The BJ's Music Marathon 2009 at BJ's Night Club : Ball Street : Paceville : Malta

The BJ`s Music marathon will this year start on the 13th of April. All musicians and artists that would like to take part please contact Mr Philip Fenech on 99493534 or at BJ`s every day after 10 pm.

I will update on here every time I will have new information and confirm the SMS numbers for donations.

History

The History BJ's live music marathon was first held 1989 to help a friend who needed medical intervention overseas. It started off with a humble beginning of one night and grew steadily to a 100 hour annual event. The last few years we have extended it to a week because of popular demand. Over 200 musicians of all styles of music participate. Veteran musicians, students and upcoming musicians take the stage and show off their talent. For some musicians this marathon would be the first time they would have played publicly. All musicians play for free, some for as much as 30 hours during the whole week. Until last year we have collected a Lm 100,000 , which have been donated to various philantropic organisations and individuals in need. Amongst other top celebrities, the well-known guitarist and singer Bon Jovi, while filming in Malta, found time to play for this worthy cause to everyone's disbelief! Many music enthusiasts see this event as Malta's Woodstock or Live Aid. Donations are collected at the door, through sponsorship and telephonic donation lines. Various organisations that benefited throughout the last 19 years include: - Caritas Malta - Dar tal-Providenza - IBIC - Institute for Brain Injured Children - Eden Foundation - Torball and also for various individuals who needed medical intervention overseas.

Israels war on Gaza - Sir David frost - Frost over the world

Sir David and his guests discuss the political and humanitarian crisis facing Gaza.

Obama's Legal Team Copies Bush's 'State Secrets' Trick to Cover Up Torture and Renditions

Attorneys representing the Obama administration are defending one of the most controversial practices of the Bush administration.

On Monday in San Francisco, attorneys representing the Obama administration did what many of the president's supporters would have considered unthinkable on election day: they arrived in a federal courtroom and defended one of the most controversial practices of the Bush administration.

"Eric Holder's Justice Department stood up in court today and said that it would continue the Bush policy of invoking state secrets to hide the reprehensible history of torture, rendition and the most grievous human rights violations committed by the American government," Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union said in an impassioned statement. "This is not change. This is definitely more of the same."

The case was Mohamed et al. v. Jeppesen Dataplan, a lawsuit originally brought in 2007 by the ACLU on behalf of five victims of extraordinary rendition, the notorious CIA program in which terror suspects are kidnapped, thrown on a plane and flown to another country to be tortured and interrogated.

Jeppesen Dataplan, a subsidiary of Boeing, is said to have provided the logistical support for the rendition of all five plaintiffs, among them, Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian national who, in July 2002, was taken from Pakistan to Morocco, where for 18 months he was imprisoned and brutally tortured, including being cut with razorblades on his testicles. Mohamed was later sent to Guantanamo Bay, where he supposedly awaits imminent plans for his release. He has never stood trial.

Under Bush, the ACLU's lawsuit was thrown out multiple times on "state secrets" grounds -- a bogus excuse according to human rights lawyers who have long argued that the real goal was to keep evidence of the sort of torture endured by Mohamed away from a courtroom.

"To date, not a single torture victim has had his day in court in the United States," ACLU attorney Ben Wizner told reporters last week. Thus, the objective of yesterday's hearing was simple: the ACLU was asking that the lawsuit move forward. But to the dismay of many who believed Obama would open the door to justice for torture victims in the so-called war on terror, it appears his administration is instead following in Bush's footsteps.

"This case cannot be litigated," Department of Justice lawyer Douglas Letter said on Monday. "The judges shouldn't play with fire in this national security situation."

For those who spent the past eight years fighting back against cynical claims of "national security" to justify illegal and inhumane practices, the words smack of the Bush era.

"If the Obama administration, so early on, is toeing the Bush line," Romero warns, "that speaks volumes for where we might end up years from now."

The Debate Over Rendition

The Jeppesen hearing came on the heels of a week that saw the topic of extraordinary rendition -- and Obama's approach to it -- under particular scrutiny. On Feb. 1, the Los Angeles Times ran a story that caused a stir around the issue in the media, the blogosphere and the human rights community.

"The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered," the article began. "Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.

"But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counterterrorism tool.

"Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States."

The article quoted an anonymous administration official, who said,

"Obviously you need to preserve some tools -- you still have to go after the bad guys.

"The legal advisors working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice."

The official's statement was backed up with a quote from a representative from Human Rights Watch: "'Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place'" for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch."

