1. Masters of their Own Destiny
Masters of their own Destiny is the first episode in Al Jazeera’s six-part series on the history of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. It looks at the challenges encountered as Palestinians sought to wrest control of their own destiny from Arab regimes and create an independent Palestinian organisation that would lead the struggle for a national home.
‘Breaking Australia’s silence: WikiLeaks and freedom’ was a public forum held on 16 March 2011 at the Sydney Town Hall. The event was staged by the Sydney Peace Foundation, Amnesty, Stop the War Coalition, and supported by the City of Sydney.
Chaired by Mary Kostakidis, it featured speeches by John Pilger, Andrew Wilkie MP (the only serving Western intelligence officer to expose the truth about the Iraq invasion) and Julian Burnside QC, defender of universal human rights under the law.
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.
Information is power and in the age of the information revolution, cyber and satellite communication is transforming our lives, reinventing the relationship between people and power. New media, from WikiLeaks to Facebook, Twitter to YouTube, is persistently challenging the traditional flow of information, and cyber disobedience is exposing powerful governments. Websites are now being treated like hostile territories; whistleblowers and leakers as terrorists, and hackers as insurgents. Governments are scrambling to salvage their influence and take advantage of the new cyber and satellite media. From China to the Sudan, Egypt to Iran, despots and armies are tracking web activity and setting up Facebook accounts to spy on their citizens. So is this the century of free information and expression as the cyber utopians predicted, or new methods of electronic oppression as the cyber sceptics warned?
Final installment of Al Jazeera’s excellent Egypt Burning series.
As the calls for regime change move into their third week, Egyptians have broken down the barrier of fear. Cracks between the protesters have started to show, but resolute protesters are standing firm on their call for the president to resign.
Nir Rosen is the finest frontline reporter the US has produced in decades. He has just resigned from his position at the New York University after he came under fire from Israel lobby attack-dog Jeffrey Goldberg for making light of the recent attacks on CBS propagandist Lara Logan (comments for which he has since apologized). Following is a talk he gave recently at LSE about his new book Aftermath. (Also, don’t miss Ali Gharib’s excellent profile on Rosen.)
Mosaic’s round-up of the celebrations across the Middle East on Egypt’s people power toppling of Mubarak.
Vodpod videos no longer available.Revolutions do not come about from determination and desire for change alone, they need organization and planning. If you are one of those who believes that the Egyptian revolution was the consequence of a spontaneous outpouring of discontent, the following episode from AJE’s People and Power, which is a unique study in the art of revolution, should help disabuse you. Western activists in particular — whose failures were noted by Antonio Gramsci in the early decades of the century, and who have maintained an unbroken record of defeat since — will find a lot to learn from this.
Ambassador Chas Freeman at a New America Foundation talk, moderated by Steve Clemons. Amb. Freeman’s current book is America’s Misadventures in the Middle East.
Vodpod videos no longer available.The U.S. should not enable Israel’s self-destructiveness
“I don’t believe that playing the role of enabler to an alcoholic is an act of kindness and I don’t believe playing the role of enabler to a country that is setting itself for catastrophe is responsible either. I think we have a very sad situation in this country in which any criticism of whatever it is that the current government of Israel is doing is immediately cited as evidence of anti-Israel bias or as evidence of antisemitism.” (Video: 21:46)
The U.S. is no longer qualified to mediate Mideast peace
“The United States essentially has disqualified itself as a mediator. I say that with great sadness because I believe on many occasions in the past we had opportunities to broker peace. I think there has been the implicit promise of peace on many occasions and we did not do that. We cannot play the role of mediator because of the political hammerlock that the right wing in Israel through its supporters here exercises in our politics. We’re simply biased. We’re not capable. If you doubt that read the so-called Palestine Papers and see what we were doing.” (Video 22:38)
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