PARADISE VALLEY, Ariz. — Yasmine Hafiz was passing through security at an airport near Washington several weeks ago when a federal agent stopped her. Something strange and metallic had shown up in her carry-on bag during screening. Now she needed to explain what the suspicious object was.

At 18, newly graduated from high school, Yasmine knew the drill all too well. A few years earlier, an immigration officer had demanded she present a visa to board a flight from Canada to her home in Arizona. It was as if, because she had dark skin and a Pakistani surname and was Muslim, she, an American citizen, still needed permission to enter her own country.

This time, the security agent began unpacking the carry-on bag until he found his quarry. It was a bronze disc plated with gold. “It’s a medal,” said Yasmine’s mother, Dilara, who was traveling with her. “It’s from the president.”

Yasmine had received the medallion in the White House the day before, when she was honored as one of 139 Presidential Scholars.

Humiliated in the wake of triumph, scrutinized, literally, for her achievement, Yasmine in that moment lived the very contradictions she had sought to address in a book. Called the “The American Muslim Teenager’s Handbook” (Acacia, 2007), written with her mother and her younger brother, Imran, and improbably modeled on that cheeky 1980s phenomenon “The Official Preppy Handbook,” the slender volume aspires to nothing less than bridging a cultural chasm.                                      More..................

Mohammed Daud Miraki, MA, MA, PhD - Rense.com

July 26, 2008 "He came from school asked me, "mother what can I eat, I am hungry". I had nothing for him. I told him "son I have no food for you. I can only boil some grass for you to eat." My son shook his head and said "I am no longer hungry." He went to his room. Some minutes passed he didn't come out. I went to the room to see what he was doing. I will never forget what I saw. I saw my sweet little boy hanged himself from the sealing. He hanged himself because he could no longer remain hungry." (A Mother from Faryab province, 2008) This mother is one of many enjoying the fruits of "democracy" in Afghanistan. There are thousands starving of hunger while others commit suicide. The people that commit suicide fall in two categories. The first category includes parents that commit suicide not to see the death of their own children, while the second category includes children who could not endure hunger and commit suicide. Another example of this type of a tragedy: "We (the children) didn't eat for a number of days. Our parents tried to get us whatever they could find but all of their efforts did not produce enough for us to eat. In the morning, when we woke up very hungry, we looked for our parents. We called their names but they did not respond. We walked to the kitchen where both of our parents had taken poison and committed suicide. They committed suicide because they didn't want to see us starve to death." (Children in Badakhshan, 2008) Afghanistan has become a disaster beyond imagination. The invasion by the US has not only condemned the population to daily death and destruction, but it has created conditions that perpetuated death and misery on daily basis. The US-NATO bombing in the south, southwestern, and eastern Afghanistan murder civilians in villages and towns while those that remain alive are forced to abandon their villages due to fear of death and loss of dignity. The internally displaced come to large cities with the hope to find something to eat. However, they come to large cities only to be homeless and face starvation.                           More..............

By James Q. Wilson

James Q. Wilson, Pepperdine University   In the United States, the two groups that most ardently support Israel are Jews and evangelical and fundamentalist Christians. Jewish support is easy to explain, but why should certain Christians, most of them politically quite conservative, be so devoted to Israel? There is a second puzzle: despite their support for a Jewish state, evangelical and fundamentalist Christians are disliked by many Jews. And a third: a large fraction of African-Americans are hostile to Israel and critical of Jews, yet Jewish voters regard blacks as their natural allies. The evidence about evangelical attitudes is clear. In 2006, a Pew survey found that evangelical Christians were more favorable toward Israel than the average American was--and much more sympathetic than either mainline Protestants or secularists. In another survey, evangelical Christians proved much likelier than Catholics, Protestants, or secular types to back Israeli control of Jerusalem, endorse Israeli settlements on the West Bank, and take Israel's side in a Middle Eastern dispute. (Among every religious group, those who are most traditional are most supportive of Israel. The most orthodox Catholics and Protestants, for instance, support Israel more than their modernist colleagues do.) Whatever the reason for Jewish distrust of evangelicals, it may be a high price to pay when Israel's future, its very existence, is in question. Evangelical Christians have a high opinion not just of the Jewish state but of Jews as people. That Jewish voters are overwhelmingly liberal doesn't seem to bother evangelicals, despite their own conservative politics. Yet Jews don't return the favor: in one Pew survey, 42 percent of Jewish respondents expressed hostility to evangelicals and fundamentalists. As two scholars from Baruch College have shown, a much smaller fraction--about 16 percent--of the American public has similarly antagonistic feelings toward Christian fundamentalists. More.........................

The ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem

Uri Avnery*

July 26, 2008 Uri Avnery looks at the systematic ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem by Israel – "a thousand and one tricks, large and small, are employed to this end, from the almost total refusal of building permits ... to the cancellation of residency rights" – its consequences and a possible solution. In one of the most beautiful songs in the Bible, the poet vows:  If I forget thee, O Jerusalem Let my right hand forget her cunning If I do not remember thee Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth If I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy!" (Psalms 137:5) For some reason, the poet did not write: "If I forget thee, O Umm Touba!" nor "If I forget thee, O Sur Baher!" nor "If I forget thee, O Jabal Mukaber!" nor even "If I forget thee, O Ein Karem!"   Israel uses every trick to ethnically cleanse Jerusalem of its indigenous population while the US, Britain and Europe look on A fact that should be remembered in any discussion about Jerusalem: there is no resemblance between the Jerusalem of the Bible and the "Jerusalem" of the current Israeli map. The object of the yearning of the exiles who wept by the rivers of Babylon was the real Jerusalem – more or less within the boundaries of the Old City, whose centre is the Temple Mount. One square kilometre, that's all. The redefined municipality of Jerusalem after the 1967 annexation comprises a vast area, some 126 square kilometres, from Bethlehem in the south to Ramallah in the north. This area has been clothed with the name of "Jerusalem" in order to bestow a religious-national-historic aura to what was nothing but an act of land-grabbing and settlement. The planners of this map, including the late General Rehavam Ze'evi, nicknamed "Gandhi", the most far-right officer in the Israeli army, had a simple purpose: to annex to Jerusalem as many areas as possible that were free of Arabs, in order to set up Jewish settlements there. They were haunted by the demographic phantom that is still terrorizing us today: they aimed to expand the Jewish and to reduce the Arab population – in Jerusalem and throughout the country.                              More....................

By Jonathan Cook*

27 July 2008

Jonathan Cook highlights the case of the Palestinian Khurd family to show how shadowy Jewish settler groups, in collusion with the Israeli government, are changing the geography of Jerusalem by forcing out Palestinians and replacing them with Israeli settlers.

It must be the smallest Israeli settlement in the occupied Palestinian territories: just half a house. But Palestinian officials and Israeli human rights groups are concerned that it represents the first stage of a plan to eradicate the historical neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, cutting off one of the main routes by which Palestinians reach the Old City and its holy sites.

Human rights organizations accuse Israel of imposing a policy of silent forceful mgration against Palestinians  in the West Bank

The home of Mohammed and Fawziya Khurd has been split in two since 1999 when the Israeli courts evicted their grown-up son Raed from a wing of the property. The elderly couple have been trying to regain possession, but were stymied last week when an Israeli high court backed the petition of a group of settlers and ordered the immediate eviction of the Khurds. The decision paves the way for the takeover of 26 multistory houses in the neighbourhood, threatening to make 500 Palestinians homeless.
 
The verdict has been denounced by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and in the past few days the Khurds have been visited by foreign diplomats, including from the United States.
 
In a letter to consulates in Jerusalem, including those of the United States, Britain, France and Germany, Rafiq Husseini, Mr Abbas’s aide, warned that the takeover of the Khurds’ home was part of a wider drive to change the geography of Jerusalem by forcing out Palestinians and replacing them with Israeli settlers. Such a development would deal a death blow to already-strained peace negotiations, he wrote.    More..................

Salon has uncovered new evidence of post-9/11 spying on Americans. Obtained documents point to a potential investigation of the White House that could rival Watergate.

Editor's note: This article is part of a Salon investigative series on spying inside the United States by the Bush administration. Research support for the article was provided by the Nation Institute Investigative Fund.

By Tim Shorrock

While reporting on domestic surveillance under Bush, Salon obtained a detailed memo proposing such an inquiry, and spoke with several sources involved in recent discussions around it on Capitol Hill. The memo was written by a former senior member of the original Church Committee; the discussions have included aides to top House Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers, and until now have not been disclosed publicly.

Salon has also uncovered further indications of far-reaching and possibly illegal surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency inside the United States under President Bush. That includes the alleged use of a top-secret, sophisticated database system for monitoring people considered to be a threat to national security. It also includes signs of the NSA's working closely with other U.S. government agencies to track financial transactions domestically as well as globally.              More........................

July 25, 2008 at 9:16 am (Israel, Palestine)

Mankind, in general, has maintained a belief in the existence of the Creator of the Universe since time immemorial. The duty of the prophets of Allaah was not so much to inform their people of Allaah's existence as to warn them against associating others with Him, and to teach them how to serve Him. Allaah Says (what means): "Their messengers said, 'Is there any doubt concerning Allaah, the originator of the Heavens and the Earth?'" [Quran 14:10]
The early Muslim scholars did not even have to address the issue of the Existence of Allaah, for it was a blatantly obvious fact, which nobody questioned. It was only around the fourth century after the Prophet's migration to Madeenah, when people's doctrine started being infiltrated with atheism and permeated by unbelief, that the scholars had to address the issue.

