Federal Registery

I received this in an email and I didn't know if it was legitimate because it came from a website with a ".com" ending. I find out the guy running this website pays attention to the real Federal Registery website and serves as a kind of watchdog.

Anyway, posting this for curiosity's sake.

Presidential Determination No. 2009-15 of January 27, 2009

Unexpected Urgent Refugee and Migration Needs Related To Gaza Memorandum for the Secretary of State

By the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, including section 2(c)(1) of the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962 (the ``Act''), as amended (22 U.S.C. 2601), I hereby determine, pursuant to section 2(c)(1) of the Act, that it is important to the national interest to furnish assistance under the Act in an amount not to exceed $20.3 million from the United States Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance Fund for the purpose of meeting unexpected and urgent refugee and migration needs, including by contributions to international, governmental, and nongovernmental organizations and payment of administrative expenses of Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration of the Department of State, related to humanitarian needs of Palestinian refugees and conflict victims in Gaza.

You are authorized and directed to publish this memorandum in the Federal Register.


(Presidential Sig.)
THE WHITE HOUSE,
Washington, January 27, 2009
[FR Doc. E9-2488
Filed 2-3-09; 8:45 am]
Billing code 4710-10-P

The ADL: Evil, courrupt, dishonest, pernicious, portentous, threatening, inauspicious, harmful, and a whole load of synonyms for a load of bullshit

Fuck the Anti-defamation League!

I found this compendiary documentary on YouTube not to long ago and I felt it was on target and well worth the time to post it here. It's in line with most of the research that myself and some of the other bloggers here at MercuryToona (mainly MisterGoldbug) have done on the ADL.

I would like to take a moment to affirm that nor myself or anyone else here at MercuryToona are racists or anti-semetic. We're honsest truth-seekers and as we've come to realize, the truth is ugly.

The ADL is nothing more than a smokescreen to domino the flagitigious, Zionist actions of the Israel Lobby and it's constituents. Zionism in of itself is a racist ideology. You can learn more about it here.

I urge you to do the reseach and see the information for yourself and form your own opinions on the matter.

Rabbi Yisroel Weiss

Rabbi Yisroel Weiss of Jews United Against Zionism, in an interview on Fox News. It was posted on YouTube August 4, 2006. This video further addresses some of the issues mentioned here on MercuryToona concerning Zionism and the illegal state of Israel, this time from the perspetive of an orthodox Jew

One of my favorites

At least one person in Congress is bucking the trend to blindly support the murderous over reaction in Gaza by Israel. Dennis Kucinich has his head on a bit more squarely than most in this regard.

"In Gaza, the United Nations gave the Israeli army the coordinates of a U.N. school, and the school was then hit by Israeli tank fire, killing about 40. The U.N. put flags on emergency vehicles, coordinating the movements of those vehicles with the Israeli military, and the vehicles came under attack, killing emergency workers. The Israeli army evacuated 100 Palestinians to shelter, and then bombed the shelter, killing 30 people.

"Emergency workers have been blocked by the Israeli army from reaching hundreds of injured persons. Today's Washington Post (reports): '100 survivors rescued in Gaza from roads blocked from Israelis. Relief agencies fear more are trapped, days after neighborhood was shelled.' Today, the U.S. Congress is going to be asked to pass a resolution supporting Israel's actions in Gaza. I'm hopeful that we don't support the inhumanity that has been repeatedly expressed by the Israeli army. The U.S. abstained from a U.N. call for a cease-fire. We must take a new direction in the Middle East, and that new direction must be mindful of the inhumane conditions in Gaza."

Found, again, on Alternet.

Boycott Israel

Some good stuff at Alternet today. Naomi Klein has a piece up that makes the argument that similar tactics used to defeat apartheid in South Africa could be used against Israel to curb the violence against Palestinians. I don't really know if that is possible, but it sounds better than doing nothing. Israel seems pretty committed to increasing violence against Palestinians lately. I'm not sure monetary punishments would sway the Israeli leadership on this, and it's not like it would be some sort of official sanctions against Israel, that will never happen, through the UN at least. The US will continue to support her right to defend herself( I like the way that's always phrased, in the feminine, so as to reinforce that fact that 'she' is never the aggressor and only defending 'herself', such bullshit psycho propaganda) to the very end, with weapons and money if need be. So from this point onward, I'll continue to never buy kosher products, except maybe pickles, but only if they are on sale. If I actually had money and investments I would consider divestment as well.

