Category: politics

Tens of thousands of people attended a memorial ceremony today, June 11, marking the 15th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, when Bosnian Serb paramilitaries executed more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys toward the end of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The massacre, deemed genocide by the UN war crimes court and the International Court of Justice, was the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II. The ceremony included the burial of 775 recently identified victims, who will join the 3,749 already there.

“If they build a mosque there, I’m going to bomb the mosque,” said one outraged resident who lives across the street from the proposed house of worship between East 28th and East 29th streets on Voorhies Avenue. The resident, who refused to give his name, identified himself as a former Israeli soldier who had lived on Voorhies Avenue for eight years. Full article.

If the security forces can treat dead women like hunting trophies, not only trussing their bodies to poles, but taking pride in displaying their kill, is it surprising that their behaviour towards the living is so atrocious? After every deadly attack by the Maoists, ‘civil society actors’ are summoned by TV channels to condemn the incident, substituting moral indignation for news analysis. And yet, the same media is strangely silent on police or paramilitary atrocities against civilians. Full article.

We are told, in many analysis features, that what we have to deal with in the Middle East are “competing narratives”. How very cosy. There’s no justice, no injustice, just a couple of people who tell different history stories. “Competing narratives” now regularly pop up in the British press. The phrase, from the false language of anthropology, deletes the possibility that one group of people – in the Middle East, for example – is occupied, while another is doing the occupying. Again, no justice, no injustice, no oppression or oppressing, just some friendly “competing narratives”, a football match, if you like, a level playing field because the two sides are – are they not? – “in competition”. And two sides have to be given equal time in every story.

[…] Similarly, the pernicious phrase “Af-Pak” – as racist as it is politically dishonest – is now used by reporters, although it was originally a creation of the US State Department on the day Richard Holbrooke was appointed special US representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. But the phrase avoids the use of the word “India” – whose influence in Afghanistan and whose presence in Afghanistan, is a vital part of the story.

Furthermore, “Af-Pak” – by deleting India – effectively deleted the whole Kashmir crisis from the conflict in south-east Asia. It thus deprived Pakistan of any say in US local policy on Kashmir – after all, Holbrooke was made the “Af-Pak” envoy, specifically forbidden from discussing Kashmir. Thus the phrase “Af-Pak”, which completely avoids the tragedy of Kashmir – too many “competing narratives”, perhaps? – means that when we journalists use the same phrase, “Af-Pak”, which was surely created for us journalists, we are doing the State Department’s work. Full article.

this article generated one of the most productive and interesting discussions on my fb wall. will write about this at some point.

verdict in oscar grant’s murder: “involuntary manslaughter” – so much for our democracy and freedoms!

Having someone who was part of the slaughter of 80 civilians in Lebanon on your Board is fine. And having a former AIPAC official with an obvious bias toward Israel (just watch Blitzer in this 5-minute clip if you have doubts about that) is perfectly consistent with a news network’s “credibility.” But expressing sadness over the death of an Islamic cleric beloved by much of the Muslim world is not. Whatever is driving that, it has nothing to do with “objectivity.” Full article.

Secondary only to ending the siege of Gaza and achieving Statehood, the enactment of the basic civil right to work and to own a home for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Refugees living in squalor in Lebanon is perhaps the most critical and immediately achievable goal of the Palestinian resistance and the ideals enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Friends of Palestine and supporters of basic civil rights, wherever they live, can help this happen without violence or martyrs by signing and distributing the Online Petition and by twinning with a Palestinian Refugee in Lebanon. Sign here.

most excellent, altho a bit hypocritical considering the brutal military occupation of kashmir by the indian army.

Dockworkers at the major Indian port of Cochin are refusing to unload Israeli cargo in protest of Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip.
According to the Indian communist publication People’s Democracy, “The boycott began on June 17 on receipt of information that cargo unloaded at Colombo Port [Sri Lanka] from Israeli ship m/v Zim Livorno 16 was bound to arrive at Cochin Port in a feeder vessel.”

