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On this day, 30 years ago, the soil of Lebanon was quenched with the blood of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese. It is said that chrysanthemums burst out of the earth at the place where martyrs’ blood flows. In the year 2012, however, no chrysanthemums are blooming in Sabra and Shatila. This bloody crime on the hands of the Israeli state, its US funder, its Lebanese proxy forces and the complicit Arab regimes that created the conditions for the massacre of 1982, is carefully skirted, quietly spun and wrapped in a cloak of silence. We are asked to forget our people or confuse the events surrounding their sudden disappearance; we are invited to debate these matters as a subject for narratives, disputes and counter narratives.Read the full article HERE:
by W. Finnerty Mon Jun 18, 2012 09:37
Motivated largely by a long-standing (and growing) belief that psychopaths (with “Iago” type personality disorders) have far, far too much influence at the present time in places such as the City of London, Wall Street, Westminster, and Washington, I yesterday sent an e-mail to Dr Anne Jeffers (Consultant Psychiatrist based in Ballinasloe, County Galway, Republic of Ireland) which made direct reference to the “Learning to become aware of the dangers of the ‘Iago’s of this world” comment at Sun Jun 17, 2012 10:24.
By “psychopath” I mean the kind of person who fits the following dictionary definition: “A person afflicted with a personality disorder characterised by a tendency to commit antisocial and sometimes violent acts, and with a failure to feel any guilt for such acts”: as, for example, relating to the antisocial “bailing out” of the bankers — at tax-payers expense — in connection with the bankers “derivatives” gambling debts (debts which may be in the region of quadrillions of Euros overall), and, for example, in relation to the “violence” aspect of this particular personality disorder, with all of the ongoing warmongering during the past year or so connected with places such as Libya, Syria, Israel, and Iran: warmongering which has the extremely dangerous potential (it seems to me) to suddenly develop into a major thermonuclear WW3 type confrontation involving NATO countries on one side, and Russia and China (together with some other large nations such as India perhaps) on the other.
On May 15, across the shatat and in the homeland, Palestinians marked the 64th anniversary of the Nakba of 1948 in a multitude of ways. We rallied, we held vigils, and we took a quiet moment to remember, reflect, and mourn. On this anniversary, we particularly honored our heroes in Israeli prisons, who conducted the longest, and one of the largest, hunger strikes in history. In our long march to liberation and return, it has always been our people, their undiminished courage, and their towering fortitude, that have carried our struggle through. We are honored to be Palestinian, proud of our people, and the nobility of our cause.It is therefore with grave concern that we issue this letter expressing our dismay at the continued disregard and disrespect for our struggle and our people by the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP), and its President, Ziad Asali.At this time of remembrance, two photos were widely circulated of Asali embracing Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren at a celebration of Israel’s independence hosted by the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC. While Palestinians were mourning the destruction of 531 of our villages, and the expulsion of nearly 800,000 of our people, Asali saw fit to attend a celebration of that moment, and shake the hands of a man whose task it is to silence us and defend the destruction of our homes, theft of our land, starvation of our prisoners, and elimination of our people.Indeed, this incident is merely the culmination of a long history of ATFP’s betrayal of our people. Since its inception in 2003, with Asali as its President, ATFP has consistently found itself the focus of the Palestinian community’s ire, and the organization’s history carries a string of resignations by one Board member after another in disgust. In the wake of Israel’s 2008-2009 war on Gaza, several Board members stepped down in protest of ATFP comments to CNN effectively absolving Israel of responsibility for its crimes. In his resignation letter to the Board, one member wrote:
“Mic check! We are the 99%. War benefits the 1%. Don’t bomb Iran! Use diplomacy not bombs!” Four Occupy AIPAC activists voices eruptedyesterday inside the AIPAC conference when Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who is pushing for a resolution which seeks to lower the threshold for the to US attack Iran, took the stage. An AIPAC delegate leaped over rows of chairs to pounce on the activists, choking one with his own tie. The People’s Microphone continued:“AIPAC wants war. We want peace.” More HERE:
"---The whole campaign has an Alice in Wonderland quality about it. Iran, which says it doesn't want nuclear weapons, is surrounded by nuclear-weapon states: the US – which also has forces in neighbouring Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as military bases across the region – Israel, Russia, Pakistan and India.Iran is of course an authoritarian state, though not as repressive as western allies such as Saudi Arabia. But it has invaded no one in 200 years. It was itself invaded by Iraq with western support in the 1980s, while the US and Israel have attacked 10 countries or territories between them in the past decade. Britain exploited, occupied and overthrew governments in Iran for over a century. So who threatens who exactly?---"
