Oud master singer actor Fareed ul Atrash plays the famous introduction to the Al Rabee' (Spring)

The art of silencing (and rousing at the right moment) a crowd of enthusiastic, rowdy fans..
To watch Fareed going crazy in his crescendo towards the end of the intro is a must watch. Also towards the end of the video a unique moment where he's listening to his recording as if he was still playing without the instrument....A great moment.
Biographical note:
Farid ul Atrash( 19, 1915 – December 26, 1974) was a Syrian-Egyptian composer, singer, virtuoso oud player, and actor.Having immigrated to Egypt in childhood, Farid embarked on a highly successful career spanning more than four decades — recording 350 songs and starring in 31 movies. Sometimes referred to as 'King of the Oud', he is one of the most important figures of 20th Century Arab music.His sister is the legendary Asmahan

Mark English

One cannot speak of Fuchs without invoking Mark English. They were friends and colleagues teaching at the same academy and competitors for the same jobs as illustrators. Mark retired from the business ten years ago in order to focus on his "Gallery" art. Needless to say that he's taken the field by storm. A feat since all illustrators know that the shift from illustration to gallery art is a very difficult task to accomplish..I can tell you something about it.
BTW, Mark is the only artist still alive of the magic quartet composed of Bob Peak, Bernard Fuchs, Robert Heindel and English..I dread the day..

Bernard Fuchs (Who Else?)

Artist Bernard Fuchs (American 1932-2009) was the most influential illustrator in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. A span that many consider as the most comprehensive in the history of illustration. No other illustrator had enjoyed such a longevity. His impact on my own work was determinant to a great degree. Every single work I've done carries one way or another, a trace of his own vision and approach..Even until now while painting, I surprise myself thinking sometimes 'what would have Bernie (as he was better known) done..Sadly he died last year.
For those who are a bit into composition. Please note where Fuchs has chosen to fit the boatman and the sun. Right on the crossing line of the golden mean/ratio..

Netanyahu rejects peace talks based on 1967 borders

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday rejected a Palestinian demand that direct negotiations be based on a statement by the Quartet confirming its position that the future Palestinian state will be based on the 1967 borders.
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130 + Irish creative and performing artists pledge to boycott apartheid Israel

Thursday 12th August: Launch of IPSC "Irish artists' pledge to boycott Israel"

[9th August] The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) has drawn up the following pledge, signed by over 130 Irish creative and performing artists, whereby they undertake to boycott the Israeli state under present circumstances:

"In response to the call from Palestinian civil society for a cultural boycott of Israel, we pledge not to avail of any invitation to perform or exhibit in Israel, nor to accept any funding from any institution linked to the government of Israel, until such time as Israel complies with international law and universal principles of human rights."

This pledge will be launched in Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, Dublin 2, this Thursday 12th August at 1pm in the presence of a number of the signatories and IPSC Cultural Boycott Officer Raymond Deane, himself a composer.

Described by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) as "a ground-breaking initiative", this pledge has so far been signed by over 130 Irish creative and performing artists: novelists, playwrights, poets, actors, composers, singers, dancers, painters, sculptors and filmmakers, ranging from those starting out on their careers to such household names as Christy Moore, Damien Dempsey, Donal Lunny, Robert Ballagh, John Arden, Seamus Deane, Bob Quinn, and Sinéad Cusack.

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UK band 'Faithless' have faith..no gig in the apartheid state of Israel

UK dance group Faithless join the growing list of artists choosing to boycott Israel in protest against the escalation of violence against Palestinians and their supporters. Frontman Maxi Jazz issued the following statement:

All Races All Colours All Creeds Got The Same Needs.

Hi, this is Maxi Jazz and these are just some of the lyrics I perform every night with my friends known as Faithless. And this short note is for all fans and family of the band in Israel. It's fair to say that for 14 years we've been promoting goodwill, trust and harmony all around the world in our own small (but very loud!) way. Ok. We've been asked to do some shows this summer in your country and, with the heaviest of hearts, I have regretfully declined the invitation. While human beings are being wilfully denied not just their rights but their NEEDS for their children and grandparents and themselves, I feel deeply that I should not be sending even tacit signals that this is either 'normal' or 'ok'. It's neither and I cannot support it. It grieves me that it has come to this and I pray everyday for human beings to begin caring for each other, firm in the wisdom that we are all we have.

Internet Killed Israeli PR: A delightful spoof..Sing along..

Parody of Video Killed the Radio Star (the Buggles) by Minor Demographic Threat.
Please share extensively!
Lyrics:

You had them on your wireless saying, 'Death to Jews'
You sliced & diced & circumcised & claimed Fair Use
600 Turks were singing 'Girl U Know It's True'

YouTube & Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, bit.ly
You spammed them all & then you even posted 3
Casual Encounters on CraigsList NYC

IDF spokesmen
Who freakin' trained them?

Bloggers came & broke your heart

Israel to deport 20,000 Jerusalemites declared "illegal" residents

Israel intends to deport over 20,000 Palestinians out of Jerusalem whom it said don't have legal residency to stay in the city, a leading Palestinian human rights defender said on Sunday. "Israeli Interior Ministry has already begun deporting Palestinians under the pretext that they stay in Jerusalem illegally," Ziad Hammouri, head of the Jerusalem center for social and economic rights (JCSER), told Xinhua.
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Jewish terrorist who killed four Palestinians sent home

Jewish terror suspect Haim Pearlman released from prison, to stay under house arrest at parents' home; judge says lineup in case problematic, did not produce positive identification. Shin Bet: Pearlman still prime suspect.

"You can shove it, or you can give it to the "poor"."

Lebanese minister: Let them keep their money or give it to Israel.

Lebanon's defense minister slams American decision to halt military aid to Beirut following deadly border skirmish with Israel; 'Let them keep their money or give it to Israel,' he says

Lebanon's defense minister on Wednesday lashed out at a US decision to halt aid to his country's army in the wake of a deadly border clash with Israel, protesting that aid was being made conditional.

"Whoever sets as a condition that the aid should not be used to protect Lebanon's land, people and borders from the (Israeli) enemy can keep their money," Defense Minister Elias Murr told a news conference. "Let them keep their money or give it to Israel. We will confront (Israel) with the capabilities we own."

Emily Henchowicz (artist who was shot in the eye by the idf thugs) sings: I Miss You Palestine

The week I got home, I got my energy back, and I was giddy with the joy of being alive. I walked my dog and bellowed out this song in the woods. I'm no musician, but the soul of the moment carried my voice. When I came home I got out my computer and recorded this in a message for my good friend Nick... but what the heck, I want to give it to the world!


Also, if someone could remix this or re-sing this with piano, that would be brilliant.

