Israel blocks Gaza students from studying abroad

Palestinian student Hadeel Abu Kawik was supposed to spend next year in the United States on the prestigious Fulbright scholarship program, but now will remain where she is -- trapped in the Gaza Strip by an Israeli blockade.

The U.S. State Department reconsiders withdrawing Fulbright grants to seven Palestinians and asks Israel to let them travel.

By Richard Boudreaux, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
May 31, 2008

JERUSALEM -- Confined by Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip, two Palestinian sisters who dreamed of postgraduate studies abroad got their chance in January when Gaza militants destroyed part of a wall along the Egyptian border.

Yasmin Abukwaik, 22, joined the thousands who fled Gaza before the breach was sealed and now studies X-ray technology in the United Arab Emirates. Her sister Hadeel, a 23-year-old software engineering instructor, took a risk and stayed so she could qualify for one of the few Fulbright grants for Gaza residents to study this fall in the United States.

The young women's divergent paths illustrate the increasingly slim odds for Gazans seeking Israeli clearance to study abroad. Few succeed. The rest, including hundreds who have earned scholarships in the West, are frustrated by Israel's policy of isolating the coastal enclave, which is run by the militant group Hamas.

On Thursday the elder Abukwaik sister was told that her gamble had not paid off. The U.S. State Department notified her and six other Palestinians that it was withdrawing their Fulbright grants because Israel had not given them permission to leave Gaza.

But the news took Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice by surprise, and Friday the State Department said it was reviewing the decision and urging Israel to allow the seven students to travel to the United States. The Fulbright is the U.S. government's leading program in international educational exchange.

BABYLON & BEYOND

"I have sacrificed a lot for my dream," Hadeel Abukwaik said in a telephone interview from Gaza City. "I am troubled, angry, confused. If this decision is not changed, what will I do? Wait in Gaza another year with no guarantee of getting out?"

Since Hamas seized control of Gaza from the more secular Fatah party last June, Israel has all but closed its Gaza border crossings in an attempt to weaken the group and end frequent rocket barrages aimed at Israeli towns. Egypt, Gaza's other neighbor, has cooperated with Israel to keep 1.5 million Palestinians enclosed in the tiny, impoverished strip.

Of the more than 1,000 Gazans who applied, Israel allowed 480 to leave for study abroad during the 2007-08 academic year, according to Gisha, an Israeli organization that advocates freer movement of Palestinians. Israel stopped granting such permissions altogether in January.

At a hearing this week by the parliament's Education Committee, Defense Ministry lawyer Sagi Krispin explained that the Cabinet had declared Gaza "hostile territory" and decided that movement out of Gaza for humanitarian concerns would be limited to people seeking emergency medical treatment. Higher education, he said, is not a humanitarian concern.

That policy is under attack on two fronts in Israel.

Several lawmakers at Wednesday's hearing berated the government for denying bright young Palestinians the opportunity to acquire skills needed to modernize their society, saying such a policy will not contribute to peace.

"This could be interpreted as collective punishment," said Rabbi Michael Melchior, chairman of the Education Committee. "This policy is not in keeping with international standards or with the moral standards of Jews, who have been subjected to the deprivation of higher education in the past. Even in war, there are rules."

The committee asked the government and the military to reconsider the policy and report back within two weeks.

Meanwhile, Israel's Supreme Court next week is to hear appeals by three Gaza scholarship students challenging the government's assertion that it has no legal obligation to allow them to travel abroad.

One of the plaintiffs, Wissam abu Ajwa, has been denied an exit visa five times. He said he and many other Gaza scholarship candidates wanted to return home after completing their studies and build a democratic Palestinian state.

"We are a valuable asset," said the 31-year-old chemistry graduate, who has been accepted to study environmental sciences at Nottingham University in England. Israeli and Western officials often emphasize the need for a modern economy in the Palestinian territories, he said, "but who will contribute to it? Are you just going to borrow expertise from Europe? It won't work."

An Israeli official said the government was reluctant to adopt a blanket policy allowing Palestinians to leave Gaza to study for fear that Hamas would use the opening to send loyalists to the West Bank and create university-based cells to undermine the more moderate Fatah administration there.

But the official said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had been receptive to special appeals by governments on behalf of Gazans seeking to study in the U.S. and Europe. The official said American diplomats had made no such appeal on behalf of the Fulbright scholars as of Friday afternoon.

That changed after Rice learned of the State Department's decision to "redirect" all seven scholarships set aside for the Gazans to Palestinian students elsewhere. Speaking to reporters in Iceland, she said she would look into the situation. By evening, U.S. diplomats were making calls to Israeli officials, a department official said.

Fulbright scholar Abdulrahman Abdullah, 29, said he viewed the late-hour U.S. lobbying as a small test of American influence over the Jewish state.

"The United States government is saying it will push Israel to allow us to create a Palestinian state by the end of this year," he said, referring to the goal of peace negotiations begun in November. "Am I to believe this if the Americans cannot even get Israel to grant me a permit to leave Gaza?"

boudreaux@latimes.com

Times staff writers Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem and Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.

Chateau Marmoset--a Communitarian Castle concept

Park Guell by Antoni Gaudi, at Montana Pelada, Barcelona, Spain

Situated high on the ridge overlooking the hills and valleys below, Chateau Marmoset is a visible landmark for miles around yet it remains indivisible with the rocky prominence on which the organic castle has been built.

Massive redwood timbers supported by "shelf" walls of ferro-cement that have become plant-boxes so that all the wall surfaces of Chateau Marmoset are alive and green with plants and ivy and profusely rainbow colored as the flowers bloom in their scheduled times to keep the castle a spectacularly gorgeous sight to behold inside and out all through the year.

With one road in and one road out the Chateau Marmoset community keeps the hills free of human development yet several hundred people live in close proximity to the natural world.
Chateau Marmoset shows how human communities, clustered for all around resource use efficiency and well educated in ecological principles, can live in harmony with the life of the land.

Chateau Marmoset is a design concept for a cooperatively owned and managed eco-friendly Castle. The premise is that of all human architectural designs for multiple family dwellings throughout history there stands one common large structure design concept that never seems to offend human sensibilities- this is the Castle design. Apartment buildings come and go. Mansions come and go. But wherever castles are built they are usually cherished and kept for generations and generations, usually only falling to ruin by ancient warfare.

