Isreal picks a fight with Ireland

It seems that Zionists and AIPAC will go to any lengths to stifle anyone critical of their murderous regime. There is no end to whom Zionists will pick a fight with.

Now it's Mary Robinson, first woman president of Ireland and former UNHR high commissioner who has supported Palestinian rights and criticised the tactics of Israel against the Palestinian people. Mary Robinson has been included to receive the 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom Award by Obama.

Zionists object of course - anyone who criticizes Israel's bloody tactics in Palestine cannot possibly be a good person. That pretty well means that a majority of people in the world are on Israel's and AIPAC's black list. The Irish people have long supported Palestine and protested the savage treatment of its people by Israel with boycotts of Israeli products and humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people.

Usually, the Irish like just about every country and nationality in the world. And, I might add, are welcomed everywhere, especially on UN peace keeping missions because of their congenialality and resolution of tense conflicts with good will rather than bombs and bullets. Israel should get some sort of medal itself for raising the hackles on Irish backs and being boycotted not only by Irish people, but also by Irish academia, a feat no other nation has accomplished in Irish history. Congratulations to Israel.

I would here argue the merits of case affirming Israel's violation of human rights, but it would takes weeks to list all the proven instances of its blatant disregard for human rights over decades. And of course, I would be arguing with people whose minds are immersed in Israeli propaganda. Only a fool argues with fools.

Before or after you read the following article you might want to review Mary Robinson's credentials in the area of human rights activities.

Mary Robinson
Mary Robinson: Human rights are good for business
Global Elders

Jewish groups decry Obama's choice of
Ireland's Mary Robinson for award

Protests against the former Irish president, who critics say is anti-Israel, could become problematic for President Obama.

By Peter Wallsten

August 7, 2009
Source
Reporting from Washington -- Jewish congressional members and lobbying groups are protesting President Obama's decision to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former Irish leader Mary Robinson, who they say has a long record of harshly criticizing Israel.

The award announcement prompted the first criticism of Obama by the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a group he courted during last year's campaign. Jewish groups in the U.S. have been largely supportive of the president. But the Robinson award is the latest in a series of recent disagreements with Obama, and some Jewish leaders are growing skeptical of his commitment to Israel.

Last month, Obama hosted Jewish leaders at a White House meeting designed to soothe tensions over his differences with Israel over the future of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and lingering concern over the tenor of his outreach to the Muslim world.

By Thursday, several members of Congress -- including two Jewish Democrats -- had rebuked the decision to bestow the country's highest civilian honor on Robinson during a White House ceremony planned for Wednesday.

Among their concerns was her role as the United Nations' high commissioner on human rights in the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. The U.S. and Israel pulled out of the conference over objections to a document it produced accusing Israel of racism in its treatment of the Palestinians.

Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and a member of the Jewish caucus to the conference, said Thursday that Robinson "allowed the event to be hijacked by extremists who had no interest in peace."

The episode, Cooper said, "degraded" the global human rights effort, setting the stage for the second racism conference, held this spring, in which a keynote speaker was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a fierce enemy of Israel who has questioned whether the Holocaust occurred.

Robinson "simply did not have the guts . . . to step into the fray and say it can't be this way," Cooper said. "She's a nice woman and a good person, but the fact that you mean well isn't a prerequisite to get our nation's highest honor."

Robinson, Ireland's president from 1990 to 1997, told Irish reporters this week that the accusations had no merit and blamed the controversy on "a lot of bullying by certain elements of the Jewish community."

"They bully people who try to address the severe situation in Gaza and the West Bank," she told a radio network, according to an account in the Belfast Telegraph.

Rep. Shelley Berkley (D- Nev.) said Thursday that the "biased views expressed by Mary Robinson against the nation of Israel remain deeply troubling, and her tarnished record of actions on this issue cannot be erased with the awarding of the Presidential Medal of Freedom."

Berkley blamed Robinson for the "highly charged anti-Jewish attacks against Israel and its supporters" at the 2001 conference and said her actions "deserve to be condemned."

Another Jewish Democrat, Rep. Eliot L. Engel of New York, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Robinson was a "screw-up" and a "mistake."

A White House spokesman, Tommy Vietor, on Thursday stood by the president's decision, calling Robinson a key figure in history. "Mary Robinson was the first female president of Ireland, whom we are honoring as a prominent crusader for women's rights in Ireland and around the world," Vietor said. "She has dedicated her career to human rights and working to improve an imperfect world.

"As with any public figure, we don't necessarily agree with every statement she has ever made," Vietor said, "but it's clear that she has been an agent of change and a fighter for good."

Still, the controversy looked to be growing.

The World Jewish Congress on Thursday accused Robinson of an "endorsement of Palestinian violence as legitimate political activity, and the outrageous equating of the Holocaust to the suffering of the Palestinians," adding that Robinson's record "renders her unqualified to receive the nation's highest civilian honor."

The criticism from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, which called on Obama to "firmly, fully and publicly repudiate [Robinson's] views on Israel," was especially problematic for the president.

As a candidate, he delivered well-received speeches to the group as he presented himself as a staunch supporter of Israel. AIPAC's incoming president, Lee Rosenberg, is a Chicago friend of Obama's and was a key fundraiser during the campaign.

Defenders of Robinson point to a 2003 op-ed she wrote in the New York Times deploring the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, and they note that during the 2001 racism conference she waved a booklet of anti-Semitic cartoons and declared, "I am a Jew."

But critics point to a 2002 report compiled by the late Rep. Tom Lantos of California, a Holocaust survivor and delegate to the Durban conference, who said that Robinson's conduct "left our delegation deeply shocked and saddened" by her remarks about Israel.

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Stop hoping and Start demanding.

