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“GAZA: LIFT THE BLOCKADE” – The Relief Convoy on its way

(Source: Gush Shalom mailing list and website)——- Click here to watch video from the convoy (sorry, Hebrew only) The initiative for the large action that took place today (26.1.08) started when the well-know psychiatrist, Dr. Eyad al-Sarraj, the human-rights activist from Gaza, met in the Gush Shalom office with a small group of Israeli peace activists, in order to tell them about the desperate situation in the strip. It was

Gaza: the Empire strikes back (and risks loosing Egypt in the process)

It was the be expected: the Pharaoh, who had been told by his masters that he was expected to “solve the problem” moved his stormtroopers in to attempt to close the border between Egypt and Gaza. Simultaneously, the Empire sensing that the situation might be getting out of control at the United Nations moved to prevent the adoption of a UNSC resolution on the blockade of Gaza. Lastly, Israel carried

People are dying, Help us!

By Maan “Information Clearinghouse” — — A humanitarian crisis is underway as the Gaza Strip’s only power plant began to shut down on Sunday, and the tiny coastal territory entered its third full day without shipments of vital food and fuel supplies due to Israel’s punitive sanctions. The Gaza Strip’s power plant has completely shut down on Sunday because it no longer has the fuel needed to keep running. One

The Shia 10th Day of Ashura and the coming war(s)

Every place is Kerbala, every day is Ashura If there is one event which is central to the entire ethos of Shia Islam it is the martyrdom of Imam Husayn ibn Ali (a grandson of Muhammad the founder of Islam) and 72 of his followers at the hands of a 40’000-strong army of Yazid Ibn Muawiyah Ibn Abu Sufyan in 680 AD at the battle of Kerbala. Here is how

An old American politician speaks the plain truth

There is this ‘old American politician with nothing to loose’ phenomenon which I have personally observed in the cases of Paul Nitze or Admiral Elmo Zumvalt: when they are old have have nothing to loose, when they are beyond reach of the US Nomenklatura, they begin saying out loud what everybody in US politics knows, but dares not say. This time it is Mike Gravel who simply decided to speak

Bad, bad start for 2008

I am finally back at my keyboard after some travels and already the first days of 2008 look so depressing that I don’t even know where to begin. In no particular order, here are some of the things which make me think that 2008 shall be an ugly and mean year. United Kingdom: the Brits are loosing it. I mean, they were never known for their kind and honorable foreign

Beauty shall save the world!

‘Beauty shall save the world‘ wrote the great Russian author Dostoevsky. Beauty also is, in essence, the same thing as Truth, Goodness and, of course, Love said another great Russian, the philosopher and priest Father Pavel Florensky (murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1937). I will spare you all a boring lecture in Russian philosophy, but I do want to share with you a little bit of joy and beauty, in

Somalia: the forgotten front in the US GWOT

Somalia is a mostly forgotten front of the US Global War on Terror. True, only a limited number of US personnel is deployed there or directly involved in the fighting; this is a war by proxy, courtesy of the US backed regime in Ethiopia who invaded Somalia under orders from Washington. After many years of chaos and violence Somalia had finally found a modicum of stability under the Islamic Courts

Osama Bin Laden “Message to the Peoples of Europe” (transcript)

This message of mine is to the peoples of the states allied to America in the invasion of Afghanistan and I mention specifically Europe. It isn’t hidden from you that the Afghans have tasted the two bitterest things for two decades at the hands of the Russians and their Communist agents, but they persevered, fought, and were resolute and victorious, by the Grace of Allah. And before their wounds had

The One State Declaration

For decades, efforts to bring about a two-state solution in historic Palestine have failed to provide justice and peace for the Palestinian and Israeli Jewish peoples, or to offer a genuine process leading towards them. The two-state solution ignores the physical and political realities on the ground, and presumes a false parity in power and moral claims between a colonized and occupied people on the one hand and a colonizing

New directions for my blog and key issues to be analyzed – RFC

Dear friends, After taking some time off to think things over I have tentatively come up with a general plan for this blog and I now want to share it with you. The main difference with the previous orientation of this blog is that I want to switch from what was mainly a clearinghouse for information taken elsewhere interspersed with occasional original analyses to a more balanced mix of original

Blog to remain, mailing list created, emails sought

Dear friends, While I have not taken any final decisions about the course of this blog, one thing I can already say now: your kind letters of support have made me decide that this blog will not close so please keep an eye on it: subscribe to it, come and check it out from time to time, or send me your email address and I will include you on my

Reflections on the Antiwar.com debacle

How did that all ever happen? The ultimate irony It is, of course, bizarre to witness how a presumably anti-government (“libertarian” in US parlance) and anti-corporatist website would make use of a government law passed by the big business monopolies (the DMCA) to ask a corporation (in this case, Google) to enforce their interpretation of the “fair use” clause on a small one-man blog. Truly, “bizarro world” as Justin Raimondo

New contact information for the Saker

Dear friends, It appears that Antiwar.com will try to have my blog shutdown. I don’t think that they have much a case, but since I am not sure any more what their real motives are I have to assume that they will try hard. As I have explained this morning, I don’t really care any more what will happen to my blog, but I do want to stay touch with

Antiwar.com files a 2nd DMCA complaint against my blog

This just fresh in:——-Hello, Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the DigitalMillennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that content in your blog: vineyardsaker.blogspot.com allegedly infringes upon the copyrights of others. The content in questionis located in the following posts: http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2007/10/lobby-unmasked-we-have-unwritten.html The notice that we received, with any personally identifyinginformation removed, will be posted online by a service called ChillingEffects, and we will send you the link of this notice.

Antiwar.com files a DMCA complaint against my blog

Received in my mailbox today:——- Hello, Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the DigitalMillennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that content in your blog: vineyardsaker.blogspot.com allegedly infringes upon the copyrights of others. The content in questionis located in the following posts: http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2007/10/whos-behind-pkk-in-word-washington.html The notice that we received, with any personally identifyinginformation removed, will be posted online by a service called ChillingEffects, and we will send you the link of

An open letter to my friends and visitors

But first, our global anthem: Can’t you seeIt all makes perfect senseExpressed in dollars and cents,Pounds, shillings and penceCan’t you seeIt all makes perfect sense Roger Waters, Amused to Death Dear friends, The time has come for me to share with you some thoughts which I had been having for a while already but which I had been trying to suppress. In the past couple of days I had some

Organized Money Vs. Organized People

By Cindy Sheehan “At a time like this, scorching iron, not convincing argument, is needed.”Frederick Douglass “Cindy’s campaign will prove that organized people can beat organized money” Reverend Lennox Yearwood; founder of the Hip Hop Caucus We are a nation that was created by “the rich, white, male property owners” and specifically for “the rich, white, male property owners.” Women and blacks, (who were counted as 3/5ths a person for

Finally, Action! Ron Paul Introduces Bill to Defend Constitution!

by Naomi Wolf It’s not every day that there is something concrete you can do to save democracy in one powerful stroke and make sure your kids don’t come of age in an American in which we are no longer protected by the rule of law. I have been writing about the terrifying and precipitous assault on our liberties and our very system of checks and balances; I have crossed

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