New Orleans seeks foreign aid!

IOL: Nagin looks for helping hands from overseas: "Nagin looks for helping hands from overseas

February 07 2006 at 01:07AM

By Michael Depp

New Orleans - Shortcomings in aid from the United States government are making New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin look to other nations for help in rebuilding his hurricane-damaged city.

Nagin, who has hosted a steady stream of foreign dignitaries since Hurricane Katrina hit in late August, says he may seek international assistance because US aid has not been sufficient to get the city back on its feet.

'I know we had a little disappointment earlier with some signals we're getting from Washington but the international community may be able to fill the gap,' Nagin said when a delegation of French government and business officials passed through on Friday to explore potential business partnerships.

Jordan's King Abdullah also visited New Orleans on Friday and Nagin said he would encourage foreign interests to help redevelop some of the areas hardest hit by the storm."

Uhg! It is like living in developing country!

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Brothers in arms - Israel's secret pact with Pretoria

Second part of the two part series on Israel and Apartheid.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Brothers in arms - Israel's secret pact with Pretoria: "srael's critics say that as the threats to the Jewish state receded it came more and more to resemble the apartheid model - particularly in its use of land and residency laws - until the similarities outweighed the differences. Liel says that was never the intent.

'The existential problems of Israel were real,' he says. 'Of the injustice we did, we're always ashamed. We always tried to behave democratically. Of course, on the private level there was a lot of discrimination - a lot, a lot. By the government also. But it was not a philosophy that was built on racism. A lot of it was security-oriented.'

Goldreich disagrees. 'It's a gross distortion. I'm surprised at Liel. In 1967, in the six day war, in this climate of euphoria - by intent, not by will of God or accident - the Israeli government occupied the territories of the West Bank and Gaza with a captive Palestinian population obviously in order to extend the area of Israel and to push the borders more distant from where they were,' he says.

'I and others like me, active after the six day war on public platforms, tried desperately to convince audiences throughout this country that peace agreements between Israel and Palestine [offer] greater security than occupation of territory and settlements. But the government wanted territory more than it wanted security."

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Worlds apart

Excellent two part article from the guardian about whether Israel's treatment of the Palestinians can be compared to Apartheid.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Worlds apart: "As far back as 1961, Hendrik Verwoerd, the South African prime minister and architect of the 'grand apartheid' vision of the bantustans, saw a parallel. 'The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state,' he said. It is a view that horrifies and infuriates many Israelis.

A prominent Israeli political scientist, Gerald Steinberg, responded to an invitation to appear on a panel at a Jerusalem cultural centre to debate 'Is Israel the new apartheid?' by denouncing the organiser, a South African-born Jew, for even posing the question.

'As you are undoubtedly aware, the pro-Palestinian and anti-semitic campaign to demonise Israel focuses on the entirely false and abusive analogy with South Africa. Using the term 'apartheid' to apply to Israel's legitimate responses to terror and the threat of annihilation both demeans the South African experience, and is the most immoral of charges against the right of the Jewish people to self-determination,' he replied.

Many Israelis recoil at the suggestion of a parallel because it stabs at the heart of how they see themselves and their country, founded after centuries of hatred, pogroms and ultimately genocide. If anything, many of Israel's Jews view themselves as having more in common with South Africa's black population than with its oppressors. Some staunch defenders of Israel's policies past and present say that even to discuss Israel in the context of apartheid is one step short of comparing the Jewish state to Nazi Germany, not least because of the Afrikaner leadership's fascist sympathies in the 1940s and the disturbing echoes of Hitler's Nuremberg laws in South Africa's racist legislation.

Yet the taboo is increasingly challenged. As Israel's justice minister, Tommy Lapid, said, Israel's defiance of international law in constructing the West Bank barrier could result in it being treated as a pariah like South Africa. Malaysia's prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, has called for a campaign against Israel of the kind used to pressure South Africa."

CALIFORNIA / Bush gets bill slashing foster care aid / State, 8 others in West affected by federal cutback

Republicans screw abused children to pay for tax cuts on the wealthy.

CALIFORNIA / Bush gets bill slashing foster care aid / State, 8 others in West affected by federal cutback: "A bill awaiting President Bush's signature includes provisions to cut off federal foster care benefits for hundreds of California children living with low-income relatives after being removed from the homes of abusive or neglectful parents.

If the cutback survives an expected court challenge, the reduction in aid will be substantial. In the Bay Area and other high-cost regions, for example, a woman providing foster care for grandchildren ages 7 and 10, who now gets $1,315 a month, would receive $723, the amount of a conventional welfare grant.

The higher aid total was ordered by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco in a March 2003 ruling that was binding in California and eight other Western states. The ruling said children who are placed with grandparents or other family members can receive federal aid based on their new foster parents' low incomes.

The government had argued that the aid should be based on the incomes of the parents from whose homes the children were removed.

Tucked into the federal Deficit Reduction Act, which won final passage Wednesday on a largely party-line vote of 216-214 in the House, is language declaring that the appeals court ruling was wrong and that long-standing federal law bases eligibility solely on the parents' incomes."

MyDD :: Direct Democracy for People-Power

"Three Card Monty" Washington style!

MyDD :: Direct Democracy for People-Powered Politics: "You Don't Get Points for Trying"

I'm going to get a lot of flack for this post, but here goes.