The "banality of evil" and Israel's destruction of al-Araqib

Israeli police along with demolition crews raid the village of al-Araqib early this morning. (Joseph Dana)

A Bedouin woman sits in front of her rebuilt home in al-Araqib after it was destroyed by Israeli forces, again. (Joseph Dana) "The demolition crew worked efficiently and without pause. Every structure that served some form of life in the village was leveled and all the building materials from it were trucked away. As we were pushed further from the village, a couple of activists tried to sit inside or in front of the tents. This was met with violence by the police as people were thrown to the ground like rag dolls. At one point in the chaos, a professor of medieval history at Tel Aviv University was grabbed by a police officer, who quickly wrenched his hand behind his back. The professor was held like this for a number of minutes and then arrested. It is still unclear under what terms." Read more

Ahmed Moor: Israel Cannot be Both Jewish and Democratic

Israel continues to lurch and stagger in the darkened bog of tribal chauvinism. The Jewish state’s further descent into the bellicose murk is being felt by the country’s minorities. Home destructions and deportations are portentous of a bleaker future for non-Jews in Israel. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have lived under an Israeli apartheid regime for decades now. Over the years, Israel has demolished homes, kidnapped thousands of political prisoners, transferred 500,000 settler-colonists onto the West Bank, conducted massive military operations in civilian areas, hoarded the vast majority of Palestinian water, and committed a host of other crimes under the apartheid banner.
Read more- huffingtonpost

You don't touch poor little Izwael!

US military aid to Lebanon put on hold (AP)
AP – The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said Monday he has suspended U.S. military aid to Lebanon’s army amid growing concern in Congress that American-supplied weapons could threaten Israel.
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The Suffering of Fallujah

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Fallujah . . . . Along with whatever else we did to Fallujah — we also, apparently, nuked the city, leaving a legacy of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality and genetic abnormality.
Read more-The Huffington Post

How Many Iraqis Did We "Liberate" From Life on Earth?

Robert Naiman
Is there a man or woman in America today who is willing to stand at noon in the public square and claim that demands to bomb, invade, and occupy other people’s countries have anything to do with human liberation?
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Push for confrontation with Iran (sometimes) bears a Jewish stamp

Philip Weiss
This is at the Council for the National Interest blog under the heading, "Full-page ad in New York Times in April demonstrates who is pushing for war against Iran." I wish I could say it’s a canard. But I can’t. Couldn’t they have gotten some non-Jewish groups aboard? Oh and yes the organizers say they’re actuated by fears of climate change, but why the Netanyahu quote and the emphasis on missiles?
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Detective who found weapons expert David Kelly’s body raises questions over his death

The mystery surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly deepened yesterday after the detective who found his body claimed he didn’t see ‘much blood’.
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NY bus ad showing mosque, burning Twin Towers OK’d

After being sued by organization opposing construction of mosque near ground zero, Metropolitan Transportation Authority accepts ad.
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Syrian economy to exceed that of Lebanon, Jordan by 2015

BEIRUT: Syria’s Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Abdullah al-Dardari said that the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of Syria is expected to double that of Lebanon and Jordan by 2015, reported the Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper on Monday. “It will get closer to the Israeli GDP per capita and Syria’s economy will become the strongest in the Middle East region, whereby the per-capita share will reach $3,000 of GDP yearly,” he said while participating in a conference in Halab.
Read more- the Daily Star

Not khappy! Israel threatening to quit UN probe into flotilla

The surprise development came just hours after PM Netanyahu testified before his country's own inquiry into the raid. He charged that Turkey had an interest in the violent confrontation, refusing to exert its influence to stop the flotilla. A Turkish official rejected that as "ridiculous."

Israeli officials said the agreement to take part in the U.N. probe was conditional on the panel relying on reports from Israel's own military inquiry, not testimony from soldiers.

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Iran to get rid of its dollar and euro reserves in response to the latest U.N. sanctions

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran announced plans Monday to get rid of its dollar and euro reserves in response to the latest U.N. sanctions over its contested nuclear program.

The U.N. Security Council imposed a fourth round of sanctions on Iran in June because of its refusal to halt uranium enrichment. Tougher unilateral U.S. and European Union sanctions followed in July.

"To fight sanctions, we will remove the dollar and euro from our foreign exchange basket and will replace them with (the Iranian) rial and the currency of any country cooperating with us," Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi told Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency. "We consider these currencies (dollar and euro) dirty and won't sell oil in dollar and euro," he added.

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As'ad's posts on Nassrallah's speech

I am told that both Haaretz and Jerusalem Post ignored the section of the speech in which Nasrallah showed Hizbullah's interception of Israeli spy plane's video transmission.

the speech

Khalid Saghiyyah explains in the last section the purpose of Nasrallah's speech.

Nasrallah’s press conference

In Arab political culture, this press conference will be regarded as a great political show. Nasrallah ended the conference by admitting that he did not present an evidence. Indeed, he has not. He presented circumstantial evidence to lobby the Hariri court to at least investigate the Israeli possibility. But that is not the matter here: personally, as you all know: I don't give a damn about who killed Rafiq Hariri and don't believe that Lebanon should spend a penny to find out. Israel has a history of killing Lebanese and Palestinians in Lebanon and I would rather investigate other Israeli murders in Lebanon. I don't want Hariri to be more valuable than other victims. But Hizbullah did something entirely different in this press conference: it recaptured Arab political opinion. It was great TV: the production was so well-done: with images, and visual effects and background music and graphics. The most important revelation is that Hizbullah was able to intercept the footage of Israeli spy planes. That is an incredible coup for Hizbullah. This will most impress Arab audiences worldwide. A leftist secular atheist friend wrote during the press conference that he now will call himself "Abu Hadi" (after Nasrallah). The expectations were high for the speech: in Lebanon, Hizbulalh's enemies did not want anything less than pictures of Israelis pulling the triggers on Hariri. That was not provided. But I think that Nasrallah was not aiming at Lebanon: this was aimed at Arabs and Aljazeera carried the 2 hours live. Dumb mini-Hariri is now in a more difficult situation: but he is too dumb to notice. I don't think he actually thinks. A person who met him recently told me: that you talk him, and his adviser, Hani Hammud, answers.

Nasrallah’s press conference
I bet that the Arab world is now glued to the TV. Riveting footage of Israeli surveillance. Nasrallah reveals that Hizbullah has been able to intercept the footage of Israeli spy planes over Lebanon.

Hasan Nasrallah: the speech of a lifetime

Today's speech by Hasan Nasrallah is probably the second most important speech of his life (or the third after the speech he gave upon learning of his son's death, and the one after the liberation of most of South Lebanon in 2000).

