Boycotting Geneva is unwise

Jewish students shout during the speech of Iranian president Ahmadinejad at the UN anti-racism conference.

Published: 20 April 2009
It is a pity that the Dutch government would rather boycott the UN anti-racism conference than engage in a debate about Zionism.
By Roel Schrijvers

Dutch foreign minister Maxime Verhagen said the UN anti-racism conference is "too important to be hijacked for political purposes" - and promptly withdrew from the conference. It was nicely put: the government comes off sounding so reasonable that you almost don't notice that it is being entirely unreasonable.
A bit of history is required. The closing resolution of the 2001 Durban conference was also widely criticised for being anti-Semitic. I have gone through its 63 pages in detail and there is nothing there that wasn't already established by the UN at some point: the Palestinians live in occupied territory and they have a right to self-determination. And all countries, including Israel, have a right to security.
What's more, the 2001 closing resolution was welcomed by Israel at the time. Shimon Peres, then president of Israel, called the statement "a very important achievement, an accomplishment of the first order for Israel and Israeli democracy".
The statements in the resolution were all correct. But even if they weren't: they form the basis of every two-state solution that has ever been proposed. In short: there was no reason not to sign it in 2001, and there is no reason not do so now.
As with every major anti-racism conference there are parties wanting to define Zionism as racism. It is often forgotten that the UN has already done this. A "Zionism is racism"-resolution was adopted by the UN general assembly in 1975. It was revoked in 1991 under pressure from the US, in part because the Madrid peace conference at the time brought hope of a lasting peace.
But there can be no question that Zionism is discriminating. In a nutshell, Zionists want a country with a Jewish identity that would be safe for Jews. There is nothing wrong with that except that implementing it is fraught with problems.
The facts go back some time, but they are important because they form the very basis of the organisation of the state of Israel.
In 1950 the development authority law was adopted, giving the Jewish National Fund property rights over 92 percent of the land - most of which was taken from its Palestinian owners - and making it the inalienable property of Jewish people worldwide. The final result of this law - combined with later laws - was that non-Jews are not allowed to buy, lease or work the land.
In 1952, Israel adopted the Jewish nationality law, offering Israeli citizenship and the Jewish nationality to all Jews (and only Jews) from the minute they set foot on Israeli soil. This distinction between citizenship and nationality is unique in the world. It is the legal basis for the institutionalised discrimination that gives Jews with the Jewish nationality access to privileges and services provided by the state of Israel.
That same year saw the creation of the Jewish Agency. Its task is to develop the country. Because of the nationality law thousands of Israeli citizens without the Jewish nationality were not eligible for a number of nationality-based privileges: they could not work on 'national' land, take part in 'national' housing schemes or apply for educational or agricultural grants.
On December 25, 1989, the Israeli supreme court ruled that a Jew who converts to another religion is no longer considered a Jew and is therefore excluded from the Jewish benefits that come with citizenship and nationality. The verdict was important because it underscored the legal basis for discrimination by equating nationality with religious persuasion.
Eleven days later, one of the supreme court judges confirmed that in Israeli society Zionism is preferred over other, universal values such as non-discrimination. "The essence of a Jewish state is to give pre-eminence to Jews as Jews. Anyone who asks, in the name of democracy, for equality to all its citizens - Jews and Arabs - must be rejected as one who negates the existence of the Israeli state as the state of the Jewish people," the judge declared on January 5, 1990. (From the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, cited in News from Within, April 3, 1991.)
Zionism comes down to the expropriation and marginalisation of non-Jews in general and Palestinian Arabs in particular. The state of Israel is a fact, but it is clear that Zionism and democracy are ultimately irreconcilable in the event that Jews should become a minority within the state of Israel. The logic of Zionism implies apartheid and discrimination and this is confirmed in practise.
That our government should refuse to engage in a debate about this is regrettable. Minister Verhagen is absolutely right when he says an anti-racism conference is too important to be hijacked for political purposes. He would do well to take a look in the mirror.

Roel Schrijvers is a lawyer specialised in international and European law at IUS-consult.

Schwarzenegger Opens California Fairgrounds to Homeless Camp

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said a make-shift tent city for the homeless that sprang up in the capital city of Sacramento will be shut down and its residents allowed to stay at the state fairgrounds.

Schwarzenegger said he ordered the state facility known as Cal-Expo to be used for three months to serve the 125 tent city residents, some of them displaced by the economic recession. The encampment may be shut down within a month, said Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson. The move comes after the Sacramento City Council last night agreed to spend $880,000 to expand homeless programs.

“Together with the local government and volunteers, we are taking a first step to ensure the people living in tent city have a safe place to stay, with fresh water, healthy conditions and access to the services they need,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement. “And I am committed to working with Mayor Johnson to find a permanent solution for those living in tent city.”

