General News

Oakland Police Trained Alongside Bahrain Military and Israeli Forces Prior to Violent Occupy Oakland Raid

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A month before Occupy Oakland was violently raided by riot police using chemical weapons, rubber bullets and flash grenades – a raid which critically injured Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen – the Oakland Police Department and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department trained alongside a military unit from Bahrain and an Israeli Border Police unit. The occasion was Urban Shield 2011, an annual training competition which gathers heavily militarized police from the United States and across the globe to explore the latest in tactical responses and to promote collaboration. It’s a training that northern California police departments credited for their “effective teamwork” in dealing repressively with Occupy Oakland. Max Blumenthal, who broke this story in al-Akhbar in an exhaustive piece on the militarization of U.S. police, describes the units alongside which multiple California departments trained before violently crushing Occupy Oakland:
Training alongside the American police departments at Urban Shield was the Yamam, an Israeli Border Police unit that claims to specialize in “counter-terror” operations but is better known for its extra-judicial assassinations of Palestinian militant leaders and long record of repression and abuses in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Urban Shield also featured a unit from the military of Bahrain, which had just crushed a largely non-violent democratic uprising by opening fire on protest camps and arresting wounded demonstrators when they attempted to enter hospitals.

General News

Hope is here with the OWS movement

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Occupy Wall street has inspired a wild level of creativity which comes from hope. Hope is so badly needed in America. For over 20 years, we have been passively enduring capitalist abuse and blaming ourselves for our suffering. Antidepressant pill use has increased 400% in the past 20 years during which the 99% sink into poverty, and precarity. People have been savaging the most helpless of Americans, their children.

General News

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week: A Mystical Message about Chanukah

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Several times the Bible tells us that God wants to have a place “to make His name dwell therein” it’s interesting that it says not that ‘I will dwell there’ but that my Name will dwell there. While everything is God, in God, the whole cosmos is not separate from God, the point that a Temple makes is–that there is a concentrated, stronger focus of the quality of divinity for those who enter there.

General News

In Historic Move, Iceland Becomes First Western European Nation to Recognize Palestinian Statehood

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On Tuesday, Iceland became the first Western European nation to pass a parliamentary motion recognizing Palestine as an independent state. The motion – symbolically passed on the United Nation’s annual day of solidarity with the Palestinian people – backs a Palestinian state on 1967 borders, calls on both Israel and Palestine to reject violence and notes the question of Palestinian refugees. Calling the vote historic, Foreign Minister Ossur Skarphedinsson indicated that Iceland’s move was precipitated by the Palestinians’ application for full U.N. membership – an application which has not been accepted by the U.N. Security Council. Icelandic lawmaker Amal Tamimi, who was born in Palestine, applauded the move as a necessary step, stating, “I hope that more countries will follow suit.” As the Icelandic parliament moved to recognize Palestine, the Palestinian Authority made clear it intends to push forward with its U.N. membership bid:
Palestinian UN observer Riyad Mansour read a message from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at UN headquarters on the occasion of the day of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

General News

Houses for Change: Kids with Homes Helping Kids Without

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“Homelessness won’t disappear,” Rabbi Lerner said in his keynote speech at the national conference of Family Promise, an interfaith nonprofit helping homeless families, “until people collectively work to end homelessness.” Family Promise has created a national campaign, Houses for Change, to do just that. It is a grassroots educational crafts project to arrange at family gatherings, congregations, schools, scout troops and other organizations. Since its launch a year ago, more than 15,000 kids and parents have made their own unique Houses for Change collection boxes to raise awareness of homelessness and raise funds to help homeless families. Using arts supplies and their imagination, participants decorate pre-ordered boxes to look like houses, take their boxes home and in the following weeks fill them with loose change.

General News

Reza Aslan and the Misrepresentation of Atheism at the American Academy of Religion

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The American Academy of Religion held its annual conference in San Francisco this past weekend. A large gathering that attracts many of the big shots — both progressive and conservative — in religious studies, the AAR meeting provides a space for critical dialogue about religion and the world. Not surprisingly there was a lack of discussion about atheism. But I was pleased to find one panel discussion on Monday morning called, “Beyond Atheistic and Religious Fundamentalism: Imagining the Common Good in the Public Sphere.” However, my excitement quickly turned to disappointment when I realized they forgot to do one important thing: include an atheist.

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“The Promise”: Considering Israel and Its Myth of Origins

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There is a shrinking minority of Israelis who share Erin’s consternation and are willing to question whether the end (Israel) justifies the means (Israel’s “original sins”). This group’s dwindling influence, due in part to the relentless attacks from the hawkish and nationalistic coalition that emerged from the last election, is palpable

General News

Israeli Police Force Closure of Jewish-Palestinian Radio Station as Attacks on Freedom of Press Intensify

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Israel’s newspaper Haaretz has declared that “democracy in Israel is under attack,” citing legislative measures limiting freedom of the press as one of the most troubling symptoms of this assault by hawkish lawmakers.
On Sunday, for the first time ever, many of Israel’s most influential journalists and media personalities gathered for an emergency conference in Tel Aviv to discuss alarming attempts by conservative lawmakers to silence dissenting, critical voices in the press.

General News

Libya: New 'Obama Doctrine' & Old Antisemitism

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I may be an outlier as a blogger on this site for fully supporting the NATO military campaign to oust Qaddafi. I was gratified that French aircraft stopped his forces cold as they closed in on Benghazi less than two months into the revolution. They would undoubtedly have exacted a terrible toll in death and suffering if they had been allowed to prevail and exact their revenge on the rebel capital. NATO’s ability to help the rebels overthrow this dictator, without sending in an army on the ground, was a triumph for collective action in a humanitarian cause. It also may have inaugurated a new “Obama Doctrine,” which emphasizes some important principles: that the United States lends its military might in a collective effort (in this case, even taking a back seat to France, Britain and other allies) in a limited way, with the support of an international consensus, as expressed in this instance by the United Nations Security Council; the U.S. and its allies need to be aware of their limitations and cannot intervene everywhere.