Racist measures against Palestinians in Israel lead to strike call

Very good article by Jonathan Cook:

Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 9 September 2009

The increasingly harsh political climate in Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government has prompted the leadership of the country’s 1.3 million Arab citizens to call for the first general strike in several years.

The one-day stoppage is due to take place on 1 October, a date heavy with symbolism because it marks the anniversary of another general strike, in 2000 at the start of the second Palestinian intifada, when 13 Arab demonstrators were shot dead by Israeli police.

The Arab leadership said it was responding to a string of what it called “racist” government measures that cast the Arab minority, a fifth of the population, as enemies of the state.

Read the rest here.

Swine Flu: Path to Martial Law?

Great article by John Griffing:

Could a form of martial law be imminent? Obama appears ready to cross the Rubicon, and all he needs is a killer virus.

Let’s connect some dots.

Remember President Obama’s Executive Order basing 80,000 active troops at home for the first time in the history of the peacetime military establishment to “help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack….”

Now connect that information to the recent announcement that the military has established regional deployment locations all across the United States to “assist civilian authorities in the event of a significant outbreak of the H1N1 virus this fall, according to Defense Department officials.”

Civil unrest and crowd control? Significant outbreak of the H1N1 virus this fall? What do they know that we don’t?

Read the rest here.

Letter to local newspaper about surveillance cameras

Here is a letter I wrote to my local newspaper about surveillance cameras in public areas:

I am well aware of the horrible sexual assault in [EDITED], and the subsequent apprehension of the perpetrators with assistance from one of the cameras; and I’m grateful they were promptly captured, but we must not let emotion cloud a very important debate.

Despite the fact that there are more than 4.2 million surveillance cameras in the United Kingdom, multiple government commissioned studies have proven the cameras ineffective by finding that they have no statistically significant impact on crime rates at all. In the isolated event that crime decreases in a certain area, it goes up in the areas immediately surrounding it. In the case of [EDITED], this would move crime from the high traffic areas where the cameras are installed into the quieter neighborhoods that surround those areas.

The Department of Homeland Security provided the town of [EDITED] with these cameras in order to assist in the evacuation of [EDITED] in the event of an emergency; but should such an event occur, we all know there would be no remedy for the traffic problems that would ensue, which would in effect render the cameras useless.

So we must ask ourselves: if studies have found them worthless in preventing crime, and logic tells us they would be useless in assisting the evacuation of [EDITED], what is the true purpose of these cameras?

You Must Leave Your Home

Why doesn’t the international community do something about all of the illegal Israeli settlements? The way many of the settlers treat the true owners of the land is outrageous. Settlers walk around with guns like they own the place; fire upon Palestinians unprovoked, and teach their children to do the same. It is absolutely ridiculous and it must stop NOW.

Imagine this: I walk into your house; beat the shit out of you; kick you out into the backyard; begin calling your house mine; continue beating the shit out of you every single day; call you a terrorist when you fight back. Doesn’t make too much sense does it? Well then why is it happening right now? Something must be done!

Someone has to give these people a taste of their own medicine, and soon.

The Jewish Internet Defense Force

The Jewish Internet Defense Force is a collective of Jewish activists led by David Appletree with the stated goal of fighting anti-Semitism and terrorism on the web. They are present on most major social media websites, but Facebook and Twitter seem to be their main areas of focus.

After only a few minutes of research I learned that the JIDF will use any means necessary to censor opinions they disagree with, even opinions with a firm factual foundation. In 2008, they hacked a Facebook group called, “Israel is not a country!… … Delist it from Facebook as a country!” And proceeded to delete all of the members of the group. Soon after, the JIDF released a statement proclaiming the hacking of the group a “major victory against Jew haters,” and that “despite tens of thousands of complaints, Facebook wouldn’t remove it, as they claimed that this incitement to murder was ‘legitimate political discourse’ – Facebook’s negligence and abdication of responsibility gave us no option but to take matters in our own hands…..”

Here we have the JIDF hacking a Facebook group not because the members are anti-Semitic or are terrorists, but because they disagree with the name of the group and the opinions of the members; many of whom have a very legitimate gripe as it was their homeland that was stolen in order to make the creation of a “Jewish homeland” possible. Isn’t it perfectly fair for them to ask who the real terrorists are? As Facebook correctly stated, their group was a forum for “legitimate political discourse.”

The JIDF is also very active on Twitter; just recently they organized a campaign to raise awareness about Gilad Shalit, an Israeli prisoner of war in the custody of Hamas. The goal was to make the hashtag #GiladShalit a trending topic, and they were successful; his name was the number two trending topic for about a day. What they failed to mention leading up to and during the campaign though, is the enormous difference between the number of current Israeli political prisoners and Palestinian political prisoners. The JIDF decries the lack of mainstream media coverage of Gilad Shalit, and uses his situation as just another excuse to label all Arabs and Muslims as terrorists, while completely denying the well documented fact that Israel kidnaps Palestinians almost every single day. Again, who are the real terrorists?

There are many more examples of the activities of the JIDF on the internet, but they are just more of the same of what was already covered; see for yourself and Google the JIDF. Their main tactic is playing the victim in order to attempt to increase their power over free speech, so they can pick and choose what can and can’t be said. If they don’t like what you write they label you either anti-Semitic or a terrorist, or both. The funny thing is though, even former Minister of Education in Israel, Shulamit Aloni, admits calling people anti-Semitic is a trick that is used all the time.

One Big Illegal Settlement

Anonymous sources close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke today of his plans to approve the construction of hundreds of new homes on illegal settlements before the much anticipated US brokered settlement freeze expected to begin within the next few months.

In a rare public display of frustration with the rogue middle eastern state, the White House released a decisive statement.

“We regret the reports of Israel’s plans to approve additional settlement construction,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said. “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement expansion and we urge that it stop.”

Typically Israels most ardent ally, the United States is seemingly sick of having to deal with the international consequences of the countries human rights violations which are illegal according to international law. After all, the United States breaks enough international laws on its own; it has enough lies to hold up without having to assist Israel in doing the same.

The Israel lobby – The influence of AIPAC on US Foreign Policy

Okay, after this no more documentaries for a bit; this one is just too good not to post:

Opinions?

War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death

Here is another excellent documentary, and more relevant than ever:

Opinions?

Why Not Sanctions for Israel?

This is a great article by Paul Craig Roberts from CounterPunch:

In Israel, a country stolen from the Palestinians, fanatics control the government. One of the fanatics is the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Last week Netanyahu called for “crippling sanctions” against Iran.

The kind of blockade that Netanyahu wants qualifies as an act of war. Israel has long threatened to attack Iran on its own but prefers to draw in the US and NATO.

Why does Israel want to initiate a war between the United States and Iran?

Is Iran attacking other countries, bombing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure?

No. These are crimes committed by Israel and the US.

Is Iran evicting peoples from lands they have occupied for centuries and herding them into ghettoes?

No, that’s what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for 60 years.

Read the rest here.

Israel’s Secret Weapon

A very good documentary: