Category: politics

pls watch this excellent documentary to understand the war on drugs (and the war on terror). this is how it works. this is what it leads to.

occupations r not only illegal and immoral – they’re psycho. how is this making israel “safer”? more here.

As European leaders increasingly question the concept of Europe without borders and follow each other in announcing the end of multiculturalism, the media response has been mostly to present migrants as destabilising Europe’s labour markets and welfare states. More here.

The mutilation and death in custody of a 13-year-old child has sparked further furious protests in Syrian city of Daraa. “More people will now go to the street. We hold the Syrian secret police fully responsible for the torturing and killing of this child, even if they deny it.” More here.

without commenting on what coll says about the syrian revolution, what struck me in this piece is:

“Any foreign power hoping to promote peace, stability, and democratic inclusion in the Middle East must account for the Israeli-Palestinian divide, the Sunni-Shia divide, the Muslim-Christian divide, widespread anti-Semitism, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the security of oil supplies pumped by weak regimes, Al Qaeda and related radicals, tribalism, corruption, and a picturesque lineup of despots.”

— smacks of arrogant, one-sided imperial goals. how can we talk of anti-semitism w/o talking of islamophobia (as in ethnic cleansing and supporting oppressive dictatorships for the sake of “stability”)? why mention iran’s nuclear ambitions w/o talking about israel’s existing nuclear arsenal? what does it mean for us to secure someone else’s oil? so there r sunni-shia issues and muslim-christian issues, but no jewish-muslim problems? it’s kind of central to the middle east’s core conflict no? and what’s better than tribalism – western style capitalism which exploits the majority for the sake of a few? and that’s not corruption? al qaeda is non-state terrorism and therefore a concern, but what about widespread state terrorism in the middle east – which is carried out on a much more massive scale and with much better military equipment, resulting in many more civilian deaths? why is that palatable?

coll ends the article with a call for investigating assad at the intl criminal court. he’s enthused that the ICC wants to arrest qaddafi for crimes against humanity. hey, guess who else could qualify for a similar warrant? several names come to mind.

U.K. music bestsellers provide link to official ‘Freedom for Palestine’ website, a project supported by groups such as Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, and Friends of Al Aqsa. More here.

When, and why, do states censor maps? Mostly when the operating principle seems to be denial and obfuscation. For yrs, the Indian state has attempted to delegitimise people’s aspirations in Kashmir, either by raising the bogey of Islamism or lumping together the challenge to its authority in Kashmir with the US-led war on terror. More here.

Saturday will be a day of celebration for a movement that is becoming more and more organized by the day and for the first time in its two-year history will have its most recognizable member, Mel Zelaya, active and in the country. The resistance can now focus on its other major goal, the re-founding of the country through a constitutional assembly. More here.

the pakistani army ready to kill and displace millions of pakistani citizens, once again. because the u.s. wants it. because the u.s. is going to save them from themselves… more here.

i saw this documentary more than a year ago. i never forgot one of the interviews (the last one in this segment, starts at 10.45). the systematic brutalization of children is unbearable. it must be stopped. two articles on the subject:

East Jerusalem: Israel detains 8-year-old Palestinian boy

The Israeli police are ramping up arrests and attacks against Palestinian children. Targeting of children is nothing new in West Bank villages like Nabi Saleh and Bil’in. This afternoon, Israeli police raided the house of 8 year-old Ali Siyam in the Occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. More here.

Are Palestinian children less worthy?

What is it about Jewish and Arab children that privileges the first and spurns the second in the speeches of President Barack Obama, let alone in the Western media more generally? Are Jewish children smarter, prettier, whiter? Are they deserving of sympathy and solidarity, denied to Arab children, because they are innocent and unsullied by the guilt of their parents, themselves often referred to as “the children of Israel”? Or, is it that Arab children are dangerous, threatening, guilty, even dark and ugly, a situation that can only lead to Arabopaedophobia – the Western fear of Arab children? More here.

the torture and killing of a senior journalist in pakistan – probable ISI involvement. “Reporters without borders rates Pakistan 151 out of 178 countries. The numbers of journalists’ deaths have gone up in the last couple of years, with 10 of them being killed this year alone.” more here.

Longtemps, j’ai espéré vivre un jour sans insultes ni agressions verbales, loin de ces regards insistants. J’en ai conservé une démarche constamment pressée. Et un goût pour les vêtements sombres. Si je déteste la couleur rouge, c’est sans doute qu’en rouge un Noir est doublement visible. Une peau sombre est un costume suffisamment lourd à porter…
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“Nous sommes tous égaux,” entend-on souvent claironner. D’ailleurs, c’est un précepte de l’islam ! Égaux en droit, certes, nous le sommes. Mais les coeurs et les épidermes sont-ils vraiment prêts à admettre qu’un Noir soit « un homme fait de tous les hommes, qui les vaut tous et que vaut n’importe qui » ? Même en Tunisie, à l’ombre des jasmins.
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More here.

It’s bad enough that ever since President Obama took office, he has repeatedly gone after whistleblowers with a cold vengeance, charging more people in cases involving leaking information than “all previous presidents combined.” But Obama administration officials are no longer content just with targeting whistleblowers. Now they are coming for the journalists as well. More here.

Since President Obama was inaugurated, research has shown that over 2,600 activists have been arrested for protesting in the US. — so america’s in revolt? alright!

They say in Madrid as they did on Palestine’s borders, our lives are ruled and affected by smug, cynical and indifferent Western politicians who hold immense power to maintain the unjust world for years to come, but we have had enough of this and will resist it. More here.