Prince George Forces Inoculation

"It's cute. It looks like their parents are dragging them to church."

"Many of them complained that their children already were properly immunized but the school system had misplaced the records. They said efforts to get the paperwork straightened out had been futile."

"Circuit Court Judge C. Philip Nichols ordered parents in a letter to appear at the courthouse Saturday and either get their children vaccinated on the spot or risk up to 10 days in jail."



LINK: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/topstories/2007-11-17-2251687368_x.htm

ORIGINAL LINK: http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Nov19/0,4670,ShotsGettingTough,00.html

Blurring the Box

Though the United States has been engaging in indecent and degrading practices, outside the Bush administration’s outlandish legal interpretation of “torture” for the past 5 years in the “War of Terror”, George W. Bush announced today that these methods of interrogation would go on no more… or at least that is how he would want it to read to the average American.

Through Bush’s unconstitutional line item vetoes, or Presidential signing statements, the military and other intelligence agencies have been allowed to conduct interrogation techniques disregarding the mandates set forth by the over 50 year old Geneva Conventions. Bush has contended that the law, including Common Article 3, is too vague hence the need for his legal team to attach even more ambiguous signing statements to bills passed through to him regarding U.S. policies on torture. He seems to be the only president, or international governing authority for that matter, to have trouble understanding the meaning of the universally accepted methods of treatment contained in the conventions. Some of the previously practiced, now somewhat banned, techniques used by the military and C.I.A. include forced nudity/sexual acts, beatings, electric shocking, waterboarding (a.k.a. simulation drowning), mock execution, and dog attacks, just to name a few. Bush announced September 6, 2006 that these practices will no longer be used by those under the rule of the Department of Defense at the bases at Guantanamo Bay. This announcement, however, will not affect the C.I.A.’s practices in the “secret detention facilities” that he has, for the first time, publically admitted to since they were (so maliciously) exposed by (those unpatriotic) reporters (trying to undermine the security of the US of A) late in 2005.  Bush also attacked the June 2006 ruling of the Supreme Court regarding the legality of military tribunals used at Guantanamo Bay in the landmark civil rights case of Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld.     He also had the audacity to put pressure on Congress to quickly pass similar legislation regarding the trials and treatments of detainees, as required by the court’s earlier ruling, by making remarks that the families of the victims of September 11^th had waited long enough for justice. Much in the same way he has made gay marriage an issue only in election years Bush thought it timely to bring up the name of the man who started it all- Mr. Osama Bin Laden. How disgusting it was to hear him compare a man he has feverishly avoided finding, much less mentioning, to Hitler and Lenin (maybe he meant Stalin). 

If there is only one thing we can learn from the latest Bush PR campaign it is that it has never been more obvious that he has nothing to offer to the American people beyond contradictory rhetoric and fear mongering.

Occupation Nation

How did Americans become so disillusioned with world politics? When did killing innocent civilians, women, and children become ok? Whether or not a collective awakening will be enough to put an end to what is going into motion in the Middle East, taking steps to educate ourselves on the true nature of world events, though it certainly will not alleviate the blame, is a step toward being able to show the rest of the world that unjust wars are not the American way.

Occupation creates “terrorists”. Targeted assassinations create “terrorists”. Kidnapping and torturing citizens creates “terrorists”. Would you too be a “terrorist” if your local neighborhood was under lockdown by foreign military forces? No? That’s good but what if your neighbors started disappearing one by one never to be seen again? You’re still sitting there taking it? That’s really nice, violence certainly isn’t the answer. What if these occupying forces prevented power, water, and food from coming into any part of your neighborhood? You would no longer have your job and thus no way to provide for your family even if there was some way to get food or water. There are no public services so trash and sewage spills into your streets. The neighbor’s house on the other side of you just got bulldozed… with your neighbors still in it. The occupying forces start to build settlements in your neighborhood and they don’t compensate any of the land owners, instead they just take what they want with no questions asked. Are you at least at the point that you want to call a neighborhood meeting to start to discuss ways that you, the poor, weak, unarmed citizen, can stand up to these forces and begin to take your community back from these men in tanks, with guns, and unlimited military funding? It doesn’t seem like these two teams are stacked quite right, does it? Now imagine 60 years have gone by and that things have actually gotten worse. What kind of person will you have become? Maybe the kind of person that has no other way to defend yourself and your loved ones but to strap explosives around the only thing they haven't taken from you yet, the one thing that can still be considered yours. Maybe not.

