Ethnic Cleansing in East Jerusalem
February 24th, 2009 § 3 Comments
Inside Story looks at the eviction of 1500 Palestinians from East Jerusalem and the prospect for peace under Netanyahu’s leadership. Inside Story would have strengthend it’s argument had it mentioned that all Israeli settlements inside the West Bank were found illegal in 2004 by the Interntational Court of Justice.
Gazan children psychologically damaged
February 24th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Al Jazeera reports that Gazan children are psychologically damaged from the war.
Should AIPAC Decide What’s Classified?
February 24th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
The Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy yesterday published two articles: AIPAC Trade Secrets Leak Leading to $71 Billion Export Loss and the following below.
On Feb. 17, Judge T.S. Ellis added a new twist in the case of two former American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) executives indicted under the 1917 Espionage Act. In what the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Secrecy News describe as a major blow to the prosecution, Judge Ellis ruled [.pdf] that J. William Leonard can testify on behalf of the defendants when they go to trial on April 21, 2009.
Obama’s Afghan Escalation, Colonial Feminism, and the Realist Cassandra
February 23rd, 2009 § 2 Comments
The Left can be so full of shit. Check out today’s Democracy Now! for instance. The coverage is ostensibly about opposition to Obama’s escalation in Afghanistan. The guests however have their own axes to grind. We are told Afghanistan was ‘progressive’ Communist and Socialist, and the Soviets genuinely wanted Afghans to remain independent — and then the US intervened and ruined everything. We are told the Russians never meant to stay — it was only the insurgency that forced them to. We are then shown a documentary where images of Muslims in prayer are superimposed over tales of women’s oppression — who wouldn’t want the Marine Corps to carry out their feminist agenda if the alternative for Afghan women is so bleak?
Interestingly, the only sensible words in the program come from an NBC interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski. The former National Security Advisor to Jimmy Carter is often endowed with demonic powers by the Left, even though he hasn’t held any position of power in three decades, and few have read a word he has written beyond the title of one of his books — The Grand Chessboard — and a 1998 interview with the La Novel Observateur where he bragged about his supposed role in bringing down the Soviets. In fact, for nearly a decade, ZB has played a Realist Cassandra to the neocon chorus opposing the war against Iraq and repeatedly intervening to check the escalations against Iran.
This is not meant to be an endorsement of Brzezinski, but rather an indictment of the sections of the Left which have failed to shed their colonial messianism.
A Choice Between Peace and Peril
February 23rd, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks at a ceremony in Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz. (AP photo / Hasan Sarbakhshian)
The great Chris Hedges on the implications of the rise of the extremist Right in Israel.
Bibi Netanyahu’s assumption of power in Israel sets the stage for a huge campaign by the Israeli government, and its well-oiled lobby groups in Washington, to push us into a war with Iran.
Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program, according to U.S. and European intelligence agencies. But reality rarely impedes on politics. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama, along with Netanyahu, all talk as if Iran is on the brink of dropping the big one on the Jewish state.
Netanyahu on Friday named Iran as Israel’s main threat after he was called to form a new government following the Feb. 20 elections.
“Iran is seeking to obtain a nuclear weapon and constitutes the gravest threat to our existence since the war of independence,” Netanyahu said at a ceremony at President Shimon Peres’ official residence. “The terrorist forces of Iran threaten us from the north,” the presumptive prime minister said in reference to Lebanon and Syria, where Israel says Tehran supplies arms to Hezbollah and Hamas. “For decades, Israel has not faced such formidable challenges.”
The Israel lobby and the fate of Palestine
February 23rd, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Alexander Cockburn on the Israel lobby and the fate of Palestine recorded in San Francisco on September 29, 2002.
The Israel Lobby and the fate of Palestine (29:04): MP3
On May 2, 2002, barely two weeks after what has become widely described in the international press as a massacre in the Palestinian refugee camp at Jenin, the US Congress took an extraordinary vote.
Arundhati Roy on Slumdog Millionaire
February 23rd, 2009 § 5 Comments
Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan’s Slumdog Millionaire was the big winner at the Oscars last night. Writer-activist Arundhati Roy was asked her opinion of the film’s global success about a week back, and here is what she had to say (see also this recent review):
People are selling India’s poverty big time both in literature and films. As they say, there is lots of money in poverty today. I am not against showing slums, but depicting them in a depoliticised manner, as has been done in the film, is quite unfortunate. Films do not show the real poor. Even if they are depicted, it’s not the true picture. The real poor are not shown in films because they are not attractive. Poverty sells but the poor do not. The film gives false hope to the poor that they too could become millionaires one day. Watching Slumdog Millionaire was like speeding on a highway with lots of potholes. The screenplay of the film is quite out of context and it feels as if a Harvard accent has been given to characters that are straight out of the Chicago black neighbourhood.
Palestinian NGO seeks UK human rights justice
February 23rd, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Al-Haq, a Palestinian NGO with the help of the Gaza Legal Aid Fund (facebook), is to take UK Government officials to court over policy that assists Israel in its illegal activities in Gaza.
Al-Haq, an independent Palestinian non-governmental organisation will tomorrow, Tuesday 24 February 2009 begin historical legal proceedings against the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, David Milliband, Defence Secretary, John Hutton and Trade & Industry (now the Secretary of State for Business Enterprise, and Regulatory Reform), Peter Mandelson.
Al Haq are making an application for judicial review of a policy decision by the three Secretaries of State that they will not change their position with respect to the UK’s relations with Israel so that the UK Government is fully compliant with international law.
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Amnesty International Urges Immediate Arms Embargo on Israel
February 23rd, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Amnesty International released a report today detailing the indiscriminate use of weapons by Israel in the latest war on Gaza. Having found undeniable evidence of the IDF’s use of US-made weapons against civilians – hence war crimes – it is calling on the new Obama administration and the UN Security Council to impose “an immediate and comprehensive arms embargo” on Israel and Hamas. Here is The Guardian‘s brief summary of the report.
Detailed evidence has emerged of Israel’s extensive use of US-made weaponry during its war in Gaza last month, including white phosphorus artillery shells, 500lb bombs and Hellfire missiles.
In a report released today, Amnesty International detailed the weapons used and called for an immediate arms embargo on Israel and all Palestinian armed groups. It called on the Obama administration to suspend military aid to Israel.
Hollywood’s New Censors
February 22nd, 2009 § 1 Comment
John Pilger describes how censorship in Hollywood works in the age of the ‘war on terror’. Unlike the crude days of the cold war, it’s by omission and ‘introspective dross’.
When I returned from the war in Vietnam, I wrote a film script as an antidote to the myth that the war had been an ill-fated noble cause. The producer David Puttnam took the draft to Hollywood and offered it to the major studios, whose responses were favourable – well, almost. Each issued a report card in which the final category, “politics”, included comments such as: “This is real, but are the American people ready for it? Maybe they’ll never be.”
