Erick Erickson, the editor of the far right Republican blog RedState, sent an e-mail to RedState supporters this morning urging the University of Illinois/Chicago to release documents related to Barack Obama's participation in the Annenberg Challenge on Excellence in Education, founded by Bill Ayers. For those of you not familiar with Ayers, he was a co-founder of the militant Weather Underground that took over Students for a Democratic Society in 1969. He has since reformed and is now a distinguished professor at the University of Illinois/Chicago.
Ayers' past is now being exploited by the far right in a shameless attempt to connect him to Barack Obama. In fact, there is absolutely no evidence that Obama and Ayers have had anything but an academic and philanthropic relationship. This is nothing more than an attempt to associate Barack Obama with a so-called "terrorist," who was never convicted, in the far right's broader attempt to cast Obama as different, foreign, "the other."
Erickson's e-mail and more commentary beneath the fold.
Whoever scheduled Gordon Brown’s recent visit to Israel is surely out of a job. Brown’s dreary, etiolated performance – appropriate for a political corpse – was rendered even flatter by its proximity to Barack Obama’s headline-hogging whirlwind tour of Europe and the Middle East. Despite the differences in style, however, both politicians took to the podium in Israel with a similar message: one of support for the latter’s rejectionist expansionism.
That the Republican water carrier and New York Times columnist David Brooks would blast Barack Obama's Berlin speech was utterly predictable. (Kevin Drum even predicted the title of the piece, "Playing Innocent Abroad.") To be sure, by slandering Obama's call to "remake the world" with epithets including "saccharine," "treacle," and "Disney," Brooks did not disappoint. Of course, even less surprising is that back in 2005, David Brooks had only glowing praise for President Bush's democratization agenda and its audacious vision to "imagine new worlds."
Just one month after airing an ad which declared "only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war," John McCain once again joked about creating carnage in Iran. On the stump Tuesday, McCain added killing Iranians with cigarette addiction to last year's musing about "bomb bomb Iran." Whether he's yukking it up over conflict with Tehran, following Osama Bin Laden to the "gates of hell" or just being the "worst nightmare" of Al Qaeda and Hamas, John McCain sounds more and more like the man he seeks to replace.
Professed partisans of the Palestinian cause have assured us that "What Hamas won't do . . . is start physically arresting or fighting IJ [Islamic Jihad] members who do decide to violate the truce," and that Hamas has no commitment to enforce the truce in the Gaza Strip, an that "It is dishonest to pretend otherwise." Indeed, we've been told that "it seems remarkable to assume that Hamas has both the will and ability to do so [control violence] with factions in its own territory.
But does Hamas really believe it has no stake in the survival and success of the cease fire? While there is evidence going both ways, recent developments are cause for hope on the part of those who, in the interest of both Israelis and Palestinians, hope, pray, and work for a comprehensive peace settlement based on the principle of "two states for two peoples" and, at least in the short run, full implementation of the calm and an improvement in the daily lives of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and Israelis in the Sderot-Ashkelon area.
A deal for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza strip came into effect last week. It is becoming apparent that the party most committed to its success is, surprisingly, Hamas. The party led by the President recognized by the West as the government, despite losing the election, Fatah has stated that the deal violates Palestinian interests.
Militant groups allied to Fatah have claimed responsibility for rocket attacks on Israel since the truce started. Meanwhile Israel stands accused by the UN of repeated violations of the ceasefire. It is also failing to abide by the agreement to open the borders for essential goods, using those rocket attacks as the excuse.
Al-Jazeera is reporting on its English language station that there is increased discontent in Gaza that the truce is not improving life on the streets.
'The mortar shells were fired [on Monday] by Hamas, although the group did not publicly take responsibility for the attack, which caused no injuries.
Israeli officials said the mortar fire appears to be a Hamas reaction to the wounding of a Palestinian civilian in northern Gaza on Monday, in a bid to show that Hamas will not stand by as Israel harms Palestinian civilians. The civilian, 68, appears to have been hurt by an errant IDF bullet.' (hat tip)
JERUSALEM — Palestinian militants fired three homemade rockets into southern Israel on Tuesday, threatening to unravel a cease-fire days after it began, and Israel responded by closing vital border crossings into Gaza.
Despite what it called a "gross violation" of the truce, Israel refrained from military action and said it would send an envoy soon to Egypt to work on the next stage of a broader cease-fire agreement: a prisoner swap that would bring home an Israeli soldier held by Hamas for more than two years.
