Daily · Dreamtime

Virginia had been on and off the streets for more than 12 years. She was considered a hard case.

The Comfort of Home
Her Underground Years Behind Her, a Woman Begins a Challenging New Life

By DeNeen L. Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 19, 2008; C01

Not that long ago nor that far away, she was the woman who slept beneath the street in a tunnel, lying on a bed of cardboard boxes.

Inside an underground commuter walkway leading to the Bethesda Metro station, she constructed a bedroom of thin paper walls. As people passed in a hush of hurry, she slept, unbothered that strangers were walking through her paper bedroom.

When she was awake, you stood outside the cardboard wall, as if talking across a neighbor's fence. And she talked with you about the worried state of the world. And you encouraged her to get up, come out of the tunnel. Whispering to her to climb into the daylight, up the steps from depression. Encouraging her to put on a pretty dress and lipstick and join the world bustling above her.

From: "Jewish Peace News " < jpn@jewishpeacenews.net>
To: rispiers
Subject: Ben Efrat on the current viability of a two-state solution
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 05:55:42 +0000

"Challenge Magazine" is (to quote it's website) "a leftist magazine focusing on
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within a global context. Published in Tel Aviv,
its "editorial staff includes Jews and Arabs". Positioning itself with a clarity
and openness that I find exceptional even among alternative publications, the
"about" section on the "Challenge" website provides a succint history of the
editorial stands taken on key issues since the magazine's foundation in 1990.
Readers pondering how reliable or knowledgable a source this is, are offered a
detailed context to draw on.

I

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The Coup d'Etat against Bush

William Pfaff
Paris, January 17, 2008 – The conspicuous irrelevance of George W. Bush's tour of the Middle East to any of the real forces and interests of the region, as well as the spooky irrelevance of nearly everything he said there about the alleged menace of Iran, Israel-Palestine peace, his fancied notions of Iraq's democratic development, and even about oil prices and the American economy, embarrassed his Arab hosts as well as the American officials and press accompanying him.

The tour – his farewell to the Middle East? -- lent weight to the judgement many abroad have already reached, that he no longer governs the United States, and indeed does not even understand its present foreign relationships. It is widely felt that what amounts to a coup d'etat has taken place in the United States, removing George Bush, without his even recognizing this (or at least admitting that it has occurred) from control over the principal issues of war and peace.

This coup has taken the form of what amounts to a mutiny of the professional foreign policy services of the U.S. government, acquiesced in by the new Secretary of Defense, the service chiefs, and Director of Central Intelligence Bush has himself appointed.

Mike Madden is Salon's Washington correspondent.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/01/18/huckabee2/print.html

Mike Huckabee hearts Israel
On foreign policy, he is talking up his visits to the Holy Land. But it may really be about courting believers in Armageddon.

By Mike Madden

Jan. 18, 2008 | Ask Mike Huckabee if being governor of Arkansas gave him enough foreign policy experience to be president of a nation at war, and he's got a ready answer. At a press conference here Thursday, he ticked off 12 countries and two continents he'd visited to prove his experience. Usually, one country in particular stands out from the list. "I've been to Israel nine times," he said.

Huckabee said the same at a debate in New Hampshire a couple of weeks ago, also mentioning Iraq and Afghanistan at the time. A few days after that, at another debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C., he lectured Ron Paul on the Middle East. "We've got one true ally in the Middle East, and that's Israel," Huckabee said. "It's a tiny nation ... I've literally traveled from Dan to Beersheba, and I understand something of that nation and the vulnerability of it." Again and again on the campaign trail, Huckabee cites his trade missions as governor -- as well as his earlier, church-affiliated trips to the Holy Land -- as proof that he'd make a credible commander in chief.

http://www.scaloguye.com/news/flaunt.html

http://www.scaloguye.com/index2.html

We are pleased to invite you to a viewing of new works by
Irina Polin
Saturday, January 26, 6-10pm, drinks and hors d'oeuvres will be served

Irina Polin, Lisa, 2006, lightjet print on white plexiglass, 26 x 35 in / 66 x 90 cm, editon of 5
Click image for more information about the artist and/or the gallery.