Crimes Against Humanity: Israel

I came upon this article by Chris Hedges on Alternet, on the ongoing atrocities of Israel against the Palestinians living in the Gaza strip. I've decided to post it here in its entirety.

Israel's 'Crime Against Humanity'

by Chris Hedges

Israel’s siege of Gaza, largely unseen by the outside world because of Jerusalem’s refusal to allow humanitarian aid workers, reporters and photographers access to Gaza, rivals the most egregious crimes carried out at the height of apartheid by the South African regime. It comes close to the horrors visited on Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serbs. It has disturbing echoes of the Nazi ghettos of Lodz and Warsaw.

“This is a stain on what is left of Israeli morality,” I was told by Richard N. Veits, the former U.S. ambassador to Jordan who led a delegation from the Council on Foreign Relations to Gaza to meet Hamas leaders this past summer. “I am almost breathless discussing this subject. It is so myopic. Washington, of course, is a handmaiden to all this. The Israeli manipulation of a population in this manner is comparable to some of the crimes that took place against civilian populations fifty years ago.”

The U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, former Princeton University law professor Richard Falk, calls what Israel is doing to the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza “a crime against humanity.” Falk, who is Jewish, has condemned the collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza as “a flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” He has asked for “the International Criminal Court to investigate the situation, and determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law.”

Falk, while condemning the rocket attacks by the militant group Hamas, which he points out are also criminal violations of international law, goes on to say that “such Palestinian behavior does not legalize Israel’s imposition of a collective punishment of a life- and health-threatening character on the people of Gaza, and should not distract the U.N. or international society from discharging their fundamental moral and legal duty to render protection to the Palestinian people.”

“It is an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe that each day poses the entire 1.5 million Gazans to an unspeakable ordeal, to a struggle to survive in terms of their health,” Falk said when I reached him by phone in California shortly before he left for Israel. “This is an increasingly precarious condition. A recent study reports that 46 percent of all Gazan children suffer from acute anemia. There are reports that the sonic booms associated with Israeli overflights have caused widespread deafness, especially among children. Gazan children need thousands of hearing aids. Malnutrition is extremely high in a number of different dimensions and affects 75 percent of Gazans. There are widespread mental disorders, especially among young people without the will to live. Over 50 percent of Gazan children under the age of 12 have been found to have no will to live.”

Gaza now spends 12 hours a day without power, which can be a death sentence to the severely ill in hospitals. There are few drugs and little medicine, including no cancer or cystic fibrosis medication. Hospitals have generators but often lack fuel. Medical equipment, including one of Gaza’s three CT scanners, has been destroyed by power surges and fluctuations. Medical staff cannot control the temperature of incubators for newborns. And Israel has revoked most exit visas, meaning some of those who need specialized care, including cancer patients and those in need of kidney dialysis, have died. Of the 230 Gazans estimated to have died last year because they were denied proper medical care, several spent their final hours at Israeli crossing points where they were refused entry into Israel. The statistics gathered on children—half of Gaza’s population is under the age of 17—are increasingly grim. About 45 percent of children in Gaza have iron deficiency from a lack of fruit and vegetables, and 18 percent have stunted growth.

“It is macabre,” Falk said. “I don’t know of anything that exactly fits this situation. People have been referring to the Warsaw ghetto as the nearest analog in modern times.”

“There is no structure of an occupation that endured for decades and involved this kind of oppressive circumstances,” the rapporteur added. “The magnitude, the deliberateness, the violations of international humanitarian law, the impact on the health, lives and survival and the overall conditions warrant the characterization of a crime against humanity. This occupation is the direct intention by the Israeli military and civilian authorities. They are responsible and should be held accountable.”

