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Why Hillary Clinton Has Always Been a Republican In the first of a series of profiles, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair chart the formative years of Hillary Clinton. Watch her as she zigzags from Nixon campaigner and vote-fraud investigator in 1960 to Goldwater Girl and President of Young Republicans at Wellesley to her internship for Gerald Ford and campaigner for Nelson Rockefeller. Witness her reaction to the student protests at Yale and the demonstrations at Grant Park during the Democratic Convention in 1968. Learn how she and Bill vowed to "remake" the Democratic Party--using the Nixon model HRC learned about as a member of the House impeachment staff. And much more! Plus: David Price on anthropologist Andre Gunder Frank, the FBI and the Bureaucratic Exile of a Critical Mind.
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Today's Stories July 12, 2007 Paul
Craig Roberts Robert Jensen July 11, 2007 Patrick
Cockburn Richard
Neville Debra
McNutt John
V. Walsh Scott
Liebertz George
C. Wilson James
McEnteer Philip
Rizk Johnny
Hazard Dave
Lindorff Website
of the Day
July 10, 2007 James
Ridgeway Tariq
Ali Javed
Hussein William
Blum Ralph
Nader Jay
Arena Anthony
DiMaggio Eva
Liddell Jerry
Kroth Alice
Woodward Nikolas
Kozloff Paul
Shannon Website
of the Day
July 9, 2007 Fidel
Castro Diana
Johnstone John
Walsh Uri
Avnery Ramzy
Baroud John
Ripton Stephen
Lendman Bruce
Jackson Michael
Donnelly Doug
Giebel Website
of the Day
Saul
Landau Ismael
Hossein-zadeh Fawzia
Afzal-Khan John
Ross Pat
Williams Rannie
Amiri Farzana
Versey Bart
Gruzalski Paul
Rockwell Reza
Fiyouzat Monica
Benderman Kenneth
Couesbouc Dave
Lindorff Charles
Modiano Missy
Beattie Dal
LaMagna Jean
Gerard Anne
Dachel Ron
Jacobs Poets'
Basement Website
of the Day
Daniel
Ellsberg Gary
Leupp Harvey
Wasserman Omer
Subhani Marjorie
Cohn Christopher
Brauchli David
Michael Green China
Hand Renee
Saucedo Corporate
Crime Reporter Website
of the Day
July 5, 2007 Andy
Worthington Mike
Stark Norman
Solomon Michael
Schwartz Susie
Day Jacob
Hornberger Bill
Hatch Don
Fitz John
Wright Website
of the Day
July 4, 2007 St.
Clair / Frank Vijay
Prashad Carl
G. Estabrook Ron
Jacobs David
R. Dow Claudia
Johnson William
S. Lind Gregory
Afghani Paul
Edwards D.
K. Wilson Niranjan
Ramakrishnan Thomas
Jefferson Cindy
Sheehan Website
of the Day
Bill
Quigley Gary
Leupp Lynda
Brayer Richard
Thieme Helen
Redmond David
Swanson Jacob
Hornberger Ayesha
Ijaz Khan Franklin
Lamb Ray
McGovern Kevin
Zeese Dave
Lindorff Website
of the Day
Andy
Worthington Nina
Serrano Jack
Hirschman Paul
Craig Roberts Bill
Williams Anthony
Papa Sonja
Karkar Louay
Safi Anthony
Gregory Monica
Benderman Website
of the Day
June 30 / July 1, 2007 John
Ross Alan
Farago Peter
Quinn Christopher
Brauchli Robert
Fisk Uri
Avnery Judith
Siers-Poisson Saul
Landau Abbas
Zaidi Ron
Jacobs Ralph
Nader Donald
Worster Mike
Whitney Jacob
Hill Kenneth
Couesbouc Missy
Beattie Mohammad
Kamaali Ramzy
Baroud Leonard
Peltier Phyllis
Pollack Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
June 29, 2007 St.
Clair / Frank Brian
Cloughley Patrick
Cockburn Gilad
Atzmon Dave
Lindorff Jennifer
Matsui / Kevin
Zeese Daniel
Klimek David
Michael Green John
Chuckman Website
of the Day
June 28, 2007 Bill
Quigley Vijay
Prashad Margaret
Kimberley Winslow
T. Wheeler Philip
Rizk D.
K. Wilson Bill
Williams Mahmoud
El-Yousseph Richard
Rhames Paul
Krassner Website
of the Day
Marjorie
Cohn Dr.
Susan Rosenthal, MD Alan
Farago Carla
Blank Matthew
Abraham Sunsara
Taylor Russell
D. Hoffman Robert
Weissman Sen.
