Satyagrahi_Ji

México: Soluciones duraderas y efectivas para la comunidad Rarámuri de la Sierra Tarahumara

2012-02-08T23:59:00.000-08:00

México: Soluciones duraderas y efectivas para la comunidad Rarámuri de la Sierra Tarahumara

El panorama a futuro indica que puede empeorar ante la escasez de alimentos y el pronóstico de lluvias escasas para esta temporada.

Fuente: Cencos

No son suficientes las toneladas de alimentos y cobijas que llegan a la Sierra, se deben planear acciones a corto, mediano y largo plazo

La sociedad, las autoridades y el sector privado deben unir esfuerzos en esta emergencia

Oxfam apoyará proyectos para incentivar la productividad, como pequeñas represas, huertos familiares de traspatio y se dará empleo a los habitantes de la zona que participen en la construcción de la infraestructura que se instalará

Oxfam colabora en estas iniciativas con la Fundación Bowerasa y la Fundación Tarahumara José Alberto Llaguno

Oxfam recibirá desde hoy donativos para financiar los proyectos productivos en la Tarahumara

Cada proyecto cuesta 350 mil pesos y beneficia directamente a 250 familias

Ante la situación de emergencia en la que viven los habitantes de la Sierra Tarahumara y con base en la experiencia en ayuda humanitaria que tiene Oxfam en todo el mundo, se realizó una evaluación directa en campo para conocer directamente el problema e implementar soluciones que beneficien a la comunidad Rarámuri.

En esta visita se comprobó que la situación es grave debido a la escasez de alimentos por falta de agua, pérdida de fertilidad en los suelos y baja productividad de las tierras. Además, el panorama a futuro indica que puede empeorar ante la escasez de alimentos y el pronóstico de lluvias escasas para esta temporada.

Después de haber evaluado la situación, Carlos Zarco, director ejecutivo de Oxfam México, anunció que se implementarán acciones a corto, mediano y largo plazo. “Se buscará favorecer la confluencia del gobierno, el sector privado y la sociedad civil para responder a esta situación de emergencia. Asimismo, será primordial fortalecer las redes de la sociedad civil en Chihuahua, en la Sierra Tarahumara, porque sabemos que las soluciones duraderas implican la participación activa de la sociedad civil local. Además Oxfam ha sido invitado a participar en conjunto con la Cruz Roja, Transparencia Internacional y la FAO en la contraloría social del fondo especial de 34 mil millones de pesos que el gobierno definió para enfrentar la sequía”, concluyó.

De las acciones más emergentes se encuentra la recaudación de recursos económicos que serán invertidos en la implementación de proyectos productivos para rescatar las técnicas de cultivo sustentables que mejorarán las cosechas de productos básicos (maíz y fríjol) y complementarios (hortalizas), así como la siembra y retención de agua. Estos proyectos, traerán como beneficios: la recarga de mantos acuíferos; redes de cosecha y distribución de agua; estudios de fertilidad y mejoramiento de suelos; investigación y mejoramiento de la producción agrícola (parcelas de maíz y huertos); diseño de proyectos productivos para el mejoramiento de la economía local y, capacitación en técnicas agrícolas y desarrollo de capacidades organizativas.

Estos proyectos además darán empleo a los habitantes de las comunidades en la construcción de la infraestructura y se les capacitará para que ellos mismos repliquen estos esquemas en otras comunidades.

Esta iniciativa ya ha sido implementada en la Sierra Tarahumara, inclusive, se ha multiplicado gracias a los resultados alcanzados y las comunidades donde los proyectos son ya una realidad se encuentran en mejores condiciones para enfrentar la crisis, al conservar una reserva de agua, haber mejorado el rendimiento de sus aguajes gracias a la infiltración del agua en el subsuelo y, como beneficio adicional, haber contado con una fuente segura de empleo durante el tiempo que duró la obra. En estas y otras acciones, Oxfam trabajará apoyando también proyectos de la Fundación Tarahumara José A. Llaguno, y la Fundación Bowerasa que brinden verdaderas oportunidades de alcanzar mejores y sostenidas condiciones vida de las comunidades Rarámuri.

Cada proyecto de conservación y recuperación de suelo y agua cuesta 350 mil pesos anuales y beneficia directamente alrededor de 250 familias. Oxfam hace un llamado a la sociedad en su conjunto para que se puedan recaudar los recursos que permitan llevar esta ayuda a por lo menos comunidades de seis municipios de la sierra de Chihuahua.

Oxfam México está recibiendo donaciones en efectivo en la cuenta bancaria

Nombre: Oxfam México, A.C.
Banco: BBVA Bancomer
Cuenta: 0149295577
Sucursal: 3533 San José Insurgentes
Clabe: 012180001492955777

Todos los donativos son deducibles de impuestos, informes con Alejandra Jiménez al 5687- 3002

Sobre Oxfam México

Oxfam México es una asociación civil independiente de cooperación internacional y ayuda humanitaria que promueve la organización de las comunidades para mejorar sus condiciones de vida. Trabaja conforme al principio universal de la Equidad Social, a partir de tres causas: Justicia Económica, Construcción de Ciudadanía y Democracia, y Ayuda Humanitaria.

Su operación se financia con las aportaciones económicas de empresas, fundaciones y donaciones individuales, que son asignadas a diversas organizaciones de la sociedad civil para auspiciar proyectos de desarrollo sustentable.

http://www.oxfammexico.org/
Contacto para medios:
La Bola de Papel, Comunicación
Sara Castellanos R.
2454-0400/ 2454/0404
scastellanos@laboladepapel.com"> scastellanos@laboladepapel.com

Dona: Los Tarahumaras nos necesitan

México, D.F. a 6 de febrero de 2012.

True cost of Afghan, Iraq wars is anyone's guess | McClatchy

2011-08-16T13:13:00.000-07:00

True cost of Afghan, Iraq wars is anyone's guess | McClatchy

By Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — When congressional cost-cutters meet later this year to decide on trimming the federal budget, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could represent juicy targets. But how much do the wars actually cost the U.S. taxpayer?

Nobody really knows.

Yes, Congress has allotted $1.3 trillion for war spending through fiscal year 2011 just to the Defense Department. There are long Pentagon spreadsheets that outline how much of that was spent on personnel, transportation, fuel and other costs. In a recent speech, President Barack Obama assigned the wars a $1 trillion price tag.

But all those numbers are incomplete.

The Problem w/ teachers

2011-03-28T23:59:00.001-07:00

#wiunion #teachers #ed #miunion #florida #Oklahoma

Amplify’d from www.commondreams.org

lem With Teachers

The Problem With Teachers

Oklahoma just became the latest state to rob teachers, those most undeserving victims, of their collective bargaining rights. Teacher and slam poet Taylor Mali, tired of the abuse, offers a lively response to the clueless question, What do you make?

Read more at www.commondreams.org

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/bww5y

Anti-Abortion Billboard Features Pres

2011-03-28T23:50:00.001-07:00

Here they go again !!

Amplify’d from thinkprogress.org

Anti-Abortion Billboard Features President Obama, Says ‘Every 21 Minutes, Our Next Possible Leader Is Aborted’

After displaying a highly offensive anti-abortion billboard campaign, the anti-choice organization Life Always ran into trouble when New York City denizens demanded it remove its colossal billboard declaring “the most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb.” Tricia Fraser, the mother of the little girl on the billboard, was enraged to learn of the billboard. She hadn’t expected a photo taken at a modeling agency to be abused for that purpose. Life Always promised not to use the girl’s picture again.

Instead, they’ll use President Obama’s. As Right Wing Watch notes, Life Always and ThatsAbortion.com will unveil 30 new billboards in President Obama’s hometown — “where residents are predominantly black” — that declares, “Every 21 minutes, our next possible leader is aborted.” These are babies who could grow to be the future Presidents of the United States, or the next Oprah Winfrey, Denzel Washington or Maya Angelou,” said Life Always Board Member Reverend Derek McCoy.

Since 2010, multiple right-wing anti-choice groups have been running “Abortion as Black Genocide” billboard campaigns across the country to target Planned Parenthood. Anti-choice groups are even defending the “Black genocide in the 21st century” fliers “displayed a noose” or said “in the new klan lynching is for amateurs.” State and federal lawmakers are now even trying to ban “race-based abortion.”

As the Guttmacher Institute notes, these groups are “exploiting and distorting” the fact that “the abortion rate for black women is almost five times that for white women” to falsely blame the “aggressive marketing by abortion providers to minority communities.” In reality, the higher abortion rate reflects higher rate of unintended pregnanices resulting from wider disparities in geographic and financial access to health services — most notably “being able to afford the more effective — usually more expensive — prescription methods.” These obstacles, ironically, are what Planned Parenthood actively seeks to remove.

“No woman’s reproductive choices should be questioned or subjected to more scrutiny or control based on her racial or ethnic background—and that’s exactly what these billboards do,” Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America told ThinkProgress. NARAL recently launched a campaign to remove these billboards. “We also find it deeply offensive that the group behind these billboards is wrapping its anti-choice agenda in the language and framework of civil rights. This cynical campaign represents politics at their worst,” she said.
Read more at thinkprogress.org

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/bww4o

2011-03-28T23:37:00.001-07:00

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/28/ge-union-workers-cuts/ Some nerve GE !! Real patriotic!! http://amplify.com/u/bww2n

Social Media and Egyptian Revolution #Egypt #Jam25 #Tahrir #Kefaya #KhaledSaid

2011-03-03T15:37:00.001-08:00

via slideshare.net

Interesting overview of the history of the revolution in Egypt

A film-maker's eye on the Middle East | World news | The Guardian

2011-03-01T11:00:00.001-08:00

A film-maker's eye on the Middle East

Writer and director Peter Kosminsky has spent seven years making The Promise, a film about the Arab-Israeli conflict. What has he learned?

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Peter Kosminsky

The Guardian, Friday 28 January 2011

Article history

Christian Cooke as Sergeant Len Matthews in The Promise.