Russian artist Irina Polin, who for the past 10 years has been living and working in Switzerland, masters with a playful confidence the seemingly effortless coexistence of fiction and reality, of present and past. One clearly recognizes a joy of both life and creation, of playing and masquerades. Irina Polin's work is of greater depth than is first apparent. Reality and dream are not shut out...they stand side by side as equals.

When first viewing Polin's portrait photographs one assumes to have an idea of her intentions. But soon enough, that idea becomes deluded. The confusion grows because Polin takes photographs as a first step and then, as the second step, uses them as templates for her paintings, extracting only a portion of the image to recreate with paint. Once the painting is complete, as a third step, she further extends the image by photographing these paintings "after" her own photographs. When all is said and done, Irina then destroys the painted portraits, liberating the final photograph from its origin.

Irina Polin, Untitled 2007, watercolor on balsa wood, 25 x 25 in / 63 x 63 cm                
Now on view, various ink, graphite and watercolor drawings on balsa wood by Polin.

http://www.scaloguye.com/index2.html

 

Bringing Death and Destruction to Muslims
by Paul Craig Roberts

 

http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=12224

 

After pandering to Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert's right-wing government last week, US president George W. Bush carried the Israeli/neoconservative campaign against Iran to Arab countries. Sounding as authentic as the "Filipino Monkey," Bush told the Arab countries that "Iran is the world's leading state sponsor of terror," and that "Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere."

 

To no effect. Every country in the world, except America, knows by now that the US is the world's leading state sponsor of terror and that the neoconservative drive for US hegemony over the world threatens the security of nations everywhere. But before we get into this, let's first see what Bush means by "terrorist" and Iran's sponsorship of terrorism.

 

Bush considers Iran to be the leading state sponsor of terror, because Iran is believed to fund Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian ghetto. Hezbollah and Hamas are two organizations that exist because of Israeli aggression against Palestine and Lebanon. The two organizations are branded "terrorist" because they resist Israel's theft of Palestine and Israel's designs on southern Lebanon. Both organizations are resistance organizations. They resist Israel's territorial expansion and this makes them "terrorist."

 

( Read more... )

"Filipino Monkey" is a pseudonym used by radio pranksters in maritime radio transmissions since at least the 1980s, especially in the Persian Gulf. These pranksters make odd, confusing, or even threatening calls on VHF marine channel 16, which is the shipping and maritime International Emergency Distress Frequency. All ships at sea are required to monitor the channel, which is meant to be used only until contact is made during an emergency, at which point the users are supposed to change to a different frequency.^[1].

An account of U.S. operations during Operation Earnest Will in the Gulf in 1988 contains this description of the Monkey's nighttime broadcasts:

"From time to time, the radio squawked, breaking the quiet with a burst of static. Most of the messages were fully routine, the expected traffic in a crowded sea. But every so often a high manic voice would break from the speaker: 'Hee hee hee! Filipino Monkey!' No one knew who the caller was, or what he meant by his strange message." ^[2]

[edit] Iran-US naval incident of January 2008

Main article: 2008 US-Iranian naval dispute

On January 7, 2008, the government of the United States of America reported that the day before a number of Iranian IRGC Navy speedboats had harassed and threatened US warships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz (a narrow passageway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman). In a video clip ^[3] released by the administration, a crew member on one particular warship was heard speaking the following on a communications radio.

"This is coalition warship. I am engaged in transit passage in accordance with international law. I maintain no harm. Over!"

This is followed by more footage of a number of smaller speedboats traveling at high speed around a number of US warships while the same crew member is heard speaking on the radio, warning five unidentified crafts that they were approaching coalition warships and asking them to identify themselves and report their intentions. Later the crew member is heard warning the crafts to stay away before a heavily accented voice is heard replying:

"I am coming to you... You will explode in... minutes."

The US administration used this incident - which occurred three days before President Bush was due to travel to Israel and Arab states of the Persian Gulf for talks on the Israeli-Palestinian relations, US arms sales to the Gulf Arab States, and US's claim that Iran was a dangerous nation with intentions of producing nuclear weapons (see Nuclear program of Iran) - as a good example of irresponsible, provocative, and aggressive behavior of the Iranian government ^[4], with President Bush warning that "all options are on the table to secure" US military assets^[5]