The article sparked anger and controversy from op-ed pages to the blogosphere. ("So, it would appear that we will not see the end of torture under this administration after all," lamented blogger Digby.) But backlash against the LA Times quickly followed.

In a post titled "Renditions Buffoonery," attorney Scott Horton, who writes the Harpers blog "No Comment," called it a "breathless piece of reporting," which, among other problems, "misses the difference between the renditions program, which has been around since the Bush 41 administration at least … and the extraordinary renditions program which was introduced by Bush 43 and clearly shut down under an executive order issued by President Obama in his first week."

The earlier renditions program regularly involved snatching and removing targets for purposes of bringing them to justice by delivering them to a criminal justice system. It did not involve the operation of long-term detention facilities and it did not involve torture. There are legal and policy issues with the renditions program, but they are not in the same league as those surrounding extraordinary rendition.

The LA Times, said Horton, "got punk'd."

Constitutional lawyer and blogger Glenn Greenwald had his own criticisms about the article, and got into an e-mail debate with its author, Greg Miller, whose response defending his report was posted on Greenwald's blog.

"The story made clear that Obama intends to administer the rendition program in a very different way," Miller argued. "… This is not a story saying it's business as usual under Obama."

"Nevertheless, the rendition program is controversial. Even if administered in the most enlightened manner, it is a program that involves the use of the CIA in secret abductions and prisoner transfers."

Even as some backpedaled on their initial reactions ("You'd think I'd know better than to take a newspaper article about the intelligence community at face value by now," Digby wrote), for some who have closely followed the Obama administration's handling of torture in his first days in office, the discussion was far from over.

"Liberal bloggers have jumped on the bandwagon defending President Obama's executive order calling for a review of the practices of transferring individuals to other nations in order to ensure that such practices comply with the domestic laws, international obligations, and policies of the United States," wrote psychologist and blogger Jeffrey Kaye, who has spent the past few months waging a one-man crusade against the torture loophole embedded in the Army Field Manual. "Forget that Obama did not outlaw the practice of rendition. But this is because, according to certain liberal bloggers, and a few human rights spokespeople (like Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch), 'Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place' for renditions."

According to Horton et al., extraordinary renditions are war crimes, because the government sends prisoners to foreign countries to be tortured. (That is certainly correct, so far as that goes.) "Legal" renditions -- as defined by Richard Clarke in a recent article … are examples of "renditions performed by the American government [and] are legal, effective and done within the scope of human rights" (emphasis added). And if you think differently, then you are "ridiculously misinformed," a "buffoon," a "moron" (the latter by a Daily Kos commenter to yours truly).

Like other defenders of Obama's right to maintain some version of the policy in place, Clarke, a counterterror advisor to Bill Clinton, sought to clear up "the confusion over rendition." Rendition "proved workable before the Bush administration," Clarke wrote, "And it need not be something to fear in the future."

What Is Really at Stake

The differences between Bush-era rendition and its precursors are not insignificant -- in fact, Horton and Center for Constitutional Rights President Michael Ratner debated them on Democracy Now! last week. But, given that they largely boil down to what the CIA did as a matter of policy under Bush (torture) versus what was allegedly done under Clinton unofficially (torture), neither are they the most urgent issue at hand. Obama's much-lauded executive orders are vague enough to elicit endless speculation when it comes to rendition and other intelligence policies. But the actions of his Department of Justice on Monday were not.

"This was an opportunity for the new administration to act on its condemnation of torture and rendition, but instead it has chosen to stay the course," Ben Wizner said. "Now we must hope that the court will assert its independence by rejecting the government's false claims of state secrets and allowing the victims of torture and rendition their day in court."

Indeed, at stake in the Jeppesen case is not only justice for the victims of a hideous policy -- one that, in whatever form, should not be exercised by a country that claims to be a beacon of democracy and human rights -- but a changing of course when it comes to the flagrant abuse of the state-secrets doctrine, which was repeatedly used by the Bush administration to stamp out lawsuits against the government for its myriad abuses, from torture to illegal spying.

Both Obama and his Attorney General, Eric Holder, have vowed to review the Bush administration's use of the state secrets privilege. As a DOJ spokesperson told the Washington Post yesterday. "It is vital that we protect information that if released could jeopardize national security, but the department will ensure the privilege is not invoked to hide from the American people information about their government's actions that they have a right to know."

But as Romero told reporters last week, the actions of the Obama administration "are unfortunately speaking louder than their words."

