Anonymous Comrade writes:

Two Wars
David Hirsh

Since before it even existed, Israel has been engaged in two wars with its neighbours. One is a just war, waged by Palestinian Arabs for freedom - which became a demand for Palestinian national independence; the other is a genocidal war that aims to end Jewish life in the Middle East.

The job of the left is to insist on the reality of this distinction and to stand against those who recognise the reality of only one or other of these two separate wars.

Nevertheless, when Israeli tanks are stalking through the crowded streets of Gaza, when Katyusha rockets are slamming into Haifa, when Israeli F16s are blowing up buildings in the suburbs of Beirut and when Israeli soldiers are being held in underground dungeons waiting for their own beheading to be broadcast on al-Jazeera, the distinction seems entirely notional.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

When Terror Is Just Fine

John Chuckman

Following the assassination of Reinhard Heidrich by Czech partisans in 1942, Hitler’s government executed all the men in the village of Lidici, sent its women and children to concentration camps, and razed the village to the ground. A few weeks later, the barbarism was repeated on the village of Lezaky.

Lidici was far from being the worst atrocity of the war, but it rightly came to symbolize heartless oppression by occupiers, what we sometimes today call state terror.

I cannot think of another historical example which better parallels Israel’s savage behavior in Lebanon. Two of its soldiers are kidnapped, and Israel quickly destroys much of the infrastructure of Lebanon, cuts the country off from the world, and kills, at this writing, two hundred civilians.

Already forgotten in the press is Israel’s behavior leading up to events in Lebanon. Israel had blown up an entire family on a Gaza beach and carried out a number of other killings and assassinations. It killed about twenty innocent people in a week or so. The pitiful efforts of people in Gaza to respond to the outrages were met by more killing and a partial invasion. Most of the cabinet of Palestine was kidnapped, and the elected Prime Minister was openly threatened with assassination.

Harassment and Repressions in Russia

Trade Union Solidarity Action Committee of Saint
Petersburg and Leningrad Region

Dear Friends and Comrades!

We have to resort to you with an appeal for help and international solidarity!

Russia is on the verge of the G 8 summit which is to be hosted in
Saint Petersburg.

At the same time our country is experiencing another series of
political violence and reprisals.

Contrary to the official G-8 summit an alternative event has been
planned to be held in Saint Petersburg by the Russian Social Forum.

The activists belonging to different political and grass root
organizations and groups scattered all over Russia are coming to Saint
Petersburg to participate in the alternative "summit". Among them are
the activists of the all Russian Society of Hostels and Dormitories
Dwellers Rights, activists of the anti "monetization laws" movement,
trade union activists of the Siberian Confederation of Labor and from
other regions, different human right groups activists and many other
individuals.

These persons are being harassed and persecuted by the local police
and security services agents on their way to Saint Petersburg.

Bush Concealed More Spying Info

Alan Elsner, Capital Hill Blue

The Bush administration was running several intelligence programs, including one major activity, that it kept secret from Congress until whistle-blowers told the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, the committee's chairman said on Sunday.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said on Fox News Sunday he had written a four-page to President George W. Bush in May warning him that the failure to disclose the intelligence activities to Congress may be a violation of the law.

In doing so, he confirmed a story that first ran in Sunday editions of the New York Times.

"I take it very, very seriously otherwise I would not have written the letter to the president," Hoekstra said.

Frank Zeidler, Last U.S. Socialist Mayor, Dies

Colin Fly, Associated Press

MILWAUKEE — Frank Zeidler, a former Milwaukee mayor who was the last Socialist to run a major American city, has died. He was 93.

Zeidler died late Friday of congestive heart failure and diverticulitis, hospital spokesman Gregg Hartzog said. He led Milwaukee from 1948 through 1960.

Born in Milwaukee on Sept. 20, 1912, Zeidler was part of the Socialist Party's city stronghold, which was fueled by German immigrants who flocked there. The party had thousands of members, a congressional seat and control of the mayor's office for nearly a half-century, ending with Zeidler.

"Historians described him in the tradition of Milwaukee's sewer socialists," said Zeidler's youngest daughter, Jeanne, who followed her father into politics and is mayor of Williamsburg, Va.

"They were community leaders, mayors of Milwaukee who thought everyone should have access to plumbing in their homes," she said. "But he also had a bigger vision than that. He really was an activist of world peace, of tolerance, of people working together."

His three terms as mayor were marked by large-scale construction of public housing, creation of the first educational television station in Wisconsin and city beautification programs. He also made strong statements on behalf of civil rights as Milwaukee became the 11th-largest city in the United States by the end of his term, Jeanne Zeidler said.