Latest trick to avoid investigation

Rights group Yesh Din says complainants often travel far to meet investigators, only for meetings to be canceled because no interpreter could be found.
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Going organic: The siege on Gaza

In February 2006, following Hamas' electoral victory, a top advisor to Ehud Olmert, the then Israeli prime minister, Dov Weisglass, described the essence of Israel's Gaza policy., "It's like a meeting with a dietitian," Weisglass said. "We need to make the Palestinians lose weight, but not to starve to death.", Although any Gazan will quickly point out that the blockade on the movement of goods - and people - into and out of Gaza long predates the election of Hamas, as the years have passed the exact date of the siege has often been, for reasons of political expedience, recast to coincide with the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007., Israel characterises the blockade as "economic warfare" targeting Hamas and its constituents.
Read more- Al Jazeera

The flotilla investingation

-What Netanyahu will only answer in secret about the Gaza flotilla raid
The PM refused to answer the questions of the Turkel commission on several occasions, saying he would only discuss those issues during a closed session.

-Kadima: Netanyahu dodging blame for Gaza flotilla raid
Kadima slams the Prime Minister's testimony to the Turkel commission, saying at the moment of truth, he made the IDF into a 'punching-bag.'

-Netanyahu defends flotilla raid
Israeli prime minister tells panel that his military acted within international law.

Wiesenthal Center opposes NYC mosque, supports museum on Palestinian graveyard

“Religious freedom does not mean being insensitive...or an idiot,” May said. “Religion is supposed to be beautiful ... Why create pain in the name of religion?” Critics say Meyer should be asking himself the same question. The Wiesenthal Center has provoked outrage by funding the construction of one of its Museums of Tolerance on top of 12th-century Palestinian graves in Jerusalem. More than a dozen families have filed a petition with the UN to stop the construction of the Jerusalem branch of the museum. Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi told Democracy NOW that he has relatives buried on the site. He said Israeli authorities have been "nibbling away" at the cemetery for three decades in an effort to remove it from history. He added that Israeli authorities claimed to have moved the burial remains but no one knows where they were moved to. On Thursday, the city of Jerusalem defended the move, saying the grave sites dating back to the 12th century were built "illegally".
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Report: Suspected Israeli spy met with Nasrallah in his hideout in 2006

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- A retired Lebanese army official detained on suspicion of spying for Israel met with Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah at least once, Israeli media reported Monday. According to the Israeli news site Enyan Merkazi, Brigadier General Fayez Karam, who is also a senior official with Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement, met Nasrallah in his hideout in 2006, where he has been staying since. Aoun was reportedly present at the meeting. The report said Nasrallah was the first to receive information on Karam's arrest last Tuesday and informed Aoun that the move was not linked to political gains.
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Israeli spies in Lebanon, As`ad Abukhalil

"More than 130 Israeli spies have been arrested in Lebanon. And they belong to different spying and terrorism networks run by Israel. If the tables are reversed, and if it was Israel which has been arresting Arab spies, Hollywood would have already celebrated Israeli successes in 4 or 5 movies. That is what they did with the case of Israeli spy in Syria, Elie Cohen: whose position and stature was so wildly exaggerated in American Zionist propaganda, and whose services to Israel were also wildly exaggerated. Basically, Cohen ran a brothel in his house and he served alcohol and some Syrian soldiers attended his parties. Woo hoo."

Where Nasrallah and Obama agree

When Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah spoke to the public earlier this week, he took up the issue of United Nations resolutions. Nasrallah turned to the side and read from a paper, citing the statistic that Israel has committed more than 7,000 Israeli violations of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, since it was issued to end the July War of 2006. The Hizbullah leader issued the standard call for fairness in such matters, objecting to the idea that some countries and groups are pressured relentlessly to adhere to international resolutions, while others can get away with repeated violations.
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NATO Forces in Afghanistan Can't Deny They Killed Civilians in Sangin Anymore

http://bit.ly/djJMga For weeks, U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan have denied they killed several dozen civilians in Sangin District of Helmand Province on July 23. But our new video exposes the truth about one of the worst civilian casualty incidents of the war. Watch our exclusive interviews with survivors and demand that your elected officials act to prevent future catastrophes like this. http://rethinkafghanistan.com

First, NATO denied knowing anything about the incident.

Then, they said only six people were killed and that most of them were insurgents.

Arab Majority Backs Nuclear Iran

The 2010 Arab Public Opinion Poll found that 57 percent of respondents not only believe that Iran's nuclear program aims to build a bomb but also view that goal positively -- nearly double the 29 percent who thought so in 2009.
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Haneen Zoabi, the interview

Irony: Haneen Zoabi attacked in the knesset by MK Russian-born convert Michaeli: "Go to Gaza, traitor!

What is it like being a Palestinian in Israel?
Israel did everything it could to make us forget our history: controlling education and the media, putting us in a ghetto, preventing us from having normal relations with the Arab world and visiting our families in Syria and Lebanon.

Are Arab members of parliament treated differently?
Of course. The state treats all Jews and Palestinians differently. Israel doesn't recognise us as the owners of this homeland. The theory is that we have equal civil rights, but the practice is very far from this.

Do you endorse a two-state solution?
The reality of Israel's actions shows us that it's unrealistic to have a real sovereign state in the West Bank and Gaza with Jerusalem as the capital. The more realistic solution is one state with full national equality for both national groups.

Is the west right to refuse to engage with Hamas?
No one can tell the Palestinian people whom to choose as a government. Hamas is not a terrorist organisation. I don't think that Hamas has a clear political vision, but regardless of whether I disagree [with it], the international community cannot mediate neutrally if it starts to label the organisations of the Palestinians as illegitimate.

Read more-The New Stateman

Ukrainian police smashes Israeli-run organ-trafficking network

Ukrainian police have smashed an Israeli-run organ-trafficking network illegally recruiting organ donors to send their body parts to Israel.

Ukrainian authorities said on Friday that twelve people, most of them Israelis, were arrested for taking part in a scheme to recruit organ donors from Ukraine and other former Soviet countries via internet and transplant the organs into Israelis who had ordered them in advance.

The network, which sought mostly kidneys, offered as much as USD 10,000 per body part and according to Ukraine's interior ministry most of the organ donors were impoverished young women.

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Israel criminelises BDS

According to the BNC(Boycott National Committee) Statement published on the 9th of July “after five years of BDS, the movement has proven, indisputably, to be the most effective and morally consistent form of solidarity with the people of Palestine in our struggle to end Israel’s occupation, apartheid, and persistent denial of the UN-sanctioned right of return for the Palestinian refugees.” With academic and trade Unions (including UNISON), cultural figures including Dustin Hoffman and Elvis Costello and large supermarket chains including Marks and Spencers on board, the BDS campaign is gaining momentum. Furthermore it is beginning to have an economic impact: settlements have been reporting cuts in production as a result of the boycotts.