The midafternoon barrage, which slightly wounded two people, capped a day of violence that presented the truce with its first serious test. Just before midnight, Palestinian militants fired a mortar shell into an empty area in southern Israel. And in a pre-dawn raid, Israeli troops killed two Palestinians, one of them an Islamic Jihad area commander, in the West Bank city of Nablus.
Islamic Jihad, a militant group backed by Syria and Iran, claimed responsibility for the rocket fire from Gaza. Although the West Bank is not included in the truce agreement, the group said the rockets were retaliation for the Nablus raid.
The corporate media spews out a daily stream of propaganda, but so much of it is taken for granted by is readership it's rarely seen as such. A typical example from the Washington Post today discusses al-Hurra, the Arabic-language television network financed by the U.S. government. Now at first, you might think this is a wonderful example of the "free press"; after all, the basis for the article is how "the station is widely regarded as a flop in the Arab world, where it has struggled to attract viewers and overcome skepticism about its mission." But in the course of reading that, you're forced to put up with such propagandistic nuggets as how al-Hurra is "the centerpiece of a U.S. government campaign to spread democracy in the Middle East" (as if!). You also read the preposterous assertion that "propaganda has become a primary front in the war against terrorism, with the United States and al-Qaeda each investing heavily to win over hearts and minds." Yeah, "propaganda" and several hundred billion dollars worth of bombs and bullets.
For the past several weeks, the Israeli government has been heavily engaged in indirect negotiations with its two arch enemies in contradiction to the policy of its greatest benefactor, the U.S., and its champion of champions, President George W. Bush.
Both Hamas and Hezbollah are on the U.S. State Department's list of Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs).
So now that Israel and Hamas have not only met, but agreed on a supposedly meaningful truce, has John McCain's stance on not negotiating with terrorists changed at all?
John McCain has been showing his foreign policy credentials to anyone who will listen. It will be interesting to see what McCain has to say today.
It's time for the MSM to start asking him the tough questions.
News is breaking that Israel and Hamas have agreed a truce starting this Thursday. The talks took place in Cairo. Egypt is also brokering talks between the two main Palestinian parties, Hamas and Fatah. (Update:Al Jazeerareport that senior Fatah officials have travelled to Gaza to discuss the reconcilliation process with Fatah groups although there are no plans to meet with Hamas as yet.)
The first stage of the deal reportedly reached between Hamas and Israel envisages a halt to hostilities and a partial reopening Gaza's borders.
A second stage of the plan would focus on the return of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and on a deal to reopen the main Rafah crossing into Egypt.
During a town hall meeting in New Jersey on Friday, Republican presidential nominee John McCain reiterated his pledge to "get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice." Amazingly, McCain was able to make his promise without his signature line about following Bin Laden to "the gates of hell." Even more amazing, McCain cited swimming as the skill American intelligence operatives will need to help him do it.
News has been coming out that a blast within Gaza has killed 7 people including a 4-month-old baby and wounded an additional 50.
Originally, Hamas placed blame on Israel for an airstrike. Israel officials immediately said they had no involvement. Now Hamas has taken responsibility for the blast
An email from Obama on 3 June 2008 said, "This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past and bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face." But not on Middle East policy. Obama will repeat the tired old policy of Bush II, and every US president since Truman. Why is that? Because American political leaders are afraid of the Israel lobby. They become convinced that to win the so-called Jewish vote they must be more Zionist than the Israeli. Obama is no different, sadly. His speech to AIPAC on 4 June proved this. Read the whole thing at NPR
I don't like posting a rebuttal to this story/smear. It was never a story in the first place. Posting it almost feels like I'm giving McBush some credit. In April, McCain sent out a letter explaining the connections between Obama and Hamas. These are scurrilous, ridiculous, and false, but it's worth noting that the Republicans are going to use this attack line, a racist and religious smear. You can't teach a bear to not shit in the woods.
There are some here who believe that Hamas is bravely resisting Israel's greed for land and water but that good, gentle, wise Hamas will lay down their arms and pick up flowers when a 'just' peace is settled and the settlements are destroyed.
Someone tell John McCain that his wet dream of framing Barack Obama as the candidate of Hamas is over. As most of you remember, Senator McCain chastised Obama in April, after a top Hamas advisor said in a radio interview that he liked Barack Obama, and hoped that he would win the Presidential election. The subsequent straw man that McCain tried to build on the subject caught fire and burned today. after Obama's speech before the AIPAC.
