Blacks4Barack

2010-05-09T21:17:00.007-04:00

ABOUT

Greg Jones'
Blacks4Barack !

Cleveland, Ohio native Greg Jones is National Director of BLACKS4BARACK, a Multi-Racial, Net/Grassroots Organization started in February 2007 (when polls showed Hillary Clinton with 82% of the Black support and most folks were still learning how to pronounce Barack Obama's name). Greg felt strongly that despite the polls, as people became more familiar with Barack Obama, they would come to the conclusion that he was the best choice for President. So Greg's original 1-man-mission was to encourage Blacks to be 4 Barack, thus B4B was launched.

As B4B membership grew nationwide throughout Campaign '08, B4B was very involved in national voter registration drives, committed to sharing updated campaign news and dedicated to invigorating and stimulating support particularly in the Black communities for Barack Obama as President 2008. We thank all of the Warriors of all races nationwide who worked tirelessly throughout the Historic Campaign....Yes We Did !

Visit our Official Site: www.Blacks4Barack.com for a stroll down Historic Campaign '08 Lane and the latest news of today. Jones is honored by the fact that his site has been selected to be part of the U.S. Library of Congress Historic Collection. Jones/Blacks4Barack is also a member of THE WHITE HOUSE Press Pool.

President Obama has stated that he cannot make change in America by himself. It's going to take the efforts of We The People. There is much work ahead which is why the B4B motto is:
Be Inspired...Be Informed...Be INVOLVED !!!

Together....We WILL (Continue To) Make A Difference !

The Blacks4Barack Organization has grown to becoming recognized in the national political arena as a voice Dedicated To Truth and the promotion of activism !

People Power...through Unity
WORKS !!!

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Greg Jones has also garnered accolades worldwide for his special Musical Message for World Peace maxi-single CD entitled " God Bless The World-Not JUST America " which reached #8 on Australia's electronic charts and #1 on Great Britain's . In a desire to spread the message of peace, Jones has elected to make his CD available as a FREE download to everyone worldwide, now available at various music sites.

Google: "Greg Jones God Bless The World" to see more.

In so many ways there's much work ahead.
Together, We WILL Make A Difference.

Peace !

" In all we do, we must all be Thankful that we have the power
to help those who don't."
(Greg Jones)

2008-01-08T11:51:00.004-05:00

Thank You for visiting. We invite you to visit The Official Greg Jones' Blacks4Barack Site....which is a multi-racial, national net/grassroots organization who's mission is to increase black voter registration and support for Barack Obama for President 2008 ! Blogazine World will be idle during 2008 to concentrate on the Presidential election......It's OBAMA-TIME !!!!!

2007-10-12T11:38:00.000-04:00

MICHAEL BELL OF 'JENA 6'
ORDERED BACK TO JAIL !

By MARY FOSTER, Associated Press Writer Fri Oct 12, 8:14 AM ET
NEW ORLEANS - A judge ordered a black teenager back to jail, deciding the fight that put him in the national spotlight violated terms of his probation for a previous conviction, his attorney said.
Mychal Bell, who along with five other black teenagers in the so-called Jena Six case is accused of beating a white classmate, had gone to juvenile court in Jena on Thursday expecting another routine hearing, said Carol Powell Lexing, one of his attorneys.
Instead, state District Judge J.P. Mauffrey Jr. sentenced Bell to 18 months in jail on two counts of simple battery and two counts of criminal destruction of property, Lexing said.
"We are definitely going to appeal this," she said. "We'll continue to fight."
Bell had been hit with those charges before the Dec. 4 attack on classmate Justin Barker. Details on the previous charges, which were handled in juvenile court, were unclear.
Mauffrey, reached at his home Thursday night, had no comment.
"He's locked up again," Marcus Jones said of his 17-year-old son. "No bail has been set or nothing. He's a young man who's been thrown in jail again and again, and he just has to take it."
After the attack on Barker, Bell was originally charged with attempted murder, but the charges were reduced and he was convicted of battery. An appeals court threw that conviction out, saying Bell should not have been tried as an adult on that charge.
Racial tensions began rising in August 2006 in Jena after a black student sat under a tree known as a gathering spot for white students. Three white students later hung nooses from the tree. They were suspended but not prosecuted.
More than 20,000 demonstrators gathered last month in the small central Louisiana town to protest what they perceive as differences in how black and white suspects are treated. The case has drawn the attention of civil rights activists including the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.
Sharpton reacted swiftly upon learning Bell was back in jail Thursday.
"We feel this was a cruel and unusual punishment and is a revenge by this judge for the Jena Six movement," said Sharpton, who helped organize the protest held Sept. 20, the day Bell was originally supposed to be sentenced.
Bell's parents were also ordered to pay all court costs and witness costs, Sharpton said.
"I don't know what we're going to do," Jones said. "I don't know how we're going to pay for any of this. I don't know how we're going to get through this."
Bell and the other five defendants have been charged in the attack on Barker, which left him unconscious and bleeding with facial injuries. According to court testimony, he was repeatedly kicked by a group of students at the high school.
Barker was treated for three hours at an emergency room but was able to attend a school function that evening, authorities have said.
Bell, Robert Bailey Jr., Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis and Theo Shaw were all initially charged — as adults — with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit the same. A sixth defendant was charged in the case as a juvenile.
Bell, who was 16 at the time, was convicted in June of aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit that crime. LaSalle Parish prosecutor Reed Walters reduced the charges just before the trial. Since then, both of those convictions were dismissed and tossed back to juvenile court, where they now are being tried.
Charges against Bailey, 18, Jones, 19, and Shaw, 18, have been reduced to aggravated second-degree battery. Purvis, 18, has not yet been arraigned.
___
Associated Press writer Chevel Johnson contributed to this report

Note from Greg Jones: It has also been reported that the judge and D.A. have ordered that the Bell family must pay $600 per month for the incarceration of their son. Bell's father, Mr. Jones was recently fired from his job for taking off to handle his son's case. The Jena 6 including the Bell's need funds desperately. We ask all who will to send your donation directly to the families at:

Jena 6 Defense Fund
P.O. Box 2798
Jena, La. 71342

2007-10-11T15:38:00.000-04:00

ASA COONS proves

Homeland Security Should Start in our Schools !!!

By: Greg 'Peace Song' Jones

This is a horrific week in the City of Cleveland, Ohio. In one of the top public schools located in the heart of the City of Cleveland, a 14 year old allegedly entered his school with 2 guns, 3 knives and 2 boxes of ammunition, and after changing his clothing into his black trench coat gear, proceeded to shoot up the school shooting 2 teachers and injuring 3 students before turning the gun on himself, taking his own life. We are thankful that the victims have survived and commend the students at SuccessTech for their exemplary handling of this incredibly terrible occurence.

In the aftermath of such a terrible ordeal, fingers will be wagged and blame issued in many different directions. Some will say that folks should have realized the mental disorder within this 14 year old shooter. Some will blame the boy's parents and family. Some will also place blame on the Cleveland Public School System for not having more security, including the idea that more metal (gun) detectors should be available in every school, along with more security guards, which could have wharted off this catastrophe. But, then there are THE FACTS. Fact is, ever since George Bush initiated his wonderful 'No Child Left Behind' Program, the Cleveland Public School System has been in severe dire financial straits. During the past 3 years the school system was forced to lay-off or fire over 1000 Cleveland School teachers, security guards, school nurses etc., due to the lack of federal dollars, which is the responsibilty of the Bush administration. The school system has been so broke that a number of the schools were forced to discontinue sports programs, music programs, in addition to the drastic reduction in staff and security. If the school board HAD purchased metal detectors for every school, or hired more security guards, they would not have had the funds to even buy books ! And then there is the HOMELAND SECURITY.

How in the world are we making our homeland more secure, when the Bush administration is simultaneously cutting much necessary funding needed to protect our public schools, evidently not realizing (or caring) that our youth....our students...our children...should be priority number one....for 'HOMELAND SECURITY'. The time is now...to speak out for what is really needed in OUR country. Instead of spending trillions of dollars to 'reconstruct' other countries.....we must DEMAND that American dollars be spent to take care of the true, obvious needs that exist here....on our Homeland...in America. This deadly ordeal, which occured across the street from the FBI Building, could have....and should have never happened.

Greg 'Peace Song' Jones

http://www.godblesstheworldonline.com/

2007-10-11T15:30:00.000-04:00

Who was Asa Coon?
(Cleveland School Shooter)

(From Cleveland Plain Dealer) Posted by Scott Stephens and Rachel Dissell October 10, 2007 22:47PM
Some of the kids called him Jack Black, the loud, chubby, long-haired actor in the movie "School of Rock."
He could be loud sometimes, all right, and his appearance cried for attention: his shock of wavy brown hair, his fingernails painted black, the dog collar around his neck, his faded rock concert T-shirts under a trench coat.
But there was another Asa Coon, an Asa Coon far more menacing than the loopy kid with the unkempt hair and faux Gothic look.
This was the Asa who always seemed to be in fights at school. This was the Asa who slapped around his mother. This was the Asa who talked about suicide.
And it was this Asa, authorities say, who walked into SuccessTech Academy Wednesday with a satchel full of guns and ammunition and opened fire on teachers and students.
"In the end, you never know who is going to snap," classmate Aaron King said while heading home through a cold afternoon drizzle. "You have to watch who you make mad."

What apparently pushed Asa's troubled young mind over the edge was an argument with classmates about the existence of God. It happened a few days ago in reading class.
Asa said he didn't believe in God and didn't respect God.
Another kid disagreed.
Asa said he worshipped rock star Marilyn Manson. He flashed the other kid an obscene gesture.
After school, the two kids fought. Asa took a beating. Both were suspended.
"I'm going to get you," he warned his tormentor. "I will get you."
Some youngsters say Asa was goaded into fights and picked on. Even before the fight, he confided to friends that he was going to shoot up the school.
"I thought he was just kidding," said Demar Tabb, 15, a classmate. "I probably should have said something, but I didn't think anything would actually happen."
True to his word, Asa entered his school on a steel-gray October day looking for revenge. He shot two teachers and two classmates before he put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. He was 14.
Asa Coon grew up in a family where violence seemed commonplace. His older brother, Stephen, was twice charged with both domestic violence and assault by the time he was 13. He was recently released from prison.
Court records show that his father's whereabouts are largely unknown.
The Department of Children and Family Services was called to the Coon home in 2000 because Asa had burns on his arms and scratches on his forehead.
When he was 12, Asa was charged in Juvenile Court with domestic violence. His mother, Lori, had called the police and told them that Asa slapped her and called her a vulgar name. She had been trying to intervene in a fight between Asa and his twin sister Nicole.
"He's a very hyper kid," said Rachel Metzger, who lives near the Coons. "He's constantly yelling at his mom or anybody else. He's pretty violent."
Once in court, a magistrate ordered Asa to undergo psychological testing and follow the orders of doctors. The magistrate also ordered the family to undergo therapy together.
Asa immediately refused to obey probation rules. He threw the paperwork on the floor and charged out of the office, nearly knocking his mother to the ground.
After that, the magistrate wanted to send Asa to the Youth Development Center in Hudson. While waiting for a spot to open at the center, the boy was placed in the Jones Home, an interim shelter care facility on the West Side. He attempted to kill himself there.
Eventually, Asa was sent to the downtown detention center and placed on two medications, Trazodone, a anti-depressant and sedative and Clonodine, a medicine meant to treat high blood pressure but sometimes used to treat ADHD.
He spent a few days at Laurelwood Hospital before being released to home detention. The Laurelwood staff concluded that Asa had suicidal tendencies and was trying to push all "their buttons." They thought he may be bipolar but agreed he needed more evaluation.
The relationship between the boy and his mother remained combative, Juvenile Court records show. One time, in front of a home detention officer, both of them screamed and cursed at each other because Asa had refused to take his medication.
His home detention officer also noted that the house Asa lived in on West 43rd Street was in a neighborhood plagued by drug trafficking and gangs. He wrote that the Coons' front yard was cluttered with debris and dog feces.
Less than a month after the suicide attempt -- Asa, then a seventh-grader at Thomas Jefferson School -- was suspended for attempting to hurt another student.
"He had issues," a teacher who once worked at the school said yesterday. "I was not surprised at all he was the shooter."
There were times when it looked like things might improve. The home detention officer said Asa showed up for his appointments and was courteous.
Last November, Asa had completed his counseling, anger management classes and community service. After five months without incident, he was released from probation.
With all of his problems, nobody denied that Asa was smart. His friends say he liked to talk about the space program, the FBI and global warming.
Some even called him a genius.
They remember Asa building fantastic towers out of nothing but paperclips. He could take appliances apart around the house and put them back together. He also liked to help adults fix and build things.
"As long as he was busy with his hands, he was cool," said a family friend who had known the boy since he was 6. "But when he was bored, he would lash out."
Asa and his twin sister, Nicole, were total opposites, she said. He was somewhat withdrawn, had dark hair and preferred to sit inside and draw. She is outgoing, blond and preferred to play outside.
But Nicole Coon was inside her house when the police pulled up on a cool and rainy Wednesday afternoon with the bad news. Moments later, the girl bolted out the front door and collapsed in the street.
"My brother!" she cried as her mother climbed into a police cruiser and headed downtown. "Oh my God!"

2007-10-07T18:27:00.001-04:00

REPUBLICANS: The Problem With America
By: Greg 'Peace Song' Jones

Over the past 7 or so years, I have watched our country go from being an incredibly united country (as evidenced following the horrific 9/11 tragedy) to being a country almost on the verge of civil war(s). No not in Iraq.....but here ! In America. The 'United States'. It is so sad to see what we as a country have disolved to becoming. When one looks back in review in wonderment as to how we could have become such a divided, hate filled, selfish, lost country being led like lost sheep....there is only one answer.

The Republicans. I listen to Republican/Conservative talk radio and watch Fox News and just shake my head in absolute disgust. The hosts, as well as callers, all sound very intelligent and articulate, but the words that come out of their mouths show nothing less than sheer ignorance never before witnessed in modern day American history. Here, you have a group of people...who call themselves Conservatives. But what exactly is that phrase supposed to mean. It can't mean that they 'conserve' anything. They spend our tax dollars like there's no end. They could care less about conserving the environment, aka conservation.

They'd rather sit on a melting glacier ignorantly debating global warming than to think that maybe it is a possibilty or at least something that should be looked into to conserve the future of our world. They can't want to conserve life.....(although they literally are obsessed to see Rowe V. Wade overturned) because they are absolutely pro-war. Don't forget, they are also the so-called religious right ! So they're pro-life....very religious...and pro-war !!! Is that weird or what ? In addition to that weirdism....they are a sad group that deep inside is actually controlled by hatred, bigotry and a desire to rescue the collapsing white power structure in America.

They are so filled with fear of power loss that their driving force has become total hatred. Whoever their Conservative leaders (sheep herders) tell them to hate(Rush, O'Reilly, Hannity, Bush, Cheney, etc.)....that's who they hate.....like Stepford controlled sheep. At first they were told to hate Bin Laden(made sense at the time).....then The Taliban (remember them ?). All of a sudden, it was Saddam Hussein....then Al Qaida. Meanwhile, don't forget they were hating the French and Germans for awhile for not going along with the Iraq war....even wanted to stop drinking french wine and even wanted to call french fries 'freedom' fries to punish the French. That died out though after awhile (french fries tasted too good).

Then, remember Shorty over in Korea ? They were hating him for about three weeks right after they hated Syria for about two weeks. Then it was Iran.....They started on Iran around July 4th of last year....but that died down after about 6 1/2 weeks. Meanwhile, they hated the Mexicans for coming to America for a better living......and more recently...back to hating Iran. (Note: No more Bin Laden, Taliban, Syria or Shorty in Korea)...Whew ! If it wasn't for the sheep herders....they wouldn't be able to keep up with who they are to hate next. And sadly, here on the homefront, that very hatred has swelled in their spirits to such a degree that racism has escalated to a modern day KKK level. Nooses...police brutality...injustice...prejudice....all stronger now than in the last 30 years.

I'm trying to keep this short so I'm not dicussing the corruption amongst these Conservatives....or their desire to rule the entire world...or how they could care less about the homeless or the needy or the Katrina victims. Don't forget.....they're supposed to be the so-called 'religious' right. The Bible says 'that you will know them by their fruits'.....meaning by what they do and how they think. I do love The Lord and I must say....those of us who truly know and love The Lord know that a true Christian does not want innocent soldiers dying in vain. They do not want the hungry to starve or the homeless without shelter. They would hate the pitiful response to Katrina.....and they would have a Godly spirit that allowed them to know how they....themselves....THE REPUBLICANS...are ruining the great land of America....the "United States"....and simultaneously hurting the entire world.

The time is Now to TAKE BACK AMERICA !!! (Oh Yea !! They also hate the Democrats !!!)

Visit: http://www.Blacks4Barack.homestead.com/
Greg Jones

2007-10-05T10:15:00.000-04:00

MUST READ ! Obama addresses black issues

JENA 6, Injustice, Racism and more...

Greg Jones' Blacks4Barack ! presents
BARACK OBAMA'S Message To Black America !JENA 6, Racism, Injustice and The New Movement !

Speech from Howard University

"To all of the honored and distinguished guests faculty staff and students, it is a privilege to be a part of today's convocation, and an honor to receive this degree from Howard.Now there are few other universities that have played so central a role in breaking down yesterday's barriers, and inching this country closer to the ideals we see inscribed on the monuments throughout the city.It is because of those victories that a black man named Barack Hussein Obama can stand before you today as candidate for President of the United States. I am not just running to make history. I am running because I believe that together we can change history's course. It's not enough just to look back and wonder how far we've come; I want us to look ahead with fierce urgency at how far we have to go. I believe its time for this generation to make its own mark, to write our own chapter in the American story.Those who came before us did not strike a blow against injustice only so that we would let injustice fester in our time. Thurgood Marshall did not argue Brown so that we could accept a country where too many African American men end up in prison because we'd rather spend more to jail a 25-year-old than to educate a 5-year-old. Dr. King did not take us to the mountaintop so that we would allow a terrible storm to ravage those who were stranded in the valley. He did not expect that it would take a breach in the levees to reveal a breach in our compassion; that it would take a hurricane to reveal the hungry God asked us to feed, the sick he asks us to care for, the least of these he asks us to treat as our own.I am certain that nine children did not walk through the doors of a school in Little Rock so that our children would have to see nooses hanging at a school in Louisiana. It's a fitting reminder that the 50th anniversary of Little Rock fell on this week. Because when the doors of that school finally opened, a nation responded. The President sent the United States Army to stand on the side of justice. The Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The Department of Justice created a civil rights division and millions of Americans took to the streets in the following months and years so that more children could walk through more doors.These weren't easy choices to make at the time. President Eisenhower was warned by some that sending the army down to Little Rock would be political suicide. Resistance to civil rights reform was fierce. We know that those who marched for freedom did so at great risk, for themselves and their families--but they did it because they understood that there are some times in our history, there are moments when what's truly risky is not to act. What's truly risky is to let the same injustice remain year after year after year. What's truly risky is to walk away and pretend it never happened. What's truly risky is to accept things as they are, instead of working for what they could be. In a media driven culture that's more obsessed with who's beating who in Washington, or how long Paris Hilton is going to be in jail, these moments are harder to spot. But every so often they do appear. Sometimes it takes a hurricane, sometimes it takes a travesty of justice like the one we've seen in Jena, Louisiana.There are some who will make Jena about the fight itself. And it's true that we have to do more as parents to instill our children with the idea that violence is always wrong: It's wrong when it happens on the streets of Chicago; it's wrong when it happens in a schoolyard in Louisiana. Violence is not the answer. And all of us know that more violence is perpetrated between blacks than between blacks and whites. Our community has suffered more than anything from the slow, chronic tolerance of violence. Nonviolence was the soul of the civil rights movement. We have to do a better job of teaching our children that virtue.But we also know that to truly understand Jena you have to look at what happened both before and after that fight. You have to listen to the hateful slurs that flew through the hallways of that school. You have to know the full measure of the damage done by that arson; you have to look at those nooses hanging on that schoolyard tree, and you have to understand how badly our system of justice failed those six boys in the days after that fight. The outrageous charges, the unreasonable and excessive sentences, the public defender who did not call a single witness.Like Katrina did with poverty, Jena exposed glaring inequalities in our justice system that were around long before that schoolyard fight broke out. It reminds us of the fact that we have a system that locks away too many young first time nonviolent offenders for the better part of their lives; a decision that's not made by a judge in a courtroom but all too often by politicians in Washington and state capitals across the country. It reminds us that we have certain sentences that are based less than on the kind of crime you commit than where you come from, or what you look like. It reminds us that we have a Justice Department whose idea of prosecuting civil rights violations is to roll back affirmative action programs at our colleges and universities; a Justice Department whose idea of prosecuting voter fraud is to look for voting fraud in black and Latino communities where voting fraud does not exist. And you know that these inequities are there. We know they're wrong. And yet they go largely unnoticed until people finally find the courage to stand up and say they're wrong--until someone finally says: It's wrong that Scooter Libby gets no jail time for compromising our national security while a 21-year-old honor student is sitting in a Georgia prison for something that was not even a felony.It's not always easy to come out and say this. I commend those of you at Howard that have spoken out on Jena Six or traveled to the rally in Louisiana. I commend those of you who have spoken out on the Genarlow Wilson case. I know it can be lonely protesting this kind of injustice. I know there's not a lot of glamour in it. Because when I was a state senator in Illinois we have a death penalty system that had sent 13 innocent people to their death--13 innocent men that we know. I wanted to reform the system, and I was told by almost everyone that it was not possible, that I wouldn't be able to get police officers and civil rights activists to work together, Democrats and Republicans to agree that we should videotape confessions to make sure they weren't coerced. Folks told me that there was too much political risk involved, and it would come to haunt me later, when I ran for higher office. But I believed that it was too risky not to act. And after a while people with opposing views came together and started listening. And we ended up reforming that death penalty system, and we did the same when I passed the law to expose racial profiling.So don't let anyone tell you that change is not possible. Don't let them tell you that standing out and speaking up about injustice is too risky. What's too risky is keeping quiet. What's too risky is looking the other way. I don't want to be here standing and talking about another Jena four years from now because we didn't have the courage to act today. I don't want this to be another issue that ends up being ignored when the cameras are turned off and the headlines disappear. It's time to seek a new dawn of justice in America.From the day I take office as President of the United States--has a ring to it, doesn't it? From the day I take office as President, America will have a Justice Department that is truly dedicated to justice, the work it began in the days after Little Rock. I will rid the department of idealogues and political cronies, and for the first time in eight years the civil rights division will actually be staffed with civil rights lawyers who prosecute civil rights violations, and employment discrimination and hate crimes.And we'll have a voting rights section that actually defends the rights of all American to vote without deception or intimidation. When fliers are placed in our neighborhoods telling people to vote on the wrong day, that won't be an injustice--it will be a crime. As President of the United States I will also work every day to ensure that this country has a criminal justice system that inspires trust and confidence in every American regardless of age or race or background. There's no reason that every person accused of a crime shouldn't have a qualified public attorney to defend them. We'll recruit more public defenders to the profession by forgiving college and law school loans. I will be asking some of the brilliant young minds here at Howard to take advantage of that offer. There's no reason why we can't pass a racial profiling law like I did in Illinois, or encourage states to reform the death penalty so that innocent people do not end up on death row.When I am President I will no longer accept the false choice between being tough on crime and vigilant in our pursuit of justice. Dr. King said: 'It's not either/or, it's both/and.' Black folks care about stopping crime. We care about being tough on violence. But we can have a crime policy that's both tough and smart. If you're convicted of a crime involving drugs, of course you should be punished. But let's not make the punishment for crack cocaine that much more severe than the punishment for powder cocaine when the real difference is where the people are using them or who is using them. Republicans have said they think that's wrong, Democrats think that's wrong and yet it's been approved by Republican and Democratic presidents because no one has been willing to brave the politics and make it right. But I will, when I am President of the United States of America.I think its time we took a hard look at the wisdom of locking up some first time nonviolent drug users for decades. Someone once said, and I quote: 'While minimum sentences for first-time users may not be the best way to occupy jail space, and/or heal people from their disease.' You know who said that? That was George W. Bush--six years ago. And I don't say this very often, but I agree with George W. Bush. The difference is that he hasn't done anything about it. When I am President of the United States, I will. We will review these sentences to see where we can be smarter on crime and reduce the blind and counterproductive warehousing of nonviolent offenders. We will give first-time nonviolent drug offenders a chance to serve their sentence where appropriate, in the type of drug rehab programs that have proven to work better than a prison term in changing bad behavior and reducing recidivism. So let's reform the system. Let's do what's smart. Let's do what's just.Now there's no doubt that taking these steps will restore a measure of justice and equality to America. It will also restore a sense of confidence to the American people that the system doesn't just work, it works for everyone. But there's a broader point I'd like to meet here today. If I have the opportunity to lead this nation, I will always be a president who hears your voice and understand your concerns. A President whose story is like so many of your own. Whose life work has been the unfinished work of our long march towards justice. And I will stand up for you, and fight for you, and wake up every single day thinking about how to make your lives better.The truth is, though, one man cannot make a movement. No single law can erase the prejudice in the heart of a child who hangs a noose on a tree. Or in the callousness of a prosecutor who bypasses justice in the pursuit of vengeance. No one leader, no matter how shrewd, or experienced, or inspirational, can prevent teenagers from killing other teenagers in the streets of our cities, or free our neighborhoods from the grip of homelessness, or make real the promise of opportunity and equality for every citizen.Only a country can do those things. Only this country can do those things. That's why if you give me the chance to serve this nation, the most important thing I will do as your President is to ask you to serve this country, too. The most important thing I'll do is to call on you every day to take a risk, and do your part to carry this movement forward. Against deep odds and great cynicism I will ask you to believe that we can right the wrong we see in America. I say this particularly to the young people who are listening today. ...I know that you believe it's possible too. The most inspiring thing about the response to Jena was that it did not begin with the actions of any one leader. The call went out to thousands across the internet and on black radio and on college campuses like Howard. And, like the young Americans of another era, you left your homes and you got on buses and you traveled south. It's what happened two years earlier when Americans from every walk of life took it upon themselves to save a city that was drowning. It's how real change and true justice have always come about. It takes a movement to lift a nation. It will take a movement to go into our cities and say that is not enough just to fix our criminal justice says what we really need is to make sure our kids don't end up there in the first place. ...It's time to finish what we started in Topeka, Kansas and Little Rock, Arkansas. It will take a movement of every American from every city and town, every race and every background to stand up and say: No matter what you look like or where you come from, every child in America should have the opportunity to receive the best education this country can offer. Every child. We recruit an army of new teachers, and we pay them better, and we give them more support. It will take a movement to ensure that every young person gets the chance that Howard has given all of you, to say that at the beginning of the 21st century, college education is not a luxury for those who can afford it--it is the birthright of every single American. So when we go back to your class rooms and your dorm rooms and you begin this new year at Howard University, I ask you to remember how far we've come, but I urge you to think about where we need to go. I urge you to think about the risks you will take and the role you will play in the movement that will get us there.And I finally ask you to remember the story of Moses and Joshua, I spoke about this when I was in Selma, the 42nd anniversary of Bloody Sunday and the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Most of you know that Moses was called by God to lead his people to the promised land. And in the face of a pharaoh and his armies, across an unforgiving desert and along the walls of an angry sea, he succeeded in leading his people out of bondage in Egypt. He led them through great dangers and they got far enough so that Moses could point the way toward freedom on the far banks of the river Jordan. Yet it was not God's plan to have Moses cross the river. Instead he would call on Joshua to finish the work that Moses began. He would ask Joshua to take his people that final distance. Everyone in this room stands on the shoulders of many Moseses. Many Moseses fought and battled here at Howard University. They are courageous men and women who marched and fought and bled for the rights and freedoms we enjoy today. They have taken us many miles over an impossible journey.And to the young people here: you are members of the Joshua Generation. It is up to you to finish the work that they began. it is up to you to cross the river. When Joshua discovered the challenge he faced he had doubts and he had worries. He told God: 'Don't choose me, I'm not strong enough, I'm not wise enough; I don't have the training; I don't have enough experience.' God told Joshua not to fear; he said 'Be strong and have courage, for I am with you wherever you go.' Be strong and have courage. Be strong and have courage in the face of anything. Be strong and have courage and we will cross over into that promised land together. Thank you."
Senator Barack Obama(From Blacks4Barack ! Please share this powerful message with everyone. Now IS the Time for a New America !!!)
Visit: http://www.blacks4barack.homestead.com/

BRITNEY: Caught on tape !

2007-09-22T15:33:00.000-04:00

SEE Britney Car Accident: CAUGHT ON TAPE !

2007-09-21T18:52:00.000-04:00

NEW $1 Coin....

Leaves out GOD !

Please help do this... refuse to accept these when they are handed back to you. I received one from the Post Office as change and I ask for a dollar bill instead..the lady just smiled and said way to go, so she had read this e-mail. Please help out... our world is in enough trouble without this too!!!!!
U.S. Government to Release New Dollar Coins You guessed it " IN GOD WE TRUST " IS GONE!!! If ever there was a reason to boycott something, THIS IS IT!!!! DO NOT ACCEPT THE NEW DOLLAR COINS AS CHANGE Together we can force them out of circulation. Please send to all on your mail list !!!

2007-09-21T15:58:00.000-04:00

NO BAIL SET FOR 'JENA 6' TEEN

JENA, La. - A relative of one of the Jena Six says a judge has denied bail for Mychal Bell, the only one of the teens who is jailed in the beating of a white classmate.
Attorneys would not comment because juvenile court proceedings are secret. But the father of one of Bell's co-defendants said Bell's bail request was rejected. Bell's mother left the courthouse in tears and refused to comment.

JENA, La. (AP) — It had many of the signs of the early civil rights protests — militant slogans, upraised clenched fists and multitudes of police — but none of the hate and fear-drenched campaigns in Selma, Little Rock and Montgomery.
Thousands of protesters descended on this tiny central Louisiana town Thursday, rallying against what they see as a double standard of justice for blacks and whites.
But unlike the protests that became landmarks for civil rights when fire hoses and police dogs greeted demonstrators, the rally to support six black teenagers charged in a school fight had a festive yet laid-back air.
"It was a great day," said Denise Broussard of Lafayette. "I really felt a sense of purpose and commitment, but it was also a lot of fun. I met great people and made some good friends."
The march for the so-called Jena Six, a group of black teens initially charged with attempted murder in the beating of a white classmate, was one of the biggest civil rights demonstrations in years.
Hours later, police in nearby Alexandria said they arrested two whites after officers noticed a pair of nooses dangling from the rear of the driver's pickup truck.
The driver, identified as 18-year-old Jeremiah Munsen of Colfax, was charged with inciting a riot, driving while intoxicated and contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile, authorities said. A city attorney will decide whether charges against the 16-year-old passenger from Dry Prong are warranted, said Alexandria Police Sgt. Clifford Gatlin.
"I wish we had a charge in Louisiana for aggravated ignorance, because this is a classic case," Gatlin said.
In Jena on Friday, the state district court scheduled a session to decide whether a judge who has been hearing the case of Mychal Bell, one of the six youths, should be made to step aside from a bond hearing.
Bell, now 17, is the only one of the six black defendants to be tried. He was convicted of aggravated second-degree battery, but his conviction was tossed out last week by a state appeals court that said Bell could not be tried as an adult on that charge.
Bell had been arrested on juvenile charges including battery and criminal damage to property, and was on probation at the time the white student, Justin Barker, was beaten. He remained in jail pending an appeal by prosecutors. An appellate court on Thursday ordered a hearing to be held within three days on his request for release. The other defendants are free on bond.
The case dates to August 2006, when a black Jena High School student asked the principal whether blacks could sit under a shade tree that was a frequent gathering place for whites. He was told yes. But nooses appeared in the tree the next day. Three white students were suspended but not criminally prosecuted. LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters said this week he could find no state law covering the act.
The incident was followed by fights between blacks and whites, and in December a white student, was knocked unconscious on school grounds. According to court testimony, his face was swollen and bloodied, but he was able to attend a school function that night.
Six black teens were arrested. Five were originally charged with attempted second-degree murder — charges that have since been reduced for four of them. The sixth was booked as a juvenile on sealed charges.
On Thursday, old-guard lions like the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton joined scores of college students bused in from across the nation who said they wanted to make a stand for racial equality just as their parents did in the 1950s and '60s.
But while those early protesters dodged police batons and were insulted by the white population, demonstrators on Thursday petted police horses, chatted with officers and posed by the Jena Police Department sign.
"It was a big event for us," said Donna Clark, who traveled from Atlanta with her husband and four young daughters. "We got matching T-shirts and drove all night. It's exciting and I think the girls can say later they were part of history."
People began gathering before dawn; state police put attendance between 15,000 and 20,000, though organizers said the crowd was much larger.
Law enforcement officials said the biggest problem was the heat.
"It's been a very peaceful and happy crowd," said Sgt. Julie Lewis of the Louisiana State Police. "Really these are very, very nice people. They are welcome in Louisiana any time."
The only strident note came at the end of the rally when a group of Black Panthers took the microphone and led the crowd in chants.
"We're nonviolent when people are nonviolent with us," one speaker said. "We're not nonviolent with people that are violent with us."
Jena residents, resentful of the massive protest in their little town and the racist label stamped upon them, were scarce during the demonstrations. Businesses closed, and so did the library, schools, city offices and the courthouse.
"I don't mind them demonstrating," said resident Ricky Coleman, 46, who is white. "I believe in people standing up for what they think is right. But this isn't a racist town. It's a small place and we all get along."
In Washington, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said he would hold hearings on the case, though he did not set a date or say if the prosecutor would be called to testify.
Walters, the district attorney, has usually declined to discuss the case publicly. But on the eve of the demonstrations, he denied the charges against the teens were race-related and lamented that Barker, the victim of the beating, has been reduced to "a footnote" while protesters generate sympathy for his alleged attackers.
President Bush said he understood the emotions and the FBI was monitoring the situation.
"The events in Louisiana have saddened me," the president told reporters at the White House. "All of us in America want there to be, you know, fairness when it comes to justice."
___
Associated Press writers Errin Haines in Atlanta and Michael Kunzelman in Jena contributed to this report.