Castles are an integral part of our imaginary lives. They show up time and time again in our cultural traditions. Often communities will battle construction of new multiple apartment complexes citing offensive designs. But how many times have you heard people complaining about any castle on earth being out of place, an eyesore, etc.? For whatever reasons, castle designs are the most universally acceptable of large building designs in the world.

What we are changing is the ownership and occupancy of castle living. Instead of hereditary rulers or super wealthy ownership of castles we are promoting cooperative condominium-type ownership, perhaps along the lines of the Co-Housing ownership model. Of course, the whole idea of cooperative castle living is to share the expenses equally.

Our Chateau Marmoset will have no kings or dukes or Mr. Bigs with servants and underlings to do their bidding. No, each one shares in the ownership and management of the whole place on an democratic egalitarian basis. But instead of the royal family living in the upper rooms we have all residents living in the upper rooms which are equally divided among them into family or individual suites.

There would be a common main community kitchen where residents could rotate cooking shifts to relieve the individual of cooking every meal. There would a common library, a computer center, work studios, and all the accessories commonly found in large apartment complexes. Perhaps even cooperative transportation as well. The level of cooperative living would be determined by each cooperative castle resident association.

As for the actual eco-design of Chateau Marmoset, I haven't one, only elements that I would like to see incorporated into the castle design such as low-cost building techniques using ferro-cement and other alternative building materials.

One aspect I am intrigued with is interior landscaping using vegetation not only for aesthetic appeal but also for air cleansing and food production. Chateau Marmoset would have its own ecological system with animals and plants living in cooperative symbiosis with human beings. There are many, many innovations one can consider within the large scope of cooperative castle living.

Israeli settlers and army started to expand illegal settlement on Bil'in land

Monday May 26, 2008

Israeli settlers under the protection of the Israeli army started on Monday morning to install homes on lands that belong to villagers from Bil'in, located near the central West Bank city of Ramallah.

Iyad Burnat, of the local committee against the wall and settlement construction, said that villagers noticed the construction since early morning on Monday. Villagers tried to reach their land in order to stop the settlers but Israeli troops prevented them from crossing the wall.

A group of men from the village were staying over night in there land managed to come close to the trucks installing the mobile homes of the settlers and stopped them by standing infornt of them, Burnat stated. He added that the men will continue to block the trucks way in an attempt to stop the destruction of the villagers lands.

In 2007 the villagers of Bil'in won an Israeli high court of Justice decision to remove the Israeli wall that separates the village from its land and move it away. The Israeli army refused to comply with the order for "security reasons."

The court ruling also forbids the settlers from expanding the settlement of Mitetyaho Mizrah which is built on the village land. Today settlers came and installed six mobile homes on the villagers' land in a clear sign that they are going to expand their settlement, Burnat said.

Burnat demanded more involvement form the Palestinian Authority and he asked for the freeze of negotiations with Israel since Israel refuses to respect any agreements with the Palestinians.

Last November the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks were revived by the U.S on the basis of the Road Map peace plan. According to the Road Map plan Israel must stop all settlement activity in the West Bank.

The villagers of Bil'in have been conducting weekly nonviolent protests against the Israeli wall and settlements for a little over three years. Burnat told IMEMC that the villagers of Bil'in will continue their resistance and the legal work in the Israeli court system.

http://www.imemc.org/article/55064

For more information:

The Bilin Friends of freedom and Justice -society

Email: majdarmajdar@yahoo.com

Tel: 972 547 847 942

Ffj.bilin@yahoo.com

www.Bilin-ffj.org

"We need more than 3.3 million tents"

China says death toll in quake more than 51,000

By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer

BEICHUAN, China - China said the toll of dead and missing from last week's powerful earthquake jumped to more than 80,000, while the government appealed Thursday for millions of tents to shelter homeless survivors.

The confirmed number of dead rose nearly 10,000 from the day before to 51,151, Cabinet spokesman Guo Weimin told a news conference. Another 29,328 people remained missing and nearly 300,000 were hurt in the May 12 quake centered in Sichuan province, he said.

The disaster left 5 million people homeless and leveled more than 80 percent of the buildings in some remote towns and villages near the epicenter. In bigger cities entire apartment blocks collapsed or are now too dangerous to live in because of damage and worries about aftershocks.

"We need more than 3.3 million tents," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters, adding that 400,000 tents have already been delivered. It was the second call for tents from China in recent days.

"We hope and welcome international assistance in this regard. We hope the international community can give priority in providing tents," he said.

U.S. aid to earthquake victims totals $2.8 million, Ambassador Clark T. Randt Jr. said, including medical equipment and satellite images of damaged infrastructure. The American Red Cross had donated $10 million, and American companies operating in China have pledged more than $34 million.

Underscoring the need, Chinese President Hu Jintao visited two tent manufacturing companies in eastern Zhejiang province, urging workers to boost production to meet needs from the disaster area, state media reported.

Hu also chaired a meeting on the quake by China's highest governing body, the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party, where leaders vowed to continue the rescue effort "to the last village," according to a statement.

Vital supplies must be ensured in affected areas and stability restored to society, the committee said, adding that schools should be reopened and agricultural production restarted.

In one quake-hit area, the rescue effort was called off and work turned to reconstruction. Rescue teams departed Dujiangyan, where workers were burying bodies and clearing rubble from collapsed buildings, The Beijing Times state-run newspaper reported.

In the effort to assure people the government was placing top priority on relief efforts, Premier Wen Jiabao returned Thursday to the disaster zone, the official Xinhua News Agency said — his second trip there following a visit immediately after the quake.

The government is also grappling with official estimates of more than 4,000 children orphaned by the quake, and received hundreds calls from people offering to adopt them.

Anger that so many children died because their school buildings were poorly built continued to simmer online and in state media. The Southern Metropolis News quoted a rescuer as saying that rubble from the Juyuan high school, where more than 270 students died, showed that no steel reinforcing bars were used in construction, only iron wire.