Israel is showing signs of distress. The non-violent boycott campaign has now joined the ranks of all other forms of Palestinian resistance, being awarded the label of ‘economic terrorism’ by Israeli officials. As is the standard response, alongside the highly effective (though no longer very novel) use of the T-word, Israel is remedying its anxiety with legal force: The prohibition on imposing a boycott bill, is the third in recent months which sets out to criminalise criticism of Israel.

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Jerome Slater: How Bad Can the Jewish Right wing Get in the US?

"Serious observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are familiar with the nastiest and most irresponsible of the “pro-Israel” American Jewish right wing, which at any cost seeks to defend Israel against the indefensible: Martin Peretz, Alan Dershowitz, Jeffrey Goldberg, Abraham Foxman, David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes, David Harris of the American Jewish Committee, and the like. To this unillustrious list must now be added the name of Lee Smith, until now an obscure right wing journalist. I don’t know if Smith is Jewish, but in the last two weeks Tablet, an online “magazine of Jewish news, ideas, and culture,” published two articles by Smith that have reached a new low: ”Mainstreaming Hate,” and “Playing With Fire”
Because Tablet has a number of well-known editors and contributors, as well as because of the sensational nature of the Smith charges, the articles have received widespread publicity and notoriety. They are hard to read without feeling physically sick. Smith makes two charges. First, he asserts that the most important blogs critical of Israel—Phil Weiss’s Mondoweiss, Glen Greenwald’s regular blog on Salon, Andrew Sullivan’s commentary in Atlantic and, above all, Steven Walt’s blog at foreignpolicy.com (Weiss and Greenwald are Jewish, Sullivan and Walt aren’t)—represent nothing more than “Jew-baiting.”
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Stop the press! This is so beautiful..Lebanese group Mashrou' Leila

Mashrou' Leila, Beirut's favorite indie music septet, released their second music video for "Fasateen," (dresses) a wistful ballad that takes on the institution of marriage. The video, directed by Diane Farah and Jowe Harfouche, depicts the band members deconstructing nuptial symbols and defying the pressure of romantic relationships. The video's set to be broadcast on Lebanese TV stations, and the band is slated to take the stage at the Byblos International Festival on July 9, 2010.

Latin American Ska song called Intifada

FEMALE ISRAELI SOLDIERS ASHAMED OF THEMSELVES 1-6

Female Israeli soldiers share what they have done to the Palestinian people. How they kill children, how they humiliate, how they degrade. Now they feel guilty and ashamed of themselves .

Syrian Artist Ahmad Moualla

Enlarge

Ahmad Moualla (Born 1958) obtained his diploma in visual communications from the of Fine Arts at the University of Damascus before continuing his studies Faculty in France where he obtained the Diploma of the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs - Paris. Moualla is currently a professor in the University of Damascus, and a well-established graphic artist, stage designer, and painter. His signature can be found on hundreds of posters, book covers, and murals.

Uribe's appointment to flotilla probe guarantees its failure

"The commission is composed of four persons, one chosen by Turkey, one chosen by Israel and two chosen from a list provided by Israel. The latter two are former Prime Minister of New Zealand Geoffrey Palmer, who will be the chair, and Uribe, who will serve as vice-chair. While Palmer, an expert in international law, is an uncontroversial choice, the appointment of Uribe is as perplexing as it is shocking. It appears that "balance" in this commission involves balance between someone versed in international and human rights law and someone who is adamantly opposed to it. This notion of balance fatally weakens this commission even before it has started, and tarnishes the process of international law."
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Gaza aid flotilla to set sail from Lebanon with all-women crew

Arabic singer joins crew of nuns, doctors, lawyers and journalists for humanitarian mission despite Israeli warning

A ship bearing aid for Gaza is preparing to leave Tripoli in Lebanon this weekend in the latest attempt to defy the Israeli blockade – with only women on board.

The Saint Mariam, or Virgin Mary, has a multi-faith international passenger list, including the Lebanese singer May Hariri and a group of nuns from the US. "They are nuns, doctors, lawyers, journalists, Christians and Muslims," said Mona, one of the participants who, along with the other women, has adopted the ship's name, Mariam.

The Mariam and its sister ship, Naji Alali, had hoped to set off several weeks ago but faced several delays after Israel launched a diplomatic mission to pressure Lebanon to stop the mission.

Read more- The Guardian

Scientific education leads to atheism

John Draper
Scientific studies have shown that Intelligence has risen in developed countries and simultaneously belief in religion has declined. The obvious conclusion is that people are getting smarter; smart people tend to reject irrational beliefs, hence with increasing intelligence more people become nonbelievers. But a paper by psychologist James Allan Cheyne at Waterloo University suggests it's more complicated than that. The correlation of intelligence and lack of belief is well documented and is called the Flynn effect, after the social scientist J. R. Flynn who first recognized it.
But first, let's note that the effect is significant - in England, for example, church attendance has dropped to less than one-third of prior levels and atheism is no longer rare. Also, because many are reluctant to call themselves atheists but prefer "non-believer", there may be more atheists than what the many surveys show. Further, studies have shown that the effect is more pronounced amongst elite scientists - only around 7% of them are believers. Is there a connection between science and the rejection of religion?
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Welcome to Lebanon: Graveyard of the Arrogant

PATRICK COCKBURN
Why has Lebanon ended up as the graveyard of so many invaders? Israelis used to say in the 1960s that one of their military bands would be enough to conquer the country. Sometimes, prior to Israel and Egypt agreeing a peace in 1979, they would add archly that “I don’t know which will be the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, but I do know the name of the second.” The idea was that Lebanon, only the size of Wales and its population divided by communal, sectarian and party hatreds, would inevitably be a pushover for the greatest military power in the Middle East. Lebanon’s Maronite Christian minority was an obvious ally for Israel against the forces of Arab nationalism. The well-earned reputation of the Lebanese for commercial ingenuity and capacity to survive in all circumstances suggested that they would be the last people to die in the last ditch fighting an overwhelmingly powerful enemy.
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Palestinians Denied Access to Water

Stephen Lendman
According to OCHA (the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), Palestinians face a serious water crisis, being denied access to their own resources. Cara Flowers with the Emergency Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Group (EWASH - a coalition of almost 30 water and sanitation sector organizations in Occupied Palestine) said many vulnerable communities in Israeli-controlled Area C (covering 60% of the West Bank) are hardest hit, the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) having limited say over its own resources, ones Israel uses itself, an international water expert saying: It's "easy (making) the desert bloom by using someone else's water (and) denying them access to their fair share...." In some areas, it's easier denying them none except what they can obtain by other means or illegally.
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Swedish activists get ready to set sail for Gaza

Solidarity activists at a meeting in Stockholm announced on Wednesday that a major flotilla will attempt to break Israel's illegal blockade of Gaza before the end of the year.
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Orwellian!: Israel says 12th century Muslim gravestones 'built illegally'

JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- Israel's Jerusalem Municipality said Thursday that tombstones razed by authorities a day earlier in a 12th-century Muslim cemetery were "built illegally with the aim to take over the plot." At least 15 tombstones and structures were torn apart Wednesday in the Mamilla (Ma'man Allah) cemetery, the Al-Aqsa Foundation for Waqf and Heritage said. The latest demolitions follow the disinterment of over 1,500 graves in 2009 to make way for a controversial Museum of Tolerance. The foundation quickly denounced the move, describing it as a "heinous crime."
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Scientists say it is 'just not true' that the vast majority of oil from the BP spill has gone

Gulf oil spill: White House accused of spinning report

While the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico has been capped, experts claim up to 75% of it is still in the water. Photograph: Ho/REUTERS

The White House was accused today of spinning a government scientific report into the amount of oil left in the Gulf of Mexico from the BP spill which had officials declaring that the vast majority of the oil had been removed.