Zeidler said the word "socialism" was discredited when Stalin and Hitler used it in their rhetoric. Still, he remained an ardent Socialist until his death, serving as chairman of the national Socialist party, even as numbers dwindled.

He never moved from the house he owned before being elected mayor, an office he retired from.

Zeidler wrote a 1,022-page manuscript in 1962 called "A Liberal in City Government" that was a memoir and a reflection on municipal government. It was finally published last year.

"I thought I would discharge the contents of my mind," he said of his work.

Zeidler ran for president unsuccessfully in 1976, receiving about 6,000 votes.

No Tolls on The Internet

Lawrence Lessig and Robert W. McChesney

Congress is about to cast a historic vote on the future of the Internet.
It will decide whether the Internet remains a free and open technology
fostering innovation, economic growth and democratic communication, or
instead becomes the property of cable and phone companies that can put
toll booths at every on-ramp and exit on the information superhighway.

At the center of the debate is the most important public policy you've
probably never heard of: "network neutrality." Net neutrality means
simply that all like Internet content must be treated alike and move at
the same speed over the network. The owners of the Internet's wires
cannot discriminate. This is the simple but brilliant "end-to-end"
design of the Internet that has made it such a powerful force for
economic and social good: All of the intelligence and control is held by
producers and users, not the networks that connect them.

Turkey to Prosecute Publishers of Noam Chomsky Book

Cihan News Agency

The Chief Public Prosecution Office has decided to prosecute two publishers for publishing a book renowned American intellectual, Noam Chomsky, accusing them of degrading the Turkish identity and the Turkish Republic.

The office prepared an indictment against the two publishing house that released the book written by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman titled Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.

The indictment claimed that certain extracts from the book degrades the Turkish identity and the Turkish Republic, and fuels hatred and discrimination among the people.

Publishers Omer Faruk Kurhan and Lutfi Taylan Tosun could face up to 6 years in prison if found guilty.

Zapatistas Call for July, 2006 Encuentro in Venezuela

Lieutenant Colonel Moisés

Communiqué from the Intergalactic Commission of the EZLN on the Intercontinental
Encuentro

Adherents Propose a Huge Gathering in Venezuela for July

TO: The Adherents of the Zezta Internazional

FROM: Intergalactic Commission of the EZLN

Receive our greetings, compañeros, as you read this information.

First, I want to remind you how we ourselves see what has happened in the
preliminary meetings to the Intercontinental Encuentro (gathering) that we are
preparing:

The gatherings and meetings in preparation for the Intercontinental Encuentro
proposed in the Sixth Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle, were called and
organized in their entirety by the adherents to the Zezta Internazional.

Lyle Stuart, Publisher of Renegade Titles, Dies at 83

Anthony Ramirez, New York Times

Lyle Stuart, a renegade journalist and publisher whose picaresque life included clashes with Walter Winchell, the publication of Naked Came the Stranger and the decision to print The Anarchist Cookbook, died on Saturday at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center in Englewood, N.J. He was 83 and lived in Fort Lee, N.J.

The cause of death was a heart attack, said his wife, Carole.

In his first career as a journalist in the 1940's and 50's, Mr. Stuart clashed with the powerful columnist Walter Winchell and supported Fidel Castro. In his second, as a publisher, he was notorious for The Anarchist Cookbook. Written by William Powell, the book, which included instructions on making bombs and homemade silencers for pistols, was first released in 1970 at the height of antiwar and anti-establishment protests. Web sites inspired by the book are still proliferating.

Mr. Stuart published the book against his own staff's wishes. "I liked it, but nobody else did — and of course no other publisher would touch it," he told an interviewer in 1978. In 2000, the author, Mr. Powell, told The Observer of London that he disavowed the book, written when he was 19; later, in an open letter on Amazon.com, he called it "a misguided product of my adolescent anger at the prospect of being drafted." But Mr. Stuart, who held the copyright, continued to publish it.

He courted controversy again in 1996 when he reissued The Turner Diaries, an anti-government novel self-published by a neo-Nazi in 1978. It is said to have been a favorite of Timothy J. McVeigh, executed for killing 169 people with a truck bomb in Oklahoma City in 1995.

Colorado Moves to Fire Ward Churchill

Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Education

It’s possible that Ward Churchill may never again teach a class at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The interim chancellor at Boulder on Monday issued a “notice of intent to dismiss” the controversial professor, citing findings of serious and repeated research misconduct. Churchill still has appeal rights — and has 10 days to take his case to a faculty review committee. After any appeal, a final decision rests with the president of the University of Colorado System and the Board of Regents. And Churchill has vowed to sue the university to block any firing.