Pictures posted online of Wufu town, where some 200 students died when the Fuxin No. 2 Primary School collapsed, showed roads lined with wreaths. Piles of dusty school bags were among the rubble.

"The children did not die because of a natural disaster, they died because of a dangerous building," read a hand-painted banner strung across a roadway.

In Beichuan, the smell of bleach was overpowering as rescue workers in white safety suits sprayed disinfectant in the area. Villagers were picking up medicine from stands set up by the government.

The town's government offices opened Thursday at a hotel in neighboring Anxian county.

"Our previous office buildings collapsed, but our responsibilities, never," Ma Yun, head of the county's administrative office, was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

Blocked streams, earthquake-loosened soil, mudslides and the upcoming rainy season create the risk of secondary disasters that can make relief work and rebuilding even more difficult, officials with the Ministry of Land and Resources said Thursday.

Avoiding further geological disasters during relief work and rebuilding will be a "daunting task," said Yun Xiaosu, vice minister of land and resources.

The earthquake and aftershocks created 34 lakes, known as barrier lakes, as debris blocked rivers and streams throughout the earthquake area.

"The dangers at the barrier lakes are severe," Yun said. "The water level in some lakes is high and rising. If there's a break, it will cause severe damage."

People who might be in the way of breaks already have been evacuated, he added.

The region's rainy season starts in June, creating further problems and risk of major mudslides, Yun said.

The torch relay, a symbol of the country's hopes for the Beijing Olympics, restarted Thursday with a minute of silence at a container terminal in the eastern seaport city of Ningbo. The torch run has been toned down in the wake of the temblor.

Originally planned for next month, organizers said the Sichuan leg of the run would be delayed until just before the start of the Aug. 8 games.

In another sign of attempts to return to normal after the quake, officials in the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu ordered all government bodies and companies to resume regular operations, Xinhua reported.

20 Jewish Activists Arrested, Disrupting Jewish Community Relations Council's (JCRC) 60th Anniversary of Israel Celebration in San Francisco

May 8, 2008 - Jewish Activists Draw Attention to 60 years of Palestinian Forced Exile and Dispossession, and stand in solidarity with 60+ years of Palestinian Resistance Click here for video of the action! San Francisco, May 8, 2008—In response to Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations, 20 Jewish activists were arrested, demonstrating Jewish opposition to Israel's 60-year-old policy of dispossession, and highlighting the often-silenced struggle of Palestinian refugees. For over two hours, 30 Jewish activists and supporters disrupted San Francisco's anniversary event, bunkering against the main atrium of the Jewish Community Center.. In conjunction, over thirty Jewish and Palestinian supporters held a rally outside the center to call attention to ongoing Israeli policy of apartheid against the Palestinian population. With banners reading, "Jews in Solidarity with 60+ years of Palestinian Resistance," activists declared anniversary, "No Time to Celebrate." "As Jews of conscience, acting in solidarity with 60-plus years of Palestinian resistance, we're here today to promote an "Independence" that does not depend on an ethnically or religiously exclusive state or on the displacement of indigenous people," said Eric Romann, International Jewish Solidarity Network (IJSN) organizer. "We want is joint liberation, not isolation." The action in San Francisco, organized by the local IJSN, is part of "No Time to Celebrate," a national Jewish campaign opposing Israel's 60th Anniversary celebrations, while simultaneously amplifying the American Jewish community's critique of Israeli policy. The Israeli Consulate and the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), who have attempted to silence any and all criticism of Israeli policy, were the sponsors of this event. The activists presented the JCRC with a statement listing the following demands: To stop the targeting of non-Jewish organizations, particularly of organizations serving communities of color in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, that criticize Israel and/or express solidarity with Palestine To stop claiming that anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel are anti-Semitic To acknowledge that they do not speak for the full organized Jewish community—that Jewish voices that criticize Israel and Zionism are legitimate voices of dissent within Jewish communities To criticize Israeli Deputy Defense Minister, Matan Vilnai threat of a "shoah" against the people of Gaza and demand a public apology for the exploitation of the Nazi genocide against the Jewish people for the continued ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Read the full statement at: http://www.ijsn.net/en/ijsn/jews_condemn_60/.

Gardenville

Garderville
(1992)

"Gardenville" is the name given for a state-of-the-art energy efficient, ecologically designed cooperative "new town" or village complex centered around an educational "eco-tourist" resort complex and school of sustainable lifestyle technology and culture. The cooperative community structure could be based on a combination of "Habitat for Humanity" low-cost financing and "Co-housing" models that seem to give the best aspects of shared and independent living.
The school would develop and teach ecological living methods and would use the resort facilities to house students in the Fall, Winter and Spring rainy season, while "eco-tourists" would use the same resort facilities during the Summer tourist season.

This model community would provide testing grounds for the development of our dreams of community self-sufficiency as it also gives us economic outlets for our creativity and healing arts with our own permanent arts and crafts Renaissance Village and Healing Arts health spa resort.
The time is right for this project as many folks who settled in our community hills are now having to face the fact that homesteading is not work for one’s retiring years. A mix of generations, a school of ecological living, an eco-tourist resort, and all the supporting services needed for them will generate a new and large source of revenue for all of the Southern Humboldt (Mateel) community while it gives us a vehicle to use and teach our best alternative community ideas and ideals for a better world.

Below: Map of Tooby Park Community site possibility, one of two favored sites in our area that was later taken up by another Mateel Community Park development group. "Gardenville" was presented to the developers of this Community Park site but so far has not been considered.

Salmon Creek Community

mourns Cathy Davis in 1976(?)

U.N. sees chance for global ban on cluster bombs

By Louis Charbonneau

Fri May 16, 7:08 PM ET

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations sees renewed momentum for a global ban on cluster bombs as more than 100 nations -- but not the world's top users and stockpilers -- gather in Dublin to finalize an anti-cluster munitions treaty.

A top U.N. official and diplomats from countries that support a ban say there is a good chance that the conference, which starts on Monday and runs through May 30, will end with the signing of a treaty outlawing cluster bombs.

"I see a momentum that warrants cautious optimism on what Dublin can bring about," Ad Melkert, associate administrator of the U.N. Development Program, told Reuters.

