Jefferson Corner

The tragic and shocking mass murder today at Virginia Tech should give the Republican Party and the NRA a good to celebrate and dance in the streets having succeeded in giving Congress and the Courts the only interpretation of the Second Amendment rights to bear arms and go out and kill and murder innocent people and students.
During the last several decades some 40 such incidents took place where students and young kids taking free and liberal interpretation of the Second Amendment and taking full advantage of lose and very liberal laws covering ownership of guns, went on rampage killing and murdering fellow students. Columbine High School and University of Texas at Austin are but few incidents of such killing and murder.
It is obvious to so many American and the world that it is the gun lobby, the National Rifle Association and its Republican mistresses in Congress have always stood in the way of putting an end to such reckless and painful killing of innocent people and the total destruction of innocent families who lost a loved ones. Yes, it guns and it is guns in hand of people that kills.
The tens of millions of dollars of the gun lobby money that goes to Republican members of Congress make it easier for the courts to give expansive and lose interpretation of the Second Amendment that gives citizens the right to bear arms, even though the first part of the amendment talks of the need for armed and organized militias to protect the states from insurgents and to defend against the colonialist Brits, and does not cover the kind of guns that are on sales now especially since we have a professional army and national guard.
While one can understand the need of hunters, whether professional or armature to own hunting rifles and the need to have such ownership restricted through some very well worded laws and regulations to prevent abuse, there are simply no needs for any professional hunters to buy and carry bazookas or RPG or Uzi or M-16 or for that matter automatic and high caliber weapons such an M-50 mm gun. There are simply no needs for any professional or armature hunter to own and buy an Uzi to go out and hunt animals. A simple shotgun can kill even the most powerful animal. No needs for any hunter to use an Uzi to hunt and kill a moose or a dear. These guns are made to kill people and only people, and Republicans are partners in the assault on America.
The Cheney-Bush’s White House and before that the Reagan and Bush’s White House have always supported the purchase and use of a wide range of weapons including automatic weapons. In the US some 40,000 people are killed annually by gun wielding citizens. This is Vietnam day in and day out with the annual total victims is only few thousands less than the total number of American soldiers who died in Vietnam.
No one can convince me and convince the millions of Americans who are simply fed up with the easy access to guns, that the Republican Party and the NRA are defending the Second Amendment right to bear arms. It is all about lobby money and it has nothing to do with defending the constitution or the rights of citizens. Since when Republicans are known for defending the US Constitution. The Founding Fathers were not in bed with the NRA and did not write the Second Amendment with the futuristic view of giving average citizens to go out and buy all kind of guns and to go out and kill and murder. The Second Amendment was and is designed to give the rights to “bear arms within the context of organized militias. Perhaps the Republican Party can organize its own militia making sure that the millions of Americans who own guns are members of the Republican Militias. At least there will be the possible chance of putting some kind of gun control in the country. At least we citizens who chose not to bear arms know very well that we are secure in our homes and shops and are secure in our towns and cities with the present of a well-armed Republican Militias. Perhaps George Bush and Dick Cheney will consider the needs to send members of this militia to Iraq to fight the Republican War on Iraq. Thus saving the lives of our soldiers and members of the national guards for other and better things.
How many more have to die until such time the Republican Party and its representatives in Congress will come to their senses and put forward an effective gun law that puts behind lock once and for all the tens of millions of guns that are lose and within the reach of so many crazy people. Time for the Republican Party to join all of us and say enough is enough and to say NO to the tens of millions of dollars from the NRA. One has to recall the late Charles Heston as he stood up with his rifle in the NRA convention and declared” Over my dead body” a challenge to America and to Congress. Perhaps Heston is now celebrating too.