A filibuster is an extreme action that requires robust public support. We do not have this support. It's that simple. I'm all for keeping Alito off the court, and a filibuster until after the SOTU is a good idea. But it's very important for the netroots to understand what's happening here. This last-minute campaign to get Senators to switch their votes, after it became crystal clear that we do not have the votes to filibuster, is a classic example of 'get points for trying' politics. It's a way for Senators to get credit from the left-wing of the party without having to actually do anything or stop anything. The reality is that this fight was lost two months ago, when Senators decided that going on Christmas break was more important than preparing to defend the constitution, and PFAW and Alliance for Justice decided that releasing 150 page documents was a good way to build public pressure against Alito's confirmation

By all means, call your Senators. Don't stop. Don't let up. But don't forgive the party leadership and our groups for this travesty. People for the American Way has been preparing for this fight for years. And then they didn't show up. The same is true with NARAL, and the Alliance for Justice. I honestly don't know why they are funded anymore - that's how bad this failure has been. And Senators - including DiFi, HRC, Kerry, and Obama - have revealed themselves to be craven fair weather fans who expect others to do the work of standing up for Democratic values for them. Think about it for a moment. John Kerry called for a filibuster from Switzerland two hours after it became public that there were not enough votes for a filibuster. That is atrocious. Tinman points out on Breaking Blue the essential point:

If he was serious about it he would have stayed in Washington, held press conferences, lobbied his colleagues and tried to generate as much attention as possible. Since it was just a PR stunt, it wasn't necessary for Kerry to change his travel plans................

And don't delude yourself, this is intentional. The attitude that the insiders have towards us is that we are a stupid ATM set up to feed their ineffectiveness. Witness uberinsider telling us the truth about where we fit in:

"The bloggers and online donors represent an important resource for the party, but they are not representative of the majority you need to win elections," said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist who advised Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. "The trick will be to harness their energy and their money without looking like you are a captive of the activist left."

Hebron for Beginners - by Ran HaCohen

Hebron for Beginners - by Ran HaCohen: "The Reality

Two beautiful stories indeed; alas, both of them miss reality. Remember that the squatters could take over the wholesale market simply because the Palestinian merchants had been driven out. The market had been closed by Israel in 1994 as a confidence-destroying measure following the Goldstein massacre, in which a Jewish settler murdered 29 Palestinian worshippers in the Patriarchs’ Tomb in Hebron (apropos 'killing and taking possession'). In the Hebron Agreement of 1997, Israel pledged to return the market to the Palestinians and let it be reopened; a wall should have separated it from the settlers’ homes. However, Israel respects treaties only in extremely exceptional cases, and Hebron is not such a rare exception.

Both the nationalist and the liberal stories are wrong on the most crucial point: they both err to believe that Israel intends to give the market back to the Palestinians. Israel has nothing of the kind in mind. All Israel needs now is a good show that looks like the liberal fantasy; especially on the eve of the general elections, it is desirable to be portrayed as a resolute, moderate, and law-abiding government. But it’s the nationalist, colonialist fantasy that is being realized. In a combined effort of Israel’s government, police, army, and settlers, Israel had a major success in ethnically cleansing Hebron’s center of its Palestinian inhabitants. Reopening the market might revive trade at the heart of the city and reverse Israel’s achievement.

What’s the solution? Attentive Ha’aretz readers could find it out just days before the issue got to the headlines (Jan. 5, 2006):

'The Defense Ministry has terminated the lease with the Hebron municipality that enabled the Palestinian merchants to work in the city’s wholesale market. This means that the merchants from the wholesale market will not be able to return to their shops even if the Israel Defense Forces do evict the settlers squatting there.'"

"The Israeli Peace Process" =sick joke, and a waste of time.

I would tell the Israelis to get better leaders but we need to get them too. The vast majority of Politicians in the world are little more than con artists.

Booman Tribune ~ Beware! Iran to Have Bomb in a Few Months!

The neocons are trying to scare us into another unnecessary war.

Booman Tribune ~ Beware! Iran to Have Bomb in a Few Months!: "Beware! Iran to Have Bomb in a Few Months!

by Steven D
Mon Jan 23rd, 2006 at 06:05:23 PM EST
Hey, that's not me talking. And it sure isn't the CIA, because they believe Iran is at least ten years away from having a bomb.

No, that's respected (ahem) conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer last week in an seemingly off the cuff comment while bemoaning the stupidity, timidity and general credulity of the European countries who, until recently, have been negotiating with Iran regarding the resumption of its nuclear program. As we now know, those talks failed to stop Iran from resuming the enrichment of its uranium supplies, an essential step in making a bomb (although Iran denies that is their intent). Check out this column of his originally published January 18, 2006 to see what I'm talking about:

Ah, success. Instead of being years away from the point of no return for an Iranian bomb, as we were before we allowed Europe to divert anti-proliferation efforts into transparently useless talks, Iran is probably just months away.

(Emphasis added)"

Apparently this meme was started by a man named Kenneth Timmerman. He is a reporter for Dick Scaife's American Spectator magazine, and a leader of the Foundation for Iranian Democracy a probable neocon front organization. Two years ago he reported that WMD had been found in Iraq. He has little credibility and neither does Krauthammer, but that is hasn't stopped the press and the mainstream democrats from echoing his ideas. Let's hope the peace movement has more backbone this time around.