Wassim Al-Adel, The Electronic Intifada

The proliferation of fast food chains like McDonald's in the Middle east is an indicator of the collusion between government and Arab big business at the expense of the boycott movement and resisting Israeli occupation. (Matthew Cassel) August 29, 2008 While boycott and divestment campaigns in the West become more sophisticated and widespread, the Arab world's longstanding boycott of Israel is being undermined by Arab governments, companies and businessmen. This attempt at no-concession normalization with Israel must be countered by all those working for justice in Palestine. The recent Adalah-NY campaign against Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev sheds light on the burgeoning relationship between Arab governments and businesses, and Israel. Earlier this year, the New York-based coalition Adalah-NY successfully spearheaded a campaign to prevent Leviev from opening a branch of his diamond chain in Dubai. Leviev is the chairman of Africa Israel Investments, which is constructing illegal Jewish-only settlements in the area of the West Bank village of Jayyous through its subsidiary, Danya Cebus. A mixture of media exposure and public outcry forced the Emirati authorities to deny that the jeweler had been granted any permission. This was a victory for those who wish to see an end to the Israeli occupation. The success of the Adalah-NY campaign offers activists two insights: first, there is a growing culture of numbness and complicity toward Israel and its financial backers which is being cultivated at the highest levels of Arab governments. Second, these same governments are susceptible to pressure when the extent of this collusion becomes apparent. It is disappointing to learn that, while public outcry and media attention effectively prevented Leviev from setting up shop in Dubai, other companies with known links to Israel continue to operate freely there. Giant retailer Marks & Spencer is high on the boycott list of most pro-Palestinian groups, and yet it has just recently opened one of its biggest stores in Dubai with an investment of approximately $3.9 million and plans for further expansion throughout the region.                                    More.....................

AMANECER DEL NUEVO SIGLO

August 30, 2008

Since the occupation of Al Quds (Jerusalem) in 1967, Israel has embarked upon a policy of ethnic cleansing in the city. This policy seeks to expel Palestinians (Muslims and Christian) from Jerusalem in order to set up Jewish settlements there. The aim is to expand the Jewish population and to reduce Muslim and Christian population – in Jerusalem and throughout Palestine.

Until the 1948 war, Jerusalem was a mixed city. Jewish, Muslim and Christian neighbourhoods were interwoven. However, after the war Zionist terrorist groups drove the inhabitants of the Arab quarters in West Jerusalem to East Jerusalem. West Jerusalem was then annexed to the Zionist state. In 1967, Israeli troops took over East Jerusalem and annexed it to Israel but this move was not recognized by the international community. The Israelis immediately tried to repeat the policies that had carried out in the West part of the city and brutally expelled Arab inhabitants from the Jewish Quarter in the Old City and destroyed the Mugrabi quarter, which as opposite the Western Wall. However, the outrageous reaction of the international community forced Zionist to stop expulsions.

Har Homa settlement

  From then on, the Zionists have used more sutle means to carry out an ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem. One is the almost total refusal of building permits for rapidly growing Palestinian families. This policy affects Palestinians throughout the Occupied Territories. But the situation is particularly acute in the East Jerusalem area, where Israel is refusing building permits to many of the 250,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem living there. It is believed that three out of every four Palestinian homes in the city are now built without a permit.           More................

(Without his shell, McCain is simply a nut that needs to be cracked, picked apart and exposed)

By Vincent L. Guarisco Back in April 2007, I wrote a zinger about the foolish maverick John McCain after he returned from his triumphant walkabout on the brutal streets of Baghdad. Johnny Boy headed straight for the public airways, where he smirkingly gushed that the streets of Iraq are now 'safe.' The foolish war pimp tried to sell the lie that everything was cozy and secure, even as he strutted around wearing his bulletproof vest, surrounded by a heavily armed military entourage buzzing in air and on the ground all around him. Indeed, according to McCain, Baghdad was safe then, and it's even safer today.
Gee, pass the prozac! I guess we're supposed to forget about the scores of GIs and civilians who have since met their brutal end in the very place McCain pranced around.  Funny how ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, FOX and the rest of the sorry corporate media failed to do follow-up stories, to show those same streets marred with puddles of blood laced with intestinal tracks, brain matter -- clogged with body parts and various limbs scattered about on those same safe streets. When McCain made his announcement, more than 3,200 of his fellow servicemen and women had been slaughtered in Iraq, millions of Iraqis had been displaced, forced to flee the country or killed outright.  Today, 4,147 Americans have been killed and we'll never know how many Iraqis, because we don't do body counts. 

