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"What is the Palestinian strategy?" is a question that I have been asked all too often, including on 15 May, the day that millions of Palestinians around the world commemorated the 67th anniversary of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians by Zionist militias in 1947-48.

 

The question itself doesn’t require much elaboration, as in, "What is the Palestinian strategy to combat Israeli military occupation, siege violence, apartheid and racial discrimination?" The painful reality is well known to many, although few take on the moral responsibility to confront it.

 

And the posing of the question is telling in itself. It wouldn’t be asked if there was a strategy in place, being implemented, and regularly revisited and modified. The question is a testament to all the failures of past strategies, and the political disintegration of any credible Palestinian leadership, currently represented by Mahmoud Abbas and his circle of wealthy businessmen and "politicians".

 

If you’re the sort of gamer who carries their 3DS around town to pick up StreetPasses (and there are plenty of you out there!) you might have noticed that an awful lot of people are playing something called Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. While Capcom’s Monster Hunter series has been a huge success in Japan since the release of the first game for the PlayStation 2, it’s only had a cult following here in the US. But with the latest addition to the series, which Capcom reported in April was the first Monster Hunter game to sell more than a million copies outside of Japan, it’s becoming a phenomenon here as well.

But what is it? And is it worth a look, or at the very least a demo download?

The number one error, engaged in by the majority of people, is failing to be an activist. The world's going to hell, countless situations can be easily improved, lives can be saved, and most people just sit there and do nothing. Others actively work to make matters worse. So, if you're working for peace and justice, you're among the tiny minority that's pretty much got the big stuff right. If constructive criticism drives you into despair, please stop reading this article right now and just continue what you're doing with your life. You have my gratitude.

If you're open to hearing some suggestions, for whatever they may be worth (and yes, of course, this list of errors will exclude those that I am myself guilty and unaware of), read on:

“What struck me” journalist Christian Parenti said in a recent Truthout interview, referring to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, “was the fact that these local towns and states around the region were sending the only resources they had to New Orleans: weapons and militarized gear.

“After 30 years of the War on Drugs and a neoliberal restructuring of the state at the local level, which is not a reduction of the public sector but a transformation of the public sector, the only thing local governments had were weapons.”

Parenti’s observation summed up a deep sense of puzzled frustration I’ve been feeling for a long time, which has been growing in intensity since the Reagan era and even more so since 9/11 and the unleashed Bush agenda. Fear, exploited and unchecked, triggers a deep, “rational” insanity. We’re driving ourselves into a new Dark Age.

For the third time in a decade, a major fire/explosion has ripped apart a transformer at the Indian Point reactor complex.

News reports have taken great care to emphasize that the accident happened in the “non nuclear” segment of the plant.

Ironically, the disaster spewed more than 15,000 gallons of oil into the Hudson River, infecting it with a toxic sheen that carried downstream for miles. Entergy, the nuke’s owner, denies there were PCBs in this transformer.

It also denies numerous studies showing serious radioactive health impacts on people throughout the region.

You can choose whether you want to believe the company in either case.

Yes, I saw the glum faces of prosecutors in the courtroom a few days ago, when the judge sentenced CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling to three and a half years in prison -- far from the 19 to 24 years they’d suggested would be appropriate.

Yes, I get that there was a huge gap between the punishment the government sought and what it got -- a gap that can be understood as a rebuke to the dominant hard-line elements at the Justice Department.

And yes, it was a positive step when a May 13 editorial by the New York Times finally criticized the extreme prosecution of Jeffrey Sterling.

But let’s be clear: The only fair sentence for Sterling would have been no sentence at all. Or, at most, something like the recent gentle wrist-slap, with no time behind bars, for former CIA director David Petraeus, who was sentenced for providing highly classified information to his journalist lover.

Pro-military displays during NFL football games are virtually ubiquitous these days and nowhere is that more apparent that at a New York Jets home-game, where the team singles out soldiers on the big screen and admonishes the crowd to cheer them.

The “Hometown Hero” segment might seem like just lazy pandering to jingoism among hometown fans, but it’s not. The Jets, like many NFL teams, are actually getting paid by the Pentagon to do it.

Between direct Pentagon funding and the National Guard, 14 NFL teams have received $5.4 million over the past 4 seasons to pay them to hold these pro-military segments.

Current controversy about standardized tests and the opt-out movement is fed by frustrated parents and teachers who feel tests are missing the point of education. But is frustration sky-high because it stems from something deeper? From decades of school requirements that miss the point of life?
For some children, the major problem isn't testing, but the requirement to attend school full-time. The flack over testing is just the tip of an iceberg of fundamental questions about children's rights, school's place in society and the quality and meaning of our lives.
To thrive, children require sleep, shelter, nutrition, fresh air, nature, athletics, play, love, family, friends, stimulation, education, community, a sense of power and purpose, and freedom to pursue one's passions.
No law intrusively mandates that children receive r amount of sleep, s of love, or t of play. But notice education requirements: Children must attend school u days per week, v hours per day, and learn w, x, and y by age z.

Some Americans have heard of New York Times reporter and book author James Risen and his refusal to expose a source. But, because most reports on that matter scrupulously avoided the subject of what it was Risen had reported, relatively few people can tell you. In fact, Risen reported (in a book, as the New York Times obeyed a government request to keep it quiet) that back in the year 2000 the CIA gave nuclear weapons plans to Iran. Flaws had been introduced into the plans, with the stated intention of slowing down an Iranian nuclear weapons program if one existed. Risen's reporting that the flaws were glaringly obvious, including to the former-Russian asset assigned to deliver the plans to Iran, made the scheme look even worse than it at first sounds.