2007-09-16T04:51:00.000-04:00

190 War Protesters Arrested In D.C.

WASHINGTON - Several thousand anti-war demonstrators marched through downtown Washington on Saturday, clashing with police at the foot of the Capitol steps where more than 190 protesters were arrested.
The group marched from the White House to the Capitol to demand an end to the Iraq war. Their numbers stretched for blocks along Pennsylvania Avenue, and they held banners and signs and chanted, "What do we want? Troops out. When do we want it? Now."
Army veteran Justin Cliburn, 25, of Lawton, Okla., was among a contingent of Iraq veterans in attendance.
"We're occupying a people who do not want us there," Cliburn said of Iraq. "We're here to show that it isn't just a bunch of old hippies from the 60s who are against this war."
Counterprotesters lined the sidewalks behind metal barricades. There were some heated shouting matches between the two sides.
The arrests came after protesters lay down on the Capitol lawn in what they called a "die in" — with signs on top of their bodies to represent soldiers killed in Iraq. When police took no action, some of the protesters started climbing over a barricade at the foot of the Capitol steps.
Many were arrested without a struggle after they jumped over the waist-high barrier. But some grew angry as police with shields and riot gear attempted to push them back. At least two people were showered with chemical spray. Protesters responded by throwing signs and chanting: "Shame on you."
The number of arrests by Capitol Police on Saturday was much higher than previous anti-war rallies in Washington this year. Five people were arrested at a protest outside the Pentagon in March when they walked onto a bridge that had been closed off to accommodate the demonstration, then refused to leave. And at a rally in January, about 50 demonstrators blocked a street near the Capitol, but they were dispersed without arrests.
The protesters gathered earlier Saturday near the White House in Lafayette Park with signs saying "End the war now" and calling for President Bush's impeachment. The rally was organized by the ANSWER Coalition and other groups.
Organizers estimated that nearly 100,000 people attended the rally and march. That number could not be confirmed; police did not give their own estimate. A permit for the march obtained in advance by the ANSWER Coalition had projected 10,000.
Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan told the crowd is was time to be assertive.
"It's time to lay our bodies on the line and say we've had enough," she said. "It's time to shut this city down."
About 13 blocks away, nearly 1,000 counterprotesters gathered near the Washington Monument, frequently erupting in chants of "U-S-A" and waving American flags.
Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Robert "Buzz" Patterson, speaking from a stage to crowds clad in camouflage, American flag bandanas and Harley Davidson jackets, said he wanted to send three messages.
"Congress, quit playing games with our troops. Terrorists, we will find you and kill you," he said. "And to our troops, we're here for you, and we support you."
___
Associated Press writer Christine Simmons contributed to this report.

2007-09-12T17:26:00.000-04:00

Two Soldiers Who Wrote NYT Op-Ed Die in Iraq (see below)
Posted September 12, 2007 01:59 PM (EST)

Last month, seven 82nd Airborne soldiers in Iraq wrote a harsh and powerful assessment of the war. The historic piece ran as an op-ed in The New York Times, stating in part:To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched.Today, it was announced that two of those soldiers have died in a vehicle accident in Baghdad.

I was gutted when I heard the news this morning. Like so many other Iraq veterans, I read the paper every day and go directly to names of the dead -- fearfully looking for names I know. Our staff reviews and posts the names of those killed in action every day on the "Honor the Fallen" section of IAVA's homepage, and not one of them is easy. But this news was especially tough for me to swallow. I really looked forward to one day meeting these brave, articulate and thoughtful soldier-statesmen -- or seeing them run for office.

Please keep these soldiers and their families in your thoughts and prayers. Like every troop that dies in Iraq, these men are more than just numbers. They each have a name, a story and a family that must be remembered. Amidst all the politics and partisanship that dominate our televisions and radios, we must always keep in mind that there are real people behind the policy. Sgt. Omar Mora, 28, of Texas City, TX, the son of Olga and Robert Capetillo, and the sister of Erica Capetillo, was on his second tour of duty and had just become a U.S. citizen. He is survived by a wife and 5-year-old daughter.Staff Sgt. Yance T. Gray, 26, of Ismay, MT, the son of Richard and Karen Gray, leaves behind a wife and baby daughter.Please consider making a donation in their memory to the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund. As soldiers and as citizens, these young men are heroes. Their devotion to our country is an inspiration, and their deaths represent an unspeakable loss.

WATCH HERE: 9/11 SuperDocumentary 'LOOSE CHANGE'

2007-09-11T19:06:00.000-04:00

In Honor of all of the 9/11 victims....ALL Americans should watch 'Loose Change'. HERE IT IS.....TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW TO WATCH !!!!

WATCH New Bin Laden Video....Looks FAKE !!!!

2007-09-07T16:10:00.000-04:00

WAKE UP AMERICA !!!

We invite all to watch the latest video release from Usama Bin Laden. Not only is he wearing the same clothes as in a previous video release broadcast 4 years ago....other than the darkening of his beard from grey to black....the 2 videos look identical. Makes you wonder........are we being led astray to be in fear ????

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1283130,00.html?f=rss

ALSO: As an American and a father it really saddens me to think that our government is systematically conning Americans to agree to this war thru absolutely contrived fear tactics while simultaneously jeopardizing the lives of our brave soldiers who have no clue that they are being used as expendable pawns. Visit this site to see the truth regarding this new 'Bin Laden Video'. These fear tactics are weak and sad. People in other countries know the truth....it's time for Americans to WAKE UP !

Visit:http://www.deepjournal.com/p/7/a/en/960.html

TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW !!!!!

American soldiers in Iraq tell it like it REALLY is ! New York Times Op-Ed

2007-08-24T16:50:00.000-04:00

Here's the text of the op-ed written by American soldiers in Iraq......just in case you can't get through to the NYTimes page:
August 19, 2007
Op-Ed Contributors

The War as We Saw It
By BUDDHIKA JAYAMAHA, WESLEY D. SMITH, JEREMY ROEBUCK, OMAR MORA, EDWARD SANDMEIER, YANCE T. GRAY and JEREMY A. MURPHY

(Baghdad)
VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)
The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the â€œbattle spaceâ€ remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayersâ€™ expense.
A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.
As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.
Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.
However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.
In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a â€œtime-sensitive target acquisition missionâ€ on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse â€" namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.
Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.
Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.
The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.
Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washingtonâ€™s insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made â€" de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government â€" places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.
Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict â€" as we do now â€" will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.
At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. â€œLuckyâ€ Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.
In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, â€œWe need security, not free food.â€
In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are â€" an army of occupation â€" and force our withdrawal.
Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.
We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.

Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.

UPDATE: Soldiers Mora and Davis were killed 3 weeks later !!!

SUPPORT OUR TROOPS.....BRING THEM HOME !!!

2007-08-21T16:35:00.000-04:00

Al Sharpton...Jesse Jackson...Black Leaders;

Time to Lead for BARACK !

Greg 'Peace Song' Jones

I regularly listen to talk radio ranging from Air America, which is more progressive or Democratic...to Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Prager and Michael Medved which are Republican....and black radio particularly Warren Ballentine and Rev. Al Sharpton on the Radio 1 Network which is doing a great job of reaching the black community and creating an opportunity for voices nationwide to be heard.

I find it interesting to hear the different views from the hosts....as well as callers nationwide...on the subject of Barack Obama for President. Many of the hosts, even callers, on both Air America and the Republican shows voice massive approval and support of Barack Obama. It's actually quite refreshing to see and hear that so many white Americans are ready for a black president, basically because they feel he is the best choice regarding the issues of America and the world. Now, that's progress.

Then I listen to the Rev. Al Sharpton. First of all, let me state that I greatly admire Rev. Sharpton. The work that he does through his National Action Network is developing into becoming a mighty force in the black community nationwide and I feel that all blacks should be supportive of NAN. But when I listen to Rev. Sharpton talk about Barack Obama's presidential campaign I am totally amazed, shocked and beyond extremely disappointed. I'm almost embarrassed. Here we have Rev. Sharpton, who many blacks, including myself, look at as the number one leader for justice and empowerment in the black community.....and here we have a black man...Barack Obama...who is a very serious, capable, qualified candidate for President of the United States, supported by millions nationwide, with a realistic chance to enter the White House.

But instead of rallying, supporting and stating this black historic opportunity as it is....Rev. Sharpton would rather not express his support of Obama at a ll !!! What's wrong with this picture ? I cannot believe that the leader(s) of the black community like Rev. Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson are NOT supportive of what could be the first black president of the United States, ever? That is crazy !!!! (note: Rev. Jackson has quietly declared that he is supporting Obama but has done little or nothing to rally the black community....while polls show Hillary currently receiving more black support than Obama !.....That's CRAZY !) We, as blacks, know that in order for the black communities to rise up out of the muck and mire that permeates, we must all work together....as a family. We know that we always preach that we should be supportive of black achievement, black businesses, our black youth and each other.
If that is the case, that we are to be supportive of each other, which I do believe that to be true, then never has that need been more evident than now. ALL black people should be in absolute support of Barack Obama for President, not just because he's black, but because of his stance, capabilities and qualifications. This should be a period of rallying in the streets, shouting with pride that we have a true opportunity to change history and put a black man in the White House. And this rally cry should be lead by our leaders.

Yes, Rev. Al, Rev. Jackson, the NAACP...ALL black leaders should be sounding the trumpet to inspire all black people to vote for this historic change. Why aren't they ? Rev. Al states that he hasn't heard enough from Obama regarding the issues to make a decision. I find that a bit disingenuous seeing as to how I know where Obama stands on the various issues....and so do the millions of white Obama supporters. Rev. Al also says that Obama may not have enough experience. I find that to be a sadly interesting comment, particularly considering both Rev. Al and Rev. Jackson ran for President with absolutely NO political experience, but never stated that they were too new for the post. (NOTE: Rev. Al knows that Barack Obama has been a
U.S. Senator for over 2 years.....and that Abraham Lincoln was a Senator for 2 years....and turned out to be considered one of the greatest Presidents of all time). Rev. Al also states that he is not hearing enough talk from Obama regarding specifically what he will do for the black community. Now common sense should tell all black folks that Obama has to play the political game. Keep in mind, he is running for president of the United States...that means everyone, black, white, hispanic, muslim, jews,and all others.

Obama cannot appear as if he will only be concerned with the black community's needs or he has absolutely no chance of winning. Maybe that's where Rev. Al went wrong with his campaign. Does Rev. Al think that Obama should be shouting 'ungawa...Black Power' during each debate ? There is no way that he could do that and expect to win. But once he is President, common sense tells us that he would be more receptive to the needs in the black community than any other candidate. That's just common sense based on what we DO know about Obama. Then some folks want to say he's not 'black enough'. That is the most pathetic thing I've ever heard. First of all, his name is Barack Obama......not like Jesse or Al. Secondly, Obama is half Kenyan.....that's pretty black !!! Sometimes I just wonder to myself, why aren't Rev. Al and Rev. Jackson leading the rally to support this historic cause ? Could they be jealous that Obama has already achieved more acceptance than they did during their campaign efforts ? I would hate to think that to be the fact. Or, could Rev. Al be hopeful that Hillary will win because he feels that she will assist him in his personal efforts if she is elected President ? I hope that too is not the case.....that would be selling out.....and I would never believe our leader(s) to be sell-outs. But for our leaders to not boisterously support Obama is like saying that they feel a white person would do better or more for the black communities, which history has proven is just not the case. Then what can it be ? That is the question.

I believe that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would be very proud and thankful to see that, in spite of all of the weights that have burdened and held the black community down, one black man has risen to such a level that he is a viable choice to be President of the United States in 2008. I believe that Rev. King would truly lead a powerful movement to change the tide of history. I envision marches, flags, signs, songs, t-shirts, buttons and millions of blacks proudly expressing jubilee for this opportunity to make a real change in our country.

WE SHALL OVERCOME....has been our motto for the black struggle for many generations and we are still struggling, in oh so many ways. And we will never overcome, until our leaders wake up, stop 'hatin' and vigorously lead the cause that will truly make a positive difference in our country, in our black community, and in the entire world. Rev. Al....Rev. Jackson....love ya' both....but on this subject...

It's Time To LEAD !!!

(Greg 'Peace Song' Jones)

http://www.blacks4barack.homestead.com/

Greg Jones is the singer/songwriter who's new CD release entitled 'God Bless the World-While You Bless America'

is considered the Musical Message for World Peace and is garnering accolades worldwide.

Visit: www.godblesstheworldonline.com

Greg 'Peace Song' Jones launches National Campaign....'Blacks4Barack'

2007-08-21T16:08:00.000-04:00

Cleveland, Ohio singer/songwriter Greg Jones has launched a new national grassroots campaign called 'Blacks4Barack'. The campaign is designed to trigger, ignite and highlight the importance of all people, particularly blacks, to vote in support of Barack Obama for President of the United States in 2008, beginning in the primaries. " We would like to see black voter registration increase by at least 10% before the election; then we'd like at least 90% of all black voters in support of Obama", states Jones as to the goals of the campaign. " Barack Obama is a highly qualified and credible candidate who will probably go down in history as one of our greatest Presidents ever. This is a very historic opportunity that the entire black population should rally in support of," Jones adds.

Greg Jones is garnering accolades worldwide with his recent Maxi-Single CD release of what is considered the Musical Message for World Peace entitled 'God Bless the World....While You Bless America' on Orville Records.

Visit: http://www.blacks4barack.homestead.com/

For info on Greg Jones' Peace CD visit: http://www.godblesstheworldonline.com/

Mass Murderer Cho left note:

2007-04-17T11:47:00.000-04:00

Click To read article from Chicago Times:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070417vtech-shootings,1,176236.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

Picture of mass murderer Cho Seung-hui

2007-04-17T10:41:00.000-04:00

By RUSSELL GOLDMAN
April 17, 2007 — Police have identified the Virginia Tech killer responsible for the deaths of 32 people as Cho Seung-hui.
Cho, 23, a Virginia Tech student and a native of South Korea, was a resident alien who lived in Centerville, Va.
Police say the senior English major was likely responsible for both shootings at the university, the first of which took place at around 7:15 a.m. Monday, when two people were killed at West Ambler Johnston Hall dormitory. Later that morning, the remaining victims were killed in the engineering studies building Norris Hall.
Immigration officials linked the fingerprints at the scene to Cho's immigration documents.
Legal permanent resident aliens may purchase firearms in the state of Virginia. The buyer must, however, provide additional identification to prove he or she is a resident of the state.

Washington Post exposes mistreatment of injured troops !

2007-02-20T18:07:00.000-05:00

UPDATE: 'Post' Gets Results from Walter Reed Hospital Probe By E&P Staff Published: February 20, 2007 updated Monday and Tuesday

NEW YORK In a front page story in The Washington Post on Sunday, reporters Dana Priest and Anne Hull exposed dreadful conditions at the supposed "crown jewel of military medicine"-- Walter Reed Army Medical Center.On Monday, the paper carried Part II by the same reporters, titled: "Inside Mologne House, the Survivors of War Wrestle With Military Bureaucracy and Personal Demons."Now, in another front-pager on Tuesday, the two report: "Walter Reed Army Medical Center began repairs yesterday on Building 18, a former hotel that is used to house outpatients recuperating from injuries suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan and that has been plagued with mold, leaky plumbing and a broken elevator."The facility's commander, Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, said Army staff members inspected each of the 54 rooms at the building and discovered that outstanding repair orders for half the rooms had not been completed. He said that mold removal had begun on several rooms and that holes in ceilings, stained carpets and leaking faucets were being fixed...."Walter Reed and Army officials have been 'meeting continuously for three days' since the articles began appearing, Weightman said. A large roundtable meeting with Army and Defense Department officials will take place at the Pentagon early this morning to continue talks about improvements in the outpatient system, he added."Weightman said the medical center has received an outpouring of concern about conditions and procedures since the articles appeared and has taken steps to improve what soldiers and their families describe as a messy battlefield of bureaucratic problems and mistreatment. 'We're starting to attack how we'll fix and mitigate' some of the problems, he said.The first part of the article opened as follows. The entire lengthy pieces are posted at www.washingtonpost.com*Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.The common perception of Walter Reed is of a surgical hospital that shines as the crown jewel of military medicine. But 5 1/2 years of sustained combat have transformed the venerable 113-acre institution into something else entirely -- a holding ground for physically and psychologically damaged outpatients. Almost 700 of them -- the majority soldiers, with some Marines -- have been released from hospital beds but still need treatment or are awaiting bureaucratic decisions before being discharged or returned to active duty.They suffer from brain injuries, severed arms and legs, organ and back damage, and various degrees of post-traumatic stress. Their legions have grown so exponentially -- they outnumber hospital patients at Walter Reed 17 to 1 -- that they take up every available bed on post and spill into dozens of nearby hotels and apartments leased by the Army. The average stay is 10 months, but some have been stuck there for as long as two years.Not all of the quarters are as bleak as Duncan's, but the despair of Building 18 symbolizes a larger problem in Walter Reed's treatment of the wounded, according to dozens of soldiers, family members, veterans aid groups, and current and former Walter Reed staff members interviewed by two Washington Post reporters, who spent more than four months visiting the outpatient world without the knowledge or permission of Walter Reed officials. Many agreed to be quoted by name; others said they feared Army retribution if they complained publicly.While the hospital is a place of scrubbed-down order and daily miracles, with medical advances saving more soldiers than ever, the outpatients in the Other Walter Reed encounter a messy bureaucratic battlefield nearly as chaotic as the real battlefields they faced overseas.On the worst days, soldiers say they feel like they are living a chapter of "Catch-22." The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers dealing with psychological disorders of their own have been put in charge of others at risk of suicide.Disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked case managers fumble with simple needs: feeding soldiers' families who are close to poverty, replacing a uniform ripped off by medics in the desert sand or helping a brain-damaged soldier remember his next appointment."We've done our duty. We fought the war. We came home wounded. Fine. But whoever the people are back here who are supposed to give us the easy transition should be doing it," said Marine Sgt. Ryan Groves, 26, an amputee who lived at Walter Reed for 16 months. "We don't know what to do. The people who are supposed to know don't have the answers. It's a nonstop process of stalling."Soldiers, family members, volunteers and caregivers who have tried to fix the system say each mishap seems trivial by itself, but the cumulative effect wears down the spirits of the wounded and can stall their recovery.
E&P Staff (letters@editorandpublisher.com)

Pat Tillman's brother speaks out on Iraq War !

2007-02-07T17:02:00.000-05:00

Posted on Oct 19, 2006
Courtesy of the Tillman Family
Pat Tillman (left) and his brother Kevin stand in front of a Chinook helicopter in Saudi Arabia before their tour of duty as Army Rangers in Iraq in 2003.

By Kevin Tillman
Editor’s note: Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, has written a powerful, must-read document.
It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we got out.
Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

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A veteran of the U.S. Army Special forces writes about a series of shockingly callous statements that Pat Tillman’s commanding officer made about the Tillman family’s search for the truth.
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Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.
Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.
Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few “bad apples” in the military.
Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.
Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.
Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.
Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.
Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.
Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.
Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.
Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.
Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.
Somehow torture is tolerated.
Somehow lying is tolerated.
Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.
Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.
Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.
Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.
Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.
Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.
Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.
Somehow this is tolerated.
Somehow nobody is accountable for this.
In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that “somehow” was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.
Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday.
Brother and Friend of Pat Tillman,

Kevin Tillman

U.S. soldiers run TV ads against escalation in Iraq !

2007-02-03T13:04:00.000-05:00

January 29, 2007, 6:28 pm
VoteVets Aims at G.O.P. Senators
By Sarah Wheaton
VoteVets.org, the group who sponsored controversial ads aimed at vulnerable G.O.P. incumbents last year, is back at it. This time, it is attacking Republican senators from purplish states who have expressed opposition to President Bush’s troop increase but have declined to support the original, harsher Senate resolution condemning the plan.
The ad features several veterans each saying a line:When it comes to Iraq, America is divided.
On the one hand, you’ve got two-thirds of the American people,
A bipartisan majority in Congress.
The Iraq Study Group.
And veterans like us, all opposed to the escalation.
The next shot is wider and shows a veteran whose arm has been partially amputated: He says:
On the other hand, there’s George Bush, who supports escalation. If you support escalation, you don’t support the troops.
(This campaign is remarkably similar to one used during the midterms, when a veteran sitting at a table said, “Republican Congressman [name here] voted to increase his pay while voting to cut health care benefits for veterans like me. That may make sense from where he sits in Congress… But not from where I’m sitting.” The shot panned out to show the man in a wheelchair.)
General Wesley Clark, a potential candidate for the Democrats’ presidential nomination in 2008, is on the VoteVets.org board of advisors, and the new ad is posted on YouTube under his username and his WESPAC also is soliciting money for the ad. Mr. Clark is expected to address, as are the other possible 2008′ers, the Democratic National Committee’s winter meeting in Washington, D.C. later this week.
Today and Tuesday, a group of veterans, including Jon Soltz, the national chairman of VoteVets.org, are holding press conferences in the home states of each senator as the ad is debuted —- a new technique for the group. Local Iraq veterans are meeting the touring group at each location.
Here’s a list of the tour stops and targets:
St. Paul - Senator Norm Coleman
Indianapolis - Senator Richard Lugar
Columbus - Senator George Voinovich
Portland, Me. - Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins
Manchester, N.H. - Senators Judd Gregg and John Sununu
Philadelphia - Senator Arlen Specter
Norfolk and Richmond – Senator John Warner

Survey declares inadequate equipment for U.S. troops in Iraq !

2007-02-03T12:59:00.000-05:00

VoteVets Action Fund Poll
First Ever Poll of Veterans Who Served in Iraq and Afghanistan Finds Troops Suffered From Inadequate Equipment in Theater and Serious Health Problems at Home

Click Here For The Entire Poll
VoteVets.org Action Fund Launches Advocacy Effort to Give Voice to the 21st Century Patriot and Veteran
WASHINGTON, D.C. - A new poll released today of American service men and women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan shows that at the start of heavy combat (2003 and 2004), nearly half of our troops reported they did not have "up-armored" vehicles that would be considered mission capable. According to the poll, conducted by VoteVets.org Action Fund, the clear majority of veterans - both active duty personnel as well as National Guard and Reservists - believe the Army and Marines are over-extended in Iraq and Afghanistan, having endured extensions of duty and stop-loss orders as the U.S. military increased operations abroad. When the veterans polled returned home, many encountered emotional and physical health problems as well as economic hardship, indicating that the impact of their service extends beyond their tour of duty.
"The results of this poll should be a wake up call to every American. We are shortchanging our troops - in combat and at home," said Jon Soltz, Iraq War Veteran, Co-Founder and Chairman of VoteVets.org Action Fund. "I am proud of my service in Iraq, but my job was made more difficult by the real life-or-death challenges I faced when it came to equipment and supplies that were inadequate or not fully operational. Our leaders should pay careful attention to the experiences of my peers - the first batch of 21st century veterans to have served in an all volunteer army - because they are telling us that problems exist. Today's military can only be successful if we have the support and resources necessary to fulfill our duties."
Key Findings
Veterans faced real challenges with equipment and supplies while in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Nearly half of all veterans (42 percent) reported that their equipment did not meet the military standard that requires a unit to be at least 90 percent operational.
Later deployments reported improvements in operational equipment: only 52 and 49 percent of veterans serving in 2003 and 2004 respectively reported their equipment was operational compared to 61 percent of those who served in 2005 and later.
Thirty-five percent of veterans said their trucks were not up-armored at all and 10 percent said the trucks were up-armored with scrap metal
One-fifth of veterans have been impacted by stop-loss regulations or extensions and the majority believes the Army and Marine Corps are overextended.
Twenty percent of respondents said their unit was extended past its original time frame.
Thirteen percent of all veterans say they were affected by stop-loss regulations, including 14 percent of National Guard and Reservists.
Overall, 63 percent of all Iraq or Afghanistan veterans believe the Army and Marine Corps are overextended at this time, including 67 percent of Army and Marine veterans and 66 percent of veterans who experienced ground combat.
When these soldiers returned home, many encountered emotional and physical health problems as well as economic hardship resulting from their service.
One in four veterans has experienced nightmares since returning, including 33 percent of Army and Marines veterans and 36 percent of combat veterans.
A fifth of all veterans (21 percent) and a quarter of Army and Marines (26 percent) and ground combat veterans (27 percent) say they have felt more stress now then before they left for war.
Among National Guard or Reserve veterans, 32 percent said their families experienced economic hardship; 25 percent feel more stress now than before the war; 32 percent experienced more extreme highs and lows; and 30 percent experienced nightmares.
Twenty six percent of all veterans have sought some service from the VA or a VA Hospital, including 33 percent of Reservists and National Guard respondents.
Despite similar military experiences, Reservists do not have access to the same health care as active duty personnel. Given how many veterans have sought some sort of care or assistance, it is no surprise that veterans across the board believe National Guard and Reservists deserve access to TriCare, the medical coverage provided to active duty personnel.Seventy nine percent of all veterans agree that National Guard and Reserve veterans ought to have the same access to Tri-Care as active duty men and women, including 80 percent of Army or Marines respondents, 81 percent of combat veterans, and 83 percent of Reservists and National Guard veterans.
VoteVets.org Action Fund (501c-4) was established to give voice to the 21st century veteran and patriot and to raise concerns about the state of today's military preparedness as well as the resources and support available to service men and women. VoteVets.org Action Fund supports the 21st century veteran through our advocacy and education. VoteVets.org Action Fund seeks to inform the public policy debate in order to improve the resources for and commitment to the men and women of the U.S. military - both those serving today, and those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The poll, which included 453 respondents, was conducted by Lake Research Partners between September 6 and 19, 2006. Respondents varied by political affiliation: 47 percent of veterans in the poll identified themselves as Republicans, 17 percent Democrats, and 22 percent as Independents, while 14 percent declined to answer. For more information on VoteVets.org Action Fund and the poll, please visit www.VoteVets.org.

POWERFUL PEACE VIDEO from Greg Jones' maxi-single CD God Bless the World-Not JUST America !

2007-02-02T15:38:00.000-05:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MUST SEE VIDEO !
(Simply Click Below)

Greg Jones' Peace Song Video
making powerful global impact !

GOD BLESS THE WORLD PEACE VIDEO

"WOW'...BEAUTIFUL'...' possibly the most important musical message of today'! These are a few of the responses regarding the hot new Maxi-Single CD recording entitled GOD BLESS THE WORLD-WHILE YOU BLESS AMERICA (aka... Not Just America) written, produced and performed by Cleveland, Ohio native GREG JONES. With a We are the World 'feel', this special release is a unique blend of adult contemporary, easy listening, soul and inspiration combined with a powerful message of peace and harmony. In fact, the special CD was recorded on the same mixing board which was owned by Kenny Rogers and used by Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson and others for the 'We are the World' project.
Jones recently signed an internet distribution deal with FineTunes (Germany) which is currently promoting the special release for legal downloads on sites such as ITunes, MusicLoad, Sony Connect, NuFonix, EMusic, Beatport, OD2, MusicMatch, Napster and more. The anthem is now available on over 145 music sites worldwide! The Maxi-Single, released by ORVILLE RECORDS is garnering exciting response through top digital music websites in the U.S, Britain, Finland, Germany and recently entered the Australian Easy Listening Top 100 Music Charts at #8 with a bullet! Also, the anthem entered the UK Soft Rock Top 100 Music Charts at #7 and then climbed to #2!! Orville Records also recently inked a deal with two of the world's largest web distributors, MusicNet and AMG for additional web distribution through top music sites such as AOL MusicNet, Yahoo Launch, Virgin Digital, FYE Download, MSN Music, ClearChannel, Amazon, Target Music, and others.

Jones' special musical message for world peace launched a revolutionary method of spreading the message of peace by creating a worldwide campaign called " Operation PeaceTone". Through this campaign cell phone users can have the chorus of the peace song as a ringtone...absolutely free.

Powerful Video Launched !

Jones recently launched his powerful slide music video for God Bless the World. Through strategically selected images combined with synchronized production....this special peace video takes all viewers on a journey to the realization of the need for world peace. The very touching video leaves viewers desiring to see a world of peace, although some images are extremely graphic and not recommended for youth viewing. For all others, this is one musical meassage that should be seen...and heard !
To WATCH VIDEO NOW !!
http://www.godblesstheworldonline.com/media/windowsmedia/GregJonesGodBlesstheWorldVideo1.wmv

FREE PeaceTone
GOD BLESS THE WORLD-Not JUST America
and for Special Buy CD Offer
visit http://www.godblesstheworldonline.com/.
You can also hear the radio and instrumental versions for FREE !
Spread the musical message of Peace! To see more please do Yahoo search...
type-in 'greg jones god bless the world' (images also available through Google images)

GREG JONES MUSIC*BMI*Orville Records*P.O. Box 43678*Cleveland, Ohio*44143*

216-254-9339 Contact: Ken J. http://us.f588.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=orvillerecords@aol.com
"The more seeds of Peace are planted...the greater the tree of life will grow"

Former Foley Staffer testifies he told Hastert's office about Foley

2006-10-12T21:31:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Rep. Mark Foley's one-time aide didn't waver Thursday from his contention that he told the House Speaker's chief of staff at least three years ago about Foley's approaches to male pages, the witness' lawyer said.
Kirk Fordham would not comment after emerging from nearly five hours of closed-door testimony before the House ethics committee, but his lawyer, Timothy Heaphy, said Fordham was ''consistent in his accounts.'' Fordham has spoken out publicly on his timeline and was questioned by the FBI.
Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill, has said he learned of inappropriate approaches by Foley in late September and his aides found out in the fall of 2005. Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, has denied that Fordham contacted him at least three years ago, contradicting Fordham and creating one of the major conflicts the committee must resolve.
Heaphy told reporters Fordham was ''forthcoming'' in his testimony. ''He has been consistent in his accounts of these events when he talked to the FBI and today met with the ethics committee.
''He's been truthful and cooperative and will continue to be throughout this and other investigations.''
Heaphy said Fordham has been asked not to comment on the substance of the inquiry because of the ongoing investigation.
Foley resigned from Congress on Sept. 29 after being confronted with sexually explicit instant messages.
Polls indicate the page scandal is hurting Republican chances of retaining the majority in the House. President Bush appeared with the embattled speaker in Chicago on Thursday, saying the country would be ''better off'' with Hastert in power.
''I am proud to be standing with the current speaker of the House, who is going to be the future speaker of the House,'' Bush said as he opened a speech to raise money for two Illinois congressional candidates.
Fordham isn't the only witness who will testify about earlier, unsuccessful attempts to stop Foley, although the timelines differ.
Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., scheduled to appear Friday, has said he confronted Foley last fall, after he was told by Hastert's office of an overly friendly -- but not sexually explicit -- e-mail to a page from Louisiana.
Shimkus is chairman of the House Page Board, a group of three lawmakers and two House officers who set policy for the program that brings teenagers to Congress to attend school and perform errands in the chamber during sessions.
Shimkus has said that he and then-House clerk Jeff Trandahl confronted Foley in his office last fall after hearing from Hastert's aides about the e-mail. Shimkus said he told Foley to cease all contact with the Louisiana teenager.
The lawmaker did not tell the two other House members of the page board about the meeting -- Dale Kildee, D-Mich., and Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.
Shimkus said he was following the wishes of the boy's parents.
''I think Congressman Shimkus acted in an expedited manner to find out what happened,'' while respecting the wishes of the family, Hastert said in support of Shimkus' decision to keep the two other lawmakers out of the loop.
Another Republican House member, Rep. Jim Kolbe of Arizona, has pushed the timeline on GOP knowledge of Foley's conduct back to 2001.
Kolbe said a former page contacted his office to report receiving e-mails from Foley that made him uncomfortable. ''I was not shown the content of the messages and was not told they were sexually explicit. It was my recommendation that this complaint be passed along to Rep. Foley's office and the clerk who supervised the page program. This was done promptly,'' he said.
Republicans received a new indication Thursday that the Foley scandal is hurting their chances of retaining control of the House.
Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., said in Cape Girardeau that GOP leaders made a mistake in failing to take quick action to address Foley's conduct. She said the controversy and the public's frustration with the war in Iraq could make it difficult for the GOP to retain control.
''Today, I'd say we aren't going to hold it,'' she said in remarks quoted by the Southeast Missourian newspaper in Cape Girardeau.
Before Fordham appeared, Capito was questioned by the House investigators.
''I'm a member of the page board who was not informed of the e-mail messages that were sent. I want the investigation to go forth quickly and reach a conclusion,'' she said after finishing her testimony.
Capito's Democratic opponent had earlier accused her of failing to protect the high schoolers in the page program.
--------
Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor and Natasha Metzler contributed to this report.