People talk alot about hope these days. Hope is not an unworthy emotion; in fact, you can't really live without it. But when hope becomes the excuse one clings to placing the burden of changing things on someone else, it is more an anesthetic than a commendable stance.

The article below by Naomi Klein cleverly puts this dreary miasma into focus. When we will decide to demand basic human rights? If the New World Order is coming, and surely it is, will people be its victims or it architects? Putting hope into action to demand that people's well being be the priority over banksters profits is the only way out. It requires moving from a victim's role to that of a responsible actor in creating the world.

Sometimes one has to stop begging the elite Big Dogs of society, 'Please help us and provide for us! Pretty please?', and start demanding, 'We will not tolerate for another moment this wreckage of your greed as a legacy for our children!' Until this happens, hope will be a toxin in the body politic rather the emergence of a better world.

‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’ I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”

Network video clip

Hopebroken and Hopesick:
A Lexicon of Disappointment

By Naomi Klein
Source
April 17, 2009 "The Nation" -- All is not well in Obamafanland. It's not clear exactly what accounts for the change of mood. Maybe it was the rancid smell emanating from Treasury's latest bank bailout. Or the news that the president's chief economic adviser, Larry Summers, earned millions from the very Wall Street banks and hedge funds he is protecting from reregulation now. Or perhaps it began earlier, with Obama's silence during Israel's Gaza attack.

Whatever the last straw, a growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard.

This is a good thing. If the superfan culture that brought Obama to power is going to transform itself into an independent political movement, one fierce enough to produce programs capable of meeting the current crises, we are all going to have to stop hoping and start demanding.

The first stage, however, is to understand fully the awkward in-between space in which many US progressive movements find themselves. To do that, we need a new language, one specific to the Obama moment. Here is a start.

Hopeover. Like a hangover, a hopeover comes from having overindulged in something that felt good at the time but wasn't really all that healthy, leading to feelings of remorse, even shame. It's the political equivalent of the crash after a sugar high. Sample sentence: "When I listened to Obama's economic speech my heart soared. But then, when I tried to tell a friend about his plans for the millions of layoffs and foreclosures, I found myself saying nothing at all. I've got a serious hopeover."

Hoper coaster. Like a roller coaster, the hoper coaster describes the intense emotional peaks and valleys of the Obama era, the veering between joy at having a president who supports safe-sex education and despondency that single-payer healthcare is off the table at the very moment when it could actually become a reality. Sample sentence: "I was so psyched when Obama said he is closing Guantánamo. But now they are fighting like mad to make sure the prisoners in Bagram have no legal rights at all. Stop this hoper coaster-I want to get off!"

Hopesick. Like the homesick, hopesick individuals are intensely nostalgic. They miss the rush of optimism from the campaign trail and are forever trying to recapture that warm, hopey feeling-usually by exaggerating the significance of relatively minor acts of Obama decency. Sample sentences: "I was feeling really hopesick about the escalation in Afghanistan, but then I watched a YouTube video of Michelle in her organic garden and it felt like inauguration day all over again. A few hours later, when I heard that the Obama administration was boycotting a major UN racism conference, the hopesickness came back hard. So I watched slideshows of Michelle wearing clothes made by ethnically diverse independent fashion designers, and that sort of helped."

Hope fiend. With hope receding, the hope fiend, like the dope fiend, goes into serious withdrawal, willing to do anything to chase the buzz. (Closely related to hopesickness but more severe, usually affecting middle-aged males.) Sample sentence: "Joe told me he actually believes Obama deliberately brought in Summers so that he would blow the bailout, and then Obama would have the excuse he needs to do what he really wants: nationalize the banks and turn them into credit unions. What a hope fiend!"

Hopebreak. Like the heartbroken lover, the hopebroken Obama-ite is not mad but terribly sad. She projected messianic powers on to Obama and is now inconsolable in her disappointment. Sample sentence: "I really believed Obama would finally force us to confront the legacy of slavery in this country and start a serious national conversation about race. But now whenever he seems to mention race, he's using twisted legal arguments to keep us from even confronting the crimes of the Bush years. Every time I hear him say ‘move forward,' I'm hopebroken all over again."

Hopelash. Like a backlash, hopelash is a 180-degree reversal of everything Obama-related. Sufferers were once Obama's most passionate evangelists. Now they are his angriest critics. Sample sentence: "At least with Bush everyone knew he was an asshole. Now we've got the same wars, the same lawless prisons, the same Washington corruption, but everyone is cheering like Stepford wives. It's time for a full-on hopelash."

In trying to name these various hope-related ailments, I found myself wondering what the late Studs Terkel would have said about our collective hopeover. He surely would have urged us not to give in to despair. I reached for one of his last books, Hope Dies Last. I didn't have to read long. The book opens with the words: "Hope has never trickled down. It has always sprung up."

And that pretty much says it all. Hope was a fine slogan when rooting for a long-shot presidential candidate. But as a posture toward the president of the most powerful nation on earth, it is dangerously deferential. The task as we move forward (as Obama likes to say) is not to abandon hope but to find more appropriate homes for it-in the factories, neighborhoods and schools where tactics like sit-ins, squats and occupations are seeing a resurgence.

Political scientist Sam Gindin wrote recently that the labor movement can do more than protect the status quo. It can demand, for instance, that shuttered auto plants be converted into green-future factories, capable of producing mass-transit vehicles and technology for a renewable energy system. "Being realistic means taking hope out of speeches," he wrote, "and putting it in the hands of workers."

Which brings me to the final entry in the lexicon.

Hoperoots. Sample sentence: "It's time to stop waiting for hope to be handed down, and start pushing it up, from the hoperoots."

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and syndicated columnist and the author of the international and New York Times bestseller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, now out in paperback. Visit her website http://www.naomiklein.org/