Daily Dreamtime

*Please come and support CNI tomorrow at a hearing on Capitol Hill. RSVP
mandatory to enter.*

* *

**The Middle East Before and After Annapolis: Facts on the Ground**

**_Date_: Friday, December 14, 2007**
**_Time_: 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM**
**_Place_**: U.S. Capitol Building, Room HC - 8**
**                    **

*Last week, Congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA) was successful in his attempts
to hold the unusually prejudicial hearing entitled "After Annapolis:
Next Steps in the Middle East Peace Process," which featured two
prominent pro-Israel "witnesses." Rep. Lantos has been a strong advocate
of Israel in the House of Representatives and a long-time ally of AIPAC,
as well as sponsor of the war in Iraq. This biased hearing featured only
two witnesses: Dennis Ross of the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy and David Wurmser, a well-know neo-conservative and Vice
President Cheney's former adviser on the Middle East. *

*Despite hundreds of phone calls and emails to his office requesting
that he add witnesses that represent a more objective and non-partisan
policy, Congressman Lantos went ahead with this transparent display of
pro-Israel bias on the Hill. *

*As a result, the Council for the National Interest is holding a
counter-hearing in the Capitol Building this Friday afternoon.
Ambassador Robert Keeley and four other members of the fall political
pilgrimage tour of the Middle East will be holding a public forum to
give first-hand reports on the "facts and high-level attitudes on the
ground" and their implications for the Annapolis initiative. _We hope
you can join us and demonstrate to Rep. Lantos and the rest of the Hill
that the public demands fair and unbiased hearings on the Hill._*

*The delegation recently completed a five-nation trip to the Middle East
visiting Israel, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon in exercise of
"citizen" diplomacy. Along with peace activists and non-governmental
organizations, the delegation had in-depth meetings with more than 50
high-ranking officials including** presidents, prime ministers, foreign
ministers, Knesset members, UN officials, leaders of Hamas and
Hezbollah, and others**. *

**For further information, contact Shannon O'Hara, 202 863-2951 x301**

Williams, founder of the grass-roots group Trafficking and Prostitution Services

http://www.lvcitylife.com/articles/2007/12/13/news/local_news/iq_18460027.txt

Pissing off the pimps

by MATT O'BRIEN

CAR TIRES SLASHED. Phone lines ripped out. The power cut off.

This is the price you pay for trying to help prostitutes in Las Vegas, says Jody Williams.

"There's always an initial moment of intimidation," said Williams, founder of the grass-roots group Trafficking and Prostitution Services. "But the pimps didn't scare me when I was in the business, so they certainly don't scare me now."

For six years, Williams worked as a prostitute and madam in Southern California. After being busted in 1985, she looked for a way out of the business -- with little success. There was Alcoholics Anonymous. And Narcotics Anonymous. But no help for people addicted to the money and power of the sex industry.

So Williams started Prostitutes Anonymous (now Sex Workers Anonymous) in 1987.

"I was in my 20s and making $30,000 a week," said Williams of her work as a madam. "I had more than one house. I had seven cars. Then all of a sudden I have the court system telling me that I have to go straight and get a job for 8 bucks an hour. I mean, I needed a little help wanting to do that and knowing how to do that."

False Torture Debate
on 2007/12/14 12:10:00 (70 reads)

Paris, December 13, 2007 – It is a strange affair when the CIA’s
destruction of videos made of its torture of prisoners has created a
greater scandal in the U.S. Congress and the press than the fact that
the torture itself took place.

The actual scandal is that the United States has been torturing
prisoners on orders from the top of the Bush administration, using
methods of torture authorized from the top that the administration still
refuses to condemn or renounce. The White House says “the United States
does not torture,” and therefore nothing that it does is torture.

Endeavour Maoris

The Head of a Chief of New Zealand, the Face Curiously Tataowd or Mark'd According to their Manner in A Journal of the Voyage to the South Seas, in His Majesty's Ship, The Endeavour. Sydney Parkinson, 1773. (high resolution image)

Sketching Congo


http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2006/02/sketching-congo.html

After its dying of hunger, Fallours is said to have lifted her fins in the front and back and found her to be like any other woman. The prefatory testimonials in the book cite several other examples of similar 'monsters' being sighted and states that the existence of the mermaid is 'quite definitely affirmed'.

shows the rhinocerous as a sympathetic, naïve creature, with beady eyes its forelegs hobbled and chained, its folds of skin clothing it like a surcoat, the ribs, which have been likened to the spokes of an umbrella are more like an uncomfortable saddle.

Vaughan, Kate (1852?–1903), by W. & D. Downey, 1880 [as Morgiana in the burlesque The Forty Thieves]