“On June 23, trade unions held a joint protest rally in Cochin Port near the office of Zim Integrated Shipping Services (India) Pvt Ltd – the Israeli shipping line,” the report added. At the demonstration, labor leaders denounced Israel’s attack on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in May which left nine people dead. Representatives of several trade unions—including those aligned with both left and right wing parties— joined the demonstration. The port of Cochin, in the state of Kerala, is one of the biggest ports in India. The Chochin dockworkers join workers at ports in Sweden, South Africa, and other countries who have refused to unload Israeli cargo. Calls for boycotts against Israel intensified in the wake of the flotilla raid. Full article.

A 43-year-old Iranian woman will not be stoned to death after an international campaign launched by her children. It is unclear whether the authorities have lifted the death sentence for alleged adultery against Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani or if she faces execution by another means. More here.

The occupation of the Palestinian territories defines Israel’s economy in a large way. About two-thirds of Israel’s history, it has been occupying power, controlling Palestinian territories. But even before that occupation, Israel has created a very particular system of economic control, which is designed to promote the idea of a Jewish state. The Jewish state is not merely a cultural idea; it’s not merely a symbolic idea; it’s a material reality which is designed to redistribute wealth in order to draw as many Jews as possible to this area and to maintain a sustainable control of the Jewish population over a piece of land which is by nature binational.

…until the year 2000, Israel was about the tenth biggest arms exporter in the world, but the fourth biggest arms exporter to the developing world, because Israel was willing to sell weapons to clients, to customers which other countries were reluctant to sell to, such as South Africa during the apartheid and so on. But after September 11, after the attacks, there was a famous quote by Benjamin Netanyahu, who is currently Israel’s prime minister. He said these attacks are good for Israel; they show the world that Israel fighting terrorism—or fighting Islam, basically—is a good thing. (Shir Hever) – Watch interview here.

this has nothing to do with islam. it’s a barbaric pre-islamic custom that needs to stop. pls sign this petition.

WARSCHAWSKI: [Since 9/11] the discourse of clash of civilizations has become deeply internalized in Israeli discourse and by the Israeli public – that we Israel are the front line defending not only ourselves but so-called Judeo-Christian civilization against not just the Palestinians – they are only the front line of a much bigger threat, which is Islam, Islamic fundamentalism. In fact, there was a shift in the discourse, starting with fighting terrorism (this was the main discourse at the end of the ’80s) then to Islamic terrorism, and then to Islam as such – a civilizational threat.

JAY: And it goes to the very core of the conception of the Israeli – of a Jewish state, because if there wasn’t some kind of clash of civilizations, you wouldn’t need a Jewish state.

WARSCHAWSKI: Yes, but the Jewish state was a answer not to Islam but to European anti-Semitism.

JAY: That gets transferred.

Watch interview here.

Most recently, this duplicitous landscape of war-on-terror “success” has been illuminated yet again by the case of four alleged Newburgh, New York, conspirators — the Newburgh Four — and in the botched arrest and fatal shooting (a first for federal authorities) of an African American imam in Detroit, leader of the so-called Ummah Conspiracy. As the details have slowly emerged, these two cases offer vivid examples of how government-scripted many of the terror plots “uncovered” in the U.S. in recent years have turned out to be. Each case, in fact, offers a window onto a stark world in which nothing is what it seems to be. Full article.

So between Afghanistan and Paksitan combined, there are a few hundred Al Qeada members total. All of this ongoing war and those hundreds of billions of dollars spent and those deaths and the decade of occupation, and those bombings and shootings and drone attacks and lawless prisons and habeas-stripping court precedents: it’s all (ostensibly) for a few hundred extremists total hiding in remote tribal areas. A few hundred. Full article.

An Indian MP’s call for the children of a recently-contacted Andaman Island tribe to be removed from their parents and sent to residential schools has sparked worldwide outrage. Full article.