The Only Democracy in the Middle East: 12.3.2010
March 15th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
In Nebi Salah The soldiers were eager and waiting, within the village when the march had reached its outskirts. Under the cover of the clashes between the army and the village youth, some villagers managed to reach their natural spring, only to find settlers swimming in it. Soldiers who eventually got to the group politely ordered the settlers to leave, while attacking the demonstrators with tear-gas in order to push them back to the village. The two groups had regrouped back in the village, where Border Police officers shot at demonstrators from behind the stone terraces that crosshatch the fields between the village and the settlement. It took the army until seven in the evening to retreat:
The injured 14 year old boy, Ehab Barghouthi, has awaken from his coma, caused by a rubber coated bullet to his head, fired by an Israeli army Soldier.
One-on-One with Margaret Atwood
March 14th, 2010 § 2 Comments
The author, poet and critic discusses her role as a social campaigner and feminist.
U.S. Congress to be Tried under Article 301 of Turkish Penal Code
March 12th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
I arrived to Istanbul last week to find the Turkish national soccer team engaged in a friendly match with the Honduran national soccer team. My first thought was that it had occurred to someone in the newly inaugurated Honduran administration of Pepe Lobo, product of last year’s coup d’état against Mel Zelaya, that friendly soccer games might be an effective way of boosting Honduras’ international image—an endeavor that would have been facilitated by the pro-coup orientation of the team’s owners as well as the fact that Turkey had been one of a smattering of countries to attend the Lobo inauguration.
Turkish attendance at such an event may seem counterintuitive given the current probe into purported coup plots against Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party and continuing arrests of military and other officials. However, chances that Turkish coup plotters will learn from their Honduran counterparts diminish if we consider that the Turkish military sees itself as the safeguard of the state’s secular identity while the former head of the Honduran armed forces has claimed that the coup against Zelaya was part of God’s plan. Other differences between the two nations include that opponents of a coup in Turkey presumably do not have the following slogan at their disposal: “Haga patria, mate un turco”—“Do something patriotic, kill a Turk.”
Falluja’s birth defects
March 12th, 2010 § 2 Comments
Our good friend Dahr Jamail on the Riz Khan show to discuss the dramatic rise in birth defects in Falluja following the two brutal sieges of 2004.
On this episode of the Riz Khan show we ask if US weapons are behind the sharp rise in birth defects in Falluja. Residents of the Iraqi city blame the surge in chronic deformities on controversial weapons used by US forces against Sunni fighters in 2004. But the US military has dismissed those allegations.
Avi Lewis talks to Cornel West
March 11th, 2010 § 1 Comment
Al Jazeera’s Avi Lewis interviews Cornel West, a professor of African American Studies at Princeton who has been the focus of controversy throughout his career due to his unconventional opinions and creative approach to the world of US academia. West discusses the current state of democracy for African-Americans, US foreign policy, the global recession, and his famous dispute with Lawrence Summers.
Rachel Corrie’s Parents Take Israel to Court
March 11th, 2010 § 3 Comments
Rachel Corrie, an ISM peace activist, was killed by an Israeli bulldozer while nonviolently protesting against the demolition of a Palestinian home.
According to Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman:
The civil trial, Craig Corrie says, is not about the monetary damages, but to discover information, and “like [South African Archbishop] Desmond Tutu talks about, of mending the tear in society.” The Corries never speak solely about their daughter, but about the plight of the Palestinians and the Israeli siege of Gaza. According to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions‘ latest figures, 24,145 houses have been demolished in the occupied territories since 1967, including the United Nations estimate of 4,247 houses demolished during “Operation Cast Lead,” the name Israel gave for its military assault on Gaza last year.
Of course, more than houses were destroyed there. More than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed. The Corries also express concern about the psychological toll exacted on Israeli soldiers. Craig Corrie said, “We lost Rachel, and that hurts every day, but that bulldozer driver lost a lot of his humanity when he crushed Rachel.”
The trial begins during the same week that Joe Biden makes his first trip to Israel as vice president. As chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden sought answers on the death of Rachel Corrie during the confirmation of U.S. Ambassador to Israel James Cunningham. Biden knows the pain of losing a daughter. His daughter was killed with his first wife in a car accident in 1972.
Active Non-violence in Palestine and Israel
March 10th, 2010 § 2 Comments
By David Hartsough
When some people think of Palestine and Israel, they often picture Palestinians as suicide bombers and terrorists while the Israeli military are seen as bombing whole neighborhoods in Palestine. The violence and counter-violence and endless war has created a hopelessness about any peaceful future for the Holy Land.
However, during a month-long stay in Palestine and Israel recently, I found something else. I found something very positive and hopeful and perhaps the key to a peaceful resolution of this tragic conflict — and a possible path toward a peaceful future for both peoples.
I found that violence is not the whole story. Endless checkpoints, 26-foot high walls, and the great fear and mistrust between many Israelis and Palestinians are grimly persistent features of life there. But there is also an alternative to this cycle of destruction being forged on both sides. There is a larger story beyond the script of retaliatory violence – a story of a growing nonviolent movement that both Palestinians and Israelis are building. It is this larger story that I would like to share.
(Neo)Orientalism with an Attitude: In the Footsteps (and Beyond) of Richard Burton
March 10th, 2010 § 4 Comments
by Huma Dar
The March 10, 2010, page A27 of the New York edition of New York Times carries an Op-Ed piece by Maureen Dowd titled, “Pilgrim Non Grata in Mecca.” Dowd writes about her desire to “learn about the religion that smashed into the American consciousness on 9/11″ via “sneaking” into Mecca in “a black masquerade cloak.” Her self-proclaimed inspiration is Richard Burton’s “illicit pilgrim[age] to the sacred black granite cube…in Arab garb” thereby “infiltrat[ing] the holiest place in Islam, the Kaaba [sic].”
