Extrajudicial killings in Pakistan
September 30th, 2010 § 3 Comments
A warning: Imran Khan’s report contains disturbing images.
Video footage has emerged showing uniformed soldiers lining up and executing six young men in Pakistan. The goverment claims the video is a propaganda film made by the Taliban. We doubt it.
Norman Mailer: The American
September 30th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Norman Mailer was one of the greatest writers of the second half of the 20th century. Unlike those who acquired fame through the glorification of war, Mailer presented it as the greatest failure of humanity.
A vocal critic of US neconservatives and the Bush Administration, Mailer wrote this in “The White Man Unburdened” just months after the US invasion of Iraq.
No, we will rise no higher than the spiritual understanding of our leadership. And now that the ardor of victory has begun to cool, some will see how it is flawed. For we are victim once again of all those advertising sciences that depend on mendacity and manipulation. We have been gulled about the real reasons for this war, tweaked and poked by some of the best button-pushers around to believe that we won a noble and necessary contest when, in fact, the opponent was a hollowed-out palooka whose monstrosities were ebbing into old age.
As usual, Mailer was ahead of his time. The clip above is the trailer for Joseph Mantegna’s new documentary on Mailer which is currently screening at film festivals.
Israeli invention for electric hair removal device contributes to female happiness worldwide
September 30th, 2010 § 4 Comments
Photograph featured on a website established by the Israeli Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs to counteract misconceptions of Israel abroad. The caption reads: "Who said camels? Some 2.4 million vehicles in Israel. Photo: Courtesy of the Kibbutz Movement"
While attempting to read an article on the Haaretz website this afternoon about the brutality of the IDF takeover of the Gaza-bound boat Irene, filled with Jewish activists, I was distracted by an advertisement at the top of the page.
The ad featured a cheerful non-Israeli woman with bangs and a flowered scarf around her neck, a picnic scene in the background, and a skewer of meat oscillating at her side. The accompanying speech balloon, which alternately appeared in Hebrew, Russian, and English, was a reference to the skewered meat: “Cooking methods in Israel are quite primitive…”. The balloon was then replaced by a black box of text with the following appeal:
Are you tired of seeing how we are portrayed in the world?
You can change the picture! Now in English, Russian and Hebrew.”
Viewers interested in multilingual pictorial change are invited to visit a website established by the Israeli Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs, which refers to visitors as “Novice Ambassadors” and announces:
Many of us [Israelis], whether we’re traveling or living abroad for an extended period of time, get involved in discussions with locals during which they bring up misconceptions and false information regarding Israel, without our having the tools and the correct information for coping with the questions or the barbs of criticism put to us. At such moments, we’re seized with an urge to make the other person open their mind and especially their heart, and see us—see Israel—differently.” [excessive emphasis in original]
Ian Buruma on the ‘Muslim Scare’ in Europe
September 29th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Award-winning author and academic Ian Buruma provides an interesting analysis of the increasing demonization of Muslim immigrants in European societies. He argues that little can be understood about the type of terrorism that has been linked to Islam from studying the Koran. Rather, the causes (and solutions) to reactionary movements which use religion as a rallying call exist in the social, economic and political realms that created them.
Buruma also discusses the case of fellow Dutch citizen Ayaan Hirsi Ali who many have criticized for riding the wave of anti-Islam sentiment in the West to fame. To those who have compared Ali to Voltaire Buruma has this to say:
…Ayaan Hirsi Ali was no Voltaire. For Voltaire had flung his insults at the Catholic Church, one of the two most powerful institutions of eighteen-century France, while Ayaan risked offending only a minority that was already feeling vulnerable in the heart of Europe.
Longstanding Impunity Challenges Argentina: 4 Years Without Julio Lopez
September 29th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Julio Lopez
by Marie Trigona
Julio Lopez, Luciano Arruga, Silvia Suppo – three names recently listed the doleful roll call of Argentina’s victims of state repression, a legacy left over from the bloody 1976-1983 military dictatorship. These three names have left painful reminders of the paradigm of disappearances and of how the social stigma of the crimes committed during the dictatorship has scarred Argentina and other nations which survived brutal military dictatorships.
Argentines recently commemorated the four-year anniversary of the disappearance of Julio Lopez with a demand that the torture survivor and human rights activist be found alive. After four years of searching, marches, and impunity, the cries for justice and punishment seem to have found no response from an indifferent government which claims to defend human rights. Activists also demanded information on the whereabouts of Luciano Arruga, a 16-year-old who was forcefully disappeared in January, 2009, and called for an investigation into the 2010 murder of Silvia Suppo, a human rights activist and torture survivor testifying in a landmark human rights trial. « Read the rest of this entry »
Aafia Siddiqui: Symbol or Spectacle?
September 29th, 2010 § 4 Comments
by Beenish Ahmed
Convicted of attempted murder, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, 38, was sentenced to 86 years in prison in New York on Thursday. The Pakistan-native was held in custody for two years after allegedly shooting at US troops and an F.B.I agent in Afghanistan with an assault rifle she grabbed from behind a curtain, unlocked, and fired before being shot in the stomach by an interpreter.
Although she infamously topped America’s most wanted list for years, most Americans would be hard pressed to comment at all on the MIT and Brandeis graduate who is due to serve decades in jail for compromising their security.
Perhaps Siddiqui’s trial has received so little attention in the US because the charges brought against her do not relate not to her’s supposed links to Al-Qaeda, or the canisters of chemicals, bomb-making manuals, and lists of American landmarks that she had been carrying at the time her detainment in Afghanistan. This has been seen by Harper’s and many others as an all too easy story, especially given the immense variance in claims made by US officials and Afghani eye-witnesses, as well as Siddiqui’s own story. Despite the questionable circumstances of her arrest, however, no evidence about her capture was allowed to surface at all in the recent trial, only furthering protest in Pakistan.