Watch Greg Jones Peace song video

2006-10-12T20:54:00.000-04:00

Greg Jones has created a powerful web video for his special musical message for world peace CD entitled GOD BLESS THE WORLD-Not Just America. To see the video simply click here.

Check these stories to learn the truth

2006-10-02T21:52:00.000-04:00

U.S. setting up 14 new bases in Iraq Bush says, "When they step up we'll step down !" Is it a bold faced lie ?

Read PROJECT FOR NEW AMERICAN CENTURY-Bush/Cheney plan to take over the world !

2006-09-18T23:14:00.000-04:00

War in Iraq and the Project for the New American Century
THE PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY (PNAC), A PLAN FOR GLOBAL DOMINANCE, IS NOT CONSISTENT WITH AMERICAN VALUES
* The Project for the New American Century, or PNAC, is a Washington-based think tank created in 1997. Above all else, PNAC desires and demands one thing: The establishment of a global American empire to bend the will of all nations.
* The fundamental essence of PNAC's ideology can be found in a White Paper produced in September of 2000 entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century." In it, PNAC outlines what is required of America to create the global empire they envision.
* Most ominously, this PNAC document described four "Core Missions" for the American military. The two central requirements are for American forces to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars," and to "perform the 'constabulary' duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions."
* Two events brought PNAC into the mainstream of American government: the disputed election of George W. Bush, and the attacks of September 11th. When Bush assumed the Presidency, the men who created and nurtured the imperial dreams of PNAC became the men who run the Pentagon, the Defense Department and the White House. When the Towers came down, these men saw, at long last, their chance to turn their White Papers into substantive policy.
* Vice President Dick Cheney is a founding member of PNAC, along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is the ideological father of the group. Bruce Jackson, a PNAC director, served as a Pentagon official for Ronald Reagan before leaving government service to take a leading position with the weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.
* PNAC is staffed by men who previously served with groups like Friends of the Democratic Center in Central America, which supported America's bloody gamesmanship in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and with groups like The Committee for the Present Danger, which spent years advocating that a nuclear war with the Soviet Union was "winnable."
* PNAC has recently given birth to a new group, The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which met with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in order to formulate a plan to "educate" the American populace about the need for war in Iraq. CLI has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to support the Iraqi National Congress and the Iraqi heir presumptive, Ahmed Chalabi.
* The PNAC Statement of Principles is signed by Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, as well as by Eliot Abrams, Jeb Bush, Bush's special envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad, and many others. William Kristol, famed conservative writer for the Weekly Standard, is also a co-founder of the group. The Weekly Standard is owned by Ruppert Murdoch, who also owns international media giant Fox News.
* The desire for these freshly empowered PNAC men to extend American hegemony by force of arms across the globe has been there since day one of the Bush administration, and is in no small part a central reason for the Florida electoral battle in 2000.
* On September 11th, the fellows from PNAC saw a door of opportunity open wide before them, and stormed right through it.
* The day after 9/11, before it was known who was behind the attacks, Rumsfeld insisted at a Cabinet meeting that Saddam's Iraq should be "a principal target of the first round of terriorism." Members of PNAC had called for regime change in Iraq in 1998 in a letter sent to President Clinton, long before 9/11. Ten of the eighteen who signed the letter are now in the Bush administration (they include Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Armitage, Bolton, Khalilzad).
*Bush released on September 20th 2001 the "National Security Strategy of the United States of America." It is an ideological match to PNAC's "Rebuilding America's Defenses" report issued a year earlier.
* PNAC had demanded an increase in defense spending to at least 3.8% of GDP. Bush's proposed budget for next year asks for $379 billion in defense spending, almost exactly 3.8% of GDP.
* In August of 2002, Defense Policy Board chairman and PNAC member Richard Perle heard a policy briefing from a think tank associated with the Rand Corporation. According to the Washington Post and The Nation, the final slide of this presentation described "Iraq as the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia as the strategic pivot, and Egypt as the prize" in a war that would purportedly be about ridding the world of Saddam Hussein's weapons.
* Iraq is but the beginning, a pretense for a wider conflict. Donald Kagan, a central member of PNAC, sees America establishing permanent military bases in Iraq after the war. This is purportedly a measure to defend the peace in the Middle East, and to make sure the oil flows. The nations in that region, however, will see this for what it is: a jump-off point for American forces to invade any nation in that region they choose to. The American people, anxiously awaiting some sort of exit plan after America defeats Iraq, will see too late that no exit is planned.
* All of the horses are traveling together at speed here. The defense contractors who sup on American tax revenue will be handsomely paid for arming this new American empire. The corporations that own the news media will sell this eternal war at a profit, as viewership goes through the stratosphere when there is combat to be shown. Those within the administration who believe that the defense of Israel is contingent upon laying waste to every possible aggressor in the region will have their dreams fulfilled. The PNAC men who wish for a global Pax Americana at gunpoint will see their plans unfold. Through it all, the bankrollers from the WTO and the IMF will be able to dictate financial terms to the entire planet. This last aspect of the plan is pivotal, and is best described in the newly revised version of Greg Palast's masterpiece, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy."
* There will be adverse side effects. The siege mentality average Americans are suffering as they smother behind yards of plastic sheeting and duct tape will increase by orders of magnitude as our aggressions bring forth new terrorist attacks against the homeland. These attacks will require the implementation of the newly drafted Patriot Act II, an augmentation of the previous Act that has profoundly sharper teeth. The sun will set on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
* The American economy will be ravaged by the need for increased defense spending, and by the aforementioned "constabulary" duties in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Former allies will turn on us. Germany, France and the other nations resisting this Iraq war are fully aware of this game plan. They are not acting out of cowardice or because they love Saddam Hussein, but because they mean to resist this rising American empire, lest they face economic and military serfdom at the hands of George W. Bush. Richard Perle has already stated that France is no longer an American ally.
* As the eagle spreads its wings, our rhetoric and their resistance will become more agitated and dangerous. Many people, of course, will die. They will die from war and from want, from famine and disease. At home, the social fabric will be torn in ways that make the Reagan nightmares of crack addiction, homelessness and AIDS seem tame by comparison.
* This is the price to be paid for empire, and the men of PNAC who now control the fate and future of America are more than willing to pay it. For them, the benefits far outweigh the liabilities.
* The plan was running smoothly until those two icebergs collided. Millions and millions of ordinary people are making it very difficult for Bush's international allies to keep to the script. PNAC may have designs for the control of the "International Commons" of the Internet, but ! for now it is the staging ground for a movement that would see empire take a back seat to a wise peace, human rights, equal protection under the law, and the preponderance of a justice that will, if properly applied, do away forever with the anger and hatred that gives birth to terrorism in the first place. Tommaso Palladini of Milan perhaps said it best as he marched with his countrymen in Rome. "You fight terrorism," he said, "by creating more justice in the world."
* The People versus the Powerful is the oldest story in human history. At no point in history have the Powerful wielded so much control. At no point in history has the active and informed involvement of the People, all of them, been more absolutely required. The tide can be stopped, and the men who desire empire by the sword can be thwarted. It has already begun, but it must not cease. These are men of will, and they do n! ot intend to fail.
* Excerpts from an article by William Rivers Pitt, "The Project for the New American Century." Pitt is a New York Times bestselling author of two books--War On Iraq (with Scott Ritter) available now from Context Books, and The Greatest Sedition is Silence, available in May 2003 from Pluto Press.
Excerpts also from an article by Gary Dorrien, "The War Against Iraq and the Permanent War." Also see Gary Dorrien's April 9, 2003 lecture, "Imperial Designs: Resisting the Permanent War."
For more information, go to the PNAC website and see for yourself:
http://www.newamericancentury.org.

Bush feels Americans Stupid ! Read Geneva Convention Article 3 for yourself

2006-09-16T23:47:00.000-04:00

In his incredibly hostile press confernce to justify his desire to not follow the Geneva Convention rules pertaining to military conduct (particularly article 3) Bush stated that 'Americans just don't understand article 3', as if it was so deep, so complicated, so intellectually superior that the average American just could not grasp it. Fact is....it's not that deep. So, to give you the opportunity to read it for yourself, not only will you have a clearer understanding of this article, but you'll also realize how crazy Bush sounded calling average Americans stupid.
Article 3
In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:
1. Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.
To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
(a) Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
(b) Taking of hostages;
(c) Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;
(d) The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.
2. The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.
An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict.
The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention.
The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict. ---------------------------------------------------Well, there it is. Not so deep that you couldn't understand huh? And these are the rules that Bush wants to NOT follow anymore. Does he realize (as NBC Press Corp Reporter David Gregory asked during the press conference) that if we, the U.S. decides to not follow article 3 rules related to torture, then that gives other countries the right to basically torture our American troops in any way they desire. That's crazy ! Even Republicans like Lindsey Graham, John Warner, John McCain, Colin Powell and others have strongly voiced opposition to Bush's desire.

Read Official 9/11 Commision Report-Compare to the boringmentary 'movie'

2006-09-11T01:01:00.000-04:00

All I can say about this 30 million dollar, super spectacular, incredibly hyped docu-whatever it's suppose to be.....boring. I mean super boring. If the Bush administration or Disney/ABC thought this would be used as a tool to rewrite history, there's only 1 problem. Knowbody....I mean knowbody, will ever want to watch this boring, hard to follow, hard to hear, hard to see........uh...movie. So, we can all exhale, watch the lawsuits fly (if it's even worth the time) and stay focused on what IS going on with this administration and in this world. But since ABC claims that this docu-whatever is supposedly based on the 9/11 commission report, we thought it might be interesting for some of you to read the Official 9/11 Commission Report for yourself. So, hear it is: The Official 9/11 Commission Report:http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf Now you can really compare the facts to the......uhhhhh....movie ?

Update of ABC Boringmentary 9:35 p.m.

2006-09-10T21:41:00.000-04:00

Some Arabs just broke into a house and ABC had the Arab dude shout out "Your sister is a bitch!" What? How does ABC know this stupid 'filler' stuff. This is pitiful. Can someone please explain. What country are they in? Who are these people? Ohhhh. It's Ramzi getting arrested. Now I'm catching up......(snore...snore...snore) Wait! Here it is! It's....it's the disclaimer! 1 hour and 34 minutes into the movie....NOW they say IT'S FICTION ! This is weird! Totally weird ! Update coming soon.

Hey ABC! What a boring movie -9/11 Movie Update

2006-09-10T21:16:00.000-04:00

I am in shock that ABC spent $30 million dollars on this boring movie. I see why Harvey was not happy. First of all, it's been on for 1 hour and 12 minutes and quite frankly....I'm lost. Who are these people. I didn't know I would have to read the movie. I didn't know Arabs like to disco so much and planned major attacks while boogy downing. It's weird that they would have O'Neil as the main voice or star, since he was one of the first people disgruntled by The Bush Clan. ( I just realized this movie is sooooo boring that I'm blogging while it's on). They should have had commercials. My girl just missed part of the movie because she had to pee. Looks like a B rated movie. A lot of extras so I see why it cost so much. But I'm totally bored! And the sound is bad. I can't even hear what Donnie is saying in his first scene. Well, back to the screen. Update coming soon. p.s. If they keep this up knowone will watch tomorrow....then they'll miss Bush's great speech. $30 million....for what?

Senate Report declares Saddam had no links to al-Qaeda or Bin Laden.

2006-09-10T14:38:00.000-04:00

Democrats say the report weakens Mr Bush's case for warThere is no evidence of formal links between Iraqi ex-leader Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda leaders prior to the 2003 war, a US Senate report says.
The finding is contained in a 2005 CIA report released by the Senate's Intelligence Committee on Friday.
US President George W Bush has said that the presence of late al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq before the war was evidence of a link.
Opposition Democrats are accusing the White House of deliberate deception.
They say the revelation undermines the basis on which the US went to war in Iraq.
The BBC's Justin Webb in Washington says that the US president has again and again tried to connect the war, which most Americans think was a mistake, with the so-called war on terror, which has the support of the nation.
The report comes as Mr Bush makes a series of speeches on the "war on terror" to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the 11 September attacks.
Requests rejected
The report is the second part of the committee's analysis of pre-war intelligence. The first dealt with CIA failings in its assessment of Iraq's weapons programme.
Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al-Qaeda to provide material or operational support,
Senate report
Senate report 6.8MB
Most computers will open PDF documents automatically, but you may need to download Adobe Acrobat Reader
Download the reader here
War rationale laid bare
'Terror war' loses direction
Quick guide: Al-Qaeda
The committee concluded that the CIA had evidence of several instances of contacts between the Iraqi authorities and al-Qaeda throughout the 1990s but that these did not add up to a formal relationship.
It added that the government "did not have a relationship, harbour or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates".
It said that Iraq and al-Qaeda were ideologically poles apart.
"Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al-Qaeda to provide material or operational support," it said.
The Senate report added that the Iraqi regime had repeatedly rejected al-Qaeda requests for meetings.
It also deals with the role played by inaccurate information supplied by Iraqi opposition groups in the run-up to the war.
'Devastating indictment'
Democrats said the White House was still trying to make the connection between the former Iraqi leader and al-Qaeda in an attempt to justify the war in Iraq.
Less than three weeks ago Mr Bush said in a speech that "Saddam Hussein...had relations with Zarqawi".
Democrat Senator Carl Levin described the report as a "devastating indictment" of these attempts.
White House spokesman Tony Snow told the Associated Press news agency the report contained "nothing new".
"In 2002 and 2003, members of both parties got a good look at the intelligence we had and they came to the very same conclusions about what was going on," he said.
HAVE YOUR SAY
Terrorists are winning and Mankind as a whole is losing
Sandor, New Jersey, US
Send us your views Zarqawi, who is believed to be responsible for numerous killings and kidnappings in Iraq since the war, was killed in a US raid in June.
Saddam Hussein and several close associates are standing trial for the killings of Shias in the village of Dujail in the early 1980s and of more than 100,000 Kurds in 1988.

Wow ! Watch ABC's movie then watch this 9/11 Pentagon video !

2006-09-10T13:48:00.000-04:00

Today is the day ABC Television will be broadcasting the $30 million dollar, commercial-free 9/11 movie which has been so highly controversial due to lies within this so-called documantary,docudrama (crockudrama), fictional (lying) movie. We invite everyone to view another little movie (actually just 4 minutes long) which may help us all have a better idea of what truly happened to the Pentagon on 9/11. Sit back, get some popcorn, learn and enjoy. Visit: http://www.freedomunderground.org/memoryhole/pentagon.php#Main Don't forget to show all of your friends this video. (P.S.) Wonder who paid ABC the $30 million to make their movie since they aren't selling any commercials. Hmmmmmm.

Bush caught lying about the Saddam 9/11 connection

2006-09-10T12:47:00.000-04:00

Today the ABC $30 million dollar mini-series will air and we will let it speak for itself. I, for one, encourage the airing of this documentary, docudrama, slash fictional rendition of the what led up to 9/11. Actually, I look forward to this back-firing and igniting more attention to the truth. For your viewing pleasures we have linked a short video which catches Bush in another lie regarding Saddam. Check it out: http://www.freepressinternational.com/bush-caught-lying-saddam-9-11.html Show your friends ! Also, feel free to check out other interesting topics on the site you're being led to. Very eye-opening stuff !

RUSSERT CHEWS OUT CHENEY !

2006-09-10T12:20:00.000-04:00

This morning, after a week of disappointment in the American media for not reporting that due to the outcry and British protesting for supporting the George W. Bush agenda and Iraq war, Tony Blair is being force to step down. But this had not been broadcast at all here via American media, although newspapers, websites and TV networks have been broadcasting this ousting as HUGE NEWS all week. But this morning I watched Meet The Press with Tim Russert. His special guest was the one and only Vice Pres. Dick 'Shooter' Cheney. All I can say is....Unbelievable ! This time 'Shooter' didn't have a script like he normally has for his speaches. Russert asked him basic, clear-cut questions and.....man......the answers were just incredible !THE FOLLOWING WAS WRITTEN BY RACHEL SKLAR AND APPEARED IN HUFFINGTON REPORT: Good evening and welcome to RussertWatch, a doozy today as Tim Russert hammered Vice President Dick Cheney on "Meet The Press," hooked on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 but in reality a solid hour of grilling on Iraq, Afghanistan, and WMDs. It was an incredibly dense show, and more than anything shows how carefully Cheney parses words — no question gets a simple yes or no answer and even while acknowledging that, fine, Iraq was not linked to 9/11 he hammers home the meme of Iraq as a sponsor of terrorism and incipient WMD threat.He manages to answer every question with a "Yes, but..." without making it sound like a "but," trumpeting success in interrogation instead of acknowledging Guantanamo and CIA black prisons, Iraqi democracy instead of the 20,000+ civilians dead in civil strife, and how safe the world is without Saddam Hussein instead of the fact that the administration led the country into war on trumped-up evidence. He also claims not to have read the just-declassified Senate Intelligence Committee report that revealed that intelligence linking Iraq to 9/11 was in fact highly disputed before the invasion. A neat sidestep, that.
My feeling (and that of the blogosphere, it seems) is that Russert did an uncharacteristically tough and dogged job up against Cheney, hammering the main points, bringing up the glaring "gotchas" (with this one there are many: Greeted as liberators, insurgency's last throes, and yep, Saddam's defnitely got WMDs). Reading Nora Ephron's post earlier, I was surprised to find that she thought Russert went easy on Cheney, and upon consideration I can see why: Everything he hammered Cheney on was easily part of the public record, and thus easily prepared for to be glibly countered. In his quest to cover everything from Iraq to Afghanistan to WMDS to midterms to rumors of Cheney's flagging influence to poor peppered Harry Whittington, Russert missed potential opportunities to play the "Yes, but" game right back. Even so, he brought up the main points and pounded away at them bluntly, refusing to accept Cheney's first and often second effort at dissembling. And let's not forget how skilled Cheney is: The man is the strong, silent type only until he has to open his mouth, and then he is a force to be reckoned with. My impression; what's yours?
Below is excerpted from my earlier post this afternoon on Eat The Press:
Notable was the trademark Russert "gotcha" moment wherein he played the infamous clip of Cheney saying in August 2002: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." When asked if, knowing that Saddam did NOT have weapons of mass destruction, if Cheney would still have gone into Iraq, he said "Yes" and went on:
"The world is better off because Saddam Hussein is in jail instead of in power in Baghdad. It was the right thing to do and if we had it to do over again, we'd do exactly the same thing."
Note that Cheney dated Saddam's WMD use at 1991.
Russert also called him on his other infamous comment, the old "insurgency in its last throes" comment, which Cheney admitted was — what's that word? — oh yeah, WRONG but with barely a breath spun it as a good thing, based on Iraqis embracing democracy and being willing to "step up and take on the responsibility for their own fate." Cheney also invoked the tough-guy rationale for staying in Iraq ( "My gosh, the United States hasn't got the stomach for the fight. Bin Laden's right, al-Qaeda's right, the United States has lost its will and will not complete the mission"), lauded the U.S. "detainee policy", claiming it was Constitutional by citing "the blessing of the lawyers" which, considering that the source of that is Gonzales, is an eyebrow-raise (when Tim asked him about "shady" methods, Cheney said stolidly "We have done everything we could think of to make the nation safe"). He also nimbly sidestepped Russert's question about military intervention in Iran, saying "I don't want to speculate on military options. It's not wise. And Rumsfeld would probably object." Russert also grilled him on Plamegate, where he admitted that "I have the authority, as Vice President under an executive order issued by the President, to classify and declassify information. And everything I have done is consistent with those authorities." He then refused to answer any more questions on the matter, though he began to look annoyed under Russert's repeated questioning. Cheney also had this chilling commentary on midterms: "I feel better about the election now than I did three months ago." SCARY.
Finally, Russert, who has finally seemed to grow a pair, asked Cheney about how he shot his friend in the face:
RUSSERT: Should I be relieved you didn't bring your shotgun in today?CHENEY: I wouldn't worry about it. You're not in season.
That may be the closest Cheney has ever come to exhibiting a sense of humor. Choice excerpts after the jump; full transcript here and full RussertWatch coming later - flag the issues of your choice in comments, today's transcript is packed with gems from one of the spinniest around.
Stating and restating the meme:
(Videotape, August 26, 2002):
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.
(End of videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: In fact, there is grave doubt, because they did not exist along the lines that you described, the president described, and others described. Based on what you know now, that Saddam did not have the weapons of mass destruction that were described, would you still have gone into Iraq?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Yes, Tim, because what the reports also showed, while he did not have stockpiles--clearly the intelligence that said he did was wrong. That was the intelligence all of us saw, that was the intelligence all of us believed, it was--when, when George Tenet sat in the Oval Office and the president of the United States asked him directly, he said, "George, how good is the case against Saddam on weapons of mass destruction?" the director of the CIA said, "It's a slam dunk, Mr. President, it's a slam dunk." That was the intelligence that was provided to us at the time, and based upon which we made a choice.
MR. RUSSERT: So if the CIA said to you at that time, "Saddam does not have weapons of mass destruction, his chemical and biological have been degraded, he has no nuclear program under way," you'd still invade Iraq?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Because, again, look at the Duelfer Report and what it said. No stockpiles, but they also said he has the capability. He'd done it before. He had produced chemical weapons before and used them. He had produced biological weapons. He had a robust nuclear program in '91. All of this is true, said by Duelfer, facts. Also said that as soon as the sanctions are lifted, they expect Saddam to be back in business.
MR. RUSSERT: All right. Now the president has been asked, "What did Iraq have to do with the attack on the World Trade Center?" and he said "nothing." Do you agree with that?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I do. So it's not...
MR. RUSSERT: So it's case, case closed.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: We've never been able to confirm any connection between Iraq and 9/11.
MR. RUSSERT: And the meeting with Atta did not occur?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: We don't know. I mean, we've never been able to, to, to link it, and the FBI and CIA have worked it aggressively. I would say, at this point, nobody has been able to confirm...
MR. RUSSERT: Then why, in the lead-up to the war, was there the constant linkage between Iraq and al-Qaeda?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: That's a different issue. Now, there's a question of whether or not al-Qaeda, or whether or not Iraq was involved in 9/11. There's a separate--apart from that's the issue of whether or not there was a historic relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda. The basis for that is probably best captured in George Tenet's testimony before the Senate Intel Commission, an open session, where he said specifically that there was a pattern of relationship that went back at least a decade between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
MR. RUSSERT: But the president said they were working in concert, giving the strong suggestion to the American people that they were involved in September 11th.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. There are, there are two totally different propositions here, and people have consistently tried to confuse them. And it's important, I think--there's a third proposition, as well, too, and that is Iraq's traditional position as a strong sponsor of terror.So you've got Iraq and 9/11, no evidence that there's a connection. You've got Iraq and al-Qaeda, testimony from the director of CIA that there was indeed a relationship, Zarqawi in Baghdad, etc. Then the third...
MR. RUSSERT: The committee said that there was no relationship. In fact...
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I haven't seen the report; I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but the fact is...
MR. RUSSERT: But Mr. Vice President, the bottom line is...
VICE PRES. CHENEY: We know, we know that Zarqawi, running a terrorist camp in Afghanistan prior to 9/11, after we went in to 9/11, then fled and went to Baghdad and set up operations in Baghdad in the spring of '02 and was there from then, basically, until basically the time we launched into Iraq.
MR. RUSSERT: The bottom line is, the rationale given the American people was that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and he could give those weapons of mass destruction to al-Qaeda and we could have another September 11. And now we read that there is no evidence, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee, of that relationship. You've said there's no involvement. The president says there's no involvement.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No, Tim, no involvement in what respect?
MR. RUSSERT: In September 11, OK. The CIA said, leading up to the war, that the possibility of Saddam using weapons of mass destruction was "low." It appears that there was a deliberate attempt made by the administration to link al-Qaeda in Iraq in the minds of the American people and use it as a rationale to go into Iraq.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Tim, I guess--I don't--I'm not sure what part you don't understand here. In September--or in 1990, the State Department designated Iraq as a state sponsor of terror. Abu Nidal, famous terrorist, had sanctuary in, in Baghdad for years. Zarqawi was in Baghdad after we took Afghanistan and before we went into Iraq. You had the facility up at Kermal, poisons facility, ran by Ansar Islam, an affiliate of al-Qaeda. You had the fact that Saddam Hussein, for example, provided payments to the families of suicide bombers of $25,000 on a regular basis. This was a state sponsor of terror. He had a relationship with terror groups. No question about it. Nobody denies that.The evidence we also had at the time was that he had a relationship with al-Qaeda. And that was George Tenet's testimony, the director of the CIA, in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee. We also have a--had knowledge of the fact that he had produced and used weapons of mass destruction and we know, as well, that while he did not have any production under way at the time, that he's clearly retained the capability, and the expectation from the experts was as soon as the sanctions were lifted he'd be back in business again.Now this was the place where, probably, there was a greater prospect of a connection between terrorists on the one hand and a terrorist-sponsoring state and weapons of mass destruction than any place else. You talk about Iran, North Korea, they're problems, too, but they hadn't been through 12 years of sanctions and resolutions by the U.N. Security Council and ignored them with impunity.
And hat tip to DailyKos for this:
Russert: There was a story in the National Journal that said that Cheney authorized Libby to leak confidential information. Can you confirm or deny that?
Cheney: I have the authority, as Vice President under an executive order issued by the President, to classify and declassify information. And everything I have done is consistent with those authorities.
Russert: Could you declassify Valerie Plame's status as an operative?
Cheney: (Cheney raises his arms in a shrugging-like motion and gives a half smile) I've said all I'm going to say on the subject, Tim.
Russert: Do you think the President should pardon Scooter Libby?
Cheney: I've said all I'm going to say on the subject, Tim.
Russert: You wouldn't support a pardon?
Cheney: I've said all I'm going to say on the subject, Tim.
Russert: How about Richard Armitage, who has come forward and said he was the source for Robert Novak, some years ago?
Cheney: Does he need a pardon? (chuckles)
Russert: You...You...Are you upset or concerned that...
Cheney (interrupting): Tim, I've said I'm not going to discuss the subject. I understand, um, why you want to ask about it. But the fact of the matter is, it is a matter pending before the court, and, uh, since I could be a witness, I think it would be inappropriate for me to say more.
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Is American media muzzled regarding TONY BLAIR'S OUSTING ?

2006-09-09T11:43:00.000-04:00

BLAIR IS BEING OUSTED !..........As a news-aholic, I find myself flipping through the various cable news programs every night. I have always felt that you have to flip through in order to try to piece together some level of truth. But I am extremely disappointed in our media this week. They've been running stories about the 9/11 movie, Paris Hilton's DUI, the shuttle lift-off, even the Senate Report declaring that Saddam had no connections what so ever with Al-Queda. But the biggest story in the world news is basically nowhere to be seen. So we, little old me, has to serve as the news guy to make certain that Americans know what's going on. TONY BLAIR IS BEING OUSTED ! That is super huge news. The fact is that due to British outcry protesting Blair's support of the Bush regime Tony Blair has agreed to step down as Prime Minister, a position he has held for over 10 years. He originally stated that he would leave office in about a year. But the mutiny within his own party (Labour Party) has prompted Blair to speed up his departure, now setting the date at May 2007 for his step-down. In a half-hour special report by the BBC News protesters by the thousands were shown marching and carrying signs which read 'Blair Must Go'! Even school aged children joined in protest stating that Blair should be spending money for British schools, NOT the Iraq war. What is sad is that this HUGE story is not being reported here in America at all. In fact, CNN just did a report on Blair visitng the Middle East and just happened to leave out the part that HE'S BEING OUSTED ! Is American media being muzzled by this Bush Administration to NOT inform Americans? Is this administration afraid that Americans may begin to rally and protest as the Brits have, calling for Bush's head next? In order to see this HUGE story one has to go to newspapers outside the U.S., like the Sun Newspaper U.K. or the Times U.K., which have headlines for this huge story so big that the headlines look like billboards ! But not here in America. It's really sad. We, here in America, are absolutely being led, controlled, propogandized and lied to on such a daily basis that it is time for us to do as the Brits have done. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH ! Time ... Blair says he'll quit a decade after landslide poll win -->
Blair: How long will he stay?
• Labour MPs quit over Blair • Webwatch on Labour quit MPs • Brown odds on favourite for PM • The Sun Says • Mixed messages for PM Blair • I'll still be Prime Minister in May • PM tells critics: Shut up • Brown's civil war warning
FULL NEWS INDEX ››
Blair tells aides he quits May 31 By GEORGE PASCOE-WATSONPolitical EditorSeptember 06, 2006 TONY Blair will leave 10 Downing Street for the last time as Prime Minister more than a decade after his historic 1997 landslide win.
The Sun can reveal that he has finally decided to step down as Labour leader on May 31 next year — exactly ten years and 30 days after becoming PM.
He will call an eight-week leadership election and, once a successor has been chosen, go to Buckingham Palace and formally quit on July 26, 2007. That will be TEN YEARS AND 12 WEEKS in power.
Mr Blair and a hand-picked circle of advisers are now working on the details of his resignation timing. Only last week he defiantly declared he would NOT do that. His refusal to bow to MPs’ demands sparked the beginnings of a coup from his own troops.
Yesterday he sanctioned a U-turn to let it be known he will be gone this time next year.
But he has told only a handful of his closest staff he will turn his back on being the nation’s Premier at the end of July.

Environment Secretary David Miliband, a key Blair lieutenant, told BBC Radio 4: “The conventional wisdom is that the Prime Minister sees himself carrying on for about another 12 months and it seems to me that conventional wisdom is reasonable.”
Changing faces ... Blair
Sir Jeremy Beecham, chairman of Labour’s ruling national executive committee, said: “I am confident that by this time next year there will be a new leader who will make his first big speech at the next party conference.”
Commons Leader Jack Straw has yet to confirm the dates of the Commons’ summer recess.
But it is odds-on he will choose Thursday July 26. Mr Blair has pencilled in this date on his calendar.
The eight-week leadership contest will start on May 31, although disastrous results in the Scottish and Welsh elections next May could bring the resignation forward by one week.
The winner — likely to be Chancellor Gordon Brown — will then have the summer to bed in before a triumphant party conference in September next year.
Mr Blair is still working on the mechanics of how his successor should emerge. He will hope that his last ten months in Number 10 will be free of aggro. But there were fears last night at the highest level that his decision to quit in July will not stop demands for him to go sooner.
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More than 100 Labour MPs are poised to demand he publicly confirm his timetable for leaving.
But he is desperate to avoid naming a day, convinced it will paralyse his command of the country and the Whitehall machine.
And he has a full programme yet to deliver — like the Ulster peace process, Iraq and Afghanistan, NHS reforms, trust schools, pensions and nuclear power.
But a growing mutiny has forced him to set out a timetable.
Two previously loyal backbench MPs — Sion Simon and Chris Bryant — began the revolt over the weekend. They have amassed at least 21 names of other modernising Blairite MPs calling on the PM to go now.
Gordon Brown-supporting junior defence minister Tom Watson removed his name after discovering the letter called for an immediate resignation.
Mr Bryant and Mr Simon were wooed by the Chancellor’s team after they were passed over for ministerial jobs recently.
Loyal Cabinet colleagues of the PM were in despair last night.
One said: “Tony Blair is in tune with the majority of the British people. He has won three consecutive general elections.
“If any Labour MP thinks Tony Blair is the problem, not the solution, then they’ve lost what few marbles they had.”
Former Home Secretary David Blunkett issues a thinly-veiled warning to the Chancellor in his Sun column today. He writes: “It would be a disaster for Gordon Brown if Tony Blair were to be stabbed in the back now. The public would gasp in disgust.”

