Welcome to Gaza
May 14th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Welcome to Gaza is a documentary about Gaza City, Palestine, looking at its ancient heritage. Here’s the trailer:
Heroes and Traitors
May 13th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Despite the mass arrests, the beatings and torture, the besieged towns and suburbs, the blocked-off mosques, and the killings of up to a thousand people, Syrian heroes today demonstrated in Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Hama, Idlib, Qamishleh, Amouda, Latakia and elsewhere.
The film below was made in Dera’a last month. It is very distubing to watch, but also very inspiring. I love the courage and compassion and the solidarity of those wonderful people who work against bullets and fear to rescue one fallen. That’s the best of Syria, and there’s a great deal of it. I challenge anyone to watch the film and then claim that the Syrian regime still enjoys any legitimacy at all. “Khawana!” scream these brave men at their persecutors. “Traitors!”
More videos smuggled through the media blackout can be seen at Sham News.
United we stand
May 13th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
by Brenda Heard
News during the last couple of weeks has rumbled in to shake an already rickety balance of world order. Perhaps one of the most disturbing images accompanying those headlines, though, was not that of more bruised and bulleted bodies. Rather, the image was of what the Associated Press termed a ‘jubilant crowd’. As though they had just won the World Cup Final, Americans waved flags as they sang and chanted their patriotic celebration.
Osama Bin Laden, they had just been told, had been shot dead. After nearly a decade-long manhunt, he had finally been pounced upon in Pakistan. The crowd cheered. And when President Obama made the official announcement, he coaxed the nation to cheer the same; he concluded by quoting the American pledge of allegiance:
Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all’.
‘Indivisible’. In this one word lies the notion that has fed American policy for many, many years: united we stand—divided they fall.
Conversations with History: Anatol Lieven on Pakistan
May 12th, 2011 § 1 Comment
Anatol Lieven is the author of the excellent America Right or Wrong. In the following interview he discusses his new book Paksitan: A Hard Country, which I shall review here shortly.
Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Anatol Lieven for a discussion of his new book Pakistan: A Hard Country. Lieven emphasizes the important role of kinship in understanding society and the state in Pakistan. Discussing the military’s unique position as the preeminent national institution, he explains the sources of its power and prestige. Focusing on Pakistani national security thinking, he traces the perceived strategic threat posed by India, the role of Afghanistan in Pakistani strategy, the distinction between the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, and the importance of Kashmir. He then proceeds to an analysis of the complex relationship between the United States and Pakistan. Lieven concludes with a discussion of the threat posed by Pakistan’s geographical location in the Indus valley and the long term implications of climate change for its future.
Bahrain’s brutal regime targets medics and schoolgirls
May 12th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
The second part of Al Jazeera’s exclusive report on Bahrain looks at the abuse of medical workers as part of the government’s crackdown on dissent.
In first of five exclusive reports, Al Jazeera has unearthed evidence that sheds light on kingdom’s brutal crackdown.
I knew bin Laden
May 12th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Ahmad Zaidan, Al Jazeera’s Islamabad correspondent, speaks to people who knew Osama bin Laden.
Panama’s Underappreciated Role in the Creation of Israel
May 11th, 2011 § 4 Comments
In honor of the sixty-third anniversary of Israel’s independence from the proprietors of the land on which it was established, the Israeli embassy in Panama is issuing a four-part magazine series entitled “Israel: 63 years of constant progress”. The first 30-page installment arrived last week with the morning La Prensa and dealt with typical cultural themes such as hummus, shawarma, and the coexistence in the Israeli democratic “oasis” of various ethnicities enjoying equal rights. Cultural trivia items included that “Israelis drink 3.5 cups of coffee per day”, “A cup of coffee costs 4 dollars on average”, and “Because they are adventurous, Israelis love extreme sports”.
Higher-caliber trivia—such as the success of an Israeli invention for an electric hair removal device, which according to Israel’s Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs “makes women happy all over the world” and should thus be used in order to counter “barbs of criticism” levied against Jewish state on account of its barbarous policies—was not on this occasion made available to Panamanians. Nor was it explained whether the multiethnic democracy’s Afghan Jewish inhabitants, represented by a photograph of women in blue burqas, had access to alternate ensembles for use during skydiving and other extreme activities, or how vast portions of the Israeli population living below the poverty line can spend 14 dollars a day on coffee.
Salhiyeh, Damascus
May 11th, 2011 § 1 Comment
Upmarket central Damascus, Corncob square and the shopping precinct below. ‘Salafi terrorists’ singing the Syrian national anthem. The mukhabarat playing various roles.
Egyptians to mark Nakba with a march to Palestine
May 11th, 2011 § 3 Comments
This article first appeared on Gaza TV:
On 15 May, the annual commemoration of the creation of the state of Israel and the expulsion of Palestinians, known as Nakba, Egyptians plan to march to Palestine under the slogan “Cairo’s liberation will not be complete without the liberation of Al-Quds [Jerusalem].”
Following Egypt’s January 25 Revolution, Egyptians are pushing for some of the country’s foreign relations policies to change, especially those related to Israel and Palestine. Aid or protest convoys to Gaza were frequently stopped or arrested during the Mubarak era by the ousted president’s regime, and now for the first time since the revolution thousands of activists are planning to march to the Rafah border town.
Gaza Strip
May 11th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
James Longley, the acclaimed director of the Oscar-nominated Iraq in Fragments (an award the film should have won, but for political reasons was instead handed to Al Gore), has generously made available his acclaimed 2002 film Gaza Strip for online viewing. (via Joseph Dana at +972)
In early 2001 I spent three months in Gaza filming material for this documentary, GAZA STRIP, working with local fixer and translator, Mohammed Mohanna. The second Palestinian uprising against Israeli military occupation had begun in September, 2000, and there had already been large numbers of deaths in Gaza when I started this project.
Though the period this documentary covers includes the election of Ariel Sharon as Israeli Prime Minister and large incursions by the Israeli Defense Forces into Gaza, in retrospect the time depicted here is one of relative quiet. More recent Israeli attacks against Gaza have been far more destructive and deadly than what falls into the scope of this film.
