in peace talks, Maariv reported. The White House denied the existence of a such a letter to the Palestinian Authority president as well as reports of a letter sent by Obama to Israeli President Binyamin Netanyahu, the newspaper said.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2010/10/01/White-House-denies-Mideast-Obama-letters/UPI-54241285938980/

UNRWA chief: Gaza must not be marginalized
The chief of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees Filippo Grandi said Friday that Gaza must not be left "in the margins." Addressing a conference at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank, the UNRWA Commissioner-General warned that, following prolonged and repeated crises in Gaza "consciously or not, many embrace the self-fulfilling rhetoric that seeks to justify its exclusion as a place beyond salvation."
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=319856

Bringing the PFLP back into PLO fold?
The Palestinian People’s Party extended its hand on Friday to leaders from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, asking that the faction take part in Saturday's PLO discussions. As of late Friday, however, PFLP's politburo chief Khalida Jarrar confirmed that the party intended to boycott the meeting, saying the current mechanism for Palestinian decision making was inadequate and unrepresentative, and that the party would not lend it support by participating now.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=319959

Fatah: Palestinians support Abbas' position
RAMALLAH Ma'an -- Palestinians support President Mahmoud Abbas' position that talks could not continue without a freeze in settlement activity, a Fatah spokesman said Friday. Usama Al-Qauasmi said the renewed settlement activity across the West Bank demonstrated that Israel was not interested in peace. This was also demonstrated by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's recent provocative statements, the spokesman said.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=319913

Other news

PCBS: Palestinian women's life expectancy higher than men's
As the UN marked International Day of Older Persons on Friday, studies revealed that life expectancy in the occupied Palestinian territories was 70.8 years for men and 73.6 years for women. A study by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said Palestinians over 60 years old represented 4.4 percent of the total population of the West Bank and Gaza, and within this group, 55 percent were women.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=320015

Israeli Arab MK: Racism in Israel has reached frightening levels
Some 6,000 Israeli Arabs march in memory of 13 youths who were killed by Israel Police officers in October 2000 riots; Israeli Arabs call for suspects to be tried, declare general strike.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israeli-arab-mk-racism-in-israel-has-reached-frightening-levels-1.316594

Shin Bet at loss after counter-espionage campaign in Gaza
GAZA, PIC -- A Palestinian security source said that a state of confusion prevails inside Israel's internal security Shin Bet after the Palestinian security apparatuses successfully eliminated its network of spies in the Gaza Strip and confiscated electronic gadgets used for intelligence activities.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7ZZkLn7g3y%2budLJ%2fUoegtUnx49r2rfVGS0neOKRp8x%2bz%2bbnrWEg3SKf8oW0DBzMu6RWF1chJG6AC5%2fodSGQWn0J%2fCVBPItxIavxa%2bhpZEIEY%3d

Memorial for Druze soldier evokes piercing criticism of leadership
Madhat Yousef, left by IDF to bleed to death after being wounded in action guarding Joseph's Tomb 10 years ago, remembered at ceremony attended by captive soldier Gilad Shalit's mother, Aviva. His brother Mehdi reads letter for Shalit, asserting same leadership who abandoned Madhat is abandoning Gilad
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3962490,00.html

13,000 Quran memorizers to be honored in Gaza
They have learned the Quran by heart by attending the “Al-Aqsa Quranic Generation” courses held during summer ... Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh as well as Ahmad Bahr head of the legislature will be attending the ceremony.
http://abna.ir/data.asp?lang=3&id=207097

Ancient tree to help turn Jericho into tourist hub
JERICHO, West Bank AP — With a giant trunk and boughs towering 60 feet high, a gnarled sycamore near Jericho's main square has long been touted as the very tree that the hated tax collector climbed to get a glimpse of Jesus. Now it's taking center stage in a plan to transform this ancient desert backwater into a tourism hub.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101001/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_palestinians_sacred_sycamore

Palestine pledges fund to Arab League initiative
Palestine allocated $1 million to a Kuwaiti initiative supporting small business projects in the Arab world, Palestinian Authority National Economy Minister Hasan Abu Libda announced Saturday. [is that $1 million of the funds given to Palestine by other countries?]
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=320050

Analysis / Opinion / Human interest

The impending collapse of Israel in Palestine / Francis Boyle
For the Palestinians to sign any type of comprehensive peace treaty with Israel would only shore up, consolidate, and guarantee the existence of Zionism and Zionists in Palestine forever.  Why would the Palestinians want to do that?  Without approval by the Palestinians in writing, Zionism and Israel in Palestine will collapse ... All the demographic forces are in favor of the Palestinians and against the Zionists ... Israel is ridden with and paralyzed by so many internal contradictions and conflicts that they are too numerous to list here. [By the author of Palestine, Palestinians and International Law]
http://mwcnews.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5563&Itemid=126

Disguising reality of aggression / Hasan Abu Nimah
...The departure from accurate terminology and the adoption of misleading formulas has been quite systematic and deliberate - a way to change perceptions of what the conflict in Palestine is about and how it can indeed be solved. With the passing of time, the desired results were largely realised. Large sectors of people worldwide have been safely distanced from the real attributes of the conflict; and so have many Arabs, especially the youth. The adoption of imported terminology, often crafted in Israel and disseminated by influential Western media, officials and think tanks, and by some Arab quarters and media under their influence, has contributed substantially to allowing such deceptions to take root.
http://jordantimes.com/?news=30455

Mid-East talks and the Palestinian exodus / Ashraf Ezzat
The Exodus of the Palestinians from Palestine is the Israeli Idea of an Everlasting Peace -- ...The Palestinians are in no position to dictate any terms and they are stuck in no war - no peace zone. They cannot offer anything tempting to the Israelis. Some argue that security is a winning card for the Palestinians negotiators, but most of the Arab-Israeli conflict analysts don’t think so.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/10/mid-east-talks-and-the-palestinian-exodus/

Washington Post continues distorted coverage on flotilla raid / Alex Kane
...There is a lot of evidence to throw the Israeli account into question, but four months later the Post still can’t get it right. While the paper’s September 29 report on the UN Human Rights Council endorsement of a report by three human rights experts that found the raid brutal, illegal and disproportionate opened with a decent lead ... the piece quickly attempts to discredit the report by citing Israeli and U.S. objections to it. And then there’s this short account of the actual attack: “The commandos, who were attacked and beaten while rappelling onto the ship’s deck, killed nine passengers as they seized control.”
http://alexbkane.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/washington-post-continues-distorted-coverage-on-flotilla-raid/

A Palestinian mayor in Safra Square / Nir Hasson
With Jerusalem split evenly between secular Jews, Haredim and Arabs, Palestinians could take both the mayoralty and city council just by going to the polls en masse ... What would happen if Palestinian politicians were to decide, for the first time since 1967, to take advantage of the voting rights possessed by the city's 250,000 Palestinians?
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/a-palestinian-mayor-in-safra-square-1.316613

The second intifada, 10 years on / Seth Freedman
For Israelis and Palestinians the legacy of the 2000 uprising is a cycle of trauma and violence -- making prospects for peace bleak ... of the dozens of Palestinians my age who I've met and interviewed over the last four years, almost all speak of a mirror-image desire to fight for their country in the same way my peers and I took up arms for ours. Watching the continuing expropriation of their land, witnessing the daily humiliations suffered by their elders and betters at the hands of teenage soldiers, burying wave after wave of dead militants and civilians alike – regardless of the political decisions behind both sides' intransigence, it would take superhuman strength not to be devastatingly affected by such brutal experiences.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/01/israel-palestine-intifada-10-years-on

Defining 'Jewish state': For many, term has different meanings / Glenn Kessler, WaPo
Nine years ago, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell delivered a speech on the Middle East in which he briefly called on Palestinians to recognize Israel as a "Jewish state." Powell doesn't recall how the phrase ended up in his speech, but David Ivry, then the Israeli ambassador to the United States, says he persuaded an aide to Powell to slip it in. From that small seed - the first time a U.S. official took sides on the issue - a significant and potentially insurmountable hurdle has emerged
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/01/AR2010100104177.html

Overcoming AIPAC is not enough / Dr. Lawrence Davidson
Two stories have recently appeared, each discussing a different approach to overcoming the influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee AIPAC , the pro-Israel lobby that presently has enough clout to substitute its own parochial interests for the national interest ... The truth is that the two approaches, one centered on the national capital and the other centered on main street, have to be pursued simultaneously. And, there is now movement at both levels. Yet the pace of change is agonizingly slow. And that fact raises the question of just how much of Palestine will be left when AIPAC’s influence is finally overcome?
http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2010/10/overcoming-aipac-is-not-enough-dr-lawrence-davidson/