It's April 1988, about five in the morning, 40km outside Kabul in Afghanistan. I'm taking shelter in a scrape in the rock, flattening my cheek against the cold surface, semi-automatic gunfire and the concussion of departing mortars beating in my ears. In theory, I'm making a documentary about young Soviet army conscripts in Afghanistan. In reality, I've been marooned on this "zastava", or mountain outpost, for days. The 17-year-old kids, who are the heroes of our documentary, fire back at the attacking mujahideen, in the grip of a kind of hyper-bravado. I, on the other hand, have leapt from my makeshift sleeping bag to cower in what passes for cover on this bare outcrop. "Why am I here?" I ask myself pointlessly, and not for the first time. "Aren't there safer assignments I could pursue, where nights are spent between soft sheets? Why am I obsessed with war?"
A quarter of a lifetime later, I'm still exploring that obsession, trying to bring to the screen what is, without doubt, the most ambitious, agonising and creatively troublesome film I've ever undertaken. The Promise, which screens on Channel 4 from 6 February for four weeks, attempts in drama to come to an understanding of the most dangerous and intractable war of our age – the conflict between Arab and Jew in the Middle East – as seen through the eyes of two outsiders, a British teenager and her grandfather. Erin Matthews, an 18-year-old just beginning her gap year, travels to Israel with her Jewish schoolfriend, Eliza. Eliza, who has dual nationality, has been summoned back to Israel for military service. Erin goes with her for moral support, taking a diary written 60 years before by her grandfather, Len. Fresh from the second world war and the airborne assault on Germany, Sergeant Len Matthews has been unexpectedly posted – like 100,000 other British troops – to keep the peace in what was then called Palestine. As Erin reads his diary, we travel back in time to witness, with Len, the war at the birth of the state of Israel. And as Erin reads, she becomes curious about the disputed country beyond the comfort of Eliza's seaside home. She starts to retrace her grandfather's steps, beginning a journey through modern-day Israel and the occupied territories that will see her solve the mystery of why Len's life was destroyed by the few months he spent in that troubled land.
War attracts nothing so much as cliche. Perhaps the greatest is that the first casualty of war is truth. For example, to my knowledge there are at least three convincing and apparently well-documented explanations of the killings that took place in the Arab village of Deir Yassin, one of the emblematic events of the bloody war of 1948. If we were to tiptoe into the minefield that is Middle-East politics, we had better get our facts right. For four years, a team of six researchers picked away at the story of Len and Erin in our two time frames, 1945-48 and today. We tracked down and interviewed over 80 veterans of the British Mandate in Palestine (Britain was the colonial power until 1948), studied archives from the period at the Imperial War Museum, the Airborne Forces Museum at Duxford and at the public record office in Kew, where thousands of declassified intelligence reports from the period can still be found and read. We unearthed unpublished photographs and accounts of the perilous journey undertaken by Palestinian Arabs in 1948, fleeing their homes in the face of the advancing Jewish forces. We spoke to Israeli academics who had interviewed Jewish women used to befriend British soldiers to covertly extract intelligence from them. And we spoke to their controllers, the underground fighters of the Irgun Tsvai Leumi, who fought to a standstill a proud British army fresh from victory in a world war.
For the present-day story we interviewed Israeli Jewish boys and girls, conscripted at 18 in defence of their country. We tracked down children of the same age from overseas, members of the International Solidarity Movement, who had confronted Israeli bulldozers to protect the homes of Palestinians in the occupied territories. We drew on testimony from Combatants for Peace, Breaking the Silence and other organisations concerned with the uneasy and undeclared truce in Israel today. On my own research trips to the region I located and visited the site of the massacre at Deir Yassin, finding the former Arab village still intact but, incredibly, now being used as a high-security hospital for mentally ill patients. I stood in the death cell where Jewish fighters condemned by the British Mandate government for insurrection awaited their fate, visited the sites of recent suicide bombings and gazed out across Israel's protective wall, surely the most palpable and chilling symbol of division on our planet.
Our research turned up some surprising facts, counter to common knowledge. For example, for many years I had believed that the Israeli military had invented the strategy of destructive reprisals against the families of insurgents. If a Palestinian blows him or herself up in an Israeli city, the Israeli Defence Force will locate the family home of that bomber and bulldoze it. How strange then to discover, as we pored over records of tactics in Mandate Palestine, that the British used exactly the same techniques against the Irgun, part-precursors of the present-day Israeli military, in 1946. If British interests were attacked by a Jewish "terrorist", the home of that terrorist would be dynamited, as a matter of policy. Why would the Jews, who demonstrably defeated the British and their entire tactical handbook, adopt exactly the same failed anti-insurgency approach as their former masters when they in turn faced an insurgency? It made no sense but, as we were to discover, nothing is simple in a land where truth has long since been co-opted as a weapon of war.
Making the drama in Israel itself also turned out to be anything but simple. At the outset, it had seemed a wise decision. Nowhere else looks quite like modern-day Israel – the topography, the architecture, the physiognomy of its diverse population. Creating Erin's story elsewhere in the Arab world would be time-consuming and costly. And where better to stage scenes set in 1940s Palestine than in the locations where the events had taken place, where some key buildings survive and others could be readily recreated from local archive and memory. English is widely spoken, period weapons and vehicles abound, there's a thriving film industry. It ought to have been straightforward. In practice, it was anything but. When I dramatised events from the Bosnian war for Leigh Jackson's Warriors, I faked them in the Czech Republic. Scenes for my drama about Somalia and Liberia were recreated in Kenya and Ghana. I did Iraq in Morocco, Pakistan in India, even Belfast was carefully remounted in the streets of Leeds and Bradford. Never before had I attempted to dramatise a conflict in the land in which it was taking place, using ex-combatants and reservists as actors and extras, local technicians as crew, shooting events still raw in the memory in the places in which they had occurred. Scenes that look achievable on paper take on a lively extra dimension when you have real Israelis and Palestinians playing your roles.
One particularly difficult scene calls for an actor playing an IDF commander to use a Palestinian civilian as a human shield while moving through a dangerous area in Gaza. We had detailed research supporting the event we were depicting and, by chance, an Israeli soldier had been found guilty in the courts for using exactly these tactics in the week we were to shoot the scene. None of these justifications made the sequence any easier to achieve in the cockpit of unresolved animosities that is Israel today. The first actor I cast walked out during rehearsals, explaining politely that, although he knew these things happened, recreating such an event in a scene with Palestinian actors wasn't something he was able to do. I recast the part, outlining in over-elaborate detail to the talented substitute actor we chose what the scene would involve. When he agreed, I privately assumed he was a committed liberal, out of sympathy with Israeli military policy. But when it came to staging the scene, in the predominantly Arab town of Ramle with Palestinian actors playing opposite him, it became clear that he had recent military experience in the occupied territories. Eventually, he revealed that he was an officer in the Israeli army reserves, spending a weekend a month in uniform. When I asked why, if that was true, he had been prepared to accept the role he said: "These things happen. We need to confront them." And confront them he did, in one of the most distressing and powerful scenes in the film.
In episode three of The Promise, Erin travels to Hebron in the occupied West Bank. We used her visit as an opportunity to restage a scene from our research, where a Jewish settler faces off angrily against an Arab resident. The actors involved wanted to be photographed together at the end of what was an unremittingly aggressive confrontation. "The image you'll never see in The Promise," said the Jewish actor as she posed arm-in-arm with her Arab fellow actor. Later she told me that, in a long career on stage and screen in Israel, this was the first time she had ever acted with a "real Palestinian". It had taken the arrival of a foreign film crew, not realising the magnitude of what it was they were asking, to bring this thing about.
So what have they taught me, my seven years engaged with the inciting conflict of our terrorist-obsessed age? The most striking thing I'm left with is a question: how did we get from there to here? Like most British soldiers we interviewed, arriving in Palestine from the war in Europe, Len Matthews felt only sympathy for the Jewish plight. Having seen the ovens of Bergen-Belsen, his heart tells him that Jews deserve a place of safety, almost at any price. In 1945, that view was shared by most of the world. In the era inhabited by Erin, his granddaughter, just 60 years later, Israel is isolated, loathed and feared in equal measure by its neighbours, finding little sympathy outside America for its uncompromising view of how to defend its borders and secure its future. How did Israel squander the compassion of the world within a lifetime? That's the question The Promise sets out to explore. Its other purpose is to act as a reminder to all of us Brits who shake our heads and mutter "not our problem". As the departing colonial power, Britain was charged with seeing both communities to independence in good order. In Palestine, as in so many other examples of our rapid retreat from empire, we left chaos, political confusion, bloodshed and war. It turns out that it is our problem, at least in part, and we should take some responsibility for it.
The Promise begins on Channel 4 on 6 February.

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Peter Kosminsky

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Kosminsky to film Palestinian drama

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zamalek
28 January 2011 9:29AM

This film seems like another attempt to downplay Arab aantisemitsm and the Arab project to destroy Israel at birth. The film-maker talks about Deir Yassin, a battle during the 1948 war, but has nothing to say about the massacre of hundreds of innocent Jews in Iraq and Libya in the 1940s, whose families sought refuge in Israel. A film based on distortions and superficial leftwing cliches.

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truthandjustice28
28 January 2011 9:38AM

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joedoone
28 January 2011 10:04AM

I'm really looking forward to this, and I'm sure it will be highly controversial. I would love to see Kosminsky's Shoot To Kill again, about John Stalker's investigations in Northern Ireland; I haven't seen it since it was first aired. A Kosminsky season a few years ago included the brilliant Warriors, but there was no Shoot To Kill.

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carolus9
28 January 2011 10:14AM

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hessexham
28 January 2011 10:34AM

An interesting article, and I'm looking forward to the series. Mr Kosminsky is a very brave man to tackle what I'd suggest is the most important but divisive issue in the world today.
Of course Britain was legally responsible not only for the creation of the Palestine/Israel issue, but also the now nuclearized India/Pakistan situation, and even Iraq which was a British mandate from 1918 to 1932 and then under effective British control until 1958. That's not to say Britain was solely responsible, but the fact that our high-handed and selfish interference in other parts of the world has ramifications sixty-odd years later should be a warning for all would-be and proto-imperialists of the day.
But as ever, as I think this series will show, it's the poor bloody people, the Jews, the Palestinians, even the ordinary British soldiers, who pay the price.

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CAPLAN
28 January 2011 10:38AM

The film will probably not please/annoy both sides equally... who cares ....... because both sides have problematic issues and the director is not an objective judge in a court of law.
All conflicts that are long lasting will show flaws on both sides ultimately the goal should be to improve the lives of both sides now ....ie if the ownership of a hill or border is to result in the forcible eviction of hundreds of thousands of jews ( destroy all settlements) what is the point likewise if Palestinians are thrown into economic ruin and constant conflict ( no compromise on ror,settlements and no end of conflict by refusing to accept a jewish state) what is the point , UNTIL GILAD SHALIT is released most Israelis are for being stubborn and difficult against gaza however FOR his release there is no reason that hamas wont be able to get economic stability with Israeli support .
Using arabic terms that are generally understood in the region also in Israel the goals could be
1. tadiya . ceasfire or limited conflict controlled as wortthwhile by muslims
2. hudna... ceasefire for a period of time that cn be broken when in muslim interests
3.salaam .. peace ....an agreement of peace that should be respected
4. sulcha .. a complete closure of conflict or disagreement
If the peace process will not bring closure best to aim for conflict management..............Economically gaza is now starting to improve and the west bank is in a much better position than it was 3 years ago and much better than gaza and it is Israel's interest to improve the situation .
In real terms that is what has happened vis a vis gaza ,hizbullah ,syria.

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HushedSilence
28 January 2011 10:48AM

'These things happen' Israel lives with the reality of the enmity of people who could have made peace and could have lived beside them for sixty years. Instead the same people have changed the landscape and have forced Israel to become a military power.
It seems from your story that you have investigated Israel minutely and harshly but their opponents are the good guys and getting a free ride from you.
Shame on you.

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themcquade
28 January 2011 11:03AM

Zamalek - your remarks remind me of a story about a news cameraman filming loyalist rioting in 1970s Belfast being set upon by a crowd of local women. He tries to reason with them - "I'm just doing my job" he says.
"Aye", they respond, "but you're filming stuff that is not actually happening!"

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Morrigan5
28 January 2011 11:05AM

Let's hope it deals with the core issue, the colonial war waged to create Israel in Palestine. At the end of the day it is only by dealing with reality that the Palestinians will get justice and freedom and the Israelis will get freedom and a future.