As BP workers finished pouring cement into the well as a first step to permanently sealing it today, environmental groups and scientists – including those working with government agencies to calculate the scale and effects of the spill – said White House officials had painted far too optimistic a picture of a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (Noaa) into the fate of the oil.

"Recent reports seem to say that about 75% of the oil is taken care of and that is just not true," said John Kessler, of Texas A&M University, who led a National Science Foundation on-site study of the spill. "The fact is that 50% to 75% of the material that came out of the well is still in the water. It's just in a dissolved or dispersed form."

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Spies for Israel, As`ad Abukhalil

The biggest story here is the arrest of senior Tayyar (the movement of Gen. `Awn) leader, Gen. Fayiz Karam for suspicions of spying for Israel. As-Safir is reporting that he may have started back in the 1980s. The man was suspected back in the 1990s of being responsible for a network of terrorists who threw bombs around the city. My suspicion is this, as I was swimming my 2 km this morning I thought, that he may not be running an espionage network for Israel, but that he may have been running a terrorist network on behalf of Israel. Don't be surprised if he is found to be tied to the assassination of former president Rene Mu`awwad. Israel's work in Lebanon is being increasingly undermined. I never thought i would live to find that the Lebanese police--Lebanese police for potato's sake--is smarter than the Mossad. hahahaha hehehehe.

Only we're allowed, Gideon Levy

After Tuesday's border clash, Israel will continue to ignore UNIFIL and the Lebanese army. Those bastards, the Lebanese, changed the rules. Scandalous. Word is, they have a brigade commander who's determined to protect his country's sovereignty. Scandalous.
The explanation here was that he's "indoctrinating his troops" - only we're allowed to do that, of course - and that this was "the spirit of the commander" and that he's "close to Hezbollah." The nerve.
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Emily Henochowicz Speaks Out: I'll planning to return

EXCLUSIVE...Emily Henochowicz Speaks Out: Art Student Who Lost Her Eye After Being Shot by Israeli Tear Gas Canister in West Bank Protest Discusses Her Life, Her Art, and Why She Plans to Return

Today, a Democracy Now! global broadcast exclusive interview with Emily Henochowicz. She’s the twenty-one-year-old American art student who lost her eye in May after being shot in the face by an Israeli tear gas canister at a protest against Israel’s attack on the Gaza flotilla that left nine people dead. "I’m not ashamed of the fact that I lost my eye. I’m proud of who I am. I believed in the cause, and that’s why I came to that demonstration on that day," Henochowicz says. "I’m not going to be the same person that I was before this happened." [includes rush transcript]

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Poll: Arab world opinion of Obama dims

A new poll of Arab public opinion finds a significant drop in views of President Obama from a year ago.

The 2010 Arab Public Opinion Poll will be released Thursday at the Brookings Institution by Shibley Telhami, of the University of Maryland and Brookings’ Saban Center for Middle East Policy. The annual survey, conducted in conjunction with Zogby International, polled 3,976 people in six countries — Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates — in June and July.

The most striking finding is that early in the Obama administration, in April and May 2009, an estimated 51 percent expressed optimism about American policy in the Middle East, but in the 2010 poll, only 16 percent were hopeful, while a majority, 64 percent, were discouraged.

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Some people should not be granted passports!

"A British woman was arrested and charged with indecency after walking through a Dubai shopping mall wearing a bikini, it was reported today.

The Foreign Office confirmed the woman was arrested and charged, but the charges have since been dropped."

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Chinese pear: Euan Uglow (1990)

Geometrical divisions and subdivisions are typical of Uglow's work..

Peres: Israel 'Concerns' Lost on Brits

The Israeli president has said his claims of anti-Semitism against Britain were out of regret that some Britons failed to recognize what he called Tel Aviv's concerns.

Shimon Peres had been quoted last week by the Jewish website Tablet as saying that the British people and their government were "deeply pro-Arab and anti-Israeli."

The comments apparently served as a response to UK Prime Minister David Cameron's earlier comment on the Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip, calling the populated enclave as a "prison camp."

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Palestine Takes Center Stage in the Antiwar Movement

Palestine is back at the heart of the antiwar movement.

By Andrew Pollack – New York

The United National Antiwar Conference, attended by 850 people from July 23 to 25, 2010 in Albany, New York, marked a sea change in the attitude of the antiwar movement toward Palestine. For the first time a broadly representative, democratic national conference of peace activists adopted the demand "End All US Aid to Israel." UNAC also endorsed the global BDS movement, committed itself to joining Palestine solidarity efforts around future flotillas, emergency responses to Zionist attacks, etc., and expressed its opposition to the US's many-faceted complicity in Zionism's various crimes. All of these positions were adopted in near-unanimous votes and in the face of attempts by a handful of delegates to water down or obstruct them.

This huge success follows on the heels of a similarly significant step forward at the US Social Forum. The resolutions passed at the USSF, which mirrored the positions adopted by UNAC, expressed the sentiment of the 15,000 activists in attendance from every social movement. But what is different about the UNAC votes is that they were taken on amendments to an omnibus Action Proposal calling for specific actions, foremost among them nationally-coordinated local antiwar actions in the fall, and national mobilizations in NY and SF in the spring. As such, UNAC has explicitly put Palestine at the center of those actions.

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Lebanese Army Thwarts Israeli Landscaping Effort

Other Israeli landscaping techniques.

By Belen Fernandez

In the latest Israeli inversion of cause and effect relationships, the clash near the Lebanese border village of Adaisseh yesterday between Israeli and Lebanese soldiers—which resulted in the deaths of one of the former nationality and three of the latter—was characterized by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak as a “planned provocation”, by Kadima MK Shaul Mofaz as a “planned terror attack”, and by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as something for which the Lebanese government was “directly responsible”. It is not clear how anyone in Lebanon is responsible for the Israeli decision to have its army uproot a tree lying outside the confines of Israel’s border fence in order to obtain a more unobstructed view of the area, especially given Israeli possession of numerous unmanned aerial vehicles for which single trees do not constitute an obstacle.