Sanchez's first mistake / Philip Weiss
I must point out that Rick Sanchez, who was unceremoniously fired by CNN today for talking some trash about Jon Stewart and the Jewish ownership of networks, was one of the few network anchors to give any attention to the Palestinian side of the story. He was plainly alarmed by the Israeli assault on Gaza in 08-09. He interviewed Palestinian lawyer Diana Buttu. And below, he interviewed Mustafa Barghouti, and showed that Israel broke the cease-fire ahead of the Gaza onslaught.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/10/sanchezs-first-mistake.html

What unity could look like / S. C. Yuter
...While most unity agreements involve the collapse of the Hamas government in Gaza and its amalgamation into a West Bank PA framework, increasing criticism of the PLO, as unrepresentative and biased, give credence to new ideas that recognize the legitimacy of Hamas as a ruling party elected by the Palestinian people, but bring the government into an international fold by extending a 10-year hudna, or truce, to Israel, under the umbrella of which sides could develop trust and end the siege on Gaza.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=319719

Musical storytelling: Reem Kelani interviewed
...Kelani has met with predictable refusals to engage with the politics of her Palestinian identity. A commission for the music for a 1992 BBC documentary commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacres included instructions not to use the words Sabra, Shatila, Palestine or Israel. But, she says, it is the world music scene which, while presenting itself as progressive and as engaging with indigenous peoples' rights, has most insidiously undermined her progress as a Palestinian artist ... "The reason is that Israel is very big on the world music scene..."
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11544.shtml

Forbidden city / Edward Platt
Shut out of Jerusalem, Arab artists have responded cleverly -- A short film by the French-Moroccan artist Bouchra Khalili makes explicit the smothering restrictions on movement that preoccupy some of the contributors to "Future Movements: Jerusalem", a group exhibition that opened on the first day of the Liverpool Biennial. Mapping Journey 3 is shot in a single take from above, with a static camera, and shows the hand of an unseen man moving across a map of Jerusalem, as he describes how he gets from his home in Ramallah to his girlfriend's home in the suburb of Sheikh Jarrah.
http://www.newstatesman.com/art/2010/10/jerusalem-arab-artists-city

AlJazeera English video: Gaza Horse Club
In Gaza, resisting Israel takes many different forms. One man has turned his anger into passion - and built a horse riding club. Al Jazeera's Nicole Johnston reports from Gaza.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b-mkredAgA

Iraq

Friday: 8 Iraqis killed, 13 wounded
Excerpt: at least eight Iraqis were killed and 14 more were wounded in light prayer day attacks across the country. In Baghdad, a blast at an Awakening Council Sahwa checkpoint killed three and wounded seven more, including worshippers from a nearby mosque. A sticky bomb wounded a civilian in Amiriya. A blast at a popular Jamiya sweets shop left an unknown amount of casualties. Gunmen killed one civilian and wounded two others yesterday in Camp Sara. Gunmen wounded a lt. colonel from the presidential guard.
http://original.antiwar.com/updates/2010/10/01/friday-8-iraqis-killed-13-wounded/

Iraq sees lowest monthly toll since January AFP
A total of 273 Iraqis were killed as a result of violence in September, the lowest figure since January, according to government figures released on Friday. The toll, released by the health, interior and defence ministries, showed that 185 civilians, 55 police and 33 soldiers died in attacks in the first month after Washington officially declared an end to combat operations here.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101001/wl_mideast_afp/iraqunresttollmonthly

Kurdish official: Lawmakers to discuss al-Maliki
SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq – Kurdish lawmakers began Saturday to plot their course as Iraq's kingmakers with enough seats to secure a second term for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and press key demands including a greater say over the oil riches in the country's north.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101002/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq

IMF releases $741 million loan to Iraq AFP
WASHINGTON AFP – The International Monetary Fund said Friday it was releasing 741 million dollars in financing to Iraq after the country made good progress in reconstructing the war-torn economy. The loan is the second installment of a 24-month loan the IMF awarded to Iraq in February.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101001/wl_mideast_afp/imfeconomyfinanceiraq

Iraqis still reliant on power generators as US prepares to leave
IN BAGHDAD - As the U.S. military prepares to leave Iraq, Iraqis are still asking: What about the electricity? In 2003, they heard President George W. Bush's promise: "We will help them to restore basic services, such as electricity." Seven years later, the state's inability to provide reliable power to homes remains one of the most striking signs of the dysfunction that persists here and a nagging source of frustration for ordinary Iraqis.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/02/AR2010100201709.html

Other Mideast

Lebanon row over Ahmadinejad visit
Lebanon’s largest parliamentary bloc has expressed concerns at a planned visit of the Iranian president to the country on October 13. In a statement issued on Friday, the March 14 alliance described Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's upcoming visit as a "provocation."
http://english.aljazeera.net//news/middleeast/2010/10/201010114619483855.html

Assad visits Iran to boost ties
Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, has arrived in Tehran on a trip aimed at reassuring Iranian leaders that the alliance between the two countries is solid despite Syria's improved relations with the US.
http://english.aljazeera.net//news/middleeast/2010/10/20101027182671433.html

Iran 'detains Western spies' after cyber attack on nuclear plant
...The intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi, said western "spy services" were behind the complex computer virus that recently infected more than 30,000 computers in industrial sites, including those in the Bushehr nuclear power plant, appearing to confirm the suspicion of computer security experts that a foreign state was responsible.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/10/02-4

A politically correct band with a message
The Egyptian group Black Theama has articulated a soundtrack for defiance with socially conscious lyrics that resonate with a disaffected twentysomething generation.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-egypt-band-20101002,0,6351305.story

BBC Video: 'Drive-by' tourism that hurts Jordan's economy
The ancient city of Petra in Jordan attracts millions of tourists every year; but few local people see any real benefit from the tourist trade because visitors often stay in chain hotels and travel with big tour companies. In response the authorities have launched a plan to use the money generated to pay for local health care and education.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11457285

Muslim world atwitter over Twitter
...Facebook and Twitter are fast becoming a chronic headache to many extollers of Islam, who value control over their public. Security issues arise, clerics worry over the corruption of youth, and extreme rightists fear foreign influence.  
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3962714,00.html

Amnesty Int'l: Saudi Arabian king urged to commute 'sorcery' death sentences
Lebanese national ‘Ali Hussain Sibat and ‘Abdul Hamid bin Hussain bin Moustafa al-Fakki, from Sudan, are both sentenced to death on this controversial charge, which has been used to punish people for exercising their right to freedom of expression ... The crime of 'sorcery' is not defined in Saudi Arabian law. However, the authorities have arrested scores of people on 'sorcery' charges in recent years.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/saudi-arabian-king-urged-commute-sorcery-death-sentences-2010-10-01

Afghanistan / Pakistan

US still taking a hard line on peace talks with Taliban / Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - Following serious setbacks to the U.S. military's war plan in Afghanistan, the Barack Obama administration has taken the first tentative step toward a negotiated settlement of the conflict by actively seeking to ascertain the willingness of the Taliban to enter into negotiations, according to a source familiar with the administration's thinking about the issue.
Patrick J. Buchanan

Obviously, Hispanics have been hit hard by the economic downturn and many of them live in areas most devastated by the foreclosure crisis, but the same could be said for many whites, and there has been very little change in their level of support for the two parties.

I suspect a large amount of the loss of support for Democrats comes from their complete and total failure to deal with immigration reform. Not only did Democrats fail to pass a bill, but they never made any serious attempt. Instead, they did almost the opposite by including offensive and unnecessary anti-immigrant provisions in the new health care law that are clearly directed against Hispanics.

Political observers can argue about the feasibility of being able to pass anything related to immigrant reform over the last two years, and the super-serious beltway insiders all seemed to know nothing was going to happen, but that is clearly not what candidate Obama lead the Hispanic community to believe. Obama unequivocally promised he would pass an immigration reform bill in his first year. The truth turned out to be something quite different. Obama made no effective effort to push for immigration reform. And this broken promise does not sit well with the Hispanic media, which has been vocal in holding the president accountable.

When you promise a group of people–through their top news outlets–something very important to them, and not only fail to deliver on that promise but don’t even seem to try, it is going to result in a lot of bad blood.

I can think of little that would motivate Hispanics to turn toward an increasingly nativist, xenophobic, tea-stained Republican Party than the fact that Obama and the Democrats have so pointedly and obviously failed to deliver on promises. Democrats had a chance to lock in the Hispanic community as part of their coalition, but instead, they opted to use them and then ignore them. Would it have really been so hard to push through the DREAM Act early in 2009?