Dowd, however, decides to “learn about Islam” in a way “less sneaky,” “disrespectful,” or “dangerous” and yet more entitled and privileged than Richard Burton could ever have dreamed of. She herself describes Burton as “the 19th-century British adventurer, translator of “The Arabian Nights” and the “Kama Sutra” and self-described ‘amateur barbarian.’” The words “illicit,” “Kama Sutra,” and “infiltration” and Dowd’s voyeuristic desires resonate with the Orientalism of yore. Moreover Dowd’s valuable US passport and USA’s special relationship with Saudi Arabia (read: enabling of the oppressive monarchy) entitle her to meet Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister — of the “sometimes sly demeanor” — on her “odyssey” to that country. “Infiltration” in disguise is no longer required, and yet this ease of access also disguises and makes more difficult the complexity of any real learning.
Dowd “presses” al-Faisal for the privilege to watch in Mecca, the “deeply private rituals” and “gawk at the parade of religious costumes fashioned from loose white sheets” although she knows in advance that “Saudis understandably have zero interest in outraging the rest of the Muslim world.” While talking to this high-ranking minister, Dowd bristles at al-Faisal’s reassuring suggestion that if she desired to see any mosque in a place other than in Mecca or Medina, and was prevented from doing so, all she had to do was to contact the “emir of the region” who would comply and enable the fulfillment of her desires. (Anyone else reminded of Aladdin’s djinn/genie?) Without conceding the irony of the situation that she, after all, is speaking to Prince al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, Dowd quips, “Sure. Just call the emir. I bet he’s listed.” Imagine what Richard Burton would have done with the special privileges of this particular magic lamp provided by the New World Order!
Finally Dowd does indeed witness the Hajj — in an IMAX theatre watching Journey to Mecca: In the Footsteps of Ibn Battuta. Dowd, much to her surprise, makes the belated discovery that “the Kaaba [sic] was built by “Abraham, the father of the Jews” [why Jews only?]— a reminder that the faiths have a lot to learn from each other.” It is also a reminder that journalists like Ms. Maureen Dowd have a lot of homework to do before they set out on their surely expensive travels — and I am not even including the much recommended language lessons. Any commonly available text on Islam, for example by Karen Armstrong, Jamal Elias, Michael Sells, or Ziauddin Sardar, might have served the purpose. Dowd could thus have avoided relying solely on the “amateur barbarian” Richard Burton or Newsweek’s own Fareed Zakaria. The former’s scholarly credentials are hardly beyond doubt — see his problematic remarks on “Jewish human sacrifice” in The Jew, the Gipsy and el Islam (1898). The latter’s forte is not his knowledge of Islam — or at least no more than Zakaria’s mentor, Samuel Huntington’s forte is Christianity. Dowd might thus have disabused herself of the notion of “the sacred black granite cube.” The “sacred black” stone is not a “cube” and neither is the “sacred cube” — the Ka’aba — all granite!
Getting one’s picture taken with the Dalai Lama or the Pope will guarantee neither Buddhist enlightenment nor beatification: my apologies for shattering the hopes of some New Agers. Similarly, entering the Ka’aba in Burtonesque disguise — specially minus his arguably relevant though shifty linguistic skills and textual knowledge (See Parama Roy’s excellent essay for more on Burton) — will not and cannot necessarily guarantee much “learning” about Islam. On the other hand, a trip to any local library with a willingness to read and learn, and engagement with an open mind in meaningful conversations with the (gasp!) American Muslims, might be better starting points for undertaking this particular journey.
Did the Editor of The New York Times not know the price difference between the ticket to the IMAX theatre plus membership to a local library and the cost of Dowd’s lavish travels to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? The Neo-Orientalist fantasy to tread in the footsteps of Sir Richard Burton is accelerated with privilege and precisely because of this privilege skips and misses its target even more widely.
It is in the spirit of a gift that I offer Ms. Dowd this image: 
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Labeled elements are as follows: 1 – The Black Stone; 2 – Door of the Kaaba; 3. Gutter to remove rainwater; 4 – Base of the Kaaba; 5 – Al-Hatim; 6 – Al-Multazam (the wall between the door of the Kaaba and black stone); 7 – The Station of Ibrahim; 8 – Angle of the Black Stone; 9 – Angle of Yemen; 10 – Angle of Syria; 11 – Angle of Iraq; 12 – Kiswa (veil covering the Kaaba); 13 – Band of marble marking the beginning and end of rounds; 14 – The Station of Gabriel.
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Russell tribunal says sanction Israel
March 10th, 2010 § 2 Comments
Russell Tribunal on Palestine concludes the EU should sanction Israel until violations stop.
On the real “Climategate”
March 10th, 2010 § 2 Comments
If you saw Johann Hari’s widely-circulated indictment of corruption in the conservation movement in The Nation, you should watch his interview from Tuesday’s Democracy Now! With Christine MacDonald, he lays out the real outage in the environmental community — the collusion between several of the largest conservation groups and some of the world’s worst polluters. As he wrote last week:
Groups like Conservation International are among the most trusted “brands” in America, pledged to protect and defend nature. Yet as we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organizations meant to be leading the fight are busy shoveling up hard cash from the world’s worst polluters–and burying science-based environmentalism in return. Sometimes the corruption is subtle; sometimes it is blatant. In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate, waiting to be exposed.
MacDonald, meanwhile, has authored Green, Inc. which similarly exposes the complacency of a number of organizations in the wake of alarming corruption and corporate influence.