Please understand these few points; the West has bred these people into becoming what they are. They are no different than you and I, just people forced into extraordinary circumstances just trying to survive the best way they know how. Islamic extremists are the exception not the rule. The media’s anti-Arab bias has grown immeasurably since September 11^th. The blood of Americans, British, and Israelis are not worth more than that of the Palestinian and Lebanese people. People are people. We all breathe, bleed, fight, cry, and die the same as everyone else on this lawless planet and it is time we stand up for our oppressed brothers and sisters not only in the Middle East but every corner of the globe. Everyone has the right to liberty and freedom in this life not just the ones with (the money and) the guns.

(terrorism)

On June 8, the Israeli army assassinated Jamal Abu Samhadana of the Popular Resistance Committees, who had just been appointed head of the security forces of the Interior Ministry by the Palestinian government, and three others. On June 9, 30,000 Palestinians attended the funeral.

That same day, June 9, an Israeli gunboat stationed off the coast of the Beit Lahiya beach fired seven artillery shells at Palestinian families on a picnic on the beach, wiping out one family. The shells killed a mother (Raeesa Ghaila), a father (Ali Issa Gahlia), and five children (Haitham, Hanadi, Sabreen, Ilham, Alia) and wounded 32 others, including 13 children.

On June 13, an Israeli plane fired a missile into a busy Gaza City street and killed 11 people, including two children and two medics, in two waves. The first missile killed several. Then, when others came to the scene to help, they were killed by a second missile.

On June 20, the Israeli army, attempting to assassinate a Palestinian adult, killed three Palestinian children (Mohammad Jamal Shukri Rouqa, 6, Samia Mahmoud Ziad al-Sharif, 5, and Bilal Jasser al-Hissi, 16) and injured 15 others in Gaza with a missile attack.

On June 21, the Israelis attacked Khan Yunis with a missile and killed a 35-year old pregnant woman, Fatmeh Ahmad, killed her brother Zachariya Ahmad, and injured 11 others, including 6 children.

On June 24, Israeli forces kidnapped two Palestinian civilians in Gaza, a doctor and his brother. Few, if any, media outlets reported on the abduction.

The next day, on June 25, reports claim that militants in Gaza kidnapped Corporal Gilad Shalit, the pretext for Israels attacks on Gaza.

Now if you will only look at the facts thus far you will see that weeks of intensifying aggression finally culminated in an abduction of two civilians from within Gaza borders and the following day there was what seems to be a proportionate response in the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier. Whether the Israeli assault took place within Palestinian borders reports have failed to specifically say but we do know that the Palestinians have been made to live like dogs within Israel's barrier walls built inside Palestine's boders for nearly 40 years. Therefore it makes it makes it difficult to distinguish Palestinian territory, from Israeli occupied territory within Palestine, from the land legally obtained (whatever that means) by the state of Israel. We should also note that the later kidnappings of two Israeli soldiers by the Lebanese resistance group, Hezbollah, occurred in a cross-border raid in which the press failed to identify who was orchestrating the raid and which border was being crossed.

Though the Palestinians are paying dearly for the acts of a militant wing of their democratically elected government, the kidnappings by Hezbollah have enabled the occupying rogue state of Israel, with the strong support of Western mass media, to connect the dots allowing a greater war to materialize in the Middle East. Our medias over-simplification of the pretexts for Israels disproportionate attacks as well as the general background and relations between the various Arab states have somehow garnered unanimous civilian support in Israel and the U.S. for Arab genocide. Much like every other major war in history, this conflict was planned well in advance of the catalyzing events that unfolded, in this instance involving the abductions of IDF military personnel. If Israels vast stranglehold on the Palestinian authority was the kindling for the metaphorical wildfires that would soon engulf the Middle East, the disputed kidnappings were the spark that Israel needed to reign down terror on hundreds (and counting) of innocent civilians. A closer look into the early reports of the Hezbollah capturing of two Israeli soldiers show exactly which side provoked this act of aggression. As you will see it will only take Israeli authorities one day to turn a routine offensive orchestrated by the IDF into an act of war perpetrated by the Lebanese resistance group, Hezbollah.

DPA, a German news agency, reported from Beirut July 12, The Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement announced Wednesday that its guerrillas have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon.

Joseph Panossian of the Associated Press reported that Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon, prompting a swift reaction from Israel, which sent ground forces into its neighbor to look for them.

Agence France Presse reported from Aitaa al-Chaab and Beirut The two Israeli soldiers were captured in Lebanese territory, in the area of Aitaa al-Chaab, near to the border with Israel, where an Israeli unit had penetrated.

