As far as the Obama Administration’s attitude toward freedom of information, that was made clear some time ago in two words: Bradley Manning.

Response to juliania @ 1

Beautifully spoken!

Response to Edward Teller @ 44

That graphic looks to me like snark beyond any reasonable doubt: note SodaStream item (SodaStream being one major target of boycott activities) and Albert Einstein as “Irgun” leader! If the cartoonist is Jewish, I’d call it one great example of Yiddish gallows humor.

Response to E. F. Beall @ 43 One distinction here — however moot, I agree, while current U.S. policy continues! — is between abolishing the State of Israel and radically reconstructing it, maybe even drawing on some of the current curiosities of Israeli Jewish thought like the distinction between “citizenship” and “nationality.” A system where [...]

In response to E. F. Beall @ 15 Thank you, and also yellowsnapdragon @ 14, for calling my attention to a great article! Russ Baker indeed neatly sums up a lot of questions about the April 15 bombing, and connects it with other episodes ranging from the Gulf of Tonkin to “WMD” in Iraq in [...]

Response to caleb36 @ 32 Quickly I should note that cultural or binationalist Zionism as espoused by the Rabbi Judah L. Magnes and Albert Einstein, and also for a time by Martin Buber, calls for power sharing between immigrant Jews and Palestinian Arabs. After 1948, some binationalist Zionists courageously held to their stand, and formed [...]

Response to caleb36 @ 38 While each situation is unique, I think that actually there’s lots to be learned from the history of South Africa. For me, the bottom line on a just solution is “Never again!” — which means that ethnic cleansing or “involuntary transfer” should not be ratified as part of a so-called [...]

Thank you for commemorating the Catonsville Nine action, in which napalm was used to burn draft records rather than human beings. I absolutely agree that this had an Occupy-like impact. This happened shortly before my graduation from high school. A few years later, before graduating from college, I took part in a production of the [...]

This analysis seems very accurate to me as a layperson, at least as far as the actual likely holdings in the California Proposition 8 and DOMA cases. The Court’s own traditional approach to deciding constitutional issues, which calls for such decisions to be avoided or kept to the narrowest tenable grounds, also would lean against [...]

Dear Jane, This is a very appropriate diary for Yom al-Nakba, the Day of al-Nakba, the Palestinian Catastrophe of 1947-1950 and beyond. While the day itself marks the declaration of the State of Israel (May 14-15, 1948), more broadly it marks an episode of ethnic cleansing and mass murder which is still ongoing. For me, [...]

Response to Crane-Station @ 28 This ethical question you posed merits lots of discussion, and in itself is a most worthy reason for this thread. One argument might be that avoiding arbitrary or excessive imposition of the death penalty (which for me means any imposition!) is an interest shared not only by a criminal defendant, [...]

Response to E. F. Beall @ 4 My first reaction is that the crime for which Assata Shakur was convicted occurred in the 1970′s (possibly, in reality, “driving or riding while Black”), and the Federal Death Penalty Act pertaining to “terrorist” offenses wasn’t passed until 1994. So under ex post facto, it shouldn’t be possible [...]

Correction to my comment @ 32

That Latin should be murdrum cum malitia prepensa. My apologies.

Response to Synoia @ 3 While a full discussion would get into lots of legal history, I’ll try to explain the distinctions as they have evolved in many state schemes of homicide law in the U.S.A. First of all, under most state schemes as under the English common law starting around the 16th century, murder [...]

Response to E. F. Beall @ 9 Please pardon me for noticing this thread at such a late date, but I’d like to offer a possible response to your question which I take to be an inquiry something like this, “When there are so many homicide cases in our state courts, why should this one [...]

Correction to my comment @ 4

The first line of text, if it displays the same for everyone as for me, should be “now that assassination is not only the new normal…”

The whole idea of people protesting a burial seems like another escalation in a War Against Decency, not that assassination is not only the new normal but an official policy that some people are seeking to regularize through “drone courts,” which a figure like Smedley Butler might call more simply “kangaroo courts.” The “torture warrant” [...]

The scenario of Einstein becoming President of Israel in 1952 would have presented the same dilemmas as someone like the Reverend A. J. Muste becoming Govenor of Georgia or Mississippi around that same time. Israeli apartheid, enforced most dramatically by the illegal transfers of Palestinian Arabs out of the “Jewish state” during 1947-1949 and beyond, [...]

Quick correction to my comment @ 14 Somehow I missed a typo on the name Ahad Ha’am, a Russian Jew who moved to Palestine and observed how other Eastern European Jews were treating the Palestinian Arabs, giving a vivid report in 1891 of how the oppressed could very quickly become the oppressors. His Hebrew pen [...]

Response to fairleft @ 16

Very nicely stated about how the issue gets stated, or spun; and I agree with the Belgium analogy as one likely comparison.