Share This

As someone who travels very frequently through Paris on Air-France, one only need to see and view the check-in counter at Washington-Dulles Airport where a special check-in counter is set up for the World Bank employees traveling First Class on their mission to tell poor countries and poor government to reduce subsidies for basic food such as bread and maize. Keep in mind the cost of a First Class ticket on Air-France to a country in Africa is not less than $ 8,000. That amount can buy over 300,000 loafs of bread in Egypt, perhaps more in some African countries.
The World Bank well known for top tax free salaries and first class tickets and early retirements is also well known for making sure that poor countries take drastic measures to cut down expenses including subsidies for the basic food items such as bread, and cooking oil. This same World Bank in the early seventies was silent when poor African and Latin American countries where building huge White Elephants such as conference centers in cities that no one even dare to think to travel to let alone hold a conference at costs of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Come Dr. Paul Wolfowitz, that Zionist and Likudist, the architect of Cheney-Bush disastrous war on Iraq to lead the World Bank with a promise to clean up the bank from corruption and with a promise to make sure that recipient countries are free from corruption and of course that include nepotism.
Of course, Dr. Wolfowitz left the Defense Department making sure that his Zionist war on Iraq will costs the US tax payers hundreds of billions of dollars and making sure that it is American soldiers that die in his stupid war and making sure hundreds of thousands of Iraqis will perish during this war, for the most by killing each others. The Tel-Aviv mafia got us in this mess and they went to bigger and bigger jobs including Dr. Wolfowitz who went to head the World Bank to do some good, perhaps to make up for his sins.
Before leaving the Defense Department, Dr. Wolfowitz was romantically involved with a highly paid and highly compensated Shaha Riza a public relation employee at the World Bank. So far so good. There is simply nothing wrong with romantic engagement with one or more person. That is a private matter. The World Bank has very strict rule covering such relationships within the bank, where supervisors are simply forbidden to get romantically involved with their subordinates. Of course with one simple exception, Dr. Wolfowitz.
However Dr. Wolfowitz with his contacts in the Bush Administration arrange to give Ms. Shaha a $61,000 annual raise and dispatch her to the State Department where she became the highest paid employee, getting paid $193,000 annually, tax free and of course with a maid that comes with the job. Believe it or not more than Candy Rice gets.
Dr. Wolfowitz of course is so outraged with these Blacks, Arabs and Muslims leaders and officials who are simply too corrupt and who nurture nepotism. So now this Ashkenazi Jew is telling these leaders and officials to clean up their act, while he as someone who think he is superior to these Blacks and Arabs is doing simply what he is telling others not to do. No corruption, no nepotism and of course no subsidies for the poor. It seems that Shaha needed some subsidies to buy not bread but caviar. People with salaries like that do not eat bread and do not buy cooking oil. They have simply very expensive habits of eating low calorie caviar. Well, Dr. Wolfwotiz, you certainly can teach these Blacks and Arabs something about integrity and good government and of course nepotism. You are in deed setting a good example of what someone in your position should do to help his lover. So please do not complain when a Black or an Arab official hires his mistress and put her on the payroll of government. At least this mistress may be in a position to buy whole lots of loaf of bread for her family and friends. For sure she will not buy caviar. Let us not hear any more of your nonsense talk of helping the poor. The World Bank under your leadership is a joke. Time for you to go home and save us from your high sense of false morality and moral virtues. The World Bank should let its employees travel economy class and not first class saving the money and given it to the poor to buy bread, maize and cooking oil with it.
Just remember next time you are at Washington-Dulles Airport waiting to check in at Air-France, take a look at the World Bank employee and think with his ticket someone in Egypt can buy 300,000 loafs of bread.