The point of this Israeli siege, ostensibly, is to break Hamas, the radical Islamic group that was elected to power in 2007. But Hamas has repeatedly proposed long-term truces with Israel and offered to negotiate a permanent truce. During the last cease-fire, established through Egyptian intermediaries in July, Hamas upheld the truce although Israel refused to ease the blockade. It was Israel that, on Nov. 4, initiated an armed attack that violated the truce and killed six Palestinians. It was only then that Hamas resumed firing rockets at Israel. Palestinians have launched more than 200 rockets on Israel since the latest round of violence began. There have been no Israeli casualties.

“This is a crime of survival,” Falk said of the rocket attacks. “Israel has put the Gazans in a set of circumstances where they either have to accept whatever is imposed on them or resist in any way available to them. That is a horrible dilemma to impose upon a people. This does not alleviate the Palestinians, and Gazans in particular, for accountability for doing these acts involving rocket fire, but it also imposes some responsibility on Israel for creating these circumstances.”

Israel seeks to break the will of the Palestinians to resist. The Israeli government has demonstrated little interest in diplomacy or a peaceful solution. The rapid expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank is an effort to thwart the possibility of a two-state solution by gobbling up vast tracts of Palestinian real estate. Israel also appears to want to thrust the impoverished Gaza Strip onto Egypt. There are now dozens of tunnels, the principal means for food and goods, connecting Gaza to Egypt. Israel permits the tunnels to operate, most likely as part of an effort to further cut Gaza off from Israel.

“Israel, all along, has not been prepared to enter into diplomatic process that gives the Palestinians a viable state,” Falk said. “They [the Israelis] feel time is on their side. They feel they can create enough facts on the ground so people will come to the conclusion a viable state cannot emerge.”

The use of terror and hunger to break a hostile population is one of the oldest forms of warfare. I watched the Bosnian Serbs employ the same tactic in Sarajevo. Those who orchestrate such sieges do not grasp the terrible rage born of long humiliation, indiscriminate violence and abuse. A father or a mother whose child dies because of a lack of vaccines or proper medical care does not forget. A boy whose ill grandmother dies while detained at an Israel checkpoint does not forget. All who endure humiliation, abuse and the murder of family members do not forget. This rage becomes a virus within those who, eventually, stumble out into the daylight. Is it any wonder that 71 percent of children interviewed at a school in Gaza recently said they wanted to be a “martyr”?

The Israelis in Gaza, like the American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, are foolishly breeding the next generation of militants and Islamic radicals. Jihadists, enraged by the injustices done by Israel and the United States, seek to carry out reciprocal acts of savagery, even at the cost of their own lives. The violence unleashed on Palestinian children will, one day, be the violence unleashed on Israeli children. This is the tragedy of Gaza. This is the tragedy of Israel.

Chomsky on the ADL (Anti-Defamation Leauge)

An excerpt from Noam Chomsky's 1989 book Necessary Illusions.

"The ADL has virtually abandoned its earlier role as a civil rights organization, becoming 'one of the main pillars' of Israeli propaganda in the U.S.… These efforts, buttressed by insinuations of anti-Semitism or direct accusations, are intended to deflect or undermine opposition to Israeli policies, including Israel's refusal, with U.S. support, to move towards a general political settlement."

More to come on this issue.

The Toppling of Saddam Statue Propaganda?

The link below is an entry that I came across on The Tribal Messenger. The entry suggests that the toppling of the the Saddam statue in April of 2003, may have been a staged event by the U.S. and the U.S. tax dollar backed FIF (Free Iraqi Forces). The event, as suspected by the author, was a propaganda move orchestrated by the Bush administration to rally ongoing support for U.S. activities in Iraq.

http://www.tribalmessenger.org/t-media/saddam-statue.htm

Tainted Lunch Meat : a few links

Some Chomsky, mercury laden tuna, and a smart guy.

Chomsky via Alternet regarding promises of change.

Oddly appropriate article regarding mercury levels in tuna, via Truthdig.

And a link to a blog that covers mainly news from the middle east, Informed Comment . It seems the Iraqi-American Security Pact was passed on Thursday. Sofa's are king, when dealing with occupations.