"What this is clearly about is shielding the U.S. government and Bush officials from any accountability," wrote Glenn Greenwald following the Jeppesen hearing Monday. "Worse, by keeping Bush's secrecy architecture in place, it ensures that any future president -- Obama or any other -- can continue to operate behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy, with no transparency or accountability even for blatantly criminal acts.

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted February 10, 2009.


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Keith Olbermann SAVAGES Dick Cheney on continued interference

Dick Cheney You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately ... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!

Keith Olbermann looks back at what Cheney has been saying and finds the old pot of poison wrong on ALL accounts. Cheney tried to scare the World into backing his and Bushs terrible regime, this is a superb counterblast to an age of paranoia not seen in the West since McCarthyism

Jewish Peace News: A vital, groundbreaking resource for resistance

Jewish Peace News: A vital, groundbreaking resource for resistance

The Men Behind Obama

n this interview, conducted by Deep Journal before the 4 November elections, Webster Tarpley expounds on the topic of his recently published book "Obama, The Postmodern Coup,The Making of a Manchurian Candidate". Does Obama represent a real change or is it the same old imperialism with cosmetic surgery?



Tarpley argues that there is more to Obama than his charismatic appearance. Exit the "neo-cons", the real power behind the throne is now Zbigniew Brzezinski whose policies, he claims, are far more dangerous and insane. There will be an immediate shift in the hit-list of countries, starting with Pakistan, widely expanding the theatre of war operations in the pursuit of a global geostrategic agenda where Russia and China are the ultimate targets. Tarpley foresees a catastrophic outcome for the entire world should Brzezinski’s plans be allowed to go through. Whether his views are correct for now is a matter of opinion and remains to be seen, but for the public debate it is relevant to take note of his facts and arguments. It would nevertheless appear that, so far, his analysis is being borne out by the recent developments in South West Asia.



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IDF "subcontracted" by extremist settlers

An Israeli soldier inspects a wall of a mosque desecrated by suspected Jewish settlers, reading "Muhammad is a pig," West Bank city of Qalqiliya, December 2008. (Khaleel Reash/MaanImages)

Extremist rabbis and their followers, bent on waging holy war against the Palestinians, are taking over the Israeli army by stealth, according to critics.

In a process one military historian has termed the rapid "theologization" of the Israeli army, there are now entire units of religious combat soldiers, many of them based in West Bank settlements. They answer to hardline rabbis who call for the establishment of a Greater Israel that includes the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Their influence in shaping the army's goals and methods is starting to be felt, say observers, as more and more graduates from officer courses are also drawn from Israel's religious extremist population.

"We have reached the point where a critical mass of religious soldiers is trying to negotiate with the army about how and for what purpose military force is employed on the battlefield," said Yigal Levy, a political sociologist at the Open University who has written several books on the Israeli army.

The new atmosphere was evident in the "excessive force" used in the recent Gaza operation, Dr Levy said. More than 1,300 Palestinians were killed, a majority of them civilians, and thousands were injured as whole neighborhoods of Gaza were leveled.

"When soldiers, including secular ones, are imbued with theological ideas, it makes them less sensitive to human rights or the suffering of the other side."

The greater role of extremist religious groups in the army came to light last week when it emerged that the army rabbinate had handed out a booklet to soldiers preparing for the recent 22-day Gaza offensive.

Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, said the material contained messages "bordering on racist incitement against the Palestinian people" and might have encouraged soldiers to ignore international law.

The booklet quotes extensively from Shlomo Aviner, a far-right rabbi who heads a religious seminary in the Muslim quarter of East Jerusalem. He compares the Palestinians to the Philistines, the Biblical enemy of the Jews.

He advises: "When you show mercy to a cruel enemy, you are being cruel to pure and honest soldiers ... This is a war on murderers." He also cites a Biblical ban on "surrendering a single millimeter" of Greater Israel.

The booklet was approved by the army's chief rabbi, Brig Gen Avichai Ronsky, who is reportedly determined to improve the army's "combat values" after its failure to crush Hizballah in Lebanon in 2006.

Gen Ronsky was appointed three years ago in a move designed, according to the Israeli media, to placate hardline religious elements within the army and the settler community.

Gen Ronsky, himself a settler in the West Bank community of Itimar, near Nablus, is close to far-right groups. According to reports, he pays regular visits to jailed members of Jewish terror groups; he has offered his home to a settler who is under house arrest for wounding Palestinians; and he has introduced senior officers to a small group of extremist settlers who live among more than 150,000 Palestinians in Hebron.