Share This

The alleged killing of BBC reporter Alan Johnson by an unknown Islamic group and the suicide bombing in Casablanca and the truck bombs in Algeria added to the daily suicide bombing and murder in Iraq, and the beheading of the Afghani translator by the Taliban are but a symptoms of what is wrong with Islam today.
For a long time, Islamic Jihad was dormant, until the Reagan administration and the CIA decided to revive it and with it the Afghan Mujahedeen became a household name in Arab and Muslim homes. Jihad became mission for many of those recruited by CIA agents with the cooperation of Arab governments who no doubt where getting a “commission” on every recruit that was heading to Afghanistan.
Suicide bombing and martyrdom became a mission from Casablanca to Kabul, passing through Riyadh, Gaza, Jerusalem Amman, Cairo, Lexuor, and of course the daily suicide bombing in Iraq became a culture, nurtured by a group of Muslim clerics who finally discovered their role and mission within an Islamic society for the most part ignorant and illiterate.
When young, desperate, poor, illiterate and drug addicted young men and women become human time bombs armed with a suicide belt raises many questions as to who stand behind all of these suicide bombing and the killings and murder of thousands of innocent people. No one simply go out and decide to become a suicide bomber. Someone must be the brain behind all of these suicide bombings. Who and what they are for sure is a puzzle that many heads of security agencies in countries like Morocco, Algeria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia would like to know?
To commit suicide without the intent of killing any one else is a simple task. One only needs to take an overdose of drugs or jump off a bridge or a tall building and they can commit suicide easy. But to commit suicide with intent to kill others is a process that takes too many players and requires sophisticated logistics, in addition to recruiting and brain washing these poor misfits.
The brains behind the killings and murder of innocent people are sophisticated well organized, well funded with access to places, like mosques and drug infested corners where they are able to recruit and send these young misfits and ignorant people to a mission to hell while they sit comfortably at home or at the mosque waiting for the next victim.
Suicide missions as a culture of death is new and strange to Islam and Muslims, especially when suicide itself is simply wrong or “haram” in Islam. Not so sure where the idea came about and who promoted it. However one thing for sure, Afghanistan was and is the breeding ground for such culture of death. And one has to go back to the roots of such culture and one has to go back to the Reagan administration with its mission of using Jihad as a way to defeat the Soviet and drive them out of Afghanistan.
Now with so many Muslim clerics appearing on television and in the media as heads of groups and organizations one has to raise the questions, since when Muslim clerics play a prominent role in society. I thought this is a Christian and Jewish phenomenon but not a Muslim one, since religious leaders in both Christianity and Judaism play major role in society and the lives of people. But not in Islam. In the Quran is no such class of people.
In my mind and in my view these Muslim clerics are the scrooge that is the cancer, spreading a culture not known in Islam. With a total absence of democracy and freedom in the Arab world, the only place where there is or perhaps a room to speak out was the mosque and of course the mosques are the domain of Muslim clerics. These Muslim clerics are working so hard these days to create a special “class” and status for themselves. Arab and Muslim democracies have to reckon with this class of religious professionals who want to make sure they are the “reference or marja’a” in society. Perhaps it is time to pull the carpet from underneath these clerics and send them back for some education and introduction starting with Islam 101, and reminding them of Allah’s words that those who kill an innocent life is like killing an entire humanity. One need to remind the clerics of Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Morocco, Algerian and Saudi Arabia that we need Muslim clerics that teach the world and us true Islam, not an Islam where they are the center of the universe, and where the true words of Allah are supreme.

Share This

No one can accuse Scott Ritter of being anti-American. He served his country, our country very well, with professionalism, integrity and under difficult conditions. Scott Ritter is one of the very few brave Americans who dare to speak out and tell it like it is. Perhaps other former officials dare to come out and speak the truth and tell American why the Cheney-Bush administration decided to go to a war, that it was ill prepared and badly managed. In the business sector, the CEO is fired under similar circumstances. George Bush always claimed to manage the country as a CEO, and he has done a very poor job of it. Bush and Cheney should be impeached and not allowed to remain in power until the end of their terms.

