Viva Palestina USA Goes To Gaza: Photo Essay
September 10th, 2009 § 8 Comments
Thanks to Matthew Miller and Nima Sheth for making available two collections of photos they took whilst visiting Palestine. “It is hard to explain in words the extent of the destruction in Gaza”, Matt writes alongside the photos they both took. ”It is so complete and so total that I fear even these following pictures will fail to convey the devastation wrought by Israel’s brutal Dec.-Jan. attack on Gaza.”
Gaza, Palestine is in the most dire situation it has been in since 1967, with a continued siege meaning that the israeli regime is still preventing relief and reconstruction. See also a couple of pieces just posted by Nazareth-based journalist Jonathan Cook: An economy strangled by its neighbour and Israel stops money for Gaza’s disabled. Matt and Nima’s second photo essay, from their visit to the Palestinian West Bank, is featured at PULSE here.
Palestine Photo Essay II
September 10th, 2009 § 3 Comments
Photo essay by Matthew Miller and Nima Sheth. See also their photo essay Viva Palestina USA Goes To Gaza.
Barrier built in the al-Ibrahimi Mosque (burial place of Abraham) after a Zionist settler from NYC shot and killed 30 Palestinian Muslims in the Mosque. The Israeli IDF then closed the mosque for a month (for “security reasons,” of course) and when they reopened it to the Palestinian Muslims, the Israelis had converted half of into a Synagogue.
Looking For Eric, Melbourne Festival, and the Cultural Boycott
September 9th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Rebecca O'Brien, Paul Laverty, Ken Loach, Kierston Wareing, Juliet Ellis and Leslaw Zurek at the Venice Film Festival 2007
In response to an earlier attack by Richard Moore of the Melbourne International Film Festival, The Guardian published an edited version of a response (‘Boycotts don’t equal censorship‘) by Ken Loach, Paul Laverty and Rebecca O’Brien. Here is the original.
When we decided to pull our film Looking for Eric from the Melbourne film festival following our discovery that the festival was in part sponsored by the Israeli state we wrote to the Director Richard Moore with our detailed reasons. Continually he has dishonestly misrepresented us and does so again (Comment is Free 27th Aug ‘09) by stating that “to allow the personal politics of one film maker to proscribe a festival position…..goes against the grain of what festivals stand for.” Later “Loach’s demands were beyond the pale”. Once again Mr Moore, this decision was taken by three film makers, (director, producer, writer) not in some private abstract bubble, but after long discussion between us and in response to a call for a cultural boycott, including film festivals, from a wide spectrum of Palestinian civil society, including writers, film makers, cultural workers, human rights groups, journalists, trade unions, women’s groups, student organizations and many more besides. As Moore should know by now “The Palestine Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel” (PACBI) was launched in Ramallah in April 2004, and its aims, reasons, and constituent parts are widely available on the net. This in turn is part of a much wider international movement for “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction” (B. D. S.) against the Israeli State.
With a Shield or Upon It – Impressions from the Spartan State
September 9th, 2009 § 4 Comments
When Spartan men went to war, their wives (or another women of some significance) would customarily present them with their shield and say: "With this, or upon this", meaning that true Spartans could only return to Sparta either victorious (with their shield in hand) or dead (carried upon it).
Sometimes I toy with he idea of suing my government in international court. If you take a good look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, you reach a firm conclusion that, inherently, conscription is in fact illegal (I skip articles 1, 2, 28, 29 and 30, as they are unavoidably violated if any of the others are):
- Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. [Art. 3]
- No one shall be held in slavery or servitude [Art. 4 - a conscripted soldier earns the equivalent of $0.026 an hour (the army does provide certain services at the time of service, but I’ll leave it to you to refute this as slavery)]
- No one shall be subjected to… degrading treatment… [Art. 5]
- (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement… within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own… [Art. 13 - a conscripted soldier must be at base at designated times, otherwise considered “absentee”, which is an offense punishable by prison time]
LIVE FROM HONDURAS: Secrets of the Honduran armed forces
September 8th, 2009 § 1 Comment
Joint US-Honduran Palmerola Air Base.