According to the Israeli Haaretz website, the tree uprooting was categorized by Israel as merely a “scheduled vegetation clearing activity”. The notion that Israeli soldier-gardeners should not be permitted to engage in heavily-armed tree-pruning wherever they see fit is thus presumably an extremist principle spawned by Iran and smuggled via Syria into Lebanon, where Hezbollah has used it to brainwash the Lebanese army—who were originally deemed less of a threat to Israeli vegetation clearing and whose debut south of the Litani River was insisted upon in UN Security Council Resolution 1701 which ended the July War of 2006. Past Israeli landscaping projects have meanwhile included separating Palestinians from their yards with concrete walls, erecting forests atop destroyed Palestinian villages, saturating Lebanese olive fields with cluster bombs, and diverting regional water supplies. It has not yet been established whether the latest deadly air raid on Gaza also qualifies as routine vegetation clearing.

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Less posts, more art and music

It looks like having less posts in order to leave time for reading and following is what some have expressed an inclination for on this site in addition to increasing art and music posts..The people has spoken..Thanks for letting me know..

Boy Begs Soldiers Not To Take His Dad

The above video shows 5-year-old Khaled Jabari crying as the Israeli military takes his father away for stealing water. In fact, he was only trying to access water that had already been stolen by Kiryat Arba, a nearby Israeli settlement. Palestine Monitor reports:

Dr Mustafa Barghouthi, Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative, commented the video, circulated yesterday on SKY TV and Al Jazeera, saying that “Palestinian children grow up under the Israeli occupation, surrounded by the Apartheid Wall, by oppression and destruction. Israel repudiates children’s rights and welfare and treats them like adults, clearly violating UN Declaration of Child’s Rights”.

After watching the footage, Hashem Abu Maria, of the Defence For Children International charity, said it was obvious the child thought his father would never return.

He said he was contacting child support agencies in the field to offer him psychological help to cope with the trauma."This child does not comprehend the concept of arrest - he does not know what it means, like the policeman or soldier understands it," he added. "I think that the child thinks that his father is leaving and not coming back - that he has lost him."

Israeli forces raided the town of Bakka after accusing Palestinian farmers of stealing water from the nearby Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba. They pulled out irrigation pipes supplying vines and vegetable fields before arresting several villagers, including the boy’s father. Angry Palestinian residents say they have documents to prove they are registered with the Palestinian Water Authority, and are paying for the water they use.

They say it is the second time in a month police have removed their irrigation pipes. "This land is the source of our income, and it is the cause of our struggle with the occupation since day one of the occupation," said Khaled’s grandfather Badran Jaber. "We live from it, we have no other job opportunity in light of unemployment reaching over 40% in the occupied territories."

The child’s grandmother, Im Ghassan, added: "What right do they have to do this? Where can we go? This is our land, our home and nation, this is ours. We live here, we were born here, and we want to die here. Let them do what they want, we cannot do any more."

The Disinherited: Syria’s 130,000 Golan Height Refugees

Golan Height refugees, 1967 (Photo: Micha Bar-am)

What happened to the 130,000 Syrian citizens living in the Golan Heights in June 1967? According to the Israeli narrative, they all fled to Syria, but official documents and testimonies tell a different story.

Israeli eyewitness: “[W]e saw a big group of Syrian civilians, a few hundred people, gathered in front of tables with soldiers sitting behind them. We stopped and asked a soldier what they were doing. He answered they were doing pre-expulsion registration. I’m not a softhearted person, but I immediately had the feeling that something here wasn’t right. I still remember what a bad impression this sight left on me. But it was, de facto, like it was [with the Arab populations] in Lod, Ramle and other places in the War of Independence.”

*UPDATED* IOA Editor: As in 1948, the “Israeli narrative” tries to sweep Israel’s ethnic cleansing crimes under the rug. As in 1948, official Israel lied about the fate of the local population during and after the war and so did Israeli historians, as this story reveals.

Note: As is often the case, the original Haaretz story, in Hebrew, is longer and more detailed than the English version presented below.

Among the parts left out of the English version: Rehavam Ze’evi, then a general at the IDF General Command under then IDF chief of staff Yitzhak Rabin, in a War Room meeting on 9 June 1967, stated

“The [Golan] Height does not have a large population and it needs to be received [delivered] clean of its residents.”

To which the Haaretz writer adds

“The IDF did not receive the Height empty, as Ze’evi wanted, but it took care that it will become that.”

Twenty years later, Ze’evi — by then an extreme right-wing politician — wrote in a Yediot Ahronot article defending his Transfer [of all Palestinians out of Palestine] idea:

“Palmach member David Elazar [IDF General in charge of the Northern Command which lead the conquest of the Golan] removed all the Arab villagers from the Golan Height after the Six-Day-War, and he did so with the approval of Rabin the chief of staff, Dayan the defense minister and Eshkol the prime minister,”

all regarded as moderate Zionists, therefore justifying Ze’evi’s Transfer idea, which was considered “extreme” in most Israeli political circles.

Indeed, Ze’evi had a point: Historically, while right-wing Zionism (“Lehi,” or the “Stern-Gang” and the “Irgun” were associated with the war crimes of Deir Yassin, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine which followed was largely the responsibility of the “Yishuv,” the broad, mainstream Jewish community of Palestine, which was dominated by labor movement elements, not the right-wing.

This is still very important today: Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni — representing the current generation that came out of the school of David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, and Yitzhak Rabin, all considered “moderate” — offer a political vision that is no different than that of Benjamin Netanyahu, who follows the the school of Ze’ev Zabotinsky and Menachem Begin, both considered “extreme”.

Also, both header and sub-header of the two versions are different. The header of the Hebrew version story reads “What happened to the 130 thousand Syrian citizens who resided in the Golan Heights in June 1967?” The header of the English version story reads: “The disinherited.”

The sub-header of the Hebrew version story reads “What happened to the 130,000 Syrian citizens who lived in the Golan Heights in June 1967? According to the official Israeli version, the vast majority fled into the depth of Syria by the end of the war. According to military documents and eyewitness reports, tens of thousands were expelled in a transfer that reminds that of the residents of Lod [Lydda] and Ramle [al-Ramla] in 1948.”

The sub-header of the English version reads “What happened to the 130,000 Syrian citizens living in the Golan Heights in June 1967? According to the Israeli narrative, they all fled to Syria, but official documents and testimonies tell a different story.” Clearly, this “sanitized” version was designed to ’soften the blow’ of the facts presented in the English version, which are essentially the same as those of the Hebrew version. Not the first time Haaretz editors engage in such practices.

