An Ungrateful Nation

Please read the latest posting from Mark Glenn - In Living Color–Racism and Hatred on Full Display in the Jewish State.

Imagine that Jonathan Pollard's wife has the balls to say that America should apologize for imprisoning her scumbag husband...I'm even referring people to read a Free Republic link! But, as you'll see, not every poster there is in lockstep with the dullards at that site.

Here's an update regarding the kidnapping of the crew of The Spirit of Humanity:

7/5/09 LATEST UPDATES on the GAZA 21 and Cynthia McKinney
As of this morning, the Americans were moved to a detainment facility that is close to the airport.

FLASH: As I am writing this at 7PM EST, the latest unconfirmed reports have Cynthia McKinney returning to the US with the port of entry being NYC sometime in the late afternoon/early evening on Monday 7/6/09. Approximately 24 hours from now. Plan on a welcoming party and a press conference. GET READY! More info will be posted as soon as it is confirmed!

You can read more here:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/McKinney-Relocated-from-Is-by-Meryl-Ann-Butler-090705-681.html
**************************************
***From John Judge:
Friends,
I just got a call confirming that former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and three other U.S. citizens were transferred from the Israeli prison at Ramale to Ben Gurion airport in Israel, the standard site for deportations. This information came originally from Mairead Maguire, the Irish Nobel laureate and was confirmed by the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, which is sending representatives to the airport. Maguire was told that the authorities would return to take her next, but she stated she is concerned about the fate of the remaining prisoners from Yemen, Jordon, the UK, Scotland, Palestine and Denmark, and may refuse to be released until all are released.

My note:
What possible grounds do the Israelis have to release these kidnapped prisoners a few at a time? If one is released then all should be released, since none of them acted differently than the others. I have been told that the form Cynthia McKinney was asked to sign was written in Hebrew, which if true is also illegal. She refused to sign the form, in any case, and then the Israeli authorities claimed that Israeli law required her to be held an additional three days, until Monday, July 6. Her early release today may reflect the level of pressure on Israel and the U.S. authorities generated by your work. By my count, the following twelve prisoners remain in Ramale:

Othman Abufalah, Jordan
Othman is a world-renowned journalist with al-Jazeera TV.

Mansour Al-Abi, Yemen
Mansour is a cameraman with Al-Jazeera TV.

Ishmahil Blagrove, UK
Ishmahil is a Jamaican-born journalist, documentary film maker and founder of the Rice & Peas film production company. His documentaries focus on international struggles for social justice.

Derek Graham, Ireland
Derek Graham is an electrician, Free Gaza organizer, and first mate aboard the Spirit of Humanity.

Alex Harrison, UK
Alex is a solidarity worker from Britain. She is traveling to Gaza to do long-term human rights monitoring.

Denis Healey, UK
Denis is Captain of the Spirit of Humanity. This will be his fifth voyage to Gaza.

Fathi Jaouadi, UK
Fathi is a British journalist, Free Gaza organizer, and delegation co-coordinator for this voyage.

Mairead Maguire, Ireland
Mairead is a Nobel laureate and renowned peace activist.

Lubna Masarwa, Palestine/Israel
Lubna is a Palestinian human rights activist and Free Gaza organizer.

Theresa McDermott, Scotland
Theresa is a solidarity worker from Scotland. She is traveling to Gaza to do long-term human rights monitoring.

Adnan Mormesh, UK
Adnan is a solidarity worker from Britain. He is traveling to Gaza to do long-term human rights monitoring.

Adam Qvist, Denmark
Adam is a solidarity worker from Denmark. He is traveling to Gaza to do human rights monitoring.

-- John Judge
Researcher, Lecturer, Congressional staff
Real Democracy Project
PO Box 7147
Washington, DC 20044
202-583-5347
*******************
FROM FREE GAZA:
Some of the UK FreeGaza 21 detainees likely to be deported Monday, should arrive to Heathrow 13.30 Monday.

We have just heard that at least 3 of the 6 British FreeGaza detainees are being put on a flight to London in the morning, due to arrive at Heathrow at 13.30 p.m.

Because it is a Sunday and we have only just heard this news, we are trying to spread the word as well as we can - so we'd be really really grateful if you could forward this email to your contacts. Some relatives and supporters will be there to meet them - but we ask anyone in the London area who is able to go to the airport to meet them to do so.

