Post-earthquake photos of Haiti by Daniel Cima
September 24th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
This past week in Washington, D.C., I met with award-winning Argentine photographer Daniel Cima, who spent over a month in Haiti following the January 2010 earthquake.
The following series of Cima’s photographs is an example of disaster-inspired creativity of a different nature than that espoused by hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean, who preferred to channel his artistic talents into a bid for the Haitian presidency before settling for a musical album entitled “If I Were President, the Haitian Experience”.
O’Keefe: Israelis Holding back Execution Footage
September 24th, 2010 § 1 Comment
A United Nations Human Rights Council investigation recently concluded that Israel broke international laws during its deadly raid on the Mavi Marmara, an aid flotilla trying to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza. Mavi Marmara survivor Ken O’Keefe argues that while Israel’s claims that it is “cooperating” with the international community, it refuses to release stolen video footage of the Israeli commandoes carrying out execution-style murders of some of the passengers. Unsurprisingly, Israel responded by calling the report “biased, politicized” and conducted with an “extremist approach.”
But they’re still “cooperating.”
Glenn Greenwald vs. Cliff May
September 24th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Earlier this week Glenn Greenwald taught Cliff May a few lessons on the Dylan Ratigan Show. For more check out Ali Gharib’s take with an update from MJ Rosenberg on Lobe Log.
South African Academics Call for Boycott of Ben Gurion University
September 24th, 2010 § 3 Comments
A long brewing South African campaign at the prestigious University of Johannesburg to cut off academic links with Ben Gurion University due to its complicity and racist practices has won the endorsement of John Dugard, Desmond Tutu, Breyten Breytenbach, Allan Boesak, Mahmoud Mamdani and almost 200 other academics from 22 academic institutions in South Africa.
SOUTH AFRICAN ACADEMICS SUPPORT THE CALL FOR UJ TO TERMINATE RELATIONSHIP WITH ISRAELI INSTITUTION
As members of the academic community of South Africa, a country with a history of brute racism on the one hand and both academic acquiescence and resistance to it on the other, we write to you with deep concern regarding the relationship between the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU). The relationship agreement, presented as ‘merely the continuation’ of a ‘purely scientific co-operation’ is currently being reviewed owing to concerns raised by UJ students, academics and staff. For reasons explained below and detailed in the attached Fact Sheet, we wish to add our voices to those calling for the suspension of UJ’s agreement with BGU.
Reese Erlich: “Stop using the word ‘terrorist’”
September 24th, 2010 § 2 Comments
Defining what a terrorist is and isn’t is a major dilemma. What one may consider terrorism, another may consider resistance. So where does one draw the line? Reese Erlich tackles that topic in his latest book “Conversations with Terrorists: Middle East Leaders on Politics, Violence, and Empire.”
Erlich is a veteran journalist who has covered U.S. foreign policy for decades. He has freelanced for National Public Radio, Radio Deutsche Welle, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. Radio, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Radio, and writes for The San Francisco Chronicle and The Dallas Morning News.
Drawing on firsthand interviews and original research, Erlich argues that yesterday’s terrorist is often today’s national leader and that today’s freedom fighter may become tomorrow’s terrorist. By branding all of American’s opponents as “terrorists,” it makes it more difficult to look beyond the individual or the political group and understand what they are really all about. I caught up with Erlich recently and here’s what he had to say.
Omar Khadr has lost one third of his Life in US Custody
September 23rd, 2010 § Leave a Comment
by Andy Worthington
Omar Khadr, the only Canadian citizen in Guantánamo, was seized in Afghanistan on July 27, 2002, when he was just 15 years old. On September 19 he turned 24, and has grown, physically, into a man during the eight years and two months he has spent in US custody, first at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, and, since October 2002, at Guantánamo. At heart, however, he remains a child, whose youth has been stolen from him by the US authorities responsible for detaining him, and by the Canadian government, which has refused to demand his return.
I don’t want you to reflect, however, particularly on the abuse to which he has been subjected throughout his detention, or on the US government’s shameful refusal to rehabilitate him, rather than punishing him, as required by its obligations under the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, which includes the agreement that all States Parties who ratify the Protocol “[r]ecogniz[e] the special needs of those children who are particularly vulnerable to recruitment or use in hostilities,” and are “[c]onvinced of the need [for] the physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and social reintegration of children who are victims of armed conflict.”
I don’t want you to reflect particularly on the Canadian government’s shameful refusal to demand his return to his homeland, despite severe criticism by the Canadian courts, or on the Obama administration’s shameful refusal to cancel his scheduled trial by Military Commission, on war crimes charges that — even if the allegations are true — are not war crimes at all, as Lt. Col. David Frakt, the military defense attorney for another former child at Guantánamo, Mohamed Jawad (who was released last August), has explained.
In Silwan, Palestinian Stones are met with Israeli Bullets
September 23rd, 2010 § Leave a Comment
The following is an excerpt from Philip Weiss’s report from Silwan:
Palestinians rioted this afternoon in Silwan, a village right outside the Old City of Jerusalem, following the killing earlier in the day of a Palestinian man by an armed guard at a Jewish settlement in the occupied neighborhood. Joseph Dana posted pictures of the “revolt” here.