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Lebanon-Israel border flares up; four dead

ADAISSEH, Lebanon, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Israeli and Lebanese troops fought in a rare cross-border skirmish on Tuesday that killed three Lebanese and a senior Israeli officer in the most serious violence along the frontier since a 2006 war. The Iranian-and Syrian-backed Hezbollah group, which battled Israel four years ago, took no part in the exchange of fire. There was also no sign of any extensive Israeli preparations for a large-scale operation -- an indication the clash might not trigger a wider conflict. Security sources and witnesses said there was no more fighting but tension remained high. The Lebanese and Israeli armies gave different descriptions of the events leading up to the skirmish, while the U.N. peacekeeping force stationed in southern Lebanon said it had yet to ascertain the circumstances leading to the bloodshed. The Lebanese army said an Israeli patrol had crossed the technical line of the border even though U.N. peacekeepers in the area told it to stop. "A Lebanese army force then repelled it using rocket propelled grenades. A clash happened in which the enemy forces used machine guns and tank fire targeting army posts and civilian houses," it said. Major-General Gadi Eisenkot, head of Israel's northern command, said a Lebanese sniper squad fired at officers inside Israeli territory. He said an Israeli tank came under fire from a rocket-propelled grenade, and when it missed, the tank fired and killed the RPG squad. "Israel has responded and shall respond aggressively in the future to any attempt to disrupt the calm along the northern border or to harm residents of the north or the soldiers protecting them," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.
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The unique Euan Uglow

Girl Tree 1989-1991 by Euan Uglow ( 1932 – 2000) Paul Carbone, Chicago

An artist friend called me from Paris this morning (early!) to say hello..I had met him at art school and inevitably we started reminiscing..One thing lead to another and we went on talking about our today's excitements ..He mentioned a couple of artists that I've heard of very vaguely but to my surprise he had never heard of Euan Uglow..That he, a well read and an immense art lover to ignore this giant came as a surprise to me and alerted me to the fact it's not enough to be considered an absolute master by many specialists in order to make an artist better known by a wider public.. A shame..Here's my little contribution..
His Wiki page here.

Pentagon: Cluster bombs are humane weapons

According to the Pentagon’s 2008 policy, cluster munitions are actually humane weapons. “Because future adversaries will likely use civilian shields for military targets – for example by locating a military target on the roof of an occupied building – use of unitary weapons could result in more civilian casualties and damage than cluster munitions,” the policy claims. “Blanket elimination of cluster munitions is therefore unacceptable due not only to negative military consequences but also due to potential negative consequences for civilians.” In other words, it’s better to use a cluster bomb on enemies using a building than to blow up the entire building.
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Poll: Pakistanis Dislike US, Taliban, and al-Qaeda

The recent WikiLeaks dump of war-related documents has brought little new to the debate over Washington’s ongoing military involvement in Afghanistan, but allegations that Pakistan’s intelligence services are aiding the Taliban has brought renewed attention to U.S. concerns over its reliance on Islamabad in battling Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan.
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Rioting in Kabul after US embassy car kills four civilians

Angry mob torches vehicles, chants slogans and confronts police, sparking fears 2006 city-wide riots will be repeated.
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An American journalist speaks about How American News Media "works in favor of Israel"

Alison Weir, an American journalist explains in a series of three videos about how the news media in the United States works in favor of Israel.
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Israel Classifies its Past as Top Secret (Maybe because it has a lot to hide!)

Lawrence Davidson
Israel is a land built on myths. It is, of course, not unique in this. Indeed in this way Israel is very much like its patron, the United States. In order to build and maintain a mythical status a nation must create a picture of itself from its very inception and pass that picture down generation upon generation. For the U.S. it is the idea that the nation is a beacon of both democracy and capitalism unto the world and what it does in terms of foreign policy, and even when at war, is always done altruistically. For Israel, the myth is that the nation is democratic and the last bastion of safety for the world’s Jews. Everything it does, even when that amounts to imperial expansion, is done defensively.
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Hand picked!: Pro Israel Colombian President Uribe to vice-chair UN panel on Israeli raid

United Nations (U.N.) Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced in a press release that outgoing Colombian President Alvaro Uribe will be vice chairman of an international inquiry into the May Israeli attack on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.

The inquiry panel, which Ban announced would be led by "eminent personalities," will be chaired by former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer. The panel will have one Israeli and one Turkish member, who have not been identified.

Read more (thanks Pitirre)

Robert Fisk: Israel has crept into the EU without anyone noticing

The death of five Israeli servicemen in a helicopter crash in Romania this week raised scarcely a headline.
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Arab states enablers of Israel

Arab Ties with Israel Damage the Palestinian Cause: Prof Gilbert Achcar
Prof. Gilbert Achcar is a renowned Lebanese academician, writer, socialist and anti-war activist. He left Lebanon in 1983 and taught international relations and politics at the University of Paris VII for several years. Since 2007, Achcar has been Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. He is a frequent contributor to Le Monde Diplomatique and ZNet. Prof. Achcar joined me in an interview to discuss the latest developments related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel’s attack on the Freedom Flotilla and the prospect of Israel’s occupation of West Bank and Gaza.
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Abe Foxman (Anti Defamation League) plays Holocaust card

Joe Klein says Abe Foxman should be fired now, and points to Foxman’s long disgraceful record, including calling Klein anti-Semitic for saying that Jewish neocons had pushed the Iraq war (and now Iran war) without disclosing their true concern.
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Israeli Rabbi Preaches "Slaughter" of Gentile Babies, Jonathan Cook

A rabbi from one of the most violent settlements in the West Bank was questioned on suspicion of incitement last week as Israeli police stepped up their investigation into a book in which he sanctions the killing of non-Jews, including children and babies. Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira is one of the leading ideologues of the most extreme wing of the religious settler movement. He is known to be a champion of the “price-tag” policy of reprisal attacks on Palestinians, including punishing them for attempts by officials to enforce Israeli law against the settlements. So far the policy has chiefly involved violent harassment of Palestinians, with settlers inflicting beatings, attacking homes, throwing stones, burning fields, killing livestock and poisoning wells. It is feared, however, that Shapira’s book The King’s Torah, published last year, is intended to offer ideological justifications for widening the scope of such attacks to include killing Palestinians, even children.
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Richard Silverstein's blog attacked after exposing IDF torturer

TIKUN OLAM SUFFERS DOS ATTACK AFTER EXPOSING FORMER IDF TORTURER
The gremlins were very unhappy with Yossi Gurvitz, Itamar Sheltiel and me yesterday for exposing the identity of Doron Zahavi as the military intelligence agent alleged to have tortured Mustafa Dirani and threatened East Jeruslem Palestinians in his new role as Arab affairs liaison to the Jerusalem police. An Israeli colleague posted a link to my post at the right-wing Rotter forum last night and at 5:30AM this morning a sustained DOS attack began on my site. Yossi’s and Itamar’s blogs were also attacked as well after they joined me in identifying Zahavi.
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Not lucky to be born a Jew..