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theeightyonekid
28 January 2011 11:10AM

HushedSilence
Of course, any film criticizing Israel is antisemitic. Destroying Israel at birth?... at the cost of Palestine! stealing Palestinians' farms, fields, olive groves, lands that they lived on for hundreds of years.

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JJ139
28 January 2011 11:14AM

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theeightyonekid
28 January 2011 11:15AM

HushedSilence
no, shame on you for defending Israeli occupation and abuse of Palestinians.

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rodhaidersrightboot
28 January 2011 11:16AM

Any chance we can see it before commenting?
No?
Oh well, let's carry on with the glib certainties then.

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HushedSilence
28 January 2011 11:17AM

theeightyonekid
. at the cost of Palestine! stealing Palestinians' farms, fields, olive groves, lands that they lived on for hundreds of years.
read Mark Twain re: the 'hundreds of years' comments. You can have sympathy for people as human beings without buying into myths that alter historical truth or that accuse others of 'stealing' without proof.

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theeightyonekid
28 January 2011 11:25AM

HushedSilence
You're quoting a 19th century fiction author as evidence?! You cannot be serious, and still defending occupation and spin on abuse of Palestinians. Israel has a country, accepted even by the Palestinians. And you refuse to give them even part of their homelands. Shame on you sir.

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LaurieRay
28 January 2011 11:25AM

this sounds like it will be an exteremly interesting film, i look forward to it!

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TheVoiceOfIsrael
28 January 2011 11:29AM

How did Israel squander the compassion of the world within a lifetime? That's the question The Promise sets out to explore.

After reading this piece it will be interesting to see how this predisposed author explains his version of how Israel fell to such depths. I would caution us all, however, not expect a film devoid of bias, which of course is not surprising. This is after all The Guardian.

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theeightyonekid
28 January 2011 11:35AM

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CAPLAN
28 January 2011 11:47AM

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theeightyonekid
28 January 2011 11:50AM

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theeightyonekid
28 January 2011 12:39PM

TheVoiceOfIsrael
How can you complain of bias, with your login name: "The Voice of Israel"?

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Therebedragons
28 January 2011 12:50PM

'TheVoiceOfIsrael
How did Israel squander the compassion of the world within a lifetime? That's the question The Promise sets out to explore.

After reading this piece it will be interesting to see how this predisposed author explains his version of how Israel fell to such depths. I would caution us all, however, not expect a film devoid of bias, which of course is not surprising. This is after all The Guardian'
Oh dear. I didnt think that blatant hypocricy was your thing. The film is not aired yet, but you deign to suggest that the film maker is pre-disposed? What do you think your comment is? Pre disposed perhaps?
Also, he does not claim to have a version of why 'Israel fell to such depths' he says it is the question he is left with - so you won't see his 'version'
Also, I assume that this article wasn't written seven years ago. Thats how long the rearch for the film has been going on. I dont see how his opinion is pre-disposed when it is based on seven years of research. It may be an opinion based on his own collated evidence, but pre-disposed it is not.
Why didn't you just say 'i wont like this film because it will involve criticism of Israel - probably' it would have at least been honest.
Voice of Israel' indeed.

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HushedSilence
28 January 2011 1:00PM

You say:
We tracked down...Jews...Mandate soldiers... Israeli soldiers...but no Palestinians.
I am sure that you are honest in what you find, after all, Israelis aren't perfect and being at war is of necessity a cruel business.
But of course you didn't find what you didn't look for. You didn't examine Arabs and their stories or their behaviour, or if you did you rejected the material for this series, because it seemingly went against your hypothesis or the prejudices of your desired audience.
Not one word of finding a fault in a Palestinian? - come on, you're just pandering to your audience and your own prejudices. That's not art, that's screen pap.

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theeightyonekid
28 January 2011 1:37PM

HushedSilence
I can understand your thinking, and maybe even agree, for the most part. The title is "A Film-Maker's Eye on the Middle-East". But by your argument, we should also include Britain, the UK, and many Western nations who have used and manipulated the Middle-East (which I would want to see too). I think this article is just talking about Israel... for now. And since they are sponsored by us and the USA, it is a story that needs to be heard.

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HushedSilence
28 January 2011 1:44PM

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maceasy
28 January 2011 1:44PM

How unusual - the same old Israeli apologists try to undermine the film before anyone has seen it. Makes you wonder what they are so scared of - maybe educating the British public about the doomed attempt of their soldiers to keep the peace between Jews and Palestinians, and for their pains being blown up and murdered by the Jewish terrorist gangs. And just remind us who 'invented' the letter bomb, sent to the UK by those same brave terrorists. Well, it will make a change from the usual propaganda from Israel.

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theeightyonekid
28 January 2011 1:47PM

HushedSilence
I believe I said that, just what you said.

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Therebedragons
28 January 2011 1:59PM

'HushedSilence
You say:
We tracked down...Jews...Mandate soldiers... Israeli soldiers...but no Palestinians.
I am sure that you are honest in what you find, after all, Israelis aren't perfect and being at war is of necessity a cruel business.
But of course you didn't find what you didn't look for. You didn't examine Arabs and their stories or their behaviour, or if you did you rejected the material for this series, because it seemingly went against your hypothesis or the prejudices of your desired audience.
Not one word of finding a fault in a Palestinian? - come on, you're just pandering to your audience and your own prejudices. That's not art, that's screen pap.'
To start with he clearly talks about including testimonies from Palestians - so your entire premise is not based on the facts written before you. Also, your argument doesn't work. If palestinian views had not been included, and only Israeli testemonies, it is more likley that the Palestinans would come accross in a distorted BAD light.
You need to stop panicking. I am sure this film won't create a bad impression of Israel around the World, not more than Israeli's manage to do themselves anyway.

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Harris2010
28 January 2011 2:36PM

Not sure how one film can be expected to capture the totality of the Mandate and the birth of Israel.
What one film can do is to further the conversation by presenting an untold perspective...especially through a personal story.
There is more than enough blame and horror to go around.
If this film enables just one person to view the Middle East through different eyes, it is well worth the effort.
Dawn (book) did that for me many years ago.
Paradise Now did that for me a few years ago.
Many thanks to the writers and film makers who continue to challenge our assumptions and broaden our perspectives.

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CAPLAN
28 January 2011 4:33PM

harris2010
It is nice that you wish to broaden your horizons however it seems you have been somewhat remiss in that you have never seen / read the periods before the sexy 1967 period and note the .1870's,1936 , 1929 and massacres carried out by palestinians for the most part against each other.
Perhaps you should take interest in the meeting of faisal and weizman as well as the opinions of lawrence of arabia as regards zionism, the period of 1936 is also of interest today if you note the conflict between palestinians ie the nusseibis and the husseinis ........ . the husseinis led by haj a amin el husseini was an organiser of the iraq revolt in 1942 (from berlin) and the british army recruIted the irgun to oppose it ...david raziel the leader of the irgun was killed in the conflict/

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DannyK
28 January 2011 5:08PM

Only just become aware of this production and already it sounds like a must-see. Thank goodness there's only a week or two to wait before it airs.

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TheVoiceOfIsrael
28 January 2011 5:33PM

Therebedragons, (28 January 2011 12:50PM): TheVoiceOfIsrael, The film is not aired yet, but you deign to suggest that the filmmaker is pre-disposed? What do you think your comment is? Pre disposed perhaps? Also, he does not claim to have a version of why 'Israel fell to such depths' he says it is the question he is left with - so you won't see his 'version'.

Therebedragons, you may not have noticed, but there is an eighteen-hundred word article by the author at the top of this page. I think that that may have given me an inkling into the author’s predispositions and opinions.
If he describes the British army in an unwelcome land thousands of miles from home as ‘proud’ while part of the local citizenry are fighting to send them back home before they hang more Jews, then I begin to wonder. Then, when the author chooses a foreign violent radical group of Palestinian supporters, the so-called International Solidarity Movement, as a source of information, I begin to suspect predisposition.
Finally when I review the list of sources mentioned by the author and find them heavily biased towards one view of the Israel-Palestinians conflict, with other sources of views suspiciously absent, I become rather firm in my suspicions.
I do though believe that it is good that the author visited Deir Yassin, which will be forever a blemish on Israel’s fight for independence, and I also note his scanty attempts to provide scraps of the Israeli narrative. But the overwhelming tone of the article is heavily biased against one side in this conflict, and there is no reason for me to expect that his television program will be any different same.
For example, center-staging the story of Palestinians being used by Israeli soldiers as human shields is disingenuous to say the least. Such behavior by Israeli troops was declared illegal by the Israel Supreme Court years ago, and since then, soldiers have been court-martialed for such conduct. You will find the same isolated incidents among the British, American, and Australian troops in Iraq and Afghanistan today.
As for the author employing a local Israeli on the set and discovering that he was a reserve Israeli soldier who is called up for active duty every year, well that would be true of most Israeli young men.
But saying that “the image that you will never see in the program – an Israeli posing arm-in-arm with a ‘real Palestinian’” and to claim that it was the film-maker who had “brought this thing about”, well that is pure hogwash. Sure, there are not enough personal interaction on civilian levels between Israelis and Palestinians (and there is a reason for that), but to claim that a cordial embrace between them is a rarity, or that it required this film-maker to facilitate it, is condescending at best, and ignorant at worst.
And finally, to claim that Israel finds little sympathy outside of America (a country comparable in size and population to Europe ) is ridiculous, and if nothing else shows this man’s predisposition then this statement does it very clearly. It is the statement of a person who never reads such mainstream British newspapers as The Daily Telegraph or The Times, and who knows little of public opinion outside of the Islamic world and the hard European left.
And Therebedragons, as for you question:
Why didn't you just say 'i wont like this film because it will involve criticism of Israel - probably' it would have at least been honest.

Let me tell you that if I didn’t like people who severely criticize Israel then I wouldn’t like most of my family and friends in Israel, nor myself, for that matter (not to mention most of the Israeli news media).

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mauriceeric
28 January 2011 5:40PM

I too like the eightyone old kid am old enough to remember the horrors the zionist terroristsinflicted on the British troops who had lately come from the bloody fighting to liberate the ghastly unspeakable Belsen concentration camp. So by all means lets talk history CAPLAN

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CAPLAN
28 January 2011 6:01PM

mauriceeric
Indeed the period had hangings and floggings of jews ( and arabs in greater numbers) as well as the disgraceful hangings of 2 british sargeants , however the 100000 british soldiers in plaestine had as their main duty the carrying out of dispicable policies of bevin leading to a concentration camp in cyprus of almost 100000 jews and also the return of jews to germany.
The total truth matters no matter how bitter and facts have to declared openly

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CAPLAN
28 January 2011 6:12PM

mauriceeric
Seeing that you are acquainted with the times perhaps you remember the 91 doctors and nurses massacred in the convoy in jerusalem and of the 30 dead of the convoy in western gallilee near kfar yasif both convoys were attacked and all the occupants massacred in arab ambushes in battles that lasted HOURS under a protection of non intervention of the occupying power and an active prevention on the pain of death for jews to openly carry arms and hence no chance of sending relief.