The Final Act of Submission
Posted on Apr 13, 2007
By Scott Ritter
In the months leading up to President Bush’s ill-fated invasion of Iraq, I traveled around the world speaking to various international groups, including many parliamentary assemblies. I spoke about democracy and the need of any nation or group of nations espousing democracy as a standard to embrace the ideals and values of justice and due process in accordance with the rule of law. I spoke of international law, especially as it was manifested in the charter of the United Nations (a document signed and adopted by all of the countries I visited).
Invariably, my presentation focused on the nation in question, whether it was Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan or Great Britain, and the status of its relationship with the United States. As an American, I said, I appreciated each nation’s embrace of the United States as a friend and ally. However, as a strong believer in the rule of law, I deplored the trend among America’s so-called friends to facilitate a needless confrontation which would severely harm the U.S. in the long run. These nations were hesitant to stand up to the United States even though they knew the course of action planned for Iraq was wrong.
Such permissive submission was deplorable, and invariably led to a comment from me about the status of genuine sovereignty in the face of American imperial power. If a nation was incapable of defending its sovereign values and interests, then it should simply acknowledge its status as a colony of the United States, pull down its disgraced national flag and raise the Stars and Stripes.
Now the tables have turned. Americans, through the will of the people as expressed in the November 2006 election, voiced their dissatisfaction with the conduct of the American war in Iraq, and empowered a new Democratic- controlled Congress to reassert itself as a separate but equal branch of government—especially when it came to matters pertaining to war and the threat of war.
This new Democratic leadership has failed egregiously. Not only has the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, been unable to orchestrate any meaningful legislation to bring the war in Iraq to an end, but in mid-March she carelessly greased the tracks for a whole new conflict. By excising language from a defense appropriations bill which would have required President Bush to seek the approval of Congress prior to initiating any military attack on Iran, Pelosi terminated any hope of slowing down the Bush administration’s mad rush to war.
Despite the fact that Congress was only stating through this language a simple reflection of constitutional mandate, Speaker Pelosi and others felt that the inclusion of such verbiage put the security of the state of Israel at risk by eliminating important “policy options” for the president of the United States. In short, Israeli national security interests trumped the Constitution of the United States.
I consider myself to be a friend of Israel, a status which has been demonstrated repeatedly through words and deeds from January-February 1991, when I was involved in the effort to stop Iraq Scud missiles from striking Israel during the 1991 Gulf War, to the period between October 1994 and June 1998 when I served as the lead liaison between the United Nations weapons inspectors and Israeli intelligence, working to find a final accounting of Iraq’s proscribed weapons of mass destruction. I know only too well the precarious reality of Israel’s security situation, and am sympathetic to its need to proactively deal with threats before they manifest themselves in a manner which threatens Israel’s ability to survive as a nation-state.
However, as an American who served on active duty in time of war as an officer of Marines, I also remember the oath I took to “uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” As such, I am troubled by the recent actions of Speaker Pelosi and other members of Congress who have not only abrogated their collective responsibility to uphold and defend the Constitution but have taken actions which, under normal circumstances and involving any other nation, would border on treasonous. Our collective duty as Americans must center on defending the very document, the Constitution, which defines who we are and what we are as a people and a nation. To have our elected representatives flagrantly push aside their constitutional responsibilities in the name of the security interests of another nation is unthinkable. And yet it has just happened, apparently without consequence.
Sadly, the new Democratic Congress has cemented its status as yet another iteration of a system which long ago sold its soul to special interests. Democrats can cackle about Republican scandals, including the Jack Abramoff affair, which brought down Rep. Tom DeLay among others. But history will show that the Pelosi-led sellout to Israeli special interests endangered the viability and security of America as a sovereign state governed by the rule of law more than Jack Abramoff ever could.
In this time of constitutional crisis, the American people need to wake up and demand that the basic tenets of the Constitution be adhered to. Congress is solely empowered by the Constitution to declare war. Demanding that the president of the United States adhere to this prerequisite is a logical and patriotic stance. Allowing any non-American interest, even one possessing such highly charged political and emotional sensitivities as Israel, to dictate otherwise represents nothing more than a capitulation of sovereignty. We the people need to rally around this defense of sovereignty. We must demand not only that Congress reassert its constitutional responsibilities and authority by demanding the president obey the letter of the law when it comes to war, whether against Iran or any other nation, but also to place in check the anti-American activities of one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington, D.C., the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee.
For decades AIPAC has operated in the shadows of American foreign policy decision-making, exerting its influence on elected officials away from the public scrutiny of the very constituents who elected those officials to begin with. It is impossible to hold someone accountable for actions that are kept secret, and as such AIPAC’s ability to secretly influence American foreign and national security policies represents a flagrant insult and threat to the very essence of American democracy. I am not advocating the dissolution of AIPAC. However, I am demanding that AIPAC be treated as any other representative of a foreign nation is treated. It should have to register as an agent of a foreign power so that the totality of its interactions with American officials can become a part of the public record. We require this of all other nations, including our good friends the British.
To state that AIPAC, and by extension Israel, is above the law in this regard is to acknowledge the reality that American national sovereignty no longer matters when it comes to the state of Israel. So be it. But then we are, collectively, no better than those nations I mocked prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 as “colonies” of the United States. So if we are to continue to permit AIPAC to operate as an undeclared agent of a foreign nation, and to influence American foreign and national security policymaking at the expense of our Constitution, then we should acknowledge our true status as nothing more than a colony of Israel, pull down the Stars and Stripes and raise the Star of David over our nation’s capitol. While representing the final act of submission, it would also be the first truly honest act that occurred in Washington, D.C., in many years.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_final_act_of_submission/