We are currently unable to make contact with the group, who have been moved to cells at Ben Gurion airport detention center. Once we have confirmation that they are on the morning flight, we will post to our website:
www.freegaza.org

If you live in the London area, please try and make it down to Heathrow to meet them. We expect to have journalists at the airport to report on their deportation, and we are trying to arrange for a press conference in London for later in the afternoon.

More to follow! ... http://www.freegaza.org

And sadly...no word at all from our Commander-In-Chief.

Here are some quotations from Travis Kelly:

"I told you I'm not going to criticize my successor. I'll just tell you that there are people at Gitmo that will kill American people at a drop of a hat and I don't believe that persuasion isn't going to work. Therapy isn't going to cause terrorists to change their mind."

— George W. Bush

"It wouldn't be vintage Bush without a few hearty dollops of mangled verbiage combined with maddening factual inconsistency, now, would it? It almost makes one nostalgic for the daily brain cramps our former president used to deliver with such gruesome consistency. Well, no, actually, not really."

— William Rivers Pitt

“I’m running out of demons. I’m running out of villains. I’m down to Castro and Kim Il Sung.”

— Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, 1991

"When it's time to occupy some mideastern country, or to create a few dozen federal czars and authorities to protect Oblabla's waning "popularity" from any blowback, or to toss 15 TRILLION dollars to the corporations on short notice -- or to provide for their own endless junkets and benefits, including lifetime Single Payer for themselves -- "our" Congress finds the public pocket to be endlessly deep, a cornucopia providing all the miraculous loaves and fishes their milita-corporate overlords can consume."

— jhoffa

"Make no mistake about it, there will be a public option in the final bill – some form of it. We want it to be a fair level playing field, but you need something to keep the big boys honest. And the only thing that really is out there is a public option. We don’t trust the private insurance companies left to their own devices, and neither do the American people."

— Sen. Charles Schumer on Face the Nation

"For the record, neither regional health cooperatives nor state-level public plans, both of which have been proposed as alternatives, would have the financial stability and bargaining power needed to bring down health care costs."

— Paul Krugman

"It is no more meaningful to say that Stalin and George Orwell were both socialists than to observe that Martin Luther King Jr. and George Wallace were both Christians."

— Andrew O'Hehir


THE MEDIA

“You can rock the boat, but you can never say that the entire ocean is in trouble …. You cannot say: By the way, there’s something wrong with our …. system."
— Keith Olbermann

"I have been told by reporters that they will not report their own insights or contrary evaluations of the official 9/11 story, because to question the government story about 9/11 is to question the very foundations of our entire modern belief system regarding our government, our country, and our way of life."
—Air Force Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski

"Mainstream-media political journalism is in danger of becoming increasingly irrelevant, but not because of the Internet, or even Comedy Central. The threat comes from inside. It comes from journalists being afraid to do what journalists were put on this green earth to do. . . . There’s the intense pressure to maintain access to insider sources, even as those sources become ridiculously unrevealing and oversensitive. There’s the fear of being labeled partisan if one’s bullshit-calling isn’t meted out in precisely equal increments along the political spectrum... I still believe that no one is fundamentally more capable of first-rate bullshit-calling than a well-informed beat reporter—whatever their beat. We just need to get the editors, or the corporate culture, or the self-censorship – or whatever it is – out of the way.
— former Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin

“All of the institutions we thought would protect us — particularly the press, but also the military, the bureaucracy, the Congress — they have failed. The courts . . . the jury’s not in yet on the courts. So all the things that we expect would normally carry us through didn’t. The biggest failure, I would argue, is the press, because that’s the most glaring…. You’d have to fire or execute ninety percent of the editors and executives. You’d actually have to start promoting people from the newsrooms to be editors who you didn’t think you could control. And they’re not going to do that.”
— Seymour Hersh

"There is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it. The sheer ease with which this machinery has been able to do its work reflects a creeping structural weakness which now afflicts the production of our news."
— The Independent

"We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things that the general public does not need to know and shouldn’t. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows."

— former Washington Post owner Katherine Graham in speech to CIA, 1988

"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one."
— A.J. Liebling, "The Wayward Press," New Yorker magazine

"There is no such thing, at this date of the world’s history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it… The business of the Journalist is to destroy truth; To lie outright; To pervert; To vilify; To fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals for rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and or lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
– John Swinton, former Chief of Staff, The New York Times, circa 1880

Travis Kelly Graphics
http://www.tkellygraphics.com

Editorial & History Cartoons
http://www.traviskelly.com

CafePress:
Cartoons on T-Shirts, Posters, Calendars, Mugs and more
http://www.cafepress.com/traviskelly