Truthout

The latest international incident involving the United States and Iran occurred on November 1st when fighter planes belonging to Iran shot at a US drone and missed. The Obama administration was forced to acknowledge the incident after stories in the media surfaced about the attack. On November 8th, Pentagon press secretary George Little said the attack was unprecedented and that the drone was flying in international air space while on a surveillance operation.

History is not on his side. There actually was a previous incident when a drone came down in eastern Iran in December 2011. Either it malfunctioned as the US claimed or, according to Iran, was brought down by their aircraft. US did acknowledge then that the drone was monitoring Iran's military and nuclear facilities.

In his reflections on the destruction of European Jewry, the late Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg described a number of ways in which Jews "tried to avert the full force of the German destructive measures." Among these was "by judicious compliance with orders, and sometimes by anticipatory compliance with order not yet issued." A telling instance of the latter – though not cited by Hilberg – took place in the camp where I was born: Westerbork, the transit camp in Holland from which the bulk of Dutch Jewry was dispatched to the killing centers of the East. There, the occupier threatened to bring on the SS to administer the camp – at which point the Jews made a counter offer to run the camp themselves – under the watchful eye, it goes without saying, of the German overseer. It was Jews, for example, who prepared the transport lists, based on a number submitted to them by the German Commandant. The upshot of judicious and anticipatory compliance, in Hilberg's words, was that by "[p]laying into German hands, they speeded the process of destruction." This was certainly true in Holland.

Our perception of the sacred determines the community we seek. The sacred isn't only a matter of belief; it is also an expression of where we live and whom we seek to live with in community.

What is the sacred? A simple definition of the sacred is that to which we assign ultimate value. Using this definition, community is a unified body of persons based on a shared understanding of ultimate value. Working backwards from the concrete to the abstract, it is possible to discern someone's understanding of the sacred by examining the nature of his or her community.

As a part of delegations over the past four years that have made their way to Gaza, we have stopped in Cairo to pick up needed authorizations. This week as a part of an "emergency" delegation to Gaza after the 8 day Israeli attack that killed 165 and wounded several thousands, we arrived in Cairo as Egyptians opposed to President Morsi's massive assumption of powers took to the streets.

We've been in and out of Tahrir Square all day. It's almost midnight and tens of thousands of Egyptians have been to the square in the middle of Cairo that was the center of the revolution against dictator Hosni Mubarak, to protest the new President's decrees on the judiciary and legislative branches of government.

In 1992, Stevie Wonder, long a civil rights activist and defender of the rights of all humans, released a song called "It's Wrong" about the Apartheid regime of South Africa.

The lyrics were explicit in their condemnation of the "atrocities" of Apartheid as "people abusing" and "oppression".

Stevie was even arrested on Valentine's Day 1985 for protesting against Apartheid outside the Washington DC embassy of South Africa.

His activism against Apartheid -- the South African regime's policy of segregation of native Africans and their colonial rulers originating from Holland -- makes his current position on Palestine curious, to say the least.

On November 20th, 2012, U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska denied bail to Jeremy Hammond, a 27-year-old Chicago activist accused of hacking into the private intelligence firm Stratfor and releasing information to Wikileaks. On November 22nd, 2012 a communique from hackers highlighted Judge Preska's failure to disclose that her husband, Thomas J Kaveler is an employee of Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP, a current Stratfor client and associate, and moreover was himself a victim of the alleged hack (SOURCE). After independent confirmation of these facts, activists and attorneys have issued a call for Judge Preska to immediately recuse herself for failure to disclose this conflict of interest. At 1pm on Thursday, November 29th in New York's Foley Square (MAP) activists, attorneys, and friends of Jeremy Hammond, including NLG President, Gideon Oliver,Andy Bichlbaum co-creator of the Yes Men, John Knefel cohost of Radio Dispatch, and Chicago activist Natalie Wahlberg will rally and hold a press conference to brief the media on their efforts to see Judge Preska recuse herself and assure Hammond access to a fair trial and due process. 

The new Mexican American Indigenous Studies program must be built on the foundation of the previous program that had demonstrated quantitative and qualitative measures of success. Therefore, the implementation of the Mexican American Indigenous Studies program and the other Ethnic Studies Programs must take budgetary priority over the implementation of the Multicultural Program.

This economy isn't working for most Americans. The faltering recovery has begun creating jobs and lowering deficits, but more than 20 million are in need of full-time work. Those finding jobs struggle with lower wages and less security. The richest 1 percent is capturing virtually all of the nation's income growth, while the middle class is getting crushed.

We need to fix the economy so it works for working people. Instead Washington is focused not on jobs and growth, but on an extortionist threat concocted by the Tea Party-dominated Republican Congress.

If I had to pick a single word to describe the global economy today, it would be fragile. Policy makers and business leaders have actively built a system that destroys the environment in order to produce profits in the short term — by distributing goods and services across a global supply chain that is designed to minimize costs and maximize financial returns — while relying on structures that are profoundly susceptible to disruption.

This is done by dodging societal responsibility through a shadow network of tax havens (building up debt in the nations of the world and increasing wealth inequality); avoiding environmental protections by choosing to operate in countries where government officials can be bought on the black market (damaging the ecological commons on which all life depends); and creating deregulated zones where worker's rights are minimal or non-existent (sowing the seeds of upheaval by keeping large numbers of people in a state of desperation).

Separated by only a week, both Hostess Brands and the Republican Party raised the white flag of defeat. Hostess' flagship snack Twinkies and GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney were, at least for now, finished. According to each, labor disenfranchisement played a role: Hostess blamed a bakers' strike and Republicans pointed to autoworkers' inability to embrace Romney'sLet Detroit Go Bankrupt editorial (NY Times, October 18, 2008. In fact, Hostess current owners, two hedge funds and private equity firm Ripplewood Holdings, followed Romney's Bain Capital (and GOP strategy focused on the privileged 1%) of loading up on debt, trampling worker rights, and unselfconsciously rewarding themselves. However, Grand Old Twinkie and Grand Old Party woes run much deeper than irksome workers and an empathetic vacuum.