While the verdict was announced only in the regional section of the New York Times, in her own country, Siddiqui’s case become something of a cause célèbre. Many Pakistanis have long condemned what they believe to be an unjust trial based on fabricated evidence through demonstrations as well as information campaigns.
Given this divergence in understanding, it is worthwhile to ask not only who Aafia Siddiqui is, but what she has come to represent to everyday Pakistanis.
Zionists: terrorist pioneers
September 28th, 2010 § 2 Comments
Via Stuart Littlewood:
Here’s the roll-call [from delphiforums] on who introduced terrorism (along with biological, chemical and nuclear weapons) to the Middle East:
- Bombs in cafés: first used by Zionists in Palestine on 17 March 1937 in Jaffa (they were grenades)
- Bombs on buses: first used by Zionists in Palestine on 20 August- 26 September 1937
- Drive-by shootings with automatic weapons: IZL and LHI in 1937-38 and 1947-48 (Morris, Righteous Victims, p681.)
- Bombs in market places: first used by Zionists on 6 July 1938 in Haifa. (delayed-action, electrically detonated)
- Bombing of a passenger ship: first used by the Zionists in Haifa on 25 November 1940, killing over 200 of their own fellows.
- Bombing of hotels: first used by Zionists on 22 July 1946 in Jerusalem (Menachem Begin went on to become prime minister of Israel).
- Suitcase bombing: first used by Zionists on 1 October 1946 against British embassy in Rome.
- Mining of ambulances: first used by Zionists on 31 October 1946 in Petah Tikvah
- Car-bomb: first used by Zionists against the British near Jaffa on 5 December 1946.
- Letter bombs: first used by Zionists in June 1947 against members of the British government, 20 of them.
- Parcel bomb: first used by Zionists against the British in London on 3 September 1947.
- Reprisal murder of hostages: first used by Zionists against the British in Netanya area on 29 July 1947.
- Truck-bombs: first used by Zionists on January 1948 in the centre of Jaffa, killing 26.
- Aircraft hijacking: world-first by Israeli jets December 1954 on a Syrian civilian airliner (random seizure of hostages to recover five spies) – 14 years before any Palestinian hijacking.
Like this:
B’Tselem’s Report on Israeli Military’s Lack of Accountability
September 28th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Those who are familiar with Israel’s human rights record cringe every time spokesman Mark Regev appears in the media to justify Israel’s crimes. That’s why so many people admired Channel 4 reporter Mark Thomson for really challenging Regev during Israel’s deadly assault on Gaza in 2008-09. Nevertheless, the brutality and frequency with which Israel continues to perpetuate violence against Palestinians is making Regev look more and more like a third-rate soap opera actor — even he can’t believe the things that are coming out of his mouth.
The Israeli NGO B’Tselem recently released a report on the Israeli army’s lack of accountability for crimes committed against Palestinians. The clip above is just one family’s testimony. You can read the full report here and find a B’Tselem summary below.
Obama Loses to Military Brass
September 28th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Robert Dreyfuss discusses Obama’s wars on the Alyona Show.
Bob Woodward’s new book, “Obama’s Wars”, released today points out, Obama, during the review of the war in Afghanistan at the end of last year, wanted out. Politically, his advisors, wanted out but the military branch of his national security team wanted more and didn’t give the president another option. Robert Dreyfuss contributing editor at The Nation explains that the problem lies with Obama being so inexperienced when it comes to the military that he didn’t know how to properly ask to end the war.
Zionism Laid Bare
September 28th, 2010 § 2 Comments
PULSE writer M. Shahid Alam‘s superb book, Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism is finally available in paperback. For those interested in the real history of Zionism, the circumstances of its birth, the sociological and historical factors that contributed to it, the rise of the Jewish lobby, its alliance with Christian Zionism, the determinants of US-Israel relations, and consequences of this alliance: there could hardly be a better place to start. Shahid is erudite, engaging and rigorous. This book is a must read. My detailed review will appear here shortly. For now I leave you with Kathleen Christison‘s impressions. — MIA
The essential point of M. Shahid Alam’s book, Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism, comes clear upon opening the book to the inscription in the frontispiece. From the Persian poet and philosopher Rumi, the quote reads, “You have the light, but you have no humanity. Seek humanity, for that is the goal.” Alam, professor of economics at Northeastern University in Boston and a CounterPunch contributor, follows this with an explicit statement of his aims in the first paragraph of the preface. Asking and answering the obvious question, “Why is an economist writing a book on the geopolitics of Zionism?” he says that he “could have written a book about the economics of Zionism, the Israeli economy, or the economy of the West Bank and Gaza, but how would any of that have helped me to understand the cold logic and the deep passions that have driven Zionism?”
Until recent years, the notion that Zionism was a benign, indeed a humanitarian, political movement designed for the noble purpose of creating a homeland and refuge for the world’s stateless, persecuted Jews was a virtually universal assumption. In the last few years, particularly since the start of the al-Aqsa intifada in 2000, as Israel’s harsh oppression of the Palestinians has become more widely known, a great many Israelis and friends of Israel have begun to distance themselves from and criticize Israel’s occupation policies, but they remain strong Zionists and have been at pains to propound the view that Zionism began well and has only lately been corrupted by the occupation. Alam demonstrates clearly, through voluminous evidence and a carefully argued analysis, that Zionism was never benign, never good—that from the very beginning, it operated according to a “cold logic” and, per Rumi, had “no humanity.” Except perhaps for Jews, which is where Israel’s and Zionism’s exceptionalism comes in.