He has also radically overhauled the rabbinate, which was originally founded to offer religious services and ensure religious soldiers were able to observe the sabbath and eat kosher meals in army canteens.

Over the past year the rabbinate has effectively taken over the role of the army's education corps through its Jewish Awareness Department, which co-ordinates its activities with Elad, a settler organization that is active in East Jerusalem.

In October, the Haaretz newspaper quoted an unnamed senior officer who accused the rabbinate of carrying out the religious and political "brainwashing" of troops.

Levy said the army rabbinate's power was growing as the ranks of religious soldiers swelled.

Breaking the Silence, a project run by soldiers seeking to expose the army's behavior against Palestinians, said the booklet handed out to troops in Gaza had originated among Hebron's settlers.

"The document has been around since at least 2003," said Mikhael Manekin, 29, one of the group's directors and himself religiously observant. "But what is new is that the army has been effectively subcontracted to promote the views of the extremist settlers to its soldiers."

The power of the religious right in the army reflected wider social trends inside Israel, Levy said. He pointed out that the rural cooperatives known as kibbutzim that were once home to Israel's secular middle classes and produced the bulk of its officer corps had been on the wane since the early 1980s.

"The vacuum left by their gradual retreat from the army was filled by religious youngsters and by the children of the settlements. They now dominate in many branches of the army."

According to figures cited in the Israeli media, more than one-third of all Israel's combat soldiers are religious, as are more than 40 percent of those graduating from officer courses.

The army has encouraged this trend by creating some two dozen hesder yeshivas, seminaries in which youths can combine Biblical studies with army service in separate religious units. Many of the yeshivas are based in the West Bank, where students are educated by the settlements' extremist rabbis.

Ehud Barak, the defense minister, has rapidly expanded the program, approving four yeshivas, three based in settlements, last summer. Another 10 are reportedly awaiting his approval.

Manekin, however, warned against blaming the violence inflicted on Gaza's civilians solely on the influence of religious extremists.

"The army is still run by the secular elites in Israel and they have always been reckless with regard to the safety of civilians when they wage war. Jewish nationalism that justifies Palestinian deaths is just as dangerous as religious extremism."

Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 4 February 2009


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Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.

Gaza zoo destroyed

Zookeeper Emad Jamil Qasim looks at the remains of a pregnant camel at the Gaza zoo. A missile fired by Israelitroops shot through the back of the camel. In every corner of the zoo and in every cage lie dead animals.


Monkeys and camels were among many animals killed by Israeli fire at a Gaza zoo.

Israeli troops shot and killed zoo animals

The Gaza Zoo reeks of death. But zookeeper Emad Jameel Qasim doesn't appear to react to the stench as he walks around the animals' enclosures.

A month ago, it was attracting families - he says the zoo drew up to 1,000 visitors each day. He points at the foot-long hole in the camel in one of the enclosures.

"This camel was pregnant, a missile went into her back," he tells us. "Look, look at her face. She was in pain when she died."

Around every corner, inside almost every cage are dead animals, who have been lying in their cages since the Israeli incursion.

Qasim doesn't understand why they chose to destroy his zoo. And it's difficult to disagree with him. Most of them have been shot at point blank range.

"The first thing the Israelis did was shoot at the lions - the animals ran out of their cage and into the office building. Actually they hid there."

The two lions are back in their enclosure. The female is pregnant, and lies heavily on the ground, occasionally swishing her tail. Qasim stands unusually close to them, but they don't seem bothered by his presence.

As he takes us around, he is obviously appalled at the state of the animals. The few animals that have survived appear weak and disturbed.

"The foxes ate each other because we couldn't get to them in time. We had many here." There are carcasses everywhere and the last surviving fox is quivering in the corner.

The zoo opened in late 2005, with money from local and international NGOs. There were 40 types of animals, a children's library, a playground and cultural centre housed at the facility.

Inside the main building, soldiers defaced the walls, ripped out one of the toilets and removed all of the hard drives from the office computers. We asked him why they targeted the zoo. He laughs. "I don't know. You have to go and ask the Israelis. This is a place where people come to relax and enjoy themselves. It's not a place of politics."

Israel has accused Hamas of firing rockets from civilian areas. Qasim reacts angrily when we raise the subject.

"Let me answer that with a question. We are under attack. There was not a single person in this zoo. Just the animals. We all fled before they came. What purpose does it serve to walk around shooting animals and destroying the place?"