California, home to one of every eight Americans, has been particularly hard hit by the housing market collapse after many residents turned to exotic mortgages to afford homes. The tent city, which has long existed along the banks of the America River, gained national attention last month when some of its recently homeless residents were featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

The state has one of the highest rates of foreclosure, according to RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine, California-based seller of real estate data. California home prices dropped 41 percent last month from a year earlier, more than double the U.S. decline, as surging foreclosures drove down values, the state Association of Realtors said today.

State Unemployment

The state’s unemployment rate rose to 10.5 percent in February, as construction, financial and manufacturing companies eliminated jobs, leaving the most-populous U.S. state with one of the nation’s worst job markets.

The shelter at Cal-Exp currently houses about 150 people. It will be expanded by another 50 beds, and will include facilities for families with children.

Dick Cheney slammed President Obama again

Former Vice President Dick Cheney slammed President Obama again on Monday night during an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity at Cheney's home in McLean, Virginia.

Cheney pointedly questioned the president's leadership, criticized Obama's overseas trips as "disturbing," said his handshake with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez was "not helpful," and strongly disagreed with the release of the torture memos.

"I've been concerned at the way we've been presented overseas... What I find disturbing is the extent to which he's gone to Europe and seemed to apologize profusely, been to Mexico and seemed to apologize there," said Cheney. "The world out there, both our friends and foes, will be quick to take advantage of that... I don't think we have much to apologize for."

Describing the Bush administration's policy as to "ignore" Chavez, Cheney said that Obama's handshake was "not helpful... You have people all across South America who are watching how we respond." He added, "The president needs to provide leadership... needs to distinguish between good [guys] and bad guys."

Finally, Cheney defended the use of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques, saying, "It worked. It's been enormously valuable in terms of saving lives and preventing another mass casualty attack on the US."

Cheney formally asked that the Obama administration to release what he claimed are memos that demonstrated the success of those techniques.

"One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn't put out the memos that showed the success of the effort," Cheney said.

While former President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have withheld comment on the new administration, Cheney has been outspoken in his criticism.

In his first TV interview last month with CNN's John King, Cheney said that Obama's policies had raised the risk of a domestic terrorist attack.

And the criticism doesn't seem to bother the president - during a February rally in Austin, Texas, Obama dismissed the former vice president, saying "When Dick Cheney says it's a good thing, you know that you've probably got some big problems."



Did he have any problem with dictators all over the world during his 'service' in public office?

New Hope for Senator John McCain

First compound for receptors in schizophrenia and Alzheimer's holds promise
April 20th, 2009 in Medicine & Health / Research

For almost 20 years, pharmacological companies have known that certain compounds that activate two specific CNS receptors, causing them to release the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, are effective in treating the cognitive and motor problems related to both schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease (AD).

But because the compounds are "dirty" - scientific lingo for a lack of selectivity - they activate not only the essential M1 and M 4 muscarinic receptors but also the other three members of the family, designated M2, M3 and M5, resulting in unacceptable gastrointestinal and other side effects.

That may soon change, thanks to the discovery of a truly selective agonist that targets only the M1 receptor, known to be central to cognition and thus implicated in diseases like AD and schizophrenia.

On April 20, speaking at the Experimental Biology 2009 meeting in New Orleans, Vanderbilt graduate student Evan Lebois in the laboratories of Dr. David Weaver and Dr. Craig Lindsley describes the complex, labor-intensive screening and discovery process that allowed Vanderbilt scientists to pinpoint what big pharma's computers and robots could not, and the process now underway to move the compound toward becoming an effective drug to treat AD and schizophrenia. The presentation is part of the scientific program of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.

In stage one, the search for the appropriate molecule, Dr. David Weaver, director of the Vanderbilt Chemical Biology's High-Throughput Screening facility and co-director of the Molecular Library Screening Center, painstakingly ran high-throughput screens of every compound in the molecular library to see which ones activated the M1 receptor. Most such studies are done on computers with robots and automatic scoring mechanisms. By looking with his own eyes at the waveform reactions of every compound in the library, including those already rejected by the robotic systems, Dr. Weaver identified the molecule the scientists dubbed VU019467.

It was now time for stage two, and therefore the turn of Dr. Craig Lindsley, head of Medicinal Chemistry and Director of the Vanderbilt Specialized Chemistry Center for Accelerated Probe Development. His task was to create an effective probe compound.

"There is no point optimizing a molecule's potency in vitro if it turns out not to work in vivo," says Lindsley. His probe works in both. The team now is trying the compound in mouse and rat models of Alzheimer's and schizophrenia to determine what dose range restores the appropriate level of signaling through the targeted receptor. In addition, this compound provides a tool of unprecedented selectivity that will allow the researchers to tease apart the basic role of the M1 and M4 receptors in CNS function and disease states to degree that has never before been possible.

The team hopes that within a year they will have a compound ready to license to a pharmacological company that can continue with preclinical development and then onward to human trials.