Israel not following United Nations cease fire plan

2006-08-30T21:57:00.000-04:00

Annan fails to secure lifting of Israeli blockadeBy Tim Butcher in Jerusalem
(Filed: 31/08/2006)
Kofi Annan left Jerusalem empty-handed last night after Israel refused his request to end its sea and air blockade of Lebanon.
In a setback for the United Nations secretary general's efforts to stabilise the ceasefire, the Israelis demanded the return of the two soldiers seized by Hizbollah last month as the price for implementing a UN Security Council resolution ending the war with the Shia militia.
The demand prepares the ground for Israeli troops to remain in Lebanon indefinitely, raising the likelihood of another military confron-tation.
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The unconditional release of the two soldiers is not included in the 19 "action points" set out in the resolution, which was agreed after lengthy debate by the security council on Aug 11.
The diplomatic impasse worsens the already sour relations between the UN and Israel. During the month-long war, the Jewish state ignored repeated warnings from the world body. In one incident known to have incensed Mr Annan and senior colleagues, Israeli forces killed four unarmed UN observers in southern Lebanon.
At a joint press conference after meeting Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, Mr Annan referred to the sea and air blockade that Israel imposed as the start of the war last month. "I do believe the blockade should be lifted," he said. When asked whether Israel would end the blockade, Mr Olmert evaded the question, saying only that Israel wanted a full implementation of the ceasefire.
His office later issued a statement connecting Israel's resolution implementation to the release of the two soldiers.
It said: "The prime minister emphasised that the main part of implementing the decision was the return of the abducted soldiers to their homes and said that Resolution 1701 would not be implemented in full without the soldiers' release and return home."
The resolution makes only passing reference to the two soldiers.
In Lebanon, Mohammed Fneish, the energy minister and a Hizbollah official, said the soldiers would be freed only as part of a wider prisoner exchange. "There is no unconditional release," he said. "It is not feasible."
Jan Egeland, the UN's humanitarian chief, increased pressure on Israel by disclosing that mine clearance experts had found 100,000 unexploded cluster bomblets at 359 sites in Lebanon.
He said it would take up to 15 months to clear the devices, which were claiming civilian lives daily, the BBC reported.
He said the "shocking new information" had come from checks by the UN Mine Action Co-ordination Centre of 85 per cent of the areas in Lebanon bombed by Israel.
30 August 2006: Annan tells Israel to lift 'humiliating' blockade
29 August 2006: TV star Nasrallah impresses people on all sides in Lebanon
28 August 2006: I didn't think abduction would lead to war, says Hizbollah chief
27 August 2006: UN will not stop Syria sending weapons to Lebanon
26 August 2006: Europe promises 7,000 troops to hold Lebanon line

Is the Israel Lobby (AIPAC) pimping America ? Read this writing by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt that U.S. media doesn't want Americans to know !

2006-08-29T19:13:00.000-04:00

The Israel Lobby
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt
For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state? One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US provides.
Instead, the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical.
Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing that given to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct economic and military assistance since 1976, and is the largest recipient in total since World War Two, to the tune of well over $140 billion (in 2004 dollars). Israel receives about $3 billion in direct assistance each year, roughly one-fifth of the foreign aid budget, and worth about $500 a year for every Israeli. This largesse is especially striking since Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to that of South Korea or Spain.
Other recipients get their money in quarterly installments, but Israel receives its entire appropriation at the beginning of each fiscal year and can thus earn interest on it. Most recipients of aid given for military purposes are required to spend all of it in the US, but Israel is allowed to use roughly 25 per cent of its allocation to subsidise its own defence industry. It is the only recipient that does not have to account for how the aid is spent, which makes it virtually impossible to prevent the money from being used for purposes the US opposes, such as building settlements on the West Bank. Moreover, the US has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to develop weapons systems, and given it access to such top-drawer weaponry as Blackhawk helicopters and F-16 jets. Finally, the US gives Israel access to intelligence it denies to its Nato allies and has turned a blind eye to Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.
Washington also provides Israel with consistent diplomatic support. Since 1982, the US has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, more than the total number of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members. It blocks the efforts of Arab states to put Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the IAEA’s agenda. The US comes to the rescue in wartime and takes Israel’s side when negotiating peace. The Nixon administration protected it from the threat of Soviet intervention and resupplied it during the October War. Washington was deeply involved in the negotiations that ended that war, as well as in the lengthy ‘step-by-step’ process that followed, just as it played a key role in the negotiations that preceded and followed the 1993 Oslo Accords. In each case there was occasional friction between US and Israeli officials, but the US consistently supported the Israeli position. One American participant at Camp David in 2000 later said: ‘Far too often, we functioned . . . as Israel’s lawyer.’ Finally, the Bush administration’s ambition to transform the Middle East is at least partly aimed at improving Israel’s strategic situation.
This extraordinary generosity might be understandable if Israel were a vital strategic asset or if there were a compelling moral case for US backing. But neither explanation is convincing. One might argue that Israel was an asset during the Cold War. By serving as America’s proxy after 1967, it helped contain Soviet expansion in the region and inflicted humiliating defeats on Soviet clients like Egypt and Syria. It occasionally helped protect other US allies (like King Hussein of Jordan) and its military prowess forced Moscow to spend more on backing its own client states. It also provided useful intelligence about Soviet capabilities.
Backing Israel was not cheap, however, and it complicated America’s relations with the Arab world. For example, the decision to give $2.2 billion in emergency military aid during the October War triggered an Opec oil embargo that inflicted considerable damage on Western economies. For all that, Israel’s armed forces were not in a position to protect US interests in the region. The US could not, for example, rely on Israel when the Iranian Revolution in 1979 raised concerns about the security of oil supplies, and had to create its own Rapid Deployment Force instead.
The first Gulf War revealed the extent to which Israel was becoming a strategic burden. The US could not use Israeli bases without rupturing the anti-Iraq coalition, and had to divert resources (e.g. Patriot missile batteries) to prevent Tel Aviv doing anything that might harm the alliance against Saddam Hussein. History repeated itself in 2003: although Israel was eager for the US to attack Iraq, Bush could not ask it to help without triggering Arab opposition. So Israel stayed on the sidelines once again.
Beginning in the 1990s, and even more after 9/11, US support has been justified by the claim that both states are threatened by terrorist groups originating in the Arab and Muslim world, and by ‘rogue states’ that back these groups and seek weapons of mass destruction. This is taken to mean not only that Washington should give Israel a free hand in dealing with the Palestinians and not press it to make concessions until all Palestinian terrorists are imprisoned or dead, but that the US should go after countries like Iran and Syria. Israel is thus seen as a crucial ally in the war on terror, because its enemies are America’s enemies. In fact, Israel is a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states.
‘Terrorism’ is not a single adversary, but a tactic employed by a wide array of political groups. The terrorist organisations that threaten Israel do not threaten the United States, except when it intervenes against them (as in Lebanon in 1982). Moreover, Palestinian terrorism is not random violence directed against Israel or ‘the West’; it is largely a response to Israel’s prolonged campaign to colonise the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
More important, saying that Israel and the US are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the US has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around. Support for Israel is not the only source of anti-American terrorism, but it is an important one, and it makes winning the war on terror more difficult. There is no question that many al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are motivated by Israel’s presence in Jerusalem and the plight of the Palestinians. Unconditional support for Israel makes it easier for extremists to rally popular support and to attract recruits.
As for so-called rogue states in the Middle East, they are not a dire threat to vital US interests, except inasmuch as they are a threat to Israel. Even if these states acquire nuclear weapons – which is obviously undesirable – neither America nor Israel could be blackmailed, because the blackmailer could not carry out the threat without suffering overwhelming retaliation. The danger of a nuclear handover to terrorists is equally remote, because a rogue state could not be sure the transfer would go undetected or that it would not be blamed and punished afterwards. The relationship with Israel actually makes it harder for the US to deal with these states. Israel’s nuclear arsenal is one reason some of its neighbours want nuclear weapons, and threatening them with regime change merely increases that desire.
A final reason to question Israel’s strategic value is that it does not behave like a loyal ally. Israeli officials frequently ignore US requests and renege on promises (including pledges to stop building settlements and to refrain from ‘targeted assassinations’ of Palestinian leaders). Israel has provided sensitive military technology to potential rivals like China, in what the State Department inspector-general called ‘a systematic and growing pattern of unauthorised transfers’. According to the General Accounting Office, Israel also ‘conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the US of any ally’. In addition to the case of Jonathan Pollard, who gave Israel large quantities of classified material in the early 1980s (which it reportedly passed on to the Soviet Union in return for more exit visas for Soviet Jews), a new controversy erupted in 2004 when it was revealed that a key Pentagon official called Larry Franklin had passed classified information to an Israeli diplomat. Israel is hardly the only country that spies on the US, but its willingness to spy on its principal patron casts further doubt on its strategic value.
Israel’s strategic value isn’t the only issue. Its backers also argue that it deserves unqualified support because it is weak and surrounded by enemies; it is a democracy; the Jewish people have suffered from past crimes and therefore deserve special treatment; and Israel’s conduct has been morally superior to that of its adversaries. On close inspection, none of these arguments is persuasive. There is a strong moral case for supporting Israel’s existence, but that is not in jeopardy. Viewed objectively, its past and present conduct offers no moral basis for privileging it over the Palestinians.
Israel is often portrayed as David confronted by Goliath, but the converse is closer to the truth. Contrary to popular belief, the Zionists had larger, better equipped and better led forces during the 1947-49 War of Independence, and the Israel Defence Forces won quick and easy victories against Egypt in 1956 and against Egypt, Jordan and Syria in 1967 – all of this before large-scale US aid began flowing. Today, Israel is the strongest military power in the Middle East. Its conventional forces are far superior to those of its neighbours and it is the only state in the region with nuclear weapons. Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties with it, and Saudi Arabia has offered to do so. Syria has lost its Soviet patron, Iraq has been devastated by three disastrous wars and Iran is hundreds of miles away. The Palestinians barely have an effective police force, let alone an army that could pose a threat to Israel. According to a 2005 assessment by Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies, ‘the strategic balance decidedly favours Israel, which has continued to widen the qualitative gap between its own military capability and deterrence powers and those of its neighbours.’ If backing the underdog were a compelling motive, the United States would be supporting Israel’s opponents.
That Israel is a fellow democracy surrounded by hostile dictatorships cannot account for the current level of aid: there are many democracies around the world, but none receives the same lavish support. The US has overthrown democratic governments in the past and supported dictators when this was thought to advance its interests – it has good relations with a number of dictatorships today.
Some aspects of Israeli democracy are at odds with core American values. Unlike the US, where people are supposed to enjoy equal rights irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity, Israel was explicitly founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship. Given this, it is not surprising that its 1.3 million Arabs are treated as second-class citizens, or that a recent Israeli government commission found that Israel behaves in a ‘neglectful and discriminatory’ manner towards them. Its democratic status is also undermined by its refusal to grant the Palestinians a viable state of their own or full political rights.
A third justification is the history of Jewish suffering in the Christian West, especially during the Holocaust. Because Jews were persecuted for centuries and could feel safe only in a Jewish homeland, many people now believe that Israel deserves special treatment from the United States. The country’s creation was undoubtedly an appropriate response to the long record of crimes against Jews, but it also brought about fresh crimes against a largely innocent third party: the Palestinians.
This was well understood by Israel’s early leaders. David Ben-Gurion told Nahum Goldmann, the president of the World Jewish Congress:
If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country . . . We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?
Since then, Israeli leaders have repeatedly sought to deny the Palestinians’ national ambitions. When she was prime minister, Golda Meir famously remarked that ‘there is no such thing as a Palestinian.’ Pressure from extremist violence and Palestinian population growth has forced subsequent Israeli leaders to disengage from the Gaza Strip and consider other territorial compromises, but not even Yitzhak Rabin was willing to offer the Palestinians a viable state. Ehud Barak’s purportedly generous offer at Camp David would have given them only a disarmed set of Bantustans under de facto Israeli control. The tragic history of the Jewish people does not obligate the US to help Israel today no matter what it does.
Israel’s backers also portray it as a country that has sought peace at every turn and shown great restraint even when provoked. The Arabs, by contrast, are said to have acted with great wickedness. Yet on the ground, Israel’s record is not distinguishable from that of its opponents. Ben-Gurion acknowledged that the early Zionists were far from benevolent towards the Palestinian Arabs, who resisted their encroachments – which is hardly surprising, given that the Zionists were trying to create their own state on Arab land. In the same way, the creation of Israel in 1947-48 involved acts of ethnic cleansing, including executions, massacres and rapes by Jews, and Israel’s subsequent conduct has often been brutal, belying any claim to moral superiority. Between 1949 and 1956, for example, Israeli security forces killed between 2700 and 5000 Arab infiltrators, the overwhelming majority of them unarmed. The IDF murdered hundreds of Egyptian prisoners of war in both the 1956 and 1967 wars, while in 1967, it expelled between 100,000 and 260,000 Palestinians from the newly conquered West Bank, and drove 80,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights.
During the first intifada, the IDF distributed truncheons to its troops and encouraged them to break the bones of Palestinian protesters. The Swedish branch of Save the Children estimated that ‘23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years of the intifada.’ Nearly a third of them were aged ten or under. The response to the second intifada has been even more violent, leading Ha’aretz to declare that ‘the IDF . . . is turning into a killing machine whose efficiency is awe-inspiring, yet shocking.’ The IDF fired one million bullets in the first days of the uprising. Since then, for every Israeli lost, Israel has killed 3.4 Palestinians, the majority of whom have been innocent bystanders; the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli children killed is even higher (5.7:1). It is also worth bearing in mind that the Zionists relied on terrorist bombs to drive the British from Palestine, and that Yitzhak Shamir, once a terrorist and later prime minister, declared that ‘neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat.’
The Palestinian resort to terrorism is wrong but it isn’t surprising. The Palestinians believe they have no other way to force Israeli concessions. As Ehud Barak once admitted, had he been born a Palestinian, he ‘would have joined a terrorist organisation’.
So if neither strategic nor moral arguments can account for America’s support for Israel, how are we to explain it?
The explanation is the unmatched power of the Israel Lobby. We use ‘the Lobby’ as shorthand for the loose coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. This is not meant to suggest that ‘the Lobby’ is a unified movement with a central leadership, or that individuals within it do not disagree on certain issues. Not all Jewish Americans are part of the Lobby, because Israel is not a salient issue for many of them. In a 2004 survey, for example, roughly 36 per cent of American Jews said they were either ‘not very’ or ‘not at all’ emotionally attached to Israel.
Jewish Americans also differ on specific Israeli policies. Many of the key organisations in the Lobby, such as the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organisations, are run by hardliners who generally support the Likud Party’s expansionist policies, including its hostility to the Oslo peace process. The bulk of US Jewry, meanwhile, is more inclined to make concessions to the Palestinians, and a few groups – such as Jewish Voice for Peace – strongly advocate such steps. Despite these differences, moderates and hardliners both favour giving steadfast support to Israel.
Not surprisingly, American Jewish leaders often consult Israeli officials, to make sure that their actions advance Israeli goals. As one activist from a major Jewish organisation wrote, ‘it is routine for us to say: “This is our policy on a certain issue, but we must check what the Israelis think.” We as a community do it all the time.’ There is a strong prejudice against criticising Israeli policy, and putting pressure on Israel is considered out of order. Edgar Bronfman Sr, the president of the World Jewish Congress, was accused of ‘perfidy’ when he wrote a letter to President Bush in mid-2003 urging him to persuade Israel to curb construction of its controversial ‘security fence’. His critics said that ‘it would be obscene at any time for the president of the World Jewish Congress to lobby the president of the United States to resist policies being promoted by the government of Israel.’
Similarly, when the president of the Israel Policy Forum, Seymour Reich, advised Condoleezza Rice in November 2005 to ask Israel to reopen a critical border crossing in the Gaza Strip, his action was denounced as ‘irresponsible’: ‘There is,’ his critics said, ‘absolutely no room in the Jewish mainstream for actively canvassing against the security-related policies . . . of Israel.’ Recoiling from these attacks, Reich announced that ‘the word “pressure” is not in my vocabulary when it comes to Israel.’
Jewish Americans have set up an impressive array of organisations to influence American foreign policy, of which AIPAC is the most powerful and best known. In 1997, Fortune magazine asked members of Congress and their staffs to list the most powerful lobbies in Washington. AIPAC was ranked second behind the American Association of Retired People, but ahead of the AFL-CIO and the National Rifle Association. A National Journal study in March 2005 reached a similar conclusion, placing AIPAC in second place (tied with AARP) in the Washington ‘muscle rankings’.
The Lobby also includes prominent Christian evangelicals like Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson, as well as Dick Armey and Tom DeLay, former majority leaders in the House of Representatives, all of whom believe Israel’s rebirth is the fulfilment of biblical prophecy and support its expansionist agenda; to do otherwise, they believe, would be contrary to God’s will. Neo-conservative gentiles such as John Bolton; Robert Bartley, the former Wall Street Journal editor; William Bennett, the former secretary of education; Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former UN ambassador; and the influential columnist George Will are also steadfast supporters.
The US form of government offers activists many ways of influencing the policy process. Interest groups can lobby elected representatives and members of the executive branch, make campaign contributions, vote in elections, try to mould public opinion etc. They enjoy a disproportionate amount of influence when they are committed to an issue to which the bulk of the population is indifferent. Policymakers will tend to accommodate those who care about the issue, even if their numbers are small, confident that the rest of the population will not penalise them for doing so.
In its basic operations, the Israel Lobby is no different from the farm lobby, steel or textile workers’ unions, or other ethnic lobbies. There is nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway US policy: the Lobby’s activities are not a conspiracy of the sort depicted in tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. For the most part, the individuals and groups that comprise it are only doing what other special interest groups do, but doing it very much better. By contrast, pro-Arab interest groups, in so far as they exist at all, are weak, which makes the Israel Lobby’s task even easier.
The Lobby pursues two broad strategies. First, it wields its significant influence in Washington, pressuring both Congress and the executive branch. Whatever an individual lawmaker or policymaker’s own views may be, the Lobby tries to make supporting Israel the ‘smart’ choice. Second, it strives to ensure that public discourse portrays Israel in a positive light, by repeating myths about its founding and by promoting its point of view in policy debates. The goal is to prevent critical comments from getting a fair hearing in the political arena. Controlling the debate is essential to guaranteeing US support, because a candid discussion of US-Israeli relations might lead Americans to favour a different policy.
A key pillar of the Lobby’s effectiveness is its influence in Congress, where Israel is virtually immune from criticism. This in itself is remarkable, because Congress rarely shies away from contentious issues. Where Israel is concerned, however, potential critics fall silent. One reason is that some key members are Christian Zionists like Dick Armey, who said in September 2002: ‘My No. 1 priority in foreign policy is to protect Israel.’ One might think that the No. 1 priority for any congressman would be to protect America. There are also Jewish senators and congressmen who work to ensure that US foreign policy supports Israel’s interests.
Another source of the Lobby’s power is its use of pro-Israel congressional staffers. As Morris Amitay, a former head of AIPAC, once admitted, ‘there are a lot of guys at the working level up here’ – on Capitol Hill – ‘who happen to be Jewish, who are willing . . . to look at certain issues in terms of their Jewishness . . . These are all guys who are in a position to make the decision in these areas for those senators . . . You can get an awful lot done just at the staff level.’
AIPAC itself, however, forms the core of the Lobby’s influence in Congress. Its success is due to its ability to reward legislators and congressional candidates who support its agenda, and to punish those who challenge it. Money is critical to US elections (as the scandal over the lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s shady dealings reminds us), and AIPAC makes sure that its friends get strong financial support from the many pro-Israel political action committees. Anyone who is seen as hostile to Israel can be sure that AIPAC will direct campaign contributions to his or her political opponents. AIPAC also organises letter-writing campaigns and encourages newspaper editors to endorse pro-Israel candidates.
There is no doubt about the efficacy of these tactics. Here is one example: in the 1984 elections, AIPAC helped defeat Senator Charles Percy from Illinois, who, according to a prominent Lobby figure, had ‘displayed insensitivity and even hostility to our concerns’. Thomas Dine, the head of AIPAC at the time, explained what happened: ‘All the Jews in America, from coast to coast, gathered to oust Percy. And the American politicians – those who hold public positions now, and those who aspire – got the message.’
AIPAC’s influence on Capitol Hill goes even further. According to Douglas Bloomfield, a former AIPAC staff member, ‘it is common for members of Congress and their staffs to turn to AIPAC first when they need information, before calling the Library of Congress, the Congressional Research Service, committee staff or administration experts.’ More important, he notes that AIPAC is ‘often called on to draft speeches, work on legislation, advise on tactics, perform research, collect co-sponsors and marshal votes’.
The bottom line is that AIPAC, a de facto agent for a foreign government, has a stranglehold on Congress, with the result that US policy towards Israel is not debated there, even though that policy has important consequences for the entire world. In other words, one of the three main branches of the government is firmly committed to supporting Israel. As one former Democratic senator, Ernest Hollings, noted on leaving office, ‘you can’t have an Israeli policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here.’ Or as Ariel Sharon once told an American audience, ‘when people ask me how they can help Israel, I tell them: “Help AIPAC.”’
Thanks in part to the influence Jewish voters have on presidential elections, the Lobby also has significant leverage over the executive branch. Although they make up fewer than 3 per cent of the population, they make large campaign donations to candidates from both parties. The Washington Post once estimated that Democratic presidential candidates ‘depend on Jewish supporters to supply as much as 60 per cent of the money’. And because Jewish voters have high turn-out rates and are concentrated in key states like California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania, presidential candidates go to great lengths not to antagonise them.
Key organisations in the Lobby make it their business to ensure that critics of Israel do not get important foreign policy jobs. Jimmy Carter wanted to make George Ball his first secretary of state, but knew that Ball was seen as critical of Israel and that the Lobby would oppose the appointment. In this way any aspiring policymaker is encouraged to become an overt supporter of Israel, which is why public critics of Israeli policy have become an endangered species in the foreign policy establishment.
When Howard Dean called for the United States to take a more ‘even-handed role’ in the Arab-Israeli conflict, Senator Joseph Lieberman accused him of selling Israel down the river and said his statement was ‘irresponsible’. Virtually all the top Democrats in the House signed a letter criticising Dean’s remarks, and the Chicago Jewish Star reported that ‘anonymous attackers . . . are clogging the email inboxes of Jewish leaders around the country, warning – without much evidence – that Dean would somehow be bad for Israel.’
This worry was absurd; Dean is in fact quite hawkish on Israel: his campaign co-chair was a former AIPAC president, and Dean said his own views on the Middle East more closely reflected those of AIPAC than those of the more moderate Americans for Peace Now. He had merely suggested that to ‘bring the sides together’, Washington should act as an honest broker. This is hardly a radical idea, but the Lobby doesn’t tolerate even-handedness.
During the Clinton administration, Middle Eastern policy was largely shaped by officials with close ties to Israel or to prominent pro-Israel organisations; among them, Martin Indyk, the former deputy director of research at AIPAC and co-founder of the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); Dennis Ross, who joined WINEP after leaving government in 2001; and Aaron Miller, who has lived in Israel and often visits the country. These men were among Clinton’s closest advisers at the Camp David summit in July 2000. Although all three supported the Oslo peace process and favoured the creation of a Palestinian state, they did so only within the limits of what would be acceptable to Israel. The American delegation took its cues from Ehud Barak, co-ordinated its negotiating positions with Israel in advance, and did not offer independent proposals. Not surprisingly, Palestinian negotiators complained that they were ‘negotiating with two Israeli teams – one displaying an Israeli flag, and one an American flag’.
The situation is even more pronounced in the Bush administration, whose ranks have included such fervent advocates of the Israeli cause as Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, I. Lewis (‘Scooter’) Libby, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and David Wurmser. As we shall see, these officials have consistently pushed for policies favoured by Israel and backed by organisations in the Lobby.
The Lobby doesn’t want an open debate, of course, because that might lead Americans to question the level of support they provide. Accordingly, pro-Israel organisations work hard to influence the institutions that do most to shape popular opinion.
The Lobby’s perspective prevails in the mainstream media: the debate among Middle East pundits, the journalist Eric Alterman writes, is ‘dominated by people who cannot imagine criticising Israel’. He lists 61 ‘columnists and commentators who can be counted on to support Israel reflexively and without qualification’. Conversely, he found just five pundits who consistently criticise Israeli actions or endorse Arab positions. Newspapers occasionally publish guest op-eds challenging Israeli policy, but the balance of opinion clearly favours the other side. It is hard to imagine any mainstream media outlet in the United States publishing a piece like this one.
‘Shamir, Sharon, Bibi – whatever those guys want is pretty much fine by me,’ Robert Bartley once remarked. Not surprisingly, his newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, along with other prominent papers like the Chicago Sun-Times and the Washington Times, regularly runs editorials that strongly support Israel. Magazines like Commentary, the New Republic and the Weekly Standard defend Israel at every turn.
Editorial bias is also found in papers like the New York Times, which occasionally criticises Israeli policies and sometimes concedes that the Palestinians have legitimate grievances, but is not even-handed. In his memoirs the paper’s former executive editor Max Frankel acknowledges the impact his own attitude had on his editorial decisions: ‘I was much more deeply devoted to Israel than I dared to assert . . . Fortified by my knowledge of Israel and my friendships there, I myself wrote most of our Middle East commentaries. As more Arab than Jewish readers recognised, I wrote them from a pro-Israel perspective.’
News reports are more even-handed, in part because reporters strive to be objective, but also because it is difficult to cover events in the Occupied Territories without acknowledging Israel’s actions on the ground. To discourage unfavourable reporting, the Lobby organises letter-writing campaigns, demonstrations and boycotts of news outlets whose content it considers anti-Israel. One CNN executive has said that he sometimes gets 6000 email messages in a single day complaining about a story. In May 2003, the pro-Israel Committee for Accurate Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) organised demonstrations outside National Public Radio stations in 33 cities; it also tried to persuade contributors to withhold support from NPR until its Middle East coverage becomes more sympathetic to Israel. Boston’s NPR station, WBUR, reportedly lost more than $1 million in contributions as a result of these efforts. Further pressure on NPR has come from Israel’s friends in Congress, who have asked for an internal audit of its Middle East coverage as well as more oversight.
The Israeli side also dominates the think tanks which play an important role in shaping public debate as well as actual policy. The Lobby created its own think tank in 1985, when Martin Indyk helped to found WINEP. Although WINEP plays down its links to Israel, claiming instead to provide a ‘balanced and realistic’ perspective on Middle East issues, it is funded and run by individuals deeply committed to advancing Israel’s agenda.
The Lobby’s influence extends well beyond WINEP, however. Over the past 25 years, pro-Israel forces have established a commanding presence at the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Center for Security Policy, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). These think tanks employ few, if any, critics of US support for Israel.
Take the Brookings Institution. For many years, its senior expert on the Middle East was William Quandt, a former NSC official with a well-deserved reputation for even-handedness. Today, Brookings’s coverage is conducted through the Saban Center for Middle East Studies, which is financed by Haim Saban, an Israeli-American businessman and ardent Zionist. The centre’s director is the ubiquitous Martin Indyk. What was once a non-partisan policy institute is now part of the pro-Israel chorus.
Where the Lobby has had the most difficulty is in stifling debate on university campuses. In the 1990s, when the Oslo peace process was underway, there was only mild criticism of Israel, but it grew stronger with Oslo’s collapse and Sharon’s access to power, becoming quite vociferous when the IDF reoccupied the West Bank in spring 2002 and employed massive force to subdue the second intifada.
The Lobby moved immediately to ‘take back the campuses’. New groups sprang up, like the Caravan for Democracy, which brought Israeli speakers to US colleges. Established groups like the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and Hillel joined in, and a new group, the Israel on Campus Coalition, was formed to co-ordinate the many bodies that now sought to put Israel’s case. Finally, AIPAC more than tripled its spending on programmes to monitor university activities and to train young advocates, in order to ‘vastly expand the number of students involved on campus . . . in the national pro-Israel effort’.
The Lobby also monitors what professors write and teach. In September 2002, Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes, two passionately pro-Israel neo-conservatives, established a website (Campus Watch) that posted dossiers on suspect academics and encouraged students to report remarks or behaviour that might be considered hostile to Israel. This transparent attempt to blacklist and intimidate scholars provoked a harsh reaction and Pipes and Kramer later removed the dossiers, but the website still invites students to report ‘anti-Israel’ activity.
Groups within the Lobby put pressure on particular academics and universities. Columbia has been a frequent target, no doubt because of the presence of the late Edward Said on its faculty. ‘One can be sure that any public statement in support of the Palestinian people by the pre-eminent literary critic Edward Said will elicit hundreds of emails, letters and journalistic accounts that call on us to denounce Said and to either sanction or fire him,’ Jonathan Cole, its former provost, reported. When Columbia recruited the historian Rashid Khalidi from Chicago, the same thing happened. It was a problem Princeton also faced a few years later when it considered wooing Khalidi away from Columbia.
A classic illustration of the effort to police academia occurred towards the end of 2004, when the David Project produced a film alleging that faculty members of Columbia’s Middle East Studies programme were anti-semitic and were intimidating Jewish students who stood up for Israel. Columbia was hauled over the coals, but a faculty committee which was assigned to investigate the charges found no evidence of anti-semitism and the only incident possibly worth noting was that one professor had ‘responded heatedly’ to a student’s question. The committee also discovered that the academics in question had themselves been the target of an overt campaign of intimidation.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all this is the efforts Jewish groups have made to push Congress into establishing mechanisms to monitor what professors say. If they manage to get this passed, universities judged to have an anti-Israel bias would be denied federal funding. Their efforts have not yet succeeded, but they are an indication of the importance placed on controlling debate.
A number of Jewish philanthropists have recently established Israel Studies programmes (in addition to the roughly 130 Jewish Studies programmes already in existence) so as to increase the number of Israel-friendly scholars on campus. In May 2003, NYU announced the establishment of the Taub Center for Israel Studies; similar programmes have been set up at Berkeley, Brandeis and Emory. Academic administrators emphasise their pedagogical value, but the truth is that they are intended in large part to promote Israel’s image. Fred Laffer, the head of the Taub Foundation, makes it clear that his foundation funded the NYU centre to help counter the ‘Arabic [sic] point of view’ that he thinks is prevalent in NYU’s Middle East programmes.
