Uncategorized

NOVANEWS Jimmy Carter, stick to your guns Why do political leaders (past or present) need the approval of the Zionist lobby? To be classed as sufficiently “Zionist”, “pro-Israel” and “friendly to Jews”? Or to attract the big bucks when running in elections? A prominent Jewish leader criticized former President Jimmy Carter on Monday, blasting Carter for saying in a speech this month that the U.S. government has “yielded excessively” to Israel. Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that Carter’s comments during a recent conference on U.S.-Arab relations suggest that he was not sincere in a 2009 apology to the Jewish community. Carter said in a statement Monday that he has “never stigmatized” Israel during his presidency or after leaving the White House....

NOVANEWS  By Rebecca Kirzner I teach English in Hebron. There. It’s said. The seemingly innocuous statement that generates an onslaught of questions, quizzical looks, and widened eyes. To be fair, it’s the type of statement that one does not often hear from a nice Jewish girl from New Jersey, living in Jerusalem. “What compels you to do that?” The question always catches me off-guard. What doesn’t compel me to do that? I teach students whose depth of experience is only matched by their quest to learn. And as we go through each lesson, I feel that it is I who am the student, sitting at the feet of those who offer their wisdom and friendship unreservedly, despite my very different background. Who entrust me with personal accounts of their lives in occupied cities and villages, and with rati...

NOVANEWS SB 118: Amended - Passed. March 18th, 2010 | by Jonathan Onomatopoeia Gaurano | After 8 hours of dialogue, deliberation, and compromise:  Of a Vote to 16 - 4 - 0 This Passes.  A Bill In Support of UC DIVESTMENT FROM WAR CRIMES Authored By: Emiliano Huet-Vaughn and Tom Pessah Sponsored By: Senators Gaurano , Carlton, Kwon, Oatfield WHEREAS, the ASUC notes the complexity of international relations in all cases, including the Middle East, and recognizes the inability of a body such as the ASUC to adjudicate matters of international law and human rights law, or to take sides on final status issues on wars and occupations throughout the world. Yet, we do note the following findings from the United Nations and other leading human rights organizations regarding the Israel/Palestine ...

UK: Protesters confront anti-Muslim rightists   BY HUGO WILS AND PAUL DAVIES   LONDON—About 2,000 people joined a counterdemonstration against the English Defence League (EDL), organized by United Against Fascism (UAF) in Bolton, England, March 20. Similar actions have taken place in cities throughout the United Kingdom. The EDL emerged last year as an ultrarightist organization that targets Muslims. Among its demands, the EDL calls for a ban on the building of new mosques in Britain and on wearing burqas, a form of dress worn by some Muslim women. According to The Times, the rightists’ march also drew as many as 2,000 people. Their placards included, “Sharia law will destroy Britain and all our British values” and “Brown lies and another soldier dies.” The UAF counterdemonstration include...

NOVANEWS The Sunic Journal Interview with Kevin MacDonald, Part 2 On Tuesday, April 6, 2010, at 9 PM Eastern US time, Tom will interview Dr. Kevin MacDonald in the second of a two part discussion. Topics for this portion will include: · “Hate speech” in the US, the fear of the stigma of racism, and the imagery of Whites in the media · Political polarization along racial lines in the US · The Zionist reaction to racial changes in Southern California · Joe Biden’s trip to Zionist regime and the low-point in US/Zionist relations · How the Republicans will try to capitalize on the Biden trip and the strained relations among the Zionist regime and the Obama administration · The possible change in the Israeli lobby power in the US, partly as a result of the book by Mearsheimer and Walt · The n...

NOVANEWS  by Bob Higgins * By Robert Parry Consortium News * Normally, if two countries with powerful nuclear arsenals were openly musing about attacking a third country over mere suspicions that it might want to join the nuclear club, we’d tend to sympathize with the non-nuclear underdog as the victim of bullying and possible aggression. You might think that – unless you were told that the two nuclear-armed countries are Israel and the United States and the non-nuclear country is Iran. Then, different rules apply, especially it seems in leading American news outlets like the New York Times. In what reads like a replay of the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Times and other major U.S. news media appear onboard for war, again happy to make the likely aggressors the “victims,” a...

NOVANEWS  by Khalil Nouri By Khalil Nouri STAFF WRITER VETERANS TODAY “All a man can betray is his conscience,” says Joseph Conrad, and there is no doubt the betrayal of trust carries a heavy taboo when the Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday blamed foreigners, including UN and EU officials, for “very widespread” fraud during presidential and provincial elections last year. “The truth is this brothers … There was fraud in presidential and provincial council elections, no doubt that there a very widespread fraud, very widespread,” Karzai told a meeting with Afghan electoral workers in Kabul. “But Afghans did not do this fraud. The foreigners did this fraud,” he said. He singled out former UN deputy head of mission, Peter Galbraith, who was sacked after a row with his boss on how t...

NOVANEWS  by Bob Higgins · * By Dr Ehsan Azari * Pakistan seems happy in getting a massive civilian and military aid package and the assurance from Washington that this country will be given the central role in the Afghan endgame. Pakistan has presented two lists to the Obama Administration officials ahead of the two-day summit.  One was a 56-pages long wish list and the second was a list of heavily bearded Taliban leaders arrested recently in Pakistan.  According to the reports (msn, news) a new $7.5 billion, five year US assistance package for Pakistan’s energy, water, agriculture and education sector was pledged.  The one billion unpaid US reimbursements for fighting the Pakistani Taliban would also begin flowing. In addition, Pakistan will receive defence supplies in the coming years,...

NOVANEWS In an extensive, research-based 2009 position paper titled: On Nuclear Weapons: A Feminist Perspective, Ednay Gorney and Hedva Eyal of the Isha L'Isha Haifa Feminist Center wrote, "the Israeli public remains excluded from the [nuclear] debate. The public does not ask questions, does not demand that the state takes responsibility, nor does it demand to be involved in decision making; it accepts and is content with the information or, more accurately, with the lack of information." This passive indifference to the nuclear weaponry widely believed to be in the public's backyard is, in my view, a highly dangerous manifestation of Israel 's longtime and entrenched militarization. As Gorney and Eyal have put it, "Decision-making in all areas related to security is characterized by secre...

NOVANEWS There's good news for everyone who's afraid of nuclear war (and that means all of us).  Last week, Russia and the USA signed an agreement to reduce their nuclear arsenals by a third.1 And next week, Obama is hosting leaders from 48 countries to talk about going even further in pursuit of a nuclear-free world.2   It's the most concrete progress in decades to reduce the threat of nuclear war.   But public support is crucial if we're going to make Obama's first bold steps really stick. Pro-war members of Congress, weapons makers and dictators from across the globe will try and trip up this fragile process. So we're teaming up with allies from Global Zero, Avaaz and MoveOn to show Obama and other leaders that the people are ready for a world without nuclear weapons.   Sign the petitio...