USACBI Statement on 1 Year Anniversary of ‘Operation Cast Lead’
December 25th, 2009 § 1 Comment
December 27, 2009 marks the one-year anniversary of the beginning of ‘Operation Cast Lead,’ Israel’s 22-day assault on the captive population of Gaza, which killed 1400 people, one third of them children, and injured more than 5300. During this war on an impoverished, mostly refugee population, Israel targeted civilians, using internationally proscribed white phosphorous bombs, deprived them of power, water and other essentials, and sought to destroy the infrastructure of Palestinian civil society, including hospitals, administrative buildings and UN facilities. It targeted with peculiar consistency educational institutions of all kinds: the Islamic University of Gaza, the Ministry of Education, the American International School, at least ten UNRWA schools, one of which was sheltering internally displaced Palestinian civilians with nowhere to flee, and tens of other schools and educational facilities.
While world leaders have tragically failed to come to Gaza’s help, civilians everywhere are rallying to show their solidarity with the Palestinian people, with anniversary vigils taking place this week in New York, Washington DC, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, and many more cities and towns in the US and world-wide.
Arms Possession for the Victim who Collects the Remains of the Assault Weapon
December 24th, 2009 § 1 Comment
An exhibition of spent tear gas grenades and projectiles in the village of Bil'in for which Abu Rahmah was indicted on. Picture credit: Oren ZivActiveStills*
Yesterday, I got the following message from The Popular Struggle Coordination Committee:
23 December 2009
Display of used tear gas canisters shot by the army earns Bil’in activist an arms charge in Israeli military court
Abdallah Abu Rahmah, a school teacher and coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall, was indicted in an Israeli military court yesterday. Abu Rahmah was slapped with an arms possession charge for collecting used tear gas canisters shot at demonstrators in Bil’in by the army and showcasing them in his home.
Military Metaphysics and the Native Informer
December 24th, 2009 § 5 Comments
Pervez Hoodbhoy
Media Monitors Network, 23 December 2009; The Palestine Chronicle, 24 December 2009; Atlantic Free Press, 25 December 2009; Dissident Voice, 11 January 2010
During a talk in Dublin A few years back a respected left luminary postulated that one cause of rising extremism in Pakistan was that an increasing number of young people in Pakistan were turning to seminaries for their education instead of scientific academies. He attributed this insight—one that is sure to leave most Pakistanis bemused—to ‘a friend, a nuclear physicist in Pakistan’.
Anyone even remotely familiar with the region would know that the education system in Pakistan is highly stratified: people with money send their children to private schools and those without to decrepit public institutions. Further down are the underclasses who are often forced to choose between educating their children or feeding and sheltering them. The dilemma is often resolved by sending children to seminaries, the much-maligned madaris (plural of madrassa) where they get food, shelter, and education. Few, if any, go to the madaris by choice (though almost all except the Westernized elite send their children to mosques at some point for basic religious education).
So the speaker’s comment was odd, Mary Antoinette-ish. It was not hard therefore to guess who its source, the nuclear physicist in question, might be. After reading Pervez Hoodbhoy in Counterpunch on December 14, 2009, one would have to be a fool to question his familiarity with Riverside Drive. However, Hoodbhoy would sound less fatuous if he were equally familiar with Peshawar Road.
Killing Activists in Honduras
December 24th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Walter Trochez
By Joseph Shansky
“As a revolutionary I will be today, tomorrow and forever on the front lines of my people, all the while knowing that I may lose my life.” - Walter Trochez, 25, murdered in Tegucigalpa on 12/13/09
The bodies of slain activists are piling up in Honduras. While it’s being kept quiet in most Honduran and international media, the rage is building among a dedicated network of friends spreading the word quickly with the tragic announcement of each compañero/a.
Now that the world heard from mainstream news outlets such as the New York Times of a “clean and fair” election on Nov. 29 (orchestrated by the US-supported junta currently in power), the violence has increased even faster than feared.
The specific targets of these killings have been those perceived as the biggest threats to the coup establishment. The bravest, and thus the most vulnerable: Members of the Popular Resistance against the coup. Their friends and family. People who provide the Resistance with food and shelter. Teachers, students, and ordinary citizens who simply recognize the fallacy of an un-elected regime taking over their country. All associated with the Resistance have faced constant and growing repercussions for their courage in protesting the coup. With the international community given the green light by the US that democratic order has returned via elections, it’s open season for violent forces in Honduras working to tear apart the political unity of the Resistance Front against the coup.