Let this be a lesson to politicians: There are voters out there who are still idealistic enough to think that you mean what you say; that a promise is a promise, that your word is your bond. When you seed a group’s collective hopes during the bright light of a campaign–only to crush them with the shadowy cynicism that passes for governance–don’t be surprised when you reap what you sow.

source: Visibility 9-11

Linda McMahon photo via Linda McMahon

The DSCC has secured an ad buy in Connecticut, where they thought they wouldn’t have to pay attention to the race between Attorney General Richard Blumenthal D and WWE executive Linda McMahon R . This $250,000 ad buy – with more likely to come – starves other candidates of potential resources. West Virginia, where the DSCC just dropped some money, also fits into this category.

But Democrats may have just caught a break in Connecticut. McMahon, appearing at a news conference that she abruptly shut down, made comments about the minimum wage that are a gift for her opponents to paint her as out of touch:

Republican Linda McMahon accepted the endorsement of a prominent business interest lobby on Thursday, but her campaign staff abruptly shut down a press conference in which McMahon was asked to explain whether she agreed with all of the organization’s positions.

Most notably, McMahon said she believed Congress should consider lowering the federal minimum wage in times of economic distress for small businesses, such as the current recession.

“The minimum wage now in our country, I think we’ve set that and a lot of people have benefited from it in our country, but I think we ought to review how much it ought to be, and whether or not we ought to have increases in the minimum wage,” McMahon said [...]

“I think we ought to look at all of those issues in terms of what mandates are being placed on businesses and can they afford them?” McMahon said. “I think we should get input from our business community. We should listen to our small business operators, and we should hear what it is they have to say and how it’s impacting their businesses and make some of those decisions.”

McMahon’s campaign tried some serious damage control, rushing out a video press release where she said she did not favor eliminating minimum wage increases completely. But perhaps the most damaging part of the event, for McMahon, was when she claimed that she “didn’t know if anyone at World Wrestling Entertainment, the company of which she was CEO until her campaign began, is paid the minimum wage.” She didn’t appear to even know how much it was in Connecticut.

Democrats in Connecticut have seized on the comments. . . .

“We were shocked to learn that Linda McMahon supports lowering the minimum wage,” said Jon Green, executive director of the Working Families Party, which announced its endorsement of Blumenthal today.

“Making low-wage workers poorer is her idea to improve the economy? That’s both foolish and cruel, and not something we’d expect from a serious candidate. We should all be outraged.”

“It is outrageous that multi-millionaire McMahon is open to reducing the minimum wage, and mind boggling that she doesn’t even know how much it is. We have said from the very beginning that multi-millionaire McMahon is not looking out for the working people of this state and she certainly proved it again today,” said John Olsen, Connecticut AFL-CIO president. “Multi-millionaire McMahon doesn’t have to try and live on $8.25 an hour like working families across Connecticut do. Maybe if she stepped out of her gilded lifestyle for a moment she would stop trying to jam the bottom line of big businesses into the back of working families.”

At My Left Nutmeg, ctblogger paid attention to the fact that McMahon appeared to put McDonald’s in the category of small businesses:

LM: In the new health care law, we’re looking at a lot of mandates that are going to come into play for small businesses and we ought to not put them into effect because they can not afford them at this time.

Look at what McDonalds said this morning. McDonalds just said this morning that they just said that they may not cover their employees because it’s just too expensive and they might just pay the fine. Those are the kinds of mandates that are made without the understanding of the consequences on businesses…

I addressed the McDonald’s story earlier today.

In the 1992 election, George H.W. Bush was hounded by an incident at a National Grocers Association convention in Orlando, Florida, where he appeared not to know what a supermarket scanner was. Connecticut Democrats will try to paint McMahon as similarly out of touch with the concerns of working Americans.

photo: ChicagoGeek via Flickr

My first reaction to this story about McDonald’s potentially dropping its health insurance coverage for employees was to ask myself, “McDonald’s offers health coverage to employees?” The answer is yes. They offer really bad health coverage.

Trade groups representing restaurants and retailers say low-wage employers might halt their coverage if the government doesn’t loosen a requirement for “mini-med” plans, which offer limited benefits to some 1.4 million Americans.

The requirement concerns the percentage of premiums that must be spent on benefits.

While many restaurants don’t offer health coverage, McDonald’s provides mini-med plans for workers at 10,500 U.S. locations, most of them franchised. A single worker can pay $14 a week for a plan that caps annual benefits at $2,000, or about $32 a week to get coverage up to $10,000 a year.

That’s about $1,600 a year for coverage you can’t really use if you actually get sick. As most people would try to avoid that annual limit by deferring care, this sounds more like a profit center for McDonald’s than a health insurance plan. Given that McDonald’s line workers aren’t making much more than the minimum wage, once the exchanges are up, the basic plan would almost certainly provide better value than the mini-med nothingburger, and would cost less. So who’s exactly threatening who, here? These mini-med plans are gone after 2014, anyway. [cont'd.]

McDonald’s does want to cut people off between 2011 and 2014, leaving them in pretty dire straits although the majority of McDonald’s line workers under 26 could go on their parents’ plans . The company doesn’t want to comply with the medical loss ratio, which forces that 80-85% of premiums be spent on actual medical care because that would mean less profit for their insurer . They’ve determined that such an MLR is unrealistic for mini-med plans. Yeah, that’s because mini-med plans are unrealistic about the cost of medical care.

Some are calling this an unintended consequence of the health care law. Actually, it looks quite intended to me. If your company doesn’t want to pay for decent health care for your employees, the company can pay a fee and the workers can go on the exchanges. There are problems with the exchanges, of course, but compared to these mini-med non-plans, they look pretty OK to me.

What this shows is that the employer-based insurance system will die out within a couple decades. The employers are looking for any excuse to drop coverage, and will pay the associated fees as part of the cost of doing business – a much cheaper cost than skyrocketing health premiums. This means that the initial estimates for the exchanges and the subsidies necessary to provide affordable coverage are all out of whack. The subsidies will cost much more than expected and more people will need to use the exchanges, or expanded Medicaid. Which is why Republicans are attacking the funding streams as a way to strangle the law.

A push by Republicans to scuttle the U.S. health overhaul by denying funding through the House’s constitutional control over appropriations is gaining momentum.

Representative Todd Tiahrt of Kansas, the senior Republican on the House Appropriations subcommittee, said the “defunding” strategy “is a very serious idea” that’s gaining support among party members emboldened by the response of constituents in their home areas, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Oct. 4 issue. “There is definitely going to be a run at it,” he said in a telephone interview [...]

John Murray, a spokesman for Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the second-ranking Republican in the House, said that if control of the House flips, possible targets for defunding may be the insurance exchanges, the new agency set up under the law to compare different drugs’ effectiveness and any added staffing that may be sought to manage coverage expansions.

By vetoing spending measures that don’t include money for the law, Obama may set up a situation similar to the 1995 government shutdown triggered by a spending dispute between the then Republican-controlled Congress and Democratic President Bill Clinton.

The simplicity of a single-payer system like Medicare is that everyone gets affected by de-funding, regardless of income or class or political power. Poor people, in general, will be using these exchanges. And they will face an adversary in Congress determined to cut the funding for them. They don’t have a lot of political power, and as a result they’ll have a hard time keeping the subsidy levels. So those percentages of income in the law? You can see those as tentative as well. In fact, you can see this whole thing toppling before it even begins.

UPDATE: McDonald’s probably won’t drop their coverage in the near-term. In the long-term, I certainly hope they do!

House Passes 9/11 Health Care Bill

photo: spike55151

This is, as Gerry McEntee might say, “Bullshit!” Via Ben Smith, McEntee praises Rahm on the Chief of Staff’s way out of DC and endorses him for mayor of Chicago:

“If I lived in Chicago, I would vote for him for mayor,” said Gerald McEntee, the president of the giant public workers union AFSCME.

McEntee clashed with Emanuel over elements of health care legislation and has at times been a critic of the Obama Administration from the left. But while many in his wing of the party remain bitter at Emanuel — and plan to campaign against him for mayor of Chicago — McEntee said that Emanuel’s record was, on balance “for progressive forces and ideas.” [...]

McEntee also recalled backing Emanuel’s 2006 efforts to take back the House of Representatives.

“For our aid and participation in that effort, particularly working close with him, he on two different occasions sent me a cheesecake from Eli’s,” McEntee said, referring to the Chicago eatery and adding that the aid had not amounted to “coordination.”

