Wednesday of this weird week the electronic intifada reports on  a demonstration organized by the Palestine Solidarity Group-Chicago.   More than two dozen activists converged on downtown Millennium Park to call on city leaders to sever ties with Israel and drop Petach Tikva, Israel from the Chicago Sister Cities program. One activist was arrested and released later that day.  "Petach Tikva is an officially segregated city, the first Jewish-only settlement in historic Palestine and the site of the primary detention center where Israeli forces abuse and torture Palestinian political prisoners -- has been dubbed by rights group Amnesty International as 'Israel's Guantanamo,'" PSG stated in a press release.

Non-violence is the ‘New Terrorism’

  This from the IMEMC  (www.imemc.org)  An Israeli military court convicted Palestinian peace activist Abdullah Abu Rahmah of incitement and cleared him of stone-throwing charges on Tuesday. Activists called the sentence a direct assault against the non-violent movement in Palestine.    Abu Rahmah, coordinator of the popular committee against the wall and settlement in the village of Bil'in, near Ramallah in the central West Bank, was detained nine months ago while the investigation was ongoing. He was convicted of incitement and organising nonviolent protest against the construction of the Annexation Wall in the West Bank.

A number of European diplomats and many of Abu Rahmah's friends were in attendance to observe the trial. The sentence is expected to be pronounced next month, and some local sources said they expect a two-year imprisonment.

Abu Rahmah's verdict was read in a packed military court room, concluding an eight months long politically motivated show-trial. Diplomats from France, Malta , Germany , Spain and the UK , as well as a representative of the European Union were in attendance to observe the trial.

As a member of the Popular Committee and its coordinator since it was formed in 2004, Abdallah Abu Rahmah has represented the village of Bil'in around the world.

Want more?  It’s all over the Electronic Intifada, indymedia at large and of course the International Middle East Media Center.

Hanford is the most contaminated site in the Western Hemisphere.  In 1855 tribes such as the Cayuse signed a meaningless treaty with the United States government that granted them the right to hunt, gather and graze livestock on  reservations in what would become the mother of all superfund sites.   Delicate networks of treaties  maintained the balance of power among European nations for the greater part of their histories.  It is only possible to sign a treaty at a particular moment  and in a particular place with no intention of honoring it, if the event is a tiny island in a sea of time. 

Without history,  a people, a nation can exist in an amoral political universe,  acting out of the naive ignorance of the very young child:  The grown-ups will clean up the mess,  hand out bandaids, make it all better.   Unintentional cruelty born out of limitless self-absorption and an innate sense of entitlement define the world of the child and the American Corporate Experiment.  But what happens when the ‘children’ lock the grown-up’ out of the room?  Now that dr. Walter Tamosaitis has been let go by Hanford’s feral ‘children’, I guess we’ll find out.  The good doctor and all-round ‘grown-up’, Walter Tamosaitis will be back tomorrow with the story on Air Cascadia.

These items didn’t make the cut this morning.  But they are none the less details of daily life that will look large in the lens of the future.

Politics meets poultry.  And the two are going to get to know one another well in coming years as more people struggle to feed families.   The Salem City Council has voted 7-1 to schedule a public hearing on a proposed ordinance that would allow residents to keep up to three hens, but no roosters, in back yards.  This means a household gets to keep three egg-laying hens, but only under certain conditions and with a required license.  A date for the public hearing was not immediately announced.

And here’s another one:  Home brewing.  Currently it’s against the law to transport ones homemade beer away from ones home – unless a batch blows ones house into the next county.  Accidents do happen.  But returning to the case – no pun intended - before us:  Democratic Senator Floyd Prozanski of Eugene is  drafting – no pun intended - legislation to permit do-it-yourself brewers to once again transport their hand-crafted products beyond their homes.   Earlier this summer, the state Department of Justice determined that an 80-year-old, Prohibition-era law barred consumption of homemade alcoholic beverages outside the home.

And let’s not forget the Net.  Yesterday Net Neutrality gained a cadre of heavy-hitters.  Four Democratic Congressmen, members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee all:   Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Anna Eshoo of California, Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania and Jay Inslee of Washington put forward their own Net Neutrality rules as an antidote to the smelly mess of potage offered up by Google and Verizon – two juggernauts with vested interests in the outcome.  It’s a classic ‘Public vs. Private’ showdown.