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theeightyonekid
28 January 2011 6:13PM

mauriceeric
I'm afraid i'm not 81 years old: the 81 is the year I was born. I'm 29, but I love to read and study, this topic (the Middle East) among many others that are not so political. I hope I have good information. I suppose at my age I just want to say I oppose the terrible treatment by Israel of the Palestinians, and the slow and West-sponsored theft of their lands. I oppose many other acts of oppression throughout the world, including those perpetrated by my own country. Every human is equal - the Palestinians have the right to self determination and freedom and their own homelands!
It is very important in this digital age for us to speak out on the Internet, in forums like this. Especially since it is now one of the best methods of communication, and there have been reports of Israeli departments set up to wage a type of public relations campaign on the Internet too.

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theeightyonekid
28 January 2011 6:16PM

TheVoiceOfIsrael
With your login name, how can you still be claiming the article is biased? I strongly suspect you are very very biased, and I only had to read 4 words.

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janba4peace
28 January 2011 6:55PM

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CAPLAN
28 January 2011 6:56PM

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CAPLAN
28 January 2011 6:58PM

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mountgomery
28 January 2011 7:08PM

Voice of Israel
he describes the British army in an unwelcome land thousands of miles from home as ‘proud’
Describing an army as proud after winning a war is not the same thing as praising them or giving them positive qualifications.
This is the complete phrase:

And we spoke to their controllers, the underground fighters of the Irgun Tsvai Leumi, who fought to a standstill a proud British army fresh from victory in a world war.
In fact, if anything he would be praising Irgun fighters. And you could say the film is bias because one of his most motivating scenes involves an aspect of the Israeli army that's deemed ilegal in Israel, but the author has comfirmed this himself in this piece, and the description of the scene gives a lot of credit to an Israeli as far as I can see.
For sure, we should all have to deal with out bias but I think we have to see if we ourselves are bias first.

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CAPLAN
28 January 2011 7:20PM

jamba4peace
the 1947 war should never have been fought ....dwell on it

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CAPLAN
28 January 2011 7:32PM

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mountgomery
28 January 2011 7:33PM

TheVoiceofIsrael
And finally, to claim that Israel finds little sympathy outside of America (a country comparable in size and population to Europe ) is ridiculous
You can't deny Israel has lost a lot of sympathy, be them for right or for wrong. Or we should say, the Palestine conflict has earned a lot of sympathy for the Palestineans.
As an example, many countries in Latinamerica who didn't recognize Palestine as an independent state have come out recently to recognize it. Peru is hardly the European left.
I don't think the notion is ridiculous at all. Perhaps the film has a few answers for that.
And I'm not a complete "Palestinean cause" supporter as I understand Israel wants to live in peace, and Palestinean leaders are not exactly peacemakers from heaven. I don't blame either side completely but I can clearly see who is paying the heaviest price.

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janba4peace
28 January 2011 8:00PM

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TheVoiceOfIsrael
28 January 2011 8:21PM

Mountgomery, (28 January 2011 7:08PM): Voice of Israel, Describing an army as proud after winning a war is not the same thing as praising them or giving them positive qualifications.

Mountgomery, we can argue that point, but I don’t think it’s worth it. I think you’ll agree that whether ‘proud’ is praise or not in this context is not the central point of my post.
And regarding:
For sure, we should all have to deal with out bias but I think we have to see if we ourselves are bias first.

I will readilly admit that I am biased; I never pretended to be anything else and I believe that a little bit of bias toward Israel on this site does but a little to tip the scales slightly in Israel’s favor.
However, I am not in the business of making a program for Britain’s TV Channel 4. I would take much less of an issue with the author if he admitted his bias as I do, both on these pages as well as in his TV program. It is the misleading claim of impartiality that is totally unacceptable from a man who writes an article such as this.
And regarding your second post (mountgomery, 28 January 2011 7:33PM) you will notice that I never denied that Israel has lost sympathy, a common occurrence when one ceases to be the underdog. What I did say was that to claim that Israel finds little sympathy outside of America (a country comparable in size and population to Europe) is ridiculous, and shows this man’s predisposition.
And I stand by the statement of mine in that regard.
I will add that I have a degree of sympathy myslel towards the Palestinians, despite them being my sworn enemy (at least some of them are). They are a people who have suffered for many reasons, part of them Israel’s, but mostly reasons of their own doing.

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theeightyonekid
28 January 2011 8:29PM

CAPLAN
I DO NOT CONDEMN THE israelis as being violent beyond what is valid in war..find me a war that is fought more nobly
I think those 773 killed civilians (a figure by Israeli Rights Watch no less, including about 300 children! and also 4 Israeli civilians killed), white phosphorous bombed UN buildings, thousands of families homeless, the use of human shields by Israeli soldiers, and the full weight of 1st world army against a militia with AK-47s and homemade rockets - all in Gaza: is hardly a "noble war". Violent is not a strong enough word for that state-sponsored destruction. 100 Palestinians killed for every Israeli.
You can's spin your defense of oppression and theft.

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theeightyonekid
28 January 2011 8:31PM

TheVoiceOfIsrael
I will readilly admit that I am biased; I never pretended to be anything else and I believe that a little bit of bias toward Israel on this site does but a little to tip the scales slightly in Israel’s favor.
Then don't accuse of bias in others, and give yourself a free pass. Israel is capable of standing up for itself (and often does, militarily and with lobbies in the USA). Your spin is not helping them.

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CAPLAN
28 January 2011 8:34PM

jamba4peace
from personal experience the plo did certainly not keep any side of any bargain as regards withholding rocket fire (just as nowadays only about 50% of the rockets that land in the south are reported in the Israeli media likewise in the north) troops are always moved forward in times of tension but using them is another thing
once the war started sharon certainly wished to take advantage of it the plo set the trigger as did the hizbullah in 2006
30% friendly fire is the norm in war and so obviously at least a similar number of mistakes are made when firing at the enemy but the accusation of deliberate murder and targeting of hospitals and schools is nonsense...........the Israeli courts have the power to condemn and punish any crimes of that nature .sharon 1982, president katsav, olmert and in the near future possibly liberman

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CAPLAN
28 January 2011 8:35PM

eightyone kid
better you never see a war and see how wasteful and inefficient and pathetic it is .. no glory there just pain and mistakes

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via guardian.co.uk

Cost of #War

2011-01-12T15:12:00.001-08:00

The US clearly has its priorities backwards ..while at home we expend to bail out the banks, we refuse to provide universal health care or help the multitude of forecloses. Our school system continues to deteriorate

Our national debt continues to rise

But we always find ways to fund the senseless wars

Amplify’d from www.accuracy.org

ost of War: Breaking It Down
January 12, 2011

Cost of U.S. Wars Since 2001
$1,136,606,437,629
See the cost to your community at www.costofwar.com

Monday (January 17) is the 50th anniversary of President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address, in which he warned of the rise of a “military-industrial complex.”

Martin Luther King Day is also Monday. He said: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

On Tuesday, the LA Times reported, Vice President Biden “backed away from his own recent promise that the U.S. would pull out of the country ‘come hell or high water’ by 2014.” Instead “conceding that the U.S. might retain a presence in Afghanistan when the 2014 deadline hits and beyond.”

JO COMERFORD, CHRIS HELLMAN

Comerford is executive director of the National Priorities Project; Hellman is budget analyst for the group, which as part of the re-launch of its website, CostofWar.com, has just issued “What’s at Stake?” — 50 state-level briefs focused on the impact of war spending. [more]
Read more at www.accuracy.org

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/blpj6

Palin Put a Gun Target on Giffords' District; Now a Colleague Says: 'Palin Needs to Look at Her Own Behavior' | CommonDreams.org

2011-01-09T23:30:00.001-08:00

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/01/09-0

I Wonder what would happen if it was " Joe six pack " the one inciting violence ??

What do you say ?? Homeland security

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/bl5fa

Canadian Study Sees Global Warming for Centuries

2011-01-09T23:25:00.001-08:00

Still unconvinced ??

Amplify’d from www.commondreams.org

Centuries

by Jeffrey Jones

CALGARY, Alberta - Carbon dioxide already emitted into the atmosphere will keep contributing to global warming for centuries, eventually causing a huge Antarctic ice sheet to collapse and lift sea levels, Canadian scientists said on Sunday.

]" />"I think you do see a big divergence in potential futures depending on if there are some reductions in emissions,"said Shawn Marshall, a University of Calgary geography professor and one of the study's authors. (AP Photo/Subhankar Banerjee, File)

Even the complete abandonment of fossil fuels and halt to emissions cannot prevent devastating ocean warming in Antarctica as well as increasing desertification in North Africa, the research finds.
Even so, many of the negative consequences in the Northern Hemisphere, such as loss of Arctic sea ice, are reversible. That means global efforts to cut greenhouse gases are not a waste of effort and money, said Shawn Marshall, a University of Calgary geography professor and one of the study's authors.

Canadian Study Sees Global Warming for Centuries

by Jeffrey Jones

CALGARY, Alberta - Carbon dioxide already emitted into the atmosphere will keep contributing to global warming for centuries, eventually causing a huge Antarctic ice sheet to collapse and lift sea levels, Canadian scientists said on Sunday.

]" />"I think you do see a big divergence in potential futures depending on if there are some reductions in emissions,"said Shawn Marshall, a University of Calgary geography professor and one of the study's authors. (AP Photo/Subhankar Banerjee, File)

Even the complete abandonment of fossil fuels and halt to emissions cannot prevent devastating ocean warming in Antarctica as well as increasing desertification in North Africa, the research finds.
Even so, many of the negative consequences in the Northern Hemisphere, such as loss of Arctic sea ice, are reversible. That means global efforts to cut greenhouse gases are not a waste of effort and money, said Shawn Marshall, a University of Calgary geography professor and one of the study's authors.
"But there are some parts of the climate that have a lot of inertia and it will take many centuries before they start to reverse," said Marshall.
The study, led by Nathan Gillett of the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, is published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Using simulations with a climate model, the scientists estimated the effects on climate patterns for the next 1,000 years by stopping emissions completely in 2010 and in 2100.
Major differences of the impacts in various regions lie in the centuries it takes for heat to circulate from the North Atlantic through the world's ocean currents and into the deep sea, Marshall said.
"The atmosphere cools pretty quickly when atmospheric gases go down and surface water will cool, but that doesn't reach the deeper waters of the ocean for a long time," he said.
Wind currents in the southern hemisphere may also play a role.
As a result, in the next 1,000 years, the average ocean temperature around Antarctica could rise by as much as 5 degrees Celsius, triggering the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, according to the study.
The elimination of the ice sheet, which covers an area about the size of Texas and is up to 4,000 meters (13,120 feet) thick, could raise sea levels by several meters.
The climate impacts would also dry out the land in parts of North Africa by up to 30 percent.
Simulations show big differences in some parts of the world, however, between cutting emissions in 2010 and in 2100, including long-term temperature variations between 1 and 4 degrees Celsius, an argument for action on carbon dioxide, Marshall said.
"You sometimes hear that defeatist argument that it's too late and there are a lot of changes that are going to happen, so just worry about adaptation," he said. "But I think you do see a big divergence in potential futures depending on if there are some reductions in emissions."
(Editing by Frank McGurty)
Read more at www.commondreams.org

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Once Again, Turning Dissent Into Treason # BradleyManning #Wikileaks #Assange

2010-12-30T12:45:00.001-08:00

by Abby Zimet

With U.S officials considering charging Julian Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act that killed his parents in the McCarthy era, the son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg has called on progressives to defend Assange from a law that criminalizes dissent. Robert Meeropol says he feels "the same chill winds that wreaked havoc on my life and many others once again sweeping our nation."
"In recent years, we have witnessed the most rapid and widespread erosion of our civil liberties since the 1950's. Those who speak out in opposition to our criminal war abroad and the growing repression at home are condemned as 'traitors' and treated as enemies of the state."

via commondreams.org

Never Cast Lead Again #Gaza2

2010-12-26T19:32:00.001-08:00

An Open Letter from Gaza: Two Years after the Massacre, a Demand for Justice

Posted by occupiedpalestine in Newsitems 2009/2010 on December 26, 2010

UK, December 26, (Pal Telegraph) – We the Palestinians of the Besieged Gaza Strip, on this day, two years on from Israel’s genocidal attack on our families, our houses, our roads, our factories and our schools, are saying enough inaction, enough discussion, enough waiting – the time is now to hold Israel to account for its ongoing crimes against us. On the 27th of December 2008, Israel began an indiscriminate bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

The assault lasted 22 days, killing 1,417 Palestinians, 352 of them children, according to main-stream Human Rights Organizations. For a staggering 528 hours, Israeli Occupation Forces let loose their US-supplied F15s, F16s, Merkava Tanks, internationally prohibited White Phosphorous, and bombed and invaded the small Palestinian coastal enclave that is home to 1.5 million, of whom 800,000 are children and over 80 percent UN registered refugees. Around 5,300 remain permanently wounded.