Anyone know what kind of presence AFSCME has in Chicago? Cause then this would make sense.

Finally, it appears as though McEntee doesn’t want to be left out of the “buck up” chorus of late.

Asked for a message about Rahm to skeptical allies on the left, McEntee echoed Joe Biden: “Suck it up.”

Come on, what is it? It’s bullshit!

Fuckin’ AFSCME.

photo: El Tekolote flickr

Privately, the closed wallets of Democratic billionaires like George Soros and Peter Lewis is all that the poobahs of the DC fundraising world have been talking about for weeks. But now it’s hit the New York Times:

Many wealthy Democratic patrons, who in the past have played major roles financing outside groups to help elect the party’s candidates, are largely sitting out these crucial midterm elections.

Democratic donors like George Soros, the bête noire of the right, and his fellow billionaire Peter B. Lewis, who each gave more than $20 million to Democratic-oriented groups in the 2004 election, appear to be holding back so far.

“Mr. Soros believes that he can be most effective by funding groups that promote progressive policy outcomes in areas such as health care, the environment and foreign policy,” said an adviser, Michael Vachon. “So he has opted to fund those activities.”

I personally can’t wait till the White House press office releases Obama’s speech to millionaires in Greenwich calling Soros and Lewis “ungrateful whiners.”

The donors’ reluctance stems from a variety of factors, including pessimism about the party’s prospects in November, but also President Obama’s strong condemnations of this kind of independent activity, both during the 2008 campaign and after he was elected.

For those who would like a translation of this rather cryptic passage, it refers to the fact that after Obama got the party nomination in 2008, the campaign’s finance director, Steve Hildebrand, called around to big donors and shut down independent expenditure operations. In part because they felt that Progressive Media, the largest of them, was staffed with too many people who had been Clinton supporters. But they also wanted to control all the money through the campaign directly. In August 2008, Hildebrand reversed himself, calling donors and telling them it was okay to donate to 527s, after the campaign started getting hammered by GOP independent expenditures. Obama campaign insiders later said that calling the big donors and telling them not to fund the IE’s was the “biggest mistake” they made.

Somewhere, Tom Mattzzie is laughing uncontrollably.

For Mr. Soros, who was also a big donor in 2006 and 2008, it is a matter of being more focused on pushing to get the policy outcomes he wants than on the electoral process, Mr. Vachon said.

Two of George Soros’s biggest issues are torture and weed. He’s been called “the Daddy Warbucks of drug legalization,” and shortly after Obama took office his Open Society Institute started pushing for a commission to investigate America’s use of torture since 9/11. Obama and Harry Reid poured cold water on the idea of a torture commission, and the administration “firmly opposes marijuana legalization.”

The attention of Mr. Lewis, chairman of Progressive Insurance, also appears to be elsewhere this year. Jennifer Frutchy, who advises Mr. Lewis on his philanthropy, said he was focused at the moment on “building progressive infrastructure and marijuana reform.”

“That’s just where his head is right now,” Ms. Frutchy said.

Two billionaires — and the majority of those under age 29 — enthusiastically support marijuana legalization. Maybe appointing former Clinton Drug Czar Rahm Emanuel to be Chief of Staff, the guy who threatened doctors with jail time for prescribing marijuana to their patients, was not the swiftest move. [cont'd.]

For donors, there is certainly an element of fatigue from giving cycle after cycle, as well as an economic squeeze brought on by the recession, the operatives said. But some more ideological donors are also upset that the Obama administration has not been more aggressive in pushing a liberal agenda.

Translation: Gay men, pro-choice women and environmentalists are probably the three biggest issue-based donor groups for the Democratic Party, and all three are absolutely ripshit at the way the Democrats have squandered their majorities. They’re also furious at the veal pen outfits that collaborated with the Democrats and gave them cover for their actions and have cut them off, too. Guess that weekly invite to the Common Purpose meeting turned out not to be such a hot ticket after all.

Labor unions are still promising to spend large sums of money backing Democrats. But they are not keeping up at this point with the flood of money going to Republican-leaning organizations.

So, let’s see if I have this straight. After the unions put hundreds of millions into getting Obama elected, and they get played on EFCA, the Democrats lay the blame off on ConservaDem Senators like Blanche Lincoln. So the unions spend $10 million trying to send a message to Lincoln, working within the Democratic party to support a primary opponent.

When Lincoln wins, “senior White House officials” are instantly calling journalists to taunt the unions as “absolute idiots” who “just flushed $10 million of their members’ money down the toilet on a pointless exercise.” Which creates huge problems for unions at the local level when it comes to putting money into political races in the future because members are always dubious about such outlays to begin with.

Then Robert Menendez, head of the DSCC, sends out a memo cheering Lincoln’s victory over “special interests in Washington” — the unions. Chuck Schumer goes on to the floor of the Senate and applauds Lincoln for “fighting Wall Street with one hand, and unions with the other.” Nonetheless, Menendez says he expects labor’s “support, you know, financially” in “all of our races across the country.”

The Democrats could have passed legislation that would have doubled union membership by now. They didn’t.

What could possibly have gone wrong with this scenario? I have no idea.

Big donors from Wall Street, including hedge fund executives and investment bankers, are also angry at the administration.

Sucking up to our Wall Street overlords while dog whistling to your base is not as easy as the GOP makes it look.

It also appears, however, that Republicans have outmaneuvered their Democratic counterparts since the Citizens United decision. They have taken advantage of Democratic broadsides against the ruling, which have inevitably had an effect on the attitudes of Democratic donors.

Mr. Obama devoted one of his weekly radio addresses this month to the effect he said untamed special interests were having on the midterm election. “We can see for ourselves how destructive to our democracy this can become,” he said. “We see it in the flood of deceptive attack ads sponsored by special interests using front groups with misleading names.”

Several Democratic strategists said the White House’s denunciations had made entreaties to prospective donors trickier.

So, the President is out there saying that the post-Citizens United IE’s are “politics at its worst,” and that the decision “gave special interests the power to spend without limit — and without public disclosure — to run ads in order to influence elections.” Why wouldn’t big Democratic donors want to jump right in and have that thrown at them? I dunno. You tell me.

Belatedly, some additional Democratic third-party efforts are shaping up. An organization called Commonsense Ten is emerging as a conduit for large checks directed toward Senate races and recently went up on the air with television advertisements in Missouri and Washington State.

“Belatedly.” Yeah, because nobody could’ve seen this coming.

Over all, though, the group is talking about spending, along with its partner organizations, about $5 million, with commitments from donors so far for about half of that.

In contrast, American Crossroads and its affiliate, Crossroads GPS, the biggest Republican-oriented group involved in Senate races, has said it is well on its way to raising $50 million for this election.

What if someone had had the foresight to anticipate the impact of the highly unpopular Citizens United decision, and used their party’s majorities in Congress to pass legislation that would have made it difficult for big corporations to hide political money in the Chamber of Commerce or Karl Rove’s $50 million independent expenditure operation without disclosure? What if there was a party that had gone to the mat trying to control corporate influence over politics rather than trying to exploit it, and given themselves at the very least a solid campaign issue for 2010?

The bigger problem for the Democrats, however, is not that Lewis and Soros are sitting it out — it’s that Lewis and Soros are considered “lead donors.” Where they go, other donors follow. If they decide to sit it out, so will others.

The complaints that Soros and Lewis have are the same ones expressed by all those hippies that Robert Gibbs, Joe Biden, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have been punching. It’s a malaise felt by the entire progressive base, who can’t be spurred into action by being told to “buck up.”

I’ll tell you one thing, though. As pissed off as people are, it’s going to be nothing compared to the rage that will be unleashed if the Catfood Commission’s recommendations to cut Social Security benefits gets passed — and Alice Rivlin says the “stars are aligned” for it to happen. They could snap the spine of the Democratic party completely with that one.

...for votes. photo: anujraj

Eager to get home to campaigning, Congress completed a pre-election session with few pieces of legislation and big questions on topics like the Bush tax cuts. Let’s take a look at what happened on the final day:

• The intelligence authorization bill passed the House, and now goes to the President for the first time since 2004. The President’s advisers have indicated he’ll sign it. The compromise measure affords Congress and the GAO some more oversight over intelligence agencies. Marcy has her assessment here.

• The continuing resolution to fund the government through December 3 passed both chambers late last night. The bill keeps the lights on at government agencies and includes very little new spending other than a $624 million bit of nuclear pork for Jon Kyl meant to grease the skids for the new START treaty, which will apparently get a vote in the lame duck session. The Interior Department also got a bit more money for inspectors of oil rigs, in the wake of the BP disaster. But other add-ons, like money for Pell Grants, the TANF Emergency Fund, and the Cobell-Pigford II black farmers settlement, were kept out of the bill.

