be just

blackagendareport.com - Cynthia McKinney Deserves Your Support, Obama Does Not : "Former Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who seems poised to capture the Green Party presidential nomination, in Chicago, this month, 'is at this juncture in history the only vehicle through which progressives can both register their outrage at Barack Obama and begin the process of rebuilding a mass, Black-led movement for real social change.' Meanwhile, the frequency of Obama's Right turns seem to increase in direct proportion to the nearness of the general election. 'Surely no one with a brain any longer believes that Obama is a closet progressive, or even a genuine liberal.' The question is, How many progressives will put their votes and resources to honorable use?"

Nader Plays the Race Card | AlterNet : "One presidential candidate has brashly played the race card. It wasn't presumptive Republican presidential candidate John McCain or his rival Barack Obama. Both have tipped lightly around race in the campaign. But Ralph Nader didn't have any qualms about bring race into the campaign. The perennial political gadfly accused Obama of saying and doing nothing to threaten the white power structure. If Nader had stopped there he might have opened up a reasoned debate on whether Obama panders to corporate interests in his stance on high gas prices, home foreclosures, the lack of affordable heath care, the Iraq war wind-down, corporate and environmental regulations, and labor protections. This might have prompted some to ask, does Obama rise to the standard of a politician who has actually sold his political soul to corporations and the Beltway establishment? But Nader didn't stop at criticizing Obama for being a Beltway insider. He aske...

U.S. Journalist Photographs Grisly Aftermath of Attack in Iraq, Gets Booted by Military | War on Iraq | AlterNet U.S. journalist Zoriah Miller says he was censored by the U.S. military in the Iraqi city of Fallujah after photographing Marines who died in a suicide bombing. On Jun. 26, a suicide bomber attacked a city council meeting in Fallujah, 69 kms west of Baghdad, between local tribal sheikhs and military officials. Three Marines, Cpl. Marcus Preudhomme, Capt. Philip Dykeman, and Lt. Col. Max Galeai, assigned to 2d Battalion, 3rd Marine Division based in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, died in the attack. The explosion also killed two interpreters and 20 Iraqis, including the mayor of the nearby town of Karmah, two prominent sheikhs and their sons, and another sheikh and his brother. All were members of the local "awakening council," one of the U.S.-backed militias that have taken up arms against al Qaeda in Iraq, according to U.S. and Iraqi authorities.

Why I’m Not Patriotic    : Information Clearing House - ICH : "Spare me the puerile parades. Don’t play that martial music, white boy. And don’t befoul nature’s sky with your F-16s. You see, I don’t believe in patriotism. It’s not that I’m anti-American, but I am anti-patriotic. Love of country isn’t natural. It’s not something you’re born with. It’s an inculcated kind of love, something that is foisted upon you in the home, in the school, on TV, at church, during the football game. Yet most people accept it without inspection. Why?Spare me the puerile parades. Don’t play that martial music, white boy. And don’t befoul nature’s sky with your F-16s. You see, I don’t believe in patriotism. It’s not that I’m anti-American, but I am anti-patriotic. Love of country isn’t natural. It’s not something you’re born with. It’s an inculcated kind of love, something that is foisted upon you in the home, in the school, on TV, at church, during the football game. Yet most people accept it withou...

 Who owns you?

  Marching Toward Hell  : Information Clearing House - ICH Scheuer recognizes the power of one of those "small segments." It is not so much the Israeli lobby itself that he criticizes, but the "Israeli-firsters," those of the elite who whole-heartedly adopt the cause of Israel as the cause of America. He describes them as "dangerous men...seeking to place de facto limitations on the First Amendment to protect the nation of their primary attachment [Israel]." He vociferously denies that "to believe that relationship is not only a burden but a cancer on America's ability to protect its genuine national interests...equates to either anti-Semitism or a lack of American patriotism." He concludes that these elite Israeli-firsters "are either the most suspect in the realm of loyalty or simply resolute liars who champion the fantasy of identical U.S. and Israeli national interests." Within his extensive and well referenced notes, a worthy r...

Syria 'would break links with Iran' if America steps in to help it - Telegraph : "According to the official, who has been engaged in low-key 'second track' discussions with Syrian representatives for many months, Syria's President Bashar Assad is increasingly open to a deal which would greatly weaken Iranian influence in the region."

VIDEO: Settlers tie Palestinian man to phone pole and beat him - Haaretz - Israel News : "A group of West Bank settlers on Saturday beat a 31-year-old Palestinian man in the southern Hebron Hills, after having tied him to a telephone pole. Left-wing activists later videoed a settler kicking Madahat Abu-Kirash, the victim, as he remained tied up and was surrounded by Israeli security forces. The soldiers subsequently removed the settler from the scene. Hebron police opened an investigation into the incident after Abu-Kirash submitted a complaint, claiming that he had been beaten all over his body."

Hamas TV: U.S. bill to outlaw us aims at silencing free voices - Haaretz - Israel News : "Hamas' Gaza-based Al-Aqsa TV on Saturday denounced a resolution presented to the United States Congress seeking to have it outlawed as a terrorist organization. The resolution, presented on June 26, was 'politically motivated and aims at silencing every free voice uncovering U.S. and Zionist acts,' said Fathi Hamad, a lawmaker who heads the satellite channel operated by the Hamas Palestinian militant movement."

The Raw Story | AP: U.S. Okayed Korean War Massacres : "SEOUL The American colonel, troubled by what he was hearing, tried to stall at first. But the declassified record shows he finally told his South Korean counterpart it 'would be permitted' to machine-gun 3,500 political prisoners, to keep them from joining approaching enemy forces. In the early days of the Korean War, other American officers observed, photographed and confidentially reported on such wholesale executions by their South Korean ally, a secretive slaughter believed to have killed 100,000 or more leftists and supposed sympathizers, usually without charge or trial, in a few weeks in mid-1950."

LobeLog.com » Blog Archive » Mohammed Omer’s Statement : "As you may know, the IPS correspondent in Gaza, Mohammed Omer, was detained last Thursday by Israeli authorities on his return from Europe where he received the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism and went on a brief speaking tour. He is currently in a hospital back in Gaza recovering from the physical wounds incurred during his interrogation. His experience resulted in an official protest by the Dutch government and some attention in the British press, especially The Guardian and The Independent, as well as in the IPS cast itself. The Israeli government’s explanation Mohammed’s wounds, as recounted by IPS correspondent Mel Frykberg, seems somehow unconvincing, although hopefully a thorough investigation, as promised by Israeli’s ambassador to The Hague, will shed some additional light on the matter. Earlier this week, colleagues sent me a lengthy — but quite eloquent — statement by Mohammed about his experience that, with...

Bringing Ireland to Baghdad: How the Resistance Will Eventually Kick the Americans Out | War on Iraq | AlterNet The basic parallels between Shia Iraqis and the IRA are clear enough: They're both minorities that got stomped on by the dominant tribe -- in Northern Ireland, Protestant mobs used to burn and stomp at will when they were in the mood; and in Shia Iraq, Sunni goons went on regular murder runs in Shia neighborhoods. So both places, Catholic Belfast and Shia Baghdad, got used to defending their own neighborhoods because nobody else was going to defend them. Then they were "saved" by foreign troops from countries that had always been their biggest enemy: The Ulster Catholics were occupied by the British Army, and Shia Iraq by the Americans. Of course, it was all supposed to be gratitude and happiness, the way the occupiers saw it. They expected the slum people to be grateful. Well, there haven't been too many people in history who've been glad to be occupied...