No discussion of the Lobby would be complete without an examination of one of its most powerful weapons: the charge of anti-semitism. Anyone who criticises Israel’s actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle Eastern policy – an influence AIPAC celebrates – stands a good chance of being labelled an anti-semite. Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israel Lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-semitism, even though the Israeli media refer to America’s ‘Jewish Lobby’. In other words, the Lobby first boasts of its influence and then attacks anyone who calls attention to it. It’s a very effective tactic: anti-semitism is something no one wants to be accused of.
Europeans have been more willing than Americans to criticise Israeli policy, which some people attribute to a resurgence of anti-semitism in Europe. We are ‘getting to a point’, the US ambassador to the EU said in early 2004, ‘where it is as bad as it was in the 1930s’. Measuring anti-semitism is a complicated matter, but the weight of evidence points in the opposite direction. In the spring of 2004, when accusations of European anti-semitism filled the air in America, separate surveys of European public opinion conducted by the US-based Anti-Defamation League and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that it was in fact declining. In the 1930s, by contrast, anti-semitism was not only widespread among Europeans of all classes but considered quite acceptable.
The Lobby and its friends often portray France as the most anti-semitic country in Europe. But in 2003, the head of the French Jewish community said that ‘France is not more anti-semitic than America.’ According to a recent article in Ha’aretz, the French police have reported that anti-semitic incidents declined by almost 50 per cent in 2005; and this even though France has the largest Muslim population of any European country. Finally, when a French Jew was murdered in Paris last month by a Muslim gang, tens of thousands of demonstrators poured into the streets to condemn anti-semitism. Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin both attended the victim’s memorial service to show their solidarity.
No one would deny that there is anti-semitism among European Muslims, some of it provoked by Israel’s conduct towards the Palestinians and some of it straightforwardly racist. But this is a separate matter with little bearing on whether or not Europe today is like Europe in the 1930s. Nor would anyone deny that there are still some virulent autochthonous anti-semites in Europe (as there are in the United States) but their numbers are small and their views are rejected by the vast majority of Europeans.
Israel’s advocates, when pressed to go beyond mere assertion, claim that there is a ‘new anti-semitism’, which they equate with criticism of Israel. In other words, criticise Israeli policy and you are by definition an anti-semite. When the synod of the Church of England recently voted to divest from Caterpillar Inc on the grounds that it manufactures the bulldozers used by the Israelis to demolish Palestinian homes, the Chief Rabbi complained that this would ‘have the most adverse repercussions on . . . Jewish-Christian relations in Britain’, while Rabbi Tony Bayfield, the head of the Reform movement, said: ‘There is a clear problem of anti-Zionist – verging on anti-semitic – attitudes emerging in the grass-roots, and even in the middle ranks of the Church.’ But the Church was guilty merely of protesting against Israeli government policy.
Critics are also accused of holding Israel to an unfair standard or questioning its right to exist. But these are bogus charges too. Western critics of Israel hardly ever question its right to exist: they question its behaviour towards the Palestinians, as do Israelis themselves. Nor is Israel being judged unfairly. Israeli treatment of the Palestinians elicits criticism because it is contrary to widely accepted notions of human rights, to international law and to the principle of national self-determination. And it is hardly the only state that has faced sharp criticism on these grounds.
In the autumn of 2001, and especially in the spring of 2002, the Bush administration tried to reduce anti-American sentiment in the Arab world and undermine support for terrorist groups like al-Qaida by halting Israel’s expansionist policies in the Occupied Territories and advocating the creation of a Palestinian state. Bush had very significant means of persuasion at his disposal. He could have threatened to reduce economic and diplomatic support for Israel, and the American people would almost certainly have supported him. A May 2003 poll reported that more than 60 per cent of Americans were willing to withhold aid if Israel resisted US pressure to settle the conflict, and that number rose to 70 per cent among the ‘politically active’. Indeed, 73 per cent said that the United States should not favour either side.
Yet the administration failed to change Israeli policy, and Washington ended up backing it. Over time, the administration also adopted Israel’s own justifications of its position, so that US rhetoric began to mimic Israeli rhetoric. By February 2003, a Washington Post headline summarised the situation: ‘Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical on Mideast Policy.’ The main reason for this switch was the Lobby.
The story begins in late September 2001, when Bush began urging Sharon to show restraint in the Occupied Territories. He also pressed him to allow Israel’s foreign minister, Shimon Peres, to meet with Yasser Arafat, even though he (Bush) was highly critical of Arafat’s leadership. Bush even said publicly that he supported the creation of a Palestinian state. Alarmed, Sharon accused him of trying ‘to appease the Arabs at our expense’, warning that Israel ‘will not be Czechoslovakia’.
Bush was reportedly furious at being compared to Chamberlain, and the White House press secretary called Sharon’s remarks ‘unacceptable’. Sharon offered a pro forma apology, but quickly joined forces with the Lobby to persuade the administration and the American people that the United States and Israel faced a common threat from terrorism. Israeli officials and Lobby representatives insisted that there was no real difference between Arafat and Osama bin Laden: the United States and Israel, they said, should isolate the Palestinians’ elected leader and have nothing to do with him.
The Lobby also went to work in Congress. On 16 November, 89 senators sent Bush a letter praising him for refusing to meet with Arafat, but also demanding that the US not restrain Israel from retaliating against the Palestinians; the administration, they wrote, must state publicly that it stood behind Israel. According to the New York Times, the letter ‘stemmed’ from a meeting two weeks before between ‘leaders of the American Jewish community and key senators’, adding that AIPAC was ‘particularly active in providing advice on the letter’.
By late November, relations between Tel Aviv and Washington had improved considerably. This was thanks in part to the Lobby’s efforts, but also to America’s initial victory in Afghanistan, which reduced the perceived need for Arab support in dealing with al-Qaida. Sharon visited the White House in early December and had a friendly meeting with Bush.
In April 2002 trouble erupted again, after the IDF launched Operation Defensive Shield and resumed control of virtually all the major Palestinian areas on the West Bank. Bush knew that Israel’s actions would damage America’s image in the Islamic world and undermine the war on terrorism, so he demanded that Sharon ‘halt the incursions and begin withdrawal’. He underscored this message two days later, saying he wanted Israel to ‘withdraw without delay’. On 7 April, Condoleezza Rice, then Bush’s national security adviser, told reporters: ‘“Without delay” means without delay. It means now.’ That same day Colin Powell set out for the Middle East to persuade all sides to stop fighting and start negotiating.
Israel and the Lobby swung into action. Pro-Israel officials in the vice-president’s office and the Pentagon, as well as neo-conservative pundits like Robert Kagan and William Kristol, put the heat on Powell. They even accused him of having ‘virtually obliterated the distinction between terrorists and those fighting terrorists’. Bush himself was being pressed by Jewish leaders and Christian evangelicals. Tom DeLay and Dick Armey were especially outspoken about the need to support Israel, and DeLay and the Senate minority leader, Trent Lott, visited the White House and warned Bush to back off.
The first sign that Bush was caving in came on 11 April – a week after he told Sharon to withdraw his forces – when the White House press secretary said that the president believed Sharon was ‘a man of peace’. Bush repeated this statement publicly on Powell’s return from his abortive mission, and told reporters that Sharon had responded satisfactorily to his call for a full and immediate withdrawal. Sharon had done no such thing, but Bush was no longer willing to make an issue of it.
Meanwhile, Congress was also moving to back Sharon. On 2 May, it overrode the administration’s objections and passed two resolutions reaffirming support for Israel. (The Senate vote was 94 to 2; the House of Representatives version passed 352 to 21.) Both resolutions held that the United States ‘stands in solidarity with Israel’ and that the two countries were, to quote the House resolution, ‘now engaged in a common struggle against terrorism’. The House version also condemned ‘the ongoing support and co-ordination of terror by Yasser Arafat’, who was portrayed as a central part of the terrorism problem. Both resolutions were drawn up with the help of the Lobby. A few days later, a bipartisan congressional delegation on a fact-finding mission to Israel stated that Sharon should resist US pressure to negotiate with Arafat. On 9 May, a House appropriations subcommittee met to consider giving Israel an extra $200 million to fight terrorism. Powell opposed the package, but the Lobby backed it and Powell lost.
In short, Sharon and the Lobby took on the president of the United States and triumphed. Hemi Shalev, a journalist on the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv, reported that Sharon’s aides ‘could not hide their satisfaction in view of Powell’s failure. Sharon saw the whites of President Bush’s eyes, they bragged, and the president blinked first.’ But it was Israel’s champions in the United States, not Sharon or Israel, that played the key role in defeating Bush.
The situation has changed little since then. The Bush administration refused ever again to have dealings with Arafat. After his death, it embraced the new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, but has done little to help him. Sharon continued to develop his plan to impose a unilateral settlement on the Palestinians, based on ‘disengagement’ from Gaza coupled with continued expansion on the West Bank. By refusing to negotiate with Abbas and making it impossible for him to deliver tangible benefits to the Palestinian people, Sharon’s strategy contributed directly to Hamas’s electoral victory. With Hamas in power, however, Israel has another excuse not to negotiate. The US administration has supported Sharon’s actions (and those of his successor, Ehud Olmert). Bush has even endorsed unilateral Israeli annexations in the Occupied Territories, reversing the stated policy of every president since Lyndon Johnson.
US officials have offered mild criticisms of a few Israeli actions, but have done little to help create a viable Palestinian state. Sharon has Bush ‘wrapped around his little finger’, the former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft said in October 2004. If Bush tries to distance the US from Israel, or even criticises Israeli actions in the Occupied Territories, he is certain to face the wrath of the Lobby and its supporters in Congress. Democratic presidential candidates understand that these are facts of life, which is the reason John Kerry went to great lengths to display unalloyed support for Israel in 2004, and why Hillary Clinton is doing the same thing today.
Maintaining US support for Israel’s policies against the Palestinians is essential as far as the Lobby is concerned, but its ambitions do not stop there. It also wants America to help Israel remain the dominant regional power. The Israeli government and pro-Israel groups in the United States have worked together to shape the administration’s policy towards Iraq, Syria and Iran, as well as its grand scheme for reordering the Middle East.
Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical. Some Americans believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure. According to Philip Zelikow, a former member of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and now a counsellor to Condoleezza Rice, the ‘real threat’ from Iraq was not a threat to the United States. The ‘unstated threat’ was the ‘threat against Israel’, Zelikow told an audience at the University of Virginia in September 2002. ‘The American government,’ he added, ‘doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.’
On 16 August 2002, 11 days before Dick Cheney kicked off the campaign for war with a hardline speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Washington Post reported that ‘Israel is urging US officials not to delay a military strike against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.’ By this point, according to Sharon, strategic co-ordination between Israel and the US had reached ‘unprecedented dimensions’, and Israeli intelligence officials had given Washington a variety of alarming reports about Iraq’s WMD programmes. As one retired Israeli general later put it, ‘Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq’s non-conventional capabilities.’
Israeli leaders were deeply distressed when Bush decided to seek Security Council authorisation for war, and even more worried when Saddam agreed to let UN inspectors back in. ‘The campaign against Saddam Hussein is a must,’ Shimon Peres told reporters in September 2002. ‘Inspections and inspectors are good for decent people, but dishonest people can overcome easily inspections and inspectors.’
At the same time, Ehud Barak wrote a New York Times op-ed warning that ‘the greatest risk now lies in inaction.’ His predecessor as prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, published a similar piece in the Wall Street Journal, entitled: ‘The Case for Toppling Saddam’. ‘Today nothing less than dismantling his regime will do,’ he declared. ‘I believe I speak for the overwhelming majority of Israelis in supporting a pre-emptive strike against Saddam’s regime.’ Or as Ha’aretz reported in February 2003, ‘the military and political leadership yearns for war in Iraq.’
As Netanyahu suggested, however, the desire for war was not confined to Israel’s leaders. Apart from Kuwait, which Saddam invaded in 1990, Israel was the only country in the world where both politicians and public favoured war. As the journalist Gideon Levy observed at the time, ‘Israel is the only country in the West whose leaders support the war unreservedly and where no alternative opinion is voiced.’ In fact, Israelis were so gung-ho that their allies in America told them to damp down their rhetoric, or it would look as if the war would be fought on Israel’s behalf.
Within the US, the main driving force behind the war was a small band of neo-conservatives, many with ties to Likud. But leaders of the Lobby’s major organisations lent their voices to the campaign. ‘As President Bush attempted to sell the . . . war in Iraq,’ the Forward reported, ‘America’s most important Jewish organisations rallied as one to his defence. In statement after statement community leaders stressed the need to rid the world of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.’ The editorial goes on to say that ‘concern for Israel’s safety rightfully factored into the deliberations of the main Jewish groups.’
Although neo-conservatives and other Lobby leaders were eager to invade Iraq, the broader American Jewish community was not. Just after the war started, Samuel Freedman reported that ‘a compilation of nationwide opinion polls by the Pew Research Center shows that Jews are less supportive of the Iraq war than the population at large, 52 per cent to 62 per cent.’ Clearly, it would be wrong to blame the war in Iraq on ‘Jewish influence’. Rather, it was due in large part to the Lobby’s influence, especially that of the neo-conservatives within it.
The neo-conservatives had been determined to topple Saddam even before Bush became president. They caused a stir early in 1998 by publishing two open letters to Clinton, calling for Saddam’s removal from power. The signatories, many of whom had close ties to pro-Israel groups like JINSA or WINEP, and who included Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Bernard Lewis, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, had little trouble persuading the Clinton administration to adopt the general goal of ousting Saddam. But they were unable to sell a war to achieve that objective. They were no more able to generate enthusiasm for invading Iraq in the early months of the Bush administration. They needed help to achieve their aim. That help arrived with 9/11. Specifically, the events of that day led Bush and Cheney to reverse course and become strong proponents of a preventive war.
At a key meeting with Bush at Camp David on 15 September, Wolfowitz advocated attacking Iraq before Afghanistan, even though there was no evidence that Saddam was involved in the attacks on the US and bin Laden was known to be in Afghanistan. Bush rejected his advice and chose to go after Afghanistan instead, but war with Iraq was now regarded as a serious possibility and on 21 November the president charged military planners with developing concrete plans for an invasion.
Other neo-conservatives were meanwhile at work in the corridors of power. We don’t have the full story yet, but scholars like Bernard Lewis of Princeton and Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins reportedly played important roles in persuading Cheney that war was the best option, though neo-conservatives on his staff – Eric Edelman, John Hannah and Scooter Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff and one of the most powerful individuals in the administration – also played their part. By early 2002 Cheney had persuaded Bush; and with Bush and Cheney on board, war was inevitable.
Outside the administration, neo-conservative pundits lost no time in making the case that invading Iraq was essential to winning the war on terrorism. Their efforts were designed partly to keep up the pressure on Bush, and partly to overcome opposition to the war inside and outside the government. On 20 September, a group of prominent neo-conservatives and their allies published another open letter: ‘Even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack,’ it read, ‘any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.’ The letter also reminded Bush that ‘Israel has been and remains America’s staunchest ally against international terrorism.’ In the 1 October issue of the Weekly Standard, Robert Kagan and William Kristol called for regime change in Iraq as soon as the Taliban was defeated. That same day, Charles Krauthammer argued in the Washington Post that after the US was done with Afghanistan, Syria should be next, followed by Iran and Iraq: ‘The war on terrorism will conclude in Baghdad,’ when we finish off ‘the most dangerous terrorist regime in the world’.
This was the beginning of an unrelenting public relations campaign to win support for an invasion of Iraq, a crucial part of which was the manipulation of intelligence in such a way as to make it seem as if Saddam posed an imminent threat. For example, Libby pressured CIA analysts to find evidence supporting the case for war and helped prepare Colin Powell’s now discredited briefing to the UN Security Council. Within the Pentagon, the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group was charged with finding links between al-Qaida and Iraq that the intelligence community had supposedly missed. Its two key members were David Wurmser, a hard-core neo-conservative, and Michael Maloof, a Lebanese-American with close ties to Perle. Another Pentagon group, the so-called Office of Special Plans, was given the task of uncovering evidence that could be used to sell the war. It was headed by Abram Shulsky, a neo-conservative with long-standing ties to Wolfowitz, and its ranks included recruits from pro-Israel think tanks. Both these organisations were created after 9/11 and reported directly to Douglas Feith.
Like virtually all the neo-conservatives, Feith is deeply committed to Israel; he also has long-term ties to Likud. He wrote articles in the 1990s supporting the settlements and arguing that Israel should retain the Occupied Territories. More important, along with Perle and Wurmser, he wrote the famous ‘Clean Break’ report in June 1996 for Netanyahu, who had just become prime minister. Among other things, it recommended that Netanyahu ‘focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq – an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right’. It also called for Israel to take steps to reorder the entire Middle East. Netanyahu did not follow their advice, but Feith, Perle and Wurmser were soon urging the Bush administration to pursue those same goals. The Ha’aretz columnist Akiva Eldar warned that Feith and Perle ‘are walking a fine line between their loyalty to American governments . . . and Israeli interests’.
Wolfowitz is equally committed to Israel. The Forward once described him as ‘the most hawkishly pro-Israel voice in the administration’, and selected him in 2002 as first among 50 notables who ‘have consciously pursued Jewish activism’. At about the same time, JINSA gave Wolfowitz its Henry M. Jackson Distinguished Service Award for promoting a strong partnership between Israel and the United States; and the Jerusalem Post, describing him as ‘devoutly pro-Israel’, named him ‘Man of the Year’ in 2003.
Finally, a brief word is in order about the neo-conservatives’ prewar support of Ahmed Chalabi, the unscrupulous Iraqi exile who headed the Iraqi National Congress. They backed Chalabi because he had established close ties with Jewish-American groups and had pledged to foster good relations with Israel once he gained power. This was precisely what pro-Israel proponents of regime change wanted to hear. Matthew Berger laid out the essence of the bargain in the Jewish Journal: ‘The INC saw improved relations as a way to tap Jewish influence in Washington and Jerusalem and to drum up increased support for its cause. For their part, the Jewish groups saw an opportunity to pave the way for better relations between Israel and Iraq, if and when the INC is involved in replacing Saddam Hussein’s regime.’
Given the neo-conservatives’ devotion to Israel, their obsession with Iraq, and their influence in the Bush administration, it isn’t surprising that many Americans suspected that the war was designed to further Israeli interests. Last March, Barry Jacobs of the American Jewish Committee acknowledged that the belief that Israel and the neo-conservatives had conspired to get the US into a war in Iraq was ‘pervasive’ in the intelligence community. Yet few people would say so publicly, and most of those who did – including Senator Ernest Hollings and Representative James Moran – were condemned for raising the issue. Michael Kinsley wrote in late 2002 that ‘the lack of public discussion about the role of Israel . . . is the proverbial elephant in the room.’ The reason for the reluctance to talk about it, he observed, was fear of being labelled an anti-semite. There is little doubt that Israel and the Lobby were key factors in the decision to go to war. It’s a decision the US would have been far less likely to take without their efforts. And the war itself was intended to be only the first step. A front-page headline in the Wall Street Journal shortly after the war began says it all: ‘President’s Dream: Changing Not Just Regime but a Region: A Pro-US, Democratic Area Is a Goal that Has Israeli and Neo-Conservative Roots.’
Pro-Israel forces have long been interested in getting the US military more directly involved in the Middle East. But they had limited success during the Cold War, because America acted as an ‘off-shore balancer’ in the region. Most forces designated for the Middle East, like the Rapid Deployment Force, were kept ‘over the horizon’ and out of harm’s way. The idea was to play local powers off against each other – which is why the Reagan administration supported Saddam against revolutionary Iran during the Iran-Iraq War – in order to maintain a balance favourable to the US.
This policy changed after the first Gulf War, when the Clinton administration adopted a strategy of ‘dual containment’. Substantial US forces would be stationed in the region in order to contain both Iran and Iraq, instead of one being used to check the other. The father of dual containment was none other than Martin Indyk, who first outlined the strategy in May 1993 at WINEP and then implemented it as director for Near East and South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council.
By the mid-1990s there was considerable dissatisfaction with dual containment, because it made the United States the mortal enemy of two countries that hated each other, and forced Washington to bear the burden of containing both. But it was a strategy the Lobby favoured and worked actively in Congress to preserve. Pressed by AIPAC and other pro-Israel forces, Clinton toughened up the policy in the spring of 1995 by imposing an economic embargo on Iran. But AIPAC and the others wanted more. The result was the 1996 Iran and Libya Sanctions Act, which imposed sanctions on any foreign companies investing more than $40 million to develop petroleum resources in Iran or Libya. As Ze’ev Schiff, the military correspondent of Ha’aretz, noted at the time, ‘Israel is but a tiny element in the big scheme, but one should not conclude that it cannot influence those within the Beltway.’
By the late 1990s, however, the neo-conservatives were arguing that dual containment was not enough and that regime change in Iraq was essential. By toppling Saddam and turning Iraq into a vibrant democracy, they argued, the US would trigger a far-reaching process of change throughout the Middle East. The same line of thinking was evident in the ‘Clean Break’ study the neo-conservatives wrote for Netanyahu. By 2002, when an invasion of Iraq was on the front-burner, regional transformation was an article of faith in neo-conservative circles.
Charles Krauthammer describes this grand scheme as the brainchild of Natan Sharansky, but Israelis across the political spectrum believed that toppling Saddam would alter the Middle East to Israel’s advantage. Aluf Benn reported in Ha’aretz (17 February 2003):
Senior IDF officers and those close to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, such as National Security Adviser Ephraim Halevy, paint a rosy picture of the wonderful future Israel can expect after the war. They envision a domino effect, with the fall of Saddam Hussein followed by that of Israel’s other enemies . . . Along with these leaders will disappear terror and weapons of mass destruction.
Once Baghdad fell in mid-April 2003, Sharon and his lieutenants began urging Washington to target Damascus. On 16 April, Sharon, interviewed in Yedioth Ahronoth, called for the United States to put ‘very heavy’ pressure on Syria, while Shaul Mofaz, his defence minister, interviewed in Ma’ariv, said: ‘We have a long list of issues that we are thinking of demanding of the Syrians and it is appropriate that it should be done through the Americans.’ Ephraim Halevy told a WINEP audience that it was now important for the US to get rough with Syria, and the Washington Post reported that Israel was ‘fuelling the campaign’ against Syria by feeding the US intelligence reports about the actions of Bashar Assad, the Syrian president.
Prominent members of the Lobby made the same arguments. Wolfowitz declared that ‘there has got to be regime change in Syria,’ and Richard Perle told a journalist that ‘a short message, a two-worded message’ could be delivered to other hostile regimes in the Middle East: ‘You’re next.’ In early April, WINEP released a bipartisan report stating that Syria ‘should not miss the message that countries that pursue Saddam’s reckless, irresponsible and defiant behaviour could end up sharing his fate’. On 15 April, Yossi Klein Halevi wrote a piece in the Los Angeles Times entitled ‘Next, Turn the Screws on Syria’, while the following day Zev Chafets wrote an article for the New York Daily News entitled ‘Terror-Friendly Syria Needs a Change, Too’. Not to be outdone, Lawrence Kaplan wrote in the New Republic on 21 April that Assad was a serious threat to America.
Back on Capitol Hill, Congressman Eliot Engel had reintroduced the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act. It threatened sanctions against Syria if it did not withdraw from Lebanon, give up its WMD and stop supporting terrorism, and it also called for Syria and Lebanon to take concrete steps to make peace with Israel. This legislation was strongly endorsed by the Lobby – by AIPAC especially – and ‘framed’, according to the Jewish Telegraph Agency, ‘by some of Israel’s best friends in Congress’. The Bush administration had little enthusiasm for it, but the anti-Syrian act passed overwhelmingly (398 to 4 in the House; 89 to 4 in the Senate), and Bush signed it into law on 12 December 2003.
The administration itself was still divided about the wisdom of targeting Syria. Although the neo-conservatives were eager to pick a fight with Damascus, the CIA and the State Department were opposed to the idea. And even after Bush signed the new law, he emphasised that he would go slowly in implementing it. His ambivalence is understandable. First, the Syrian government had not only been providing important intelligence about al-Qaida since 9/11: it had also warned Washington about a planned terrorist attack in the Gulf and given CIA interrogators access to Mohammed Zammar, the alleged recruiter of some of the 9/11 hijackers. Targeting the Assad regime would jeopardise these valuable connections, and thereby undermine the larger war on terrorism.
Second, Syria had not been on bad terms with Washington before the Iraq war (it had even voted for UN Resolution 1441), and was itself no threat to the United States. Playing hardball with it would make the US look like a bully with an insatiable appetite for beating up Arab states. Third, putting Syria on the hit list would give Damascus a powerful incentive to cause trouble in Iraq. Even if one wanted to bring pressure to bear, it made good sense to finish the job in Iraq first. Yet Congress insisted on putting the screws on Damascus, largely in response to pressure from Israeli officials and groups like AIPAC. If there were no Lobby, there would have been no Syria Accountability Act, and US policy towards Damascus would have been more in line with the national interest.
Israelis tend to describe every threat in the starkest terms, but Iran is widely seen as their most dangerous enemy because it is the most likely to acquire nuclear weapons. Virtually all Israelis regard an Islamic country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons as a threat to their existence. ‘Iraq is a problem . . . But you should understand, if you ask me, today Iran is more dangerous than Iraq,’ the defence minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, remarked a month before the Iraq war.
Sharon began pushing the US to confront Iran in November 2002, in an interview in the Times. Describing Iran as the ‘centre of world terror’, and bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, he declared that the Bush administration should put the strong arm on Iran ‘the day after’ it conquered Iraq. In late April 2003, Ha’aretz reported that the Israeli ambassador in Washington was calling for regime change in Iran. The overthrow of Saddam, he noted, was ‘not enough’. In his words, America ‘has to follow through. We still have great threats of that magnitude coming from Syria, coming from Iran.’
The neo-conservatives, too, lost no time in making the case for regime change in Tehran. On 6 May, the AEI co-sponsored an all-day conference on Iran with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the Hudson Institute, both champions of Israel. The speakers were all strongly pro-Israel, and many called for the US to replace the Iranian regime with a democracy. As usual, a bevy of articles by prominent neo-conservatives made the case for going after Iran. ‘The liberation of Iraq was the first great battle for the future of the Middle East . . . But the next great battle – not, we hope, a military battle – will be for Iran,’ William Kristol wrote in the Weekly Standard on 12 May.
The administration has responded to the Lobby’s pressure by working overtime to shut down Iran’s nuclear programme. But Washington has had little success, and Iran seems determined to create a nuclear arsenal. As a result, the Lobby has intensified its pressure. Op-eds and other articles now warn of imminent dangers from a nuclear Iran, caution against any appeasement of a ‘terrorist’ regime, and hint darkly of preventive action should diplomacy fail. The Lobby is pushing Congress to approve the Iran Freedom Support Act, which would expand existing sanctions. Israeli officials also warn they may take pre-emptive action should Iran continue down the nuclear road, threats partly intended to keep Washington’s attention on the issue.
One might argue that Israel and the Lobby have not had much influence on policy towards Iran, because the US has its own reasons for keeping Iran from going nuclear. There is some truth in this, but Iran’s nuclear ambitions do not pose a direct threat to the US. If Washington could live with a nuclear Soviet Union, a nuclear China or even a nuclear North Korea, it can live with a nuclear Iran. And that is why the Lobby must keep up constant pressure on politicians to confront Tehran. Iran and the US would hardly be allies if the Lobby did not exist, but US policy would be more temperate and preventive war would not be a serious option.
It is not surprising that Israel and its American supporters want the US to deal with any and all threats to Israel’s security. If their efforts to shape US policy succeed, Israel’s enemies will be weakened or overthrown, Israel will get a free hand with the Palestinians, and the US will do most of the fighting, dying, rebuilding and paying. But even if the US fails to transform the Middle East and finds itself in conflict with an increasingly radicalised Arab and Islamic world, Israel will end up protected by the world’s only superpower. This is not a perfect outcome from the Lobby’s point of view, but it is obviously preferable to Washington distancing itself, or using its leverage to force Israel to make peace with the Palestinians.
Can the Lobby’s power be curtailed? One would like to think so, given the Iraq debacle, the obvious need to rebuild America’s image in the Arab and Islamic world, and the recent revelations about AIPAC officials passing US government secrets to Israel. One might also think that Arafat’s death and the election of the more moderate Mahmoud Abbas would cause Washington to press vigorously and even-handedly for a peace agreement. In short, there are ample grounds for leaders to distance themselves from the Lobby and adopt a Middle East policy more consistent with broader US interests. In particular, using American power to achieve a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians would help advance the cause of democracy in the region.
But that is not going to happen – not soon anyway. AIPAC and its allies (including Christian Zionists) have no serious opponents in the lobbying world. They know it has become more difficult to make Israel’s case today, and they are responding by taking on staff and expanding their activities. Besides, American politicians remain acutely sensitive to campaign contributions and other forms of political pressure, and major media outlets are likely to remain sympathetic to Israel no matter what it does.
The Lobby’s influence causes trouble on several fronts. It increases the terrorist danger that all states face – including America’s European allies. It has made it impossible to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a situation that gives extremists a powerful recruiting tool, increases the pool of potential terrorists and sympathisers, and contributes to Islamic radicalism in Europe and Asia.
Equally worrying, the Lobby’s campaign for regime change in Iran and Syria could lead the US to attack those countries, with potentially disastrous effects. We don’t need another Iraq. At a minimum, the Lobby’s hostility towards Syria and Iran makes it almost impossible for Washington to enlist them in the struggle against al-Qaida and the Iraqi insurgency, where their help is badly needed.
There is a moral dimension here as well. Thanks to the Lobby, the United States has become the de facto enabler of Israeli expansion in the Occupied Territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians. This situation undercuts Washington’s efforts to promote democracy abroad and makes it look hypocritical when it presses other states to respect human rights. US efforts to limit nuclear proliferation appear equally hypocritical given its willingness to accept Israel’s nuclear arsenal, which only encourages Iran and others to seek a similar capability.
Besides, the Lobby’s campaign to quash debate about Israel is unhealthy for democracy. Silencing sceptics by organising blacklists and boycotts – or by suggesting that critics are anti-semites – violates the principle of open debate on which democracy depends. The inability of Congress to conduct a genuine debate on these important issues paralyses the entire process of democratic deliberation. Israel’s backers should be free to make their case and to challenge those who disagree with them, but efforts to stifle debate by intimidation must be roundly condemned.
Finally, the Lobby’s influence has been bad for Israel. Its ability to persuade Washington to support an expansionist agenda has discouraged Israel from seizing opportunities – including a peace treaty with Syria and a prompt and full implementation of the Oslo Accords – that would have saved Israeli lives and shrunk the ranks of Palestinian extremists. Denying the Palestinians their legitimate political rights certainly has not made Israel more secure, and the long campaign to kill or marginalise a generation of Palestinian leaders has empowered extremist groups like Hamas, and reduced the number of Palestinian leaders who would be willing to accept a fair settlement and able to make it work. Israel itself would probably be better off if the Lobby were less powerful and US policy more even-handed.
There is a ray of hope, however. Although the Lobby remains a powerful force, the adverse effects of its influence are increasingly difficult to hide. Powerful states can maintain flawed policies for quite some time, but reality cannot be ignored for ever. What is needed is a candid discussion of the Lobby’s influence and a more open debate about US interests in this vital region. Israel’s well-being is one of those interests, but its continued occupation of the West Bank and its broader regional agenda are not. Open debate will expose the limits of the strategic and moral case for one-sided US support and could move the US to a position more consistent with its own national interest, with the interests of the other states in the region, and with Israel’s long-term interests as well.
10 March