There is an increasing "awareness that leaving so many devices spread around is taking away the peace from people after conflicts, particularly for children," he said.

Cluster munitions open in mid-air and scatter as many as several hundred "bomblets" over wide areas. They often fail to explode, creating virtual mine fields that can kill or injure anyone who comes across them.

The UNDP says cluster munitions have caused more than 13,000 confirmed injuries and deaths around the world, the vast majority of them in Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon.

The so-called Oslo process against the bombs began three years ago and is modeled on the campaign against anti-personnel land mines, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 and led to the 1999 Ottawa Treaty banning them.

Melkert said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was playing a key role in the Norwegian-led campaign against cluster bombs by actively advocating a ban.

U.S. OPPOSES BAN ON CLUSTER BOMBS

The top producers, users and stockpilers of cluster bombs -- the United States, Israel, China, Russia, India and Pakistan -- will skip the conference. But diplomats say Washington is encouraging allies to adopt positions that could lead to a watered-down treaty.

"It is regrettable that the U.S. and a handful of other states continue to insist on their need to use a weapon that the rest of world is banning," said Steve Goose, director of the arms division at the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

"But we believe that a strong new treaty will stigmatize cluster munitions to such a degree that it will be difficult for any country to use them without international condemnation," he said.

Benjamin Chang, a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said: "We are opposed to any ban on cluster munitions. We do not believe they are indiscriminate weapons."

Melkert said there are billions of unused cluster munitions stockpiled by some 75 countries. Most of those countries are now backing a treaty banning such weapons.

But U.S. allies such as Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and Sweden are lobbying for the exclusion of some cluster bombs from the ban, diplomats said.

Some also are pushing for a transition period during which the devices could still be used and for deletion of a clause in the draft treaty -- approved in New Zealand this year -- that bars signatories from engaging in joint operations with countries actively using cluster munitions.

"As it stands, the draft treaty is a strong, comprehensive ban on cluster munitions. Any attempts to water it down should be rejected completely," Goose said.

Indian Island Massacre 128 years ago. Beginning of Zionist Colonization of Palestine 126 years ago

Right now in Humboldt County we have two very prominent advocates of "Progressive" politics, one being Hank Sims, the Editor of the Northcoast Journal, and the other being Eric Kirk, Prog activist with one of the most popular Progressive political blogs in Humboldt County, teaming up to discredit local Native Americans of the Bear River Band of Rohnerville Rancheria by ridiculing their Heartlands Project and one of its directors, me.

Now if it was just me I wouldn't be drawing the community's attention to Hank and Eric because as most of you know, I get criticism up the yin yang all the time because I am an activist myself and do not hold back from criticizing Prog sacred cows in Prog political territory like Eric's blog and Heraldo's. But this is different.

Hank Sims is the Editor of the Northcoast Journal. He has a responsibility to the community for NOT CENSORING TRIBAL NEWS which he has done for over two years now, refusing to publish anything about Bear River's Heartlands Project or the Tribe's involvement with the Palco Bankruptcy. The Bear River Heartlands Project included a partnership with Palco employees and news of that too Hank Sims has censored out of the Northcoast Journal news--two groups of people, one with over 300 Bear River tribal members and the other representing literally over a thousand Palco workers, past and present.

Does Hank Sims have a right to not only censor news of their Project from the community's awareness but to add ridicule of these people and their representative? I think he does not have such a right and exercising unilateral negative judgment on a Project that carries the hopes of so many people is something Hank Sims needs to rethink. As does Eric Kirk who has followed Hank into supporting Hank's slurs against Bear River tribal members and the person they've chosen to represent their interests now for over 13 years.

Here's Hank ridiculing the Bear River's Heartlands Project's Palco coordinator:

"Steve: It's not Bear River members and Palco workers -- it's the spun-out bwana who presumes, wrongly, to speak for them.

Mon May 12, 06:48:00 AM


Here's Hank thinking he's funny by giving the one name guaranteed to anger Bear River tribal members who remember Ken Miller's and Humboldt Watershed Council co-founder Bob Martel's attempts to sabotage the Heartlands Project in 1997.

"It sounds like a good idea, but wouldn't such a powerful story threaten the progressive community? Let me run it by Ken Miller and get back to you.

Otherwise, I'm thinking women's roller derby.

Tue May 13, 07:08:00 AM


Here's Eric going along with Hank in ridiculing Bear River and censoring my posts protesting Eric's and Hank's racist actions against local Native Americans.


Yeah -- gotta go with the roller derby.

Tue May 13, 10:13:00 AM


Here's Hank again:

"You're talking three (ex-)Palco workers and one uppity Injun, right?

Put 'em in spandex and skates and then we'll talk.

Tue May 13, 03:52:00 PM



Here's Hank telling us Bear River tribal members are calling me some isoteric Spanish song to ridicule me. As if the Spanish are particularly fondly remembered by California Native Americans.

"Go up about 19 posts above to the appropriate post which should have informed that how many Bear River tribal members are involved in the Heartlands Project? One? Hank?

But I thought that was superceded by the post about 12 posts up, in which the tribe determined that you were cucurrucucú.

Tue May 13, 07:06:00 PM


Here's Hank again making fun of my observation that he's racially prejudiced against local Native Americans.

"Steve: If I'm racist, it's only because of the ancient Ashkenazi blood flowing through my veins from 600 years ago. Not my fault.

But you're not being fair to Eric. He was merely suggesting that the Heartlands Project could be significantly improved with the addition of an American Gladiators component.

Judges love American Gladiators. Eric knows this.

Wed May 14, 07:07:00 AM



Eric and Hank, the new White People's gurus telling the Progressive community that Bear River tribal members are for all intense and purposes nuts for thinking they can get back their ancestral lands through the Heartlands Project. An anon using Hank's language to that effect even tried to post Hank's sentiment here. And of course, all Palco workers are "wacky" too even though three former Palco workers are behind the Palco Community Corporation part of the Heartlands Project and every current Palco worker we've talked to about the PCC plan wishes us luck even if they are too afraid of losing their jobs to help us.

But we cannot get help to them or to the Bear River tribe if we have people like Hank and Eric censoring news of us to the Progressive community, the people most likely in Humboldt County to want to help Bear River tribal people regain their ancestral lands and Palco workers form an employee owned new Palco corporation that protects their rights.

My anger is up and I am calling Hank and Eric racists for their actions against local Native Americans. Actually, I can include Eric's support of colonial Zionists also of the same racist stripe as was seen here in Humboldt County in 1860, the beginnings of the California Indian Wars with the victors after slaughtering Native Americans indiscrimatel and stealing all their land, us.

Don't let it happen again. Protest Hank and Eric leading Progressives into wrong attitudes and wrong action against local Native Americans.

P

Palestinian Options as the Nakba turns 60

by Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD We are 126 years after the practical initiation of Zionist project to colonize Palestine and we are 60 years after the realization of that vision in the form of a Jewish ethnocentric nationalistic state. These are very short periods in human histories (the crusader kingdoms lasted much longer). History teaches us that native people are not guaranteed victory but that they always have many options moving forward. In this assay, I explore the challenges and the many options open for Palestinians as we enter perhaps the most challenging period of our history. George Bush's speech in front of the Israeli Knesset "celebrating" this ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the politicide that followed included this with no bit of irony: "The alliance between our governments is unbreakable, yet the source of our friendship runs deeper than any treaty. It is grounded in the shared spirit of our people, the bonds of the Book, the ties of the soul. When William Bradford stepped off the Mayflower in 1620, he quoted the words of Jeremiah: 'Come let us declare in Zion the word of God.' The founders of my country saw a new promised land and bestowed upon their towns names like Bethlehem and New Canaan. And in time, many Americans became passionate advocates for a Jewish state." Will his "Manifest destiny" characterize the future and will Palestinian natives follow the trajectory of America's natives? Will he be proven wrong here as he was proven wrong in Iraq and Afghanistan? We cannot guarantee anything. We only know that history is not something that happens; it is made. Further, natives can learn to analyze objectively without losing their dreams and aspirations (and natives in America have not given up). In Palestine, we actually have far more options and possibilities if we look at things objectively. Today, there are millions of Jews who identify themselves as Zionist of various shades and who hold significant power in Western Countries. There are some 5 million Jews and five million Palestinian (Christian, Muslim, and other) who live under the rule of the apartheid Israeli state. Half the Jews who live in Palestine/Israel are immigrants. Seven million of the 10 million Palestinians in the world are refugees or displaced people. Israel stole most of the land and now controls some 93% of the land of Palestine (before the British invasion and the Balfour Declaration, native and Zionist Jews collectively owned only 2% of Palestine). The CIA predicted accurately the meaning of Truman's push to partition Palestine despite the wishes of its inhabitant and despite the UN charter and they wrote in a now declassified document (ORIGINAL November 28, 1947): "Armed hostilities between Jews and Arabs will break out if the UN General Assembly accepts the plan to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states....The Jews are expected to be able to mobilize some 200,000 fighters in Palestine.. The Jewish armed groups in Palestine are well equipped and well trained in commando tactics. Initially they will achieve marked success over the Arabs because of superior organization and equipment....The US by supporting partition has already lost much of its prestige in the Near East In the event that partition is imposed on Palestine, the resulting conflict will seriously disturb the social, economic, and political stability of the Arab world, and US commercial and strategic interests will be dangerously jeopardized. ..The poverty, unrest, and hopelessness upon which Communist propaganda thrives will increase throughout the Arab world. (and later in the document, p. 6) US prestige on teh other hand has steadily decreased with each new indication that the US supports the Zionists. The good will enjoyed by the US at the time of the Rosevelt-Ibn Saud Conference and following backing of Lebanese and Syrian claims for independence was short lived as a result of President Truman's support of Jewish immigration to Palestine and of the Anglo-American Committee report. Because of the long standing cultural ties between the US and the Arab world, the friendly role that the US played in the achievement of Syrian and Lebanese independence, the partial dependence of certain Arab states on oil royalties from US companies, and the promise of increased royalties in the future, the Arab states would like to maintain friendly relations with the US. ... Little of this (positive) development will be possible, if the US supports a Jewish state in Palestine." (http://tinyurl.com/2c4kh3) History may be written many times by the colonizers and their supporters (and rewritten, revised, distorted by those with agendas) but while it can't be rewinded, it can be shaped. For example, the colonization of South Africa and the dismantlement of apartheid happened without expelling the white settlers or their descendants and it is still a work in progress. But other fates can await us in Palestine: the fate of Algeria's struggle against colonial rule or the fate of Native Americans or the fate of Northern Ireland. No one has a crystal ball and can predict the future with certainty. We can reflect on trends and we can also reflect on available options. While oppressors and their supporters have many options, the natives also have options. First a realistic check. Today after this history of conflict and war, Israel is an economically vibrant state with support from much of the world governments. It has tremendous military power with the fourth or fifth strongest army on earth and with 100% support from the only remaining superpower (whose internal politics dictate that people running for high office grovel at the feet of the Israel lobby). This unrivaled political and military power ensures that places where the public is very much in support of Palestinian rights (including the right to return to their homes and lands) like Italy and Egypt have governments that are subserviant to Zionist and US imperial and elite interests. It ensures that money is funneled through corporations and governments in support of Zionism from ordinary citizens who have no clue about these transactions. Hence extra cost for products that carry a "kosher label" that go not for the cost of such certification but through the Orthodox Union to support Israel and Zionism. Hence US taxpayers unwittingly pumping several billion every year to Israel because their politicians want to be (re-)elected and need the power of the Israel-first lobby (cash and media access). Hence silencing of investigations into Israeli military and economic spying on Western countries (Israel now sells lots of US technology to countries like China). Hence repackaging of stolen US technology sold back to the US public unwittingly not knowing its origin. Hence Michael Chertof, Zionist head of US national security awarding no-bid contracts for security of the US Mexico borders to Israeli instead of US Companies. Hence the Iran-(Israel)-Contra affair (yes Israel was the Middleman in that deal with a big cut). Hence the attacks on honorable Americans like Senator Fullbright, Congressman Findley, and ex-President Jimmy Carter. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. and the list is endless. On the positive side, the original Zionist blue prints are for control of the area between the Euphrates and the Nile. Here we are 126 years later and even the area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean is roughly at parity between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians. 30 years ago, Zionists had convinced most of the world that there was no such thing as Palestinians (only Arabs who happen to be in our way out of Eretz Yisrael). Today most of the world and even Zionists themselves recognize that not only are there Palestinians but that indeed there is such a thing as Palestine. The Palestinian flag now flies around Palestine even inside the Green line. But whether one looks at the glass as half full or half empty, it is how to go beyond the desriptive to the prescriptive that captivates most Palestinian intellectuals and ordinary Palestinians. Of course there is no uniformity of Israeli opinions and there is even less uniformity of Palestinian opinions. Here are just two Palestinians expressing certain opinions/sentiments: 1) Prof. Edward Said (e.g. in the Question of Palestine) provides the intellectual analysis: "The irreducible and functional meaning of being a Palestinian has meant living through Zionism first as a method of acquiring Palestine, second as a method for dispossessing and exiling Palestinians, and third as a method for maintaining Israel as a state in which Palestinians are treated as non-Jews, and from which politically they remain exiles despite (in the case of the 650,000 Israeli-Palestinian citizens)[now 1.5 million-MQ] their continued presence on the land" or in this "Who is now asking the existential questions about our future as a people? The task cannot be left to a cacophony of religious fanatics and submissive, fatalistic sheep. ...Years of sacrifice and struggle, of bones broken in hundreds of prisons and torture chambers from the Atlantic to the Gulf, families destroyed, endless poverty and suffering. Huge, expensive armies. For what? This is not a matter of party or ideology or faction: it's a matter of what the great theologian Paul Tillich used to call ultimate seriousness. Technology, modernization and certainly globalization are not the answer for what threatens us as a people now. We have in our tradition an entire body of secular and religious discourse that treats of beginnings and endings, of life and death, of love and anger, of society and history. This is there, but no voice, no individual with great vision and moral authority seems able now to tap into that and bring it to attention....There is a wonderful expression that very precisely and ironically catches our unacceptable helplessness, our passivity and inability to help ourselves now when our strength is most needed. The expression is: will the last person to leave please turn out the lights? We are that close to a kind of upheaval that will leave very little standing and perilously little left even to record, except for the last injunction that begs for extinction. Hasn't the time come for us collectively to demand and formulate a genuinely Arab alternative to the wreckage about to engulf our world?" 2) Fawaz Turki provides the language of the heart (The Disinherited, 2nd edition (Monthly Review Press, 1972) pp. 160-161). "The private terrors that shadow the everyday life of the exile, the refugee, the occupied, the stateless would have forever remained private were it not for the fact that from these terrors an occasional outcry of fathomless anger is emitted, spilling over to the outside world. This outside world, standing with its back to the human passions housed within the confines of the ghetto, the refugee camp, the occupied city, and the colonized town, does not understand these occasional outcries, simply because their idiom and their metaphor, their cause and effect stem from a reality alien to the outside world. Yet those of us who have known no other reality, driven by it as if by the terrors of a primal pain, also share our humanity with other men and women, denying them monopoly of this humanity. Such is the matrix of logic of the outside world in this day that the onus always falls on the oppressed to explain his position, to prove his sincerity, to justify his platform, to articulate his vision of the future and to truly, truly convince his oppressor (whose napalm and military occupation, whose racist excesses and sadistic regressions have crushed his very soul and reduced him to a fragment) that he is motivated by love and not hate. Above all, he is called upon to believe in the notion that the violence of the oppressor to subdue him with sophisticated weapons and keys to the dungeons, is moral. His own violence which he uses to break his chains is immoral." in the 1960s civil rights struggle, the phrase was used "free your mind and your ass will follow." Surely, between these two voices of the past and thousands, millions of other Palestinian voices, surely we can have a vision and a direction and free all our minds. Surely there are many options despite the attempt of our oppressors to convince us that our options are gone save for surrender. Surely, there is hope. To think of many possible options (good or bad) for the native Palestinians moving forward is an exercise worth pursuing if nothing else than to show us that there are choices besides surrender. These 20 options are listed simply as examples (not an exhaustive list) of potential options that some Palestinians have considered (rightly or wrongly). These options are also not mutually exclusive, not exhaustive, and some may overlap: 1) Collaborate or succumb to the power structures, play along and obey the people in power (e.g. Palestinian police to train by the CIA and operate to quell Palestinian violent and nonviolent resistance) and hope for whatever handouts the chiefs decide. 2) Revive the Palestine Liberation Organization with the original charter to liberate all of Palestine from Zionist colonial rule (democratized PLO). 3) Engage in massive nonviolent resistance in the areas occupied in 1967 (3.6 million Palestinians form a base). 4) Engage in massive nonviolent resistance in the areas occupied since 1948 (1.5 million Palestinians who are Israeli citizens form a base). 5) Start an Intifada/uprising in the the areas occupied since 1948 (violent and nonviolent resistance, nonviolent resistance ongoing now can be intensified) 6) Start an Intifada/uprising in the the areas occupied since 1967 (violent and nonviolent resistance, nonviolent resistance ongoing now can be intensified) 7) Engage in nonviolent resistance in areas outside of Palestine (300,000 Palestinians in the US, 350,000 in Lebanon, 2 million in Jordan). 8) Engage in resistance outside of Palestine that involves targeting Israeli Zionist companies and interests world wide by economic sabotage. 9) Engage in targeting individuals that support war crimes and support Zionist control (e.g. Richard Perle, Alan Dershowitz, Israeli leaders etc) with the logic that this creates a cost for engaging in or supporting war crimes and crimes against humanity. 10) Engage in educational campaigns and media campaigns. Lobbying, writing, speaking out etc with the logic of capturing hearts and minds by telling the truth of what colonial Zionism has done. 11) Build alliances with powerful states that could provide protection or support. 12) Wait for the US/Israel empire to collapse of its own weight and idiocies (Israel pushed the US to go to war on Iraq and are now pushing for a conflict with Iran, these are bancrupting the US). 13) Convert to Judaism and claim the right of return as a Jew. 14) Engage in boycotts, divestments, and sanctions which are helpful also in raising awareness about the apartheid nature of Israel. 15) Depend on God's will and His designs for the future. 16) Attack fellow Palestinians you disagree with. 17) Live for the moment, build for your family, forget the collective interest. 18) Intermarry with Israeli Jews and move back to Palestine to live with your spouse and produce lots of children 19) Convince enough Israeli Jews to abandon Zionism and vote for a post-Zionist state for all its people. 20) Write poems, do music, perform plays and other resistance arts. There can be many combinations of the above; statistically even three combinations can result in hundreds of cocktails. Some options were adopted, others talked about, some feasible, some unrealistic. I am sure some readers will think of other options I have not listed. The purpose of this mental exercise was to show that there are many, many options. History of course provides some lessons on what works or what does not work but most people ignore history. (As Hegel pointed out, learn from history that we learn nothing from history.) So what remains for us is that Palestinians need to open up such discussions as to what options they have. We may arrive at some conclusions and we may agree to disagree on directions. But such a discourse ensures we focus on actions not talk. A recent author noted that Israel is successful but Zionism has failed. I would say history in this case is still in flux and as always our actions do make a difference. Actions will speak louder than words and will shape our destinies in the next 60 years. As Palestinians, now the sacrificial lambs for a supine world community, we can shape our future with choices we make. Silence and collaboration are both complicity in this epic injustice that best epitomizes the 21st century, the injustice of continuing ethnic cleansing/continuing Nakba. Just like Palestinians, those who show backbone and support this noble struggle also have equally varied and contradictory choices. But that is the subject of another discussion. For now, the choice that remains relevant is the one posed by Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Cowardice asks the question - is it safe? Expediency asks the question - is it politic? Vanity asks the question - is it popular? But conscience asks the question - is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.” And choosing to do what is right must also adhere to that universal wisdom: "Grant me the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept those I can't, and the WISDOM TO KNOW the difference." Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD http://qumsiyeh.org http://justicewheels.org http://palestineconference.org