Inside one cage lie three dead monkeys and another two in the cage beside them. Two more escaped and have yet to return. He points to a clay pot. "They tried to hide", he says of a mother and baby half-tucked inside.

Qasim says that his main two priorities at the moment are rebuilding the zoo and taking the Israeli army to court. For the first, he says he will need close to $200,000(Dh734,000) to return the zoo to its former state - and he wants the Israelis to cover the costs. "They have to pay me for all this damage."

We ask him why it's so important for Gaza to have a zoo. "During the past four years it was the most popular place for kids. They came from all over the Gaza Strip. There was nowhere else for people to go."

Has Israel gone berserk and lost all sense of reasoning? Should it be tried for war crimes at The Hague?



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By Ashraf Helmi, Videographer, and Megan Hirons, Photographer for Gulfnews

Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire

Now that U.S. government has stop searching the weapons of mass destruction, it is not very delighting to hear Bush, Cheney and others say that there is "no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction". Of course they won't be saying it anymore, but it's all here, in Hijacking Catastrophe.

The war against Iraq is also a never-ending subject for debates between left-wing and right-wing, but this documentary shows and reminds us all from the facts and reasons, that drove U.S. to attack middle-east once again. Michael Moore gave his personal view with Fahrenheit 9/11 and successfully told what he thinks about Bush and his friends in Capitol Hill. Hijacking Catastrophe on the other hand, gives us much more and goes very deep into economy of America and history and presence of Project for the New American Century (yes, there is a "project" that has a website at http://www.newamericancentury.org). If Fahrenheit 9/11 was disturbingly great political stance, Hijacking Catastrophe is frightening experience that gives you emotions of anger, sadness and also fear.

Direction of Jeremy Earp and Sut Jhally is strong with perfectly controlled and respectable use variety of persons interviewed. Those who are first to blame Hijacking Catastrophe as left-wing slander propaganda, should know that you can hear and see ex-Delta Force, Rangers and Special Forces soldier Stan Goff, Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski from U.S. Air Force and Scott Ritter, a ballistic missile technology expert telling what they have been seeing and experiencing during their years in military. Of course, they are sharp interviews of Noam Chomsky, Norman Mailer and many other intelligent individuals who are credible enough to open our eyes. The fact that there are no fanatic and overblown preaching involved, makes Hijacking Catastrophe a strong experience that needs to be seen many times. On top of interviews and TV news flashes, the narration of civil rights activist Julian Bond tightens the information that doesn't leave you with many questions. In the end, you can understand the reasons of these neo-conservatives but you don't have to accept them.

Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire is intelligent piece of documentary cinema, that deserves a lot of more attention. It raises up many interesting views between the acts of U.S. government and Nazi leader Herman Goering. Quote of Goering from Nuremberg trials: "The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.". Just visit the before-mentioned website of Project for the New American Century, watch Fox News Channel or their website at foxnews.com and take a look what Dubya have recently said (about Iran and Syria, for example). Or just watch Hijacking Catastrophe. It's all here, before Bush said anything. The makers of the film are not prophets, they have only collected visible information into one film in very intelligent way.

Media Education Foundation does a great and respectable job producing critical documentaries to people (and living up to its name!), who are all alone with corporate-controlled media - television and newspaper. If you are in doubt, check Hijacking Catastrophe out as soon as possible. There are fine examples of TV propaganda included in this documentary, that you haven't been noticing. Until now.




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Article source

Machssomim-israel-gaza Strip Checkpoint (palestinians Abuse) (2003)

This is the shocking video footage Machssomim - Israel-Gaza Strip Checkpoint (2003) which simply provides a "fly on the wall" account of various checkpoints on the Palestine-Israel border. Miles from anywhere, people travel frequently, walking long distances, to go to hospitals or to work. The Israeli guards like to 'show them' and routinely harass them by making them stand in the blazing sun, driving rain, or deep snow for many hours (eg up to ten hours) before returning their papers and often sending them home. They are polite, but admit to the cameras that this is how they deal with people - force them to stand in the rain. It could almost be a laid back Palestinian expose of what is happening at the checkpoints except - and here is the double-whammy - it is made by an Israeli, with Israeli funding - and it has been snapped up and promoted by the Israelis in cinemas but also the Palestinians - what is perhaps even more shocking it is now being used by the Israeli forces as training material for their guards. See for yourself the level of harrasment ordinary Palestinians have to endur to simply get from one part to the other of a country which used to belong to them but is still under Israeli occupation. 1h long. long. A must see for everyone.




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