This devastation exceeded in savagery all previous massacres suffered in Gaza, such as the 21children killed in Jabalia in March 2008 or the 19 civilians killed sheltering in their house in the Beit Hanoun Massacre of 2006. The carnage even exceeded the attacks in November 1956 in which Israeli troops indiscriminately rounded up and killed 275 Palestinians in the Southern town of Khan Younis and 111 more in Rafah.

Since the Gaza massacre of 2009, world citizens have undertaken the responsibility to pressure Israel to comply with international law, through a proven strategy of boycott, divestment and sanctions. As in the global BDS movement that was so effective in ending the apartheid South African regime, we urge people of conscience to join the BDS call made by over 170 Palestinian organizations in 2005. As in South Africa the imbalance of power and representation in this struggle can be counterbalanced by a powerful international solidarity movement with BDS at the forefront, holding Israeli policy makers to account, something the international governing community has repeatedly failed to do. Similarly, creative civilian efforts such as the Free Gaza boats that broke the siege five times, the Gaza Freedom March, the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, and the many land convoys must never stop their siege-breaking, highlighting the inhumanity of keeping 1.5 million Gazans in an open-air prison.

Two years have now passed since Israel’s gravest of genocidal acts that should have left people in no doubt of the brutal extent of Israel’s plans for the Palestinians. The murderous navy assault on international activists aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in the Mediterranean Sea magnified to the world the cheapness Israel has assigned to Palestinian llife for so long. The world knows now, yet two years on nothing has changed for Palestinians.
The Goldstone Report came and went: despite its listing count after count of international law contraventions, Israeli “war crimes” and “possible crimes against humanity,” the European Union, the United Nations, the Red Cross, and all major Human Rights Organizations have called for an end to the illegal, medieval siege, it carries on unabated. On 11th November 2010 UNRWA head John Ging said, “There’s been no material change for the people on the ground here in terms of their status, the aid dependency, the absence of any recovery or reconstruction, no economy…The easing, as it was described, has been nothing more than a political easing of the pressure on Israel and Egypt.”

On the 2nd of December, 22 international organizations including Amnesty, Oxfam, Save the Children, Christian Aid, and Medical Aid for Palestinians produced the report ‘Dashed Hopes, Continuation of the Gaza Blockade’ calling for international action to force Israel to unconditionally lift the blockade, saying the Palestinians of Gaza under Israeli siege continue to live in the same devastating conditions. Only a week ago Human Rights Watch published a comprehensive report “Separate and Unequal” that denounced Israeli policies as Apartheid, echoing similar sentiments by South African anti-apartheid activists.

We Palestinians of Gaza want to live at liberty to meet Palestinian friends or family from Tulkarem, Jerusalem or Nazareth; we want to have the right to travel and move freely. We want to live without fear of another bombing campaign that leaves hundreds of our children dead and many more injured or with cancers from the contamination of Israel’s white phosphorous and chemical warfare. We want to live without the humiliations at Israeli checkpoints or the indignity of not providing for our families because of the unemployment brought about by the economic control and the illegal siege. We are calling for an end to the racism that underpins all this oppression.

We ask: when will the world’s countries act according to the basic premise that people should be treated equally, regardless of their origin, ethnicity or colour – is it so far-fetched that a Palestinian child deserves the same human rights as any other human being? Will you be able to look back and say you stood on the right side of history or will you have sided with the oppressor?

We, therefore, call on the international community to take up its responsibility to protect the Palestinian people from Israel’s heinous aggression, immediately ending the siege with full compensation for the destruction of life and infrastructure visited upon us by this explicit policy of collective punishment. Nothing whatsoever justifies the intentional policies of savagery, including the severing of access to the water and electricity supply to 1.5 million people. The international conspiracy of silence towards the genocidal war taking place against the more than 1.5 million civilians in Gaza indicates complicity in these war crimes.

We also call upon all Palestine solidarity groups and all international civil society organizations to demand:

- An end to the siege that has been imposed on the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a result of their exercise of democratic choice.
- The protection of civilian lives and property, as stipulated in International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law such as The Fourth Geneva Convention.
- The immediate release of all political prisoners.
- That Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip be immediately provided with financial and material support to cope with the immense hardship that they are experiencing
- An end to occupation, Apartheid and other war crimes.
- Immediate reparations and compensation for all destruction carried out by the Israeli Occupation Forces in the Gaza Strip.

Boycott Divest and Sanction, join the many International Trade Unions, Universities, Supermarkets and artists and writers who refuse to entertain Apartheid Israel. Speak out for Palestine, for Gaza, and crucially ACT. The time is now.

Besieged Gaza, Palestine

27.December.2010

List of signatories:

General Union for Public Services Workers

General Union for Health Services Workers

University Teachers’ Association

Palestinian Congregation for Lawyers

General Union for Petrochemical and Gas Workers

General Union for Agricultural Workers

Union of Women’s Work Committees

Union of Synergies—Women Unit

The One Democratic State Group

Arab Cultural Forum

Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel

Association of Al-Quds Bank for Culture and Info

Palestine Sailing Federation

Palestinian Association for Fishing and Maritime

Palestinian Network of Non-Governmental Organizations

Palestinian Women Committees

Progressive Students’ Union

Medical Relief Society

The General Society for Rehabilitation

General Union of Palestinian Women

Afaq Jadeeda Cultural Centre for Women and Children

Deir Al-Balah Cultural Centre for Women and Children

Maghazi Cultural Centre for Children

Al-Sahel Centre for Women and Youth

Ghassan Kanfani Kindergartens

Rachel Corrie Centre, Rafah

Rafah Olympia City Sisters

Al Awda Centre, Rafah

Al Awda Hospital, Jabaliya Camp

Ajyal Association, Gaza

General Union of Palestinian Syndicates

Al Karmel Centre, Nuseirat

Local Initiative, Beit Hanoun

Union of Health Work Committees

Red Crescent Society Gaza Strip

Beit Lahiya Cultural Centre

Al Awda Centre, Rafah

Photo: Sameh Habeeb

An Open Letter from Gaza: Two Years after the Massacre, a Demand for Justice.

via nevercastleadagain.wordpress.com

#Gaza under siege: great counter for your website « tweetextensions.com - Dec 27 #Israel op "Cast led "

2010-12-20T00:57:00.001-08:00

From http://siegebreak.wordpress.com/2010/12/19/gaza2-campaign/

via luckykiwi.wordpress.com

On Dec 27 208 Israel lunched Operation cast led
On 27 December 2008, without warning, Israeli forces began a devastating bombing campaign on the Gaza Strip codenamed Operation “Cast Lead”. Its stated aim was to end rocket attacks into Israel by armed groups affiliated with Hamas and other Palestinian factions. By 18 January 2009 some 1,400 Palestinians had been killed and large areas of Gaza had been razed to the ground. Amnesty International believes that the deaths of so .... Continue reading

http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE15/015/2009/en

Cold War Air Defense Relied on Widespread Dispersal of Nuclear Weapons, Documents Show

2010-12-13T15:29:00.001-08:00

Washington, D.C., November 16, 2010 - To counter a Soviet bomber attack, U.S. war plans contemplated widespread use of thousands of air defense weapons during the middle years of the Cold War according to declassified documents posted today at the National Security Archive's Nuclear Vault and cited by a recently published book, Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era: Nuclear Antiaircraft Arms and the Cold War (Palgrave Macmillan) by historian Christopher J. Bright. The U.S. government publicly acknowledged the facts of the deployments in the 1950s, yet they garnered surprisingly little public opposition, Bright concludes, in disclosing for the first time that air defense weapons comprised as much as one-fifth of the US nuclear arsenal in 1961. Still, nearly 25 years after the United States retired the last of them in 1986, their exact number remains secret.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the most perilous crisis of the Cold War, Bright shows that top Defense officials wanted to limit a response to a bomber attack to conventional weapons, not realizing how much plans and deployments rested solely on nuclear weapons. Bright's work also raises the possibility that air defense weapons may have been among the most dangerous nuclear arms because of their widespread deployment and the predelegated use arrangements that could have led to inadvertent nuclear use during a crisis.

Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era is a reminder of the extent to which nuclear weapons were integral to Cold War American military strategy. It comes at a time when U.S. policy makers are giving renewed attention to nuclear arms, occasioned in part by President Barack Obama's support for their ultimate abolition, and the suggestion by others that existing U.S. nuclear warheads should be replaced or refurbished, along with continuing political disagreement about the necessity and adequacy of a New START arms control treaty with Russia.

Bright's book recounts many other formerly secret details about the thousands of Army and nuclear air defense weapons built during the Cold War, the plans and procedures for their use, and their eventual withdrawal. Drawing upon declassified documents held by the National Security Archive (including material in ninety boxes of files donated in 2003 upon the death of nuclear researcher Chuck Hansen) and other once-secret information originating at the White House, Pentagon, Atomic Energy Commission and elsewhere, Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era discusses the development and deployment of:

3155 Genie air-to-air rockets (with two kiloton nuclear warheads) estimated to have armed scores of Air Force interceptor aircraft at 31 bases in 20 states starting in 1957

1900 Falcon guided air-to-air missiles (with a half kiloton warhead) which later also equipped some of these and other airplanes

2500 Army Nike-Hercules surface-to-air missiles (carrying two or 22 kiloton warheads) that the Army positioned at 123 launch sites around 26 cities and 10 Air Force bases in 25 states

409 Air Force BOMARC long range surface-to-air missiles (each with six and one-half kiloton warheads) located at eight launch sites in seven eastern and northeastern states (in addition to two locations in Canada)

Before the advent of intercontinental ballistic missiles, the fear of a surprise mass Soviet bomber attack spurred defense planners and government scientists to compensate for technological limitations of antiaircraft arms of the era. Recognizing the difficulty of targeting relatively high-flying, fast-moving airplanes, proponents of nuclear air defense believed that relatively small defensive nuclear warheads compensated for inaccuracy by producing comparatively large lethal blast zones. They further argued that nuclear warheads would assuredly destroy attacking planes and the bombs they carried, while posing minimal risk to those on the ground. Policy makers, including President Dwight Eisenhower, military service leaders, and members of Congress, agreed. Defense officials announced the deployments to the public; arms manufacturers and the news media also publicized them. There was little public dissent. Even members of the nascent anti-nuclear movement at the time devoted almost no attention to these arms. While this does not indicate their assent to the weapons, it suggests that they did not see nuclear air defense weapons as especially worrisome.