From JEWISH VOICES for PEACE...A view we Americans never hear on U.S. media

2006-08-29T19:03:00.000-04:00

JVP In-Depth: Israel's Attacks on Gaza and Lebanon
Email this article Printer friendly pageFrom Gaza to Lebanon, the conflict over Israel has once again flared up into major violence, with civilians being the overwhelming majority of the victims. And, true to form, the blame game is in full swing. Cries of “they started it” can be heard loudly from all sides, and the voices talking about reasonable ways to end “it” are once again muted.
It looks very much like we are at the beginning of a long period of renewed and intensified conflict in the Middle East. It is important to understand how these events came about, and to at least try to understand the motivations of the players involved. Jewish Voice for Peace brings you this extensive in-depth analysis. There's a lot of information here, so you can use the Table of Contents below to get to the subjects you want to learn more about.
Background Palestinians Infiltrate an IDF Outpost Devastating Gaza Hizbullah Enters the Fray Israel Bombard Lebanon What Are They Thinking: Israel What Are They Thinking: Hamas What Are They Thinking: Hizbullah and Lebanon What Are They Thinking: Iran What Are They Thinking: Syria What Are They Thinking: US What You Can Do Talking Points
Background The latest chapter in this seemingly endless tragedy begins last year with the Israeli “withdrawal” from the Gaza Strip. That plan, which was more accurately called redeployment than withdrawal, was born of the new-found love affair between Israel and the idea of unilateral withdrawal. Because it was carried out unilaterally, the "withdrawal" served to undermine the existing Palestinian government, and Gaza, while left without settlements or Israeli soldiers inside it, was also left in chaos. Worse, Israel maintained full control of the borders and border crossings as well as the air and sea spaces. By closing off all routes in and out of the Strip, Israel prevented any recovery of the devastated Gazan economy. With regular shellings (which caused numerous civilian deaths and extensive damage) and fly-overs causing sonic booms, Israel also kept the population terrorized. Very little of this was reported in the media. In January, Hamas’ election upped the ante. Now, Israel and the United States had their public justification to refuse to talk with the Palestinians, even though there had been no talking even with the previous regime for years. Hamas, for their part, had to struggle with their own ideology and rhetoric. They had to find a way to be responsible leaders and represent the Palestinian people but, even though Palestinian polls all reflected a desire for Hamas to negotiate with Israel, Hamas’ own charter precluded recognizing Israel. They struggled with this, and several ideas were floated about, but Hamas was not able to resolve this dilemma before the conflict with Israel turned to still greater violence. With Israel increasing its belligerency, Hamas, like its predecessor, had neither the political motivation nor the political space to do anything to stop the regular launching of Qassam missiles at the Israeli town of Sderot. Although the overwhelming majority of these missiles landed harmlessly in the Negev desert, they did serve to unnerve the Israeli populace and cause them to demand that their government act to stop them, increasing the Israeli government’s impetus to escalate the boiling conflict with the Palestinians.In Lebanon, despite the fact that the United Nations certified a full Israeli withdrawal in 2000, Israel maintained control of the disputed Sheba'a Farms area. Interestingly, while Lebanon claims this area as its own, Israel's claim is that it is actually occupying Syrian territory. No one claims the area legitimately belongs to Israel, not even Israel. Israel's ongoing presence there has led to periodic clashes with Hezbollah since 2000. These grew more intense in May, after a car bomb killed a leader of Islamic Jihad in Lebanon. Israel is generally believed to have been behind this act, and the man arrested for it claimed to have been working for the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad. An exchange of fire followed, greatly raising tensions between Hezbollah and Israel leading up to the July 12 Hezbollah attack.
Palestinians infiltrate IDF outpost inside IsraelOn June 25, a group of Palestinian guerrillas from Hamas’ armed wing, the Popular Resistance Committees and a new group called the Islamic Army entered an Israeli army outpost on the Israeli side of the border, killing two soldiers and taking one prisoner. The day before, Israel had taken two Palestinian brothers, on charges that they were members of Hamas, but with no charges of any other wrongdoing. Israel holds 9000 Palestinian political prisoners, including hundreds of women and minors. Of these, some 1000 are held as "administrative detainees", meaning they are held without charge or trial. It was clear that the Palestinian attack the next day was, at least in part, a response to Israel's imprisonment of these two brothers, the first such Israeli action since the withdrawal the year before. From initial responses, it was also clear that the Palestinians operation was executed without the knowledge or consent of the Hamas political leadership, the leadership of the Palestinian Authority. It was orchestrated by Khaled Meshal, the most prominent leader of Hamas’ armed wing, who resides in Damascus. Meshal was being increasingly marginalized as the elected Hamas leadership became more prominent. The attack on the IDF not only restored and even increased Meshal’s prestige, but also overshadowed and undermined the agreement, announced almost simultaneously, between Fatah and Hamas on the “prisoners’ document”, a blueprint for national Palestinian unity that included an agreement to limit military activity to the Occupied Territories.But whatever one might believe about the legitimacy or wisdom of the Palestinians’ attack, the Israeli response was illegitimate. Israeli leaders themselves conceded that the attacks, initially almost exclusively against civilian targets and infrastructure, had no chance of freeing their soldier or of stopping the firing of Qassam rockets, whose range had been improved and could now reach the town of Ashkelon, which is a bit further inside Israel than Sderot.
Devastating Gaza
Israel’s assault began with bombing Gaza’s main electrical plant, leaving the majority of the Strip without electricity or running water, and crippling the ability of medical facilities to treat their patients. Israel devastated roads inside Gaza and, while the majority of the initial casualties were combatants, as the bombardment went on, the ratio of civilian casualties to combatant ones rose quickly.
Israel detained without charge dozens of Palestinian legislators, many not even affiliated with Hamas, despite the fact that Israel was well aware that the Hamas political leadership was not involved in the attack.
As of this writing (July 31) the assault on Gaza has tapered off, but is by no means ended. Israel is launcing air strikes at Gaza numerous times per week, and occasionally carrying out operatins with ground troops. The most recent casualties have been overwhelmingly civilian and it has been virtually impossible for aid or aid workers to reach the Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel has also escalated operations in the West Bank, though not nearly to the same degree as Gaza. The escalation with Lebanon means that attention is drawn away from the ongoing bombardment of Gaza, and that has allowed Israel to continue or even escalate their assault with impunity.
Hezbollah enters the frayOn July 12, Hezbollah crossed the southern Lebanese border into Israel, and attacked an IDF post. They killed three soldiers and took two. It is crucial to point out that the conditions between Israel and the Palestinians, on the one hand, and Israel and Lebanon on the other are not the same, even though the similarity of the two actions against IDF outposts draws comparisons. The Palestinians are a people under occupation and they have the right to resist that occupation, even with force. One may argue over the advisability of their action, but it was permitted under international law. This is not the case with Hezbollah. Their act was a clear violation of international law, as was their subsequent attack on civilian targets within Israel. The Israeli occupation of Sheba'a farms doesn't justify Hezbollah's incursion into Israel in this manner. Hezbollah, like Hamas, had internal reasons as well as external ones for launching its attack. Hezbollah had come under significant pressure to disarm and allow the Lebanese to deploy in the south of the country. A UN Security Council resolution did demand this, and the new, more pro-Western government was also desirous of this. While Hezbollah had attained a heroic status for having fought Israel until it ended its 18-year occupation of Southern Lebanon, that was six years ago. It was a permanent fixture in Lebanon politically, but it was beginning to look like Hezbollah's days of being able to independently run its own military affairs in Lebanon were drawing to an end. Ironically, this is what Israel claims it wants, yet its invasion has united much more of Lebanon behind Hezbollah.The Hezbollah attack precipitated a major escalation in the already dangerous situation in the Middle East. It gave Israel the excuse it needed to launch a major attack on Lebanon. It has to be unequivocally stated that, having said that Hezbollah violated international law, Israel’s immediate targeting of civilians and use of disproportionate and overwhelming force is a much greater crime. Israel completely decimated much of Lebanon's infrastructure, internally displaced some 750,000 Lebanese and the death toll at this writing is over 800, the vast majority of them civilians. In Qana, where ten years earlier Israel had bombed a refugee camp run by the UN, killing over 100 civilians, most of them women and children, Israel again caused heavy loss of life of innocents, this time killing dozens of children. In fact, Israel's invasion of Lebanon has drawn nearly universal scorn, has caused many people who are generally supportive of Israel to criticize its behavior and has severely eroded global good will to Israel. Only the fact that the United States' current government is even more fanatical than the Israeli has prevented action geared to stopping the Israeli invasion.
Israel bombards LebanonIsrael declared that the Hezbollah action constituted an act of war. As in Gaza, Israel immediately targeted the Lebanese civilian infrastructure, bombing the major Lebanese airport as well as many roads and bridges. Unlike Gaza, the death toll in Lebanon quickly rose and was almost entirely civilian. Hezbollah responded with missile attacks on Israeli cities, killing several civilians. Israel then put the Lebanese shoreline under siege and has continued its bombardment and invasion of the country. And that is where we are today. Israel is continuing its completely illegal collective punishment in Gaza, now with the eyes of the world diverted to Lebanon. Hamas’ repeated calls for negotiations have been completely ignored. The Lebanese government, a weak leadership body, has called for an immediate cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israel, but is not capable of stopping Hezbollah’s actions. Their calls for mediation and international intervention have been taken more seriously but, as usual, the United States vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire.The US is not the only foreign player in these events. It’s time to look at what might be the goals and thinking of Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah as well as the US, Syria and Iran, all countries that are also involved, albeit in less visible ways.
IsraelOne thing that must be understood is just how weak Israel’s political leadership is right now. It is the military, to an extent even greater than usual, which is making the decisions regarding Gaza and Lebanon. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz are following, not leading. And they appear more than content to do so. Their own lack of military experience, itself unprecedented among Israel’s major leaders historically, leads to a lack of confidence, both on their parts and on the part of the Israeli public, in their ability to act. It certainly precludes any possibility of reason entering into the thought process. When the Palestinians successfully launched their June attack, the military was humiliated. They lashed out, determined to punish the Palestinian people for their own embarrassment. The operation in Gaza seemed to have little more rationale than that, other than to simply continue a program of trying, futilely, to beat the Palestinians into submission. While the United States and many Arab leaders might wish to see Israel destroy the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, Israel needs to concern itself with what would follow. One thing that would surely come about would be the expectation that Israel take back responsibility for administering the Palestinian territories, something they do not want (how much of that responsibility they would take is a different question). Israel has nothing to show for their attack on Gaza. Their soldier is still being held, and Qassam rockets continue to be fired at their towns. At this point, it would seem that Israel is desperately trying to show that they can force the Palestinians to surrender the soldier and their rockets. In Lebanon, the situation is different. Humiliation is not outside of this equation either. Not just the humiliation of the Hezbollah attack this week, but also the open wound from the withdrawal from Lebanon six years ago, a move the military never supported, and which the current military leadership, especially Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, sees as an embarrassment. The Hezbollah attack provided the excuse Halutz has wanted for some time to attempt to wipe out HezbollahSome have suggested that this is an attempt at regime change in Lebanon. That’s only true to a certain extent. The Lebanese Prime Minister is backed by the US. It is not a full change in government that Israel wants, but the removal of Hezbollah from that government. This would also have the effect of further diminishing Syria’s role in Lebanon (which is still considerable, even though it was diminished by the forced withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon) as well as Iran’s influence. Both countries are closely tied to Hezbollah.The trouble is that this was never a realistic possibility and that Israel has pursued only demonstrates, again, their lack of understanding of Lebanese politics and society. Hezbollah as a political party is deeply woven into Lebanese politics. As a militia, Hezbollah was losing its grip before the Israeli attack. But Israel's actions have reversed this. Now, the pro-Western Prime Minister of Lebanon tells the American Secretary of State that she is not welcome in Lebanon unless she brings a cease-fire with her and he openly thank Hezbollah, heretofore his bitter rival, for defending Lebanon. While Israel waves its flag and says it is acting for the security of its citizens, its foolhardiness and adventurism has already cost Israeli lives, on top of hundreds of Lebanese lives. And their actions are only making Israel less secure going forward.
Hamas
In the days since the Palestinian attack on the IDF outpost, the military and political wings of Hamas have very much come together on their plans and actions. There has been real unity in Hamas and the message has been very clear: if Israel refuses to talk, Hamas will pursue other options. But Hamas has been equally clear about its willingness to negotiate with Israel.
Israel’s great assault on both the Palestinian infrastructure and Palestinian Authority buildings and officials have forced Hamas and the entire PA to simply hunker down and try to survive this assault. The fact that less and less attention is being paid to Gaza and the West Bank with each passing day will make that even more difficult. Still, while many parties are eager to see Hamas fall (including, but far from limited to, the US—many Arab states are eager for this as well), Israel is the only one that needs to be concerned about the repercussions of such an event. Though the bombardment of Gaza continues, including most recently the Palestinian Foreign Ministry, it has remained largely directionless. For now, the Hamas government is not in immediate danger of collapse. That could change very quickly, though.
Hezbollah and LebanonWhile Israel, as well as a great many others on all sides of this debate, is not drawing a distinction between Hezbollah and Lebanon more broadly, the two are far from the same and their interests are not identical, just as any specific political party's interests are not necessarily identical to those of the country as a whole. Many Lebanese are very supportive of what Hezbollah has done, but many are not. What is much closer to a consensus position is that Israel has no right to kill civilians and devastate Lebanon as a result. Even those opposed to what Hezbollah did are currently, and appropriately, directing their anger at Israel.The Lebanese Prime Minister is trying hard to secure a cease-fire, but divisions within the country and the huge obstacles the United States has put up to any international involvement have made that exceedingly difficult. In essence the government has been largely impotent in all of this, and, while they have not brought the national military into this conflict, continuing Israeli aggression may well force them to do so.Over the coming weeks, we may learn with much more certainty what exactly motivated Hezbollah to act now as it has. But we can explore a few different possibilities.One that has been suggested is that the Hezbollah action was motivated purely by a wish to help the besieged Palestinians in Gaza. There’s no doubt this was a factor on several levels—including many in Hezbollah who wanted to help the Palestinians, and the fact that Hezbollah is now the one Arab group that has come to the Palestinians’ side in all of this, increasing their popularity. But there have been many such opportunities in the past six years, and Hezbollah has never acted like this before, implying that there is much more to it.Hezbollah’s own position in Lebanon has been a bit more tenuous since the UN Security Council passed a resolution calling for the disbanding of all militias in Lebanon. Though Hezbollah was not named in the resolution, everyone understood that they were its prime target. With the departure of the Syrian forces that supported Hezbollah and the election of a government that was much more pro-Western than the previous, Hezbollah may well have felt even more threatened. Hezbollah still enjoys tremendous support because it is perceived (in many ways, correctly) as having driven Israel out of southern Lebanon after 18 years of Israeli occupation of that area, that was six years ago. They may have felt a need to boost their prestige and support back up.It is certain that Hezbollah would not have done this without at least the approval of Iran. Some believe, in fact, that Hezbollah did this at Iran’s behest. Hezbollah is not simply an arm of Iran, of course, but it would also be incorrect to believe that Hezbollah would take such a bold step, with so many regional implications, without at least Iran’s permission. The extent of Iran’s involvement may become clearer in the coming weeks, but in any case, it is important to examine why they might have wanted this escalation.
Iran
Iran’s role in all of this is not extremely clear, but we can be certain that they are somehow involved. On one level, the escalating tensions between Iran and Israel certainly made it much more desirable for Israel to try to cut off Iran’s agents in Lebanon, Hizbullah.
Aside from Israel, Iran is the most economically and politically stable and most powerful military in the Middle East region. Iran most certainly has ambitions of much greater regional influence, and certainly sees opposition to Israel as the best way for them to increase that influence.
With Iran under increasing US pressure for its nuclear program and knowing that the US and Israel would like nothing more than regime change in the Islamic Republic, Iran has every reason to want to act against the US and its ally, Israel. But none of those parties are eager for open warfare between Iran and Israel, let alone the US. Having Hizbullah fight Israel instead is a way to assert Iran’s influence by demonstrating that there were forces capable of opposing US-Israeli aims in the region. It is this consideration that led Saudi Arabia to bitterly condemn Hizbullah’s attack on Israel.
It is a particularly opportune moment for Iran to make such a move because of the US’ continuing stagnation in the mire of Iraq and Israel’s absorption with battling Hamas. These conditions lessen the already moderate risk of the fighting spreading to include Iran.
Syria
The same cannot be said for Syria. Israel has been increasing its antagonistic stance toward Syria for some time. In part, this is in support of US anti-terror rhetoric, and in part it is due to Bashar al-Asad’s uncertain strategy regarding Israel. This stands in contrast to his father, Hafez al-Asad, who was a stronger leader and whose agenda was much clearer. Still, Israel has also objected to American notions of de-stabilizing the Syrian regime, believing that deposing Asad would lead to a regime that was much more threatening to Israeli interests.
Since Syria’s departure from Lebanon, and despite their continuing influence in Lebanon, they have had much less influence over Hizbullah. This likely explains why Syria has made some efforts to defuse the situation. They have been engaging with both Hamas and Hizbullah to secure the release of Israeli soldiers, although these efforts have not exactly been maximal.
Israel is already beginning to threaten Syria with attack. As of now, there is no evidence that they are sending any material support to Hizbullah, but if Hizbullah is routed from Lebanon as the Israelis hope, Syria is where they will flee.
Syria is largely caught in the middle now. They are outside the world of Arab states friendly to the US. They are the only Arab country that has offered anything like significant support to Palestinian militant groups, although even that support is often vastly overstated. Yet they have also tried to mend their relations with the West, although certainly not with Israel, a reconciliation that will remain impossible as long as Israel holds the Golan Heights. They’re trying very hard to stay out of the current violence. Whether they can do so or not will probably be up to Israel.
United States
No party could have been done as much to change this entire scenario as the US. The escalation in Gaza is directly attributable to the Bush Administration’s decision to abandon the entire Israel-Palestine issue with the lone exception being efforts to undermine the legitimately elected Hamas government. Nothing dramatic would have been necessary, just keeping some slight restraint on Israeli actions and maintaining the material support on which the Palestinian people are dependent. Instead, the US acted to increase the tensions until they blew up.
That the US is fully supportive of Israel’s targeting of civilians is not a surprise. Still, the veto at the UN earlier this week of a remarkably balanced resolution that would have called not only for Israeli withdrawal from both Lebanon and Gaza, but also the return of Israel’s soldiers and the cessation of rocket fire at Israel meant that there would be no international constraints on Israel whatsoever.
The Bush Administration’s lack of any informed or clear thinking on the Middle East is bearing its poisonous fruit. Policy, such as it is, is even turned against itself. Israel’s attacks are harming the long-term stability of the Lebanese government, a government the US supports. The US’ main concern in the region is Iran, and, while Israel certainly uses Iran for rhetorical and propaganda purposes, and is definitely concerned about Iran’s nuclear potential, Israel is far more concerned about the actions of Hamas and Hizbullah. Whether this obvious fracture in US policy will have any impact on the situation remains to be seen.
As always, it is the US that has the most power to change things.
What you can do

Be a part of one of the many demonstrations that are being called
Use the talking points below for letters to the editor and to call in on radio shows discussing the current situation in the Middle East
Call your congressional representatives, the State Department and the White House with the same points
Do everything you can to educate your friends, co-workers and neighbors about what’s really happening in the Middle East
Support Jewish Voice for Peace and other groups like us so we can build the political force necessary to change US policy and make sure that things never get this bad again
Talking points

The Israeli attacks constitute collective punishment of the entire Gazan and Lebanese populations, and have created a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented proportions in Gaza.
Israel’s own leadership has admitted that the operations in both Gaza and Lebanon have virtually no hope of freeing the Israeli soldiers or stopping rocket attacks.
Gaza must not be forgotten while attention is being diverted to Lebanon.
Hizbullah’s attack on the Israeli army and its subsequent missile attacks on Israeli cities are also violations of international law. These need to be condemned, but they do not justify Israel’s subsequent actions.
Israel's assault on Gaza does not constitute a re-occupation, because Israel's occupation of Gaza never ended.
The ongoing crisis reflects the failure of Israeli unilateralism, the failure of the "Roadmap," the failure of the U.S.-orchestrated exclusion of the UN, and failure of the international community and the UN to intervene.
The Gaza escalation demonstrates once again the need for an entirely new, international (not U.S.-sponsored) diplomatic process based on international law and human rights, aimed at ending the occupation and establishing equal rights for all, the only basis for a just, lasting and comprehensive peace in the region.

American's are not told Israeli's are against war....An open letter

2006-08-29T18:58:00.000-04:00

Dear Shale:I am writing to let you know that I have received your letter, sent to me during my stay in military prison. I would like to thank you and the Jewish Peace Fellowship for your support during a time of distress. You words have truly helped me copy with this uneasy period.I was released on April 11, 2002, after serving 26 days in military prison 4. Despite the somewhat frightening name, it is not a regular jail with cells and dungeons, but rather something that resembles a military camp, with tents and field showers. Nevertheless, it does reflect the lack of freedom found in facilities of this type. The good news was that I was able to read a lot, so you can say that this has not been a total waste of time.It was very important for me that people around the world would realize that not all Israelis support the policy of our current government, and willing to take part in the ongoing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Unfortunately, the sane voices are currently being hushed by the sound of exploding bombs in Israel, and by the roaring of tanks in the occupied territories. Though I am sure that both peoples are striving for basically the same thing, which is an honorable and safe existence in their homeland, it seems that a wall of misunderstanding prevents each side from seeing its own dream within its counterpart. Both Israelis and Palestinians end up giving in to extremists, which currently run (or ruin) the lives of 9 million people in this part of the world.Due to the current escalation of the conflict, and the military's attitude towards those of us who refuse to serve in the territories, there is a very real possibility that I will be sent to jail again in the near future. My wife and I have therefore decided that we will travel abroad for some time. Though it may seem as escapism, I fail to see how another visit to prison serves anyone.Again, I thank you for your support, and hope to hear from you in the future.Elad Lahav

The Greg Jones Showgram- "Israel slaps George W. in the face !"

2006-07-30T13:34:00.000-04:00

The Greg Jones Showgram "Crisis in the Middle East' audio series

2006-07-30T01:15:00.000-04:00

Below, you can click to hear the special audio series Crisis in The Middle East from Greg Jones. Please go to audio # 1 first....then 2...and so on to hear the show in the proper order. We thank you and appreciate the opportunity to share this information with you. Please tell your friends to visit. And we encourage your comments, views and ideas. Please visit again for regular updates regarding the issues of our world....and remember 'The more seeds of Peace are planted....the greater the tree of life will grow' Greg Jones.

(Audio) Middle East Crisis from Greg Jones part 4

2006-07-30T01:07:00.000-04:00

(Audio) Middle East Crisis from Greg Jones part 3

2006-07-30T01:01:00.000-04:00

(Audio) Middle East Crisis from Greg Jones part 2

2006-07-30T00:34:00.000-04:00

(AUDIO) Middle East Crisis from Greg Jones Part 1

2006-07-30T00:28:00.000-04:00

Greg Jones launches ' 5 Minute News Update' Podcast

2006-06-17T17:26:00.000-04:00

Greg Jones is currently in post production of a new podcast called '5 Minute News Update'. The show will be a series of 5 minute podcast shows hosted by Jones which will give concise news bits regarding world issues. "I'm very excited to have the opportunity to spread some truthful news and we really hope that folks tune in from all over the world", states Jones. 'The show is designed for people who are very busy but want to stay abreast of what's going on in our world', Jones adds. The first show will air the week of June 27, 2006 and will be available as a podcast through Blogazineworld.blogspot.com. Jones is also the composer, singer and songwriter of the new anthem for world peace CD single entitled God Bless The World-While You Bless America (Not Just America) which is garnering accolades worldwide. Jones has also recently launched OPERATION PEACETONE, in which the chorus from his peace anthem is now available as a FREE RingTone for all cell phone users. 'We'd love to have at least 6 million people ringing the musical message of world peace' states Jones. Visit:www.godblesstheworldonline.com for more info on the special CD and Operation Peacetone.

Hello, Hello Hello from '5 Minute News Update with Greg Jones'

2006-06-17T15:58:00.000-04:00

Two CBS Newsmen slain in Iraq along with dozens of others !

2006-05-29T21:08:00.000-04:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq (May 29) - A wave of car bombings and shootings plagued Shiite and Sunni areas of Iraq on Monday, killing more than three dozen people including two CBS crew members and a U.S. soldier. The network's correspondent was seriously wounded.
Watch Video: Blast Hits CBS Crew Raw Video From Scene More Coverage:· Pace Promises Answers on Alleged Massacre· A Dangerous Assignment for Journalists Talk About It: Post Thoughts
As parliament discussed the nation's disintegrating security, lawmakers pressed for the appointment of defense and interior ministers - seen as a necessary step toward Iraqi forces assuming more control so U.S.-led troops can begin withdrawing.
At least eight bombings rocked the capital in the worst wave of violence in days. A car bomb exploded as a U.S. convoy patrolled in central Baghdad, killing veteran CBS cameraman Paul Douglas, 48; soundman James Brolan, 42; and an American soldier, U.S. officials said.
Network correspondent Kimberly Dozier, 39, was critically wounded. CBS said Dozier underwent surgery at a U.S. military hospital in Baghdad. She was in critical condition, but doctors were cautiously optimistic, the network said.
The CBS crew was on patrol with the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, when the bomb exploded. The U.S. military said an Iraqi interpreter also was killed and six American soldiers were injured.
There were conflicting reports on whether the car was moving or parked when it detonated.
According to CBS and Iraqi police, the journalists were reporting outside their armored Humvee when the blast occurred just before noon in Tahariyat Square, a mixed area in south-central Baghdad. The blast collapsed the front end of the Humvee.
Dozens of journalists have been injured, killed or kidnapped in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. Before Monday's attack killed the two Britons, the Committee to Protect Journalists had put the number killed at 69. Of those, nearly three-quarters were Iraqis, the New York-based group has said.
Another group, Reporters Without Borders, said it was deeply saddened by the deaths of the two British members of the CBS crew.
"The security situation is becoming more and more alarming for the press in Iraq," the group said.
At least 37 other people were killed nationwide, most of them in Baghdad.
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The attacks began just after dawn, with one roadside bomb killing 10 people and injuring another 12 who worked for an Iranian organization opposed to the Tehran regime, police said.
That bombing targeted a public bus near Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad in Diyala province, an area notorious for such attacks, provincial police said.
All the dead were workers at the Ashraf base of the Mujahedeen Khalq, or MEK. The group, made up of Iranian dissidents living in Iraq, said the dead were Iraqi workers heading to their camp.
A car bomb parked near Baghdad's main Sunni Abu Hanifa mosque killed at least nine Iraqi civilians and wounded 25, said Saif al-Janabi, director of Noaman hospital. It exploded at noon in north Baghdad's Azamiyah neighborhood and disintegrated the vehicle.
Rescue crews and Iraqi army soldiers helped carry stretchers toward waiting ambulances, AP Television News footage showed.
A bomb planted in a parked minivan killed at least seven people and wounded at least 20 at the entrance to an open-air market selling secondhand clothes in the northern Baghdad suburb of Kazimiyah.
Another parked car bomb exploded near Ibn al-Haitham college in Azamiyah, also in northern Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding at least five - including four Iraqi soldiers, police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi said.
In other attacks, a roadside bomb killed two police officers and wounded three others in Baghdad's Karradah district, while one man was killed and six were wounded when a bomb hidden in a minivan exploded.
A mortar shell exploded at a Shiite mosque in southern Baghdad's Zafraniyah district. Shiite militiamen sealed off the area and prevented police from approaching, said police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi.
Also, gunmen in separate incidents killed two police officers in western Baghdad; two police officers, identified as former Baathists, in Amarah, 180 miles southeast of Baghdad; and police Brig. Gen. Sadiq Jaafar Salih, director of the national ID card office in Diyala, authorities said.
Iraq's parliament debated the deteriorating security situation in the capital and some of its outlying provinces but did not set up a commission to address the problem because of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's inability to appoint ministers of defense and interior - two posts that control the various security forces.
More than a week after al-Maliki's unity government took office, Iraq's ethnic, sectarian and secular parties are struggling to agree on those ministers.
"The deteriorating security situation is due to the fact that the interior and defense ministries are still unfilled posts," Shiite legislator Baha al-Araji said.
The Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry, which controls the police forces, has been promised to that community, while Sunni Arabs are to get the defense ministry, overseeing the army.
It is hoped the balance will enable al-Maliki to move ahead with a plan for Iraqis to take on all security duties during the next 18 months. He wants to try to attract army recruits from the Sunni Arab minority, which provides the core of the insurgency.
Nadira al-Ani, a member of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party, called for the defense minister, who is expected to be a Sunni Arab, to be given more power.
"I certainly hope that the defense minister will be a strong character ... to create a balance," she said during a round-table discussion between female Iraqi legislators and British human rights envoy Ann Clwyd in the heavily secured Green Zone, where Iraqi government offices and the U.S. Embassy is located.
5/29/2006 15:29 EDT
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

Veterans speak out AGAINST Iraq War

2006-05-27T19:59:00.000-04:00

Veterans Against Iraq War is a coalition of American veterans who support our troops but oppose war with Iraq or any other nation that does not pose a clear and present danger to our people and nation.
Until and unless the current U.S. Administration provides evidence which clearly demonstrates that Iraq or any other nation poses a clear, direct and immediate danger to our country, we oppose all of this Administration's pre-emptive and unilateral military activities in Iraq. Furthermore, we cannot support any war that is initiated without a formal Declaration of War by Congress, as our Constitution requires.
Although we detested the dictatorial policies of Saddam Hussein and sympathized with the tragic plight of the Iraqi people, we opposed unilateral and pre-emptive U.S. military intervention on the grounds that it established a dangerous precedent in the conduct of international affairs, that it could easily lead to an increase of violent regional instability and the spread of much wider conflicts, that it places needless and unacceptable financial burdens on the American people, that it diverts us from addressing critical domestic priorities, and that it distracts us from our goals of tracking down and destroying international terrorists and their lairs.
Furthermore, we do not believe that the American military can or should be used as the police force of the world by any administration, Republican or Democrat. Consequently, we believe that the lives and well being of our nation's soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines should not be squandered or sacrificed for causes other than in the direct defense of our people and nation.
Finally, we believe that a doctrine of pre-emptive and unilateral U.S. military attack on Iraq or any other nation is illegal, unnecessary, counter-productive and presents a truly dire and distressing threat to our vital international interests and basic national security. As military veterans, we have a unique understanding of war and know the many hidden truths that lie behind war's easy theories and promises, as well as behind the tragic consequences that even, "victory" brings. We therefore call on all like-minded veterans and family members to endorse this statement and support us in our efforts to help avert, mitigate or stop a national tragedy and an international calamity.
We ask that you support our troops, by demanding that they be brought home from Iraq immediately. We ask that you support our nation's vital interests, by demanding that our troops should never be placed in harm's way except to meet and defeat any direct and immediate threat to our people.

'Unit's' military expert calls Iraq utter debacle!

2006-03-26T23:24:00.000-05:00

'Unit's' military expert has fighting words for Bush
By David Kronke, TV Critic
Eric Haney, a retired command sergeant major of the U.S. Army, was a founding member of Delta Force, the military's elite covert counter-terrorist unit. He culled his experiences for "Inside Delta Force" (Delta; $14), a memoir rich with harrowing stories, though in an interview, Haney declines with a shrug to estimate the number of times he was almost killed. (Perhaps the most high-profile incident that almost claimed his life was the 1980 failed rescue of the hostages in Iran.) Today, he's doing nothing nearly as dangerous: He serves as an executive producer and technical adviser for "The Unit," CBS' new hit drama based on his book, developed by playwright David Mamet. Even up against "American Idol," "The Unit" shows muscle, drawing 18 million viewers in its first two airings.
Since he has devoted his life to protecting his country in some of the world's most dangerous hot spots, you might assume Haney is sympathetic to the Bush administration's current plight in Iraq (the laudatory cover blurb on his book comes from none other than Fox's News' Bill O'Reilly). But he's also someone with close ties to the Pentagon, so he's privy to information denied the rest of us.
We recently spoke to Haney, an amiable, soft-spoken Southern gentleman, on the set of "The Unit."
Q: What's your assessment of the war in Iraq?
A: Utter debacle. But it had to be from the very first. The reasons were wrong. The reasons of this administration for taking this nation to war were not what they stated. (Army Gen.) Tommy Franks was brow-beaten and ... pursued warfare that he knew strategically was wrong in the long term. That's why he retired immediately afterward. His own staff could tell him what was going to happen afterward.
We have fomented civil war in Iraq. We have probably fomented internecine war in the Muslim world between the Shias and the Sunnis, and I think Bush may well have started the third world war, all for their own personal policies.
Q: What is the cost to our country?
A: For the first thing, our credibility is utterly zero. So we destroyed whatever credibility we had. ... And I say "we," because the American public went along with this. They voted for a second Bush administration out of fear, so fear is what they're going to have from now on.
Our military is completely consumed, so were there a real threat - thankfully, there is no real threat to the U.S. in the world, but were there one, we couldn't confront it. Right now, that may not be a bad thing, because that keeps Bush from trying something with Iran or with Venezuela.
The harm that has been done is irreparable. There are more than 2,000 American kids that have been killed. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed ñ which no one in the U.S. really cares about those people, do they? I never hear anybody lament that fact. It has been a horror, and this administration has worked overtime to divert the American public's attention from it. Their lies are coming home to roost now, and it's gonna fall apart. But somebody's gonna have to clear up the aftermath and the harm that it's done just to what America stands for. It may be two or three generations in repairing.
Q: What do you make of the torture debate? Cheney ...
A: (Interrupting) That's Cheney's pursuit. The only reason anyone tortures is because they like to do it. It's about vengeance, it's about revenge, or it's about cover-up. You don't gain intelligence that way. Everyone in the world knows that. It's worse than small-minded, and look what it does.
I've argued this on Bill O'Reilly and other Fox News shows. I ask, who would you want to pay to be a torturer? Do you want someone that the American public pays to torture? He's an employee of yours. It's worse than ridiculous. It's criminal; it's utterly criminal. This administration has been masters of diverting attention away from real issues and debating the silly. Debating what constitutes torture: Mistreatment of helpless people in your power is torture, period. And (I'm saying this as) a man who has been involved in the most pointed of our activities. I know it, and all of my mates know it. You don't do it. It's an act of cowardice. I hear apologists for torture say, "Well, they do it to us." Which is a ludicrous argument. ... The Saddam Husseins of the world are not our teachers. Christ almighty, we wrote a Constitution saying what's legal and what we believed in. Now we're going to throw it away.
Q: As someone who repeatedly put your life on the line, did some of the most hair-raising things to protect your country, and to see your country behave this way, that must be ...
A: It's pretty galling. But ultimately I believe in the good and the decency of the American people, and they're starting to see what's happening and the lies that have been told. We're seeing this current house of cards start to flutter away. The American people come around. They always do.

Retired Supreme Court Justice warns of Dictatorship

2006-03-26T23:19:00.000-05:00

Retired Supreme Court Justice hits attacks on courts and warns of dictatorship
RAW STORYPublished: March 10, 2006

Supreme Court justices keep many opinions private but Sandra Day O’Connor no longer faces that obligation. Yesterday, the retired justice criticized Republicans who criticized the courts. She said they challenge the independence of judges and the freedoms of all Americans. O’Connor’s speech at Georgetown University was not available for broadcast but NPR’s legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg was there.
Nina Totenberg: In an unusually forceful and forthright speech, O’Connor said that attacks on the judiciary by some Republican leaders pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedoms. O’Connor began by conceding that courts do have the power to make presidents or the Congress or governors, as she put it “really, really angry.” But, she continued, if we don’t make them mad some of the time we probably aren’t doing our jobs as judges, and our effectiveness, she said, is premised on the notion that we won’t be subject to retaliation for our judicial acts. The nation’s founders wrote repeatedly, she said, that without an independent judiciary to protect individual rights from the other branches of government those rights and privileges would amount to nothing. But, said O’Connor, as the founding fathers knew statutes and constitutions don’t protect judicial independence, people do.