Share This

Every one including the Palestinian leadership talks of aids, peace discussions etc, yet no one talks of ending the Israeli Occupation to immediate end. Of course, Israelis and beyond them the Jewish community at large simply ignor that the Israeli and Jewish Occupation is not only legally wrong, but morally wrong as well. For a community that talks so much of morality, there is not only total silence, but try to find execuses and justification for the worst military occupation in modern history after the Nazi and Japanes occupation. My wife told me of an incident that happened in an Israeli court looking into fraudulent property transaction. When the Palestinian landowner presented all the legal documents proving evidence of ownership according to Israeli laws, the Jewish settlers stood up in court and said, but I have a more superior document of ownership one from G-d. Of course, the document was did not have the seal and signiture of G-d and was not legalized at the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

Worse Than Apartheid?
By Robert D. NovakMonday, April 9, 2007; 12:00 AM
BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Hani Hayek, an accountant who is the Christian mayor of the tiny majority-Christian Palestinian village of Beit Sahour, was angry last week as he drove me along the Israeli security wall. “They are taking our communal lands,” he said, pointing to the massive Israeli settlement of Har Homa. “They don’t want us to live here. They want us to leave.”
Har Homa, dwarfing nearby dwellings of Beit Sahour, seemed larger than when I saw it at Holy Week a year ago. It is. The Israeli government has steadily enlarged settlements on the occupied West Bank, and I could see both the construction at Har Homa and road building for a dual transportation system for Israelis and Palestinians.
Jimmy Carter raised hackles by titling his book about the Palestinian question “Peace Not Apartheid.” But Palestinians allege this is worse than the former South African racial separation. Nearing the 40th anniversary of the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, the territory has been so fragmented that a genuine Palestinian state and a “two-state solution” seem increasingly difficult.
The security wall has led to virtual elimination of suicide bombings and short-term peace. But life is hard for Palestinians, whose deaths because of conflict increased 272 percent in 2006 while Israeli casualties declined. In a minor incident last week of the type that goes unnoticed internationally, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troopers killed a Palestinian man accused of illegally entering a firing zone while collecting metal scraps to sell. The Britain-based organization Save the Children estimates that half the children in the occupied territories are psychologically traumatized.
Palestinians argue that things have gotten worse because of pervasive feelings of hopelessness. Students at Bethlehem University (run by the Catholic Brothers of De La Salle, with an enrollment that is 70 percent Muslim) sounded more pessimistic and radicalized than a year ago. Ahmad al Issa, a fourth-year journalism student, was held for a year in an Israeli prison on charges of throwing stones at Israeli troops. Now he has bought into the libel that Jewish employees at the World Trade Center were warned in advance of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The U.S.-backed boycott following the election victory of the extremist group Hamas in early 2006 has made the Palestinian Authority destitute, crippling government services. Deprived of help from the authority, with the economy in a shambles, city governments are bankrupt. Bethlehem’s mayor, Victor Batarseh, has a special problem because tourists and pilgrims no longer stay overnight in the city of Christ’s birth. Out of money and credit, he is ready to lay off the city’s 165 staffers.
Batarseh, a U.S. citizen who practiced thoracic surgery in Sacramento, is pinned down in Bethlehem. A Christian and political independent who calls himself a private-enterprise democrat, Batarseh is on the Israeli blacklist because he contributed to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which the State Department has designated a terrorist organization. Denied permits for Jerusalem, the mayor must drive to Amman, Jordan, to get to meetings in Europe.
Contact with the PFLP is not a requirement for being holed up by the Israel Defense Forces. Bethlehem University students cannot get to Jerusalem, a few minutes’ drive away, unless they sneak in illegally. The students from the separated Gaza enclave have to take classes from Bethlehem via the Internet.
Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey was at the university the same day I was, and faculty members could hardly believe a real live member of Congress was there. Smith later was given a tour of Jerusalem to see with his own eyes that the separation barrier in most places is a big, ugly and intimidating wall, not merely a fence.
Smith, an active Catholic layman, was drawn here because of the rapid emigration of the Holy Land’s Christian minority. They leave more quickly than Muslims because contacts on the outside make them more mobile. Peter Corlano, a Catholic member of the Bethlehem University faculty, told Smith and me: “We live the same life as Muslims. We are Palestinians.”
Concerned by the disappearance of Christians in the land of Christianity’s birthplace, Smith could also become (as I did) concerned by the plight of all Palestinians. If so, he will find precious little company in Congress.
© 2007 Creators Syndicate Inc.