Among the related topics addressed in Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era:

Eisenhower authorized in advance (or "predelegated") the use of these arms in the event that an aerial attack upon the US was known to be underway but the president could not be contacted. Although intended to be secret, a senior U.S. Air Force officer, General Earle Partridge, disclosed this publicly in 1957 and 1958.

In February 1958, an Air Force publicist revealed the cost of the Genie's W-25 nuclear charge, one of only two occasions in which the expense of a U.S. nuclear warhead has been revealed.

The Genie rocket was test-fired from an Air Force plane over Nevada in July 1957. Five officer volunteers stood below in an attempt to demonstrate that the weapon could be utilized without endangering those on the ground.

In July 1958, extensive preparations had been made to test-fire additional Genies as well as Nike-Hercules missiles over the Gulf of Mexico. Days before the operation was scheduled to be conducted, Eisenhower canceled the test, in an Oval Office meeting with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and others.

The Soviet Union was interested in the details of American nuclear antiaircraft arms. In 1958, the USSR's military intelligence agency apparently recruited an Army lieutenant colonel (one of the highest-ranking US officials suspected of having engaged in espionage on behalf of a foreign power) to provide classified information about the Nike-Hercules. This alleged activity was not uncovered until several years later when Soviet colonel Oleg Penkovskiy, an American agent, reported that the Army missile information was in the USSR's possession.

Despite the ubiquity and visibility of air defense nuclear weapons to Americans a generation ago and the importance of many of these and other related issues, Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era marks the first book-length scholarly examination on the topic. Coinciding with the publication, the National Security Archive is posting thirteen documents which highlight many of these and other important topics covered in the book.

Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era is based upon a dissertation written at The George Washington University under the direction of Leo P. Ribuffo, the Society of the Cincinnati George Washington Distinguished Professor of History. Further guidance was provided by GW historians James G. Hershberg and William Becker; the National Defense University's David Alan Rosenberg; and William Burr, a senior analyst and director of the nuclear history documentation project at the National Security Archive.

Further details about Continental Defense in the Eisenhower Era are available at www.ChristopherJohnBright.com.

Read the Documents

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Justice Department Censors Nazi-Hunting History

2010-12-13T15:26:00.001-08:00

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Infographic: Who Is Anonymous? [PIC] #wikileaks

2010-12-12T12:13:00.001-08:00

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CLOC

2010-12-11T17:52:00.001-08:00

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Derechos de la Madre Tierra

2010-12-11T17:51:00.001-08:00

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The God of Small Things With excerpts from Arundhati Roy's Book

2010-10-11T01:07:00.001-07:00

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A Big Deal: A Look at the Saudi Arms Deal with the US

2010-09-24T15:15:00.001-07:00

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Mind Control: America's Secret War

2010-09-19T12:51:00.001-07:00

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Nuclear waste piles up with no disposal plan | APP.com | Asbury Park Press

2010-09-16T10:15:00.001-07:00

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WASHINGTON — Tens of thousands of tons of potentially lethal radioactive waste have been piling up across the nation for more than a generation, but the federal government has yet to decide how to get rid of it permanently.
After axing a multibillion-dollar plan to bury the waste beneath Yucca Mountain, Nev., President Barack Obama has asked an expert panel to recommend alternatives.
But the panel's report isn't due until January 2012. And the group's recommendations aren't binding on the White House or Congress.
In short, the country's political leaders are no closer to a safe, permanent disposal plan for nuclear waste than they were a generation ago, when nuclear power became widespread and the Cold War was in full swing.
The nation's accumulated 70,000 tons of extremely radioactive, "high level" waste — uranium and plutonium — has sat in "temporary" storage in 35 states since at least the 1950s.
"The country at large is beset by a whole host of problems, so it's not surprising that they aren't paying attention to this," said nuclear expert Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. "Everybody realizes that the collapse of the Yucca Mountain program means many years of on-site storage with no end in sight. Even the people who want nuclear power don't want waste in their backyards."
The waste will continue to pile up as the nation's 104 nuclear power plants win license renewals from federal regulators. It's expected to reach 153,000 tons by 2055, according to a November report from the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative agency.
Commercial nuclear waste, which is solid, is stored in deep pools of water at many power plants. Some of it also is stored in huge steel-and-concrete containers called dry casks, which cost about $1 million apiece, according to Rod McCullum, a waste expert at the power industry's Nuclear Energy Institute.
Jim Riccio, a nuclear energy analyst at the environmental group Greenpeace, said the Obama administration should tell the industry to move more of the fuel rods from pools, where they're more vulnerable to terrorist attack, to dry casks.

via app.com

A planet at #war with itself | #Afghanistan #US #Environment

2010-09-14T11:14:00.001-07:00

A shortage of clean water and no proper sanitation are two of the most severe problems affecting refugees living in the Parwan-e-duo slum, Kabul, Afghanistan. Photograph: Jason P. Howe/Oxfam
Sala Khan Khel, 40 miles outside Kabul, looks like a rural paradise at harvest time. Women and children play behind the high mud walls of the old houses, the men thresh the wheat, teenagers pick walnuts and the water coming straight off the snowy mountains high above the village gurgles through the irrigation canals.

Millennium development goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability

What is the goal? To ensure government policies include sustainable development, reverse the loss of environmental resources and biodiversity, halve the number of people with no access to clean water and sanitation and improve the lives of slum dwellers.

Progress so far The vast majority of countries have improved access to clean water. India and China have already met the target. The rate of deforestation is declining, but levels are still high. CO2 emissions have dipped in recent years, but they are projected to rise again. Governments have talked about their commitment to tackling climate change, but the 2009 Copenhagen conference failed to produce a significant agreement to move forward. While the share of the urban population living in slums has reduced, in absolute terms the number of slum dwellers has grown.

Likely to be met? Improved access to clean water is the only target expected to be achieved.

But the rural idyll hides conflict, deep poverty and growing environmental degradation. Most families here say they have been uprooted by war in the last 20 years, and that climate change means the seasons have become shorter. Also, the population has grown so much there's not enough land to grow food for everyone. On top of that, they say, the water is polluted and is now a source of conflict.
"We can't earn nearly enough. Compared to 20 years ago we are now much poorer. We have new crop diseases we cannot treat, there's conflict between the herders and the settled farmers, and people are cutting down the forests for fuel," says Mahmoud Saikal, a village elder.
Sala Khan Khel's problems mirror those seen all over Afghanistan and the prospects of this war-torn, hungry country getting anywhere near meeting millennium development goal 7 – which covers water, sanitation and the environment – is zero in the next decade and probably for far longer.
Afghanistan is not just one of the poorest countries in the world, it has some of the very worst human development indicators, comparable to Sierra Leone and Angola. Its development has been tied closely to conflict for decades and it only signed the Millennium Declaration in 2004.
Since then, its situation has worsened. Millions of people have flooded into the capital Kabul, either to escape conflict or increasingly to find work or food. The city, with an estimated five million people, is believed to be the fastest-growing capital in the world and new, illegal shanty towns creep up and over the hillsides every year. More than 75% of the whole of the urban Afghan population live without water, electricity or secure ownership. In Kabul, the figure is almost certainly higher.
Government statistics, which are sparse and unreliable, are shocking: in rural areas, it is estimated that 80% of all Afghans are drinking contaminated water. A similar proportion of hospital patients in Kabul suffer from diseases caused by polluted air or water. The burgeoning city generates nearly 2,000 tonnes of solid waste a day but only has the capacity to handle 400 tonnes.
It is one of the only capital cities in the world without a sewage system and last year a survey found that it had only 35 public toilets. The authorities say only one in 10 or 20 households have access to clean water via the city water system, with everyone else sharing communal water pumps.
In rural areas, where people rely on timber for fuel, the forests are disappearing. This, says a spokesman for the environmental protection agency, "is an ecological disaster. With the loss of forests and vegetation, and excessive grazing, soils are being exposed to serious erosion from wind and rain. Land productivity is declining, driving people from rural to urban areas in search of food and employment."
Like many other developing countries, Afghanistan has strong environmental laws but no money to implement them. An EU review of MDG 7 statements from more than 60 countries earlier this year shows that monitoring and reporting, for the most part, have not been undertaken systematically.
The result is that the cycle of poverty, ill health and environmental destruction continues worldwide, say observers.
Although the world is ahead of schedule in meeting the MDG 2015 target on drinking water, in 2008 some 13% of the world's population, or 884m people, still depended on unimproved water, sharing it with animals from lakes, rivers and dams.
On sanitation the situation is desperate. "If current rates of progress go on, MDG 7 target will take more than 200 years to be achieved in sub-Saharan Africa and countries like Afghanistan. Globally, 4,000 children die from diarrhoea a day and in Africa it is now the biggest killer of children under five. Even if the MDG 7 sanitation target were achieved, more than 1.7 billion people would still be without sanitation," says a spokesman from campaign group WaterAid.
Progress on the environmental targets has been the slowest of all MDGs. Worldwide, forest deforestation and fish-stock depletion rates are higher now than they were in 2000. The target to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss has been missed by all 192 countries who have signed up. Climate change emissions in developing countries are soaring and rose overall nearly 30% between 1990 and 2005.
Bright spots include slums. In 1990, UN Habitat could report that 46% of urban populations in developing countries lived in slums, a fall of more than 10% thanks to rapid industrial growth in China and India. Equally, while millions of acres of forest continued to be lost in Latin America and south -east Asia, the rate of replanting worldwide increased dramatically in the last decade.
Worryingly, the pressure on biodiversity – the wealth of nature that is the base of all economies – is increasing. No country has reported progress since 1990, and the need to produce more food and materials for a rapidly increasing global population is threatening most developing countries' habitats.

Most indicators are negative. No government claims success. Some 17,000 plant and animal species are threatened now with extinction. The world's fisheries are not satisfactory – more than half are fully exploited and 28% are overexploited, says a UN report.

via guardian.co.uk

The Heirs - Colombia death squads, are back

2010-09-13T10:24:00.001-07:00

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Psywar: The Real Battlefield is the Mind – Documentary Film « American Pendulum

2010-08-28T16:41:00.001-07:00

Psywar: The Real Battlefield is the Mind – Documentary Film
27 August 2010, 10:33 pm
Documentary Film by Metanoia Films — This film explores the evolution of propaganda and public relations in the United States, with an emphasis on the “elitist theory of democracy” and the relationship between war, propaganda and class. Includes original interviews with a number of dissident scholars including Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti, Peter Phillips (“Project Censored”), John Stauber (“PR Watch”), Christopher Simpson (“The Science of Coercion”) and others.

Source: Metanoia Films

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Nuclear Disarmament and the Hiroshima Nagasaki aftermath

2010-08-08T23:00:00.001-07:00

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Never Again

How Many Iraqis Did We "Liberate" from Life on Earth?

