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Israel Notice To Northern West Bank: Land Will Be Confiscated, Olive Trees Destroyed

Israeli forces are uprooting dozens of olive trees in Zubaba Village, northwest of Jenin. The Coordinator of the Youth Initiative for Freedom from the Al Yamoun Village Cultural Center told PNN that Israeli forces occupying northwestern Jenin confiscated large tracts of Zubaba Village for the Wall.

Hundreds of farmers will no longer be able to reach their trees and crops when Israeli forces have completed the confiscation and destruction in the Palestinian town. Coordinator Zayed said that Israeli forces recently distributed leaflets written in Arabic announcing the intention to uproot the olive trees. The decision was made by the Israeli Commander of the Central Region for “security reasons.”

Zayed continued, “The destruction is arbitrary and is not based in any law other than illegal occupation. Bulldozers are destroying the land and the trees just as the olive season harvest is upon us.”

article here

(photo: Ron Edmonds / AP)

President George W. Bush’s speech employed his usual army of dancing straw men. His latest disingenuous and questionable assertions deserve greater, more detailed attention, as they’re sure to form the basis for the latest GOP talking points deployed on political talk shows this weekend and in the weeks to come. But two blazing hypocrisies deserve immediate highlighting.

President Bush simply cannot get through a single news conference without contradicting himself. Already, within the course of a couple weeks, he’s presented Osama bin Laden (who he let escape at Tora Bora and still has not captured) as a dread menace and then someone not to worry about. (Huh? Think Progress also notes that “Bush Rewrites History on Zarqawi Statements.”) But in addition to trotting out some of his “greatest hits,” within this single news conference, Bush simultaneously excoriates a journalist for dabbling in “hypotheticals,” but then employs hypothetical situations himself for further fear-mongering. He also lambasts the United Nations for waiting for an invitation to enter Sudan to stop the killing there, but then justifies not hunting down bin Laden because the United States needs an invitation first from Pakistan, our supposed ally in the “War on Terror.”

The Washington Post has a transcript here. (It’s a short conference worth reading in its entirety, but I’ve quoted at length here to provide full context for Bush’s remarks.)

Bush first gets extremely testy with David Gregory of NBC news for questioning him about the potential danger to U.S. troops if the Geneva Convention is undermined. Rather than address this very relevant, core question, Bush lashes out at it as an irrelevant “hypothetical”:

Read more »

Guantanamo Bay detainee camp showed excellent prison conditions, including “24/7 medical care - better than many Americans.”
He [Senator Frist] visited the prison with two other senators Sunday to prepare for Senate debate on legislation to legalize the commissions after a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June said they lacked congressional approval. article

“No matter what the quality of the treatment of those individuals is, after four years of being in a lockup in a foreign country without having had a day in court to contest or even hear the reasons that the United States is detaining you, that cannot be considered humane.”
Gabor Rona, international legal director of Human Rights First, based in New York City, said in an interview that Frist’s speech on the Senate floor overlooked major legal problems with the Guantanamo operations.

United Nations Universal Declaration Of Human Rights

Unfuckingbelievable

By JESSICA GRESKO
Associated Press
Posted September 15 2006, 1:40 PM EDT

CORAL GABLES — The Bush administration proposed Friday that Cubans hold a referendum to decide if they want to live in a democracy or under a dictatorship, a plan one expert called a “Disneyesque fantasy” that the Castro brothers would reject.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez suggested the referendum, but Cuban President Fidel Castro has long fiercely resisted any U.S. attempts to interfere with his government. As Castro recovers from surgery, brother and designated successor Raul is the acting leader of the communist nation.

Full article here

“If we’re not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation,” said Wynne. “(Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press.”

Were you surprised by this statement? Shocked?
Well, you shouldn’t be. The US government and its military has a history of testing ‘non-lethal’ weapons on the citizens it supposedly protects.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
The United States government did something that was wrong-deeply, profoundly, morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens. . . -President Clinton’s apology for the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment to the eight remaining survivors, May 16, 1997
Project MK-ULTRA is another example.
“The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over 30 universities and institutions were involved in an ‘extensive testing and experimentation’ program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens ‘at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign.’ Several of these tests involved the administration of LSD to unwitting subjects in social situations.” —Senator Ted Kennedy
A History Of US Secret Human Experimentation gives a comprehensive listing, beginning in 1931 to 1995 when it was discovered that biological agents used during the Gulf War were tested on prisoners in the Texas Department of Correction and 1996 when the Department of Defense admitted Desert Storm soldiers were exposed to chemical agents.

Unlike our Secretary of the Air Force, Israel doesn’t give warning.

In Palestine, On August 18, Bright blue water was fired from the canon at the demonstrators, totally unprovoked, as soon as they were within range of the massive white tank. Many demonstrators were soaked by the blue liquid, dying their hair, clothes and skin, and most of them reported subsequent burning and irritation of the skin that lasted into the night. Tear gas was also used against the demonstrators as soon as the water canon was engaged, so it is unclear whether the burning was from gas being absorbed into the wet skin and clothing, or whether the water itself contained a chemical. Regardless, the message from the Israeli army was clear: non-violent protest will not be tolerated and will be met by increasing displays of force. sources here and here
This is what rubber bullets did to lawyer and activist Lymor Goldstein, shot by Israeli soldiers during a peaceful demonstration in Bil’in on August 11, 2006.

One more thing:
Microwave beams disable video recording equipment.

If you saw this exchange on the tube, it was a total lovefest. Very weird.

Jon Stewart rips progress in Afghanistan. 30% more opium than world demand. So if the price of heroin goes down, expect to see more and more heroin addicts, no?

I think Novak is a strange character. Someone refresh my memory…. did Novak tell Fitzgerald who his source was, and if so, why wasn’t Armitage charged?

By Robert D. Novak
Thursday, September 14, 2006; Page A21

When Richard Armitage finally acknowledged last week that he was my source three years ago in revealing Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA employee, the former deputy secretary of state’s interviews obscured what he really did. I want to set the record straight based on firsthand knowledge.

First, Armitage did not, as he now indicates, merely pass on something he had heard and that he “thought” might be so. Rather, he identified to me the CIA division where Mrs. Wilson worked and said flatly that she recommended the mission to Niger by her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson. Second, Armitage did not slip me this information as idle chitchat, as he now suggests. He made clear that he considered it especially suited for my column.

Full article here

Read more about Novak’s changing story hereand here

WASHINGTON - Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, pleaded guilty Friday to making false statements and conspiracy to commit fraud and violating post-employment restrictions for former congressional aides.

Ney abandonded months of defiant denials to admit guilt in the congressional corruption probe spawned by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Ney becomes the first lawmaker to admit wrongdoing in the election-year investigation.

More here