CODEPINK: 11-11-11 at Occupy LA

On 11-11-11 add your voice to the call for an end to all wars!

CODEPINK joins Vets for Peace and Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace in an anti-war extravaganza at the site of the Arlington West art installation and memorial:

• Friday, Nov. 11, 10:30 am
• North of Santa Monica Pier
• Ocean & Colorado, Santa Monica 90401

Money for People’s Needs,
Not Corporate War Profiteers' Greed!

As women struggle the world over to be heard as powerful and passionate, so do those who Occupy LA. Join the latest Women and Allies meeting Friday to make plans and take action.

• Solidarity with Palestine Freedom Riders
• Friday, Nov. 11, 5:00 pm
• south side near Children's Area next to Media Tent
• City Hall south, 200 N. Spring St., downtown LA

Occupy LA, Not Palestine!

Remember war criminal Condi Rice? Codepink does.

Palestine in, UNESCO out, Gaza flotilla

Amber Dorrian (Wisdom Quarterly), Codepink.org, Christian Science Monitor

Half of Palestine's 1.5 million people are under the age of 15 (d3mha.com).

This week, with tears in our eyes, we witnessed history in the making when UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization) voted in favor of admitting Palestine as a full member.

• UNESCO votes to admit Palestine
  
• Eyes on Gaza flotilla
  

This marks a major step in the Palestinian people’s struggle for self-determination in spite of unbelievable Israeli (and complicit American) oppression.

A second flotilla of peace in support of Gaza has gone forth in support of equality (NT).

UNESCO’s mission is to contribute to building peace, eradicating poverty, and creating sustainable development and intercultural dialogue. It accomplishes this through education, the sciences, culture, communication, and information. All the while they emphasize gender equity.

These sound like the goals of CODEPINK, Wisdom Quarterly, and other progressive organizations. This admirable institution will now include Palestine, a move that has been greeted with both celebration and condemnation.

What has been the US response?

Israeli Navy boards protest boats bound for Gaza (Fox News)

While the whole world was watching, the US government again flouted international will by opposing Palestinian membership (along with only 13 other countries, none from the EU save Germany). On Halloween the US pledged to kill all funding to UNESCO, against its own best interest... More

Drones and mechanical war? Not in our name.

Pay attention to Palestinian Peace ("Budrus")

David Hudson (Mubi.com)

(TEDtalksDirector) TED.com In 2003 the Palestinian village of Budrus mounted a 10-month-long nonviolent protest to stop a barrier being built across their olive tree groves. Did you hear about it? Didn't think so. Brazilian filmmaker Julia Bacha asks why we only pay attention to the violence the Israelis want focused on -- and not to the nonviolent leaders who may one day bring peace.

Conversations this International Day of Peace will this year undoubtedly be focused on Palestinians' bid for UN membership, the latest development in the decades-old Israel-Palestine conflict. Brazilian filmmaker Julia Bacha (BUDRUS) has spent years in the Middle East and, as she notes at the top of her recent TED Talk, one of the most common questions she's asked is, "Where are the Palestinian Ghandis?" More

• AUDIO: Listen to "The Crucible" (Salem witch trials)
• PHOTOS: Angkor Wat, Cambodia's Theravada Buddhism
  

Climbing Everest for Middle East peace (video)

Wisdom Quarterly
(lancetrumbull)

Narrated by Nichiren Buddhist Orlando Bloom (pictured left) and hailed as a "tremendous achievement" by the Dalai Lama (Tibet's pope-king), "Everest: A Climb for Peace" is no typical Everest film. It is a socially relevant documentary about peace, war, and the human spirit -- an inspirational adventure film with some of the most incredible Mt. Everest footage ever shot, including a dramatic rescue from near the summit of a mountain some regard as Mt. Sumeru (the mountain at the center of the Buddhist cosmology). Tibetans call it Goddess Qomolangma ("Holy Mother"), whereas the local sherpas who frequently climb it call it Sagarmāthā, and the Chinese, who are still occupying Tibet, call it Zhūmùlǎngmǎ Fēng in Mandarin.

View from the Top of the World

• VIDEO: EverestPeaceProject.com
• Everest: A Climb for Peace continues national TV airings
  

The "Catastrophe" (Nakbha)

Wisdom Quarterly

(Media4Palestine)

(May 15, 1948) Why was the creation of the state of Israel a "catastrophe," as it is remembered by the indigenous Palestinians? It is not. The Catastrophe (Nakbha) is the ongoing displacement, aggression, cultural genocide, and nonstop war brought on by Zionists seeking to create a Jewish homeland with American and British backers (who did not want Jews in their own countries).

Utilizing interpretations of the Bible to justify behavior more characteristic of -- God forbid -- Nazis? It's verboten! To mention any similarity between Israeli nationalists and Nazis is "racist," "cruel," and perfectly obvious to any disinterested bystander.

The 60th commemoration of the Catastrophe coincides with celebrations of the birth of Israel, our great partner throughout the geopolitical Middle East. Will we live to regret our collusion as a terrorist state with another terrorist state while labelling all Arabs "terrorists," or will God high-5 us on the Day of Rapture, which is Saturday, May 21, 2011 (possibly December 21, 2012)?

FamilyRadio.com (what "no man knows") predicts a great earthquake prior to doomsday, and that seems to have occurred near Libya. Rumors of an 8.4 tremor are circulating, but curiously any such news has been blacked out of the US Geological Survey site, which usually reports even minor shakers in almost real time. HAARP is armed and running; the earthquakes are coming and with it famine. It's neither nature nor God doing it.

• Connect the Dots with Lila Garrett (KPFK.org)
• Middle East in Focus with Don Bustany (KPFK.org)
• JStreet: Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace Movement (jstreet.org)
  

Peace prospects bleak for Netanyahu U.S. visit

JERUSALEM (Reuters, May 19) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu goes to Washington on Friday to rally opposition to a Palestinian bid for U.N. recognition of statehood.

There is little indication the right-wing leader will, or can, offer new peacemaking ideas to persuade Palestinians not to take a detour at the U.N. General Assembly in September around the brick wall that the U.S. peace efforts have run into.

A unity deal between Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement and the Islamist group Hamas has further dampened chances of a breakthrough. The accord signed this month, dealt a "tremendous blow" to peace, Netanyahu said. More

• Life in Abbottabad (Akbhar Khan's compound)
  
• Oprah's last show (Finally!)
  
• Billabong Rio surf action
• Animals around the world
• Prisoners lock arms