Moving right along... I am a long-time resident and ardent voter in McCain's conservative home state of Arizona.  I have lived near the banks of the Colorado River for the better part of 40 years. I'm a proud progressive liberal minority living among many hard-line Republicans in my local area, although I gladly admit the times are changing. The economic hardship under Bush's leadership is quickly changing the political landscape, moving my locals away from their once cherished right-wing stewardship. Thank God for small miracles...           More................

Hulton/Getty Images (2), Getty Images (2), American Stock/Getty Images, MPI/Getty Images, Associated Press (2), Corbis

Why No Outrage? From top to bottom: New York's Sub-Treasury Building in 1929; Angelo Mozilo, former CEO of mortgage lender Countrywide Financial; Unemployed men, circa 1935; Foreclosure sign, April 2008, Stockton, Calif. Strikers, 'scabs' battle, circa 1935; Bear Stearns executive arrested, June 2008; Hooverville shantytown; NYSE trader, 2008; Mary Lease

"Raise less corn and more hell," Mary Elizabeth Lease harangued Kansas farmers during America's Populist era, but no such voice cries out today. America's 21st-century financial victims make no protest against the Federal Reserve's policy of showering dollars on the people who would seem to need them least.

Long ago and far away, a brilliant man of letters floated an idea. To stop a financial panic cold, he proposed, a central bank should lend freely, though at a high rate of interest. Nonsense, countered a certain hard-headed commercial banker. Such a policy would only instigate more crises by egging on lenders and borrowers to take more risks. The commercial banker wrote clumsily, the man of letters fluently. It was no contest.

The doctrine of activist central banking owes much to its progenitor, the Victorian genius Walter Bagehot. But Bagehot might not recognize his own idea in practice today. Late in the spring of 2007, American banks paid an average of 4.35% on three-month certificates of deposit. Then came the mortgage mess, and the Fed's crash program of interest-rate therapy. Today, a three-month CD yields just 2.65%, or little more than half the measured rate of inflation. It wasn't the nation's small savers who brought down Bear Stearns, or tried to fob off subprime mortgages as "triple-A." Yet it's the savers who took a pay cut -- and the savers who, today, in the heat of a presidential election year, are holding their tongues.

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Many people have noted that torture doesn't work as a method for obtaining information.

Now, a group of leading World War II interrogators have broken their silence and confirmed that torture is not needed. As quoted in the Washington Post:

"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess.

"During the many interrogations, I never laid hands on anyone," said George Frenkel, 87, of Kensington. "We extracted information in a battle of the wits. I'm proud to say I never compromised my humanity."

Jason Leopold

August 17, 2008 Four months before the United States invaded Iraq, the Department of Defense was secretly working with Vice Pesident Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton Corp. on a secret deal that would give the world's second largest oil services company total control over Iraq's oil fields, according to interviews with Halliburton's most senior executives. Previously undisclosed Halliburton documents obtained by The Public Record confirm that controlling the world's second largest oil reserves was a top priority for the Bush administration. Additionally, the deal between the Department of Defense and Halliburton unit Kellogg, Brown & Root to operate Iraq's oil industry saved Halliburton from imminent bankruptcy. In October of 2002, Halliburton was saddled with a multibillion-dollar asbestos liability as well as a serious slowdown in domestic oil production. The company’s stock plummeted on the news falling to a low of $12.62 in October 2002 from a high of $22 the year before. A month later, in November 2002, Halliburton’s financial troubles seemingly disappeared. At the urging of unnamed officials in the Office of the Vice President, according to the documents, the Department of Defense recommended The Army Corps of Engineers award a contract to Kellogg, Brown & Root to extinguish Iraqi oil well fires in addition to "assessing the condition of oil-related infrastructure; cleaning up oil spills or other environmental damage at oil facilities; engineering design and repair or reconstruction of damaged infrastructure; assisting in making facilities operational; distribution of petroleum products; and assisting the Iraqis in resuming Iraqi oil company operations." That was a deal hatched five months before the start of the Iraq war, when the Bush administration said publicly that it had not been working on war plans. "The fact that the Department was planning for the possibility that it would need to repair and provide for continuity of operations of the Iraqi oil infrastructure was classified until March 2003," the Army Corps of Engineers said on its web site. "This prevented earlier acknowledgement or announcement of potential requirements to the business community."                              More.....................

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has concocted a remarkable new policy: It reserves the right to seize for an indefinite period of time laptops taken across the border.