I was forced to visit the Honduran military museum in Tegucigalpa on my own after proving unable to convince any of my Honduran acquaintances that the armed forces were not sufficiently showcased on the streets. A few blocks from the parque central, the museum boasts signs denoting it as such on both sides of the building; I approached the side closest to the park and was directed by a teenage soldier to the opposite side of the building, where another teenage soldier denied that there was a museum on the premises.
The soldier nonetheless unlocked the gate for me and motioned me inside, whereupon I directed his attention to a banner listing all of the features of the museum, such as an arms exhibit and a library. He shrugged, and we stood staring at one another until two more young soldiers arrived to confirm that there was in fact a military museum but that it currently being renovated, by the military itself.
Maghut’s Shade and Noon Sun
September 7th, 2009 § 2 Comments
Syrian writer Muhammad al-Maghut was born the son of a peasant farmer in the dusty town of Salamiyah in 1934, during the French occupation. As a young man he joined the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, the second biggest mass party in Syria after the Ba’ath. Like the Ba’ath, the secular SSNP appealed to religious minorities – al-Maghut was of Ismaili origin. Unlike the pan-Arabists of the Ba’ath, it envisaged a fertile crescent state including Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait and even Cyprus. Al-Maghut was locked up on several occasions for SSNP membership. During his first imprisonment – in Mezzeh prison in 1955 – he met the influential poet Adonis and started writing poetry himself.
As a poet he deserves to be much more widely known. Along with Adonis and Nizar Qabbani he was a modernist, using free verse instead of the traditional Arabic forms. Like Qabbani he aimed to be accessible to the ordinary people, but his ‘lover narrator’ is perhaps better suited to our twisted times than Qabbani’s. Certain verses sum up the decadent atmosphere very well indeed. The following remind me of those Gulf Arabs and others who profit from the prostitution of refugee women from occupied Iraq:
Lebanon is burning – it leaps, like a wounded horse, at the edge of the desert/ and I am looking for a fat girl/ to rub myself against on the tram/ for a Beduin-looking man to knock down somewhere. My country is on the verge of collapse/ shivering like a naked lioness/ and I am looking for two green eyes/ and a quaint café by the sea/ looking for a desperate village girl to deceive.”
Words: Maya Angelou
September 6th, 2009 § 4 Comments
Maya Angelou
The Lesson
I keep on dying again.
Veins collapse, opening like the
Small fists of sleeping
Children.
Memory of old tombs,
Rotting flesh and worms do
Not convince me against
The challenge. The years
And cold defeat live deep in
Lines along my face.
They dull my eyes, yet
I keep on dying,
Because I love to live.
Chris Hedges on Media Matters
September 6th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
In this August 30 interview on Media Matters award winning author and journalist Chris Hedges discusses his new book, Empire of Illusion.
According to a Random House summary:
Chris Hedges argues that we now live in two societies: One, the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world, that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other, a growing majority, is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. In this “other society,” serious film and theatre, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins. In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Hedges navigates this culture — attending WWF contests as well as Ivy League graduation ceremonies — exposing an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion.
The Search
September 4th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
On a couple of occasions – that I know of – I’ve had my irises scanned. These in the airports where I get pulled over for the stupid questions. In theory, a computer link can now tie my iris to my bank account, credit rating, police record, driving license and passport details – all in the sharpest microsecond.
The town centre has been replaced by a shopping mall, owned and controlled. People take more interest in Angelina Jolie’s romantic life than in the course of political events. The politics on show are soap opera, and the soap opera is a British value to be transmitted to deserving immigrants. According to the new points system for migrants, access to Britishness can be speeded up by campaigning for a political party (I presume they don’t mean Hizb ut-Tahrir), while ‘active disregard for British values’ – which might or might not mean protesting against imperialist wars – will retard membership of the club.
The great Englishman Dr. Johnson said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” And on that sound note allow me to introduce a short story by the Syrian writer Ibrahim Alloush, translated by Domenyk Eades.