• A bill that would force high duties on any imports from countries that manipulate their currency, targeted specifically at China, passed the House 348-79, with more Republicans in favor than opposed. Whether the Senate will take up a version of this, or whether the President supports it, is unclear, but the bill certainly gives leverage to the White House, if they choose to use it, in negotiations with China over allowing the renminbi to appreciate.

• In addition to delaying action on the Bush tax cuts, the House declined to move a child nutrition bill promoted by First Lady Michelle Obama. House liberals, led by Jim McGovern D-MA , could not see their way clear to using food stamp cuts to pay for more generous school lunches. “The way you are going to pay for a child nutrition bill is by dipping into people’s food stamps? Give me a break,” McGovern said.

• NASA Authorization wrapped up, which extended the life of the space shuttle program by a year. The President will sign the measure. Also, Congress will rename a mountain in Alaska after Ted Stevens.

• The 9/11 health workers bill, providing health care and compensation to those sickened while helping to clean up Ground Zero, finally passed the House, but its future in the Senate is uncertain.

• Janet Yellen and Sarah Bloom Raskin finally got confirmed by the Senate as members of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. Peter Diamond, another nominee, will have to wait until the lame duck session. The confirmations were part of a large deal, where some nominees got to move through the Senate in exchange for Democrats holding pro forma sessions so President Obama could not make any recess appointments. The 54 nominees confirmed included 12 ambassadors, 11 U.S. Marshals, 6 U.S. attorneys and one district court judge. Basically, Mitch McConnell threatened to send everyone back to the White House:

Republican Leader Mitch McConnell R-Ky. had threatened to send Obama’s most controversial nominees back to the president if Democrats did not agree to schedule pro-forma sessions, according to a senior GOP aide.

Senate rules give McConnell this power.

That would have forced the president to resubmit the nominees to the Senate and Democrats to start their confirmation processes including hearings all over again.

That’s about it.

more news from Today in Palestine:

[if gte mso 9]>--> Land and Property Theft and Destruction/Ethnic Cleansing
Palestinians may continue talks if construction limited to settlement blocs
US envoy Mitchell meets Palestinian president Abbas in Ramallah as part of American, international effort to save peace talks; PLO Executive Committee to convene Thursday to discuss negotiations.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3962220,00.html

Palestinians expected to leave direct talks
After giving Netanyahu an extension of several days to stop the renewed building in the settlements, the Palestinian leadership is expected to decide to cut off contact on Saturday.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/palestinians-expected-to-leave-direct-talks-1.316446?localLinksEnabled=false

Abbas aides defiant on settlement freeze ahead of Mitchell meet
President Barack Obama's emissary, George Mitchell, is making a secretive last-minute attempt to rescue Mideast peace negotiations
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/abbas-aides-defiant-on-settlement-freeze-ahead-of-mitchell-meet-1.316416?localLinksEnabled=false

Erekat calls on EU, US to enforce settlement halt
JERICHO Ma'an -- Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat called on the US and EU officials to push Israel to extend its settlement construction moratorium during meetings on Wednesday.  Settlement activity in both the West Bank and East Jerusalem must be stopped,and the peace process given the chance it deserves, Erekat stressed in separate meetings with US consul general in Jerusalem Daniel Rubinstein and the EU representative to Palestine Christian Berger.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=319422

Obama in personal appeal to Netanyahu: Extend settlement freeze for two months
Netanyahu inclined to reject Obama's offer, which includes string of security incentives, citing lack of political support.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/obama-in-personal-appeal-to-netanyahu-extend-settlement-freeze-for-two-months-1.316450?localLinksEnabled=false

EU's Ashton: Settlement freeze can urge Palestinians to resume talks
Comments by EU foreign policy chief come following her announcement of a surprise visit to Israel, PA in another attempt to restart stalled negotiations.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/eu-s-ashton-settlement-freeze-can-urge-palestinians-to-resume-talks-1.316407?localLinksEnabled=false

Mitchell presses Israel to halt settlement construction
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Washington's Mideast envoy on Wednesday was trying to wring an agreement out of Israel to bar new West Bank settlement construction and put foundering peace talks back on track.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=119847

Levin: White House pushing 60-day settlement freeze extension
Senior White House officials told a group of Jewish lawmakers Wednesday morning that the Obama administration is pushing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to extend the now-lapsed settlement building moratorium for 60 days as one way to allow Israeli-Palestinian peace talks to continue, said Sen. Carl Levin D-MI in an exclusive interview with The Cable.
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/09/29/levin_white_house_pushing_60_day_settlement_freeze_extension

Barghouthi: Israeli higher court ruling racist
MP Mustafa Al-Barghouthi said that the Israeli higher court ruling allowing expulsion of tens of Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah was a "serious, racist" decision.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz

The unorthodox Israeli settlement leader - who isn't even a settler
Naftali Bennett, who lives in an affluent suburb of Tel Aviv, is a driving force behind Netanyahu's decision not to extend the Israeli settlement freeze.
http://rss.csmonitor.com/%7Er/feeds/world/%7E3/z8-pXKsDzEo/The-unorthodox-Israeli-settlement-leader-who-isn-t-even-a-settler

Freeze was meaningless, Philip Weiss
Great precise journalism by Matti Friedman of AP on how the settlement freeze was really just a slowdown, and hardly a slowdown, given the dropping of the freeze. "A few projects were delayed," says Hagit Ofran of Peace Now. Let's hope more mainstream news organizations pick up on this insult to American policy and intelligence.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/09/freeze-was-meaningless.html

Activism/Solidarity/Boycott, Sanctions & Divestment
UJ ultimatum to Israeli university
The South African University of Johannesburg UJ senate has warned to end its relationship with Israeli university Ben-Gurion BGU unless certain conditions are met.  In a statement released on Wednesday, the South African university's highest academic body agreed that the Ben-Gurion University would have to work with Palestinian universities on research projects and stop its "direct and indirect support for the Israeli military and the occupation".  "The conditions are that the memorandum of understanding governing the relationship between the two institutions be amended to include Palestinian universities chosen with the direct involvement of UJ," the university said in a statement.  "Additionally, UJ will not engage in any activities with BGU that have direct or indirect military implications, this to be monitored by UJ's senate academic freedom committee.  "Should these conditions not be met within six months, the memorandum of understanding will automatically lapse on April 1 2011," UJ said.
http://english.aljazeera.net//news/africa/2010/09/201092920223262366.html

Nilin journalist "determined to film"
Hamoudeh Amireh participates in the resistance against Israel's settlements through his documentation of the grassroots struggle in the occupied West Bank village of Nilin. Jody McIntyre interviews for The Electronic Intifada.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11543.shtml?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+electronicIntifadaPalestine+%28Electronic+Intifada+%3A+Palestine+News%29

Gazans rally against buffer zone
GAZA CITY Ma'an -- Marking the 10th anniversary of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, Gaza's Popular Committee organized a rally to voice dissent against Israel's separation wall in the West Bank and no-go zone in Gaza.  Marching toward the border area, through an Israeli-declared "buffer zone" that reaches up to one kilometer in width according to UN surveys, demonstrators said several young men managed to install a Palestinian flag on a gate in the border fence.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=319330

Jordan unions urge boycott of cycling event with Israel AFP
AFP - Jordan's trade unions called on Wednesday for a boycott of a cycling tour for environmental awareness, saying the event involving Jordan, Israel and the Palestinians was really a cover to normalise ties with the Jewish state.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mideast/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100929/wl_mideast_afp/cyclingjordanisraelpalestiniansenvironment

Nobel Peace Laureate Still Detained By Israel
Nobel Peace Laureate, Mairead Maguire, is still imprisoned by Israel and awaiting deportation from the country.
http://www.imemc.org/article/59499

Rosengarten, sole American on Jewish boat, says she was asked to prove that she was Jewish, Philip Weiss
We have received two accounts of the treatment of passengers and crew on the Jewish boat to Gaza. The first is from the American passenger on the boat, Lillian Rosengarten of New York, a former refugee from Nazi Germany. The second is from Nurit Peled-Elhanan, an Israeli married to Rami Elhanan, one of the passengers. Rosengarten...
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/09/deported-humiliated-american-on-jewish-boat-to-gaza-says-she-was-asked-to-prove-that-she-was-jewish.html