Source: Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (news : web)

Keith Olbermann: "President Obama's Mistake"

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Knaan talks with Davey D about the "truth behind the Somali Pirates"

Can anyone ever really be for piracy? Outside of sea bandits, and young girls fantasizing of Johnny Depp, would anyone with an honest regard for good human conduct really say that they are in support of Sea Robbery? Well in Somalia, the answer is: it's complicated. The news media these days has been covering piracy in the Somali coast, with such lopsided journalism that it's lucky they're not on a ship themselves. It's true that the constant hijacking of vessels in the Gulf of Aden is a major threat to the vibrant trade route between Asia and Europe. It is also true that for most of the pirates operating in this vast shoreline, money is the primary objective. But according to many Somalis, the disruption of Europe's darling of a trade route is just Karma biting a perpetrator in the butt. And if you don't believe in Karma, maybe you believe in recent history. Here is why we Somalis find ourselves slightly shy of condemning our pirates.

Somalia has been without any form of a functioning government since 1991. And despite its failures, like many other toddler governments in Africa, sprung from the wells of post-colonial independence, bad governance and development loan sharks, the specific problem of piracy was put in motion in 1992.

After the overthrow of Siyad Barre, our charmless dictator of twenty-some odd years, two major forces of the Hawiye Clan came to power. At the time, Ali Mahdi, and General Mohamed Farah Aidid, the two leaders of the Hawiye rebels were largely considered liberators. But the unity of the two men and their respective sub-clans was very short-lived. It's as if they were dumbstruck at the advent of ousting the dictator, or that they just forgot to discuss who will be the leader of the country once they defeated their common foe. A disagreement of who will upgrade from militia leader to Mr. President broke up their honeymoon. It's because of this disagreement that we've seen one of the most devastating wars in Somalia's history, leading to millions displaced and hundreds of thousands dead. But war is expensive and militias need food for their families, and Jaad (an amphetamine-based stimulant) to stay awake for the fighting. Therefore a good clan-based Warlord must look out for his own fighters. Aidid's men turned to robbing aid trucks carrying food to the starving masses, and reselling it to continue their war. But Ali Mahdi had his sights set on a larger and more unexploited resource, namely: the Indian Ocean.

Already by this time, local fishermen in the coastline of Somalia have been complaining of illegal vessels coming to Somali waters and stealing all the fish. And since there was no government to report it to, and since the severity of the violence clumsily overshadowed every other problem, the fishermen went completely unheard. But it was around this same time that a more sinister, a more patronizing practice was being put in motion. A Swiss firm called Achair Parterns, and an Italian waste company called Progresso, made a deal with Ali Mahdi, that they could dump containers of waste material in Somali waters. These European companies were said to be paying Warlords about $3 a ton, where as in to properly dispose of waste in Europe costs about $1000 a ton.

In 2004, after Tsunami washed ashore several leaking containers, thousand of locals in the Puntland region of Somalia started to complain of severe and previously unreported ailments, such as abdominal bleeding, skin melting off and a lot of immediate cancer-like symptoms. Nick Nuttall, a spokesman for the United Nations Environmental Program, says that the containers had many different kinds of waste, including "Uranium, radioactive waste, lead, cadmium, mercury and chemical waste." But this wasn't just a passing evil from one or two groups taking advantage of our unprotected waters, the UN Convoy for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, says that the practice still continues to this day. It was months after those initial reports that local fishermen mobilized themselves, along with street militias, to go into the waters and deter the Westerners from having a free pass at completely destroying Somalia's aquatic life. Now years later, that deterance has become less noble, and the ex-fishermen with their militias have begun to develop a taste for ransom at sea. This form of piracy is now a major contributor to the Somali economy, especially in the very region that private toxic waste companies first began to bury our nation's death trap.

Now Somalia has upped the world's pirate attacks by over 21 percent in one year, and while NATO and the EU are both sending forces to the Somali coast to try and slow down the attacks, Blackwater and all kinds of private security firms are intent on cashing in. But while Europeans are well in their right to protect their trade interest in the region, our pirates were the only deterrent we had from an externally imposed environmental disaster. No one can say for sure that some of the ships they are now holding for ransom were not involved in illegal activity in our waters. The truth is, if you ask any Somali if they think getting rid of the pirates only means the continuous rape of our coast by unmonitored Western vessels, and the production of a new cancerous generation, we would all fly our pirate flags high.

It is time that the world gave the Somali people some assurance that these Western illegal activities will end, if our pirates are to seize their operations. We do not want the EU and NATO serving as a shield for these nuclear waste-dumping hoodlums. It seems to me that this new modern crisis is a question of justice, but also a question of whose justice. As is apparent these days, one man's pirate is another man's coast guard.

Pointer has some questions:

• It's a story and it can be believed, but think about it. Why should criminals be dumping waste from Europe over the wall near the coast of Somalia? The Atlantic Ocean is not that far away and if there is that less control they can dump it into the Atlantic depth of 400-4500 meters.
• Why do they attack other ships than the "bunch of ships" there are with criminal intent, illegal dumping or fishing alike?
• Why is illegal practice never reported and why did the pirates never catch an illegal ship?

The story is peculiar and very entertaining but not very plausible.

The Buccaneer Stops Here

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