Hezbollahs statement said: Implementing our promise to release the Arab prisoners in Israeli jails, our strugglers have captured at 9:05 a.m. two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon.

The BBC later translated the Hezbollah statement as having said captured two Israeli soldiers at the border with occupied Palestine.

The following day, through DPA in Germany, Israel strongly denied the abductions took place within Lebanese borders, rather while the two soldiers were on patrol in Israeli territory. From this point on in the conflict the kidnappings have been said to have taken place in Israel, thus classifying an act of war and constituting harsh military repercussions upon southern Lebanon. This type of intentional ambiguity in what we think of as an unbiased world media should no longer be viewed as gross incompetence but rather careful twisting of the facts setting up the grounds for what will soon be known as World War III. Now we have to ask the question, if the media holds no value in equipping the public of truthful, well intentioned information, who do their loyalties lie with? News reports would have us believe that all the aggression (as opposed to resistance) is at the behest of Iran, the supposed parent figure for the militant Hamas as well as Hezbollah. Israel has since publicly stated that it had been gearing up for its present military offensive well before any of the kidnappings took place. Israel would also have us believe that they have been under attack from Hezbollah rocket attacks prior to any military strike on southern Lebanon. Such rocket attacks may strengthen their argument for the need for Israel to defend itself but in fact Hezbollahs attacks on northern Israeli cities came after heavy civilian casualties following Israels attack on Beirut. The supposed link between the Lebanese Shia Resistance group, Syria and Iran has been heard increasingly throughout American news networks. The U.S's so-called neo-cons have been calling for an attack on Iran as a preemption to halt the countrys peaceful, civilian nuclear enrichment program for several months.

Just based on these two related kidnappings two conclusions should be inferred, the first being the bias of the western media in blacking out the first kidnapping by Israel and asserting Israels right to defend itself.. If, on June 24, the media unanimously decided not to report on the abduction of two civilians within their homeland, merely regarding it as another instance of necessary Israeli aggression toward the terrorist state of Palestine, surely someone would have noticed the paradox in Israels extreme military reaction in the ensuing days in the attacks on Gaza. The second is the comparison of a civilian kidnapping versus that of a soldier and this also ties into the Israeli aggression on the civilian population of south Lebanon. According to international humanitarian law it is a crime to abduct and to bring a civilian across the border into your own country. On the other hand, during military conflict, the apprehension of soldiers, so long as they are treated humanely, is a perfectly legal operation given the current state within Palestine and southern Lebanon. One which was not a crime was widely publicized and given as a reason for attacking another state while the other, though legally and morally criminal, was ignored.

A week after Israel took on Hezbollah in response to the cross-border attack the U.S. Congress overwhelmingly passed a resolution expressing support for the Jewish states right to defend itself and held Lebanon responsible for the alleged acts of Hezbollah. The final U.S. House of Representatives version passed Thursday in a 410-8 vote omitting the Senate versions clause to protect innocent civilian life and infrastructure. The Congress resolution instead praised Israel for minimizing civilian loss in spite of widespread media reports to the contrary.

We can no longer view this as conflict between two equal and opposing forces. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been displaced in the 60 plus years of occupation by Israel. After World War II, Israel was granted land that was occupied by a native people, much like the land we so savagely acquired from our own native peoples. The Native American people were displaced into reservations much like what we see in the only original Palestinian land occupied solely by the native Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza. We have the opportunity to atone for the sins of our ancestors by speaking out to put an end to these atrocities. A land the size of New Jersey consisting of above 5 million citizens has been equipped with a military arsenal not nearly proportionate to that of its Arab neighbors. It is in the top five nuclear powers in the world with a reported 200-300 nuclear warheads. Israel is the only country, in defiance of international law, to allow torture to be used on enemy combatants as well as defending its practice of targeted assassinations. Over 8,000 Palestinians are in Israeli captivity to this day on charges not disclosed. Israel often justifies their actions by comparing its policies to those of the Bush administration concerning prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. The undeniable United States/ Israel alliance forms a new Axis of Evil cleverly hidden behind the guise of self defense from the attacks of suicide bombers and radical Islamic terrorists. There is no doubt this conflict in due time will spiral out of control, out of the control of peace and liberty loving Americans. The wars in the Middle East are not and have never been in the interest of the American people. Now is the time to educate ourselves and take action against the murderous plans of our leaders in the Middle East.



sources:
www.zmag.org
www.dpa.de/en/unternehmenswelt/index.html
www.news.bbc.co.uk/
www.americanfreepress.net