The Northcoast Journal's Editor is a Racist--Boycott the Northcoast Journal

It pains me to report this fact but there's no other explanation for the Editor of the Northcoast Journal's current postings on Eric Kirk's SoHum Parlance blog. Hank Sims is acting as a racist bigot who is currently ridiculing Bear River Tribal Council and Tribal members who have authorized the Heartlands Project leaders twice to represent the whole Tribe, over 300 members, in the Tribe's attempts to recover aboriginal territorial land under the ownership of Pacific Lumber Company.

Here is a copy of the first authorization given to me in 1996 before Donald Brenard joined the Headwaters Lottery project and together we changed the name to the Heartlands project.






Here is a copy of the latest authorization given to Don Brenard and myself in March of this year to represent the Bear River tribe and all its members in the Palco Bankruptcy proceedings in Corpus Christi, Texas.


Here is the text of that authorization given to Don Brenard and myself.

BEAR RIVER BAND of ROHNERVILLE RANCHERIA

27 BEAR RIVER DR. LOLETA, CA 95551 707.733.1900, fax 733.1972

February 28, 2008

Judge Richard S. Schmidt

United States Courthouse

1133 N. Shoreline Blvd.

Corpus Christi, TX 78401

Re: -Pacific Lumber Company Bankruptcy proceeding

-Claim of Aboriginal Title and Rights to Land Assets Presently Being Held by

Pacific Lumber Company and Scotia Pacific Company

Honorable Richard S. Schmidt:

The Bear River Band of Rohnerville Rancheria, a federally-recognized Tribe with

aboriginal claim to most of the land presently held by Pacific Lumber Company and

Scotia-Pacific Company, has designated Mr. Donald Brenard, an enrolled tribal member,

and the Heartlands Commission to represent the Tribe in the Pacific Lumber Company

Bankruptcy proceedings to represent the Tribe's title, interests and claims to its historical

and cultural lands in southern Humboldt County, CA. The Tribe's three specific interests

include 1) the recovery of ancestral lands under conservation easements, 2) the protection

and repatriation of the cultural resources in this area, including scores of documented

villages sites, burial sites, and other sacred sites, and 3) the sustainable economic

stewardship of the natural resources on those lands. The Tribe requests that, pursuant to

Executive Orders and federal laws related to government-to-government consultation, the

Court consider the claims and role of the Tribe in these proceedings.

Thank you sincerely for your consideration.

Dakota McGinnis

Vice-Chairman

Bear River Band of Rohnerville Rancheria

I have repeatedly asked Hank Sims to report what has been happening with Bear River's attempt to enter the Palco Bankruptcy but he's refused and ridiculed the Heartlands Project in the NCJ and on Eric's blog. Eric Kirk has joined in with Hank in ridiculing the Heartlands Project and thus 300 Bear River tribal members who won't think their attempts at humor are anything more than white bigots in action.

It's people like Hank and Eric who give local Native Americans reason for distrusting white people. Even so-called "Progressives" cannot contain their prejudices when they think no one is looking.

Boycott the Northcoast Journal

Because the Editor is currently ridiculing the attempts of local Native Americans to regain their ancestral land.

Key 9/11 suspect charges dropped

The Pentagon has dropped charges against a Saudi citizen alleged to have been the "20th hijacker" in the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US.

Mohammad al-Qahtani was one of six Guantanamo Bay inmates charged with murder and war crimes in February.

The Pentagon said the case against the other five defendants would proceed.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against the suspects in a case before military tribunals at the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay.

'Torture'

A Pentagon official said the charges against Mohammad al-Qahtani had been dropped "without prejudice", meaning they could be reinstated.

Lawyers for the defendant say they believe the charges were dropped because he "was tortured" under interrogation.

The decision could have implications for the other five suspects, whose lawyers claim that similar treatment was meted out to them, the BBC's Adam Brookes reports from Washington.

Authorities say Mr Qahtani failed to take part in the 9/11 attacks because he was denied entry into the US by an immigration official.

In 2006, he recanted accusations he had made against fellow detainees of having links to al-Qaeda.

His lawyer told Time magazine the statements had been extracted under torture.

