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.

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
  

Israel sabotages "Freedom Flotilla"

Flotilla vessel stopped by Greek coastguard

ISTANBUL, Turkey (Reuters) - Irish pro-Palestinian activists accused Israel on Thursday of sabotaging their boat while it was docked in Turkey to stop it joining an international flotilla bound for the Palestinian enclave of Gaza. The crew of the MV Saoirse realized there was something wrong with the propeller shaft when they took the vessel for refueling at Gocek on Turkey's southwest coast on Monday. Activists said a marine engineer who inspected the damaged boat in dry dock declared that it had been sabotaged. More

• Breaking "Freedom Flotilla" News! (Code Pink)
• Israel pushes on with illegal settlement plans
• Greeks intercept Gaza-bound Canadian ship
• VIDEO: Mayor hits sheriff for demolishing shanty town
  
• Brazilian Summer Festival 2011 (Hollywood)

Jewish threats: No Gaza Peace Flotilla (video)

(RussiaToday, June 27, 2011) A flotilla carrying humanitarian aid bound for Gaza is set to depart from Greece. Israel has already warned that it will not let the convoy reach its destination [even if it has to kill defenseless peace activists like it did last time]. It also said foreign journalists who take part will be banned from working in Israel for 10 years.

Imagine Jewish Americans standing up to the nearly all-powerful Israel (in cahoots with the US Department of War and our many clandestine services). It's amazing. It gives me hopes that the outrageous criminal behavior of Israel, who calls it "defense" and "victimization" while Palestine withers away strangled by a capricious blockade, repeated infiltration by tanks and soldiers, aerial bombing, wall building, land usurpation, checkpoints... It's too much.

CODE PINK (codepink4peace.org)

It was too much years ago. How Gaza has survived, as a helpless "Arab world" looks on, is unknown. And why the US government presses Israel to utterly destroy it makes less sense. It's all very biblical, as if the powers that be insist on an end time narrative spelled out in Middle Eastern terms. Armageddon is a place after all. It is more famous for a future war to be waged there if Israel and Western powers have their way. One Israel is worth ten CIAs, a CIA official once observed. We [the CIA, Pentagon, NSA, DOD] need it. But is incurring the hatred of the world as we collude in extravagant ways with Israel to cover our war crimes and theirs? Those veto votes sure come in handy. Germany, the world's monetary ruler, can't even get hold of such a vote. Palestine can't even get NATO recognition.

We have to remember, "Israel" is a complete fabrication with subsequent biblical justification, not the other way around as we are told. History has to adjust to fit the human plans on the ground. And any scholar who points out discrepancies is quickly dismissed, denounced, and when possible destroyed. Yet people speak out against anti-Arab injustice. Conscience compels us even as allegiance to Judaism or Zionism compels many American and Israeli Jews to muzzle themselves, sit on their hands, look the other way, or actually try to defend the right wing Israeli government no matter what. And Christian fundamentalists in America leap on the bandwagon to make points with a tribal God they feel sure wants them to destroy "infidels" (like Arabs in the Holy Land) and defend the "chosen people" no matter what.

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