POLITICAL: Iraq is Bleeding

2006-03-26T22:54:00.000-05:00

"The Country Is Bleeding"
by georgia10
Sun Mar 26, 2006 at 08:39:01 PM PDT
It was less than a week ago that U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad stated that "the country is bleeding," though he insisted that the violence was not yet a civil war. Recent developments in Iraq reveal the country isn't just bleeding--it's hemorrhaging, and unfortunately, it appears there is little doubt that Iraq is suffering from an all-out civil war.
Politically, the process of forming a unity government has stalled. After meeting for just a half hour last week, the Iraqi leaders have failed to make substantial progress towards forming a government. While Bush and Rice make excuses about how difficult the process of forming a government can be, Democrats are calling on the administration to show some leadership and tell the Iraqis to either get their act together or lose our support.
On the security front, what is occuring in Iraq is nothing short of "sectarian cleansing," as one Kurdish member of the Iraqi Parliament put it. The New York Times reports "security is deteriorating by the hour." Thirty beheaded Iraqis were found today. Bodies are being found by the dozens and car bombs continue to explode. The leading Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr narrowly escaped getting killed in a mortar attack on his camp. American forces clashed with members of his militia today in/near a mosque (reports differ), killing 17 or 20 "insurgents." The police claim 22 bystanders died and al-Sadr's aides claim 18 innocent men were killed (after allegedly being tied up and shot). More on this story from the New York Times here. As the confusion and chaos escalates, Shiite politicians are accusing the U.S. of a "massacre." The incident, according to one source, has "injured the whole political process."
American forces also found a secret prison where prisoners were secretly held and apparently tortured by the Iraqi Interior Ministry. They arrested 40 policemen in the raid. An Iraqi police major was also arrested for heading up a death squad. The militias are out of control. Ambassador Khalilzad stated that "[m]ore Iraqis are dying today from the militia violence than from the terrorists."
The country is bleeding. In the heart of Baghdad, Shiite and Sunni militias are already fighting for control over districts, with scores of Iraqis killed as a result:
"The fighting will only stop when a new balance of power has emerged," Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish leader, said. "Sunni and Shia will each take control of their own area." He said sectarian cleansing had already begun.
Many Iraqi leaders now believe that civil war is inevitable but it will be confined, at least at first, to the capital and surrounding provinces where the population is mixed. "The real battle will be the battle for Baghdad where the Shia have increasing control," said one senior official who did not want his name published. "The army will disintegrate in the first moments of the war because the soldiers are loyal to the Shia, Sunni or Kurdish communities and not to the government." He expected the Americans to stay largely on the sidelines.
The American plan, according to Donald Rumsfeld, is indeed to stay on the sidelines as the Iraqi Army we trained disintegrates and the Iraqi people we promised to protect from terror see terror firsthand in their streets and in their homes. As reports stream out from Iraq, it appears that what we feared and hoped to never see is finally occurring: a complete breakdown in order, and an all-out civil war in Iraq. At last word, the Iraqi leaders are debating on having the entire Parliament chose Iraqi's new Prime Minister, in the hopes that the sooner a government is formed, the sooner the infighting in their country stops. Can a stabilized political process stop the chaos before it reaches a tipping point? Is the country already there? Can the bleeding, for the sake of Iraqis and our troops in harm's way, finally be stopped?

Another Top Bush White House Aide Indicted. This one arrested for Theft !

2006-03-11T16:26:00.000-05:00

Former White House Aide Is Arrested on Theft Charges
By JOHN FILES and ROBERT PEAR, The New York Times

WASHINGTON, (March 11) - A former top White House aide was arrested on Thursday in the Maryland suburbs on charges that he stole merchandise from a number of retailers, the police in Montgomery County, Md., said Friday.
The former aide, Claude A. Allen, 45, was President Bush's top domestic policy adviser until resigning last month. Known as a rising conservative star, he previously served as deputy secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, and in 2003 the White House announced its intention to nominate him to a seat on the federal appeals court based in Richmond, Va. Democrats raised questions about the nomination, and it never came to a vote.
The police said Mr. Allen was seen on Jan. 2 leaving a department store in Gaithersburg, Md., with merchandise for which he had not paid. He was apprehended by a store employee and issued a misdemeanor citation for theft, said Lt. Eric Burnett, a spokesman for the Montgomery County Police Department.
A statement issued on Friday by the police said store employees saw Mr. Allen fill a shopping bag with merchandise and put additional items into a shopping cart. He then sought, and received, a refund for some of the items and left the store without paying for others.
The Police Department said that as a result of an investigation it opened after the initial incident in January, it found that Mr. Allen had received refunds of more than $5,000 last year at stores like Target and Hecht's. Mr. Allen was arrested on Thursday and charged in connection with a series of allegedly fraudulent returns. The police said he was charged with a theft scheme over $500 and theft over $500.
The President's Reaction
"When I heard the story last night, I was shocked, and my first reaction was one of disappointment, deep disappointment - if it's true - that we were not fully informed," Bush said Saturday morning. "Shortly thereafter, I felt really sad for the Allen family." "If the allegations are true, Claude Allen did not tell my chief of staff and legal counsel the truth, and that's deeply disappointing," the president said at the White House following an event on Iraq. "If the allegations are true, something went wrong in Claude Allen's life, and that is really sad."
Source: AP
"He would buy items, take them out to his car and return to the store with the receipt," the police said in the statement. "He would select the same items he had just purchased and then return them for a refund."
Mr. Allen was released on his own recognizance, the police said.
Mr. Allen's lawyer, Mallon Snyder, said: "We deny that Claude Allen took anything from a Target store or any other department store. We would welcome an opportunity to meet with Target store personnel to explain the confusion. Once they have an opportunity to examine the record, these charges will be dropped."
Mr. Snyder said that Mr. Allen had returned merchandise to the Target store on several occasions, but that "there was no impropriety."
Mr. Allen was the secretary of health and human resources for the State of Virginia when he was chosen by Mr. Bush in 2001 for the No. 2 job at the federal Health and Human Services Department. Last year, he was named as top domestic policy adviser in the White House.
Mr. Allen went to the White House after his nomination to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit stalled in the Senate. The nomination never came to a vote, in part because some Democrats raised questions about comments he had made in 1984, while working for Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina. He had been quoted as saying that Mr. Helms's opponent that year was vulnerable because his campaign could be "linked with the queers." He later apologized and said he had not intended his words to be a slur against gay men and lesbians.
The White House announced on Feb. 9 that Mr. Allen was resigning as Mr. Bush's domestic policy adviser.
Asked about the charge against Mr. Allen, Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said, "If it is true, no one would be more shocked and more outraged than the president."
Mr. McClellan said Mr. Allen reported the initial incident to Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, on Jan. 2, the day it occurred. But, he said, Mr. Card did not inform the president until early February because Mr. Allen had said the incident resulted from a misunderstanding.
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Mr. McClellan gave this chronology: On Jan. 3, Mr. Allen discussed the incident with Harriet E. Miers, the White House counsel, and told her that he had been returning merchandise and there was confusion with his credit cards because he had moved many times. He assured Ms. Miers that the matter would be cleared up.
Mr. McClellan said the White House gave Mr. Allen "the benefit of the doubt" because he had gone through extensive background checks before his judicial nomination.
Within a few days of the incident, Mr. McClellan said, Mr. Allen told Mr. Card and Ms. Miers that he was thinking of leaving the White House to spend time with his family. But Mr. Allen decided to stay for a while because he was working on domestic initiatives for the State of the Union address, which Mr. Bush delivered on Jan. 31.
William A. Pierce, a former spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said he was "stunned, absolutely stunned" to hear of the arrest.
"I think a great deal of Claude," Mr. Pierce said. "He served ably as deputy secretary. He was, in effect, the chief operating officer of the department. He made sure that the machinery of the agency worked well. Many regulations came through him."
A neighbor reached by phone on Friday night said that Mr. Allen belonged to the Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Md., and moved into the neighborhood along with several other members of the church. County records show that Mr. Allen bought his home in October 2005 for $958,300, along with his wife, Jannese.
David Sanger contributed reporting for this article.

Brad and Angelina....The Ring of Truth

2006-03-07T22:44:00.000-05:00

Brad and Angelina -- The Ring of Truth
Photos of famous couple sporting same band
By TMZ.COM STAFF
(Mar. 6, 8:00PM ET) -- Hollywood gossip blogs have been burning up the Internet recently (including Celebrityblog, Skyshowbiz and Filmfodder), speculating that Brad and Angelina have secretly tied the knot. One report has it that Angelina was spotted wearing a band on her ring finger. Another report claims that both are wearing rings but on the right hand. A number of blogs limit the sighting to Angelina wearing a band.

X17
Angelina, Brad and family in Paris
VideoBrangelina in Tokyo
Photo galleryAngelina Jolie Brad Pitt Brad and Angelina
Celeb spotlightAngelina Jolie Brad Pitt
You be the judge!Speak out on the TMZ message boards
TMZ did some digging and turned up several interesting pictures. Angelina was photographed Saturday (March 4) in Paris with a gold band on her right thumb.

X17TEXT -->
Now take a look at the matching band on Brad's right middle finger.
Could this be the unconventional couple's way of unconventionally telegraphing their marriage? You be the judge.
Related link:Juliette, Gwen, Jen and Jolie

From Greg 'Peace Song' Jones...Why I Wrote the Anthem for World Peace!

2006-03-07T22:14:00.000-05:00

Why I Wrote The Anthem for World Peace SongFrom Greg JonesGOD BLESS THE WORLDWhile You Bless AmericaThe special CD release by Greg Jones considered the new anthem for world peace is entitled God Bless the World-While You Bless America. Already available on over 125 music sites worldwide, this special peace anthem is garnering accolades worldwide. Below, Greg explains the motivation behind his powerful musical message for world peace.

"Yesterday, I was interviewed by a very nice reporter from the Euclid (Ohio) Sun Newspaper who is doing a story on the release of my Peace Song CD GOD BLESS THE WORLD-While You Bless America. His story will likely include how this special anthem has been garnering accolades worldwide and how it's already available on over 125 music sites worldwide and hasn't even hit national radio yet. He'll probably mention how thankful I am for all of the support worldwide and how happy I am for the incredible snowball affect. But he asked me a question that I really did not give the true, full answer to. He asked, 'what led me to write the world peace song?' Simple question right? But after we departed, I thought back a bit and realized that the answer I had given... that I just want 'to see the war end and our troops safe at home' was not a full answer. The fact is, when 9/11 occured, I found it to be one of the most horrific events of modern day history. I could not believe that anyone could do something like the terrorists did, to absolute strangers. At that exact time, my daughter and wonderful son-in-law, who I proudly must add is serving our country in the Air Force, had just arrived at their new assignment which had them based and living in London, England. When the planes hit the Twin Towers all I kept wondering, in absolute panic was, are my daughter and son-in-law ok? I was going nuts! Because phone lines were so jammed up, I attempted calling them over repeatedly but it was 2 weeks before I heard anything from my daughter, and wow...was I thankful to hear that they were OK. During this 2 week period I, (as we all were) had been going through such a roller coaster of emotions. Anger, fear, desire to learn everything I could overnight about the whole thing. Who is this Bin Laden? How did they know he did it so quickly? What the heck is going on? Man! My head was spinning. I was glued to the news channels. In the meantime, I was also witnessing and experiencing the greatest show of American patriotism and togetherness that I had ever seen. EVERYWHERE you looked you saw the American flag blazed with pride. Stories were on the news about how flag companies couldn't manufacture flags fast enough. It was incredible! You also saw, everywhere you looked big, pretty red, white and blue banners stretched everywhere stating 'God Bless America !'. I remember the pride I felt for my country as I would see street after street literally lined with Old Glory and these banners...day after day. I would ride around and in my travels just look at all of the flags, even counting how many were on various streets. I would see the banners and get this feeling of pride and say to myself, yea! God Bless America!.... God Bless America ! .......(and the it started to hit me).......God Bless America??........ (It hit me harder) God Bless AMERICA??? WAIT A MINUTE!!!! What about my daughter and son-in-law IN LONDON!! God Bless America ??? We need God to bless the whole world !!! By now I found myself actually getting a bit upset. I'm thinking and thinking. My mind takes it even a step deeper. Now I'm analyzing this wonderfully patriotic historic phrase. God Bless America? Are we asking God to bless just America? Can't be. Who do we think WE are. Do we really think that God created people all over the world, but he only desires to bless us! Are we nuts? So, THAT bugged me and bugged me as I found myself praying for God to bless us and keep us safe here in America, while at the same time I had to pray that God would bless and protect my loved ones in London. So one day, while sitting on the edge of my bed watching the news, I grabbed my guitar and it just came to me. The chorus to what is now considered the New Anthem for World Peace. God Bless THE WORLD-While You Bless America. And now, the more I pay attention to what's going on in this world, not just Iraq...but the 300 children killed in Russia...the starvation in the Sudan...the Tsunami...the attacks in London...Katrina...thing after thing...I realize just how important my musical message really is. The fact is, there is no way that WE can be blessed if we don't have the desire to see the entire world be blessed. That's why I sing it with every grain in my body... GOD BLESS THE (whole) WORLD!!! (Not JUST America) p.s. Thanks Jeff. You got me thinkin' ! Greg Jones Peace!"

Visit: http://www.godblesstheworldonline.com/ for special offers. Free listen, lyrics, buy CD, download, Free 'Operation PeaceTone' Ringtone, God Bless the World FunGear and more! ********************************************************* contact: orvillerecords@aol.com

Greg peace song Jones' Conservative 'Talking Points' to beware of ! Add Yours

2006-02-25T00:29:00.000-05:00

Our world and country has gotten to the point where people are actually deeply afraid to speak out. It is an incredibly sad period in American history. But, I, a simply, plain, peace loving man, must state....I am not afraid to spread the message. I refuse to succumb to the fears that are being established by the current conditions of our 'democracy'. We MUST SPEAK OUT! And it is our right as Americans! The conservative party has, for the past 5 years, exemplified mastery in relations to directing the minds of the American people in the direction they have wanted to guide us in. It has been interesting to watch the strategic manipulation of the party for the purpose of steering our minds in the direction of their choice. They regularly accomplish this through a simple procedure, probably masterfully under the guidance and direction of the 'talking point' king of the administration Carl Rove. To put it plainly, the Conservatives are the 'kings' of the talking points. From this point on, we will begin to list the 'talking points' of the conservatives so that listeners and viewers will become more aware of statements being used by the administration and conservative media for tactical purposes. It's almost like mental, strategic, con. We ask that everyone who notices ANY talking point statements, please list those statements for all to see. It's our duty, those of us who catch the bull, to help inform others to beware of the the bull.... talking points. Don't get sucked in. Now, let's get the bull.... 'talking points' list started:The administration likes to tell us the following talking points 1) We're fighting over there so they won't fight over here 2) The world is now a safer place since Saddam Hussein has been arrested (Yea right, I feel so much safer......oh by the way.....where's Bin laden, remember him?) 3) They are against us because of our freedom 4) Democracy and the right to vote will create harmony (Hmmmmm.....guess it depends on who they vote for. What if they vite for Hamas?....big problem and WRONG!) 5) Mission Accomplished....That's almost embarrassing....!) 6) Iran is now a threat with weapons of mass destruction......(Uhhhhh, excuse me.....is this based on the same 'Intelligence' that led us to invade Iraq?) Please add to the list and/or check back periodically for additions to the BS Conservative talking points list! Staying informed of the tactics is a form of power! DON"T BE CONTROLLED!

Was Cheney Drunk...or What? (Share your thoughts).

2006-02-15T20:44:00.000-05:00

Well, as you have already heard, Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot his millionaire lawyer friend in the face and chest at approximately 5:oopm this past Saturday while hunting on a private ranch in Texas. We're very pleased to hear that the victim, Mr. Whittington is pulling through, although a number of the over 150 buckshots that struck Whittington have reportedly entered his heart, causing further complications. Many people can not figure out how Mr. Cheney could shoot a person just 30 yards away; a shot that would have had to have been at ground level, when usually one would shoot into the air to shoot a flying bird. After the incident, for some unexplained reason, Cheney chose to just go completely silent on the whole story. He didn't contact the President. He didn't release a statement. His secret service people wouldn't even allow local investigators the opportunity to question Cheney when they arrived at the ranch. Republicans want to say that Cheney is just a private man. That he had other things on his mind rather than notifying the press....or even the Pres. for that matter. That's possible.But beginning on the Monday after the incident, speculation began to grow that Cheney was possibly drunk while hunting, thus the terrible judgement, thus the lack of desire to be interviewed until the following day. One of the first commentators to mention the 'drunk theory' was Ron Reagan Jr. son of late President Reagan. His view was basically that Cheney wanted to wait until the next morning to be questioned by authorities because he was too drunk Saturday evening. Now, other commentators such as Lawrence O'Donnell and many others are drawing to the same conclusion prompting the 'were you drunk' question to be raised in an interview today with Britt Hume of Fox News. Cheney did admit to drinking 'one beer' earlier that day. So, there we have it. We know, as per Cheney, that drinking was involved. We know for a fact that Cheney had 'at least' one drink. That leads us to the real question. WAS CHENEY DRUNK? What do you think? Share your views. From: Greg Jones Singer/Songwriter of New Anthem for World Peace entiled God Bless the World-Not JUST America which is garnering accolades worldwide. Jones has launched 'Operation FREE Peacetone' where everyone can have the chorus of the Peace Anthem as a ringtone for FREE! visit:www.godblesstheworldonline.com

Share your thoughts...What would Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. say about the world today?

2006-02-08T00:47:00.000-05:00

Share your comments on the very provocative question; What would Dr. King say about the world today. Are we heading toward his dream as a world. What about world peace? Black achievement? Intergration? Prejudice? Poor people? Our government? Share your comments and views!

The life of Coretta Scott King-The Queen for a King passes on

2006-02-08T00:37:00.000-05:00

Childhood
Coretta Scott King was born Coretta Scott on a farm in Heiberger, Perry County, Alabama to Obadiah and Bernice McMurry Scott. Though her family owned the land, it was often a hard life. All the children had to pick cotton during the Great Depression to help the family make ends meet.
Graduating from Lincoln Normal School in Marion, Alabama at the top of her class in 1945, Scott went to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. After graduation she attended the New England Conservatory in Boston, where she met Martin Luther King Jr.

Adult Life
The Kings were married on June 18, 1953 on the lawn of her parents' house; the ceremony was performed by King's father. After earning a degree in voice and violin at the New England Conservatory, she moved with her husband to Montgomery, Alabama in September 195 4 after he was named pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
The Kings had four children:
Yolanda Denise King (November 17, 1955, Montgomery, Alabama)
Martin Luther King III (October 23, 1957, Montgomery, Alabama)
Dexter Scott King (January 30, 1961, Atlanta, Georgia)
Bernice Albertine King (March 28, 1963, Atlanta, Georgia)
All four children later followed in their parents' footsteps as civil rights activists.
Coretta Scott King received honorary degrees from many institutions including Princeton University and Bates College. She was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, a noted African-American women's sorority.

Civil Rights Movement
Just two weeks after the birth of King's first child, Rosa Parks was arrested on a Montgomery bus, helping spark what would develop into the modern civil rights movement. King's husband soon emerged as a major leader of the movement. The struggles that followed included a narrow escape from death on January 30, 1956. King and her daughter were home when a bomb exploded at the family's residence; her husband was speaking at Rev. Ralph Abernathy's First Baptist Church at the time.

Freedom Concerts
King later put together a series of Freedom Concerts, which combined poetry, narration and music both to highlight the movement and to raise funds for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
In 1962, she served as a Women's Strike for Peace delegate to the 17-nation Disarmament Conference in Geneva, Switzerland. In addition, she preceded her husband by two years in opposing the Vietnam War, addressing a 1965 anti-war rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City, while also serving as a liaison to international peace and justice organizations.

Life after assassination of MLK

Martin Luther King Day

Coretta Scott King, along with Rosalynn Carter, Andrew Young, Jimmy Carter, and other civil rights leaders during a visit to Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, January 14, 1979.
Over the years, she was active in preserving the memory of her husband and in political issues. After her husband was assassinated in 1968, she began attending a commemorative service at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta to mark her husband's birth every January 15 and fought for years to make it a national holiday, a quest that was realized in 1986, when the first Martin Luther King Day was celebrated.
Coretta Scott King attended the state funeral of Lyndon B. Johnson, in 1973, as a very close friend of the former president, himself a contributor to civil rights. She was also present when President Ronald Reagan signed legislation establishing Martin Luther King Day.

Opposition to Apartheid
During the 1980s, King reaffirmed her long-standing opposition to apartheid, participating in a series of sit-in protests in Washington, D.C. that prompted nationwide demonstrations against South African racial policies.
In 1986, she traveled to South Africa and met with Winnie Mandela, while her husband Nelson Mandela was still a political prisoner on Robben Island. She declined invitations from Pik Botha and moderate Zulu chief Buthelezi (as per [[2]]). Upon her return to the United States, she urged Reagan to approve sanctions against South Africa.

Other Issues

King and President George W. Bush
She was present at the first inauguration of George W. Bush in 2001.
King was vocal in her opposition to capital punishment and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, thus drawing criticism from conservative groups. She was also an advocate of women's rights, lesbian and gay rights and AIDS/HIV prevention. Her support for gay and lesbian rights, including same-sex marriage, sometimes put her in conflict with some members of her family including her daughter Bernice and her niece Alveda King.
King called her adoption of a vegan diet in 1995 a blessing. Her son, Dexter, had been vegan since 1988, saying that an appreciation for animal rights is the "logical extension" of his father's philosophy of non-violence. Dick Gregory and Richard Pryor made similar connections between the civil rights movement and animal issues.

Coretta Scott King Award
The Coretta Scott King Award, a medal presented by the American Library Association, is awarded to African American writers and illustrators for outstanding and inspirational educational contributions in children's literature.

The King Center
Established in 1968 by King, The King Center is the official memorial dedicated to the advancement of the legacy and ideas of Martin Luther King, Jr., leader of a nonviolent movement for justice, equality and peace. [3]

Mission
As the institutional guardian of Dr. King's legacy, the King Center, in collaboration with other organizations, focuses on the following areas:
The development and dissemination of programs that educate the world about Dr. King’s philosophy and methods of nonviolence, human relations, service to mankind, and related ideas;
Building a national and international network of organizations that, through sanctioned programs, promote, compliment, and help further the organization’s mission and objectives of building the Beloved Community that Dr. King envisioned
Functioning as the clearinghouse for non-profit organizations and government agencies which utilize Dr. King’s image and writings for programs and ensuring that the programs are historically and interpretively accurate;
Monitoring and reporting on the impact of Dr. King’s legacy on the world. [4]

Programs & Services
The King Center has a wide variety of programs and services in place to fulfill the organization's mission of building Dr. King's "Beloved Community." [5]
These programs and services include:
The Beloved Community Network
Nonviolence or Nonexistence Online Learning Program
Re-Ignite the Dream Campaign: Building the Beloved Community through Service
King and the Modern Civil Rights Museum Scholar and Historian Research Program
The King Papers Project
Education through Exploration Visitor Services Program
Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Service Summit

Final days
On August 16, 2005, King was hospitalized after suffering a stroke and a mild heart attack. Initially, she was unable to speak or move her right side. She was released from Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta on September 22, 2005, after regaining some of her speech and continued physiotherapy at home. Because of complications from the stroke, she was apparently unable to make her wishes known regarding the ongoing debate as to whether of the King Center would continue to operate independently or be sold to the National Park Service [6]. On January 14, 2006, Mrs. King made her last public appearance in Atlanta at a dinner honoring her husband's memory.
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Death
Mrs. King died in the late evening of January 30, 2006 [7] at a rehabilitation center in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, where she was undergoing holistic therapy for her stroke and advanced stage ovarian cancer. The King family maintains that King died on the night of January 30, 2006, the very same day Mahatma Gandhi died. The main cause of death is believed to be respiratory failure.[8]
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Funeral
Over 14,000 people gathered for King's six-hour funeral at the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Georgia on February 7, 2006 where daughter Bernice King is an elder. The megachurch whose sanctuary seats 10,000, was better able to handle the expected massive crowds than Ebenezer Baptist Church where King had been a member since the early 1960s up to her death and which was the site of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s funeral in 1968. Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, their wives and numerous other political figures attended the service. In addition to the presidents, speakers included former FBI director William Sessions, chairwoman of the National Council of Negro Women Dorothy Height, poet Maya Angelou, Dr. Joseph Lowery, Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin, Attallah Shabazz, daughter of Malcolm X, Bishop T.D. Jakes and former Ambassador Andrew Young. Music was provided by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and vocalists Stevie Wonder, Michael Bolton, BeBe Winans and CeCe Winans. Bernice King delivered the final official eulogy with Dr. Robert Schuller providing the closing benediction.
Mrs. King will be buried in a temporary mausoleum on the grounds of the King Center until a permanent place next to her husband's remains can be built.[9] She had expressed to family members and others that she wanted her remains to lie next to her husband's at the King Center. However, the mausoleum there was only built for a single interment. [10]
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Tributes
President George W. Bush opened his State of the Union address the night of January 31 by paying tribute to her. On February 6, 2006, Bush issued a proclamation [11] flags to be flown at half staff throughout the day of King's interment, February 7.
King's body was returned to Atlanta, and carried through the streets on a horse-drawn carriage to the Georgia State Capitol as the crowd threw roses at the casket and a lone bagpiper played Amazing Grace; King became the first woman and black person to lie in state at the Capitol. (see [12]). King also layed at historic Ebenezer Baptist Church (where her husband was pastor).
The beginning of Super Bowl XL was marked by a moment of silence in memory of King and Rosa Parks.
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force issued a press release honoring the memory of the Late Mrs. King. "Mrs. King worked tirelessly after her husband's death in 1968 to carry on his legacy of social justice activism. She was a steadfast ally in the struggle for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights, and was honored by the Task Force in 1997 for her support of the cause. In addition, Mrs. King was a featured speaker at the Task Force's Creating Change 2000, where she rallied hundreds of activists gathered for the country's largest LGBT rights organizing conference. In 2003, her son, Martin Luther King Jr. III, was personally responsible for inviting Task Force Executive Director Matt Foreman to join Mrs. King to speak from the podium at the 40th anniversary of the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington."
In 1997, upon receiving the Task Force's Honoring Our Allies award, Mrs. King told the crowd, "I accept this award as a reaffirmation of my commitment to carry forward the unfinished work of my husband, Martin Luther King Jr. My husband understood that all forms of discrimination and persecution were unjust and unacceptable for a great democracy. He believed that none of us could be free until all of us were free, that a person of conscience had no alternative but to defend the human rights of all people. I want to reaffirm my determination to secure the fullest protection of the law for all working people, regardless of their sexual orientation ... it is right, just and good for America."
Said Mandy Carter, executive director and a co-founder of the North Carolina-based group Southerners on New Ground, "I'll forever cherish the day that I and Matt Foreman, representing our lesbigaytrans community, got to stand shoulder to shoulder with her on August 23, 2003, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington," Carter continued. "The 1963 march was organized by Bayard Rustin, a black gay pacifist who was instrumental in introducing Dr. King to concepts of Ghandian nonviolence, the hallmark of the civil rights movement. Thank you so much Mrs. Coretta Scott King. You've left an amazing legacy." The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force mourns death of Coretta Scott King
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Senate Resolution 362
Upon the news of her death, moments of reflection, remembrance, and mourning began around the world. In the United States Senate, Bill Frist presented Senate Resolution 362 on behalf all U.S. Senators, with the afternoon hours filled with respectful tributes throughout the U. S. Capitol. The Senate Resolution 362 as it appears in The Congressional Record can be found here.
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House Resolution 655
On January 31, 2006 following a moment of silence in memoriam to the death of King, the United States House of Representatives presented House Resolution 655 in honor of Mrs. King's legacy. The remembrances that followed were both emotional and poignant. John Lewis (D-Georgia) stated:
I first met Mrs. King in 1957 when I was only 17. I was a student in Nashville, Tennessee. She was traveling around America, especially in cities of the South telling the story of the Montgomery movement through song. She was so beautiful, so inspiring, she would sing a little, and she would talk a little, and through her singing and talks she inspired an entire generation.
In an unusual action, the resolution included a grace period of five days in which further comments may be added to it. From: Greg Jones Singer/Songwriter of New Anthem for World Peace entitled God Bless The World-Not JUST America which is garnering accolades worldwide. Jones has recently launched 'Operation FREE Peacetone' where everyone can have the chorus of the Peace Anthem as a ringtone for FREE! visit:www.godblesstheworldonline.com

Voting Rights Act 1965 Should be passed FOREVER! Not 25 Years!!!

2006-01-02T23:38:00.000-05:00

In 2007, Congress will vote regarding the extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It is sad that here, in the year 2006, we still have to obtain our rights to vote through the maintained powers of others. What is even more disturbing is the fact that our current elected officials have stated that they will surely extend the Voting Act but what is appalling is that it will be extended for only the next 25 years. That means that in the year 2035 the right to vote unobstructedly will expire, again! That means that in the year 2035, we will have to go back to 'the authorities' in hopes that they will be kind enough to re-grant our rights. This is rediculous. Everyone should contact their Congressional Reps and Senators to let them know WE WANT OUR RIGHTS FOREVER!! Below is an article that gives a bit more info on the subject. -----Ballots in the Balance
Does the 1965 Voting Rights Act Still Matter?
by Richard M. Valelly
Author of The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement
Forty years ago—in a dramatic response to decades of African American struggle in the courts and the streets and to growing public concern over black disenfranchisement—a large bipartisan majority in Congress framed and passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act. President Lyndon Johnson proudly signed it in a special Capitol Hill ceremony. These officials, much of the public, and key partners such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Congress on Racial Equality all intended a restoration of the Reconstruction Amendments, particularly the 14th and 15th Amendments. In that they succeeded. Since 1965 the federal protection afforded by the Voting Rights Act has immeasurably strengthened minority voting and representation. The Voting Rights Act is today widely recognized as perhaps the premier case of a national law that can institute broad and desirable political change.
But will the Voting Rights Act survive its next congressional review? Should it? These questions now animate a growing number of conferences and discussions at law schools and universities around the country. Opponents and supporters of the Voting Rights Act are now meeting and planning for the congressional review. Voting rights issues now flying below the public radar are certain to surface on the national agenda this year or next.
By August 2007 Congress must renew, amend, or drop the Voting Rights Act's temporary enforcement provisions. These measures include (1) federal review of proposed election changes in Southern and some non-Southern states and counties (a process technically known as "Section 5 preclearance"), (2) the federal election observer program, and (3) the requirement—added ten years after Congress first passed the law—that many non-Southern jurisdictions, including Arizona, California, and Texas, provide bilingual balloting materials and assistance.
Some legal experts argue that the most important temporary measure, Section 5 preclearance, cannot survive the upcoming congressional review. They believe that under the doctrine of separation of powers currently advocated by the Supreme Court's majority, Congress cannot enact a prospective prohibition on unconstitutional behavior. Instead, Congress can remedy discrimination or correct systematic public violations of civil rights only after discriminatory violations appear. Congress cannot, in other words, enact remedies for problems that do not yet exist or no longer exist. By implication, Section 5 preclearance would be allowed to die a decent death, with thanks for the forty years of work that made America a much more democratic country.
But is that work really finished? Once the deterrent effects of Section 5 preclearance vanish, will there be an erosion of hard-won African American and Latino voting rights? As my new book, The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement, shows, as a country we have been here before. The First Reconstruction, after the Civil War, was successful far longer than we think, but collapsed altogether in the 1890s, as black disenfranchisement spread throughout the South. A regression of that magnitude is unthinkable today. But we are hearing some echoes of it, ironically outside the Deep South. Given our history, we Americans must deliberate together about what we can and must do to avoid any backsliding on our fundamental freedoms.
During the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections black voters experienced— according to a stream of anecdotal evidence and several statistically sound studies—a wide range of difficulties in voting in the key battleground states of Florida and Ohio. These included unconscionably long voting lines because too few machines were provided, high levels of ballot spoilage, and challenges by private citizens and elections officials. Since 2000 there has been mounting anecdotal evidence of so-called ballot security programs targeted by the Republican Party on minority neighborhoods and localities—a great irony, given the party's proud history in securing black emancipation and voting rights.
Significantly, such attacks on black voting rights have surfaced in jurisdictions that are not subject to Section 5 preclearance. To put it another way, with the possible recent exception of still unproven election-day ballot security programs in the 2003 Mississippi gubernatorial election, election-day shenanigans have all but disappeared in areas subject to Section 5 preclearance—yet they have sprouted up in uncovered jurisdictions when election contests have been uncertain and close.
Once Section 5's deterrent and compliance-inducing effects are removed in places that have been covered since 1965, will the new ballot security programs migrate from uncovered jurisdictions to previously covered jurisdictions? In 1990 Senator Jesse Helms launched a massive ballot security program, mailing tens of thousands of postcards to black North Carolinians falsely warning them of penalties for fraudulent voting. He did this in a very tight campaign in which he trailed a dynamic black Democrat, former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt. After the fact Helms was forced by the Department of Justice to stipulate that his program was impermissible under the Voting Rights Act. Once the Voting Rights Act's temporary enforcement provisions go, will the Justice Department have the resources to effectively police a rash of new ballot security programs in tight elections in the previously covered jurisdictions?
In addition, consider minority representation rights, which are secured in principle by a permanent feature of the Voting Rights Act: Section 2. Congress added Section 2 in 1982 after thirteen years of massive resistance by Southern governments to the prospect of black officeholders. Such resistance, in fact, continues in some jurisdictions today. Both before and after the 1982 amendment, Section 5 preclearance played a leading role in forcing Southern governments to drop election rules that blocked black office seekers. The obvious question is: if Section 5 preclearance expires, will we see a return of such discriminatory election rules in the South? Or in Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas, and parts of New York, where they were once used to deny electoral victory to aspiring Latino politicians?
No one knows the answers to these questions. But not knowing the answers hardly lessens their importance. The evidence of selective disenfranchisement of minorities in America is plentiful—and growing. Such selective disenfranchisement is rare in jurisdictions that are now covered by the Voting Rights Act. But after 2007 that may change. Congress must soberly weigh that possibility. Indeed, not only must Congress renew the Voting Rights Act's temporary provisions; it must also find ways to take its cue from the Voting Rights Act and curb the selective disenfranchisement that increasingly plagues too many elections all over this country. To see video Speech regarding Voting Rights Act by Congressman John Lewis, D-Ga. (former aide to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) Click on Windows Media or Real Player

