According to the  New York Times today:

The American State Department has withdrawn all Fulbright grants to Palestinian students in Gaza hoping to pursue advanced degrees at American institutions this fall because Israel has not granted them permission to leave.

I haven't seen this diaried elsewhere and thought it would be of interest.

According to MSNBC former Georgia Congresman Bob Barr has announced that he will seek the Libertarian Party's nomination for President.

The money quote:

Barr, who has hired Ross Perot's former campaign manager, acknowledged that some Republicans have tried to discourage him from running. But he said he's getting in the race to win, not to play spoiler or to make a point.

The Huffington Post is carrying a story from AMERICAblog that General Wesley Clark called Clinton last night to "tell her its over."

Accuse me of wearing tin-foil, but this is basically how I think things will go down.

I haven't seen this diaried yet, but I thought it was important. Laura Flanders has a blog piece up at The Nation called Which Womanhood? written in response to Robin Morgan's Goodbye To All That (#2) which takes its title from Morgan's very important 1970 essay, Goodbye To All That, a feminist declaration of independence from the male chauvinist New Left.

Thanks to the good folks at Kasama for this gem.

People involved in impeachment activism who have worked with World Can't Wait (WCW) have probably heard of Bob Avakian, the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party which is very involved in WCW.

Some folks may have recently encountered an ad in the New York Review of Books that is part of a campaign initiated by the RCP calling on people to Engage Bob Avakian.

The basic premise of this campaign is that Avakian is a thinker and leader of such a special caliber that everybody concerned about the present disastrous course of the world should read him and be prepared to defend him against the repression and attacks that the RCP is sure will come down on him.

Mike Ely has writen an interesting response to Michael Moore who has posted a letter online that ruminates over the Democratic presidential field. Moore poses the question that faces us as follows:

Twice before, we have begun the process to stop this man, and twice we have failed. Eight years of our lives as Americans will have been lost, the world left in upheaval against us... and yet now, today, we hope against hope that our moment has finally arrived, that the amazingly powerful force of the Republican Party will somehow be halted. But we know that the Democrats are experts at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, and if there's a way to blow this election, they will find it and do it with gusto.

more beneath the fold...

The Bush administration and the corporate medi seem to be rallying around the claim that Al Qaeda was behind the assassination of Bhutto.

As always we should be careful when swallowing anything we get from the corporate media. The Al Qaeda story is convenient because it offers a justification for continued aid to the Musharraf dictatorship.

But as Robert Fisk argues, its not what the folks in pakistan believe, and with good reason.

more below the fold...

This diary is about a fascinating critique of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) and its leader, Bob Avakian that has just appeared on the Mike Ely's new blog, Kasama.

Many people here who have been involved in impeachment or anti-war work have become familiar with the RCP in the course of their interactions with World Can't Wait, an organization in which the RCP has played a prominent role. And those familar with the RCP are quite likely to have heard of its Chairman, Bob Avakian.

I have defended the role that the RCP played in building up WCW, and the role of socialists and communists generally in waging important struggles when liberals wouldn't. I have consistently opposed the anti-communism and red-baiting that is often directed at people with revolutionary left politics who have played such a critical role in organizing much of what public protest there is against this war and the other crimes of this government.

Thats the headline up on ABC News.

Now I happen to agree that the presumption of innocence should be respected here and that people simply accused of a crime have as much right to employment as anyone else. Its not like the priest is working with kids. But if you're running for President, well maybe its not such a good idea to hire a priest accused of child molestation.

This drip, drip, drip of revelations has got to be killing Giuliani. I'm predicting that Huckabee is going to start making some big advances. And frankly he should scare us just as much as Giuliani. He's a hell of a lot more likable, and his social conservatism and economic populism will appeal to many of the Reagan Dems who have been so alienated by Bush.

I've always used music to remind me why I stay in the fight or why I should even when I don't. Below the fold you can find a bunch of my fave songs of struggle available on YouTube.

I'd be interested in what other people listen to when they need the inspiration to stay in the struggle.

An internationalist hip hop version of the old union classic. It made me cry with joy.

This is a re-enmcatment of a historic speech given by Paul Potter, President of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at the April 17, 1965 March on Washington against the war in Viet Nam. It is an important speech that still raises provocative questions even for anti-war activists.

So who here is planning to attend protests at the RNC next year in the Twin Cities?

The RNC Welcoming Committee, a local anarchist group, has just released the following hilarious video:

Its also up on the Star Tribune site!

Who is the Iraqi resistance? As reported last year in the Washington Post considerable efforts have been made to convince the American people that they are closely tied to Al Qaeda or at the very least Islamic fundamentalists. The truth is a lot more complicated. The various resistance groups range in politics from Islamists to Baathists to various stripes of nationalists to communists and other leftists.

This complexity almost never makes it into the corporate media that shapes the thinking even of progressive activists.  I recently came a cross a couple videos from an Iraqi resistance group that I think every American should see to get a better appreciation of who exactly "our troops" are fighting.

Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada posted an interesting article on Barack Obama's transformation into a supporter of Israel. He writes

I first met Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama almost ten years ago when, as my representative in the Illinois state senate, he came to speak at the University of Chicago. He impressed me as progressive, intelligent and charismatic. I distinctly remember thinking 'if only a man of this calibre could become president one day.'

Obama may become president, but a man of the calibre that Abunimah saw that evening will not. The tale of Obama's transformation from a principled supporter of the Palestinian's struggle against colonial occupation into another AIPAC sycophant is a sad story of how the terms of political debate are set in this country.

The movement to impeach Bush and Cheney for war crimes is gaining steam. One piece of this is the "Bush Is Over! ... If You Want It!" campaign based on John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "War Is Over" campaign. The Bush is Over campaign is looking to put up billboards and posters promoting the simple message that we can be rid of Bush if we really want it. They also have a great slide show of folks holding Bush is Over and similar signs that  riffs off the "We Tried" slideshow that went up after Bush's re-election. The important difference is that this time instead of apologizing for our failure to oust Bush, everybody is declaring their determination to drive him out. So check out the Bush Is Over slideshow. Also take a look at their main page.