#BDS: 6,000 Irish shoppers demand supermarket stops stocking Israeli goods
Today, Thursday 29th July 2010, at 1pm, the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign IPSC delivered a petition to Dunnes Stores signed by 6,000 shoppers across Ireland. The petition demands that Dunnes Stores stop stocking Israeli products, until Israel respects Palestinian rights and international law. Present at the handing-in were Brendan Archbold, the trade union official at the centre of the 1980s Dunnes strike when workers refused to handle South African goods, Freda Hughes IPSC National Chairperson, Aengus O'Snodaigh of Sinn Fein along with supporters of the campaign and members of both the Palestinian and South African communities in Ireland.
http://youthanormalization.blogspot.com/2010/09/bds-6000-irish-shoppers-demand.html

#BDS: Israeli Occupation to Evergreen Divestment
When: Oct 7, 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Where: The Evergreen State College - Seminar II, E 1105,
Join a discussion and talk on the history and aims of Israel’s occupation over Palestinian land and people, with a focus on the injustices produced by Israeli settlements, land theft and violations of international law.The Conflict Over Palestine and the Imperative of Justice – a talk by Steve Niva, TESC Faculty Middle East Studies.  Join a long history of Palestinian resistance to occupation and the recent turn to global civil society and non-violent strategies of boycott, divestment and sanctions BDS , which have appeared on the Evergreen campus during the past year.  Sponsored by TESC Divest.
http://youthanormalization.blogspot.com/2010/09/bds-israeli-occupation-to-evergreen.html

#BDS: BDS Goes South
In a landmark event held in New Delhi on 22-23 September 2010, the conference “A Just Peace for Palestine” ended with a clear call for BDS as a strategy for realizing justice for Palestinians. The conference was co-organized by the Palestinian BDS National Committee BNC , the Committee for Solidarity with Palestine, the All India Peace and Solidarity Organization, and the recently established Indian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. The conference ended with a resolution that called upon “the Indian government to end its military ties with Israel and return to its earlier commitment to the cause of the Palestinian people.” The conference also affirmed that “the world must declare that Israel is an apartheid state. It must call for global boycott and sanctions on Israel as long as it continues its illegal occupation of Palestine and its apartheid policies.” The resolution appealed to “people in India to join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions BDS campaign as a show of solidarity with the Palestine people and their just struggle.” A plan of action was announced, in which several steps to show solidarity with Palestinians were outlined, particularly the launching of BDS campaigns and other measures by people’s action groups in the Asian region.
http://youthanormalization.blogspot.com/2010/09/bds-bds-goes-south.html

#BDS: SCORPIONS: “Wind of Change” for Justice or Apartheid?: An Open Letter from PACBI
Dear Scorpions,  Occupied Ramallah, 28 September 2010 -- The Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel PACBI has learned from various sources that you are scheduled to perform in Tel Aviv on October 4, 2010.  Your performance in Israel was only recently announced on your official tour website. Prior to this, when we contacted your agents and lawyers to inquire about your performance we received ambiguous responses. Your now scheduled performance violates the appeal of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions BDS movement [1] which urges people of conscience throughout the world to isolate Israel until it ends its colonial and apartheid oppression against the Palestinian people, as was done against the apartheid regime in South Africa. We urge you, as a band known for its commitment to support the “wind of change” and the falling of the Berlin Wall, not to perform in apartheid Israel that is building a far more cruel and illegal [2] wall on occupied Palestinian land. 
http://www.odsg.org/co/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2139:scorpions-wind-of-change-for-justice-or-apartheid&catid=28:boycott&Itemid=64

Nationwide Launch Of Film On Palestinian-Israeli Nonviolence Struggle
Oklahoma City, OK—EthnoGraphic Media EGM marked the United Nation’s International Day of Peace by kicking off a 12-day launch of its latest documentary, Little Town of Bethlehem.  The standing-room-only event at Boston College was hosted by the Faith, Peace and Justice Program in the Department of Sociology. The film director, Jim Hanon was interviewed on FOX Americas News HQ with Shannon Bream on Sunday September 26th.  Fox News anchor Shannon Bream introduced the film as a documentary that imagines peace in the Middle East.  Showing several clips from the film, Bream and Hanon discussed the need to reach people, especially college age people with the message of nonviolence.
http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8842&Itemid=1

The Siege Gaza & West Bank /Humanitarian/Restriction of Movement/Human Rights/Racism
Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory 23-29 September 2010
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/JALR-89SHXS?OpenDocument&RSS20=02-P

In Gaza: Israel Opens One Border Crossing, Keep The Other Closed
Israeli authorities ordered the Karem Abu Salem Kerem Shalom border crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip to open, but kept Al-Mentar Erez crossing closed for the entry of goods.
http://www.imemc.org/article/59502

In my Cairo hotel, I meet a family that is desperate to get to Gaza, Susan Johnson
Mondoweiss correspondent Susan Johnson of Doylestown, Pa., has been stuck in Cairo, trying to get into Gaza, where two organizations have requested her services. Her latest report.  Here I sit in my cheap little Cairo hotel...people coming and going, some more interesting than others....a mother in her sixties with two adult sons she constantly berates...barges into their rooms without knocking...I guess they should be happy they aren't all in the same room with her.. Lots of backpackers stopping in for a shower and the sights in Cairo......A group of three stands out...two gals and a guy from Australia ...divers....on a nine month jaunt around the world....... a 56 year old woman from Holland testing out a relationship with a man from Egypt.....she met him on the internet........a very beautiful woman in her thirties.....five inch heels...tight jeans...leaves the hotel around 11PM, returns around 3AM.....she sleeps late into the afternoon.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/09/in-my-cairo-hotel-i-meet-a-family-that-is-desperate-to-get-to-gaza.html

Violence/Aggression & Provocations
Man Wounded After Being Rammed By Settler’s Vehicle
Palestinian medical sources reported on Wednesday at night that a Palestinian man from Nablus, in the northern part of the West Bank, was moderately wounded after being rammed by the a speeding settlers’ vehicle.
http://www.imemc.org/article/59507
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=319449

Father says son assaulted by Hebron settlers
HEBRON Ma'an -- A group of at least four young men from the Kiryat Arba settlement attacked a young boy east of Hebron on Wednesday night. Jawdat Al-Ja'bari said that 4 settlers attacked his son Baha while he was on his way home. He said the teen was left with bruises on his hands, chest, and torso and was taken to hospital to check for internal bleeding.  Al-Ja'bari said he filed a complaint against the settlers with Israeli police, who did not respond to phone calls seeking comment.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=319529

Palestinian Worker Wounded By Explosive Dropped By Israeli Army
Medical sources in the Gaza Strip reported that a Palestinian man was wounded by unexploded ordinance, apparently dropped by the Israeli army during the war on Gaza last year.
http://www.imemc.org/article/59508

One Palestinian Wounded By Israeli Military Fire In Gaza
One Palestinian resident was wounded by Israeli military fire, on Wednesday morning, as he was working at one of the evacuated settlements in the Gaza Strip, local sources reported.
http://www.imemc.org/article/59504

Israeli border police break into homes and demand to be served coffee in Silwan, Joseph Dana
On Tuesday evening, Israeli border police and special Yasma forces rampaged through the East Jerusalem city of Silwan. Their presence on the ground was due to unrest that has been engulfing the city since last week’s murder of a 35 year old Palestinian at the hands of a private settler security guard. Recently, I was on the ground and witnessed soldiers urinating and defecating on the roofs of private Palestinian homes, throwing bottles water and beer on to Palestinians pedestrians  on the street and breaking windows left and right.  From the ground I tweeted:  “Soldiers are trashing roof tops with urine and feces in Silwan. We are cleaning up and putting the waste in front of the settler house”  "The police have no shame at all. They have broken a window now and poked their heads into the house demanding coffee"  “They are also throwing bottles from roofs on to the main streets. The border police are doing this that is”  Below is the first in a series of videos that document these petty, routine and all to familiar crimes of occupation which the Israeli army commits on a daily basis.
http://josephdana.com/2010/09/israeli-border-police-break-into-homes-and-demand-to-be-served-coffee-in-silwan/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=israeli-border-police-break-into-homes-and-demand-to-be-served-coffee-in-silwan

Israeli Settlers Write Slogans Call For Mosque Demolition In Nablus
Israeli extremists settlers called, on thursday, for the demolition of a mosque in the West Bank village of Burin, near Nablus.
http://www.imemc.org/article/59510