An activist friend in West Jerusalem said that the riots were the start of the third intifadah, and with that sense of moment, I went to Silwan. It was 6 o’clock. Smoke rose from fires in the village center, and heavily armed Israeli forces were mustered at the walls of the Old City, in part to protect Jews who were flocking to the Jewish Quarter to celebrate the start of Sukkot.
I walked down the hill past the City of David settlement, a messianic Jewish colony on occupied land, with a big gold sign in English. I found my way to the Wadi Hilwah Information Center. A man with a limp– shot by a settler guard in both legs, I was later told–walked me back to Jawad Siyan, the director of the office. A thin, intense man of about 35, he vented his despair over Palestinian powerlessness as he fielded telephone calls and a teenager brought me coffee.
The 55,000 people of the village were “sad and shocked” tonight, Siyan said grimly. Villagers had continually complained to Israeli police that the settlers had taken the law into their own hands; but the complaints were ignored. Armed guards in the settlement– which has been spearheaded by a religious group called Elad– roamed the town freely, with the support of the Israeli border police. They threatened Palestinians with impunity.
The incident today began–Siyan said witnesses had told him– when Palestinians and settlers shouted abuse at one another, as they often do, and the guards had fired guns in the air. The Palestinians had run away. The guards had chased them, and shot at them. Two men were seriously injured. Israeli security forces had arrived within minutes, but Samar Sarchan, 35 years old, lay on the ground for an hour before an ambulance arrived. He later died of his injuries.
Nabi Saleh Resists Israeli Colonization
September 22nd, 2010 § Leave a Comment
The Israeli Halamish (Neve Zuf) settlement, located opposite of the Palestinan village of Nabi Saleh, has illegally seized nearly half of Nabi Saleh’s valuable agricultural land through land confiscation. In this clip Palestinians and international activists resist Israeli soldiers as they physically assault them, detain youths, and launch tear gas projectiles at the demonstrators.
According to Iyad Burnat, a Palestinian leader in the struggle against the Israeli Apartheid wall (a family man who has been physically assaulted and arrested by the Israelis), international solidarity is needed now more than ever as Israel accelerates its colonization of Palestine.
Writes Burnat:
The presence of the international supporters in Palestine is very important especially in the nonviolent protests like those in Bil’in, Nil’in, Al Ma’ssara, and Al Nabi Saleh villages; those supporters help in deescalating the violence used by the Israeli military during those weekly actions. They are also our ambassadors to the world, they transmit the full picture of what is happening here to their home countries though there presence and cameras.
We know that the Israeli occupation depend on three venues that makes it strong in facing international law and escape all the crimes it does against the unarmed Palestinian people;
Tariq Ali on the Floods in Pakistan
September 22nd, 2010 § Leave a Comment
On Tuesday British-Pakistani historian, author and political analyst, Tariq Ali, appeared on Democracy Now! where he addressed the lacking international response to the devastating floods in Pakistan which have left millions homeless and “up to 3.5 million children are at high risk from deadly water-borne diseases.” During that same episode Ali also discussed his new book, The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad, and Glenn Greenwald was interviewed on US foreign policy towards Iran and US domestic politics.
According to Ali:
It is the worst disaster we have seen for a very long time—24 million people homeless; massive malnutrition, which already existed, now worse; malaria and cholera raging in the camps, if one can call them that, where people are taking refuge. This should be a global appeal to the entire world to send doctors, to send medicines, to send food, to—for the United Nations really to move in and take over the rescue effort. That is what needs to be done. Any government—I admit the Pakistani government under Zardari is totally corrupt, and that is putting people off giving money, but there are lots of other organizations at work there which can be given money, and teams of doctors can be sent with medicines. I mean, the Cubans went during the last earthquake, and it was very effective.
Battling State Department amnesia
September 21st, 2010 § 1 Comment
Pinochet was also known to wear hats.
Today marks the one-year anniversary of former Honduran president Mel Zelaya’s sudden reappearance in Tegucigalpa following his June 28 expatriation at the hands of the Honduran military. After extensively debating whether or not said military expatriation qualified as a military coup, the U.S. State Department finally arrived at the conclusion this year that whatever it was it had resulted in a government committed to democracy and constitutional order. The U.S. would presumably not welcome similar thought processes by foreign opponents, or a situation in which Iran spent the better part of a year hemming and hawing over whether it had in fact executed political prisoners before determining that the term execution was inconsequential and not an obstacle to the maintenance of human rights.
As for regimes slightly less adept at the manipulation of truth, Honduran coup president Roberto Micheletti was eventually forced to amend his claim last Sept. 21 that Zelaya was in a hotel in Managua, Nicaragua, after being presented with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, such as the legitimate president’s appearance on the balcony of the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa. Aside from hiring U.S. lobbying firms to promote the coup on Capitol Hill, other coup government attempts at truth manipulation consisted of crafting pro-coup commercials for Honduran television starring Zelaya’s cowboy hat alongside the red beret of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez—although it was never clear why these two forms of Latin American headgear were any more ominous than those used by right-wing dictators.