A pair of DHS policies from last month say that customs agents can routinely--as a matter of course--seize, make copies of, and "analyze the information transported by any individual attempting to enter, re-enter, depart, pass through, or reside in the United States." (See policy No. 1 and No. 2.)

DHS claims the border search of electronic information is useful to detect terrorists, drug smugglers, and people violating "copyright or trademark laws." (Readers: Are you sure your iPod and laptop have absolutely no illicitly downloaded songs? You might be guilty of a felony.)

This is a disturbing new policy, and should convince anyone taking a laptop across a border to use encryption to thwart DHS snoops. Encrypt your laptop, with full disk encryption if possible, and power it down before you go through customs.

Here's a guide to customs-proofing your laptop that we published in March.

It's true that any reasonable person would probably agree that Customs agents should be able to inspect travelers' bags for contraband. But seizing a laptop and copying its hard drive is uniquely invasive--and should only be done if there's a good reason.

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PNN

August 13, 2008 Gaza / PNN – The Hamas government called on the Arab and Islamic nation to stand firmly in front of Israeli plans to Judaize East Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque and destroy it. Hamas Spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhari called to "prove to be able to able to protect the holy sites." Al Aqsa Mosque is third in importance in Islam, coming after the sites in Saudi Arabia. Abu Zuhari told reporters in Gaza on Wednesday of a newly disclosed Israeli plan to "sweep" the Mosque. "This plan newly disclosed…and is considered a serious development in the series of the Israeli Judaization of Jerusalem and the Al Aqsa Mosque." The spokesman added that this disclosure, which comes in light of continuing negotiations, considered "frivolous" regarding the city of Jerusalem, reflects the role played by the Palestinian Authority in providing cover for the Israelis to continue "these crimes against the holy sites." He is referring to the PA’s continued negotiations with the Israeli government which, according to the Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, refuses to negotiate on the city. In the press, the PA has adamantly rejected the Israeli Prime Minister’s statements on the issue. Abu Zuhari called on relevant institutions in Jerusalem to "expose these schemes," as he continued his call for the "Arab and Islamic nation to stand with their responsibilities towards this serious threat against the third of all Holy Shrines." Abu Zuhari said that Hamas would make every effort and use every possible means to protect Al Aqsa Mosque from these "malicious schemes." Sheikh Ra’ed Salah, the head of the Islamic Movement inside the Israeli boundaries, held a press conference yesterday in which he unveiled the plans to surround and eventually destroy the Mosque. The Sheikh showed other documents indicating an Israeli decision to impose a set of synagogues to the south and west, as well as the construction of a bridge of 18 meters to connect the Square via the Moroccan Gate. Link: english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3346&Itemid=50

LOS ANGELES – On the first Friday of each month, Mohammed Elsisy, an Egyptian-born software engineer, usually drives from his home in Irvine, Calif., to the King Fahad mosque in Culver City, Calif., to deliver the khutba, or sermon.

Elsisy thought the first Friday of this past June would be no different.

But little did he know something totally unexpected was about to happen that would make this particular Friday the most memorable for years to come.

Elsisy had two passengers in his car at the time.

In the back seat sat Ahmed Niazi, 33, a language teacher and a friend, while in the passenger seat sat a man who converted to Islam almost a year ago.

The man was 44-year-old Craig Monteilh, but he went by the name "Farouk Aziz."

"Monteilh started talking about the Iraq war," Niazi said. "He went off on a rant against U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East."

But then, out of the blue, Monteilh said something that sent chills down the spines of his companions.

He asked Elsisy and Niazi if they knew of an "operation" he could be part of.

Pin-drop silence followed. Elsisy’s eyes bounced over to the rearview mirror and traded a horrified glance with Niazi.

"Blood froze up in our veins," Elsisy recalls.

Exactly a year earlier, Monteilh had walked into the Islamic Center of Irvine and declared his intention to embrace Islam.

Issa Edah-Tally, president of the center, said Monteilh, known only as Farouk then, was just another convert among many who took Shahada, or declaration of faith, at the center and became regulars at the mosque.

"We don’t ask people for their real names and don’t keep track of who attends prayer service," Edah-Tally said.

Monteilh started attending regularly and enrolled in the weekly adult Arabic class taught by Niazi.

"Farouk told me his real name was Frederick Jordon," Niazi recalled. Monteilh also told Niazi that he was of French and Moroccan descent.

However, when Monteilh joined the Berlitz Language Institute’s Costa Mesa branch – where Niazi works – to learn Arabic, he filled out a form and wrote his name as Craig Monteilh.                                                                 More.......................