Israel to deport 400 children
TEL AVIV Monday, August 02, 2010 (IRIN) – Of the 1,200 children of migrant workers slated for deportation in 2009, the Israeli Cabinet on 1 August granted legal status to 800 and said 400 would be deported with their families to their parents’ country of origin within 21 days.
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The occupied have no rights

Israel maintains that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights does not apply to the occupied West Bank and Gaza, although it says that the treaty does apply to Jewish settlers there, committee member Christine Chanet said.
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Killing an "Arab" by mistake doesn't cost you a thing!

Israeli Media Allow Army To Whitewash Another Murder
Another Palestinian life was ended by Israeli gunfire last week. Again it was dismissed by military spokesmen as a case of mistaken identity, again it was presented in the Israeli press as a successful security operation. Written and photographed by Aaron Dearborn.
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Americans involved in settlements building

Activists work to stop tax-exempt donations to Israeli settlements
As Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise in the occupied West Bank continues to be a strain on US-Israel relations, an unflattering light is being shone on US private donations towards the development of the settlements that are increasingly encroaching on Palestinian land. Alice Speri reports for The Electronic Intifada.
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IOF gives demolition notices to a mosque and houses in Jenin

Jenin, July 31, (Pal Telegraph) Israeli occupation forces raided ‘Khirbet Irza’ east of Tubas in the West Bank and stormed the houses there handing owners warrants of demolition including a mosque and a number of housing units. The head of the village’s council, Mokhlis Massaeid, said that the demolition notices included a mosque built on an area of 100 square meters and was finished recently, in addition to four houses, and handed him a warrant that asks a resident of the village to surrender himself to an Israeli court claiming that he did an “illegal” action by building in his own village.
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It's Turkish but could also be either Arabic or Persian music..Common roots..

Göksel Baktagir - Hicaz Saz Semaisi (Garip)
(Thanks Pitirre)

NEW YORK CITY 'BOAT TO GAZA' EVENT SOLD OUT:

TICKETS ARE SOLD OUT. CONTACT US AT NYBOATEVENT@GMAIL.COM TO BE PUT ON A WAITING LIST AND WAIT FOR OUR RESPONSE.

Dear Friends,

This is an important moment in history. In the aftermath of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla massacre and increased world-wide scrutiny of Israel’s blockade of Gaza, the Israeli government has mounted a huge public relations campaign spreading the lie that by letting a few more items into Gaza the blockade has been lifted. This is not the reality. Gaza is still under siege, vital building materials and other supplies are banned, exports of goods from Gaza are denied and neither ships nor people can travel without permission from Israel, permission which Israel will not give. Gaza is essentially an open-air prison under a U.S.-backed Israeli blockade.

We are planning to launch a U.S. boat to Gaza, joining a flotilla of ships from Europe, Canada, India, South Africa and parts of the Middle East due to set sail in September/ October of this year. In order to succeed in this essential but costly human rights project, we need significant financial support.

Citizens around the world have responded to the plight of the Palestinian people and are taking action to help break the blockade which is suffocating the lives of the people of Gaza and denying them their liberty. The U.S. government is complicit through established policies that uncritically support Israel in its brutal attack on the Palestinian people and on those who attempt to intervene on their behalf. We in the United States must continue to step up and do our part. We must join with others from across the world to support an end to the collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza.

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Counter

A click on the flag counter reveals that since it was set up, merely 5 days ago, a total of 416 unique visitors from 60 countries have been curious enough to have at least one look ..I can't be unhappy with that. Only last week, I had no idea whatsoever that more than 5 or 6 people were interested and was seriously thinking of closing shop...However, I wish people could give some feedback though..There are many ways this blog can be improved on. Suggestions welcome...
Update: Crossed the 500 today(Tuesday)

Uri Avneri on Israeli Fascism

"So, there is no reason anymore for not calling the spade a spade: a large fascist camp is now threatening Israeli democracy.

What happened last week in Israel was not a legitimate "protest", nor a democratic endeavor to influence public opinion in order to change the decisions of the government and the Knesset. It was not even a campaign of civil disobedience by a minority trying to force the reversal of a decision of the majority.

It is much more: the beginning of an attempt to overturn by force the democratic system itself.

Confronting Israeli democracy now is the hard core of the settlers, which practically all the settlers accept as their spokemen. This week we saw tens of thousands of them, and there is no escape from the realization that this is a revolutionary movement with a revolutionary ideology using revolutionary means.

What is this ideology? It was proclaimed loudly, again and again, by the central spokesmen of the movement: God gave us this country. All the land and its fruits belong to us. Anybody who gives away even one square meter of it to foreigners (meaning the Arabs, who have been living here for many generations) is violating the commandments of the Torah. The Torah is binding. All government decisions, Knesset laws and court judgments are null and void if they contravene the word of God, as conveyed to us by the rabbis who stand above the cabinet ministers, the Knesset members, the Supreme Court judges and the army commanders. Like in Khomeini's fundamentalist Iran.

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Does Israelo-fascism exist? James North asks the question

Robert O. Paxton, the distinguished emeritus professor at Columbia University, is perhaps the world’s leading authority on fascism. His book Vichy France (1972) has become a classic, not least in France itself, for telling truths about the collaborationist regime that the French themselves had been too ashamed and timid to say. More recently, The Anatomy of Fascism (2004) is a masterful survey that looks thoroughly and intelligently at “fascism” instead of just using it as an epithet.

Toward the end of the book, Paxton looks at the possibility of fascism in “Other Times, Other Places” outside its peak in Europe between the two World Wars. Among several examples, he says that “. . . one must address the potential – supreme irony – for fascism in Israel.”
He recognizes that

“Israeli national identity has been powerfully associated with an affirmation of the human rights that were long denied to Jews in the Diaspora. This democratic tradition forms a barrier against ‘giving up free institutions’ in the fight against Palestinian nationalism.”

But, he writes, more recently there is cause for worry.

“The suicide bombings of the second intifada after 2001 radicalized even many Israeli democrats to the right. By 2002, it was possibly to hear language within the right wing of the Likud Party and some of the small religious parties that comes close to a functional equivalent to fascism. The chosen people begins to sound like a Master Race that claims a unique ‘mission in the world,’ demands its ‘vital space,’ demonizes an enemy that obstructs the realization of the people’s destiny, and accepts the necessity of force to obtain these ends.”

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My most beloved and admired artist ever..A miracle called Vermeer