The existence of Allaah is established by various categories of proofs, which may be conveniently classified under four categories.

Scriptural evidence

The major religions of the world have scriptures, which teach the existence of the Creator. In particular, the Quran, the only revealed book which has remained totally intact and preserved, establishes the existence of Allaah by compelling rational arguments, while at the same time serving as an enduring miracle testifying to His reality. It decisively establishes His uniqueness and non-resemblance to creation, and emphasizes that worship is only for Him.                  More................

---

---

“Which forces are in control, the public or shadow powers?”

-- Peter Dale Scott, author, essayist and poet.

What made John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) such a threat to the “Shadow Government” that he had to be murdered? To begin with, he was an “American” in the finest sense of that word; a student of history and of the classics; and a lover of the Republic. JFK represented the best of the post-WWII generation. He put the U.S. first in all things, particularly in the area of foreign policy. JFK, unlike that insufferable blockhead currently occupying the White House, was a man of vision, too. He said that we can “put a man on the moon,” and we did. But, there is much more.                                                              More.....................

Resistance Art

July 20, 2008 A very frequently used question designed to confuse and distort the fact of the Palestinian Israeli conflict; to which the so obvious answer is: Israel does not have the right to ethnically cleanse 750,000 Palestinian and steal 78% of Palestine (Known to the Palestinian as an Nakba) so it can have a place to exist. Israel does not have the right to imprison 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza after she made them refugees. Israel does not have the right to inflect horror and atrocities against the Palestinian people on a daily bases so it can have a place to exist. Israel does not have the right to terrorize, to dispossess, to torture people in order to have a place" to exist". Israel does not have the right to take away other people's rights. The answer is as simple as that. Everyone and for that matter everything have "the right to exist". If one reviews the relevant universally accepted rights. One should not miss the very first point which is the right of the Palestinian people to keep their own country, if this is an accepted right for the Palestinians!! Then when Israel is stealing Palestinian land on a daily bases and creating an apartheid system in Palestine; it is Israel who started the hostilities, not the other way around. Sequencing the Palestinians as the aggressors and the Zionists as the victims is a very vicious perversion of the facts. But who perpetrated this odious shift? Who benefited from that monumental fraud by breaking the simplest laws of logic and human decency? What happened to the Jewish people in Europe was an absolute evil, and all humanity specially the Jewish people should work hard to insure that this kind of crime and atrocities never happen to any one again. It is very sad and wrong for the victims become the oppressors. What Israel and its Zionist elite are doing to the Palestinian people is an absolute evil. What happened (and still happening right now) to the Palestinians people and to Palestine is an absolute wrong, two wrong never make a right. Or is there a very special class of people who enjoy very special "rights", which annihilates other people's most basic rights? Is this horrible human cost that the Palestinian ends up having to pay in order to ensure that Israel has a special right to exist?                                   More...................

Bill Fletcher Jr.'s ZSpace Page

July 16, 2008

Once again, there's a lot of serious attack-on-Iran talk going around. We've both been following this, admittedly with no deep expertise, for several years now. During that time a number of media/blogosphere storms declaring such an attack imminent have whirled up and then blown away. (Of course, we oughtn't to forget that in the old children's story, the wolf eventually does come and eat the shepherd boy who produced the false alarms.) So we decided to sketch out these few points.

1. No matter how much Bush and his coterie may want it, we give no more than 10% odds on an attack actually taking place, and that's mainly just covering ourselves.

2. The furor is not a calculated bluff by the administration to put pressure on Iran. Neither is it a planned distraction to weaken opposition to the continued occupation of Iraq. It's the public face of a tense struggle within US ruling circles, concentrated in the state apparatus. Among those pushing for an attack are Bush, who is looking for the Hail Mary pass that will redeem his presidency in the history books; Cheney and the neocons and open advocates of empire, who are certain that the US can by force of will and arms dominate the world; a minority in the Armed Forces, mostly notably in the Air Force which hasn't been permitted to get their lethal jollies in the region; and the Israel lobby people, fronting for ruling class forces there who want to crush anything that might end Israel's regional monopoly on nukes.

Arrayed against an assault on Iran are a whole range of powerful forces in the US and throughout the world. Articles like the well-publicized Seymour Hersh pieces in the New Yorker recently are salvos in that battle. We identify a few more below.                         More.............