The Saudi was reportedly submitted to stress positions, sleep deprivation and humiliation at Guantanamo.

Apartheid Victims to Sue Multinationals

South Africa:
13 May 2008
Posted to the web 13 May 2008

John Allen
Cape Town

Victims of apartheid who are suing 23 leading multinational corporations in American courts on the grounds that the companies collaborated with the policy have been given clearance to take their case forward.

The United States Supreme Court issued an order in Washington, DC, on Monday affirming a decision by a lower court, the effect of which is to allow the case to go ahead. The Supreme Court was unable to hear the case because four of its nine members had to recuse themselves, leaving the court unable to form a quorum.

The Khulumani Support Group, an organisation of apartheid victims and survivors, welcomed the court order as a "significant development" in a statement issued in Cape Town on Tuesday.

It said the decision meant "the critical arguments that corporations should be held accountable for aiding and abetting the perpetration of gross human rights violations, can now be interrogated."

However, New York Times Supreme Court correspondent Linda Greenhouse reported on Tuesday that it was still "highly uncertain" whether the case would ever go to trial.

She wrote that the court had been sceptical in the past about using the two-century-old American law under which the case is being brought, the Alien Tort Statute, as a means of pursuing cases arising out of human rights violations committed outside the U.S. In a footnote to a previous case, it had said of the apartheid case that there was "a strong argument that federal courts should give serious weight to the executive branch's view of the case's impact on foreign policy." The Bush administration, as well as the South African government, have opposed the case.

Greenhouse also suggested that the court was unable to hear the apartheid case as a consequence of three judges holding stock in defendant companies, and the employment by another company of the son of a fourth judge.

"The outcome calls attention to the occasionally uncomfortable consequences of the justices' ownership of stock in individual companies," she wrote. "With solitary recusals being much more frequent, a 4-to-4 deadlock is a more common outcome than an inability to proceed with the case at all."

Khulumani said its case targetted the multinationals "for having aided and abetted the perpetration of gross human rights violations in South Africa under apartheid by equipping and financing the apartheid government's military and security agencies."

It said all the defendants had operations in apartheid South Africa, and it was seeking damages for "specific violations of internationally recognized human rights norms... by the apartheid government following the United Nations' classification of apartheid as a crime against humanity."

It named the defendants in the case as: Barclay National Bank Ltd., British Petroleum, PLC, Chevrontexaco Corporation, Chevrontexaco Global Energy, Inc., Citigroup, Inc., Commerzbank, Credit Suisse Group, Daimlerchrysler AG, Deutsche Bank AG, Dresdner Bank AG, Exxonmobil Corporation, Ford Motor Company, Fujitsu, Ltd., General Motors Corporations, International Business Machines Corp., J.P. Morgan Chase, Shell Oil Company, UBS AG, AEG Daimler-Benz Industrie, Fluor Corporation, Rheinmetall Group AG, Rio Tinto Group and Total-Fina-El

Happy Mother's Day

My daughter and grandson. God Bless mothers!

Urge the government of Myanmar to cooperate

				AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA
			A cyclone devastated the lives of over a million Myanmar residents. However, the government of Myanmar is slow to help pick up the pieces. Urge the government of Myanmar to cooperate with the international community in the distribution of humanitarian aid.
			We've been closely watching the devastation in Myanmar caused by Cyclone Nargis for nearly a week now. Despite the disaster, Myanmar's government keeps the country on lockdown. Only a handful of flights offering assistance have been allowed in. Relatively few resources like food, water, medicine, blankets and tents have been given out. Call on the government of Myanmar to distribute humanitarian aid to victims of Cyclone Nargis. Our hearts go out to the victims of this terrible tragedy. The cyclone has killed thousands of people and more than a million have been displaced from their homes. Myanmar's government must work with international relief efforts to help the victims of Cyclone Nargis by:			Children sit outside their damaged house in a cyclone-hit area of Burma. © KHIN MAUNG WIN/AFP/Getty Images
			granting access to humanitarian aid workers into Myanmar by easing visa restrictions and customs procedures allowing professional relief workers to offer assistance without restriction or interference establishing clear and transparent guidelines for delivering aid that are based on need; not race, gender, national or social origin, political opinion, or religion The people of Myanmar must focus on putting their lives back together. Tell the government of Myanmar to help pick up the pieces - ensure that cyclone victims receive humanitarian aid. Sincerely, Larry Cox Executive Director Amnesty International USA

Stop Violence Against Women campaign

This Mother's Day, honor the mothers, sisters and daughters in your life by making a gift to our Stop Violence Against Women campaign.

		Help us halt the global epidemic of violence against women. Kavira Muraulu survived rape and violent attacks by government soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. ©AI Honorata Barinjibanwa was just 18 years old when she was kidnapped from her village in the Democratic Republic of Congo by Rwandan outlaw fighters last April. She spent five long months tied to a tree - her captors untied her only to gang rape her. She survived to tell her story, but remains deeply wounded by the attacks. Rape is a weapon of war in so many countries around the world, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia and Sudan. And one thing is clear - the problem of violence against women vastly exceeds the resources currently devoted to stopping it. Through our Stop Violence Against Women campaign, Amnesty International is leading an effort to end this systematic violation of women's basic human rights. But we have a long road ahead of us to ensure that our work brings real changes for women. Despite overwhelming barriers, none of this is inevitable or irreversible. Your gift today can bring urgently needed funds to Amnesty's grassroots efforts to end the most brutal forms of violence against women in more than 36 countries around the world. Amnesty and its coalition partners were the driving force behind the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA) introduced in Congress last October. This bill would authorize nearly $700 million for local programs and services to help end the most brutal forms of violence against women, including honor killings, bride burnings, genital mutilation, mass rapes in war and domestic violence. Its passage is a critical first step in improving the lives of millions of women and girls around the world - women just like Honorata Barinjibanwa. Please join me today in honoring our mothers, sisters and daughters by making a tax-deductible gift to support Amnesty's Stop Violence Against Women campaign. Together, we can put an end to the horrors women face every day around the world. Thank you for your continued commitment to advancing the human rights of women and girls worldwide. Sincerely, Irene Khan Amnesty International Secretary General