This is our Home
December 23rd, 2009 § 1 Comment
Home can be viewed for free on YouTube.
In 2007 French photo-journalist and environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand began compiling footage for a documentary film about humankind’s destruction of the earth. Operating on a 12 million dollar budget, and after 18 months of preparation which included editing close to 500 hours of footage, Home was released in June 2009 in accordance with World Environment Day.
One of the most well-known aerial photographers in the world, Arthus-Bertrand used his skill to create a film that portrays the stark contrast between our earth’s breath-taking beauty and the awe-inspiring destruction which we are imposing upon it. Despite its stunning audio-visual content which would surely attract paying viewers, Home was made free for download since its release date and has over 4 million views on YouTube to date.
The English version which runs just over 1.5 hours can be viewed here in high-quality and is narrated by Glenn Close.
In the Guardian, Palestinians ‘Claim’ While Israelis ‘Count’
December 23rd, 2009 § 4 Comments
Halim writes in over the Guardian’s blatantly biased language in its coverage a week ago:
It is the second time in 2 days that the UK Guardian and its correspondent Ian Black have repeated the same claim without proof. They say:
“Palestinians claim 1,400 were killed, mostly civilians; Israel counted 1,166 dead, the majority of them combatants.”
“Palestinians claim 1,400 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the three-week offensive. Israel counted 1,166 dead, the majority combatants. Israel insists it acted in self-defence against Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza.”
How can it be that the Palestinians only claim but Israel counts? Where is the proof of this “counting”? Please EMAIL ian.black@guardian.co.uk and ian.cobain@guardian.co.uk and ask them this.
Note: Ian Black’s son reportedly serves in the Israeli military. Readers might want to ask Guardian editors if this is true, and if it does not constitute a conflict of interest.
The So-Called “Concessions” of the Settlement Freeze
December 22nd, 2009 § 1 Comment
Palestinian reduced to biulding settler homes.
Remember the dramatics of the 2005 “disengagement” from Gaza? The emotional open letters, the stories of martyrdom, the binary of “good” and “evil”. This propaganda is standard procedure, in Israel, when it comes to the illegal settlements. It wasn’t enough that Obama caved from “We want to see a stop to settlement construction, additions, natural growth – any kind of settlement activity” to a 10-month construction freeze, not including “East Jerusalem”, or construction that is “already underway”, or schools, kindergartens, synagogues, or “public buildings essential for normal life in the settlements”. The Israeli government must make sure that this is seen as a “a far-reaching step toward peace”.
The Privatization of War: Scahill reports 121,000 contractors in Afghanistan
December 22nd, 2009 § 2 Comments
During an interview with Riz Khan on December 21st Jeremy Scahill reported that the Obama administration has surpassed the Bush era’s privatization of war, having nearly doubled the number of security contractors in Afghanistan over the past several months. Amongst the contracting firms who remain in Afghanistan is Blackwater (now operating under the name XE) – a firm that Scahill describes as “one of the most powerful private actors in the so called War on Terror.“
In a series of reports for The Nation in November and December of 2009, Scahill revealed that “members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives” both inside and outside of Pakistan. Despite public indictments, Blackwater continues to work for the State Department without oversight.
Pakistan’s ‘Oral’ Society
December 22nd, 2009 § 6 Comments
Public library of Hulwan, Baghdad
M. Shahid Alam
(Note: This essay was written nearly twenty years back, in April 1991. A great many changes have come to Pakistan since then, but I am afraid that the observations I had made then about ‘orality’ of Pakistani discourse still hold true. Pakistan’s best young minds do not go where their hearts and their talents lead them. Instead, overwhelmingly, they still pursue job security. Sadly, education – even for the brightest – is still mostly vocational education. With the introduction of multiple private cable channels, however, orality has entered a new age. The oral discourse, previously confined to drawing rooms and campuses, is now led by ‘talking heads’ in television studios. Is this discourse now more solidly rooted than before in the written word, in history and the social and natural sciences? I doubt it: and why should it? Pakistan’s brown Sahibs continue to drag the country deeper into dependency; they work overtime to trap Pakistanis in the most superficial consumerism, without the capital, technology and skills that support this malaise in developed Western societies. In other words, Pakistan is still caught in the disease that Jalal Al-i Ahmad had described in his book, Gharbzadagi - Occidentotis: A Plague from the West.)
I first became aware of differences between ‘oral’ and ‘literate’ societies when I returned to Pakistan in 1979 – after an absence of some five years in the United States and Canada – to take up a fellowship at the Applied Economics Research Center, affiliated to the University of Karachi.