2010-08-07T14:22:00.001-07:00

Is there a man or woman in America today who is willing to stand at noon in the public square and claim that demands to bomb, invade, and occupy other people's countries have anything to do with human liberation?

If such people can be found, let them answer a few simple questions about the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.

How many Iraqis did we "liberate" from the companionship of their loved ones?

How many Iraqis did we "liberate" from dwelling in the houses and towns and the country of their birth?

How many Iraqis did we "liberate" from life on Earth?

If any American who claims to believe that indefinite continuation of the war in Afghanistan -- or a US/Israeli military attack on Iran -- is justified by humanitarian concerns cannot give a fact-based and intellectually coherent answer to the question of how many Iraqis have lost their lives as a result of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, do not that person's claims for "humanitarian" war, bombing, and occupation deserve zero credence?

To state that we cannot know how many have died is outrageously false. It is vacuously true that we cannot know exactly how many have died. But in the diverse fields of human inquiry and endeavor, there are many large numbers that are important which we cannot know exactly. If understanding the magnitude of a number is important, we do not throw up our hands and say, "we can never know." Imagine a reference book that said, "we don't know how many humans are alive on Earth today, because no one has counted them all."

If we want to understand the magnitude of a large number that we cannot count, we estimate it.

And there have now been several attempts to estimate the death toll. In November 2008, Tim Lambert published the following table comparing several estimates, extrapolating the numbers to October 2008:

Survey ..................Violent deaths .....Excess deaths
ILCS .................... 160,000
Lancet 1 ..............350,000 ..................510,000
IFHS .....................310,000..................740,000
Lancet 2: ..............1,200,000..............1,300,000
ORB: .....................1,200,000

If Lambert were to revisit the issue today, he would produce a table that would look something like this:

Survey ..................Violent deaths .....Excess deaths
ILCS .................... 180,000
Lancet 1 ..............400,000 ..................580,000
IFHS .....................350,000 ..................840,000
Lancet 2 ..............1,370,000 ..............1,480,000
ORB .....................1,370,000

These numbers are different from one another. Based on these different numbers, can we say anything meaningful about how many Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S. invasion and occupation beginning in March 2003?

Absolutely we can. We can make the following statement with very high confidence: "Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S. invasion."

So, if you happen to run into any American who claims to support the open-ended war and occupation of Afghanistan, or a US/Israeli attack on Iran, or any other demand to bomb, invade, or occupy someone else's country based on "humanitarian" motivations, ask them to say this sentence: "Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S. invasion and occupation of their country." If they can't say this sentence, you can safely ignore anything else they have to say.

Robert Naiman is Policy Director at Just Foreign Policy

via commondreams.org

Commemorating Hiroshima victims - Asia-Pacific - Al Jazeera English

2010-08-06T10:23:00.001-07:00

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RAWA Photo Gallery

2010-08-03T14:37:00.001-07:00

US troops massacre over 147 civilians in Farah Afghanistan

Over 147 innocent civilians, many of them women and children, were massacred when US war planes bombed villages of Gerani and Gangabad in Bala Baluk district of Farah Province on May 4, 2009.
This is one out of many war crime cases committed by the US troops in Afghanistan over the past few years. The number of innocent civilians killed since Obama took office in Jan.21, reaches to 300 and his so-called "new" strategy for Afghanistan and surge in number of troops has resulted in more such terrible tragedies.

Slideshow | Photo Gallery

More Photos

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One Afghan Civilian=Six U.S. Soldiers #NoWar

2010-08-03T14:24:00.001-07:00

via commondreams.org

When will the US Realize what is an obvious conclusion ? there is no winning in Afghanistan!!

Each time U.S. or NATO forces accidentally kill Afghan civilians, insurgents and their sympathizers retaliate with six new assaults on foreign forces, says a new study based on declassified NATO data. Is there really anything else we need to know about the folly that is this war? Photos of some of the Afghan victims here. Warning: Very graphic.

"The people are the center of gravity." - Gen. David Petraeus

Sneak Preview of NIOT's Next PBS Film | Not in Our Town

2010-08-01T00:48:00.001-07:00

Sneak Preview of NIOT's Next PBS Film

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Submitted by suefish on July 21, 2010 - 8:20pm

in
NIOT III

Patchogue

PBS

We've been burning the midnight oil in our Oakland editing room to bring you preview scenes from our next PBS film, NIOT III: The Patchogue Story.

It's the story of a small Long Island community where Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorean immigrant, was murdered in November 2008 in an attack by seven high school students who were looking for "Mexicans" to beat up.

NIOT film crews have made more than a dozen visits to Patchogue. We've gotten to know the Lucero family as well as civic leaders and elected officials, who tried to bring the community together in the aftermath of this shocking hate crime.

Why did we choose this story as our film's centerpiece?

"People around the country have seen the escalating rhetoric and violence against immigrants," says NIOT CEO and Executive Producer Patrice O'Neill. "This is just an extreme case. And what was important for us is that the tragedy awakened many good people in Patchogue-- including the Mayor and other local leaders, who are trying to make their community safer."

In addition, O'Neill says, Marcelo's brother Joselo has proven to be a powerful voice for many people, especially immigrants, who feel increasingly vulnerable.

NIOT III: The Patchogue Story will be presented on PBS stations nationwide in 2011.

via niot.org

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The End of White Privilege :: racismreview.com

2010-08-01T00:41:00.001-07:00

Jul

30

The End of White Privilege
By Jessie

Sen. Jim Webb (D-Virginia) has called for an end to end to affirmative action programs because, he contends, white privilege is a “myth.”

Here’s what Sen. Webb said in a recent (7/22/10) Wall Street Journal piece:

In 1974, a National Opinion Research Center (NORC) study of white ethnic groups showed that white Baptists nationwide averaged only 10.7 years of education, a level almost identical to blacks’ average of 10.6 years, and well below that of most other white groups. A recent NORC Social Survey of white adults born after World War II showed that in the years 1980-2000, only 18.4% of white Baptists and 21.8% of Irish Protestants—the principal ethnic group that settled the South—had obtained college degrees, compared to a national average of 30.1%, a Jewish average of 73.3%, and an average among those of Chinese and Indian descent of 61.9%.

Policy makers ignored such disparities within America’s white cultures when, in advancing minority diversity programs, they treated whites as a fungible monolith. Also lost on these policy makers were the differences in economic and educational attainment among nonwhite cultures. Thus nonwhite groups received special consideration in a wide variety of areas including business startups, academic admissions, job promotions and lucrative government contracts.

Where should we go from here? Beyond our continuing obligation to assist those African-Americans still in need, government-directed diversity programs should end.

Nondiscrimination laws should be applied equally among all citizens, including those who happen to be white.

Webb is right to note that white Americans are not a monolith and that there are poor whites among the racial category “white.” However, just because Webb has discovered poor white ethnics does not mean that white privilege is a myth. There are so many examples of white privilege that it barely merits listing them all again, but just in case you’ve never read Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” review it now.
One of the key points that Webb misses (and there are many) is that even in a system in which all poor people are oppressed, some poor people who happen to have black or brown skin are even more oppressed. As Matt Yglesias points out:

Someone accused of killing a white person in North Carolina is nearly three times as likely to get the death penalty than someone accused of killing a black person, according to a study released Thursday by two researchers who looked at death sentences over a 28-year period.

People are generally aware of the fact that the criminal justice system sanctions African-American suspects and perpetrators disproportionately harshly. Less noted, but in some ways even more pernicious, is the way it affords lesser protection to African-American victims and potential victims. Randall Kennedy’s Race, Crime, and the Law explicates this neglected issue in an excellent way.

So, while I will be the first to applaud the end of white privilege, we’re not there yet, Sen. Webb – not by a long shot.

Categories : affirmative action, government action, racism, white privilege

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Punk Johnny Cash « Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton and Charles Goyette

2010-07-18T16:21:00.001-07:00

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Posted via email from Jose's posterous

Zionism = Racism.

2010-06-29T19:35:00.001-07:00

All nation states are founded on the nationalist belief that each nation has a specific claim to a specific territory. Nationalists can and do recognise other nations claims to other territories, but almost all make an exclusive claim to at least some territory. This claim is, by definition, an expression of group superiority. The members of the nation, according the nationalist movement in question, possess an inherently superior claim to the territory, purely by membership of the group. They do not have to do anything for it. The claim covers not only their claimed right to live there, but their claimed right to exclude others.
There is one exception to this pattern: the diaspora nationalism of the Roma. The Roma do not know exactly where their ancestral homeland is located. Therefore, in sharp contrast to other nationalist movements, Roma nationalism does not claim territory. And until they know where it is, Roma nationalists can not attempt to expel the existing inhabitants of that territory.
All existing nation states do make a claim of superior right to national territory. In all cases, this claim is made on behalf of a single ethnic group, or a cluster of ethnic groups (titular nation plus national minorities). That the groups are ethnic is the source of most of the racism in ideology and policy. If states were exclusively founded on gender, their ideology might be sexist, but not racist.
Conversely, all nation states claim that other groups do not possess that specific right to the territory in question. Irish nationalists believe that the 'Irish people' have a superior right to the island of Ireland, and that the Paraguayan people do not possess this right. They believe that individual Irishmen and Irish women are the bearers of this collective right, and that these individuals can not be denied the right to reside in Ireland. They they do not believe this about randomly selected individual Paraguayans. Ireland has no indigenous ethnic minorities so the definition of the nation is relatively simple. However these beliefs can be held on behalf of more than one national group, but never on behalf of all nations of the world - at least not in any existing nation state. The formal expression of these underlying beliefs is the citizenship and immigration policy of the nation states. Note that nothing stops Irish and Paraguayan nationalists from respecting each others claims, especially since they have no common disputed territory. However, that does not make their claims any less racist.
It is often said, that the nation states have widely differing conceptions of citizenship. In fact they all operate in conformity with these two principles of superior claim, and legitimate exclusion. All existing nation states share two other characteristics. No nation state has an absolute open-border policy (totally free immigration), and all nation states allow the acquisition of citizenship by descent.
These four characteristics allow Zionism to be considered racist - in the company of other nationalisms, including the quasi-official ideologies of each nation state.
The superior claim to national territory is the attribution of a superior quality to members of the national group. The denial of this claim to certain other ethnic groups is the attribution of an inferior status to their members. The lack of an open-door immigration policy means, that these claims are translated into real exclusion. Finally, the acquisition of citizenship by descent is a purely biological mechanism: it is racist in the general sense, but it is also closest to the biological ideologies first described by the term 'racism'.
French and German attitudes are said to represent the extremes of citizenship policy, but in fact both states share a biological concept of citizenship. Both illustrate this core policy, despite their differences in emphasis. Germany has a generally restrictive immigration policy, which it relaxed in the 1960's and 1970's to allow labour migration for (West) German industry. The children of the many Turkish immigrants grew up in Germany as foreign citizens, with a Turkish passport and a German residence permit. Even the third generation, often born in Germany of German-born parents, usually speaking only German, were still Turkish citizens. If they committed a crime they were liable to be deported to Turkey, even if they did not speak a word of Turkish and had never been there before. Only in the last few years has naturalisation become almost automatic for the third generation. In contrast, descendants of Germans who settled in eastern Europe, sometimes two or three centuries ago, can arrive in Germany and claim full citizenship. It is not necessary that their parents are German citizens, and they are not required to speak a word of German. The German state will pay for their full integration in German society, because they are considered part of the German 'Volk'.
French policies are based on different assumptions, about the effectiveness of French society in transferring its own core values. Living in France for a long period, or growing up in France, is considered to effectively assimilate the migrant or the child. (There is an underlying belief in the self-evident superiority of French values). Naturalisation is therefore easier, and in principle birth in France confers citizenship - but the parents must get there first, for the child to be born there.
However in both cases a basic rule applies, which undermines the French pretensions to have a 'non-racist' citizenship and nationality policy. The child born of citizens is a citizen. All existing nation states apply this principle, usually without regard to place of birth. The child born to a French-citizen mother and a French-citizen father, in Zambia, is a French citizen. The child born to a German-citizen mother and a German-citizen father, in Zambia, is a German citizen. No special procedure is required of either the parents or the baby, and no supplementary qualifications.
The child of Zambian parents, who have no German or French ancestors and no connection with Germany or France, can make no claim on the citizenship of these countries. Both doors are equally closed. That essential inequality is by definition racist. As an adult, the Zambian child can later try to enter either country, and acquire citizenship. That means going through a special procedure, and meeting certain norms, for instance on educational level. Ultimately, acquiring citizenship might be easier in France, but there is no guarantee there either.
This is the reality of nation states: most people got their citizenship from their parents, and they did nothing for it. They certainly did not have to cross the Strait of Gibraltar in a small boat, and spend 10 years picking tomatoes or cleaning toilets - which is what a Zambian might do to acquire legal residence in an EU country. In other words the average citizen, certainly in the richer countries, is complicit in a grand racist scheme. They benefit greatly from their privilege at birth, while others lose horribly. That is presumably why they don't like to talk about the issue, but in terms of human suffering this is the worst aspect of the inherent racism of the nation states. If adults in a western city were arrested, and condemned on the basis of their ethnicity to the typical conditions of life in rural Africa, it would be considered a crime against humanity.