Russ Feingold Paul
Buchheit Website
of the Day
June 26, 2007 Jonathan
Cook Ralph
Nader Corporate
Crime Reporter Ron
Jacobs Martha
Rosenberg John
Chuckman Denny
Haldeman Anthony
DiMaggio Stephen
Fleischman William
S. Lind Website
of the Day
Paul
Craig Roberts Jennifer
Loewenstein Bob
Anderson Robert
Pollin Patrick
Cockburn Eva
Liddell Dan
Bacher Larry
Atkins Mark
Brenner James
Rothenberg Website
of the Day June 23 / 24, 2007 Alexander
Cockburn Jeff
Taylor Oren
Ben-Dor Gary
Leupp Robert
Fisk David
Rosen Russell
Mokhiber Alison
Weir Robert
Fantina D.
K. Wilson Nicole
Colson Stephen
Soldz, Steven Reisner and Brad Olson Dave
Lindorff Benjamin
Dangl Michael
Dickinson Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
June 22, 2007 Andy
Worthington Sherwood
Ross Eliana
Monteforte Robert
Weissman Richard
Rhames Christopher
Brauchli Ramzy
Baroud Ehud
Krinis, David Shulman and Neve Gordon David
Michael Green Kathryn
Webber Website
of the Day
June 21, 2007 Peter
Linebaugh Natsu
Saito Ron
Jacobs Saree
Makdisi John
Stauber Scott
Liebertz Tom
Clifford Robert
Jensen Michael
J. Smith Jeb
Sprague Website
of the Day
Omar
Barghouti Andy
Worthington Margaret
Kimberley Robert
Weissman Russell
D. Hoffman Rannie
Amiri Stephen
Lendman Dave
Lindorff David
Swanson Anne
Dachel Website
of the Day
June 19, 2007 Ralph
Nader Dr.
Shepherd Bliss Bill
and Kathleen Christison Jeff
Leys Dave
Zirin Chris
Floyd Ben
Terrall Anthony
Papa VIPS Linda Flores Website
of the Day
John
Ross Paul
Craig Roberts Martha
Rosenberg Norman
Solomon Don
Santina Isabella
Kenfield James
Brooks Eva
Liddell Sam
Husseini Akiva
Eldar Website
of the Day
Alexander
Cockburn John
Halle Robert
Fisk Andy
Worthington Uri
Avnery Fred
Gardner Saul
Landau P.
Sainath Missy
Comley Beattie Alan
Gregory Walter
Brasch Website
of the Weekend
June 15, 2007 Alan
Farago Andy
Worthington Michael
Simmons Franklin
Lamb Gary
Leupp John
Ross Website
of the Day
June 14, 2007 Michael
Donnelly
Faisal
Kutty Harry
Browne Charles
Jonkel Steven
Higgs Bruce
Dixon Bruce
K. Gagnon
Website
of the Day June 13, 2007 Glen Ford Marjorie Cohn Bill Christison Charles Jonkel Silvia Cattori Richard Gott Firmin DeBrabander William S. Lind Keith Rosenthal Website of the Day June 12, 2007 Jeffrey St.
Clair Paul Craig
Roberts P. Sainath Ralph Nader Omar Waraich Dave Lindorff Harvey Wasserman Malini Johar
Schueller Ramzy Baroud Website of
the Day
June 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Paul Craig
Roberts Uri Avnery Norman Solomon Eva Liddell Rannie Amiri Rachel Voss Christopher
Brauchli D. K. Wilson Website of
the Day
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July 12, 2007 Growing Indian - Israeli TiesWill New Delhi's Palestinian Policy be Neutralized?By NICOLA NASSER A seminar on "Palestine: 1967 and After" organized by the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA) and the mission of the League of Arab States (LAS) in New Delhi on June 22 highlighted India's still unwavering historical support for the Palestinian people, but failed to address the potential political effects of the growing Indian--Israeli ties on New Delhi's more than ten--decade old policy on the Arab--Israeli conflict in Palestine. Only the criticism of those ties by the participating Indian intellectuals, university professors and journalists made up for ignoring the factor of the Indian--Israeli ties by the major speakers like the Indian Prime Minister's Special Envoy for West Asia and the Middle East Peace Process, Chinmaya R. Gharekhan, the Director General of the ICWA and the newly--appointed ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Talmiz Ahmad, and M.P. Sitaram Yechury as well as the Secretary General of the LAS, Amr Moussa, whose contribution was read by ambassador Ahmed Salem Saleh Al-Wahishi. Similarly all attending Arab and non--Arab ambassadors and diplomats, except for the Palestinian ambassador Osama Mousa Al-Ali, also diplomatically avoided raising up the issue, which could not but affect positively or negatively India's role in any Arab--Israeli peace process, which was the main concern of all speakers. Diplomats of the Palestinian embassy in the Indian capital proudly showed this writer a four--dumum plot of land in the diplomatic corps neighborhood of New Delhi donated by the Indian government as a "present from the Indian people to the Palestinian people" to build a complex for the embassy of the "state of Palestine." It was part of a package of a $15 million grant donated to the Palestinian Authority during the visit of President Mahmoud Abbas to New Delhi in May 2005. $ 2.25 million of the grant was allocated for building the complex and the rest went to infrastructural projects in the Israeli--occupied Palestinian territories, Palestinian ambassador Al-Ali said. In addition to political and diplomatic support, $20 million volume of bilateral trade and several shipments of medical supplies for Palestinian hospitals, India was careful to cement her Palestinian ties culturally and had completed two--Indian aided projects in the Gaza Strip, namely the Jawaharlal Nehru library at Al-Azhar University and the Mahatma Gandhi library at the Palestine Technical College in Deir Al-Albalah; a third project, a center of Indian studies, is also being planned at Al-Quds University. Historically India's Palestinian policy has been drawing on the ideological guidance set by the world's spiritual leader of non-violence and the father of Indian independence, the Mahatma Gandhi, who consistently rejected Zionism over a period of nearly twenty years despite unrelenting Zionist lobbying, because according to Paul Power: "First, he was sensitive about the ideas of Muslim Indians who were anti-Zionists because of their sympathy for Middle Eastern Arabs opposed to the Jewish National Home; second, he objected to any Zionist methods inconsistent with his way of non-violence; third, he found Zionism contrary to his pluralistic nationalism, which excludes the establishment of any State based solely or mainly on one religion; and fourth, he apparently believed it imprudent to complicate his relations with the British, who held the mandate in Palestine." (1) Although his sympathies were
