By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS - Counterpunch

It is 1939 all over again. The world waits helplessly for the next act of naked aggression by rogue states. Only this time the rogue states are not the Third Reich and Fascist Italy. They are the United States and Israel...The targeted victims are not Poland and France, but Iran, Syria, the remains of the Palestinian West Bank and southern Lebanon...The neoconservatives are ecstatic. Hegemony uber alles is back on track.

By Dan Freeman-Maloy - May, 07 2008

When Ben Dunkelman...returned from the European battlefields of WWII...he had already been [asked]...to participate in the looming fight in Palestine. Soon, Dunkelman was juggling management responsibilities at Tip Top Tailors with his tasks as head of the Canadian branch of the Hagana. These included fundraising for weaponry, direct arms procurement, and recruitment for Hagana forces. By the summer of 1948, he was in command of a Brigade actively depopulating Palestinian villages by force - a unit so heavily comprised of recruits from Canada, the United States and South Africa that it came to be known as the "Anglo-Saxon Brigade."

Israel's ambassador says he is concerned that the growing number of Muslim Canadians might cause a shift in this country's Middle East policy...Alan Baker, Israel's ambassador in Ottawa, said Muslim communities have had an impact on the foreign policies of such countries as France, and he is concerned Canada might follow..."Do you expect...these greater numbers [of Arab immigrants]...will absorb themselves into Canadian society as Canadians or that they'll try to push Canadians to adopt their own values and principles? And this is the gist of the problem"...

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NO TIME TO CELEBRATE!
A Walk for Palestine Commemorating 60 years of Nakba
National Day of Action
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Saturday, May 10
Gather at 1 pm at Clark Park (Commercial Drive at 14th Avenue)

Followed by a silent march and rally at Grandview Park
**Please wear black**

Palestinian resistance against Israeli repression.

By Dan Freeman-Maloy - May, 06 2008

...Canada is operating in particularly crude alignment with Israel against the Palestinians. Within the framework of the "war on terror," the Canadian government has criminalized nearly all major Palestinian political parties by designating them as "terrorist groups"...even as it cultivates ever more intimate trade, security and diplomatic relations with the Israeli state. On the United Nations Human Rights Council, Canada has emerged as the staunchest opponent of meaningful criticism of Israeli human rights violations and war crimes.

By ANDREW COCKBURN - May 2, 2008

Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that...[is] "unprecedented in its scope."...Bush’s secret directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from Lebanon to Afghanistan – but is also far more sweeping in the type of actions permitted under its guidelines – up to and including the assassination of targeted officials.

by Chalmers Johnson - Tom Dispatch

The RAND Corporation was the ur-think tank, the Cold War granddaddy of them all, and it's still with us. In the 1950s, nuclear war-gaming a conflagration...it took the U.S. military into virtuality and science fiction long before there was an Internet to play with...In the 1960s, it helped several administrations plan and fight the Vietnam War, making antiseptic theory into an all-too-grim reality. And that's just the beginning of the work RAND did on a range of hot-button imperial issues...For a brief period in the 1960s, Chalmers Johnson was a RAND consultant.

Around the world, plans are being made to mount major celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel. But this year also marks 60 years since 750,000 Palestinians were brutally expelled from their homeland in what they refer to as the Nakba or “catastrophe”. Given this history, and the deepening conflict in the region today, we believe there is no grounds for celebration.

Martin Lukacs | Rabble

In this small, impoverished northern village, people eke out a miserable existence. One of the world's most powerful countries occupies their land, plunders their resources, interferes with their governance and seems intent on assimilating them into wider society.

With its Olympic Games at hand, the country would rather the international community dwell on its national achievements than cast scrutiny on these abuses.

Palestinian suffering continues as Israel prepares to commemorate its 1948 crimes against humanity.

By SIMON ROMERO - April 21, 2008

Chafing at ties between American intelligence agencies and Ecuadorean military officials, President Rafael Correa is purging the armed forces of top commanders and pressing ahead with plans to cast out more than 100 members of the American military from an air base...in...[the] coastal city [of Manta].

by Daphne Bramham - Vancouver Sun

From the 1960s through most of Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraqi women were among the most liberated and liberal of all Muslim women. Girls went to school, women worked, wore what they chose, drove cars, ran for office and spoke their minds...Yet far from restoring women's rights, on the Americans' watch, Iraq has become a prison for women.

Continued and brutal Israeli repression against Palestinians.