Origins and definition of Zionism
The racist characteristics of nationalism can be found in the Zionist ideology and in the State of Israel, a nation state. The word Zionism is used today for the foundational ideology of the Israeli nation state - the claims by which it justifies its existence. However Zionism as a nationalist movement is older than that state: past and present Zionism do not always coincide.
Zionism is a diaspora nationalism of the Jewish people. In a diaspora nationalism, most members of the national group are not resident on the claimed national territory, and the nation state can only be achieved by 'return' migration. Zionism is an unusual nationalism: it is largely the creation of a single individual, Theodor Herzl. He was the first to make a public claim to a Jewish State, and promoted that idea in Europe. His work reflected the general climate of nationalist revival movements in eastern Europe at the time, especially in the Austro-Hungarian empire. It was almost inevitable, that a Jewish movement would identify Jews as 'a people' when all around them Germans, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Ruthenians, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, and Hungarians were doing the same. The other historically possible options - a purely religious revival movement, and an emancipation movement - were side-tracked.
Zionism is also unusual because, in the early years, there was no clear idea of the national homeland. There was a clear territorial concentration of Jews in Europe, in what is now Poland, Belarus, the Ukraine and southern Russia. However, except for local concentrations, they were in a minority even in this territory. The idea of a Jewish nation state in eastern Europe was never influential in Zionism. Some of the early plans for Jewish resettlement were not even formally nationalist: they made no claim to a state. Resettlement in a British colony, such as Uganda, was for a time the most serious option. The negotiations came to nothing - but the idea influenced British policy, when Palestine became a British mandate territory, after the First World War.
By the time of the Balfour Declaration, Zionism was a standard nationalist movement. Zionists claimed to speak on behalf of a people, the Jewish people. They claimed a nation state for that people in Palestine, on the grounds that it was the historic homeland of the Jewish people. The 'Jewish people' for almost all Zionists was (and is) an ethno-national group - and not a religious community. A minority of religious Jews still opposes Zionism for religious reasons.

Zionism in the State of Israel
When the State of Israel came into existence, it included a mainly Arab minority, now about one million people. Historically Zionism has never recognised any 'national minority' within the nation, the status of (for instance) the Frisians within the modern Dutch nation. For Zionists, the Jewish people is the Jewish nation: Zionism is a mono-ethnic nationalism comparable to Irish nationalism. The present State of Israel generally has the constitutional structure of a secular nation state. It has conceded citizenship to the 'Israeli Arabs', although many will identify themselves as 'Palestinians'. However there is no tradition in Zionism which sees this group ('Arabs' or 'Palestinians') as a constituent minority of the Jewish people. Although many Zionists claimed the territory where Yasir Arafat lived, no Zionist ever saw him as a Jew.
There is also no nationalist movement to establish a bi-national state on the former mandate territory of Palestine. Zionism is not such a movement, and the State of Israel does not claim to be a bi-national state. In this respect, Zionism is comparable to Czech nationalism or Slovak nationalism - not to Czechoslovak nationalism.. No Zionists call themselves Palestino-Jews or Judaeo-Palestinians. The State is called Israel, not Filastino-Israel or Israelo-Filastina
Within this framework, which includes contradictory ideas about Israeli citizenship, the four racist characteristics can be identified.
Firstly, the Zionist movement historically made a claim to territory on behalf of 'the Jewish people', an exclusive geopolitical claim. It claimed that individual Jews had a right to residence in that territory, which did not apply to randomly selected non-Jews outside that territory. None of the early Zionists advocated the ethnic cleansing, which in fact preceded the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 - but none of them believed that non-Jews had a right to the Jewish homeland either. Zionists attribute a superior quality to Jews, namely the exclusive right to the Jewish national territory. The State of Israel, by definition, claims Israeli territory for Israeli's. It attributes a superior quality to Israeli's, although paradoxically that includes the Arab minority with Israeli citizenship. However, the State of Israel is not 'Israelist' - in the sense of consistently presenting these claims for both its Jewish and Arab citizens. In official pronouncements, such as its defensive speech to the Durban anti-racism conference, Israel continues to claim state legitimacy as the national homeland for the 'Jewish people'. It is therefore not correct to say, that in Israel Jewish diaspora nationalism has been succeeded by Israeli nationalism. The legitimising ideology of Israel is still largely Zionism, and not 'Israelism'.
Secondly, Zionism attributes an inferior status to members of non-Jewish ethno-national groups: that they lack the absolute right to residence in the Jewish homeland, and to citizenship of a Jewish nation state. The State of Israel confers no right of residence or citizenship on persons born outside Israel, unless they have specific links to Israel, to the Jewish people, or to Judaism. That excludes about 99% of the world population. The only exception to the general pattern of nationalist exclusion is, that the State of Israel extends citizenship to the historically resident Arab minority. However, some groups in Israel dispute even their right to residence, and propose their expulsion as part of a 'peace settlement' - together with the expulsion of Palestinians from all or part of the occupied territories. According to a 2003 opinion poll in Israel (Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies), 31% now support the expulsion of the Arab minority, and 46% support clearance of the territories.
The most obvious exclusion, which was not foreseen by the early Zionists, is the status of the Palestinians in the occupied territories. Theodor Herzl never imagined that a Jewish state would be an occupying power, and therefore the de facto government, for a large non-Jewish population. In addition, about three million people belong to the clearly identifiable 'Palestinian-refugee' minorities, in other Arab countries, although most were born in their present country of residence. The State of Israel clearly attributes an inferior status to this population: namely that they do not possess the right to Israeli citizenship. This population is generally equivalent to the 'Palestinian people' in the occupied territories, although it includes small non-Jewish, non-Arab minorities. The members of this population, (primarily Palestinian), can not vote, for instance, and if they did all vote in Israeli elections, it would mean the end of the State of Israel. Again it is true that all nation states operate this exclusion, and none of them extend citizenship to everyone, certainly not to hostile populations. That does not make such policies any less racist, since the exclusions are by definition on ethnic or national grounds.
That would not matter so much, if Israeli borders were open to all immigrants: but they are not, and this is the third racist characteristic of Zionism. Israel has one of the highest immigration rates in history, but immigration policy has always been restrictive. Although Israel grants citizenship to the resident Arab minority, it does not permit Arab immigration, even by former residents of its territory. Only those who stayed in their villages in 1948 got Israeli citizenship: those who crossed the front line to the Arab side can not get back - not as a citizen, and probably not as a visitor. Other Arabs, who have no connection with Palestine, can not simply migrate to Israel, nor can most of the world's population. Israeli immigration is essentially for Jews only, and this is the most obviously racist policy of present Zionism. In this case, the State of Israel has a formal and explicit policy of Jewish immigration, which is clearly Zionist. It is the logical consequence of the original Zionist demand for a Jewish state formed by migration, meaning migration of Jews.
In one respect Israeli policy differs from most national immigration policies: citizenship can be indirectly acquired on religious grounds. A person who converts to Judaism can be a Jew in the sense of the Israeli Law of Return, if the conversion is accepted as valid by religious authorities in Israel. The convert can then go to Israel (entry can not be legally refused), and can claim Israeli nationality and citizenship. Sometimes this is quoted by Israel's supporters, to show Israel is not racist. In theory, all the inhabitants of the Palestinian territories can sincerely convert to Judaism tomorrow, and on acceptance of their conversion move to Israel. - where they will all presumably live as good and prosperous Israeli citizens. In practice this is absurdly unlikely. And the question is: why should they have to convert to Judaism, when native-born atheist or Buddhist Israelis can still be part of the Jewish people?
This is the fourth racist characteristic, equally present in the state policies of Israel and present Zionist belief. It was not very relevant for the early Zionists, who were too far from a Jewish state to think about its future citizenship policy. Nevertheless, it was predictable even at the time Herzl wrote, on the basis of the general characteristics of European nation states (and of the Austro-Hungarian empire where he lived). The child of an Israeli citizen mother and and Israeli citizen father is an Israeli citizen. (I am not sure if this applies to the children of Israeli Arabs, born in the occupied territories). The child acquires this privilege without effort: no application under the Law of Return, no conversion to Judaism, no other qualification for citizenship. The child simply acquires the rights (and duties) of an Israeli citizen through unconscious biological process. The child without this biological advantage (birth, or parentage, or genetic material) does not automatically acquire citizenship. Life in Israel is not always pleasant, and many western Jews hesitate to emigrate there, but within the region an Israeli-born child has the advantage. The child born to Israeli settlers in central Hebron will statistically live longer, be better educated, and have a higher standard of living, then the Palestinian child born in an adjoining house. This advantage is part of the general advantage of being born in a rich country, which about one-fifth of the world's population share.
In citizenship and immigration issues, biology determines fate. Not inevitably, but because nation states are structured that way. There is no inherent moral reason why states should limit immigration, or residence, or citizenship, simply on grounds of birth. In fact, it is hard to think of any moral justification for it. It is clearly racist in the general sense of the word, and its derivation from the ideology of nationalism indicates the racist origins of that ideology. The nationalism underlying the nation state Israel, which is accurately called Zionism, is no different in this respect. Here too, Zionism is racist.

via web.inter.nl.net

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Roger Waters - "We Shall Overcome" #Gaza

2010-06-08T03:25:00.001-07:00

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One would think that after experiencing a Holocaust the Jews, they would not want that on anyone .... Or maybe they are just exacting revenge ...but they are doing on the wrong people

Satyagrahi_Ji

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