all with the Jews, who as a people were subjected to inhuman
treatment and persecution for a long time, Gandhi wrote, "My
sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The
cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal
to me Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make
that country their home where they are born and where they earn
their livelihood?" Accordingly, India was among 13 nations who voted against the UN General Assembly resolution 181 for the partition of Palestine in 1947. In the same year, as a member of the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), India proposed a minority plan which called for the establishment of a federal Palestine with internal autonomy for the Jewish illegal immigrants. She was also among the first non-Arab nations to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people in 1974 and the first non-Arab country to recognize Palestine as an independent state in 1988; in 1996 India opened a diplomatic representative office with the autonomous Palestinian Authority. Talmiz Ahmad's reference in his opening remarks of the New Delhi seminar to the "resurgence of imperialism" in West Asia would undoubtedly assure Arabs that India would continue Mahatma Gandhi's heritage of dealing with the Palestinian--Israeli conflict within the context of the international national liberation movements against colonialism, but the pragmatism which marked the Indian foreign policy in dealing with Israel, particularly since 1992, would potentially compromise this approach sooner or later. Arab and Palestinian strategists should not underestimate this possible strategist shift in the foreign policy of the world's largest democracy, which a CIA study in 2005 envisaged as the second rising world power after China during the next two decades. New Delhi is very well aware of her rising international status and that's why she has been vying with Japan and Germany for a permanent seat at the Security Council of the United Nations. "The most important development of the 21st century will be the rise of Asia. India's independence from colonial rule and the gradual evolution of a strong, stable, dynamic and democratic India has also contributed to Asia's resurgence Our Government has re-activated the Indian Council of World Affairs and has offered support to other think tanks to invest in the study of Asia, Africa and our neighbourhood We have imparted new energy to our "Look East Policy", launched in the early 1990s. This has contributed to a comprehensive re-engagement with Asia to our East," said the incumbent Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, when his book, "The New Asian Power Dynamic," was released recently. An indicator of the new Indian strategic shift is the Indian focus on the Palestinian--Israeli peace process more than on the struggle of the Palestinian people for liberation, a development that was highlighted by the appointment of the veteran diplomat and former assistant to the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, C. R. Gharekhan, as India's Special Envoy for the Middle East Peace Process. Accelerated Pace of Ties with Israel Since Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao decided in January 1992 to establish full and normal diplomatic relations with Israel, Indian diplomats felt it necessary to "brief" Arab ambassadors in the Indian capital at regular intervals of India's ties with Israel, but India is now Israel's second largest trading partner in Asia after Hong Kong and Israel is now India's second largest supplier of military equipment after Russia. Official Israeli figures show that Israeli exports to India valued $1.270 billion in 2006 and imports $1.433 billion, to double the bilateral trade to more than tenfold since 1992. India's Ambassador to Israel, Arun Kumar Singh, said recently that Israeli investments in India top $1b. Agricultural, water and IT technologies in addition to fertilizers and diamonds are major mutual trade concerns. The State Bank of India (SBI) became in June the first foreign bank to open a branch in Israel's diamond exchange. However both countries are careful to remain discreet about the defense component of their relations and trade. Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) Limited is looking for Indian partners to build two types of aircraft and jets in India and set up software and aeronautical engineering companies in Bangalore, according to The Hindu on July 2. The Times of India on June 14 reported that a top-level Israeli Army delegation, led by Israeli deputy chief of general staff Major-General Moshe Kaplinsky, was to visit Jammu & Kashmir after wide-ranging discussions with the top Indian military brass. In August 1994, Israeli Defense Ministry's Director-General David Ivry visited New Delhi and Indian Defense Secretary T. K. Banerji visited Tel Aviv. In March the following year the Israeli Air Force chief visited India and his Indian counterpart was in Israel in July 1996, one month after a strategic visit by the leading defense scientist, Abdul Kalam. In April 1996 the first Indian defense attaché, an air force officer, arrived in Israel. Prolonged cooperation between India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and its Israeli counterpart, the Mossad, is also reported; the RAW reportedly arranged in the late 1970s a visit by former Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan to India. Defense also figured high on the agenda of visits by President Ezer Weizman in December 1996 and the then Foreign Minister (now President) Shimon Peres in May 1993. Comatose Ariel Sharon became the first Israeli prime minister to visit New Delhi in 2003. However, late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat used for decades to visit New Delhi on a two-hour notice. Several factors contributed to the Indian pragmatic shift in foreign policy. Internally India in the early 1990s started her "look Asia policy" towards West and East Asia. Internationally the collapse of the former Soviet Union, which led to the emergence of the United States as the unipolar world power and globalization were the most prominent factors. Regionally the nuclear and technological race with China and Pakistan made New Delhi more responsive to more opening to the US, Israel and Japan. The Indian--Pakistani conflict was another regional factor. Except for the Baath-led Iraq and Syria, most conservative Arab governments were leaning towards Pakistan; the historical visit to New Delhi of the Saudi monarch King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz in 2005 had however balanced their imbalanced policy. Diplomats of the ruling Congress party like to blame the Israeli shift policy on the former ruling conservative Janata ("people's" in Hindi) party and the war with Pakistan in the Kargil district of Kashmir in 1999, when Israel reportedly promptly supplied the Indian army with much needed military equipment, including night vision devices, thus kicking off a growing defense cooperation ever since. But in September 1950 Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (1947-64), a founding father of the Congress, granted Israel de jure recognition. A few months later, Israel opened a trade office in Bombay which gradually became a consular mission, and the first Israeli consul took over in June 1953; in early 1952, Nehru expressed his willingness to establish diplomatic relations. Another Congress leader, Rajiv Gandhi (1984-89), initiated a few direct and indirect contacts with Israel. (2) Arab 'Green Light' Arab and Palestinian diplomacy's ambivalent refrain from publicly warning against the growing Indian--Israeli ties could be interpreted as a refrain from demanding from friendly countries what Palestinians and Arabs have "green-lighted" for themselves when they collectively chose the Arab Peace Initiative as their "strategic option" with Israel in an Arab summit meeting held in Beirut, Lebanon in 2002; non-Arab countries could not be more Arab and Palestinian than Arabs and Palestinians themselves. It is noteworthy that the Indian--Israeli relations accelerated pace in 1992, a year after the Arab--Israeli peace conference in Madrid, Spain. However the presence of more than five million strong expatriate Indian labor force in Arab countries, three million of whom are to be found in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and the more than $25 billion value of Arab--Indian trade, including 60 percent of Indian oil and gas imports worth $20 billion, are enough pragmatic reasons not to be politically compromised by the newly-found pragmatic approach of Indian foreign policy. "When we recognized Israel and normalized relations with her we did that after taking the approval of the Palestinian leadership; we said, after you agree we'll recognize (Israel) the Palestinian leadership told us: There are signed accords between us (and Israel) and we are now talking to the Israelis; your establishing relations with Israel helps us," the Indian representative to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, Zikrur Rahman told the London-based Al-Haqeq newspaper on May 12, 2007. Zikrur Rahman is a grandson of the Indian Muslim Mujahed Muhammed Ali Al-Hindi who died in battle in defense of the Palestinian people against the British mandate-protected Zionist paratroops early in the twentieth century, before Israel was created. His burial place alongside the graves of other Arab and Palestinian prominent freedom fighters is still standing as a symbol of Indian solidarity and friendship in the backyard of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest site in Jerusalem. Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist in Kuwait, Jordan, UAE and Palestine. He is based in Birzeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. Notes (2) P.R. Kumaraswamy, "India and Israel Evolving Strategic Partnership," Begin--Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Israel, September 1998.
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