Greg Jones' launches OPERATION FREE PeaceTone

2005-12-30T20:54:00.000-05:00

Greg Jones, composer of what many consider to be the New Anthem for World Peace has announced the launch of 'Operation FREE PeaceTone', where his special peace song entitled GOD BLESS THE WORLD-NOT JUST AMERICA is now available as a cell phone ringtone for absolutely FREE ! Everyone, worldwide can now have the chorus of the special peace anthem sent directly to their cell phones to be used as ringtones absolutely FREE. 'We'd like to see at least 6 million cell phone owners with the peace anthem as their ringtone as a way to spread the musical message of Peace,' states Jones, the writer, composer, producer and performer of the new special peace CD which is garnering accolades worldwide. This free ringtone will be instantly sent to your cell phone for free, in real tone (which means sounds like the CD) and will ring the beautifully harmonic message 'God Bless the World, Not Just America, God Bless the whole wide world, so we can live in Peace...'. Operation PeaceTone is geared to catch on fast and we've offered the special Peace ringtone for free to make it easily accessible to everyone, worldwide, so that when their phones ring, they are simultaneously spreading the message of Peace,' Jones adds. We would like everyone to tell at least 6 friends about the free PeaceTone so that we can create a quick, worldwide snowball effect. 'There would be nothing more wonderful than if all phones worldwide were ringing the message of world peace', states Jones. A bit more info: "WOW'...'BEAUTIFUL'...' possibly the most important musical message of today'! These are a few of the responses regarding the hot new Maxi-Single CD recording entitled GOD BLESS THE WORLD-WHILE YOU BLESS AMERICA (aka... Not Just America) written, produced and performed by Cleveland, Ohio native GREG JONES. With a We are the World 'feel', this special release is a unique blend of adult contemporary, easy listening, soul and inspiration combined with a powerful message of peace and harmony. In fact, the special CD was recorded on the same mixing board which was owned by Kenny Rogers and used by Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson and others for the 'We are the World' project. A section of the song's lyrics reads 'God bless the world...not just America...God Bless the whole wide world...so our kids can live in harmony...God bless the world'! "It is very important that our leaders realize the importance of desiring that our entire world be blessed, here in America, in the Sudan, Europe, Israel, Iraq...everywhere! If the world is not blessed, we're all in trouble", states Jones regarding his motivation for this powerful musical message. Jones recently signed an internet distribution deal with FineTunes (Germany) which will promote the special release for legal downloads on sites such as ITunes, MusicLoad, Sony Connect, NuFonix, EMusic, Beatport, OD2, MusicMatch, Napster and more. The anthem is now available on over 125 music sites worldwide! The Maxi-Single, released by ORVILLE RECORDS is garnering exciting response through top digital music websites in the U.S, Britain, Finland, Germany and recently entered the Australian Easy Listening Top 100 Music Charts at #8 with a bullet! Also, the anthem entered the UK Soft Rock Top 100 Music Charts at #7 and then climbed to #2!! Orville Records also recently inked a deal with two of the world's largest web distributors, MusicNet and AMG for additional web distribution through top music sites such as AOL MusicNet, Yahoo Launch, Virgin Digital, FYE Download, MSN Music, ClearChannel, Amazon, Target Music, and others. In addition, GOD BLESS THE WORLD is currently being 'spotlighted' on Vitaminics International in Denmark, Netherlands and Sweden. Jones has also been 'Artist of the Week' on the ever-popular,world reknown SonicGarden Music site for the past number of weeks ! Internet radio giant, Live365, the world's largest network of online radio stations, has signed on and is 'special featuring' GOD BLESS THE WORLD through close to 2000 web radio stations worldwide. Commercial radio is fast catching wind of this special release and is next in line while experts are declaring GOD BLESS THE WORLD-While You Bless America a future classic! With over 200 unreleased songs under his belt, songwriter Greg Jones explains his inspiration for this special recording. 'I would turn on the news each day and see how so many world leaders resort to war as a means of settling conflict, as if human life is expendable. It would make me sick. They always say that if you want to see a change you have to do something, whatever you can, even when you're just one person. I've always been inspired by the powerful messages of greats like John Lennon, Bono and Bob Dylan so I did what I could do. I wrote a song. I'm so very thankful for the response worldwide that the anthem is receiving. It's exciting how so many people have embraced the song and the message ... and now we are very excited about OPERATION PEACETONE. To get your FREE PeaceTone visit www.godblesstheworldonline.com. Please don't forget to tell at least 6 other people. We truly appreciate your help in spreading the musical message of Peace and the fact is....together, we WILL make a difference. To see more please do Google search...type-in 'greg jones god bless the world' (images also available through Google images) GREG JONES MUSIC*BMI*Orville Records*P.O. Box 43678*Cleveland, Ohio*44143*216-254-9339

Contact: Ken J. orvillerecords@aol.com x x -30- x x "The more seeds of Peace are planted...the greater the tree of life will grow" (Greg Jones)___________________________________________________

The NEW Orleans BLUES- Katrina Update

2005-12-16T00:41:00.000-05:00

Three months ago, after chafing from criticism over his failure to even appear to respond to the suffering in New Orleans, George W. Bush finally made it to Jackson Square to deliver his promise that "this great city will rise again." Yet today the great city remains largely in darkness. Most citizens of New Orleans are outside its boundaries, many with no real prospect of returning. What's rising in New Orleans are divorce and suicide rates, toxic dumps, foreclosures and rage.
The rage was evident in early December just a half-dozen blocks from Jackson Square, in Congo Square, where African-Americans performed ancestral music in the early nineteenth century, heralding a new American culture. On a recent chilly Saturday, Congo Square was the meeting point for a crowd of about 500 demonstrators who gathered to march behind the Soul Rebels Brass Band to demand the return of New Orleanians to New Orleans.
By now it should be obvious that the drowning of the city was a man-made disaster. Multiple investigations, including those sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers and the National Science Foundation, conclude that the sea walls and levees were poorly designed, constructed and inspected. A not-too-subtle whispering campaign quickly suggested that the fault might lie with those gaudy New Orleanians who insist on rollicking below sea level, or with a state whose legacy of political shenanigans dates back to before "The Kingfish," Huey Long. The city and state have much to account for, including an evacuation plan that failed to protect their most vulnerable citizens. But the ongoing campaign against New Orleans obscures the simple truth that erecting barriers against floods is a federal responsibility. The Army Corps of Engineers failed its job. The Bush Administration now has the obligation to launch a massive effort to rebuild the city that the federal government destroyed.

Bush last visited the Gulf Coast on October 11. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the President, and many in Congress, would prefer to look the other way while New Orleans collapses. Over the past quarter-century, conservatives have waged their most effective war against "big government." This model was advanced by Ronald Reagan and endorsed by every President since. Now, when a federally coordinated solution is required, agencies from HUD to the EPA to FEMA are flummoxed. Bush faithfully followed the script by endorsing only limited solutions like the Gulf Opportunity Zone and Worker Recovery Accounts. In doing so, he advanced government as a stop-gap for what couldn't be handled by his private and faith-based "armies of compassion."
Stymied by this lack of leadership and by no national call for an ambitious regional rebuilding effort, Louisiana legislators, among them Democratic Representative William Jefferson and Republican Senator David Vitter, are now fretting aloud that demands for protection from the strongest hurricanes could actually work against the city's interests by raising hopes too high. That's pathetic. A half-day's drive through New Orleans--at least, through the 80 percent of it that still looks nearly exactly as it did three months ago--should reveal to anyone what happens when levees don't hold. You can start by reading the body count still scrawled in red marker on some homes. Yet there are those who dare to offer New Orleans protection on the cheap.
In October this magazine called for a coordinated "people's reconstruction" that would provide for a "democratically accountable, economically viable, socially just and environmentally sustainable plan for regional rebuilding." This effort must begin with the physical reclaiming of New Orleans--an ambitious, two-step process including a re-engineered levee system capable of withstanding a Category 5 hurricane and a fully funded restoration of the coast, using the Coast 2050 blueprint. A people's reconstruction would then address the multiple effects of urban poverty that opened like fresh wounds during those days immediately following the levee breaches. Long before Katrina entered the Gulf, far too many New Orleanians lived on dangerous streets, worked low-paying jobs in the service industry, were unable to insure their families and sent their children to bleak public schools long abandoned by the middle class. For these citizens, the desperation experienced in post-Katrina New Orleans is nothing new.
New Orleans could become the nation's classroom. A reinvigorated dialogue about urban America is newly possible--or at least it was three months ago, when images of suffering children on Louisiana bridges and highways played across the nation's TV screens. So far, the President has squandered this opportunity, just as he squandered the post-9/11 opportunity to realign the nation's energy policy. No wonder it's widely feared in New Orleans that the Katrina moment has passed.
If New Orleans is to reclaim its greatness, the scope of the solution must match the scope of the problem. Each inch of the 200 miles of levees that are supposed to keep the city dry is now suspect. The wetlands that buffer the region continue their relentless disappearing act. Bush's EPA has downplayed the effects of oil spills following the hurricane; there is no real plan to deal with the toxic refuse of the flood. The Administration does not acknowledge the science of global warming and the consequences of a warmer ocean. Many New Orleanians long to return to their homes, but it is an unsteady feeling to raise children and care for elderly parents in a city on the brink. Meanwhile, decisions about homes, neighborhoods, schools and jobs will be made in their absence and without their input.
It doesn't have to be this way. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the rhythms of Congo Square sprouted into jazz, which gave the world a soundtrack of improvisation and democracy. A hundred years later, another democratic revolution could begin in New Orleans--but its song is quickly playing out.

This article from The Nation

Michael Jackson Reported Converts to Muslim

2005-12-16T00:29:00.000-05:00

Well, the King of Pop is soon to be a Muslim living in Bahrain. At least that's the story coming out of that small kingdom today.
American pop star Michael Jackson has officially announced that he has been following the five tenets of Islam and intends to convert to Islam, according to a report on the website of Arab-Israeli newspaper Panorama.
The report is based on information elicited from sources in Bahrain.According to the report, Jackson's announcement noted he is moving to Bahrain and has purchased some real-estate on an artificial island there. The singer said he decided to convert to Islam because he is convinced it is the closest religion to his personal beliefs.According to a phone recording released last week, among Jackson's "personal beliefs" is one that considers Jews to be "leeches."
According to that story,
Jackson is heard saying that "they're like leeches...I'm so tired of it. They start out the most popular person in the world, make a lot of money, big house, cars and everything. End up penniless. It is a conspiracy. The Jews do it on purpose."I suppose that fits in with most Muslim attitudes these days, at least in the Middle East.
The story of Jackson's conversion to Islam continues,
Jackson also noted he intends to soon move all his assets and his studio from the U.S. to Bahrain, and expressed his hope to be rid of various legal troubles and enjoy the kind of freedom he says he does not have in America.Considering that Jackson is supposed to be flat broke, how does he come up with enough money to buy and artificial island and house in Bahrain? And what assets does he have that are not already claimed by creditors?
In any case, it looks as though Neverland will be left behind for good.
I wonder if we have an extradition treaty with Bahrain?
I also wonder if child molestation is considered to be a crime there? Maybe Jackson will name his new home, "Pleasure Island."
Jackson has been a creative and talented entertainer. He is also, as I have stated before, a very troubled man. I cannot, in good faith, wish him well in the new path he appears to be taking. I would prefer to see him submit to the judgement of God, repent and be "born again" into a new and improved Jackson rather than to see him pick a religion because it "comes close" to agreeing with his own beliefs.
What about his hope that he will "enjoy the kind of freedom he says he does not have in America"? Well, when you have enough money, you can enjoy freedom without accountability in just about any corrupt, despotic country you care to choose.
It is only in nations that believe all individuals are to be held equally accountable under the law that a rich man or woman loses the freedom to do whatever they want.
If this is freedom for Michael Jackson, then perhaps it is better for all of us for him to live in Bahrain.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: Are We Losing The War In Iraq?

2005-11-10T20:05:00.000-05:00

Following election day this past Tuesday, it is felt that Americans are deterring away from the Republican agenda and support of the Iraq War. Yesterday, terrorists attacked multiple areas of the Middle East ranging from three popular hotels in Jordan killing over 50 including people at a wedding party as well as massive bombings in a popular Iraqi restaurant killing 34. (happened to occur on 11/9 which is 9/11 in reverse.) Current polls show that President Bush's ratings have declined to 36%, the lowest since his presidency, while Cheney is listed at an incredbly low 19%. Experts are declaring that a variety of categories of dispair are growing among American people, and there is one question that is growing more day by day. ARE WE LOSING THE WAR IN IRAQ? What do you think? Share your thoughts views or ideas.

POLITICS: A Message From Barbra Streisand

2005-11-09T10:48:00.000-05:00

A Message from Barbra Steisand from her Official Site www.barbrastreisand.com Posted on October 26, 2005
If there was ever a time in history to impeach a President of the United States, it would be now. In my opinion, it is two years too late. We should have done this before the election to spare the country the misjudgment, the incompetence and the malfeasance of this administration. Let us remember that UN weapons inspectors asked for more time to search Iraq for WMDs. Two months into their search, the Director General of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, stated that he found no evidence that Iraq had revived its nuclear weapons program since its elimination in the 1990s. And Saddam Hussein had begun to comply with the administration's demands. Why would you invade a country if there was still a chance for peace? Shouldn't war be an absolute last resort? We went to war because we were misled. And we should be angry because of the 2,000 American soldiers and the 200 armed coalition forces that have died. We should be livid because of the 15,000 American soldiers that have been horribly maimed and wounded. We should be disgusted because of the 30,000 innocent Iraqi civilians that have been killed and the 20,000 that are wounded after administration officials claimed that the US was going to liberate the Iraqi people.
When does it stop? It stops with the indictment and impeachment of this corrupt, power-hungry, greedy group of incompetent leaders. How many more have to die before this happens?
Impeachment will be difficult. People must understand the power of Congress. When one party controls both the House and the Senate, they control the agenda. They control what hearings are held, what legislation gets voted on, whether subpoenas are issued and which investigations can take place. And they control whether impeachment proceedings can be brought.
We were clearly deceived by this administration and now we find ourselves fighting a war under false pretenses. There was no connection between Iraq and 9/11, despite Dick Cheney's many assertions. There were no WMD's and the CIA had intelligence which corroborated that evidence. There was no nuclear threat contrary to Condoleezza Rice's "smoking gun becoming a mushroom cloud" scare tactic. And there was no yellow cake purchased from Niger by Iraq as former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, along with our European allies, confirmed. All of these misconceptions and falsehoods were relentlessly stated. But this administration disregarded the facts because they wanted to wage this war, as we learned in the Downing Street memo.
This President will go down as the worst president in American history. His administration ignored and neglected the threats before 9/11. His team was not prepared to act and react before, during or after Hurricane Katrina. His policies have contributed to the hastening of global warming, an ever growing national debt, a rise in poverty and an increasing disparity between the rich and the poor. We are watching the middle-class disappear under Bush's leadership. He has taken our economy from the largest surplus in U.S. history to the largest deficit in U.S. history. And he has appointed several people to important positions that are unqualified and loyal to a dangerous fault.
With the recent controversy surrounding the potential indictments and charges of perjury against senior members of the Bush administration, some have made comparisons to the perjury charge that was brought against President Clinton. Perjury under any circumstance is wrong. However, in President Clinton’s situation, the matter was concerning an issue that only adversely affected himself and his family. But the potential charges filed against Bush’s closest advisors have put everybody’s families and the national security of the United States at risk.
Thank god the media and the American public are finally waking up and asking the tougher questions now. I keep hearing Harry Truman's famous statement ringing in my brain, "I wonder how many times you have to be hit on the head before you find out who's hitting you?"

Scooter, Scooter, Scooter-Why Would You Lie? READ ENTIRE INDICTMENT! Know the Facts!

2005-10-29T17:20:00.000-04:00

As the entire world knows by now top White House official Irv Lewis 'Scooter' Libby was indicted on five counts including perjury, obstruction of justice and false statements in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Despite all of the facts, many Conservative pundits have the gall to still try to put their spin on this sad and embarrassing occurrence. They want to give false information regarding the charges....they want to act as if Rove is absolutely in the clear...they want to concentrate on Joe Wilson, which is crazy....and at a time when secret intelligence (spying) is of vital importance for the security of our country, pundits want to minimize the impact of the 'outing' of a CIA Agent. Rush Limbaugh spent much of his radio show today talking about Bill Clinton! What the heck does Bill Clinton have to do with Scooter's charges? So, to make certain that everyone is informed as to the charges against Scooter we are posting Patrick Fitzgerald's website which spells out word for word the entire indictment against Scooter.

Please visit:www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc.
There, you will find the actual indictment that the judge and all reporters have received. Print copies. Share them with others. This is public information and it is important that the public is clear as to exactly what the facts are. Then, when you listen to the pundits you'll know how rediculous they sound.

Greg 'peace song' Jones

Greg Jones is the composer of the special Anthem for World Peace CD entitled GOD BLESS THE WORLD-While You Bless America which is garnering accolades worldwide. In remembrance of the 2000th fallen American soldier, Jones is offering the special peace CD as a FREE DOWNLOAD (limited time) so that everyone worldwide can share the musical message of Peace.

Visit:www.godblesstheworldonline.com for your FREE DOWNLOAD Today!

MOVIES: 40 Year Old Virgin

2005-10-25T22:17:00.000-04:00

The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005)

Directed byJudd ApatowWriting credits (WGA) Judd Apatow (written by) &Steve Carell (written by)

Genre: Comedy / Romance (more) Tagline: A Comedy about the moments that touch us in ways we've never been touched before. (more) Plot Outline: Goaded by his buddies, a nerdy guy who's never "done the deed" only finds the pressure mounting when he meets a single mother.

A funny, smoothed paced film that takes on a unique issue (40 year old virgin) and adds a bit of reality combined with funny stuff. His friends who want to help him solve his problem are very funny and the star himself is hilarious while making one feel for his plight. Other characters seem real and enhance the whole movie. Happy film for ages teen and up. Worth the time and money.

$$$ (Worth the money)
Blogazine World
Mr. and Mrs. Critic

Times: Cheney First Disclosed CIA Official's Name

2005-10-25T22:02:00.000-04:00

The New York Times reported late Monday that Vice President Cheney has been directly linked to the so-called "Plamegate" scandal involving the disclosure of the name of Valerie Plame, a CIA officer.
The paper reported that Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby "first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003."
The paper sourced their story to "lawyers involved in the case."
The Times said that notes taken by Libby differ from his own testimony before the grand jury as to when he first learned of Plame's identity.

"The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson’s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration’s handling of intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program to justify the war."
Cheney apparently discovered details of Plame's CIA work after he questioned then CIA Director George J. Tenet about her husband, Ambassador Wilson.
But even if Libby or Cheney had disclosed Plame's identity as a CIA officer they may not have committed a crime.
"Disclosing a covert agent’s identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent’s undercover status," the Times said.
.

Rosa Parks Passes at 92. The Mother of Modern-Day Civil Rights

2005-10-25T18:50:00.000-04:00

Most historians date the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in the United States to December 1, 1955. That was the day when an unknown seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. This brave woman, Rosa Parks, was arrested and fined for violating a city ordinance, but her lonely act of defiance began a movement that ended legal segregation in America, and made her an inspiration to freedom-loving people everywhere.

Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama to James McCauley, a carpenter, and Leona McCauley, a teacher. At the age of two she moved to her grandparents' farm in Pine Level, Alabama with her mother and younger brother, Sylvester. At the age of 11 she enrolled in the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, a private school founded by liberal-minded women from the northern United States. The school's philosophy of self-worth was consistent with Leona McCauley's advice to "take advantage of the opportunities, no matter how few they were."

Opportunities were few indeed. "Back then," Mrs. Parks recalled in an interview, "we didn't have any civil rights. It was just a matter of survival, of existing from one day to the next. I remember going to sleep as a girl hearing the Klan ride at night and hearing a lynching and being afraid the house would burn down." In the same interview, she cited her lifelong acquaintance with fear as the reason for her relative fearlessness in deciding to appeal her conviction during the bus boycott. "I didn't have any special fear," she said. "It was more of a relief to know that I wasn't alone."

After attending Alabama State Teachers College, the young Rosa settled in Montgomery, with her husband, Raymond Parks. The couple joined the local chapter of the NAACP and worked quietly for many years to improve the lot of African-Americans in the segregated south.

"I worked on numerous cases with the NAACP," Mrs. Parks recalled, "but we did not get the publicity. There were cases of flogging, peonage, murder, and rape. We didn't seem to have too many successes. It was more a matter of trying to challenge the powers that be, and to let it be known that we did not wish to continue being second-class citizens."

The bus incident led to the formation of the Montgomery Improvement Association, led by the young pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The association called for a boycott of the city-owned bus company. The boycott lasted 382 days and brought Mrs. Parks, Dr. King, and their cause to the attention of the world. A Supreme Court Decision struck down the Montgomery ordinance under which Mrs. Parks had been fined, and outlawed racial segregation on public transportation.

In 1957, Mrs. Parks and her husband moved to Detroit, Michigan where Mrs. Parks served on the staff of U.S. Representative John Conyers. The Southern Christian Leadership Council established an annual Rosa Parks Freedom Award in her honor.

After the death of her husband in 1977, Mrs. Parks founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development. The Institute sponsors an annual summer program for teenagers called Pathways to Freedom. The young people tour the country in buses, under adult supervision, learning the history of their country and of the civil rights movement. President Clinton presented Rosa Parks with the Congressional Medal of Freedom in 1995.

When asked if she was happy living in retirement, Rosa Parks replied, "I do the very best I can to look upon life with optimism and hope and looking forward to a better day, but I don't think there is any such thing as complete happiness. It pains me that there is still a lot of Klan activity and racism. I think when you say you're happy, you have everything that you need and everything that you want, and nothing more to wish for. I haven't reached that stage yet."

Mrs. Parks spent her last years living quietly in Detroit, where she died in 2005 at the age of 92.

Blogazine World seeks writers. Readers worldwide ! World Blog Premier !

2005-10-21T18:48:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the World Blog Premier of the new Blogazine World E-Zine; a quilted blend of entertainment, pop-culture, news, views and more. As we develop the look, style and feel of Blogazine World, we have elected to recruit new editors/writers for the different categories or features that will regularly appear on Blogazine World. If you have writing skills please select your category of interest below. Simply send us an e-mail stating you interest, contact info and a sample article in the category that you choose. If you select sports, write a sports related article that you feel would be interesting to readers. Or fashion, review a song. Political or social view. Whatever your interest may be, you are invited to write an article that may be shared with the world. You may either become a regular featured Blogazine Writer or write periodically. Top stories selected will also appear on other top blogs which Blogazine World is affilated with, giving your story exposure to literally hundreds of thousands of readers worldwide. If you have a website you may also include your URL which will link more viewers to your site.

Categories: Sports, Health, Fashion, Televison, Movies, Music, Celebrities, Political, Social, Recipes, Poetry/Poems, Relationships, Business, Religion, Economy, children, books,

So write something for us. Send your article to :Blogazine World Submission
orvillerecords@aol.com.

OPINION: If Only I Had The Money-I'd Start My OWN Political Party!

2005-10-15T18:55:00.000-04:00

As I watch the news on a daily basis, which I have become somewhat addicted to since 9/11, I can't help but to sit back and wish that I was rich. I don't have to be Bill Gates or Donald Trump rich. I just wish I was rich enough to start my own NEW political party. Why you may ask? Because I am absolutely embarassed to consider myself a Democrat, and totally against the majority of the philosophies of the Republicans. Now days, if you're not for one, then you're automatically considered to be a follower of the other. I, and I am growing to learn, many, many others do not fall into either of these two political categories. Sure, you say well, there's the Independent or the Green parties. Frankly, they both seemed a bit weird to me. I definitely could not follow them. So let's look at what we have.

We have the Republicans: A politically savvy group of people who seem to be very power hungry. A group whose primary desire seems to be to take over everything. Seems to derives from a very pompous egotistical attitude that they are the greatest and most intellectually inclined...and everyone else is not only beneath them, but less intelligent, less intellectual, even less patriotic (they're so savvy that they strategically make you think that if you're against them, then you're against America). The Republicans seem to be a party filled with inner contradiction. On one side, they are super pro-life. At the same time, they're super pro-war! How is that mentally possible. How can a person's mind and heart care about life so deeply that they will do everything thinkable to protect the embryo, (which I commend that desire) but at the same time, be so willing and eager to send our young men and women (other people's sons and daughters) to war to possibly be killed, tortured, at least mamed and their lives destroyed. Are they emphatic about saving the embryo so they can raise up a new army 18 years from now to fight in Iraq? (We'll probably still be there). It's weird.

The Republicans seem to be a party made up of liars, conivers, schemers and law breakers. They'll lie to accomplish whatever their goal is at the time. And then, even after it's proven to be a lie, Republican followers go on with an 'ahhh...it's still ok' attitude. It's weird. The Republicans seem to care only about the rich, the Haliburtons, the opportunity to make their super rich base just richer. They are commited to everything except the concerns of the middle and lower class citizens of America. It actually feels like they are systematically doing little things to smother out the middle class. As if they want this country to be a two class system. The rich and the poor. It's weird. It seems like a lot of the Republican citizens in the middle and lower economic status have been strong supporters of the party and followers of the lies for one main reason. FEAR! The devistation of 9/11 shook up our entire country. Some folks are so afraid that they needed 'John Wayne' to come to the resue. It seems like they would like to see us just go and nuke everyone who is not 'in-line' with us. It's weird. Their answer to everything is to just send more troops, as if the lives of our young sons and daughters are totally expendable. (But don't forget...they're suppose to be pro-life).

I could go on about the war but, even if I didn't concentrate on the sending of our troops to Iraq as a main issue, I still have to pay attention to the other goings on in the Republican party. For one, they could care less about the economic condition of average Americans. They could care less that gas prices are unaffordable, that heating gas prices are going up 45%. That illegals are taking jobs that are needed by average Americans. (sometimes I forget a lot of the illegals work for the super rich at super cheap, below minimum wages...lawn care, nannies, field workers, assembly, etc.) Also, day after day another Republican is being accused of doing something illegal (Frist, DeLay, Rove
etc.). I think about how the great Colin Powell was so hurt and crushed by his own party for being used as a pawn in the con game, that he chose to quit. A great man quit serving our country! That's so sad. Colin's son was so mad he even quit HIS gravy job as head of the FCC.

I watch how there seems to actually be two seperate groups of Republicans. Those who have legitimate views and ideas, which they feel are best for the country and the world, and that's their right. Then there's the other group of Conservatives who are more driven by what they call 'the movement'(dedicated to Republicans taking over everything). What's absolutely weird is to watch these two groups in action, particularly the 'movementeers' which are rallied through the 'movementeer' talk show hosts and media. These are your Hannity's, Laura Ingrams, Ann Coulters, Rush's, Bill Kristols and the like. This group is so dedicated to 'the movement' that they will do anything and everything in their power to crush, smother and destroy ANYONE who is in disagreement with their views...even their own constituents! It's weird. Look at what they've done to folks like Richard Wright, O'Neil, Joe Wilson...they hate Voinovich now. And now they've added Senator Dewine to their hate list. And these are ALL FELLOW REPUBLICANS! It's weird. Now, since they aren't absolutely positive that Harriet Miers is for 'the movement', they hate her. And to top it all off, they are slowly but surely coming to the realization that President Bush is making his decisions based on his own ideas and views...NOT FOR THE MOVEMENT! And if they could...the 'movementeers' would squash him next! (he'd better watch it) It's almost funny to watch...but at the same time, it's actually very sad.

I could go on and on about other things I disagree with the Republicans about but I'll just go to the Democrats now and talk about what they are all about................Bare with me a minute here.........I'm thinking............wait, they....no........what about..no..............what! The Democratics aren't about ANYTHING ! It it so sad for me to have to say that what had been my party throughout my life has absolutely no agenda whatsoever. NOTHING. What are they for? What are they against? Who the heck knows? Do they? Does Hillary? (and I like Hillary) So nowdays, if I say I'm a Democrat, I'm really saying that I'm for NOTHING! This is so sad. It's like the Dems are totally afraid to have a view. The only thing they are, is against Bush! That's it! That's weird.

So I watch this stuff, day after day and just fantasize about starting my own political party. I'd call it 'The Realist Party'. If I only had the money, it would be simple to do. I would take the good that the Dems used to be about and combine it with the little good that does exist in the Conservative camp...tweek things a bit, add a little essence (I like Emeril too) and BAM! We'd have ourselves a winner. A winner for America. A winner for the world. Hmmm...If.....

Greg Jones
Cleveland, Ohio

Greg Jones is the composer of the special anthem for world peace CD entitled 'God Bless the World-While You Bless America' which is already available on over 125 music sites and is garnering accolades worldwide. He is also a fellow blogger with talkingpeace.myblogsite.com as well as editor of Blogazine World. For CD free listen/lyrics/download/specials and more visit; www.godblesstheworldonline.com

TV: C-Span broadcasts Million More Movement Live

2005-10-15T16:05:00.000-04:00

CIVIL RIGHTS
Millions More Movement
The tenth anniversary of the Million Man March is marked this weekend with the Millions More Movement meeting on the National Mall at the West Front of the Capitol.Themes for the day include reparation-repair, rebuilding, reconstruction and renewal of the Black community. The event reported to attract over 800,00 visitors.
SAT., C-SPAN, 8:30AM-until ET
Rebroadcast 8:30PM

ENTERTAINMENT: Tom Petty To Receive BillBoard Magazine's Century Award

2005-10-15T15:29:00.000-04:00

Tom Petty will receive the Century Award, Billboard's highest honor for creative achievement, at this year's Billboard Music Awards.

The show will air live on the Fox network from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on Dec. 6.

"This award comes at a particularly nice time as the Heartbreakers and I go into the 30th year of our career," the 54-year-old rocker said in a statement Thursday. "I'm very honored that Billboard has acknowledged me."

Petty to Receive Billboard Century Award
Martin Looks Forward to Latin America Tour
The Blond Bond: Dye Another Day

Petty's hits include "Free Fallin'," "Don't Do Me Like That" and "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around," a Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers' duet with Stevie Nicks.

Previous award recipients include George Harrison, Buddy Guy, Billy Joel, Joni Mitchell, Carlos Santana, Chet Atkins, James Taylor, Emmylou Harris, Randy Newman, John Mellencamp, Annie Lennox, Sting and Stevie Wonder.

Petty introduced Harrison, the first Century Award honoree, at the 1992 Billboard Music Awards.

On the Net:

http://www.tompetty.com/

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Bush Supporter & Talk Show Host Ann Coulter says Bush 'boozing it up!'.

2005-10-13T23:11:00.000-04:00

With all that the Republican Party has been going through lately...accusations of outing a CIA spy; Bill Frist being accused of wrongdoings in the stock exchange arena; Tom Delay having to answer to charges of corruption; Carl Rove having to appear yet again before the authorities for the continued investigation into his wrong doings; the lowest approval ratings in Pres. Bush's term; the response of millions of Conservatives who are disgusted with the selection of Ms. Harriett Miers as a Supreme Court Judge; and now...the very spokepeople in the media who are the driving forces of furthering the Conservative 'movement' have become so angry with President Bush's selection (and non-participation in the 'movement') that they have turned from super supporters to just plain super rude....AGAINST THEIR OWN! Conservative talk radio has been in a tailspin as the Republican Party unfolds. During the Michael Medved radio show today it was reported that reknowned author, talk show guest and Conservative pundit Ann Coulter stated to her constituents that '30 years ago, when the Conservatives were planning to take over the courts, George W. Bush was too busy boozing it up!' That's an incredible statement coming from one of the most vocal conservative spokepeople in America! (Guess if you're not for 'the movement'...then you're out...even if you're the President! It's really funny to watch and at the same time...very sad!

BOOKS: Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende

2005-10-10T18:55:00.000-04:00

Isabel Allende's 1999 release Daughter of Fortune is a book well worth your time and money. The very first page grabs your interest and continues to hold on until the very end. In this wonderful book you'll journey from England to Chile to the United States. Allende intertwines very precise historic detail with a riveting story line, transporting readers through the early 1800's. Daughter of Fortune shares the life of a Chilean girl who is adopted by an Aristocratic English family. Her growth, perils, anguishes and triumphs fill each page of this twisting saga.

Highly Recommended
Recommended
Not Recommended

Stephanie Smith-Jones
BlogAzine World
Book Critique