Share This

George Bush not known for his smarts and is well known for choosing mediocre if not incompetent senior officers within the administration (minor exceptions are Bill Gates and John Roberts, chose to circumvent the normal process of having senior appointments come before US Senate, chose to appoint Daniel Pipes board members of US Institute of Peace and chose to appoint John Bolton as US Ambassador to the UN.
Daniel Pipes is not known for his intellect nor for his intellectual credentials, but is well known for his hate and his attacks on freedom of speech through his dog pack like organizations Campus Watch and his attacks on Arabs and Muslim was appointed to perhaps one of the most prestigious US institutions known for the quality of scholars it hosts and well known for the work it does around the world and of course the god face of an otherwise ugly ad vindictive foreign policy.
Of course Pipes appointment was against the majority will of the US Senate and many of senators voiced their appositions to such appointments. However George Bush chose to be feisty and chose such an obnoxious senior officers and his appointment is nothing more than an insult to our sense of sensibilities and our sense of honor and dignity. One would think that George Bush would chose against the advice of his senior administration advisor one who will promote reconciliations and who will promote the mission and vision of the US Institute of Peace. As one except from such an incompetent administration, George Bush chose Daniel Pipes to sit on the board of directors of US Institute of Peace.
Adding insult to injury, again, George Bush chose other senior officers not know for his intellect but is well know for being obnoxious to represent us at the UN.
One only to recall some of our UN ambassadors such as Henry Cabot Lodge, George Bush, Arthur Goldberg, Richard Halbrook, even Madeline Albright and compare to that of John Bolton. What an insult such an appointment not only to us, the people of the US but to the UN and to the world at large.
However with the exception of John Roberts and Robert Gates, most if not all appointees where chosen for their right wing ideology and not known for their competence and intellect. One only need to see how we made such a big mess of Iraq and how George Bush and Dick Chaney chose to appoint a High Commissioner, Paul Bremer, who knew nothing about Iraq and whose decisions are directly responsible for the tens of dead US soldiers and Iraqis and responsible for the big mess that is Iraq today and responsible for the billions of dollars stolen by US corporation and of course stolen by senior Iraqi officials.
Thanks God, our democracy does not allow such incompetent, vindictive highly ideological president and vice president to stay in power beyond their maximum 8 years term. We can only hope that Cheney/Bush team will not commit more stupid reckless ventures in what is left of their term. Their tenure can only be classified as the worst in our history and history of the world. There are jinxed from day one. They came to power not to uplift American but to destroy what ever great things we have. They totally failed at their war on terror, and they succeeded to fleece the country and take it to being broke and of course they could only succeed in instilling hate and fear in our people and the world. They will not be missed.

Share This