Unrest continues after East Jerusalem killing
SILWAN, occupied East Jerusalem IPS - Tension, the twisted carcasses of gutted vehicles, buses with smashed windows, smoldering dumpsters, streets riddled with rubber-coated steel bullets and empty cartridge cases, tear gas and air thickened with black soot from burning tires marked the beginning of the fifth day Monday of continuous demonstrations in East Jerusalem.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11542.shtml?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+electronicIntifadaPalestine+%28Electronic+Intifada+%3A+Palestine+News%29

Israeli Military Raids Houses In Jerusalem
The Israeli military launched large-scale raids of houses, Wendesday morning, in several neighbourhoods in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Silwan, south of al-Aqsa mosque.
http://www.imemc.org/article/59501

Detainees
Detentions made in Al-Aqsa following settler visit
JERUSALEM Ma’an -- Israeli police detained several men from the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Thursday, following reports that settlers had entered the area and sparked anger.  Minister of Waqf and religious affairs in Gaza Taleb Abu Sha’ar sounded the alarm shortly before noon, saying Jewish worshipers had made the provocative move of entering the Haram Ash-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, where the mosque is located within the Old City of Jerusalem.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=319584

Ansar Al-Asra: Israel kidnaps about 500 Palestinian children every year
Ansar Al-Asra, a human rights organization, reported Thursday that Israel kidnaps about 500 Palestinian prisoners under age 18 every year and there are still 310 of them in its jails.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz

Report: 70,000 Palestinians jailed since intifada
The PSC issued Thursday on the tenth anniversary of the Aqsa intifada a comprehensive report which found that Israeli authorities have since the intifada arrested 70,000 Palestinians.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6

War Criminals & their Palestinian and American enablers
Silwan studies Israeli use of expired weapons
JERUSALEM Ma'an -- Silwan residents will launch an investigation into the use of expired and oxidized tear-gas canisters by the Israeli military which locals say pose health risks.  A news conference was held at the Silwan protest tent in East Jerusalem on Wednesday, where a local committee said a preliminary investigation had been undertaken after residents reported an increase in symptoms of fatigue, high fever, vomiting, and shortness of breath in the wake of recent clashes in the neighborhood.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=319515

U.N. rights body backs critique of Gaza flotilla raid Reuters
Reuters - The United Nations Human Rights Council Wednesday endorsed a fiercely critical report on Israel's raid on a Gaza aid flotilla in May but stopped short of pressing for an international criminal inquiry.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mideast/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100929/wl_nm/us_israel_rights

UN report: Israeli interception of the Gaza flotilla was illegal, Adam Horowitz
More from the UN report into the Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Notice that the report also makes clear that the entire Israeli blockade of Gaza is illegal as a form of collective punishment. The following appears on pages 14 and 15 of the UN report.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/09/un-report-israeli-interception-of-the-gaza-flotilla-was-illegal.html

Palestinian Rights Groups Slam Gaza Vote at UN
Palestinian human rights groups have condemned a U.N. resolution backed by their own government that delays action on a report alleging war crimes during last year's Gaza conflict.
http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=a3bb368afb913a0228a7041983d46f22

PA decision at UN a "betrayal of Gaza victims' rights"
As members of the Palestinian Council of Human Rights Organizations, we strongly condemn the decision of the Palestinian Authority PA to support a UN Human Rights Council resolution that accords further time for ineffective domestic investigations, thus effectively failing to pursue accountability for crimes committed during the Israeli offensive code-named "Operation Cast Lead."
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11545.shtml?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+electronicIntifadaPalestine+%28Electronic+Intifada+%3A+Palestine+News%29

Palestinian Authority Recommends Whitewashing Gaza War Crimes, Steve Lendman
Who do they serve anyway? It's clear from the sham peace talks and a new development. The Mahmoud Abbas-controlled Palestinian Authority PA wants Israel absolved of accountability for Cast Lead crimes of war and against humanity. No matter that conclusive evidence exposed them, the result of the IDF's 23-day day rampage, killing over 1,400, injuring over 5,000, many severely, and practically leveling wide areas of Gaza, affecting mostly civilian and non-military related targets. Besides other investigations, two UN Human Rights Council HRC ones unequivocally condemned Israel's lawlessness, each demanding accountability.
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/09/palestinian-authority-recommends.html

Once again, PA caves on Goldstone Report, Philip Weiss
Complete cave: The Palestinian Authority today acted in the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva to freeze the Goldstone Report, preventing it from going to the Security Council and International Criminal Court.    Raji Sourani of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights blasted the PA's action as a "grave mistake."
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/09/once-again-pa-caves-on-goldstone-report.html

More from Israel's Arab Helpers
Islamic Jihad: PA arrests West Bank leader
GAZA CITY Ma’an -- Palestinian Authority forces detained a member of Islamic Jihad on Thursday, the movement's Gaza branch said.  Khader Adnan was detained from his workplace in the town of Qabatiya in the Jenin district, a statement from the party said.  "Adnan has suffered medical troubles since his release from Israeli prisons in recent years," a movement said, calling for his immediate release.  According to the party, Adnan's detention was politically motivated.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=319523

ATFP Organizes Meetings With Zionist Groups: Hussein Ibish, Washington Concierge To The PNA
The ANTI-PALESTINE Task Force operating under the misnomer American Task Force on Palestine describes itself as an “independent voice for Palestinian-Americans and their supporters…”, but as was clearly demonstrated during Mahmoud Abbas’ recent visit to the US, when he couldn’t find any Palestinian community leader willing to meet with him, the overwhelming majority of Palestinian-Americans refuse to associate with the Palestinian National Authority or the ATFP which operates as the Washington public relations firm for the Israeli-sponsored, Western-funded, and American-supervised PNA.  During that visit Abbas did meet with representatives of 50 Zionist organizations.
http://ikhras.com/2010/09/atfp-organizes-meetings-with-zionist-groups-hussein-ibish-washington-concierge-to-the-pna/

"Peace" Talks/Political Developments
Egyptian FM 'not optimistic' over talks
BETHLEHEM Ma’an – Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Abu Al-Gheit said he did not expect peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to continue, "despite international efforts."  In a televised interview with the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya TV, Abu Al-Gheit said Wednesday that he believed Israel's refusal to extend a moratorium on settlement construction had stymied the peace process.  A final decision on the talks will be made after Arab foreign ministers meet in Lybia in the coming days, Abu Al-Gheit said, adding that he believed ministers would hold the "decisive meeting to discuss the negotiations which stopped before they even began."
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=319414

'Bibi understood and really appreciated how much we put together [in] this package ... but felt it just wasn't enough,'
"Dennis said, 'Bibi understood and really appreciated how much we put together [in] this package ... but felt it just wasn't enough,'" the lawmaker said, adding that the U.S. and Israel "are still talking."  Ross told the lawmakers that the United States and the Palestinians understood the "political necessity" for Netanyahu to honor his pledge not to extend a 10 month partial West Bank settlement freeze that expired last weekend, the lawmaker said. "Just as the United States and Israel understand the political necessity for [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas of honoring his pledge to secure a meaningful or significant settlement construction halt," he continued. By not taking quick action after the settlement freeze expired with no deal, Abbas "demonstrated Palestinian understanding" of Netanyahu's political position, the lawmaker said Ross conveyed....  The White House briefers "also talked about the conversations the U.S. is having with the Palestinians and the Arab nations such as Saudi Arabia to try to find a way to allow a compromise to be reached on the subject of settlement expansion in order to allow negotiations to continue," the lawmaker said....  Not specific to the message conveyed in the briefing, one Washington Middle East expert emphasized "that the main point is that the U.S. is waiting for an answer from Bibi, and it is not looking good right now."
http://www.politico.com/blogs/laurarozen/

Other News
Palestinians mark anniversary of second Intifada
It is ten years since the start of the second Intifada in the occupied Palestinian territories. The uprising claimed 5,500 Palestinian lives as well as more than 1,000 Isrealis. Al Jazeera talks to Ahmad Abed Rabbo, the young Palestinian who was part of President Yasser Arafat's presidential guard at the time of the fighting. This is his story.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4NOTFHBOwU&feature=youtube_gdata

Dubai police chief says Mossad behind death threats
Commander that led investigation into the killing of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh claims Israeli agents warned him he would be targeted.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/dubai-police-chief-says-mossad-behind-death-threats-1.316449
    
Syrian-occupied Golan Heights not to be under negotiation: FM
DAMASCUS, Sept. 28 Xinhua -- Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said Tuesday the Syrian-occupied Golan Heights are not to be under negotiation, the Syrian official SANA news agency reported.  Al-Moallem made the comments during his meeting with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in New York on the sidelines of the 65th UN General Assembly's meetings as they discussed Middle East issues, basically Mideast peace process and situation in Lebanon and Iraq.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-09/29/c_13534503.htm

