With their husbands, sons and brothers at the frontlines, the women of Benghazi are busy supporting them with meals and supplies, preparing thousands of sandwiches and warm meals daily.
Hoda Abdel Hamid reports from Benghazi, where the uprising began.
Category: Activism
The death of fear
Good to see that Al Jazeera made a journalist out of Rageh Omar, who while working for the BBC breathlessly relayed the false narrative on the stage-managed toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad. (Also see Part II)
Rageh Omaar examines how the death of a street vendor led to a wave of uprisings across Arab world.
The death of fear
My Journey to BDS
by Roger Waters
In 1980, a song I wrote, “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2,” was banned by the government of South Africa because it was being used by Black South African children to advocate their right to equal education. That apartheid government imposed a cultural blockade, so-to-speak, on certain songs, including mine.
Twenty-five years later, in 2005, Palestinian children participating in a West Bank festival used the song to protest Israel’s apartheid wall. They sang “We don’t need no occupation! We don’t need no racist wall!” At the time, I hadn’t seen first-hand what they were singing about.
A year later in 2006, I contracted to perform in Tel Aviv.
Palestinians from the movement advocating an academic and cultural boycott of Israel urged me to reconsider. I had already spoken out against the wall, but I was unsure whether a cultural boycott was the right way to go. The Palestinian advocates of a boycott asked that I visit the occupied Palestinian territory, to see the Wall for myself before I made up my mind. I agreed.
Don’t mess with Anonymous
Anonymous, or Anon, is a movement made up of a number of nameless internet activists from around the world. For many, the ‘hacktivist’ group has become the face of the new cyber-war against oppressive governments and all-powerful corporates. Others say the group’s actions are reckless. Describing itself as “the freedom of speech, the freedom of information and the freedom of expression taken to a logical extreme,” Anon says it breaks laws, but only for the greater good.
Al Jazeera’s Scott Heidler reports.
The revolt comes to Saudi Arabia
Meaningful change in the Middle East is not possible until the malign influence of the House of Saud is lifted. For nearly eight decades it has served as a bulwark of American power in the region, and in more recent years has emerged as a key ally of Israel. When Israel was devastating Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2009, the Saudi government reserved its criticism for the war’s victims. It has also tried to draw attention away from its own domestic failings by joining Israel and the US in ratcheting up propaganda against Iran. (As with pre-Jan25 Egypt, the accomodation with Zionism resulted in Iran replacing Israel as the chief bogeyman). It has yet to pay a price for the repeated betrayals of its own people and for spreading the brand of conservative, intolerant Salafist Islam that is today fragmenting societies from Beirut to Jakarta. It is time for a reckoning, and as Robert Fisk reports, the date has been set for March 11.
Saudi Arabia was yesterday drafting up to 10,000 security personnel into its north-eastern Shia Muslim provinces, clogging the highways into Dammam and other cities with busloads of troops in fear of next week’s “day of rage” by what is now called the “Hunayn Revolution”.
Saudi Arabia’s worst nightmare – the arrival of the new Arab awakening of rebellion and insurrection in the kingdom – is now casting its long shadow over the House of Saud. Provoked by the Shia majority uprising in the neighbouring Sunni-dominated island of Bahrain, where protesters are calling for the overthrow of the ruling al-Khalifa family, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is widely reported to have told the Bahraini authorities that if they do not crush their Shia revolt, his own forces will.
Roger Waters on BDS and the walls of division
Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters talks to Riz Khan about his passionate campaign for the rights of the Palestinian people and why, more than 30 years after he wrote the globally-acclaimed album ‘The Wall’, he is focusing on another wall – the Israeli separation barrier in the West Bank.
A new beginning? — Tariq Ali on the Arab uprisings
Our good friend Tariq Ali on the Arab uprisings and the US response. You can ignore the neocon Uncle Tom who appears afterwards.
Liberated Libya Rejects US Intervention
On the streets of liberated Benghazi people say no to McCain, Lieberman and any US intervention.
A Perfect Storm in the Arab World?
Middle East scholar Prof. Fawaz Gerges on the Arab revolt.
Regardless of the outcome of events in Egypt, for Arabs, psychologically and symbolically, this is their Berlin Wall moment. They are on the brink of a democratic wave similar to the one that swept through Eastern Europe more than 20 years ago, hastening the Soviet Union’s collapse. The Arab intifada has put to rest the claim that Islam and Muslims are incompatible with democracy. The democratic virus is mutating and will probably give birth to a new language – and a new era – of politics in the Arab world. Fawaz A. Gerges is a Professor of Middle Eastern Politics and International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
This event was recorded on 24 February 2011 in Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building. It was chaired by Dr Maha Azzam.
Available as: mp3 (41 MB; approx 87 minutes)
Event Posting: A Perfect Storm in the Arab World?
Philip Weiss on the Arab Revolt
This is as good as talk radio gets. Our friend, the great Phil Weiss on Radio Open Source with Chris Lydon to discuss the implications of the Arab revolt and the changing discourse in the American Jewish community.
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