No place for hate in the Empire State?!

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Max Blumenthal: Pro-Israel Rally Attended by Big-Time NY Dems Descends into Calls for 'Wiping Out' Palestinians
No one I spoke to could seem to find any circumstance in which they would begin to question Israel’s war. No number of civilian deaths, no displays of extreme suffering -- nothing could deter their enthusiasm for attacking one of the most vulnerable populations in the world with the world’s most advanced weaponry. There are no limits, no matter what Israel does, no matter how it does it.

The rally made me think of a passage in “The Holocaust Is Over, We Must Rise From Its Ashes,” a powerful new book by former Israeli Knesset speaker and Jewish National Fund chairman Avraham Burg:

“If you are a bad person, a whining enemy or a strong-arm occupier, you are not my brother, even if you are circumcised, observe the Sabbath, and do mitzvahs. If your scarf covers every hair on your head for modest, you give alms and do charity, but what is under your scarf is dedicated to the sanctity of Jewish land, taking precedence over the sanctity of human life, whosever life that is, then your are not my sister. You might be my enemy.

A good Arab or a righteous gentile will be a brother or sister to me. A wicked man, even of Jewish descent, is my adversary, and I would stand on the other side of the barricade and fight him to the end.”
Read the whole piece and watch the video

The broken watch

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Even a broken watch is right twice a day.

OK, there is a certain irony in Mad Mel calling Harman 'unhinged' but she's got a point:

Harriet Harman's Orwellian 'equality' agenda is not just sinister - it's positively unhinged
listening to her is a bit like entering a time-warp and being subjected to some ghastly student radical circa 1970 nasally boring on about the class/gender/race struggle. That’s because she - and a number of her ministerial colleagues - were indeed part of that generation of privileged baby-boomers who indulged in adolescent fantasy politics about changing society and human nature - but who, crucially, never grew out of it.

What then happened was that between 1979 and 1997 they were kept out of power by three successive Conservative administrations. And when they finally clawed their way into government, they were then in a position to put into practice the adolescent politics which had been stored in aspic and beyond which they had never progressed.

The way forward is obvious. The Equalities Minister must put her money where her mouth is.

By her own lights, the best way the public school-educated Harman could do her bit to ‘tackle the class divide’ would surely be to step down as an MP forthwith so that a working-class person could take her place.

I am not worthy

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Tom Engelhardt: Prelude to an Inaugural
We have just lived through a commander-in-chief presidency whose oppressive power and overwhelming hubris would undoubtedly have left (the) early presidents in shock, if not armed revolt. They would have seen George Bush's world - in which strength was the byword of power and weakness an anathema - as the scion of European autocracy.

These were, after all, men wary of armies and military power, who had sacrificed the very idea of executive strength to a tripartite form of government that would, they hoped, have the advantages of resiliency and responsibility. They understood, and embraced, certain limits that Americans may only be waking up to now.

Fuck Schillings!

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Like many others today, I have hosted the pdf version of Craig Murray's new book "The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and Other Conflicts I Have Known". It's hosted on my Dreamhost server in the US. Dreamhost is run by madmen (no offence) renowned for eating lawyers for breakfast. 

I Twittered the fact but completely forget to mention it here. Strike a blow for freedom of speech, download the book: free download (pdf).

The full details surrounding the publication of the book can be found at Craig Murray's site:

Craig Murray - FREEDOM OF SPEECH - FOR FREE
Lawyers Schillings, acting on behalf of mercenary commander Tim Spicer, persuaded my publisher to pull out of publishing my new book, The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and Other Conflcits I Have Known.

Tim Spicer has made millions from the war in Iraq, and the UK has become notorious for the ability of the rich to close down criticism because of the massive costs - often hundreds of thousands of pounds - of defending a legal action.

Let me be clear: there is no libel in this book - it is all true and based on my own eye-witness account. It contains not libel, but rather truth some people wish to hide.
The self-published book is for sale in hard copy at Amazon: The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and other Conflicts I Have Known (Hardcover) by Craig Murray (Author) (£11.87 + FREE delivery in UK)

An end to torture?

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Obama’s new man, Leon Panetta,  calls time on US torture
Andrew Sullivan:

Panetta’s core qualification at this particular moment was his public statements on the Bush-Cheney torture programme. This is what Panetta wrote in the Washington Monthly last year: “How did we transform from champions of human dignity and individual rights into a nation of armchair torturers? One word: fear. Fear is blinding, hateful and vengeful. It makes the end justify the means. And why not? If torture can stop the next terrorist attack, the next suicide bomber, then what’s wrong with a little waterboarding or electric shock? The simple answer is the rule of law. Our constitution defines the rules that guide our nation. . .

“Those who support torture may believe that we can abuse captives in certain select circumstances and still be true to our values. But that is a false compromise. We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don’t. There is no middle ground.”

How much?

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How much would YOU pay to hear this spiv?

How Tony Blair talked his way to earning £15m in just TWO YEARS
Tony Blair is expected to earn £15million in his first two years after leaving Downing Street, it was claimed yesterday. The former Prime Minister has a lucrative new career as the world's best-paid public speaker. His agents typically charge $250,000 (£164,000) for a 90-minute speech. But there have been questions about his commitment to his role as the UN's Middle East envoy.

Critics have asked why he has not yet visited Gaza, despite the deepening crisis there.Mr Blair flew to Jerusalem nine days after Israel began bombarding the Gaza Strip, but he has yet to visit Gaza. And yesterday a United Nations ambassador-said Mr Blair had yet to address the Security Council on his progress as envoy, despite being asked to do so in October.

Ethnic hatred is a terrible thing...

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Shocking picture taken in San Francisco, of all places.



NAH! Only kidding. The real photo is below. Phew! That was almost anti-Semitism and we wouldn't want that, would we?

Pics of San Franciscans Rallying Behind Israel's Massacre Of Gazans
As the number of Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza passes 800 and the US and Red Cross accuse Israel of targeting aid convoys and engaging in other war crimes, some in San Francisco still choose to rally behind Israel. The following photos are a pictures of Gaza and pictures of a pro-Israel counter-protest to a rally for Gaza on Saturday January 10th 2009. You might think that this crowd doesn't represent the views of many Americans and that could be correct but both the US House and Senate voted with no opposition to a resolution backing Israel just yesterday and the bills were sponsored by several of our local representatives.




And yes, 'anti-semitism' got an airing

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I see that the Labour MP for Bury South, prominent 'Friend of Israel',  Ivan Lewis was cheering on Israel and the IDF earlier today in Manchester.
This community stands shoulder to shoulder with the people of Israel in the good and the bad times. We do not apply double standards to Israel and the challenges that she faces.
Mr Lewis, an adulterer and annoying little text pest, is the last person to be talking about 'standards' I would have thought.

IDF sadists

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Gaza: The massacre in Zeitoun
What is particularly horrifying about the Zeitoun massacre—details of which continue to unfold—is the sadistic behavior of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). This is a mass killing that has unfolded over days.

It appears that the IDF tricked residents, promising that they would be safe gathered in large groups in particular buildings, only to bomb them later. Over the course of four days, the Israelis then left the sick and dying—all civilians, the majority small children—with no medical assistance, food or water, even though Israelis enjoyed total control over the area. At the same time, they refused repeated requests for access to the neighborhood by aid workers.

It is not clear how many have died in Zeitoun. At this point, it appears the number is somewhere between 70 and 85. But this figure may grow significantly as the unassisted wounded continue to die, and as aid workers uncover bodies of victims in bombed-out buildings.