Israel's electronic warfare capabilities
JERUSALEM, Sept. 29 UPI -- Israel's electronic warfare capabilities have been given a rare public airing.  The Israeli air force's Sky Crows squadrons, which on Sept. 6, 2007, deployed 10 F-15I fighter jets to attack Syria's purported nuclear reactor, built along the Euphrates River and modeled after the North Korean reactor in Yongbyon and financed with Iranian assistance, have spoken to the media, The Jerusalem Post reported Wednesday.
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2010/09/29/Israels-electronic-warfare-capabilities/UPI-70571285795313/

"Operation Orchard" was never publicly confirmed by Israel
Israel's reportedly used electronic warfare to neutralize Syria's air defense systems.  Pinhas Buhris, who served as director general of the Defense Ministry at the time, in discussing Israel in developing state-of-the-art electronic warfare capabilities, said at the time: "You need this kind of capability. You're not being responsible if you're not dealing with it. And, if you can build this kind of capability, the sky's the limit."  Israel's Sky Crows Squadron commander Lt. Col. Oren observed: "The current theater of operations for aircraft is challenged and threatened by advanced surface-to-air missile systems in enemy territory. Our objective is to activate our systems and to disrupt and neutralize the enemy's systems."
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2010/09/29/Israels-electronic-warfare-capabilities/UPI-70571285795313/

Analysis/Opinion/Human Interest
Pollard - "Common Sense and Impudence" Richard Sale
I was the reporter who broke the story of how the Israeli government was selling the pilfered Pollard material to the Eastern Bloc in return for increased emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union...
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2010/09/common-sense-and-impudence-richard-sale.html#more

Avigdor Lieberman’s UN Speech Shows the True Face of Israel
Yisrael Beiteinu’s strong third-place showing in Israel’s February 2009 elections for the Knesset was met with dread and disgust from many different quarters.  Avigdor Lieberman, the founder and leader of the far-right party and the current Foreign Minister, ran a campaign filled with fascist overtones as he called for “loyalty oaths” to be signed by Palestinian citizens of Israel.
http://alexbkane.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/avigdor-liebermans-un-speech-shows-the-true-face-of-israel/

Lieberman's vision is a reality
For the second time in as many weeks, Benjamin Netanyahu has been forced to issue a statement distancing himself from comments made by his hardline foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=17&article_id=119809

In NYT, Robt Wright dares to suggest that Palestinians should have a right to, unh, vote, Philip Weiss
Robert Wright of the New York Times is a great journalistic ally in the road ahead. Because he knows the story, because he understands that the current situation is oppressive, because he's in the mainstream, and because he couldn't really care less about Zionism. Today he has a pretty good piece about demanding a one-state solution as a means to a two-state solution. Though it is circumlocutory, its essence is that Palestinians should have a right to-- sit down-- vote. And he suggests very indirectly that BDS is the path. Good work. Onward. Remember, Wright is working in a den of Jewish nationalism, the MSM, so someone must bake him a cake with a hacksaw blade inside it, so that we might look forward to his continuing liberation from the militaristic and often-racist rationalizations of the status quo.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/09/in-nyt-robt-wright-dares-to-suggest-that-palestinians-should-have-a-right-to-unh-vote.html

Makovsky: Obama will give it up for Israel for a two-month freeze extension, Ira Glunts
According to a startling report in the Jerusalem Post, David Makovsky of the Washington Institute of Near East Policy told Israeli Army Radio that President Obama is asking read begging Prime Minister Netanyahu to accept a two-month temporary settlement freeze.  In exchange, Washington will promise never to bother Israel about freezing the settlements again and pledge to veto all UN peace initiatives for one year.  Among other concessions, Makovsky claims the deal includes American support for a long-term read permanent Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/09/makovsky-obama-will-give-it-up-for-israel-for-a-two-month-freeze-extension.html

Sailing into the storm, Philip Weiss
One of the most disturbing things about visiting Israel and Palestine is seeing the bifurcated reality. Political freedom and prosperity in Israel, despair and 60 years of no-rights right across the Green Line. Time Magazine brilliantly captured this separation in its cover story on Israelis making too much money to care about peace. Everything's in the bubble, the Palestinian situation is being contained, and this explains why, historically, people resort to violence. As Patrick Henry wrote in a quote Annie dug up , "Sir, we have done everything that could be done, to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament.... If we wish to be free, if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending... we must fight!"
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/09/sailing-into-the-storm.html

The Jewish boat and the ‘peace process’, Pamela Olson
As yet another boat—a Jewish one this time—is forcefully boarded by the Israeli navy while attempting to run the blockade of Gaza, a natural question for many Americans is: Why are boats still trying to run the blockade when Abbas and Netanyahu are in the middle of a peace process?  Let’s leave aside for the moment that the blockade, which imprisons 1.5 million people, destroys their economy, and denies them desperately-needed medical and educational resources, is an illegal form of collective punishment.  Let’s talk instead about the peace process. It’s fore-ordained to fail by virtually all knowledgeable experts. Why?
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/09/the-jewish-boat-and-the-peace-process.html

Palestinian group sells out to the lobby, MJ Rosenberg
This is hard to understand until one realizes that this is just an example of politicians acting like politicians i.e, with no regard for the people they claim to represent .  During their recent visits to the United States, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad made absolutely no headway with the Obama administration. Although the idea of negotiating with Netanyahu while he is building more settlements is ridiculous on its face, the administration allowed Israel to end the settlements freeze. It did say, however, that it was "disappointed" but, other than that, the White House had no criticism of Netanyahu. It's back to the policy of previous administrations: no criticism of Israel in even or odd numbered years.  So Fayyad and Abbas have decided that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Under the tutelage of the American Task Force On Palestine, they have decided to join up with the Jewish far right in this country.  Specifically, the ATFP is hooking up with The Israel Project, a fringe organization well to the right of AIPAC. The love affair began months ago but culminated at a dinner in New York during the recent visit which Fayyad, ATFP, and The Israel Project treated as their "coming out" party.  So what's wrong with Palestinians "reaching out" to Jews.
http://palestinenote.com/blogs/blogs/archive/2010/09/29/palestinian-group-sells-out-to-the-lobby.aspx

Strenger than Fiction / Political learnings for make benefit of understanding glorious nation of Israel
Israel after years of dedicated experimentation has developed the Glorious New Method of Government by Chaos. http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/strenger-than-fiction/strenger-than-fiction-political-learnings-for-make-benefit-of-understanding-glorious-nation-of-israel-1.316389

Peace Process to Nowhere, FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY
The Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot reports that President Obama begged Prime Minister Netanyahu to extend his settlement freeze in order to save the so-called peace talks.  As a quid pro quo, Obama is reported to have promised Netanyahu that 1 Israel could resume settlement construction if the peace negotiations failed to produce results and 2 that the United States would give Israel written assurances of its commitment to Israel’s security suggesting a formal peace treaty perhaps? .  Despite Obama’s desperation,  Netanyahu blew Obama off and allowed the so-called freeze to expire.   If, as is likely, this report is true, Israel has humiliated the United States once again -- a fact that will no doubt be deemed irrelevant by Israel’s shills on both sides of the aisle in Congress, not to mention the mainstream media.
http://www.counterpunch.com/spinney09302010.html

It's Not What You Say, it's How You Say it, Joharah Baker for MIFTAH
My mother used this line on me all the time when I was growing up. When I felt I had been done a grave injustice by my unfair parents – which was obviously every other day as a teenager – I would argue my point in rants and raves, flaying my arms and blaring in the highest decibel humanly possible. When the dust would finally settle, my mother would calmly advise me to choose my words carefully, lower my voice and get my point across – which she sometimes conceded was legitimate – in a way that would be well received on the other end. "It's not necessarily what you are saying," she would tell me. "It's how you say it."  I am reminded of that maxim frequently as I listen to Palestine's leaders defend our cause. In my opinion, there is no cause more just than that of Palestine's. International law is behind us, most of the world has rallied for the creation of a Palestinian state and many good minded, well-intentioned people have pledged their support and solidarity with us. Nonetheless, despite all of these positive factors, we are still stateless, misunderstood and accused of being intransigent, violent and uncooperative. In part, this is due to the unwavering support Israel gets from the United States, even when the former does not move in the exact direction the Americans would like them to. Given that the US is the only superpower left in the world, its word holds a mighty amount of weight and other countries follow suit if only for association.
http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=22644&CategoryId=13

Lebanon
House Passes 9/11 Health Care Bill